5 ms·

Quote from a mom on the fence in the article “On one side, they make you afraid, and the other side they make you feel stupid, and you get stuck in this middle

Quote from a mom on the fence in the article “On one side, they make you afraid, and the other side they make you feel stupid, and you get stuck in this middle where you feel beat up by both sides,” she said. Not trying to be condescending but this frustrates me even more than anti vaxers who have an identity in supporting their idiotic parade. This woman is sincerely trying to figure out what is best for her child and she couldn’t do it until she had a 2 hour one on one conversation with her doctor. She has no agenda. And she can’t figure it out with honest effort even with the internet. Our society lacks clear trusted authorities on important basic issues. And our citizens lack critical reasoning skills. Why is she so bad at this? serious question. How is our general population so poorly equipped? I’m glad she did go have that 2 hour conversation, but that feels like the kind of solution we can’t reasonably provide to all people. It shouldn’t require that.

walrus01 8y ago
My theory? The virulent strain of anti-intellectualism / anti-elitism that has run through American society in the last 20 years. "These fancy educated people in their ivory towers telling me what to do with my children...". There's a point at which you should simply defer to the critical mass of thousands of people with doctorates in the subject matter, such as about 99.9% of epidemiologists on the planet.
- mindslight 8y ago
  I've been thinking a lot on the anti-intellectualism lately. Lower intelligence people are less able to judge whether an idea is sensible on its own merits. Furthermore, they are likely to be outwitted by people with higher intelligence. So their mode of operation becomes to not even attempt judging an idea by its merits, lest they end up fooled. Rather, they judge based solely on the perceived stature of whom the idea is coming from. The breakdown of our media institutions furthers the problem - rather than presenting an opinionated application of common sense that condemns poor ideas, they've devolved into giving "each side" equal time to obscure their true power of defining what subjects are talked about. So once these memes get out there, they keep circulating as folk wisdom continually re-validated by appearances in mainstream media.
- FooHentai 8y ago
  But it begs the question. What's underpinning that as the root cause for what we're now seeing? My money's mainly on the loss of prestige surrounding the teaching profession, and loss of the elite status of high education. It's simply not valued as it once was, and as a result everyone's 'highly' educated while simultaneously quite poorly educated, at least outside of stuff that is scored on tests. As the parent post says, 'Critical' reasoning/thinking skills are demonstrably lacking. Reading back what I just wrote, I'm certainly entering 'old man yells at cloud' years of my life it seems :)
  - torpfactory 8y ago
    I think the reason is the vast change in communication technologies (i.e. the internet) in the last 20 years. People used to mostly be exposed to only the pro-vax side which was available from their doctor, in person. There simply wasn't an efficient avenue for anti-vax sentiment to spread. Now any yahoo with a Facebook account can post their zany ideas. In fact, these technologies are almost tailored to spread the zaniest ideas. People are exposed to these ideas often in social media, making them believe they are also common. This breaks down the barrier which might have previously prevented people from believing in fringe ideas: they are now exposed to them frequently. As for the 'average citizen', I don't think the general public has EVER really had critical thinking or reasoning skills. I would bet only 5-10% of the population has the scientific literacy skills to really make sense of the statistics and scientific reasoning which so strongly supports vaccination. Without the ability to make sense for themselves, many are left with appeals to emotion or authority for guidance. As authority loses ground in a sea of new voices on social media, only emotion and fear (much of it unfounded) remains.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- rdtsc 8y ago
  > "These fancy educated people in their ivory towers telling me what to do with my children...". I have seen college educated people including those with advanced degrees who just as easily if not more so pedal anti-vaxxing bullshit. No, they are not scientists, but they and their peers would consider themselves intellectuals. > you should simply defer to the critical mass of thousands of people with doctorates I noticed a paradox in that people who have doctorates in unrelated fields just as easily decide that they can research on their own and other doctors might just not be as "smart". Unlike flat earth, contrails and other such bullshit, anti-vaxxing does seem to attract educated people as well as uneducated ones. Even if you read the article, I wouldn't consider Washington state as the epicenter of anti-intellectualism in US. Quite the opposite I would say.
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    We shouldn’t let someone who doesn’t understand evolution and probability to consider themselves educated. Those concepts should be required to be learned in high school, and not be able to pass without them.
    - rdtsc 8y ago
      > We shouldn’t let someone who doesn’t understand evolution Agree yeah. The difficult part is that a lot of these people think they understand evolution. Overall Clark County, WA doesn't seem to be a hotbed of uneducated people, about 30% of adults have college degrees there which is about average for US as well I think. At least it's not as simple as pointing and saying "Ah, look only 5% of people there went to college of course they be anti-intellectual with all the associate risks of following conspiracy theories" but it seems something more complex is happening there.
wtallis 8y ago
> Our society lacks clear trusted authorities on important basic issues. This is definitely not true of public health issues. Even though some states have dangerously lax rules about claiming exemptions to vaccination requirements, the fact that the requirements exist in any form should be enough of a clue. Or the fact that every doctor and nurse recommends these vaccines, starting before your kid is even born. If you cannot tell the difference between a professional opinion coming from your doctor, and bullshit coming from an internet troll, then you absolutely should feel stupid. That's the correct response to finding yourself in that kind of situation. If it takes two hours for your doctor to convince you that you should get your kids vaccinated, then you're being an asshole to your doctor by wasting so much of his time resisting his well-informed professional advice. It should be a two minute conversation, unless the parent and the doctor literally don't speak the same language.
- QuantumGood 8y ago
  Two doctors in my family. They have stories about how stupid doctors can be, more than one story of a dumb decision by a doctors killing a patient. I see a cardiologist. He didn't know that ecg apps existed, and so made prescriptions based on guesses about what my heart might be doing when it was not being measured. I got an ecg app, and determined my own course of treatment based on what was actually happening. Doctors don't do differential diagnosis on most issues. They just suggest common approaches. They may be smart and educated, but they don't use their IQ to diagnose most cases. Relying on experts who aren't optimizing their time to utilize their expertise to help you isn't a great idea. I was sleeping wrong on my elbow, and a doctor suggested a couple of different drugs for my elbow pain without investigating causes at all. I determined the cause pretty easily, and in the process helped several other people with a similar issue. I'm just saying that you can't rely on the advice of doctors by default. It can kill you.
  - jfrn 8y ago
    > determined my own course of treatment based on what was actually happening. The fact that you would use a phrase like “what was actually happening” in regard to a health issue (cardiologic no less) based on an ecg app is all we need to know that you’re utterly clueless.
purplezooey 8y ago
The authority is there, but especially in the past couple of years, people prefer to listen to their own reality.
munchbunny 8y ago
I remember reading an article somewhere by a public health researcher on why parents choose not to vaccinate. The gist of her point was that most parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids believe that they have the financial and other resources to manage the illness in the tiny chance their kids do get it, so they don't think it's worth the "potential downside". I recall the same article also pointing out that the majority of voluntarily unvaccinated kids are in middle/upper class families. Based on this, I'd attribute the phenomenon to three causes: 1. People have forgotten how bad these diseases can be. Measles will really mess you up, but today's parents were born in the 80's and 90's, they don't remember measles. 2. On the flipside, they do remember scaremongering about autism and mercury. Autism has been especially prevalent in the public memory because we've only recently started to understand it better. 3. Naturopathic/homeopathic remedies have really taken off in the past few years. Humans have a fundamental comformation bias problem. When you want to believe that a remedy is working, you tend to believe that it's working. Humans suck at remembering to consider the null hypothesis. So my interpretation is that they know that autism is incurable, and they think it's a risk in the single percentage points as a consequence of the mercury in vaccines. However, they know nobody with measles, so they think of it as a zero probability to get a disease like a more serious flu (curable). Who wants to make that tradeoff? I think that train of thought is so wrong it's not even wrong, but you can't be condescending if you intend to persuade.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
chx 8y ago
You know where to put the blame, aren't you? Charlie Sykes told you. The right wing media spent decades on undermining the authority of the mainstream media, as Sykes said, if one of his callers said something blatantly false, he couldn't say any more, look what the New York Times has written because he and the likes of him spent a long time making sure noone believed the NYT any more. This, obviously, doesn't stop at the NYT or even the media. The CDC, well, that's just one voice and how do you know they are right? Lies, euphemistically called "fake news" elected the current president of the USA, how do you think those people can see the truth any more?
- humanrebar 8y ago
  > The right wing media spent decades on undermining the authority of the mainstream media... And the media didn't deserve it? Dan Rather? The Duke Lacrosse incident? Political donation habits of self described journalists? Media complicity in what should have been a MeToo moment for Bill Clinton in the 90s? Or how long Harvey Weinstein was an open secret? Hannibal Buress breaking the Cosby story? How about the crying wolf about how sexist Mitt Freaking Romney was so that there was no alarm left when a lech like Donald Trump came around? It's interesting that you use the term "fake news", because besides being a synonym for "lies" on the left, it's used in the alt-right (don't worry, not my camp) to label cherry-picked facts that conform to an existing narrative. Lies of bias and omission, basically. Mostly, though, to be more severe, the media concentrates on quick narratives, on sound bites, on visuals, and on fresh controversies. And increasingly these days, on reinforcing existing echo chambers. There are so many rumors, anonymous sources, and unverified stories that would have been left to tabloids 20 years ago. There are so many ridiculous articles rehashing twitter arguments in newsprint. And stories about what he-said-about-what-she-said-about-what-they-said. The media pride themselves on speaking truth to power, but the power they are not willing to speak to is the collective power of their perceived audiences. That goes for nearly all media outlets. They are beholden to remain popular within their respective niches. If it's not clear, I think there's a tribalism problem in most media organizations, and I think we have them to thank for being a significant contributor to Trump being elected. If people can blame the U.S. for instigating terrorism through its foreign policy, I can blame the media for instigating an ignorant and paranoid public through its pursuit of tribalism over truth.
gdubs 8y ago
I picked up Carl Sagan’s “Demon Haunted World” recently, and it’s all about this question of why certain myths, urban legends, and superstitions, persist. Really worth the read. He often pointed out the precariousness of living in a world that runs on science, but where few people understand science. People who know me here know that I’m a big Sagan fan, but seriously — wish we had him around for times like these.
- banku_brougham 8y ago
  Carl was one of the greats. I was too young to go with him into the darkness of Demon Haunted World, now I’ve seen enough to perhaps take solace and learn how I might combat such demons in my own small world.

walrus01 8y ago

My theory? The virulent strain of anti-intellectualism / anti-elitism that has run through American society in the last 20 years. "These fancy educated people in their ivory towers telling me what to do with my children...". There's a point at which you should simply defer to the critical mass of thousands of people with doctorates in the subject matter, such as about 99.9% of epidemiologists on the planet.

mindslight 8y ago
I've been thinking a lot on the anti-intellectualism lately. Lower intelligence people are less able to judge whether an idea is sensible on its own merits. Furthermore, they are likely to be outwitted by people with higher intelligence. So their mode of operation becomes to not even attempt judging an idea by its merits, lest they end up fooled. Rather, they judge based solely on the perceived stature of whom the idea is coming from. The breakdown of our media institutions furthers the problem - rather than presenting an opinionated application of common sense that condemns poor ideas, they've devolved into giving "each side" equal time to obscure their true power of defining what subjects are talked about. So once these memes get out there, they keep circulating as folk wisdom continually re-validated by appearances in mainstream media.
FooHentai 8y ago
But it begs the question. What's underpinning that as the root cause for what we're now seeing? My money's mainly on the loss of prestige surrounding the teaching profession, and loss of the elite status of high education. It's simply not valued as it once was, and as a result everyone's 'highly' educated while simultaneously quite poorly educated, at least outside of stuff that is scored on tests. As the parent post says, 'Critical' reasoning/thinking skills are demonstrably lacking. Reading back what I just wrote, I'm certainly entering 'old man yells at cloud' years of my life it seems :)
- torpfactory 8y ago
  I think the reason is the vast change in communication technologies (i.e. the internet) in the last 20 years. People used to mostly be exposed to only the pro-vax side which was available from their doctor, in person. There simply wasn't an efficient avenue for anti-vax sentiment to spread. Now any yahoo with a Facebook account can post their zany ideas. In fact, these technologies are almost tailored to spread the zaniest ideas. People are exposed to these ideas often in social media, making them believe they are also common. This breaks down the barrier which might have previously prevented people from believing in fringe ideas: they are now exposed to them frequently. As for the 'average citizen', I don't think the general public has EVER really had critical thinking or reasoning skills. I would bet only 5-10% of the population has the scientific literacy skills to really make sense of the statistics and scientific reasoning which so strongly supports vaccination. Without the ability to make sense for themselves, many are left with appeals to emotion or authority for guidance. As authority loses ground in a sea of new voices on social media, only emotion and fear (much of it unfounded) remains.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
rdtsc 8y ago
> "These fancy educated people in their ivory towers telling me what to do with my children...". I have seen college educated people including those with advanced degrees who just as easily if not more so pedal anti-vaxxing bullshit. No, they are not scientists, but they and their peers would consider themselves intellectuals. > you should simply defer to the critical mass of thousands of people with doctorates I noticed a paradox in that people who have doctorates in unrelated fields just as easily decide that they can research on their own and other doctors might just not be as "smart". Unlike flat earth, contrails and other such bullshit, anti-vaxxing does seem to attract educated people as well as uneducated ones. Even if you read the article, I wouldn't consider Washington state as the epicenter of anti-intellectualism in US. Quite the opposite I would say.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  We shouldn’t let someone who doesn’t understand evolution and probability to consider themselves educated. Those concepts should be required to be learned in high school, and not be able to pass without them.
  - rdtsc 8y ago
    > We shouldn’t let someone who doesn’t understand evolution Agree yeah. The difficult part is that a lot of these people think they understand evolution. Overall Clark County, WA doesn't seem to be a hotbed of uneducated people, about 30% of adults have college degrees there which is about average for US as well I think. At least it's not as simple as pointing and saying "Ah, look only 5% of people there went to college of course they be anti-intellectual with all the associate risks of following conspiracy theories" but it seems something more complex is happening there.

wtallis 8y ago

> Our society lacks clear trusted authorities on important basic issues. This is definitely not true of public health issues. Even though some states have dangerously lax rules about claiming exemptions to vaccination requirements, the fact that the requirements exist in any form should be enough of a clue. Or the fact that every doctor and nurse recommends these vaccines, starting before your kid is even born. If you cannot tell the difference between a professional opinion coming from your doctor, and bullshit coming from an internet troll, then you absolutely should feel stupid. That's the correct response to finding yourself in that kind of situation. If it takes two hours for your doctor to convince you that you should get your kids vaccinated, then you're being an asshole to your doctor by wasting so much of his time resisting his well-informed professional advice. It should be a two minute conversation, unless the parent and the doctor literally don't speak the same language.

QuantumGood 8y ago
Two doctors in my family. They have stories about how stupid doctors can be, more than one story of a dumb decision by a doctors killing a patient. I see a cardiologist. He didn't know that ecg apps existed, and so made prescriptions based on guesses about what my heart might be doing when it was not being measured. I got an ecg app, and determined my own course of treatment based on what was actually happening. Doctors don't do differential diagnosis on most issues. They just suggest common approaches. They may be smart and educated, but they don't use their IQ to diagnose most cases. Relying on experts who aren't optimizing their time to utilize their expertise to help you isn't a great idea. I was sleeping wrong on my elbow, and a doctor suggested a couple of different drugs for my elbow pain without investigating causes at all. I determined the cause pretty easily, and in the process helped several other people with a similar issue. I'm just saying that you can't rely on the advice of doctors by default. It can kill you.
- jfrn 8y ago
  > determined my own course of treatment based on what was actually happening. The fact that you would use a phrase like “what was actually happening” in regard to a health issue (cardiologic no less) based on an ecg app is all we need to know that you’re utterly clueless.

purplezooey 8y ago

The authority is there, but especially in the past couple of years, people prefer to listen to their own reality.

munchbunny 8y ago

I remember reading an article somewhere by a public health researcher on why parents choose not to vaccinate. The gist of her point was that most parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids believe that they have the financial and other resources to manage the illness in the tiny chance their kids do get it, so they don't think it's worth the "potential downside". I recall the same article also pointing out that the majority of voluntarily unvaccinated kids are in middle/upper class families. Based on this, I'd attribute the phenomenon to three causes: 1. People have forgotten how bad these diseases can be. Measles will really mess you up, but today's parents were born in the 80's and 90's, they don't remember measles. 2. On the flipside, they do remember scaremongering about autism and mercury. Autism has been especially prevalent in the public memory because we've only recently started to understand it better. 3. Naturopathic/homeopathic remedies have really taken off in the past few years. Humans have a fundamental comformation bias problem. When you want to believe that a remedy is working, you tend to believe that it's working. Humans suck at remembering to consider the null hypothesis. So my interpretation is that they know that autism is incurable, and they think it's a risk in the single percentage points as a consequence of the mercury in vaccines. However, they know nobody with measles, so they think of it as a zero probability to get a disease like a more serious flu (curable). Who wants to make that tradeoff? I think that train of thought is so wrong it's not even wrong, but you can't be condescending if you intend to persuade.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

chx 8y ago

You know where to put the blame, aren't you? Charlie Sykes told you. The right wing media spent decades on undermining the authority of the mainstream media, as Sykes said, if one of his callers said something blatantly false, he couldn't say any more, look what the New York Times has written because he and the likes of him spent a long time making sure noone believed the NYT any more. This, obviously, doesn't stop at the NYT or even the media. The CDC, well, that's just one voice and how do you know they are right? Lies, euphemistically called "fake news" elected the current president of the USA, how do you think those people can see the truth any more?

humanrebar 8y ago
> The right wing media spent decades on undermining the authority of the mainstream media... And the media didn't deserve it? Dan Rather? The Duke Lacrosse incident? Political donation habits of self described journalists? Media complicity in what should have been a MeToo moment for Bill Clinton in the 90s? Or how long Harvey Weinstein was an open secret? Hannibal Buress breaking the Cosby story? How about the crying wolf about how sexist Mitt Freaking Romney was so that there was no alarm left when a lech like Donald Trump came around? It's interesting that you use the term "fake news", because besides being a synonym for "lies" on the left, it's used in the alt-right (don't worry, not my camp) to label cherry-picked facts that conform to an existing narrative. Lies of bias and omission, basically. Mostly, though, to be more severe, the media concentrates on quick narratives, on sound bites, on visuals, and on fresh controversies. And increasingly these days, on reinforcing existing echo chambers. There are so many rumors, anonymous sources, and unverified stories that would have been left to tabloids 20 years ago. There are so many ridiculous articles rehashing twitter arguments in newsprint. And stories about what he-said-about-what-she-said-about-what-they-said. The media pride themselves on speaking truth to power, but the power they are not willing to speak to is the collective power of their perceived audiences. That goes for nearly all media outlets. They are beholden to remain popular within their respective niches. If it's not clear, I think there's a tribalism problem in most media organizations, and I think we have them to thank for being a significant contributor to Trump being elected. If people can blame the U.S. for instigating terrorism through its foreign policy, I can blame the media for instigating an ignorant and paranoid public through its pursuit of tribalism over truth.

gdubs 8y ago

I picked up Carl Sagan’s “Demon Haunted World” recently, and it’s all about this question of why certain myths, urban legends, and superstitions, persist. Really worth the read. He often pointed out the precariousness of living in a world that runs on science, but where few people understand science. People who know me here know that I’m a big Sagan fan, but seriously — wish we had him around for times like these.

banku_brougham 8y ago
Carl was one of the greats. I was too young to go with him into the darkness of Demon Haunted World, now I’ve seen enough to perhaps take solace and learn how I might combat such demons in my own small world.