> The problem here is that you assume they're reasonable. And you assume they are unreasonable? Almost everybody has the ability to reason, the problem is that

> The problem here is that you assume they're reasonable. And you assume they are unreasonable? Almost everybody has the ability to reason, the problem is that their reasoning system is grounded differently from yours. To begin common reasoning, we must first find common ground, even if we have to go all the way back to "I think therefore I am". > No one is antivaccine from a position of logic or science, > because the position is completely impossible to support > with either. There are plenty of ways to argue a point from an anti-vaxxer perspective (which I don't support FYI): 1. There is not enough data to draw conclusions about negative long-term effects. This argument is also used for radio signals (cellular/wifi/bluetooth/etc), smoking (at the time where it was unclear whether there was harm) and many others. 2. Some organization has an incentive to hide known issues. Whilst you might say "conspiracy", just look at the poor ladies who were painting with radium and how their companies hid the effects. Or asbestos. There is a long history of covering up issues to aid profits. 3. The default logical or scientific position is to be skeptical of all claims. If a mass of people say "this is good", it is important for at least a small number of people to challenge this. If people didn't go against the grain, perhaps we would still believe that the earth is at the center of the Universe and if we sail too far, one will simply fall off. As I'm sure you are aware, for many (including myself), it's not possible to read every paper on a subject, hence some of our biases are based on things we haven't confirmed ourselves directly. I didn't personally take a picture of a black hole, but people I trust say that they have and it fits my model of reality. It's unlikely that more than a handful of people with strong positions on vaccines have read years of dense academic articles on vaccine research. They probably get their information from sources they trust, probably different sources from you and I. > Antivaccine beliefs are functionally very similar to > religion. I'm not sure that's true, the reason to be an anti-vaxxer or religious could be completely different. Perhaps anti-vaxxers can be considered as fighting an authoritative figure and religious persons as wanting to follow some authoritative figure? I'm sure the reasons are many and varied. I imagine the reasons for being religious are more socially based though.