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Hacker news usually doesn't disappoint with contradictory view points, e.g. on climate change. Makes sense -- the hacker ethos is traditionally anti authoritari

• Aloha 7y ago
  There are justifiable and reasonable questions about climate science, specifically in re proposed solutions. This is not the case with Vaccines.
  • gdhbcc 7y ago
    Sure it is, there's plenty of reasons to be skeptical. From concerns regarding their safety (see the quality control issues with Chinese vaccines), to nefarious government intervention (such as unethical medical trials) to concerns about espionage and data collection ( see the CIA and their vaccines as cover for spying in Pakistan and Afghanistan). To say "there is no reason to ever question or be against vaccines" shows a disturbing ignorance and naivety on how the world works
    • WkndTriathlete 7y ago
      That's just needless pedantry. Production questions don't address the efficacy of population vaccination; likewise with unethical medical trials or espionage. I don't deny any of these happen, but the fact they did doesn't invalidate an effective vaccine. Would you prefer "There is no reason to question vaccines produced to FDA quality guidelines based on established and well-accepted efficacy, completed within an ethical and rigorous set of clinical trials"? Because I'm pretty sure that's what people generally mean when saying "there is no reason to ever question or be against vaccines" even if they don't state that explicitly.
    • jhayward 7y ago
      This argument is one of basic innumeracy. Those things mentioned, to the extent they exist, are tiny nits on the enormous benefit. They are always discussed in isolation complete with heart-rending horror stories of suffering and no countervailing presentation of massive benefit of vaccines. It's a common tactic of subversion - essentially "how to lie with facts".
  • vixen99 7y ago
    Do the downvotes mean there are no justifiable and reasonable questions to ask about climate science? Some science that would be but of course there are! For example, there are intense discussions regarding the magnitude of the climate sensitivity and be clear about it, there is no consensus view. It's spoken of in terms of probability. The influence of cloud cover is immensely complicated and little understood in terms of its contribution to the earth's energy balance.
    • mistermann 7y ago
      > Do the downvotes mean there are no justifiable and reasonable questions to ask about climate science? My downvote was for the "This is not the case with Vaccines" assertion. It is imperfect from a factual and epistemological perspective, at least.
• sambroner 7y ago
  The Overton window refers to things that are not allowed to be considered in public discourse for fear of public shaming. There's another option: No one agrees with the anti-vax movement, the couple's cause, or the cause's tenuous relationship to free speech enough to pen a comment in support.
  • creaghpatr 7y ago
    Also it's unclear if the couple is funding the groups because they actually disagree with the science- rather than some kind of religious or money motive. If I had to guess, I would say they themselves are vaccinated.
• s_m_t 7y ago
  The only reasonable form of vaccine skepticism would involve publically exholting the benefits of vaccines while not taking them yourself. Build up herd immunity, avoid any potential side effects yourself. So the crickets are actually part of the conspiracy.
  • conanbatt 7y ago
    That is a long, abstract, con.
• astrodust 7y ago
  When your "rebellion" aligns with the objectives of big oil, or your "anti-authoritarian" movement is part of a Russian disinformation campaign you may need to consider you're not actually either of those things. The hacker ethos is not to be contrarian, it's to explore.
• xwdv 7y ago
  I can usually come up with a contrarian view point if summoned but on this topic all I can say is that while I personally don’t care if people do not want to vaccinate themselves or their children, them not doing so causes problems for herd immunity, so for that reason they should be forced to.
  • conanbatt 7y ago
    When people sit around in their homes playing video games instead of doing charity, they deprive the community of valuable human labor. So for that reason they should be forced to work.
    • zentiggr 7y ago
      Again, false analogy. Video game players are not putting other people at risk by not being social.
      • conanbatt 7y ago
        People that are unvaccinated are not putting anyone at risk. It's people that are vaccinated that create a safer environment.
• JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > I'd love to hear a defense of this couple and their cause Okay, let me try. There is no reasonable objection to the measles vaccine per se. The problem is with normalizing the population to the government mandating injections. Informed consent requires both consent and being informed. If someone isn't giving informed consent, the government cannot simply coerce them into complying (e.g. by withholding access to public spaces). It's not like the American government hasn't previously abused this power. We have the Tuskegee syphilis experiment [1] and fake Pakistani vaccine drive in the hunt for bin Laden [2]. The Jewish population, specifically, has reasonable historical basis for suspecting the state-mandated introduction foreign compounds into their veins. (Counter: We have consensus among a diverse population of doctors that the MMR vaccine is a good idea. New vaccines face medical and scientific skepticism. If a group were legitimately concerned about government overreach, an independent testing body would be a better approach than scaring people from prudent medical care.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci...
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• JudgeWapner 7y ago
  On a similar note: despite the tens of articles/comment series I've read on HN about Bay Area housing, I've not once heard an actual NIMBY defend the status-quo. All I've ever heard is that NIMBY's are the primary cause. If they are powerful enough to cause the BA housing crisis, I'd expect that at least some of them would state their case online.
  • scarmig 7y ago
    No one identifies as a NIMBY in general: the sense is, of course if I lived in neighborhood X, I'd be happy if they built it up for the sake of the common good. The only time anyone makes NIMBY arguments is when something's actually being built in their backyard. Then they quickly realize how YIMBY arguments often ignore local context and negative side effects. Also, no one is happy with the status quo. I'm relatively on the pro-NIMBY side (at least for the median HN commentator). I support development. I also think impacted communities, particularly marginalized communities, do deserve substantial say in how that development takes place, up to and including veto rights.
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• catacombs 7y ago
  What's there to defend? People who support not vaccinating their children are delusional.
• spamizbad 7y ago
  I feel like anti-vaxx talk is much more tolerated these days than when I was a child (in the 1980s). Back then, you had a much larger group of people who lived through terrible diseases that were eradicated through vaccination. It's much easier to make an argument against vaccination when the vast majority of your audience hasn't lost a loved one (like a child or sibling) to a (now) preventable disease.
• conanbatt 7y ago
  I think this happens because the vast majority of participants in this topic cannot distinguish between the overwhelmingly convincing evidence of the good of the vaccine and the terrible morality of the government forcing them down on people. In this topic you can often find individuals complaining about the threat of internment camps while simultaneously arguing to round up all anti-vaxers together and punish, humiliate or segregate them. [In the HN thread a participant that has been voted up has literally suggested inoculating people and placing them in ghettos] To satisfy your original request, I will offer the counter-weight: my core argument is that herd immunity is a privilege not a right. You are not entitled to it, and thus if you want it, you need to pay for it. The vaxers need to compensate the anti-vaxers for their perceived inconvenience. There are more worthwhile details in the debate: medicine is not about forcing treatment on people, but public health often is (through some mechanisms like segregation). It also could be very counter-productive to do the latter, since the most dangerous clinically wise is someone lying about getting the vaccine, than someone not getting it. Fundamentally my request to those that wish to use force against the anti-vaxers is to grow a pair and try to go with a vaccine in hand into these people's homes and inject it themselves, since they are so brave to ask for drastic measures.
  • dctoedt 7y ago
    > the terrible morality of the government forcing [vaccines] down on people For many of us, there's nothing moral about an anti-vaxxer's insistence on personal autonomy (read: "You're not the boss of ME!") when it could endanger thousands of others. Anti-vaxxers had better be prepared for an effort to get them to do otherwise — OK, sure, by kindly persuasion if that's possible, but if not .... And yes I do realize that's a two-way street.
    • conanbatt 7y ago
      I hope you have the courage to get the vaccine yourself, break into an anti-vaxers home and risk your life in a fight to inject them with it. After all, it is for your child's life. Then I will believe your argument about sacrificing individual sovereignty for a common good.
• twy5790 7y ago
  I have commented in the past but no longer do so because of the downvotes that come my way. This is the only topic on HN where I censor myself in this way. And I am someone who is fully vaccinated and who vaccinates her family.
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  • conanbatt 7y ago
    This topic is vitriolic here as it is on twitter, and even the public discourse in other countries. One upvoted comment literally mentions murdering and ghettos, something that would get you banned and possibly fired if you replaced the word anti-vaxxers with anything else, but applauded in a forum of wealthy intellectuals.
  • twy5790 7y ago
    And I can see I'm getting downvotes even for posting this response. Why downvote someone for answering a question about their behavior on HN? Seems like folks just view anyone who isn't fully and unquestioningly bought-in on vaccines as the enemy, and worthy of downvotes for that reason. Sad day for HN. Hopefully this won't spread to other topics.
• wowzap 7y ago
  The problem is that people hold vaccines and "herd immunity" so dearly to themselves that they're afraid to accept that they have side effects just like any other medication. Gardasil (HPV Vaccine) for example is responsible for a slew of well-documented side effects (paralysis, GBS, etc) causing countries like Japan to stop recommending them. Add in it's inefficiencies at actually vaccinating against HPV and that the big risk of catching HPV is through an elective behavior and it's clear it shouldn't be mandatory. Individual vaccines can be argued against their own merits, but unfortunately as you say the "Overton Window" is rife with people who are swallowing down opioids like candy and believe anything that comes in the form of a pharmaceutical is gold. The reality is most medications have extensive side effects, and vaccines are no exception. Unfortunately nobody can have an honest conversation on which ones are worth it and which ones aren't because of the uneducated stigma associated with the average anti-vax beliefs. I'd cater that the same thing is the case with climate change. I read some comments today from people who unironically believe that humanity will be wiped out within 12 years. Al Gore said that 20 years ago and here we still are. I'd advise people to be more open minded and try and convert the anti-vaxxers to the correct side. Of course you can admit that measles isn't so bad of a disease while still promoting it's vaccines, and surely that will garner more support than advocating strapping anti-vaxxers to a table and shoving a needle in their arm.
  • dragonwriter 7y ago
    > read some comments today from people who unironically believe that humanity will be wiped out within 12 years. If they are the widely reported ones for which that timeframe is cited, that doesn't seem to be the consequence they were talking about. (Yes, the phrase “the world will end” was used, but the world ending is a common hyperbolic metaphor for things other than the end of humanity—and even with the end of humanity it's still a hyperbolic metaphor, since that does not literally end the world.) > Al Gore said that 20 years ago and here we still are. No, he didn't.
    • wowzap 7y ago
      You're right, he said the ice caps would be gone by 2014 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsioIw4bvzI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsioIw4bvzI). How are they looking?
• mistermann 7y ago
  > But it's been crickets so far. I'd love to hear a defense of this couple and their cause. I wouldn't offer a defense, because I'm not an anti-vaxxer, and I am not supportive of this couple's actions, but there is plenty of material on this topic here for an interesting epistemological discussion. Staying emotionally disengaged seems rather difficult for most people though. Vaccines are safe, full stop, is only true for particular definitions of the word safe, not all. The fact that people have died from from vaccinations should be enough to demonstrate this from an objective/logical perspective on a hacker website, but this is where human psychology comes into play. Hackers, while highly logical, are first and foremost human. > Or -- is this so far outside the Overton window that folks are afraid to speak up? Well, you wouldn't be able to have much of a conversation on HN or in most subreddits, because the inevitable downvotes would render the person playing devil's advocate unable to respond. I also don't have much time today despite how much I enjoy such conversations, and I'm quite confident it would rapidly descend into a shitshow of a conversation demonstrating various peculiarities of the human psyche, which you'd think would be interesting to those with a hacker mindset, but there seems to be limits to people's curiosity - certain topics seem to be off limits (this article touches on this phenomenon: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/experiments-in-philosophy/200804/what-s-the-matter-little-brothersister-action https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/experiments-in-philo...). Just as a hint, I would be starting with questions along the lines of: How do we know vaccines are safe? What exactly is the definition of the term "safe" in this context? Does safe possibly have somewhat distinct meanings at the micro-level vs the macro-level? Are there any imperfections in the current vaccine delivery and monitoring system that might allow unrealized risk to go undetected.