> Exactly one of the following two claims is a lie: No, a lie is a deception carried out by means of an untrue statement. "1 + 1 = 3" is not a lie, but an acco

> Exactly one of the following two claims is a lie: No, a lie is a deception carried out by means of an untrue statement. "1 + 1 = 3" is not a lie, but an accountant claiming such in order to embezzle is lying. > 1) “Vaccines are safe” > 2) “Vaccines cause, rather than prevent, illnesses”. For the sake of getting at the deeper problem with this argument, I'll grant that a version of these assertions could be roughly mutually exclusive. > If 1 is true, the antivaxx movement is risking tens of millions of lives and >>billions of disability adjusted years of life expectancy. > If 2 is true, vaccines are a multibillion dollar fraud. You've framed this as though it's hard to believe that the antivaxx movement would risk people dying and becoming disabled. Many positions impose a potentially high death toll if you're wrong, e.g. both sides of the debates on war, guns, climate change, health care. In an alternate history, Neville Chamberlain could have been the man who brokered "peace in our time." He believed he was right and, correctly, believed going to war would be bloody and awful, and took actions based on those beliefs. But we typically have little direct influence over policy, so what dominates people's views is the immediate impact they observe. In that "multibillion dollar fraud" you have countless doctors and pharmacists administering vaccines to people they know, watching them get sick, and shrugging it off to collect a paycheck. Unless medical school filters for people who are profoundly unethical, that's not happening.