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You're right. > The best way to prevent the spread of viruses like Corona is to put everyone in a straightjacket and chain them to the floor in their home. Epi
by ttfkam 6y ago
You're right.
> The best way to prevent the spread of viruses like Corona is to put everyone in a straightjacket and chain them to the floor in their home. Epidemiologists will keep saying people need to stay inside because that’s safer.
This is a hyperbolic take on shelter in place orders and wearing masks. You have replaced the actual recommendations and public orders with a call for complete removal of bodily autonomy even though this was never the case. At no time were people unable to drive to the grocery store for example. They were however restricted from congregating at the beauty salon because of obvious issue with viral transmission.
You have substituted "we need to take precautions as a society" with "let's remove everyone's ability to use their arms and move more than a few feet". Then you went on to suggest that this is akin to what epidemiologists would have us do if given their preference.
If you honestly believe what is happening now is just a precursor to your replacement premise, profound elimination of bodily autonomy, this would fall under another common logical fallacy known as the slippery slope.
> You need the other people to have a voice as well because you can’t live and eliminate all risks at the same time.
Has anyone said, "We want to eliminate all risks"? Has anyone said, "Hanson must not be allowed to speak"?
No. The actual proposed arguments have been, "We want to mitigate risk while looking more closely at what the risks levels actually are," and "Hanson is an economist, not a medical professional who has dedicated their life to the study of infectious disease; therefore his opinion should not carry as much weight as theirs."
So you see? The actual arguments have been substituted for your more hyperbolic and untenable remarks. The hyperbolic remarks are then refuted, not the original arguments.
Ergo: straw man fallacy
Good day, sir.
- tinus_hn 6y ago> You have replaced the actual recommendations and public orders with a call for complete removal of bodily autonomy even though this was never the case. Scientists do not put out orders, that is the job of politicians. Science can only tell you, if you this you run the risk of that. A proper scientist would tell you the only way to avoid being infected or infecting others is to be chained into place. > Has anyone said, "We want to eliminate all risks"? People won’t say ‘we want to eliminate all risks’ but if the consequences are presented as being scary enough, they will take any action to avoid them, which factually is the same thing. Concretely many people want to ‘shelter in place’ until there is no more risk they can be infected and a lot of these people want everyone else to do that as well. It is the job of politicians to evaluate these risks properly and for that they need to listen to both medical scientists, like epidemiologists, so they know what risks they can avoid using their orders, but also economists so they know what costs they incur by these orders. It should be clear that if they do not do this properly the result can be taking measures that are unsustainable or incur new, worse risks. > Has anyone said, "Hanson must not be allowed to speak"? > But by all means, let's all presume that an economist like Robin Hanson [...] has somehow come up with an idea that has escaped the notice of that entire segment of the population dedicated to human health. If Robin Hanson speaks he must be ridiculed because what could he possibly have to bring to the table that no one has thought of before (and then I even cut out the vague insinuations about his motives). But anyway I have no idea who he is and did not refer to him in my comment. My only point is that if you immediately dismiss the input of economists and others outside medical science, you’re only looking at one side of the story and are bound to take poor decisions.
- ttfkam 6y ago> you're only looking at one side of the story False dichotomy. Not only are there more than two options, looking to economists among others without medical training on epidemiological matters as though they should have equal standing is asinine. Dunning-Kruger applies here. As said before, might as well ask Mike Pence whether bloom filters are an effective relational database indexing strategy. "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”" – Isaac Asimov https://aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_Cult_of_Ignorance.pdf https://aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_C...
- tinus_hn 6y agoSo besides looking at one side of the story and looking at more than one side of the story, what are the options? How is that a ‘false dichotomy’?