7 ms·

This is a harsh thing to say, but I understand where you're coming from. We....all of us, all human beings...need to be very patient and merciful with each oth

This is a harsh thing to say, but I understand where you're coming from. We....all of us, all human beings...need to be very patient and merciful with each other. My wife and I know good, honest and smart people who are fully convinced that Covid19 isn't that dangerous, that it's a hoax, etc. I'm not saying "smart" lightly. All humans...even the best of us...are at our core deeply irrational most of the time. Different groups of us are irrational about different things. Saying all of this, I do not mean to minimize the focused, concerted actions of a relative few who have taken advantage of not just human weakness but also the new communication technologies available to them. We should reserve our ire for those who pull the strings of manipulation to the detriment of many.

dkural 6y ago
Why do you think they're good and smart, why do they think Covid19 is a hoax? Surely a good person would try to do the safe thing even if they had doubts.
- anonfornoreason 6y ago
  Not the original poster, but I would imagine it echos what I have seen (and believe myself) in that it’s not a hoax as is normally defined, but a mass hysteria fueled by a media that needs clicks to survive. The risks are real for certain demographics, we need to take precautions to help vulnerable people, etc. however the unintended consequences of drastic policies are economic hardship, creating a new generation of homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, and deaths of despair. I have been called a denier, and have had my beliefs references as “believing COVID is a hoax”, which is far from the truth. From what I can tell a huge portion of the United States is engaged in a mass delusion, and is actively handing over all the prosperity for the next decade to large corporations who benefit from COVID, while risking the future of kids with mostly worthless remote learning. Focus the effort required to create lockdowns / restrictions on providing relief for elderly, unhealthy, immunocompromised people, etc. If some misguided old people in the Midwest want to pretend they are not at risk, it’s their life and their body to do that with. Sucks for the healthcare workers tasked with dealing with that, but you can’t legislate away life, risk, etc.
  - NathanKP 6y ago
    > the unintended consequences of drastic policies are economic hardship, creating a new generation of homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, and deaths of despair. None of these things are inevitable. For example China arguably implemented some extremely drastic policies and they are doing just fine now. New Zealand did the same. In the United States we are just doing an incredibly bad job at this. Too many people talk about controlling the virus and protecting the economy as if they are polar opposites but the aren't. A month or two of drastic lockdowns early on would have saved the years of slow bleeding we are currently facing.
    - salmon30salmon 6y ago
      The way China controlled the virus is legally impossible in the United States. You simply can't confine someone to their home without due process. New Zealand is an island that, for all intents and purposes, closed their ports to human travel. Early in COVID, everyone suddenly became statisticians and had opinions on exponential growth, and while most of their proclamations were ill-informed, the truth remains that one infection can spiral out of control quickly. With a disease that exhibits nearly 40% asymptomatic rates and is aerosolized, there is no eradication. It will be with us in waves until we are immune via natural immunity or vaccinations. If New Zealand opened their ports today to the same levels as the United States' ports, they would quickly see a spike.
      - vkou 6y ago
        > New Zealand is an island that, for all intents and purposes, closed their ports to human travel. Firstly, New Zealand is not closed to human travel. It has mandatory quarantine for inbound travelers. The US can do the same. It is in an even better situation to do so than New Zealand, because its economy is less dependant on tourism and imports. It would be utterly pointless, of course, because nearly anywhere in the world has less COVID-per-capita than the US. A random traveler from Kentucky, or New Jersey is just as likely to be a COVID carrier as someone flying in from Paris. Keeping Parisians out isn't doing anything to stop spread, at this point. [1] As for the legality of locking people in their own homes, the US is no stranger to blanket curfews during a state of emergency... Or for imprisoning symptomatic, or asymptomatic carriers of a disease. [1] In a stroke of brilliance, travel from China to the US is still banned. Can anyone puzzle out how this policy is currently helping improve American health outcomes?
- Diederich 6y ago
  I worked with a guy named Danny many years ago. He was one of the smartest programmers I'd ever met. Not only did he write great code, but he also always maintained an excellent connection to the his customers who would use the programs he wrote. This was in a hospital. Personally, he was kind, generous, excellent family man. He never really talked too much about politics, didn't care too much for it. He also helped me order the parts for and showed me how to assemble my first intel based desktop computer, an amazing 486-DX2-66! It's been years but I recently communicated with him, and we had a great e-mail exchange, caught up. He was surprised and pleased that since I left I'd not only gotten married but now have an adult son. Surprised because back >25 years ago when we hung out I was very much not a "family man" kind of person. I asked him in passing how he'd been holding up with the pandemic, and suddenly, there it was. Covid19 was a hoax perpetrated by China to help Joe Biden get elected. It broke my heart. A smart, good, kind man that I knew had been brain damaged. Like some kind of fucking psychological cancer. As the old saying goes, There but for the grace of God, go I. You and I can't imagine falling prey to such a thing, but I can assure you that my old friend Danny had and has the same mental facilities as you and I. He caught this particular cancer, and you and I didn't. What's worse? He doesn't even know he has and is subject to this psychological malignancy. I wonder if there are any psychological cancers you and I are subject to, right now, that we don't even know about or suspect?
  - phobosanomaly 6y ago
    Sharp comment. Lot of truth packed in there.
  - thelean12 6y ago
    Sorry, that means they're not smart. They might be a good programmer and a family man, but they're not smart. If you are able to fall for "Covid19 was a hoax perpetrated by China to help Joe Biden get elected" in the modern day, then you are not smart. It's one thing when you're not able to get information, like way back in the day when we had no real world explanations for lots of things, and had to work with what you've heard from word of mouth. But now? There's no excuse.
  - busrf 6y ago
- kinjba11 6y ago
  Beliefs don't exist in a vacuum - hoax memes spread much like COVID itself. Media literacy is scarily low among most people, even those who are brilliant in other ways. Metaphorically we are failing to vaccinate against misinformation in primary education, leaving tech giants the impossible task of policing misinformation on their platforms designed to maximize engagement for profitability. 'The Social Dilemma' documentary (Netflix) dips into this if you haven't seen it.
agentdrtran 6y ago
> My wife and I know good, honest and smart people who are fully convinced that Covid19 isn't that dangerous, that it's a hoax, etc. I'm not saying "smart" lightly. If they have a Ph.D in theoretical physics but think COVID is a hoax they're still dumb, sorry.
- rusk 6y ago
  Pretty much this.
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  PhD involves years of thinking very specifically about an extremely narrow set of problems, not building a robust set of reliable heuristics about how the world outside of that field works. I know plenty of brilliant PhDs and Physicians who couldn't real-world their way out of a paper bag. They're dumb as a rock when it comes to anything outside of their field, because their field has vacuumed up all of their mental energy over the decades. By comparison, I'm pretty mediocre at what I do because I read widely, follow the news, and have elaborate political discussions for fun. By their standard, I'm dumb as a rock because I'm up late reading about the Soviets in Afghanistan, instead of yet another journal article. Time is finite, and it's all a big compromise.
- kjs3 6y ago
  I wouldn't say that. There are different kinds of "smart", and then there is "poor analytical skills". There are "smart" people, for many values of "smart", that still have such poor analytical skills that they think Covid is fake, the earth is flat, bigfoot is real, Elvis is alive, etc. Just calling them 'dumb' doesn't get to root cause.
chillwaves 6y ago
Thank you for your comment. I would describe what is happening as rationality 'blind spots' -- everyone has them about different subjects. It's not a matter of smart vs stupid. That framing of the world is too simplistic to be valuable.
jimkleiber 6y ago
I appreciate this. It says to me that we humans are very emotional beings, whether we want to admit it or not. I think many cultures have a tendency to forget that emotions drive our behaviors, or are afraid to admit—feeling about feelings :-) I wish we would spend more time talking about what people were feeling more so than what they were believing. Like you, I know many people whom I admire for their intelligence who seem to have fallen into a deep distrust of many institutions and individuals in society. How we feel can really distort how we think and what we believe.
- Diederich 6y ago
  Thank you for the kind words. > How we feel can really distort how we think and what we believe. Have you seen this book? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31170723-behave https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31170723-behave Not only do our feelings distort how we think and what we believe, they (along with our personal background, evolutionary history, etc) also pretty much transparently and automatically create the foundational reality upon which we stand, moment by moment.
  - jimkleiber 6y ago
    > Not only do our feelings distort how we think and what we believe, they (along with our personal background, evolutionary history, etc) also pretty much transparently and automatically create the foundational reality upon which we stand, moment by moment. Yes. So much yes. No, I hadn't heard of the book, but I'm excited to check it out more. I'll add it to the queue! Hopefully I start reading from the queue soon lol. Thank you for recommending it.

dkural 6y ago

Why do you think they're good and smart, why do they think Covid19 is a hoax? Surely a good person would try to do the safe thing even if they had doubts.

anonfornoreason 6y ago
Not the original poster, but I would imagine it echos what I have seen (and believe myself) in that it’s not a hoax as is normally defined, but a mass hysteria fueled by a media that needs clicks to survive. The risks are real for certain demographics, we need to take precautions to help vulnerable people, etc. however the unintended consequences of drastic policies are economic hardship, creating a new generation of homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, and deaths of despair. I have been called a denier, and have had my beliefs references as “believing COVID is a hoax”, which is far from the truth. From what I can tell a huge portion of the United States is engaged in a mass delusion, and is actively handing over all the prosperity for the next decade to large corporations who benefit from COVID, while risking the future of kids with mostly worthless remote learning. Focus the effort required to create lockdowns / restrictions on providing relief for elderly, unhealthy, immunocompromised people, etc. If some misguided old people in the Midwest want to pretend they are not at risk, it’s their life and their body to do that with. Sucks for the healthcare workers tasked with dealing with that, but you can’t legislate away life, risk, etc.
- NathanKP 6y ago
  > the unintended consequences of drastic policies are economic hardship, creating a new generation of homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, and deaths of despair. None of these things are inevitable. For example China arguably implemented some extremely drastic policies and they are doing just fine now. New Zealand did the same. In the United States we are just doing an incredibly bad job at this. Too many people talk about controlling the virus and protecting the economy as if they are polar opposites but the aren't. A month or two of drastic lockdowns early on would have saved the years of slow bleeding we are currently facing.
  - salmon30salmon 6y ago
    The way China controlled the virus is legally impossible in the United States. You simply can't confine someone to their home without due process. New Zealand is an island that, for all intents and purposes, closed their ports to human travel. Early in COVID, everyone suddenly became statisticians and had opinions on exponential growth, and while most of their proclamations were ill-informed, the truth remains that one infection can spiral out of control quickly. With a disease that exhibits nearly 40% asymptomatic rates and is aerosolized, there is no eradication. It will be with us in waves until we are immune via natural immunity or vaccinations. If New Zealand opened their ports today to the same levels as the United States' ports, they would quickly see a spike.
    - vkou 6y ago
      > New Zealand is an island that, for all intents and purposes, closed their ports to human travel. Firstly, New Zealand is not closed to human travel. It has mandatory quarantine for inbound travelers. The US can do the same. It is in an even better situation to do so than New Zealand, because its economy is less dependant on tourism and imports. It would be utterly pointless, of course, because nearly anywhere in the world has less COVID-per-capita than the US. A random traveler from Kentucky, or New Jersey is just as likely to be a COVID carrier as someone flying in from Paris. Keeping Parisians out isn't doing anything to stop spread, at this point. [1] As for the legality of locking people in their own homes, the US is no stranger to blanket curfews during a state of emergency... Or for imprisoning symptomatic, or asymptomatic carriers of a disease. [1] In a stroke of brilliance, travel from China to the US is still banned. Can anyone puzzle out how this policy is currently helping improve American health outcomes?
Diederich 6y ago
I worked with a guy named Danny many years ago. He was one of the smartest programmers I'd ever met. Not only did he write great code, but he also always maintained an excellent connection to the his customers who would use the programs he wrote. This was in a hospital. Personally, he was kind, generous, excellent family man. He never really talked too much about politics, didn't care too much for it. He also helped me order the parts for and showed me how to assemble my first intel based desktop computer, an amazing 486-DX2-66! It's been years but I recently communicated with him, and we had a great e-mail exchange, caught up. He was surprised and pleased that since I left I'd not only gotten married but now have an adult son. Surprised because back >25 years ago when we hung out I was very much not a "family man" kind of person. I asked him in passing how he'd been holding up with the pandemic, and suddenly, there it was. Covid19 was a hoax perpetrated by China to help Joe Biden get elected. It broke my heart. A smart, good, kind man that I knew had been brain damaged. Like some kind of fucking psychological cancer. As the old saying goes, There but for the grace of God, go I. You and I can't imagine falling prey to such a thing, but I can assure you that my old friend Danny had and has the same mental facilities as you and I. He caught this particular cancer, and you and I didn't. What's worse? He doesn't even know he has and is subject to this psychological malignancy. I wonder if there are any psychological cancers you and I are subject to, right now, that we don't even know about or suspect?
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  Sharp comment. Lot of truth packed in there.
- thelean12 6y ago
  Sorry, that means they're not smart. They might be a good programmer and a family man, but they're not smart. If you are able to fall for "Covid19 was a hoax perpetrated by China to help Joe Biden get elected" in the modern day, then you are not smart. It's one thing when you're not able to get information, like way back in the day when we had no real world explanations for lots of things, and had to work with what you've heard from word of mouth. But now? There's no excuse.
- busrf 6y ago
kinjba11 6y ago
Beliefs don't exist in a vacuum - hoax memes spread much like COVID itself. Media literacy is scarily low among most people, even those who are brilliant in other ways. Metaphorically we are failing to vaccinate against misinformation in primary education, leaving tech giants the impossible task of policing misinformation on their platforms designed to maximize engagement for profitability. 'The Social Dilemma' documentary (Netflix) dips into this if you haven't seen it.

agentdrtran 6y ago

> My wife and I know good, honest and smart people who are fully convinced that Covid19 isn't that dangerous, that it's a hoax, etc. I'm not saying "smart" lightly. If they have a Ph.D in theoretical physics but think COVID is a hoax they're still dumb, sorry.

rusk 6y ago
Pretty much this.
phobosanomaly 6y ago
PhD involves years of thinking very specifically about an extremely narrow set of problems, not building a robust set of reliable heuristics about how the world outside of that field works. I know plenty of brilliant PhDs and Physicians who couldn't real-world their way out of a paper bag. They're dumb as a rock when it comes to anything outside of their field, because their field has vacuumed up all of their mental energy over the decades. By comparison, I'm pretty mediocre at what I do because I read widely, follow the news, and have elaborate political discussions for fun. By their standard, I'm dumb as a rock because I'm up late reading about the Soviets in Afghanistan, instead of yet another journal article. Time is finite, and it's all a big compromise.
kjs3 6y ago
I wouldn't say that. There are different kinds of "smart", and then there is "poor analytical skills". There are "smart" people, for many values of "smart", that still have such poor analytical skills that they think Covid is fake, the earth is flat, bigfoot is real, Elvis is alive, etc. Just calling them 'dumb' doesn't get to root cause.

chillwaves 6y ago

Thank you for your comment. I would describe what is happening as rationality 'blind spots' -- everyone has them about different subjects. It's not a matter of smart vs stupid. That framing of the world is too simplistic to be valuable.

jimkleiber 6y ago

I appreciate this. It says to me that we humans are very emotional beings, whether we want to admit it or not. I think many cultures have a tendency to forget that emotions drive our behaviors, or are afraid to admit—feeling about feelings :-) I wish we would spend more time talking about what people were feeling more so than what they were believing. Like you, I know many people whom I admire for their intelligence who seem to have fallen into a deep distrust of many institutions and individuals in society. How we feel can really distort how we think and what we believe.

Diederich 6y ago
Thank you for the kind words. > How we feel can really distort how we think and what we believe. Have you seen this book? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31170723-behave https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31170723-behave Not only do our feelings distort how we think and what we believe, they (along with our personal background, evolutionary history, etc) also pretty much transparently and automatically create the foundational reality upon which we stand, moment by moment.
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  > Not only do our feelings distort how we think and what we believe, they (along with our personal background, evolutionary history, etc) also pretty much transparently and automatically create the foundational reality upon which we stand, moment by moment. Yes. So much yes. No, I hadn't heard of the book, but I'm excited to check it out more. I'll add it to the queue! Hopefully I start reading from the queue soon lol. Thank you for recommending it.