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My personal view is that vax vs anti-vax views are shaped by the person's relationship with 'Authority' in the past. If someone felt that they were mis-treated

My personal view is that vax vs anti-vax views are shaped by the person's relationship with 'Authority' in the past. If someone felt that they were mis-treated in the past by the government or by say a university bureaucracy, they are more likely to be anti-vax; because appealing to authority has no meaning or relevance to the way they process and assign weights to the information that they rrceive. Of course more positive views of 'Authority' will lead to a different, more pro-vax position. Curious if this matches with what others are seeing.

sterlind 5y ago
That matches what I've seen. An acquaintance of mine who's native was very distrustful of the vaccine and got angry when our state allocated early doses to Indian tribes, saying they were testing it on them (they've since calmed down.) Though on the other hand, a tribal elder I work with was extremely stoked to get the vaccine as soon as possible. I think politics is a big factor too, honestly. Misinformation flows through echo-chambers and everything becomes partisan.
squiggleblaz 5y ago
> My personal view is that vax vs anti-vax views are shaped by the person's relationship with 'Authority' in the past. If a person excessively distrusts authority, they are vastly more likely to have a poor interaction with authorities. For instance, a person who believes the government is trying to trick everyone into subjugating ourselves to them by getting and using birth certificates and drivers licences is going to have a very poor interaction with the police and perhaps the courts. (I don't mean to say that everyone in some class are Sovereign Citizens, but that at one extreme you have Sovereign Citizens, and you have people who are more or less like them in between them and the person whose mistrust legitimately started from an interaction with authorities.) I wouldn't want to use those experiences as the basis for concluding that an antivaxxer is antivax because of their previous poor interactions. Both events are caused by the original distrust. If we know who's had poor runins with the law and we're trying to find the antivaxxers, then yes, I think this is a useful place to look. But it's just a correlation, not an explanation. Consequently, I want to place much less weight on your reasoning: >If someone felt that they were mis-treated in the past by the government or by say a university bureaucracy, they are more likely to be anti-vax; because appealing to authority has no meaning or relevance to the way they process and assign weights to the information that they rrceive. (Also, I'm not convinced of your argument even with these objections resolved. A lot of people seem to distrust the government because they view it as associated with one party, even when their preferred party is in charge. This distrust seems somewhat confected. And in America, distrust of government is a widespread ideology/mindset, even embedded into the culture. Neither of these forms of distrust are rational or understandable (over)reactions to trust-forming interactions.)

sterlind 5y ago

That matches what I've seen. An acquaintance of mine who's native was very distrustful of the vaccine and got angry when our state allocated early doses to Indian tribes, saying they were testing it on them (they've since calmed down.) Though on the other hand, a tribal elder I work with was extremely stoked to get the vaccine as soon as possible. I think politics is a big factor too, honestly. Misinformation flows through echo-chambers and everything becomes partisan.

squiggleblaz 5y ago

> My personal view is that vax vs anti-vax views are shaped by the person's relationship with 'Authority' in the past. If a person excessively distrusts authority, they are vastly more likely to have a poor interaction with authorities. For instance, a person who believes the government is trying to trick everyone into subjugating ourselves to them by getting and using birth certificates and drivers licences is going to have a very poor interaction with the police and perhaps the courts. (I don't mean to say that everyone in some class are Sovereign Citizens, but that at one extreme you have Sovereign Citizens, and you have people who are more or less like them in between them and the person whose mistrust legitimately started from an interaction with authorities.) I wouldn't want to use those experiences as the basis for concluding that an antivaxxer is antivax because of their previous poor interactions. Both events are caused by the original distrust. If we know who's had poor runins with the law and we're trying to find the antivaxxers, then yes, I think this is a useful place to look. But it's just a correlation, not an explanation. Consequently, I want to place much less weight on your reasoning: >If someone felt that they were mis-treated in the past by the government or by say a university bureaucracy, they are more likely to be anti-vax; because appealing to authority has no meaning or relevance to the way they process and assign weights to the information that they rrceive. (Also, I'm not convinced of your argument even with these objections resolved. A lot of people seem to distrust the government because they view it as associated with one party, even when their preferred party is in charge. This distrust seems somewhat confected. And in America, distrust of government is a widespread ideology/mindset, even embedded into the culture. Neither of these forms of distrust are rational or understandable (over)reactions to trust-forming interactions.)