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> One taxi driver told me she didn't like the vaccine because of overpopulation and maybe we should cull the herd of older people anyway I don't agree with the

> One taxi driver told me she didn't like the vaccine because of overpopulation and maybe we should cull the herd of older people anyway I don't agree with the taxi driver, but I fail to see how this response could be viewed as a sentiment stemming from lowered intelligence, especially given how often the same or similar sentiment comes up (albeit masked in nicer words) in virtually every discussion about global population as relates to climate change, and often from people who are clearly intelligent.

normac2 5y ago
> I don't agree with the taxi driver, but I fail to see how this response could be viewed as a sentiment stemming from lowered intelligence, especially given how often the same or similar sentiment comes up (albeit masked in nicer words) in virtually every discussion about global population as relates to climate change, and often from people who are clearly intelligent. I agree to a certain extent; you could even argue that less intelligent people are less likely to pay attention to big geopolitical issues like overpopulation, so they wouldn't even go far enough as to have a position on that. The main reason I took it as poor intelligence is that she seemed to think this justified her personally not getting the vaccine. Which would make her the personal deliverer of justice to anyone in her cab who happens to be older, or then transmits it to people who are older (if she happens to get COVID and someone catches it). I pointed this out and she was like, "hmn... that's a good point." That's a pretty easy leap of logic that had never occurred to her at all.
FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
But killing old people, past their reproductive years, has no long-term effect on population, except maybe through extremely weak high-order effects like "the availability of grandma to watch the kids may subtly affect reproductive decisions" or "old people come from an old culture which is more productivist, and may influence their descendents ideologically".

normac2 5y ago

> I don't agree with the taxi driver, but I fail to see how this response could be viewed as a sentiment stemming from lowered intelligence, especially given how often the same or similar sentiment comes up (albeit masked in nicer words) in virtually every discussion about global population as relates to climate change, and often from people who are clearly intelligent. I agree to a certain extent; you could even argue that less intelligent people are less likely to pay attention to big geopolitical issues like overpopulation, so they wouldn't even go far enough as to have a position on that. The main reason I took it as poor intelligence is that she seemed to think this justified her personally not getting the vaccine. Which would make her the personal deliverer of justice to anyone in her cab who happens to be older, or then transmits it to people who are older (if she happens to get COVID and someone catches it). I pointed this out and she was like, "hmn... that's a good point." That's a pretty easy leap of logic that had never occurred to her at all.

FooBarBizBazz 5y ago

But killing old people, past their reproductive years, has no long-term effect on population, except maybe through extremely weak high-order effects like "the availability of grandma to watch the kids may subtly affect reproductive decisions" or "old people come from an old culture which is more productivist, and may influence their descendents ideologically".