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Sure, some people hate admitting when they're wrong. But I have to imagine that pales in comparison to how much they hate being evicted, risking having their fa

Sure, some people hate admitting when they're wrong. But I have to imagine that pales in comparison to how much they hate being evicted, risking having their families split up, not being able to afford food or medical care, etc. It just seems oblivious for the author to say that people complied because deep down they knew it was right, when that author's colleagues have written about the actual dangers these people would face if they lost their income.

acdha 5y ago
This sounds like a misunderstanding: the point is that people knew getting vaccinated was right all along but rather than at some point they probably started to accept that their concerns had been overblown — likely supported by seeing so many people around them get vaccinated with no issues — but having taken a strong position earlier increased the psychological weight of formally reversing it. Here's a sentence right before the quote up-thread: > They’ve made bad decisions earlier and now may be frozen, part in fear, and unable to admit their initial hesitancy wasn’t a good idea, so they may come back with a version of how they are just doing “more research.” This kind of decision paralysis can last for ages unless something forces it. Nobody seems to be saying that the consequences of ignoring vaccine mandates aren't real, it's rather quite the opposite: you can come up with hypothetical concerns about any low-probability event but being faced with actually losing something you care about forces that to be put into perspective. It's similar to how a fair number of people worry about air travel but hop on a plane when the alternative is a cross-country drive — rationally looking at crash statistics isn't as effective for those people as the misery factor of a long drive.
- ifyoubuildit 5y ago
  So this may just be something that we have differing opinions on. If we say (number of compliers) = (people who wanted to save face and needed an out) + (people who are living paycheck to paycheck) + (whatever other reason), my guess is that the last two components would dominate the equation, but that's just my gut. The excerpt you quoted also kind of bothered me because it presupposes that getting vaccinated immediately was the right idea. Just because someone slapped the label "vaccine" on something doesn't mean you should jump to receive it as early as possible. Not everyone wants to be an early adopter, and there's good reason for that.
  - acdha 5y ago
    I would characterize the last part a bit differently: many people understandably were hesitant to be the earliest adopters, especially those who had relatively low-risk lifestyles (plenty of 80 year olds were jumping after losing friends), but I think there's a difference between someone who is planning to get it in a few months and someone who takes a public position opposing it. In the latter case, your credibility is on the line and it's very easy to surround yourself with a self-reinforcing bubble of people saying the same things. That acts like a ratchet where at each point it's easier to continue down the path rather than say that was totally overblown.
    - ifyoubuildit 5y ago
      Yeah, I think we're imagining different people when we read the article. I'm thinking of people who are just quietly going about their lives. It seems like you may be thinking more of people who are vocal about this kind of thing, the crazy uncles on fb, who I tend to think are the minority (just based on what I've seen around me).
      - acdha 5y ago
        What I’m thinking more of are the people I knew who got into a religion/philosophy, even a diet, etc. where they read a bit & trusted some of the people they met who sounded like they knew a lot more. Some of what they said they believed in a lot, some of it was just going along with their group identity. If you directly confronted them about an inconsistency or them not personally following one of those rules they’d get defensive since at some point they’d staked that out as something they believed but if there was a way to say something had changed or their hand had been forced, they’d take it and move on.

acdha 5y ago

This sounds like a misunderstanding: the point is that people knew getting vaccinated was right all along but rather than at some point they probably started to accept that their concerns had been overblown — likely supported by seeing so many people around them get vaccinated with no issues — but having taken a strong position earlier increased the psychological weight of formally reversing it. Here's a sentence right before the quote up-thread: > They’ve made bad decisions earlier and now may be frozen, part in fear, and unable to admit their initial hesitancy wasn’t a good idea, so they may come back with a version of how they are just doing “more research.” This kind of decision paralysis can last for ages unless something forces it. Nobody seems to be saying that the consequences of ignoring vaccine mandates aren't real, it's rather quite the opposite: you can come up with hypothetical concerns about any low-probability event but being faced with actually losing something you care about forces that to be put into perspective. It's similar to how a fair number of people worry about air travel but hop on a plane when the alternative is a cross-country drive — rationally looking at crash statistics isn't as effective for those people as the misery factor of a long drive.

ifyoubuildit 5y ago
So this may just be something that we have differing opinions on. If we say (number of compliers) = (people who wanted to save face and needed an out) + (people who are living paycheck to paycheck) + (whatever other reason), my guess is that the last two components would dominate the equation, but that's just my gut. The excerpt you quoted also kind of bothered me because it presupposes that getting vaccinated immediately was the right idea. Just because someone slapped the label "vaccine" on something doesn't mean you should jump to receive it as early as possible. Not everyone wants to be an early adopter, and there's good reason for that.
- acdha 5y ago
  I would characterize the last part a bit differently: many people understandably were hesitant to be the earliest adopters, especially those who had relatively low-risk lifestyles (plenty of 80 year olds were jumping after losing friends), but I think there's a difference between someone who is planning to get it in a few months and someone who takes a public position opposing it. In the latter case, your credibility is on the line and it's very easy to surround yourself with a self-reinforcing bubble of people saying the same things. That acts like a ratchet where at each point it's easier to continue down the path rather than say that was totally overblown.
  - ifyoubuildit 5y ago
    Yeah, I think we're imagining different people when we read the article. I'm thinking of people who are just quietly going about their lives. It seems like you may be thinking more of people who are vocal about this kind of thing, the crazy uncles on fb, who I tend to think are the minority (just based on what I've seen around me).
    - acdha 5y ago
      What I’m thinking more of are the people I knew who got into a religion/philosophy, even a diet, etc. where they read a bit & trusted some of the people they met who sounded like they knew a lot more. Some of what they said they believed in a lot, some of it was just going along with their group identity. If you directly confronted them about an inconsistency or them not personally following one of those rules they’d get defensive since at some point they’d staked that out as something they believed but if there was a way to say something had changed or their hand had been forced, they’d take it and move on.