9 ms·

That’s what happens when you burn a lot of good faith.

by jslql 4y ago

_Microft 4y ago
No, that's what happens if people lack self-reflection. If they had asked themselves if there is any chance that they could possibly know better than someone who's working on a topic all the time, the answer would have been a resounding no, no matter the topic in question.
- hcrean 4y ago
  It is almost unperceivable to people who truly have faith, that other might not believe in the same higher authority as them. This is a story as old as time.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    This is very true. I don't know if you're saying that about vaccination providers or anti-vax campaigners (Deliberate ambiguity? I ask because I do that sometime). While there is a massive difference in evidence supporting these two sides, as I have a mere GCSE grade C in biology, I necessarily have to just have faith in the research methods and licensing regimes that made my 4 Covid jabs and humpteen others. Not unadulterated faith, but I do have faith, and it is only faith. I can't do a double-blind replication even if I wanted to.
    - fidgewidge 4y ago
      Why? There's no requirement that you get a credential from a particular group in society before being allowed to distrust them. If such a rule really existed it'd be a field day for scammers. For example nobody would be allowed to doubt any claim related to Web3 if they hadn't already spent years writing smart contracts. Or they wouldn't be allowed to decide Tesla FSD isn't safe enough, because they aren't themselves self driving car researchers. It's really smart to distrust vaccine providers and public health authorities. Having blind faith in them is bad. You don't need a credential to see that, you just have to observe that they constantly make strong claims in favor of vaccines that they later walk back when it's too late, without any consequences whatsoever.
      - ben_w 4y ago
        Why do I trust the vaccines? Because medicine is generally useful and functional. Because doctors studied at the same university that taught me much of my profession. Because nations in economic dispute with each other, nations with territorial disputes, even nations at war with each other, still all agree that the vaccines are a good idea.
  - hanselot 4y ago
    Faith has no impact on my decision to prefer not to be the guinea pig for experimental gene therapy, that results in micro clotting and turning your body into a spike protein factory. I have no issue with traditional vaccination, but this is nothing like a vaccination. They wouldn't have needed to change the definition of vaccination if it was. They wouldn't need to push this 24/7 on every possible platform if it worked as promised. They wouldn't have to tell us that these super rare side effects that every one of my colleagues is experiencing is super rare and nothing to be concerned about. If you find your opinions align with the mindless masses, perhaps you are among them.
    - blibble 4y ago
      it is not possible for your DNA to be modified by the mRNA vaccines, so it is not gene therapy and the virus will turn your body into a spike protein factory regardless
      - pclmulqdq 4y ago
        This is actually not true - reverse transcriptase is present in your cells, and has been known to add code from viral RNA to your DNA, sometimes permanently.
        blibble 4y ago
        you are thinking of integrase, which is not present and there is no primer site on the mRNA for RT to operate if it was that easy for random bits of floating mRNA to integrate itself into your DNA then we'd never make it to the point of being born
        pclmulqdq 4y ago
        I'm not suggesting that it's normal, easy, or within the everyday functions of a cell. The parent comment said "...it's not possible..." It demonstrably is possible, and has happened before in the genetic record of humans.
- ben_w 4y ago
  While any sane person would agree in general, it isn't hard to find examples of experts in any domain who made some mistake in that domain at some point. Also, normal people are absolutely terrible about probability. Combined, I therefore suspect it's "I know they're normally right, but not about this."
  - korm 4y ago
    In this case it's not disagreement with one expert, or even a few. The vaccination schedule is based on a consensus of experts. Not only across organizations, like the CDC, AAP, FDA, but across nations too, more or less. It's truly bizarre to _radically_ disagree, especially as a layperson.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      I mostly share your assessment, except that I think the word "bizarre" presumes how normal people behave. These kinds of attitudes have been around since at least the Spanish Flu pandemic, so it's important to… how do I phrase this? To account for such attitudes when planning public health campaigns, and not just dismiss such people as arrogant fools with no self-awareness.
- speeder 4y ago
  In my personal experience... you are wrong. I mean, the part about knowing better than someone that works with something. People working in some fields often suffer the "It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It" Example: I have Hashimoto's Disease. All endocrinologists I went to, wouldn't help me, some of them burned a lot of my money trying to prove I had diabetes or other disease that could lead to expensive treatment (one insisted I had cancer, despite every test for cancer she asked for, returning negative). In the end to get treatment I got help from an Ophthalmologist, that even explained to me some things I didn't knew about the disease. Example 2: when I was having some mental issues, all psychiatrists kept giving me random meds that were recently patented and expensive, and refused to let me get Ritalin, that was cheap because generic version of it exists. In the end the solution was ritalin. To get the ritalin I went to a psychiatrist that inherited lots of wealth and focused treating poor people, I suspect that psychiatrist in particular is the only one not getting dinners, parties and other "marketing events" from manufacturers. (I also in one point of my career worked in a software company that one project was make an app for the pharma client sales team track all the "gifts" given to doctors...)
  - nabla9 4y ago
    Thank you for sharing your personal experience. Unfortunately sharing personal stories like this in the internet is the source of much grief for three reasons: 1) There is no way to quantify how likely this is from personal stories. If your experience is 1 in 100 event, you are doing more harm sharing it than not sharing it if 1 in 10 becomes too suspicious to follow diagnosis. 2) We really don't know. Either things happened as people say, or they doctor shopped until received a misdiagnosis and mismedication they wanted. 3) Readers can't use your example in their personal life because they are different. They may read what you said and go doctor shopping and googling until they are misdiagnosed and mismedicated. You should not blindly trust doctors, and get second opinion of things seem wrong, but sharing medical stories in the internet is misses the information needed for it to be usable.
    - NhanH 4y ago
      So “lived experience” matters until it is against the dogma. Sharing personal story likes this is the reason the internet being a wonderful place. It should always be recommended as long as it is truthful, and doesn’t involve explicit agenda of spamming out other experience or information.
- realjhol 4y ago
  Actually yes, sometimes an outsider opinion can be the correct one... that is the very essence of scientific enquiry - to ask questions. Who am I? Some rando on the Internet, but I correctly assessed that the vaccines wouldn't prevent transmission, carried a non-zero risk of side effects - sometimes extremely serious, that natural immunity would provide far greater protection, that vaccination was unnecessary for children and younger adults, that there would no benefit to lock downs, and that masks were pointless. We have been proven correct about every single one of these things, and every health official who promoted these ideas has been proven completely incorrect
  - ben_w 4y ago
    > We have been proven correct about every single one of these things No, you haven't. > natural immunity would provide far greater protection false > vaccines wouldn't prevent transmission, carried a non-zero risk of side effects "Prevent" and "non-zero" are weasel words, that sentence as written is true of literally every treatment and prophylactic in existence forever. But it does reduce the risk of transmission even in the case of prisoners sharing a cell. And the risks of side effects are much, much lower than the risks of those effects from the actual illness. > that there would no benefit to lock downs, and that masks were pointless. False on both counts. Lockdowns were there to reduce the secondary consequences from running out of capacity. Several places ran out of capacity to handle the dead, let alone the living. I still don't understand how we were able to get short of medical oxygen, but that happened in some places too. Masks likewise, reduce the transmission rate. Not eliminate, reduce. That's not pointless. > that vaccination was unnecessary for children and younger adults, Weasel phrasing, "unnecessary" can mean anything. But, I will try to interpret generously as possible: Sure, lots of kids and young adults won't die, they'll only get sick for a few weeks, with unknown long term damage.
    - mrphoebs 4y ago
      While I agree with the points you are making and think they are important, they could have been made just as effectively without resorting to an Ad hominem format. Though the quality of civil discourse on HN has degraded over the years, HN is still the one of the places I expect to live upto a higher standard. (I'm sorry to any readers that this comment is not adding anything materially useful to the wider discussion)
- iinnPP 4y ago
  Hi. You don't know me and that is fine. In early January 2020 I predicted the entire pandemic, including the mask lie(before they lied), the supply run (My entire family picked off full shelves), the effort from people, the vaccine issues, and the aftermath. If I followed what you suggested, I would be without my mother. So maybe, just maybe, you are wrong.
lawn 4y ago
No, that's what happens when conspiracy theories instill fear, uncertainty and doubt.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  When did you switch from hating masks to loving masks? What caused your switch? Why caused you to hate them before you loved them? Was it a conspiracy?
  - gapan 4y ago
    Who said anything about masks? And why does everything have to be black or white? I personally never hated masks. Never loved them either. But I understand how they help and when they don't.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    Let's make the exceptionally charitable assumption that you are asking this question in good faith... Nobody that listened to public health experts ever "hated" masks. But initially, they didn't rush out to buy masks because the advice was to prioritise isolating the infected, social distancing for everyone else and clean hands to avoid [overestimated risk of] contact transmission, and not to rely on masks to protect you from infected people because there was no evidence they would offer that protection (the only masks they had reasonable confidence might work were far too limited in supply to stop it on a population level) The recommendation changed (pretty quickly, based on stronger evidence of aerosol transmission and asymptomatic transmission and COVID being sufficiently widespread to make altogether avoiding contagious people unrealistic) to suggesting that although social distancing was recommended because cloth masks alone were insufficiently effective at preventing infection, masks were better than nothing and so on a population scale wearing them in public places would slow infection rates. At this point - even though I'd already had the infection - I started wearing a mask to the supermarket because apart from it being logical, it was also required to enter. It wasn't much of an imposition, and subsequent evidence largely supports the reduced transmission risk. I think the question works better in reverse. When was it you switched from being angry at the CDC for telling you not to bother with the masks because they couldn't altogether prevent infection so you were better off avoiding people with COVID altogether to being angry at the CDC for recommending masks in public places to somewhat reduce risk of infection? What was the scientific evidence that lead you to change your mind?

That’s what happens when you burn a lot of good faith.

by jslql 4y ago

That’s what happens when you burn a lot of good faith.

No, that's what happens if people lack self-reflection. If they had asked themselves if there is any chance that they could possibly know better than someone who's working on a topic all the time, the answer would have been a resounding no, no matter the topic in question.

hcrean 4y ago
It is almost unperceivable to people who truly have faith, that other might not believe in the same higher authority as them. This is a story as old as time.
- ben_w 4y ago
  This is very true. I don't know if you're saying that about vaccination providers or anti-vax campaigners (Deliberate ambiguity? I ask because I do that sometime). While there is a massive difference in evidence supporting these two sides, as I have a mere GCSE grade C in biology, I necessarily have to just have faith in the research methods and licensing regimes that made my 4 Covid jabs and humpteen others. Not unadulterated faith, but I do have faith, and it is only faith. I can't do a double-blind replication even if I wanted to.
  - fidgewidge 4y ago
    Why? There's no requirement that you get a credential from a particular group in society before being allowed to distrust them. If such a rule really existed it'd be a field day for scammers. For example nobody would be allowed to doubt any claim related to Web3 if they hadn't already spent years writing smart contracts. Or they wouldn't be allowed to decide Tesla FSD isn't safe enough, because they aren't themselves self driving car researchers. It's really smart to distrust vaccine providers and public health authorities. Having blind faith in them is bad. You don't need a credential to see that, you just have to observe that they constantly make strong claims in favor of vaccines that they later walk back when it's too late, without any consequences whatsoever.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      Why do I trust the vaccines? Because medicine is generally useful and functional. Because doctors studied at the same university that taught me much of my profession. Because nations in economic dispute with each other, nations with territorial disputes, even nations at war with each other, still all agree that the vaccines are a good idea.
- hanselot 4y ago
  Faith has no impact on my decision to prefer not to be the guinea pig for experimental gene therapy, that results in micro clotting and turning your body into a spike protein factory. I have no issue with traditional vaccination, but this is nothing like a vaccination. They wouldn't have needed to change the definition of vaccination if it was. They wouldn't need to push this 24/7 on every possible platform if it worked as promised. They wouldn't have to tell us that these super rare side effects that every one of my colleagues is experiencing is super rare and nothing to be concerned about. If you find your opinions align with the mindless masses, perhaps you are among them.
  - blibble 4y ago
    it is not possible for your DNA to be modified by the mRNA vaccines, so it is not gene therapy and the virus will turn your body into a spike protein factory regardless
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      This is actually not true - reverse transcriptase is present in your cells, and has been known to add code from viral RNA to your DNA, sometimes permanently.
      - blibble 4y ago
        you are thinking of integrase, which is not present and there is no primer site on the mRNA for RT to operate if it was that easy for random bits of floating mRNA to integrate itself into your DNA then we'd never make it to the point of being born
        pclmulqdq 4y ago
        I'm not suggesting that it's normal, easy, or within the everyday functions of a cell. The parent comment said "...it's not possible..." It demonstrably is possible, and has happened before in the genetic record of humans.
ben_w 4y ago
While any sane person would agree in general, it isn't hard to find examples of experts in any domain who made some mistake in that domain at some point. Also, normal people are absolutely terrible about probability. Combined, I therefore suspect it's "I know they're normally right, but not about this."
- korm 4y ago
  In this case it's not disagreement with one expert, or even a few. The vaccination schedule is based on a consensus of experts. Not only across organizations, like the CDC, AAP, FDA, but across nations too, more or less. It's truly bizarre to _radically_ disagree, especially as a layperson.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    I mostly share your assessment, except that I think the word "bizarre" presumes how normal people behave. These kinds of attitudes have been around since at least the Spanish Flu pandemic, so it's important to… how do I phrase this? To account for such attitudes when planning public health campaigns, and not just dismiss such people as arrogant fools with no self-awareness.
speeder 4y ago
In my personal experience... you are wrong. I mean, the part about knowing better than someone that works with something. People working in some fields often suffer the "It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It" Example: I have Hashimoto's Disease. All endocrinologists I went to, wouldn't help me, some of them burned a lot of my money trying to prove I had diabetes or other disease that could lead to expensive treatment (one insisted I had cancer, despite every test for cancer she asked for, returning negative). In the end to get treatment I got help from an Ophthalmologist, that even explained to me some things I didn't knew about the disease. Example 2: when I was having some mental issues, all psychiatrists kept giving me random meds that were recently patented and expensive, and refused to let me get Ritalin, that was cheap because generic version of it exists. In the end the solution was ritalin. To get the ritalin I went to a psychiatrist that inherited lots of wealth and focused treating poor people, I suspect that psychiatrist in particular is the only one not getting dinners, parties and other "marketing events" from manufacturers. (I also in one point of my career worked in a software company that one project was make an app for the pharma client sales team track all the "gifts" given to doctors...)
- nabla9 4y ago
  Thank you for sharing your personal experience. Unfortunately sharing personal stories like this in the internet is the source of much grief for three reasons: 1) There is no way to quantify how likely this is from personal stories. If your experience is 1 in 100 event, you are doing more harm sharing it than not sharing it if 1 in 10 becomes too suspicious to follow diagnosis. 2) We really don't know. Either things happened as people say, or they doctor shopped until received a misdiagnosis and mismedication they wanted. 3) Readers can't use your example in their personal life because they are different. They may read what you said and go doctor shopping and googling until they are misdiagnosed and mismedicated. You should not blindly trust doctors, and get second opinion of things seem wrong, but sharing medical stories in the internet is misses the information needed for it to be usable.
  - NhanH 4y ago
    So “lived experience” matters until it is against the dogma. Sharing personal story likes this is the reason the internet being a wonderful place. It should always be recommended as long as it is truthful, and doesn’t involve explicit agenda of spamming out other experience or information.
realjhol 4y ago
Actually yes, sometimes an outsider opinion can be the correct one... that is the very essence of scientific enquiry - to ask questions. Who am I? Some rando on the Internet, but I correctly assessed that the vaccines wouldn't prevent transmission, carried a non-zero risk of side effects - sometimes extremely serious, that natural immunity would provide far greater protection, that vaccination was unnecessary for children and younger adults, that there would no benefit to lock downs, and that masks were pointless. We have been proven correct about every single one of these things, and every health official who promoted these ideas has been proven completely incorrect
- ben_w 4y ago
  > We have been proven correct about every single one of these things No, you haven't. > natural immunity would provide far greater protection false > vaccines wouldn't prevent transmission, carried a non-zero risk of side effects "Prevent" and "non-zero" are weasel words, that sentence as written is true of literally every treatment and prophylactic in existence forever. But it does reduce the risk of transmission even in the case of prisoners sharing a cell. And the risks of side effects are much, much lower than the risks of those effects from the actual illness. > that there would no benefit to lock downs, and that masks were pointless. False on both counts. Lockdowns were there to reduce the secondary consequences from running out of capacity. Several places ran out of capacity to handle the dead, let alone the living. I still don't understand how we were able to get short of medical oxygen, but that happened in some places too. Masks likewise, reduce the transmission rate. Not eliminate, reduce. That's not pointless. > that vaccination was unnecessary for children and younger adults, Weasel phrasing, "unnecessary" can mean anything. But, I will try to interpret generously as possible: Sure, lots of kids and young adults won't die, they'll only get sick for a few weeks, with unknown long term damage.
  - mrphoebs 4y ago
    While I agree with the points you are making and think they are important, they could have been made just as effectively without resorting to an Ad hominem format. Though the quality of civil discourse on HN has degraded over the years, HN is still the one of the places I expect to live upto a higher standard. (I'm sorry to any readers that this comment is not adding anything materially useful to the wider discussion)
iinnPP 4y ago
Hi. You don't know me and that is fine. In early January 2020 I predicted the entire pandemic, including the mask lie(before they lied), the supply run (My entire family picked off full shelves), the effort from people, the vaccine issues, and the aftermath. If I followed what you suggested, I would be without my mother. So maybe, just maybe, you are wrong.

lawn 4y ago

No, that's what happens when conspiracy theories instill fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Mountain_Skies 4y ago
When did you switch from hating masks to loving masks? What caused your switch? Why caused you to hate them before you loved them? Was it a conspiracy?
- gapan 4y ago
  Who said anything about masks? And why does everything have to be black or white? I personally never hated masks. Never loved them either. But I understand how they help and when they don't.
- notahacker 4y ago
  Let's make the exceptionally charitable assumption that you are asking this question in good faith... Nobody that listened to public health experts ever "hated" masks. But initially, they didn't rush out to buy masks because the advice was to prioritise isolating the infected, social distancing for everyone else and clean hands to avoid [overestimated risk of] contact transmission, and not to rely on masks to protect you from infected people because there was no evidence they would offer that protection (the only masks they had reasonable confidence might work were far too limited in supply to stop it on a population level) The recommendation changed (pretty quickly, based on stronger evidence of aerosol transmission and asymptomatic transmission and COVID being sufficiently widespread to make altogether avoiding contagious people unrealistic) to suggesting that although social distancing was recommended because cloth masks alone were insufficiently effective at preventing infection, masks were better than nothing and so on a population scale wearing them in public places would slow infection rates. At this point - even though I'd already had the infection - I started wearing a mask to the supermarket because apart from it being logical, it was also required to enter. It wasn't much of an imposition, and subsequent evidence largely supports the reduced transmission risk. I think the question works better in reverse. When was it you switched from being angry at the CDC for telling you not to bother with the masks because they couldn't altogether prevent infection so you were better off avoiding people with COVID altogether to being angry at the CDC for recommending masks in public places to somewhat reduce risk of infection? What was the scientific evidence that lead you to change your mind?