Vaccines aren't proven compared to things like the color of the sky, are they? Who on earth still believes that after "95% effective against COVID infection and

Vaccines aren't proven compared to things like the color of the sky, are they? Who on earth still believes that after "95% effective against COVID infection and will end the pandemic" turned into whatever this week's version of the story is. COVID shots demonstrated unequivocally that scientists and officials will happily assert things with 100% certainty that are falsifiable, and then continue to assert them even after they've been proven false in front of everyone. And that's my point - if you intuit that the world is simple and progress easy, you become committed to mental shortcuts like "if a professor/civil servant says it, then it must be true". The education system forces this mentality on you, even. When other (usually older) people who don't take such shortcuts say "but actually that's not true" then it turns into a fight over what reality actually is, which is an enormously complex thing. Rather than engage down in the weeds where they might lose, young radicals prefer to just try and shout down objections. This pattern crops up again and again. Evolution is an interesting one because in that case it's the creationists who have adopted an overly simplified model of reality and don't want to let it go. Same problem, just different groups. I don't personally think the word "conservative" is all that useful for that reason even though you often have to use it, because it just means trying to conserve things, which as a position is neutral with respect to what's being conserved.