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-- Sent via DARPA Internet Protocol The US government does so many damn things that it can be used as an example of just about anything.

aaomidi 2y ago
The internet was going to happen with or without US government involvement. The US government just made it faster. Also, comparing testing radiation vs testing fast communications is not a valid equivalency.
- kube-system 2y ago
  I don't disagree, because that's entirely not the point I was making. I'm saying that the law of truly large numbers applies here. The US government has done exceptionally good things and exceptionally bad things because it does a ridiculous number of things. It simply does more than any other organization; it has been the world's largest organization for some time.
  - odyssey7 2y ago
    This sounds like Donald Trump. We do lots of things! Some say the best things! Are some of them bad? Well, when you do a lot of things, some of them don’t turn out so good. If you don’t draw the line at mass murder then I don’t know where you draw it.
odyssey7 2y ago
Red herring. Abusing your citizens is bad. If the government wants to be trusted it should make itself trustworthy.
- kube-system 2y ago
  Agreed. Now what is the measure by which that is judged? Of course, if we are to say that only the governments with a spotless record are trustworthy, then the only trustworthy governments are fictional ones. That might be a bit unreasonable of an expectation for an organization made up of fallible humans, though, so many reason that some non-zero number of mistakes are inevitably bound to happen, even within bounds of trustworthiness. At the end of the day, trust is a personal judgement call. But it's my opinion that if you have an impossible standard of trust, you may just have an unreasonable opinion.
  - odyssey7 2y ago
    This isn’t an engineering problem where you can just hit some metric. Trust gets earned informally on person-by-person terms over a long period of time. People in St. Louis died / were killed at the direction of the US Army. Frankly, if they decide they don’t trust vaccines that government officials recommend, I can’t tell them their distrust is invalid. They’d be right. For decades, administration after administration has lied to them about what the government did to sabotage their health. The course of action in this specific case that would build rapport would be to plainly tell the public the truth. It’s not rocket science where you have to invent a metric. Keeping the secret allows the government to avoid oversight. So that it can do the same sort of thing again? Because it is doing the same sort of thing right now?
    - kube-system 2y ago
      Yes, as I said, trust is a personal judgement call. However, I doubt anyone who distrusts the damn COVID vaccine because of the story in the OP is not going to be convinced by anything. There's such a ridiculously weak association between those activities that the person is simply ignorant of how the world works. Their personal beliefs may be sincere, but they are not a person worth convincing of anything because they draw their conclusions through superficial means.
      - aaomidi 2y ago
        Other than the US using a fake vaccination program to find Osama. I say this as someone who got the vaccine as someone first in the line. I’m pissed at the government doing this, because I can’t blame folks for not trusting the government over this. And what that means is the next pandemic will take so much longer to deal with because of this distrust.
        kube-system 2y ago
        I absolutely understand why someone might not understand the practical and operational differences between the development of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and how that chain of command has nothing in common with CIA operations in Pakistan. It's a very explainable opinion, but that doesn't mean it is correct.

aaomidi 2y ago

The internet was going to happen with or without US government involvement. The US government just made it faster. Also, comparing testing radiation vs testing fast communications is not a valid equivalency.

kube-system 2y ago
I don't disagree, because that's entirely not the point I was making. I'm saying that the law of truly large numbers applies here. The US government has done exceptionally good things and exceptionally bad things because it does a ridiculous number of things. It simply does more than any other organization; it has been the world's largest organization for some time.
- odyssey7 2y ago
  This sounds like Donald Trump. We do lots of things! Some say the best things! Are some of them bad? Well, when you do a lot of things, some of them don’t turn out so good. If you don’t draw the line at mass murder then I don’t know where you draw it.

odyssey7 2y ago

Red herring. Abusing your citizens is bad. If the government wants to be trusted it should make itself trustworthy.

kube-system 2y ago
Agreed. Now what is the measure by which that is judged? Of course, if we are to say that only the governments with a spotless record are trustworthy, then the only trustworthy governments are fictional ones. That might be a bit unreasonable of an expectation for an organization made up of fallible humans, though, so many reason that some non-zero number of mistakes are inevitably bound to happen, even within bounds of trustworthiness. At the end of the day, trust is a personal judgement call. But it's my opinion that if you have an impossible standard of trust, you may just have an unreasonable opinion.
- odyssey7 2y ago
  This isn’t an engineering problem where you can just hit some metric. Trust gets earned informally on person-by-person terms over a long period of time. People in St. Louis died / were killed at the direction of the US Army. Frankly, if they decide they don’t trust vaccines that government officials recommend, I can’t tell them their distrust is invalid. They’d be right. For decades, administration after administration has lied to them about what the government did to sabotage their health. The course of action in this specific case that would build rapport would be to plainly tell the public the truth. It’s not rocket science where you have to invent a metric. Keeping the secret allows the government to avoid oversight. So that it can do the same sort of thing again? Because it is doing the same sort of thing right now?
  - kube-system 2y ago
    Yes, as I said, trust is a personal judgement call. However, I doubt anyone who distrusts the damn COVID vaccine because of the story in the OP is not going to be convinced by anything. There's such a ridiculously weak association between those activities that the person is simply ignorant of how the world works. Their personal beliefs may be sincere, but they are not a person worth convincing of anything because they draw their conclusions through superficial means.
    - aaomidi 2y ago
      Other than the US using a fake vaccination program to find Osama. I say this as someone who got the vaccine as someone first in the line. I’m pissed at the government doing this, because I can’t blame folks for not trusting the government over this. And what that means is the next pandemic will take so much longer to deal with because of this distrust.
      - kube-system 2y ago
        I absolutely understand why someone might not understand the practical and operational differences between the development of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and how that chain of command has nothing in common with CIA operations in Pakistan. It's a very explainable opinion, but that doesn't mean it is correct.