4 ms·

> It's amusing to see the early signs of the anti-vax movement here. The history of that movement is long. > Humans are built to thrive in danger, chaos and in

by tivert 2y ago

> It's amusing to see the early signs of the anti-vax movement here. The history of that movement is long. > Humans are built to thrive in danger, chaos and instability. I think a good chunk of humans go insane in a safe and stable environment and resent the things that allow them to live mundane, safe lives -- technology, medicine and rational thinking. No, I don't think that's true. Humans are built to learn from experience, and one thing that vaccines do is eliminate the experiences that justify their use. That also makes the experience/knowledge of smaller dangers more prominent. For instance, a kid getting his arm paralyzed from the (now discontinued) live oral polio vaccine, looks a lot different if people are commonly getting worse paralysis from wild polio than if no one is getting wild polio at all anymore. The other thing you should probably take into account when regarding a book from 1929, is the experiences people had back then with (often dangerous) quack cures promising miracles. For instance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Food_and_Drug_Administration#Origins_of_federal_food_and_drug_regulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Food_and_Drug_A...): > By the 1930s, muckraking journalists, consumer protection organizations, and federal regulators began mounting a campaign for stronger regulatory authority by publicizing a list of injurious products which had been ruled permissible under the 1906 law, including radioactive beverages, the mascara Lash lure, which caused blindness, and worthless "cures" for diabetes and tuberculosis. The resulting proposed law was unable to get through Congress for five years, but was rapidly enacted into law following the public outcry over the 1937 Elixir Sulfanilamide tragedy, in which over 100 people died after using a drug formulated with a toxic, untested solvent.

drcwpl 2y ago
I had forgotten about the Elixir Sulfanilamide tragedy, great reminder, thank you. Humans are adaptive learners, shaped by both individual experience and cultural memory. The rise of anti-vax sentiments might be better explained by psychological and sociological factors. Like mistrust of institutions, the amplification of fringe views via social media, or the cognitive biases that prioritize visible risks over abstract ones.
- stevenAthompson 2y ago
  Those sociological factors aren't complex, and don't require an explanation of any real depth. The entire problem is this: Fifty four percent of Americans read below the 6th grade level, which means that the simple majority of Americans don't understand the world they live in and never will.
  - drcwpl 2y ago
    That is a terrifying statistic "Fifty four percent of Americans read below the 6th grade level" ... just found the research.
  - pksebben 2y ago
    I'd agree with this, but it's missing something; why is this the case? From what I know, it's a lot tougher to tease out the cause of this malfunction in our society. Do we have an undereducated populace because of poverty? Lack of school funding? (if so, why do we underfund schools? is it because we don't have the money? greed? is there a concerted effort to suppress an educated populace for political reasons?) Is there a cultural reticence built into us that resists scientific thought? My kneejerk analysis boils down to "it's the economy, stupid" and that a substantial portion of our population lives below the poverty line (which itself isn't defined particularly well and probably misses a bunch of folks who ought to qualify for 'living under distressed economic conditions'). It's tough to care about education when you struggle to keep a roof overhead.
    - stevenAthompson 2y ago
      It's the old dream of the information era. We were going to cure all of the worlds ills by fixing the problem of unequal access to information. Surely people would all perform equally, when given equal opportunity? Not only didn't it work, it made the world a far worse place. I think Occam's razor tells us why: Forty nine percent of people will always be of below average intelligence. Average intelligence currently seems to mean understanding the world at the 6th grade level. Maybe we can raise that to the 7th grade level with a concentrated effort, but that will also raise the performance of the top fifty percent. There will always be a bottom half and they will always struggle to understand the world the top half build.
phtrivier 2y ago
Interestingly, the experiences that people are rallying around (for better or worse) are more going _against_ negative effects (perceived or real) of the scientific / technological world: * Climate Change (caused by the tech of "burning lots of fuels") * PFAS, pesticides, endocrine disruptors, etc... * Opiods crisis, nartotics, etc... * Impact of GAFAM on privacy, social discourse, etc... In a sense, the "white coats in their labs" and "nerds with glasses" have been repeatedly found (lately) to be on the "wrong side of the issue". (There are usually scientists on both side of the issue, which is the saving grace for science: self-correction is built in.) Maybe it's relevant that the book is dated from 1929, that is, right before a time where "white coats" started being involved into very shady stuff (eugenics, mass-media propaganda, global-scale destruction weapons, and of, course, industrialized death.) The COVID crises could have been a time for science in general to earn trust again - in some sense it did, but this time people were overexpecting, and got disappointed at least (and downright enraged at worst, if they were on the wrong side of the politico-scientifict decisions.) And the pendulum will keep swinging, but hopefully still rise.
- kibwen 2y ago
  This is mistakenly attributing the destructive consequences of profit-motivated mega-industries to "nerds with glasses", thereby creating more cover for the ruthless profit-maximizers to continue destroying the world while deflecting all blame.
  - phtrivier 2y ago
    Well, in part it's the age-long debate about scientists being held responsible for the effects of their research. In other part, it's also that the bad consequence of what the "suits" ask the "nerds" to do are becoming increasingly more visible and obvious than before. Of course science is still helping. But it's also hurting. And I would argue that for lots of folks, the hurting is more obvious and tangible than the help.

by tivert 2y ago

drcwpl 2y ago

I had forgotten about the Elixir Sulfanilamide tragedy, great reminder, thank you. Humans are adaptive learners, shaped by both individual experience and cultural memory. The rise of anti-vax sentiments might be better explained by psychological and sociological factors. Like mistrust of institutions, the amplification of fringe views via social media, or the cognitive biases that prioritize visible risks over abstract ones.

stevenAthompson 2y ago
Those sociological factors aren't complex, and don't require an explanation of any real depth. The entire problem is this: Fifty four percent of Americans read below the 6th grade level, which means that the simple majority of Americans don't understand the world they live in and never will.
- drcwpl 2y ago
  That is a terrifying statistic "Fifty four percent of Americans read below the 6th grade level" ... just found the research.
- pksebben 2y ago
  I'd agree with this, but it's missing something; why is this the case? From what I know, it's a lot tougher to tease out the cause of this malfunction in our society. Do we have an undereducated populace because of poverty? Lack of school funding? (if so, why do we underfund schools? is it because we don't have the money? greed? is there a concerted effort to suppress an educated populace for political reasons?) Is there a cultural reticence built into us that resists scientific thought? My kneejerk analysis boils down to "it's the economy, stupid" and that a substantial portion of our population lives below the poverty line (which itself isn't defined particularly well and probably misses a bunch of folks who ought to qualify for 'living under distressed economic conditions'). It's tough to care about education when you struggle to keep a roof overhead.
  - stevenAthompson 2y ago
    It's the old dream of the information era. We were going to cure all of the worlds ills by fixing the problem of unequal access to information. Surely people would all perform equally, when given equal opportunity? Not only didn't it work, it made the world a far worse place. I think Occam's razor tells us why: Forty nine percent of people will always be of below average intelligence. Average intelligence currently seems to mean understanding the world at the 6th grade level. Maybe we can raise that to the 7th grade level with a concentrated effort, but that will also raise the performance of the top fifty percent. There will always be a bottom half and they will always struggle to understand the world the top half build.

phtrivier 2y ago

Interestingly, the experiences that people are rallying around (for better or worse) are more going _against_ negative effects (perceived or real) of the scientific / technological world: * Climate Change (caused by the tech of "burning lots of fuels") * PFAS, pesticides, endocrine disruptors, etc... * Opiods crisis, nartotics, etc... * Impact of GAFAM on privacy, social discourse, etc... In a sense, the "white coats in their labs" and "nerds with glasses" have been repeatedly found (lately) to be on the "wrong side of the issue". (There are usually scientists on both side of the issue, which is the saving grace for science: self-correction is built in.) Maybe it's relevant that the book is dated from 1929, that is, right before a time where "white coats" started being involved into very shady stuff (eugenics, mass-media propaganda, global-scale destruction weapons, and of, course, industrialized death.) The COVID crises could have been a time for science in general to earn trust again - in some sense it did, but this time people were overexpecting, and got disappointed at least (and downright enraged at worst, if they were on the wrong side of the politico-scientifict decisions.) And the pendulum will keep swinging, but hopefully still rise.

kibwen 2y ago
This is mistakenly attributing the destructive consequences of profit-motivated mega-industries to "nerds with glasses", thereby creating more cover for the ruthless profit-maximizers to continue destroying the world while deflecting all blame.
- phtrivier 2y ago
  Well, in part it's the age-long debate about scientists being held responsible for the effects of their research. In other part, it's also that the bad consequence of what the "suits" ask the "nerds" to do are becoming increasingly more visible and obvious than before. Of course science is still helping. But it's also hurting. And I would argue that for lots of folks, the hurting is more obvious and tangible than the help.