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I'm upvoting you because this is genuinely what people I know who are fans of RFK Jr. say and apparently believe. I believe that there's a yawning epistemologi

I'm upvoting you because this is genuinely what people I know who are fans of RFK Jr. say and apparently believe. I believe that there's a yawning epistemological void built into this way of thinking that makes it unlikely that it will result in better health outcomes for anyone. However, I think a narrative most people can agree with is that a broken food system and healthcare system have fostered mistrust of the medical and public health establishment among many and driven people to seek alternative ways of finding "truth" and understanding the world around them.

gitaarik 2y ago
I'm not necessarily a fan of RFK, I don't really know much about him to be honest. I'm just giving my view on why people might have voted for him. But thanks for your support for me sharing my views. That seems to have become challenging the last 5 years, I've noticed. I don't trust governments and big corporations in general. And I find it amazing how many people are so trustworthy about a new vaccine technology that hasn't been tested widely, globally organized by mayor governments and big corporations. And I've done a lot of research about it and I'm not convinced about the effectiveness of it. There are many studies with different results, that can be interpreted in many ways, could have been mangled with / cherry picked, has many parameters influencing it, etc. And I find it weird that there is so little attention to so many obvious improvements we can make in our health and environment. But we do have the money for LBQT+ projects in South Africa or something. And then if someone comes along who kind of questions it a little bit, he is condemned by a lot of people like he's some kind of psycho. If I put that all together in one equation, I get a big frown. Not a trustworthy feeling.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  The issue with discussion is that many people (see refurb in above thread) are doing so dishonestly. It's easy and cheap in terms of time to whatabout, while costly in terms of time to cite ones sources. Consequently, it's time-effective to troll via whataboutism, without any intention of having a substantive discussion. For example, > ... new vaccine technology that hasn't been tested widely... There are many studies with different results, that can be interpreted in many ways, could have been mangled with / cherry picked, has many parameters influencing it, etc. That's easy to say, in the same way I could say, 'All vaccines that are approved for mass US use go through rigorous safety studies and demonstrate negligible to no safety concerns at scale.' I've done a lot of research too. Given our contradictory opinions, only facts actually matter. Unfortunately, media-style driveby fact pulling has become the standard there as well. I.e. 'Look at this one study I found that supports my position.' With regards to the measles vaccine and similar widely deployed ones, it is scientifically defensible to say there haven't been issues at scale. (Because we would have seen them) And with regards to newer mRNA platforms, the irony is that they're conceptually safer than traditional vaccines, because we're skipping intermediate biological steps and directly creating the outcomes we want, rather than trusting our (incredibly complex) immune systems to get things right. Time will tell on long term results, but from a pathways perspective I'd take a newer mRNA vaccine over a newer live/attenuated vaccine any day of the week.
  - monkeyfun 2y ago
    Your patience and clarity of speaking in an understanding and respectful way is truly impressive. If things are going to get any better, more people like you are needed. I'm certainly taking notes.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Nobody has a position without being passionate about what they believe. :) And we should all try to value each others' passion, whether or not we agree.
  - gitaarik 2y ago
    Well, have you never ever heard about studies being funded for getting a certain results. So then you can't even trust the studies. Or do you believe this is not happening at all?
tpm 2y ago
> a broken food system and healthcare system have fostered mistrust The issue with this line of thinking is that the brainrot has taken hold of significant numbers of people even in societies with working healthcare and food system (although not completely sure what that is).
- Centigonal 2y ago
  I am an American and I'm speaking about America, where we have an all-time high 40%+ obesity rate and a 14% food insecurity rate at the same time. Both are overrepresented for people with low incomes. For reference, obesity and food insecurity in Germany (which has one of the highest obesity rates in the EU) appear to be ~23% and 4%, respectively. For reasons we don't fully understand (but probably have something to do with the ubiquity of highly processed, low nutrition, low fiber, high calorie density foods -- plus the lack of time to cook and the breaking-up of family & community fabrics among lower income communities), we've created a society that makes more of us fat, more than our first world peers, even while dangling many Americans (especially children and the poor) over the precipice of starvation. This is a broken food system. We have similar issues with health care: we spend more on healthcare than any other country in the world, by a mile. The US spends about 1.5x to 3x per capita on healthcare (adjusted for PPP) compared to most of the other OECD countries. However, our health outcomes are... not great. We hover around 50th place in the world on most metrics, close to Panama. Additionally, our healthcare system is byzantine and deeply, deeply painful to interact with. If people in countries with high-performing health and food systems are getting infected with America's particular brand of brain worms, all I have to say is: you really don't understand how good y'all have it in this particular respect, and consider that mistrust of government regulation may worsen the situation, not improve it.
  - tpm 2y ago
    > America's particular brand of brain worms You (Americans) are not that special :). Antivax brainrot was started by that Wakefield study in the UK, distrust of government/establishment is and was widespread in many countries, sometimes for good reasons. Moreover many of the brainrot-infected people actually have it good and don't need any regime change. What I think has actually happenned is that spreading disinformation has become cheap thanks to soc. networks and that was then weaponised by the most unscrupulous people. This is not connected to any physical reality except access to capital by the baddies. What is now happenning is the disinformation beast - the name for that which I like is disordered discourse - has to be perpetually fed or it will eat even those who it brought to power. So now it is destroying institutions. It will get worse everywhere, I'm afraid.

gitaarik 2y ago

I'm not necessarily a fan of RFK, I don't really know much about him to be honest. I'm just giving my view on why people might have voted for him. But thanks for your support for me sharing my views. That seems to have become challenging the last 5 years, I've noticed. I don't trust governments and big corporations in general. And I find it amazing how many people are so trustworthy about a new vaccine technology that hasn't been tested widely, globally organized by mayor governments and big corporations. And I've done a lot of research about it and I'm not convinced about the effectiveness of it. There are many studies with different results, that can be interpreted in many ways, could have been mangled with / cherry picked, has many parameters influencing it, etc. And I find it weird that there is so little attention to so many obvious improvements we can make in our health and environment. But we do have the money for LBQT+ projects in South Africa or something. And then if someone comes along who kind of questions it a little bit, he is condemned by a lot of people like he's some kind of psycho. If I put that all together in one equation, I get a big frown. Not a trustworthy feeling.

ethbr1 2y ago
The issue with discussion is that many people (see refurb in above thread) are doing so dishonestly. It's easy and cheap in terms of time to whatabout, while costly in terms of time to cite ones sources. Consequently, it's time-effective to troll via whataboutism, without any intention of having a substantive discussion. For example, > ... new vaccine technology that hasn't been tested widely... There are many studies with different results, that can be interpreted in many ways, could have been mangled with / cherry picked, has many parameters influencing it, etc. That's easy to say, in the same way I could say, 'All vaccines that are approved for mass US use go through rigorous safety studies and demonstrate negligible to no safety concerns at scale.' I've done a lot of research too. Given our contradictory opinions, only facts actually matter. Unfortunately, media-style driveby fact pulling has become the standard there as well. I.e. 'Look at this one study I found that supports my position.' With regards to the measles vaccine and similar widely deployed ones, it is scientifically defensible to say there haven't been issues at scale. (Because we would have seen them) And with regards to newer mRNA platforms, the irony is that they're conceptually safer than traditional vaccines, because we're skipping intermediate biological steps and directly creating the outcomes we want, rather than trusting our (incredibly complex) immune systems to get things right. Time will tell on long term results, but from a pathways perspective I'd take a newer mRNA vaccine over a newer live/attenuated vaccine any day of the week.
- monkeyfun 2y ago
  Your patience and clarity of speaking in an understanding and respectful way is truly impressive. If things are going to get any better, more people like you are needed. I'm certainly taking notes.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Nobody has a position without being passionate about what they believe. :) And we should all try to value each others' passion, whether or not we agree.
- gitaarik 2y ago
  Well, have you never ever heard about studies being funded for getting a certain results. So then you can't even trust the studies. Or do you believe this is not happening at all?

tpm 2y ago

> a broken food system and healthcare system have fostered mistrust The issue with this line of thinking is that the brainrot has taken hold of significant numbers of people even in societies with working healthcare and food system (although not completely sure what that is).

Centigonal 2y ago
I am an American and I'm speaking about America, where we have an all-time high 40%+ obesity rate and a 14% food insecurity rate at the same time. Both are overrepresented for people with low incomes. For reference, obesity and food insecurity in Germany (which has one of the highest obesity rates in the EU) appear to be ~23% and 4%, respectively. For reasons we don't fully understand (but probably have something to do with the ubiquity of highly processed, low nutrition, low fiber, high calorie density foods -- plus the lack of time to cook and the breaking-up of family & community fabrics among lower income communities), we've created a society that makes more of us fat, more than our first world peers, even while dangling many Americans (especially children and the poor) over the precipice of starvation. This is a broken food system. We have similar issues with health care: we spend more on healthcare than any other country in the world, by a mile. The US spends about 1.5x to 3x per capita on healthcare (adjusted for PPP) compared to most of the other OECD countries. However, our health outcomes are... not great. We hover around 50th place in the world on most metrics, close to Panama. Additionally, our healthcare system is byzantine and deeply, deeply painful to interact with. If people in countries with high-performing health and food systems are getting infected with America's particular brand of brain worms, all I have to say is: you really don't understand how good y'all have it in this particular respect, and consider that mistrust of government regulation may worsen the situation, not improve it.
- tpm 2y ago
  > America's particular brand of brain worms You (Americans) are not that special :). Antivax brainrot was started by that Wakefield study in the UK, distrust of government/establishment is and was widespread in many countries, sometimes for good reasons. Moreover many of the brainrot-infected people actually have it good and don't need any regime change. What I think has actually happenned is that spreading disinformation has become cheap thanks to soc. networks and that was then weaponised by the most unscrupulous people. This is not connected to any physical reality except access to capital by the baddies. What is now happenning is the disinformation beast - the name for that which I like is disordered discourse - has to be perpetually fed or it will eat even those who it brought to power. So now it is destroying institutions. It will get worse everywhere, I'm afraid.