9 ms·

I’m an Anti-Braker

221 points by mzs 12y ago

ColinDabritz 12y ago
Delightful. Satire is an excellent way to illuminate inconsistent or unreasonable positions.
- api 12y ago
  It's a great way to self-congratulate, but it never changes anyone else's opinion. If anything it makes others' opinions more entrenched by pushing antagonistic emotional buttons.
  - kbenson 12y ago
    I tend to think that it may also depend on how well the satire is done, for example how in depth and how well it correlates.
  - ColinDabritz 12y ago
    I disagree, it affects public discourse and how we reason as a society. It does change opinions. http://www.shalhevetboilingpoint.com/top-stories/2015/01/14/opinion-from-charlie-chaplin-to-charlie-hebdo-satire-is-crucial-force-for-change/ http://www.shalhevetboilingpoint.com/top-stories/2015/01/14/... http://www.ted.com/conversations/6205/what_role_does_satire_play_in.html http://www.ted.com/conversations/6205/what_role_does_satire_... http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/07/laugh-satire-establishment-ridicule-democracy http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/07/laugh-s...
  - thirtyseven 12y ago
    We don't have to convince the anti-vaxxers. We have to convince everybody else that it's worthwhile to legislate mandatory vaccination.
  - droopyEyelids 12y ago
    Yes but there isn't a good strategy to convert people who actively hold opposing viewpoints. Satire and even sarcasm can help sway the undecided, if they're done tastefully- and the undecided are the people everyone cares about swaying.
joezydeco 12y ago
We need to think of a better way to convince parents to vaccinate their children than hitting them with sarcasm. While these are fun to read from our smug pro-vax point of view, they provide no effect on everyone else. We need to show parents what life was like before the polio vaccine. Before measles/mumps. Hell, before smallpox. Part of the problem is that younger parents don't believe that these diseases were all too real and way too common before the treatments. There aren't many polio survivors around anymore, and the only place you'll ever see measles is on Brady Bunch reruns.
- tdees40 12y ago
  I get all this, but I really think the only way to sort this out will be to heavily stigmatize it. It needs to be shameful not to vaccinate your child. I think satire plays into that.
  - api 12y ago
    A post of mine from another thread on this general topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8985668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8985668
  - jgallag8 12y ago
    I would prefer to live in a world where, as much as possible, rationality guides decisions instead of emotivist social pressure.
    - Qwertious 12y ago
      I would like the former too, but I'll accept the latter if the former isn't feasible.
    - blt 12y ago
      Keep waiting.
    - john_b 12y ago
      Unfortunately you don't, and you never will. You'll have to get used to the fact that "emotivist social pressure" is usually a more effective way to change peoples minds than reason. If people can't be convinced by reason that their dangerous and unreasonable behavior is in fact dangerous and unreasonable, then little is left besides social pressures.
smileysteve 12y ago
While I appreciate the satire, there is a legitimate argument that bad drivers brake too much. Braking, brake lights, etc create a change that cascades to other drivers. The driver in front of you on the highway is predictable UNTIL they put on their brakes via their relative distance. If you have to put your brakes on on the highway (in the left lane) you are following too closely.
- emodendroket 12y ago
  You probably also shouldn't inject the polio vaccine into your eye. So what?
deleted 12y ago
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jacquesm 12y ago
The biggest problem with the anti-vaccin groups is that not only does it negatively affect their children (which is bad enough), it also negatively affects others due to reduced herd immunity. In other words, those that have had ineffective vaccinations or that are simply more susceptible are also at an elevated level of risk.
gear54rus 12y ago
An exemplary piece. For a second there, I thought he was serious. For the added effect, we don't have that kind of movement where I live so it was not immediately on my mind.
carsongross 12y ago
I wonder how many kids will end up dead due to these shitty, point-and-laugh, self-congratulatory articles, rather than positively and honestly engaging the anti-vax sides concerns.
lisper 12y ago
Not all anti-vaxers are stupid or ignorant, some of them simply have a different quality metric. I've had extensive correspondence with a former colleague who fully accepts all the science, but simply believes that natural immunity is "better" than artificial immunity, and that a 0.1% mortality rate (which is about what measles produces) is an acceptable price to pay. We both accept the science, but he likes the odds and I don't. I have no idea what to say to someone like that.
- john_b 12y ago
  Tell him that he has no right to make that choice for others, and while he may think he is only making that choice for his own family he is also choosing to put others at a greater risk. The braking analogy in this article is quite apt. Prior to the measles vaccine, about 3-4 million people got measles every year. In such a world, a 0.1% mortality rate still leaves 3000-4000 people dead from an easily preventable disease. And this says nothing of the people who suffer from it but don't die. The economic costs from kids and parents getting sick and missing school and work would total in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Even intelligent people can be narrow-minded. There is much more to a disease than its mortality rate.
  - lisper 12y ago
    He's fully aware of the impact his decision has on other people. Like I said, he's simply willing to accept a 0.1% child mortality rate as the price you have to pay for the benefit of natural immunity. A minority has to die so that the majority can have a better quality of life. It's a defensible position.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      It's a nonsensical position. People do not have "natural immunity" to measles. They develop an immunity after contact with live measles in the form of disease or dead measles in the form of a vaccine. The difference between the two is not just the greater risk of death from measles the disease, but also the risk of blindness. It's bad enough that he's not taking that risk himself, but foisting it on his children. And, worse, on the rest of society.
engendered 12y ago
The whole vaccination thing has taken a turn much like the AGW debate -- it has become religion, and people define themselves by their (painfully simplified) position on it : I have Facebook friends who post such clever articles and meme images daily, literally preaching to the converted for absolutely no gain but their own smug sense of superiority. But here's the thing -- vaccinations carry risks. Of course they do. They have massive upsides, but they invariably have downsides, bad reactions, and so on, and it is the utter foolishness that so many try to paint it otherwise. The net result is of course a major positive -- if 1% of the population has an adverse reaction, but 10% avoids getting a painful disease, then a win for the whole (even if it sucks if you're the 1%) -- but it is infantile if not ignorant to not only pretend these risks don't exist (which is ridiculously common), but to actually question people's own assessment of their risk profile. http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/02/05/hpv-vaccine-gardasil-has-a-dark-side-star-investigation-finds.html http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/02/05/hpv-vaccine-ga... All of those incidents might very well be entirely coincidental. Or maybe they aren't. Such is the nature of massive, widespread immunizations, where the abnormal immune system of one person might be sent spiraling out of control, while another might suffer a critical allergic response. Despite endless evidence to the contrary, many seem to believe we have a complete understanding of medicine and the human body. In some ways we remain hacks, and more often than not luck upon our algorithms. But this blind march really makes the movie "The Children of Men" seem more like a prophecy than a fiction. EDIT: -2 within a minute. HN has taken a perilous dump into garbage land -- the classic ignorant back-slapping and sophistry -- as more and more entirely ignorant people get down arrow rights.
- tfinniga 12y ago
  Vaccinations carry risks, but so does not vaccinating. If you just want to talk percentages, what is the chance that you will have an unusual or adverse reaction to a vaccination vs. what is the chance that you will contract and have an adverse reaction to the illness? Even on those terms it seems worth it to vaccinate against MMR. Those vaccines have been around for a long time, they are effective, and they are safe. They are certainly much safer than measles, mumps, and rubella. It used to be that you could avoid the risk of vaccination entirely by assuming that everyone else around you would vaccinate. That's no longer a good assumption. Plus, there is the compounding factor that by not vaccinating, these people are facilitating harm to others. Government is all about balancing benefit and risk as a whole.
xai3luGi 12y ago
classic vindictive "well then why dont everybody"republican lowest common denominator derivative calculator math at best... seen it a thousand times...
deleted 12y ago
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- ptaipale 12y ago
  But if you do that, you're a danger to others.
- sergiosgc 12y ago
  What is the "braking" distance for a 120km/h to complete stop operation? How do you go from the ~6km/h you get at 850rpm in first gear to complete stop?
transfire 12y ago
I know this will be down voted, nonetheless, after reading many of these threads it is clear to me that most pro-vaxxers are horribly uneducated about the facts, and simply go around parroting others and making holier than though smug comments. If they would actually take the time to listen they would see that most so called "anti-vaxxers" are nothing of the sort. While there will of course always be the few that are extreme about it, most are simply concerned about safe delivery and over vaccination for the sake of pharmaceutical company profits. They want better oversight and safe guards. They want to spread vaccination schedules out and not have to get any that aren't absolutely necessary. If these concerns were addressed, the die-hard "anti-vaxxers" would be such a small number as not to matter for herd immunity.
- kstrauser 12y ago
  > for the sake of pharmaceutical company profits Ignoring the fact that 1) vaccines are low-profit items, to the point that some companies have stopped making them, and 2) it's way less profitable to prevent illness than to treat it. If you want to believe a conspiracy, you've got to go all it. And if you do that, the real conspiracy would be that vaccine manufacturers are spreading mistruths about them so that you'll buy their expensive cures rather than their cheap, low-profit preventative vaccines. Which is hogwash, of course. But if you're in for a penny, might as well be in for a pound.
- sergiosgc 12y ago
  Your opinion does not fly in the face of the anti-vaxxer public discourse. It's not a question of vaccine frequency. Vaccines are being accused of causing autism, and anti-vaxxers propose abandoning them altogether. All of this without any validated study linking vaccines to autism, in more than half a century of vaccine use. All of this, also, in the face of many confirmed studies proving the efficacy of vaccination in disease prevention. It's like people have decided to abandon science altogether and rely on gut instinct alone.
- legohead 12y ago
  What lack of oversight? If anti-vaxxers think somehow vaccines got added into the system for the hell of it or purely for profit, that's only going to make them look insane. You can spread out vaccinations all you want, you just have to ask. Our 4 year old just had her vaccinations, and we chose to have 2 right now, and 2 next year (it is normally a combination of 4 vaccines).
nostromo 12y ago
If you want to convince skeptics to get vaccinated, being insufferably smug is probably the worst way to go about it.
- karlshea 12y ago
  Might as well since reason, facts, and logic don't seem to be working.
  - sanderjd 12y ago
    In my experience, this sort of intellectual smugness is one of the main causes of people on the other side ignoring reason, facts, and logic. They get the picture loud and clear that people think they are too dumb to understand things and that they're being talk down to, and it makes them far less likely to believe the facts. This is the same problem that the climate change movement has. People who say "it is not plainly obvious to me that this is what's going on" and are scoffed at for being stupid are much more likely to listen to somebody who says "no, you're not stupid, here are some (potentially incorrect) facts that confirm your point of view". The fact is that these complicated sciency thing are not at all obvious and those who can should be doing the hard work to convince people who don't have the time or ability to study this stuff themselves, rather than just thinking people who don't inherently trust the "right" scientists for their expertise are stupid.
leichtgewicht 12y ago
The sarcasm was completely lost of me because of the brakeless bicycle movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-gear_bicycle#Brakeless http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-gear_bicycle#Brakeless I thought he is just a crazy bad-ass.
transfire 12y ago
The more appropriate analogy: http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/Vehicle-owners-with-defective-airbags-urged-to-take-immediate-action http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/Vehicle-owne...
rkroondotnet 12y ago
Here is a good article on non-medical exemption rates http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/vaccine-exemptions-states-pertussis-map http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/vaccine-exemp... TLDR: Oregon, Michigan, Idaho and Vermont are the worst offenders with over 5% of their kindergarten students having nonmedical exemptions.
sidcool 12y ago
I actually and really went through half the article thinking 'Wow, what an interesting point of view!'. It was only in the last couple of paragraphs that I realized the satire. I am not a very bright person.
- supercanuck 12y ago
  guilty as well.
alttab 12y ago
The analogy doesn't really hold up. And I love it how you can be so right, so unwaveringly correct as to leave no air or room for debate. While illustrating a point poorly the author just comes across like an asshole to anyone that doesn't completely agree with him. Circle jerk much?
kyledrake 12y ago
In snow in the winter, slamming on the brakes actually can prevent you from stopping your car. I grew up in Minnesota, where you learn how to deal with this very quickly. If you've never driven in snow/ice before, there's a situation where the brakes can "lock up", causing your tires to freeze instead of slowly spin down. For some physics reason I don't entirely understand, the tires have better friction with a slippery surface when they're still spinning, so when they stop spinning your car just turns into a giant hockey puck, and you can no longer stop the car without getting the tires to spin again. Newer cars have what's called an "Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS)", but it usually doesn't work very well. I'm pretty sure it's just there for the people that have never driven in snow before. It's actually worse to trigger it sometimes. If you've never driven in snow before and just moved to a place where it does, find an empty driveway and learn how to pulse the brakes. Seriously could save your life.
- sidcool 12y ago
  I am looking for the `\s` in your comment.
- pedrocr 12y ago
  > For some physics reason I don't entirely understand, the tires have better friction with a slippery surface when they're still spinning Nothing complex about this, the coefficient of friction in most reasonable cases is higher when the two surfaces aren't sliding. >Newer cars have what's called an "Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS)", but it usually doesn't work very well. I'm pretty sure it's just there for the people that have never driven in snow before. It's actually worse to trigger it sometimes. ABS is far from new. It was introduced in airplanes in the 1930s and has existed in cars since the 1970s. It's rare for cars these days not to have it. It's also much safer than pulsed braking because the anti-lock feature is applied per-wheel and not globally, so you can safely steer for example. Apparently ABS reduces braking distances on asphalt and may increase them on snow/gravel because in some of those situations locked wheels can actually brake more by digging into the surface. More modern systems probably fix that and I bet even the old ones are still safer in real situations where you need to brake and steer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system
sanderjd 12y ago
I thought it was going to be a metaphor about central banking systems and the gold standard. Perhaps this is generally a style of argument that works against any sort of "things used to be better" viewpoint.
allthatglitters 12y ago
After reading the 123 comments so far of this delightful discourse, I'm curious why no one has mentioned how we handle the immigration issue and vaccination? Does ICE check the health records or what? I guess those legally entering with visas etc are good... dare I mention illegals?
chrisBob 12y ago
I have a strong personal stake in this one right now. I am the parent of a 2 month old who can not get the MMR vaccine for another 10 months. Knowing that I have to take my daughter on a commercial flight in the next few weeks scares me, especially with the recent news of the outbreaks. Maybe education about protecting infants could go a long way to change people's minds. Maybe there needs to be more legal action against the anti-vax movement. http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2015/01/28/measles-is-spreading-and-kids-might-die-sue-parents-who-didnt-vaccinate-absolutely/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2015/01/28/measles-is...
justizin 12y ago
"Waaah, wahh, my corrupt mechanic who installs my brake pads calls me ignorant because I'm a know it all, but I don't fucking work on cars for a living." Shut the fuck up. You hit a cyclist with that car and I will throw you under it, motherfucker. Seriously, the notion that brake pads are a conspiracy by auto mechanics is simply.. Words cannot. Let's try this: In driver's ed, they tell you not to use the brake as a solution to all problems. If you cannot follow those instructions, you should not operate a motor vehicle. Do not modify the motor vehicle to remove essential safety equipment because YOU cannot fucking drive. DRIVING IS A PRIVILEGE!
TeMPOraL 12y ago
Anti-vaxx movement seems to be a symptom of a deeper problem - I see it as a combination of people being increasingly unable to comprehend the world around them and growing mistrust toward the authorities. The second one is perfectly understandable - politicians cheat us all the time. Journalists lie in every other sentence. Big companies consistently spew bullshit. A lot of small companies are run by fraudsters. The fundamental trust of society toward its structures is broken. It's easy to assume that politicians and businessmen try to push things for profit and not for the social benefit. That itself is not enough for a movement like anti-vaxxers though. I'm pro-vax, but not because I trust the government or pharmaceutical companies. There's definitely a lot of fraud, bribery and fudging results there. But the general scientific idea is sound, and it adds up to other things. It's the kind of feeling I believe big part of population doesn't have. That things add up. I believe in mainstream science because it's coherent, logical and agrees nicely with observable reality. I understand some genetics, know enough maths to have a feel for exponential growth, etc. But many people don't really understand anything about the world (yay education!), it must seem like a black box for them. Some things happen because they happen. When you eat dirt you get sick, etc. Along with anti-vaxxers, I often talk with anti-GMO and anti-nuclear people. The situation is always the same - they don't trust the autorities and they don't understand a thing about the topic domain. "Nuclear energy" is the scary thing. Chernobyl. Soviet lies. Fukushima. Japanese lies. It's hard to make them do the math and understand that this is our only viable option for now. They don't trust governments and they don't have enough knowledge to evaluate the topic themselves - so they don't trust the solution. I'm afraid that as a civilization, we're going to really hurt ourselves beacuse of trust issues. That's why in my books, lying to people is one of the biggest sins. It's literally destroying humanity's ability to work together.
- jrs235 12y ago
  "I'm afraid that as a civilization, we're going to really hurt ourselves beacuse of trust issues." And that (FUD) is what people are fed when they sit in front of a television.
dang 12y ago
This is not a good HN submission. It doesn't teach us anything; its purpose is to arouse indignation in favor of what one already believes. In other words, it's a riler-upper. Please don't post riler-uppers to Hacker News.
- emil10001 12y ago
  Reads more like satire to me.

I’m an Anti-Braker

221 points by mzs 12y ago

ColinDabritz 12y ago

Delightful. Satire is an excellent way to illuminate inconsistent or unreasonable positions.

api 12y ago
It's a great way to self-congratulate, but it never changes anyone else's opinion. If anything it makes others' opinions more entrenched by pushing antagonistic emotional buttons.
- kbenson 12y ago
  I tend to think that it may also depend on how well the satire is done, for example how in depth and how well it correlates.
- ColinDabritz 12y ago
  I disagree, it affects public discourse and how we reason as a society. It does change opinions. http://www.shalhevetboilingpoint.com/top-stories/2015/01/14/opinion-from-charlie-chaplin-to-charlie-hebdo-satire-is-crucial-force-for-change/ http://www.shalhevetboilingpoint.com/top-stories/2015/01/14/... http://www.ted.com/conversations/6205/what_role_does_satire_play_in.html http://www.ted.com/conversations/6205/what_role_does_satire_... http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/07/laugh-satire-establishment-ridicule-democracy http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/07/laugh-s...
- thirtyseven 12y ago
  We don't have to convince the anti-vaxxers. We have to convince everybody else that it's worthwhile to legislate mandatory vaccination.
- droopyEyelids 12y ago
  Yes but there isn't a good strategy to convert people who actively hold opposing viewpoints. Satire and even sarcasm can help sway the undecided, if they're done tastefully- and the undecided are the people everyone cares about swaying.

joezydeco 12y ago

We need to think of a better way to convince parents to vaccinate their children than hitting them with sarcasm. While these are fun to read from our smug pro-vax point of view, they provide no effect on everyone else. We need to show parents what life was like before the polio vaccine. Before measles/mumps. Hell, before smallpox. Part of the problem is that younger parents don't believe that these diseases were all too real and way too common before the treatments. There aren't many polio survivors around anymore, and the only place you'll ever see measles is on Brady Bunch reruns.

tdees40 12y ago
I get all this, but I really think the only way to sort this out will be to heavily stigmatize it. It needs to be shameful not to vaccinate your child. I think satire plays into that.
- api 12y ago
  A post of mine from another thread on this general topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8985668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8985668
- jgallag8 12y ago
  I would prefer to live in a world where, as much as possible, rationality guides decisions instead of emotivist social pressure.
  - Qwertious 12y ago
    I would like the former too, but I'll accept the latter if the former isn't feasible.
  - blt 12y ago
    Keep waiting.
  - john_b 12y ago
    Unfortunately you don't, and you never will. You'll have to get used to the fact that "emotivist social pressure" is usually a more effective way to change peoples minds than reason. If people can't be convinced by reason that their dangerous and unreasonable behavior is in fact dangerous and unreasonable, then little is left besides social pressures.

smileysteve 12y ago

While I appreciate the satire, there is a legitimate argument that bad drivers brake too much. Braking, brake lights, etc create a change that cascades to other drivers. The driver in front of you on the highway is predictable UNTIL they put on their brakes via their relative distance. If you have to put your brakes on on the highway (in the left lane) you are following too closely.

emodendroket 12y ago
You probably also shouldn't inject the polio vaccine into your eye. So what?

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jacquesm 12y ago

The biggest problem with the anti-vaccin groups is that not only does it negatively affect their children (which is bad enough), it also negatively affects others due to reduced herd immunity. In other words, those that have had ineffective vaccinations or that are simply more susceptible are also at an elevated level of risk.

gear54rus 12y ago

An exemplary piece. For a second there, I thought he was serious. For the added effect, we don't have that kind of movement where I live so it was not immediately on my mind.

carsongross 12y ago

I wonder how many kids will end up dead due to these shitty, point-and-laugh, self-congratulatory articles, rather than positively and honestly engaging the anti-vax sides concerns.

lisper 12y ago

Not all anti-vaxers are stupid or ignorant, some of them simply have a different quality metric. I've had extensive correspondence with a former colleague who fully accepts all the science, but simply believes that natural immunity is "better" than artificial immunity, and that a 0.1% mortality rate (which is about what measles produces) is an acceptable price to pay. We both accept the science, but he likes the odds and I don't. I have no idea what to say to someone like that.

john_b 12y ago
Tell him that he has no right to make that choice for others, and while he may think he is only making that choice for his own family he is also choosing to put others at a greater risk. The braking analogy in this article is quite apt. Prior to the measles vaccine, about 3-4 million people got measles every year. In such a world, a 0.1% mortality rate still leaves 3000-4000 people dead from an easily preventable disease. And this says nothing of the people who suffer from it but don't die. The economic costs from kids and parents getting sick and missing school and work would total in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Even intelligent people can be narrow-minded. There is much more to a disease than its mortality rate.
- lisper 12y ago
  He's fully aware of the impact his decision has on other people. Like I said, he's simply willing to accept a 0.1% child mortality rate as the price you have to pay for the benefit of natural immunity. A minority has to die so that the majority can have a better quality of life. It's a defensible position.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    It's a nonsensical position. People do not have "natural immunity" to measles. They develop an immunity after contact with live measles in the form of disease or dead measles in the form of a vaccine. The difference between the two is not just the greater risk of death from measles the disease, but also the risk of blindness. It's bad enough that he's not taking that risk himself, but foisting it on his children. And, worse, on the rest of society.

engendered 12y ago

The whole vaccination thing has taken a turn much like the AGW debate -- it has become religion, and people define themselves by their (painfully simplified) position on it : I have Facebook friends who post such clever articles and meme images daily, literally preaching to the converted for absolutely no gain but their own smug sense of superiority. But here's the thing -- vaccinations carry risks. Of course they do. They have massive upsides, but they invariably have downsides, bad reactions, and so on, and it is the utter foolishness that so many try to paint it otherwise. The net result is of course a major positive -- if 1% of the population has an adverse reaction, but 10% avoids getting a painful disease, then a win for the whole (even if it sucks if you're the 1%) -- but it is infantile if not ignorant to not only pretend these risks don't exist (which is ridiculously common), but to actually question people's own assessment of their risk profile. http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/02/05/hpv-vaccine-gardasil-has-a-dark-side-star-investigation-finds.html http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/02/05/hpv-vaccine-ga... All of those incidents might very well be entirely coincidental. Or maybe they aren't. Such is the nature of massive, widespread immunizations, where the abnormal immune system of one person might be sent spiraling out of control, while another might suffer a critical allergic response. Despite endless evidence to the contrary, many seem to believe we have a complete understanding of medicine and the human body. In some ways we remain hacks, and more often than not luck upon our algorithms. But this blind march really makes the movie "The Children of Men" seem more like a prophecy than a fiction. EDIT: -2 within a minute. HN has taken a perilous dump into garbage land -- the classic ignorant back-slapping and sophistry -- as more and more entirely ignorant people get down arrow rights.

tfinniga 12y ago
Vaccinations carry risks, but so does not vaccinating. If you just want to talk percentages, what is the chance that you will have an unusual or adverse reaction to a vaccination vs. what is the chance that you will contract and have an adverse reaction to the illness? Even on those terms it seems worth it to vaccinate against MMR. Those vaccines have been around for a long time, they are effective, and they are safe. They are certainly much safer than measles, mumps, and rubella. It used to be that you could avoid the risk of vaccination entirely by assuming that everyone else around you would vaccinate. That's no longer a good assumption. Plus, there is the compounding factor that by not vaccinating, these people are facilitating harm to others. Government is all about balancing benefit and risk as a whole.

xai3luGi 12y ago

classic vindictive "well then why dont everybody"republican lowest common denominator derivative calculator math at best... seen it a thousand times...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

ptaipale 12y ago
But if you do that, you're a danger to others.
sergiosgc 12y ago
What is the "braking" distance for a 120km/h to complete stop operation? How do you go from the ~6km/h you get at 850rpm in first gear to complete stop?

transfire 12y ago

I know this will be down voted, nonetheless, after reading many of these threads it is clear to me that most pro-vaxxers are horribly uneducated about the facts, and simply go around parroting others and making holier than though smug comments. If they would actually take the time to listen they would see that most so called "anti-vaxxers" are nothing of the sort. While there will of course always be the few that are extreme about it, most are simply concerned about safe delivery and over vaccination for the sake of pharmaceutical company profits. They want better oversight and safe guards. They want to spread vaccination schedules out and not have to get any that aren't absolutely necessary. If these concerns were addressed, the die-hard "anti-vaxxers" would be such a small number as not to matter for herd immunity.

kstrauser 12y ago
> for the sake of pharmaceutical company profits Ignoring the fact that 1) vaccines are low-profit items, to the point that some companies have stopped making them, and 2) it's way less profitable to prevent illness than to treat it. If you want to believe a conspiracy, you've got to go all it. And if you do that, the real conspiracy would be that vaccine manufacturers are spreading mistruths about them so that you'll buy their expensive cures rather than their cheap, low-profit preventative vaccines. Which is hogwash, of course. But if you're in for a penny, might as well be in for a pound.
sergiosgc 12y ago
Your opinion does not fly in the face of the anti-vaxxer public discourse. It's not a question of vaccine frequency. Vaccines are being accused of causing autism, and anti-vaxxers propose abandoning them altogether. All of this without any validated study linking vaccines to autism, in more than half a century of vaccine use. All of this, also, in the face of many confirmed studies proving the efficacy of vaccination in disease prevention. It's like people have decided to abandon science altogether and rely on gut instinct alone.
legohead 12y ago
What lack of oversight? If anti-vaxxers think somehow vaccines got added into the system for the hell of it or purely for profit, that's only going to make them look insane. You can spread out vaccinations all you want, you just have to ask. Our 4 year old just had her vaccinations, and we chose to have 2 right now, and 2 next year (it is normally a combination of 4 vaccines).

nostromo 12y ago

If you want to convince skeptics to get vaccinated, being insufferably smug is probably the worst way to go about it.

karlshea 12y ago
Might as well since reason, facts, and logic don't seem to be working.
- sanderjd 12y ago
  In my experience, this sort of intellectual smugness is one of the main causes of people on the other side ignoring reason, facts, and logic. They get the picture loud and clear that people think they are too dumb to understand things and that they're being talk down to, and it makes them far less likely to believe the facts. This is the same problem that the climate change movement has. People who say "it is not plainly obvious to me that this is what's going on" and are scoffed at for being stupid are much more likely to listen to somebody who says "no, you're not stupid, here are some (potentially incorrect) facts that confirm your point of view". The fact is that these complicated sciency thing are not at all obvious and those who can should be doing the hard work to convince people who don't have the time or ability to study this stuff themselves, rather than just thinking people who don't inherently trust the "right" scientists for their expertise are stupid.

leichtgewicht 12y ago

The sarcasm was completely lost of me because of the brakeless bicycle movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-gear_bicycle#Brakeless http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-gear_bicycle#Brakeless I thought he is just a crazy bad-ass.

transfire 12y ago

The more appropriate analogy: http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/Vehicle-owners-with-defective-airbags-urged-to-take-immediate-action http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/Vehicle-owne...

rkroondotnet 12y ago

Here is a good article on non-medical exemption rates http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/vaccine-exemptions-states-pertussis-map http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/vaccine-exemp... TLDR: Oregon, Michigan, Idaho and Vermont are the worst offenders with over 5% of their kindergarten students having nonmedical exemptions.

sidcool 12y ago

I actually and really went through half the article thinking 'Wow, what an interesting point of view!'. It was only in the last couple of paragraphs that I realized the satire. I am not a very bright person.

supercanuck 12y ago
guilty as well.

alttab 12y ago

The analogy doesn't really hold up. And I love it how you can be so right, so unwaveringly correct as to leave no air or room for debate. While illustrating a point poorly the author just comes across like an asshole to anyone that doesn't completely agree with him. Circle jerk much?

kyledrake 12y ago

In snow in the winter, slamming on the brakes actually can prevent you from stopping your car. I grew up in Minnesota, where you learn how to deal with this very quickly. If you've never driven in snow/ice before, there's a situation where the brakes can "lock up", causing your tires to freeze instead of slowly spin down. For some physics reason I don't entirely understand, the tires have better friction with a slippery surface when they're still spinning, so when they stop spinning your car just turns into a giant hockey puck, and you can no longer stop the car without getting the tires to spin again. Newer cars have what's called an "Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS)", but it usually doesn't work very well. I'm pretty sure it's just there for the people that have never driven in snow before. It's actually worse to trigger it sometimes. If you've never driven in snow before and just moved to a place where it does, find an empty driveway and learn how to pulse the brakes. Seriously could save your life.

sidcool 12y ago
I am looking for the `\s` in your comment.
pedrocr 12y ago
> For some physics reason I don't entirely understand, the tires have better friction with a slippery surface when they're still spinning Nothing complex about this, the coefficient of friction in most reasonable cases is higher when the two surfaces aren't sliding. >Newer cars have what's called an "Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS)", but it usually doesn't work very well. I'm pretty sure it's just there for the people that have never driven in snow before. It's actually worse to trigger it sometimes. ABS is far from new. It was introduced in airplanes in the 1930s and has existed in cars since the 1970s. It's rare for cars these days not to have it. It's also much safer than pulsed braking because the anti-lock feature is applied per-wheel and not globally, so you can safely steer for example. Apparently ABS reduces braking distances on asphalt and may increase them on snow/gravel because in some of those situations locked wheels can actually brake more by digging into the surface. More modern systems probably fix that and I bet even the old ones are still safer in real situations where you need to brake and steer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system

sanderjd 12y ago

I thought it was going to be a metaphor about central banking systems and the gold standard. Perhaps this is generally a style of argument that works against any sort of "things used to be better" viewpoint.

allthatglitters 12y ago

After reading the 123 comments so far of this delightful discourse, I'm curious why no one has mentioned how we handle the immigration issue and vaccination? Does ICE check the health records or what? I guess those legally entering with visas etc are good... dare I mention illegals?

chrisBob 12y ago

I have a strong personal stake in this one right now. I am the parent of a 2 month old who can not get the MMR vaccine for another 10 months. Knowing that I have to take my daughter on a commercial flight in the next few weeks scares me, especially with the recent news of the outbreaks. Maybe education about protecting infants could go a long way to change people's minds. Maybe there needs to be more legal action against the anti-vax movement. http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2015/01/28/measles-is-spreading-and-kids-might-die-sue-parents-who-didnt-vaccinate-absolutely/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2015/01/28/measles-is...

justizin 12y ago

"Waaah, wahh, my corrupt mechanic who installs my brake pads calls me ignorant because I'm a know it all, but I don't fucking work on cars for a living." Shut the fuck up. You hit a cyclist with that car and I will throw you under it, motherfucker. Seriously, the notion that brake pads are a conspiracy by auto mechanics is simply.. Words cannot. Let's try this: In driver's ed, they tell you not to use the brake as a solution to all problems. If you cannot follow those instructions, you should not operate a motor vehicle. Do not modify the motor vehicle to remove essential safety equipment because YOU cannot fucking drive. DRIVING IS A PRIVILEGE!

TeMPOraL 12y ago

Anti-vaxx movement seems to be a symptom of a deeper problem - I see it as a combination of people being increasingly unable to comprehend the world around them and growing mistrust toward the authorities. The second one is perfectly understandable - politicians cheat us all the time. Journalists lie in every other sentence. Big companies consistently spew bullshit. A lot of small companies are run by fraudsters. The fundamental trust of society toward its structures is broken. It's easy to assume that politicians and businessmen try to push things for profit and not for the social benefit. That itself is not enough for a movement like anti-vaxxers though. I'm pro-vax, but not because I trust the government or pharmaceutical companies. There's definitely a lot of fraud, bribery and fudging results there. But the general scientific idea is sound, and it adds up to other things. It's the kind of feeling I believe big part of population doesn't have. That things add up. I believe in mainstream science because it's coherent, logical and agrees nicely with observable reality. I understand some genetics, know enough maths to have a feel for exponential growth, etc. But many people don't really understand anything about the world (yay education!), it must seem like a black box for them. Some things happen because they happen. When you eat dirt you get sick, etc. Along with anti-vaxxers, I often talk with anti-GMO and anti-nuclear people. The situation is always the same - they don't trust the autorities and they don't understand a thing about the topic domain. "Nuclear energy" is the scary thing. Chernobyl. Soviet lies. Fukushima. Japanese lies. It's hard to make them do the math and understand that this is our only viable option for now. They don't trust governments and they don't have enough knowledge to evaluate the topic themselves - so they don't trust the solution. I'm afraid that as a civilization, we're going to really hurt ourselves beacuse of trust issues. That's why in my books, lying to people is one of the biggest sins. It's literally destroying humanity's ability to work together.

jrs235 12y ago
"I'm afraid that as a civilization, we're going to really hurt ourselves beacuse of trust issues." And that (FUD) is what people are fed when they sit in front of a television.

dang 12y ago

This is not a good HN submission. It doesn't teach us anything; its purpose is to arouse indignation in favor of what one already believes. In other words, it's a riler-upper. Please don't post riler-uppers to Hacker News.

emil10001 12y ago
Reads more like satire to me.