[FRIAM] On the: RLY!? side

[Pieter Steenekamp]

Gillian,

My take on your question of how this thinking, of being an antivaxer, works?

For me, the key lies in understanding human behavior. I know I'm waltzing
on very thin ice because there are others in this group who have already
forgotten what I still have to learn about human behavior , so I'm prepared
to be severely humbled.

This Friam group is excluded of course, but for the rest of humanity,
humans make decisions subconsciously and then rationalise their decisions
with logic. Their subconscious minds do not care about logic or whether it
makes sense at all, it's just about emotions.

One of the books I'm currently reading is Making Sense of World History by
Rick Szostakt and I can't verbalise it better than the quote from the book:
"Humans have an incredible capacity for self-deception. Our subconscious
thoughts can guide us to act in ways that are cowardly, malicious, or
jealous even if we would consciously disdain cowardice, malice and
jealousy. Why did a mental capacity for self-deception evolve in humans?
One theory is that self-deception aids us in other-deception. Humans have
been selected for cooperation, and therefore selected to give and observe
cues regarding dishonesty. As discussed above, we will feel guilty for
lying (that is, violating a cultural value favouring honesty), and display
this guilt physically. Human cooperation would be difficult if we lacked
any ability to discern when others were lying. While cooperation depends on
some degree of confidence in the honesty of others, individual success can
nethertheless rely on some ability to cheat. In the complex evolution of
human beings, then, we can expect selection pressure for both (detection
of) honesty and dishonesty. Difficulty in consciously lying would encourage
the cooperation on which human societies depend. Ability to lie
subconsciously would be individually advantageous, and the limits it
imposes on human cooperation might not prevent collaboration in hunting or
gathering or agreeing on group decisions."

I'm not condoning the antivaxers. Personally I consider vaccination
technology one of humankind's greatest medical inventions ever, and I'm
also super excited about the potential of mRNA vaccination technology in
more effectively fighting future viruses. I'm merely trying to explain
illogical behavior, that's what you asked, not so?

Pieter

On Wed, 25 Aug 2021 at 03:39, Gillian Densmore <gil.densmore at gmail.com>
wrote:

> What can possibly poses people to have a GD tantrum about vaccines.
> The cynical of me thinks it's basically a tantrum mixed with deranged and
> dangerous levels of trolling. While the "Jedi" side er the small part
> wanting to see the best of these GD raving lunatics. It's, frankly, baffled.
> The powers that be say put a GD mask on, and thank antivaxers.  What is
> pissing me off and just straitup confusing the ever living *** me  is how
> does this thinking work? Rejecting a compound that'll keep you healthy? For
> me: I (literally) couldn't get in line fast enough! I think I broke my
> caregiver who, I wanted to drive me their just in case. Meen while the
> other extreme are these people having GD tantrum. It's like: here's
> something that'll help you not get this virus,its free and you just need to
> get in a line. The first thing they say is: omg! free? why that smacks of
> [something they read someplace]. And ma freedoms
>
> Can some please help me get just WTF these people are on, or how the hell
> anything about how they think can possibly make any sense?
> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20210825/608859ae/attachment.html>