[FRIAM] On the: RLY!? side

[Prof David West]

Glen is very sensitive to potential misrepresentation/misinterpretation of his words, as am I. I merely asked if Glen's sentences, which on their face seem to equate anti-vax and stupid, should be interpreted that way. In a sense I was trolling him because I know he would not make such a blanket and absolute assertion.

However, the entire tenor of the thread, and the public rhetoric regarding people holding anti-vax positions seems, to me, to be grounded in exactly this kind of assertion: "if _you_ (a person) are anti-vax _you_ are stupid (and probably a Trumpista or at least a Republican).

In my  opinion this kind of assertion is wrong, harmful, and, if your goal is to increase vaccination rates, entirely counter-productive.

davew


On Thu, Aug 26, 2021, at 10:55 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
> I addressed the stupid people vs stupid acts. Dave makes that 
> conflation. I don't.
> 
> But re: punishment - I also never claimed stupidity should be punished. 
> I claimed stupidity should be painful. As a person who inflicts pain on 
> myself daily, on purpose, it would be silly to identify pain with 
> punishment. Futher, many of us are affected by chronic pain, often of 
> unknown mechanism/origin. Sophistry about the problem of Evil 
> notwithstanding, chronic pain is not the universe punishing you. The 
> story of Job is a stupid story.
> 
> We *could* talk about pain as a mechanism for aversive learning, 
> though. The chronic pain I suffer from has taught me how to (and that I 
> must) moderately meter out my pain in order to avoid greater amounts of 
> pain. Pain has taught me a great deal. It's not a punishment in the 
> slightest sense of that word.
> 
> On 8/26/21 9:44 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> > It would be good to make a distinction between "punishment" and "self-preservation".  There is something incoherent about asserting that stupid people need to be punished, because one of the salient features of stupidity is an inability to learn from experience.   
> > 
> > Also, don't we need to distinguish between stupid people and stupid acts?
> -- 
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
> 
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