"resistance to COVID vaccines has become a marker of political and ideological identity among Trump supporters, even though their leader was among the first politicians to avail himself of the shots"....it would have been appropriate to not that Trump was not just among the first to get the shorts, it is because of the impetus that he gave the program that we had the shots available *at all* when we did. Left to the standard way of doing things, we would have gotten vaccines some time between mid-2022 and the Twelfth of Never.
"For most of the past two centuries, the Left has been identified with science and against obscurantism; we have believed that rational thought and the fearless analysis of objective reality (both natural and social) are incisive tools for combating the mystifications promoted by the powerful."
That 1997 quote from Sokol may have been largely correct when applied to Leftists up to about, say, 1960, but it hasn't been true for a long time. Talk to a Leftist and you are are not likely to find a scientific materialist like you might have found in 1900 or 1920, but rather a collection of beliefs including astrology, homeopathic medicine, magical crystals, various 'forces', and a conscious Gaia.
David, you are making Mark's point well. Those bother me less because they are unfortunately for conservatives, mostly true. Not entirely, and it is oversold. Currently, it is liberals who are ignoring educational, genetic, and economic research, and insisting that some weak cases are actually strong, such as with climate or pretty much anything in cultural anthropology or social psychology. Still, it is not as if the conservatives have got these right, just wrong in different ways.
Indeed. I have seen 'conservatives' who are absolutely convinced that the vaccines kill 5X more people than they save, and who become very angry when being asked for supporting information for that assertion. I have seen a lot of people singing the praises of Natural Immunity without always seeming to understand that in order to get such immunity, you have to first get the disease!
We have a big problem in that a lot of Americans never learned to conduct or assess a logical argument, and especially never learned to evaluate quantitative data. Also never learned anything substantive about science or history of science.
I am quite sure that an approach to vaccines based on education and persuasion, rather than on scolding, would have produced much better results. Either the Biden admin and (much of the) public health establishment either (a) don't understand Americans and our psychology at all, or (b) weren't really all that interested in vaccine uptake in the first place, compared with interest in telling people what to do.
Even though we associate lockdown impatience with conservatives, I believe it was strongly implicated in the nationwide urban protests last year. Even liberals were just looking for an excuse to get outside at cut up. George Floyd happened and the tinder went up.
I think there was something similar just waiting to happen with conservatives demonstrating that they had just "had it" with the toffs, and vaccines came into the picture. Even having Trump at the forefront (for good reasons) was not enough, because Trump has always been a symptom of that rebellion, not its cause.
In such situations, few of us are quantitative even if we are very used to working with numbers and approaching issues in those terms. Similarly, even those who can teach college level courses in logical errors will just abandon that at times. The shell is thin.
So rife with ad hominem, condescension and patronizing strawman arguments....unreadable
ReplyDeleteNo chance that it's you, then? Always the other guy?
ReplyDelete"resistance to COVID vaccines has become a marker of political and ideological identity among Trump supporters, even though their leader was among the first politicians to avail himself of the shots"....it would have been appropriate to not that Trump was not just among the first to get the shorts, it is because of the impetus that he gave the program that we had the shots available *at all* when we did. Left to the standard way of doing things, we would have gotten vaccines some time between mid-2022 and the Twelfth of Never.
ReplyDelete"For most of the past two centuries, the Left has been identified with science and against obscurantism; we have believed that rational thought and the fearless analysis of objective reality (both natural and social) are incisive tools for combating the mystifications promoted by the powerful."
ReplyDeleteThat 1997 quote from Sokol may have been largely correct when applied to Leftists up to about, say, 1960, but it hasn't been true for a long time. Talk to a Leftist and you are are not likely to find a scientific materialist like you might have found in 1900 or 1920, but rather a collection of beliefs including astrology, homeopathic medicine, magical crystals, various 'forces', and a conscious Gaia.
David, you are making Mark's point well. Those bother me less because they are unfortunately for conservatives, mostly true. Not entirely, and it is oversold. Currently, it is liberals who are ignoring educational, genetic, and economic research, and insisting that some weak cases are actually strong, such as with climate or pretty much anything in cultural anthropology or social psychology. Still, it is not as if the conservatives have got these right, just wrong in different ways.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. I have seen 'conservatives' who are absolutely convinced that the vaccines kill 5X more people than they save, and who become very angry when being asked for supporting information for that assertion. I have seen a lot of people singing the praises of Natural Immunity without always seeming to understand that in order to get such immunity, you have to first get the disease!
ReplyDeleteWe have a big problem in that a lot of Americans never learned to conduct or assess a logical argument, and especially never learned to evaluate quantitative data. Also never learned anything substantive about science or history of science.
I am quite sure that an approach to vaccines based on education and persuasion, rather than on scolding, would have produced much better results. Either the Biden admin and (much of the) public health establishment either (a) don't understand Americans and our psychology at all, or (b) weren't really all that interested in vaccine uptake in the first place, compared with interest in telling people what to do.
Even though we associate lockdown impatience with conservatives, I believe it was strongly implicated in the nationwide urban protests last year. Even liberals were just looking for an excuse to get outside at cut up. George Floyd happened and the tinder went up.
ReplyDeleteI think there was something similar just waiting to happen with conservatives demonstrating that they had just "had it" with the toffs, and vaccines came into the picture. Even having Trump at the forefront (for good reasons) was not enough, because Trump has always been a symptom of that rebellion, not its cause.
In such situations, few of us are quantitative even if we are very used to working with numbers and approaching issues in those terms. Similarly, even those who can teach college level courses in logical errors will just abandon that at times. The shell is thin.