This is a site for discussing roleplaying games. Have fun doing so, but there is one major rule: do not discuss political issues that aren't directly and uniquely related to the subject of the thread and about gaming. While this site is dedicated to free speech, the following will not be tolerated: devolving a thread into unrelated political discussion, sockpuppeting (using multiple and/or bogus accounts), disrupting topics without contributing to them, and posting images that could get someone fired in the workplace (an external link is OK, but clearly mark it as Not Safe For Work, or NSFW). If you receive a warning, please take it seriously and either move on to another topic or steer the discussion back to its original RPG-related theme.
The RPGPundit's Own Forum Rules
This part of the site is controlled by the RPGPundit. This is where he discusses topics that he finds interesting. You may post here, but understand that there are limits. The RPGPundit can shut down any thread, topic of discussion, or user in a thread at his pleasure. This part of the site is essentially his house, so keep that in mind. Note that this is the only part of the site where political discussion is permitted, but is regulated by the RPGPundit.

Author Topic: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!  (Read 199174 times)

Shrieking Banshee

  • Narcissist Undead
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2507
Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #15 on: August 04, 2021, 01:41:22 PM »
Today, however, those who believe in "science" are derided. Fine. What the alternative is, so?
Don't do this 'woah is me' bullshit. People who believe in 'science' are derided? By whom? When the entire media establishment and the culture as a whole has a mystical almost religeous worship of The Science (TM).
Because SOME people don't worship The Science (TM), then all of science is under threat! Unless complaince with The Science (TM) is 110% then that means poor scientists are under fire!

Reckall

  • Junghian alchemist
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2004
Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #16 on: August 04, 2021, 01:45:38 PM »
Today, however, those who believe in "science" are derided. Fine. What the alternative is, so?
Don't do this 'woah is me' bullshit. People who believe in 'science' are derided? By whom? When the entire media establishment and the culture as a whole has a mystical almost religeous worship of The Science (TM).
Because SOME people don't worship The Science (TM), then all of science is under threat! Unless complaince with The Science (TM) is 110% then that means poor scientists are under fire!

Your personal opinion on "science" being?
For every idiot who denounces Ayn Rand as "intellectualism" there is an excellent DM who creates a "Bioshock" adventure.

Pat
BANNED

  • BANNED
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • ?
  • Posts: 5252
  • Rats do 0 damage
Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #17 on: August 04, 2021, 01:58:33 PM »
Today, however, those who believe in "science" are derided. Fine. What the alternative is, so?
The alternative is not treating science as a belief system, with priests and holy dogma, but instead treating it as what it is, a highly effective set of systems for developing knowledge. The people who talk about "believing in the science" are usually in the first category. They've chosen a set of prophets, treat their word as infallible, and react to anyone speaks against those words as a heretic, regardless of their qualifications or the soundness of their arguments. A good example of that is when people started posting on social media that their doctor had advised them against taking the vaccine, usually because of some pre-existing medical condition, and they were told they should get another doctor.

Shrieking Banshee

  • Narcissist Undead
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2507
Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #18 on: August 04, 2021, 02:19:44 PM »
Your personal opinion on "science" being?

That its a method of understanding the natural world. Practitioners os science are smart, but as fallible as anyone else.

KingCheops

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • K
  • Posts: 1272
Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #19 on: August 04, 2021, 02:22:57 PM »
Is there something wrong with saying:

"mRNA treatments and adenoidal viral vectors are still relatively untested technologies that don't have a long term track record?  I'd rather wait for a traditional vaccine like Novavax where I know how it works and where it'll go in my body.  After all Pfizer itself knows that within 48 hours all the "vaccine" moves throughout the body and mostly settles in the ovaries and bone marrow."

Ratman_tf

  • Alt-Reich Shitlord
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 8331
Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #20 on: August 04, 2021, 03:19:15 PM »
I've said it before, but I think public health's biggest failure during the pandemic was messaging. Their primary goal should have been to share information. Unvarnished information, with all the warts, including those nasty uncertainty bars. It's fine if the science changes[1].
Im also concerned about this having backroom deal politics involved. Where companies market their cures as a slam-dunk to get the pay and the credit. And politicians don't want to market 'Yeah we are largely fucked for a while, stay put while we figure it out', they want to say 'I got a slam dunk solution!'. Lies may have not just been for peoples security, but for money and prestige.

Now that the lie is coming out, this now has credibility on the line. Why should we be buying tons of this expensive vaccine if its effectiveness is a MAYBE.

My father got infected despite taking the vaxine. In theory it made recovery better. But I find the whole thing in question now.
Have you seen the contracts that Pfizer had countries sign? They're absurd. 10 to 30 year blackout period where the details of the contract can't be shared, complete assumption of all liability by the government, guarantee of payment under almost all possible circumstances... they were ridiculously one sided. There's a lot of money flowing, and while there's no smoking gun yet, it sure smells like corruption.

The vaccines do work fairly well. But they tend to mitigate the worst effects, rather than making you immune. They're less effective than natural immunity. And the efficacy ratings are highly deceptive. They also have some significant side effects. Though they're less dangerous than the disease overall, especially for high risk populations like the elderly. But for low risk populations, like children, that calculus changes. And we don't know about long term complications. In other words, it's complicated. Public health should never have pretended otherwise.

I'm starting to think the idea is that if they get nearly everyone vaccinated, then they can point to that as an indicator that everyone agreed with the government's decisions. A way to spread out the blame if/when the promises they made about the vaccines turn out to be more marketing than fact.
The notion of an exclusionary and hostile RPG community is a fever dream of zealots who view all social dynamics through a narrow keyhole of structural oppression.
-Haffrung

Ratman_tf

  • Alt-Reich Shitlord
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 8331
Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #21 on: August 04, 2021, 03:25:42 PM »
"believing in the science"

Is the first hint that something is terribly wrong.

The notion of an exclusionary and hostile RPG community is a fever dream of zealots who view all social dynamics through a narrow keyhole of structural oppression.
-Haffrung

Eirikrautha

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1266
Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #22 on: August 04, 2021, 03:40:06 PM »
[1] It's really weird that it's become the norm to refer to "science" as this monolithic thing, instead of saying something like "a new study came out".

The problem is not "referring to science" by itself. Science is not monolithic: it learns, changes and evolves everyday. There is a reason as why they had propeller planes in WWII and we have jets today.

Planes, however, tend to stay up. When an airplane falls - and it is very rare - there is an investigation. Usually they find that the cause is a flaw, some sort of human error or even a freakish accident. They do their best to fix it and planes continue to stay up.

How virii act is very well known. In one hour any eight grader can learn the basics of virology. It is that simple.

Today, however, those who believe in "science" are derided. Fine. What the alternative is, so?

Hearsay?
What your favourite politician says?
Folk remedies?
Voodoo?

Even worse, some people grasp a single concept, with no context, and speak from it like if it is the absolute truth.

"Only I decide what enters in my body and when!!" Fine. Are you aware that you just justified DUIing? I don't think so. Seldom these kind of people think things through.

"Masks = Fascism!!" So is the mandatory use of helmets in heavy industries and other work activities, I guess.

"I don't want no shitty vaccine DNA!!" Then you will possibly get COVID DNA. Me? Given a choice I'll go for the vaccine but if you like COVID more feel free to embrace the alternative. I don't think, however, that these people ever reached eight grade - not mentally at least - and thus they lack the awareness that your cells are invaded by foreign DNA every day. In unlucky times it will be the Spanish Flu or the COVID, but the idea "No vaccine = no shitty DNA in my cells!!" is the very definition of delusionary.

"Dr. Fauci is wrong!! A doctor said that!!" A whole doctor? Wow! :o

And so on. A concept is expressed, but no solution is given. Ironically, by grasping "the infinite truth!" via refusing any context - all of this while attacking and laughing about those who disagree - these people are not different from SJW and wokes. They are actually the same, only the specifics of the "religion" are different.
I certainly hope you don't smoke.  Surrounded by all those strawmen, you're liable to start a serious fire...

Eirikrautha

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1266
Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #23 on: August 04, 2021, 03:51:30 PM »
Today, however, those who believe in "science" are derided. Fine. What the alternative is, so?
The alternative is not treating science as a belief system, with priests and holy dogma, but instead treating it as what it is, a highly effective set of systems for developing knowledge. The people who talk about "believing in the science" are usually in the first category. They've chosen a set of prophets, treat their word as infallible, and react to anyone speaks against those words as a heretic, regardless of their qualifications or the soundness of their arguments. A good example of that is when people started posting on social media that their doctor had advised them against taking the vaccine, usually because of some pre-existing medical condition, and they were told they should get another doctor.
Exactly!  Science is a process, not a product.  The most that can ever be said for any product is: "We arrived at this result using the scientific method, and this result does not appear to be contradicted by additional observation."  Modern "scientific" practice, however, tends to pick a particular outcome first, then gathers evidence to support it.  This is especially true in cases where large sums of money (pharmaceuticals, medicine, publicly funded research) are dependent on the outcome of the research.  It is also a function of the "publish or perish" construction of most research universities.  Performing research that results in a negative or no conclusion tends not to get published.  Replicating a previous experiment tends not to get published.  Extraordinary results, even if unlikely to be accurate, get published.

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-beware-scientific-studiesmost-wrong.html

HappyDaze

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • H
  • Posts: 5337
Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #24 on: August 04, 2021, 03:58:52 PM »
It was sold as a 100% slamdunk cure. Now its a 'aid' for when you do get infected anyway. This whole thing is sketchy as hell.
I've said it before, but I think public health's biggest failure during the pandemic was messaging. Their primary goal should have been to share information. Unvarnished information, with all the warts, including those nasty uncertainty bars. It's fine if the science changes[1].

But rather than being purely information-oriented, they seem to have been mostly goal oriented, primarily aimed at changing people's behaviors. Even when they don't lie (and they eventually do lie; it's a natural consequence of this approach), they often convey a higher degree of certainty than is merited, because "this is absolutely effective" makes a more compelling case for action than "here are the caveats".

The problem is that's short-term thinking. Yes, pretending the world is ending unless you do X is a great way to convince people do X -- but only the first time. The second time, people will start to be more skeptical, and it will just get worse from there. It's the boy who cries wolf problem. It creates a vicious cycle where they have to keep upping the rhetoric, and the truth becomes more and more of a casualty.

If they saw their mission as simply conveying information, and relying on people to make the best choices on their own, things would have been very different. In that case, they would have built a lot of credibility. Being uncertain may discourage people in the short term, but in the long term, when they see how the science changes[1], they'll come to appreciate that they weren't sold a bunch of absolutes. People will develop trust in the information presented, and end up making better decisions.

Ironically, public health would probably have been able to accomplish more of their long term goals by not focusing on those goals, and just being honest about what they know and don't know instead.

[1] It's really weird that it's become the norm to refer to "science" as this monolithic thing, instead of saying something like "a new study came out".
Well, that's because the goal isn't "public health" (which is a nonsense phrase, anyway, as health is a feature of individuals).  It's control.  The people who are on TV making these pronouncements aren't doctors (despite the fact that they have Ph.Ds in medicine) or scientists; they are career bureaucrats.  I've seen as many patients in the last 20 years as Anthony Fauci (hint: it's zero).  So their number one goal is to make you do what they want.  Your actual health is secondary, at best...
You don't have a fucking clue what public health means, and that's ok, but it doesn't mean that public health is nonsense. The vast majority of people live in an interdependent society, and the health of one/some can certainly impact the health of many/all. You're a dumbass, but even you can grasp that.

Kiero

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • K
  • Posts: 2989
Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #25 on: August 04, 2021, 05:04:12 PM »
You don't have a fucking clue what public health means, and that's ok, but it doesn't mean that public health is nonsense. The vast majority of people live in an interdependent society, and the health of one/some can certainly impact the health of many/all. You're a dumbass, but even you can grasp that.

We dealt with trivial respiratory viruses long before 2020.
Currently running: Tyche's Favourites, a historical ACKS campaign set around Massalia in 300BC.

Our podcast site, In Sanity We Trust Productions.

HappyDaze

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • H
  • Posts: 5337
Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #26 on: August 04, 2021, 05:17:31 PM »
You don't have a fucking clue what public health means, and that's ok, but it doesn't mean that public health is nonsense. The vast majority of people live in an interdependent society, and the health of one/some can certainly impact the health of many/all. You're a dumbass, but even you can grasp that.

We dealt with trivial respiratory viruses long before 2020.
My statement isn't limited to the public health threat of a pandemic.

Pat
BANNED

  • BANNED
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • ?
  • Posts: 5252
  • Rats do 0 damage
Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #27 on: August 04, 2021, 05:37:07 PM »
Today, however, those who believe in "science" are derided. Fine. What the alternative is, so?
The alternative is not treating science as a belief system, with priests and holy dogma, but instead treating it as what it is, a highly effective set of systems for developing knowledge. The people who talk about "believing in the science" are usually in the first category. They've chosen a set of prophets, treat their word as infallible, and react to anyone speaks against those words as a heretic, regardless of their qualifications or the soundness of their arguments. A good example of that is when people started posting on social media that their doctor had advised them against taking the vaccine, usually because of some pre-existing medical condition, and they were told they should get another doctor.
Exactly!  Science is a process, not a product.  The most that can ever be said for any product is: "We arrived at this result using the scientific method, and this result does not appear to be contradicted by additional observation."  Modern "scientific" practice, however, tends to pick a particular outcome first, then gathers evidence to support it.  This is especially true in cases where large sums of money (pharmaceuticals, medicine, publicly funded research) are dependent on the outcome of the research.  It is also a function of the "publish or perish" construction of most research universities.  Performing research that results in a negative or no conclusion tends not to get published.  Replicating a previous experiment tends not to get published.  Extraordinary results, even if unlikely to be accurate, get published.

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-beware-scientific-studiesmost-wrong.html
It is not standard scientific practice to decide on a result, and then search for supporting evidence. It does happen, and you're correct it's often associated with grants from special interest groups, but it's at least a managed problem. It's why declaring all potential conflicts of interest is so important, for instance.

You're correct about the publication bias toward studies that have an interesting results, and against studies that show something doesn't work. Though since the replication crisis, there's been an active attempt to counter that, with many attempts to confirm or disconfirm significant studies, and a push to provide outlets where negative results can be published (there isn't a page limit in electronic journals).

But the biggest problem is just statistics. Let's say spontaneous combustion has become the leading cause of death in the world, and your research on luciferian pathways comes up with 1,000 different chemicals you think might help reduce the chance of bursting into flame. Let's assume that none of the chemicals actually work, but you don't know that. So you run 1,000 trials, where you give each chemical to a different group of people. And then you wait a few years, and check to see how many in each group died a horrible witch death. Using statistical analysis, you calculate a p value for chemical, and look for values < 0.05. That 0.05 threshold means there's only a 5% chance to come up with that result by mere chance. Except you tested 1,000 chemicals. 5% of 1,000 is 50. That means you'll find roughly 50 chemicals that appear to have a statistically significant chance of reducing autoholocausts... except we know that none of the chemicals work. So all 50 positive results are false positives.

A lot of studies work like that. For example, genetic research often tests every single gene, looking for correlations, which can end up with a lot of hot statistical garbage. That it happens has been verified by empirical tests. There are ways to compensate for it, but a lot of medical researchers aren't very good at it, and even when it's done right, yes, it's often difficult to conduct enough testing to be sure, especially since the strength of the signal is fairly low (which is often the case).
« Last Edit: August 04, 2021, 05:41:24 PM by Pat »

Eirikrautha

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1266
Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #28 on: August 04, 2021, 05:44:00 PM »
Today, however, those who believe in "science" are derided. Fine. What the alternative is, so?
The alternative is not treating science as a belief system, with priests and holy dogma, but instead treating it as what it is, a highly effective set of systems for developing knowledge. The people who talk about "believing in the science" are usually in the first category. They've chosen a set of prophets, treat their word as infallible, and react to anyone speaks against those words as a heretic, regardless of their qualifications or the soundness of their arguments. A good example of that is when people started posting on social media that their doctor had advised them against taking the vaccine, usually because of some pre-existing medical condition, and they were told they should get another doctor.
Exactly!  Science is a process, not a product.  The most that can ever be said for any product is: "We arrived at this result using the scientific method, and this result does not appear to be contradicted by additional observation."  Modern "scientific" practice, however, tends to pick a particular outcome first, then gathers evidence to support it.  This is especially true in cases where large sums of money (pharmaceuticals, medicine, publicly funded research) are dependent on the outcome of the research.  It is also a function of the "publish or perish" construction of most research universities.  Performing research that results in a negative or no conclusion tends not to get published.  Replicating a previous experiment tends not to get published.  Extraordinary results, even if unlikely to be accurate, get published.

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-beware-scientific-studiesmost-wrong.html
It is not standard scientific practice to decide on a result, and then search for supporting evidence. It does happen, and you're correct it's often associated with grants from special interest groups, but it's at least a managed problem. It's why declaring all potential conflicts of interest is so important, for instance.

You're correct about the publication bias toward studies that have an interesting results, and against studies that show something doesn't work. Though since the replication crisis, there's been an active attempt to counter that, with many attempts to confirm or disconfirm significant studies, and a push to provide outlets where negative results can be published (there isn't a page limit in electronic journals).

But the biggest problem is just statistics. Let's say spontaneous combustion has become the leading cause of death in the world, and your research on luciferian pathways comes up with 1,000 different chemicals you think might help reduce the chance of bursting into flame. Let's assume that none of the chemicals actually work, but you don't know that. So you run 1,000 trials, where you give each chemical to a different group of people. And then you wait a few years, and check to see how many in each group died a horrible witch death. Using statistical analysis, you calculate a p value for chemical, and look for values < 0.05. That 0.05 threshold means there's only a 5% chance to come up with that result by mere chance. Except you tested 1,000 chemicals. 5% of 1,000 is 50. That means you'll find roughly 50 chemicals that appear to have a statistically significant chance of reducing autoholocausts... except we know that none of the chemicals work. So all 50 positive results are false positives.

A lot of studies work like that. For example, genetic research often tests every single gene, looking for correlations, which can end up with a lot of hot statistical garbage. That it happens has been verified by empirical tests. There are ways to compensate for it, but a lot of medical researchers aren't very good at it, and even when it's done right, yes, it's often difficult to conduct enough testing to be sure, especially since the strength of the signal is fairly low (which is often the case).
All very true.  The lack of replication then means that any additional studies on those false positives don't get printed when they contradict the original findings.  It's all intertwined.

Eirikrautha

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1266
Re: Imprison anyone who refuses the vax!
« Reply #29 on: August 04, 2021, 05:48:24 PM »
It was sold as a 100% slamdunk cure. Now its a 'aid' for when you do get infected anyway. This whole thing is sketchy as hell.
I've said it before, but I think public health's biggest failure during the pandemic was messaging. Their primary goal should have been to share information. Unvarnished information, with all the warts, including those nasty uncertainty bars. It's fine if the science changes[1].

But rather than being purely information-oriented, they seem to have been mostly goal oriented, primarily aimed at changing people's behaviors. Even when they don't lie (and they eventually do lie; it's a natural consequence of this approach), they often convey a higher degree of certainty than is merited, because "this is absolutely effective" makes a more compelling case for action than "here are the caveats".

The problem is that's short-term thinking. Yes, pretending the world is ending unless you do X is a great way to convince people do X -- but only the first time. The second time, people will start to be more skeptical, and it will just get worse from there. It's the boy who cries wolf problem. It creates a vicious cycle where they have to keep upping the rhetoric, and the truth becomes more and more of a casualty.

If they saw their mission as simply conveying information, and relying on people to make the best choices on their own, things would have been very different. In that case, they would have built a lot of credibility. Being uncertain may discourage people in the short term, but in the long term, when they see how the science changes[1], they'll come to appreciate that they weren't sold a bunch of absolutes. People will develop trust in the information presented, and end up making better decisions.

Ironically, public health would probably have been able to accomplish more of their long term goals by not focusing on those goals, and just being honest about what they know and don't know instead.

[1] It's really weird that it's become the norm to refer to "science" as this monolithic thing, instead of saying something like "a new study came out".
Well, that's because the goal isn't "public health" (which is a nonsense phrase, anyway, as health is a feature of individuals).  It's control.  The people who are on TV making these pronouncements aren't doctors (despite the fact that they have Ph.Ds in medicine) or scientists; they are career bureaucrats.  I've seen as many patients in the last 20 years as Anthony Fauci (hint: it's zero).  So their number one goal is to make you do what they want.  Your actual health is secondary, at best...
You don't have a fucking clue what public health means, and that's ok, but it doesn't mean that public health is nonsense. The vast majority of people live in an interdependent society, and the health of one/some can certainly impact the health of many/all. You're a dumbass, but even you can grasp that.
I know what the people who would like to use human interaction as a justification for totalitarian control consider "public health" to mean.  I just reject their arbitrarily asserted definition.  If the fact that every action we take effects others is a justification for interference in personal liberty, when are you going to stop breathing so the oxygen you are using can be better used by the many, many people smarter than you are?
« Last Edit: August 04, 2021, 05:50:34 PM by Eirikrautha »