Speaking (off-topic) of “the meatspace”: no epic Twitter ratio or consensus of “based” nihilists can make your critique of factory farming incorrect or unpersuasive.
I don’t know if you’ll ever win this debate (I’m vegetarian for ethical reasons, so of course I hope you do), but I appreciate your sincerity and willingness to take fire from every direction in defense of your principles.
"my suspicion is that most skeptics are less committed to their rejection of the counsel being offered than they are to their distrust of the people doing the counseling." This is a good guess and maybe it's true, but how many "vaccine skeptics" did you interview before you wrote this? Let me tell you about my experience. I was initially wary of the lack of long term data on the new technologies used in these vaccines, but I got double vaxxed with Moderna because I thought we could more-or-less trust our health institutions. But then I started to do my own research. It's relevant to mention that I have a PhD in a biological field. I learned more about the vaccines, and by that I mean I looked at the data from the clinical trials, and noticed how non-representative the people in the trials were, and also noticed that there were no bio distribution studies done that measure how much and where the spike protein (encoded by the vaccines) goes. Then I saw papers come out showing that the spike protein alone, even without the rest of the virus, is cytotoxic. Then I saw "fact checkers" say that just because the spike of the virus is toxic, doesn't mean that the spike from the vax is toxic; they would reiterate over and over again that there was "no evidence" that the spike from the vax was unsafe, despite the fact that there were NO STUDIES that directly looked into that (the cytotoxicity of the spike was not known at the time of vaccine design). Then I noticed that people who were saying they had serious adverse events from the vax were being censored, or labeled "anti vax." Then I noticed wildly inconsistent messaging coming from Fauci, the CDC, etc. Then I saw the leaked CDC slides that showed that viral titers coming out of the noses of the vaccinated were about the same as those of the unvaccinated. Then I saw the CDC blatantly mislead people with the ways they labelled "unvaccinated" in their reports ("unvaccinated" is sometimes defined as someone who has had their first dose less than 14 days ago, not zero doses, as you might think). Then I saw how the media ran with those studies to make headlines like "99% of those hospitalized with covid were in the unvaccinated" and I saw how most sheeple would read this and think that "unvaccinated" meant people who only got zero doses. If you really want to know what the "vaccine hesitant" or "vaccine skeptics" think (of which I am now one, even though I have been vaccinated), you need to read what they are reading. What "turned" me was the totality of the evidence.
While "the notion that the credentialed elite are delegated special political powers by virtue of their specialized knowledge," is probably acceptable to most thoughtful people, I think what's especially irritating about our current crisis is how privileged humanities graduates are putting themselves forward as lay epidemiologists and governing the way you'd pretty much expect clueless privileged humanities graduates to do, which is to say very badly and with little regard for the actual day-to-day welfare of actual people (as opposed to abstract People). Cf Michael Tracey's latest Substack posts.
Speaking (off-topic) of “the meatspace”: no epic Twitter ratio or consensus of “based” nihilists can make your critique of factory farming incorrect or unpersuasive.
I don’t know if you’ll ever win this debate (I’m vegetarian for ethical reasons, so of course I hope you do), but I appreciate your sincerity and willingness to take fire from every direction in defense of your principles.
"my suspicion is that most skeptics are less committed to their rejection of the counsel being offered than they are to their distrust of the people doing the counseling." This is a good guess and maybe it's true, but how many "vaccine skeptics" did you interview before you wrote this? Let me tell you about my experience. I was initially wary of the lack of long term data on the new technologies used in these vaccines, but I got double vaxxed with Moderna because I thought we could more-or-less trust our health institutions. But then I started to do my own research. It's relevant to mention that I have a PhD in a biological field. I learned more about the vaccines, and by that I mean I looked at the data from the clinical trials, and noticed how non-representative the people in the trials were, and also noticed that there were no bio distribution studies done that measure how much and where the spike protein (encoded by the vaccines) goes. Then I saw papers come out showing that the spike protein alone, even without the rest of the virus, is cytotoxic. Then I saw "fact checkers" say that just because the spike of the virus is toxic, doesn't mean that the spike from the vax is toxic; they would reiterate over and over again that there was "no evidence" that the spike from the vax was unsafe, despite the fact that there were NO STUDIES that directly looked into that (the cytotoxicity of the spike was not known at the time of vaccine design). Then I noticed that people who were saying they had serious adverse events from the vax were being censored, or labeled "anti vax." Then I noticed wildly inconsistent messaging coming from Fauci, the CDC, etc. Then I saw the leaked CDC slides that showed that viral titers coming out of the noses of the vaccinated were about the same as those of the unvaccinated. Then I saw the CDC blatantly mislead people with the ways they labelled "unvaccinated" in their reports ("unvaccinated" is sometimes defined as someone who has had their first dose less than 14 days ago, not zero doses, as you might think). Then I saw how the media ran with those studies to make headlines like "99% of those hospitalized with covid were in the unvaccinated" and I saw how most sheeple would read this and think that "unvaccinated" meant people who only got zero doses. If you really want to know what the "vaccine hesitant" or "vaccine skeptics" think (of which I am now one, even though I have been vaccinated), you need to read what they are reading. What "turned" me was the totality of the evidence.
While "the notion that the credentialed elite are delegated special political powers by virtue of their specialized knowledge," is probably acceptable to most thoughtful people, I think what's especially irritating about our current crisis is how privileged humanities graduates are putting themselves forward as lay epidemiologists and governing the way you'd pretty much expect clueless privileged humanities graduates to do, which is to say very badly and with little regard for the actual day-to-day welfare of actual people (as opposed to abstract People). Cf Michael Tracey's latest Substack posts.