Legit fascinating to see him write knowlegably and insightfully about
medicine (he is an MD, after all) and then, when the topic changes to
politics, instantly take the off ramp to crazy town and
start ranting about how it’s the evil stinkin’ liberals fault that
anti-vaxxers don’t trust science.
tbf psychiatry *is* the best specialty if you get all your mail forwarded to Libertarian Town. What other doctors can lock up the poors without charge?
I don't read it that way at all. I read it as saying, regardless of what liberals do, conservatives have their heads on so far backwards that they see them as equivalent to hostile aliens, and make decisions based on that.
And because management of the pandemic was made a political issue by the government that was trying to do that management, everything related to the pandemic has become a political issue by extension. So, yeah, they are going to resist establishment science, because they see it as the enemy.
That's perhaps one step beyond his analysis, but it's consistent with it.
The problem to solve is not how to get them to listen to establishment science, because they won't. The problem is not how to make establishment science not aligned with liberals, because it's made up of people, and it's inherently going to be less beholden to religion, by definition.
The problem to solve is how to not see people who disagree with them as the enemy. And there's not really much liberals can do about that.
No, the management of the pandemic was made a political issue by conservative politicians and media to excuse their own incompetence. The skepticism of the vaccines was made a political issue by conservative media looking to fill air time when trump wasn’t around and there wasn’t much news to cover in the spring.
There’s no inherent reason conservatives should oppose vaccines. In 2015, anti vaxxers were hippie libs and conservatives loved to dunk on them for opposing science.
You and Scott are both trying to draw broad conclusions from very recent circumstances. None of this was predetermined.
>There’s no inherent reason conservatives should oppose vaccines. In 2015, anti vaxxers were hippie libs and conservatives loved to dunk on them for opposing science.
Speaking as someone that lives in Georgia, that's just not true. There's certainly new antivax people now, but it was not a "hippie lib" thing exclusively, plenty of crunchy conservatives. The motivation was similar, regardless of which side of the political aisle they were on. Point being, it's not strictly anathema to either side. When more generally the pandemic was made political, this just came along for the ride and grew from the seed that already existed.
You’re being unjustly downvoted. /u/solastsummer is completely wrong: the vast corpus of modern anti-vax begins with a doctor from my own home country of the UK, Wakefield, and gets spread in America by people of (somewhat ambiguous) centrist, liberal, and conservative politics alike. Black people in America with both conservative and extremely left views (rightly) have suspicions about experimental mass programmes in medicine.
This didn’t start with Donald fucking Trump, and conservatives in 2015 easily had their fair share of vaccination deniers.
I specifically said it’s the fault of the media; not trump. I never said there weren’t conservative antivaxxers. I said it’s not inherent to conservatives.
https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2015/02/FT_Vaccines.Parties.png
Here’s data on partisan attitudes about vaccines from 2009 and 2014. In 2014, Dems were slightly more likely to favor mandatory vaccines over Republicans and independents. But there was no difference in 2009 between parties.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/10/01/for-covid-19-vaccinations-party-affiliation-matters-more-than-race-and-ethnicity/
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/10/01/for-covid-19-vaccinations-party-affiliation-matters-more-than-race-and-ethnicity/
Here’s current attitudes. GOP is way below dems and independents. I’ll agree there’s a trend of gop becoming more skeptical of vaccines as time goes on that predates trump; but it’s simply not true that this is inherent to conservative worldview. If it was, there’d be a noticeable difference in 2009.
No, you said that “management of the pandemic” and “skepticism of the vaccine” was made a political issue to fill airtime in the spring, by conservatives *and* media
That’s false by your own data: conservatives already existed with a bias against vaccines and masks and a motivation to make it an issue, and made it an issue *with that existing bias*
Tucker Carlson didn’t come out of nowhere suddenly deciding “Wuhan flu” should be blamed on - well - Wuhan, or China more broadly
The problem is you’re not contextualising the evidence: /u/ringobob was completely right to point to GOP advocacy against science as an originary factor in this whole equation
Maybe conservatives most broadly conceived liked to shit on hippie libs for being anti-science, but as far as memory serves that was a rhetorical play against the same hippie libs who criticised the GOP themselves for hating evolution etc.
No, while there was a difference between dems and republicans in 2014; independents were the same as republicans. The delta between conservatives and independents now is purely the fault of the media.
If your conclusion from a poll where 65% of republicans favor mandatory vaccinations is that they’ll never listen to establishment science, I don’t know what to tell you.
This is just the most simplistic bullshit
Obviously there are going to be plenty of Republicans who favour some kind of vaccination, but that is obviously *not* the only thing in play here
Jesus fucking Christ dude, have some imagination or just look at the world around you
No, we can definitely thank arseholes like Tucker Carlson for spreading vaccine disinformation as efficiently as a hostile state actor to his terrified followers.
That’s certainly one way to read it, but it sure feels like Scott bending over backwards to make these people seem reasonable. Really, a vaccine is like a brain implant? The CDC is like evil aliens? But somehow it’s da evil libs fault that this stuff is politicized because in early 2020 Fauci said there aren’t studies on the efficacy of masks for Covid and advised selfish Americans not to hoard the scarce supply and reserve them for critical health care workers? Conservatives are just being so damn *reasonable* and if only libs wouldn’t constantly lie to them we wouldn’t be having this problem. LOL
He’s providing pseudo-intellectual comfort-food to a poor downtrodden white supremacists who have it too hard in this country being pandered to only 90% of the time instead of 99% like the days of yore. Maybe it helps some of them escape the right wing torture-sex cult diaspora machine but it probably hardens the majority of them in their insane beliefs if his comments sections and TheMotte are anything to go by.
>But somehow it’s da evil libs fault that this stuff is politicized
Where does he say that? In what world does comparing the right wing perspective to viewing the left as hostile aliens make *them* seem like the reasonable ones?
He doesn't say that, you're reading the implication into what he says based on the fact that he's trying to find ways to help these people rather than condemn them. In point of fact, he's *obviously*, with a great many thousands of words prior to that point, saying that the people these right wingers believe are hostile aliens *are not* in fact like hostile aliens, they are genuinely helpful humans trying to make the situation better, so for them to believe they are like hostile aliens is unreasonable *in the context of the rest of the article*.
He doesn't just switch to blaming the scientific establishment for being seen as hostile aliens. No where does he make that accusation or suggest anything they did to deserve the comparison. It's all on the people seeing it that way, they own the perspective, all he's trying to do is explain the perspective so that more reasonable people can try new, hopefully more effective ways to disabuse them of their delusions than what most people have done up to this point, which has been ineffective.
Yes, I'm using stronger language than he is. That's because I'm not trying to write an article that I hope those people can actually take something useful away from. Individual people who have bought into the Ivermectin boondoggle might actually be persuaded by his analysis prior to his political section. Should he risk that by calling them all crazy people? No, absolutely not. But I get him wanting to address it, it's the elephant in the room. So he describes it without injecting his own perspective, allowing you and they to bring your own biases to it and read it how you want.
You and they share the same propensity to jump to conclusions, apparently. You wipe away all of the previous discussion that mostly upholds the scientific establishment as doing the right thing, and you assume he's saying they've somehow justified this view of themselves as hostile aliens. He doesn't say or imply that anywhere. He really doesn't. That's all coming from you.
Death of the author and all that, I don't really care what Scott intended at this point. Look at the comment section, look at TheMotte. Scott attracts anti-vaxxers and they clearly think he's on their side.
The Ivermectin stuff might as well be a totally separate blog post, I liked that and agreed with it, although he was overly cute about it and should've led with his conclusion rather than burying it so many pages deep.
Confirmation bias. You think he supports right wing ideology, so you see right wing anti-vaxxers in the comments. I think he's taking an even handed approach, and I see a split between anti-vaxxers and pro-vaxxers in the comments. I don't see a circle jerk anywhere but here.
>it sure feels like Scott bending over backwards to make these people seem reasonable. Really, a vaccine is like a brain implant? The CDC is like evil aliens? But somehow it’s da evil libs fault that this stuff is politicized because in early 2020 Fauci said there aren’t studies on the efficacy of masks for Covid and advised selfish Americans not to hoard the scarce supply and reserve them for critical health care workers? Conservatives are just being so damn reasonable and if only libs wouldn’t constantly lie to them we wouldn’t be having this problem.
Is that not what you meant, here? If not, what did you mean?
I think there’s two valid interpretations to that. One is yours, that conservatives are so far out there it’s useless to reason with them. That’s fine. My problem with the analogy was it seemed to sympathize with the anti-vaxxers, by buying their frame about how the liberals have supposedly handled this pandemic. Nowhere in his alien analogy does he have an equivalent of the right wing disinformation machine. He says the aliens did certain things without saying that was only what the right wing *says* they did. Conservatives will read along and nod and go “yeah man the libs lied to us and said the vaccines would work 100% and end the pandemic” when the libs said no such thing.*
Edit: use “the CDC” instead of “the libs” in my above point if you have a semantic quibble. Just trying to explain where I’m coming from.
I don't think it's useless to reason with them at all, and neither does Scott. That's precisely the point - you have to understand what it is they believe in order to craft a viable message.
Obviously it's complicated, not just crafting the message but figuring out how to deliver it, but it appears that's what he's chipping away at. He doesn't speak about the liberal perspective because he's not trying to figure out how you might convince them of anything. It's not nefarious, it's a first person view.
I certainly believe right wing anti vaxxers could read what he's saying the way you suggest, after all, *you* read it that way, too. But that doesn't make that interpretation supported by the text, it requires your (and their) own personal biases to see it that way.
There’s no such thing as a neutral text reading without bias, is there? Yes I have my own biases about Scott based on the totality of everything else he has written, and the community he has fostered. It would be naive to ignore that when reading his texts.
Great, I can't claim to have read "the totality of everything else he has written" but I did go look up some other stuff, care to point me in the direction of something else he's said that's more clear in your interpretation of his intent? Because, while I limited my search to his follow ups on this particular topic, I didn't find anything.
That isn't fair, it also can catch fire. The biggest fire, the best fire.
Just the way to prevent the rising of the sea levels. Just use ungodly amounts of water to put things out.
This is from ivmmeta.com, part of a sprawling empire of big
professional-looking sites promoting unorthodox coronavirus treatments.
I have no idea who runs it - they’ve very reasonably kept their identity
secret - but my hat is off to them.
yeah this honestly seems fine
i mean im no expert so i can't tell much about the science of it
and the political stuff at the end veers into some nonsense
but i thought the part about worms was pretty interesting!
scott's boring science articles tend to be his best just because looking at a bunch of studies is much preferable to his usual writing style
His political take was especially hilarious because his point was that "these people don't believe scientists cuz scientists are like aliens to them!", but then you scroll down into the comments to see vaccine denial, mask denial, etc...but they all still read SSA for some reason!
The way Scott completely ignores the American right-wing misinformation machine is just bizarre. The reason people don't trust the CDC is because they didn't support masks in March 2020...what?! Is Scott not aware that Republicans have been opposed to masks on bizarre ideological grounds for the last year-and-a-half?
Scott somehow has the extraordinary ability to regurgitate conservative talking points with complete sincerity, and then turn around to chide the liberal establishment for not responding with uniform patience and understanding to what is little more than weaponized ignorance. The real people at fault here are the people on twitter who made fun of people buying up the supply of horse-grade ivermectin, apparently.
But yeah, I guess he's good at reading scientific articles.
the political take part of it is really weird because it's founded on the bizarre right wing belief that vaccines are made by big pharma who can't be trusted, but ivermectin is... wouldn't that also come from pharmaceutical companies? you'd think so
> Then some human scientists suggest vaccinating against the plague. The aliens say this is idiotic, vaccines originally come from cowpox, even the word “vaccine” comes from Latin vaccus meaning “cow”, are you saying you want cow medicine instead of actual brain implants which alien Science has proven will work?
such a dishonest writer it's incredible
The intellectually honest response to your comment is that Ivermectin is off-patent, meaning the profit-potential is lower. Less of a conflict of interest in their mind.
Ivm is made by pharma companies, but the incentive structure for new drugs and therapeutics is quite different because of the monopoly power granted by patents. The patent on ivm is up, it's just a commodity now and profit margins are thin.
Actually yes. When the major elite establishments were telling people to not wear masks I was shocked. It later came out that Fauci said they deliberately lied because they were afraid of running out for hospital workers. Why would I ever trust them? Actually, I don't trust authority much to start with. Would rather look at studies myself.
Arguing that Americans are so dumb that they need their leaders to lie to them, *even if true*, isn't a very good argument for trusting that said leaders are telling you the truth.
Just saying.
You should be assimilate Fauci lying about masks without reflexively bootlicking! Fauci shouldn't have lied, it understandably damaged the credibility of the CDC. He's a fucking moron for doing that and he should have resigned.
Also true: the right wing misinformation machine is an even more pernicious and harmful force than Fauci lying with good intentions!
He also admitted to intentionally misleading us on what he thought the true herd immunity threshold was - started somewhere in the 60s I think and inched it higher over a few statements until he ultimately admitted he thought it was probably north of 80 the whole time but the American people couldn't handle that. Do this enough times and people start looking on YouTube for the "real" number.
The reason those people still read SSC even if they're not perfectly ideologically aligned with him is because he is intellectually humble and thoughtful in his analysis and observations: He doesn't condescend to his audience even if some of them may be misguided. This is a skill I would imagine that people posting in a sub literally titled "SneerClub" would do well to develop.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/lm36nk/old_scott_siskind_emails_which_link_him_to_the/
He might be honest in his beliefs, but he’s grossly incompetent. I recommend the rationalwiki pages on LessWrong, Eliezer, and the NRx movement for additional sources.
That link is broken and also I'm not getting the implication from some association with the far right (that I can't verify because the link is broken) to therefore being grossly incompetent. Plenty of far right people historically have been quite competent which is why they're scary.
We know the original tweet has been deleted. That's why there's a stickied comment under that post with links to backups for those who can read that far.
Mr. Doctor Scott Alexander has additionally commissioned rationalist
think-tank the Observatory Board of Virtuous Intelligent Objective
Unbiased Soporificists (O.B.V.I.O.U.S) to learn if wearing seat belts
while driving improves health outcomes of COVID patients after vehicular
collision.
Was this honestly that obvious to everyone? I personally wouldn’t have thought of this connection. It’s nice to have a plausible theory why some legit studies show an effect instead of just a gut feeling that ivermectin boosters are a bunch of conspiracy theorists. People I know who were into this stuff actually changed their mind presented with this analysis so that’s all good in my book.
What Scott has done is he’s waded into the clustered tangle of a conspiracy theory, took great lengths to remove the numerous fraudulent or poor studies, and then reverse engineered that Ivermectin is an effective dewormer. The method he used is an incredibly bad approach to science methodology, and it reveals a poor understanding of science and a distrust of experts.
If you know people who’ve been convinced by his reasoning, it’s because they’ve been tricked by conspiratorial thinking. You can’t resolve conspiratorial and faith based thinking by logically arguing inside the conspiracy or faith; it’ll rebound and resolve itself on another poorly reasoned answer. The underlying problem here is that people do not understand the scientific process, what determines whether someone is an expert, and whether large organizations of people can be trusted. Until you resolve that, they’ll just move on to another drug or homeopathic remedy. Scott has not resolved that. He’s made it worse by playing to their ego by claiming their ignorance and reasoning was justified.
ok I really hate playing defense for scott, so please see this as me not understanding your perspective correctly rather than me thinking Scott's article was cool and good
when it comes to 'removing the fraudulent or poor studies', is that not the whole point when it comes to determining its effectiveness? It's not like he pretends they don't exist or anything.
He didn't reverse-engineer that Ivermectin was effective - if he was doing that he would have found that it was! instead he finds that the effect is not statistically significant enough to really draw conclusions. the rest of the article after that point is essentially just cope, trying to put a spin on the data that appeals to his audience.
I agree with you that overall it's not really an effective response to ivermectin as a conspiracy theory, but I don't see how his initial methodology (looking at a bunch of studies and trying to work out which ones are reliable) is bad or reveals a distrust of experts.
It's almost like some people are just working really hard at trying to find the truth and not just villainous caricatures of the worst kind of right-wing tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy nut.
I agree that characterising Scott as a right-wing tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy nut is silly - that downplays the extent to which he deliberately conceals his reactionary beliefs in order to spread them with plausible deniability!
and to be clear, 'reading a bunch of studies other people made' is not 'working really hard at trying to find the truth', especially when the 'truth' that he discovered is 'it almost certainly doesn't do anything but here's a stupid analogy about aliens to explain why it was totally reasonable for you to believe the conspiracy theory'
this is why I said I hated playing defense for Scott, by the way. because idiots like you might appear and take this as evidence against him being horrible when all I'm saying is that he manages a *bare minimum* of intellectual honesty - and not even throughout the entire article!
the performative outrage about being called names from you people never ceases to amaze me
consider that I am currently the one engaging in conversation with you and making arguments as to why the things you are saying are wrong, while you are the one deflecting to an irrelevant point about me being mean to you
Also it wasn't performative. Believe it or not I took real offense at being insulted by a stranger on the internet who I chose to engage intellectually with seeking what I thought was common ground. But maybe that's because I'm not a sociopath and I'm not used to having that kind of interaction in the subs I frequent which also aren't full of sociopaths.
i guess I do believe you now, because you're certainly acting pretty offended
but that honestly only makes it even weirder to me - like, I said something insulting to you twice? I wasn't even very harsh?
This being some of the worst things you've ever been called on the internet is amazing to me, considering you seem to be the type to go out of your way to seek out political disagreements
I'm going to be honest with you, I've had many, many interactions with people when using this site, and sometimes when a person says something I think is stupid I will call it stupid. I've also had the same done to me, and I don't think much of it. You're essentially demanding everyone else change their behavior to accommodate your feelings.
of course, the funniest part of this whole thing is that you then turn around and call *me and everyone else on this sub sociopaths*, which is *way worse* than anything I said
also, uh, what are you doing [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/VaushV/comments/hnphgi/that_petition_that_chomsky_and_some_other_people/hmewsv5/?context=3)?
Sharing relevant links. Also the description for this sub basically says it's for sociopaths so I rest my case there. You may not be, but the sub is explicitly marked as being designed to attract dark triad traits.
But really the subs I'm in tend to be pretty friendly. I've never had anyone categorically other me with "you people". Like, what people? Anyway, it was just jarring that's all. No hard feelings. Hope yor future is bright. I'm out now.
Ok just read the description. Makes sense "sneer clubs are expected to attract people with dark triad characteristics... Some amount will be psychologically f'ed up" etc. I get it now.
It doesn't, actually, it's just quoting someone we don't like. Think of it as advertising to all the people who also do not like Eliezer that this sub talks smack about him.
I get what you’re saying and I mostly agree. It’s a bit of a wack-a-mole with those types. And yet.. every time you can get them to come around with detailed analysis like this the cycle shortens somewhat and doubt about their whole worldview creeps in. E.g. with HCQ it took much longer; this time around I got to “I guess this could be like the HCQ debacle again” much faster. Call me naive but I’m optimistic that this is a valid approach if one sticks to it. Kind of like cognitive behavioral therapy for conspiratorial thinking.
People respond rapidly to real tangible evidence. It’s impossible to deny there’s a bear when it’s standing in front of you. People don’t need a meta-analysis of why the bear may or may not exist and the benefits of recognizing the bear. The problem is the bear is very very small; invisible to the naked eye. The quickest way to make a person a believer in microbiology and virology is a microscope and a sample of their blood.
I can't upvote this enough. Why do we have to form enemy images of people who have reached a different conclusion than us, or even just have different methodology? Seeing the stream of passive peer reviewed articles on this and then comparing to the official line genuinely was a huge source of cognitive dissonance for curious individuals. I'm glad someone finally took the time to break it all down for us non specialists.
> Why do we have to form enemy images of people who have reached a different conclusion than us
Probably because frequently, they are our enemies. Scott Siskin's promotion of HBD bullshit is enough for him to be considered such, even if he is completely genuine about believing it.
Legit fascinating to see him write knowlegably and insightfully about medicine (he is an MD, after all) and then, when the topic changes to politics, instantly take the off ramp to crazy town and start ranting about how it’s the evil stinkin’ liberals fault that anti-vaxxers don’t trust science.
I like how the analogy for the vaccine is a brain chip implant. those two definitely seem comparable.
hard to blame him though. maybe the 5G chip the WHO implanted in Scott fried his brain a little.
https://twitter.com/dril/status/831805955402776576?s=21
Legitimately good article
Hidden gem under the plot about miles driven:
Interesting claim to make about non-negative numbers. Might Scott have a particular affinity for The Bell Curve?
Mr. Doctor Scott Alexander has additionally commissioned rationalist think-tank the Observatory Board of Virtuous Intelligent Objective Unbiased Soporificists (O.B.V.I.O.U.S) to learn if wearing seat belts while driving improves health outcomes of COVID patients after vehicular collision.