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Teen Who Defied Anti-Vax Mom Says She Got False Information From One Source: Facebook (washingtonpost.com)
An 18-year-old from Ohio who famously inoculated himself against his mother's wishes in December says he
attributes his mother's anti-vaccine ideology to a single source: Facebook [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: Ethan Lindenberger, a high school senior, testified Tuesday before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and underscored the importance of "credible" information. In contrast, he said, the false and deep-rooted beliefs his mother held -- that vaccines were dangerous -- were perpetuated by social media. Specifically, he said, she turned to anti-vaccine groups on social media for evidence that supported her point of view. In an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday, Lindenberger said Facebook, or websites that were linked on Facebook, is really the only source his mother ever relied on for her anti-vaccine information.
I started to base all my opinions on stuff that I read on 4chan. You wouldn't believe the change in my quality of life.
Facebook wasn't around 18 years ago. Even the stupid summary says that she went to Facebook to CONFIRM her already held idiotic beliefs. That means she did NOT get the false information from ONE source - Facebook. She already had the false information from somewhere else - probably that idiot Jenny McCarthy since that would be closer to the time. She used Facebook for confirmation bias only. Stuck in her bubble of idiots.
...because the people who are stupid enough to easily believe all the crap they read on social media are usually the ones who are on social media the most. Oh, and those are the people having the most kids. The world is rapidly becoming the Idiocracy movie.
Seriously, who cares? People are going to pick and choose their sources to support their views. The implication of this "story" is more "wrong think" suppression, and that is far more dangerous than a few idiots not vaccinating.
It is interesting. If this is a common pattern (and I think it is), that means Facebook is the best place for an education campaign. This is a democracy with free speech (more or less) and we're not meant to solve problems of ignorance through government force or corporate censorship, but by winning in the marketplace of ideas.
Actually being right is a huge advantage in convincing people that you're right. The budget needed to drown Facebook in pro-Vax truth is tiny by government standards, especially if Facebook decides to give some free "air time" to the cause.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So why the moral panic?
Because people who don't get vaccines don't just kill/maim themselves, they also can lead to people who are allergic to vaccines, or otherwise cannot be vaccinated, to be infected with these controllable diseases?
No the implication of this story is that social media once again enables the gullible to be targeted via misinformation campaigns. What do Anti-vaxers, flat earthers, Anti-gmo crusaders, and a certain branch of one of our main political parties all have in common? They get their information from Facebook. Ill actually defend Facebook here. They are the platform, the scammers and the scammed just happen to both use it.
Looks, I'll be the first in line to trash Facebook for all the things they do wrong. But just the same, I prefer to have an honest discussion about root issues. Facebook didn't tell him mom that vaccinations were bad. Stupid people using Facebook did.
If you don't want to use Facebook because they're not cracking down on anti-vaxxer crap, fine, boycott it. I'm surprised all the flaws about Facebook haven't led you to boycott it until now, in fact. But don't suggest that Facebook is at fault. They're not.
- Pacific Bell didn't call in the bomb threat.
- The US Postal Service didn't send someone anthrax.
- Highway 101 didn't stop you from getting to work on time.
These are all networks being used by people to do harmful (or at the very least, stupid) things. Go after them. Regulate them. Do the hard work and propose how we're supposed to, in the realm of free speech and the right to be wrong, regulate stupid people.
Facebook is a megaphone for disinformation. True, there was disinformation around before they existed, before the internet existed, but to spread it you needed a budget. Facebook is like owning a printing press with a built-in distribution system.
If you're disseminating information that harms people, seriously harms them in some instances, where's the accountability?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Morons just look for confirmation of their misconceptions. Ordinarily, I would not mind, but anti-vaxxers inflict serious harm on others, in particular on those that cannot be vaccinated for medical reason and on their own children, which clearly is child-abuse.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
"Actually being right is a huge advantage in convincing people that you're right."
That isn't my experience. Because it isn't enough to be right for the wrong reasons. You win people over with a strawman oversimplified version of the truth and then they very quickly get swayed by a slightly more informed person with the opposing view. The truth is usually complicated and grey and full of thousands of concessions to the other sides talking points that are crippling in SOUNDING right but essential to actually being right.
Very few people actually want to be right, they just want the people they are impressed with to be impressed with them and pretend that means they are right.
The point of this story is that people are unable to tell fact from fiction and fabrication. It's not about "wrong think" it's about believing bullshit and not being able to tell when you're fed bullshit.
People lack the ability to identify when they're being lied to. That in turn is mostly due to them having a crappy education level that doesn't even allow them to question what they're told because they have no information to rely on as a gauge to test new information. They have been taught by schools that put more emphasis on believing what an authority tells them, rote learning that leaves you completely unable to learn anything but what you are force fed and a system that rewards conformity rather than questioning.
So when they start "questioning", it usually takes the form of "The elites/illuminati/big pharma/boogeyman-du-jour have told me A, so I will instead blindly believe B instead because B must be true since it is the opposite of what (insert boogeyman here) says".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There are a large number of those who depend on herd immunity without it being a choice (IE they're immunocompromised or allergic to the appropriate vaccines). It's kinda like saying drunk driving is a self-correcting problem because drunk drivers are more likely to be in accidents than sober drivers.
What right is being taken away here? The right to be wrong? The right to believe any bullshit no matter how insane? The right to be an utter moron that's easily convinced because he's too stupid to tell when he's being bullshitted?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
>Actually being right is a huge advantage in convincing people that you're right.
Unfortunately there are many studies that show otherwise. There's a reason cult de-programmers use strong appeal to emotion instead of logic, you can't 'logic' someone out of something they didn't 'logic' themselves into to begin with.
For once, human nature serves humanity. The teen urge to rebel against their parents is remarkably constructive in the face of the rampant stupidity of the anti-vaxxers. Now all we need is for this guy to produce a Vaccination Challenge video and stick it on Youtube and ten thousand teens will sneak behind their parents' backs to seek out a medical professional.
You can't make this shit up.
I don't really care what's happening as long as it's detrimental to Facebook.
#DeleteFacebook
Probably the biggest source of misinformation when I was younger was email forwards. There was no quick way to verify the information, it was written to sound compelling, and it was very easy to share with your friends and relatives. Snopes became huge by becoming the de facto source to check on the validity of a forwarded email.
Before that, it was actually faxes. I'm not old enough to have worked in an office before email really replaced it, but people used to forward hoaxes, chain letters, and all the same stuff to their colleagues by fax machine.
What's changing is the transaction cost, and reach. With fax machines the cost was quite high (paper/phone line tied up), and the number of people you could reach was limited. With email it got cheaper and easier to spread faster. Facebook is the next generation of that, because it even shows you stories that didn't come from your acquaintances. Facebook spreads the misinformation itself, to the people most inclined to believe it.
There has never been a time when "everyone knew that information was not reliable." Every single person had to learn that the hard way, sometimes by a parent explicitly explaining it to them, or by being embarrassed when they forwarded something that turned out to be false.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
What do Anti-vaxers, flat earthers, Anti-gmo crusaders, and a certain branch of one of our main political parties all have in common? They get their information from Facebook.
All of these movements predate Facebook, sometimes by centuries.
There was strong resistance to smallpox inoculation in Britain, that was only somewhat reduced when the children of the royal family were inoculated in 1722.
Throughout the 19th century, there was religious opposition to vaccinations, and resistance to vaccinations today is strongest in muslim countries such as Pakistan where Facebook is not so pervasive.
The anti-GMO movement started in the 1990s, long before social media became common. Facebook was started in 2004.
Believe it or not, political extremism also predates Facebook. Seriously.
The Right of stupid people to say what they like? Yeah, I think that that fits. Note that once you've decided that stopping stupid people from saying whatever they like, it's pretty easy to expand the definition (gradually, mind you!) of "stupid people" till the government is restricting anything they don't want to hear in public.
And remember, you may agree with the gov at first, but sooner or later, their definition of "stupid people saying the wrong thing(s) in public" will include things YOU want to say in public....
No, I'm not anti-vax. I wish that measles had been available when *I* was an infant. Alas, I was four or five before it was developed, much less available to the general public, much less mandatory.
Nor am I pro-stupid-people. I am, however, rather fond of the First Amendment. And restricting speech I disagree with isn't one of the exceptions listed in the First....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The right to contribute to both your children's and society's collective vulnerability to potentially deadly disease outbreaks?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Exactly why you don't bring your own research to your doctor, he took decades to be wrong, you took months to be right.
What I don't understand is how so many people in the pro-vaccine camp lose their goddamn minds over the incredibly tiny risk to people who can't get vaccinated. We're talking about an incredibly small number of people,
That's not how it works. Most vaccines aren't 100% effective. However, if almost all of the population is vaccinated, an outbreak is still unlikely to obtain critical mass to spread even if the vaccine is only, for example, 80% effective.
However, if a bunch of people refuse to vaccinate, then it can add enough susceptible people to get critical mass for an widespread outbreak. In this example, that could cause harm to the 20% of the population that vaccine failed to fully protect.
You arguing that being right is no substitute for being a good debater. I agree. But it's still loads easier when you're actually right. Much like it's easier to keep your story straight when you're telling the truth.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Fuck the marketplace of ideas. If that concept had any merit, why is this the state of affairs in the Western world after practicing it for so many decades? Actually being right does not do much to convince the Average Joe that you're right, especially after they've sought out and indoctrinated themselves with beliefs that are wrong. We have disproved the marketplace of ideas through experiment, and our reality is the aftermath.
We need to use our freedoms to reduce the exposure of factually wrong and morally toxic ideas to the public rather than continuing to wait for the marketplace of ideas' invisible hand to lead people to the truth while it merely points out rabbit-holes to madness for vulnerable people to gleefully leap into. Call it corporate censorship if you like, but the alternatives are common carrier status or forced speech. Choose one.
It's also strange for someone who expresses such worry about corporate censorship to be so gung-ho about corporate and government propaganda campaigns.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
(slow clap)
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
That is exactly the right being discussed. It's a fundamentally important right, because almost every statement we now consider correct was popularly considered batshit at some point, and vice versa. The world has certain immutable, objective truths, but it's ridiculous to think humans could ever know them with certainty.
... is like a dog walking on its hind legs. You can train him to do it, but it will never come naturally.
People are social animals; prisoners who are put in solitary confinement for extended periods come out with serious psychological disturbances, even if you do nothing more inhumane than make them sit by themselves for months. In a less extreme version of this, it will always feel uncomfortable to hold an opinion without supporters, even if you know you're right. On the flip side it's all too easy to go along with apparently popular ideas you disagree with. Eventually you'll believe those ideas.
Don't get me wrong. Groupthink is mankind's killer evolutionary advantage. If you disagree with *everyone* around you, chances are you're wrong, although of course that varies depending on you and the people around you. But social media is unlike anything humans have ever experienced before. If you designed an operant conditioning experiment with the aim of producing group think on an unprecedentedly vast, society-wide scale, social media is exactly what you'd end up with.
It's like sugar. Favoring sweet foods is good for you if you're a member of a small band of hunter-gatherers. A sweet tooth is not so good for you if you live in a society that boasts a sugar industry. A bias toward consensus is good for you if you're human living in a small group. It's bad for you if you live in a society with a groupthink industry.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What I don't understand is how so many people in the pro-vaccine camp lose their goddamn minds over the incredibly tiny risk to people who can't get vaccinated.
I'm in the "pro-vaccine camp." I don't lose my goddamn mind over the issue you've cited - I lose my goddamn mind over two other things:
1) The fact that parents who don't vaccinate their kids are putting their own little kids at risk of unnecessary suffering. I know a lot of Slashdotters would say "Let them suffer" as if its the kids' fault for having stupid parents. However, I suspect the Slashdotters who say that either aren't parents or lack empathy - And have never spent a wakeful night or two dealing with an ill, suffering kid, powerless to do anything. I'm in my early 50s. When I was a kid there was no Chicken Pox vaccine. I still remember, 40+ years later, the terrible suffering my brother went through when he suffered from the pox, and the stress it put on my parents. So I lose my goddamn mind over potential child suffering when people choose to not vaccinate for things like chicken pox.
2) The fact that, while my kids are vaccinated, the fact is that vaccines are not 100% effective on all biochemistries means that disease prevention also depends on herd immunity. If there are kids in my kids' classroom that aren't vaccinated, then they in turn are putting my kids at risk, even though my kids are vaccinated - Because the vaccine my kids took might not be effective with them.
"We need to use our freedoms to limit our freedoms." You're a fascist.
Ah, the good old Nihilism argument. Because there's no absolute truth, everything is an opinion and the end. And all opinions are equally valid.
However, some opinions have resulted in us being able to converse about this nonsense over the internet at about the speed of light, while half a planet may be between us.
Don't you think these are a bit more desirable than those opinions that, to use one other extreme as an example, caused genocides?
Funny, the ownership class uses their freedoms to limit our freedoms and nobody has ever accused them of being fascists. Let's admit that "freedom" by itself is a word that's vague to the point of uselessness and be more specific:
Let's exercise our civil liberties and private property rights a way to reduce the exposure of factually wrong and morally toxic ideas to the public rather than to perpetuate their debate in the mistaken belief that it might achieve the same end.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If that concept had any merit, why is this the state of affairs in the Western world after practicing it for so many decades?
Quality of life seems to track directly with amount of freedom of speech, so I'm not sure what you're going on about?
I think you're upset that what makes most people happy isn't what makes you happy, and you want to force everyone else to change. Thing about dictatorships: you don't get to be the dictator. So what alternative do you propose? An autocratic system where you're banned from arguing against any position taken by the autocracy? You do realize those won't be positions that you like, right?
We need to use our freedoms to reduce the exposure of factually wrong and morally toxic ideas to the public
That didn't work out so well for the people when Mao, Stalin, and Hitler did it. Do you imagine it will be your ideas the next time around? Sorry, hate to break it to you, that's not how any of this works.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You get your kids initial vaccinations when they're babies... Facebook wasn't around when she made this decision... and in it's early years it wasn't really a place where people got their news from...
The "marketplace of ideas" does not equal free speech, they're different things. The "marketplace of ideas" is the concept that it's beneficial (or at least harmless) to expose the public to a debate of terrible ideas and falsehoods. "Invite the nazi to speak at the college, we'll curb-stomp him with facts and reason and show everyone how wrong his ideas are, thus making the audience less supportive of nazi ideas" - that's the "marketplace of ideas."
I don't propose any government censorship, I propose that we realize that debating these ideas spreads them to vulnerable people who aren't swayed by logic, and that citizens should use their civil liberties and private property rights to deny these debates a venue, forcing them into smaller and more obscure venues where less people would be exposed to them. Don't let the nazi speak at your college, don't allow anti-vax content on your social media platform, etc.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Lawsuits and concerns about Russian trolling to sway elections are causing pressure to curate the postings. Won't this coincidentally end the safe harbor provisions for copyright violations, currently limited to DMCA takedowns in a timely manner?
For if they filter, they can filter for copyright, and thus can be sued immediately because now they are a publisher?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Participating in it? Not intentionally. It certainly doesn't mean I support the concept. Learn what it means:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The marketplace of ideas holds that the truth will emerge from the competition of ideas in free, transparent public discourse and concludes that ideas and ideologies will be culled according to their superiority or inferiority and widespread acceptance among the population.
That central tenet is demonstrably false. We would not live in a world of viral fake news and large subcultures who believe in clear falsehoods if it were true. Exposing the public to falsehoods for the purpose of debate was not harmless or, on balance, beneficial.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It is interesting. If this is a common pattern (and I think it is), that means Facebook is the best place for an education campaign. This is a democracy with free speech (more or less) and we're not meant to solve problems of ignorance through government force or corporate censorship, but by winning in the marketplace of ideas.
Actually being right is a huge advantage in convincing people that you're right. The budget needed to drown Facebook in pro-Vax truth is tiny by government standards, especially if Facebook decides to give some free "air time" to the cause.
That' a nice idea but there is a body of research that shows exposing people to counter arguments, however factual, just hardens their viewpoint rather than changing it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/sc...
https://www.scientificamerican...
They also tend to change the argument to avoid facing inconvenient facts.
https://www.scientificamerican...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Much like it's easier to keep your story straight when you're telling the truth.
At the amateur level, maybe. A well-thought-out and practiced lie, however, can easier to keep straight than the truth. Reality tends to be messy, and when people aren't deliberately trying to keep their story straight the details tend to get blurred. Stories that fit together unusually well often contain a fair bit of fiction—either deliberate deception or simple subconscious editing and rationalization.
It does help to have solid evidence on your side, if the people you're trying to convince are the type to be persuaded by the evidence. If not, your skills as a debater will matter far more than whether you're right or wrong.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
It would only be fairly mitigated if homeschooling meant keeping non-vaccinated children quarantined from society, which it doesn't.
And how did free speech get into this? There's been no talk of governments criminalizing anti-vaccine speech.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Don't worry too much about changing the minds of specific individuals. Instead, think about the drift of ideas between generations (the old definition of "memes" pre-2000). That is where the difference is made. You can't e.g. convince someone not to be racist, but you can change the statistical likelyhood of their kids being racist.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The Right of stupid people to say what they like? Yeah, I think that that fits. Note that once you've decided that stopping stupid people from saying whatever they like, it's pretty easy to expand the definition (gradually, mind you!) of "stupid people" till the government is restricting anything they don't want to hear in public.
And remember, you may agree with the gov at first, but sooner or later, their definition of "stupid people saying the wrong thing(s) in public" will include things YOU want to say in public....
No, I'm not anti-vax. I wish that measles had been available when *I* was an infant. Alas, I was four or five before it was developed, much less available to the general public, much less mandatory.
Nor am I pro-stupid-people. I am, however, rather fond of the First Amendment. And restricting speech I disagree with isn't one of the exceptions listed in the First....
However restricting speech that represents a clear and present danger has never been part of the first amendment... though I'm not about to claim to be smart (dumb?) enough to try to apply that outside of the most blindingly obvious examples.
"Reality tends to be messy, and when people aren't deliberately trying to keep their story straight the details tend to get blurred."
Which of course will also be useful for a practiced liar. An inexperienced liar will be trying to keep every detail straight and terrified is something contradictory creeps in. An master liar will ride the chaos because they know it is present all over the place when people are telling the truth as well.
"Free speech" means "you're free to say anything without being charged with a crime." And there are limits to that even in the US - incitements to violence, for example. Very different from the "marketplace of ideas" concept which has nothing to do with criminality:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Everyone you disagree with is a "Nazi" these days, so you're saying "don't let people you disagree with speak at a government-funded school. I don't see any daylight between that and government censorship.
It may amount to government censorship at a public school. However most colleges are privately funded so there's no issue.
Censorship by effective monopolies that dominate public debate is nearly as bad as censorship by governments.
Nearly as bad in your opinion, but legally worlds apart. Again, the alternatives are enforced common carrier status and forced speech. Choose.
Anyway, since when are "forbidden ideas" less attractive? I don't think the human mind works that way.
Doesn't matter how attractive they are if they're highly elusive and largely unknown. Pushing ideas underground works.
Debunk the bunk. Especially, do so in a way that kids of anti-vax parents get the full story.
This is what the Western world's been doing for much of the late 20th century, and as you can see the bunk has been winning. Remember Einstein's definition of insanity?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Rawhide “Incident at Red River Station” (1960) – Gil and Rowdy get exposed to smallpox and leave the herd to find a vaccine. They instead find a town that believes in Asafoetida bags, leeches and herbal tea, pushing the real doctor out of town to care for patients in a pest house. “There are very few people around here who believe in vaccination,” says Dr. Flood, at least until people start dying of smallpox and they line up for the batch of vaccine he makes from the cowpox of a nearby herd.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
I really *want* to agree with you, because it seems reasonable. We know that Nazis are bad, and we know that anti-vax is wrong. We know that because we've studied the effects of both and they're undesirable.
We also know that exposing people to these concepts will cause them to be sympathetic to them, although I we don't fully understand the scale. In the US, exposing people to Nazi propaganda seems to create a ~9% supportive effect[1], while in Germany in the 20s and 30s it was far higher. The truth is, if you or I were a student in Germany in the 30s, we'd almost certainly be Nazis.
The problem with suppressing wrong/hate speech is that the same argument could be made about Galileo in the 1600s or US racism in the 60s. Let me "quote" you: "Don't let the black man speak at your college, don't allow black content on your social media platform, etc. Letting them debate ideas spreads them to vulnerable people who aren't swayed by logic, and citizens should use their civil liberties and private property rights to deny these debates a venue."
We would be much better off if only correct arguments can be platformed, so that weak people aren't swayed by incorrect arguments. Unfortunately, we don't have a way of perfectly identifying "correct" arguments. Even if we could, "correct" changes over time, as people and cultures change. Life is complex and complicated enough that anyone who thinks they "know with certainty" anything about any complex topic is kidding themselves. If you restrict speech based on what you "know" is right, you will get it wrong some of the time. Furthermore, evil people will come along and use those restrictions as a weapon to create further oppression. History shows us that.
If we seek truth and a better life for all, the best way I've found is to allow people to speak freely, debate, argue, and pick at truth. It's messy and often has horrible outcomes. It causes Measles outbreaks. It allows Nazis to march and alienate people. It allows speech that is utterly hateful to homosexuals and racial groups. It allows speech that marginalizes people of less common attributes (appearance, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, etc). But I'll take all of those downsides in a heartbeat if the alternative is oppression, exploitation, and dictatorships.[2]
I strongly recommend you read "The Gulag Archipelago" from Solzhenitsyn.
Sources:
[1] https://www.elitedaily.com/new...
[2] https://stanfordfreedomproject...
-=Lothsahn=-
Let's take measles as an example. Measles is so contagious that in order for herd immunity to be effective, at least 95% of the population needs to be immune. Now consider that the measles vaccine currently in use is 98% effective. So what percentage of the population needs to be given the vaccine in order to get to that 95% immune level? If you do the math, at least 97% of the population needs to be given the vaccine. Now consider that there are some people who should NOT receive the measles vaccine due to legitimate medical conditions such as severe allergic reaction to neomycin, compromised immune system, etc. The best thing for those people is to be covered via herd immunity and they can legitimately be part of the 3% of the population who do not need to receive the vaccine. And these anti-vaccine idiots effectively eliminate the effectiveness of herd immunity. To illustrate. A 2015 study indicates that for the measles vaccine, 9% of the American population believe it should not be given to their children.... 9% people. Now contemplate that 9% and see if there's some way using the above figures to get the immune population up to 95%.
Where, exactly? There are several States that allow exemptions from vaccination for "personal reasons" or "religious belief". Those States allow unvaccinated children to attend public school.
The most aggressive States in requiring vaccination are, I believe, Mississippi and West Virginia. The only exemptions accepted are from a medical doctor who testifies that the child is allergic to the vaccine itself.
Mississippi ran a campaign for medical professionals called "If you get 'em, stick 'em." to encourage universal vaccination.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Why the fuck is an adult (well, legally anyways) getting all this attention for doing something that adults are expected to do? I just filed my taxes, where's my standing ovation?
Lucky you I don't have mod points to vote your ignorant posting down. Last time I did that though, I didn't get any mod points for a very long time. I'd still risk it here. OK, here's the explanation. There's no requirement for an adult to get vaccinated. So adults aren't "expected to do" this because most adults already did this as kids. He's getting attention because he's standing up to his ignorant parents (seems like this is all mother driven though - dad doesn't seem to care one way or another and seems to just be giving in to his wife because this is just THE BIGGEST DEAL EVER to her) and the media is hoping that stupid anti-vax people might rethink their position if one of their own did this on his own. Of course, no anti-vax person is going to change their mind because as another post pointed out, proving people wrong with facts just makes them even more determined than ever that they are right.
My mom, rest her soul, was an anti-vaxxer (and a research Nurse no less). Facebook would let her spread that nonsense. It would give her a safe space to discuss it and get it reinforced.
Reinforcement's the big thing. My bro and I were just talking about the Dem primary. Based on his news feeds Kamala Harris is the front runner. Based on mine it's Bernie and Harris is dead in the water. The two of us had to do a mess of googling to get out of our bubbles.
That's because services like YouTube and Facebook are built to keep funneling content to you that your receptive of so they can get more "engagement" (e.g. eye on glass) and more ad impressions. It's real time and designed around sessions. Click a Bernie video and your feed blows up with Bernie. Click a gaming video and suddenly it's gaming. Whatever it takes to keep you clicking one more video.
True story, YouTube decided a buddy was trans. Apparently several of the Warhammer 40k players and painters he subscribed to were, and they'd done videos about the Trans issues they were facing on their 40k channels. I guess that's one way to get out of the Bubble. But baring that you really have to try to step out of it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Stop using the "Fire in a Crowded Theater" argument
Insert your villian here: Terrorists, Child molesters, Gun Owners, Anti Vaxers, Russian bots, Hate speech....
Or to some the favorite villains could be: minorities moving to my neighborhood, minorities wanting to vote, gays wanting to get married, people choosing the wrong religion, all reasons to motivate some to try and restrict rights.
One day my mother is saying how we must protect the freedom of religion and get rid of government intrusion. The next day we drive past a mosque and she says "that shouldn't be allowed". The human brain is perfectly capable of believing in to contrary ideas simultaneously. Freedom for me, but restrictions for you!
That "incredibly small number" includes all children under ab out a year old, where measles is concerned. It also includes pretty much everybody over a certain age, too.
To the tune of 49,000 violent attacks on US citizens a year.
Boy that sounds bad. It's too bad you didn't provide enough context to actually evaluate the number. 'Cause our native-born population commits about 2 million "violent attacks" on US citizens a year. Also, that 2M statistic uses traditional definitions of "violent attacks", as opposed to property crimes that are included in your 49,000 statistic.
Meaning our native population causes violence at a higher rate than the immigrants you want to exclude.
So, when you say everyone should care about the violence of immigrants and ignore the actual rate of violence in the country, you demonstrate you don't really care about crime. You care about hurting brown people.
And to bring it back to the subject at hand, infectious diseases kill far more than 49,000 people per year, and death is a wee bit worse than the very loose definition of "violent" used to create that statistic.
So, when you constantly whine that people should care more about immigrants than deadly diseases, you don't really care about people dying. You care about feeding your racism.
Isn't this how a whole generation or three of kids were raised (Late-X, Millenials and Y?) I showed up! I got a trophy for showing up! Yay me! I'm thpecial! Look at me! Participation awards! I'm a thpecial and unique snowflake!
So, the massive stupidity on your talking point here is that the kids weren't giving themselves trophies. They were kids. The adults were the ones handing out the participation trophies. Because the adults couldn't handle their child not getting recognition.
If you think something is wrong with "the kids these days", you have to remember you raised them.
While I understand your frustration with the stupid, I do believe that "lynching" might be a little extreme. I think we should make them pay for it. You want to be a dumb ass and not vaccinate your spawn, fine. Insurance and government medical don't have to cover your dumb ass for such illnesses. Or insurances get to charge you more for your stupidity.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
with anti-vaxxers. There is real, definite harm. The FCC should step in and treat it as a false advertising issue. Cut it off at the head. Facebook is profiting from the anti-vaxxer movement by serving up adverts themselves.
Basically, through their algorithms spreading false information that is itself a product for Facebook. It should be regulated as such.
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Because then they start whining about their "god given rights" to be stupid. Which is another pet peeve of mine. There is no such thing as "god given rights." But anyway, just let them be stupid, just make sure they can't affect any one else.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
there is a body of research that shows exposing people to counter arguments, however factual, just hardens their viewpoint rather than changing it.
It is almost as if what you need is a counter-conspiracy-theory that generates a new revelation about the old conspiracy without ever directly arguing with it.
You have no "natural rights" ether. There is no such thing as natural, god given, odin given, zeus, or lucifer given rights. Any rights that you think you have that you think came from god(s) can be taken away from you with the stroke of a pen. All rights that you have come from government and society and are subject to the whims of that society.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
I remember doing a bit of research and finding that vaccination rates in may Latin American countries (everything south of the US, essentially) is higher than vaccination rates in the USA, at least for measles, which is what I found data on.
I suspect that claims that people from Latin America are a risk to USA disease wise are exaggerated and probably have more to do with racism than fact.
--PeterM