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Reblogged:It Is Not 'Self-Interest' to Take Illness Lightly

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7 hours ago, whYNOT said:

About benevolence, uniformity, rules, agreement

I was talking about your benevolence that you said you have. That you aren't a pessimist. The belief that people are generally decent. Exactly the way you described your assumption of people:

On 1/1/2021 at 6:28 AM, whYNOT said:

I guess there is much of me assuming people are mostly upfront, decent and well-behaved enough to not arbitrarily want to impose their habits or diseases on others.

 

Rules and agreement were a completely different topic. My point was that you don't think people are mostly decent if you also say:

15 hours ago, whYNOT said:

The argument that if everyone does it, it would have worked, ignores that humanity isn't like that.

 

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No contradiction. People can be generally decent, never actively *wanting* to impose e.g. their behaviors and viruses onto others.

Until you order them to behave this way - or else. Until the harsh controls begin to hurt them. Until they sense the injustice. To deny them their freedom of choice to be decent, when and to whom they want to be decent. Then they will buck the system and revolt.

That is the 'saving grace' of humanity imo: no tyrant and harsh system can keep human beings uniformly compliant for long. Humanity isn't like that.

Edited by whYNOT
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Are there even enough "petri-dish scenarios" to objectively and unequivocally establish a difference in outcomes between the control groups 'a', 'b', 'c', etc., without cherry-picking? SARS and MERS managed to contain earlier outbreaks of a comparatively similar viral variant. Now reports are of a new more virulent strain having recently jumped the pond from Europe to the Americas. Such adds yet another permutation to the evaluative processes.

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11 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

No, "Works" means the pandemic is not as bad as it otherwise would have been, and there are more people to enjoy the benefits of the vaccines than there otherwise would have been.

You, DM, must have omniscient knowledge. How does anyone know 'not as bad' until they know what 'bad' is and would have been?

That is rationalist conjecture. We have no benchmark, except what scientists' models and hypotheses inform us. And they have previously been off by factors of 10 and 100.

You haven't accepted that man's life is tops and is inclusive of 'peoples lives'. If focused on the first, the second will -also - fall into line. Reversed, both are lost.

Imagine this: If from early 2020, every single person of advanced age, and/or with those with "comorbidities" had been individually quarantined by force by an authoritarian state. No physical contact at all allowed with others, and wide distancing from them for this past year.

Now, from what we know and knew at the time, the greatest number of fatalities  - must obviously have been averted (the aged, etc.) AND, the entire populace could continue operating exactly as before. (Unmasked and un-distanced, except by choice).

The certain outcome: Perhaps 80% of lives lost could be saved; the economy and thriving lives remain untouched.

Win win.

What did we all get instead? A compromise. Not totally dictatorial ... and not free. Bouncing between those poles arbitrarily. Every person, old and young, frail or healthy, is lumped under the identical regimen.

What transpired by this method?

Nearly 2 million have died and the economies, health systems and social fabrics of countries are shattered and everyone is - still - petrified.

That is what compromise leads to. Lose-lose.

Now remove the "authoritarian state" to enforce that procedure. Leave it entirely to the judgments of citizens to isolate their relativies and be isolated. Maybe - there would be 50% of lives saved, but that too is conjecture, still, the vital affairs of the country would go on.

But the consequences could not have been worse! (Than what they are).

Edited by whYNOT
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10 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Why are you telling me this? I know this, we went over it, I explicitly told you I agree with you that all this should be voluntary.

Once more, but with a little justification this time, someone takes the 'royal' "you" to be yourself, personally. Look at the context, and you won't make the error. I mean, how could "you" be doing the ordering of others? Gawd, what a picky lot.

Edited by whYNOT
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8 hours ago, whYNOT said:

someone takes the 'royal' "you" to be yourself, personally.

Huh? You were telling me that people can't be ordered around with force. But that was in response to me talking about voluntary systems of rules... Why would you want to talk about why force is bad when I'm talking about why voluntary systems work well? 

 

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Parachute use causes mass panic

I suppose the individuals who leaped from the building top forced the guests to watch, (but not to leap themselves).

To a conclusion, that is . . .

The two men are still at large.

As an aside, when I was in Nashville last summer, masks were mandatory per the county. Other communities left it to local businesses to set guest policies. I don't know if the establishment had posted the ledge as a no-leap zone.

Edited by dream_weaver
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10 hours ago, whYNOT said:

You haven't accepted that man's life is tops and is inclusive of 'peoples lives'.

I have accepted this all along.

You haven't accepted that the actions of one person can increase risk to others and that in some cases this can rise to the level of physical aggression.  Sometimes you seem to be taking the ridiculous position that no one can ever possibly be at fault in an accident.

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That publicly blowing one's nose could be significant, not wearing a mask might be physical aggression, indications of how civilisation has fallen to fear and other-ness. Not with a bang, a whimper.

 

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On 12/12/2020 at 11:57 AM, tadmjones said:

mask wearing, keeping my phlegm and snot on my face is not helping to ‘fight the spread’.

Specifically, in the context of this post.  tadmjones needed to blow his nose and/or wipe off his face, which would require briefly moving his mask out of the way.

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1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:

Yesterday I was in a store and had to briefly raise my mask, without completely removing it, in order to blow my nose.  Nobody gave me a hard time about this, nor should they have.  Maybe this observation will help with a point that came up earlier in this thread.

Sounds to me like you weren't doing your part for that brief moment, and I'm personally worried about all of the grandmothers of all of the poor souls who were within your visual vicinity. ;)

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My comment up thread was speaking to the efficacy of cloth masks re germ spread. 

Mask wearing tends to increase secretions of mucous, at least from what I’ve noticed. I never used to have a problem with keeping my secretions off of others. Thankfully now it’s even less a concern. Got your six bro, masked up! Alone together we’ll beat this !

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15 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

I have accepted this all along.

You haven't accepted that the actions of one person can increase risk to others and that in some cases this can rise to the level of physical aggression.  Sometimes you seem to be taking the ridiculous position that no one can ever possibly be at fault in an accident.

You say you do. Acknowledge man's life as the standard of value, but if you strictly mandate masking for all in every situation, this undermines what's explicit and implicit in the principle. Man's proper life: rational, independent, self-concerned, productive, constructive - and - continuously functioning.

A look back to the excerpt from Bayer's essay in the OP:

"Other people's lives contribute immensely to one's own self-interest. A world full of sick and dying people is not to anyone's advantage. Anyone who misses the life we all lost in March is already familiar with this. Whether you've lost a job or are grieving for a loved one, or even just miss being able to go to a restaurant with friends, you know other people matter to your interests. They are the potential employers, producers, innovators, and friends who help each of us live a happy human life. So why would you want to slow the return to normal life with people by getting them sick?"

His ethical reasoning is very dubious, citing self-interest in protecting one's employees without noting the deeper sacrifices. He makes a false equivalence and false causation, bundling together losing a job and grieving for a loved one. Lives do not depend upon ceasing human activity - losing employment--and never did: I've hypothesized, both ongoing business/commercial activity and maximum protection of life were greatly possible. Where left alone to make individual choices. Failing this, is where altruism was allowed to dominate.

Of course "a world full of sick and dying people is not to anyone's advantage"! And as for "getting them sick" ... Talk about encouraging the guilt of 'other'-responsibility...

His rather dramatic appeal to emotion obscures that "a world full of" non-functioning "potential employers, producers, innovators and friends" - an economy at standstill and a dangerous socio-politics on the rise to replace the 'old normal' - is exceedingly more terrible. There will be no immediate "return to normal life". For the majority who live on.

Like after a Pyrrhic victory, looking over the battlefield we'll see that we will have won the battle but lost everything in order to win it.

Edited by whYNOT
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If transmitting germs and viruses is taken to be initiation of force and physical aggression, one makes nonsense of individual rights. (And it is individual rights which forbid IOF). The only agency to protect us from initiation of force is the government, and therefore would have its hands full in every epidemic and pandemic or outbreak of disease. The Govt. already has excess of interference and force during this time of Covid. Imagine them dictating to every individual incident of transmission, arresting each culprit.

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8 hours ago, whYNOT said:

but if you strictly mandate masking for all in every situation

Doug, like me, and like you, all agree that this should all be voluntary... How many times does that need to be repeated?

12 hours ago, tadmjones said:

keeping my secretions off of others.

The point of masks isn't preventing secretions from getting on others. 

 

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2 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Doug, like me, and like you, all agree that this should all be voluntary... How many times does that need to be repeated?

 

 

DM could speak for himself, thanks. If so, he has been ambiguous about masking etc., since I recall him saying much earlier on that the President "should have used his 'bully pulpit' to bully the country into masking" - or words very close to that.

 

Edited by whYNOT
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1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

to bully the country into masking

I don't think you know what a bully pulpit is. It doesn't have to do with bullying people. Plus you missed a very important word, "encourage". I should leave the conversation here, I think I figured out well enough where the breakdown in communication is.

I don't think it's so much the difference has to do with facts that we recognize, but more about how we judge others. Whether we take the pessimistic route that the average person does things out of altruism even if some people do it for legitimate reasons, or the optimistic route that the average person doesn't do things out of altruism even if some people do it out of altruism. 

 

Edited by Eiuol
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10 hours ago, whYNOT said:

If transmitting germs and viruses is taken to be initiation of force and physical aggression, one makes nonsense of individual rights. (And it is individual rights which forbid IOF). The only agency to protect us from initiation of force is the government, and therefore would have its hands full in every epidemic and pandemic or outbreak of disease. 

Does that mean that you do NOT believe in the right to quarantine?

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12 hours ago, whYNOT said:

and as for "getting them sick" ... Talk about encouraging the guilt of 'other'-responsibility...

The point I am trying to make is that endangering others can rise to the level of physical aggression, that we need to be rational about where to draw the line, and that reacting emotionally to certain excesses is not sufficient.

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