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Have any prominent Objectivists addressed this point II?

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2 hours ago, tadmjones said:

The first roll outs of the polio vax were disastrous, technicalities with the preparations lead to infections caused by the vaccines. 

Which isn't the case here. This is a red herring, trying to introduce skepticism for all people who want a vaccine simply based on how one time more than half a century ago a vaccine preparation wasn't done properly. 

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3 hours ago, whYNOT said:

When you went from "initiation of physical force" (misunderstood) by not masking and not vaccinating - to "murder" by Covid,

I have never spoken of " 'murder' by Covid" or anything like that.  You must have badly misunderstood one of my posts, perhaps the one in which I said that Hitler and Stalin probably had laws against certain actions that should be viewed as very serious initiations of physical force and are widely recognized as very serious crimes.

4 hours ago, whYNOT said:

what's your need by belaboring over and over that single point

If I have belabored over and over a single point, it is because, over and over, someone seems to be ignoring or misunderstanding it.

 

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3 hours ago, whYNOT said:

And if someone's health threat from catching Covid is extremely low to zero, on a personal risk-benefit scale - for whom and for what is one getting vaccinated, in the first place?

This can be true, and there can still be a risk that that person will spread the disease.

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3 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Repeat, you are not pro-liberty if you believe that liberty is only for the smart and rational by your 'revealed knowledge' (mind reading).

 

3 hours ago, whYNOT said:

What has Doug Morris implied and stated many times? Initiation of physical force.

To say that an action is initiation of physical force is not to say that liberty is not for people performing that action.  We can have laws against such actions as speeding, letting one's dogs run unleashed, or disturbing one's neighbors' sleep and still recognize that people who do such things are entitled to liberty.

If you want to attack my views, you should address the arguments I have made on this website to support my claim that failure to mask or to vaccinate can rise to the level of physical force.  You should explain where you think those arguments go wrong.  You should not smear me by putting words into my mouth.

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3 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

Someone who does not own a car or have swimming pool etc. doesn't have those responsibilities/requirements.

Someone who does not have a respiratory system should not be required to mask or to vaccinate.  To put it another way, if we ever build rational computer systems, they should not be required to mask or to vaccinate. 

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3 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

But in the case of vaccination, do I or you have the right to invade someone's body and vaccinate them for the good of the group?

It is not for open-ended collectivist nonsense like "the good of the group".  It is on the grounds that failure to vaccinate increases the risk of spreading disease, and that this is physical force.

3 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

The fundamental right is to be unmolested

Germs molest people.

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1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:

increases the risk of spreading disease, and that this is physical force.

To confuse risk of physical force with  initiation of physical force is to confuse a potential with an actual. The whole mandatory vaccination position depends on a Parmenidean worldview in which all that exists is fully actual, combined with disregarding the need to obtain sufficient information to blame any one person for anything. It is the same fallacy employed by advocates of anti-immigration, gun control, and environmentalism. Thank you for helping to make that connection.

 

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3 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Which isn't the case here. This is a red herring, trying to introduce skepticism for all people who want a vaccine simply based on how one time more than half a century ago a vaccine preparation wasn't done properly. 

The point was they first picked the wrong strain for manufacture and inadvertently used live virus , and there was a second fuck up when they switched to an attenuated virus in an oral preparation. The digestive system reanimated the virus and those exposed to fecal matter, like parents changing diapers were infected .

It is an example that the time it takes to know beyond hypothesis takes the time it takes. If these novel vaccines are effective enough to be worth the inherent risk all the better, no one can claim that is true now , to say nothing of the beginning of last year . 

Didnt the New England Journal of Medicine just have to admit they lied when they reported the vaccines were safe for pregnant women ? Were pregnant women part of the test cohort ? 

Given the relative and seemingly limited protection from infection conferred by this generation of covid vaccines , they are feeling more and more therapeutic which places them even further outside the realm of the OP.

The anti-anti vaxxers argument presupposes the dubious idea of zero or near zero covid. The most reasonable estimation is that most people will be infected. Theses particular vaccines are not the only treatments to show some promise and efficacy in symptom relief and slowing of the progression of disease.

Edited by tadmjones
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55 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

anti-anti vaxxers argument

I don't actually know what this argument is or who this refers to exactly. I mean, do you mean a view that not being vaccinated is itself threatening? Because the only position I am offering here is that vaccine skepticism is invalid and that it is a poor basis for any argument. 

2 hours ago, 2046 said:

To confuse risk of physical force with  initiation of physical force is to confuse a potential with an actual.

I pretty much agree with you but how do you take into account what is right now potential but will imminently be actualized in a short amount of time? And using the same type of example, what would you say if you were only reasonably confident that harm will happen? 

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1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

what is right now potential but will imminently be actualized in a short amount of time?

Sounds like an actual

1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

what would you say if you were only reasonably confident that harm will happen? 

Sounds like a potential

On the first, it may be helpful to shift your focus from starting off already knowing what qualifies as an act vs potency (since that is the very question at hand) and the temporal element which is secondary to an existing actuality, to what you know about how it will imminently reach some state, and whether those factors are actual or not. Of course you cannot know that without individualized determination.

In the case of the vaccine mandates, one does not only invade someone's body against their will before an actual initiation of force has occurred (rather only on a potential future possibility of some unwanted effect), but also without the knowledge of the attribution of any specific immanent harm from any specific individual. And they are quite often explicit about this and think it's a good thing (eg., calling it a collective action problem.)

 

 

 

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On 9/14/2021 at 2:34 PM, Doug Morris said:

If you are dead, the risk of death is 100% for all future times.

That's not at all how the word risk or how statistical expectation values are used. If you take a Methods 100 level class, here is one way you'll learn to use the word risk:

risk₁ - the statistical expectation value of an unwanted event which may or may not occur

With this, you could use something like the average number of deaths from the last 10 years is the risk of some potential event. You see how you can't assign to a state that had already occurred an expectation value because you are no longer talking about something that may or may not occur.

But just in general, ordinary language, the word "risk" means several different concepts. One is something like:

risk₂ - an unwanted event which may or may not occur

Example: “Lung cancer is one of the major risks that affect smokers.”

Or something like:

risk₃ - the cause of an unwanted event which may or may not occur

Example: “Smoking is by far the most important health risk in industrialized countries.”

Or probably the closest ordinary usage to the statistical usage:

risk₄ - the probability of an unwanted event which may or may not occur

Example: “The risk that a smoker’s life is shortened by a smoking-related disease is about 50%.”

Problem: none of these tell me precisely what an initiation of physical force is, or what would qualify as an initiation of physical force. So if someone were to say something like "risk is physical force" or "identifiable increases in risk must be restrained with physical force" or something along those lines, you can safely disregard this person as a source of knowledge on the issue.

This attempt at tying individual rights to risk, rather than initiation of physical force, will cast such a wide net that nearly all human activity would be restrained or prohibited. Almost everything a person does imposes some risks on others. Just by walking down the hallway at work for example, I impose the risk of spreading cold or flu. The prohibition or penalization of some risk would also itself impose other risks, and introduce a large amount of insecurity into human life, as Nozick pointed out, that having an indefeasible right not to be risk-exposed would be self defeating.

 

 

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21 hours ago, 2046 said:

To confuse risk of physical force with  initiation of physical force is to confuse a potential with an actual.

Does this mean we should not have laws against reckless driving, reckless firing of a gun, reckless burning when fire danger is high, or any other form of reckless endangerment?

21 hours ago, 2046 said:

a Parmenidean worldview in which all that exists is fully actual

I am not saying that possible future infections are fully actual.  I am saying that already existing germs are fully actual and that physical endangerment can rise to the level of physical force.

21 hours ago, 2046 said:

disregarding the need to obtain sufficient information to blame any one person for anything

We would need such information to justify suing or prosecuting someone for actually causing harm.  We do not need it to prove endangerment.

21 hours ago, 2046 said:

anti-immigration

An immigrant does not endanger anyone by simply entering the country; there is no justification for restricting entry.  Anti-immigration is driven largely by xenophobia, racism, protectionism, and blaming immigrants for violating laws that violate their rights.

21 hours ago, 2046 said:

gun control, and environmentalism

Exactly what sort of gun control?  Exactly what sort of environmentalism? 

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4 hours ago, 2046 said:

That's not at all how the word risk or how statistical expectation values are used. If you take a Methods 100 level class, here is one way you'll learn to use the word risk:

risk₁ - the statistical expectation value of an unwanted event which may or may not occur

With this, you could use something like the average number of deaths from the last 10 years is the risk of some potential event. You see how you can't assign to a state that had already occurred an expectation value because you are no longer talking about something that may or may not occur.

But just in general, ordinary language, the word "risk" means several different concepts. One is something like:

risk₂ - an unwanted event which may or may not occur

Example: “Lung cancer is one of the major risks that affect smokers.”

Or something like:

risk₃ - the cause of an unwanted event which may or may not occur

Example: “Smoking is by far the most important health risk in industrialized countries.”

Or probably the closest ordinary usage to the statistical usage:

risk₄ - the probability of an unwanted event which may or may not occur

Example: “The risk that a smoker’s life is shortened by a smoking-related disease is about 50%.”

Problem: none of these tell me precisely what an initiation of physical force is, or what would qualify as an initiation of physical force. So if someone were to say something like "risk is physical force" or "identifiable increases in risk must be restrained with physical force" or something along those lines, you can safely disregard this person as a source of knowledge on the issue.

This attempt at tying individual rights to risk, rather than initiation of physical force, will cast such a wide net that nearly all human activity would be restrained or prohibited. Almost everything a person does imposes some risks on others. Just by walking down the hallway at work for example, I impose the risk of spreading cold or flu. The prohibition or penalization of some risk would also itself impose other risks, and introduce a large amount of insecurity into human life, as Nozick pointed out, that having an indefeasible right not to be risk-exposed would be self defeating.

 

 

I am not asking for a blanket elimination of risk.  I am saying that unnecessarily increasing physical risk can rise to physical force.

My comment about risk and death was a response to the bizarre statement that life increases risk.

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19 hours ago, 2046 said:

Sounds like an actual

How could it be? If I shoot a gun, the bullet going towards you has not actualized the damage yet, but you know it will very soon. The bullet hasn't "done its work" so to speak, meaning that since the bullet isn't doing anything to you yet, the damage can't be actual just yet. The damage isn't doing its work either. It remains as potential until the time you're hit. The difference with disease in many cases is just the amount of time for the damage to be actualized. 

Furthermore, the fact that there is time until the damage happens introduces a degree of uncertainty. It is not an absolute guarantee that shooting a gun will cause damage, because of so many random things that might happen. With a concrete like this before something happens, all you have is potential, the realistic possibility that damage will happen, albeit with a high probability.

I agree that what matters is how it will reach that dangerous state, so I guess I could say that potential and actual about the harm isn't primary. What is primary is the context and condition in which things are happening. Disease might, in some instances, be like a bullet shot from a gun, but as with the bullet, we don't discuss the risk involved. Rather we talk about if the conditions are met to cause damage, as far as anybody would reasonably expect (crowded areas, direct line of sight, proximity, etc.). 

 

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45 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

How could it be? If I shoot a gun, the bullet going towards you has not actualized the damage yet, but you know it will very soon. The bullet hasn't "done its work" so to speak, meaning that since the bullet isn't doing anything to you yet, the damage can't be actual just yet

Actual and potential are reflexive terms. Something is not absolutely actual or potential, but in regards to something else. Example: the acorn is actually an acorn, but potentially an oak tree. The oak tree is actually a tree but potentially a rotting log. In a similar way, a bullet just leaving the barrel could be potentially hitting its target, while at the same time an actual initiation of physical force. A threat could be potentially damaging your car, but an actual initiation of physical force.

I know that's not a complete answer to your question but it's a start.

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On 9/17/2021 at 10:45 AM, whYNOT said:

"The HART group are informing us that several media outlets in the UK have simultaneously released a story alleging that, "unvaccinated people are risking their own health and will become potential factories of  coronavirus variants". Commenting on these news items, Dr Gerry Quinn who is a post-doctoral Researcher in Microbiology and Immunology (and therefore appropriately qualified to comment), points out that the reverse is more likely to be true. He says, "there is the as yet unproven (but not discounted) theoretical possibility that vaccination may be making the situation of ‘mutant variants’ worse".

The reason for this is that natural immunity, which is now estimated to be at over 80% provides a far broader protection as it is not narrowed to a reaction to just the spike protein".

https://www.totalhealth.co.uk/blog/are-people-getting-full-facts-covid-vaccine-risks

 

 

This requotation needs addressing as an example of many such scientists who independently have voiced similar reservations (for the very long term, not side effects). They are gaining nothing out of it, quite the opposite, their reputations are being slurred. No one can doubt that there has been information censoring/filtering throughout the pandemic by the 'legitimate' scientists. The rush to coerce vaccinations on whole populations must give pause for thought. If even a theoretical possibility, vaccinations "may be making mutant viruses worse".

So what does the individual, who wants to follow the proper science, believe in and do? Place automatic faith in govt., media and pharmaceuticals? Take the jab when he/she has no pressing need of it? If they have any hesitancy, given the scientific dissent, previous cover-ups and noble lies, and they have the slightest reasonable doubt - their reluctance to be sacrificed for the common good is eminently supportable by Objectivists, you'd think. These people probably represent the last remnants of the independent individualists in collectivist societies.

Mandates. Who benefits? If 'Society' is the beneficiary, not oneself and one's own, you not only have the right to refuse you have the moral right to refuse.

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11 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

I am not asking for a blanket elimination of risk.  I am saying that unnecessarily increasing physical risk can rise to physical force.

My comment about risk and death was a response to the bizarre statement that life increases risk.

Life requires risk. Living IS risk. Or else one wouldn't get out of bed every morning.

DM, you are stuck in a single and linear modality: person-to-person transmission. So you come by unending culpability for random others' health/illness, at risk of initiating force.

Clear, you don't know the facts.

A virus becomes an epidemic and pandemic when it has a greater transmission rate than one. When it has an R0 factor of (e.g.) 3, one may calculate that only five generations of infection starting from one person will lead to 1000 cases over a short period. Then show which person in the exponential chain is responsible for physical force, or, all of them...

The transmission is "out of control". 

Basic questions of strategy 1. do you try to clamp down on the spread? (an unsuccessful policy, as fatality results show us. With a host of knock-on problems and damage, we won't see the end of for decades).

or 2. do you self-select and select the "vulnerable cohort" for special protection, allowing the spread in the vastly less-risk population until natural herd immunity had been reached? (and it would have been) -  then following up with vaccines for the vulnerable when they are later developed.

https://www.physio-pedia.com/Endemics,_Epidemics_and_Pandemics

 

 

"The WHO defines pandemics, epidemics, and endemics based on a disease's rate of spread. Thus, the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic isn't in the severity of the disease, but the degree to which it has spread.

A pandemic cuts across international boundaries, as opposed to regional epidemics. This wide geographical reach is what makes pandemics lead to large-scale social disruption, economic loss, and general hardship.

It's important to note that a once-declared epidemic can progress into pandemic status. While an epidemic is large, it is also generally contained or expected in its spread, while a pandemic is international and out of control".

 

 

 

Edited by whYNOT
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16 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

... unnecessarily increasing physical risk can rise to physical force.

 

What is "unnecessarily"? One man's standard of necessity will not be an other's and the criterion of 'judgment' will be subjective/relativist so none can judge objectively.

It's necessary for a rational man to take all possible risks into account - and assume, benevolently and fearlessly, that no one is "out to get him" deliberately. If there are a few who will dangerously fire off guns in public, that is a remote reality he accepts for going out, pursuing his goals. Otherwise, for any who are so scared of people, be consistent - hide away from society on a mountain top or deserted island. (Or cover yourself up/take the jabs, etc.) This argument you pose resorts to alarmism, and sounds like the horde of vaxxers trying to intimidate and 'guilt' any others into compliant behavior. Only some libertarians' version of "initiation of force" (NAP) ~might~ lend your argument credibility. I.e. then NIOF is a floating abstraction, detached from man's nature, and ethics and individual rights. "You will NOT do such and such - you can't guarantee others may not be harmed!" (Ending up in practice a primary concern for 'the other', a rigid, self- restrictive commandment, inimical to an individual's freedom of action).

Edited by whYNOT
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Seen, a mention of Rand, on The Wife's Facebook page among a largely freedom-orientated, rational and thoughtful thread (unusual and glad to know) by several South Africans:

"For the record, all the antivaxx arguments - pro-choice, my body, experimental, microchips, Bill Gates, natural immunity, Big Pharma, a New Holocaust - it's all selfish, Ayn Rand, individualist, libertarian, bullshit". 

Notice the package-deal. Against forced vaccines - must - equal 'microchips' etc.etc.

For his angry conclusion: generally for Oists one presumes, and essentially, absolutely true.

The writer reveals profound awareness that the enemy of the collective is the individual.

That is the main war, of which vaxxes and masks and so on, is a subsidiary.

 

Edited by whYNOT
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9 hours ago, whYNOT said:

unending culpability

No, I am not saying that.

9 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Then show which person in the exponential chain is responsible for physical force, or, all of them

That's a wrongheaded way to look at it.  We do not need to identify any chains or individuals in chains to prove that failure to mask or to vaccinate increases the risk of spread of the disease.  It appears you will never understand that I am saying that unnecessarily increasing such risk can rise to physical force.

It is a technical issue whether we emphasize controlling spread or we let the spread rip and hope for natural immunity.  I do not trust your sources of technical information. 

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4 hours ago, whYNOT said:

What is "unnecessarily"?

An example of necessary increase in risk would be a case where someone has a legitimate medical reason for not masking or not vaccinating.  We may need to work on this some more for the purpose of writing laws.

I am trying to clarify one philosophical point.  I am not trying or claiming to give an encyclopedic treatment of all the technical issues of medicine and the philosophy of law that might be relevant to deciding what exactly the law should say.

4 hours ago, whYNOT said:

one is "out to get him" deliberately

 

4 hours ago, whYNOT said:

scared of people,

 

4 hours ago, whYNOT said:

alarmism,

 

4 hours ago, whYNOT said:

intimidate and 'guilt' any others into compliant behavior

I am not doing, advocating, or condoning any of these things.

4 hours ago, whYNOT said:

you can't guarantee others may not be harmed!

I am not asking for an absolute guarantee.

I am saying we should rationally determine at what point increasing physical risk rises to physical force.

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4 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Seen, a mention of Rand, on The Wife's Facebook page among a largely freedom-orientated, rational and thoughtful thread (unusual and glad to know) by several South Africans:

"For the record, all the antivaxx arguments - pro-choice, my body, experimental, microchips, Bill Gates, natural immunity, Big Pharma, a New Holocaust - it's all selfish, Ayn Rand, individualist, libertarian, bullshit". 

Notice the package-deal. Against forced vaccines - must - equal 'microchips' etc.etc.

For his angry conclusion: generally for Oists one presumes, and essentially, absolutely true.

The writer reveals profound awareness that the enemy of the collective is the individual.

 

We must not let this push us into swinging to the other side of the same false coin.

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11 hours ago, whYNOT said:

If even a theoretical possibility, vaccinations "may be making mutant viruses worse"

Even if they make the Delta strain worse specifically, that's only harmful to the people who are not vaccinated. In which case it's not really vaccination that makes the Delta strain worse, it is the fact that a vaccine exists but specifically there are people who don't want to get the vaccine. Incidentally, this would mean they are making it worse for themselves. Not the vaccines.

50 minutes ago, Doug Morris said:

We must not let this push us into swinging to the other side of the same false coin.

The better approach is to use whyNot as a punching bag for practice on finding fallacies and errors in reasoning. He has a lot of them and it's good practice.

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2 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Even if they make the Delta strain worse specifically, that's only harmful to the people who are not vaccinated. In which case it's not really vaccination that makes the Delta strain worse, it is the fact that a vaccine exists but specifically there are people who don't want to get the vaccine. Incidentally, this would mean they are making it worse for themselves. Not the vaccines.

 

No, by many scientists, possible and future mutations of the virus could be most harmful to the repeatedly mass-vaxxed especially. There are those who definitely should, in self-interest, get vaccinated because of preexisting conditions. Their risk-benefit ratio, Covid infection v. vaccination, is heavily weighted in favor. There are those who don't need to. There are those who don't want to. All have the rights to refuse or be temporarily hesitant, regardless of the reasons for those choices.

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