> Critics would argue, “it’s confounded! more elderly are vaccinated.”
The same critics who had no problem confounding the COVID deaths before vaccines were even available, to justify the use of vaccines.
It is really insidious but a hallmark of what we are really dealing with.
Once you recoginize this pattern, you can take all their arguments for defending vaccine safety and with minor tweaks, completely justify the safety of COVID before the vaccines were even available.
The problem is not their arguments. The problem is their judgement.
What makes this insufferable, is that they are blissfully unaware of their own dichotomy.
(I have a hunch based on prospect theory why this might be the case, but haven't figured out a way of "fixing" it.)
We could try deconstructing all their arguments for vaccine safety and carefully applying them to COVID safety. And then ask them why they think their arguments are perfectly rational for the vaccines but not for COVID (?).
It boils down to how our brains process risk and reward. Vaccines have a positive connotation, whereas COVID has a negative one. So we use different parts of our brain to reason about them.
Both reasoning processes are completely logical from the stand point of the individual. It is almost as if our brains can compartmentalize rationality.
Each of these "regions" is completely "blind sided" from the other.
(I was going to write an informal article called "The blind side of logic" based on this. I have written down some notes and sketches, but then got caught up in analysing the 2020 US election data, and never really had much time to think more about it, until now. Unbeknownst to me at the time, it might be relevant to the COVID response.)
> Critics would argue, “it’s confounded! more elderly are vaccinated.”
The same critics who had no problem confounding the COVID deaths before vaccines were even available, to justify the use of vaccines.
It is really insidious but a hallmark of what we are really dealing with.
Once you recoginize this pattern, you can take all their arguments for defending vaccine safety and with minor tweaks, completely justify the safety of COVID before the vaccines were even available.
The problem is not their arguments. The problem is their judgement.
What makes this insufferable, is that they are blissfully unaware of their own dichotomy.
(I have a hunch based on prospect theory why this might be the case, but haven't figured out a way of "fixing" it.)
We could try deconstructing all their arguments for vaccine safety and carefully applying them to COVID safety. And then ask them why they think their arguments are perfectly rational for the vaccines but not for COVID (?).
It boils down to how our brains process risk and reward. Vaccines have a positive connotation, whereas COVID has a negative one. So we use different parts of our brain to reason about them.
Both reasoning processes are completely logical from the stand point of the individual. It is almost as if our brains can compartmentalize rationality.
Each of these "regions" is completely "blind sided" from the other.
(I was going to write an informal article called "The blind side of logic" based on this. I have written down some notes and sketches, but then got caught up in analysing the 2020 US election data, and never really had much time to think more about it, until now. Unbeknownst to me at the time, it might be relevant to the COVID response.)
Ah... the tricks our brain play on us.