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Anti-vaccine protesters… why?

Anti-vaxxers, those of the more vocal kind at least, tend not to be ‘single-issue’ sceptics. They disbelieve in climate change, the ‘official’ narrative about 9/11, and are often Holocaust deniers. They have a profound distrust of what they term the MSM, think that those who don’t share their beliefs are ‘sheeple’ yet, ironically swallow wholesale the guff put out by the likes of Piers Corbyn and David Icke.

They also want/need a Grand Unified Theory of how the world is run, with a sinister International ‘elite’ controlling everything that happens, towards a definite, if obscure purpose of enslaving humanity. Thus Covid was deliberately created with the sole aim of forcing people to receive ‘poison’ in the form of a vaccine, which will also enrich the elite. I guess it’s partly the inability of some people to accept randomness and cock-ups as being at least as important as sinister, carefully laid plans in the course of world history.
 

New research published in The Journal of No Shit Sherlock provides evidence that critical thinking skills are negatively related to belief in conspiracy theories. In other words, the study suggests that people with greater critical thinking skills are less likely to believe that terrorist attacks are being covertly directed by a country’s own government or that mind-control technology is secretly being used to control the population.
 

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

Carl Sagan - The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Scarily prescient and could apply to the UK just as much as the US.
 
Well, yes, but Sagan’s fears are essentially the same as those expressed by H L Mencken in the 1920s, summed up by him as ‘No-one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average American’.
 
Anti-vaxxers, those of the more vocal kind at least, tend not to be ‘single-issue’ sceptics. They disbelieve in climate change, the ‘official’ narrative about 9/11, and are often Holocaust deniers. They have a profound distrust of what they term the MSM, think that those who don’t share their beliefs are ‘sheeple’ yet, ironically swallow wholesale the guff put out by the likes of Piers Corbyn and David Icke.

They also want/need a Grand Unified Theory of how the world is run, with a sinister International ‘elite’ controlling everything that happens, towards a definite, if obscure purpose of enslaving humanity. Thus Covid was deliberately created with the sole aim of forcing people to receive ‘poison’ in the form of a vaccine, which will also enrich the elite. I guess it’s partly the inability of some people to accept randomness and cock-ups as being at least as important as sinister, carefully laid plans in the course of world history.

It also gives them something to blame for their life being shit, hard to make it when you're living in one big plot controlled by The Man.
 
'copy' and 'paste' requires very little literacy.

Or, he's as literate as the rest of us, and paid to pebbledash media with this stuff.

I've met Robin a couple of times and I don't believe for one minute he's being paid. He does believe what he says and is obviously intelligent.

We have a friend who is a professor and he's probably the most intelligent person I've met (he can talk for England). To say he's eccentric is an understatement. He also has strong beliefs that most wouldn't agree with.
 
I've met Robin a couple of times and I don't believe for one minute he's being paid. He does believe what he says and is obviously intelligent.

Then I'm afraid he is massively ill-informed, and his intelligence does not extend to the ability to properly assess risk of..say the Covid virus, v say.. the Covid vaccine. The whole thing is a numbers game.
As for toxins in vaccines. That is utter pseudo scientific bollox, based on outdated and misinterpreted info.
https://www.parents.com/health/vaccines/controversy/mercury-and-vaccines/
 
We have a friend who is a professor and he's probably the most intelligent person I've met (he can talk for England). To say he's eccentric is an understatement. He also has strong beliefs that most wouldn't agree with.

His beliefs are irrelevant..except to him. What is relevant to the rest of us, is whether his beliefs stand up to scientific examination. If they don't, they are relegated to the status of 'faith and mythology'. We've all seen where that sort of shite has led half of America, the entire population of Afghanistan, etc.

I find it hilarious that our 21stC conspiracy theorists, use the result of scientific research (The internet..computer chips, mobile tech, etc,etc..) ..to try to undermine science.
That alone marks them out as ****wits in my book.
 
My favourite bit is the libertarians telling me what to think.

Proponents of freedom advocating the policies of facist governments.

As I put a mask on outside Tesco, I had an anti vaxer telling me to breath the fresh air, as he sparked up a roll up.

Can’t wait to hear what Stewart Lee makes of all this!
 
It is in our DNA that a certain percentage will not agree with the majority. Normally it is a survival precaution. But in this case...
 
I think there is a tendency in most people to be a little sceptical about much they are told by "authority" and this is not a completely bad thing but taken to extremes, such as here and the case of my former colleague mentioned above it becomes an end in itself - nothing you are told by government / doctors / engineers / experts of any type can possibly be true, this results in the Qanon style loony movements as well as anti vax type people, many though not all of these beliefs coincide with right wing pro gun types as well as the more extreme Brexiteers. Opportunist politicians such as Trump and Boris just encourage and feed off this behaviour of course.

The irony is that these people think they are smarter than others but in fact they are just more gullible

No idea what to do about it though.
 

I've met Robin a couple of times, and he's a nice guy, so although I don't agree with his views on this, I don't want to get too involved either, but just wanted to point out that he's not trolling or being paid.

Edit: The other point I was trying to make is you can be intelligent, but also have beliefs (God for example).
 
I think there is a tendency in most people to be a little sceptical about much they are told by "authority" and this is not a completely bad thing but taken to extremes, such as here and the case of my former colleague mentioned above it becomes an end in itself - nothing you are told by government / doctors / engineers / experts of any type can possibly be true, this results in the Qanon style loony movements as well as anti vax type people, many though not all of these beliefs coincide with right wing pro gun types as well as the more extreme Brexiteers. Opportunist politicians such as Trump and Boris just encourage and feed off this behaviour of course.

The irony is that these people think they are smarter than others but in fact they are just more gullible

No idea what to do about it though.
Do? Well a society where there's no dissent seems like a rather unhealthy society to me and it's difficult to see how you set (and who sets) the boundary of valid dissent vs invalid dissent without the opportunity for abuse.

In summer 2020 I was approached at a venue by a chap who proceeded to regale me with his view of Trump's battle to rein in Gates' awful ambitions. And on Covid the iniquity of UK government ministers deliberately creating false panic over very little to subjugate the populace. He didn't really address my view that government ministers may have information but don't have either knowledge or much direct control - so cock-up is always much more likely than conspiracy. He was articulate, apparently intelligent, and he seemed to be truthful about owning a property business in India (under-performing due to Covid). So how can you tell in advance if someone has "interesting" opinions?

I met him again this summer at the same place and he had changed his tune to insisting that Fauci had been responsible for Covid through funding gain-of-function research at Wuhan because he couldn't do that in USA. And he was imminently going to be found out and imprisoned. I dared to mention conspiracy theories but he rather batted the issue away and I didn't pursue it.

Back in my locale, the stickers keep on appearing and being ripped away ...
 
I've met Robin a couple of times, and he's a nice guy, so although I don't agree with his views on this, I don't want to get too involved either, but just wanted to point out that he's not trolling or being paid.

Edit: The other point I was trying to make is you can be intelligent, but also have beliefs (God for example).
My question mark was that I see intelligence and holding those views he expressed as incompatible.
I must admit, I haven't seen any of his posts on here, and there have been a few, that would make me assess him as anything other than a full-on, barking nutter with a wide streak of gullibility.
Funny what you say about beliefs. The only reasonably close friend of mine who has gone full-blown anti vax also worked for a long time on perpetual motion machines and was obsessed with Rothwell, little green men etc.
For the record I personally place the probability of the existence of little green men, or at any rate extraterrestrials, rather higher than anti-vax bulshit having any foundation.
From odd posts I've seen about on here and elsewhere, I'm getting the impression that the church is not acquitting itself too well in the anti vax stakes either.
 
I've met Robin a couple of times, and he's a nice guy, so although I don't agree with his views on this, I don't want to get too involved either, but just wanted to point out that he's not trolling or being paid.

Edit: The other point I was trying to make is you can be intelligent, but also have beliefs (God for example).
People often behave differently face to face vs online. We've seen, upthread, his antivaxx position, which is at best misguided, and could reasonably be characterised as forceful, borderline aggressive; and this was his recent contribution on climate change in the gas boilers thread.
More nonsensical thinking in a completely pointless and futile attempt to stop a non-existent problem. Hare-brained thinking which if implemented would take us back to the dark ages. Very rarely have I heard such absolute and utter misguided twaddle in my entire life. The whole emphasis on CO2 is completely wrong. It doesn't trap heat (it's physical properties don't allow it to), and even if it could, there isn't enough of it to make the blindest bit of difference to the planet's temperature. The climate does change, but it's in natural cycles of approximately 180,000 years, humans have absolutely no effect on it at all.

I just find it interesting that some people have an unerring knack of being on the wrong side of an argument, and often have an unshakeable grip on the wrong end of the stick. Any stick.
 
I hesitate to describe myself as 'highly intelligent', but at least I'm aware of the limits of my knowledge, and therefore don't go round challenging the opinions of those with much greater knowledge and experience of things about which I know little or nothing. To do so might be a sign of something, but it's unlikely to be a sign of intelligence.
 
I do get the alienation/outsider thing a lot of people who fall for conspiracy theory and popularism clearly feel. I’ve always viewed myself as an outsider. I feel entirely disenfranchised by UK politics and view it as a fundamentally corrupt anti-democratic charade. I have no voice or advocate in that arena at all. I am however not an idiot, or at least I don’t think I am (I guess no one does!). No way in hell would I ever get into an argument with peer-reviewed science, NASA, the global medical consensus etc on anything. These are exactly the people I trust the most on this planet! That’s the bit I don’t get at all. The point people throw all logic away and start falling for religion or charlatans rather than using hard evidence and logic to fight their ground.
 
I am however not an idiot, or at least I don’t think I am (I guess no one does!). No way in hell would I ever get into an argument with peer-reviewed science, NASA, the global medical consensus etc on anything. These are exactly the people I trust the most on this planet! That’s the bit I don’t get at all. The point people throw all logic away and start falling for religion or charlatans rather than using hard evidence and logic to fight their ground.
I'd broadly put myself in a similar position, but I do still align firmly in the subjectivist camp on cable, mains and supports threads so I'm a little wary of throwing too many rocks. That said, there's a difference between not denying your own lived experience, and swallowing others' bullshit wholesale.
 


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