site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1652 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 23, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

opting out of vaccination is, to an extent, mooching off the commons.

More than the commons mooches off of us? Citizens don't owe the commons one damn thing by default, and the balance seems tipped pretty far in the other direction lately what with all the accomodations we're expected to make around "living in a society".

If you think that citizens have no positive obligations towards improving the commons, I don't see why you'd want to make them worse off.

I don't know what you're pointing at when you say something like:

what with all the accomodations we're expected to make around "living in a society".

Hence I can't really engage with it.

At the very least, KMC's stated reason for opting out of vaccinating their kids, namely because other people are doing so too, and because of a minor drug reaction are terrible on merit alone. The COVID vaccine? I'm well past caring about it, or asking people to, but most others are recommended for very good reason, even for a person who doesn't care about the well-being of others.

I don't know what you're pointing at when you say something like:

what with all the accomodations we're expected to make around "living in a society".

I'm talking here about vaccines that are on the schedule with no clear benefit to the recipient -- COVID for kids, HPV for boys. 'Society' wants these administered for herd immunity reasons (I guess); 'society' also taxes us to the bone and provides pretty marginal access to services that we do want. (ADD drugs, for instance)

What has society done for me lately, that I should bend to its will?

HPV for boys

Hold up. Below covered it but HPV related cancers are absolutely skyrocketing in men.

I won't defend covid shots for kids. Marginal risks for marginal benefits.

HPV for boys? Infection with high risk strains can increase risk of anal, oropharyngeal and penile cancers. I have no idea if the risks are particularly high in absolute terms, at least not without doing more work than I want to this late. But unlike covid vaccines in kids, it strikes me as plausibly a good idea, even if I suspect that a lot of the net benefit is spreading herd immunity and protecting girls, where HPV actually is a big deal to my knowledge.

HPV for boys? Infection with high risk strains can increase risk of anal, oropharyngeal and penile cancers.

I have no idea if the risks are particularly high in absolute terms

Total incidence rate of those I'm getting something like 1/100k/a (https://www.mcgill.ca/hitchcohort/hpvfacts) -- no idea what percentage of those would be HPV related, but that is already well, well within the OOM that I'd find plausible for unnoticed/rare serious adverse vaccine side effects.

You and @Throwaway05 may have some new news on these rates -- but then the question is raised as to why anyone would believe doctors about this sort of thing after having seen how fast & loose the relationship with facts has been, once public health gets on some hobbyhorse.

HPV

I don't know what McGill is smoking.

https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/hpv/cases.html

The rate changes are a bit odd as sexual habits change (go men on finally eating women out!) and at the same time its getting a bit more controlled as more people are vaccinated. However some of the other causes (like smoking) are going down.

General

You believe doctors because it's retarded to throw out the entire field of medicine because of one misstep.

I could respect it if it was "okay fine I will never listen to a doctor again, clearly everything they say is wong" but the situation is very clearly picking and choosing what things to be mad about purely depending on how someone feels about it.

General vaccinations are already different enough from what happened with COVID, but now you are saying "lets just not listen to any public health recommendations in general," "why anyone would believe doctors about this sort of thing?" <- your own quote.

Great now go light up using somebody with Ebola's vomit as bong water.

No? That doesn't seem reasonable? Well it's also a public health recommendation!

At best people are using uninformed opinions and intuitions as laymen without doing any research at all to decide when to listen to expert advice, and ignoring it otherwise, and as we see elsewhere in this thread those opinions and intuitions are absolutely trash and often can be invalidated with the slightest, minimum possible research. See in other subthreads here the comically ill-informed takes on hepatitis, chickenpox.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats