Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> My body my choice? If being pregnant was contagious, we'd treat it as a very different issue.
I would read that short story.
A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929
31–40 of 180 posts
Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929
#32[flagged]
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Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929
#33It's amusing to see the early signs of the anti-vax movement here. The history of that movement is long. Humans are built to thrive in danger, chaos and instability. I think a good chunk of humans go insane in a safe and stable environment and resent the things that allow them to live mundane, safe lives -- technology, medicine and rational thinking. I think there's a certain amount of cherry-picking going on with th…
>Humans are built to thrive in danger, chaos and instability. I think a good chunk of humans go insane in a safe and stable environment and resent the things that allow them to live mundane, safe lives -- technology, medicine and rational thinking. And yet science says the opposite. The prevailing evidence suggests that humans are generally better suited to stable and safe environments, with danger and chaos typicall…
The word "generally" is the important one in your sentence. Genes don't know what environment they will be born into, and so they include various strategies to cope with the unknown in the hope that some will survive.
Generally, humans are better suited to stable and safe environments. But it would be irresponsible of genes not to include, occasionally, humans who did better in chaos because chaos frequently happens.
Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929
#34It's amusing to see the early signs of the anti-vax movement here. The history of that movement is long. Humans are built to thrive in danger, chaos and instability. I think a good chunk of humans go insane in a safe and stable environment and resent the things that allow them to live mundane, safe lives -- technology, medicine and rational thinking. I think there's a certain amount of cherry-picking going on with th…
> It's amusing to see the early signs of the anti-vax movement here.
Not surprising. I look at vaccines the same way as I look at any new medication: has it been tested long enough to know what the long-term effects of it are, and do the benefits outweigh the risks. I don't have a problem with MMR, TB and other common vaccines, that have been around for decades. If I'm traveling to East Africa I'm going to get a yellow fever vaccine. I also don't have a problem with the COVID vaccine because it was clear that the risk of not getting vaccinated was significant. But I have never gotten a "flu shot" in my life because the benefit of it is rather low relative to the risk of influenza given my demographics and health. If that makes me an anti-vaxxer, so be it. Don't really care.
Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
People don't set their standard of a good life against a 3000 year old kingdom they've never seen or think about. Nor are they impressed when people resort to mining the ancient past or far-off countries for the deepest pits of misery they can find to make things sound good by comparison.
Nor are they impressed when people resort to mining the ancient past or far-off countries for the deepest pits of misery they can find to make things look good by comparison. Practicing gratitude is a pretty common strategy for combating depression. If young people today in developed nations don't even understand how bad humans used to have it (and still do, in some places), how can they possibly be grateful for what…
But it was the Faustian striving ever upwards that built a better world.
Anyway, I'm not sure this is gratitude so much as the gratification in having someone you can look down on.
Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929
#36[flagged]
The author might be wrong. It can actually be racist in ways beyond "African people are genetically inferior." I didn't find the author to be particularly deeply invested, they seemed to want to score some points over "social justice warriors" and then backed off pretty quickly with an "it's complicated" footnote.
When I read that part I also thought they were just trying to pwn the libs, but the rest of the article was so good, and what they said isn’t inaccurate, so now I think I was just projecting that.
Not being super invested and having it just be a small part of the article actually seems right to me so idk.
I’ve hit my fair share, but this article alone in no way makes me think this person is one.
Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929
#37It's amusing to see the early signs of the anti-vax movement here. The history of that movement is long. Humans are built to thrive in danger, chaos and instability. I think a good chunk of humans go insane in a safe and stable environment and resent the things that allow them to live mundane, safe lives -- technology, medicine and rational thinking. I think there's a certain amount of cherry-picking going on with th…
What is it about vaccines? Lots of anti-vaxxers are fine with other kinds of drugs and use them liberally, even in many cases street drugs. They'll eat fast food, processed food, use household chemicals, do all kinds of other things that expose them to things they don't understand and may not be good for them, but vaccines are just the devil incarnate. The word vaccine seems to provoke a visceral gut reaction among a…
Of course, in the pandemic we saw extreme versions of this. Anything to avoid vaccination, but ivermectin and other risky drugs were no problem. If vaccination would be alternative medicine and ivermection government mandated, we might see the reverse.
So I don't think its vaccination perse, at least not on its own, but vaccines have various things going against them. Like someone else in this thread said, government mandate + preventative medicine has the right ingredients to form a conspiracy theory with, religious doctrine has historically amplified that as well. Additionally, there's also a distrust of 'big pharma' in general, and especially with minority groups a history of dubious or even malevolent medical experimentation by the government.
A big part of the antivaxxers are now also anti 5G, advocate against the use of sunscreen, are against wind energy and EV, sometimes pro-russia, anti-deepstate, etc. Some of this is fossil lobby, some of it is the result of Russian propaganda and other parts are just organic whackyness, like the flat earthers.
Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929
#38It's amusing to see the early signs of the anti-vax movement here. The history of that movement is long. Humans are built to thrive in danger, chaos and instability. I think a good chunk of humans go insane in a safe and stable environment and resent the things that allow them to live mundane, safe lives -- technology, medicine and rational thinking. I think there's a certain amount of cherry-picking going on with th…
What is it about vaccines? Lots of anti-vaxxers are fine with other kinds of drugs and use them liberally, even in many cases street drugs. They'll eat fast food, processed food, use household chemicals, do all kinds of other things that expose them to things they don't understand and may not be good for them, but vaccines are just the devil incarnate. The word vaccine seems to provoke a visceral gut reaction among a…
> Something about vaccines creeps a lot of people out for reasons I don't understand.
I think it's the fact that vaccines are heavily pushed on everyone, which is very different than a medication that you choose to take, or your doctor specifically prescribes for you, to address a medical condition. Taking chemicals to cure some disease is different than taking chemicals when you're healthy simply to decrease a risk that you may or may not consider relevant to you. Also, often vaccines are administered not for your own sake but to protect the community, and so again it's a different calculation where you're injecting chemicals (or injecting your kids with chemicals) not because you think you need them but to potentially protect others should you become ill. Also there often isn't as much explanation around vaccines (besides COVID) as to their makeup, etc., compared to some medication that your doctor prescribes to you (i.e., if my Dr prescribes a blood thinner I'm going to get a pretty thorough explanation of it and can ask questions, whereas with vaccines it feels mandatory without much explanation other than "the surgeon general said to".
So it's not at all surprising to me that there is strong resistance to vaccines from some people who have no problem with medications in general.
Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929
#39Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929
#40Science has delivered a standard of living to most of the developed world that is greater than that of an Egyptian Pharaoh or a Roman Emperor in numerous ways: health, food, availability of information, ease of travel, physical comfort, etc. Yet visit social media and it's absolutely overflowing with gloom and doom and histrionic political rage and fear bait. Saw a thread recently on Reddit about how many young peopl…
No one cares that our lives are better than humans who lived thousands of years ago or even 100 years ago. And why should we? The benchmark is other humans living today and how they are faring.
> We'd have to fall pretty far for their standard of living to decline below that of Pharaoh Ramses II.
Not most people in America. Sure, Ramses didn't have a car, phone or modern medicine; but he could get whatever he wanted _that was available at the time_. That's the yardstick.