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They Died from Covid. Then the Online Attacks Started

nytimes.com

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Re: They Died from Covid. Then the Online Attacks Started

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. If you give society both middle fingers while headed off a cliff at speed as the crowd shouts to you to stop, not much sympathy when you’ve run out of runway. We use your experience to encourage better outcomes for those still with us who can make better choices.

not having sympathy for people is a far cry from collectively laughing at their death and trolling their family members. there's a difference between shrugging off people you find to be moronic or destructive and being an aggressor and mean spirited. and the common defense of things like https://old.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/ is to equate the two, and it's intentionally dishonest

The posts discussed are public. Why couldn’t we discuss public statements, including criticising them? Each story is a lesson, and the subreddit also has good stories of people who got vaccinated or got their loved ones vaccinated after having seen some of these horror stories. They also have a strong redaction policy, and do not encourage stalking, trolling, or harassment.

The Guardian is also running some stories about how some peoples were led to distrust vaccines and paid it with their lives. This is important. We need to expose mistakes if we want to avoid repeating them.

Re: They Died from Covid. Then the Online Attacks Started

#42
post #19
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exact rhetoric is something you often hear whenever any sort of left leaning person does anything remotely incriminating. It's really hard to separate the reasonable criticism from the neonazi trolling, which usually leaves one to search for embedded dog whistles. Of which this post has a few. I will leave it up to you if that is something you wish to address.

I'm always suspicious about who is actually making these posts. Surely it is obvious to them that nobody would ever fall for it or treat it in good faith. The only conclusion that seems to make any sense is that the authors are being paid to write these comments.

> Surely it is obvious to them that nobody would ever fall for it or treat it in good faith.

This says a lot about you, and makes me suspicious about your posts.

You either assume that someone with a different view is lying, that they don't even believe in their own views, because these are obviously wrong.

Or you are unable to treat posts in good faith, suspecting a commercial incentive.

So, you can not contribute anything to this community. If you disagree, it is because you disagree with liars. And who treats something in good faith, when they suspect the other person is not acting in good faith?

Your suspicion should make you conclude that you have nothing of value to contribute and should look for a community where everybody agrees or promises to act in good faith.

Re: They Died from Covid. Then the Online Attacks Started

#43
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that depends on who gets to decide value and in what manner. Settled scientific facts are not the same as politics and policy. They can be useful in determining policy, but are not a default policy. It also depends on how those facts get linked together. You need to question the n-order impacts to devise good policy. "If there is a belief among some that settled scientific questions are a matter of non-expert…

> Settled scientific facts are not the same as politics and policy Except that we are talking about scientific facts here, and not policy. If the political movement accepted that vaccines are seemingly safe and effective, but still rejected getting them based on some other critique, that would be a political topic. Or if say the "anti-mask" movement were solely against mask mandates , while encouraging everyone to be…

Perhaps the lumping together of various opinions and he implication that the political movement doesn't accept general safety is what's causing the disconnect here. It seems that many of those being shamed on that Reddit did not share misinformation, or even any public misinformation on the vaccine.

Vaccines are generally safe. There are a number of factors that an individual may weigh to consider their value. Many of the opponents are against mandates so that individuals can weigh the choice themselves.

Sure, there are people who say things that are blatantly untrue (on both sides). We can try to shame them for false information. We still have the question of how civil this shaming should be. It also depends on group/public sentiment on how useful this will be - it could be seen as a badge of honor, group think can play a role too.

Re: They Died from Covid. Then the Online Attacks Started

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, to be fair, it's flagrant "thumbing their nose at you as they're being rolled into intensive care", top-level ignorance. The HCA subreddit made me uneasy, but the rules and goal do seem to be at least semi-compassionate in a "save the flock being led off the hill by showing them the dead shepherd" kind of way.

do you really think a sub reddit that talks down to people is going to win any hearts and minds? really?

https://twitter.com/StarZimmerman6/status/146217386567357644... (r/HermanCainAward celebrates its 99th and 100th IPA. This is the 99th and 100th person(s) who decided to be vaccinated after lurking on the Herman Cain Award subreddit. | Nov 20, 2021)

Oxygen concentrator fund raise and donation for someone terminally ill who could not afford it: https://old.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/comments/qmw4o8/a_d...

So, it appears so? The style might not be...ideal, but the results speak for themselves., and I will go so far as to say lives are being saved.

Re: They Died from Covid. Then the Online Attacks Started

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you really think a sub reddit that talks down to people is going to win any hearts and minds? really?

https://twitter.com/StarZimmerman6/status/146217386567357644... (r/HermanCainAward celebrates its 99th and 100th IPA. This is the 99th and 100th person(s) who decided to be vaccinated after lurking on the Herman Cain Award subreddit. | Nov 20, 2021) Oxygen concentrator fund raise and donation for someone terminally ill who could not afford it: https://old.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/comments/qmw4o8/a_d... So, it app…

how do measure all the people who have become increasingly entrenched in their anti-vaxx positions due to encountering those communities?

how many simply "hesitant" just double-down in contrarianism to that sub-reddit of assholes?

Re: They Died from Covid. Then the Online Attacks Started

#46

Putting aside any special reverence we might have for the dead, I guess the abstract question is: is there any social value to publicly shaming those who uncritically call into question settled scientific claims, putting others at risk? I would say there is some value. Our society will not survive if it is socially acceptable to do this. COVID is exhibit A. Climate science is exhibit B. Settled scientific matters, li…

public shaming, and more so mobbing, is not an adequate method of civilised dialogue. The argument in favor is highly consequentialistic: if the total result is a net positive, the method is deemed morally right. However i consider this method wrong on principle as it uses emotional/psychological violence at the hand of vigilantes. More so the use of such violence is eristic: the method itself doesn't lead to a deeper truth or understanding, it just aims at winning a dispute, claiming that the victims must best be forced to see the truth. Because of this it can easily be abused to lead away from truth as well. It does not matter how obviously stupid or wrong you consider your opponents opinion to be: the restriction that the use of such methods is ok, when it is used by the right side of an argument, doesn't lend itself to an enlightened discourse. Now one may argue that humans are naturally violent, that their behavior is highly linked to how it influences their social status and that shaming and mobbing are natural phenomenons in how group dynamics work, that humans are not, at large, enlightened, but from the perspective of civilized morality it is a barbaric method. It is unsurprising that it happens, but one should sneer at it and clearly show those who use it that they are not morally sublime ;-)

Re: They Died from Covid. Then the Online Attacks Started

#47
post #30

Putting aside any special reverence we might have for the dead, I guess the abstract question is: is there any social value to publicly shaming those who uncritically call into question settled scientific claims, putting others at risk? I would say there is some value. Our society will not survive if it is socially acceptable to do this. COVID is exhibit A. Climate science is exhibit B. Settled scientific matters, li…

The results of Millikan's oil drop experiment were settled. They were also wrong. Calling for people to not subject fact claims to scrutiny because they're considered settled is not a pro-science position. It's anti-science. Matters of science don't need anyone to come to the universe's aid by telling people to give it a rest. They'll hold up.

There is a difference between the results of one experiment in a narrow subfield, and the results of an uncountable number of experiments across disciplines and time.

There is a difference "subjecting fact claims to scrutiny" and people without scientific training weighing in on scientific questions.

Most people on this forum would have no problem mocking someone who believed their cell phone worked by magic. Somehow the logic is different when the topic is vaccines.

Re: They Died from Covid. Then the Online Attacks Started

#48
There's not much use in reading the comments on /r/HermanCainAward, but the submissions themselves can be quite enlightening (the ones tagged "awarded" or "nominated").

These follow the same general format: assorted social media posts from the subject over the course of the pandemic to the point they are hospitalized or killed by COVID, often followed by social media posts asking for help with medical bills or funeral expenses.

The social media posts are often reposting memes and agreeing with them. People are using these memes to help make medical decisions. Many seem convinced that by taking advice from memes instead their doctor, local or state departments of health, and similar that they are "doing their own research".

The first thing that surprised me was how weak many of these memes were. For example I've seen several were people seemed to be taking seriously as an anti-mask argument a meme about how underpants and pants can't stop people nearby from smelling your fart so why would you expect a mask to stop a virus?

I don't expect everyone to remember enough from their school days to remember that we sense odor by sensing individual molecules emitted by the source of odor, that these are often quite small (one of the major fart smell molecules just has 3 atoms), and that viruses are much larger (the smallest virus has almost 30k atoms, and the COVID-19 virus has about 6700x as many as that).

But I'd expect everyone, before deciding that a meme is a better info source than the doctor, health departments, etc., to do at least a little checking like Googling what causes farts to smell and Googling the COVID virus and then seeing that the former is a lot smaller, and so yes you should expect some difference in what it takes to filter them.

Furthermore, a lot of these people seem to have quite a few social media friends. So even if they fail to do all of the above I'd expect them to have at least one friend who either remembers how odors and viruses work or who looks it up and warns them that the meme is giving bad advice.

I knew social media exposes you to a lot more misinformation than you would normally get, but I had thought that for people with many social media friends that large friend group would somewhat counter that but that doesn't seem to be the case. For some reason it seems people's friend groups on social media are too homogenous, and so the same weak meme gets them all.

It's similar for most of the other memes common on these posts. Most are as flawed as the fart one, I would have expected a fair number of people to see the flaws immediately just from general knowledge from middle school or high school, and if not I'd have expected many to do the small amount of research to check it out, and for those who do neither I'd have expected some of the friends to do so and post. Seeing how far off my expectations were has been an eye opener.

Re: They Died from Covid. Then the Online Attacks Started

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, to be fair, it's flagrant "thumbing their nose at you as they're being rolled into intensive care", top-level ignorance. The HCA subreddit made me uneasy, but the rules and goal do seem to be at least semi-compassionate in a "save the flock being led off the hill by showing them the dead shepherd" kind of way.

Right. If you give society both middle fingers while headed off a cliff at speed as the crowd shouts to you to stop, not much sympathy when you’ve run out of runway. We use your experience to encourage better outcomes for those still with us who can make better choices.

99.9% of people Put another way, do the Razzies prevent shitty movies from being made? No! Nic Cage will always be around to make shitty movies and god love him for it, I know I do.

Re: They Died from Covid. Then the Online Attacks Started

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you really think a sub reddit that talks down to people is going to win any hearts and minds? really?

https://twitter.com/StarZimmerman6/status/146217386567357644... (r/HermanCainAward celebrates its 99th and 100th IPA. This is the 99th and 100th person(s) who decided to be vaccinated after lurking on the Herman Cain Award subreddit. | Nov 20, 2021) Oxygen concentrator fund raise and donation for someone terminally ill who could not afford it: https://old.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/comments/qmw4o8/a_d... So, it app…

At best some small fraction of a life has been saved.
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