You have a right to an opinion. I have a right to dismiss that opinion off-hand like I would dismiss someone saying the earth is flat. Would you host a debate with someone at a university about whether or not the earth is flat? If I went to a Python conference and have a lecture on how strings in Python work which were completely contrary to how the language operates would you suggest that this is a matter of two sides, or that it's the basis of philosophy and learning? I don't think so.
Everything you deem to be wrong? " Allowing for there to be these separate "sides"... "
> It's settled science.
Everything is "settled science" until it isn't. Like the earth being the center of the universe. Like newtonian physics. Like einsteinian physics. Etc. It was settle science that Lamarckianism was scientific charlatanism until epigenetics.
> You have a right to an opinion. I have a right to dismiss that opinion off-hand
We are agreed. Except you don't want to even allow others their opinions.
> If I went to a Python conference
Someone once compared python to a tricycle.
> or that it's the basis of philosophy and learning? I don't think so.
Then you don't know philosophy, science and most importantly the history of science/philosophy. Why is it that the people with the least knowledge/wisdom/etc are the most sure about things they know nothing about?
As I said, if you run into a flat earther, just show them a video of the earth. Or don't waste your time with them. Who do you think you are to say whether they should be "allowed or not" to have their opinion or say?
You sound like you care very much. I've known many zealots who want everyone to adopt their orthodoxy.
> I care when they have a megaphone and they're convincing other people of their reality and that leads those people to their own early death.
Every preacher, pope, cult leader and zealot of all kinds says the same thing. They want "heresy" silenced in order to save souls. How noble and virtuous. Ever consider that people have their own agency? Ever consider whether you are in the wrong?
What happens if someone says the earth is flat on a megaphone? They get laughed at. As long as you have the facts and data, what are you so afraid of?
It never works because it's not symmetric, you want your enemies to shut up but not you, this is because you see yourself as the correct side, which might be either true or false, but the sure thing is that your enemies beg to disagree. The only thing that will make it work is brute force, but other than that it's just another way to say to your enemies "Just admit you're wrong and go to your room".
Let me put it another way. What if you had a family member who had cancer and I wrote a bunch of stuff and ran Facebook ads that they read that convinced them to not get very likely life-saving treatment with no downsides to them. All good then yea? You won't be mad or suggest maybe I stop doing that?
This assertion encodes a worldview within it, one that is not shared among a lot (most ?) of religious people, especially in the Middle East. Religious people often assign very high weights to the fact that their religion isn't respected/believed in, and the resulting moral value can be compared with, and often exceeds, material damage to lives and property in their eyes. So the very act of saying "What one does in one's bedroom is none of your business" is itself a topic of intense disagreements. I say this as a closeted atheist in said society who have tried a number of times to play "Devil's Advocate" to atheism and gay rights in my social circles : if only it was as easy as saying "but they don't harm anyone!" and getting people to agree on that.
There are actually analogs to this in western societies (and in every other society I have heard of). Ironically, it's usually the dual to what happens in my soceity : very high sensitivity to anti-lgbt opinions, although the same applies, being anti-lgbt in the abstract doesn't actually harm anyone. Another example is holocaust denial, how does it actually harm anyone ? I don't see an obvious way, a popular stance goes something like "If we allowed people to deny the holocaust, people would percieve it as less serious and it might happen again", but this is overly simplistic and selective, people deny and underplay countless historical atrocities (e.g. the 20th anti- and pro- communism conflicts in Asia,Africa,and South America) and that doesn't automatically make them more likely to happen.
So every society has certain taboos and red lines that you are not allowed to speak against in public (although doing so wouldn't concretely harm anyone), and problems happen when 2 social groups who have different ideas of what should be taboo interact together.
>that convinced them to not get very likely life-saving treatment with no downsides to them
I have several comments on this:
- Cancer and Covid are not comparable in damage, Cancer is uniformly deadly, Covid only so for very specific subsets of the population.
- Cancer is not viral, so whatever happens in the end it will only affect that specific family member and my family, but with Covid you have to balance people's freedom with the threat they pose to the rest of the populations.
Overall, I agree in the abstract that free speech should be restricted in critical expertise-related subject matters, like medical and engineering matters, but the particular case of Covid discourse is such a disaster. Governments and public institutions consistently lied or made up things out of thin air, authoritarians hid behind "The Science^TM" to advance authoritarian solutions to what could be equally solved with voluntary incentive-setting, and overall "The Science^TM" camp just consistently shout louder and assume bad faith more than the reverse. The actual factual subject matter itself is far from settled and much much blurrier than - say - the question of "Does vaccines cause autism", the virus constantly mutates and wipes the floor with the efficiency of the vaccines, lockdown measures are often disastrous and impact far more people negatively than the virus. But there is a certain type of people who will treat the virus as an ultimate demon, to be exorcised at all costs, and they ridicule anyone disagreeing with them as "Science Deniers^TM", and this just becomes exhausting after a while.
There is a ton we don't know about it.
This is despite spending decades and hundreds of billions of dollars on public health.
You remember the public health folk. When they ask for money, they say how it's needed so we're ready for the next spanish flu.
Indications of covid being airborne were available very early on, particularly as its genetic predecessor "OG Covid" / SARS-CoV-1 was also known to be airborne.
The problem was politicians who feared a run on masks and thus refused to follow science. On the other hand, the increased hygienic measures - particularly regular hand washing and disinfection - contributed to the eradication of at least one flu strain and prevented the spread of countless other infectious agents, leading to a reduction of load on the hospital systems, so it was not entirely pointless (and in fact should be kept even when the pandemic condition ends).
There is a reason we don't approve vaccines on an ad hoc basis in normal times. It's an emergency so you gotta take some risks. But trying to shut down dissent with THE SCIENCE IS SETTTLED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is bullshit.
What is the exact scientific criteria where it'll be settled enough for you to take a vaccine?
Physical motion is fundamentally relative and there is nothing in the laws of physics that says you can’t construct a frame of reference in which everything else moves relative to the Earth. Heliocentrism is certainly easier to reason about and much simpler, but it’s no more true in any fundamental sense.
Two sides/devil's advocate is the basis of philosophy, thought, learning, etc. To claim otherwise is to demand blind obedience to authority.
> As an example, are there two sides to the flat earth debate? If you say yes, then you're admitting that people who think the earth is flat have an equal standing with someone who knows that the earth is round.
Nobody is saying they are on equal footing. They have a right to their opinions. But the facts are what matters.
800 years ago, you'd be demanding everyone believe the earth is the center of the universe and that anyone who says otherwise is a heretic. You'd be saying we shouldn't legitimize indefensible things like heliocentrism. In my opinion, the side that is trying to stifle debate/opinions/etc is the wrong side. If someone says they are a flat earther, just show them a video of the earth.
Do you realize that just a few decades ago, the idea of vaccination was viewed as indefensible and anti-science? Much of the scientific community viewed vaccine advocates as charlatans. After all, you'd have to be a lunatic to infect yourself with disease right? Almost everything you hold dear and absolutely true today were once "indefensible things". Including almost everything medical and scientific.
Instead of trying to stifle debate, just bring facts with you and you'll be fine. Nothing is gained by zealotry.