Comments by "dixon pinfold" (@dixonpinfold2582) on "UnHerd"
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@SuperKripke "Emotions weaponized", "increase the temperature", "gain a following", "roll the dice", "political gain", "randos", "vague", "cynical" — all this intemperate language could just as easily be deployed in the other direction. Far better, I think. Especially perhaps "rando," which certainly does not fittingly describe Professors Kulldorff, Gupta and Bhattacharya.
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@SuperKripke There's no basis for you to speculate on why I sided with Professors Gupta, Kulldorff and Bhattacharya, for I didn't get into those reasons. Your flat assertion that it was to confirm my feelings, along with your dwelling on the fact that the three professors were outnumbered, however, do give me a basis for speculating on why you'd say so. More like an open invitation or an insistence, nearly.
But on grounds of infra dig I shan't oblige you. I'll just address the two matters generally.
First, as to their being outnumbered, there is no automatic obligation to stand with majority opinion qua majority opinion on any matter. Only a blindness to one's own positive delight in obedience to social or institutional pressure could lead to a belief in such an obligation.
When it comes to science that goes double at least. (Majority opinion and "scientific consensus" on Galileo was that he was a poor scientist and a wicked heretic besides.) I hold that scientific consensus as an aim in itself is deeply un- scientific, for it ignores the fact that scientific truth — or any truth — ultimately resides in the individual mind, not in authorities, textbooks, government agencies, holy books or inquisitions, or anywhere else.
This latter view also happens to be the only one which justifies scientific debate. For without it we all might as well just come to blows and settle every matter that way. The opposite view can be summarized by saying that scientific 'consensus' (a word very loaded and rather empty at the same time, but let that pass) is always to be obeyed because it has a tendency to be upheld over the longer term. A mere tendency, notice. (If speaking about Galileo strikes you as mawkish and dated I offer the example of the Nobel laureate Dr. Barry Marshall. Incidentally, my best friend probably owes his life to Marshall's gallant disregard for consensus.)
Such an opposite view is all very well if one's ideal is "getting on," but it ignores the striving after truth value which is the aim of science in the first place. Not helpful. A rigid commitment to getting on smacks of politics. Corrupt politics at that, as a glance at today's Russia will suggest.
(The counterpart of the consensus-is-all view in the political realm is that any elected leader is the best leader because the people are always right, which is patently and axiomatically untrue. The real legitimacy of elected leaders rests in an un-exalted, perhaps somewhat surprising and probably depressing locus; namely, the people's right to be wrong. This helpfully indicates to us why science and politics are thankfully two very different realms, and why to mix the two is to court disaster.)
It pains me to explain such things to a grown person who's obviously "been to college."
Secondly, as for my feelings, I don't hesitate to acknowledge that I have them, nor am I the least bit ashamed of them. Anyone claiming not to have them, or even disclaiming the high value personally put upon them, is merely flaunting her or his vanity.
What is important is not to extirpate or even ignore one's feelings but to be aware of them, first, and secondly to examine them. Only then can we assign value and mental work to them. Feelings alone can lead one to choose science as one's life's work in the first place, after all, and only feelings can command strictness of thought in carrying out scientific or any other kind of work.
It's only unexamined feelings running loose at their own service which are to be disparaged. It is very important to keep this in mind at all times.
Lastly I turn to the other topic you raised, the next pandemic. On it I perforce have almost nothing to say. I'm not vain enough to imagine I can anticipate its nature. My sole view at this stage is that the very idea that we can decide in advance of it what the best course of action ought to be is pure folly. An opposite view reveals everything one might possibly need to know about how anyone's mind works, or doesn't.
I regard any further communication with such a mind as lost time. So I insist on being left alone. But I shan't use the mute button and deprive anyone of an opportunity to show a redeeming social virtue. Whatever you wish to say, if anything, just write it in reply to one of your own above posts.
Forgive the length of this reply, and thank you for occasioning the opportunity and the desire to express these thoughts.
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I think he's completely right. What madness to go from 2.5 to 8 billion in a single lifetime. What irresponsibility. The amount of resources consumed, animal life annihilated, forests cleared and ruined, air, land, rivers, lakes, and oceans poisoned is ridiculous. Where the hell do people think global warming came from? There's no way 2.5 billion people could have made such a mess. It has caused a hell of a lot of suffering along the way, too, including starvation and armed conflicts.
All because people can't use birth control, or keep their zippers up or knees together otherwise. In my view the population explosion is one of the most embarrassing things humans have gotten up to, and although the West let up by about 1975, overall since 1945 it's been quite the team effort.
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@danielwarton5343 Thanks for your reply. First, on global temperatures, I think there's a bit of room for disagreement. There's almost certainly been warming but it's less certain why this has happened. As I said there's ample reason to suspect it's human-caused but I don't consider it proved. It's something to watch carefully and adopt a cautious approach on. As fossil fuels are horribly polluting anyway---entirely apart from any carbon effects---the current move away from them led by private business and individual consumers can only help. Who doesn't want a clean environment?
But yes I think people have been increasing our numbers much too fast and it threatens the environment, prosperity, and global security. Did you know that 10% of all humans ever to live are alive today?
If we could drift slowly back down towards four or five billion simply by couples having three or fewer children, thereby amounting to a replacement rate just under 2.0 per couple, we'd ameliorate those threats. (I don't recall the planet seeming barren of people back in 1985 when there were five billion people. Nor was it in 1900 for that matter.) Besides that, the better parents can afford their children, the better for the whole family.
I'm not talking about social engineering nor, as one moron accused me, eugenics (!). I'm suggesting merely that the whole world do what all the rich countries have done for the past 50 years: have small families. And it's really too bad they didn't join us earlier. All people could live in greater security.
All the best.
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@tiberio1352 With each passing week I see Western society ripening for totalitarianism. The descent is so fast that I really can't see the elections falling on time past mid-century, if they even make it that far.
At one time we saw the Germans of the 1930s as pathetic and weak-minded for what became of them. Now, in our own way, we're copying their decay from most-advanced status to dumbass ignominy.
(Cf. Elvis Costello, 'The Invisible Man', 1983:
"Never mind, there's a good film showing tonight,
Where they hang everybody who can read and write,
Well, that could never happen here,
But then again it might."
(The allusion was to a book by Sinclair Lewis, "It Can't Happen Here", which you can look up if you like. Cheers.)
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@G360LIVE Thankfully, it's not necessary for everyone to be vaccinated to keep the flu down. (Nor will it be for SARS-CoV-2.)
As you have no doubt heard, transmission can be suppressed effectively with levels of immunity across the population as low as 40% or even lower, depending on the virus in question.
If you are suffering anxiety over the pandemic, I suggest you spend some time watching the YT channel of the Yale University epidemiologist Dr. David Katz.
The media ignores all scientists who don't fully believe in the most dire predictions expressed in breathless, panic-making language. In reality these more balance-minded people constitute at least half the research community.
The media think they are absolutely doing the right thing by cherrypicking the most scaremongering scientists, believing that only by doing so can they make people behave correctly. I find this not only dishonest, but also patronizing, officious, insulting, and paternalistic, and it has ended my longstanding trust in news organizations.
In the end, I think their distortions will lead people to be surprised when the pandemic fizzles out. They've been media-conditioned to think it will be worse and last longer than is likely. I would bet that many will refuse to believe it's ending.
Recently I've noticed that US deaths (7-day trailing daily averages) have fallen quite steadily to a 94-day low. From the August peak of 1,178 deaths they are down to 725, which is 40% lower. They were last this low on July 10. Yet this is not mentioned in the news, a typical sort of occurrence throughout the pandemic.
Hear out Dr. Katz. This professor is a highly qualified researcher into epidemics from one of the world's highest-ranked universities, and he is very, very far from alone.
Best wishes.
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