They need to explain themselves, and it is entirely appropriate to make their 
lives risky and inconvenient until they do.

From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2021 12:07 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] On the: RLY!? side

Glen is very sensitive to potential misrepresentation/misinterpretation of his 
words, as am I. I merely asked if Glen's sentences, which on their face seem to 
equate anti-vax and stupid, should be interpreted that way. In a sense I was 
trolling him because I know he would not make such a blanket and absolute 
assertion.

However, the entire tenor of the thread, and the public rhetoric regarding 
people holding anti-vax positions seems, to me, to be grounded in exactly this 
kind of assertion: "if you (a person) are anti-vax you are stupid (and probably 
a Trumpista or at least a Republican).

In my  opinion this kind of assertion is wrong, harmful, and, if your goal is 
to increase vaccination rates, entirely counter-productive.

davew


On Thu, Aug 26, 2021, at 10:55 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
> I addressed the stupid people vs stupid acts. Dave makes that
> conflation. I don't.
>
> But re: punishment - I also never claimed stupidity should be punished.
> I claimed stupidity should be painful. As a person who inflicts pain on
> myself daily, on purpose, it would be silly to identify pain with
> punishment. Futher, many of us are affected by chronic pain, often of
> unknown mechanism/origin. Sophistry about the problem of Evil
> notwithstanding, chronic pain is not the universe punishing you. The
> story of Job is a stupid story.
>
> We *could* talk about pain as a mechanism for aversive learning,
> though. The chronic pain I suffer from has taught me how to (and that I
> must) moderately meter out my pain in order to avoid greater amounts of
> pain. Pain has taught me a great deal. It's not a punishment in the
> slightest sense of that word.
>
> On 8/26/21 9:44 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com<mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> > It would be good to make a distinction between "punishment" and 
> > "self-preservation".  There is something incoherent about asserting that 
> > stupid people need to be punished, because one of the salient features of 
> > stupidity is an inability to learn from experience.
> >
> > Also, don't we need to distinguish between stupid people and stupid acts?
> --
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
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