Developer Of Hpv Vaccines Comes Clean, Warns Parents: Giant Deadly Sca

[CrossCuT]

[Maggyie]

I have finished one paper and am on a break, and your question actually speaks to matters that I discussed in my paper, so...

 

You keep hammering on the correlation ≠ causation point, but everybody participating in this discussion is fully aware of that, and we are already way beyond that.

 

You seem to have a very simplistic (and erroneous) understanding of what is necessary for rationality. For one, you seem to think that logical validity is necessary, but it is not. Logical validity of an argument is necessary for the truth of a conclusion, but not for the reasonableness of one. For two, you seem to think that logical validity is the ONLY thing necessary for rationality. If it is not even necessary at all, how can it be the only thing necessary?

 

What you appear to be missing is likewise two-fold:

 

(1) Truth and rationality are not the same thing. A belief can be perfectly rational without being true. (And, if you want to get into religion, a belief can also be perfectly true without being rational!)

 

(2) Conditions for rationality are many, complex, and highly situation-dependent. For example, there's a professor in my department who is a decision-making scholar (i.e., an expert on rationality). He is fond of introducing the complexity of rationality with the following story:

 

A man retired from his job and received his entire severance package in one lump sum. On the evening of the day he received the money, he went to the local casino, sat down at the roulette table, and placed his entire severance package on 18. Is what he did rational?

 

Undergrads will immediately shout, "No!" So my colleague then complicates matters: "But he won. Now is it rational?" Some of the undergrads will change their minds, but not all. My colleague keeps his mouth shut, and usually there is then at least one really smart undergrad who pipes up with, "Did he know in advance that he was going to win?" Then my colleague grins his big German grin, because now the discussion can start to get truly interesting.

 

Whether or not the man knew in advance that he would win is an important consideration in determining whether his behavior was rational. Clearly, if he did, then it was rational. But if he didn't, it still wasn't necessarily irrational. There are many more contextual factors we have to consider: Is the man independently wealthy, such that his severance package is but a pittance to him? Does the man know that he will die tomorrow, and want nothing more than to play one last game of roulette? Was the man warned by an "insider" that, if he does not spend all of the money by night's end, the government—whom he hates with a passion—will come and take the lot? Any of these contextual conditions could change our judgment of whether the man's behavior was rational.

 

The point is: Rationality is not determined by truth or any sort of correspondence with reality. It's determined by the "fit" of a behavior/belief with all the other beliefs a person holds, all the other things they know, etc. This is why, if a person does not have medical knowledge, but does have a good deal of mistrust of the medical establishment, their refusal to be vaccinated is perfectly rational: They don't have any "vaccines save lives" beliefs for that behavior to conflict with. Similarly, if a person holds the belief that vaccines are dangerous, it would be IRRATIONAL for that person to go and get a vaccine, but RATIONAL for that person to avoid vaccines. It matters not one bit for the rationality of an individual person's vaccine decisions what the medical establishment says about vaccines if that person does not know what the medical establishment says about vaccines or does not believe what it says about vaccines. In other words: The absence of certain knowledge/beliefs can be as critical to the judgment of whether a person's behavior is rational as is the presence of other knowledge/beliefs.

 

This is also why my modified black cat/toe stubbing, modified "water causes cancer but beer does not", and "all my family members got sick after being vaccinated" examples all demonstrate perfectly rational thinking. (Remember that rationality and logical validity/truth are NOT the same thing.) On the other hand, the original black cat/toe stubbing example (the "one-off" case) and the original totally context-less "water causes cancer" example do not illustrate rational thinking—at least not for the average American who knows enough logic (implicitly, not consciously) to know that that reasoning is bad. It is extremely difficult to imagine a person who is so thoroughly deficient in logical ability that they would believe these examples (although, as you say, people commit errors of the same logical form all the time in reference to more complex cases). If we could imagine such a person, though, someone who has zero understanding of the correlation ≠ causation principle, of the false cause fallacy, etc., then, given the severely limited (and probably warped) system of that person's beliefs, it may nonetheless be rational for them to believe those examples, simply because (1) they cannot possibly know any better, and (2) believing them does not in any way conflict with what they do know.

 

Before Lilllabettt accuses me of more pomo nonsense, let me just say explicitly again: TRUTH AND RATIONALITY ARE DIFFERENT THINGS. I am talking about rationality here, not truth.

 

I suggest, Maggie, that you read the following encyclopedia article in its entirety: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/epistemology/#JTB

 

...of which I will post the most relevant portion here:

 

 

Note that:

 

(1) This entry clearly distinguishes between truth and justification/rationality as two completely separate things.

 

(2) In the bold/underlined portions, the talk of criteria of justification is equivalent to our discussion of criteria of rationality.

 

(3) On the evidentialist view, it suffices for rationality that a person's belief fits THEIR evidence, i.e., the evidence they DO have ("my family members all got sick after vaccinations", "doctors have been wrong in the past", etc.), NOT the evidence they DON'T have ("vaccinations have been found safe over and over again in clinical trials", "these trials were mostly reliable", etc.).

 

(4) On the reliabilist view, it is not the "fit" of a belief with evidence held that matters so much as it is the process or procedure by which the person arrived at the belief. This view is much more complex than the evidentialist one, and there are many different opinions about which processes/procedures qualify as sufficiently reliable for justification.

 

In my opinion, the evidentialist view sets a lower bar for rationality than the reliabilist view, and all I expect from common people (i.e., non-scientists, non-academics, the under-educated, etc.) is that they meet that lower standard. I think that's all one can fairly expect, especially given the state of our educational system.

 

You all are arguing that we ought to hold common people up to the reliabilist standard, which is, in my opinion, much higher. Indeed, it is the standard of science and of most of analytic philosophy. The reliable procedure you seem to require ALL people to follow regardless of educational level is alternately the scientific method or logical deduction. (Or blind faith in science, which for some reason you seem to think perfectly rational. That part I don't understand... Or rather, I do: It's called the "rationalist bias" and it is rampant in America.)

 

While I absolutely expect scientists and other academics and highly educated folk to form most (though not all) of their beliefs to a reliabilist standard, I do not think it fair or even reasonable to expect common people to do so. To consider common people irrational or unreasonable because they meet an evidentialist standard of justification but not a reliabilist one is, in my opinion, unfair, arrogant, and elitist.

 

I hope my view is much more clear now.

 

 

 

 

Personally, I would not be averse to this thread descending into pictures of unicorns at this point.

 

 

You see I get what you're saying, but are we really discussing abstract, esoteric theory about epistemology and the nature of truth, the meaning of the word "rational" and the meaning of the word "is" and so forth? I believed our discussion was about the fact that every year, hundreds of thousands of women die in agony, from what medical experts believe is a preventable disease in most cases. How is it elitist to demand the highest standard of evaluation possible, when it comes to care for the human body? Do you honestly think that we as a society should conduct medicine based on what you admit is a  "lower" evidentialist standard? I most sincerely wonder about this last question.

 

It was that lower standard for "rationality" after all that allowed people to convict and burn women for practicing witchcraft. At that time, all the evidence fit the common belief that women were capable of doing harm to others by casting spells and bewitching them. Therefore, the action the community took to meet the threat sufficed for "rationality" in the academic sense that you describe. But not in the sense that really matters.

 

While I enjoyed the suggested encyclopedia article, my own suggestion is to take a break from the classroom and volunteer with one of the support groups for real women with this condition (attendees are more likely to have advanced disease).

 

Then posit the question again to yourself whether it is really okay and rational (and I mean rational, in plain speech, vs. the academic meaning of the word rational) for people to circulate scare articles with made-up quotes created out of thin air, simply because in the end "they don't have any "vaccines save lives" beliefs for that behavior to conflict with."

[Gabriela]

You see I get what you're saying, but are we really discussing abstract, esoteric theory about epistemology and the nature of truth,

 

We are not discussing the nature of truth. Please go count how many times I said that. It was a lot. As Catholics, I think we can all agree on the nature of truth.

 

the meaning of the word "rational" and the meaning of the word "is" and so forth?

 

If you do not understand the arguments, at least do not demean them by comparing them to banal trials of promiscuous presidents.

 

I believed our discussion was about the fact that every year, hundreds of thousands of women die in agony, from what medical experts believe is a preventable disease in most cases.

 

No one has mentioned that but you. For the last two pages, we have been debating the meaning of the word "rational", which you clearly are not interested in. If you're not interested...

 

How is it elitist to demand the highest standard of evaluation possible, when it comes to care for the human body?

 

It would not be elitist if we could actually expect common people to achieve it. But since we cannot, it is elitist. We must accept people's limitations, not demean people as irrational on account of their limitations.

 

Do you honestly think that we as a society should conduct medicine based on what you admit is a  "lower" evidentialist standard? I most sincerely wonder about this last question.

 

:doh: 

 

:doh:

 

:doh:

 

Go back and read the last three paragraphs of my last post.

 

It was that lower standard for "rationality" after all that allowed people to convict and burn women for practicing witchcraft. At that time, all the evidence fit the common belief that women were capable of doing harm to others by casting spells and bewitching them. Therefore, the action the community took to meet the threat sufficed for "rationality" in the academic sense that you describe. But not in the sense that really matters.

 

The problem was not the standard of rationality. The problem was the wack beliefs that people held, and the absence of knowledge that would have enabled them to arrive at better, truer, more humane beliefs. You really must distinguish the quality of the standard from the quality of the beliefs, because they are quite independent of one another.

 

While I enjoyed the suggested encyclopedia article, my own suggestion is to take a break from the classroom and volunteer with one of the support groups for real women with this condition (attendees are more likely to have advanced disease).

 

Thank you for the suggestion, but my gifts do not incline to that sort of charitable work, and anyway my volunteer time is already booked.

 

Then posit the question again to yourself whether it is really okay and rational (and I mean rational, in plain speech, vs. the academic meaning of the word rational) for people to circulate scare articles with made-up quotes created out of thin air, simply because in the end "they don't have any "vaccines save lives" beliefs for that behavior to conflict with."

 

You don't know that the people who circulated the "scare articles" had no "vaccines save lives" beliefs, and I certainly never claimed that they didn't, because I never once mentioned the people who circulated the arguments. You have a really bad habit of mashing together different parts of a person's argument that do not belong together, Maggie, and of leaping to totally random conclusions about other people's beliefs and intentions. I would never pass judgment on the rationality of the choice people made to circulate "scare articles" without first being fully informed of all the relevant circumstantial facts. My example of the man who put his entire severance package on 18 at the roulette table makes clear why I think that is important.

 

Note, however, that your willingness to pass judgment on the rationality of the decision to circulate "scare articles" without having any of the relevant circumstantial facts that led to that decision does not meet the high reliabilist standard of rationality that you claim all people (including yourself) should be held to. In fact, because your passing judgment without any of the relevant facts does not meet the standard you claim to support, it fails even to meet the low evidentialist standard of rationality you consider "too easy". If it is too easy, Maggie, you should be able to meet it with no difficulty.

 

By failing to meet both the high and the low standard in your own judgment, you have proven my point that the high standard is indeed too high, and the low standard is by no means too easy. Thank you for the support.

 

[4588686]

Hey this is pretty cool.  I also don't like thing but some thing I think are ok

[Gabriela]

Enough already.

 

[URL=http://s813.photobucket.com/user/jesigler/media/MLP2_zpsa16e50da.jpeg.html][/URL]

[Gabriela]

[URL=http://s813.photobucket.com/user/jesigler/media/MLP3_zpsc34c8362.jpeg.html][/URL]

[4588686]

Enough already.

 

 I'm almost 14 an girls think I m cut n Ill have a gf soon 

[Gabriela]

[URL=http://s813.photobucket.com/user/jesigler/media/MLP1_zps5aeef1ef.jpeg.html][/URL]

[Gabriela]

I love this one:

 

[URL=http://s813.photobucket.com/user/jesigler/media/Weeee_zps7fc227d9.png.html][/URL]

 

It makes me giggle.  :hehe2:

[4588686]

Sumtimz its good 2 laugh

[Gabriela]

 I'm almost 14 an girls think I m cut n Ill have a gf soon 

 

FP, get out of Hasan's account stat or I'll report you to the Boss.