Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mz | Hacker News Reader

No, that isn't what I am saying at all.

People here are talking to me as if I am an antivaxxer when I have said I am not. Pro vaxxers are just as blind, unthinking and extremist as anti vaxxers.

Both sides disregard valid points on the other side. This is the crux of the problem.

Einstein said that you cannot solve a problem from the same level of thinking that created it. The world is not going to solve this conflict as long as it frames it in extremist either/or terms. The efforts to ramp up the pressure on anti vaxxers to conform merely deepens the conflict. It does not help the matter.

View on HN

>Einstein said that you cannot solve a problem from the same level of thinking that created it.

Appeal to authority. Also, Einstein wasn't an epidemiologist.

>The efforts to ramp up the pressure on anti vaxxers to conform merely deepens the conflict. It does not help the matter.

This is a serious claim, do you have any evidence to support it? I'd expect countries with culture that emphasizes the collective over the individual to have much lower rates of anti vaxxers, as compared e.g. to the US.

Most of anti vaxxer material I see here in Europe is poorly translated and almost universally originally intended for the anglophone market. The 'higher end products' are written by locals, but still heavily leaning on anglophone sources.

It is not an appeal to authority. It is citing my source.

I don't know what your beef is with me. As far as I can tell, both my comments make the same point: That pro vaxxers are just as extremist and close minded as anti vaxxers.

There are lots of people who have bad reactions to vaccines, who take some vaccines but not others, etc. who are not ideologues on the subject. The medical community has processes for dealing with the reality that some people react badly to vaccines and judgement calls need to be made. Pro vaxxers act like this is not a reality. Both camps are very all or nothing.

What we got here is a failure to communicate.

An appeal to authority is a type of fallacious argument; in attributing the quote to Einstein, your subtext is that his endorsement is your argument. But, of course, context-free quotes from Einstein aren't sufficient evidence of anything.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com