Hacker News Reader

Comment by nzach | Hacker News Reader

Isn't 'doctors political beliefs' just another axis(proxy) people can use to make a guess about the competency level of said doctor?

If you 1 - think X and also 2 - think that everyone who doesn't hold the same belief is "dumb"/evil. Isn't logical to think a doctor is less "capable" (whatever that means to you) if he/she doesn't hold the same beliefs that you do ?

My take is that the polarization/radicalization that is happening in the last 10 years made the second point pretty common (i.e. to think everyone who doesn't agree with you is dumb/evil) and this is just the consequence of this kind of thinking.

View on HN

The article is not about doctors political beliefs. Its about patients political beliefs and how that relate to their trust of doctors.

Maybe the take away from this is that healthcare becoming politicized is a problem in and of itself. Maybe then, we should consider who is driving this, anti-vaxers, people pushing poorly regulated supplements as alternatives to tested medicines, etc., and listen to them less or not appoint them to positions of power.

At this level, there's nothing good/evil about medical science. It's as amoral as the sun rising in the day and setting at night. It doesn't matter what you feel about immigrants, tariffs or the price of eggs. As long as the FDA is able to do its job, treatments are tested. We know the effects and side effects of treatments.

It would fit the pattern of the current US administration / GOP where any given thought, opinion, lifestyle that isn't their own is bad...

Is that not the same for the Democrats?

As an outsider looking in, no.

The democrats seem as likely to choke down on speech, but it tends to be speech that represses others. The republicans choke down on speech that contradicts their vision of society or their personal moral compass. Although both contradict free speech absolutism, they are IMO fundamentally different.

If it were that easy there would be no issue.

If I were possessed of a religious faith that considered my name to be so holy that it must not be spoken, would a law against saying my name repress others, or would lack of that law repress me?

I find democrats efforts misguided, but rarely are they "my views only, exclude all others". They don't typically involve library book challenges, what appear to be ctrl+f searches for specific terms that relate to people unlike them, don't involve "report on your coworkers" type demands, and so on.

And most of all they don't seem to identify any and all differing views as "enemies" and so on.

> doctors political beliefs

This is about patients' political beliefs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com