[ExI] UN worried about police brutality against protestors

[William Flynn Wallace]

John, I have read many thousands of essays in our groups, and I don't know
of a better one.  Splendid.  Bill W

On Fri, Dec 24, 2021 at 10:23 AM John Klos via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> > Really? Did you think it over before committing this to the keyboard?
>
> Yes, I did.
>
> > Let me upack the logic here for you. Let's assume that a population of
> > well-informed individuals who are at risk of a deadly infection if they
> > leave their homes but are safe if they stay in...
>
> This isn't the case at all. We have well meaning people who care about
> themselves, their families and people around them. They are conscientious
> and careful, they wear masks, and they've gotten vaccinated. This is a
> majority of people.
>
> Then we have people who are in excellent health and/or think that the
> effects of Covid are exaggerated, and therefore don't care much about
> whether they get Covid, but who aren't selfish and care enough about
> others to vaccinate, wear masks and otherwise participate in trying to
> avoid spreading Covid.
>
> Then you have people who want to force their beliefs on others. It's not
> enough for them to passively participate, or to avoid public places. They
> don't care about possibly affecting others.
>
> Trying to say that the last group is equal to the first two and are
> equally "making the decision for themselves" is... Well, it's ridiculous.
> You're really, really stretching here, so much so that I find it difficult
> to know whether to take you seriously.
>
> You're essentially saying that engaging in risky public behavior that can
> hurt others is fine, because others have made the decision to participate
> in being public. So, by extension, you're saying that if 5% of the
> population wants to do something to scare the other 95% in to staying in
> their houses, they should be allowed, because, again, we're all making our
> own decisions about whether to participate in anything public. You're also
> suggesting that the concept of "public good" has little or no weight nor
> value.
>
> If this is how you feel, then we fundamentally disagree, and we can simply
> agree to disagree.
>
> But I know for a fact that you would be screaming bloody murder if the
> roles were reversed.
>
> Imagine this: what if I had an aerosol form of a Covid vaccine and walked
> around in public spraying it everywhere? And what if my attitude was that
> if you don't want to be vaccinated, then simply don't go out in public.
> Would you meekly stay home and accept that we're both making decisions for
> ourselves? No, of course you wouldn't. But I seriously doubt you could
> acknowledge this.
>
>
> I brought up pollution not as an analogy but as an example of how
> self-righteousness and selfishness are similar between polluters and
> anti-vaccine people: they both require the idea that the individual's
> desires outweigh any possible impact to others.
>
> But if you want to make an analogy of it, I'd suggest that it's similar to
> people who drive while on the phone not caring about their potential
> impact on others. Again, there's no equivalence between those who don't
> want to be told to not be on their phones and everyone else. We'd accuse
> people who insist they should be allowed to drive while using their phones
> of a "tremendous amount of selfishness and a criminal lack of self
> reflection", but obviously not all drivers :)
>
> And I haven't the slightest clue about what you're talking about in your
> non-sequitur about "lazy, witless moralizing" that has somehow led to
> "turmoil that cost tens of trillions of dollars and millions of lives".
>
> I wish there were more substance in what you're writing, because I REALLY
> want to understand why people anti-vaccine and anti-mask people don't
> really care about others. Outrage about masks, negative test results, or
> vaccination requirements is somehow equivalent and just as bad as, in your
> collective minds, possibly harming or killing people. If someone killed
> someone you love via Covid, would you really be OK with the idea that it
> could've been avoided, but avoiding is too onerous? Would you even answer
> that question honestly?
>
> John
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20211224/0920e1e8/attachment.htm>