Consept

The thing with the conservatives is that they only care about power, its really a game for them that theyre trying to win, Johnson, Cameron etc have all been groomed from a young age at schools like Eton to play this game, they dont really have an understanding of the average person passed how to manipulate them to vote. Now this can be considered a good and bad thing, bad for obvious reasons but good in the sense that they can be swayed if theres enough support for a cause. The green targets for example are quite forward thinking, there have also been a ton of u-turns on things like free meals for school kids in poverty. So in reality its terrible leadership because theyre just trying to cling on to power but at least they can be pressured into doing what the people want, this is cool when you get want you want but then they can also be pressured into disasters like Brexit. Labour is just more of the same, theyve gone more centrist with the new leader but he could be a tory and no one would notice. There needs to be a realistic alternative and there needs to be strong leaders who actually care about the people. A lot of the population has been whipped up into a nationalistic rage because of the fear-creating marketing that was used for Brexit, this unfortunately has created a divide in the UK. So there is a lot to be done, question will be how bad will it have to get before a radical change happens.

Depends on your outlook, if youre looking at it from an egocentric view as in how what is the cost and benefits to you personally, then potentially theres a slight benefit in that if you do catch it you wont affect you as much, the cost is time and getting a needle, theres also the fear that the vaccine could damage you in some way, although being in the top 0.1% of healthy people Germany that most likely wont be the case for you. We can even level it and say theres no benefit to you and a slight risk. Now if we flip it to a world centric view or even a community view then theres the same cost to you as before but the benefit is that youre less likely to catch it and spread it, meaning that potentially less people will die or get sick. The reduce in hospitalisations also mean the healthcare system isnt stretched and so has a positive knock on effect. You maybe healthy but healthy people have been to hospital for this, taking the vaccine reduces the possibility of this happening which means hospitals arent over worked. Another thing is that governments are more than likely to keep other measures and restrictions in place if the vaccine take up isnt where it needs to be so that more lives arent at risk, so not taking it will also prolong these restrictions. So its basically what view you take ego or world centric, from the framing of your question it would sound like youre looking for an egocentric reason for taking it and although there is to some extent i dont think its the best reason to take it.

There are always many narratives on everything, but if you want to go down the scientific route, what is the scientific consensus for this vaccine?

Anti-vaxxers will be proved wrong by history, you can have all the debate you want but it will 100% be the case. The epistemology is just all over the place and the lack of awareness that the position is entirely fear based shows the where people are at. I know there will be strong negative reactions to this but that is how it is when ideological positions are challenged, I hold a lot of compassion regardless of the position but it will play out that youll be on the wrong side of history on this one unfortunately

Bang on, this is the key and i guess where freedom eats its own tail. Is true freedom being able to dismantle the structure that gives you freedom in the first place?

I think the question I would have for Russell is if covid is a serious issue, what would be a reasonable reaction by the goverment to get people to take the vaccine? Let's say the people protesting are just wrong, with normal conspiracy theories previously they would never have been shut down, simply put no one cared because it didn't really affect anyone but them. There were numerous conspiracies about 9/11, marches, protests etc. If we had a heavily authoritarian government that would've never been allowed, even Putin would've shut that shit down. The difference now is that not getting a vaccine or adapting your behavior etc is going to cause real world consequences for many people. This isn't conjecture, we've seen the effects of covid and we've seen how they've been improved by the vaccine so it's not even theoretical anymore. The balancing act the government has to do because its not authoritarian, is to convince those that don't want to take it subtly and its a tough job. It's like a green parent dealing with a rebellious child if they don't want to eat vegetables. Freedom comes with responsibility and I don't think these people are as of yet able to make such choices, especially if they are just anti-government by default

Sorry if i wasnt clear, the death rate as in people who have died after contracting covid over 80 is 7.8%, this declines a couple percent per age group, but either way this is a lot of people when you consider its a pandemic. Another stat (i will leave a link below) - "reported that 0.04% of 10-19 year olds would probably require hospital care—as would 1.0% of people in their 20s, 3.4% of people aged 30-39, 4.3% aged 40-49, 8.2% aged 50-59, 11.8% in their 60s, 16.6% in their 70s, and 18.4% of those over 80". Now even if we bypass the deaths and say we're happy for them to die because they were old or have illnesses, we would still have to deal with this very significant amount of hospital admissions, which will basically cripple already stretched health systems and cause chaos. Meaning that other patients will not be able to be seen. Heres your link on these stats ive mentioned - https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1327 Keep in mind im just pointing out what would happen if there was no vaccine or no other solution. Regarding long covid, lets take the example of the UK since im there. There have been around 5.8 million covid cases and 1.1 million have self reported long covid symptoms with 674,000 claiming it has adversely affected their day to day activities. So we're talking about 20% having it and 16% saying its affected them on a daily basis. So i wouldnt say its been exaggerated unless all those people are lying or are creating psycho somatic conditions because of fear. - https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/prevalenceofongoingsymptomsfollowingcoronaviruscovid19infectionintheuk/1april2021 So just looking objectively at statistics the question would be is taking the vaccine going to make the population better or worse? The vaccine has so far been proven to be around 95% effective against the virus with very low side effects (0.003%) so to take the stand that no vaccine would be the better option doesnt really make sense to me considering the amount of negative consequences. Even if you think it will not be effective to just assume it would be dangerous would either mean the government is actively trying to kill you or make you ill through a vaccine, which if that was the case why not let covid just do its thing? Or you think the development of the vaccine was sub par and will lead to problems in the future, but if that was the case then we might as well give up on the whole medical industry as most drugs are not able to have 20 year test periods.

There are very few experts saying that the vaccine shouldn't be taken. There maybe some disagreememt about the lockdowns or face masks, but there would be a recognition that 'something' has to be done, its not going to go away by itself. I don't think you'd find 5% of experts that are saying the vaccine shouldn't be taken, this doesn't mean that you should just blindly listen to them, but if your argument is based on this or even factors it in, you'd have to throw out the scientific method as the consensus would be against you. Also yes you're right younger people are not dying en masse but there are sever issues with long covid symptoms which a lot of people are getting, we also don't know how this will affect people in years to come. With no vaccine and a strategy of just building up herd immunity a lot of old people will die, something around 7%. Not only that the hospitals will be jam packed, meaning other treatments will be pushed back as we've seen earlier in the pandemic. To go through all that risk or take a vaccine that has a scientific consensus, imo a vaccine would be the way out, unless there's another solution I'm missing

If we accept that the pandemic is real, there would of course naturally be fear. The question would be whether its been exaggerated or if its even real, in which case you could say people are being deceived and the fear is being enhanced. I think what scares people the most is when someone they know or are close to dies or gets ill from it, in which case their fear makes sense in context. Most people I know including myself know of someone that has died from it and definitely many that have got sick from it. Those that have got sick from it, a lot have said its the worse illness they've had. So these are very real things that people are basing their fear on. When it comes to anti-vaxx there isn't the sane concrete happenings to say that the vaccine is dangerous, potentially there could be in the future but even that's doubtful, either way nothing has actually happened to justify the fear, hence why its fear. Also reporting of the pandemic still has restrictions on it, you can't just outright lie about it although they may only show certain facts, this is not so much the case with alternative media. I also don't buy that alternative media doesn't have anything to gain from an alternative narrative, many you tubers have increased the subscriptions by millions since the start of the pandemic. Ultimately most are choosing a side, it's just are you choosing the side with no restrictions and very few experts

Let's say that you're right and your scientific conclusions are more informed and accurate than epidemiologists and virologists that have spent their life studying this topic. Even if you are 100% correct with your alternative view of health, most who are in the same camp as you have not done the same amount of research. You can see that, so if we are looking at that 'normal' anti-vaxx perspective I think fear plays massive role.

After talking to people who have the anti-vaxx perspective and contemplating this topic for a little while I've come to a conclusion on it. I think it really just comes down to fear and this is a somewhat justified fear, but it's also the inability to admit and face that fear. There's 2 types of fear involved, one is fear of government which manifests in distrust of anything they try and impose on the population. The second is just a fear of having to have something stuck in their arm and injected into them, this is actually a fear many people have had since childhood, what's worse is that they feel pressure to have the shot which makes them feel bad as they're unable to overcome this fear. These 2 fears also cross over of course. Now the big factor is that people are not willing to face this fear, which is to say to recognise where this fear comes from and either go through it and take the shot or just admit that you're fearful of it and don't want to take it. Because the fear is strong, people selling the anti-vaxx narratives can target these people and stoke up the fears within them, because it gives them a rationale and 'evidence' no matter how tenuous it might be. The implication is that these are just 100% rational people who don't have any particular emotions either way, they have looked at the research and it's clear that it's more in favour of the anti-vaxx view. This is simply not the case. The fear was there first and the 'research', came after making it an exercise in looking for a justifiable reason not to take it. The weighting that's given to anti-vaxx research compared to normal research is far greater. For example there can be an anti-vaxx meme given more weight than a peer reviewed scientific paper, not by everyone but a lot of people will give the meme greater significance. This doesnt strike me as a cold hard 'stick to the facts' perspectives. The anti-vaxx perspective doesn't exist without fear, as I said it somewhat makes sense as the government and big business have a history of not having our best interests at heart, so I do get why the fear is there and that shouldn't be shamed its a real thing. However I feel it would be a more honest assessment if the anti-vaxxer would just say I'm scared and its not necessarily rational, this would gain a lot more understanding from other people. What has been happening is that people are so scared that they don't want to admit they're scared and are getting defensive calling others sheeple etc. Also the smarter you are the better you can probably put together a complex argument against the vaccine, but again if you look honestly at it fear is still a big component. Also extra note, I'm not saying people who take the vaccine are fearless, of course they will have their fears too, either they do fear the vaccine but still go ahead with it or they really fear covid or they're just not that fearful either way and do what they think is the best thing, which is probably the majority.

Im not really saying i know exactly where the line is and I am very glad i dont have to make such decisions. My main point is that its not a binary choice of there should be no government control or there should be full government control. The assertion has been made that complete free choice for the individual is paramount over having laws or policies that protect the majority sometimes from themselves. Also keep in mind if there isnt a sign on the road saying how fast you can go or if all the ingredients arent printed on a bottle of coca cola, the individual will sue the company for negligence. So its like the governments is screwed either way. Regarding your thought exercise, it is an extreme one but of course if the human race would become extinct youd have to do whatever it takes really and most likely it would have to involve deception as people wouldnt be willing to just give up their life. Of course youd exhaust every other possibility. The analogy is to say that would people still do something thats significantly bad for their health despite warnings and information, in the case of cola, cigarettes, alcohol, whatever, the answer is a resounding yes, these companies are some of the biggest and most profitable in the world. But i think what your missing is this idea of freedom that you have, it literally would not exist without government control. Its not like youre completely free and government are just annoying and getting in the way, you are free, at least more than ever before, because of government control. Theres no real way around this. Saddam Hussein was obviously a red strongman, dictator, but he had a good amount of control over Iraq. When he was taken out did everyone enjoy the freedom that was expected, well no, there was no control and order which meant anyone could do anything and that turned into a mess. The control we have today is more Orange/Green meaning that its no where near as bad as either a red dictatorship or our society if there was no control.

I get what you're saying but then how far do you go with this? Should we be allowed not to wear seat belts? Which of this wasn't a law millions would most likely die. What about enforcing protective equipment for cycling or even having rules for the road, all these things could be seen as a nanny state in which the government purports to know better but bottom line is millions of lives are being saved. Also the very idea that we have any freedom is only possible because the government has immense security, laws and structure. If that wasn't in place there wouldn't anything stopping someone running into your house taking everything you have and beating the crap out of you. You having any freedom is specifically due to government of which you are also free to buy land off and live off grid not taking or giving anything to them. Imagine you were the leader of say Italy and they said to you, 'experts have told us that Coca-Cola consumption will be the cause of 2 million deaths over the next 10 years, if we significantly lower the sugar content we can save all these people, however there could be protests and people won't be happy about us choosing their sugar content because they want freedom to choose'. Would you give them that free choice knowing you're condemning so many people to death?

The thing here though is that you're making an assumption people will make the best choices for themselves. Take Coca-Cola for example, it's been one of the most popular drinks for the last 100+ years. Is it responsible for the government to allow the same sugar content which will mess up peoples health, lead to numerous diseases etc in the name of freedom? Or is it more responsible to reduce the sugar or even ban the drinks as this will definitely save lives? It's not a simple choice as people will complain either way, so I guess as long as people are complaining you might as well save their lives. Either way I don't buy into this thing that everyone's going to make the best choice, not only for them but society, we're not even close to that level of consciousness on a wider scale.

I understand the green perspective and i get the red perspective, i dont necessarily agree with these perspectives but i think Leos laid this out quite well. If we say that what we currently have now in terms of the pandemic solution is a Blue/Orange (vaccines, lockdown etc) then what would be a red or green solution, as in if there was a green leader in charge who didnt believe in the current course of action what would their solution be? Also how effective would it likely be? We've had red leaders deal with it, most notably Bolsanaro in Brazil, which was a complete disaster and led to the state leaders simply not listening to him. We also had hints of it with Trump, although he was hindered by a good amount of the population and a system that includes weighted expert opinion. Had he been allowed to do what he wanted i think we can see it wouldve been pretty damaging. But would like to hear from someone who is a green anti-vaxx or vaccine hesitant person to break down the steps for what would have been an alternative strategy to what we have had.

Turquoise can be very proactive, they basically live their life in service, whether it be giving daily talks to help people raise consciousness or doing what Sadhguru does with his eco efforts and volunteers. I think they realise that they can have a powerful impact on the planet and humans and so they use their higher perspective to carry it out. There are of course some that would probably just meditate in a cave but i dont think its intrinsic. Turquoise also is more community orientated, each stage of sd goes from individual to communal, yellow is individual and so next stage would be communal.

Flat earth theory is really going to struggle to keep going with the imminent passenger space travel from virgin galactic and others, would be interesting to see how that's explained, maybe it's a simulator or something. In terms of censorship I guess what you're saying is 'what harm can it do?' to have potentially false ideas out there, especially if there's even a slight chance they could be real. The issue is how they are presented, so this isn't a neutral scientist saying 'here's the evidence for flat earth and here's the evidence for a globe'. These theories turn into belief systems a kin with religion, where they actively try and convince others what they believe. I guess inherently there's nothing more wrong with that than any other religion, so if it isn't causing damage then there's not as much of problem. However if you have a privately owned platform then it may degrade the validity and integrity of that platform if you allow such vagrant misinformation posing as truth on it . For example imagine this forum if there were many topics discussing and going into detail about whether flat earth is true or not, most serious actualizers would never come on here. Its the same with youtube and Google, if every out there, debunked, theory was given the same weight as proven theories then most likely people wouldn't go to those platforms for information, at best it would be very confusing. So to me it makes sense from that perspective, however they should obviously be free to talk about it amongst themselves, the idea itself is not censored its just not promoted. But the problem is if people find what they think is truth they always want to share it.

Do you ever consider that blue especially but also orange are also incredibly sensitive, you could make the argument that they are even more sensitive than green, it's just that their sensitivities are more respected. For example if we look at blue and not even necessarily an extreme version. They tend to be religious, if anything was said about Jewish, Christian or Muslim people, even in an outdated language type of way they would be extremely sensitive to it. In fact there are anti-defamation organisations setup with the express intent of looking for these infractions that could even loosely be deemed as defamation, which then the person responsible will be sued or worse. I wont get into the backlash that has occurred from criticising Islam. Republicans are intensely sensitive, abortion, immigration, patriotism. The uproar and outrage from Kaepernick taking the knee was incredible. So to me it would seem people on both sides are sensitive, it's just that the green side is seen as comical or over the top, but I think this comes down to people being against the core ideas. The core ideas of green are not changing language, although both sides can do that to suit them, their ideas are about protecting the environment, treating animals as sentient beings, community etc. I think the reductionist way of taking them down to their most annoying tendancies is actually exceptional and a kind of whatever works marketing by the right, as it means you don't take them seriously and therefore don't look at the bigger picture. This strategy is played by both sides to some extent but the right are able to be more ruthless with it.

OK I get where you're coming and why you might say that. First off I'm not really interested in labelling you anything, I don't think that's the point of this discussion. Everyone has at least an implicit bias, so it is what it is. So your position is to teach kids just facts with no context or no theory so that they can come up with their own theories. This sounds good on the surface but I think you're underplaying the importance of theories in teaching. For one youre asking a lot of kids to just come up with coherent theories for themselves just by being presented with facts. Most subjects and teaching have theory and are almost based around teaching it, there's economic theory for example, if you do economics you will learn all type of theories to make you understand the vast data of economics. If you just said there was a crash and then there was a boom and then this happened and then that happened, it gives no context or understanding of the bigger picture or why anything could have happened. It might be that some theories are biased or have different perspectives of the same event, but that's why you don't just learn one theory, you learn many and decide for yourself what makes the most sense or maybe take bits of different theory. When I was in school and we learnt about the holocaust, we learnt about Hitlers eugenics theory, we even learnt about his ideas in 'Mein Kempf', this was important to get an idea of what his perspective was and why he did what he did. I don't think anyone would say this shouldn't be taught as long as its not taught as truth and is balanced with other theories. So this brings us to crt, why is there an issue teaching a theory where the perspective is that society is somewhat built upon systemic racism? People have generally been OK with theories if it doesn't affect their worldview. There's a fear that this new theory, whatever it might be, will change the world we want to see. Creationists campaign against atheism or evolution to be taught in schools because they want to uphold their 'truth'. This is the same with crt. Even if you say crt is bullshit why should it not be taught? I don't have a problem with creationism or eugenics being taught and not because I'm overly accepting, I think if it is a bullshit theory it won't stick and if you don't teach it as truth and teach other theories as well, then kids or adults even can come to their own conclusions. It's also important to teach because you can get to the root of why something happened. Yes I'm sure you can discern what is hate speech and what's not. In the same way people can discern what theories make sense and what dont. Crt has theory in the name so by definition it's not being taught as truth. Your saying that you want to be able to decide what is hate speech but at the same time you're saying people shouldnt be able to decide which theories make sense and which don't.

One way to look at it is there will always be a 'mainstream' narrative. This idea cancel culture has just come about now and that there was complete freedom of speech prior to whats happening now is plainly false. All thats happened is the mainstream narrative has shifted, for example someone who was lgbtq in the 80s didnt have freedom of speech to celebrate who they were or even legally to have sex, it only became legal for same sex, sexual acts in 2003. So there was freedom of speech for people who wanted to condemn lgbtq people but there wasnt for lgbtq people to actually be themselves. This wasnt the case for just lgbtq people, basically any minority had a sever limit to their freedom of speech if it went against the narrative in ways that were not just annoying but actually life limiting. As consciousness has risen these things have changed and maybe to some extent even over corrected, in terms of not being able to say black or whatever, but i still cant see how that would be worse than what was experienced by minorities. It would also seem to me that those that want it to be how it was before are not really happy about minorities getting equal footing. This is a somewhat survival instinct in which they want their group to still be privileged, but it would then follow that to halt this progress may be beneficial which is why cancel culture is boosted to be a much bigger problem than it actually is. Basically if i had to choose a mainstream narrative, one causing actual harm to people and the other meaning occasionally someone over reacts to someone saying the word black, id probably go for the former. This will also most likely correct itself as well anyway.

OK could you just clarify this please, i dont want to misrepresent you. Are you saying i get serotonin hit calling people racist because im right that there is systemic racism and maybe i enjoy pointing that out to people, or are you saying i get a serotonin hit because systemic racism doesnt actually exist and i just want to make people feel bad by calling them racist?

@StarfoxEpiphany OK so get to your final point, are you saying racism doesn't exist and black people are just blaming their struggles on race and exaggerating the effect of racism on them?

You're missing my point I'm talking about the actual penalties in law for different drug offences. If we compare crack cocaine to meth, meth users for possession may receive a fine and up to 3 years, for possession of crack you can get up to life imprisonment. Essentially in law the two drugs are treated completely differently despite the heavy damage they both do. So looking at that it seems like there's a racial element to it, although I might be wrong and maybe you can enlighten me.

The drug law comparison wouldn't be between other countries, for it to make sense and be considered racist, you would have to compare the penalties for another illegal drug within the same country that's user base is a different demographic. This isn't hard to do for example you can compare the sentences people got for weed over say crystal meth which has a mostly Caucasian user base, you'll find it's not even close, there were much harsher penalties imposed on black people using weed, despite the fact meth is a much more damaging drug to the community. Same can be said for the descrepencies in penalties for cocaine vs crack cocaine. Mostly the same drug but treated completely differently in the legal system. So you would have to find another country where there are harsher penalties imposed on drugs that are the same or less damaging than other drugs for your example to make sense.

OK I'm racist against people from Papua new Guinea, does that change the impact systemic racism?