A Challenge: Can You Make Your Case For or Against the COVID Vaccines Without Ad Hominem Attacks?
If you really know something you can teach it, without attacking your student.
Can we even talk about COVID mRNA vaccines? What are the preconditions for a rational conversation? The whole subject of vaccines has driven a rift between us so deep it seems like we may never reach each other again.
If you think no such conversation is possible or desirable, congratulations, you get your wish — you will not hear anyone, so by definition, no conversation will take place. Everyone is right in an echo chamber.
But for those of us who still want to talk, I suspect there are at least a few of us on each side of this that don’t want there to be any such thing as “sides”. That is, we have more fidelity to truth than we do to defending one “side” or another.
As best I can tell, right now, the conversation goes something along the lines of:
Side 1: I can’t understand how you would question the COVID vaccines. They are perfectly wonderful, effective, and safe, they’ve brought the cases down, the pharmaceutical companies have pulled off a miracle and saved us, and no one can (or should) say otherwise, and I can’t believe anyone does, and if you do, you’re stupid and moronic and dangerous and want people to die.
Side 2: I can’t understand how anyone can so uncritically accept what is clearly propaganda by and for the pharmaceutical companies and all the agencies colluding with them. Nothing is perfectly wonderful and safe — this is new technology, important safety protocols were skipped or misrepresented, and we have no long-term data. The risks here are massive and the incentives for the for-profit companies perverse. Anyone who has been brainwashed by this false narrative is stupid and moronic and dangerous and wants people to die.
Sound about right?
Okay.
So two things we have in common: one, we don’t understand each other, and two, anyone who doesn’t agree with us is a moron.
To a rational species, this might be a clue: we need to talk. We need have this out in an ongoing debate where we make our respective cases and try to understand each other. One might even say this is exactly the function of science — to hold an ongoing conversation about what is true, to continually test it, and subject it to criticism and counterarguments.
But we are not a rational species. We are sophisticated monkeys who have learned to wield clubs. When we possess a club that will shut down any such debate before it even begins, we will wield it. If you can wield tech censorship, or manipulate the access to information that people hear through the media, or even just flat out refuse to hear any opinion but your own, why wouldn’t you?
It would be great if people were more critical of the information they hear. But I hardly expect that to happen. We’re human. As we’ve talked about before, most humans form their beliefs uncritically:
We adopt the opinion of people we like, trust, or revere.
We adopt the opinion of someone based on their authority or say-so.
We adopt the opinion that confirms our more general worldview or politics.
We hear things repeated so often they become “true by repetition”.
We adopt beliefs because they give us a psychological advantage or secondary gain: doing so smooths things over with people, doesn’t upset the family, herd, or tribe, gives us a sense of belonging, gets us attention/significance, involves financial gain, or comforts us or gives us certainty or alleviates fear, etc.
Given this is how most humans form their beliefs, is it any wonder beliefs are so difficult to challenge, especially when encrusted in the amber of emotion?
When you think about it, there’s a good reason things like politics and religion (and vaccines) are such emotional topics. When you challenge someone’s beliefs in these areas, people interpret it as an attack against them. Not necessarily true, but that’s how the lizard brain interprets it.
When you employ ad hominem attacks, you leave no possibility for the target — you are not arguing that someone has reached a faulty conclusion, but that they, the concluders, are somehow faulty. An ad hominem attack implies, in some sense, that the target is wrong for even existing.
Any time you imply that someone is not only wrong in the sense of being mistaken, but wrong in the sense that their being is flawed, you will run up against the turbulent rocks of emotion-based arguments with little or no basis in reality.
So, the first thing we have to do here is recognize that our extreme emotions on the topic of vaccines might not be serving us. If someone disagrees with us, they are not necessarily implying that our being is wrong, or that we should not exist — we’re just having a conversation, bringing our collective minds to bear on a survival problem.
That done, ask yourself this: can I rationally defend my position without resorting to ad hominem attacks, or insults, or sarcasm, or condescension, or preventing access to information, or otherwise using some means to shut down the conversation?
Here’s my premise: to know something is to be able to teach it. if you truly know what you know, you should be able to make a case for it, using nothing but facts and logic.
Can you teach your position, calmly, without attacking your student?
Let’s say your positions is “the vaccines are wonderful” and somebody presents some concerns about them, like antibody-dependent enhancement, or the cytotoxic properties of the spike protein, or pathogenic priming, or endothelial clotting and inflammation, or the lipid nanoparticles crossing the blood brain barrier and potentially causing neurodegenerative diseases, or the lack of any kind of signal monitoring for adverse events, etc. If you know what you know about these vaccines, you should be able to answer each of these things, calmly, and with reference to the necessary facts, to show why each of these things are non-concerns.
Similarly, if you think these things are concerns worth looking into and talking about, then you should be able to bring them to someone’s attention without condescension or implying the idiocy of whoever you are talking to, and cogently explain why you are concerned about them, again, using nothing but facts and logic.
If you can’t do this, consider that you may not know what you think you know.
The debate about these vaccines is a disagreement about a survival strategy. Two people discussing how to best survive a bear attack might disagree, even vehemently disagree, but I’m guessing we wouldn’t silence one or the other, nor attack their character, nor characterize each other as pro-bear-mauling. We would profit by the discussion, learn something, and all still be on the same side (presumably, anti-death-by-bear).
So, can we assume that we’re all on the side of not being killed horribly by a virus and talk about the way we’re addressing that?
I think all sides would agree on this: our future (and our unity) depends on it.
So, without resorting to any form of attack, can you make your case?