Coronavirus

[anthony]

Signs of recovery from the phlegmatic Brits? This article has refreshing news amid this hysteria to *get the kids vaccinated*: They, most, have already been infected!

"The government estimates are that nearly 80 percent of children have now had Covid and about 6-7 per cent are newly infected per week..."

Lockdown fanatics should be ashamed of themselves

WWW.TELEGRAPH.CO.UK

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Those who called for Plan B just days ago have already seen their predictions proven wrong – yet again

 

[anthony]

FDA authorizes use of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine for kids 5-11

NYPOST.COM

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The Food and Drug Administration on Friday paved the way for children ages 5 to 11 to get Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. The FDA cleared...

“With this vaccine kids can go back to something that’s better than being locked at home on remote schooling, not being able to see their friends,” said Dr. Kawsar Talaat of Johns Hopkins University. “The vaccine will protect them and also protect our communities.”

Justifying sophistry and moral sanctimony from a doctor at the esteemed JHU, of all places. Release the kids from lockdowns to "see their friends". "Will protect them".  Oh. By the way - And - "protect our communities".

[Ellen Stuttle]

1 hour ago, anthony said:

a doctor at the esteemed JHU, of all places

Not "of all places."  Johns Hopkins has been at the forefront of medical chicanery throughout the Covid scare and had probably lost its right to esteem well before then.

Ellen

[Mark]

With a name like Kawsar Talaat – both names are Muslim – she is either an immigrant from the Middle East or her parents where unassimilated immigrants from the Middle East.  Her John Hopkins webpage says she is fluent in Arabic (and Spanish, which  I imagine was acquired in order to deal with Spanish speaking patients).

It may be a case of an immigrant doing the dirty work Americans won’t do, except that unfortunately a lot of Americans are doing it or keeping quiet while others do it.

ARI has been promoting Amesh Adalja all through this covid fiasco.  He also is affiliated with Johns Hopkins and his M.D. is from American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine.  Here’s what he said about vaccinating children:

“...when the vaccine is approved for children above the age of five, that’s going to help with our population immunity because those children are going to be – it’s going to be harder for the virus to infect them. And that’s going to be important as we move the next transition phase of this pandemic.”

Last month Binswanger published
Vaccine skepticism is arbitrary
“The safety and efficacy of the mRNA Covid vaccines are established beyond any reasonable doubt.”  Etc.  These stupid people would do much harm.  Fortunately even among Ayn Rand fans few are listening to them any more; at least I get that impression.
 

 

 

 

[william.scherk]

A striking bit of research ...

 

[Ellen Stuttle]

3 hours ago, Mark said:

Last month Binswanger published
Vaccine skepticism is arbitrary
“The safety and efficacy of the mRNA Covid vaccines are established beyond any reasonable doubt.”  Etc. 

Leave it to Harry to be a fool. LOL.  Some things don’t change.

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

On 10/28/2021 at 5:49 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

This is what I mean.

BREAKING: Former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo Charged with Forcible Touching - Expected to be Arrested Next Week

WWW.THEGATEWAYPUNDIT.COM

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Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Thursday...

He was removed as governor and will likely go to jail for one thing (meetoo), but the real issue is all the old people he killed due to his Coronovirus policies.

Michael

They're willing to hang him for a sheep.

--Brant

cover-up

[Brant Gaede]

5 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

Leave it to Harry to be a fool. LOL.  Some things don’t change.

Ellen

A hodgepodge of ignorance, stupidity, irrelevance, questionable data with no philosophical tie in. He's gone anti-individualism, pro-collectivist, fascist and doesn't begin to know it.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

45 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

A hodgepodge of ignorance, stupidity, irrelevance, questionable data with no philosophical tie in. He's gone anti-individualism, pro-collectivist, fascist and doesn't begin to know it.

Brant,

Harry Binswanger, to me, has always had an aura of "priest class." Even when I was in Brazil looking out here from afar.

I don't mean that as a barb.

I mean it as an identification.

Just look what he does and how he lives. From the things of his I have seen, he's always been about ritual, excluding non-believers from sacred ground, establishing the "really elite group within the elite group," he's dogmatic as all hell, he's physically a wimp, he apes certain arguments of Rand while including her tone of voice, and so on.

(Apropos this last, I literally cringed while watching him in a debate--I don't remember with whom right now, but it's out there--where he announced that his opponent did not like to define his terms, so that is exactly what he was going do at that very moment, define his terms. I can't remember the Rand essay where this appeared, I think it was an Ayn Rand Letter, but I do remember Binswanger practically quoted her verbatim. What's worse, he then looked out at the public with a smirk like he had just wasted his opponent.

 

I think he would be an interesting form of Toohey for a villain in a novel.

Once again, not a barb qua barb.

I'm suddenly brainstorming.

In fact, eureka!

In the book I'm working on, The Apostate, I think I might have just found the character template for one of the villains.

I don't want to write a Roman ä Clef, so I would mix it up a lot. But the template is there in all the essentials.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

34 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I think he would be an interesting form of Toohey for a villain in a novel.

Toohey was psychologically astute.  Harry is so psychologically dense, I think he's never had power over people except a power of inclusion or exclusion on his list (if that's still going).  "Priest class," yes.  Guardian of that class. "The Stormtrooper of Objectivism," some called him in NY O'ist circles when Rand was still alive. He doesn’t have the ability to manipulate, just to police.

(I'm using present tense, though it's been years since I've seen Harry in person, but he sounds, like I said, unchanged.)

Ellen

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

15 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

He doesn’t have the ability to manipulate, just to police.

Ellen,

I have no disagreement with anything you said. How's that for something different?

I like the comment of yours I quoted and I like it a lot. Wanna know why?

 

I've been mulling around an inference of archetypes I have been making from Howard Bloom in The Global Brain. He said all super-organisms that succeed--and I believe he said going back to single cell species--have five elements that are fulfilled by the members of the superorganism for it to survive and evolve. I add that often there is one member per element, but not always. The elements are conformity enforcers, diversity generators, inner-judges, resource shifters, and intergroup tournaments.

In my storytelling, I've been making archetypes out of these elements for institutions, societies, groups, etc.

Incidentally, this is one particular area where bad fiction written by Objectivists, when they write bad fiction, are really characterized. The groups, when they exist, are awful and made out of cardboard. The characters of a story are not just individuals. Groups are characters, too. (Just look at any cop show.) The history of something or someone, when relevant to the story, can be a character. Even, at times, the setting.

 

I found an essay that goes into these elements enough to get a gist of them. See here: Conformity, Diversity, and the Global Brain by Sara Wampler. To quote a passage:

Quote

Bloom’s theory of group selection relies on five key elements: conformity enforcers, diversity generators, inner-judges, resource shifters, and intergroup tournaments.  In Bloom’s words, this “pentagram of the learning machine” was in place at least 120 million years ago and comprised “some of the secrets of the nascent global brain.”  At first glance, these components are rather straightforward.  Conformity enforcers ensure that groups maintain enough similarities to actually function as a group.  These “enforcers” are group members who, like the bully on the playground or the informant in a police state, demand obedience to some behavioral norm in exchange for protection from harm.  In the best sense, conformity enforcers encourage unity and the pursuit of normalization; in the worst sense, enforcers stifle creativity and destroy deviants.  These enforcers are balanced by another element: the “diversity generators.”  These individuals each test a new hypothesis of the communal mind, exploring possibilities that conformity enforcers would ignore.  They “spawn variety” and open paths to new developments.  Generally, diversity generators seem overwhelmingly positive; however, they require some amount of balance, or the individuals lose their connection to the group.  When too many members fail to identify with and protect the group, the group dies, and is thus removed from the “global brain.”  So, some amount of conformity is required to ensure that the diversity generators do not diversify to the point of their group’s destruction.

While conformity enforcers and diversity generators are actually individuals within the system, the remaining three elements—inner-judges, resource shifters, and intergroup tournaments—are instead personal and group mechanisms for development and control.  Inner-judges are, according to Bloom, the equivalent of cellular mechanisms that encourage apoptosis (cell death).  These judges, through some (rather poorly explained) system of hormones and chemicals, create a sometimes overwhelming feeling of despair in individuals who have failed to contribute to the group.  Inner-judges are usually harsh, unforgiving critics who can encourage individuals to remove themselves from the progress of the group, either through suicide or through an inability to continue performing tasks.  One’s critic is often triggered by the work of a “resource shifter”—something that “shunt[s] riches, admiration, and influence to learning-machine members who cruise through challenges and give folks what they want.”  A resource shifter is not necessarily an individual; it can “range from social systems to mass emotions.”  It also works in both directions, since it can either heap rewards upon some members, or “cast...some into some equivalent of pennilessness and unpopularity.”  In some instances, the resource shifter acts based on the outcome of intergroup tournaments—friendly or serious competitions between groups that “force each collective intelligence, each group brain, to churn out innovations.”  Resource shifters reward the winners of intergroup tournaments, ensuring that their innovations are further explored.  But, the shifters also take away needed resources from the losers, fueling the self-destructive impulses of their inner-judges and starting a chain of negative reinforcement that, if left unchecked, can lead to the annihilation of the entire group.

Group formation, then, is not simply the random result of individual selection; rather, individuals and groups are selected together, with the needs of the group shaping the destinies of its members.  An individual success or failure is important to the group only because it confirms or destroys a hypothesis, not because the genetic success of each individual is encouraged.  In a colony of bees, for example, the workers do not have the opportunity to pass on their own individual bits of genetic code.  However, they do have the opportunity to ensure the success of the group, and encourage the survival of the queen’s DNA by finding food sources and protecting the hive.  Individual bees may die if they fail in their tasks, but the group as a whole survives, and so is considered a success.  The hives that find and exploit new food sources survive; those that do not soon perish, and their group endeavors are lost forever.

 

Just for the record, when I talk about individual values (which are a thing--how could they not be on a site devoted to discussing Rand?  ) and group values or species values, the part above is what I mean for group.

I'm especially intrigued by the idea of apoptosis. Essentially, when a member of a group no longer feels that its live can contribute to the group. In that case, the cells actually do have a tendency to start dying. (Or, for humans in society, the member leaves the group and moves on to different ones and avoids this.  )

Rand liked to portray many of her villains as spiritual suck-monsters who make people feel their own lives are not worth anything anymore. (Toohey was one such spiritual suck-monster.)

And she portrayed this withering joy in living of the victims in individual value terms. But the more I look at it, there is always a group involved that rejects these individuals. Enter apoptosis? At least, spiritual apoptosis for sure.

 

Back to Binswanger. If he isn't a perfect conformity enforcer, I don't know what is. And I continue thinking his position is among the priest class. Or he's a bureaucrat par excellence. Great "banality of evil" material.  

 

Isn't it odd that, in this formulation, Rand was a diversity generator in art and philosophy when she was on the fiction side, but ended up being a conformity enforcer in nonfiction? Especially in her personal life (oddly enough), but also in politics. And there followed a long series of conformity enforcers who emulated mostly that part of her. When I say "fundy" or "ortho" in terms of Objectivism, that is mostly what I mean.

So why not choose the good stuff instead? Why not, indeed. I'm pretty sure I know.  

Another way to say all this is that, on an individual level (but not group level), power is the main value of a "conformity enforcer." On a group level, the conformity enforcers ensure the survival of the group. But on a personal level, the game is personal power. And that generally grows and corrupts..

Fortunately, Rand did create and loved it. In fact, I think this might be what caused her such difficulty in writing The Ayn Rand Letter. She was no longer creating, but instead, enforcing.

 

One one further point--since this is the Coronavirus thread.  When I look at the cabal of bad guys running this show, their group so to speak, all I see are Bloom's elements and the archetypes of them. I don't see any individuals with predominantly individual values. (Notice that free speech is under serious attack.)

And most of all, to me, their superorganism, the elitist class, is the epitome of a Drooling Beast.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

10 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Ellen,

I have no disagreement with anything you said. How's that for something different?

WOW!  I never thought I'd live to see the day….

 

10 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Isn't it odd that, in this formulation, Rand was a diversity generator in art and philosophy when she was on the fiction side, but ended up being a conformity enforcer in nonfiction? Especially in her personal life (oddly enough), but also in politics. And there followed a long series of conformity enforcers who emulated mostly that part of her. When I say "fundy" or "ortho" in terms of Objectivism, that is mostly what I mean.

That's an enlightening way of putting the paradoxicalness of Rand, by which I was struck and puzzled from very early in my acquaintance with Rand's non-fiction and the conformity-enforcing quality of the Newsletter, then The Objectivist and of what I sensed (from a distance) of NBI dynamics.  On the one hand, individualism and creativity, on the other, stifling uniformity.

I liked your post a lot, including the excellent synopsis you quoted about Bloom's categories.  I'll be marking the post for easy future reference.

Ellen

[ThatGuy]

14 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Ellen,

I have no disagreement with anything you said. How's that for something different?

I like the comment of yours I quoted and I like it a lot. Wanna know why?

 

I've been mulling around an inference of archetypes I have been making from Howard Bloom in The Global Brain. He said all super-organisms that succeed--and I believe he said going back to single cell species--have five elements that are fulfilled by the members of the superorganism for it to survive and evolve. I add that often there is one member per element, but not always. The elements are conformity enforcers, diversity generators, inner-judges, resource shifters, and intergroup tournaments.

In my storytelling, I've been making archetypes out of these elements for institutions, societies, groups, etc.

Incidentally, this is one particular area where bad fiction written by Objectivists, when they write bad fiction, are really characterized. The groups, when they exist, are awful and made out of cardboard. The characters of a story are not just individuals. Groups are characters, too. (Just look at any cop show.) The history of something or someone, when relevant to the story, can be a character. Even, at times, the setting.

 

I found an essay that goes into these elements enough to get a gist of them. See here: Conformity, Diversity, and the Global Brain by Sara Wampler. To quote a passage:

 

Just for the record, when I talk about individual values (which are a thing--how could they not be on a site devoted to discussing Rand?  ) and group values or species values, the part above is what I mean for group.

I'm especially intrigued by the idea of apoptosis. Essentially, when a member of a group no longer feels that its live can contribute to the group. In that case, the cells actually do have a tendency to start dying. (Or, for humans in society, the member leaves the group and moves on to different ones and avoids this.  )

Rand liked to portray many of her villains as spiritual suck-monsters who make people feel their own lives are not worth anything anymore. (Toohey was one such spiritual suck-monster.)

And she portrayed this withering joy in living of the victims in individual value terms. But the more I look at it, there is always a group involved that rejects these individuals. Enter apoptosis? At least, spiritual apoptosis for sure.

 

Back to Binswanger. If he isn't a perfect conformity enforcer, I don't know what is. And I continue thinking his position is among the priest class. Or he's a bureaucrat par excellence. Great "banality of evil" material.  

 

Isn't it odd that, in this formulation, Rand was a diversity generator in art and philosophy when she was on the fiction side, but ended up being a conformity enforcer in nonfiction? Especially in her personal life (oddly enough), but also in politics. And there followed a long series of conformity enforcers who emulated mostly that part of her. When I say "fundy" or "ortho" in terms of Objectivism, that is mostly what I mean.

So why not choose the good stuff instead? Why not, indeed. I'm pretty sure I know.  

Another way to say all this is that, on an individual level (but not group level), power is the main value of a "conformity enforcer." On a group level, the conformity enforcers ensure the survival of the group. But on a personal level, the game is personal power. And that generally grows and corrupts..

Fortunately, Rand did create and loved it. In fact, I think this might be what caused her such difficulty in writing The Ayn Rand Letter. She was no longer creating, but instead, enforcing.

 

One one further point--since this is the Coronavirus thread.  When I look at the cabal of bad guys running this show, their group so to speak, all I see are Bloom's elements and the archetypes of them. I don't see any individuals with predominantly individual values. (Notice that free speech is under serious attack.)

And most of all, to me, their superorganism, the elitist class, is the epitome of a Drooling Beast.

Michael

Is this a variation of the "guardian/trader syndromes" theory of Jane Jacobs?
 

Systems of Survival - Wikipedia

EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

 

[Mark]

COVID VACCINE AGENDA NOW TARGETING YOUNG CHILDREN

by Joel Skousen, World Affairs Brief, 31 Oct. 2021

If ever there was any doubt about the evil and rapacious agenda behind this vaccine propaganda and promotion it is the recent decision by the FDA to allow it to be given to children as young as age 5. Children are not even at risk for the Covid virus, but their developing immune system and less-robust elimination systems, make them highly susceptible to damage from the vaccine. Real doctors warned the FDA panel that the rise in deaths and vaccine damage to teens who are now getting the shot should give them pause about widening the emergency use of this injection to children, but their testimony fell on deaf ears. The panel acted like its mind was already made up and they were simple going through the motions of the hearing.

[Mark]

Christian Drosten is Germany’s Anthony Faucci.  Recently he said that he hoped for multiple post-vaccination infections: “I want to have vaccine immunity and then, on top of that, I want to have my first infection, and my second, and my third at some point.”

Why is he saying this now?  The following is excerpted from an article by “eugyppius,”  There Are No Arguments on the Other Side:
----------------------------------------------------------

The answer is vaccine failure. Drosten spoke after steep case spikes in the United States and Israel had shown all the world that the SARS-2 vaccines do not stop transmission. These events had destroyed all arguments for Germany’s coercive vaccination policies, along with any lingering hopes that anybody, anywhere would eradicate SARS-2. It was up to Drosten to see how these awkward facts might be sewn into the tapestry of virus hysteria that he and the rest of the propaganda apparatus had spent the last 18 months spinning.

His particular ... trial balloon is interesting, as one of various clues suggesting that elites understand the vaccines have failed, and that they no longer believe that anything beyond natural immunity will end the pandemic. As numbers deteriorate over the winter, they will beat the vaccination drums ever louder – not because they think this will help, but because the alternative to blaming the unvaccinated is admitting failure. They will now vaccinate and vaccinate and vaccinate, while Corona infects ever wider numbers of people. In this way, they plan to usher some semblance of herd immunity in through the back door, while allowing the vaccines to take the credit for falling infections in the spring. They played the same game with lockdowns.

... the vaccinators don’t have coherent arguments anymore; they just have power. You can tell this from the lazy and extremely stupid things that they say in the press all the time: This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, they explain, so we have to vaccinate everyone to reduce spread, but breakthrough infections don’t matter, since the primary purpose of vaccination is to limit severe disease, which is why we have to vaccinate children, who are not at risk of severe disease, in order to reduce spread.
...
The great problem these geniuses [like Drosten, said sarcastically] now face, is that while virus anxiety has become a self-reinforcing phenomenon with a life of its own, none of their hysteria-fuelled methods have worked. The people in charge have sown demand for virus eradication, which is the one thing they cannot deliver. But they can’t just end suppression policies either, unless they want the eradicationists to blame them for every last Corona death. They have no options but to insist on more of the same – first more lockdowns and more masks, now more vaccines.

The discourse surrounding vaccination isn’t supposed to be correct. It’s supposed to justify vaccination policies politically and encourage compliance. If the vaccines were actually safe and effective, this encouragement wouldn’t be necessary and none of us would be here saying any of these things. The Pfizer child vaccine trial is the latest in a long line of travesties showing that there is no longer any interest, anywhere, in studying the safety or the effectiveness of the vaccines at all. The vaccinators are like a cornered animal. They will say anything to escape the inconvenient trap that their own rhetoric and heedless policies have put them in.

 

[Ellen Stuttle]

1 hour ago, Mark said:

[Mark is quoting from an article by “eugyppius,”  There Are No Arguments on the Other Side:]

This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, they explain, so we have to vaccinate everyone to reduce spread, but breakthrough infections don’t matter, since the primary purpose of vaccination is to limit severe disease, which is why we have to vaccinate children, who are not at risk of severe disease, in order to reduce spread.

That's a gem of a summary of the Alice in Wonderland "logic."

Ellen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

13 hours ago, ThatGuy said:

Is this a variation of the "guardian/trader syndromes" theory of Jane Jacobs?

TG,

Not really. Bloom's thing is for all living organisms and the organizations they form in order to survive and evolve. With emphasis on evolution. In fact, there is another part from The Lucifer Principle that I will soon add to this thread. What I talked about above was how a "species brain" so to speak grows and evolves along with the species. Before that, the species has to have certain characteristics in order to develop a "brain," or even survive over generations. (For example, species members have to be able to communicate to each other. Think swarms to get a visual. More later on this.)

From what I saw of Jacobs, she only dealt with human society. However, I like her distinction between Guardian Syndrome and Commercial Syndrome for moral precepts--at least as food for thought.

(As the Grand Lady said, context, context, context.  )

I don't know when I will get to Jacobs, but she is now on my radar. Thanks for mentioning this.

Michael

[anthony]

On 10/30/2021 at 8:00 PM, Mark said:

ARI has been promoting Amesh Adalja all through this covid fiasco.  He also is affiliated with Johns Hopkins and his M.D. is from American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine.  Here’s what he said about vaccinating children:

“...when the vaccine is approved for children above the age of five, that’s going to help with our population immunity because those children are going to be – it’s going to be harder for the virus to infect them. And that’s going to be important as we move the next transition phase of this pandemic.”

Last month Binswanger published
Vaccine skepticism is arbitrary
“The safety and efficacy of the mRNA Covid vaccines are established beyond any reasonable doubt.”  Etc.  These stupid people would do much harm.  Fortunately even among Ayn Rand fans few are listening to them any more; at least I get that impression.
 

 

 

 

How is it HB's place or expertise to endorse the vaccines' safety and efficacy? Many are doing that (and many skeptics questioning them, I doubt, 'arbitrarily').

More evidence of ARI ducking the real issue - their "anti-mandate hesitancy". Does one have autonomy of one's body (and final say-so over one's childrens') - or not? Are individual citizens to be reluctant/unwilling sacrifices for the "common good"? Or should one be left alone to weigh up one's own life risks v. benefits? Whatever others' reasons for the choices of getting vaccinated or refusing it, none of anyone's business - their right to do so must be upheld - no? Binswanger knows the answers.

 

 

[Mark]

To be fair ...

Binswanger argues, in a string of sophistries, that the spike protein jab is very safe and very effective.  He doesn’t endorse any government forcing people to get it.

Apparently he, like Brook, has no problem with companies requiring their employees to get jabbed, in effect forcing them to do it.  (Of course many companies are private in name only, being substantially financed by, or otherwise benefiting from, government, but ARI ignores this.)

And though they denounce government forcing people to get jabbed, for every word they utter about it they utter several hundred words praising vaccination to the skies.

Getting jabbed is good; oh, by the way, the government shouldn’t force you to be good.  Thus they take half the moral fire out of opposing forced vaccination.

 

[Ellen Stuttle]

1 hour ago, Mark said:

To be fair ...

Binswanger argues, in a string of sophistries, that the spike protein jab is very safe and very effective.

Getting jabbed is good

 

To be fair…, "Leave it to Harry to be a fool."

The spike protein jab is neither safe nor effective.  Getting jabbed is at best misguided.  And Harry has the scientific educational background to have known better.

Ellen

[ThatGuy]

3 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

To be fair…, "Leave it to Harry to be a fool."

The spike protein jab is neither safe nor effective.  Getting jabbed is at best misguided.  And Harry has the scientific educational background to have known better.

Ellen

After reading the Binswanger piece, it seems his accusation of vaxx refusal being arbitrary is based on "argument from authority"; basically, he just says "trust the science."  He simply presents the claims of the CDC face-value, without looking further. And he seems to simply dismiss any claims about damage and deaths caused by the vaccine. (Let alone ignoring historical precedent of lies from the CDC, or the lies of the VA regarding the Tuskagee experiments, not to mention the political machinations that are connected to this.) And accepts the vaxx's as being necessary, despite the high survival rate, and how they do little to stop one getting Covid regardless (vaxxed/double-masked Jen Psaki, anyone?). He doesn't address other alternatives like therapeutics. He doesn't address the legal issues, how the drug companies have immunity from damages. Etc...

It doesn't seem as if he made the case that the refusals are arbitrary, presenting no specific claims and addressing no specific  evidence presented by the other side; not even a "weak man" argument. It's more like HIS claim about vaxx hesitancy is itself arbitrary. He checks no premises.  But it is interesting that he used the term "arbitrary". There was a recent post here about his essay about anarchism being t"he arbitrary", as if this were his go-to response,  his version of "handwavium". (Of course, there's also the possibility that he just doesn't want to side with the religious protests against this.)
 

[anthony]

3 hours ago, ThatGuy said:

After reading the Binswanger piece, it seems his accusation of vaxx refusal being arbitrary is based on "argument from authority"; basically, he just says "trust the science."  He simply presents the claims of the CDC face-value, without looking further. And he seems to simply dismiss any claims about damage and deaths caused by the vaccine. (Let alone ignoring historical precedent of lies from the CDC, or the lies of the VA regarding the Tuskagee experiments, not to mention the political machinations that are connected to this.) And accepts the vaxx's as being necessary, despite the high survival rate, and how they do little to stop one getting Covid regardless (vaxxed/double-masked Jen Psaki, anyone?). He doesn't address other alternatives like therapeutics. He doesn't address the legal issues, how the drug companies have immunity from damages. Etc...

It doesn't seem as if he made the case that the refusals are arbitrary, presenting no specific claims and addressing no specific  evidence presented by the other side; not even a "weak man" argument. It's more like HIS claim about vaxx hesitancy is itself arbitrary. He checks no premises.  But it is interesting that he used the term "arbitrary". There was a recent post here about his essay about anarchism being t"he arbitrary", as if this were his go-to response. (Of course, there's also the possibility that he just doesn't want to side with the religious protests against this.)
 

I find it useful to reread LP's arbitrary assertion hypothesis. The last portion:

 "The arbitrary, however, has no relation to evidence, facts, or context. It is the human equivalent of [noises produced by] a parrot . . . sounds without any tie to reality, without content or significance.

In a sense, therefore, the arbitrary is even worse than the false. The false at least has a relation (albeit a negative one) to reality; it has reached the field of human cognition, although it represents an error—but in that sense it is closer to reality than the brazenly arbitrary.

I want to note here parenthetically that the words expressing an arbitrary claim may perhaps be judged as true or false in some other cognitive context (if and when they are no longer put forth as arbitrary), but this is irrelevant to the present issue, because it changes the epistemological situation. For instance, if a savage utters “Two plus two equals four” as a memorized lesson which he doesn’t understand or see any reason for, then in that context it is arbitrary and the savage did not utter truth or falsehood (it’s just like the parrot example). In this sort of situation, the utterance is only sounds; in a cognitive context, when the speaker does know the meaning and the reasons, the same sounds may be used to utter a true proposition. It is inexact to describe this situation by saying, “The same idea is arbitrary in one case and true in another.” The exact description would be: in the one case the verbiage does not express an idea at all, it is merely noise unconnected to reality; to the rational man, the words do express an idea: they are conceptual symbols denoting facts.

It is not your responsibility to refute someone’s arbitrary assertion—to try to find or imagine arguments that will show that his assertion is false. It is a fundamental error on your part even to try to do this. The rational procedure in regard to an arbitrary assertion is to dismiss it out of hand, merely identifying it as arbitrary, and as such inadmissible and undiscussable".

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"Go-to response", I rather agree with, TG. Maybe too often by Oists is it so - since LP's introduction of an extra (and superfluous imho) category: True/False/Arbitrary .

Because how often are the facts, the evidence, the truth - glaringly obvious to one, without requiring wider and deeper investigation?

Too easy to dismiss someone's statement out of hand as if it did not occur. When in doubt, cite "arbitrary" and all your troubles vanish. Is this rigorous thinking?

Then, the argument from authority comes into play: My expert scientist Objectivist Dr. Adalja says These vaccines are good and efficacious - undoubtedly True; and that other person named e.g. Malone (who appeared on Fox News(!), let's say) raises doubts about [*these*] vaccines- self-evidently Arbitrary.

Not even 'a weak man' argument -as you say.

And even when accurate, the "sounds" made by "a savage" (defined and identified, how?) cannot comprehend (how do you know this without mind reading or querying him further?) what he's saying : Arbitrary - dismiss and ignore.

 

 

[ThatGuy]

15 minutes ago, anthony said:

Too easy to dismiss someone's statement out of hand as if it did not occur. When in doubt, cite "arbitrary" and all your troubles vanish.
 

 

 

See also "Handwavium"...
 

Urban Dictionary: handwavium

WWW.URBANDICTIONARY.COM

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a term used when a science fiction writer "waves his hands" at reality and hard science for the sake of the plot. Refers to all unrealistic or...

 

[anthony]

5 hours ago, Mark said:

To be fair ...

Binswanger argues, in a string of sophistries, that the spike protein jab is very safe and very effective.  He doesn’t endorse any government forcing people to get it.

Apparently he, like Brook, has no problem with companies requiring their employees to get jabbed, in effect forcing them to do it.  (Of course many companies are private in name only, being substantially financed by, or otherwise benefiting from, government, but ARI ignores this.)

And though they denounce government forcing people to get jabbed, for every word they utter about it they utter several hundred words praising vaccination to the skies.

Getting jabbed is good; oh, by the way, the government shouldn’t force you to be good.  Thus they take half the moral fire out of opposing forced vaccination.

 

Fair nuances you point to, and from what I've seen (and not seen) it seems their objections to gvt. forced vaxxes are rather 'pro forma', while their enthusiasm for the vaccinations is boundless. As Objectivist philosophers, primarily defending free choice, liberty and individual rights deserve the "several hundred words", while the vaccinations are (I am afraid to say) steaming ahead without any help, a 'given' and inevitable. For those who don't even need them. ARI's proportions are entirely wrong.

[ThatGuy]

FWIW:

 

 

Would Harry call Amy Peikoff's argument "arbitrary"?