Counterfactual statements are literally all I've ever received when I've argued about any covid policy (usually accompanied by a hyperbolic dig about "I suppose we should just do nothing and 'let people die'."
They're impossible to respond to. They cannot be argued. This doesn't make them correct. Just incompatible with debate, like arguing the existence of God.
Thanks for writing this. It's what my geeky, science-y, data-driven mathematician husband uses when we debate about lockdowns and vaccines. My geeky Stanford-grad older brother also uses this argument. "It would have been a lot worse if we didn't..."
I'm not geeky, or science-y like that, plus I was never on the debate team (I suck at confrontation and arguments), so I don't really know what to say when this statement comes up. I think it's important to discuss this whole counterfactual issue because it's what so many people (on the other team) say. And without evidence for either, it's difficult to debate, and I can't just go with what I 'feel'. Geeks (especially my husband) don't talk about FEELINGS.
Counterfactual statements are not wrong BECAUSE they are counterfactual - eg "If I hadn't left my gas cooker on my house wouldn't have blown up". But they do need to be treated with caution because they rely on an assumption of an alternate reality in which something wasn't done.
Many of these kinds of statements are also brutally obvious - I broke my finger playing Wii tennis (do not attempt a backhand whilst too close to the mantle over your fireplace). It certainly wouldn't have happened if I had not been playing Wii tennis.
The lockdown statements (it would have been worse if we hadn't locked down) are of a different character though. It's possible it's right, but it needs to be ably supported with evidence. What we do know is that if we look at places which did have lockdowns and then decided against them (Florida, Texas, for example) we did not see any unfolding catastrophe as a result. This is direct evidence that there's something wrong with the original "it would have been worse" counterfactual.
It can go the other way as well. I count myself as geeky, science-y, data-driven mathematician husband, and in the discussions with my wife, I have to battle emotionally laden arguments like "do you really want to deny the kids a trip to the pool because your vaccination status is insufficient, so they won't let you in?".
Ah yes. You're so right. Alas, if only. I know that pulling the 'feelings card' doesn't do much with my husband, and cleverly on his part (or maybe not), he's chosen to stay as neutral as possible by not reading much, for the sake of marital harmony. He reads what mainstream (BBC, FT) reports, and then he has his education and his own views, and he also helps me understand data and graphs (and now Quantum Mechanics, since Riggery brings it up all the time and I want to understand it as much as I am capable). I'm drip-feeding it to him, and it's helped him see what's really going on, so that's a good thing. So, I'm grateful to have blogs like this from Riggery and Eugyppius. I love reading all their posts.
Instead of "counterfactual", I'd call it an "evidence-free assertion", because these statements are offered up *without* facts or evidence. And then this: The COVID mRNA "vaccines" don't stop people from getting COVID, not even if they've had two shots and a booster. They don't stop people from spreading it, not even if they've had two shots and a booster. So they're not vaccines, period. Vaccines stop spread, that's the point, period. If they don't stop infection or stop spread, they're defective products. Luckily for the makers and providers of these shots, *they* have full immunity - from civil liability for damage caused by defective products - by federal legislation signed into law in October 2020, before a single dose was given. And this is the case for every country where the shots were given, so if you suffer harm, you can't sue, and if you die, your next of kin can't sue, either. And insurance doesn't usually pay for the side effects of experimental treatments - and these "vaccines" are in trials until January 2023. That's why they keep track of the lot number, it's a double blind randomized control trial. If you got it, you had to sign a voluntary consent form and release of liability - so you volunteered for the trial without pay or compensation, or insurance from loss. So those "counterfactuals" or "assertions without evidence" aren't exactly innocent - the people making them either want you to share in their misery, or they're conning you into doing something which serves their interests entirely, and your interests not at all...
Yes - I wanted to phrase it in the language of counterfactuals - partly because I also wanted to drop a little bit of funky physics in there. But you're right - there are other ways to approach things too.
We always have to do our best to be guided by the evidence. Things have to fit. Making people stand 2m apart in an airport queue and then squeezing them all together into a relatively small metal tube for hours on end? Doesn't really fit does it?
Three elements in mass formation appear here - social isolation (social distancing, masking), enforced in the queue, and effectively on board the aircraft by the seating arrangement; lack of sensemaking - the social distancing rule followed by the crowding in the aircraft, which turns the rule into nonsense; and free-floating anxiety, which makes you scared of the person sitting right next to you as a source of deadly contagion, especially if they cough or sneeze, or their mask slips down below their nose, a very common occurrence - so the experience reinforces mass formation, the flight itself is a source of emotional trauma.
I would not be writing this if seatbelts had been required in my father's wilder days. He had an accident that he only survived because he was thrown onto the backseat when the car turned over. That said, I am very much in favour of seatbelts - as long as nobody comes up with the idea that their efficacy might be improved by injecting something into you that will glue to the seatbelt in the case of an accident.
The Simpsons provided a fine allegory for this in the episode "Much Apu About Nothing". (S07E23). Flanders (a covid True Believer) panics at finding a bear (Coronavirus) in his yard, and whips up a frenzy with the townfolk who promptly march into the Mayor's office and demand action, with the pithy chant "We're here, were queer, we don't want anymore bears".
A Bear Patrol (lockdown, extreme surveillance, etc) is promptly organised, and as "Bear Patrol" fighter jets fly over Springfield, the following exchange takes place between Homer and Lisa:
Homer: Ah, not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, honey.
Lisa: By your logic, I could claim this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work. It's just a stupid rock. But I don't see any tigers around here, do you?
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
So far so obvious, but where it gets really interesting is when the scheme falls apart and the Mayor pivots by shifting the blame on to illegal immigrants. We haven't seen the covid pivot yet. How will it play out, and who is going to take the blame?
Thanks for naming the weird argument they deploy, I didn’t know it had a name (other than “stupid” and “annoying”). Not being sciency, I just answer these counterfactuals with “how do you know?” And “that’s just speculation, you cannot possibly know”. Works quite well, they generally do not respond.
But there's a whole apparatus of causality that one might try to apply to things Covid (has anyone done that?). Or would this be casting Judea Pearls before swine?
Counterfactual statements are literally all I've ever received when I've argued about any covid policy (usually accompanied by a hyperbolic dig about "I suppose we should just do nothing and 'let people die'."
They're impossible to respond to. They cannot be argued. This doesn't make them correct. Just incompatible with debate, like arguing the existence of God.
Thanks for writing this. It's what my geeky, science-y, data-driven mathematician husband uses when we debate about lockdowns and vaccines. My geeky Stanford-grad older brother also uses this argument. "It would have been a lot worse if we didn't..."
I'm not geeky, or science-y like that, plus I was never on the debate team (I suck at confrontation and arguments), so I don't really know what to say when this statement comes up. I think it's important to discuss this whole counterfactual issue because it's what so many people (on the other team) say. And without evidence for either, it's difficult to debate, and I can't just go with what I 'feel'. Geeks (especially my husband) don't talk about FEELINGS.
Counterfactual statements are not wrong BECAUSE they are counterfactual - eg "If I hadn't left my gas cooker on my house wouldn't have blown up". But they do need to be treated with caution because they rely on an assumption of an alternate reality in which something wasn't done.
Many of these kinds of statements are also brutally obvious - I broke my finger playing Wii tennis (do not attempt a backhand whilst too close to the mantle over your fireplace). It certainly wouldn't have happened if I had not been playing Wii tennis.
The lockdown statements (it would have been worse if we hadn't locked down) are of a different character though. It's possible it's right, but it needs to be ably supported with evidence. What we do know is that if we look at places which did have lockdowns and then decided against them (Florida, Texas, for example) we did not see any unfolding catastrophe as a result. This is direct evidence that there's something wrong with the original "it would have been worse" counterfactual.
It can go the other way as well. I count myself as geeky, science-y, data-driven mathematician husband, and in the discussions with my wife, I have to battle emotionally laden arguments like "do you really want to deny the kids a trip to the pool because your vaccination status is insufficient, so they won't let you in?".
Ah yes. You're so right. Alas, if only. I know that pulling the 'feelings card' doesn't do much with my husband, and cleverly on his part (or maybe not), he's chosen to stay as neutral as possible by not reading much, for the sake of marital harmony. He reads what mainstream (BBC, FT) reports, and then he has his education and his own views, and he also helps me understand data and graphs (and now Quantum Mechanics, since Riggery brings it up all the time and I want to understand it as much as I am capable). I'm drip-feeding it to him, and it's helped him see what's really going on, so that's a good thing. So, I'm grateful to have blogs like this from Riggery and Eugyppius. I love reading all their posts.
Instead of "counterfactual", I'd call it an "evidence-free assertion", because these statements are offered up *without* facts or evidence. And then this: The COVID mRNA "vaccines" don't stop people from getting COVID, not even if they've had two shots and a booster. They don't stop people from spreading it, not even if they've had two shots and a booster. So they're not vaccines, period. Vaccines stop spread, that's the point, period. If they don't stop infection or stop spread, they're defective products. Luckily for the makers and providers of these shots, *they* have full immunity - from civil liability for damage caused by defective products - by federal legislation signed into law in October 2020, before a single dose was given. And this is the case for every country where the shots were given, so if you suffer harm, you can't sue, and if you die, your next of kin can't sue, either. And insurance doesn't usually pay for the side effects of experimental treatments - and these "vaccines" are in trials until January 2023. That's why they keep track of the lot number, it's a double blind randomized control trial. If you got it, you had to sign a voluntary consent form and release of liability - so you volunteered for the trial without pay or compensation, or insurance from loss. So those "counterfactuals" or "assertions without evidence" aren't exactly innocent - the people making them either want you to share in their misery, or they're conning you into doing something which serves their interests entirely, and your interests not at all...
Yes - I wanted to phrase it in the language of counterfactuals - partly because I also wanted to drop a little bit of funky physics in there. But you're right - there are other ways to approach things too.
We always have to do our best to be guided by the evidence. Things have to fit. Making people stand 2m apart in an airport queue and then squeezing them all together into a relatively small metal tube for hours on end? Doesn't really fit does it?
You make some good points - thank you.
Three elements in mass formation appear here - social isolation (social distancing, masking), enforced in the queue, and effectively on board the aircraft by the seating arrangement; lack of sensemaking - the social distancing rule followed by the crowding in the aircraft, which turns the rule into nonsense; and free-floating anxiety, which makes you scared of the person sitting right next to you as a source of deadly contagion, especially if they cough or sneeze, or their mask slips down below their nose, a very common occurrence - so the experience reinforces mass formation, the flight itself is a source of emotional trauma.
I would not be writing this if seatbelts had been required in my father's wilder days. He had an accident that he only survived because he was thrown onto the backseat when the car turned over. That said, I am very much in favour of seatbelts - as long as nobody comes up with the idea that their efficacy might be improved by injecting something into you that will glue to the seatbelt in the case of an accident.
The Simpsons provided a fine allegory for this in the episode "Much Apu About Nothing". (S07E23). Flanders (a covid True Believer) panics at finding a bear (Coronavirus) in his yard, and whips up a frenzy with the townfolk who promptly march into the Mayor's office and demand action, with the pithy chant "We're here, were queer, we don't want anymore bears".
A Bear Patrol (lockdown, extreme surveillance, etc) is promptly organised, and as "Bear Patrol" fighter jets fly over Springfield, the following exchange takes place between Homer and Lisa:
Homer: Ah, not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, honey.
Lisa: By your logic, I could claim this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work. It's just a stupid rock. But I don't see any tigers around here, do you?
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
So far so obvious, but where it gets really interesting is when the scheme falls apart and the Mayor pivots by shifting the blame on to illegal immigrants. We haven't seen the covid pivot yet. How will it play out, and who is going to take the blame?
Thanks for naming the weird argument they deploy, I didn’t know it had a name (other than “stupid” and “annoying”). Not being sciency, I just answer these counterfactuals with “how do you know?” And “that’s just speculation, you cannot possibly know”. Works quite well, they generally do not respond.
But there's a whole apparatus of causality that one might try to apply to things Covid (has anyone done that?). Or would this be casting Judea Pearls before swine?