the return of the crucible

Over my wild and crazy weekend I didn't  get around to checking out  any of Old Dog's links.  I don't know, one appeared to be a book, and I'm not going to read a whole book.  Maybe Old Dog can quote where in the book it refutes my contention that the world has gotten worse for third world folks and that due to massive pollution and itchy fingers on weapons of mass destruction we teeter much closer to wiping ourselves out than we did when we were wondering should we plant those seeds and hang around or should we grab our spears and head off to the wild and free hunt.

As for people hallucinating their own realities, well that is something we already knew isn't it?  And no matter how much we hallucinate there either is or isn't a tree in my backyard so Objective Reality stands.  Unless you dabble in quantum mechanics, but none of those effects extend to anything larger than oh, twenty or thirty molecules.


I'll just refute Beagles's first sentence by saying that I was a hippie in the 60s and no we didn't. Actually I wonder what he means when he uses the expression moral relativism.  I wonder what were those wrong things that hippies were doing.  I am going to assume sex and drugs because that is the usual bad rap on hippies, but wasn't Beagles at this time. looking down disapprovingly from his high tower of Internalized Moral Code, getting loaded frequently and having sex whenever he had the opportunity?

Do we have a right to believe whatever we want?  I think the crux of the argument  Beagles and I had on this subject is I think if you have some kind of belief you have a responsibility to have it examined logically, to submit it to the (ahem) crucible, whereas Beagles didn't feel like he had use any stinking crucibles he had a right to believe whatever he wanted.  That's my memory of it, Beagles may want to correct me.

I am thinking of those anti vaxxers.  They have this belief because of some anecdotal evidence and there are some minor celebrities and some websites.  Well some people believe in astrology and crystals and stuff, isn't this the land of the free?

Except that now those childhood diseases which had been pretty much wiped out in the first world are coming back because the anti vaxxers are leaving their kids vulnerable and their kids get the disease and pass it on to kids who have been vaccinated.  Vaccinated kids can still get the disease though it is much less likely, but if everybody is vaccinated the disease is not around for anybody to get.

So there are your anti vax neighbors with their virus farm kid Vinnie, and you don't want your Mary who has been vaccinated for Measles to get it from Vinnie.  Do you have a right  to drop in on them with your evidence?  Do they have a right to slam the door in your face?