(Brief) Thoughts on Vaccines, Skepticism, and Vaccine Skepticism

Collected from my online exploits.

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1) Vaccines have been proven to work. See eradication of smallpox and near-eradication of polio; the formerly declining rates of MMR; etc. that cannot have any other explanation.
2) If burden of proof falls to the positive claim, then it is up to the vaccine folk to prove their various claims, e.g. that vaccines kill or that there are "natural" alternatives. Therefore, skepticism of their claims is justified.
3)IF there were pre-existing "natural" treatments/vaccines, as some people claim (the argument being that vaccines work, but are unnecessarily dangerous/powerful) then we would not be seeing diseases that have been controlled with vaccines running rampant in areas without access to the vaccines. Don't even get me started on the supernatural treatments ...

Skepticism is about the discipline and detachment to engage in rigorous systematic testing of verifiable claims. It is not doubt for doubt's sake. So Arturo's definition is somewhat closer, but it still misses the point: There comes a point when it is no longer prudent or virtuous to be skeptical.

Vitamins were not discovered until the early 20th century; the first vitamin supplement (C, for those who care) was not available until the 1930's - yet there doesn't seem to be much skepticism regarding their effectiveness, especially in light of their novelty in the scope of the entire field and history of nutrition.

I would not be surprised to learn that there are, in fact, anti-vitamin activists who believe God is in their whole foods keeping them healthy or some such nonsense (and in fact, now that I think about it, the Raw Food movement may at its roots be a manifestation of Vitamin Skepticism ...) but this does not mean that we, as skeptics, must abandon our certainty in Vitamins due to doubts raised largely by Lay-Knowledge, Magical Thinking, or downright Quackery.

Jury Duty

Collected from my online exploits.

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Jury duty's certainly a pain in the ass (I get called every year. No exceptions. And I usually spend the whole day there) but if we accept the premises that:

1) Some form and quantity of government exceeding zero is necessary to maximizing liberty;
2) One of governments legitimate functions is adjudication of disputes and the enforcement of law;
3) A government may take what measures are necessary to effectively fulfill its obligations and perform its functions;
4) A public trial before our peers is at least sometimes a desireable method of conducting such adjudication; and
5) People hate listening to other people talk about their problems;

Then the case becomes easy to make that jury duty is no misnomer and while we need not be happy to have to deal with the inconvenience, we are better off overall for it.

Jurors and Law Enforcement

Another short essay collected from my exploits on the World Wide Web, this time on the topic of whether or not the Police should be given the same powers of nullification granted to jurors.

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I think that denying the police such license, which by corollary binds them to strict enforcement of the law, is in fact a desireable thing.

Our current legal system is constructed in such a way that we enjoy a number of very important boons.

First, there exist limits placed on the exercise of government. Namely, that all government, from the Fed all the way down to Buttsex, Kansas City Council are bound to conduct themselves in a constitutional manner. (Nevermind whether it actually happens 100% of the time, that's a different discussion)

Second, what laws are passed that are not delineated in the constitution are passed either by the citizens or their proxies; hence the designation of the United States as a Republic, as we all remember (or at least, ought to remember) from our civics classes.

Third, there are limits that apply to the powers held by the citizens and their proxies; these limits prevent mob rule from overriding basic rights or in certain cases using the letter of the law to defeat the spirit of the law. As Justice Walker opined in his ruling on California's Proposition 8 last August:

"The considered views and opinions of even the most highly qualified scholars and experts seldom outweigh the determinations of the voters. When challenged, however, the voters’ determinations must find at least some support in evidence. This is especially so when those determinations enact into law classifications of persons. Conjecture, speculation and fears are not enough. Still less will the moral disapprobation of a group or class of citizens suffice, no matter how large the majority that shares that view. The evidence demonstrated beyond serious reckoning that Proposition 8 finds support only in such disapproval. As such, Proposition 8 is beyond the constitutional reach of the voters or their representatives." It is within this construction that I frame my arguments. Less enlightened or fair systems suffer their own flaws which do not necessarily find their solutions in my argument, yada yada keep it in context =)

Our legal system is not perfect and has, at various times, been unfair to various peoples for various reasons. What it does offer, however, is a methodology whereby both the power-hunger of the leaders and the fanatical fear/greed of the populace are held in check. If we hold that such irrational or frankly malicious desires being held in check is a good thing, then it follows that nullification should not be the purview of police officers.

I will further argue that even if nullification is not granted, then to an extent it still is granted, nonetheless. This isn't a contradiction, it is just a juxtaposition of the legal/pragmatic reality vs. the real-reality, if that makes any sense. I'm getting ahead of myself, more on that later.

The idea of the police having powers of nullification is demonstrably different from jurors having that same ability. A police officer is one man; a jury is twelve. A crime is an act in progress, a constantly evolving scenario; a trial is a presentation of evidence on the past - understood to be immutable; a police officer is charged with the enforcement of the law; a jury is charged with its interpretation. From these differences, we derive that a jury nullification is built from a consensus of the citizenry, who are themselves a sort of representation of that same citizenry in much the same manner as a legislator. They are hearing facts and evidence and weighing the merits of a person, of a case, of a law and of a sentence and as such their opinion is neither the subject of whim nor of subjectivity.

Further, the decision of the jury is subject to review by additional courts and, often, additional juries. Appeal is a luxury of the courts that an officer does not have.

When such broad powers are granted to lone individuals, as police officers are, subjectivity once again becomes a factor. The case for nullification is easy to make when the law in question is possesion of a dime bag of marijuana. But that sword cuts both ways: what about the officer who opposes CA Prop 215 (which are plethora in my home county), or the officer who opposes the Civil Rights Act or any number of other liberty granting legislation?

What about laws regarding what weapons it is appropriate for an officer to carry; or when it is appropriate for an officer to use them?

By handing the power of nullification to single people, as you would be doing with police officers, you would, in reality, create tiny little dictatorships along every beat subject to whatever the whims and fancies of your local officer on that shift might be. And while some of us would be blessed enough to have our own local Tony Ryan, at least as many would be under the whip of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

If the power of nullification extends to individual precincts or departments, but not to individual officers, then you have simply created - or if not created, certainly augmented - a special interest group whose interests and powers would readily exceed those of the citizenry who are supposed to constitute their charges and employers. Bills that would increase or decrease their workloads (e.g. criminalizing or decriminalizing various activities) would be subject to their approval; as would budgeting and hiring.

It is in our best interests to have the officers bound to the laws as we, the citizenry, pass and interpret them. In such a manner, we have power over the exercise of force used in enforcing them.

I mentioned in my brief digression above that nullification would exist anyway, and here is what I mean: As it stands, many officers will overlook certain crimes in favor of enforcing more important ones anyway. Few officers will harrass a couple of teenagers breaking curfew when a bar brawl breaks out. This sort of prioritizing is a matter of course with police; the upside is that, should an officer take undue liberties with his judgement there is recourse for any negligence.

Shocked Out of Cultural Relativism

I realize I have been neglecting this blog somewhat, but fortunately that does not mean that I've not been opining elsewhere. The following - which will apply to most, if not all, of the posts I will be making over the next few days - comes from a discussion in which I was engaged some time back.

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I heard an anthropologist talk about an island tribe that practices ritual homosexuality and pedophilia. The superstition goes that semen = life force, and that for a male child to have enough life force to assure the continuation of the species/race/tribe/whatever that he must ingest semen from the older tribe members. This ritual fellation begins at a surprisingly early age and continues for an extensive period of time until the child is deemed to have absorbed enough life force to marry.

The men jealously guard their semen to such an extent that a husband and wife only cohabitate during a specific part of the year, during which conception is attempted. Women are viewed simply as factories for the production of children and recreational sex - and especially non-procreative sex - is not only frowned upon, but feared. During the remainder of the year, the men live together in communal barracks, segregated from the women as much as is possible.

This anthropologist presented this little tale as an illustration in favor of cultural relativism. The argument was something to the effect that This Tribe has managed to do well enough for itself and does not seem to suffer for its behaviors, which to outsiders seem (to put it perhaps TOO mildly) bizarre.

But the argument, like most of cultural relativism, only stands up in a vacuum. Has the tribe indeed done well for itself? I contend that they obviously have not. They are a stone age culture, speaking a language only they speak, perpetuating a culture that has, in fact, failed to thrive. They have no wealth, no art, and no science. Their only technology is the same technology that every people on the world has managed to develop: means to shelter themselves from the elements, and a means to procure food.

A modern look at their practice shows them to be abhorrent, because our understanding of psychology - a science, by the way, which is advanced literally thousands of years beyond their ken - reveals to us the undeniable and irreversible damage that these people do to their progeny as a matter of course. And it shows in their society: they are a culture of pederasts, fearful and distrustful of the women whom they depend on in order to perpetuate themselves and who must nurture them through those early years before they go off to the abuses of the men's barracks. This is a culture that has managed to survive not for any virtue of its own, but in spite of itself.

This culture (whose name, I'm afraid, escapes me) is not the only one of its kind, though its practices are definitely the strangest and most extreme I've yet heard of. It is tales of peoples like this, who never advanced enough in some cases to even discover fire or writing, that cured me of any Cultural Relativism. We cannot judge people in a vacuum, especially in an increasingly interconnected world. A people is only as good as its contributions to our overall advancement, and a people that never strives, that lurks in prehistoric superstition and rites must be brought forward or left behind in the dusty annals of history.

To listen to Relativists is to risk damning ourselves to the same stagnant fate.