[vearwhershuh]

Here is the pattern:

1) Establish a false dichotomy ("All vaccines are good, all vaccines are bad")

2) Come up with a pithy slur for the other side ("Antivaxx")

3) Emphasize the looniest people on the other side, ignore and hide the reasonable people on the other side.

4) Use this slur to browbeat moderates, the skeptical, the unsure and the open minded into silence.

It's very effective.

[secstate]

Thank you for bringing attention this. In a language many software engineers would understand, I would call this an antipattern that encourages non-theological religious belief.

[Tainnor]

The problem is that 1) is just a strawman no medical expert agrees to.

[lpah4all]

We're not talking about medical experts here.

[Tainnor]

Yes. The article clearly discusses how select individuals disagree with majority medical opinion with basically zero evidence. So the opinion of medical experts matters.

[lpah4all]

That's not who the OP was talking about, not-Einstein. He's talking about the idiots who idiotically polarize needed conversations that need nuance. a-hem

[dasil003]

Great point. Two truths that can not be reasoned away by ideology:

1) Most Americans don't have the lived experience to properly weigh the value of world-changing vaccines like Polio, MMR, etc.

2) There is a strong profit motive for pharmaceutical companies to get more globally-recommended vaccines approved.

Polarizing the debate and then picking a winning side will lead to the wrong outcome. Details matter.

[lpah4all]

You got it.

It takes intelligence to entertain both sides of an argument, grasp and appreciate the nuance of the situation and then come to a sensible conclusion, which is often "I don't know, I'll need to learn more to decide."

And it takes intellectual honesty to admit when our preconceptions need to be tossed and upgraded to a more expansive, more accurate worldview, which is the essense of intelligence.

That's why Dunning & Kruger's work is so damned important: It showed that the least capable are the most confident.

[Tainnor]

This is just an argument to moderation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

Realistically, you can entertain both sides of an argument and come to the conclusion that one side is wrong.

[lpah4all]

There's nothing more tedious than someone who cites an argument fallacy incorrectly.