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by mtlmtlmtlmtl 1130 days ago
Seems like all he really said was that people who refuse to get vaccinated should take responsibility for the fact that they're objectively a threat to other people and that dealing with the consequences of their own actions is ultimately their problem.

Interpreting that as him saying they should starve is certainly... creative.

1 comments

> "How can we get food to them?" Chomsky told YouTube's Primo Radical on Sunday. "Well, that's actually their problem."

What if a majority group, maybe white Americans, decided that a minority group, maybe one with a high crime rate, like African Americans [1], was dangerous and should be segregated from society, and said that access to food was their problem to figure out? That they were a high-crime group, and it was dangerous to society if they continued to operate in it? I imagine you would be singing a different tune if those were the groups in discussion.

[1]: https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-2020-in...

This is very strange reasoning. Whatever I might have thought if he had said that, he did not say that, therefore it is not relevant.

He didn't even say antivaxers "should be segregated", the writer added that.

But clearly arguing in good faith is but a distant memory at this point. Let's just make up imaginary scenarios and argue about those, I guess.

> Whatever I might have thought if he had said that, he did not say that, therefore it is not relevant.

Do you not consider counterfactual thinking to have any value?

There's nothing wrong with counterfactuals in general, but you have to do it correctly. Doing it wrong leads to a strawman and that has very little value indeed.
Chomsky is arguing that unvaccinated people are a danger to those they come into contact with. Not a potential danger - a real danger. It's not like having brown skin; you can't choose not to have brown skin.

People are free to not be vaccinated; and other people are free to shun them.

That's his point, the way I read it.