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by pasabagi
659 days ago
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Democracy is not supposed to settle technical questions. It is supposed to settle questions about societal goals and moires. As such, there's no need for anybody to know about anything technical. And they don't: the president of the US suggested injecting bleach. The prime minister of the UK bragged loudly about shaking hands with absolutely everyone. The various interventions vis-a-vis night-time strolls were basically technical measures in the end of a widely-agreed upon goal: avoiding mass casualties. You can say you are fine with the casualties. You can become an expert and identify a mistake in the argumentation. You can't vote on what the facts are, and whether or not 'do not leave the house' moves case rates up or down is a fact. |
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No, I have been trying to say since the original post that we cannot be fine with a system in which it is either practiced or plausible or both that people are or are deemed incapable of understanding proper behaviour, such as "virus spreading: stay far from people" - which cannot be considered technical, because it is not a matter of higher expertise but a very trivial idea. In light of people not understanding "collective risk: stay far" and of the de-dignification that embraced the former ("the population is imbecile and accident prone: do not touch any tool in the shed"), the point of "freedom" that the article writer proposed as first comes later.
Unless you mean: are you fine with car crashes casualties which could be prevented by forbidding transportation - in which case I would say that yes, such casualties in the general framework are overwhelmed by the benefit given by the opportunity that enables them as a possible side effect. So yes, if a citizen acted responsibly and all precautions seriosly taken the remote ugly case happened, then yes, "too bad". Forbidding cars to avoid accidents would be insane.
Only yesterday, by coincidence, I was told by an acquaintance of somebody fined 500e for having gone running in the woods - a guy exercising in mountain paths.
There is no need to gather any expertise beyond "primary school" level to highlight the expected behaviour I mentioned.
And sure "not leaving the house" avoids a class of accidents, just like "not using cars" avoids car accidents: but it is psychotic to reduce numbers that way. And it is absurd to confuse "do not meet people", direct, with "do not leave the house", indirect - and the absurd is satanic. So in front of psychopathology (taking goals as absolute), of satanistic absurd, of the prospect of a "citizenship of the mindless" etc., the goal about "mass casualties" goes in the background in importance and similarly for the mistaken issue of freedom.