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Comment by rodgerd | Hacker News Reader

COVID is a catastrophe in India because the government's core is religious extremism and other forms of bigotry, and those have driven its response, including cabinet members promoting folk remedies above vaccines and encouraging large religious gatherings (including an upcoming one).

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I guess in America there is a lot of the same with some groups of people believing they can pray the virus away or that it simply doesn't exist and is part of some satanic cults agenda.

Seems like a very caricaturish characterization of what people actually believe. That sort of broad contempt and unwillingness to understand the range of perspectives on the issues besides the "official" (read: oligarchic) narrative is unfortunate.

No, people actually do believe that - even people who are literally being treated for COVID-19 at the time they make those claims.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/a-wave-of-covid-pati...

> He mentions hating “fake news”. He says, “I don’t think covids is really more than a flu.“ I clarified, “Now you think differently though?”

> He replies, “No the same. I should just take vitamins for my immune system. They (news) are making it a big deal.”

> I’m at a loss for words. Here I am basically wrapped in tarp, here he is in a Covid ICU. How can you deny the validity of covid? How is this possible?

Some people believe flat earth theories. It's still unreasonable to paint that as a widely held belief of those who disagree with you.

Fact is, the theories are widely held.

And in a democracy, that goes a long way.

What theories? And how widely?

Huge groups of people are being generalized as equivalent to people who genuinely believe COVID-19 isn't real. It makes reasoned discourse impossible.

Though I don't think I'm letting the cat out of the bag here.

Essentially half of the surveyed Republican voters say they'll refuse the vaccine: https://www.wpr.org/gop-men-are-most-likely-say-theyll-refus...

That's enough to elect a President and change the direction of the entire Federal government.

The time when these people could be ignored, laughed at, or otherwise dismissed is unfortunately over.

Refusing the vaccine is not the same as believing COVID-19 doesn’t exist. You are proving my point.

From the point of view of the rest of society, there is no difference at all. The coronavirus doesn't care if you believe in it or not, it only cares if you're vaccinated.

Sorry--the goalposts are moving too fast for me in this discussion.

Some people definitely believe stuff like that, and it's not even only uneducated people. My mother-in-law went to the doctor for an annual checkup, and the doctor told her that it's pointless to get the vaccine because covid is man-made, and whoever created it will just release a new variant that is immune to the vaccine. Luckily my wife convinced her otherwise.

But which country are you living in ?

What else can we expect when 50% Ministers in Modi Cabinet are Brahmin who are less than 5% in India https://archive.ph/h3TBP

What is "religious extremism"? That term always struck me as odd. Either the truth claims of a religion are true, somewhat true, or false.

If they're true (read: have sufficiently good reasons to believe them), then it's not extreme to live in accordance with them. In fact, it is arguably insane not to live in accordance with them. Imagine if someone said "Oh, I believe things fall to the ground when dropped, but I'm not an extremist about it". What does that mean?? That you only sort of believe that they fall to the ground? That you only sometimes avoid jumping off of bridges?

If they're somewhat true, then they need refinement and correction because they contain error.

If they're false, then it would be an error to follow them in any way.

So really, if what's being done is evil or wrong, it should maybe be called religious error, or just error.

I would expect that most of the window of peoples' perspectives in most religions fall in the "mostly true, but we don't know which bits, so we'll be tolerant of people who disagree about which bits". Extremists are the people who say "Absolutely true, thus anyone who disagrees on any of it is a *"

As an example, I believe that things usually fall to the ground when dropped, but I've seen a number of counter-examples, and I'm aware of some disagreement at the margins over exactly how quickly those things fall. An extremist would say "Anyone who disagrees that things fall with an acceleration of 9.8m/s^2 is a transgressor".

edit: format

I think it has something to do with one's tolerance of other people's version of truth.

There are no versions of truth. Those are called opinions if there can be more than one.

There are very much different versions of the truth; even at a fundamental level. Do you know what a reference frame in Physics is?

What you are alluding to are different observations of the truth. The concept of reference frames depends on the universality of the laws of physics, which by definition means that there can only be one version of the truth. By the time your reference frame catches up to another, the observations converge.

By relativity and quantum mechanics, some frames can never catch up with some others.

seer and seen are described from the vedic times. there is a third element called the enabler.

person, box, light all are required for the person to declare there is a box. I dont see a box is an observation which is correct for a visually challenged person or person in the dark. they dont become truth.

Agreed. Although that doesn't stop people having their own perceived truth which is what I was referring to.

Yeah. Their opinions which they believe to be true.

Most people say they believe some of the ideas in their religion, but often act like they don't.

Extremists believe many of the ideas of their religion with certainty, and act in accordance which can lead to behaviour that is illogical from an outside perspective or ethically unhinged. Extremists are the ones who take their religion too seriously.

You can be an extremist about other ideas too. Like a raw vegan. Arguably regular vegans too - there's no health reason to be 100% vegan vs 95% - probably the contrary.

I don’t think extremism is about whether the claim is true or not. It’s about what the claim is. If you’re a gravity extremist, it would suggest that your views on gravity are very different from what’s considered mainstream.

The original meaning of "religion" in Arabic ("Din") is law. What you call "religious error" is tantamount to "illegal behaviour" to others.

That made me naïvely curious about 'Aladdin'; yep: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D8%B9%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%A1_%D...

Seems unrelated to Hindi (via Sanskrit) दिन 'din' meaning 'day' though. (Not that I expected it because 'day' and 'religious' are similar in meaning, just curious because there is overlap, and borrowed terms (well, with Persian, but those in turn often derived or cognate with Arabic, at least in my idly curious Wiktionaring experience anyway).)

It makes me think of "dan" too as in the Tribe of Dan in the Bible. Dan = judge. Daniel = god (el) judges me. The Tribe of Dan supposedly spread out and, some say, seeded other civilizations up the Dan-ube river up into Dan-mark. For real.

Wait until you hear about Ta-Allah-hassee.

That din has a short i. The one in Alaa’adin, (despite how Disney would have you say it) is a long i.

Ah! Ok, dīn, turns out it is borrowed into Hindi (दीन) with the same faith/religious meaning, I just wasn't aware of thag so didn't twig, and yes, thought 'Aladdin' had a short 'i'. (I suspect that predates Disney.)

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