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Comment by eganist | Hacker News Reader

> (i was always laughing at anti-vaxxers, yet seeing all misinformation and propaganda (the smell of USSR strength propaganda is just overwhelming) around covid i think i'll pass this one)

No, you weren't. A common false-flag (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag) attack involves presenting oneself as a member of an opposing viewpoint in order to find adherents for the desired viewpoint.

The tell is your use of the words "misinformation" and "propaganda." People who tend to levy such claims also tend to share more of it: https://www.colorado.edu/today/2020/06/17/who-shares-most-fa... - "The paper, in the journal Human Communication Research, also found that people who lack trust in conventional media, and in one another, post misinformation more often."

I was always pro-vax, and that hasn't changed with this vaccine.

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Responding to skepticism with hostility does nothing except make you feel better. And further convince the skeptics that you're wrong. After all, if you'll try to tell them that their own lived experience is a lie, why should they believe anything you tell them?

> Responding to skepticism with hostility does nothing except make you feel better. And further convince the skeptics that you're wrong. After all, if you'll try to tell them that their own lived experience is a lie, why should they believe anything you tell them?

I hear you, though it's not an effort at convincing the OP employing manipulative communication.

It's an effort at highlighting the manipulation—with references—so that vulnerable readers are informed and inoculated against it. Unlike OP's comment, scientific skepticism simply seeks information, insight, and references in order to inform their own opinions rather than making assumptions on faith.

>the OP employing manipulative communication.

> ... it's an effort at highlighting the manipulation—with references—so that vulnerable readers are informed and inoculated against it.

as i've already shown (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27467720) you invented the "manipulation", ie. you generated misinformation, and you're clearly acknowledging here that you're using that misinformation in order to affect "vulnerable readers", ie. for propaganda purposes.

> as i already pointed out you invented the "manipulation", ie. you generated misinformation, and you're clearly acknowledge here that you're using that misinformation in order to affect "vulnerable readers", ie. for propaganda purposes.

I was clear in providing citations. At this point, you need to provide your own backing for all the other vaccines you've supported, such as the flu vaccine, MMR, etc. if you want to lend credibility to the idea that you're not broadly anti-vaccine.

Thing is, even if you're against new-technology vaccines, we have numerous old-technology vaccines following the same paradigms used to make the vaccines I mentioned above (AZ, JJ, etc). Being broadly anti-covid-vaccine essentially acknowledges holding generalized anti-vaccine opinions since the majority of vaccines on the market make use of legacy manufacturing techniques.

I don't see this conversation between you and me being any more productive. Sock puppetry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sock_puppet_account) is a pretty established pattern, and it's easily defeated by asking people to provide their sources, something you haven't done with your assertions against the COVID-19 vaccines.

Cheers, mate. I wish you the best.

you've got caught generating misinformation, and now you're clearly deflecting.

>I was clear in providing citations.

All the citations/links you brought in were to build a house of cards of your pet narrative on top of a factually wrong false statement you generated about me out of nothing. You generated that false statement in order to be able to apply those citations. Without that foundational false statement your citations didn't make sense.

Now, once you've got caught (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27467720) by me showing that you just casually generated that misinformation, you're trying to drown that fact under the pile of the long winded meaningless word-abouts like this gem here:

>Being broadly anti-covid-vaccine essentially acknowledges holding generalized anti-vaccine opinions since the majority of vaccines on the market make use of legacy manufacturing techniques.

It is a classic device of propaganda - equating risk-benefit analysis unfavorable in a specific narrow situation (a healthy very low risk group in this case) with blanket non-acceptance ("broadly anti-covid-vaccine"). Like back in the USSR - "You don't like the absence of hot water?! You're anti-Soviet!" It is strange that you didn't notice that propaganda device description among your "manipulation" describing links.

It is pretty clear that you're trying to paint me, against the already demonstrated facts, as an anti-vaxxer in order to undermine whatever i was saying. I think you'll be able to find on your own a link describing that fallacy.

>Being broadly anti-covid-vaccine essentially acknowledges holding generalized anti-vaccine opinions since the majority of vaccines on the market make use of legacy manufacturing techniques.

You're assuming everyone has the same knowledge base as you and then inferring their decision making process from that. More likely is that people have formed broad opinions about a new event based on scattered information. That's the sort of information that would be helpful to provide, not Wikipedia pages to generalized propaganda techniques.

> You're assuming everyone has the same knowledge base as you and then inferring their decision making process from that. More likely is that people have formed broad opinions about a new event based on scattered information. That's the sort of information that would be helpful to provide, not Wikipedia pages to generalized propaganda techniques.

Hey, thanks for that. This helped me rethink and understand the entire conversation.

I'm not sure how much more effective new information or facts would be either, in hindsight, but it did remind me of an old publication (not research, I should add) discussing the use of personal narratives and stories to fight vaccine misinformation: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.4161/hv.24828

Possibly effective against other forms of misinformation too. Sadly, I'm too buried in the facts and not enough of a storyteller to be effective here.

>Thing is, even if you're against new-technology vaccines, we have numerous old-technology vaccines following the same paradigms used to make the vaccines I mentioned above (AZ, JJ, etc).

Those two are viral-vector vaccines, which isn't old-technology. They're almost as new as mRNA vaccines.

Good catch; I'd conflated viral vector with inactivated vaccines. The plurality are inactivated, but nonetheless, not the majority.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_COVID-19_vaccine_autho...

Per that image, none of which are available at all in the US, Canada, Australia, or most of Europe, so...

You should apologize to trhway. He's proven that his statement was correct with a comment he made here on HN in 2015 where he does indeed take a (very) pro-vax position.

> You should apologize to trhway. He's proven that his statement was correct with a comment he made here on HN in 2015 where he does indeed take a (very) pro-vax position.

Done.

>The tell is your use of the words "misinformation" and "propaganda." People who tend to levy such claims also tend to share more of it

you said it yourself. It is kind of ironically not surprising that you levied the above mentioned claim and actually posted the misinformation and propaganda yourself - see below.

>No, you weren't.

you really don't know, yet you're making with complete confidence such a completely false blatantly contradicting facts[0] statement just because it suits your narrative

>A common false-flag ...

and helps you to advance your agenda. Thus your post is a clear example of misinformation and propaganda. Not sure that you're doing it intentionally, probably you're just caught up in that mob hysteria.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8860543

It's very amusing you were actually able to show yourself laughing at anti-vaxers right here on HN, thus winning the argument against eganist completely. You should probably have called that out more clearly. I guessed what might be in the link but it would have been good to quote it.

> It's very amusing you were actually able to show yourself laughing at anti-vaxers right here on HN, thus winning the argument against eganist completely. You should probably have called that out more clearly. I guessed what might be in the link but it would have been good to quote it.

My guess is that what drew so much ire was the tone and presentation. Similar to "thus winning the argument against eganist completely" when it was less of an argument and more of an immune response to common patterns that proved in this case to be a false positive.

But yes, simply going with quoting the past post, drawing attention to it very clearly in text ("Please see linked one example of a past post where I've declared my own pro-vaccine views"), and then using that past position to contextualize their current aversion would've been great for constructive engagement.

Water under the bridge. Either way, sorry trhway; glad you're not anti-vax, but hoping to win you over to the mRNA side (though feel free to laugh at me on my way to the grave if I die of vaccine induced long term effects. I guess I'll have earned it at that point).

Hey, I figure the downvotes were probably a consequence of tone, but your quoted post is a robust defense of your prior assertion about your position on vaccines.

(in all honesty, I clicked the post a few times and wondered why you were linking it, but it only clicked after mike drew attention to it.)

Anyway, I apologize for doubting. I still don't understand your position regarding the current batch of mRNA vaccines, but I can appreciate that you're not an anti-vaccine generalist.

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