Comment by therealpygon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by therealpygon | Hacker News Reader

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Cherry-picking is fundamental to most people’s views, sadly, and they always use “we have to draw the line somewhere” as an excuse for why it is valid to ignore similar or even far worse situations. Worse still, they focus their time creating elaborate objections to what are mostly meaningless topics, mostly due to not being able to exercise their control over those much bigger and broad issues. For example, known effects from cigarettes versus theorized effects of e-cigarettes. Same goes for debates on alcohol vs pot, electric car accidents vs ICE vehicles, so on and so forth. It also happens when placing extraordinary value on an individual cherry-picked life or theoretical life, rather than any of the actual lives lost every day to solvable problems.

End of the day, it’s all about people trying to control other people’s thoughts and actions by forcing them to conform to the box the debater has created and lined with cherry-picked facts. You can see that in the arguments of this article and in this thread.

Just as a note, I’m not advocating one way or another on any topic, just addressing the issue of cherry-picking that happens regardless of which side anyone falls on an issue.

Anecdotally, I would like to mention that my partner has been sick for over a month with some kind of lung shit he got from an e-cigarette (vuse something disposable crap). He has been literally unable to sleep through a night for over a month, multiple doctor visits, 3 courses of antibiotics, lung xray that apparently confirmed it was viral pneumonia, but yeah. I have been smoking for over 6 years and still alive, but he smoked that shit for less than a few weeks and he is barely functional. I can't remember the last time I got a full night's sleep anymore, because I constantly have to apply muscle relaxants and ensure he has proper medication to be able to remain asleep.

So yeah, not really the point of your argument, but fuck e-cigarettes, for the rest of time I will have this stance. And yes, I am brutally aware of what cigarettes do as well, but don't knock the "theoretical" effects of e-cigarettes.

If it's viral, how can you tell it's from the e-cigarettes and not a direct human-to-human infection?

As said, another example of cherry-picking. They smoked a vape, therefore it must be vapes. They got the vaccine, therefore it must be vaccines. Rinse and repeat for whichever argument.

What is worse, pointing out these selective facts generally makes people become defensive, so they dive into searching for more cherry-picked arguments as ammunition to prove themselves right, rather than accepting that they might actually be wrong and objectively looking for information. It is the core of the problem of politics on both sides and we can easily see how extreme it can make people regardless of the thing being advocated.

Cherry-picking and self-reinforcement go hand-in-hand.

On the topic of cherry picking and vapes, one of the biggest absurdities is that it's now cheaper and more convenient to purchase meth or fent in San Francisco than it is a flavored vape. I can respect people having different levels of libertarian or public health concerns than me, but there's absolutely no consistent pairing of them that should result in vapes being more restricted than fentanyl.

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