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Comment by picafrost | Hacker News Reader

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Is there any evidence supporting the claim there is a significant overlap between the group of people who "refuse injections the government recommends" and the group of people who take "peptides"? The article is carefully crafted to evoke this impression without clearly stating it, listing only anecdotal evidence.

RFK Jr using the blue dye stuff for one thing

How?

“Blue dye stuff” meaning methylene blue? Ironically that is one of the most extensively studied compounds in medicine, with hundreds of clinical trials over 100 years…

That doesn't support the claim that people who take peptides are anti-establishment.

I imagine the entire Joe Rogan sphere with being anti vax (or vax skeptical)... While promoting a billion supplements.

*anti untested vaccines - people should be skeptical of untested vaccines, just like peptides.

Indeed, but that’s not the point: many anti-vaxxers are against all vaccines, irrespective of how they were tested. (And will argue against e.g. the FRA approvals.)

But you confuse that set of people with people who don’t know want to inject untested vaccines into their body.

(I don’t)

I’m genuinely not aware of a DIY or grey market in vaccines. Peptides, yes, but vaccines?

In the absence of this, I suspect you’re either confused or straw-manning…

I was referring to the MRNA vaccines, which were relatively untested when released to the public. Suspicion of that is very reasonable.

Okay; noting that the argument has moved from "untested" to "relatively untested".

To clarify, is your concern the inadequacy of the approval process FDA uses for (all) vaccines (noting that many vaccines --e.g. influenza-- are refreshed on a fairly regular basis to account for new strains of viruses) or something specific to approval of the MRNA vaccines?

Or is it that MRNA vaccines were a new approach for vaccines more generally, and so there wasn't/isn't the same long-term data that there was/is for multiple generations of vaccines based on older technologies (viral vector, toxoid, etc.)?

Untested is always relative. And the second, but what’s your point?

> Untested is always relative.

I disagree; "untested" is a very definitive statement. Not tested. Especially when it's in a thread discussing people using all manner of less tested or sometimes literally untested peptides. (Hence my initial thought that maybe you were aware of people taking a DIY route that I wasn't.)

Anyway, when discussing a subject so popularly controversial as vaccines, it's probably better to be precise.

> And the second, but what’s your point?

I wanted to understand your perspective.

Which untested vaccines are regularly given to patients?

He means the COVID vaccine but knows people will make fun of him if he says what he actually believes so he's playing pretend like there is some plague of untested vaccines being used instead of there being one fast tracked vaccine deployed in response to a massive pandemic

It has a certain logic to it, and I think US tipping culture basically follows the same rules.

Even if you almost always end up paying the bill + 20% tip, Americans like the idea that they could not pay the tip if the service was bad.

The appearance of free action is appealing and preferable to being forced to pay the extra amount, even if you almost always pay the amount willingly anyway.

In my experience, everyone who defends tipping culture is defending not paying the tip. I don't buy this idea that someone likes tipping culture and still pays it. After all, you're free to tip anyone you want regardless of culture.

The problem is it is so ingrained in US culture that switching to tip-free has generally failed where tried, even in pro-labor lefty hoods in blue cities.

Numerous restaurants in NYC tried and flipped back over the last 10 years. Restauranteurs reported illogical / innumerate behavior where sales went down when they switched to untipped higher prices.

https://www.eater.com/21398973/restaurant-no-tipping-movemen...

The only restaurants that it stuck were Japanese restaurants that cater primarily to Japanese ex-pats, because culturally its familiar to them.

Well sure, it has to be mandated through law or underpaying workers will inevitably outcompete those that pay workers. I don't think that's an argument that anyone likes tipping culture (except wait staff in bougie cities).

I remember when Uber first came to Austin, one of the big draws was that a tip wasn't expected. The app didn't even allow it IIRC and Uber sort of advertised this as a feature. 15 years later, back to it, tips seem expected again?

Oddly enough, the fact that I was initially sold a product where a tip wasn't expected has made me continue to not tip Uber drivers. Not sure what that says about me.

I actually like tipping culture because it makes me feel generous and charitable, not because there's some kind of weird master/servant relationship. I even make it a point to passive aggressively tip well when service sucks because who gives a shit?

The world is full of people that confuse contrarianism for intelligence.

HN, in particular, loves anything that allows them to discredit science (like the constant banging on about the replication crisis) and replace it with their own pet theory.

Is HN particularly drawn to this over other platforms? I gotta say I don’t quite recognize this. In general, I think there’s a good dose of respect for science around these parts, but maybe I’m blind to it.

I don’t think HN discredits science a lot, especially when compared to other platforms.

I see a particular strain more often here and in “rationalist”-adjacent spaces. It’s essentially anti-intellectualism dressed up as intellectual curiosity and debate.

Come on, just admit that you are not able to follow the debate instead of criticizing it from the outside without understanding it.

>The world is full of people that confuse contrarianism for intelligence.

I've been shouting this from the roof tops for years now and it's one of the biggest problems we face today. I live in a rural area and 100% of the Joe Rogan-ified men I know are mindless reactionaries. They aren't educated, they don't read books, they don't travel, heck, they barely leave the county. They think they're so smart because they say no to everything anyone else says. They never offer solutions. They never try to fix things. They barely even vote. If you say the sky is blue they will say it's green because they're just oh so smart. It's a massive massive problem.

As opposed to this, you have the mindless non-contrarians who unquestioningly believe any assertion by academia or authority, which is a problem too.

I feel like you're completely proving my point here.

Well I have a PhD and have published lots of papers, so I like to think I am educated lol.

And I should unquestioningly believe you? :P

I mean, from a position of critiquing non-contrarians you shouldn’t in general. But me specifically, everyone should believe me lol.

I think it’s also that contrarianism generates an argument they can follow - it’s often much more simplistic along some axis. For example, flat earthers superficially have a really simple model. Throw a ball up, of course it comes down. You look straight ahead and it looks flat. Ask them how GPS works and they can’t follow the math anyways.

I have recently been through the rabbit hole of peptides and most of the people engaged or involved in peptides seem to be healthy individuals. There are some exceptions like lookmaxxers and anti vaxers. The vast majority of people are normal and majority are outside of USA where anti vax sentiment are not in vogue. Some explore peptides for their dogs and cats too.

To assert that people are sad and anxious while not putting the effort to understand the people involved is such an intellectually lazy position to hold.

Extra points for people partying hard on shady synthetic drugs, but being actively anti-vax because government. Case in point, Miguel Bosé, a very well known spanish artist that spent the first 50 years of his life abusing everything except heroin (his own words), but now he is a vaccine negationist, for him and for his two children.

A lot of these peptides are designed to optimize bodies. And a lot of these people suffer from OCD - often a similar type to anorexia. No, it is not normal to intrusively think about your body every few minutes, most people that you see around you do not think about their bodies more than maybe once a day, when they look in the mirror after a shower. And maybe not even that.

"Antivaxxer*" here. I'm not injecting peptides for a similar reason - I'm not convinced the cost/benefit works out. That said, the issue for many is autonomy - if you want to put novel stuff in your body, go ahead. As long as you don't try to compel me to do it.

* Not if we're actually in literate company, but that seemed to be the common consensus after I skipped the jab, having recovered from covid right before the shots became available. Nevermind that my doctor was on board and I've had all the other ones (minus the flu shot). I was still a selfish grandma killing Republican who probably voted for trump to the commentariat.

> That said, the issue for many is autonomy

Your right to swing a fist ends where the other fella's nose begins. That doesn't mean you aren't free, it just means you recognize that the right not to suffer grievous bodily harm trumps the right to swing your fist willy-nilly.

As a fist-swinger you may not always agree, and you may even get hurt one day because you couldn't swing your fist whenever you wanted, but that's just the cost of living in a world filled with other human beings.

The article frames these supplements as being purely appealing to "anti science" people but I think that's really unfair. You can believe in medication, believe in science, trust government systems, etc, and still feel like you're not being served by the medically approved options.

It can also depend on people's politics vs who is on power. In general British anti-vaxers are left wing (very lefty affluent hippie types - you can see this from the areas with low MMR rates), and even more so during covid when a right wing government was in power. There is evidence for this in a survey KCL did of anti-vaccine beliefs during covid. I personally know of British students who declared they would not have covid vaccines because they "did not trust the Tories"

i mean, to be fair everything everyone is injecting, including prescribed medicines, are largely coming from Chinese (or Indian) factories. We don't manufacture much in the western world ourselves.

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