
Why are we really in lockdown? - TinyBig
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2020/04/15/1586943153000/Why-are-we-really-in-lockdown--/
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djaque
This article looks like it's part of the genre of "act like an authority on
fact while giving a slanted view of reality that confirms my own opinions"
literature that seems more and more popular nowadays.

Just because you think you're including a "liberal point of view" (the author
leans right) doesn't mean both sides are really covered. Especially when you
call that point of view "a scaremongering campaign from a biased “liberal”
media" as the author does. Or... sorry, he says that "others" are calling it
that. Which I guess means he can wash his hands of that politically charged
statement.

I have to wonder if authors like this are actually trying to deceive their
audience or if they genuinely believe that "the other side" follows the
arguments they lay out. It feels like the author's version of democrats is
what my crazy uncle would say they are and his only interaction with liberal
ideas are from people making fun of them on his facebook feed.

Edit: I don't want this comment to come off as too angry, but I've been seeing
more and more of this brand of "intellectualism" and it's been making me
frustrated. I just wish that people would fairly represent their opponent and
not pretend that their version of what's going on is unbiased.

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xg15
Their core argument seems to be that we should place less value on those dying
from Coronavirus, because most of them "would soon have died anyway" \- and
more value on the percieved economic risk of the lockdowns, because this
somehow represents "the people we can see dying in front of us".

Hence easing the lockdown, focusing on the economy and just letting the virus
take its course whould naturally be the more "humane" solution...

Seems like a classic right-wing trolley-problem exercise which is really a
thinly-veiled excuse to lobby for social darwinism.

~~~
travisoliphant
I didn't perceive it to be an argument for anything specific. I did not get
the sense the author is suggesting either lifting restrictions or not. I saw
it as more of a piece trying to get us all to think harder and better and
expose the difficult trade-offs and the conundrum we face as humans of the
morality vs utility argument of saving someone hurting in front of us at any
cost versus saving more people at a lower cost potentially at the risk of
_not_ saving the person in front of us. I appreciated the author's parable of
the river.

My own thoughts go in the direction of maybe the _right_ thing to do is
different at different "scales". The _right_ thing to do in my family is
different than the _right_ thing to do in my job which is probably different
than the _right_ thing to do at the city level, the county level, the state
level, the nation level, and the world level (to use labels appropriate for
the USA). Leaders at each level have a different decision to make and things
work better the more people we have making "good" decisions at each level. The
process of figuring out what "good" decisions at each level is the really hard
part that is not easily wrapped up with platitudes, memes, or other
projections into a single one-dimensional axis (i.e. left vs. right) of a
high-dimensional, multi-attribute space.

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neonate
[https://archive.md/Cf6W9](https://archive.md/Cf6W9)

