alt Hacker News> The thing is most of those people made rational objections. The problem is their reasoning was based on false information.
This is how Typhoid Mary understood her status:
> It did not take Mary long to react to this suggestion. She seized a carving fork and advanced in my direction. ... Mallon's refusal was based on her belief that she was not infected. ... To stop her struggles, he had to sit on her chest for the journey.
And yet, locking her up over her objections her was itself a rational decision. This is the debate.
I'm not saying that this kind of intervention is appropriate today, just that her "rational objections" were not be-all and end-all of the situation.
Why is it more "important to understand why she objected"? Isn't it far more important to understand that she infected? The thing is, a virus doesn't care what you believe, or your political stripe. To a pathogen, you're a mass of warm cells, nothing more. Human beliefs are irrelevant to a virus, so why centre them?
Stopping the spread of e.g. measles depends on vaccinating just about everybody, that's statistics and epidemiology. At the end, that is what determines if there will be an outbreak. Cutting people slack on that because they choose to believe nonsense is not helpful and will not work. Actions matter more than beliefs, voluntary or not.
> her "rational objections" were not be-all and end-all of the situation.
I hope this is not what you think my position is.
If you want to change someone's mind, you need to understand it. If someone believes false information, and if they are driven my emotion due to everything they've heard, then giving them a bullet list of facts will not change their mind 95% of the time.
You've probably heard of the term "steel manning" when arguing with someone. If you cannot state the other person's argument in a way that they agree with, then you are just talking past each other. If you can state their position as well or better than they can, now you in a better position to change their mind.
If your goal isn't to change their mind, then go ahead, just keep calling them stupid and making no progress with them.