There is no plausible public health rationale for the new ads I saw a couple of days ago. The first one reads, “Masks are like opinions / Everyone should have one.” The first few Google search results for “are like opinions” link to the well-known witticism “Opinions are like assholes / Everyone has one.” The obvious transitive implication that masks are like assholes does not promote the idea of mask-wearing. It does not describe a benefit of wearing a mask. The thinly veiled message behind this advertisement is, “Wear a mask and eat shit.”
The second ad reads, “Masks speak louder than words.” This neither describes a benefit of masks nor instructs people to wear one, but—while alluding to “actions speak louder than words” and therefore implying that a mask is a costly signal—but of what? - its explicit content is that masks are a form of silencing. And they do in fact impede speech and make it harder to understand and be understood by strangers.
It seems to me like these observations are best explained by ad companies coming up with all kinds of ideas, many of which don’t make literal sense but evoke some associations, and some of which can be read into. I’m not convinced that you’re not projecting a signal that doesn’t exist onto some noise.
What are you positing instead? That the designers who created these ads had had a conscious desire to send a straussian / esoteric subtext? That they were consciously making an add, but unconsciously expressing their true attitudes about masks? That the designers and the decision makers who picked the designs are all motivated to show their conformity by signaling that they think that people who conform should be denigrated?
I don’t get it.
And since believing a narrative in good faith makes someone an unreliable coalition partner, coalition members want to send credible signals to each other that they don’t take their own arguments literally.
I think you’re saying something like...
There are a bunch of people who are operating on an (conscious? unconscious?) model that what actually matters is not improving public health, but instead getting other people (and themselves?) to take on costs to show their deference. So they craft narratives and literally create ads that try to encourage people to take on costs in deference to the authorities. But believing that narrative means that you can’t be expected to shift when the narrative shifts, so they have to show that they know (consciously? unconsciously?) that they’re operating on a model whereby “more costs are better” by sending esoteric signals to each other that hint at that?
Is that right at all?
Concretely…
but—while alluding to “actions speak louder than words” and therefore implying that a mask is a costly signal—but of what?”
I don’t think the implication is that wearing a mask is a costly signal. I naturally read it as “stop culture warring about covid, and wear a mask, because that actually helps a lot more.” (Which notably, I think is true!)
But overall, I think these ads are mostly random. They’re not making arguments, or even communicating subtext, they’re intended to be catchy slogans.
The side effects from the vaccines are minimal. COVID can be very harmful to your health. The risk of death cannot be compared with time lost due to vaccine side effects.* You cannot draw inferences about your risk level from local data because there is no peeing section of the pool.** I live in the real world, where cost benefit analyses are inapplicable. I’ll get a booster shot if The Science tells me to, no matter how bad the side effects are.
I would be quite surprised if anyone who argued against me this way actually followed Zvi’s advice and doubled up on vaccines (unless specifically ordered to by the authorities), while I might if case rates get high enough. They weren’t arguing for an opinion, they were just arguing against me.
For most people in the privileged classes, good-faith argument about the vaccines, even if it explicitly endorses the official recommendations, reads as an antivax position—only bad faith counts as provax. The point isn’t to argue for some particular proposition, but to undermine the idea that propositions are credited or discredited by argument.
This, however, sounds right to me. People are feel threatened by cost benefit analysis, because it opens the door to the anti-vax position, which is shunned in many circles.
It feels a little like if someone was like “let’s all be reasonable here, I want to discuss the pros and cons of going back to a system in which only men can vote.” Some people will be predictably outraged by that; it’s a proposal well outside the overton window, to be rejected out of hand as abhorrent, not “discussed rationally”. The act of entertaining it moves this policy from “known to be ‘unthinkable’” to “something that is at least worth considering.” Even having the discussion is loosing the political battle.
Furthermore, if a Bob claims that he’s not personally in favor of restricting the vote to men, he just wants to consider that option, most people would rightly suspect that Bob is feigning more indifference than he in fact has as a rhetorical trick: probably he’s bringing this up at all because he does think that women shouldn’t vote.
The same applies in this case. Even considering the question pushes the overton window, and onlookers guess that the overton window pushing is you actual objective.
Plus in the vaccination case, people have math trauma, and anticipate being bamboozled by someone citing numbers and studies, that they can’t follow.
So they feel threatened, and produce a somewhat nonsensical “shutting you down” response.
This coalition is implicitly threatening me with collective violence for reasoning publicly at all, so I have to regard myself as in a military conflict with it.
This inference, that you’re being implicitly threatened with physical violence, and threatened in such a way that the best response is to regard yourself in a military conflict, seems wildly unjustified. Do you think that the arguments in this post should be sufficiently compelling for your reader to agree with you on this point? Or are there additional pieces of the argument?
It seems to me like these observations are best explained by ad companies coming up with all kinds of ideas, many of which don’t make literal sense but evoke some associations, and some of which can be read into. I’m not convinced that you’re not projecting a signal that doesn’t exist onto some noise.
What are you positing instead? That the designers who created these ads had had a conscious desire to send a straussian / esoteric subtext? That they were consciously making an add, but unconsciously expressing their true attitudes about masks? That the designers and the decision makers who picked the designs are all motivated to show their conformity by signaling that they think that people who conform should be denigrated?
I don’t get it.
I think you’re saying something like...
There are a bunch of people who are operating on an (conscious? unconscious?) model that what actually matters is not improving public health, but instead getting other people (and themselves?) to take on costs to show their deference. So they craft narratives and literally create ads that try to encourage people to take on costs in deference to the authorities. But believing that narrative means that you can’t be expected to shift when the narrative shifts, so they have to show that they know (consciously? unconsciously?) that they’re operating on a model whereby “more costs are better” by sending esoteric signals to each other that hint at that?
Is that right at all?
Concretely…
I don’t think the implication is that wearing a mask is a costly signal. I naturally read it as “stop culture warring about covid, and wear a mask, because that actually helps a lot more.” (Which notably, I think is true!)
But overall, I think these ads are mostly random. They’re not making arguments, or even communicating subtext, they’re intended to be catchy slogans.
This, however, sounds right to me. People are feel threatened by cost benefit analysis, because it opens the door to the anti-vax position, which is shunned in many circles.
It feels a little like if someone was like “let’s all be reasonable here, I want to discuss the pros and cons of going back to a system in which only men can vote.” Some people will be predictably outraged by that; it’s a proposal well outside the overton window, to be rejected out of hand as abhorrent, not “discussed rationally”. The act of entertaining it moves this policy from “known to be ‘unthinkable’” to “something that is at least worth considering.” Even having the discussion is loosing the political battle.
Furthermore, if a Bob claims that he’s not personally in favor of restricting the vote to men, he just wants to consider that option, most people would rightly suspect that Bob is feigning more indifference than he in fact has as a rhetorical trick: probably he’s bringing this up at all because he does think that women shouldn’t vote.
The same applies in this case. Even considering the question pushes the overton window, and onlookers guess that the overton window pushing is you actual objective.
Plus in the vaccination case, people have math trauma, and anticipate being bamboozled by someone citing numbers and studies, that they can’t follow.
So they feel threatened, and produce a somewhat nonsensical “shutting you down” response.
This inference, that you’re being implicitly threatened with physical violence, and threatened in such a way that the best response is to regard yourself in a military conflict, seems wildly unjustified. Do you think that the arguments in this post should be sufficiently compelling for your reader to agree with you on this point? Or are there additional pieces of the argument?