When facts get in the way
When people have differing opinions, providing more facts can polarise opinions rather than leading to agreement. How come? And how does this relate to our vaccine targets?
Tag: truth
Customary practice
The Speaker of the House tried to force Rawiri Waititi (Māori party co-leader) to wear a tie but had to back down after commentary including Waititi calling a tie a ‘colonial noose’. Cultures and times change…there’s a related challenge in the Māori community over the rights of wahine Māori to speak on marae.
Patterns & Conspiracy Theorists
What leads people to believe in conspiracy theories? Three components are being individualists, seeing patterns in random designs, like Jackson Pollock paintings, and not being interested in investigating the patterns once they have seen them.
Hope & reality
For any sort of normal to reappear in the world, we need the vaccines that have now been developed to be rolled out to achieve herd immunity. For New Zealand, it looks like that won’t happen until 2022 given we don’t yet have vaccines in the country. That’s a long time staying home…
The paradox of predictions
Why does the voting in the US election differ substantially from the poll results? Could be the polls were wrong. Or it could be the polls influenced people to act differently.
Evidence in the face of belief
Some people are positive saints in these COVID times. The process of beatification is a long one, so they won’t likely become saints until they are dead. Beatification often seems to include belief without evidence, like what we believe about the economy.
My teacups are getting stormy
It’s easy to get stressed right now. Our household is unlikel to be the only one overreacting when people have symptoms that could be from COVID. Or any other illness that would mean a difficult and risky trip to the doctor.