‘I mean, it’s honestly laughable of someone to talk about the logic of qualys being used to murder people while they have a print of Mao Zedong hanging behind them almost certainly unironically.’
Hypocrisy is not relevant to the validity of a criticism, right?
From the perspective of cognitive decoupling, then yes—this point in the video is unrelated to the specific claim referenced here.[1]
However, I think some contextualising norms ought to be applied here—I could honestly have picked many different parts of the video to contrast against idolising Mao. I think this paying attention to this context shows that the critique comes from the frame of a worldview that has done—and if it gains influence again will do—immense harms to the world. Thus, I think it is fair to view the video as a whole from a sceptical perspective, rather than an assumption of good faith.
Sometimes the right response to critique isn’t a polite research project of separating the good points from the poor ones. While I agree that it’s a good ideal to try to rise above conflict theory and argue on the object level, sometimes your interlocutor just wants conflict, and this is one of those cases.
None of the claims made in that section—which are: 1) QALYs were used to deny disabled people healthcare in the context of COVID-19, 2) This is morally equivalent to murder, 3) The healthcare rationing choice is made because the lives of disabled people (it’s not clear whether this is implied to be some or all) is lower than some economic value (it’s not made clear whether this is the economic value of giving an alternative person treatment, or a specific threshold), and 4) that this ‘murder’ is done in the name of cost effectiveness—are evidenced or referenced either in the video or in the bibliography shared on Twitter
‘I mean, it’s honestly laughable of someone to talk about the logic of qualys being used to murder people while they have a print of Mao Zedong hanging behind them almost certainly unironically.’
Hypocrisy is not relevant to the validity of a criticism, right?
From the perspective of cognitive decoupling, then yes—this point in the video is unrelated to the specific claim referenced here.[1]
However, I think some contextualising norms ought to be applied here—I could honestly have picked many different parts of the video to contrast against idolising Mao. I think this paying attention to this context shows that the critique comes from the frame of a worldview that has done—and if it gains influence again will do—immense harms to the world. Thus, I think it is fair to view the video as a whole from a sceptical perspective, rather than an assumption of good faith.
Sometimes the right response to critique isn’t a polite research project of separating the good points from the poor ones. While I agree that it’s a good ideal to try to rise above conflict theory and argue on the object level, sometimes your interlocutor just wants conflict, and this is one of those cases.
None of the claims made in that section—which are: 1) QALYs were used to deny disabled people healthcare in the context of COVID-19, 2) This is morally equivalent to murder, 3) The healthcare rationing choice is made because the lives of disabled people (it’s not clear whether this is implied to be some or all) is lower than some economic value (it’s not made clear whether this is the economic value of giving an alternative person treatment, or a specific threshold), and 4) that this ‘murder’ is done in the name of cost effectiveness—are evidenced or referenced either in the video or in the bibliography shared on Twitter