My recent post on the Mysteries of 9/11 has resulted in two good friends (Al and Ben, pseudonyms) getting into an argumentative email exchange that ended in personal insults and an, hopefully temporary, end of their many years of friendship.
A small group have been mailing each other about Covid Vaccines their side effects and the politics of Big Pharma. Both Al and Ben are good people who want a better world. Al leans to the right and Ben is apolitical. I, as I have said before, am a Democrat, but with a mind open to all sides of an argument.
I have lived in the U.S., Australia, Africa, France, Germany, Italy and England. I have worked in some of the world’s very best research institutions and in some excellent universities, the latest being the University of Oxford (voted again as number one in the world).
I say that because, I am used to open discussion on many topics (computer science, biology, physics, philosophy, mathematics). As a logician, scientist and philosopher, I am used to debating hypotheses. I usually don’t take it all that seriously -unless someone steals my ideas (i.e., publishes my novel and significant scientific ideas as if they were their own without properly citing me as the source. Scientists, like any artist, work hard to create their ideas and theories and acknowledgement is often the only public reward.)
After my seminars in Balliol College, often my chief antagonist and I would joke and exchange stories in the dining hall. No problem that we were at opposite ends of the debating spectrum. That is what academia should be. The truth is often hidden and takes time to unfold. The hypotheses and theories change as more is learned and understood. Often both are simultaneously wrong and right. As it turned out to be in our case.
Recently, talking about Covid Vaccines has become a political and personal issue. Few are able to look at the topic dispassionately.
Getting back to Al and Ben, when I then added the additional hypothesis that 9/11 has some unexplained mysteries and cited architects and engineers for 911 truth, it was too much for poor Ben. He flipped out. And poor Al was the target of his fears and aggression.
The biggest mystery with 9/11 is Building 7. It came down like a controlled demolition without being hit by a plane. Its free fall has never been adequately explained. That being said, I don’t much care if it is ever explained. But it does make some people like Ben very uncomfortable -so much so that they refuse to look at it.
As for Covid Vaccines the issue is: Which is worse, getting a severe side-effect from Covid or getting a severe side-effect from one of the Vaccines? To choose, one has to do a probability assessment. Am I more likely to be harmed by the Vaccine or by Covid? For most healthy, not too obese, young people the answer may be different than for old, immunocompromised and overly obese people. That is up to you. Don’t ask me, because I don’t have the answer.
The point is more that hypotheses are just that and no more. Reality will enter and give the answer. You die or don’t. You have side-effects or not. Fear of one or the other or both generates strong emotions. This can lead to poor decision making. We are all irrational and rational. Such is the human condition.
But to loose a friend over a discussion about hypotheses, goes too far. Friendship is more important than differences about hypotheses.