But they get validation. It’s not just that they think their ideas and information is correct. They are correct and doctors and entire industries are wrong or corrupt. That makes them smarter than those eggheads that went to school for sometimes a decade and have spent further decades with their face in a microscope. After decades of education and dedicated research somehow Cletus from BFE, Dumbfuckistan and Google was able to best them intellectually.
Comment on What is in for the antivax in a government?
whyrat@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
They’re working off of incorrect information & ideas. They think people will be better off not getting vaccinated. They genuinely think they’re doing a good thing. They don’t think we’ll have resurgences of diseases at any large scale because they don’t attribute the disappearance of those diseases to vaccines. They believe society will be relieved from some vaccine induced “side-effects” like increased autism (or 5G mind control… or whatever… it’s hard to keep track of their nonsense).
Since they accept the above falsehoods; they don’t need to “get” anything. They’re as certain stopping vaccinations will help the general population as I am that it will do harm. But some idiot(s) put them in charge so they get to execute on their campaign promises.
meco03211@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
WarlockLawyer@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
And your explanation for the ones who always get the vaccines themselves but spread lies about how other people shouldn’t?
shalafi@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Science has become political, projecting an antivax attitude resonates with the rubes. Nothing more to it.
db2@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
No they don’t. Some are simply stupid, others are genuinely evil.
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
They absolutely think they are doing good…
Pretty unanimously, the most evil people to walk the planet all legitimately believe they’re the good guys.
Almost no one sees themselves as a villain, that’s just how the human brain is wired.
People not understanding this, is why evil shit keeps fucking happening.
If you just keep writing them off as “villains” doing evil for the sake of evil, we’ll never learn how to stop it. That literally why they keep coming back.
lovely_reader@lemmy.world 40 minutes ago
I broadly agree but there’s not necessarily anything altruistic about the “good” that they’re doing—they’ve just found a way to justify what they want/decide to do, same as everyone. They don’t have to believe it’s good for people or the world. As long as they can find a reason why those harms don’t matter, or convince themselves that those people/the world would’ve been fucked regardless, or figure at least they’re not doing [insert some other scenario they can imagine], they can live with themselves. And they can focus on who it is good for (their kids perhaps, and all the people in their lives who are undoubtedly pressuring them to abuse their power).
I just wanted to speak up for that nuance, because to me “they think they’re doing good” implies that they value the ideals of doing actual good…and I don’t think there’s necessarily true.
snooggums@piefed.world 8 hours ago
Nah, the majority of evil people are doing stuff that benefits them personally, not for some misguided altruistic purpose that makes for good villains in fiction. Trump, Putin, and all of the rest sre just looking out for themselves and sometimes their families/contacts at the expense of everyone else.
CannonFodder@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Yes, but they honestly believe that’s the right thing to do. Or at least they’ve convinced themselves that it’s excusable. They believe they have a right to do things for themselves at the expense of others. That’s why they won’t ever have remorse. It takes more intelligence to empathize with others; they don’t have that. It’s actually kinda sad.
People who wig out and do what they know is evil are very distraught, and often suicidal.