If someone wants to believe that the Universe has something in store for them aka Law of Attraction, fine, that isn't a harmful belief as far as I can tell. BUT saying that people shouldn't get vaccines and promoting "natural" cures and the like IS dangerous and has direct harm, that is my concern.
And they believe it isn't dangerous. So, you promote your opinion, they promote theirs, and everyone else makes up their own mind.
The problem I see here is your assertion that the expression of _their_ opinion, and I quote, "IS dangerous and has direct harm".
Why isn't your opinion "dangerous and has direct harm"?
the idea is to promote critical thinking when it comes to health, since most of the items there are about health.
Here's the problem as I see it: Coercion.
Expressing your opinion, urging people to examine the available information and making up their own minds while (of course) hoping that they will come to the same conclusions as you, that's not coercion, that's persuasion.
Requiring medical procedures through force of law, even if it's "for your own good", that's coercion.
You want to see a bunch of people getting vaccinations for their kids? Then let a few die of those preventable diseases and see people flocking to your banner. Let people experience the results of choice, and you will see a lot more responsible behavior.
Dude, everyone on this forum agrees government should get out of medicine, you're trying to find an argument where there isn't one.
Scott isn't saying that promoting bad medical advice IS like harming someone and should therefore be illegal, but that it leads to direct harm and should therefore be strongly apposed with free speech. Theres no need to frame this in pro liberty/anti liberty because everyones on the same page as far as thats concerned.
As far as "once a few people die then people will realize which medicines are bullshit and which are not" goes, this simply isn't the case.
You're assuming people are rational. If it were the case, peoples deaths would have already warned people off bad choices, then there would be no more cancer sufferers wasting money on magnets, non of them buying healing crystals or going to psychic healers or faith healers.
All of these "alternative" treatments are empirically much worse at curing cancer and extending your life than traditional chemo/radiotherapy/surgery.
People don't shun these conventional, proven treatments because they've made a rational choice on what works better, they shun them namely for two (emotional) reasons.
1. Chemotherapy, radiotherapy both have very nasty side effects people don't want to endure, if they can bullshit themselves that the "cure is worse than the cancer", then they can free up some dissonance to follow unproven alternative bullshit. Surgery is also risky, and theres a chance you can die and that it won't do much to extend your life.
2. Often, even with the best chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery, prognosis is bad for certain cancers. If you've got severe pancreatic/lung/bone cancer, and doctors are telling you, even with the best treatment your probably only going to live for another 5 years, its much easier to listen to the hacks telling you that "traditional medicine" is harmful, and that theres an easy cure the scientific establishment doesn't want you to know about.
After all, the "scientific establishment" has effectively sentenced you to death, and if you only have a couple of years left, its pretty easy to grasp at straws, especially if you have a head full of "science can't explain everything/science is just another religion"
Unfortunately, the "let idiots die" attitude, doesn't take into account the fact that alot of people who fall for bullshit treatments, aren't normally irrational, they're just desperate, and as a result they waste money, and often ignore better treatments, and knock years off their life as a result.
There are
countless assholes who
make their buck from persuading people to ignore "conventional", in favor of their special treatment that can so easily cure you
Even though "conventional" treatments have doubled, and in some cases tripled cancer survival rates in the last 30 years.
Of the two quacks i linked to, one says that cancer is caused by "psychic shock", and that its chemo and radiotherapy that kill people with cancer, and that if you resolve your "psychic shock" then your body will heal itself.
The other claims cancer is a fungus and can be cured by bicarbonate of soda.
If this shit seems like a joke, take a look at some of the cancer forums where people are actually putting their hopes into this shit, then take a look at the people who've opted against chemo, radiotherapy and surgery, and died shortly afterwards.
They're like assholes selling big dick pills, except 1000 times worse because they're persuading desperate people to make a scientifically unsound choices which will shorten their life. Not only this but its self perpetuating. Once someone has a few people suckered, they can use their testimony as "proof" it works. And this all goes into a largery societal trend of fundamental misunderstanding of what science is.
The same attitude that backs "science can't explain everything", and "you can get scientists to say anything", is the same attitude that people draw upon when making these bunk scientific decisions.
The quacks are at the height of
cargo cultism, they use percentages like scientists do, they use sciency sounding names like scientists do, and most people can't tell the difference, because they don't actually understand what science is.
The same retards who bitch about "blind trust" in scientists, are the same assholes who use bullshit authority arguments like X% of doctors wouldn't use chemotherapy if they got cancer, X% of doctors wouldn't give their children vaccines.
The only thing thats gonna make people make better choices is more informed discussion on the scientific method and its place in all our lives,
and that goes for whether theres a free market or not.