Support NeoGAF

[Rentahamster]

Despite anti-institutional religiousness being prominent on the left, I anecdotally still see a lot of new-age, spiritual, astrological, hippie, naturalistic-fallacy-related stuff that occurs on the left. The religious right doesn't have a lock on believing in the supernatural. It's more of a human thing, really.

Anti-nuclear environmentalists are also annoying, as well as anti-GMO. There are legitimate points to be had, but it really does involve a lot of anti-corporate, anti-"artificial", naturalistic fallacy scare mongering. Especially when these are real solutions, and the same opponents are probably ascribing to a Malthusian view of human progress (which I also find annoying).

In fact, I look forward to the day when our great, great grandchildren look back on us with horror in the same way I do with my (presumably) flagrantly racist great, great grandparents.

I shall observe this eventuality from my pickled jar.

I plan to as well. We'll interface to the neural web, and play Diablo 12 together in space.

 

[Woorloog]

One thing neither side of the debate seems to focus on enough to me is just, like, using less energy.

Doesn't seem to be practical. With expanding population, more industry and whatever else, energy usage goes up, and efficiency certainly isn't keeping pace... and trying to get people to simply reduce their energy usage seems to be be more or less impossible.

Perhaps it would be a good solution but to me it seems to have more problems than increasing (or shifting to another) energy production in one way or another.

 

[AbortedWalrusFetus]

Aside from religious people, i've found people on the left are way more willing to buy into anti-scientific stuff. Especially anything involved goods produced by big corporations.




it's also a pipe dream to believe that renewable energy don't impact the environment. People often seem to assume that putting 100 windturbines on a field won't affect the enviroment much when they have already been big issues with bird populations and high maintnance costs. Nevermind issues with storing and reliable production.


There is no one size fits all solution for energy production and producing large amounts of energy will impact the environment a lot, renewable or not. You have to use wind/sun/hydro in places where they are efficient. That's not everywhere.

The most frustrating thing to me related to energy alternatives is more how things are rushed into as solutions without actually seeing if they will work well and without fully appreciating the impacts. I am all for alternative energy, but rushing into some of these solutions without impact studies for some of it is reckless. I'm not down on it at all, in fact I personally advocate for an additional $1 gasoline tax, half of which would go into energy research, and the other half into mass transit.

 

[Coconut]

Most alternative medicine stuff is left leaning. Sorry folks gems aren't going to rid your body of cancer.

 

[Palette Swap]

Many of the supposed sins from Monsanto are either wholly made up or hugely distorted (e.g. the "suing farmers who had some seeds blow on their farm" story, or "terminator seeds" myth).

That isn't to say that Monsanto has never done anything wrong, but the left tends to demonize Monsanto in the same way that libertarians demonize the government.

I think this is actually beside the point anti-GMO people are trying to make: Monsanto could be the worst bunch of cartoon villains that it wouldn't say too much on the technology itself. There's nothing in their alleged evils that is somehow essential to GMOs.

And that is what depresses me as a liberal: the need to pass off as rational what are beliefs or values. I mean, there's nothing wrong to dislike a company because you don't like what you've seen of how they run their business, but there's no need to turn that into an absolute fact on their business. These are sloppy and unnecessary inferences made to look more righteous.

 

[Fuchsdh]

Same applies to nuclear, maybe if we spent more time developing nuclear energy instead of being scared of it we would have came up with new technologies that solved the waste problem or maybe even fusion.

We also could have been using nuclear power for decades now, which would really help the environment.

The main problem with alternate energy is the storage issue which is being invested in because it is helpful for all energy sources.

And I agree. But there's room for legitimate argument about this. It's not prima facie
anti-science.

 

[Cyrix]

A bit of a tangent: Does anyone have a significant other/spouse who has some of these beliefs, especially the diet/anti-GMO/"alternative" medicine kind?

I ask because my girlfriend, who I agree with 90% of the time on everything, has a naturopath as her GP (but will go to an actual doctor if it's serious stuff, and she's not anti-vax or anything like that; she just says she prefers a naturopath because they treat the "cause" rather than just the "symptom". I have had arguments with her about this many, many times, and it's just something I've learned to live with, but god damn do I want to scream at her sometimes for some of the stuff she goes on about. She is also apparently allergic to almost every food in existence, it seems like.

Anyway, anyone else deal with anything like this? How do you keep from going crazy?

My older sister is like this only even worse, she basically completely distrusts science and will only see real doctors if things get serious. It's incredibly difficult to be around her at times, especially as she has a kid now and I worry about him.

A big problem I have found is that much of this kind of thinking is rooted in something of a spiritual or religious belief that "nature provides" or is at least inherently better/safer, and as we all know faith is something that is very difficult for people to let go of.

I've had to really avoid even discussing anything with her anymore as i really only see her on christmas and my parents really wouldn't appreciate me starting shit.

 

[J-Rod]

It's true that most drugs treat the symptoms and not the underlying cause. If I take a pain killer because I broke my arm, it isn't mending my bones, or if I take a decongestant, it's not killing the infection in my sinuses. However, alternative medicine treats neither unless you think the underlying cause is from bad karma or something. Just saying they treat the cause doesn't mean they do.

 

[Opiate]

Despite anti-institutional religiousness being prominent on the left, I anecdotally still see a lot of new-age, spiritual, astrological, hippie, naturalistic-fallacy-related stuff that occurs on the left. The religious right doesn't have a lock on believing in the supernatural. It's more of a human thing, really.

Anti-nuclear environmentalists are also annoying, as well as anti-GMO. There are legitimate points to be had, but it really does involve a lot of anti-corporate, anti-"artificial", naturalistic fallacy scare mongering. Especially when these are real solutions, and the same opponents are probably ascribing to a Malthusian view of human progress (which I also find annoying).

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=129513197&postcount=112

And in case there was any ambiguity, follow the discussion down the thread: he was indeed suggesting that those starving people should just die, if the alternative are GMOs crops.

 

[Damaniel]

My biggest beef right now is with the anti-gluten / self-diagnosed celiac/gluten sensitive people. Apparently half of the left has magically acquired a sensitivity to gluten in just the last few months. Either evolution is working in overdrive, or 99% of those people are just jumping on yet another stupid dietary fad.

Unlike the examples that Opiate suggested, which are all pretty bipartisan in terms of who believes them, the gluten sensitivity issue seems to be mainly believed by the left. For example, I was reading a diary over on Daily Kos (a blog about as left as they come) about gluten sensitivity this morning. The diary author had the audacity to suggest that gluten sensitivity was mainly a made-up condition for most people who aren't diagnosed celiac sufferers, and he got absolutely skewered by people in the comments who felt that eliminating gluten made them feel 'better' in some nebulous way, even though they had no diagnosed gluten sensitivity issues. Many of the skewer-ers were pretty strongly opposed to the anti-vax movement, yet failed to see the cognitive dissonance that their stance on gluten sensitivity created.

I'm rather ashamed that people supposedly on my side of the political spectrum can buy into the same anti-science bullshit that I'd expect from people on the other side of the spectrum.

 

[Mumei]

What you are describing is a not a problem inherent to standardized testing. What you are really describing is a problem caused by insufficient resource allocation - a problem that is independent of whether it was a standardized test or an individualized one. Do you believe that if the same amount of per-student resources were devoted to grading writing on individualized exams that they would do any better?

There is a point to be made about efficiency of resource utilization that is inherent to test standardization: that is, standardized tests use resources much more efficiently than individualized exams, because all of the fixed costs are amortized over a much larger number of students.

I know. I just don't know what should be done about it, in practice. What would you suggest? This particular company hired around 400 or 500 testers (as temp workers, naturally) for the grading season for each shift (morning and evening), and there were constantly increasing production goals (I started at 150 / hour on one question and ended up at well over 900 / hour by the time we finished it, and though I was by far an outlier it was pretty normal for people's hourly quotas to double or triple.

So what would you suggest they do differently?

 

[Kabouter]

Doesn't seem to be practical. With expanding population, more industry and whatever else, energy usage goes up, and efficiency certainly isn't keeping pace... and trying to get people to simply reduce their energy usage seems to be be more or less impossible.

Perhaps it would be a good solution but to me it seems to have more problems than increasing (or shifting to another) energy production in one way or another.

Ehhh, I don't really agree with this. There's a great deal of efficiency to be gained, particularly when you look at the differences in per capita energy consumption in the Western world.

 

[patapuf]

One thing neither side of the debate seems to focus on enough to me is just, like, using less energy.

It is a highly discussed topic here in switzerland at least, and while it is clearly the only way on the long term i'm a bit pessimistic on that aspect improving anytime soon.

Bringing up old structures and technology up to the current standard has a huge economic cost. The new stuff is all nice and efficient but so many buildings, cars, electronic appliances, cars ect. need upgrading. It'll be done sometime but it'll take long and people will argue for a long time who has to pay how much.

Then there's population growth and with that the required economic growth, that's manageable in the first world but we still have a lot of people coming in the rest of the world and they'll all need power.

Then there's just the general increase in power consumption that seems to happen for some reason, battery powered consumer devices or whatever.

 

[Fugu]

It's a reflexive, instinctive dislike of large corporations prima facie, regardless of evidence of efficacy or safety. That's what I would refer to as a "gut feeling."

I would refer to that as being consistent insofar as it plays into a worldview that values public over private ownership.

I think you'd find that almost all of us responding to this thread self identify as liberals. I identify as such, at least. The goal is definitely not to create a "both sides are equally bad" false equivalence.

But I would say this: precisely because I am a liberal, I am often much more concerned with anti-scientific beliefs that propagate amongst liberal people than amongst conservative people. The liberals who hold these anti-scientific beliefs represent me, in a vague but real way.

I understand the benefit of taking an apolitical look at the stupid things people believe and subsequently associating them with an ideology. But I don't feel the same association with all liberals that you might, and that's probably because there are a lot of unscientific liberals (and I'd be more apt to describe myself as a communist than a liberal anyway, but that's beside the point). Consequently, I find myself more concerned with the notion of leveraging a belief on being opposed to science and subsequently the effect that that has on allowing the proliferation of antiscientific beliefs; in a very roundabout way the climate change deniers justify the presence of the anti-vaccine people and it's worth treating the social acceptability of such beliefs as a cohesive unit.

 

[Freshmaker]

GMO's are a huge one.

Also Gluten.

Also organic food being somehow superior to conventional food despite countless studies showing no actual advantage to health etc.

 

[Kinitari]

I am so goddamn liberal, and I think that's why I -hate- to see these common liberal pitfalls employed so often.

I think, in a very weird way (and something I can't prove, but I want to look into) liberals are often pessimistic. I don't know if it's more than any other political group, but I find that anecdotally, a lot of the stuff I don't like boils down to people assuming the worst, and embracing this idea that the world is going to shit. Medicine is 'gone to shit' and so we need to get back to the roots, is often what I hear from my girlfriends family, for example.

My girlfriend when I met her was pretty into a lot of this stuff, but not with any sort of passion - mostly because it was just something she had been inundated with since childhood. When she met me, it took a very long time of us talking about stuff (after establishing a strong and safe foundation for communication) for her to start thinking about these pitfalls critically. Now she tells me all the time that she is a happier person than she's ever been. Not just because I slay in bed or anything, but because she doesn't see monsters around every corner so to speak.

Her mother and sister go to their homeopath, naturopath, and slew of other woo doctors whenever one of them has a slight headache or has slightly severe cramps. They get told that their ki or whatever is fucked, and that they need to do x y z to resolve it. They get told this by every "doctor" they see. I guarantee that if you go to a homepath or a naturopath or anything and you are like "Just here for a checkup" - even if you feel brilliant, you're gonna leave with them telling you everything about you is fucked on a physical, emotional and spiritual level. I see shadows of this in unreasonable environmentalism, as well - and other pitfalls. Just this almost raw fear and disappointment with the world.

---

I tell the story of my girlfriends sister now often, but she recently was diagnosed with crohns - and a few months ago got surgery and now is doing better than she has been for years, however that's not how it actually went down. Almost 10 years ago her doctors suspected that she might have crohn's, but they weren't sure (those sorts of ailments are a bitch to diagnose). She didn't remember about this until recently, when she was looking through some old diaries, but apparently in reaction to this, she jumped into homeopathy, naturopathy and the ilk with a passion.

The little weirdness she felt passed, and she attributed it to these products as opposed to... you know, the ebb and flow of life and ailments, so she doubled down and became obsessed. Years went by with little episodes, but she thought nothing of it and just bought more tinctures until the pains passed and that was that. Finally last year her shit was TOO fucked, she lost 40lb very rapidly, had no energy, fainted a few times and was basically not doing well - when the fear really took hold, she went to the doctor. Within a few weeks they were 100% sure she had crohn's and had started treating it - mostly with steroids. She felt better, but was still apprehensive about 'western' medicine and continued to see her acupuncturist and what not - where some of them even claimed they could cure her of crohns (the same motherfucking acupuncturist who thought her problems were because she wasn't eating meat, then told her that he knew how to cure crohns).

Anyway, as time went on, and she had to be taken off the steroids and all the woo was doing shit, she started to have almost a life crisis when she started to think maybe all this stuff wasn't doing her any good and in fact might be doing her harm. She finally had her surgery and now she is doing -so- much better - even though the surgery was made more difficult by the 10 years of no treatment. However, it's not all rainbows as she is now less scared for her life, she is back to embracing all the old stuff plus a bunch of new crazy shit. Crystals, for example, and their supernatural powers.

I remember a little while ago at her parents cottage, she pulled out a book to talk to my girlfriend about crystals (they did this off in private as she has figured out that when she tries to pull me into the conversation it doesn't work out) - and she said, and I quote:

"People from all over the world have been talking about the mystical properties of crystals for thousands of years. That has to mean something."

The silver lining in all this is that her parents, at the very least, don't practice it as much as a result - her mom was originally the one really into it, but never as much as her daughter was. And now, she always recommends that her daughter (the one with crohn's, not my girlfriend) go to "real doctors" (she calls them that sometimes) if she feels any sort of stomach ache.

Anyway - that whole long as story is just a very important reminder that this stuff isn't harmless, it can be devastating. It almost was devastating for me, I really like my girlfriends sister.

 

[Woorloog]

Ehhh, I don't really agree with this. There's a great deal of efficiency to be gained, particularly when you look at the differences in per capita energy consumption in the Western world.

Eh, energy efficiency is rising in general? I always thought it would not really keep pace with demand for energy.
I wasn't saying it can't be increased, just that it won't increase as fast as demand for energy...
I may be wrong though.

Still figure reducing energy consumption won't be a realistic course, even if it were an ideal one.

 

[eudaemonic]

Wow, I didn't know there was still an anti-fluoridation movement. I thought that basically fell away after it became standard and no one's precious bodily fluids suffered permanent damage.

I actually heard someone argue that fluoride blocks "your third eye" this past weekend. I was speechless.

 

[Kabouter]

Eh, energy efficiency is rising in general? I always thought it would not really keep pace with demand for energy.
I wasn't saying it can't be increased, just that it won't increase as fast as demand for energy...
I may be wrong though.

Still figure reducing energy consumption won't be a realistic course, even if it were an ideal one.

It doesn't have to increase as fast as demand for energy to be a useful investment, it is per euro spent a lot more advantageous to do so on measures to reduce consumption than it is to spend it on windmills or, for many countries at least, solar panels.

 

[AbortedWalrusFetus]

It doesn't have to increase as fast as demand for energy to be a useful investment, it is per euro spent a lot more advantageous to do so on measures to reduce consumption than it is to spend it on windmills or, for many countries at least, solar panels.

The other nice thing about reduced consumption is it buys more time for alternatives to mature.

 

[G.ZZZ]

The IQ difference between white and black people. It doesn't fit peoples worldview so they reject it.

http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf

This is stupid because it want to identify things like "race" "black" or "white" taht don't really exist. I mean there could be some difference (bone density and average muscle strenght/composition), but they're small and progressively distributed geographically. Americans perceptions are so skewed on this because they live in a immigrant country, but when you live in place like southern europe you notice that people are just varying in skin tone depending on their location mostly, there's no "black" or "white", just varying degrees of browns if you like, from the very dark brown of central africas, to the averages browns of the north, the light browns of south europe, the even less browns northern european.

 

[Opiate]

I actually heard someone argue that fluoride blocks "your third eye" this past weekend. I was speechless.

This seems highly scientific. Here is a diagram from the article you linked which illustrates the important functions of the pineal gland.

 

[G.O.O.]

ermmm, shale gas ?

 

[Atlagev]

Anyway - that whole long as story is just a very important reminder that this stuff isn't harmless, it can be devastating. It almost was devastating for me, I really like my girlfriends sister.

Yeah, I mean, that's what really drives me nuts. These are people I love, people I care about. And my girlfriend is damn smart. That's what really blows my mind. How can someone so smart fall for this stuff? Whenever the conversation moves to medicine or health, I basically have learned to shut off. It actually worries me if we have kids, because there's no way I'm going to take my kid to a fucking naturopath.

 

[Woorloog]

It doesn't have to increase as fast as demand for energy to be a useful investment, it is per euro spent a lot more advantageous to do so on measures to reduce consumption than it is to spend it on windmills or, for many countries at least, solar panels.

How does it compare to additional nuclear energy? Probably well? IIRC nuclear power is rather expensive (not to mention uranium mining being pretty bad for environment).

I don't think it useless investment, just doubting people will realize it, bother to invest in it.

 

[Valhelm]

Despite anti-institutional religiousness being prominent on the left, I anecdotally still see a lot of new-age, spiritual, astrological, hippie, naturalistic-fallacy-related stuff that occurs on the left. The religious right doesn't have a lock on believing in the supernatural. It's more of a human thing, really.

Yeah, I've met a couple white, liberal Buddhists and Hindus who are basically fundamentalists. I was really surprised.

 

[Cyan]

ermmm, shale gas ?

What about it? Is it not as harmful to the environment as liberals claim?

 

[Yoritomo]

anything that uses an appeal to nature that isn't otherwise justified scientifically

 

[Neo C.]

Truth is, it doesn't matter whether it's left or right, people just want things being simple. Black and white world view is much easier, fluffier and lovelier than a world full of grey tone.

So there you have it:
Organic - good! Non-organic - bad!
Vegetables - good! Meat - bad!
Science - good! Science which doesnt support my world view - bad!

The amount of people who believe to change the world by changing their eating habits never ceases to amaze me.

 

[Josh7289]

I'm glad we're talking about this more.

 

[ISOM]

Can someone explain the fluoridation debate to me? I thought it was bad for you, but I am willing to change my stance on the subject if there is information telling otherwise.

 

[Timeaisis]

Gotchaye already covered it, but this is a philosophical difference, not a question of ignoring science. Given that the philosophical difference is largely driven by religion--life begins at conception because that's when God sticks a soul in there--it's sort of odd to argue it relates to anti-science views.

See, I think it's unscientific to paint with such a broad stroke that a fetus is not human life. More question for philosophy, perhaps, but the fact stands that science defines life while philosophy defines "human life". If we can't reconcile these things then we can never really have a profound argument for or against abortion.

I think Albatross is right when he claims that people who arbitrarily define points of human life in the abortion debate are being anti-scientific. Their claims are not based on science, or even philosophy, just their person opinions of the matter for the sake of further debate. Essentially, it's convenient for pro-lifers to define "human life" to begin at conception, while it's convenient for pro-choice to define it at the 3rd trimester (or whenever they happen to define it nowadays, I'm uncertain). This is a shot in the dark and doesn't take into account questions of science or philosophy: "what is life" and "what is a human life"? Both are essential questions being disregarded by both sides of the debate, and yes, I do believe that ignoring them is somewhat anti-scientific. Maybe not as problematic as the others, but at the very least the arguments on either side tend to skirt logical arguments for and against life at certain points for the sake of convenience. Instead, it defines life at a certain point so they don't have to get into the ethical argument of whether or not destroying a life is ethical and they can just argue based on their personal ethos.

Sorry that is slightly off topic, just wanted to point out that I don't think Albatross is off-base in his claim. Plenty of groups disregard analysis for the sake of convenience, a fact that's very much related to this topic.

 

[reckless]

Can someone explain the fluoridation debate to me? I thought it was bad for you, but I am willing to change my stance on the subject if there is information telling otherwise.

It adds/removes fluoride in the public water supply to a level that is shown to help reduce tooth decay while not posing any health concerns.

People think its bad because "CHEMICALS!!!" usually.

 

[Ethelwulf]

I'm liberal and atheist and I sincerely believe that being liberal and religious is somewhat contradictory.

 

[Atrophis]

Every moon hoaxer I know is left leaning.

 

[AllIsOneIsNone]

Medicine does sketch me out, honestly. I mean I trust stuff like antibiotics, but especially when it comes to psychiatry I stop trusting doctors as much. They'll throw highly addictive/brain chemistry altering substances your way in a second just because they're making money, depending on the psychiatrist of course.

Basically I could see how that extends to other fields of medicine to some degree. It's fine to trust your doctor's advice, but it should be accompanied by personal research.

 

[Kinitari]

Can someone explain the fluoridation debate to me? I thought it was bad for you, but I am willing to change my stance on the subject if there is information telling otherwise.

There is such a thing as fluoride poisoning. It requires a -significant- amount of fluoride however. In small doses, fluoride is shown to significantly improve dental health. Therefore we put small amounts into a lot of our water supplies.

It has been thoroughly tested, and have been shown to not have any ill effects at the level of consumption we have in developed nations, however people still are fearful and try and repeal fluoridation of water. Luckily we still have it in like toothpaste and stuff, but still - I think generally when we remove fluoride, the only change in health is kids with more fucked up teeth.

 

[CheDominik]

Also organic food being somehow superior to conventional food despite countless studies showing no actual advantage to health etc.

I don't know anyone,myself included, who eats organic(or the EU equivalent) because it's supposed to be healthier. It's always because of ethical or environmental reasons.

 

[reckless]

Medicine does sketch me out, honestly. I mean I trust stuff like antibiotics, but especially when it comes to psychiatry I stop trusting doctors as much. They'll throw highly addictive/brain chemistry altering substances your way in a second just because they're making money, depending on the psychiatrist of course.

Basically I could see how that extends to other fields of medicine to some degree. It's fine to trust your doctor's advice, but it should be accompanied by personal research.

The problem with that is the personal research usually leads to wrong information.

 

[Opiate]

Can someone explain the fluoridation debate to me? I thought it was bad for you, but I am willing to change my stance on the subject if there is information telling otherwise.

Flouride is bad for you, in large enough doses. This is the old dosage trick: show that something is bad if you consume it in large enough quantities, and thus it's "bad for you."

Flouride in small doses is good for tooth enamel. Flouride in large doses is neurotoxic. As such, sometimes we add fluoride to water (as we do in much of the US) but in other places the water is actually deflourinated (Because it has too much and needs to be brought back down to safe levels. This is done in a few places in the US and in other countries).

 

[Gotchaye]

See, I think it's unscientific to paint with such a broad stroke that a fetus is not human life. More question for philosophy, perhaps, but the fact stands that science defines life while philosophy defines "human life". If we can't reconcile these things then we can never really have a profound argument for or against abortion.

I think Albatross is right when he claims that people who arbitrarily define points of human life in the abortion debate are being anti-scientific. Their claims are not based on science, or even philosophy, just their person opinions of the matter for the sake of further debate. Essentially, it's convenient for pro-lifers to define "human life" to begin at conception, while it's convenient for pro-choice to define it at the 3rd trimester (or whenever they happen to define it nowadays, I'm uncertain). This is a shot in the dark and doesn't take into account questions of science or philosophy: "what is life" and "what is a human life"? Both are essential questions being disregarded by both sides of the debate, and yes, I do believe that ignoring them is somewhat anti-scientific. Maybe not as problematic as the others, but at the very least the arguments on either side tend to skirt logical arguments for and against life at certain points for the sake of convenience. Instead, it defines life at a certain point so they don't have to get into the ethical argument of whether or not destroying a life is ethical and they can just argue based on their personal ethos.

Sorry that is slightly off topic, just wanted to point out that I don't think Albatross is off-base in his claim. Plenty of groups disregard analysis for the sake of convenience, a fact that's very much related to this topic.

But people do do this analysis. No one's saying that fetuses obtain rights in the third trimester because magic. The usual language you see is about how an early fetus is "a clump of cells" or similar, which is getting at how the early fetus doesn't have those features that we associate with rights-having individuals. There's lots of talk about when the fetus can feel pain, which ties into a broader debate about not just human rights but all animal rights, where the idea is that sentience is plausibly an important aspect of personhood.

It seems to me that all you're asking for is a semantic argument, which is really uninteresting. Who cares what we use the words "human life" to mean? That's not what's important, except to the extent there's some sort of Orwellian concern about language here (but I don't think that's where this is going). There's no reason to think that "organism" maps to "person" in any neat way - that's the assumption that seems to me to need a lot more analysis.

Like I said, "life" is just being used to mean "person", and the arguments we have about abortion are very much about justifying particular theories of personhood, although many pro-life arguments are a little confused because the people making them really just think that persons have souls but are instead arguing about things like heartbeats.

Edit: And it should probably be noted that of course a lot of pro-choice arguments are more-or-less willing to grant that the fetus has moral value.

 

[HarryHengst]

The IQ difference between white and black people. It doesn't fit peoples worldview so they reject it.

http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf

And here is a published article (so i guess it must be true) that states that the intelligence difference between black and white people is rapidly decreasing. So clearly black people are evolving at a faster rate than white people!

Also, a working class kid being adopted by a middle-class family sees a 12 to 18 point increase in its intelligence, so clearly middle-class people know this one weird trick to change your genes!

 

[Simply Sarah]

Medicine does sketch me out, honestly. I mean I trust stuff like antibiotics, but especially when it comes to psychiatry I stop trusting doctors as much. They'll throw highly addictive/brain chemistry altering substances your way in a second just because they're making money, depending on the psychiatrist of course.

Basically I could see how that extends to other fields of medicine to some degree. It's fine to trust your doctor's advice, but it should be accompanied by personal research.

This is a bit of a sticky concept. On the one hand, yes, there are times when medical professionals outright get things wrong/have blind spots. On the other hand, it's often very easy to go in completely wrong directions with "personal research", both because there is questionable information out there and because interpreting even the good information can be tough without a proper background (sometimes it's hard enough even with one). You can see this with how badly people tend to do diagnosing themselves through searching the Internet.

 

[jmdajr]

Yeah the organic food movement is completely out of control with this shit.

No doubt.

 

[AllIsOneIsNone]

The problem with that is the personal research usually leads to wrong information.

This is a bit of a sticky concept. On the one hand, yes, there are times when medical professionals outright get things wrong/have blind spots. On the other hand, it's often very easy to go in completely wrong directions with "personal research", both because there is questionable information out there and because interpreting even the good information can be tough without a proper background (sometimes it's hard enough even with one).

What I mean is you should know the right questions to ask when you go to the doctor's office. They'll diagnose you immediately, where you may be able to find more specifics on your condition that could alter that diagnosis or at the least speed up a process of trial and error. Depending on the seriousness of the condition, I'd say it's imperative that you learn everything you can rather than trusting 5 minutes with a doctor who sees 100 people a day.

 

[BocoDragon]

I don't see how 9/11 as inside job is "anti-scientific". It's not as if the conventional story is some proven scientific fact. It's like saying people who don't believe North Korea was behind the Sony hacks are anti-scientific...

I don't want to debate 9/11 as inside job in this thread. I don't believe it was! But the nature of that debate is not one where you have a scientific consensus that only nutters would doubt. It's honestly a debate you can have .... the science will never be in to close the book on it.

 

[jmdajr]

I'm liberal and atheist and I sincerely believe that being liberal and religious is somewhat contradictory.

Is Tom Cruise conservative?

 

[Lonely1]

Does being ethically opposed at the patenting of genetic code or strains counts as being Anti-GMO in an un-scientific manner?

 

[Valhelm]

I'm liberal and atheist and I sincerely believe that being liberal and religious is somewhat contradictory.

Yeah, the Dalai Lama is a fucking right-wing mouth breather.

 

[Azih]

I'm liberal and atheist and I sincerely believe that being liberal and religious is somewhat contradictory.

Yeah Gandhi and MLK were so far right wing they hung out with Mussolini for fun.