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What's anti-gay and anti-science about the Heritage Foundation?

seriously?

Well here:s a bunch of mealy-mouthed JAQing off about global warming:

https://www.heritage.org/envir...

they're too cowardly to actually state their position insted they merely approach it from every angle but casting doubt, raising issues, obscuring the point and so on. Climate change might be up for debate but not by a bunch of jaqoffs who have an axe to grind.

but it at no point demonises or targets people based on their sexuality or gender

Ye they're too cowardly to actually commit in writing. Nonetheless they're advocating that places should be allowed to force this dude to use women's bathrooms:

https://i.upworthy.com/nugget/...

If those laws are allowed then any dude can walk into a womens bathroom and then claim he was born female and he's legally required to. I can't think for the life of me why they'd do that unless they hate transgender eople so much that it's blinded them to reality.

Oh and some anti gay:

https://www.heritage.org/marri...

yep start off by defining marriage as between a man and a woman. But it's more mealy mouthed insinuation and implication to grind their axe about zomg teh geys!111one

They do disagree with the legislation but do so by raising a large number of concerns about its implications.

Precisely. They have a regressive anti-seience, anti-gay agenda. They never state it but exist in a continual state of jaqing off, raising "concerns" and so on which all point one way.

to avoid addressing the real issues with the concept of meritocracy.

Let me be specific. You've set up a straw man of two people (the PhD who worked for 5 years and the repairman with a ton of experience) who seem like what they do is effortless. The argument is that meritocracy as a concept is worthwhile because people with knowledge can do valuable things very quickly because of the work they did to obtain that knowledge.

But those aren't what anyone thinks about when they hear the phrase "meritocracy", especially in a context critical of the concept.

What we're all thinking about are two things:

a. People who coast to wealth on the backs of actual hard working folk. The Paris Hilton's the world. The Prosperity Gospel and the Divine Right of Kings.

b. People given a leg up in the world who act like they earned it all themselves. There's a phrase for this behavior: Pulling the ladder up behind you.

You've set up your strawman (the hardworking PhD/repairman) and knocked him down, while completely ignoring people's real concerns over how the concept of meritocracy is abused to excuse wealth inequality, uphold a ruling class and punch down on the lower castes.

I'm honestly not sure if you're aware you're doing it, but either way please stop. It's bad for everyone all around. All it does is perpetuate the same sort of monarchies and oligarchies that have been holding us back for thousands of years.

That is a really nice rose coloured view you have there, but for some more details of how Walmart actively suppresses unions, try something like http://www.upworthy.com/6-cree...

The US has more trees now than it did in 1860. >

There's also a large economic cost to banning timber as evidenced by once wealthy,but now impoverished small towns.

When her 5-year-old broke his leg, this mom raised $0. It's actually inspiring.

Freddie Teer is a normal 7-year-old boy. He loves Legos, skateboarding, and horsing around with his older brother Ollie. But two years ago, his mother faced every parent's worst nightmare. ...

While Freddie's injury required major treatment, none of Ashley's friends raised any money for him.

No one from their town took up a collection or held a bake sale.

No GoFundMe page was started to help cover his bills.

Instead, Ashley and Freddie walked out of the hospital owing nothing. Because they live in Canada.

Are you referring to the same jokers who have AOL + Yahoo addresses? Because, c'mon now... The US congress has a GREAT track record of comprehension of the internet!

http://www.theverge.com/2014/9...
http://www.upworthy.com/the-go...
http://gizmodo.com/this-congre...
https://thinkprogress.org/new-...

It's called "El Niño", we're experiencing a stronger one this year.

http://www.upworthy.com/the-re...

Also a prominent Broadway composer has banned his works from being performed in NC. I'm very heartened by this; the boycott movement might actually get legs and make NC think twice.

Unfortunately, Mississippi has passed an even more egregious law than the one in NC. The Mississippi law basically makes it legal to fire LGBT people and refuse them housing.

What the hell is going on in the Bible Belt? Are these people insane?

That statement is semantically identical to: "It doesn't do that because we do it intending for it to not do that."

Yes.

But not "it was done to X, therefor it was successful at X."

As I noted, I was responding to your assertion that simply boiled down to 'it won't work'. I didn't see a need to elaborate any more than you did. It seems pointless to waste time on the semantics of an otherwise useless exchange.

I believe the term you're looking for is "Illustrative," which means "Shows the mechanism in a more complex system by a simplified example." "Misleading" means "draws an incorrect conclusion."

It's misleading because you are misrepresenting the relative differences between the top and the bottom, then using that to present an argument about progressive taxation stating that the top tax rates only need to be a little bit higher because their incomes and wealth are only a little bit higher. Plus there's that whole "tax is for revenue" thing.

It's begging the question. Why is it mind-boggling?

Because it's unintuitive and difficult for most people to comprehend or accept.

What is "skewed"?

Biased in an unfair or unreasonable manner.

How is the increasing income gap different than the increasing income gap that occurred all throughout history?

LOL. From someone who just launched an attack for begging the question, you go on to do exactly the same thing.

The increasing gap since the neoliberals took over the world in the '70s and '80s is no different to previous times, and it will produce the same outcome (social stratification, civil unrest, conflict, etc). That's the point. It *can* be different, because the outcome is a result of policy choices and because we are in a narrow gap in history where the people - rather than a handful of elites - actually have (though rapidly becoming "had") some ability to influence that policy.

Let's ask a bit more on that last one. The income gap across history has widened as GDP per capita has increased; does it seem significant that the income gap appears to have widened more quickly [washingtonpost.com] during a massive spike in productivity [wordpress.com] starting just after 1960?

Actually the late '70s was when productivity increases detached from median income increases. As with most of the big economic problems in today's world, you can thank Reagan and Thatcher for it.

Your argument assumes a widening income gap is bad, and that a flatter income gap is good.

Yes. Because large and increasing income and wealth gaps is something history has demonstrated more than once are bad.

People doing productive work draw a cost.

Which is more than recovered in their output. That's, y'know, kind of the point of PRODUCTIVE WORK.

You have argued that "NUH UH IT'S FREE!" and "WELL WE JUST MAKE THE RICH PAY FOR IT LULZOR!"

I have not. Again with the fallacies.

The rich are not a natural resource.

What does that even mean ?

You're even stupid enough to argue that taxes are not for revenue.

They're not. A currency-issuing sovereign Government does not need tax revenue to spend. This is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact. It is demonstrated every day by every currency-issuing country on the planet.

Let's just shut off all taxes, and see how the government pays for anything.

Same way they do all the time. They create (though I suspect you're the kind of guy who prefers the word "print") the money and give it to people for goods and services.

then it would follow that there should be women who "believe they're really a man." Except ... there aren't. Go ahead, find a Caitlyn that wants to be a Bruce.

They're called FTM's or transmen. Been around for years, however since our society seems to be obsessed with the MTF side, you don't hear much about them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Find a bill that would allow women to use the men's bathroom.

http://lexiecannes.com/2015/11...

http://www.upworthy.com/heres-...

"Transgenderism" is a thing that only came about when feminists started pushing their whole "the penis is evil" thing.

Actually the first scholarly book about it, was written in what was it, 1910?

Lili Elbe transitioned in 1930 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And Christine Jorgensen did so in 1951, long before any so-called "penis is evil" thing you claim exists:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

This comic claims that climate change is one of the triggers (combined with the authoritarian regime, of course):
https://www.upworthy.com/tryin...

The UN has warned for years that climate change will lead to water and food shortages, and therefore political instabilities. This seems to be the first clear example, with probably many to follow as deserts expand.

I do know of him and your comment inspired me to do a little Internet searching which quickly led me to this: http://www.upworthy.com/neil-d...

He's lying in that video, which appears to be from 2012. Try watching instead this video from 2006:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

A quote from a little segment starting at about 10:40:

"We've all seen the data. There's 90-whatever percent of the American public believes in a personal god that responds to their prayers. Then you ask, "What is that percentage for scientists?" Averaged over disciplines, it's about 40 percent. Then you say, "How about the elite scientists?" Members of the National Academy of Sciences. An article on those data, recently in Nature, it said 85 percent of the National Academy reject a personal god. Then they compare it to 90 percent of the public.

That's not the story! They missed the story! What that article should have said is, "How come this number isn't zero?" That's the story!"

I do know of him and your comment inspired me to do a little Internet searching which quickly led me to this: http://www.upworthy.com/neil-d...

Bollocks.

Imagine we live in the stone age, (major) religion not having been invented yet. The two of us are out in the wild.

You have found an apple and think, that would be nice for breakfast. In the morning, you wake up, and the apple is gone. You feel hungry, but I don't.
The next night you wake me up and say, let's go hunting. I notice that the firestone axe I worked on for over 2 weeks is in your belt. When I ask you for it, you won't give it back.

I develop a new insight: Taking stuff from another person isn't a good thing.

Back at the tribe, someone irks me. I plant my (spare) axe deeply into that person's body and toss him outside the camp to avoid stench. Problem solved. I'm the last one to go to sleep. When I go to my fur rug, I hit someone's foot. That person wakes up grumpily, grabs his axe and tries to kill me.

I develop a new insight: Arbitrarily killing another person is not a good thing. It could happen to me.

This suggests that morals develop as soon as brain functions develop, possible future consequences can be understood, and future actions of others can be predicted and controlled. Religion isn't the source of those morals. Religion certainly helps to maintain them. If I'm strong and you're weak, religion gives you some control over me: Don't kill me, or the god Faket will punish you for it. Hmmm, I could easily crush you, and while I don't mind crushing you, I don't want to be crushed by Faket. So, I leave you alone and you get to reproduce.

Here's a fairness study for monkeys
http://www.upworthy.com/2-monk... ... ext?c=upw1

Here's another article on altruistic behaviour in monkeys
http://www.madisonmonkeys.com/...
starting with this; "Previous work in our laboratory(1) had demonstrat- ed that most rhesus monkeys refrained form operating a device for securing food if this caused another monkey to suffer an electric shock.".

Morals are not a feature exclusive to humans, and with the above stone age scenarios, the 'god-tells-human(s) about what is moral and what is not' hypothesis remains unsubstantiated speculation. And if your source is a religious book that says that people should be stoned for wearing cloth made of two types of fiber, how much time do you need to realise that book (and that god) is a human fabrication?

Bert

Honestly, creativity is overrated in our age because with scientific research over the last century a lot of good ideas have been already been flushed out. They simply are not practiced. The problem is not that people avoid creativity, it's they want their own creativity to manifest, not yours. This is true even in the face of peer reviewed, expertly written material.

Geniuses do not create new things, they copy things that already exist (I got this from Edward Tufte). Basically, they observe and then they apply intelligent design to what already exists to improve the status quo, in a way then does not rock the boat, but improves things gradually. Gradual improvement is all we are really capable of anyways, because you cannot observe and improve things without seeing the problems first.

However, this is what is seen as "creativity" by those who do not understand it, because understanding usually requires in depth abstract thought and an extremely good memory to put together the pieces of the puzzle together.

What is really easy is these people who are trying to be "creative" in their own right and ignoring the status quo making things horrible for those around them and creating very detrimental products of their creativity.

i.e. "Let's take advantage of people's superstitious nature." (forced spread and manipulation of religion, just glance at the inquisition...), "Let's issue to much currency and not protect the people, we'll make a huge profit in the end either way." (Several banks throughout history, perhaps bit coin will be the same, we'll see.), "Let's guess how much we are going to make based on business plans that have not come to fruition, and budget that way." (Enron) "Let's time our employees and pay them less, so they need more government assistance and assistance from family members. It's the job that is worthwhile to them." (Good Will) "Let's pay our employees so little and squeeze as much money out of them as possible instead of paying them what we can afford and investing into their futures. This way they go on welfare." (Walmart) "Let's do massive scale Agriculture" (Humanity)

I suppose I could throw in experts being told what to do by their bosses despite plenty of push back. If you have not experienced this, you should try getting a degree or specializing in something. Everyone is an expert except the practitioner and student of their discipline.

As far as I know, ALL of these things go against conventional wisdom, or did at some point in time. These things were never observed to be good, they were just done, they were created by creative people. Created against the tried and true wisdom established before hand.

• -Religion as a Form of Control (who needs real leadership and organic social structure, we have no control then.)
• -Banks (Specie Circular crisis)
• -Speculative Budgeting (Enron did this, and I remember in the documentary, they even coined a term for it, maybe I even got it right. Bull markets come to mind too, i.e. Taking out loans for investing, because how can you lose, right?)
• -Not Investing into People (If you have not watched the Good Will clip that demonstrates this, you should. However, this is how employers are treating people across the board in my experience so far. Walmart is another "great" company.)
• -Mass Scale Agri

Actually, let my elaborate a bit on that. Something that really made me think about my own country in a more positive light was the talk "If Americans want to live the American dream ... they should go to Denmark", which talks about social mobility in different countries and the talk "The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class".

I find that as I grow older I'm more and more in favor of free education, free health care and all the other benefits that I get from living in a country with high taxes. The alternative just doesn't look good from my perspective.

You should watch http://www.upworthy.com/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely-wrong-about-this-mind-blowing-fact-2/

Look at what? all I see is a 404.

You should probably look up the difference between Communism and Socialism before you post. Not to mention this isn't really Socialism. That would be equal sharing - not just reigning in the disparity between the top 1% and the other 99%.

You should watch http://www.upworthy.com/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely-wrong-about-this-mind-blowing-fact-2/

This deserves to be linked once more.

http://www.upworthy.com/we-saw-the-violence-freedom-of-speech-can-spark-now-lets-see-the-love?g=2&c=cp1