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Conservatives' Trust In Science Has Fallen Dramatically Since Mid-1970s
An anonymous reader writes "While trust in science remained stable among people who self-identified as moderates and liberals in the United States between 1974 and 2010, trust in science fell among self-identified conservatives by more than 25 percent during the same period, according to a study by the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. 'Over the last several decades, there's been an effort among those who define themselves as conservatives to clearly identify what it means to be a conservative,' said the study's lead author. 'For whatever reason, this appears to involve opposing science and universities and what is perceived as the "liberal culture." So, self-identified conservatives seem to lump these groups together and rally around the notion that what makes "us" conservatives is that we don't agree with "them."'"
Or in other words, around the time that science started suggesting reasons why economic progress can be bad, instead of just helping it along?
First off - scienceblog - light grey on white is NOT a good colour scheme for text.
Have you been to Reality lately? It's dog eat dog. Literally.
I don't think Reality has a "liberal bias". More like "liberals" are more willing to use science as a means of "validating" their positions.
While "conservatives" are more willing to use religion to "validate" their positions.
Even science can't yet fix stupid.
There's a difference between social conservatives and fiscal conservatives.
interactive hologram, or it didn't happen.
Reality has a well known liberal bias.
I am a liberal, and I cringe whenever I see a liberal say this. It just makes you look hard-headed. It was originally intended as a joke, and it stopped being funny a long time ago.
Reality doesn't care about your ideology at all, actually.
That being said, we all know how religious forces took over the Republican Party since the 1970s, and you have a lot of these religious folks who call themselves conservatives. Is this news? The key phrase here is "self-identified conservatives."
It's this sneering trope -- "reality has a well known liberal bias", a quote of Stephen Colbert, whose work I generally admire -- that gets hauled out every single time this subject comes up. And its point, so far as I can tell, is actually to stifle debate on legitimate politicization that the left has done, particularly with anthropogenic global warming, especially within the scope of the IGCC. When "scientists" start playing politically-minded games with data, engage in semantic and legalistic games to prevent its dissemination, and then complain that they are being treated unfairly or for political reasons -- well, they only have themselves to blame.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Link to full summary. Good thing this bias and falsification of data only exists in the biomedical sciences. Whew! Quick question: you're a researcher and you've just found, by empirical research, something that confirms what conservatives have been saying for decades. The effect of your research will be profound, and likely change the course of public policy. Do you publish, or quietly bury your story? Or, do you falsify data to support what you desire to be true? It happens. For real. Real scientists do this, people just like you.
This article is about conservatives trying to brand themselves.
They want to find out what liberals support, and be the opposite. Since liberals seem to like science, and it seems to conflict with religion to some people(*), conservatives are rebelling against that.
What "science" actually is has nothing to do with the conservative view, or the liberal one(+).
The real problem that conservatives face here is that their strategy is silly. Defining yourself by what your enemies do will not work. It leaves you open to manipulation and getting backed into a corner. I think that's what is happening here.
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* - I don't think this is true at all. Religion is metaphysical poetry, science is its physical counterpart.
+ - I don't believe that "reality has a liberal bias." Reality has a reality bias. It's pointlessly combative to claim that all conservatives are detached from reality (or all liberals)
They DO declare their belief in science by asking to be treated by a modern medical facility. If they really didn't believe it would work, they wouldn't bother.
They're not stupid, they're hypocritical, and lying to themselves about what they believe as much as to anyone else.
There is no 'i' in team, but there is in fiasco...
Good luck with the whole science pledge thing. I don't know how many times lately on Facebook I see someone thanking the Lord (I assume he has a Facebook page) for miracle that saved cousin Fred-Bob. Of course on further questioning, Fred-Bob had a heart attack and someone used a cell phone to call the ambulance, which arrived quickly because the highly trained paramedics had a laptop GPS and maps on it. They used a portable defibrillator and drugs to keep him alive until they got the the hospital where a high trained surgeon used a heart catheter to fix the problem. Of course, praying to Jesus was what really did the trick, No need to thank the scientists who invented all that stuff or the doctor who used science to do the healing.
There is no "trust" in science - there is nothing to "believe." Science is just the application of logic and reason to help explain the world around us. So what this article is really saying is that "Conservatives view of the world has dramatically departed reality since 1970." Which sounds pretty plausible to me.
"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.” -Neil DeGrasse Tyson
giggity
Or in other words, around the same time that people started using science to justify their political cause. Science used to be about progress, but now it's about power. It's not that conservatives don't trust science, it's that we don't trust the scientists: their motives, their interpretations, or their solutions.
No matter the problem, the solution is always to transfer money or power.
"liberals' use of science as a religion has increased dramatically since mid-1970s".
How in the world do you infer *that* exactly? Seriously, I hear this sort of thing from conservatives and there must be some kind of logic chain that led you to make this conclusion. I'd just like to know what it is, explicitly.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
but the neo-conseravatives. There are many conservatives that do not subscribe to the following of reagan and W. Basically, it is these 2 and their followers that fight against science, logic and facts. You will find that nearly all support the concept of creationism, fight against the idea that Global Climate Change is cause by man.
They will argue that Russia is enemy #1 and claim support for private enterprise, but then push for the Space Launch System (in which CONgress, mostly neo-cons designate WHICH companies will provide WHICH parts for a shuttle derivative and costing us 60 billion), push for us to be reliant on Russia for another decade of rocket launches and works to destroy private space.
Likewise, they will argue that Corporations should be ONLY for making profits and have absolutely no conscience, but then want them to be able to lobby, influence congress, and some have said that they want to give them a vote. Yet, at the same time, they scream that society is broken morally.
This lack of logic continues over and over and over. It has become a broken record with the no-cons.
OTOH, many conservatives and real republicans fully support science, logic, etc. and what can be learned from it. Sadly, they are now a minority of the republican party. Many of them are driven out with the neo-cons screaming that those ppl are RINOs and are actually liberals. Sad that America has sunk this low.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
As a self-identified conservative I would like to clarify that the increased lack of trust is in the scientists, not science itself. To trust a man means to expect him to always try to do the right thing, and since the 70s or so higher education has been almost exclusively the domain of liberalism, a philosophy whose definition of "right" is diametrically opposed to the conservative one. Is it any surprize that there can be no trust between us?
More specifically, the lack of trust in the scientists directly results in the lack of trust in any data or conclusions produced by these scientists. We all know that a biased experimenter often produces the results he is looking for; that is why we usually insist on double blind experiments in areas where bias is a factor. A liberal scientist will thus have a significantly higher burden of proof, which, in my experience with politically charged subjects such as AGW, has not yet been met.
Without trust in the scientists the only way to really believe their results is to reproduce their experiments and see for ourselves. Unfortunately, most of us are not qualified to do so, hence today's political standoff.
âoeThere is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.â
Isaac Asimov
"It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so."
Will Rogers
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."
Upton Sinclair
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias."
Stephen Colbert
I have a little something I call the parable of the investment opportunity. Dick has the option of investing in this exciting new product that promises to double his money in twelve months. Jane is skeptical. The two can jawbone back and forth all day long.
Jane explains that it looks like a bad idea, resembles many other bad ideas, the person presenting the opportunity has a history of failed schemes, and the whole thing looks too risky.
Dick feels she's being too negative. She's not embracing opportunity. He has a prospectus printed in full color on expensive paper and the pitchman has such a nice haircut, really looks like someone you could do business with.
It's impossible to know how the investment will turn out until it's made, even if anyone watching the two of them argue will more than likely have a strong opinion before long.
Dick makes the investment. Twelve months later, he's lost all his money. Not only that but he's lost it in exactly the way Jane predicted, for the reasons she listed.
Now for most people, this would be some pretty compelling evidence. Not so for Dick! Perhaps it wasn't a bad idea, he just didn't apply it with enough vigor. Perhaps there was an external factor that sabotaged what was otherwise a sound idea. Does he reevaluate? Does he reexamine? No, he'll double-down. And Jane is still an ignorant slut.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Science has this annoying tendency to reveal facts, and when these facts clash with one's ideology, it makes them uncomfortable.
Repeat that enough times and science becomes something to be feared. Can't have science go and ruin one's world view.
I'd identify myself as conservative, and at least in my case my trust in science has not decreased. That said, my trust in the scientific community has certainly decreased in the last decade or two. Of course, I could say the same about humanity as a whole. I wasn't even born by the 1970s, so most of my decreasing trust could probably be attributed to simply growing up and realizing that the world is filled with people on all sides who have agendas.
'conservative' means different things to different people, but checking the dictionary gives this definition: "disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change."
I think most people agree science is a driving force for change, whether through application of new knowledge or development of new technology. So, at least based on the definition above, science directly opposes conservative goals. It's not surprising for people to distrust something that actively threatens their ideology.
It's not that reality has a liberal bias, it's that conservatives in the US especially have a 'not intended to be a factual statement' bias which they seem to have developed since the 70's. This means that on the rare occasion democrats in the US aren't proverbially shooting themselves in the foot there is a small possibility that they may align with facts, for no other reason than it being bound to happen occasionally. Conservatives have institutionalized support for things that aren't factual, and an overt rejection of anything that is factual.
I'm not really sure how that happened and you'd think it would have cost them more business support, after all, businesses can't function unless things they buy, people they hire etc all deal primarily in facts. You can't 'not believe' in Liquid crystals existence, you can't just 'believe' parts from china aren't counterfit etc. 'trust but verify' (popularized in english by Reagan) requires you to do the verification part honestly.
This has been gradually leading up for a century and more. Conservatives have always been doubtful of science, preferring to believe what they had been told in their youth. For them, it is easier to believe in the mad ramblings of an old book than a system of thought that has borne the fruit of progress for four centuries. There is no fundamental difference between the Catholic Church's assaults on Giordano Bruno and Galileo and the Evangelical assault on Evolution in schools. (For people who condemn Popery so strongly, this is especially amusing.) That there was ever an embrace of science on the conservative side only reflects the reality of the world as was discovered in the Second World War. That is to say, even the most stupid of Evangelicals must acknowledge we are better off with atomic bombs and ICMBs than without. Of course, it might be acknowledged that this is only an extension of the conservative love of spreading doctrine through violence rather than rhetoric and scientific persuasion.
Yes, the ones who call themselves liberals have their own problems with science. The stupid stupid lies of postmodernist thought destroyed a generation and a half of potential scientists, but the important thing is that science is pulling away from that abhorrent clap trap.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
That's false. I am a fiscal conservative. It simply means that we want ppl to handle a checkbook responsibly. Sadly, the neo-cons scream fiscal conservative, but they account for most of the debt. In addition, other than FDR handling GD and WWII and O handling the current mess, dems have shown far more fiscal conservationism than has the republicans ever since the neo-cons took over the republican party.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Obligatory xkcd - http://xkcd.com/154/
Wait a minute. Hasn't this been going on at least since Galileo?
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
We all know the "reason" for this... Religion. Lets just call it like it is. The Judaeo-Christian worldview is by-and-large anti-science. I don't think it set out to be that way though, but more as a reflection of 1st millennium B.C. thinking. Nothing unusual in the stories from the Old Testament, when taken in the context of their times. However, Mankind(and Man) has learned and experienced quite a lot since 1000 B.C. The interesting thing, in a terrifying way(Al Qaida, Iran, Evangelical Christians, etc;) is that even with the benefits of science staring them in the face, people still take these Iron Age myths as The Truth.
Your typical liberal has more of a "critical thinking" worldview, maybe not much more, but enough to tip the balance away from "Doctrines and Covenants" that require a suspension of dis-belief, require blind faith.
So the question is, why are conservatives NOW so anti-science, when even a generation or two ago it wasn't like that? Well, we all know the answer to that as well, which is a combination of Right-Wing Media, the ease of dis-information via The Internet, and a Republican party that has poly morphed into something very different from the Republican party of even the 1980's.
Another key ingredient is that conservatives in general have a "good old days" mentality. They seek to attempt to go back to how things used to be, when things "appeared" simpler, when there was "order" in the world, etc;. We all know that is utter bullshit, and there is no "going home" as it were. Liberals are more apt to embrace change and understand we had to adapt to the changing world, not get the world to adapt to us.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
For most of our species' history, the only use of our ideas was as badges of allegiance, since there was no way we knew of to use them on the outside world. "Conservatives" are just stuck in pre-history in the sense that they're refusing to use ideas as anything more than an indicator of allegiance.
Of course it doesn't. That's why it's funny. The truth that makes it funny is the reverse. Liberals have a bias towards reality, whereas conservatives base their opinions on ego and fairy tales.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
People trust in science because it's self-correcting, and regardless of what you seem to assume, the peer-review process is bloody strict. It's not blind faith, but simply using logic.
To be fair, it tends to be more like "University professors and researchers tend to be more liberal since 1974, likely due to social and cultural changes on campuses that started in the 60's. This has led to others conflating scientific progress with liberalism. That has caused conservatives to view the pronouncements of people in those fields with more skepticism than they would have in the past when practitioners of the scientific method tended to take a more neutral, or even conservative view."
In short, all this says is that a bunch of academics are liberals now, and the conservatives are unhappy with science being turned against them as a tool. The result has been that science itself ends up becoming an issue when it shouldn't. Of course, having read some opinions here and hearing some otherwise intelligent people talk, its clear that blame is definitely a two-way street here.
TFA says conservatives had the highest trust in science back in 1974. Ike liked science.
It's not that conservatives have lost faith in science, they've lost faith in scientists. Not quite the same thing.
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.
Actually, most squirrels I know are in favour of Rick Santorum which makes them conservatives.
Apparantly, squirrels like nuts.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
"Conservatives" sure do seem to trust science when they get cancer, or need an operation. Then all of a sudden, there aren't enough medical advances to suit them. They'll shell out tons of cash to extend their lives just a wee bit more.
Dick Cheney just had a heart transplant, and the donor was probably some guy he shot in the face. Tell me Dick Cheney doesn't "trust science" when it comes to keeping him alive.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Right, because all those guys who pointed out that burning coal releases mercury that shows up in your can of tuna, or the Day the River Burned Down was due to water pollution, were heavily invested in windpower companies and alternative methods of manufacture. Actually, turns out they were like the 'agenda-driven climate alarmists' of today: mostly university professors.
Believing that science has an agenda is to believe that thousands of independently-working and independently-paid researchers are all part of a vast conspiracy. That's practically the DEFINITION of 'The Paranoid Style in American Politics', which is actually not inherently right-wing at all (think most Kennedy theories), and goes back for centuries (the original essay traced it back to Illuminati fears in the 1700s).
But the paranoid style has steadily taken over the right wing in recent decades, until fact-based, or at least fact-conceding, old conservatives can hardly be heard (or found) any more. It's the paranoids among them that are anti-science, not the whole group.
You have just demonstrated the most dangerous attitude possible. It's what gets people and America (and other countries) into more problems than anything else. It's the "I'm one of the good guys, so what I believe in must be true."
Reality has, repeat after me, zero bias.
Liberal and conservative are arbitrary viewpoints on a multitude of subjects that change constantly. Reality doesn't give a damn what you, I, or anyone else thinks. The belief that one's viewpoint is inextricably linked to reality is magical thinking.
It's fine to think you are a good person. But it becomes dangerous when you start believing that your beliefs are correct because you think you are good. The corollary is that those who disagree with you are bad (or ignorant, or stupid). To be disregarded. That leads to some extremely stupid decisions.
Classic examples:
"But think of the children!"
"The science of communism will solve all economic problems!"
"Saddam has nukes!"
These were sentiments expressed by a lot of people who ingnore(d) contradictions because they believed they were on the side of right, so the beliefs must be true.
If liberals continue to say "Reality (or truth) has a liberal bias," they are going to end up believing it and doing some really stupid things some day. Time to stop holding that gun to our heads.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Umm, no.
It is possible to NOT claim to be conservative, and still vote conservatively.
Which makes "self-identified conservative" a subset of "conservative", but not the whole thing.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Which is why the fiscal conservatives should join the democratic party, and make an effort to get more fiscally conservative social liberals winning elections. It's the only path to sanity.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Social liberals only want to support people who think like they do, and fiscal liberals only want to fund people who think like they do.
Still reads as true, doesn't it? I see the republican party as swinging more extremist at the moment, but let's face it: both sides want their policies passed.
And on the OP, I see a lot of anti-science and distrust on the liberal side as well. Homeopathy isn't restricted by political bias, but I have a distinct impression that those who resist vaccines and insist on buying organic tend to be more on the liberal side. All the 'food X' is good/bad for you based on the science of the week, etc...
Still, you have evolution, global warming, and support for junk(in my opinion) social science on the conservative side. I can accept the evolution as a number of loud religious nuts who have to have a literal reading of their holy book be true. Global warming, I'd have more respect if their disputes were more along the nature of the economic damage from controlling CO2 being higher than just accepting the sea level rise. A vaccine to prevent a cancer causing STD will encourage promiscuity? Really?
I don't read AC A human right
I'd say it was Regan who invited the social conservative Christians into the Repblican party, creating the rise of the "religious right". This group as a whole seems to demand that they be "right" and everyone else be wrong, so it's natural for them to seek consensus on what a "true conservative" means, and they're quite willing to morph their beliefs to gain consensus. It's not that they trust science less, it's just that these people, who blindly believe in Genesis rather than any science, now identify themselves as "conservative", not that they've warped the meaning to their liking.
The term "conservative" had a very different meaning in the '70s. Those conservatives would have cringed at the phrase "true conservative". Here's a decent definition of the term. They blindly believe not just in the common ground between social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and military hawks, but they believe in the super-set of all three, creating the strangest set of widely held blind beliefs I've ever heard of.
So, it's now Christian to promote war, fiscal conservatives abandon rational though when it comes to science, and the desperately poor rally to causes to help the rich. It's "I'll believe what you want me to believe if you believe what I want you to believe." Scary. Understanding science is simply one of those things they brokered away. I love how the definition above claims true conservatives don't believe in various science issues like Evolution, because "they do the research themselves."
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
It stopped being funny when everyone realized it was true. Because the other side decided to depart from reality.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
This study laments that conservatives reject liberal culture and turn it into an "us" vs "them" mentality. However, this is exactly what this study is saying on the liberal side, e.g. Those conservatives don't believe in science. This conveniently lumps them all into a science-hating group and furthers the "us" vs "them" rhetoric. The comments so far on this page show a circle-jerk consisting of "Only stupid people don't believe in science!" in which they lap this study up as further proof that all conservatives are religiously extreme and don't believe in science. It's sad that the very article which points out the vitriolic conservative rhetoric against science (a truly lamentable thing) only furthers the rhetoric from the other side.
"Science" is not black and white. It is a matter of discovery and interpretation of the meaning of that discovery. "Believing" science is not the same as believing scientists. It is normal and healthy to maintain a certain degree of skepticism about ALL discoveries until orthogonal experiments and/or data can document results that appear to indicate a similar conclusion.
Such behavior should never be limited to a liberal or a conservative. Nevertheless, the liberal will tend to run with a discovery a bit sooner than a conservative will. These are judgement calls and definitions, not political postures.
There is also a tendency among both liberal and conservative to selectively view the facts that appear to support your thinking. Those with liberal views look just as crazy to the conservative as those with conservative views look to the liberal.
Thus the study confirms that people's definitions of themselves tend to correlate with their other beliefs. Imagine that...
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
I dislike tobacco. I don't like the smoke, I don't like the spitting, I don't like the spent butts littering the roadway.
All of that is personal opinion, no different from disliking the appearance of people chewing gum or getting it stuck on my shoe.
Neither is enough to permit me to get my dander up and start banning this and that. I could ask someone not to smoke upwind of me and that's just a question of common courtesy.
That's all anyone could say about tobacco for a number of years. Doctors suspected health effects but it took time to properly substantiate those suspicions.
Of course, the people making money from tobacco had a great interest in keeping the controversy alive. It's not good for business to admit that your product, when used as directed, will kill people. The only way a smoker won't die of smoking-related causes is if he dies of something else first.
As someone who tobacco to begin with, now science is on my side. How far can I push with regards to tobacco? If we consider that a person has a right to do what they want to their own body, up to and including suicide, then who are we to argue as to how they do it?
At the same time, we know that advertising works. Billions of dollars don't get spent on marketing if it doesn't influence decision-making in the human animal. So are these people really making a choice for themselves?
I'm not a supporter of the way the temperance movement operated back in the day. I like having my wine and beer. Temperance crusaders can point to the dangers of alcohol consumption. I could argue that you can drink in moderation with no ill effects whereas there's no safe level of tobacco consumption but that could sound like rationalization.
I think as far as my own opinion goes, the tobacco companies deliberately prevented their customers from making an informed choice. They did their best to cloud the discussion with bad science, bad data, and deliberate lies and bullshit. They prevented a rational discussion from ever occurring because it would be bad for business.
Look at the current scientific "controversies" and you will see the same thing happening, parties interested in the status quo doing their best to create uncertainty where there is actually a great deal of scientific certainty.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Scientists check and recheck and recheck their results. They are very conservative and guard against over interpreting their data. And then, the results get reviewed by other conservative scientists. The problem is not the scientists. The problem is the political conservatives not liking the results. It is a matter of wishful thinking on their part.
It was a response to the threat the government posed to religions. A lot of the early founders of this country cared deeply about religious freedom, and wanted to do everything in their power to keep government's hands off the church.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Reality doesn't care about your ideology at all, actually.
Never a truer word...
The scientific method produces hypotheses which are ever-improving approximations to reality. Our description of reality is somewhat better now than it was in the 1970s.
The "trust" thing is irrelevant to how the universe actually operates, but tells us something about people (and perhaps their dogma). If some people's trust in a set of hypotheses has declined as the hypotheses have been revised to be more accurate, then it is not the process of forming and revising hypotheses which has the problem...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I'm a liberal and I distrust science because it has become so political. Look at string theory, for example. If you are a scientist and don't believe that string theory is valid, you'll have a hard time getting a job, getting grants, getting anything. Science has always had a political flavor but it seems worse now than in the Middle Ages. Science has never been pure science and maybe will never be. But does it have to be so political?
Of course, global warming is the poster child of political science. The science of global warming is so bad it shouldn't be called science. The people doing the "research" start with their conclusion and then do only the research that supports that conclusion. The glaciers are melting in Norway: Global warming caused by humans. But then they're revealing ancient farms which means it was a lot warmer there in the past when there were a lot fewer humans. Oh, let's just brush that away and ignore it. Global warming is caused by humans!
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
It's also the downfall of a 2-party system. In the rest of the world, with multi-party democracies, the fiscal conservative social liberals (like me) can join or found their own party and have a reasonable chance of getting in. (and in fact, have gotten in in several countries in Europe)
It really is; I for one have already done that. The "social conservatives" are causing the Republican Party to eat itself, exactly as Goldwater predicted.
Preventing the extinction of animal species due to over-consumption comes at a price.
Preventing the expansion of the hole in the ozone layer due to CFCs comes at a price.
I wish it didn't cost a penny to protect species diversity and the atmosphere, but unfortunately wishing doesn't make it true.
As Carl Sagan would say "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition."
Warning: This sig is not thread safe. For more information see Slashdot's sig policy.
The idea behind the joke was that there were well-known conservative positions at the time Colbert said it which specifically countered by reality. For instance, conservatives were proudly proclaiming that Iraq had chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons capable of reaching the United States and that the Bush tax cuts increased revenue.
I am officially gone from
The meaning of "reality has a liberal bias" is only that conservatives like to call very solid facts and well-established science biased, rejecting reality. Agree or not, that's the meaning. See: Conservapedia.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Let me see if I can make it work out. Note: I am a democrat (aka liberal) so I don't know if this is truly how they arrived at it, but I know basic logic, and thought I would give it a shot.
First some definitions:
Religion: the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or Gods
Science: systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
Faith: Complete trust or confidence in someone or something
Now conservatives have faith in religion, really they have faith in a God or Gods. They believe it , but have no hard evidence other then the fact that there is no evidence to the contrary, which I believe is called an argument from ignorance(double check that, it's been a while)
So we have: conservatives have faith in religion, and as the article pointed out, liberals have faith in science.
Now how do we get from liberals have faith in science, to: liberals' use of science as a religion, well that is simply a misguided substitution of faith and religion, and a little rewording to make sense.
So we go from: liberals have faith in science, to: liberals have science as a religion
This is all just a guess, and there are numerous points where anyone who went to school can see right though it, but I guess the "bitter clingers in Jesusland watching NASCAR" missed it.
There is also a third conservative; a practical one.
Take a software development shop doing security sensitive code. One type of conservative would fire the developers and offshore everything, hiring a H-1B for anything that needed done on US soil, only later to find that their business is compromised. Another type would fire the senior developers and hire people at min wage, firing anyone too good so they don't have to give pay raises.
A practical conservative knows that morale is important in the company, and knows that payroll is a relatively small fraction of accounts payable. They give the developers competitive pay, and morale is high. The result is that security policies are strictly followed because people rally behind the company's banner (as opposed to just going there for a paycheck.) Result, no leaks or security intrusions, and employee ideas add further revenue.
Similar with government. A practical conservative considers part of national security the welfare and morale of citizens. Better pay for good schools now than pay for long prison stays later.
Reality has a liberal bias because only liberals are interested in pursuing research wherever it leads. Both the US Right and the Soviet Left, for instance, at some point opposed the theory of evolution for dogmatic reasons.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Indeed. If we could change the system that would be better. I only claim that given the system we have, fiscal conservative social liberals are employing a non-optimal strategy.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
"fiscally conservative social liberals" is an oxymoron.
Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton ALL come to mind. Every one of them decreased our debt relative to GDP. And all but Carter decreased the total debt .
It was under ALL 8 years of reagan, 3 years of Poppa Bush, and 7.5 years of W that massive increases in deficits/debt came about.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
but the neo-conseravatives. There are many conservatives that do not subscribe to the following of reagan and W.
Honestly, the above is a silly statement. Reagan would not support the W. regime. Not even close. W. and Reagan were almost that opposite ends of the political spectrum. Reagan was, for example, able to compromise when needed. Reagan was also fiscally conservative (though somewhat of a big spender) while W. was no such thing. Not many people increased the Fed the way W. did, a distinctly left-leaning behavior.
Bush Sr. was appalled at the W. policies. Reagan would be rotating in his grave.
One thing that should also be noted here, several of the major players in the neo-conservative movement, particularly the "intellectuals" that formed it, are ex democrats. Not only are they ex democrats, they are people who were well to the left in the democratic party when it came to fiscal policies. It is amusing when current conservatives lump Obama in with ancient communists since neocons traditionally are (fiscally) well to the left of Obama. G. W. Bush was also, fiscally, well to the left of Obama.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
To filter it a down a bit more, you have a lot of these "religious folks" who consider themselves followers of the actual religion. Once again... "self-identified".
Though I'd disagree with him on a broad range of issues, Bill Maher is dead-on when making his criticisms of quasi-religious political movements that directly contradict the founder's directly-stated principles. How we get to the current "conservative" pro-rich, pro-war, anti-compassion stances from anything Jesus said, is beyond me.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Uhm - nope. You are confusing Fiscal Conservatives with Republicans...that isn't the same thing!
In this case let's call them all US Politicians and agree that they LOVE spending our money exponentially. Doesn't matter which party.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
"fiscally conservative social liberals" is an oxymoron.
You mean like Sweden.?
Stefan Axelsson
If liberals continue to say "Reality (or truth) has a liberal bias," they are going to end up believing it and doing some really stupid things some day.
You do know where it is coming from, right? Yes, it is important to remember that this was a dig at a Republican president who clearly substituted feelings for rational analysis. But at the same time, it brilliantly encapsulates how a lot of people feel any time a conservative talks politics or science (is there anything left? Maybe grocery lists): that they make up their own reality, and that they call anyone a dirty liberal if they dare to point out the complete lack of facts in their position.
The quickest way to let that phrase die is by having conservatives stop embodying it.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Reagan - Democratic Congress
Bush 1 - Democratic Congress
W - Most if the debt racked up after getting a Democrat Congress.
BTW...Clinton - Most of his decrease came after getting a Republican Congress. And he had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into fiscal conservatism.
Guess who taxes and spend? Don't know? Ask your mamma.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
There *is* trust in science, i.e. that the scientific method is valid. We say that if a experiment is repeatable enough times, that we have a valid test of truth. We assume that nature isn't completely capricious and random. i.e. If Zeus were throwing the lightning bolts around, he might avoid the buildings with lightnings rods just because he wants to, but still occasionally blast one or two just because he was feeling ornery.
We have trust in Occam's razor. "other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one." Most of the time that works for us, but as H. L. Mencken is quoted: "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
Recently there was a astrophysist that suggested that billions of years ago some scientific constants like the charge on the electron were subtlely different. If these constants drifted in a consistent fashion, we might be able to develop a theory that properly describes the universe. This is one explaination why there's no detected life far away, it just wasn't possible until now.
If, on the other hand, right after the Big Bang, the various universal constants bounced around, then there's not much hope we could ever properly describe what happened or predict what will happen.
For now, we trust the scientific method because it works better than praying to Zeus. If something comes along that works even better than science, we should switch to it. (But I'm sure some people will stick with science for awhile)
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Uh no. Not actually. I "trust" in science because science is a way of testing a theory until you know it's really, really reliable at predicting behavior in the physical world. Historically, it's worked out pretty well as evidenced by the fact that the lights come on when I flick the switch and my car actually works.
So what I don't get is the "science as religion" part of your statement. Epistemologically, science is the exact opposite of Abrahamic religions that rely on faith. The process of scientific method is what you do when you have no faith at all. You just empirically see what happens again and again when you apply your theory, to see if the theory holds up.
So, can you explain to me how you equate science and religion?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Really? I'm pretty sure you don't understand what each of the words mean.
1) Fiscally conservative: don't spend what you don't have. Spend money on things with an ROI. Do not spend money on shiny baubles.
2) Socially liberal: don't judge people for how they like to live, as long as that life doesn't directly impact me. That means homosexuals can do whatever heterosexuals do, that what you do in the privacy of your own home is your own business, and that the only time the government gets involved in the personal life of people is when they start coercing others to do things they don't want to do.
Notice how there is no overlap between 1 and 2.
On the other hand, what is an oxymoron is being fiscally and socially conservative. Being socially conservative requires you to spend government money on enforcing your personal beliefs on others, regardless of whether there's an ROI on it or not.
It is therefore not surprising that pretty much all social conservative ideas and politicians have directly lead to an unbalanced budget.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
How so? I don't see any obvious contradiction there. That stance tends to boil down to, "Spend money wisely while supporting personal freedoms." Not an oxymoron at all.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
And yet, it was reagans budget that got passed. IOW, yes, PART of reagain's congress was dem, but they gave him everything that he wanted.
As to Clinton, he had dem congress for 2 years and dropped the deficit then as well.
And W had the same neo-con controlled congress that Clinton had and it ran up monster deficits.
IOW, it is normally irrelevant about what congress you have (I will say that this current CONgress defies what I just said; the current CONgress does not care about America or our issues. They are only concerned about gaining total control. again).
It is about the president deciding how to handle thing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I see why people should try to get more fiscally conservative social liberals winning elections, but what are the advantages of using the Democrat party for that? Wouldn't it make more noise and sense, to use a party whose very platform includes those two things?
Not to mention that if the Democrat party were to go libertarian, what party would "hippie liberals" have to vote for? They would then need another party. They're just going to be fighting you, telling people to try to get more fiscally liberal Democrats winning elections. There's still a place for "classic" Democrats and a huge amount of support for them.
Don't try to repurpose Democrats (that's a fight you likely can't win); replace them.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I always love hearing that scientists are somehow not trustworthy because they have agendas and are getting paid for their opinions. The alternatives are, as you said, politicians, think tanks and joe's on the street who are either only paid to say what someone else thinks, or who don't get paid for their opinion because they don't research their opinion.
In other words, it's the chunk of coal calling a slightly used pot black.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
OTOH, many conservatives and real republicans fully support science, logic, etc. and what can be learned from it. Sadly, they are now a minority of the republican party. Many of them are driven out with the neo-cons screaming that those ppl are RINOs and are actually liberals. Sad that America has sunk this low.
This. Technically, I should vote republican every time. I believe in a balanced budget, frugal spending priorities, and a limited government. However, what I get from republican candidates is God, wars on xxx, politically motivated spending projects and the attitude that if you're not with us, you're a terrorist.
No thanks.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Reality doesn't care about your ideology at all, actually.
Don't anthropomorphize reality; It hates that.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
Now for most people, this would be some pretty compelling evidence. Not so for Dick! Perhaps it wasn't a bad idea, he just didn't apply it with enough vigor. Perhaps there was an external factor that sabotaged what was otherwise a sound idea. Does he reevaluate? Does he reexamine? No, he'll double-down.
There was a recent fMRI study of compulsive gamblers vs. regular people while playing slot machines. In the compulsive gambler an apparent "near miss" lit up the "win" area of the brain. In the normal person, only a real win would light up that same area. (The casinos already knew this from experience and have adjusted their machines to give more "near miss"es.)
The investment advisor can take advantage of this by keeping Dick informed with every bump in the "value" of the investment, and downplaying any losses. When the bottom of the market drops out, the advisor just dumps Dick and gets a new mark.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
It seems clear that this article was a title first, and then they crafted the article around the title. No research or poll was done.
And you reached that conclusions without going to look at the actual study by Gauchat in "American Sociological Review". Admittedly it is a forthcoming publication, but here is the author's bio. I am sure that you can read the article in April if you like, and then take up any issues with the author.
I study the anti-science movement in both conservatives and liberals, and the although they are both equally anti-science in their own way, the conservatives have a powerful anti-science champions in fox, the evangelical movement, Beck, Limbaugh, and pretty much every conservative think-tank that I can think of.
All that propaganda has an effect.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
fiscal conservative social liberals are employing a non-optimal strategy.
I think that's at least in part because your Republican party is winning a propaganda war. They're spending gobs and gobs of cash trying to convince people that they're the fiscally responsible ones, and that the Democrats are the ones pissing away money. (irony, much?). When you look at the numbers, it's actually been the inverse: the deficit has consistently increased year over year under Republican presidents, and decreased under Democrats.
Unfortunately, however, they are spending more money trying to propagate the myth that they're the ones saving money, and people are buying into it. Personally, I don't see how the idea of fiscal responsibility is incompatible with progressive social ideals.
In fact, if I were to tell you where I stood on social matters, most Americans would probably call me a communist.... I believe that the justice system should be focused on mending recidivism rates, and that this means spending money on education and apprenticeship programs for offenders to equip them with the skills they need to find a productive job upon their release. I also think that this means that education on the whole should be a main target for money. I believe in publicly accessible health care, because I know that early detection of health problems means that they're *far* cheaper to treat in the long run. I believe in social welfare programs in general, because while there's some people who abuse them, society as a whole benefits from not letting people fall through the cracks. I believe that we should be taxing bad behaviours (environmental practices), and rewarding good behaviours (subsidizing solar installations, for example). I believe that these sorts of environmental rules should extend in to other areas of industry as well... make it too expensive to run your business badly, and business will stop doing things badly (regulated but mostly free market). And I believe that the tax rates on the wealthy and corporations should be set at a level they can bear... there's no excuse for a corporation to be able to post a $1bn profit for a year when they've used tax loopholes to not pay a dime in corporate income taxes (again, sustainable market growth, but make sure that the corporations contribute their fair share to the economy). All of these ideas are very socialist... enough that McCarthy would have called me a communist sympathizer, but I also believe, quite firmly, that the government should never be allowed to run deficit spending, unless it's extenuating circumstances (such as an economic crash), and that for such circumstances, it should require a 2/3 majority in all levels of government to pass.
If I were in the US, I'd probably be trying to make a difference in the Democrat party.... as it is, I actually belong to the Green party in this country, and have been quite active in trying to get certain policies set.... the Greens are, in most of the world, socially liberal while being fiscally conservative... a very good compromise, IMO. :)
It sure is strange that the reality of the pump prices and the deficit counters around the country seem to show that the idea of liberal economic policies working to be more of a dream than reality.
Too bad it was conservative economic and foreign polices that brought us the wars and the recession in the first place. Go figure that repairing the worlds largest economy is costing a lot of cash. At least one of the wars is finally over. But it is clearly Obama's fault that Iran is going for the nukes instead of Iraq... (The preceding sentence is sarcasm, I know conservatives have a hard time with that too.)
As you claim to speak for all conservatives, would you mind providing a reason for not trusting scientists? Sure I can see why you don't trust scientists working at Philip Morris to tell you about the harms from smoking tobacco products, but "scientists" is a large category to mistrust for any single reason. I am a scientist, do you distrust what I post here because I am a scientist? If so why? What are your reasons.
I totally agree that the politicalization of science has been a detriment to both science and society. That we as a nation should remove politics from science. However you cannot remove science from politics. Our nation should not make policy decisions based on gut feelings when a rational understanding is available.
Simply stating that you don't trust scientists without providing a reason is a great analogy for the current problem as I see it: many people FEEL that they KNOW what the answer is and when evidence contradicts that they ignore it, when evidence validates it they claim victory. In reality very little is ever that cut and dry. Science will (in fact must) be wrong at times. There are many reasons for that but the number of times that it has been due to scientific misconduct are minuscule when compared to the number of times it was just a statistical fluke or experimental error. So what evidence do you have to support your distrust of scientists as a group?
1) GOP has had a sharp increase over the years with religious right, and evans. To deny this is stupidity. Many of these people have come right out and said science is wrong if it conflicts with their beliefs.
2) Rush Limbaugh's job is to get sponsors and to anger people for attention. He should be ignored he ads nothing to public discourse. That said, RL praising an engineered apple product isn't the same his science denial.
" I remember the religious zealotry coming out of the scientific community at the time."
That makes no sense. Are you implying the science is a religion? if you are you are provable wrong.
"That's not anti-science, that is foresight."
no, it was pure anti-science. He has no control over the scientific community at large, but he did cut federal grants which put is about 8 years behind in the tech. Undermining, yet again, American scientific advancement in medical science.
" and restricted the harvesting of new embryonic stem cells. "
And that tell my you are fucking clueless about the subject matter and don't know where they get new embryonic stem cells.
HInt, they aren't harvested so much as saved from the trash. The are the left over from ivitro fertilization. THAT is what the are initially harvested for. I couldn't help but notice they didn't come out against invitro fertilization. Why? hypocrasy and ignorance, that's why. SO not the left overs from invitro are thrown away. Man, isn't that smart? And ignorant people like you go right long with it instead ogf bother to learn about something before forming your opinion.
Shame on you.
"Look at the sex slave trade we have going on now. Back during the stem cell debate, science was claiming that conservatives cared nothing for human life. Had they permitted free reign for embryonic stem cells, then sex slave trading would be the "better" outcome if you were a female child and kidnapped.......
What The Fuck? Again, that has NOTHING TO DO WITH EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS.
You are beyond stupid.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Slash Dot bashing conservatives? Really, hard to believe.
Trust in science has declined among conservatives. would you rather slashdot censor that bit out, in the name of political correctness?
That's just factually incorrect. No liberal I have ever met wants that. We want the smallest effective government possible.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
The conservative Christopher Buckley, son of William Buckley, traces the problem to a misplaced war on intellectualism by the right. His thoughts on this is that for the last half decade or so, conservative intellectuals had a tendency to go to Wall Street after college while liberal intellectuals had a tendency to go into higher education. Over time, colleges and universities had a more liberal personnel influencing future generations of students. Many conservative intellectuals like his father warned about this liberal intellectualism influence. The problem was the less intelligent members of the right would ignore the "liberal" part of the warning and the right grew to distrust all intellectuals regardless of their ideological views. People like Sarah Palin almost revel in their lack of knowledge portraying intellectuals as "elitists.". This is a very dangerous stance according to Buckley as it hinders progress and science.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It's just you, and the other dimwits like you who criticize things they don't understand. The only people that hold a view of some 'bigwig in the sky' are ignorant people like you who don't understand the bible... haha, yes, that includes some of the ignorant christians as well, but anybody who really understands the bible knows that no such claim is ever made.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
So, you're saying that 60 years of (somewhat) socially responsible programs has cost the tax-payer more than 9 years of foreign war? The term "apples and oranges" doesn't really seem strong enough to even use here. Maybe if we stopped fighting "wars" against nouns (drugs, terror, etc.) and went back to being fiscally conservative we'd see our economy pick up. But it's obvious where your loyalties lie...quick, Fox News is on! Get a pencil and paper so you don't miss any of the mind-blowing commentary!
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
I've heard the statement plenty of times before, that reality has some kind of "liberal bias". Yet nobody has ever advanced any evidence, any discussion, any explanation of how reality actually has that bias or what "liberal" means in this context. And nevermind an explanation of how reality can even have a bias in the first place.
Apparently it's just another example of the adage that stating something often enough makes it true, at least in the eyes of the public.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
I don't know how something obviously so false could me modded up.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Religious/Social Conservatives will likely not believe anything they are told that is contrary to what the bible tells them. Conservatives who are big proponents of big oil are likely to not believe or will discredit what climatologists say, if it hurts THEIR (big oil) interests. Then their are conservatives with the ignorant, biased view that scientists are all a bunch liberal elites who think they are better than everyone else because they have PhDs and grad degrees.
What we REALLY need to investigate is;
How the Hell did Big Oil get social/religious Conservatives to tie Big Oil interests to their religion?
Why is it the person screaming about "life at ejaculation" is also the same person ranting; "LOL, it was a cool day today" as a proof of some trend?
I think a survey would show that all these people have a hatred for Unions. A disgust for compassion. A mistrust in science.
What would really CLEAR THIS UP, is to recognize that a "Social Conservative" in the US today, mostly fits the following 14 characteristics -- see if you can find Herman Cain, Newt, Romney or Santorum here -- heck, I'd be surprised if they don't nail at least 10 traits;
The 14 Defining
Characteristics Of Fascism.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
The headline doesn't surprise me at all, but I think some of the conclusions about why stem from speculation on stereotypes rather than a comprehensive understanding of conservatism. As a practicing catholic, I accept the teachings of the church in the Bible; however, I also accept the theory of evolution based on my studies of bioinformatics related subjects. My interpretation of the Bible does not stand in conflict. For instance, the Bible says God created Earth in seven days. Since so much of the Bible's teaching comes in the form of metaphors, I interpret seven days a metaphor for people of ancient times with no access to education so they could easily relate concepts they understood to the formation of a planet. Many of my fellow catholics and conservatives express their beliefs in similar fashion.
In coming to where the distrust of science arises, I consider several data points. First, Left leaning thinkers dominate most of academia. Polls show this overwhelmingly, and I'm pretty sure most reading this don't disagree. Second, causes of environmental extremism frequently only present a partial view of science to justify an agenda. Consider the claims that man made CO2 emissions are causing the planet to warm. Much of the research upon which scientists have based these claims is not public. They have taken steps to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests, even to the extent that a frustrated whistleblower dumped a series of emails that blew up into the scandal now known as Climategate. For instance, proper simulation analysis undergoes a process called Independent Validation and Verification (IV&V). This involves third parties reproducing results against known outcomes, and anyone wishing to challenge the assertions may openly participate. However; this is not what's happened. Rather than openly engaging skeptics, even those with scientific backgrounds, the proponents tarnish, ridicule, and exclude such people from the process. Given the substantial financial gains some stand to make with the implementation of CO2 emissions policy, conservatives not welcoming such changes will naturally express a high degree of skepticism. Efforts such as capping CO2 emissions, elimination of DDT, etc. span back as early as the 1970s. Third, it's natural for conservatives to distrust anyone with the power of public policy making. There are exceptions, but not many.
On the other side, I think some of my fellow conservatives sometimes fail to look at the whole picture of an issue. For instance, the US energy sector stands to gain a great deal of efficiency with the implementation of SmartGrid technology. However, it has an Orwellian aspect to it in that a central office can manipulate the amount of power applied at the point of consumption. Conservatives, myself included, don't want somebody in a central office controlling what happens within their homes, and this sentiment sometimes overshadows the other benefits of SmartGrid technology, such as synchrophasers. So rather than simply opposing the single invasive aspect of SmartMeters, they oppose the entirely of all SmartGrid technology.
Lastly, I think that scientists naturally tend to drift towards Left leaning ideology because of their problem solver mentality. When an engineer builds something, a car or rocket or software application, he/she aims to develop it in such a manner that it functions in the most optimal way possible, time and money permitting of course. The building blocks are mechanical parts, 0's and 1's, or other types of inanimate objects. They don't have consciousness, feeling, dreams, desires, or rights. When science enters the realm of public policy, however, those building blocks are individual persons. I think it's too easy for scientific based public policy makers to forget that and consequently dehumanize the problems they are trying to solve. That's what I consider the essence of conservative based skepticism of science in today's world.
Yeah, no.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Niigata+Minamata+disease
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
In conversations I've heard, many conservatives express the notion that some thoughts should NOT be questioned.
This is not accepted by people who prefer thoughts that can withstand (survive) questioning.
I would not say my trust in science has dwindled at all. I trust science very much.
The problem is that ACTUAL SCIENCE has decreased significantly since the 1970's. Consensus has become the new Science, but consensus is not science. I do not trust consensus. I trust science.
There has been a proliferation of bad science, and with it a loss of faith. I feel conservatives have no problem with hard science like materials research, but there is a lot of "press release science" that amounts to a collection of statistics, some nonsense discussion that confuses correlation with causation, maybe a slick graph with projections on top, and most of that stuff is just crap. Social science and climate science (liberal favorites) are the biggest offenders.
....that this started in the '70s. That's about the time that partisans on the left (and then eventually more mainstream Democrats) began politicizing science to support their agenda.
Now it's a tough situation. If you're labeled the equivalent of a Holocaust Denier just for questioning the validity of a theory or a model, when there are folks screaming that skeptics should be denied jobs and/or the opportunity to air their questions, when the contrary evidence or theories are ignored--it's difficult to reach any kind of accommodation or agreement after that.
Ferretman
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Because wars cost less than healthcare.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The liberal anti-science movement is much more pernicious, since they inhabit the academic departments in the social sciences, psychology, feminism, and the humanities. Pick up Sokal's Beyond the Hoax" from the library to see liberal anti-science mania in action. You can also read Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate", which is full of liberal anti-science fuzzy-thinking nonsense.
Some results of all of this are myths like: rape is about power on not sex, violent media causes violent behaviour, god was once a woman, nuclear power is polluting and unsafe (which is a relative statement), GMOs are inherently bad (a homologue to stem-cell research), there is no biological basis for gendered behaviour,... really the list is quite long, and there are some serious consequences.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
It's not that conservatives don't trust science, it's that we don't trust the scientists: their motives, their interpretations, or their solutions.
As a scientist, I have to say that trust in conservatives is also around zero.
Your group is the one that has a significant number of members that think the world was created in 4004 BCE, and that Saying God did it is a scientific answer. Or at least that we need creationism taught in science class.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That's got to be one of the most batshit insane posts I've read on slashdot. How on Earth can a bunch of indpendently working scientists who have to beg for scraps to conduct their research be after power? They can barely get enough funding to run their projects!
Seriously, have you even looked into what a post-doc has to do to keep enough money flowing to put bread on the table? Entry level programmers can make more than they do, and for a lot less hassle.
You don't get into science to get rich. You get into science because you love it. If they wanted to be rich and powerful they would have gone into the financial sector.
~X~
Liberals believe there's finite amount of wealth to be had, and that's just not true
There very much is a finite amount of wealth (at least, as finite as the accessible part to the universe), and even venerable capitalists like Adam Smith would admit to that. I believe what you mean to say is "zero-sum game", not "finite wealth".
The big point of Wealth of Nations, the big consequential argument for free markets (besides the deontological ones put forth in other works like the Second Treatise on Human Nature), is that everybody trying to provide for their own need just by their own ability is not always the most efficient way of doing things. Smith was examining nations in particular, but the lesson applies to individuals just as much.
Prior to Smith's work, nations were trying to become and remain wealthy by buying as little as possible and selling as much as possible, by producing everything they needed domestically and selling off any surplus. It was seen as a loss to the nation if you had to import something from another nation, and a gain if other nations were importing things from you. That in every such trade, one person lost and another gained equally: and thus, every trade was zero sum, with no net gain or loss between the partners.
What Smith put forward, inventing free market capitalism in the process, was that sometimes, even often, it can be a net gain to trade; that both sides can win from it; and that, if trade was undirected by the state (but well regulated to prevent fraud or coercion), and all trades were thus strictly voluntary, nobody would ever mutually agree to a trade that wasn't a net gain, and so resources would naturally be allocated into the ways that produced the greatest wealth for everyone, one small step forward at a time.
That does not mean that infinite wealth can be had from finite resources. What it means is that wealth is just not the sum of resources; it is the sum of resources and how they are organized. (Nothing is ever just the sum of its parts; rather, all things are the sum of their parts and the relations between them). If I have tons of shit I don't need and am lacking something else, and you have more of that something else than you could ever want but are lacking what I have in surplus, then reorganizing who has what can make us both wealthier, even though no new resources have been gained between us. So I'll gladly trade you some of my surplus for some of yours, and you'll gladly accept, and we'll both win.
But, if we have now reached the best organization of our joint resources, and there is no longer any situation of us each having something worth more to the other than it is to us, then there is no way we can become any wealthier without some outside input.
In other words: resources are finite; but they are not all there is to wealth; organizational optimization also contributes to wealth; but such optimization also has a finite maximum; so, overall, wealth is still finite. Just shuffling tokens representative of wealth around more will never get anybody more of what they actually need.
Incidentally, lets look at those conditions where trades are a net gain again. Instead of each party providing for their own needs by their own ability, each sells what they're best at and buys what they're worse at; they trade whatever resources they have best ability of producing in exchange for whatever resources they have the greatest need of consuming. Thus, resources flowing from each according to his ability, to each according to his need is the quintessentially capitalist model for generating wealth.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."