Really? Didn't anyone stop to think that maybe math is overrated?
Then do without it. Go a week without relying on anything that relies on somebody knowing math. Math skill may not give you the debonair attitude that gets women out of their pants, but you should still show respect. Fucking is great (A++++, WOULD DO AGAIN!!!) but ultimately it boils down to procreation and recreation. Nothing wrong with either, but without smart people we'd be cavepeople. Ugh.
Well, yeah, I guess there is a stigma for men who come out and say they want a ditzy blonde with big boobs. You have a point there. But that doesn't lessen my fascination with women who are, for lack of a better example, like the characters often played by Janeane Garofalo. I want Dorothy Parker, only not a drunk. But I'm overly cerebral, and it's hard to be in a relationship with me. To quote my ex-wife, "it's hard to be more interesting than all of western literature." I had, and have, nothing to say to that.
But heaven forbid I offer an opinion on a topic such as the current political climate, or the economy when I go home for a weekend. They don't want to hear it, not from me.
Everyone who isn't in step with O'Reilly and Coulter is shouted down in this political climate. I feel like a pariah just for saying something as obvious as "torture is wrong." Our culture is dominated by people who think that contempt and derision qualify as valid arguments. It's not as if these same people are all calm and logical when they aren't talking to women, and then break into the "how dare you" tone when someone with ovaries comes in the room. They're assholes with the rest of us, too.
People that have not lived in a situation where it is just easier to act dumb cant understand.
It's easier for anyone to act dumb. Doesn't matter if you're male or female. I get made fun of for having a decent vocabulary, for reading, for not watching TV and sports, and so on. I'm not saying "guys have it worse," only that much of the flak women think they're getting because they're female isn't really because they're female--we get it too.
"For in much wisdom is much grief; and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow." - Ecclesiastes 1:18.
This is an old, old idea. No, you can't prove it mathematically, because you can't PROVE anything in the real world mathematically. There is a correlation between smoking tobacco and lung cancer--the link is not PROVEN, but to believe otherwise isn't considered all that reasonable. But the idea that wisdom or intelligence undermines happiness has been around forever. It doesn't stop being true, though it shouldn't be couched in mathematical terms.
"For in much wisdom is much grief; and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow." - Ecclesiastes 1:18.
But I guess that guy was wrong, too. Look, the idea has been around for a long time that knowing more can actually make you unhappy. There are a lot of silly little ideas that make us feel better about our existence, but that a smart person just can't bring themselves to believe. "Everything happens for a reason," for example. Your statement that correlation is not causation, while technically true, doesn't refute the basic truths we can see around us. You may not be able to PROVE it mathematically, which is what you're saying, but that doesn't mean much outside the field of mathematics.
I always hear that, but I don't see it around me. Girls score higher than boys in most subject areas in school. Women make up more than half of all college students. A high percentage of law and medical students are female. Women are not penalized socially for being smart or articulate. What I have seen is that women who want to date a particular type of guy, the type who happens to be the jock alpha-male, have to try and fit in with the likes/dislikes of that type of guy, and they find themselves being someone they don't want to be, and resenting men for it.
But I don't think many perl hackers want dumb women. Speaking as an English major, I don't like dumb women. I have met women who pretended to be dumber than they were, but without exception these women wanted to date a type of guy who wanted that in a woman. They ignore all the men who like strong, intelligent women, and then conclude that society painted them into a corner. It's sort of like men who date strippers--it's not that women are that way, but that women you like are that way. A woman having bad taste in men doesn't make me a pig. And all the smart women I know are respected by those around them. Yes, some are called "the B word," just as some rude, pushy men are called assholes. People are people, and no one gets a free pass.
Actually I did read somewhere that there is an upper limit of about 130. Past that, and your thought processes/speech patterns are too complex to appeal to, or connect with, the public at large. I honestly can't remember where I read the article, but the author said that JFK was about as smart as you can be and still make it in politics. The question of the article was whether "character" (whatever that is) mattered more than intelligence, a question prompted of course by the constant accusations that the current US President isn't all that quick.
Of course this raises the question of what his "character" is after all, and whether you should at least have one of the two things the article was talking about.
1) Software that cannot, by definition, be maintained because of a restrictive license and locked-down, secret code.
2) Software that can be supported in principle, but you don't have the time to support.
Is there really no difference? Even if code isn't maintained, it can be reused, improved, looked at for ideas, etc. I know that in reality there isn't a vibrant, vigilant community of volunteers swarming over ever snippet of code, eating up bugs and vulnerabilities like so many little scrubbing bubbles. But years from now someone could pick it up and move forward with the project, as opposed to a commercial offering that just dies forever and forever. Look at truecrypt--the E4M project wasn't being actively developed, but after it sat around for a while someone came in and used the E4M base to make Truecrypt. It may have been the same people (I don't really know) but even so, in principle it could've been someone else.
It's true that not everyone has the inclination and time to do everything. That doesn't change the fact that it's better to have the option than not.
I was wondering why some guy smart enough and sane enough to develop a filesystem would go and murder his wife.
Intelligence has little to do with passion, and passion drives our actions much more than we would like to think. I concede that most of the population who shot someone over a 6-pack of beer are probably from the less gifted end of the gene pool, but love, rejection, bitterness, etc., will dupe very smart people into doing very stupid things.
And if you go to the more cold-blooded end of the murder spectrum, the killers actually get smarter, and outright sociopaths are often pretty bright. However, I base that on nothing more substantial than a hunch I get from what I've read, heard, and seen over the years, so don't bet any vital organs on it.
And giving up the illusion of absolute safety is one of the prices. Giving up the panacea of an omnipotent government that can do anything at the drop of the hat, without the encumbrance of due process and the limits of checks and balances, is one of the prices. Totalitarian states are generally much more efficient, because they don't have to jump through hoops--they just kill you. Easy peasy.
Societies that value freedom have to give up these things, because these things are antithetical to freedom. Let me be more clear--these things kill freedom. They don't protect it, facilitate it, guard it, or preserve it. Societies that embrace these things are in the process giving up their freedom.
If you embrace surveillance without warrant, imprisonment without trial, and confessions under torture, you are an enemy of freedom and decency. Ipso facto, if you say you are advocating these things to protect freedom and decency, then you are lying. You are an enemy to my country, my constitution, and my way of life. If the push for totalitarianism against the principle of freedom ever causes civil war, may God have mercy on your soul.
If you aren't sticking up for surveillance without warrant, imprisonment without trial, and confessions under torture, then the above doesn't apply to you. Have a nice day.
Does anyone know of any news sites similar to Slashdot that don't editorialize their stories to this degree?
Foxnews.com may be what you're looking for. They're both fair and balanced, and they don't spin their stories at all. They're about as close to objectivity as I've seen this side of the Drudge Report.
Am I the only conservative on Slashdot that actually wants to WIN against the terrorists?
Am I the only conservative on Slashdot who actually believes in limited government and the rule of law? Warrants are nothing more than oversight, a part of the checks and balances system to guard against abuse of power. No one left, right, or center, has opined that the President should not authorize surveillance. The issue is not whether or not the government taps phone calls, but whether or not they need a warrant before doing so. Without the intermediate step of getting a warrant, there is no oversight, and nothing to prevent wholesale targeted surveillance of political opponents, pesky protest groups, etc.
By what stretch of the imagination do you call yourself a conservative? Does that just mean "gay marriage is bad?" It used to mean fiscal responsibility, small government, etc. How can you call yourself by that time-honored name and still advocate removing such a significant check on government power? Conservatives understand that government is inimical to freedom. What are you, and why do you think that's what you are?
You do know, of course, that the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, frivilous or not, was not seen in the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)? You must know that slip-n-sue lawsuits, though irritating and probably jacking up the price of our apple sauce, are not competing for time in judge's chambers with efforts to get warrants to catch terrorists?
Are you kidding? Where do you people come from? I mean, I've made some bone-headed statements in my life, but I do generally try to research something before I spew it forth.
Being wrong is one thing--everyone makes mistakes--but to say that frivolous lawsuits are hampering the war on terror, causing the Executive Branch to jettison the need for warrants altogether, is so far in left (by that I mean right) field that I must infer that you really are a space alien.
Hey, God! We've been waiting for you! Where have you been all this time? We've all been late to work once in a while, but when you do a half-assed job in the first place, then jet for 2000 years, people find it hard to give you the benefit of the doubt. I can only cover for you for so long.
Why is there evil in the world, and what's up with that duck-billed platypus? Was that just a joke, or were you pulling our leg on that one?
Or... well, now that I think about it, I feel a bit sheepish. Is it possible you aren't really God, not really omniscient, and really just sort of an arrogant simpleton? Are you just one of those guys who pretends to know more than they do, out of a grossly inflated sense of their own perspicacity? Man, to think I've been living a lie for the last 45 seconds of my life. I feel so disillusioned! You used me!
The bible is full of the fallibility, even foolishness of people who weren't obedient to God. But people who think that what they're doing is sanctioned by God, or that they are "warriors for Christ" in a cultural battle against the powers of darkness, don't have much self-doubt. I was raised in the Bible Belt, and I can differentiate between what is in the Bible and how people act. I wasn't criticizing the bible, but people. Your argument seems to be about what is or isn't in the bible, which isn't at all what I was talking about.
Haven't you seen for yourself the huge, well-financed, glaringly obvious cultural movement of religious fundamentalism? Haven't you seen the huge cultural movement advocating rejecting methodological materialism, meaning what conventional, mainstream scientists call "science"? These people just know things, and they easily reject evolution, the big bang, evidence for an old earth, common descent, global warming, or any number of other things that are accepted by mainstream science. They repudiate the very scientific method, claiming it's "too blinkered by materialism."
That cavelier rejection of education, expertise, decades of research, data, inference, the entire edifice of rational, careful analysis and thought is indicative of people who just know that they're right. They just know, because they're fighting for God, which leaves everyone else fighting for the other guy, Satan. In all other contexts that would meet the textbook definition of arrogance, and I don't think we can call it humility just because it's advanced by religion.
Yes, they agree that humans are fallible, which is why they aren't relying on humans. To them, they're relying on God, who is infallible. But their "God" manifests through their gut feeling/intuition/whatever, which leaves the rest of us faced with tens of millions of Americans who reject rational thought because they feel like it, while making the totally unverifiable claim that it's because they're more Godly. They could be more Godly, and we could be hellbound materialistic heathens, or they could just be undereducated, arrogant people with a touch of megalomania and cosmic narcisissm. Which is really more probable?
This does touch on the bible in some ways. The bible says in many places that people should not trust their own perceptions, because that is folly. Don't trust your own wisdom. This undermines the idea that we can look around us and figure something out about the world. So there are verses in the bible that could be used to advance anti-intellectualism, but whether or not you focus on these to the exclusion of the others is a matter of individual preference. Obviously not all Christians are anti-intellectual, not all reject science, and not all think that their gut feeling/"voice of God" trumps verifiable, objective fact. I'm not painting all believers with the same brush, because they aren't all the same. It's just the "Jesus Camp" contingent that keeps me up at night. From what I read, the Dark Ages weren't all that wonderful.
I wasn't calling you stupid, only illustrating the thought process involved in the worldview I was explaining (and criticizing). Sorry I wasn't more clear on that. And my point about the Saddam/9-11 connection was that people will believe it even if, factually, it isn't true, and they'll just attribute your "fact" to bias on your part. People consider "true" and "false" to be matters of opinion, so a little logo in the bottom of the screen isn't going to clarify much. Yes, I can imagine someone saying "the 67th digit of pi is..." and the software recognizing an inccorrect statement, but not "unemployment has gone down." That would be harder, if not impossible, to catch, because politicians just re-define unemployment, as they have terrorism, torture, etc.
Anyway, sorry about about leaving you thinking I was calling you stupid. I was actually caricaturing the sanctimonious worldview of those who use ad hominem arguments because they don't consider raw logic and facts to be necessary to prove their point.
There are auditory and visual cues to detecting a lie
I think there are auditory and visual clues to detecting a willful falsehood, but what about people who are sincere? I think VP Cheney means what he says, really, and he doesn't seem affected by what we call "reality." No matter how many CIA or Defense Department studies or reports contradict what he's saying, he still stays on-message. The more prominent of a role religion plays in public life, the more frequently we see what I call "faith-based reality." People believe whatever the hell they want, and they don't consider fact, expertise, education, or even the glaringly obvious to threaten their worldview in any way. They're used to believing things based on their gut feeling, they've grown up in a culture where they're told to trust that inner voice and distrust "the secular world," and lo and behold, that's what they do. A lie detector isn't going to catch someone who sincerely believes something that isn't true.
For example, parts of the country (the Bible Belt comes to mind) that rely more on abstinence-only education have a higher teen pregnancy rate, but that doesn't dissuade religious people from thinking that abstinence-only education is better. You don't have to collect data or analyze trends if you just know, and people who just know things based on their "conscience" aren't really lying. They're just using a kind of thinking that doesn't rely on objective reality. What's more, their confidence will actually be higher than "secularists," because the secular worldview always entails the awareness of our own fallibility, thus an element of self-doubt, which doesn't plague those who feel they are instruments of divine providence. They more sincerely and steadfastly believe in their faith-based reality than you do in your reality-based reality. So you'd be tripped up by your device long before they would be.
You can't eliminate the capacity of human language to convey lies. Were the Kurds "massacred" or "pacified?" Were they "innocent women and children" or "rebels bent on destroying Iraq?" Which one is a lie depends on who signs your check. People don't actually believe in one standard of conduct for everyone, so loaded language isn't going to go away. We're virtuous, they're dastardly cowards, and who has killed more people has nothing to do with anything. We were liberating, while they were oppressing. Surely you aren't too stupid to see the difference there? I could deceive you all day without technically telling a lie. 65% of Republicans, and almost 40% of Americans as a whole, still believe that Saddam was linked to 9/11, even though Bush has explicitly (though infrequently) admitted that no evidence links him to 9/11 or Al Queida. Is a computer program going to catch constant innuendo? Commercials don't actually tell you that drinking a particular beer or smoking a particular cigar will get you laid, so are they really lying? Yes, but not in a crass way where you can say "Aha! Caught you!"
Politicians are routinely caught in falsehoods. The only people who pretend to care, really, are the ones trying to discredit this politician so they can (they hope) bolster support for their own liar of choice. There is no regard for truth per se. "Truthiness," though ostensibly a joke, is what counts. What part of the truth bolsters my political or religious opinions? Well, that's the part I care about and will talk about--everything else is just noise. In fact, if outright facts, verifiable reality, contradicts my political or religious beliefs, then those "facts," that "reality," will be called into question. Hence "science doesn't prove anything," "Saddam was behind 9/11," "evolution and global warming are lies told to our children," etc. I think many people would dispute the very existence of an objective fact. At the very least, they repudiate its significance, unless it happens to bolster what they believe that day.
No, left-wingers are not immune, but they are not in power right now so their stupidity is less glaringly annoying than the self-righteous know-nothingness of the right wing. If/when they come to power again, I'll hate them too, just as I detested them when they were in office before. The annoying thing (to me) about that last sentence is that so-called conservatives will chime in just to say "well, at least you realize that the Dems lie" and that's it--again, they won't care about truth per se, but only to the extent that a mock concern for "truth" can be used to slime the opposition so the lying of their own party isn't so egregious. It's like the "draft dodger" epithet that was used on Clinton, but someone loses its currency when talking about Bush, even though everyone knows why rich kids went to the Guard rather than Vietnam.
Politics robs normal human discourse of any shred of integrity, because the need to bolster your own "side" means you have to slime the other side and stick up for things you don't really want to stick up for, just to avoid giving the other side points. Republicans aren't bad people in general (Christian Dominionists aside) and they would never, in a moment of clarity, stick up for a pedophile, but politics pushes them into that corner where they don't want to risk congressional seats, so they say "oh come on, it wasn't that bad, was it?"
they didn't look at academic performance, just feelings about performance
This part of your post got me thinking. How exactly would you check performance? The SAT? General knowledge? Math ability? IQ? As I get older, I realize that I've met so many kinds of people, with different kinds of intelligence, but whether they were considered "smart" would depend on what was asked of them that day. I'm not that bright (compared to many I've met) but I have more intellectual curiosity than most. Does that count? I'm horrible at math but I can spot a logical fallacy at 100 meters.
The mainstream media does a very good job of covering stories of human tragedy, celebrity gossip, and stuff like that. As long as no political or religious ideas are involved, as long as no reading of the story could slight the party favored by their sponsors/owners, then objectivity is easy. But they can't cover Bush, Clinton, the environment, evolution, or really anything touched upon by religion or politics without screwing it up. Unfortunately, everything that matters is touched upon by religion and politics. So the only subjects they do well on essentially don't matter.
Yes, I'm saying that human tragedy doesn't matter. People got shot this week, and more will get shot next week. In a nation of 300 million, murders happen. I'm more interested in what the Christian Reconstructionists are up to, or which parts of the nation still have electronic, unverifiable voting machines, than in who got murdered last week. The movie Jesus Camp moves me more deeply, and disturbs me more profoundly, than the Amish murders.
Different children develop differently, and generalizations become too broad to be useful applications.
Generalizations can accurately predict outcomes, despite exceptions to the contrary. You don't lose every bet in Vegas, but the shiny buildings indicate which way the money is flowing. Even if a single kid, or a large number of them, do well despite long gameplay and TV viewing, increased hours of exposure correlating well with lower academic scores does mean something. People who read more generally have better vocabularies and critical thinking skills, even though I have met a couple (literally) of people who read only when they had to, but still had excellent vocabularies and critical thinking skills. Correlation matters, even if it throws a negative light on your hobby.
I think it's highly likely that other forces - unknown who - accompliced the 9/11 disasters
But who? I've heard the Mossad angle, but I just don't buy it, juicy as it is. I'm not saying it's impossible, only that I see little reason to say "yeah, I believe that." Bin Laden and his merry crew seem like good candidates. Well financed, motivated, methodical, able. It could be someone else, but you can always posit an unknown. What reason do you have to believe it was someone else? I'm not denigrating your statement, only asking for substantiation. Incompetence I can believe, but outright malevolence takes a bit more for me to bite.
I never said I lacked faith in the constitution, nor was my post one of those "the sky is falling--Bush is Hitler!" messages. I was responding to a post that said, in essence, "government needs powerful tools to deal with this problem." The powerful tools are: surveillance without a warrant, detention without trial, and a redefinition of torture so it won't be torture now that we're doing it. My post was cautionary, in that I believe that government generally abuses its power--in fact, I believe that government power is inherently inimical to freedom. I did not say that we are doomed, forever and ever, that we could never repair what has been done, or anything of the sort. I'm sick of someone jumping in and making my argument into something I didn't say, so they can feel justified in (still) failing to address my actual point--are these powers likely to be abused, or aren't they? Stop acting like I said the sky is falling, and just come out and admit whether or not you think the government should have these powers.
I didn't say 9/11 was innocuous, only that it killed less than 1/10 as many people as the flu does every year. That statement is factually accurate, even if you don't like where that line of thought leads. Yes, it disrupted lives, or rather, the fear that it generated, the fear that was amplified, reinforced, and exploited by the media and by government, disrupted lives. I don't blame the government (or even the media) for people being suckers for this, but I still stand by my opinion that the fear we've lived with is far disproportional to the actual threat. Well, I shouldn't call it an opinion, because the word "proportional" implies a mathematical relationship, in which case it clearly, unambiguously is not proportional.
I fully respect your right to be who you want to be. I really do. But no one is going to pay you for it. There aren't many jobs where you are just paid for doing things--usually what they want is a bit more nebulous, and involves "playing the game." You not being willing to do that doesn't reflect on your character in a definitive, existential way, but it will impact your income.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, yeah, I guess there is a stigma for men who come out and say they want a ditzy blonde with big boobs. You have a point there. But that doesn't lessen my fascination with women who are, for lack of a better example, like the characters often played by Janeane Garofalo. I want Dorothy Parker, only not a drunk. But I'm overly cerebral, and it's hard to be in a relationship with me. To quote my ex-wife, "it's hard to be more interesting than all of western literature." I had, and have, nothing to say to that.
It's easier for anyone to act dumb. Doesn't matter if you're male or female. I get made fun of for having a decent vocabulary, for reading, for not watching TV and sports, and so on. I'm not saying "guys have it worse," only that much of the flak women think they're getting because they're female isn't really because they're female--we get it too.
This is an old, old idea. No, you can't prove it mathematically, because you can't PROVE anything in the real world mathematically. There is a correlation between smoking tobacco and lung cancer--the link is not PROVEN, but to believe otherwise isn't considered all that reasonable. But the idea that wisdom or intelligence undermines happiness has been around forever. It doesn't stop being true, though it shouldn't be couched in mathematical terms.
But I guess that guy was wrong, too. Look, the idea has been around for a long time that knowing more can actually make you unhappy. There are a lot of silly little ideas that make us feel better about our existence, but that a smart person just can't bring themselves to believe. "Everything happens for a reason," for example. Your statement that correlation is not causation, while technically true, doesn't refute the basic truths we can see around us. You may not be able to PROVE it mathematically, which is what you're saying, but that doesn't mean much outside the field of mathematics.
But I don't think many perl hackers want dumb women. Speaking as an English major, I don't like dumb women. I have met women who pretended to be dumber than they were, but without exception these women wanted to date a type of guy who wanted that in a woman. They ignore all the men who like strong, intelligent women, and then conclude that society painted them into a corner. It's sort of like men who date strippers--it's not that women are that way, but that women you like are that way. A woman having bad taste in men doesn't make me a pig. And all the smart women I know are respected by those around them. Yes, some are called "the B word," just as some rude, pushy men are called assholes. People are people, and no one gets a free pass.
Of course this raises the question of what his "character" is after all, and whether you should at least have one of the two things the article was talking about.
1) Software that cannot, by definition, be maintained because of a restrictive license and locked-down, secret code.
2) Software that can be supported in principle, but you don't have the time to support.
Is there really no difference? Even if code isn't maintained, it can be reused, improved, looked at for ideas, etc. I know that in reality there isn't a vibrant, vigilant community of volunteers swarming over ever snippet of code, eating up bugs and vulnerabilities like so many little scrubbing bubbles. But years from now someone could pick it up and move forward with the project, as opposed to a commercial offering that just dies forever and forever. Look at truecrypt--the E4M project wasn't being actively developed, but after it sat around for a while someone came in and used the E4M base to make Truecrypt. It may have been the same people (I don't really know) but even so, in principle it could've been someone else.
It's true that not everyone has the inclination and time to do everything. That doesn't change the fact that it's better to have the option than not.
And if you go to the more cold-blooded end of the murder spectrum, the killers actually get smarter, and outright sociopaths are often pretty bright. However, I base that on nothing more substantial than a hunch I get from what I've read, heard, and seen over the years, so don't bet any vital organs on it.
Societies that value freedom have to give up these things, because these things are antithetical to freedom. Let me be more clear--these things kill freedom. They don't protect it, facilitate it, guard it, or preserve it. Societies that embrace these things are in the process giving up their freedom.
If you embrace surveillance without warrant, imprisonment without trial, and confessions under torture, you are an enemy of freedom and decency. Ipso facto, if you say you are advocating these things to protect freedom and decency, then you are lying. You are an enemy to my country, my constitution, and my way of life. If the push for totalitarianism against the principle of freedom ever causes civil war, may God have mercy on your soul.
If you aren't sticking up for surveillance without warrant, imprisonment without trial, and confessions under torture, then the above doesn't apply to you. Have a nice day.
By what stretch of the imagination do you call yourself a conservative? Does that just mean "gay marriage is bad?" It used to mean fiscal responsibility, small government, etc. How can you call yourself by that time-honored name and still advocate removing such a significant check on government power? Conservatives understand that government is inimical to freedom. What are you, and why do you think that's what you are?
Are you kidding? Where do you people come from? I mean, I've made some bone-headed statements in my life, but I do generally try to research something before I spew it forth.
Being wrong is one thing--everyone makes mistakes--but to say that frivolous lawsuits are hampering the war on terror, causing the Executive Branch to jettison the need for warrants altogether, is so far in left (by that I mean right) field that I must infer that you really are a space alien.
Why is there evil in the world, and what's up with that duck-billed platypus? Was that just a joke, or were you pulling our leg on that one?
Or... well, now that I think about it, I feel a bit sheepish. Is it possible you aren't really God, not really omniscient, and really just sort of an arrogant simpleton? Are you just one of those guys who pretends to know more than they do, out of a grossly inflated sense of their own perspicacity? Man, to think I've been living a lie for the last 45 seconds of my life. I feel so disillusioned! You used me!
Haven't you seen for yourself the huge, well-financed, glaringly obvious cultural movement of religious fundamentalism? Haven't you seen the huge cultural movement advocating rejecting methodological materialism, meaning what conventional, mainstream scientists call "science"? These people just know things, and they easily reject evolution, the big bang, evidence for an old earth, common descent, global warming, or any number of other things that are accepted by mainstream science. They repudiate the very scientific method, claiming it's "too blinkered by materialism."
That cavelier rejection of education, expertise, decades of research, data, inference, the entire edifice of rational, careful analysis and thought is indicative of people who just know that they're right. They just know, because they're fighting for God, which leaves everyone else fighting for the other guy, Satan. In all other contexts that would meet the textbook definition of arrogance, and I don't think we can call it humility just because it's advanced by religion.
Yes, they agree that humans are fallible, which is why they aren't relying on humans. To them, they're relying on God, who is infallible. But their "God" manifests through their gut feeling/intuition/whatever, which leaves the rest of us faced with tens of millions of Americans who reject rational thought because they feel like it, while making the totally unverifiable claim that it's because they're more Godly. They could be more Godly, and we could be hellbound materialistic heathens, or they could just be undereducated, arrogant people with a touch of megalomania and cosmic narcisissm. Which is really more probable?
This does touch on the bible in some ways. The bible says in many places that people should not trust their own perceptions, because that is folly. Don't trust your own wisdom. This undermines the idea that we can look around us and figure something out about the world. So there are verses in the bible that could be used to advance anti-intellectualism, but whether or not you focus on these to the exclusion of the others is a matter of individual preference. Obviously not all Christians are anti-intellectual, not all reject science, and not all think that their gut feeling/"voice of God" trumps verifiable, objective fact. I'm not painting all believers with the same brush, because they aren't all the same. It's just the "Jesus Camp" contingent that keeps me up at night. From what I read, the Dark Ages weren't all that wonderful.
Anyway, sorry about about leaving you thinking I was calling you stupid. I was actually caricaturing the sanctimonious worldview of those who use ad hominem arguments because they don't consider raw logic and facts to be necessary to prove their point.
For example, parts of the country (the Bible Belt comes to mind) that rely more on abstinence-only education have a higher teen pregnancy rate, but that doesn't dissuade religious people from thinking that abstinence-only education is better. You don't have to collect data or analyze trends if you just know, and people who just know things based on their "conscience" aren't really lying. They're just using a kind of thinking that doesn't rely on objective reality. What's more, their confidence will actually be higher than "secularists," because the secular worldview always entails the awareness of our own fallibility, thus an element of self-doubt, which doesn't plague those who feel they are instruments of divine providence. They more sincerely and steadfastly believe in their faith-based reality than you do in your reality-based reality. So you'd be tripped up by your device long before they would be.
You can't eliminate the capacity of human language to convey lies. Were the Kurds "massacred" or "pacified?" Were they "innocent women and children" or "rebels bent on destroying Iraq?" Which one is a lie depends on who signs your check. People don't actually believe in one standard of conduct for everyone, so loaded language isn't going to go away. We're virtuous, they're dastardly cowards, and who has killed more people has nothing to do with anything. We were liberating, while they were oppressing. Surely you aren't too stupid to see the difference there? I could deceive you all day without technically telling a lie. 65% of Republicans, and almost 40% of Americans as a whole, still believe that Saddam was linked to 9/11, even though Bush has explicitly (though infrequently) admitted that no evidence links him to 9/11 or Al Queida. Is a computer program going to catch constant innuendo? Commercials don't actually tell you that drinking a particular beer or smoking a particular cigar will get you laid, so are they really lying? Yes, but not in a crass way where you can say "Aha! Caught you!"
No, left-wingers are not immune, but they are not in power right now so their stupidity is less glaringly annoying than the self-righteous know-nothingness of the right wing. If/when they come to power again, I'll hate them too, just as I detested them when they were in office before. The annoying thing (to me) about that last sentence is that so-called conservatives will chime in just to say "well, at least you realize that the Dems lie" and that's it--again, they won't care about truth per se, but only to the extent that a mock concern for "truth" can be used to slime the opposition so the lying of their own party isn't so egregious. It's like the "draft dodger" epithet that was used on Clinton, but someone loses its currency when talking about Bush, even though everyone knows why rich kids went to the Guard rather than Vietnam.
Politics robs normal human discourse of any shred of integrity, because the need to bolster your own "side" means you have to slime the other side and stick up for things you don't really want to stick up for, just to avoid giving the other side points. Republicans aren't bad people in general (Christian Dominionists aside) and they would never, in a moment of clarity, stick up for a pedophile, but politics pushes them into that corner where they don't want to risk congressional seats, so they say "oh come on, it wasn't that bad, was it?"
Yes, I'm saying that human tragedy doesn't matter. People got shot this week, and more will get shot next week. In a nation of 300 million, murders happen. I'm more interested in what the Christian Reconstructionists are up to, or which parts of the nation still have electronic, unverifiable voting machines, than in who got murdered last week. The movie Jesus Camp moves me more deeply, and disturbs me more profoundly, than the Amish murders.
I didn't say 9/11 was innocuous, only that it killed less than 1/10 as many people as the flu does every year. That statement is factually accurate, even if you don't like where that line of thought leads. Yes, it disrupted lives, or rather, the fear that it generated, the fear that was amplified, reinforced, and exploited by the media and by government, disrupted lives. I don't blame the government (or even the media) for people being suckers for this, but I still stand by my opinion that the fear we've lived with is far disproportional to the actual threat. Well, I shouldn't call it an opinion, because the word "proportional" implies a mathematical relationship, in which case it clearly, unambiguously is not proportional.
I fully respect your right to be who you want to be. I really do. But no one is going to pay you for it. There aren't many jobs where you are just paid for doing things--usually what they want is a bit more nebulous, and involves "playing the game." You not being willing to do that doesn't reflect on your character in a definitive, existential way, but it will impact your income.