I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views
joseduarte.com
joseduarte.com
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/04/27/br...
The author of the parent comment has established that they made a mistake. Maybe you weren't outraged before but now there is some readily apparent hostility.
Surely if I made a factual error on something that you were knowledgeable on - say, NodeJS - and you corrected me, you'd be slightly peeved - or at least see my behavior as odd - if I replied to you claiming that your friendly input was "outrage".
If that was indeed an honest error then you could have elaborated on how it was possible for you to hold both of these contradicting views simultaneously, and I would have admitted that I was wrong to assume that you were a prick.
Since instead of doing that you've decided to deflect with "STOP WITH THE OUTRAGE THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!", I did surmise that you are simply not aware of what 'respect' is. Hence while it was wrong of me to take on that role of 'teaching' it to you (what a waste of effort), I stand by my implication that someone should have done that by now.
No malice, no motives, just a mistake. Stop reading so far into it.
The way you worded your response was basically, "If it was an error why are you a bigot?"
Like I said, I felt insulted by you labelling my off-hand comment as "outrage", especially after you agreed that I was factually correct.
In hindsight I can see why you took offence to my original comment, but there is a massive difference in connotation between saying "I am offended" and "you are outraged". [0]
As I am a big proponent of free speech online, your implication of what I should and should not be able to say has been quite vexing to me, hence my annoyance. But I shouldn't have conflated that with whatever your views on trans women are.
See
>Stop reading so far into it.
and
>Be civil. [0]
[0] https://www.itu.int/net/wsis/docs/geneva/official/dop.html
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
[2] https://books.google.com/books?id=SK3VRr7bFVkC&pg=PA138#v=on...
What twisted hoops did you have to jump through to say something like that? "Private politics" is not politics. It makes no sense to say something like that. Politics is explicitly about interacting with other people in a non-private way.
Politics is explicitly about controlling other people, and there's nothing personal about that.
Unless they're actually offended by non-violence, in which case they probably did you a favor.
Most would not say they are offended by non-violence, and most would actually advocate non-violence. The problem comes in when you start pointing out that logical and consistent definitions of violence/aggression preclude a lot of the things people value and think noble. To some, mentioning you are Libertarian inherently means you are saying all of their "noble" and "good" ideas should be scrapped because they rely on aggression. Hence the cliched "you want poor people to starve" criticism of Libertarian-like beliefs.
Violence is also a bit of a misleading word, in that it paints a very physical picture. Threat of violence can be seen as aggression, and is on-par with actual violence because the implication is that if compliance is not achieved, the aggressor will exercise violence. Had to clarify a bit, as I did switch the discussion from violence to aggression, which is what libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism is mainly about.
Their values can simply be different, and it is valid for them to disagree with you based on the conclusions they get from those values.
Aggression is defined differently by different groups after all, so the set of actions that a libertarian objects to based on their understanding of "aggression" would be different to a set of actions that someone else would object to based on a different understanding of "aggression".
Obviously you disagree with their conclusion of dismissing libertarianism and blocking libertarians, and that's fine. What's less fine - in my eyes - is to imply that the disagreement comes from the fact that you are the only one who understands some basic Truth about the world and those that disagree are foolish and cliche for disagreeing with you.
That's the sort of thing that I associate with religion, rather than an honest intellectual discussion of political merits of an ideology.
But to your point - yes of course it's ok to disassociate with someone who is advocating violence or National Socialism, because it can reasonably be inferred that said person isn't rational, or has a twisted sense of morality than makes associating with them damaging to yourself. However, I'm assuming that's not the case here - it had come in vogue in SWJ and intellectual circles to immediately disregard anyone who has an incorrect opinion. Vote republican? You obviously are a terrible human being. Fall in line with the Democrats except you think abortion is wrong? Kill yourself.
Given the very serious discussions in US politics about placing US citizens in concentration camps and refusing them re-entry to the country based on their religion, the question about at what point a party becomes the National Socialists must be a legitimate one to ask. Clearly we're not there yet. But also, clearly there's a nonzero chance that we might find ourselves there very soon.
If you want extremist views to have free reign, then keep avoid them until they form a broad enough coalition of the ignored and disaffected to take power, I guess.
And yes it's true I'm far from the most religious person there is, and I strongly believe in birth control, women's rights, on and on, I am constantly assumed to be some Bible-thumping redneck by anyone who doesn't know me. It also doesn't help that I regularly enjoy working with my hands, building things, fixing things, which mind you when it comes to many things to fix there's a great deal of intelligence required, but because it's not the fancy coastal intelligence that gets you six figure jobs I'm assumed to be an idiot.
And then people wonder why Middle America has such a disdain for the cultures and intellectual achievement, after they've spent their entire learning lives being told how dumb they are by the snobs, most of whom can't even swap a tire for a donut without calling AAA.
</rant>
Even the snobs in NYC or SF are more tolerable (NYC having a pragmatic undercurrent, and SF at least having a "builder" mentality).
The sheer irony involved in that original comment and his choice of example should have been immediately obvious. The fact it wasn't makes me think, frankly, its OP who is the issue.
The fact I have to put up with bullshit from people who live in the [insert location here] on a regular basis and make condescending comments doesn't mean I assume the entire [insert location here] behaves that way in general. Rather, I recognize that its the specific individuals I deal with in that instance that are the problem and not the general population.
The fact both of you immediately jumped in to defend the generalization and expand on it, frankly, makes it even more ironic to the point of hypocrisy.
Is there some kind of large, documented body of evidence proving what the OP says is true? [ Hint: We have that for racism but we don't for what the OP is stating as far as I'm aware. ]
> Strangely, that rule seems not to apply when it's a progressive talking to a traditionalist. And progressives wonder why they have such a hard time talking to traditionalists? You'd have to be willfully blind.
I'm unaware requiring broad, systemic evidence of discrimination before applying the "this is a problem beyond a few individuals" is a strange standard.
Please, explain why this is an unreasonable standard?
Because you haven't described a standard, you've asked for "broad, systematic evidence." What exactly constitutes "broad, systematic evidence"? If we were to provide you with, say, 20 instances of left wing discrimination against the right, would you admit you're wrong? How these conversations usually go is you demand evidence, we provide evidence, you say our evidence is invalid and round and round we go.
This is called "bringing dialectic to a rhetorical debate". You're not arguing logic or facts, you're arguing emotions. If I'm wrong on that fact, please, describe an exact standard that would convince you the OP is, in fact, correct.
Empirical research by enough different researchers that reasonable people can assume it to be true and not the product of statistical manipulation.
Hell, I won't even hold you to that standard.
Provide lots of things like this:
http://blog.linkedin.com/2015/06/17/measuring-gender-diversi...
I don't care if they are real academics.
It's not incorrect to make broad generalizations about the culture of places. While every place has a broad spectrum of people, every place has identifiable trends and modalities.
I'm going to use this phrase. Thanks.
It's great ammunition for certain politicians (like Trump or his UK and European counterparts).
He's more right than most parties in the European Left bloc, and there's still fringe groups left of those.
That's simply not true, and a drastic oversimplification of American politics.
It is true that there are two mainstream America political parties. However, anyone is free to run as an Independent or under the banner of any other party they choose, whether that be the Green Party or the Libertarian Party. Here is an example ballot, showing that more than just Mitt Romney and Barack Obama were on the 2012 federal election ballot: http://www.sos.ms.gov/links/elections/home/tab1/GE12%20Sampl...
As you can see, the Constitution Party, Libertarian Party, Green Party, and Reform Party also appeared on the ballot.
It is true that voters seldom vote for people outside the Republican or Democratic parties. (Two notable recent exceptions are Bernie Sanders, formerly Democratic Socialist who switched to Democrat, and Joe Lieberman, Independent) Why is this? Because for the most part, people are happiest with one of those two. How's that possible? Because there's an enormous amount of political range within a party. Basically anyone can up and announce that they're a Republican at any time, and that's that. Ron Paul and John Kasich can be in the same party and nobody blinks an eye. That's why you hear expressions like 'Tea Party Republicans' or 'Blue Dog Democrats' or 'Southern Democrats'. There's a lot more variety in the party than you see in European parties and party members are free to do basically whatever they want while in office. They don't have to vote in blocs.
At the same time, Americans vote for damn near every position imaginable. Federal government is largely divorced from most people's everyday concerns; you get a vote for President/Vice-President, two Senators, and a Representative. The policies that affect the average American most are legislated and executed on a local and state level, not a federal level. States have enormous power in America politics. And take my state, for example: I get to vote for Governor, Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor, State Auditor, Secretary of State, State Treasurer, Agriculture Commissioner, State Senator, Insurance Commissioner, Public Service Commissioner, Transportation Commissioner, Supreme Court Justice, District Attorney, and House Representative. On the county level, which is also where an incredible amount of decisions are made, I elect a Supervisor, Constable, Sheriff, Justice Court Judge, Tax Collector, Tax Assessor, Chancery Clerk, Circuit Clerk, School Board Member, Superintendent of Education Coroner, and Prosecuting Attorney. And the more local you get, the less party matters at all.
There isn't a democracy problem in America: most of the most important decisions - education funding, infrastructure development, criminal laws and prosecutions, law enforcement, taxation, utility management, etc - are made on a state level or a hyperlocal city or county level. The reality is that the federal government has comparatively little to do with most people's lives, beyond getting a federal income tax return, the military, Social Security, and Medicare.
The problem is with the people.
It is in practice quite true even if it is not nominally true, and not only that it is true, but the connection between it and the particular kind of poorly-representative electoral system the US has been established by comparative study across democracies.
> There isn't a democracy problem in America
Yes, there is, largely to a very poorly representative electoral system. Lots of elections doesn't make a well-functioning democracy, that takes elections which produce governments that are effectively representative.
Can you explain in what sense American government is not representative?
People freely choosing to vote for people that you don't consider to be in their best interests does not make a government unrepresentative.
There are a few factors that impact representativeness - gerrymandering and the ineligibility of felons and illegal immigrants, for instance, but all-in-all that impact is pretty minor. In particular, of course, at a local and state level, those impacts are reduced along with the scale. There's an unwarranted hyper-focus on federal government because it's the most visible and affects the most citizens, but for most people's day to day lives, it is the least important level of government.
If Americans have a divisive, gridlocked federal government that produces results nobody likes, that's the natural consequence of a divisive, gridlocked populace that doesn't know what it wants (lower taxes! more social security! balance the budget!), not un-representative government.
While 'Winner Takes All' is one way to do representative voting and checking that item off the list, it's one of the worst ways to be representative. CGP Grey has a series of videos on different voting systems and their pros and cons on youtube - start with this one, which goes through the ways 'winner takes all' drives towards worse representation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
Another issue that Grey doesn't mention is that electioneering in the US is so constant and expensive, that politicians can rarely afford to speak in-depth to people without money to donate. It's a subtle effect and not really corruption, but a result of having to endlessly chase the dollars in order to electioneer.
The US has a representative system, no-one's arguing against that. But is it satisfactory or unsatisfactory?
State and local elections are often not winner takes all, but two-round voting. (Really, more than that, if you want to cheat and count the primary election and possible run-offs there.)
Because it produces outcomes where the distribution of power in government does not follow the distribution in the preferences of the electorate (even the distribution as expressed in voting, which is already distorted by tactical accommodation to the known features of the electoral system.)
This is problem stemming largely from the use of single-member winner-take-all elections by majority/runoff or plurality rules, as is the case for most legislative (and many other) elections, and which is compounded, at the federal level, by distribution of representation disproportionately to population (obviously in the Senate, but granularity results in significant variance in district size for House seats, as well.)
Arend Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy provides pretty good coverage of both the degree to which various modern democracies have representative government, the structural features that are associated with effective representation, and the effects that those variations in effectiveness of representation have.
> People freely choosing to vote for people that you don't consider to be in their best interests does not make a government unrepresentative.
True, but America, nevertheless, among modern democracies has a notably poorly representative government.
> There are a few factors that impact representativeness - gerrymandering and the ineligibility of felons and illegal immigrants, for instance, but all-in-all that impact is pretty minor.
Gerrymandering actually has a lot less impact on representativeness than it gets credit for (but it having any significant effect is a product of single-member, winner-take-all districts, which have a very large effect on representativeness, even outside of gerrymandering.)
> In particular, of course, at a local and state level, those impacts are reduced along with the scale.
No, the scale might be reduced, but the effects of gerrymandering and disenfranchisement, such as they are, are not reduced at local scale (and may actually be exacerbated, depending on the locale -- there are locales above and below the national average for distortion from any of those sources.)
Additionally, there are systems used at local scale (such as multiseat elections on a Vote for N system, with N winners) that are frequently used in local elections that are more hostile to effective representation than single-member, winner-take-all districts.
OTOH, the effects of unequal allocation (at least for legislative districts) are reduced at the state level.
> If Americans have a divisive, gridlocked federal government that produces results nobody likes, that's the natural consequence of a divisive, gridlocked populace that doesn't know what it wants (lower taxes! more social security! balance the budget!), not un-representative government.
Well, no, its a product of a combination of unrepresentative government and a Constitutional system deliberately made to have many veto points, which means if the distortions that effect different institutions work in different directions, the result is gridlock.
As an American, I find it amusing the same way I find it amusing when someone points out the sky is blue, or the Earth is round.
On top of that, the center in the US is pretty far to the right in European terms; the mainstream of the Republican and Democratic parties (in government, if not in the electorate) have been, I think fairly, described as, respectively, right-wing and center-right in European terms.
But as someone else pointed out elsewhere on the page, I guess it depends on how you define left and right in terms of politics.
The space occupied by the rhetoric might be similar, but the distribution within that space is not; more significantly, the substantive policy outcomes are not similar, particularly on economic/labor/welfare issues. (Consider things like government policies on healthcare, paid sick leave, paid family/maternity/paternity leave, etc.)
In many ways, those items are being addressed on the US state level, as they should. I, for one, have all the things you list available to me. Are some more expensive then they should be? Sure, but most likely if you dig into the truth of the matter it's because of government interference.
In the end, most people want the same things regardless of their government.
But relatively speaking, the pattern holds true even in places with different political norms and what not. The media is disdain for people who don't agree with the academic/media/whatever narrative are vilified, they turn to candidates with some questionable views because they don't treat them terribly and it just starts spiraling out of control.
The closest thing to European style left is Bernie Sanders, but he's such an outlier that he's considered a commie in the US, while in Europe he'd be center-left.
And most European countries don't even have socialized health care, just basically the UK.
[1] http://france.angloinfo.com/healthcare/health-system/health-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Germany#Public_i... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Russia
Of course, the implicit "having a more left-er political spectrum is better" opinion is assumed, which is almost always the case for contra-American political claims, but in your defense, may not be the case here.
There's a certain irony here I can't dismiss. You write three paragraphs about being victimized by stereotyping Middle America, then end your rant by.... stereotyping everyone on the east coast (or those who sought extended education).
The catch there is that knowing Socrates isn't getting you off the side of the road, and that's what I was getting at. I could've explained it better though.
I'm from the South and can't go home without being made fun of for "doing computers".
On the other hand, I might just be lucky. Who knows?
I'm from the South and have never heard of an adult being made fun of for working with computers. And my family on both paternal and maternal sides is very Southern, having been in SC/NC since before the Revolutionary War.
I have noticed that some family tease a lot about anything and everything, but this seems to cross regions and countries.
There's no need to focus on the example I used. To reply, though, this is something I've encountered in Southern Georgia and I'll say that a) it may have to do with my physical appearance and b) it really isn't bothersome or overly mean spirited. I don't get too hung up on anything like that.
As you said, that's a far easier skill to learn than say programming. However, I have never encountered such an attitude and have lived on both coasts. I think people greatly appreciate skilled mechanics, tradesmen, etc. all over the country. The best can usually charge a premium. That's no different on the coasts.
I doubt this will be a popular opinion: Frankly, I think belief in the supernatural should be screenable in an employment application. Maybe it doesn't affect how you think about the world and how you think about solutions to problems but it could. Maybe you're prone to believing in unsupported theories because you've trained your brain to do so in your private life? Maybe you press on with an idea when you shouldn't. Maybe that will effect your business decisions?
I'm not an atheist. I just think it's an interesting question. I grew up with a lot of Mormons who metaphorically drowned the parts of their brain that were curious about the world. The sad part was that they were required to in order to fit into their community and maintain good familial relations. A lot of them struggled with it and still do. I say it's sad because they could have achieved and contributed a lot more to the world. Now most of them are salesmen, which is a skill they learned on their missions.
I think about this often. As humans, our brains look for social signals for shortcuts (read Robert Cialdini). Do people use religious belief as a shortcut? Do they do so subconsciously? I've never asked someone about their religious beliefs in an interview but if they mentioned it, would I subconsciously reach a different conclusion? Would I be less willing to trust that they have good, objective business sense? Would I want someone who believes in the bible literally as an engineer? What about as a salesman? Maybe for marketing? Does it aid creative thinking or impair it?
Why would you bring up religion in an interview?
If you apply this fairly, it would exclude a lot of people. For example, I meet a lot of people folks here on HN that believe in "human rights" or "natural rights" that don't arise out of legal documents. But if you cut someone open, you can't find any "natural rights" in there, nor has anyone provided experimental evidence characterizing the physics of "natural rights."
I don't mean to pick on them, but just to strengthen your point: almost all of us believe in something supernatural (which doesn't make it any more real, of course.) But what really characterizes people who believe in something supernatural is they believe that thing is natural. Devout Christians do, of course, believe that God transcends nature, having created it, but God is for them an entirely 'natural' thing, a perfectly obvious and eternal truth that everybody should just know, you'd think, an inalienable part of the natural world.
This kind of fundamental belief, or axiom, or cognitive bias, or whatever you want to call it, is very difficult for most people to really identify and understand in themselves.
I don't believe in god or natural rights, so examples raised so far are out.
Maybe markets. I believe that forces like supply and demand are fundamental and essential in all sorts of human interactions. But maybe that's just because I can't transcend some sort of deeply engrained thinking.
Hrmmmmmmmm.
A) Scientists believing in the supernatural should not be hired.
This statement could be correct or not.
B) supernatural events can not be explained with the laws of physics. There is not any experimental evidence of any supernatural event.
This is true.
C) "natural rights" can not be explained with the laws of physics. There is not any experimental evidence of any "natural right" inside a human body. If you cut someone open you can't find any "natural rights" in there.
This seems true, but is false in fact *
D) Thus, we conclude that people believing in natural rights should not be hired.
Not. This is a fallacy because C is not related at all with neither A, nor B. Thus your example can not teach us about if A is false. Is not a proof of anything.
To suggest that people "believe" in a paper with something written on it is equivalent to people "believe" in god is wrong. You can sacrifice a chicken and them put its corpse in a fridge, but you are not trying to make the fridge happier or less angry. Is not a god. Fridges, as laws, are just created by humans to improve the life inside human societies. A law is just a pact, a paper with something written on it its origin and creation can be explained perfectly without to breaking any natural rule. Laws can seem esotheric, but this is not remotely equivalent to such thing as "a supernatural event".
* Yes, C is false. If you cut someone open that believe in natural rights you could find some copies of those "natural rights" of course, as chemical traces saved in the cells that hold the memory and culture of this people. At least for a while.
People tend to have separate approaches towards things they believe are well defined vs things they know require faith.
Here's an alternative view point: Take someone who believes in ghosts, they may believe a ghost exists and is quite capable of grabbing them a beer from the fridge, but I doubt that does mean they sit around waiting for it to happen. They may even ask, but in the mean time they will go get their own beer. So I, as an employer, know can rely on that person to get the job done while at the same time that person may discover new rewarding approaches because they are open minded enough to try out-of-the-box ideas. On the other hand I can also always hire a scientific minded person to do the job, but it's less likely they will find opportunity to disrupt anything.
IMHO I think having a mixed group is the best way to go.
It's a pretty common attitude among folks brought up in upper middle class people who end up in professional or other high end jobs. It's a Nouveau riche thing.
As far as heavy religious people are concerned, I've learned in general to not judge and let people demonstrate the capability.
One of the most brilliant guys that I ever met was a ultra-orthodox Hasidic dude. He lived by a strict code, but had an amazing discipline, work ethic and creative problem solving approach. He had great technical ability, but also had a unique way of connecting with people and working out complex people problems.
I think there are good reasons for these laws. If it is legal to discriminate in employment against religious minorities, that can contribute to their disconnection from broader society, which could promote radicalisation and similar problems. You also have to consider that there are many countries where religious discrimination is official government policy - how easy is it for an open atheist to get a job in Saudi Arabia? - and for Western countries to prohibit religious discrimination is a good way of sending a message about it at the global level (whether or not anyone in places like Saudi Arabia are listening.)
As a Libertarian, I wouldn't deny you your right to hire whom you please for whatever reasons.
As a Leader, if you were applying to me for that job, I would take the position of "As long as your code works well and you're willing to work hard, you can go home and worship a flaming bag of dog shit and dance naked around it listening to David Bowie for all the fucks I give about it, just please don't show me pictures." and I would mean it.
In the vast majority of places, no, I'm not surprised at all.
I agree with what you're saying.
In fact, a scholarly person refusing to learn how to change a flat tire is of benefit to society because it frees their mind to contemplate more complicated matters and allows for less the less ambitious or less capable to still have functions in the economy.
1. AAA isn't always there at your beck and call. 2. The mechanics of changing a flat don't exactly take years of training. 3. Some degree of self-reliance is generally desirable although that degree may be a reasonable topic for debate.
Sure if you don't want to do it, there's nothing wrong with that. But many smart people don't learn simple practical things for the same reason many practical people don't learn intellectual things, they put them in the too hard or too boring basket. You tend to be good at the things you work at, and work at the things you like.
In modern society, is knowing how to change a tire more practical than understanding the basis of argument?
> You tend to be good at the things you work at, and work at the things you like.
You work at those things which bring you utility. It's a subtle difference, but utility includes activities you don't like but which generate income. Ideally, those activities are also beneficial for society. Critical thinking is more highly valued in modern society than is knowing how to change a flat.
I see what you did here
I think it speaks to the heart of it. Please feel free to elaborate on why I'm wrong.
But here's how I understood it: He was exaggerating a bit for the purpose of making his argument a little more punchy, and phrases like "most of whom can't even swap a tire for a donut without calling AAA" are clearly meant to have an element of humor to them. You took his words at absolute face value without stopping to think that they might be meant as something else.
Taking this single little point and then using it to systematically reject the whole argument is an example of what the parent was ranting about.
You have rejected his argument right there.
Its seems quite likely to be (insulting) hyperbole, but I don't see the humor. (I suppose it kind of sounds funny if you aren't used to the use of the term "donut" to refer to a reduce-size, limited-speed spare tire, since talking about swapping a tire for a donut would in that case be an absurdity.)
The problem I have with the GP is not the literal words (I have no problem with style), but that he's complaining of being stereotyped while spreading a stereotyped anti-intellectual message.
Even the worst bible-thumping rednecks I know (many, many cousins of both sides of the family) will agree to disagree and behave in a civil manner in the presence of those with whom they disagree.
When I was living in San Francisco, I've been literally run out of coffee shops, restaurants and parties after the wrong person finds out I'm pro-gun.
Though, really, "left" and "right" are useless terms without defining your usage of them beforehand. Rest assured, there are many right-wingers who are all too willing to make the personal political and to stifle dissent. In fact, that's more-or-less a signature distinction of the New Right that emerged around the era of Buckley and National Review.
Again, the term "left" is useless without defining it first. I have no idea what the hell you actually mean when you say "left".
The first paragraph, which appeared to be what was rejected, was a generalization, not a recounting of personal experience.
And, nothing in the post you responded to was any kind of rejection that violates any precept that is particularly common, AFAICT, on the left (it might, I suppose, violate a right-wing stereotype of the left, but, then, that's more a problem of the alignment of the stereotype with reality.)
You are correct. I was wrong.
People define themselves by these terms and the terms are also widely used. If you can't figure them out, that's on you.
Is that so? Because I've heard definitions of "right" as variously economically liberal, economically protectionist, socially conservative, socially liberal (as in classical liberalism), non-interventionist in foreign policy, interventionist in foreign policy, anti-statist, statist and so forth.
In fact, all of these contradictory views have belonged or continue to belong to various movements categorized as "right-wing".
So I'm asking about what you mean. Or perhaps you don't mean anything and are simply looking for an ax to grind.
Come to Seattle, in my RPG group we had 2 people conceal carry and visits to the local range are a common activity for all political persuasions.
One night one of my players brought in a collection of knives he'd just purchased. The MtG players next to us did look a bit.... unsettled as we handed around all the various new sharp toys that'd been brought in.
> They're the ones who say we're not allowed to have jobs if we think the wrong thoughts or have the wrong opinions.
I've seen plenty of people on the right proclaim that "all atheists should be removed from the country" or that "if you aren't Christian you are a traitor to the nation."
The people you are complaining about and the people I am complaining about are all authoritarian, that is the problem, not the left/right spread. The people who cause problems are those who think someone should be in charge and be dictating the rules that everyone must follow.
The actual set of rules being dictated is fairly arbitrary.
>Even the worst bible-thumping rednecks I know (many, many cousins of both sides of the family) will agree to disagree and behave in a civil manner in the presence of those with whom they disagree.
You've got to be kidding me. You (and I) are from the land of Jim Crow. My high school's prom was segregated until the late 90's. I worry for the safety of anyone openly gay in my hometown.
Let's just be honest - every classification of people you can think of has their assholes. It's a fact of life, ignore them and move on.
Thank you for perfectly demonstrating my point.
But to give you a very specific example, you may remember this from the news this year:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Walter_Scott
If you're going to be that snarky, at least be right.
> the number of minorities in my little hometown has increased at a startling rate the past 3 years
Sorry we startled you.
Yeah, like that crazy leftist Joe McCarthy, and his modern-day ilk that try to get teachers fired for being gay or atheist.
No party has a monopoly on nutbags; it just seems that way because of selection bias.
Nothing says "proselytisation" like walking into a different conversation and announcing your passion for religion.
So I have the "fancy coastal intelligence" you talk about, or at least the degrees that signify that I do (although I got them in relatively remote places in Kentucky and Tennessee, so not exactly coastal). But I come from a family of school teachers, carpenters, and construction contractors. In other words, the kind of people who do not tolerate a lack of common sense in their children and try to teach it at every possible opportunity from birth on.
I've personally seen this exclusion at work many times. Political correctness police, social justice warriors, whatever you want to call them, don't care for inclusion of anything that doesn't fit their narrative. They will seek out your differing point of view, scream about it, try to isolate you from help, gang up on you, force you to apologize, make you give up, then appeal to higher authorities to marginalize you/exclude you/fire you, then have something like a show trial about you, and then finally declare victory and celebrate. But their celebration will usually contain notes of "well I never intended things to turn out like this!"
Obviously I've seen this whole process happen a time or three in various corporations. Those who were excluded/marginalized/fired often had no real idea what they did in the first place.
That's the end of my rant, which is only tangentially related to yours, but yours resonated with me because a lot of what you said reminds me of myself.
It's a lot more to do with the culture one grows up with than the belief itself, and anything you learn at such a young age is difficult to shake loose of completely.
Personally, I used to be a strong Lutheran, I'd say I'm now 20% Lutheran and 80% agnostic, but even that has far less to do with me intellectually not recognizing my God and a lot more to do with frustrations over the behaviors of organized religions.
In short: For a lot of people that I know and myself, religion is far less believing that God is going to help you in some way (frankly, if you know your Bible, you know God's help tends to come in rather rough and leaves a lot of things broken so you don't really want it anyway) and lot more in believing that it's just a nicer universe to live in if you assume that you simply cease to exist at the point of death and there is nothing but...well, nothing awaiting you over that line.
Is this something you have to do regularly, make judgements on scientists based on their speculations of an afterlife?
Wouldn't it be far better to make judgments based on their contribution to their field?
Does this mean we should not take Francis S. Collins seriously?
I don't want to get into a huge theological thing, my policy on this is always the same: You do you, I'll do me, and we'll get along fine. If we get to a point where we can find out what the afterlife is, if it exists, then we can re-evaluate beliefs at that point, but I don't think we're anywhere close to that, so until then I'll keep my faith and all I ask is the respect that anyone else would deserve.
However, it should not surprise someone in the sciences if they are passed over for job opportunities based on their religious beliefs. Those beliefs may limit your capacity to effectively perform your job.
Even so, your counterpoint still holds no water. Just because many of them turn to faith during difficult times does not mean they necessarily perform their job function at a higher level as a result.
Sounds like an unsubstantiated belief to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christians_in_science_...
But to borrow from Sam Harris, if you met a scientist who openly admitted to believing Elvis is still alive, would you hold the same opinion of them professionally?
Skepticism is a core quality of being a scientist. Believing in something without proof is contrary to being skeptical. Thus, believing in god or Elvis are anti-scientific beliefs.
But people are remarkably good at erecting fences in their minds. Many of those brilliant people I refer to (I call them brilliant because of their past good work in science) were able to sort of build a fence in their mind around their work and let irrational beliefs take root around it. So they were not true scientists in all aspects of their lives.
Believing in God doesn't necessarily make you a bad scientist, either.
Skepticism is a core quality of being a scientist.
Anyway, I just got done reading [1] and found it interesting that Galileo's biggest advantages as a scientist were that he could grind a lens and being trained as an artist (so he had a good idea what he was looking at when he looked at the moon). [And probably also being really witty so he could make friends at parties and impress his financial backers.]
Also:
Believing in something without proof is contrary to being skeptical.
I took several history of science and technology courses at university and the impression I got was that the most important aspects of being a scientist was messing around with technology, taking notes, and having a lot of time to sit around and think. [Having some sort of rival who was also doing teh science whom you really wanted to show up seems to be a bonus.]
Being willing to be disappointed when you're proved wrong seems a lot more useful than only believing things you have proof for. In fact believing something without proof seems like a great way to get started on something very important as long as you're willing to do a lot of additional work.
[1] - http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...
I also failed to differentiate "belief" from its use in common vernacular, so I'll rephrase my previous statement:
A scientist practices scientific skepticism. Accepting an unsubstantiated hypothesis without empirical evidence is contrary to scientific skepticism. Belief in a higher power is accepting an unsubstantiated hypothesis without empirical evidence. Thus, belief in a higher power is contrary to scientific skepticism. Therefore, belief in a higher power is contrary to being a scientist.
Of course it's human nature to become emotionally attached to a hypothesis of one's own design. And perhaps scientists would not so rigorously pursue empirical evidence to support their claims if they didn't "believe" them. But the difference between a scientist and a theist is that a scientist will back off their hypothesis when evidence to the contrary is presented, whereas a theist will not.
Everything I've seen of Galileo leads me to believe that he was't a scientific skeptic (the dude still had epicycles when all he had to do was pay a bit more attention to Kepler). I'm interested in what evidence you use to believe that he was practicing any form of skepticism.
You underestimate the number of scientists with absurd beliefs.
There are people who believe in parallel universes, dark matter, spooky action at a distance, wormholes, time travel, simulating the human brain in silico, more than 3 spatial dimensions, strong artificial intelligence, aliens, etc.
Dealing with the absurd is a fundamental part of the human experience, and those denying this are only kidding themselves. See for example the atheists who give in to the absurd, semi-religious, arguments for the existence of life on other planets in the absence of any proof at all.
We're never free of absurd beliefs, we just find new ways to have them. The trick is to separate belief from fact when doing science and only draw conclusions from the latter.
Scientists do not believe in parallel universes, dark matter and all the other stuff you mentioned. They hypothesize about them, then they try to formulate theories and then they try to test these theories, by means of experiments.
When they do get to perform comprehensive experiments then, depending on the results, finally know what the truth is.
Not so much the same as with the beardy invisible man living in the sky now is it?
The only things actually pertinent to monotheistic doctrines are "invisible" and "living".
> Scientists do not believe in parallel universes, dark matter and all the other stuff you mentioned.
Of course they do. They create models and then try to interpret them using what looks more like philosophy than hard science. What they get sometimes is nothing short of unsubstantiated belief in absurd things. But as long as they don't try to pass that as the scientific truth, we don't mind. Crazy beliefs might lead to new discoveries, specially in that nebulous phase of hypothesis formulation.
Read the definition from wikipedia: "Belief is the state of mind in which a person thinks something to be the case, with or without there being empirical evidence to prove that something is the case with factual certainty"
The reason why you're confused is simple; you conflate casual speech with literal definitions. When you hear scientists say "I believe that... blah blah" is a figure of speech. In the same way I used "what the hell" but I really don't believe in hell :)
What they mean actually is "I hypothesize that ... blah blah". That's why you won't see any scientific papers saying "I believe that the number must be something around... 42".
And by the way, even if they believed in the sense that you said, any evidence contrary to their beliefs would make them adjust their beliefs ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_We_Believe_But_Cannot_Pro...
There's a whole book with responses from real scientists regarding this.
Not quite. The current substantiated hypothesis is always provisional until a better idea or contrary evidence turns up. That's not what most people call truth, and certainly not the kind of truth religious people have in mind.
Sometimes I wonder why I spend time to respond to people. No one reads anything. People just want to disagree to pass the time.
Even with an enormous and indefinite number of validating experiments, a theory is still provisional. There is no forever truth. For example consider Newtonian physics. For the 200 years until relativity and quantum mechanics were invented it was the best game in town. 200 years of experiment is pretty comprehensive. We can do experiments today that support Newtonian physics. But it was never 'true', because if you look very, very carefully you can find examples where it doesn't work.
You can not prove things true in science (unlike math), you can only disprove them. Things that resist disproof are held as provisionally true until we know better.
So: there is no moment when you "finally know what the truth is". Hence my disagreement with your post.
Scientists know what the truth isn't. There's a T-shirt slogan for you.
On the other hand what does all this have to do with the belief(as in faith) and the belief of scientists in various phenomena, theories etc?
You picked a word("truth") from my post and wrote an irrelevant(but kinda interesting) comment.
We were talking about the absurdity of believing in something(like god) rather than believing that something might hold true.
And then, you're just playing with words, you're not actually making a point.
If one would want to be concise they would say that everything can be true or false, for specific values of truthiness or falsiness under a particular context.
Case in point: Newtonian physics is true under a macroscopic context.
PS. I don't wear T-shirts that bear aphorisms.
> When [scientists] perform comprehensive experiments then, depending on the results, [they] finally know what the truth is.
and contrasted that with the beliefs of religious people. Your assertion isn't quite true, and I explained why.
Then you told me off for (a) not reading your fine comment; (b) irrelevance; and (c) having poor apparel recommendations.
I concede the last point gracefully. Have a great weekend.
b) Compared to the greater point, which was the dishonesty of equating "believe-in" to "believe-that", it was a bit irrelevant. Yet, as I said, interesting. Also I explained why this kind of nitpicking doesn't offer much(IMHO), by giving the example of how far we can go by playing with truthiness/falsiness values.
c) Hey, there's no accounting for taste! Also, I didn't judge. I just said that I don't wear them.
Have an even greater weekend
Edit (you edited the post, now my joke makes no sense :( )
Belief A has no rational basis. Belief B has a rational basis. If you believe A yet have proven B, that doesn't make B wrong. Even if believe that it was A which led you to the discovery.
>If you believe A yet have proven B, that doesn't make B wrong.
It makes you wrong. All the time you spend as a proponent for A is wasted.
I agree that it's better not to waste your time believing A if you can avoid it.
Non sequitur. What you believe is separated from your work. Just like when you were a kid and your math homework had nothing to do with the fact that you believed wrestling was real.
Basing your professional opinion of someone on anything other than their professional work strikes me as very 'unsciency'
In the US, its generally should, since its pretty blatantly illegal in virtually every case.
> Those beliefs may limit your capacity to effectively perform your job.
There may be some specific religious beliefs where that is true for some jobs (in the sciences or otherwise), but, in general, that's not even remotely true.
A law that cannot be enforced isn't really a law. Making a case for religious discrimination is difficult. And the subject of this thread revolves around whether discriminating based on beliefs should be allowed. If you worked at Bain Capital and openly supported Bernie Sanders, would you be surprised to not get promotes?
> There may be some specific religious beliefs where that is true for some jobs (in the sciences or otherwise), but, in general, that's not even remotely true.
See my comment below regarding skepticism and science.
To the extent that it is difficult to enforce, it is because it is difficult to know when it has occurred. But, that doesn't reduce the surprise one should have when one discovers that it has occurred, because that means that it is one of the cases where the problems that usually exist with discovering that it has occurred (and which pose a difficulty for enforcing the law) are not present, at least at their normal level.
> See my comment below regarding skepticism and science
Religious beliefs in general are not incompatible with skepticism on questions within the domain of science; some specific religious beliefs may be incompatible with skepticism in some areas of scientific inquiry, but, again, that's different than the generality posed.
> Religious beliefs in general are not incompatible with skepticism on questions within the domain of science;
I disagree. The Bible explicitly attempts to provide explanations for the order of the natural world.
> some specific religious beliefs may be incompatible with skepticism in some areas of scientific inquiry, but, again, that's different than the generality posed.
How so? This sounds like a restatement of my original point: "Those beliefs may limit your capacity to effectively perform your job."
One of the most significant obstacles to interpreting the Bible today is the unreasonable burdens placed upon the text. For example, the writers of the creation story in Genesis had no concept of modern science, and their purpose in writing was not to explain how the cosmos were created, but to explain that the cosmos were created by YHWH. When we read it expecting to find scientific explanations for the nature of the universe, we obscure the authors' purpose and the intended meaning. People who do so then discount the entire text based upon their own unreasonable expectations, and then accuse those who find value and existential truths in the texts of being irrational (or worse).
Considering how poorly we humans tend to communicate verbally and face-to-face, I guess it's no big surprise that we tend to do a poor job of interpreting the written word as well.
I am always quite shocked to hear of how strong the divide appears to be in the US between, loosely, "religious conservatives" and "non-religious liberals". I've spent approximately zero time in the US, so I can't really tell if it is partly an exaggeration, but the feelings certainly seem to run quite strong across the media spectrum.
For example, there's definitely a north-south tension in England, which does have some cultural aspects to it, but it's in a completely different league from the US situation (as far as I understand that), and beyond the occasional mutual quips, you won't see any real discrimination - that's my experience, anyway.
I would think that people feel that the way outgroups go about their lives is bonkers, but that most of the ingroup people are crazy in their own right.
I'm embarrassed that the upvoters of this comment actually agreed with this comment. One trip to Houston or Minneapolis is enough to verify the presence of a thriving arts and culture scene. The anti-intellectual Middle America trope is not factual.
One trip to Winchester, VA or Davidsonville, MD (Washington, DC suburbs) will reveal farming communities that exude pragmatism. Hell, there's a popular trap shooting range in Greenbelt, MD.
If DC or some other bogeyman city is so hostile to "bible-thumping", how can you explain the large church attendance there?
I think this comment is a reaction to a handful of personal experiences that you had. The rest of your comments aren't as hyperbolic as this one. I agree that it is frustrating when dealing with rude people, but to generalize about similar folks is exactly the thing that bugs you!
It's amazing to me that you took this (what you've recognized as) hyperbole'd and obviously emotionally filled post and assumed this is how I act in daily life, a point which I didn't feel I needed to make but apparently must do so is that of course I do not dismiss everyone from a coastal area as being a pseudo intellectual. That doesn't stop the majority of them from proving to be exactly that, but you know, I do try.
FTR, I never once intended to insult the midwest. I prefer it here, and that may well be simply because I've never lived anywhere else.
My personal ideal for "well-done political debate" is comes from economists: they can quickly distinguish between facts, speculation about facts, and value judgements, and then engage with the first two while steering clear of the third. (It does make for some silly interviews, though: journalists basically only care about people's value-judgements, and economists will redirect every attempt at getting theirs into a discussion about some fact or another.)
My point being that I think you actually unwittingly identified this 'midwest/coastal divide' in your own backyard.
But I feel I could not possibly give an example that could satisfy you, since practically every habitable region in the world has experienced a "rich lawyer" or two buy up land in the area. Yet the fact remains that the majority of the region maintains its rural character.
Uh, okay. How about rural Georgia where I grew up?
Dollars to donuts that Houston and Minneapolis have much higher subscription rates to the New Yorker than zip codes from elsewhere in the state.
Are subscriptions to the New York Times the benchmark of intellectualism?
http://www.politico.com/2014-election/results/map/senate/geo...
And people wonder why Trump does so well in the polls.
I think that's your problem. Walking into a discussing and announcing that is a fairly odd thing to do. I've never entered a discussion on reddit and announced I'm an devout atheist. I think people generally bristle at people staking out positions via broad categories.
1. quite a few people in middle America are poorly educated because of their religion and politics, and the political system, permit them to elect ideological morons to school councils, and those fuckwits are ruining facts. There are so many line item "vetos" editorializing history and science books that school book publishers have thousands of derivatives of a particular book title and edition to cater to every county in the country. So it's a circular problem that the American education system is itself political.
2. Middle Americans used to be relatively wealthier than they are now, because we used to believe, as a country, that is was a bad idea for a handful of people to end up with all the marbles. And that wealth meant that at one time, Americans as a whole were some of the most well traveled people in the world. Now, something like 80% of Americans don't even have a passport.
And that means confusing the difference between "culture and achievement" with condescending assholes which you do in fact get on the coasts; just like there are ignorant assholes in middle America. If we were more well traveled, we'd know the difference, and we'd properly be condescending to the assholes, and we'd embrace more of the people who just want to get good things done, instead of being so adversarial all the time.
You know, if one wants to thoroughly embrace stereotypes and all.
Please point out to me where I said that middle America has no culture and we're all friendly, and that the coasts are nothing but cultured snobs.
While you're doing that, look up the definition of "flyover states" and tell me what it says and why I probably brought it up.
Out of curiosity, do you think it is possible that a government-monopolized school system could be anything other than political?
Strawman.
EDIT: I was asking not because I disagreed, but because I was hoping the parent would elaborate on that point. The person who replied to my post did a very good job at that.
That's precisely what the article talks about, and reddit is a great way to experience the kind of bigoted dogmatism the article discusses.
This isn't a thing only liberals do to conservatives, it goes the the other way when conservatives are in the majority. I experienced it first hand.
Most people treat politics like sports teams, you're born a republican/democrat the same way you're born a fan of the local football team. So they automatically divide the world into the "in-group" and "out-group" and just blindly rage against the other "team" like the home crowd boos the opposing team.
There is a reason the founders were fearful of tyranny of the majority.
But if it was a private university, then that's their right. Feel free to disagree with them, but a private university is allowed to have political views and admit folks to their programs based political views [1].
[1] http://education-law.lawyers.com/school-law/can-private-scho...
Oh, of course! But disagreement does include saying, 'they have a right to do this, but they are wrong to do so.'
Not necessarily. It could be something they thought might lead somewhere interesting ("Do you know about $foo? Cool, so what's your opinion on this detail?"; the first question is only useful to know if you can ask the second questions). It could be stalling for time while they try to come up with something useful to ask. It could be following up on some earlier comment, according to the rules of polite small talk.
Those last two aren't something a skilled interviewer would do, but then I don't think most interviewers are skilled. They also don't fit with the original post, but the first one might.
Are you sure the two are exactly alike? I realize there's a lot of soft science that's ridiculous, but it's generally accepted that global warming exists.
Oddly, you'll find that organizations opinions on GW align fairly well with their source of funding.
GW is a hugely political topic, and in my estimation has little to do with hard science anymore.
No one really knows how big that consensus is, or what the consensus even is. Too much noise in the way.
I would be interested to know why Duarte feels the correct number is 80, and which IPCC model, if any of them, that consensus includes. I'm going to have to catch up on his blog.
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/08/denier-weirdness-97-irony...
Read the abstract, and understand the premise... As was explained in the above postlink. Then visit web of science and verify that claims are true, which you can do yourself.
If you do this, you'll note that the skepticalscience website is misrepresenting the Cook study, whether on purpose or by accident.
Just because someone says that a thing is solid does not make it so.
I am always willing to change my mind, but not on anyone's say-so. Particularly given giant red flags such as the Cook study.
"Do you think human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures?"
That question is closest to the proposition tested by Cook et al (2013). That low figure is because most scientists asked were not specialists in the relevant field, and consequently had little more knowledge on the topic than any non-scientist. Of the small portion of the those surveyed who were specialists in climate science, and actively publishing in the field so that they had up to date information, 97.4% agreed with question 2. There were only 77 of those, but they were part of a much larger sample.
Turning now to Farnsworth and Lichter (2012), we find that it is a survey of scientists, 50% of whom were members of the AMS, and 50% of whom were members of the AGU, and all of whom were listed in the American Men and Women of Science. Their 489 respondents are therefore comparable to Doran and Zimmerman's 3,146 respondents, not to the 77 publishing specialists in climatology. Further (the relevant fact Phronesis did not reveal), only 41% of those 489 actively research in any aspect of global climate science.
It is not clear how those 200 scientists compare to Doran and Zimmerman's classification. For Doran and Zimmerman, and active publisher must have published at least 50% "... of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change". That is, by a reasonable measure, at least 50% of their research must be on the topic. In contrast, the 200 scientists from Farnsworth and Lichter need only have actively researched on any aspect of climate science, ie, greater than 0% and need not have brought the research to publication. Nor need they be specialists in climatology. They are probably best equated with Doran and Zimmerman's active publishers. For the other 289, however, the closest category would be Doran and Zimmerman's non-publishers/non-climatologists.
From all of Farnsworth and Lichter's respondents, 84% responded yes to the question:
"In your opinion, is humanly induced global warming now occuring?"
Assuming Farnsworth and Lichter's non-researchers resonded at the same rate as Doran and Zimmerman's non-publishers/non-climatologists (ie,76.6% affirmative), that represents 221 affirmative responses. That leaves only 190 affirmative responses to come from Farnsworth and Lichter's researchers, meaning that 95% of them responded affirmatively.
Given the low bar on expertise set by Farnsworth and Lichter, and the strong correlation between expertise and current topic knowledge and acceptance of AGW found by Doran and Zimmerman, that 95% is surprisingly high. It shows, however, that the results of Farnsworth and Lichter is entirely consistent with those of Doran and Zimmerman, and also of Cook et al, (2013).
Phronesis may rightly reject the assumption that Farnsworth and Lichter's non-researchers affirmed AGW at the same rate as Doran and Zimmerman's as speculative. The implication of that, however, is that no comparison can reasonably be made between their results and those of Doran and Zimmerman because they do not survey groups with the same demographics. Farnsworth and Lichter would then provide information about general scientific acceptance, but not specifically about acceptance by those with specialist knowledge in the field.
Finally, Phronesis misrepresents the results of Farnworth and Lichter on expected outcomes. The question put, and results were:
"Overall, if present climate trends continue, do you regard the likely effects of global climate change in the next 50 to 100 years as: Trivial to Catastrophic 1–3 (NET) 13 4–7 (NET) 44 8–10 (NET) 41 Don’t Know 2 Mean 6.6 "
Thus, less than half (but only just less than half) think the results of current climate trends will be catastrophic, or near catastrophic. Slightly more, but still less than half think the results will be moderate, while only 13% think the results will be trivial or near trivial."
-- From a comment.
I'm done arguing over this, whether or not the specific number is 97% is not the issue here. The issue is falsely equating two sides of a debate as only existing to preserve their own existence when only one of the sides is actually supported by science.
It always matters when minority scientific opinion is ignored, or worse, silenced.
If medical science gets it wrong, how much greater is the possibility of being wrong when trying to find tenths-of-a-degree difference over decades with a margin of error at least as great?
First of all, do you have evidence that there was scientific consensus on the idea that egg yolks are "bad" for you? Because there's been quite an upheaval in dietary science recently, in particular the idea that there is "bad" cholesterol and "good" cholesterol. Google torcetrapib if you're interested.
And with this argument, you're shifting the goalposts to validating medical science that is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
These aren't "scientific opinions" we're talking about here. These are the conclusions that knowledgeable, educated professionals in the field have come to after peer-reviewing the data of others and frequently doing their own research into the subject as well. Global warming has very little to do with opinion and nothing to do whatsoever with egg yolks and medical science.
In closing, I'll make an appeal to a different argument here: even if global warming is a hoax or conspiracy or whatever you think it really is, isn't a renewable future still something we should strive for as a country that can achieve it? Imagine what New York City would be like without air pollution. You'd be able to see the stars at night! Regardless of whether or not global warming is an existential threat to humanity, (and it is) a future where we no longer pump clouds of sooty black ash and oily smoke into the skies above us is surely a future we can all agree is better than the situation we have now.
Consensus is a political term not a scientific one, no one disproves the null consensus.
In science we cite experts, papers and a refutable hypothesis, in politics we cite the opinions of non expert masses to questions that have no refutable hypothesis.
I feel you on the trust though both sides feel like they are lying through their teeth to protect their POV/livelihoods. Most topics in science to me have easy experiments like here's a terrarium with 200ppm and here's 400ppm this one is Z degrees hotter therefore we must take any actions we can to sequester co2 like ocean seeding, etc. instead of here's a bunch of massaged data our only choice is to not use fossil fuels.
The question is not whether or not CO2 has an insulating effect, this is intuitively obvious with even a basic understanding of chemistry and physics. The question is whether we're emitting enough of it to cause environmental problems diverse from those naturally occurring. Additionally, the effects would not be as obvious in something like a terrarium because the greenhouse effect works with glass as well. That's why it's called the greenhouse effect.
I do very much agree that spending motivates most "do-good" groups more than simply doing good does. In that sense, I agree that global warming and other such causes are very political. That indeed is a similarity between politics and academia.
How influential is the Left - not the Democrats, but the popular Left - on Wall St, in corporate board rooms, in Congress, in the Senate, in the US military, in econ schools, on MBA courses, in US intelligence, in police management, and in foreign policy?
If you want parity of influence, let's see it there first. Because I'm really not seeing anything that looks even slightly left-wing in any of the above - at least not by European ideas of what the Left is.
And we did invent it after all, so we have some idea what it's supposed to look like.
(I'm not from the USA so maybe this is an American thing?)
There's been lots of noise lately about how conservatives don't respect science or the intellectual sphere. Why would they? They know we're politically biased."
This is where it took a turn for me. I'm basically in agreement with everything else, and it's personally eye opening to gain a greater understanding of these kinds of biases, but when you take a few bad apples in the social sciences (literally what? five? six?) and extrapolate that out to justify distrust of all of science, it becomes problematic.
The leftists I know (not including myself, though I share similar views) don't dislike conservative attitudes towards social science or other "soft" sciences, in fact most of them take it as a foregone conclusion that conservatives won't like them. They dislike point blank denial of facts such as that of human-caused climate change perpetuated mostly by conservative think tanks and consumed by an undereducated population of people who legitimately don't know better.
The problem is really that we live in a culture that does not value education very highly, nor does it enable good forms of it for the majority of our nation.
And just for fun, let's take the opposites of this so-called "urban intellectualism" that is expressed with these characteristics:
"... is ingenious, a deep thinker." vs. is dumb, a shallow thinker.
"... values artistic, esthetic experiences." vs. values uncreative, ugly experiences
"... is inventive." vs is uninventive
"... is sophisticated in art, music, and literature." vs. knows nothing of art, music, or literature
"... likes to reflect, play with ideas" vs likes to avoid introspection, take things at face value, and move on.
Pardon me if a few of those don't seem obviously better to more than just liberals than their alternatives. I know a lot of conservatives who would be exceptionally proud to call themselves inventive, sophisticated, deep thinkers with passions in art and literature.
You're doing intellectual conservatism a disservice by acting like these are all things conservatives would be offended to see described as "openness." If being an intellectual, sophisticated person is synonymous with being a blinkered bourgeois intellectual liberal then I'm friends with an awful lot of blinkered bourgeois liberals who are also big fans of Austrian economics.
Science can't prove/disprove AGW because there's no control, which means that it isn't and can't be a fact.
(I believe we should assume AGW to be safe.)
Science doesn't fit in a test tube.
Karl Popper begs to disagree. (By the way, I also believe we evolved from apes. I am not so sure about the Big Bang just because it's so strange and hard to comprehend, but okay, I'm not like against it or anything.)
This is so wrong... If it was correct, what would be point of doing science? Let's face it - the point of science is to build models of reality. And every model (except of usage of the world in logic) by definition is a type of inductive reasoning about reality. The reason why we want to have models is to be able to predict situations where we don't have control; for instance, we don't want build two bridges that are to be used by people to see which one fails. So you're pretty much rejecting inductive reasoning in that sentence.
The AGW theory, specifically, is not a fact (GW is a fact), it's a model that tells us what's gonna happen (conditionally on our emissions) with the planet. And you can believe it's a good model even without having control (just like you can believe that a computer model of a bridge is a useful tool). For instance, because you understand laws of thermodynamics, and you can measure what greenhouse gas is.
(Oh, on 2nd reading, I understand where you're coming from. Model is technically not a fact, fact is some observation. But I guess in common language, most of the things we call facts are actually models.)
Your words about models and inductive reasoning are helpful. Bringing that up in the future will probably help clarify my position, which is about like yours. Thanks.
> blinkered bourgeois liberals who are also big fans of Austrian economics
This is the icing on the proving the point cake.
The left disregards science when it suits their politics as well, e.g. IQ - https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/645301814955388930
Regarding the opposites-list - just because someone doesn't consider himself an "ingenious, deep thinker" doesn't mean he thinks he's a dumb, shallow thinker. It's all relative - who or what are you comparing yourself to? Compared to Steven Pinker, I'm a dumb, shallow thinker. Compared to the average American, I'm probably ingenious, a deep thinker. The statement as given is not quantifiable on a 1-5 scale.
You may think it obviously better, but the question is about "openness to new experiences." I.e., if you think if yourself as an ingenious, deep thinker, but prefer only 'sophisticated art, music and literature' I see someone whose ego won't allow for new experiences.
I don't think of myself as an ingenious, deep thinker just as I don't think of myself as an eater of burgers. I engage in deep thinking and discuss deep thinking with my colleagues and sure it defines me sometimes but other times I'll screw something obvious up and realize that I'm really just a fucking idiot. Everyone is in some way and anyone telling you otherwise is hiding something.
Vs. is able to explain things so that they seem obvious.
"... values artistic, esthetic experiences." vs. values uncreative, ugly experiences
Vs. values practicality.
"... is inventive." vs is uninventive
Vs. understands the value of having standards.
"... is sophisticated in art, music, and literature." vs. knows nothing of art, music, or literature
Vs. enjoys things as things rather than solely on the meta level.
"... likes to reflect, play with ideas" vs likes to avoid introspection, take things at face value, and move on.
Vs. prefers using ideas over taking them apart.
...such as the relative safety of nuclear power and GMO foods? Or the potential effectiveness of missile defense?
Ideology of all stripes can, and does, frequently come hand-in-hand with flat denial of inconvenient facts.
And furthermore, you're implicitly and explicitly misrepresenting the arguments against all of those things which you claim leftists hawk as evil. Nuclear power is powerful, sure, I don't think anyone denies that. But it leaves us with piles of toxic waste and very few ways to rid ourselves of it, so it's not as if it's a done deal. Especially not when sources like solar and wind have many of the same benefits without the toxic aftereffects.
As for GMO foods, I'm an aspiring synthetic biologist myself and I can say that there's nothing inherently dangerous with the scientific side of it, nor does there seem to be anything explicitly awful going on with commercial GMOs right now. The problems I have with GMOs are more what I see as potential problems, specifically that the companies creating them have less than sterling reputations for concern of public safety. I'm also generally wary of deregulation of industry, because historically it has not ended well. I think people shouldn't trust large companies implicitly, especially when these large companies are saying "please trust us".
I should highlight that none of these constitute point blank denial of science in the way the denying global warming does.
As for complaints with the potential effectiveness of missile defense, you'll have to be a bit more specific.
1. In 2007, 14 Jewish Members resign from the advisory board of the Carter Center, due to disagreements over statements in Carter's book.
2. OP blogged about this, apparently in support of their statement. (The original original blog post is not linked to)
3. Some undetermined amount of time later (it sounds like at least a year later), OP applies for PHD programs at several schools.
4. When interviewing for a PHD program at one unnamed school, the interviewer explicitly asks about OP's blog post, about OP's political views on Jimmy Carter, and outright admits that the other faculty members oppose OP's admission to the program, on basis of his blog post.
Also what exactly was the keyword that put him into the 'enemy camp' - was it support of Israel, criticism of Carter or both of them that raised the red flag for them ?
> She also asked if I "really" felt that way about Jimmy Carter.
and
> During the call, I got the impression that they thought / were worried that I was a conservative. The horror.
While discrimination certainly takes place in the world, I think we're blowing this article out of proportion; we don't know what happened here.
Sure, the contents of that conversation are uncorroborated, but I don't think it's fair to the author to deny his experience on that basis. Denying that is, implicitly, accusing him of either being dishonest, or at the very least exaggerating and misinterpreting the event. And, to do so is hypocritical for a supposedly liberal person - recognizing and acknowledging the individual experience before demanding systemic evidence in one case, but not this case.
(Not that you, necessarily hold that as a valid method of understanding the world, but many people supposedly do - it's the basis of a lot of popular identity politics)
You might want to actually read the article in detail - the majority of it concerns widespread bias in academic social science, and provides what's arguably concrete evidence of that. His personal anecdote is just a reinforcement of his main point, not the entirety of the article.
We don't know what happened during one particular phone call, but we do know what questions (and what results were drawn) on several social science surveys.
That he was grilled on his political views by telephone is sufficiently damning.
I'm not sure what the objection is to that ?
It reminds me of Gad Saad talking on Joe Rogan's podcast about being denied professorship at various universities for not being Christian enough. I believe at one point he was asked to write a short essay on his relationship with Jesus as his saviour (at which point he realized that job offer wasn't probably going to work out). [I don't have a link at this time]
The book is called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Very interesting read.
my supervisor let me do anything I want as long as there were a few publications at the end (graduation requirement, and in academia the only way to get jobs), other supervisors just look for cheap work for their own project (~robots). I have a friend from the US who worked full-time for 7 years on her PhD and published only one paper! The rest was work on the supervisor's stuff. I would've switched supervisor after 2 years at the latest (but hindsight, 20/20, yaddayadda)
I agree with his other points though: liberal bias in science is a great danger and needs to be removed.
As far as I'm concerned any view justifying the matter is a rationalisation, left or right wing politically; agree or disagree it's certainly nothing to be upset about being called a rationalisation.
It seems others commenting on negative connotation are all American, but personally I would only consider it thus in the form of a question:
> Oh yes? How do you rationalise that then?
I would proffer it stems from an assumption that we are rational beings (uh-oh) which may suggest that the very fact it's questionable implies it is incorrect; but we're not rational, people differ - the one thing we all have in common is that we tend to think our own actions rational.
Hence "my rationalisation" is neutral; "your rationalisation" has a negative --ahem-- ex post facto connotation.
My rationalisation is just what I think makes it rational. No negative connotations here. "How do you rationalise that, then?" is where the doubt creeps in.
I think I just presumed someone blogging about being discriminated against for political views would have left-wing political views.
I didn't really realise US academia was so skewed left politically; completely misread the subtext.
So you could use the word "rationalize" neutrally, but most people don't use it that way and don't take it that way.
As such, I have a lot of Christian friends but, it is understandable that some "intellectuals" are hostile to those with strong religious beliefs given that many with similar beliefs deny scientific concepts like evolution, advocate teaching creationism in schools, and deny the existence of global warming.
Regardless, maybe the intellectuals should stop being hostile, have an honest dialogue with such people, and maybe they'll get somewhere.
how can you "have an honest dialogue" with someone that thinks that you are going to burn in Hell and tells you that your ideas about women, voting, and abortion are "the Devils"?
I guess in the same way you try to have an honest dialogue with a person that insists you are stupid and they can dismiss anything you say because of your beliefs. Both are equally guilty of refusing to participate in the dialogue. Many of the intellectuals refuse to see their failing is evident as much as the overly religious person's failing.
Imposing punishments for failure to comply is coercion, and fairly described as forcing, or at least attempting to force, someone to do the act toward which the coercion is directed.
Years back the head of the IRS famously made the statement that the US federal tax system is voluntary. You volunteer to pay it in the manner they describe.
Now, I agree that if you refuse to pay it then there will be consequences for failure of payment. But that's not the same as someone beating you to force you sign the check.
It seems that people are doing their best to impose their definition of being forced to do something without bothering to see what it is I mean by my original statement.
Here's a simplistic view of it. If I do some sort of negative thing to you before you do/don't commit an act I don't/do want you to make, then I'm forcing you; "ex: I'll stop hurting you when you do this!" If I do some sort of negative thing to you after you do/don't commit an act I don't/do want you to make, then I'm punishing you; "ex: You did this and now I'll hurt you!" There's a difference between those two things, but I agree the line dividing them is very fine.
I hope I got those do/don't and don't/do parts right and it's understandable.
So, for the kid refusing to pray in school. Being sent to the principal's office after refusal is not forcing the student to do anything. So far the student hasn't prayed, therefore not forced. If the student views being sent to the office as punishment and decides to pray from then on to avoid going to the office again, you could have the view that the kid is being forced with threats of future punishments. I don't necessarily agree with that but I can understand the thinking.
The reason I don't agree with it is because if I rob a bank and get caught, I go to jail. I've been punished. I know that if I rob another bank I'll likely go to jail again, therefore with that logic I'm somehow being forced to not rob another bank if I choose to not do so. But, I can easily rob another bank to face possible punishment afterwards.
To force a student to pray in school can simply be paddling the student and then demand they pray so the paddling shall stop. In the story I responded to, the student was punished (possibly repeatedly) for not praying.
That's, ah, unconvincing, to put it lightly.
My personal intellectual growth was stunted for quite a long time because so much of the opposition were so dismissive and egotistical about things that were discussed. They were obviously right, I was obviously backward and they never felt the need to explain any of it because obviously a dumb, backward redneck would NEVER understand these complex thoughts.
When you engage in a discussion, you can either pursue the enhancement of your ego, or pursue the conversion of the opponent, and you can never do both. The vast majority of people go for the former.
I think the usual word with hostility toward people not because of things they do, but because of things other people that share a characteristic with them do, is "bigotry".
It doesn't really matter which, given that the GP was in response to a post about it being understandable to have hostility to "those with strong religious beliefs" not because of what those directly receiving the hostility do, but because of various things that "many with similar beliefs" do.
Whether or not "being a Christian" or "having strong religious beliefs" is "something you do" or "a trait", if you are hostile to people to which the description applies because other people who share that description do other things which justify hostility, that's bigotry.
Does a public declaration of strong allegiance to religious views say something actionable about a person or not?
Do people feel that strong religious beliefs are a direct threat to themselves and their loved ones? Or is it just something a person "carries in their head", harmlessly, and acting on the perceived dangers would be bigotry, as dragonwriter says?
Is pre-emptive (verbal) defence against ideologies and memes ever justified?
I submit that the answer is usually determined by economy in the end, not by philosophising. Is it more cost-efficient to do indiscriminate public shaming of certain ideologies, or is it cheaper to defer punishment to a concrete person after having observed concrete damage? Note "damage" can mean different things to different people (money lost, limbs lost, emotional anguish...).
In genetic evolution, the answer turned out to be clearly "discriminate!". Organisms take strong, immediate reactions based on observable surface characteristics of the other party (the phenotype), without performing deep analysis of its particular gene combination or its mutations, or waiting for their concrete manifestation in action.
Stop trying to justify your prejudices. Two wrongs, etc. etc.
I personally agree with Jose Duarte, that his political beliefs should not be grounds for denying admission.
My point was meant to counter the notion that a certain segment of the country has a monopoly on making judgements about those in the out-group.
I experienced the same things FuzzyZeus complains about it growing up in one of the red states.
(But anyway thanks for educating me.)
Personally, I look down on people who are members of any political party. I truly try not to be biased, but it's pretty hard not to generalize. People who seek out association with amorphous groups just seem intellectually weak, lazy, or worse.
The irony is that I'll probably be down-voted for stating my opinion (the way things are these days).
Edit: Actually you guys are even cooler than that. You're down-voting my old posts, too. I admire your commitment to group-think!
You're being this guy.
http://www.theonion.com/article/area-man-constantly-mentioni...
But, on the other hand, I know I violated the guidelines, so I took a risk. Just trying to prove a point.
Calling it censorship, though, makes it sound like you think of HN as your blog. HN is a forum; a downvote is the virtual equivalent of what happens in a real public forum when people—as a group—decide to walk away from someone so they can talk without that person's viewpoint interrupting them. It's not censorship; the person is still free to talk. It's a decision to not listen, and a persistent notice posted that the person is—for people whose tastes agree with those that walked away—not worth one's time listening to.
You can say anything you like by responding to an HN comment as a quote on your own blog. Anyone trying to deny you that would be attempting censorship. Everything else, though, is just the reaction of a community-as-organism to something that community doesn't like. It's no more censorship than a single person ignoring you and walking away is.
Thanks for pointing that out. It's good to learn new things.
Although I feel kind of aged at the moment, it also makes me feel good knowing that I can now suppress people much more liberally and not [care if their content was meant to be constructive or not]. Who knew?
edit from: give a shit
I think the change happened gradually; people saw what happened as the result of espousing populist "everyone has a voice and a downvote is only for trolling" policies, on sites like Slashdot and Digg and early pre-subreddits Reddit: a reversion-to-the-societal-mean of cat pictures and other "shallow content", and the complete inability to have a discussion on a topic of any controversy.
The reaction, as seen originally in MetaFilter and SomethingAwful, and lately in post-subreddits Reddit, Tumblr, Discourse, Slack, etc., is that attempting to create a community that contains people with diametrically-opposed viewpoints is silly, and the fundamental verb of community-building is moderation: banning people who don't fit in, so that what's left is a pleasant place to have a conversation without anyone needing to expend any effort in tolerating anyone else.
The group who believes in the early, populist systems, calls the second wave of systems "echo chambers"—but engaging with that idea at an object-level is silly, because I really believe there's a fundamental difference between the environment in which the two kinds of forums were built.
The first wave of forums were built from the ideas of Usenet, IRC, and ISP-hosted chatrooms: open-access "places" that served as Schelling points for anyone interested in a topic. There was no real possibility for moderation, and the sheer scale of the problem (the possibility of a 10000:1 user-to-moderator ratio) made "community-building" impossible. Also, it was, for many people, the only place online where they could express themselves—for anyone who wasn't enough of a wizard to put together HTML and a web-server, the shiny "POST" button on a forum somewhere was the only way to get their opinion out there.
The second wave of forums is being built in an environment where everyone has their own blog (or Twitter/Facebook feed), people can asymmetrically "follow" one-another's blogs in numerous ways and "unfollow" when they lose interest, and people each use many small forums to engage in their interests, where frequently these blog posts are shared (this being the usual way people's personal blogs get discovered.)
In this newer system, each forum is less like a "place", and more like a "group"—a circle of friends that happen to share a common interest, but who also share values that allow them to get along even when not talking about that interest. People bounce around between many small group-forums (HN being one of those) until they find a few forums compatible with their values, and then stay active in all of them, fully comfortable with the idea of participating in several non-overlapping spheres that could be connected and mixed together, but that aren't, for social rather than topical reasons.
One more interesting aspect of the newer Internet is that, when engaged in these group-forums, people naturally lean toward developing "faces": different presentations of aspects of themselves, tuned to the interests and values of the group. I would never talk about e.g. my weekends spent with my girlfriend with my online D&D group, because they're all single so it'd just annoy them. What I do on the weekend is an aspect of me, but it's not an aspect of "that guy that posts in that Slack team." And so on for each group-forum we engage with.
I can understand missing the old "place culture" of the Internet—the heady days where a forum was just everybody that happened to like something or be somewhere, where both heavy arguments and friendships could spring up. But I think I prefer the current culture: the one thing it's done for me, personally, is to remove some "perennial arguments" from most of the places I visit. Having a community means being able to have a culture, with cultural mores like "we know we don't agree about X, and at this point more ink spilled on the subject is just wasted"—and being able to teach that culture even to new members who weren't there for the original arguments. There's much less to roll my eyes at on the new Internet (though there is the whole concept of "hate-blogging", where people build communities based on a shared distaste for something, and then sometimes things leak out of those communities and it's quite painful.) It's also much simpler to make "real" friends (as opposed to acquaintances), since joining a group-forum is less like joining a society (which tells you nothing about how likely anyone there is to like you), and more like joining a club (where, if you liked the club enough to join, this greatly increases your chances you'll like the people in the club enough to become personal friends.)
The vast overwhelming majority of users on that site use downvotes to indicate disagreement, or dislike. That interpretation of downvoting has, like it or not, spread throughout the internet. Here? Yes, probably even here.
>The first wave of forums were built from the ideas of Usenet, IRC, and ISP-hosted chatrooms: open-access "places" that served as Schelling points for anyone interested in a topic. There was no real possibility for moderation, and the sheer scale of the problem (the possibility of a 10000:1 user-to-moderator ratio) made "community-building" impossible.
It's quite possible to create a community in an IRC channel. I was part of several quite vibrant communities in various IRC channels in the mid to late 1990s. It's also possible to moderate IRC channels. You can be kicked out of a channel for a period of time, banned from channels, or even entire networks. Operators in individual channels can even choose to grant "voice" to some people and then set a channel mode (+m, for moderated) so that only people with voice can even speak in the channel.
>One more interesting aspect of the newer Internet is that, when engaged in these group-forums, people naturally lean toward developing "faces": different presentations of aspects of themselves, tuned to the interests and values of the group.
Sociologists have long studied how people present different aspects of themselves to different groups depending on the norms of those groups. I would not call that a feature unique to the "newer" Internet, but the newer internet does allow for greater separation of whatever parts of your personality you feel like expressing.
I miss the old culture of the Internet because it was easier for me to find people who shared my interests but had viewpoints different enough from my own that it was possible to have very interesting conversations. Your definition of community sounds, quite frankly, rather boring to me. I fall solidly in the camp of "nothing interesting is happening without a little conflict". What has been lost on this "newer" Internet is the ability to have an ideological conflict remain purely ideological. There is a greater tendency for online conflict to veer into the realm of the personal, especially in these modern communities that you prefer, because there's a shortage of ideas that are "permissible" to argue about.
My $0.02, anyway.
Sure, but it didn't used to be the norm. The usage of IRC has shifted over time, from "channel-as-place" to "channel-as-community", with many of the original "channel-as-place" IRC networks now dead or virtual ghost-towns. The big reason everyone is in a love-fest for Slack but can't quite enunciate is that it's IRC but with multiple channels for each community, which encourages people to distinguish the two concepts further.
> I would not call that a feature unique to the "newer" Internet.
I didn't mean to imply it was, but rather that the first-wave of BBSes was a unique time because there was very little of that; everyone was their full self, in all their horrible glory.
It may have helped that many Internet users up through the early 90s were nerds without enough emotional intelligence to see the point in putting up a face; and that the great number of these made it easier to drop one's own face without being judged for it.
You can still see this effect on e.g. 4chan, where it's impossible to feel "excluded" in any ongoing sense, because of the lack of persistent identity. Anyone who says that "4chan's anonymity is valuable, because it generates a lot of Original Content" means specifically that people dropping face enables for some uniquely-interesting interactions.
> What has been lost on this "newer" Internet is the ability to have an ideological conflict remain purely ideological.
This still happens—but, instead of being an automatic result of everyone just sort of airing their views in the open and colliding (and then blocking everyone annoying enough until everyone who's left has this ability), you have to actively look for a community where "keeping ideological arguments ideological" is a cultural norm of that community.
http://slatestarcodex.com/ 's comments section (which has somehow become a vibrant community, despite the worst UX for community-building ever) is a pretty good example: there are people from everywhere on the political spectrum, of several religions and varying backgrounds, engaging with one-another on some decidedly controversial topics, where it's the culture of the community—and the desire not to lose it—that keeps everything civil.
Interesting. My experience is the opposite. The channels I am still involved with are much less communities now than I knew a couple of decades ago. Anecdotal so not intended as a refutation to your point, just a "hmm, that's interesting..."
>you have to actively look for a community where "keeping ideological arguments ideological" is a cultural norm of that community.
Which is one of the reasons why I like HN. Also the effective moderation here does help.
Your opinions are that it's OK to casually look down on people for having political views. I think that's a legit reason for someone to think that your opinions are full of it and are worth downvoting.
Look, you have to understand that I grew up in the 80s and 90s. Having an opinion and expressing it was a big thing, back then. But, these days, it's all about conformity (or seems so, to these eyes).
For example, here's mine: In my opinion when some dude enters a conversation and calls a huge chunk of the people in it "intellectually lazy and weak", that dude is kind of an asshole, and probably thinks that he is way smarter than he actually is.
Now this is some discussing imgur, thrumbl kind of behaviour here. Not that it would matter but I counter up voted your submissions and bunch of your comments (just to make you feel better). Funny enough, that is also behaviour from more silly networks.
To be honest, I could not tolerate this brainless group-think behaviour in imgur regardless of all the entertainment there and I really hope that this has no holding here.