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Comment by alexandercrohde | Hacker News Reader

I dislike this study. It naively picks out a few conservative views to lampoon as examples of irrationality (I say this as a liberal), and then hopes to generalize this as "controversial topics"

This is too narrow. We shouldn't pretend that human beliefs are predominantly logical with a few strange exceptions. By and large we know incredibly little, most of what we "know" is because authorities have told us about it (e.g. I've never seen Africa with my own eyes), and most of what we believe isn't scientifically meaningful (i.e. justice/goodness being social constructs).

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What is a controversial scientific view that you wouldn't characterize as "conservative"? The article mentions aversion to GMO, does that count?

Aversion to GMO is a sort of aversion to the unknown.

Something like "regulation of long guns (shotguns, rifles, other things that aren't handguns) in various states in the US has had a non-negligible impact on crime in those states" would be more on par with climate change denial because in both cases you really have to pick a lot of cherries to back up the claim.

"nuclear power is the safest on earth"

(cf forbes article which show death/kwh is even lower than wind / water energy)

That article is not a very good example. It makes some pretty twisted arguments, the sort of thing boys in college say to make themselves feel smart.

Its just numbers.. you can interpret as you want.

You can interpret as you want, but start interpreting in a way that reflects poorly on the intellectual habits of the average HN reader, and you get downvoted to oblivion.

Anti-vaxxers tend to be described as middle/upper-class liberals. GMO/Organic trends do also tend to be similar groups

That's the stereotype, but it's not clear that it's actually true [1]

1. http://theconversation.com/anti-vaccination-beliefs-dont-fol...

>Anti-vaxxers tend to be described as middle/upper-class liberals.

I've heard this, but it doesn't square with my own impressions, and a cursory Google search suggests that anti-vaxxers are not, in fact, predominantly liberal.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5784985/

[2] https://medium.com/the-future-is-electric/conservatives-are-...

I've never heard anybody say that anti-vaxxers are anything but mostly conservative, and those opinions seem to match my own experiences, so this comment is a genuine surprise for me. Is there really a belief in the opposite in some circles?

Contrary to my downvotes, yes. I don't really think of it as any specific political thing, but there was a lot of emphasis, at least originally, put on the hollywood left (Jenny McCarthy comes to mind) pushing an anti-vax agenda.

I'm not trying to make any kind of political point here. Someone asked >>What is a controversial scientific view that you wouldn't characterize as "conservative"?

It's a stereotype. Like all stereotypes, it's attempting to make a broad proclamation of a large group of people, something that I generally try to avoid. I don't even agree with this one being accurate, but it's out there in the world.

[1]https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/childhood-vaccination-...

> the hollywood left (Jenny McCarthy comes to mind)

McCarthy is clearly connected to Hollywood, but left? Basically her entire political activity is anti-vaxxers, and her brief foray into Presidential politics involved first trying to get McCain to take a meeting with her on the vaccine issue when he was running and, only when that failed, trying to do the same with Obama (who also declined.) Not exactly what you'd expect of someone committed to (or even inclined towards) the left.

(Which isn't to say there aren't Hollywood left anti-vaxxers, but McCarthy is an odd choice as an example...)

> I'm not trying to make any kind of political point here. Someone asked >>What is a controversial scientific view that you wouldn't characterize as "conservative"?

Anti-GMO would be a better example than anti-vax.

>> Gary Baum of The Hollywood Reporter has investigated childhood illness and vaccination rates around Los Angeles County. He discovered that some schools in the most affluent L.A neighborhoods have vaccination rates lower than Southern Sudan. Let that sink in for a minute; one of the poorest regions in the world that is unable to supply clean drinking water for half of its inhabitants has a greater vaccination rate than schools that educate the offspring of Hollywood’s elite. [1]

I don't think LA is a hotbed of Republicanism or conservatism.

[1] https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/vaccination-r...

I always heard of anti-vaxxers as bipartisan stupidity - although also largely middle or upper class because the poor and working class - partially because literally can't afford to pass up something that might make them sick and partially because they are often well aware that they aren't well educated.

Stereotypically vaccines are too 'unnatural and not flattering to their holisticism' for the left branch and the right are too scientific elite or government conspiracy for the right.

Err literally can't afford to pass up something not that might make them not get sick.

> Anti-vaxxers tend to be described as middle/upper-class liberals.

While conservatives who aren't anti-vaxxers like to point to anti-vaxxers as the left equivalent of whatever anti-science group on the right is involved in a conversation (most often climate deniers), but while there are definitely some anti-vaxxers on the left, there's plenty, and from what I've seen more of them, on the religious right, too.

- men and women being physiological equivalent.

- women having equal innate interest in Stem

- no mental differences between races

- gay,bi,trans being entirely genetic

just off the top of my head. scratches the surface.

The last is particularly interesting because its the opposite viewpoint with regards to protected classes of people and genetic psychology.

Anything along the line of Rind et al. Not that paper in particular, but anything that is even remotely in the same region.

For the purposes of attempting to understand why people continue to believe in things when there is much scientific evidence to the contrary, I felt the list they chose was very representative of relevant topics that fit this criteria. If you were to attempt to balance what you see as bias in this study, what are some specific examples that you feel would improve it?

Many I know on the left would deny any evidence of intrinsic psychological differences between the sexes. GMO safety is probably another one, but one example they gave of fallacious reasoning, while logically fallacious, is also well lined up with reality.

There's definitely a stronger inclination within the "left" to attribute sex-/gender-specific trait differences to culture/environmental causes rather than genetics. I'm kind of interested in the challenge of picking out how far genetics predetermines things but as far as I know there's not really a scientific consensus - at least nowhere near as much as for climate change or GMOs?

A few points:

1) Whether or not such a consensus exists is somewhat orthogonal to the question "Would any evidence convince you to change your mind"

2) There is complete consensus that there are morphological differences between the sexes; this consensus extends to neurology. To what degree these morphological differences are genetic is up for debate (remember that brain morphology is absolutely environmentally affected), but most of the time we have studied traits for nature vs. nurture, the answer has been "both."

3) For some mental traits (e.g. IQ) it is well established that the difference, if any between the means of men and women is quite small. For other mental traits it is well established that the difference is quite significant, and the question is to what degree it is genetic versus environmental.

4) Many people on the left have argued that any investigation into innate differences between men and women should not be allowed, under the theory that any positive result would be co-opted by misogynists. That might be true and even be a good reason to avoid the research in today's cultural climate, but it's definitely fallacious as an argument that there are no inherent differences; this study was specifically about fallacious reasoning, not correct reasoning.

I get what you're saying with (1). I'm saying I don't think it's quite justified to draw the comparison between "right-wing vs climate change" and "left-wing vs sex differences". All you have at the moment is a counter-factual about what you think left-wingers would believe if there was a scientific consensus.

"There's definitely a stronger inclination within the "left" to attribute sex-/gender-specific trait differences to culture/environmental causes rather than genetics. "

No, it's the opposite.

'Born that way' was a positioning effort discovered in tye 90's by gay advocacy groups.

When social conservatives believe that 'gay is a choice' - then they are against it, but if social conservatives can be convinced that people are simply 'born that way' i.e. inherently gay, and it's not a behavioural thing, then clear majorities of them are accepting of it.

It's the biggest factor in determining a social conservatives tolerance towards gays.

The science I think is still out on that, but there's no doubt that the community marketing objectives are oriented towards 'inherent'.

When Cynthia Nixon decided in later life that she was gay - and then virulently said that she was in fact straight before, i.e. not 'coming out' but rather 'becoming gay' - it upset the gay community a lot because this is inconsistent with the marketing by the gay community.

This is one of a few topics that tend to be twisted by all sides. The science is vague.

I was talking about attitudes towards sex differences, not sexual orientation differences.

Oh, sorry. Then yes, absolutely. Totally agree.

> as far as I know there's not really a scientific consensus - at least nowhere near as much as for climate change

Why do you think that?

Not sure what you're looking for. After Damore's memo came out I carefully read it along with statements from scientists both in support and opposition, and I have the impression that there is no broad scientific consensus about the extent to which gender-specific career choices are biologically innate.

> I have the impression that there is no broad scientific consensus about the extent to which gender-specific career choices are biologically innate.

You are shifting the goalposts. We were discussing traits/personality differences.

Gender differences in the big 5 personality traits for example have broad scientific consensus.

Tying that to career choices isn’t really scientific AFAIK.

You're the one shifting goalposts. I stated that there's no scientific consensus regarding how far genetics predetermines things. Career choices is one thing where the consensus is not there.

If you meant how much genetics determines overall outcomes then I agree there isn’t a scientific consensus.

In your first paragraph you were clearly talking about traits and not outcomes:

> attribute sex-/gender-specific trait differences to culture/environmental

I missed where you changed to outcomes in your second paragraph.

>what are some specific examples that you feel would improve it?

The positive correlation between readily available long guns (i.e. non handguns) and violent crime (protip: the official stats tell the opposite story) is the equivalent to climate change denial (i.e. directly contradicted by pretty much all available evidence and pretty much everyone who is an expert in the subject) for the other end of the political spectrum. If you're looking for examples of illogical opinions this one is as good as any.

I'd be quite interested in those stats if you can give me a citation. I can come up with a few ways to explain that correlation off the top of my head that would not imply causation (such as "long guns are more commonly owned in rural areas, so have proportionally higher ownership, and such areas also tend to see lower crime rates per square mile due to low population density", i.e., a third variable problem), so I'd be really interested to see the underlying data.

Presumably a good test case should involve a scientific consensus that the average person could reasonably be expected to be familiar with. What you're suggesting does not seem to fit (to be honest, I'm not even sure offhand what a "long gun" is).

> why people continue to believe in things when there is much scientific evidence to the contrary

No, it's not though. It's cherry-picked political. Most instances of believing this contrary to evidence aren't just political.

They are individual (e.g. thinking one is smarter than they are), religious, social (glorifying founding fathers), or even ethical

> I dislike this study. It naively picks out a few conservative views to lampoon as examples of irrationality (I say this as a liberal), and then hopes to generalize this as "controversial topics"

I strong object to this. Having been deeply involved both with this topic, skeptical advocacy, and having been raised deeply conservative: "GMO foods" is not a conservative anti-science issue. It's deeply "liberal", and generally stems from an inability to separate unethical corporate work and interests with the outcomes of technology. Similarly, many anti-vaccination misinformation peddlers are squarely aligned with what constitutes the "left" in American popular culture.

> This is too narrow. We shouldn't pretend that human beliefs are predominantly logical with a few strange exceptions.

Again, I think you're reading into both the study and the article. This is more a study of how people rationalize their beliefs and in some cases, political affiliations inform that. It's an important topic.

> By and large we know incredibly little, most of what we "know" is because authorities have told us about it

Science, of course, neither creates reality nor truly measures it. It can only measure our observations, and we can seek to make our observations ever more reflective of reality. The entire point of that process is for us to convince one another and survive each other's reasonable objections.

Understanding how people work themselves up to reject such a consensus-driven process, and how the mental techniques they use may be addressed. The stakes are quite high.

> many anti-vaccination misinformation peddlers are squarely aligned with what constitutes the "left"

“Squarely aligned”? Nope, anti-vaxxers are not “squarely aligned” with any broad political movement.

Responsible politicians, party officials, pundits, etc. of all parties and ideologies are pro-vaccination.

But e.g. the Governor-Elect of Oklahoma is a GOP anti-vaxxer. It is incredibly dangerous when these views start to get legitimized: children will die.

Trump is another noted anti-vaxxer. It's only anecdata, but all the anti-vaxxers I've known have been wealthy GOP voters.

Let's offset him with Jim Carrey, perhaps?

It's a very bipartisan issue. People associate it with religious worldviews, but those folks actually make up only one faction.

When did Trump become an anti-vaxxer?

Don’t forget that Trump was a prominent Dem supporter for decades.

Trump in 2012:

> A study says Autism is out of control--a 78% increase in 10 years. Stop giving monstrous combined vaccinations

Trump in 2014:

> Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn't feel good and changes - AUTISM. Many such cases!

etc.

Yes, but when did he first become an anti-vaxxer?

Hi, today a noted liberal screenwriter compared the word "anti-vaxxer" to the racist n-word.

So if you ever scroll back through this, Google to see how wrong you were about this.

I don't think they are saying that we are predominantly logical with a few exceptions around controversial topics...

I think they are saying something much, much deeper and maybe this is just my confirmation bias kicking in here but it really supports my observations on a position I've held for a couple of years now.

I think what they are alluding to is that we are not logical and not rational in how we choose all of our beliefs as we do not try to seek out what is true (except for one edge case), instead we try to seek consensus within some political sphere (a group of any kind).

The so called controversial topics are where it's easiest to spot and easiest to study. But there is a stunningly deep implication that just because there is an uncontroversial consensus around something it doesn't mean the conclusion was arrived at by a sound process. So you actually really have to question everything.

For a while now I've been saying people don't argue for what is true, they argue for political affiliation.

It's close to impossible for humans to tell what's true. Often it would take trillions of dollars, millions of people or thousands of years to actually verify something as being the case. We take 99.99% of our existence on faith because it's simply not possible for us to fact check it. And if it's not possible for us to fact check what is true except for in the most basic of cases why would it ever be important to us as a social behavior? So that's why we see what this article points out. At least in my view.

We do do some degree of fact checking but it's usually the minimum viable fact checking to coordinate with our peers.

The interesting edge case they point out where some people do reason consistently is also signaling political affiliation. They are attempting to signal "I'm on team evidence-based". But the interesting thing about team "evidence-based" is they tend not to question or be skeptical so much of the fraud and other social phenomenon (replication crisis etc) present in science. They take it on faith that "this is the best answer I have whether it is true or not, but it's most likely true therefore it's true". Even team evidence-based isn't purely rational. And for good reason. They can't be. It's simply not viable to personally try to reproduce every study you read.

We are political animals that care about our survival and forming consensus. Not truth.

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