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Comment by fighterpilot | Hacker News Reader

The left has its fair share of growing anti-science sentiment. I agree it's quite a bit worse with Republicans but it is growing in both directions, which is a concern. People pick their science a la carte as long as it confirms what they want.

- Denial of the science of sex differences

- Denial of the science of intelligence differences, the relevance of intelligence in life outcomes and how heritable it is

- Belief without evidence that black/white racial differences in outcome are completely due to racism and not partly due to a byproduct of cultural differences

- Anti-nuclear sentiment that wildly exaggerates the risks of nuclear power

- Historical revisionism (e.g 1619 project and NYT begrudgingly making stealth edits)

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Then (as it was already well known and evident) you have a deeper problem with a faulty political system, that creates monstrous overgrowths of mental patterns begging for votes instead of progressive ("look-up-to") models.

Telling example: "We believe in self-determination" // "There are unclaimed votes available in those anti-abortionist tribes" // "Ok then, we take them". This should be a joke, not an event. There is a systemic issue.

Most of my friends are politically and socially liberal, whereas I'm liberal on some issues, conservative on others, and have a decent number of views that are hard to categorize on a liberal/conservative spectrum.

One thing I've noticed about the friends who are dyed in the wool liberals is that they seem to be more susceptible than average to pseudoscientific practices such as reiki, crystals, homeopathy, etc.

And that jives, I think, with historical trends. Go back 100 years and G.K. Chesterton was chiding the liberal upper-class socialites who were taken in with this stuff.

Of course, my own observations are just anecdotal, but I would be curious to know if anyone else has noticed it.

Yes, there's a niche part of the left - the new age/hippie types, very high in openness and very low in conscientiousness - that is profoundly anti-science (or perhaps just ignorant of it). They tend to buy into woo-woo of all sorts and buy into science denialism around GMOs and synthetic pesticides. They would also never accept the tentative evidence that marijuana damages the brains of teenagers.

> Denial of the science of intelligence differences, the relevance of intelligence in life outcomes and how heritable it is.

> Belief without evidence that black/white racial differences in outcome are completely due to modern systemic racism and not partly due to a byproduct of cultural differences

I think what you're describing is that a lot of liberals and leftists are opposed to the use of science to justify what they would probably consider racist beliefs. They might point to the use of scientific racism in the past as a reason not to repeat such mistakes. They might also question the intentions of the (disproportionately white) people who tend to focus obsessively on these issues to the exclusion of many others.

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