Liberal & Conservative 'Pseudoscience'

Can much of ‘pseudoscience’ (or alt if you prefer) meaningfully be divided into a liberal and conservative wing?

Since Conservatism has roots in Christianity and being more skeptical of government than big business: climate change skepticism, new world order conspiracies, exorcism, faith healing, prophesy, flat earth and young earth creationism would be part of the conservative wing, whereas, since liberalism, since at least the 1960s, at least in part, has taken root in the new age movement and is more skeptical of big business than government: alternative medicine, astrology, parapsychology, witchcraft, fairy lore, spiritualism and ufology would be part of the liberal wing.

I suppose some beliefs, like the Antediluvian period, cryptozoology and hollow earth, could go either way.

However, fascists and Nazis, who reject Christianity, would be more inclined to believe in the brand of pseudoscience liberals believe in.

Hitler himself was mired in the occult.

Of course fascists and Nazis would be the most inclined to ‘anti-Semitic’ conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific ideas about race.

I’ve never pondered the eventualities stemming from mistrust of business vs government.

I’m not sure I see the mechanism that the skepticism of government causes theism, and the belief in faith healing, though the two seem to correlate.

And is Alex Jones selling alt medicine? Yeah because I looked into his Brainforce+ and found Bacopa to be the main ingredient, so bought a bottle of that for 10 bucks instead of whatever ridiculous price he’s charging. I haven’t tried it yet and I guess that’s a measure of how well I expect it to work lol!

I don’t think alt med correlates. I know too many christians into alt med or alt-anything really because of a general distrust of the elites. Actually, if there is any correlation, it’s to the right since the only sort of person I can imagine who’d not be interested in alt-meds are the scientific types who are mostly liberals.

So, in the liberal category, we’re left with “goofy religious beliefs”.

Reminds me of an Alan Watts bit:

The sergeant would call out, “Catholics to the right, Protestants to the left, fancy religions in the middle."

books.google.com/books?id=AS6GA … ht&f=false

Then he said “to the degree that intelligent people in our culture have any religion at all, it tends to be a fancy religion.”

I came in contact with a lot of conservatives during a family members catastrophic illness who were into alt. med, some Christians. But you need to relook at this conflating convervatism with anti-science. The neo-cons are all over technology and science. There is the Christian right, and there is the rest of the right.

I would guess that more lefties, especially green ones and hippies are more open to alt. meds, but there is a strong rural tradition of keeping herbalism and other ‘folk remedies’. And from what I noticed, I think conservatives, with less education, are more willing to try alternative approaches, especially when the mainstream med stuff does not work. Why? My guess is they have no fear of appearing fooling or gullible, while the educated liberal or conservative could die for their ego.

I can’t see how Catholicism is not a fancy religion. The Pope, the Vatican, eating and drinking Jesus, organs, confessions, weird processions and more. And I’d put Mexican Catholicism up against even the gaudier circuses the HIndus can put on. Not sure what Watts means here. Protestantism I get. And maybe he doesn’t count Buddhism as a religion, but Zen, say, just don’t seem that fancy to me. Shamans can put on a show, I suppose, but it’s got nothing on the day of the dead.

Who are the neo-cons?

All I know are hillbillies and christians, except for dad who is neither. Dad was an AM radio junkie for at least 30 years, maybe more. Now he listens to AM radio online lol. Other than listening to people talking on mono, his favor thing is to sit in the shade devouring books. He always always always has a big thick book with him and even dated a library manager for a decade or two. He’s also very good with mental arithmetic and generally strikes folks as intelligent. I don’t think he believes in conspiracy theories, but he’s very distrustful of the government, pharma, and doctors. But dad doesn’t represent any stereotype I can conceive, except AM radio junkie or Dittohead. He likes the city and is in no way religious, so he doesn’t fit. But the fact that dad is an exception to my own generalization isn’t going to deter me because I’m bombarded by the other two varieties, who I think warrant particular focus in order to exhibit the lack of justification for their arrogance.

Kid Rock said “it ain’t bragging if you back it up.” I disagree, but it’s somehow worse if we can’t even back it up. What I want to know is, for instance, why someone would have an opinion on climate change if they don’t understand the underlying physics? The problem with appeals to authority is that one must be an authority to judge an authority, so how is anyone qualified to pick sides in a climate debate? It’s like choosing a favorite football team.

Same with economics. The minimum wage has been raised 21 times in 80 years and each time the newspapers filled with concerns that the sky would fall and yet, nothing but more jobs created and much more prosperity resulted. Then some guy with nothing more than a high school education, probably with no particular distinction, mediocre grades, and no specific reason to suspect he may be any smarter than any of his peers; and on top of that, never even being in the same room with an economics book, starts threads and leaves comments asserting with as much braggadocio as he can muster regarding the stupidity of the minimum wage. On what are these people predicating their arrogance?

As far as I can tell, it’s prerequisite of conservatism to regard Paul Krugman as an idiot. Nobel laureate and author of textbooks. Where do they get their balls?

Found this on zerohedge:

You associate education with ego? I was going the other way with it.

Those were the two most popular religions in the UK, so his point was that the smart people are usually found outside the herd, practicing the fancy religions.

It’s like republicans, democrats, and the fancy party (independents). Independents are usually smarter.

Their public face is people like Kissinger and Cheney. Project for a New Century was one think tank of theirs.

I don’t know what your dad is, but the neo-cons use people like him, just as they use the Christian right.

Sure, most people are gut choosing their teams.

As far as I can tell, it’s prerequisite of conservatism to regard Paul Krugman as an idiot. Nobel laureate and author of textbooks. Where do they get their balls?

I associate education with have certain specific kinds of ego fears. The last thing they want to admit is they followed their gut or went against scientific or expert knowledge. Mainstream expert knowledge. I think there egos are more hinged to that. Conservatives - each of the various kinds - will have their own ego fears, but I think educated people and perhaps liberals are expert lovers and think rationality is hinged on following experts. And they experts. If experts are wrong - and since experts disagree this has to happen - it calls into question their own heuristics and expertise.

OK, I took ‘fancy’ too literally. I do think that the independents will include a higher percentage of the people (per capita) with either better intuition or higher intelligence or both, but the word ‘include’ must be stressed. We all have seen hordes of alternative morons.

I’ll concede there are educated dogmatists who accept scientific fashion like scripture. They were probably the studious kids in school whose parents made them study, so they have the education, but might not be any smarter than average. They’re followers by nature: they obey parents, school rules, and want to do what is expected of them.

To shake off the ego, I think one has to leave the realm of the amygdala and venture into structures that haven’t been part of evolutionary history for quite as long.

Reminds me of this youtube comment youtube.com/watch?v=rW9R6jgE7SQ

Eric Ling
An honest person asks to be corrected about a wrong assumption.
An idiot is offended by being corrected about a wrong assumption.
1 month ago
682 upvotes

Most idiots could be smarter if they didn’t already know everything. I’m not even sure stupidity exists, but is arrogance instead.

Max Planck said science progresses funeral by funeral and he was talking about scientists being unable to change their minds.

Here is the full context:

[i]Planck’s book “Wissenschaftliche Selbstbiographie” appeared in German in 1948, the year after his death. A translation by Frank Gaynor titled “A Scientific Autobiography” appeared in 1949. Planck discussed the opposition to novel scientific theories:

“This experience gave me also an opportunity to learn a fact-a remarkable one, in my opinion: A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”[/i]
[quoteinvestigator.com/2017/09/25/progress/]
(https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/09/25/progress/)

And

In the future, employers may well begin to start testing these abilities in place of IQ; Google has already announced that it plans to screen candidates for qualities like intellectual humility, rather than sheer cognitive prowess. bbc.com/future/story/2015041 … ing-clever

I would say this is the norm.
When I did alternative medicine for a very serious disease and stopped with the conventional, I got most of the shit from very well educated liberals. That’s one example amongst many.

But, again, that’s their blindspot, or one of them. Less educated have others. Perhaps more. But they ain’t running the world. My problems are mainly with education, highly intelligent morons.

I have similar issues with the ones who up in the high percentiles also.

It’s a group, with a paradigm, or set of paradigms, and these are religiously clung to.

I have precisely the opposite approach. The thinky bits of the brain, work with words, have too much faith in deduction. It’s not like I let the amygdala decide everything. But I set that mother free, so the thinky parts are INFORMED by my whole life and all my intuition. The thinky parts have been trained to think they don’t need the amygdala to think. Oops.

Yes, and that includes the smart ones.

[/quote]
A good idea, but they’ll produce some kind of test, because their own intuitive systems are so damaged, they need to make a test. Of course some parts of their intuition are still functioning, don’t get me wrong. Coding takes creative leaps. But so many other types of intuition they have shortcircuited.

Ok, I’ll agree with you there. I used to carry that flag, but I’m on a different crusade now and once the victory is behind me, I’ll return to focus on my former enemies, no doubt. Doctors are the 3rd leading cause of death hopkinsmedicine.org/news/me … _in_the_us And I’ll probably never go to another vet unless I know the person personally because I’m assuming they’re all too dumb to be a real doctor, not like that’s saying much.

My mission now requires I ignore all that for the time being and I’ll worry about women in power and educated idiots later after we’ve secured a decent standard of living for the poor. First things first.

I know what you mean.

The thinky parts include subgroups as well. I’ve noticed folks who are excellent in language usually aren’t that bright otherwise, but their language ability is intimidating, so they push people around that way. My hillbilly friend calls them “well-read” as a denigration. There is something to that. One part of the brain sucks up resources from the others and we get various flavors of idiot savants who are good at one particular thing, but near retarded in other ways.

There are at least 9 types of intelligence blog.adioma.com/9-types-of-inte … fographic/

In my Creativity and Problem Solving class in college, we took a test which mapped our ability in 4 quadrants: logical (A), organized (B), spiritual (C), creative (D). Mine looked like a kite since I did well in A and D, but not so well in B and C. The professor said ceos often do equally well in each without doing exceptionally well in any, so they are the square shapes (not kites).

Here it is kheper.net/topics/intelligence/Herrmann.htm

@Serendipper

People got to worship something I guess, if not God, than celebrities, science, technology, laws or the state.

I think most of that stuff is bunk.

Just eat a variety of whole foods, exercise your body, mind and reduce stress and exposure to electromagnetic radiation.

Right, like Karpal said, both alt right and alt left hillbillies, hippies and conspiracy theorists buy into alt med.

There’s some pretty goofy beliefs about gender, race, iQ and personality differences having little-no basis in biology circulating among liberals as well, that all culture is equal, that people are altruistic, that it’s the institutions alone that make us selfish.

Again, if conservatives and libertarians are paranoid, liberals prefer to see everything through a rose colored prism.

Yea, Alan Watts preferred the fun, extravagant religions to the dour, puritanical ones.

If you’re going to believe a bunch of bullshit, it might as well be fun bullshit *shrugs.

I would think that theism is an authority that is not the state. If you have authorities that are not the state, you are likely to be critical of the state, unless you live in a theocracy. You will also see a tension between scripture or God and the state. Governments are run on compromises, even dictatorships. Now, you can be a theist and believe in compromise, but generally the organized religion theists are deontological and absolutist (at least about something).

Sure. And there can be people like, shit, that guy no longer at Fox News who was a real bully. He combined emotional intelligence - how to push people’s buttons, how to indicate status - with some language ability. That combination is deadly. Especially if you are close to - in both senses - the control room.

I think the general denigration of intuition by the educated is a problem. They use it, but they often don’t want to admit it. So when they face it in others, they condescend to it.

C is probably my strongest. I am not organized. Here’s a funny story. I got a personality test type thing around personality qualities. It was a list of about 100 positive traits. I was supposed to pick out 10 and get a friend and a family member to check off my top ten as they saw it.

My wife misunderstood the task - a cross language messup - and she just checked everything that fit me. Well, before I noticed the problem she had already checked everything in the first couple of columns - 50 items - except a word meaning both ‘thorough’ and ‘organized’. The psychologist looking at the test paper, saw that and laughed. She got a great bit of insight into me from that misunderstanding. I can be logical, but I vastly prefer lateral thinking. Spiritual, well, not by the usual standards, but who knows. That seems like an odd four categories. I feel like either spiritual should be left out or many other categories should come in.

Good to see Watts is working on your weak areas.

Not only do Christians worship their God, an authority outside of the state, but Christians are explicitly warned to be very skeptical of the state.

I mean Jews were persecuted by the largest states of their day: the Egyptian, Babylonian and Greek states, and both Jews and Christians were persecuted by Rome, their messiah himself was crucified by them.

There’s all sorts of talk in the bible about how men are sinful by nature, and that God has given them over to the devil and their wickedness.

The bible is full of conspiracy theories about how the anti-Christ and false prophet will deceive and unite the nations of the world against Christians.

While Jews were very religious, and religion is often used to justify the state, because they were often persecuted wherever they wandered and cynical about humanity, this gave their religion a sort of anti-authoritarian bent most religions didn’t really have.

Being a small, but ultra-clannish, religious and stubborn people who refused to assimilate, made them antagonistic to the world and the powers within it.

It’s very peculiar how this little, eccentric people’s religion became universalized and spread all over the world to become the world’s largest, and retained its cynicism.

Appeal to Bob Dylan eh? Gotta Serve Somebody lol

bobdylan.com/songs/gotta-serve-somebody/

We need electromagnetic radiation to live.

Ok but who does not? I can only think of the scientific types who shun what isn’t supported by science and they are liberals.

Goofy beliefs go hand in hand with goofy beliefs I guess.

I guess so.

Well, fun doesn’t have a purpose and therefore isn’t righteous. So the more fun a religion, the less it seeks to accomplish anything and the less harmful it can be.

But can’t intuition be used to underpin anything? Matt Dillahunty’s point about faith is that it’s not a reliable guide since faith can be used to substantiate anything. Intuition seems similar.

My deer hunter friend has some remarkable intuition and seems to operate on it exclusively (since, being poor, he didn’t go far in school and doesn’t have much else to go on). Two of us thought the neighbor had killed the lame buck he was after, but he said “I just don’t feel like they shot that buck.” Sure enough, a month later he killed the buck himself. Then a cat I haven’t seen in 2 years suddenly returned and hung around for a while, but then vanished on the same day as buzzards are flying around and I caught a coyote on the trail cam. He said “I just don’t feel like a coyote got your cat.” Sure enough, the cat returned. It could be coincidental, but maybe not and after 65 years of life I’d figure he knows what works and what doesn’t.

I’ve also read research into women’s intuition, but they chalk it up to subconscious processing. However, my friend seems to be consulting a divine continuum or something. I won’t disregard it, but can we really allow intuition in science? “All the evidence is pointing this way, but I feel like the evidence is wrong.” Is that a valid objection?

Yes, I’m trying to become more like a square lol

I actually am organized, but it appears as clutter to anyone else. All my computers are crammed full and my desktops are filled with icons, but I can find anything I want to find, it just appears disorganized because it isn’t filed away neatly. I’ve been meaning to find time to organize everything, but I’ve been meaning to do that for years and just can’t seem to get to it. I’d rather come here and talk than do that. And I have so many webpages open and open for so long that the memory eventually fills up which requires a restart. Luckily chrome remembers everything, even the text I type in here. I actually have a post half-constructed to Gloominary from months ago still sitting there and each time I restart, it comes back with the text I typed.

Organization seems to me too much like worrying about appearance which is egoic I think. As with language because why must I know all sorts of fancy words unless it be to impress someone, so I never paid much attention in school to vocabulary and writing. Little did I know the internet would require me not to seem like a bumpkin lol, so now I have to catch up :techie-studyingbrown:

And the category of C is more than just spiritual. That’s just how I remember it. Check the link kheper.net/topics/intelligence/Herrmann.htm

And I cohabited with a woman who nurtured compulsions to “hide everything” in drawers, nooks, crannies, cubbyholes just to maintain appearance in case someone came by who would give a shit. Consequently, we could never find anything and her solution was to buy another. So we had like 10 staplers. Organization sacrificed on the altar of vanity. Anyway, we were diametrically opposed and after she moved out, I was finding things for years that I hadn’t seen in years. After which I formulated theories of “form over function” and “function over form” types of people only to later discover it was about the ego.

I’m not sure how I feel about that one.

Jesus’ opinion:

15 Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk.
16 And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men.
17 Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?
18 But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?
19 Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny.
20 And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?
21 They say unto him, Caesar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.

biblegateway.com/passage/?s … ersion=KJV

Paul’s opinion:

13 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:
4 For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
5 Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.
6 For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.
7 Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.

biblegateway.com/passage/?s … ersion=KJV

Peter’s opinion:

13 Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme;
14 Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well.
15 For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men:

biblegateway.com/passage/?s … ersion=KJV

And Jesus said:

37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

In other words, stfu and be humble as the dirt you’re made of.

38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

How can one fight the gov in observance of that?

40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

How does hating on welfare jibe with that?

43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?
48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

There is no ambiguity about it.

Ghandi said “I like you christ but not your christians.” They’re the most hypocritical bunch who flatter themselves for a religion they don’t even practice.

A couple of responses: 1) even if this is the case, there is no avoiding intution. There is no pure deduction, no pure empirical research. As corporeal, limited perspective beings in time, we always use intuition in all our work and processes. And we all wake up in the morning with intuitive guesses about how good our memory is, how well we thought through X and so on. And very rational analysis has hundreds of microsteps using intuition. Shit, just think about all the intuition about semantic issues you and I are depending on in this interaction. 2) Some people simply have better intuitions about specific issues (and even in general) and this can be measured. Some detectives will get gut feelings that are more dependible than others. You can measure this shit. Psychologists, gamblers, animal trainers, teachers…you can measure intuitive abilities in many fields.

Right, he may have an intuitive skill related to animals.

I black box it and I don’t care, in regard to the issues here, what it is.

  1. intuition is already in science. And the better scientists are better at it. They are betting at choosing ripe lines of reseach. It is used in problem solving protocols…and I could go on. But here you are concerned about collective conclusions. Should we throw away the results of research because of someone’s gut feeling. I haven’t suggested anything like that.

What one could do as a base is not assume that if something is not accpeted by consensus science it isn’t true. The educated classes (in an inconsistant and often arbritrary way) dismiss things they should be agnostic about, becuase they act like science is complete, like there are no paradigmatic blind spots and they know this, that they themelves never use intution or believe in things based on non-empirical processes and so on. It’s like a kind of class issues, where the rich thing the poor are all morons, but it’s not really a class issue, since these attitudes and assumptions can relate to anyone deemed irrational.

In my own way I am working on this also.

I just read someone saying clutter was a sign of some positive trait. Can’t remember the someone or the trait, but it was a bit of solace.

I think one could make the case that she was neat but not well organized.

Organization is very useful. And I sympathize with your urge to denigrate it, since I am not strong on that. But I want my surgeon and my bureaucrat organized and anal. I’m just not like them and I can’t help looking down on them, especially if they are assholes.

Yes that’s Watts’ point too. He says we take all the variables into account that we can for as long as we can and when the time comes to make a decision, we make a snap judgment. That means we stress and stress looking for certainty and we end up guessing anyway.

Yep, you’re onto something. Pursue it!

I think he applies it to everything. He developed skills of survival that were not taught in school. Alan says to go into the woods and stop putting labels and words on thoughts. My friend could be doing that naturally because he doesn’t know the words in the first place or how to articulate how he knows something.

Researchers wanted Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley to take LSD because they were the best equipped humans to describe what they experienced. Most people can’t put words to it, but they still have the experience. Maybe that’s intuition.

I see what you mean now.

I think they are coming around though. We have published research claiming most publish research is wrong. And there’s something new going on about publishing mistakes and being proud of them.

The zen of self-improvement lol. Now that’s a book that needs written :slight_smile:

The positive trait mentioned was probably not memory lol

That’s putting it mildly.

Well there’s a difference in organization and narcissism.

Sure, though I was confessing something a bit uglier. I think I view people who are not creative as damaged. This comes up less when dealing with people who have not had opportunities to be created. But a well educated person who is not creative in some arty farty way - including bands, traditional arts, etc. - I look down on. Or there is some tendency on my part to do this. Now I know many of them look down on for my antics and disorganization, and in the work world they have all sorts of advantages, but still I’d prefer not to participate in the ‘my talents are the right talents and you are lesser people’ crap. So even the not narcissistic surgeon or the not little hitler bureaucrat is gettting some of my snootiness.

I think there is a difference in merely recognizing you have abilities that others don’t have without being condescending or whatever word I mean. Either you are gifted and the other people are normal or you are normal and other people are damaged. I think it depends on which perspective you choose to take. Chris Langan has 200iq, so is he gifted or are we damaged idiots?

Okay the bible doesn’t exactly teach you to be skeptical of government.
Libertarian conservatives cherry-pick the bible to try to make it seem that way.
They focus on the book of revelation, how the anti-Christ and false prophet takeover government and organized religion respectively.
They focus on how Satan offered Jesus all the world’s kingdoms, as if they were his to give.

If I remember correctly, the Jews supposedly lived in a state of semi-organized anarchy for several centuries before they demanded a monarchy, against the warnings of Elohim, who recommended they remained in anarchy.

Libertarian conservativism is more like OT morality + Greco-Roman ideas about democracy, and Anglo-Saxon ideas rights and work ethic.
They’re not really into Jesus and his ideas about charity and forgiveness, they just pay lip service.
That being said, Jesus wasn’t liberal either, he was apolitical.
He wanted people to give out of the goodness of their own hearts, or out of the holyspirit which gives without expectation, not by force.