Boycott Google

It should piss everybody off. Unless for some reason you think that corporations and those in power would never skew information or cover anything up. Or coming at it from another angle, that people should not be able to communicate freely.

Corporations would never lie. That would make consumers not trust them, then how would they sell their products?

Some liberals are skeptical of some or all aspects of political and corporate science too, but mainstream liberals and conservatives have of course gotten behind them, which’s part of what makes them mainstream.

Some liberals are into alternative medicine, diets, conspiracies and ‘new age’ beliefs and practices.

They’re skeptical of big pharma, GMO and scientific medicine.

=D> :handgestures-thumbup:

Alternative medicine is one area where bonds can form across right/left splits, at least in the US. Right wingers can feel it first as a principle - no government can restrict how I try to heal myself, I get to make my own errors - or because they are traditionalists and they had grandmothers and strange aunts who could in fact break fevers and make bones heal faster and they are not as afraid as some liberals of coming off as a believer of some kind. And lefties with their nature is good, skepticism about pharma, the FDA and corporate controlling of how we think about our bodies and healing, end up exploring alternative medicince, perhaps in touchy feely dreamy ways, but also through anal retentive science based naturopathy and more. So when at pharma’s behest the government tries to shut alternative medicine down suddenly people who would not agree on abortion, recent wars, hipsters, logging or any of a number of highly divisive issues can work together. If only they could each learn to spread out their skepticism about what power is saying to a more broad front.

There are hints of this, but not nearly enough.

Good points, a significant minority of liberals and conservatives question scientific medicine for similar, and different reasons, liberals because they distrust big business, which’s what scientific medicine has become, conservatives because they distrust authoritarianism, which’s also what it’s become, conservatives because many grew up in rural communities exposed to traditional western medicine, liberals because they’re less anthropocentric and are curious about traditional eastern medicine.

Sciencetards? :slight_smile: Thanks for the new word to succinctly encapsulate the idea that “smart people are stupid” that plagues the trumptards. That’s essentially it and they’re not ashamed to admit it.

New research: zerohedge.com/news/2019-01- … profession

Talent on the left and trumptards on the right.

I agree that science is manacled by big business, but that’s capitalism. They want to profit on peddling veggie oils so they rig science to favor the health aspects, then peddle pills to repair effects of the bad diet. Most published research is wrong and that fact itself is published. But that doesn’t mean academia is a bunch of sciencetards.

Astrophysics is the highest IQ profession and is 98% liberal. Your rebuttal is they are stupid. I’m no rocket scientist, but that doesn’t make sense.

Or you make it seem like a giant conspiracy, like academia is in collusion with silicon valley and hollywood, but the tendency to formulate conspiracy theories is associated with trumptards. And why is it that only the smartest people are susceptible to the brainwashing that the farmers and miners are too smart to fall for?

You’re right. I know.

No I support free speech.

What I’m happy about is the conservatives support the means of their own extermination with their free market axiom that corps can do what they want without government (ie constitutional) regulation. The irony is the same corps don’t like conservatives lol! They’re like “Hey thanks for the tax cut! Now, you’re banned! Sucker!”

I wouldn’t trust any package labeling without the gov guaranteeing the honesty of it. It’s not perfect, but without the gov, they’d label horsemeat as beef.

I’d prefer not feed euthanized animals to my pets, but I can’t tell which food has it and which doesn’t, so what the hell am I supposed to do? The gov should outlaw that practice because the free market doesn’t work.

And if I can get a ticket for a trailer light that burned out, then the gov should regulate producers of trailer lights so they don’t malfunction so often; they’re shit.

Agreed, but I will say a little horse meat, properly seasoned…I feel like that could be delicious.

Nice irony.

And since there is a revolving door between industry and government oversight…

I can see that. And no doubt some portion are realizing that you have to be careful what you want. I do wish more of the right didn’t confuse corporations with persons, just like the law does. I do see a larger number of the right seeing an oligarchy, but it is still a minority. Though it’s also a minority on the left. I have often found the rights hatred of liberals as communists sad and amusing since for all practical purposes liberals are radically capitalist. Clinton signed in the GlasSpeagal act. The liberals do nothing about campaign finance reform. Obama brought in Wall St. after complaining about Bush and Wall st. and I mean right into his cabinet.

It’s like the noise gets confused with the music.

It may or may not be a perfect term, but that’s twisting the meaning right off the bat. First it is equating science with intelligence, like they are synonyms. And while I am sure scientists do well above average on IQ and other measures of some kinds of intelligence, they may not do well in other ways.

More important you are making it as if the term is used mainly about scientists. In fact it is used about science groupies and technocrat supporters.

But sciencetards, to me, as a term is referring to a naive belief that 1) current science is final science 2) if something is not confirmed by mainstream science then you are moron to believe in it 3) lacking any sense of the history of science 4) lacking any sense of the biases in science, both epistemological and political - caused big business or caused by scientists tending to see themselves as NOT like religions people, and choosing their positions and research based on what for them seems like an old battle between good and evil. 5) have the false sense that they do not use the epistemologies of the people they hate and think are stupid.

I think scientism is a better term - aim at the belief system and not the people. Not because one needs to be nice, but I think it makes it clear that we are talking about a way of related to scientific research and not science as a whole. A naive and dangerous way of relating to it and using it in debate.

Here’s an example of sciencetardism. I was talking to a relative of my wife about how I caught a cold. I said I got caught in a near freezing rain, got a deep chill and got sick. He said ‘but we know now that colds are caused by viruses.’ He was condescending. I said, sure, I likely have a virus, but why did I get sick. It is not mutually exclusive to say that my illness is a virus and my illness was caused by my getting extremely cold. He said it has nothing to do with the cold. I said anything that causes stress can weaken the immune systems ability to fight viruses, for example, and we are surrounded by viruses all the time. Suddenly he started mulling. Me, I know I have a much better chance of getting sick if I get cold to the bones suddenly. I can find scientific research to back up why. But here’s the thing, right then I was just thinking for myself, based on my sense of my own body and intuition. I managed to present it in pseudoacademic terms, which is how most academic people speak anyway, so he gave me some minimal respect. If I had been one of those not so educated people who you could be seen as looking down on in your post, he likely would have just thought I was those trumptards, though not wiht their politics for hte most part.

People with academic backgrounds have been exposed to a lot of information, but they really have very little systematic, problem solving intelligence around it, unless they went on to work in that specific area. I have seen encouters between academics, who are not biologists, with theists where both sides are equally misinformed about evolutionary theory.

Sciencetardism is have a quasi religous attitude about certain beliefs one correctly or incorrectly thinks are true because they come in some way from scientific research and because other people in your social circles also think it is true.

Look aet how liberals accept the pharma/psychiatric model of emotional suffering. They should have the philosophical, sociological, and scientific tools - educated liberals, that is - to see how much damaging BS there is in that model. But they don’t. They laugh at the scientologists with their anti-psychiatry stance - and the scientologists deserve to be laughed at - but not for their anti-psychiatric stance, though I think they make it too utterly binary.

I think less well educated people actually stand a better chance of having a gut, there’s something fucked up with that stuff, response.

I don’t see where the ‘but’ comes in. If it is that way, then it is that way. He may agree as to the why or one of the whys.

It might mean that they are extremely clever about a number of things, but about certain things, where values come in or to question something paradigmatic would be emotionally threatening, they are stupid.

I’m not sure I want astrophysicists determining social policy. The ones I know have trouble relating to women, for example. (I am sure there are asome astrophysicists who are women. I don’t know how they relate to women.) I don’t like where the technocrats are taking society. And these are some very smart people who tend to be liberal socially and somewhat conservative economically.

I think that is a media created assessment. Extremely smart people believe in conspiracies. Extrememly smart people are a small percentage of any political group. Lefties used to be conspiracy theorists, but seeing this now identified with the right, they tone down their own conspiracy theories.

Everybody ran after the Bush administration when they wanted to go into Iraq over WMD’s. Which was what can actually be called a conspiracy theory, in the pejorative sense, since it was BS. I think less educated people are willing to consider it possible that something fundamentally and systematically wrong is happening. They can be manipulated as to what this is and who is to blame and what the solution is. But the educated person is much better at rationalizing, in fact they are better at dealing with counterevidence and not being affected by it. I just read a book summing up cognitive studies on this.

@Serendipper

How do you figure?

While Trump’s voters were less educated on average, they were wealthier on average…not that I associate either of those things with talent, I’m not sure why you do.

I don’t base my beliefs on demographics, I evaluate each belief on its own merits.

I don’t believe in something just because educated or wealthy people believe it, or a, b or c political party or religion believes it, or most people believe it, that is what lemmings do.

It’s also corrupted by government funding, and government working in tandem with big business (corporatism).

Sciencetards referred more to the people who blindly followed science, rather than the scientists themselves.

There is corrupt science and uncorrupt, there is also hard science and soft, there is broad and narrow consensus science and controversial, science that may contradict our personal or collective experience and reason and science that may concur with (as well as concerns the scientific community has yet to address), science that is well established, and science that is novel, highly subject to revision, so just because it’s science, doesn’t mean we should believe it wholeheartedly, or at all.

Most science is smart, but not necessarily right.

The establishment is peddling a lot of conspiracy theories lately, like about Russian collusion.

I don’t know if rural and right wingers are more attracted to conspiracy theories than urban and left wingers, do you have any data on that, or just your opinion?

But even if that’s the case, it may be because rural people are less domesticated than urban people, as I don’t associate conspiracy with idiocy, on the contrary:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO0-u900OG4[/youtube]

Maybe, but you’d have to purchase beef to get it because if your intention was to procure horse, you’d be sold ass lol

That’s why I said it’s not perfect. They cut corners, I’m sure, but the gov has limited the size of the corner they can cut.

Do you agree that Jimmy Carter was the last liberal president? I can see a lot of truth in it.

And the irony is the republican Tricky Dick Nixon "imposed wage and price controls for ninety days, enforced desegregation of Southern schools, established the Environmental Protection Agency and began the War on Cancer. " en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon

Yes corps are different than small-time entrepreneurs. I don’t know where to draw the line, but there should be a line.

I don’t know why you have it out for rural people so much.

They may be less educated and smart about the kinds of things academia considers important, but they can hunt, fish, farm, build a shelter, and when our economy completely collapses, they won’t be as disturbed by it.

Rural people are survivors, they know how to take care of themselves, their families and communities, their concerns are very real.

Civilizations come and go, rise and fall, they have a beginning and an endpoint, but the ways of the farmer, fisher and herdsman are timeless.

You’re right. It should be intellitards. That has a ring to it :smiley:

Good points.

Yes scientism is a more accurate way of conveying the problem without making scientist out to be retarded.

That’s the same argument I used against mom when she wouldn’t let me go outside in the cold for fear I might get sick lol. Later in life I discovered there are things we can do to predispose us to succumbing to infections. I remember my first sinus infection. I thought I had a abscessed tooth, so I went to the dentist and he said my teeth were fine and perhaps I had a sinus infection. I never had one, so how would I know? But what happened was I was riding an atv in the cold which caused condensation in my sinuses which allowed bacteria to grow and tada. So yeah, I guess cold can cause “colds”. Also, cold dry air may damage tissue to allow easier infection. There has been a few times that I’ve eaten onions only to have a sore throat the next day (onions make sulfuric acid).

The guy is where I was at 10.

To have a theory you need correlation and a mechanism to explain it. That’s essentially science to me.

Precisely why Noam Chomsky (regarded by some as our greatest living intellectual) believes the climate change narrative: it’s not his field and he’s simply going on the word of other academics. If you can’t trust your colleagues, who can you trust?

I see what you’re saying. Someone who is not in the box is better equipped to think outside of it, but the republicans have gone entirely too far with it.

My hillbilly friend has cured Parvo twice with gatorade and pepto-bismol. Sure, a country boy can survive, but he doesn’t know shit about economics.

I had a good friend in New York City
He never called me by my name, just Hillbilly
My grandpa taught me how to live off the land
And his taught him to be a businessman

He used to send me pictures of the Broadway nights
And I’d send him some homemade wine
But he was killed by a man with a switchblade knife
For forty-three dollars my friend lost his life

I’d love to spit some Beech-Nut in that dude’s eyes
And shoot him with my old forty-five
'Cause a country boy can survive

genius.com/Hank-williams-jr-a-c … ive-lyrics

Skinning bucks, running trotlines, growing tomatoes, making wine, having dogs and guns does not qualify one to make economic decisions and it’s that arrogance that pisses me off. And songs like that further the idea that there is pride in being a bumpkin. Not everything is “common sense”.

Because without gov regulation we get corporate regulation. Either the gov says this is how things should be or profit determines how things should be. Capitalism = capitalizing off society.

Categorizing a group of people who have excelled academically as inherently missing something is essentially saying smart people are stupid; that they are stupid specifically because they are smart.

Andrea Ghez, Wendy Freeman, Sara Seager, Laura Danly, Kim Weaver, Michelle Thaller, Amy Mainzer and that’s just the ones on discovery channel videos. There’s another all covered in tattoos and i can’t remember her name.

That’s the worst kind. Our genders are confused and we still don’t get welfare.

Conspiracy theories often result from cognitive biases and that’s the antithesis of intelligence I think.

How could they be without being educated about what is happening?

Right, educated people are probably better at defending bad ideas. scottberkun.com/essays/40-why-sm … bad-ideas/

Funny, you were reading my mind lol

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cQNkIrg-Tk[/youtube]

That doesn’t qualify one as an economist.