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Post 30 Dec 2010, 3:46 am

This is a rejoinder to the "different brains" post.

Many conservative americans believe that Obama is Hitler, Stalin, and a Kenyan anti-colonialist. And they believe all of that at the same time... 24% of Republicans also think Obama may be the Antichrist. (<a href="http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/tabid/447/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/mid/1508/ArticleId/223/Default.aspx">Harris Interactive</a>)

39% of the Americans can not name any of the freedoms in the First Amendment... :shock:
19% agreed that the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees :shock: :shock: :shock:
39% say the press has too much freedo (not surprising as only 16% know that the first amendment guarantees the freedom of press).
31% believe musicians should be forbidden to sing songs with lyrics other may find offensive. (Freedom of speech anyone?)
(<a href="http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org//about.aspx?item=state_first_amendment_2009_link&SearchString=state_of>State of the First Amendment 2009</a>)

42% of the Americans believe there is people being possessed by the devil, 41% in esp, 37% that houses can be haunted, 25% believe in astrology and so on. (<a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/16915/three-four-americans-believe-paranormal.aspx">Gallup</a>)

40% of the Americans believe dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time.
20% think the Sun revolves around the Earth.
(<a href="http://www.calacademy.org">California Academy of Sciences</a> and <a href="http://www.cmb.northwestern.edu/faculty/jon_miller.htm">Jon D Millers</a> research)

About 50% of the Americans believe aliens have abducted humans (<a href="http://articles.cnn.com/1997-06-15/us/9706_15_ufo.poll_1_ufo-aliens-crash-site?_s=PM:US">CNN</a>).

Wingnuts anyone?

"Right-wing nut": "An outspoken, irrational person with deeply-held, nominally conservative, political views. A person who chooses on principle to be flagrantly ignorant. A person holding political views that the user of the word finds to be extreme, most often extremely conservative. Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Fred Phelps are examples of the wingnut element in modern America.
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Post 30 Dec 2010, 3:47 am

URL parsing.... ???
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Post 30 Dec 2010, 5:32 am

BBCodes are set to off. HTML is probably also disabled (I thought it usually was on php BB sites to avoid hacking). Hopefully Chad will lift the bar once he's happy with Beta.
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Post 30 Dec 2010, 12:32 pm

Machmstr: your first data are from an interactive poll, not a regular one with a controlled sample. As a result, Harris says, at the very page to which you (tried to) link: "no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated." [Yes... let's please get BBCode!]

You interpret your second source as reporting that "31% believe musicians should be forbidden to sing songs with lyrics other may find offensive." But the question upon which you base this is worded as follows: "[agree or disagree:] Musicians should be allowed to sing songs with lyrics that others might find offensive." 9% mildly disagreed, 22% strongly disagreed. It does not necessarily follow that 31% think they should be "forbidden" to sing the songs.

None of the links you provide for your dinosaurs/humans/sun-revolving data allow me to investigate the source. On the ET data, the linked story provides no link to the actual survey.

Mind you, I wouldn't argue with a general conclusion that many Americans hold absurd beliefs, or even with a general observation that to some degree there's an unusual nexus of the ignorant/silly among the religious right (especially non-urban folk who watch a lot of TV?). You may have noticed me raising very similar points myself. But when making or implying such a strong criticism it's important to be very careful with sources. Also, when a post like yours is critical (it seems to me) of Americans in particular, it would be nice to have a bit more info about stupid beliefs held in other parts of the world. Are Americans especially idiotic? Or are humans idiotic in general?

But I guess your real point is not about Americans in general but rather about Republicans. You first list some absurd beliefs about Obama (mostly held by Republicans), then some evidence of ignorance about constitutional rights, then paranormal beliefs, then unscientific ones, and finally something about aliens - and jump from there to a discourse on wingnuts. But you've not really demonstrated much of a correlation between "person[s] with deeply-held, nominally conservative, political views" and unrelated silly beliefs. You open your post by referencing the thread that comments on a study that found some physical differences between the brains of BRITISH Tory voters versus BRITISH Labour voters. Are you suggesting that American "wingnuts" are somehow constructed differently than average Americans? Or than registered Democrats? And not just constructed differently - that they're defective? Are they conservative because they're stupid? Or is it that whatever makes them stupid also makes them conservative? You're not at all clear about any of this. Thus, your post amounts to very little more than a gratuitous insult. That doesn't speak well for the mental superiority of the insulter.

Your Gallup poll is part of their "Religion and Social Trends" series, which are available at...
http://www.gallup.com/tag/Religion%2ban ... rends.aspx

I note with satisfaction that, according to the first survey listed, religiosity and religious influence in the USA seems to be declining, and from the fourth listed survey, that belief in strict creationism also seems to be declining. The creationism survey provides some breakdown versus political party affiliation. I consider creationism to be a much more serious and dangerous false belief than belief in UFOs or that Obama is a socialist, so I'm particularly interested in this data. There's a significant difference in belief in creationism versus party but it's not quite as significant as many would suspect. Gallup provides three alternatives: strict young-earth creationism, strict Darwinism, and a sort of hybrid. Actual wording they used:
• God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.
• Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process. ("no part" is underlined)
• Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process.
The strict creationism belief is held by 52% of Republicans but also by 34% of Democrats and 34% of independents. The God-guided evolution belief is held by slightly more Dems and Inds than Reps. Those who accept Darwin's version are indeed rare in the GOP, but hardly a majority elsewhere: 8% of Republicans, 20% of Democrats and 21% of independents.

So, 54% of DEMOCRATS reject Darwin. Do we conclude from this anything about defective brains? I think not.

For the record: I think individual psychological makeup ("psyche") influences political leanings, but so do many other things. It's going to be difficult to figure out the cause-effect matrix of, among other factors: poverty, parental beliefs, education, parental education, source of parental income, rural/urban, other geography, age, and church attendance. Excessively simplistic formulations, which I interpret Machmstr's post to be, obscure more than they illuminate.
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Post 31 Dec 2010, 10:29 am

It's intended as a provocation of course, but also as an intriguing expose of odd facts. Especially from a european perspective. That the other post was about the British does not have any relevance bar that european connection... ;)
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Post 31 Dec 2010, 10:43 am

Minister X

Quote: Mind you, I wouldn't argue with a general conclusion that many Americans hold absurd beliefs, or even with a general observation that to some degree there's an unusual nexus of the ignorant/silly among the religious right (especially non-urban folk who watch a lot of TV?). You may have noticed me raising very similar points myself. But when making or implying such a strong criticism it's important to be very careful with sources. Also, when a post like yours is critical (it seems to me) of Americans in particular, it would be nice to have a bit more info about stupid beliefs held in other parts of the world. Are Americans especially idiotic? Or are humans idiotic in general?


Charles F Pierce has written an interesting book that examines this…”Idiot America” and he ascribes the unique nature of the way new freedoms were won, constitutionalized and practiced in the US for part of this…He calls it the tolerance of the crank, a great American tradition. However he ascribes the growth of the general acceptance of cranks in the mainstream to the original acceptance of religious freedom and tolerance of religion and to popular media's profit motive .

His three great premises are: “Any theory is valid if it sells books soaks up ratings or otherwise moves units. “ That really started back with Ignatiuus Donnelly who wrote the pseudo scientific theories of Atlantis in 1882 to great acclaim and profit. Based on nothing more than two lines found in Plato’s dialogues and a lot of speculative musing… You see it today everywhere from Jenny McCarthy's uninformed rants on vaccines to the battle against the mythical NAFTA superhighway conducted by Lou Dodds….

The Second Great premise: “Anything can be true if you say it loudly enough”. And if it finds its way onto the Internet....lasts forever. With suppossed authority. And, for example, don't we see that on this board with the repeated postings of decades old frauds denying the science of climate change. Nothing new, old, oft repeated pseudoscientific musings that can't sustain critical analysis. But somehow rise up every couple of years, phoenix like, and need to be repudiated again as if they were fresh information....

The Third Great premise “ Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.”

To illustrate this he points to the history of the commissioning of the memorial to the passengers on flight 93. Despite the actual history of the memorial design, it was commissioned by a committee of victims families and chosen from dozens of submissions a fellow named Rawls published a book , Crescent of Betrayal” that claimed the memorial was a Muslim tribute to the 4 hijackers who died. Which means that the National Park Service has to, working in concert with an architect and the families of the 40 murdered people developed a memorial that honored the murderers.

Absurd, and yet it was picked up by Michelle Malkin, Tom Tencredo, and others so fervently that the commission reconvened to slightly alter the design – despite the fact that they personally knew the book and its “beliefs” were poppycock. SIcne they had been the original commissioners.

Somehow, the respect for the effort required to develop and promulgate nonsense somehow bleeds into a respect that validates the nonsense. The same way that respect for another's religious tolerance bleeds into respect for the pseudo scientific poppycock of Intelligent Design. Where a President actually stood up to say that intelligent design should be taught alongside the theory of evolution in the nations science classrooms. “Both sides ought to be properly taught so people can understand what the debate is about”. George Bush

Except of course, that there is no debate about evolution within the scientific community. Pierce says “The very notion of a debate is a measure of how scientific discourse and the way the country educates itself have slipped through lassitude and inattention ….

He quotes a 2005 newspaper account in the New York Times on this “debate”. “They have mounted a politically savvy challenge to evolution as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic movement onto the front pages and putting Darwins defenders firmly on the defensive."

“Politically savvy challenge to evolution” makes as much sense as taking a Gallup poll on gravity or running someone for President on the Alchemy ticket. And there it was, an actual lead sentence on the front page of the New York Times.. "Pierce

So Minister, if Pierce is right, this tolerance for ignorance does seem to be more prevalent in the US. Though I stand to be corrected by our European posters if they oppose Pierce's with enough evidence.
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Post 31 Dec 2010, 10:49 am

How come the word p o p p y c o c k
comes out
*$?@!!
?
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Post 31 Dec 2010, 11:01 am

Veeery different....

O’DONNELL: … these groups admitted that the report that said, “Hey, yay, we cloned a monkey. Now we’re using this to start cloning humans.” We have to keep…

O’REILLY: Let them admit anything they want. But they won’t do that here in the United States unless all craziness is going on.

O’DONNELL: They are — they are doing that here in the United States. American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains. So they’re already into this experiment.

O’Reilly show, Friday, November 16, 2007. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,311946,00.html
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Post 31 Dec 2010, 1:59 pm

I cant seem to get the ilnk to work, is this a poll of Conservatives ONLY? Yes the part about Obama was but was the rest from a pool of Conservatives only or from all Americans? The post attempts to paint Conservatives as "wingnuts" yet fails )miserably) to prove they are any different than Liberals. If the data is from all Americans it shows nothing, if it is, then we need to compare it to what Liberals think (maybe they are the same, maybe they are worse)
\And the part about Obama.... that made me laugh almost out loud. Liberals were oh so rational when talking about W?
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Post 31 Dec 2010, 5:21 pm

First: before placing too much stock in author Pierce or his theories, you might want to visit his Amazon author page, see what else he's written, and read the bio there.
http://www.amazon.com/Charles-P.-Pierce ... r_dp_pel_1
Maybe the guy's a genius, but he has no credentials in history, sociology, political science, psychology, social psychology, or any other relevant field. Basically, he's sounding off. He'd fit right in here! (But hey... maybe he's right.)
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Post 01 Jan 2011, 10:41 am

I think one would have to look at the bibliography and notes section of the book to determine the level of impact it should have. If the bibliography and notes section show a healthy reliance on scholarly works, then it should be considered influential. However, if it doesn't, then it should be ignored as biased crap up there along with "Lies and the lying liars who tell them."

However, I looked the author up on Wikipedia and it reported a great quote of his in regards to the possibility of Scott Brown winning the Mass. Senate election.

"Well, we're almost here, aren't we? The end of a long, arduous, four-month campaign for a Senate seat that you have approximately the same chance of filling as you did the pilot's chair of the Starship Enterprise" and "The notion that Massachusetts would elect a Republican to fill the seat left vacant by Edward Kennedy was the property of people who buy interesting mushrooms in interesting places. You might as well expect the House of Windsor to be succeeded on the British throne by the Kardashian sisters."
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Post 01 Jan 2011, 11:24 am

Rickyp> How come the word p o p p y c o c k

Umm, what would the last four letters be on their own? I think that would explain it. Good job we don't often discuss male poultry.
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Post 01 Jan 2011, 11:55 am

minister
First: before placing too much stock in author Pierce or his theories, you might want to visit his Amazon author page, see what else he's written, and read the bio there.
http://www.amazon.com/Charles-P.-Pierce ... r_dp_pel_1
Maybe the guy's a genius, but he has no credentials in history, sociology, political science, psychology, social psychology, or any other relevant field. Basically, he's sounding off. He'd fit right in here! (But hey... maybe he's right.)

I'd read his bio. And I don't pretend he's an authority. I don't know what kind of back ground or education one would have to have to be a recognized authority on irrationality...
But before you condemn his observations ask yourself if his three Great Premises seem to explain how once irrational ideas were constrained from popular acceptance by the effort required to advance them through limited means? (Medicine Shows and traveling tub thumping)
Perhaps the greatest advance for the irrational mind was the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the complete domination of the AM radio waves by Right Wing Talk Radio. And later Fox News copying that strategy on cable. . The Three Great Premises are right in line with the modus operandi there aren't they?
Pierce also makes a point about "taking up sides" as a peculiarly American phenomenon. And I've noticed that a neutral examination of an issue and expose of the facts is indeed rare in American media. I really appreciate the CNN show on Sundays with Fareed Zakkaria because of his appeal to "expertise" when discussing an issue. Usually on Talk Radio its one side blathering...On cable news its often one side only or at best two sides hammering away at each other rather than examining the issue. Pierce quotes a Gallop Poll that found that 22 million Americans got their news solely from Talk radio... And Fox News is an exclusive source for an equal amount...
Now I haven't checked those numbers, though they seem in the range I've read in polls elsewhere, but X if there is a correlation between the holding of erroneous information and listening or watching these sources as sole news - then isn't there something to the Three great Premises of Pierce?

Indeed, you are right, if I appealed to Pierce as an authority, I'd be giving into the idea (Which he eschews) that anyone who writes a book, or talks on the radio is an authority. Is Hannity an economist? And yet his opinions seem to matter. (Hannity flunked out of NYU...) Sarah Palin achieved prominence with scant education and limited experience and yet her opinions on everything are valued....
Pierce writes well. He lays out his ideas in an entertaining fashion and supports them with evidence from authoritative sources. But he isn't an authority. Nor does he claim to be one. On the other hand, as you admit, he may have genuine insight.
I think he does. But then I'm only exposed to Talk Radio or Fox News when traveling in the States...(Well, we have one right wing talk radio station in Toronto that I listen to occasionally. Same modus operandi with them but they are strugglers in the ratings game.)
I suspect that the history of media development in the US, the American predisposition to "take sides" on everything and the tolerance of any idea (which is usually a good thing) have all developed uniquely in America. I do know that with a multi party system of politics in Canada, political debates tend to range through numerous shades of grey but in the US its almost always one side or t'other...
Tell me, Ginger or MaryAnn?
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Post 01 Jan 2011, 1:22 pm

Oh boy, here we go again, AM radio and Fox news = Bad. All else = Good. Ricky, why do you refuse to admit CNN, ABC, CBS, etc (lets not get into MSNBC) lean left? ONLY those who are right are bad???
And the fairness doctrine sounded fair only, the whole idea was to tilt all news to the left and attempt to homogenize news, it was anything but fair and anything but free speech.

Also conveniently ignored was how the author paints conservatives as irrational but without any sort of liberal similar study, it means absolutely NOTHING. It was clear at the start regarding how many Conservatives think of Obama as some sort of anti-Christ, yes those people are nuts. But what about those liberals who claimed GWB was the anti-Christ? To be honest, it sure did seem to me that was far more often mentioned. I asked about this earlier and it was ignored, it was far more easy to simplay accept those who embrace your views than to examine or even question the validity of the claims! I have some news for you, I agree there are many, MANY Conservative nuts. But please do not stop reading and embrace only what you like, the Liberals have just as many if not many moire nuts on their side as well!
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Post 01 Jan 2011, 1:37 pm

Tom> But please do not stop reading and embrace only what you like, the Liberals have just as many if not many moire nuts on their side as well!

Yay! Got 50 points in Tombingo, with an example of "both sides are as bad as each other, but Libruls are probably worse".

Plus 10 points for each unnecessarily capitalised word. Good start to the year!