US Politics Thread 2016-2020

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Catfish

This is what's most frightening.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/b...d-5-key-traits

No what is really frightening is that "rabid anti-trumpers" (tm) are such a predictable troupe of bigoted lemmings.

[Aktungbby]

^ SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION??!!

[mapuc]

Originally Posted by Catfish

This is what's most frightening.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/b...d-5-key-traits

It made me real sad when reading the article.

That people who support or like Trump should suffer from some psychological issue.

What if it's the other around, those who dislike Trump have some psychological problems.

But hey I'm not a psychiatrist.

It just makes me really sad that a person must have some
psycho-problem(s) when this person put his or her vote on a not-so-popular-politician

And this sentence
"Given their extreme devotion and unwavering admiration for their highly unpredictable and often inflammatory leader"

So far I have seen those type of people in every parti here in Denmark and Sweden-extreme devoted to their parti and the leader

This is my point-of-view.

Markus

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Catfish

This is what's most frightening.

I think it is pretty funny. Is it meant to be a joke? Mr. Azarian wears his political predjudices quite plainly as per this quote from an article just prior to the 2016 election. Emphasis mine.

So what can we do to potentially change the minds of Trump loyalists before voting day in November? As a cognitive neuroscientist, it grieves me to say that there may be nothing we can do. The overwhelming majority of these people may be beyond reach, at least in the short term. The best we can do is to motivate everyone else to get out to the booths and check the box that doesn’t belong to a narcissistic nationalist who has the potential to damage the nation beyond repair.

What arrogance. There is a phrase for this condition. It's called the “tyranny of the experts”. It fits Mr. Azarian and many others perfectly. They are by their own opinion smarter than the people who don't vote the way they think they should. Their solution I would venture is that if everyone went to a Progressive/Liberal university and was properly indoctrinated they would then know how to vote properly.

From the linked article...

Authoritarianism refers to the advocacy or enforcement of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom, and is commonly associated with a lack of concern for the opinions or needs of others.

The fact is that no other group of people in America looks more favorably at authoritarianism than the progressive/left/Democrats, especially the younger ones. They would gladly give up their rights to an authoritarian Big Brother if it would make their socialist dreams come true. These people have an adverse view of things like free speech and their constant application of identity politics feeds the authoritarian beast.

Then there is this bit of comedy...

Relative deprivation refers to the experience of being deprived of something to which one believes they are entitled.

This describes the present state of many people on the Left from Hillary Clinton on down. They deserve to be in power and if they are not they were cheated out of it and there is something wrong with the people who are in power.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by u crank

I think it is pretty funny. Is it meant to be a joke? [...]

Seems at least one saw the Smilie.

But: I would not call this 'arrogance of the experts' though. The right wing knows exactly why it refuses science on a broader scale. But what are facts in our times.

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Catfish

But: I would not call this 'arrogance of the experts' though. The right wing knows exactly why it refuses science on a broader scale. But what are facts in our times.

So you agree with Mr. Azarian, the cognitive neuroscientist. His assumption that Trump voters are 'beyond reach' sounds like an expert giving his opinion. And it is an arrogant opinion. I don't know what else you would call it.

As for the Right refusing science on a broad scale people on the left can be very selective when it comes to science over doctrine as well. A denial of the very basic XX and XY chromosomes in saying a man can and is a woman if he chooses to be one comes to mind. And the hell with science.

[Dowly]

For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon - We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!

(https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...51097955102720)

[eddie]

Originally Posted by Dowly

(https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...51097955102720)

LOL Especially when just a few years ago he told NASA to go back to the moon first, Mars later!! Just a friggin idiot!

[em2nought]

Originally Posted by eddie

Just a friggin idiot!

If he's an idiot then the only explanation for his success is that God must be on his side.

[JU_88]

Originally Posted by Catfish

Seems at least one saw the Smilie.

But: I would not call this 'arrogance of the experts' though. The right wing knows exactly why it refuses science on a broader scale. But what are facts in our times.

The right wing likes to deny science when it comes to global warming.
The left wing likes to deny science when it comes human biology.
Personally I think they both want to drive us to extinction

[Skybird]

I do not so much see the denial of science, but its propagandistic abuse. A huge dose of fanatism is the motivation for that. Methodology gets corrupted and exploited. Results of scientific research must be chosen from a preset pool of allowed outcomes. Reality has to obey ideology. Objection to this abuse gets sanctioned, and socially banned. This way, fanatism feeds itself. Science, once the remedy to religious fanatism, this way gets turned itself into a tool for practiucing fanatism.



In the end, those using it for thes epiurpose, al claim they want to save the world. But what they always are about is: they want that all others must follow their commands and must be like their fanatical preachers are. We all must be a uniform big happy family. Opinion incest included.



Where consensus becomes a civil duty, discussion, debate, diversity become a crime. Always all and evertyhign dopen and decided by consensus is like sheets a soft, warm waxed silk-paper gently put in layers onto the face of a delinquent, until he suffocates. Germany is a wonderful example for that.



The only hope is the delinquent fights with all his power and manages to free himself. Formerly known as a peaceful, reasonable kind guy, he then may now be so angry that he goes on a killing frenzy against his perpetrators. Of course he then gets called ill-tempered and uncivilised. Isn't consensus good stuff? Don't you want to be a civilized kind guy...?



I see the whole academic factory in big, big troubles. Its corrupted from the bottom to the top, me thinks. Free research is not so much in retreat, but in panical stampede. Many of those few still resisting, get literally crucified, socially silenced, economically killed, job-wise fired.

[Catfish]

somehow true, somehow not.
Politically abused to serve one's agenda in international politics and among politicians and dictators to justify and cement their grab to power? Always.

But let me ask you..this is what i thought some time ago:
You are young, and have learned a lot at school. Then maybe you go to a university, to learn more. And you begin to apprehend what it is all about, at least a faint glimpse on what this world is running on, from phsyical laws to resources to "politics".
It was my firm belief that no one studying natural science and who got this glimpse can ever be on the politically "far right" without completely compromising what he learned. With a few exceptions of course.

Then a lot happened. People using computers and mobile phones and technical stuff of all kind, while actively denying the technology behind it. From arabian terrorists shunning and hating the new enlightend times and trying to bring it down with the very devices their declared 'enemy' invented and developed. And now the inventors do it themselves. No to vaccination. No to evolution. No to women driving cars. No to international development. Back to national isolated states. Back to tribes.
It is as if no one ever has learned something.

[Skybird]

The corruption of science gets driven from many sides and directions. Commercial interests. Political intersts. Ideological interests. Religious interests. Special interest groupd interestsd. And, last but not least: the inner dynmaic of the process itself. My prime example for that is String Theory - a theory of whcih not few say that it is not even a theory in a scientific defintion, since it lacks certain decisive key criterions for a theory actually being a theory. Individsual craeer interests, peer group pressure, the need for securign finaical donations, the lost-investments dilemma in case one abadons it, the prressure to get poublished if you want to keep your opffice at university, , and many more factors come into play here. The result is that a wild specualtion, that string theory in my understandin actually is, gets constantly speculated on differently, gets constantly blown up, rewritten, compelmented, added to, for exmaple an inflation of dimensions it postulates - withouth any basis for all this action that goes beyoind mere speuclation and trying to keep this speculation free of neqwly emerged inner contrsadictions. It is not being checked by experiment, because it cannot be checked by experiment - it is a theorewticla fdanatsy onlky so far. Nevertheless it consumes an ammount of research budgets and gets credit and apllaus to a degree and by itself serves as thge fundaemnt for further spöeculations build on its basis, that it all borders the hilarious. Ctitical physicists not agreeing weith this canon, have a very difficult stand, and tend to be ignoired by their colleagues with the latter forming their career and exiostence on the grounds of treating the string theory asan actually methodoligically correctly identified "theory". But it isn't. It borders esoteric, I once heard one British physicist saying on TV. - The corrupt nature of the academic way of dealing with string theory due to corrupted motives, breeds the ongoing corruption of science itself - and its branches that have contact with string "theory".



So personal economic interests (fame, prestige, money, economic existence) are a driving factor for the corruption of science as well.


Science is under fire from all directions. At the same time our failings in so many other areas direct expectations at it to "provide solutions" - with thes esoltuioions then beign demanded to be in conformity with ones own convictions and worldviews that one already had set up before one approached science. Open-end review of thigns is not possible, a pre-arranged set of allowed views that science shall proviode, already has been selected in advance. Thats why I have become so critical of climate consensus science. Its not so much an attempt to deny certain tings, but the ideologically dicated solutions that science is demanded to fabricate, no matter how, so that they are in line with what is politically and ideologically en vogue currently. Necessarily, the soltiuioons for takclig climate issues this way become coprrupted as well, misled, ineffective, basing on false assumptions, getting locked down in hairpslitting irrelevancies that willd o little while other , more monumental concerns get even completely ignored. Nevertheless the solution to how the planet must be saved, gets dictated with utter conviction. Thats why I have nothing by laughter for "Friday for Future" - people maybe shouod spend some time with researchign the biographic background of both Greta Thunberg, and the WWF püeople that manage her form the background. Her story is deeply saddening, and tragic, but that does not mean that I do not diagnose her to be a case for psychiatric treatment - although she found this her crusade as a solution for herself to get herself engaged on something that pulled her out of her deep psychological troubles and troublesome family background (both the father and mother have psychological issues as well, even suicidal - crisisses. Heck, what's the plural of crisis? ). The nature of the managers in the background however must be seen critically and are imo shady at best. I already flattened my ears when the WWF was mentioned before the latest scandal published some weeks ago. A very dubious business organisation, with apparently a very strong selfish economic agenda. They did the child crusade thing before already, Thunberg is not the first one.

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by Catfish

It was my firm belief that no one studying natural science and who got this glimpse can ever be on the politically "far right" without completely compromising what he learned. With a few exceptions of course.

This 'belief' of yours, is it based on any kind of scientific statistical method? If not, I would suggest it may be a symptom of infection by modern politics. Don't you think its just a tad bit on the fascist side to accuse someone of having a politically undesirable bent because they dont ascribe themselves to your scientific method or beliefs? Maybe we should start rounding them up huh? Of course we'll be sure to keep those few exceptions out of the solution.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

This 'belief' of yours, is it based on any kind of scientific statistical method? If not, I would suggest it may be a symptom of infection by modern politics. Don't you think its just a tad bit on the fascist side to accuse someone of having a politically undesirable bent because they dont ascribe themselves to your scientific method or beliefs? Maybe we should start rounding them up huh? Of course we'll be sure to keep those few exceptions out of the solution.

Scientific methods.. so you think the outcome of experiments is different depending on the prober having a "left" or "right" agenda?
What you describe is not "science".

What you describe has indeed infected universities in Europe, but mostly this is based on lobbyism from interfering companies, especially in the medical sector. Write your dissertation on a product of ours, and we pay but would prefer a certain outcome. Significant statistics not needed. This foremost serves capitalistic ideas, meaning it is rather "non-left" lol

Experiments and results are what they are. What people make of it is a different question.
When certain people discover a rare species of hamsters in a to-be-built airport area they can either try to block the construction to save the animals, or they can say there are enough others, or profit is more important. You decide which is the more "scientific" method.