chadn737

The genetic differences in humans is small enough to rule out much influence on cultural evolution or moral traits as I think the OP was suggesting.

I don't think you can make that claim by simply glancing at the amount of human variation.

All right, but some characteristics belong to people with the same religion or nationality. I understand the mixtures in the past, but then you better study those that didn't mix that much, f.i. Arabs. In all arab countries people understand oher Arab dialects, and they also marry orhers from the same muslim religion, so you better study them than Chinese, perhaps, because of less variety and mixture. I just like to know if some genes (on/off) are found in people with the same morals, or maybe no links at all are found yet.

Those are cultural, not genetic factors. If you look at many of these populations at a genetic level, you would find that they do not segregate the way you would expect

Population specific/enriched gene expression differences would be very subject to environmental differences and inherently noisy/unreliable.

There are allelic differences between populations, some with functional consequences. However we need to be careful not to confuse "nationality" with a "population". A nation like China is highly diverse with many different populations, some quite different from each other. Populations like those in Tibet or in the Northwestern parts of China are going to collectively look different than those on the Eastern regions. Even a more ethnically homogenous region/nation like Denmark will be complicated by various migration/intermarrying events.

Humans are very mobile creatures and populations have mixed continuously throughout history. The result being that there are very few clear/hard distinctions. Human populations existing rather on a continuous gradient with varying amounts of admixture, making any attempt to draw clear distinctions impossible.

 

Life exists. Even if the probability of it were low, it doesn't matter. You can't argue that something didn't happen owing to low probability if it actually did happen.

But it does matter. The creationist argument is in principle logically valid. "Probability of life occurring by chance processes is so extremely low that it is far more likely that it occurred by some other means". Now I would argue that the calculations themselves are flawed (and premised on assumptions regarding the unknown) and thus the argument's conclusions are wrong, but the argument itself is solid. We use such probabilistic arguments all the time in science and daily life. Probability of X is low, therefore there must be a more likely cause.

Saying "life exists, therefore its irrelevant" begs the question, creates a strawman, and is therefore a fallacious response to the creationist's argument on two fronts. It also sets up a premise that is dangerous in science, it sets up a premise that we should stop asking valid questions about the origins of life since we "know life exists". If we are going to disagree with an argument or position, then we must disagree on logical grounds, not respond with additional fallacies.

 

That's fine, because science doesn't actually claim this. The outcomes of chemistry are not random — the Miller-Urey experiment shows this.

 

Most of these calculations of life occurring by chance are horrendously flawed. If you applied the same reasoning to a bunch of oxygen and hydrogen atoms combining, you'd conclude that forming water was unlikely, and yet we know that the probability is 1.

No, science doesn't say this, but many do claim that this is "what science says". We need to be careful in our use of language here. Non-random is not the same as something having a low probability. One could speak of a set of chemical reactions having a non-random outcome. After all, chemistry would be a rather useless field if the outcomes were truly random....but that isn't really the whole argument is it? While a set of conditions may have non-random outcomes, the chance of those conditions occurring could be extremely low and may themselves be subject to chance.

Water is a rather poor example, as hydrogen and oxygen readily react with each other to produce water, hydrogen is the most abundant element and oxygen is a byproduct of nucleosynthesis of stars. Water forms during star formation, with some of the most abundant sources of water...many times that of Earth...being found in dust/gas clouds. One would conclude that the probability is actually quite likely.

 

No, that wasn't my point.

 

It's already been pointed out that the probabilities are moot, given that life exists. I was pointing out that the probability calculations are grossly wrong.

How are the probabilities moot? The probabilities are themselves clue to how life originated or how likely we are to find other life. The probabilities are informative and I do not think you will ever be able to fully understand the origins of life if you ignore the probabilities involved.

The probabilities "are moot" not because life exists, but because they are premised on a set of faulty generalizations that ignore exceptions and alternatives.

And I don't like responses taken out of context. I was responding to this:

So it was not meant as a serious argument? Because I have seen this EXACT argument used many times against creationist claims.

The argument basically boils down to "if we assume that it is impossible for life to arise by chance, then life cannot have arisen by chance."

It is a perfectly valid to ask about the probability of life arising by chance occurrences. I for one am not convinced that it can. This does not make me a "creationist", but our lack of understanding of how life first arose also logically forces me not to assume that life arose by chance. Earlier I linked to a paper by England that would essentially say that the chances of life arising are not by "chance" at all, but a natural consequence of the 2nd law of thermodynamics and Life's ability to dissipate heat. My problem with the creationist's argument regarding probability is the same as my problem with atheists asserting that life is the result of chance processes. Both are argue from a point of ignorance, lacking any clear evidence for the assertion. The creationist argument argues based on a set of calculations premised on scientific data, but which ignore the exceptions. For instance, the fact that L and D amino acids are typically formed in equal proportion does beg the question of how all life ended up with L amino acids. It ignores however that there are specific circumstances where there is biased production of a particular form, namely those formed in outer space and found on meteorites. On the other hand, all current abiogenesis hypotheses remain hypotheses, possessing a limited degree of evidence for each, and no clear consensus on a predominant theory. There are glaring mechanistic gaps and a lack of historical evidence. Hypotheses like the RNA-world have made progress in showing that nucleic acids can pull double duty, but it has not yet progressed much beyond the creation of a handful or Ribozymes. Saying these processes are necessarily "chance" makes the same fallacious error in assuming that there is no other alternative.

Are you alive? Probability of life in the Universe is 1.

PS Someone put this page up a while back; it may be of some help.

Index of Creationist Claims

Thanks a LOT! I think I might have something for him now

I don't like responses like this because they are inherently fallacious as it assumes a strawman. The creationist claim (which is inherently flawed itself) is not "what is the probability of life", but rather "what is the probability of life having arisen by random processes". These are two different claims. Fallacious/bad arguments should not be responded to with more fallacious argumentation, that just perpetuates the cycle of fallacies.

"There aren't enough atoms in the universe for life to arise by chance according to science."

is just plain wrong.

According to science, it did.

According to science, we don't really know much about the conditions or circumstances that led to life. There are those who argue that it is not a matter of chance at all, but rather life is "guaranteed" to arise. For instance, Jeremy England at MIT argues that origin of life and Darwinian Evolution arise because of their ability to dissipate energy. http://www.englandlab.com/uploads/7/8/0/3/7803054/2013jcpsrep.pdf

You, experienced in biogenesis or biochemistry!:

 

I have this one guy whom opened a conversation (text) like this:

 

"There aren't enough atoms in the universe for life to arise by chance according to science."

 

As a student in his last year in finnish "lukio", I pretty well knew that this wasn't true so I managed to write an answer:

 

"Hey dude you got this one wrong. Life is possible to form "accidentally": There are about 3.0 x 10^23 stars in the observable universe, a big portion of them have planetary systems orbiting them. Lets say about 1/100 of them. Now we have 3 x 10^21 planetary systems out there. It's a fucking big number. Now out of all those planetary systems there are millions of billions planets like ours with a molten spinning core forming a magnetic field and some of those planets have water and some don't. Its actually proven that life doesn't need water or oxygen to form, it can substitute even carbon with silicon. Thus the possibility of planets CAPABLE of forming life increases.

The calculated possibility of the simplest known "life", a self replicating peptide only 32 amino acids long, forming randomly on earth is about 1 in 10^40. I know, it's really big number considering the fact that the known universe should have about 10^80 atoms in it BUT the possibility of life forming and evolving randomly is still possible.

Now to give that a boosting factor: the approx. amount of water in the oceans is about 10^24 litres.

The concentration of amino acids in the prebiotic oceans was about 10^-6M which is dilute, yes. BUT still 10^31 self-replicating peptides would form in under a year, because of these billions of chemical reactions happening simultaneously.

 

The atoms are there, and the conditions for forming life are there. Not by some "intelligent creator" but by chance which our enormous universe has given.

 

Now think about that happening in billions of planets. Do you really believe it's really that impossible? Life in the universe isn't some miracle. It's "de rigueur"."

 

His response came in pretty quickly:

 

"COPIED AND PASTED answer from http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html LOL! (at this point I tought about leaving this unanswered, but I really wanted to bring all those memories from chemistry and biology classes back up)

Your copied and pasted answer doesn’t even bring up the FACT that you need functional amino acid sequences to make a functional peptide or a protein. They come in a ratio of about 1 in 10^77. Furthermore, they don’t even mention that amino acids come in two forms, they’re called optical isomers. D-amino acids are harmful to life, all life on Earth is composed of L-amino acids (left-handed). Also, unnatural non-proteinogenic amino acids won't form bonds. Natural amino acids come in a ratio of 1:3. So you have another obstacle to overcome. So, the probability to find that functional peptide would be 1/(1/2)^32=~4.3*10^10. To get the bonds right, 1/(1/3)^32=~1.86*10^15. So, 1/((10^77)*(4.3*10^10) * (1.86*10^15))=1.25*10^-103. or 1 in 8*10^102 which is IMPOSSIBLE. Following so far?, good because that is high school math for you.

 

"the concentration of amino acids in the prebiotic oceans was about 10^-6M which is dilute, yes. BUT still 10^31 self-replicating peptides would form in under a year”

 

LAUGHABLY WRONG. The website from where you got this nonsense might not be aware that the environment in the Early Earth was mainly composed of nitrogen and oxygen, which would have destroyed any organic material from forming. Try again

 

 

Peer-reviewed: Ratio of functional protein sequenceshttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15321723"

 

(I did not actually copy and paste my answer)

 

This is where I could not give an answer to him. The article he referred to was a bit sketchy considering his argument. My knoweledge about amino acids and biochemistry stops at basic bonding stuff and structural stuff so I'd like to expand my knoweledge on this matter.

 

Help?

We ultimately don't know what the probability of life arising by chance is. These calculations make a number of assumptions that can easily shown to not hold true under differing circumstances/conditions. He is asserting faulty calculations based on bad assumptions.

Hence the gratuitousness of the OP title.

 

 

 

 

Are there people who stand fiercely behind the assertion that "GMOs" (? all of them?) cause autism spectrum disorder? That's a rare type - that degree of amnesia is not the normal countercultural problem.

 

Or are you just lumping in people hostile to the currently promulgated GMOs and their modes of deployment

 

- natural food obsessives, organic anything belovers, agribusiness cynics, big business cynics, people who learn from history, people who can follow an argument and recognize bs when its being sprayed all over their neighborhood, counterculture folks, new age mystics, people who pay an extra twenty dollars to have a crystal sewed into the crotch of their pre-faded jeans, the well educated non-technocratic -

 

with somebody else you think is foolish, whom you actually have evidence is wrong?

 

It's called hippie-punching. That's its name, that little rhetorical twist you put in the OP. If you don't want to be thought of as the type who does that, don't do it.

The number of people who believe that GMOs or vaccines cause autism is surprisingly large and extremely vocal. The joke is very timely.

The rest of this is so far off-topic that its not worth addressing.

Nearly everything causes changes in gene expression.

I was just thrilled to see a nicely run proper article on environmental factors that heighten the risk of ASD - we have seen so much crap thrown at the press dressed up as research, reprinted ad nauseam, and leading to severe negative effects. And - I think this was iNow's point as well - we won't read about this in the press.

 

And for a group of conditions that we know have multiple causal factors an odds ratio of 1.67 isn't that bad. Cohen's rules of thumb are all very well - but major health initiatives have been launched on ORs that would be classified as small; I would be surprised (and delighted) if a medical paper can come up with a new idea for any common ailment that gets above 9. For the well researched areas the sorts of things that will get an OR above 9 have already been found or are awaiting that once in a generation spark of genius.

 

From this paragraph I am not sure you are completely au fait with ORs as used in medical papers. The OR is not a percentage chance - it is the ratio between

 

[latex]OddsRatio=\frac{Ill and At Risk / Healthy and At Risk}{Ill and Not at Risk / Healthy and Not At Risk}[/latex]

 

This ratio is 1.42. This is the odds that an outcome will occur given a particular exposure, compared to the odds of the outcome occurring in the absence of that exposure.

I didn't say that the OR was a "percentage chance". That paragraph doesn't even mention OR, rather that was a separate post that automatically got combined after with the following paragraph, which itself was a separate post. I first posted this paragraph before having read the paper and was giving an explanation of why effect size is important and not just "statistical significance". While the OR is not a "percentage chance"....it does give one a rough idea of the effect size.

As with iNows misleading hippie-punching in the OP title, a false presumption: I read this in my local paper, the New York Times, and a couple of lefty environmental newsletters, days ago. Here's a hippie website with it (you have to go to the archives, it's a few days old) http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org

Here's my local paper, more than a month ago, reprinting an earlier release of the "autism spectrum" (ADHD) correlation from the Washington Post on November 14th : http://m.startribune.com/nation/282353901.html The NYT of course had it in its science section, I can't remember if in a Sunday or Tuesday edition.

 

It appears to have worked its way down to you guys, which in my experience means the lefties and hippies have been reacting to it for a while. Maybe the reason you guys think this stuff isn't in the press is because it has been and gone from the front pages by the time you hear about it?

 

btw: sure it's a joke, but it's always the same twisted little joke, so: PAH correlation does not exonerate vaccines or GMOs - the vaccines have been largely but not completely exonerated, at least after the mercury was largely removed from the most worrisome ones; the two or three GMs in the common diet, in their various Os of significance, remain uninvestigated for that or any other long term hazard (if solid research is to be done, several other medical hazards of the currently significant dietary GMOs would be far more likely and urgent, anyway).

 

bbtw: One of the aspects of this latest correlation is that the first and most often mentioned mechanism to be investigated, a general increase in inflammation, is also indicated by the remaining hints of vaccine correlation.

 

bbbtw: Exposure to PAH in general, including fine particulates, long predates the current autism epidemic - so the issue isn't going to be as simple as "don't breathe dirty air". Which is hopeful, actually - maybe there's just one or two specific bad factors, newly introduced, we would have some hope of getting rid of.

Its not that PAH exonerates vaccines or GMOs....it doesn't need to because there is absolutely no correlation between vaccines or GMOs and ASD. Its not for lack of studies or attempts to make such correlations either. Its because there simply is none.

PAH at least has some mild association, although it is a mild one. Compare the Odds Ratio of parental age and Autism....its twice as much PAH and approaches or is in the range of effect size that Cohen would call "medium" effect. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18945690

One thing we do know, is that parents are waiting longer to have children and the average age of parents is increasing. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db21.htm

I was just thrilled to see a nicely run proper article on environmental factors that heighten the risk of ASD - we have seen so much crap thrown at the press dressed up as research, reprinted ad nauseam, and leading to severe negative effects. And - I think this was iNow's point as well - we won't read about this in the press.

 

And for a group of conditions that we know have multiple causal factors an odds ratio of 1.67 isn't that bad. Cohen's rules of thumb are all very well - but major health initiatives have been launched on ORs that would be classified as small; I would be surprised (and delighted) if a medical paper can come up with a new idea for any common ailment that gets above 9. For the well researched areas the sorts of things that will get an OR above 9 have already been found or are awaiting that once in a generation spark of genius.

 

I think we are grasping for straws in assuming environmental factors. Other factors have been correlated with ASD and have much stronger ORs....for example parental age has a far stronger effect than does PAH...

No I did not.

I said that, if you want a medical diagnosis then you need a doctor.

However, to judge if someone is sane or not, you just need to consider their behaviour.

You mean behavior like that which relies on subjective political opinion to judge the mental state of others rather than actual science of the mind, i.e psychiatric and psychological research....

What matters here is a medical diagnosis, not people's subjective view of those who disagree with them. So yes, we need a doctor, or at least we need to rely on actual psychiatric and psychological research to objectively makes such decisions. Its pointless debating this further with you as it is clear that you have let your political biases trump scientific objectivity.

 

I am not quite sure what you are getting at - I think a word might have been mangled in your post

 

"ASD was based on maternal report , which was validated against the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised in a subset."

 

"Therefore, both ADI-R and SRS scores support reliable ASD case ascertainment in our population."

 

Standard diagnostic tests were run on a subset which bore out the maternal questionaire

From 1996 to sometime in the 2000s the number of reported cases of autism grew from ~2 to ~6 per 1000. However, at that time it was not known if this increase was actually a factor of some environmental/biological cause driving a real increase in the incidence of ASD or if the incidence had always been that high and methods of diagnosing it had simply gotten better.

At the same time, there has been a lot of attempts to find actual environmental causes....some complete BS, as in the case of vaccines or GMOs being linked to it.

The other issue I have to ask is what is the effect size? They report a significant association, but statistical significance is merely a measure of your ability to reliably tell a difference. It doesn't tell you how large of a difference/effect there is. If pollution increases the risk of ASD by 1% then does it really matter? What about 5% vs 10% vs 50%...if the effect size is small, then these results will not really explain much in the way of why ASD has increased. That is the real question.

If you look at the reported Odds Ratios (OR)....all of these are rather small. As a general rule of thumb based on Cohen's 1988 work, an OR 0f ~1.5 is a "small" effect, an OR of ~3.5 is a "medium" effect, and an OR of ~9.0 is a "large" effect. All of the reported ORs in this study are on the order ~1.5....which means that reported association is only a small effect and can only explain a small fraction of ASD.

Is it still known whether or not there is an actual increase in ASD or if its primarily a difference in diagnosis?

The writer had some fun. And the title of this thread has a question mark at the end not an exclamation point. So I think you are missing some of the context here.

As for picking out a few key issues; how parties vote matters. If you look at the record number of filibusters against Obama and Congress doing nothing at a historic rate itis clear that the whole party in towing the line. They don't just cherry pick. They are united and push a specific agenda and the public that donates money and votes for them supports that specific agenda. Perhap some more out of ignorance than insanity.

I don't think I'm missing any context. A writer made a 10 point argument labeling half the nation as "insane" based on an absurd list of examples. That the list is perhaps meant as an inside joke with readers who have already drank the same koolaid as the writer is about the only relevant context....what other context am I missing?

You mean how the Democratic party has toed the line in previous administrations? This is nothing new and people forget that both parties have done this. Its also irrelevant to the mental state of conservatives.

The OP and subsequent studies are the point of conversation in this thread. So if one does not wish to continue discussing them why read and or post in this thread?

Here is an article from "Psychology Today" looking at 10 sign of mental illness within the Republican party.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-entertainment/201206/conservatism-mental-illness

This is not scientific evidence, its a continuation of the same sort of subjective and obvious biased argumentation used by John Cuthber and Overtone. In other words...pick out a few key issues held by somebody on the political right, call it insane, and then make a hasty generalization of the entire political right.

For instance....one of the "10 signs"...."General Oddness". The only thing in that category is "Ron Paul". They took a single politician our of the millions of conservatives, call him "Odd" and then call then use this to make a hasty generalization of the entire political right. That is so absurd in terms of fallacious reasoning and subjectivity as to be laughed out of these forums.

Or take #1 "Denial"....listed there is "denial that humans evolved". Only problem is that ~40% of liberals don't believe this and at least a 1/3rd of conservatives do. Its another hasty generalization. Based on this same issue I can say that the political left is also in denial since a huge chunk of them reject evolution as well.

Number #5 "anger"....Newt Gingrich's scowl is only example given. Do you honestly think this is blog post (it is nothing more than a blog post) constitutes serious scientific evidence after reading that? How about the fact that its directly contradicted by studies showing conservatives are consistently more happy than liberals? http://mic.com/articles/98480/psychologists-say-conservatives-are-happier-than-liberals

This entire list is subjective and meant more as entertainment than anything else. Posting it here as "scientific evidence" is an insult to reason.

And, once again (in the hope that you might listen this time).

No. I have labelled people who disagree with evidence insane.

That's not controversial and I have cited my reasons for asserting it.

You seem not to understand that I already presented the evidence.

The definition of delusional disorder falls within the field of psychiatry.

The relevant bit is here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusion

 

However, the diagnosis might not fall in that field.

 

Imagine I claim that there's gold in my garden.

The only way to tell if I'm delusional in thinking that is to check to see if it's actually true.

You need an analytical chemist or a geologist or some such to do that.

A psychologist or psychiatrist simply isn't qualified to establish whether my belief is delusional or not.

 

So, will you please stop banging on about psychiatry and psychology as if they are some God-given answer to anything?

 

 

Anyway, here's the evidence again.

http://www.oecd.org/social/inequality-and-poverty.htm

You are not in any way attempting to show that it's wrong.

And, in spite of that clear documented evidence, you seem to insist that the Right wing are correct in their beliefs.

Do you, by any chance also think that you are Napoleon?

Of course I'm not trying to show that its wrong, because its a red herring. Its so irrelevant to the issue of whether or not the political right have a mental illness that its not even worth discussing. You cannot objectively or scientifically classify half of a nation as "mildly insane" based on agreement or disagreement with highly contentious political issues. You are in essence making an absurd litmus test in which political disagreement with John Cuthber = "insanity". Thats all this is, subjective name-calling. Disagree with John Cuthber and he can classify you on insane based on nothing else than politics.

Consider the fact that your argument and evidence are a strawman. The OECD data is premised on legal immigration, hence why the biggest benefits are seen in the immigration of educated and skilled workers....but the political right isn't against legal immigration, its against illegal immigration...which makes an argument for legal immigration a strawman argument. And its not simply a matter of economics. Illegal immigration comes at enormous human cost in the form of human trafficking across the borders. http://abcnews.go.com/US/tracing-human-cost-immigration-altar-arizona/story?id=21406135Your argument ignores that important aspect. Now the point here is not whether one should be for or against immigration....its to demonstrate that your argument ignores the subtleties and complexities of a very contentious political issue and based on such simplistic assumptions, labels have a nation as mentally insanse. That line of argumentation and fallacious reasoning is "insane".

As you yourself said, we need a psychiatrist. In order to logically, objectively, and scientifically claim the the political right is "insane" you need to provide scientific evidence from psychiatry and psychology...the disciplines that actually study mental illnesses. Anything else is simply a red herring.

So I ask you yet again, do you have any scientific evidence from the fields of psychiatry or psychology to support your argument?

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/study-predicts-political-beliefs-with-83-percent-accuracy-17536124/

 

http://www.people-press.org/2009/07/09/section-4-scientists-politics-and-religion/

 

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Political_beliefs_of_academics

 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201104/conservatives-big-fear-brain-study-finds

 

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/29/secrets_of_the_right_wing_brain_new_study_proves_it_conservatives_see_a_different_hostile_world/

 

Read this and get back to me.

Simply posting a bunch of links while failing to provide any context yourself is an internet tactic called "link warz" or "gish gallop".

I would kindly ask that you provide the main arguments, since this is your argument. Otherwise, you will just have to wait until I have time to read all of them.

To get an idea of what an American "conservative" regards as a "politically unbiased manner", take a look at John Ray's musings on the topic of authoritarianism and politics here: http://ray-dox.blogspot.com

 

I was especially impressed with his praise of the liberating and freedom-providing Pinochet regime (which unfortunately had to use some Leftist tactics), and the description of the German Nazi Party in WWII as "Leftist". So we look forward to analysis in which the governments of Pinochet and Hitler are at opposite ends of Jay's political spectrum. This will be evidence of the sanity of US political "conservatism".

 

One wonders, naturally, how someone who declares the entire Left to be "inherently authoritarian", with no libertarian membership, can hope to design a questionnaire capable of separating the authoritarian from the non-authoritarian Right - but we are assured by our local righties of the true "scientific" nature of his approach, so his operating from a private semantical world might not be the deal breaker it would normally be: all we would need to do is relabel his findings to allow communication with the outside world of dictionaries, etc.

This is nothing but one giant ad hominem.

I am referring to John Ray's peer-reviewed and published work on the subject. I have linked to his papers in previous posts. What the man's personal opinions are, are irrelevant....what matters is whether or not his published scientific work is valid. Attempting to discredit John Ray personally rather than addressing the actual arguments is a fallacy.

chadn737, on 17 Dec 2014 - 6:26 PM, said:

Yes, as I have pointed out several times.

 

I ask you again....do you have any actual psychiatric/scientific evidence that conservatives are insane?

The Right wing are in the same position as a man who thinks he's Napoleon.

They believe stuff that's plainly not true.

For example, trickle-down economics.

There are, of course, plenty of other daft ideas they subscribe to.

Nothing that you have presented represents "psychiatric" research. None of it represents "psychological" research....none of it is qualifies as an actual scientific study. All you have done is focus on highly contentious issues, assume that you are right on those issues, and label anyone who disagrees with you "insane".

When politics trumps the need for science....demise of science indeed.

Not based on - correlated with. What the correlation is based on remains to be discussed.

 

And we remind ourselves that our political vocabulary is corrupted, here: we have no usable definition of "liberal", only a self-identification criterion for "conservative", and ongoing confusion about right/left labeling that often gets mixed up with authoritarian/libertarian labeling. So we need to take things easy, scientifically speaking.

 

In post 185 you were handed a list of reality disconnections, simple and obvious delusions or hallucinations or bizarrely unreal perceptions common in the US - including, here, failures of very simple, basic reasoning in people clearly and demonstrably far more capable of intellectual rigor than such failures indicate.

 

That is physical evidence, the basis of the beginning of a scientific inquiry or discussion, of mental disorder of some kind (I don't feel comfortable with "insanity" - something more on the lines of what one would call a phobia or other inexplicable irrationality that specifically cripples a persons ability to reason and act in certain narrowly defined contexts). It appears to be peculiarly focused or severe among the authoritarian rightwing - so much so as to almost identify membership in that faction, in agreement with the self-identification as "conservative" that normally accompanies such ideology. ( It also seems to cover the bulk of the self-described libertarian rightwing as well, but the accuracy of that self-identification seems questionable, and the self-label "conservative" can be taken reasonably to mean authoritarian rightwing in the US, in practice. Not, of course, "conservative" in any intellectual sense).

 

So we have had a basis for a reasonably scientific discussion, if any such thing were sincerely desired. In the sense of reasoning from evidence, like.

 

We could also use the OP study, which despite its flaws seems to carry useful information.

In post 185 I was given a list of political issues with the assumption that any opinion differing from the political view points of yourself means a disconnect with reality....rather than simply a logical difference of opinion, which it is. Hell, you actually list "denial of risks of GMOs" as if that had any scientific basis. If you really want to talk about disconnect with reality based on such issues, lets discuss the fact that ~40% of liberals don't believe in evolution. Suddenly the lines of which "side" is out of touch becomes blurred as vast numbers on both side clearly do not believe in evolution. As I keep pointing out, judging half a population's mental state based on your own personal opinion of contentious issues is subjective, unscientific, false, and absurd. Not to mention the fact that its incredibly arrogant to think that you are right on every political issue and that anyone disagreeing with you is "insane". Based on that list, I myself am mildly insane because I actually believe the science on GMOs that they are safe.

To pretend that these arguments are scientific rather than merely an expression of your political opinion is an insult to logic and science.

Ok, so lets deal with the issues of RWA...maybe by returning to actual research we can finally start to discuss science:

1) The questions used in the questionaire to measure RWA are inherently biased. The nature of the questions focuses exclusively on a very narrow set of issues, namely certain moral/social values such as homosexuality or atheism. It ignores a broad range of other issues such as economics, foreign affairs, social policy that is inherently not about sex/religion, property rights, etc. With an inherent and untested assumption that any "right wing" answer will be "authoritarian" and that any "left wing" answer is inherently "anti-authoritarian". The effect is that the questionaire is designed to ignore any form of conservatism that would not correlate with the preconception of conservatives as authoritarians. As I pointed out in previous posts, modifying the language or changing the issues can easily bias the questionaire to produce "left wing authoritarians" or make the test agnostic to an individuals actual politics.

2) As John Ray in his published work pointed out, the RWA does not correlate at all with independent measures of authoritarianism, but does correlate to a degree with certain types of conservatism. The implication is that the RWA does not measure "authoritarianism" but merely measures religious conservatism.

3) Given such inherent biases in the nature of the questions, of course you will find correlations as the test itself is designed in such a way as to produce the correlations it wants. The experiment is designed to produce the desired outcome....hence why its biased.

After we discuss the RWA, we can then discuss other results and conclusions....such as:

1) Significance and most importantly Effect Size of RWA correlations with various measures....such as those used in the Jost meta-study. If the effect size is small...is the finding even meaningful?

2) How does any of this correlate or associated with "mild insanity"?

Insane is not the correct term. Are they scizophrenic, bipolar? No. They have a belief system that is not connected with reality, but as with religion, a shared group delusion is a faith, not an illness under current standards. If it is learned, then it is belief. Outside of this caveat, conservatives, when asserting the world is 6000 years old, or that evolution is untrue, or that climate change is not happening, are clearly and unequivocally out of touch with reality. It's simply delusional, but taught just like the various magic man beliefs of the Abrahamis religions. One read of the bible should confirm the nonsensical nature of the assertion, but we are told repeatedly that this is truth, and questioning is not acceptible.

Except that the issue is not whether or not some conservatives believe things that are "out of touch". ~40 some percent of liberals do not believe in evolution, ~1/3rd of conservatives do, and there are many Creationists who believe that the Earth is billions of years old. If simply having a belief outside of what is fully supported by science is enough to make one insane...then ~40% of liberals are "insane".

The issue of this thread, from the start, has been whether or not conservatives are "mildly insane" because...well because psychology says so....somewhere along the line....mainly after I pointed out the inherent flaws in the experiments/measures used to come to some of these conclusions, the debate became about labeling half of a nation "insane" because they disagree with John Cuthber and associates on immigration or topic X.

If you want to label that many people as having a mild mental disorder based on political affiliation, then I expect scientific evidence to support it. It is hypocritical and unscientific to make such absurd assertions and refusing to support it with scientific evidence while pretending to be the defender of science. It is illogical to go around making classical fallacies like hasty generalizations: if ~1/3rd of conservatives believe in evolution and ~40% of liberals do not, then calling "conservatives" "out of touch" or "insane" and that liberals are somehow not on this one issue is a hasty generalization when such large sections of each group believe the opposite.

It really is saddening to see scientists and those who claim to be dedicated to science suddenly ignore all science and need for evidence and resort to such obvious fallacies when suddenly its comes down to politics. That is no different intellectually than what a creationist does. Rational people should reject such obvious fallacious name-calling.

Next time, before you quote stuff back at me, you may wish to read it

John Cuthbar: "If you want a medical diagnosis of insanity you need a psychiatrist.""

 

Also, it might look better if you spell my name correctly- I know it's a pseudonym, but surely it's not too much trouble to get it right.

 

And, once again I will draw your attention to the fact that three were de facto diagnoses of insanity before there were psychiatrists.

The doctors came about because there was an illness- not the other way round.

Are you actually going to address that?

Anything other than a medical diagnosis is non-scientific and simply name-calling. We call things/people "insane" or "crazy" in common usage not because people are actually insane or crazy, but because we simply find the idea or person ridiculous, outrageous, disagreeable, etc. This sort of usage is subjective, unscientific, non-medical, and simply reflects the user's own biases and opinions....nothing more. They may be perfectly sane....more sane than the person calling them "insane" and we recognize that such verbiage is simply opinion and not a reflection of the accused's actual mental state.

I will draw your attention to the fact that before there were psychologists we treated homosexuality, transexuals, and a host of other non "insane" people as if they were literally insane. Even after there were psychiatrists, we treated such people as if they had a mental disease. We treated people of different races as if they were sub-human and lacking in mental capacity. Forgive me then if I take issue with your "de facto" diagnosis that is not backed by scientific evidence. Such diagnoses have a very high rate of false-positives and tend to be colored by a person's biases. Calling those you personally disagree with "insane" without any actual psychiatric evidence to back it up falls under this same sort of biased diagnosis that you call "de facto" that was used to justify locking homosexuals up. The only person that it is "de facto" too is yourself and those who share your personal biases.

At this point, your refusal to actually provide psychiatric evidence that conservatism is a form of insanity is nothing but dodging. Your responses are dodging and an attempt to justify "folk psychiatry" as legitimate science.

I ask you again....do you have any actual psychiatric/scientific evidence that conservatives are insane? If not, then we can conclude that calling them such is simply your opinion and can be dismissed as such.

If you look back a bit, you will find out what I think is required to make a diagnosis

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/84790-is-political-conservatism-a-mild-form-of-insanity/?p=841378

 

And, since I have clarified why I think it's essentially a societal decision, ordinary people are perfectly able to decide if someone has lost the plot or not.

As I said, people diagnosed others as being insane long before psychology existed.

It's possible that psychology and psychiatry can tell you more about these unfortunates- perhaps give you the why's and wherefores or even offer treatment.

But, in terms of just answering the question "are these people normal?" there's no need for any qualification; there never was.

Um no. You are not qualified to make the diagnosis, neither are common people. You yourself just said that only psychiatry is:

John Cuthbar: "If you want a medical diagnosis of insanity you need a psychiatrist."

So if you want to actually claim that conservatives are crazy, then you need to provide ACTUAL psychiatric data on the mental state of conservatives. Anything less than that is non-scientific, speculation, and shear biased opinion.

I'll ask you again to please support your claims with hard psychiatric research.

Yes it's subjective but it's subjective with experience and knowledge.

 

I have a lot of biochemist friends. A lot, I don't know what it is, but it seems Biochemistry is a popular major at my university. Most of them will expect a 80 to 90K pay salary at some point and talking to professional biochemist they are well above 100k a year.

 

I was originally a Neuroscience major before I switched to Physics, and so I know pretty familiar with most biology related majors and jobs. Biochemistry is definitely more in demand than Neuroscience, Genetics, Cell Biology, Developmental Biology, Microbiology, and these fields that I mentioned are much higher in depend than Zoology, General Biology, Plant Biology, Ecology, and other Wild Life Biology.

 

Ofcourse you will need a Phd in most cases unless your going straight into the industry you might not need it. Specially for Biochemistry, most of the people I know are not planning on going into graduate school unless is needed. I was just talking to a kid just yesterday he's a Biochem major and he's father is Biochemist with a BS and he's only planning on a BS. He also told me he's father is making 100k a year working for HCMC.

Science careers are not determined by the actual "degree" you get. In reality there are very few hard lines regarding any of these subjects. My bachelors was in Agronomy and my phd is in biology. My actual expertise is in genetics and genomics with strong computational emphasis. However, I also have a long history in molecular biology and biochemistry. I could get a job in biochemistry without a biochemistry degree. I could get a job in plant biology, biochemistry, genetics, biology, cell biology....etc.

The simple fact is that these "subjects" are the byproducts of history. At one time, the methods and knowledge required to be a geneticist was very different than that of a biochemist or a zoologist. Now, biochemistry is typically a required course in many biology departments, biology courses in many biochemistry departments. I took 5 semesters of chemistry as an Agronomy major. Regardless of what department you do a PhD in, your research may require you to do any of these subjects. I know biochemistry PhDs who do more molecular biology and genetics than actual "biochemistry" and "biology" PhDs who do more biochemistry than many in the biochemistry department. The hard lines/methods have broken down. What is important is less the specific degree than what you do with it, what sort of work you do, and where you carve out the niche of your expertise.

One particularly spectacular red herring is the reference to psychology.

If you want a medical diagnosis of insanity you need a psychiatrist.

If, on the other hand, you are using the term colloquially then any of us is "qualified" to give an opinion.

it's especially clear that it's a red herring as I pointed the issue out before.

Since the thread was started based on psychology studies....all the debate on contentious issues that in no way assess an individual or group of individuals actual mental state (i.e. your entire argument) is a red herring.

If you want to say that only psychiatry is qualified to say whether or not "conservatism" is a form of insanity...then I'll gladly go along with that and ask that you show actual scientific evidence from psychiatric research that supports any such assertion. At least the psychological research discussed earlier has standards regarding measurement and statistical analysis. The current debate that relies on peoples opinions on contentious subjects (again your arguments) is so far from the any psychological or psychiatric measure of insanity as to be laughable. So by all means, lets discuss the psychiatric research on conservatives. Please show me any published research from any reputable psychiatric journal that has conducted such work.

The red herrings and straw men introduced to divert this thread from actual discussion of psychology is telling. I guess if the actual science fails to confirm your opinion of those who disagree with you...then use fallacies....

"I'm saying that if you want to label half a nation insane, then you need to back it up with HARD scientific data and not based on the facts that you disagree with their positions."

I'm not

I'm calling them insane because they ignore evidence (and that is science, and I did cite it).

Incidentally, you keep ignoring this fact and saying it's just my belief.

Pointing out that the one thing it can not possibly be is "dehumanising" isn't dehumanising.

1) They ignore evidence and you misrepresent their positions and create strawmen.....which is the same as "ignoring evidence".

2) A discussion of immigration is off-topic in a thread about psychological studies of the political right. You are introducing a red herring. If 'ignoring evidence" is a form of insanity, so is the use of fallacies.

3) Saying that somebody "ignores evidence" is not the same as being insane. Some of them do ignore evidence. Many base their position on different types of evidence or possess positions more subtle than the strawman you have made. Many people on the left ignore evidence, like in the case of GMOs...by that logic, much of the left is insane as well. Disagreement over complex issues is NORMAL....calling anyone you disagree with "insane" is dehuminization. Such views of the "other side" is characteristic of people who struggle with ambiquity, differences, changing information, etc....

 

So, if, for example a group of people are documented as saying that they oppose teaching thinking and if the population in general believe that teaching kids to think is a good thing then, by the general rough definition of "insane" that group are insane.

That's still true even if they are correct in their belief- unless thy can show overwhelming evidence for it.

Is this ACTUALLY what you think the Right believes and says? Because its so far off-base as to be delusional.

Insanity is a decision made, in effect, by society.

 

You are redefining "insanity".....

Do you understand that insanity was a perfectly well recognised concept before anyone invented psychology?

For what it is worth, the correct field of expertise for deciding if someone is actually insane or not is psychiatry, rather than psychology.

It hardly matters.

We are not looking at some subtle trait here.

What we are looking at is a wilful ignorance of the data.

 

 

Are you seriously saying that you need to be a psychologist to tell if someone who believes in dragons has "bats in the belfry"?

 

Incidentally, only humans can be sane or insane, so it's hardly "dehumanising" to call someone insane.

I'm saying that if you want to label half a nation insane, then you need to back it up with HARD scientific data and not based on the facts that you disagree with their positions. As I pointed out, a lot of your arguments misrepresent theirs and amount to making strawmen of them....upon which you call them "insane"? Pointing to complex social/economic/political issues and claiming that half the nation is in "willful ignorance" that you disagree with is far from actual scientific evidence of such a claim. That is neither logical nor scientific and I expect more of a scientific claim coming from a scientist.

This is nothing more than an attempt to "dehumanize" people of who differing views....its classic propaganda of the worst kind.

 

No, I am saying exactly what I said. I also never mentioned GMO in my objection. I mentioned nuclear power.

So do you admit that the science of GMOs is being politicized by people on the Left?

 

But, which party is in charge in the house, who would be responsible for scheduling hearings?

And could also ensure a bill never make it out of committee? Meaning if this is the left's doing, you have nothing to worry about.

Not the point I am made and I think you know it. You claimed that:

"The left has their wacky, little-grasp-of-science groups. But how many people are getting up to speak in front of the house or senate spouting that nonsense?"

.....enough said.

 

 

Also, that's a bill about labels. As your link notes "more than 60 countries, including China, the European Union's 28 members and even Syria, require that genetically modified foods be labeled." China and Syria, those freedom-loving liberal bastions.

 

So? There is no scientific basis for labeling GMOs and the arguments used to support labeling are premised on misreprenting the truth. See again the previous links where outright lies were made regarding the health and environmental facts regarding GMOs as support of banning. This argument is also an argument ad populum. Just because other countries do something does not mean that it is right or scientifically valid. Saudia Arabia outright bans GMOs and also women from driving. This is a scientific issue. Either there is evidence of GMOs being harmful or not. Misuse of science in these debates is exactly the issue at hand.

Jean-Claude Juncker was part of Occupy Wall Street and serves in the US government? I missed that. I guess I should catch up on current events. And the goalposts, as they move.

 

Since when is this only about the US government? Does Europe not have political parties? Do those political parties not misuse scientific information? The fact that political advocasy from groups like Green Peace led to the EU sacking the highest scientific position in the EU over GMOs is clear evidence of how high this goes politically. You are simply dismissing the evidence.

Still waiting for that nuke cherry-picking data.

 

Groups like Greenpeace spread an incredible amount of misinformation and cherry-picked data regarding nuclear power....such as the claim of a "Cherynobl-scale accident" every decade.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/nuclear/