Who's the bigger offender: Conservatives or Liberals?

Critical thinking is hard. Not really. But it takes effort. Easier to have some scam artist tell you how to think and act.

I'm concerned about Canada too. We have a minority of idiots who are proud of being idiots. Their number seems to be shrinking but idiots like Trump only encourage them.

Here is an interesting study entitled: "A Key Detail in Some People's Childhoods May Lead to Vaccine Resistance"Key paragraphs:"When we compared the early life histories of those who were vaccine resistant to those who were not we found many vaccine-resistant adults had histories of adverse experiences during childhood, including abuse, maltreatment, deprivation or neglect, or having an alcoholic parent.These experiences would have made their childhood unpredictable and contributed to a lifelong legacy of mistrust in authorities, as well as seeding the belief that "when the proverbial hits the fan you're on your own".This study, based in New Zealand, needs to be expanded, but if valid for a sizable percentage of anti-science/anti-authority people it suggests that it will be difficult to change minds. The article does point out that although NZ has many anti-vaxxers, 95 percent of its population is vaccinated and its infection rate and death rate are far lower than the US. It suggests why this may be so and thus offers some hope for improvement of the US, Canadian, and European situation.

I have relatives in Alberta. The list of issues they talk about sound complicated, but though I can't understand most of it, what they're saying just doesn't have a rational feel.They also seem to have a sort of cult of the victim. No matter what happens in the country, they seem to try very hard to figure out how it's bad for them and often decide that it's being done to hurt them on purpose. They feel that Albertan wealth is being stolen for the good of the rest of the country.--Percy

In a way, that's true. One of the main reasons we have a federation is so that we can help each other out. And it's probably true that a rich province like Alberta often puts in more than they take out.But I have little sympathy for Alberta. When oil was booming, they were floating on an ocean of money. They could have put a few nickels aside for a rainy day but they were typical conservatives, only interested in keeping taxes as low as possible.

Moving on is definitely a good idea. I've noticed activity is picking up in one of the evolution/creationism threads and that, after all, was the starting point of this website, wasn't it?

Dennys started out as a doughnut shop, too. Should they have never expanded the menu beyond doughnuts?

Tim Hortons started as a donut shop too. Now they sell all kinds of soups, sandwiches, etc. though they're not quite as upscale as Dennys. They mostly sell coffee. You can even get their coffee at the grocery store.Sarah takes her own advice and "moves on" but she's going in circles, driving by again and again and again and again and again and again and again....

In 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District was decided against the school district, putting the lie to intelligent design's claim to be distinct from creationism. As a result the Discovery Institute, the primary promoter of Intelligent Design in the US, took a critical hit. Henry Morris, founder of ICR, died in 2007Then in 2007 the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) moved its headquarters from California to Texas where it was denied academic accreditation and could no longer issue diplomas. At the same time it decided to abandon its frontal assault on science to instead focus on the grass roots level such as classroom education. Michael Behe's irreducible complexity was revealed a fraud when William Dembski of the Discovery Institute attempted to formalize it mathematically with a concept he called specified complexity. The attempt provided too many falsifiable specifics.Duane Gish, ICR's primary promoter, died in 2013.The Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, their primary Intelligent Design promotional arm, suffered another serious setback when Dembski left for Baylor University in 2016. Phillip E. Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial, died in 2019 but had not been active in some time due to a series of strokes.As a result there's no longer much organized creationist miseducational effort out there filling devout young heads to the brim with creationist nonsense so that they can come here armed to the teeth with blanks.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Fix Philip E. Johnson's year of death.

And Ken Ham's ark seems to be sinking...

In the May Issue of The Atlantic Jonathan Haidt explains Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid - The Atlantic. He puts the blame on social media, reasoning like this:

quote:

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Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has weakened all three.

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I haven't finished the article yet, but good reading so far.--Percy

Replying to myself with what I thought the best quotes from Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid - The Atlantic:

quote:

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Facebook developed algorithms to bring each user the content most likely to generate a “like” or some other interaction, eventually including the “share” as well. Later research showed that posts that trigger emotions––especially anger at out-groups––are the most likely to be shared.
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The newly tweaked platforms were almost perfectly designed to bring out our most moralistic and least reflective selves. The volume of outrage was shocking.

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It was just this kind of twitchy and explosive spread of anger that James Madison had tried to protect us from as he was drafting the U.S. Constitution...The key to designing a sustainable republic, therefore, was to build in mechanisms to slow things down, cool passions, require compromise, and give leaders some insulation from the mania of the moment while still holding them accountable to the people periodically, on Election Day.
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Recent academic studies suggest that social media is indeed corrosive to trust in governments, news media, and people and institutions in general. A working paper that offers the most comprehensive review of the research, led by the social scientists Philipp Lorenz-Spreen and Lisa Oswald, concludes that “the large majority of reported associations between digital media use and trust appear to be detrimental for democracy.”
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Mark Zuckerberg may not have wished for any of that. But by rewiring everything in a headlong rush for growth—with a naive conception of human psychology, little understanding of the intricacy of institutions, and no concern for external costs imposed on society—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a few other large platforms unwittingly dissolved the mortar of trust, belief in institutions, and shared stories that had held a large and diverse secular democracy together.
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Across eight studies, Bor and Petersen found that being online did not make most people more aggressive or hostile; rather, it allowed a small number of aggressive people to attack a much larger set of victims. Even a small number of jerks were able to dominate discussion forums, Bor and Petersen found, because nonjerks are easily turned off from online discussions of politics.
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Finally, by giving everyone a dart gun, social media deputizes everyone to administer justice with no due process. Platforms like Twitter devolve into the Wild West, with no accountability for vigilantes. A successful attack attracts a barrage of likes and follow-on strikes. Enhanced-virality platforms thereby facilitate massive collective punishment for small or imagined offenses, with real-world consequences, including innocent people losing their jobs and being shamed into suicide. When our public square is governed by mob dynamics unrestrained by due process, we don’t get justice and inclusion; we get a society that ignores context, proportionality, mercy, and truth.
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he most pervasive obstacle to good thinking is confirmation bias, which refers to the human tendency to search only for evidence that confirms our preferred beliefs. Even before the advent of social media, search engines were supercharging confirmation bias, making it far easier for people to find evidence for absurd beliefs and conspiracy theories, such as that the Earth is flat and that the U.S. government staged the 9/11 attacks. But social media made things much worse.
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The “Hidden Tribes” study tells us that the “devoted conservatives” score highest on beliefs related to authoritarianism. They share a narrative in which America is eternally under threat from enemies outside and subversives within; they see life as a battle between patriots and traitors. According to the political scientist Karen Stenner, whose work the “Hidden Tribes” study drew upon, they are psychologically different from the larger group of “traditional conservatives” (19 percent of the population), who emphasize order, decorum, and slow rather than radical change.
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The stupidity on the right is most visible in the many conspiracy theories spreading across right-wing media and now into Congress. “Pizzagate,” QAnon, the belief that vaccines contain microchips, the conviction that Donald Trump won reelection—it’s hard to imagine any of these ideas or belief systems reaching the levels that they have without Facebook and Twitter.
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What changes are needed? Redesigning democracy for the digital age is far beyond my abilities, but I can suggest three categories of reforms––three goals that must be achieved if democracy is to remain viable in the post-Babel era. We must harden democratic institutions so that they can withstand chronic anger and mistrust, reform social media so that it becomes less socially corrosive, and better prepare the next generation for democratic citizenship in this new age.
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But it is within our power to reduce social media’s ability to dissolve trust and foment structural stupidity. Reforms should limit the platforms’ amplification of the aggressive fringes while giving more voice to what More in Common (pro-democracy group, funded the Hidden Tribes study) calls “the exhausted majority.”
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But the main problem with social media is not that some people post fake or toxic stuff; it’s that fake and outrage-inducing content can now attain a level of reach and influence that was not possible before 2009.
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Banks and other industries have “know your customer” rules so that they can’t do business with anonymous clients laundering money from criminal enterprises. Large social-media platforms should be required to do the same. That does not mean users would have to post under their real names; they could still use a pseudonym. It just means that before a platform spreads your words to millions of people, it has an obligation to verify (perhaps through a third party or nonprofit) that you are a real human being, in a particular country, and are old enough to be using the platform. This one change would wipe out most of the hundreds of millions of bots and fake accounts that currently pollute the major platforms. It would also likely reduce the frequency of death threats, rape threats, racist nastiness, and trolling more generally. Research shows that antisocial behavior becomes more common online when people feel that their identity is unknown and untraceable.
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Will we do anything about it?

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When Tocqueville toured the United States in the 1830s, he was impressed by the American habit of forming voluntary associations to fix local problems, rather than waiting for kings or nobles to act, as Europeans would do. That habit is still with us today. In recent years, Americans have started hundreds of groups and organizations dedicated to building trust and friendship across the political divide, including BridgeUSA, Braver Angels (on whose board I serve), and many others listed at BridgeAlliance.us. We cannot expect Congress and the tech companies to save us. We must change ourselves and our communities.

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--Percy

Draft Supreme Court Opinion Would Overturn Abortion Decision - The New York TimesRoe v Wade is probably coming down.

All Repugnants should be shot at dawn, including the 6 Assholes nominated by the Repugnants. Biden should then immediately expand the court to 13, one for each of the original states and appoint 6 + 4 = 10 more judges.The Repugnants are just to repugnant to live.If I posted this on Facebook this post would immediately put me back in Facebook jail, for the 9th time.Do with me what you will, Percy.

If this is the opinion, think of what a court system with even more Republican nominated and approved Federal Judgeships will mean. Remember that it is not just the SCOTUS but also 13 Circuit Courts and 94 US District Courts that are Article III judges serving for life unless removed. There are also the Non-Article III Federal Judgeships that general serve for a period of time but cover areas such as the Magistrate Courts, Bankruptcy, Federal Claims Courts, Tax Courts and Territorial Courts.