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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31032 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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Although I broadly agree that falling for Illuminati-Esque conspiracies is rather embarrassing. You must correct for the fact that right-wing coded conspiracies are lower status for a variety of reasons. By all means, was it just as ridiculous and IMO just as embarrassing to believe that Russia was stuffing ballots in 2016. But believing in that didn't elicit the "what a fucking uneducated hillbilly dumbass" reaction from just about everyone.

I do think the rights biggest mistake pertaining to this specific weakness is their descent into anti-intellectualism. In response to the fact that Universities and Schools are ideologically captured, the right-wing response to that is some variation of "Stop going to school, you'll be brainwashed". Instead of "Don't go to school for the humanities but do go to school for STEM where ideological capture is significantly harder if not impossible.". They threw out the baby with the bathwater.

Similarly to their sentiment towards the scientific establishment. As a response to the fact the scientific establishment is used as a propaganda tool by the left sometimes, they assume an anti-science rhetoric, instead of learning how to parse science better. Throughout covid the right had a tendency of saying "we can't trust these mathematical models to predict complex outcomes of policy in the real world".. Well yes we can't but that's a weakness of the interpreter not the tool of mathematical models themselves. Mathematical models were also the very thing that helped us realize that covid policy was suboptimal. Instead of signal boosting good science why did you have to antagonize science itself?

I don't blame them (right wingers). The layman can't learn experimental design and advanced statistics just to parse the news. They are fighting against significant headwinds as the left is hostile towards them in just about all levels of Academia from middle-school to post-doc applications to what research gets published. It's just a shame that we are here.

ideologically captured, the right-wing response to that is some variation of "Stop going to school, you'll be brainwashed". Instead of "Don't go to school for the humanities but do go to school for STEM where ideological capture is significantly harder if not impossible."

I'm afraid you are mistaken. Ideological capture in STEM has in fact happened, as one can tell though "feminist vulcanology", various Nature editorials, and AI-alignment.

I haven’t witnessed anyone on the right (or otherwise) demonizing the Scientific Method, but rather criticizing the new definition of “Science (tm)” being utilized as a consensus-building weapon against any who would question the mainstream narrative.

It’s the bastardization of “science” that invokes revulsion, not true scientific inquiry itself.

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