Acme

How many of your friends have died from a broken leg because they couldn't get food and run from predators? None? That's odd. How many of your children have been eaten by wolfs? None? ! ? WOW! Same here! What a coincidence! That's very common for deer and other wild animals. How are your teeth at opening nuts? I wonder if people really understand how hard it is to live in the wild. And how easy we have it.... I think Phi's point -and I agree with it- is that 'how easy we have it' as you put it is the result of human evolution. We did the evolving right along with the rest of nature. Our course is different but so is that of all flora & fauna. While our teeth may not gnaw through nuts, neither do those of most carnivores. Our teeth are however well suited to eating both seeds and meat. Neither are we unique in such social activities as caring for our offspring or our sick and injured or mourning our dead. Do you think a pack of wolves would not protect their young from a bear? Lick the wounds of injured members of their pack and bring them food? Not linger around the body of a pack member that died? And how easy will we and the rest have it were a massive meteor to strike? Do you think humans would not be able to use the same evolved adaptability to survive a return to the wilds? Evolution only has direction in the sense that humans perceive time differently than other life forms and how we pass on information.

I'd like to revisit this complaint. In the thread on the demise of science I alluded to having read 80% of Altemeyer's book. Checking now I must amend that to ~64%. Anyway, I got off on other interests and duties and didn't finish the read so today I picked it up where I left off and in short order found a telling passage in regard to your above claim. To whit: The Authoritarians

I don't understand. What link are you referring to?

Whose finger was it!? Never minding that my finger did not contain the mercury, you are correct in that the mercury did not climb up my finger but rather was depressed around it. By-the-by, while I have you on the line have you found a reference yet supporting your assertion that felt-hat wearers of old suffered mercury poisoning?

De nada. Now off to read wut u rote. PS Looks good, but you misspelled 'modaling'. It's 'modeling'. Best of luck with your studies.

Not that I was recommending the practice of course. GurBBLe w pmwinderk bahhh. Certainly the sensation of putting my naked digit in a beaker of the stuff was one of it being in a liquid, however there was no urge to dry my finger off when I withdrew it as there has been with water or other liquids that I have stuck my finger in. The concave meniscus round my digit in the mercury was pronounced I might add.

Sure. But Imatfaal was asking about how it would feel on his skin. As I attested, it does not feel wet and all indications [more-or-less] are that I surfed no no no ull forklenerns.

Click on your name at upper-right of screen when logged in. Click on Profile. On the right-upper part of the Profile page click Edit my Profile. From that page, scroll down to heading Profile Information and click on Edit my About Me button. Voila! cross posted with Junky.

So each measure should be taken in the context it is given. I don't have a problem with that. Just because apples aren't oranges does not mean they are not fruit. So using your analogy, the studies have just as sure a result as the nail is driven. One does not drive a nail all the way in if they intend to hang their hat on it. Well, Altemeyer's work does show that his 'right-wing authoritarians' tend to self-identify as conservative so it shouldn't be surprising to see that reflected in the meta-study. The link in post #1 is not the meta-study itself; I give that link in post #22. As to the meta-study itself equivocating, I think the authors were quite straight-forward. They say: Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition I'd say that, at least in regards to Altemeyer, he is straight-forward about the demographics as well as about what shortcomings his work has and what further studies may be desirable to fill in gaps. On the general idea of studying psychology, science is always amendable and that can only serve as a lenitive to your fundamental problem. You would not be the first here to just declare that you don't believe there is legitimacy to comparing political persuasions, however people are as people do and the interest appertains whether you join or not.

I don't claim that it is for political reasons, I claim that it is a characteristic of those on the Left and a movement that finds its political support largely in leftist politics. OK. From your earlier link: I count 7 Obama & 4 Romney and the Obama margin is 99 and the Romney margin is 103. What shall we conclude in regards to your claim? Moreover, shouldn't we enquire as to Romney & Obama's stance on vaccination before drawing any conclusions here?

I think you will agree that correlation does not equal causation. Do you have something that shows anti-vaccers hold their stance for political reasons?

Do you have some data to support your implication that political left-leaning is the primary motivation for anti-vaccers? This page indicates a wide range of historical opposition to vaccinations. >> History of Anti-vaccination Movements

1) Please point out which specific measures you take issue with so we can look at the specifics. 2) What's the use of using the term statistically significant if one can simply dismiss it as small? Either statistical significance matters or it does not. Would you likewise qualify a statistically insignificant result as large? 3) What study are you referring to here? In Altemeyer's study there is no claim that all authoritarians [per his definition/use of the term] are conservative or that the two terms denote the same measure. 4) I think you will find religiosity -to name another aspect- is rather high in association with conservatism in the US.

While I agree, ... Good. See you there. Since the subject of this thread is the contemporary demise of science I don't think the other-than-contemporary historical context is of much application. BusaDave9 did not simply pull his frustration out of his ass.

Please bring these objections to the other thread where they belong. >> Is Political Conservatism a Mild Form of Insanity?

My goodness! I should hope not. Altemeyer uses similar if not the very-same terms so you should be comfortable discussing/criticizing them in regards to the specific contexts in which they are used. Again the appropriate context for that discussion is the other thread.

Again with the broad-brushing. The term 'authoritarians' as used by Bob Altemeyer is arbitrary, i.e. it is an after-the-fact denomination chosen to characterize his studies. Whether or not it has negative connotations is immaterial to the validity of those studies. Those are the kinds of arguments you need to bring to specifics of individual studies. Even so, your qualifications of 'general-rule-of-thumb' and 'maybe-not-that-important' are well-seasoned with subjectivity. In the case of Altemeyer's studies everyone has an unbiased and equal opportunity to score as a high authoritarian. It just happens to be the case that few who score high identify themselves as left and/or liberal. I think you need to bring up your questions and objections over in the other thread so as to not draw this one too far afield. As I alluded to, I was not satisfied with the [popular] media slant of the meta-study either and this was the reason for my digging into the actual study and then delving into one study in detail. I note that I was rather alone in that effort and the detail oriented approach you profess would be welcome.

It doesn't matter if you brought it in or not; it's in. My skepticism is in good order, thank you. You will find over there that my skepticism moved me to go well beyond the initial pop-sci report, and I urge you to do the same. That's another broad-brush determination that does not jibe with specifics in [some of] the studies. Again with the broad-brush. Without giving reference to specific studies and their specific methods & means we remain beholdin' to your I.

The study that starts the thread is a meta-study that examines ~80 different studies. You should know that a gross generalization and dismissal such as you make is hardly a scientifically sound judgment. You certainly wouldn't accept such a judgment of your field of genetics. I think the proper place for specific criticism of the linked article is in the thread where it appears. As I said, the thread begins with a meta-study so it's unclear which 'they' you refer to. Again I think these arguments would be better served in the other thread and directed to specific studies there. In the one study that I took from the meta-study and pursued in detail the focus is on a category termed 'right-wing authoritarianism' and folks who score high in this ranking vary in their association with 'conservatism' by country and time. In regards to this thread, folks who rank as high right-wing authoritarians also tend to reject science. Edit: It's worth noting that these same high-right-wing-authoritarians in contemporary US tend [in statistically significant terms] to self-identify as politically conservative.

Many here are actually Brits and the forum itself is based in GB. The studies in the thread that John & I linked to are not limited to the US.

That is in the eye of the beholder. Being a staunch centrist, there is little distinction to me between the two sides and I see a clear oportunism on the Left to maintain and cater too their own constituentcies. The real difference is that the Left learned long ago how to better phrase their message. While arguably the first thread John linked to is in the eye of the beholder, the thread Is Political Conservatism a mild form of Insanity? is not so much. True there was plenty of eye-beholding whining there, but there was no valid discounting of the methods employed in the studies. Those methods you can test yourself to some degree and see if indeed they do or do not confirm your centrism.

No link I see, but erhm... yes. hatter @ a dictionary By the same token, the March Hare is crazy and the character name is also a play on a phrase extant in Carrolls time, 'mad as a March hare'. March Hare "Chapter 6: In THAT direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, `lives a Hatter: and in THAT direction,' waving the other paw, `lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.' source It's also worth noting that the text of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland does not describe either characters' manner of dress; this is left to the illustrations. Carroll is always working at multiple levels and a shallow inspection of his work never satisfies. PS Inasmuch as I answered the OP to the author's satisfaction, I beg indulgence is this OT discussion.

Yes well, what can you tell about nutters? That they make nuts? Think as in 'she's a nutter'. Carroll used hatter in the same way because 'hatter' could also refer at the time he was writing to someone who was nuts just as we now use 'mad as a hatter'. The Hatter was not nuts because he made hats, rather Carroll named the character as he did because the character was nuts. That Carroll had John Tenniel draw Hatter with a top hat is an example of a stylistic device; a visual pun as it were. The hat tag -as I earlier alluded- is a stand in for a feather or other hat decoration, again to illustrate the nutty nature of Hatter. Hatter's harlequinesque suit is another such visual device meant to convey nuttiness. The lewis Carroll society

My pleasure. Always happy to return to an OP. Drifting again, I went looking for the original drawings of Alice in Wonderland and found this image in the public domain according to the poster at Flickr. Anyway, after reading the article from the British Medical Journal I have a different take on the tag significance than what you earlier gave. To whit, because the hatter is mad/eccentric, he simply did not remove the tag after he bought the hat.

Back in my school days we had a flask of mercury in the chem lab and a couple of us stuck our fingers into a beaker of it. It felt cool, offered a greater resistance than water and did not feel wet. Weeee suffered no illlll fects assssss fr bosh oOUVUV L V BER. Cobbers it is. The article from the British Medical Journal that I added the link to calls it the 'Bellman's fallacy'. The entire article is worth reading and -if it matters to you- it is short. This article: >> Did the Mad Hatter have mercury poisoning?