I'm embarrassed that the upvoters of this comment actually agreed with this comment. One trip to Houston or Minneapolis is enough to verify the presence of a thriving arts and culture scene. The anti-intellectual Middle America trope is not factual.

One trip to Winchester, VA or Davidsonville, MD (Washington, DC suburbs) will reveal farming communities that exude pragmatism. Hell, there's a popular trap shooting range in Greenbelt, MD.

If DC or some other bogeyman city is so hostile to "bible-thumping", how can you explain the large church attendance there?

I think this comment is a reaction to a handful of personal experiences that you had. The rest of your comments aren't as hyperbolic as this one. I agree that it is frustrating when dealing with rude people, but to generalize about similar folks is exactly the thing that bugs you!

It's amazing to me that you took this (what you've recognized as) hyperbole'd and obviously emotionally filled post and assumed this is how I act in daily life, a point which I didn't feel I needed to make but apparently must do so is that of course I do not dismiss everyone from a coastal area as being a pseudo intellectual. That doesn't stop the majority of them from proving to be exactly that, but you know, I do try.

FTR, I never once intended to insult the midwest. I prefer it here, and that may well be simply because I've never lived anywhere else.

My personal ideal for "well-done political debate" is comes from economists: they can quickly distinguish between facts, speculation about facts, and value judgements, and then engage with the first two while steering clear of the third. (It does make for some silly interviews, though: journalists basically only care about people's value-judgements, and economists will redirect every attempt at getting theirs into a discussion about some fact or another.)

I think the personal attack was unnecessary.

Uh, okay. How about rural Georgia where I grew up?

Dollars to donuts that Houston and Minneapolis have much higher subscription rates to the New Yorker than zip codes from elsewhere in the state.

Are subscriptions to the New York Times the benchmark of intellectualism?

http://www.politico.com/2014-election/results/map/senate/geo...

And people wonder why Trump does so well in the polls.

My point being that I think you actually unwittingly identified this 'midwest/coastal divide' in your own backyard.

But I feel I could not possibly give an example that could satisfy you, since practically every habitable region in the world has experienced a "rich lawyer" or two buy up land in the area. Yet the fact remains that the majority of the region maintains its rural character.

So I have the "fancy coastal intelligence" you talk about, or at least the degrees that signify that I do (although I got them in relatively remote places in Kentucky and Tennessee, so not exactly coastal). But I come from a family of school teachers, carpenters, and construction contractors. In other words, the kind of people who do not tolerate a lack of common sense in their children and try to teach it at every possible opportunity from birth on.

I've personally seen this exclusion at work many times. Political correctness police, social justice warriors, whatever you want to call them, don't care for inclusion of anything that doesn't fit their narrative. They will seek out your differing point of view, scream about it, try to isolate you from help, gang up on you, force you to apologize, make you give up, then appeal to higher authorities to marginalize you/exclude you/fire you, then have something like a show trial about you, and then finally declare victory and celebrate. But their celebration will usually contain notes of "well I never intended things to turn out like this!"

Obviously I've seen this whole process happen a time or three in various corporations. Those who were excluded/marginalized/fired often had no real idea what they did in the first place.

That's the end of my rant, which is only tangentially related to yours, but yours resonated with me because a lot of what you said reminds me of myself.

It's a lot more to do with the culture one grows up with than the belief itself, and anything you learn at such a young age is difficult to shake loose of completely.

Personally, I used to be a strong Lutheran, I'd say I'm now 20% Lutheran and 80% agnostic, but even that has far less to do with me intellectually not recognizing my God and a lot more to do with frustrations over the behaviors of organized religions.

In short: For a lot of people that I know and myself, religion is far less believing that God is going to help you in some way (frankly, if you know your Bible, you know God's help tends to come in rather rough and leaves a lot of things broken so you don't really want it anyway) and lot more in believing that it's just a nicer universe to live in if you assume that you simply cease to exist at the point of death and there is nothing but...well, nothing awaiting you over that line.

Is this something you have to do regularly, make judgements on scientists based on their speculations of an afterlife?

Wouldn't it be far better to make judgments based on their contribution to their field?

Does this mean we should not take Francis S. Collins seriously?

I don't want to get into a huge theological thing, my policy on this is always the same: You do you, I'll do me, and we'll get along fine. If we get to a point where we can find out what the afterlife is, if it exists, then we can re-evaluate beliefs at that point, but I don't think we're anywhere close to that, so until then I'll keep my faith and all I ask is the respect that anyone else would deserve.

However, it should not surprise someone in the sciences if they are passed over for job opportunities based on their religious beliefs. Those beliefs may limit your capacity to effectively perform your job.

In the US, its generally should, since its pretty blatantly illegal in virtually every case.

> Those beliefs may limit your capacity to effectively perform your job.

There may be some specific religious beliefs where that is true for some jobs (in the sciences or otherwise), but, in general, that's not even remotely true.

A law that cannot be enforced isn't really a law. Making a case for religious discrimination is difficult. And the subject of this thread revolves around whether discriminating based on beliefs should be allowed. If you worked at Bain Capital and openly supported Bernie Sanders, would you be surprised to not get promotes?

> There may be some specific religious beliefs where that is true for some jobs (in the sciences or otherwise), but, in general, that's not even remotely true.

See my comment below regarding skepticism and science.

To the extent that it is difficult to enforce, it is because it is difficult to know when it has occurred. But, that doesn't reduce the surprise one should have when one discovers that it has occurred, because that means that it is one of the cases where the problems that usually exist with discovering that it has occurred (and which pose a difficulty for enforcing the law) are not present, at least at their normal level.

> See my comment below regarding skepticism and science

Religious beliefs in general are not incompatible with skepticism on questions within the domain of science; some specific religious beliefs may be incompatible with skepticism in some areas of scientific inquiry, but, again, that's different than the generality posed.

> Religious beliefs in general are not incompatible with skepticism on questions within the domain of science;

I disagree. The Bible explicitly attempts to provide explanations for the order of the natural world.

> some specific religious beliefs may be incompatible with skepticism in some areas of scientific inquiry, but, again, that's different than the generality posed.

How so? This sounds like a restatement of my original point: "Those beliefs may limit your capacity to effectively perform your job."

One of the most significant obstacles to interpreting the Bible today is the unreasonable burdens placed upon the text. For example, the writers of the creation story in Genesis had no concept of modern science, and their purpose in writing was not to explain how the cosmos were created, but to explain that the cosmos were created by YHWH. When we read it expecting to find scientific explanations for the nature of the universe, we obscure the authors' purpose and the intended meaning. People who do so then discount the entire text based upon their own unreasonable expectations, and then accuse those who find value and existential truths in the texts of being irrational (or worse).

Considering how poorly we humans tend to communicate verbally and face-to-face, I guess it's no big surprise that we tend to do a poor job of interpreting the written word as well.

Even so, your counterpoint still holds no water. Just because many of them turn to faith during difficult times does not mean they necessarily perform their job function at a higher level as a result.

Sounds like an unsubstantiated belief to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christians_in_science_...

But to borrow from Sam Harris, if you met a scientist who openly admitted to believing Elvis is still alive, would you hold the same opinion of them professionally?

Skepticism is a core quality of being a scientist. Believing in something without proof is contrary to being skeptical. Thus, believing in god or Elvis are anti-scientific beliefs.

But people are remarkably good at erecting fences in their minds. Many of those brilliant people I refer to (I call them brilliant because of their past good work in science) were able to sort of build a fence in their mind around their work and let irrational beliefs take root around it. So they were not true scientists in all aspects of their lives.

Believing in God doesn't necessarily make you a bad scientist, either.

   Skepticism is a core quality of being a scientist.

Anyway, I just got done reading [1] and found it interesting that Galileo's biggest advantages as a scientist were that he could grind a lens and being trained as an artist (so he had a good idea what he was looking at when he looked at the moon). [And probably also being really witty so he could make friends at parties and impress his financial backers.]

Also:

    Believing in something without proof is contrary to being skeptical.

I took several history of science and technology courses at university and the impression I got was that the most important aspects of being a scientist was messing around with technology, taking notes, and having a lot of time to sit around and think. [Having some sort of rival who was also doing teh science whom you really wanted to show up seems to be a bonus.]

Being willing to be disappointed when you're proved wrong seems a lot more useful than only believing things you have proof for. In fact believing something without proof seems like a great way to get started on something very important as long as you're willing to do a lot of additional work.

[1] - http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...

I also failed to differentiate "belief" from its use in common vernacular, so I'll rephrase my previous statement:

A scientist practices scientific skepticism. Accepting an unsubstantiated hypothesis without empirical evidence is contrary to scientific skepticism. Belief in a higher power is accepting an unsubstantiated hypothesis without empirical evidence. Thus, belief in a higher power is contrary to scientific skepticism. Therefore, belief in a higher power is contrary to being a scientist.

Of course it's human nature to become emotionally attached to a hypothesis of one's own design. And perhaps scientists would not so rigorously pursue empirical evidence to support their claims if they didn't "believe" them. But the difference between a scientist and a theist is that a scientist will back off their hypothesis when evidence to the contrary is presented, whereas a theist will not.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_skepticism

Everything I've seen of Galileo leads me to believe that he was't a scientific skeptic (the dude still had epicycles when all he had to do was pay a bit more attention to Kepler). I'm interested in what evidence you use to believe that he was practicing any form of skepticism.

Edit (you edited the post, now my joke makes no sense :( )

You underestimate the number of scientists with absurd beliefs.

There are people who believe in parallel universes, dark matter, spooky action at a distance, wormholes, time travel, simulating the human brain in silico, more than 3 spatial dimensions, strong artificial intelligence, aliens, etc.

Dealing with the absurd is a fundamental part of the human experience, and those denying this are only kidding themselves. See for example the atheists who give in to the absurd, semi-religious, arguments for the existence of life on other planets in the absence of any proof at all.

We're never free of absurd beliefs, we just find new ways to have them. The trick is to separate belief from fact when doing science and only draw conclusions from the latter.

Scientists do not believe in parallel universes, dark matter and all the other stuff you mentioned. They hypothesize about them, then they try to formulate theories and then they try to test these theories, by means of experiments.

When they do get to perform comprehensive experiments then, depending on the results, finally know what the truth is.

Not so much the same as with the beardy invisible man living in the sky now is it?

Not quite. The current substantiated hypothesis is always provisional until a better idea or contrary evidence turns up. That's not what most people call truth, and certainly not the kind of truth religious people have in mind.

Sometimes I wonder why I spend time to respond to people. No one reads anything. People just want to disagree to pass the time.

Even with an enormous and indefinite number of validating experiments, a theory is still provisional. There is no forever truth. For example consider Newtonian physics. For the 200 years until relativity and quantum mechanics were invented it was the best game in town. 200 years of experiment is pretty comprehensive. We can do experiments today that support Newtonian physics. But it was never 'true', because if you look very, very carefully you can find examples where it doesn't work.

You can not prove things true in science (unlike math), you can only disprove them. Things that resist disproof are held as provisionally true until we know better.

So: there is no moment when you "finally know what the truth is". Hence my disagreement with your post.

Scientists know what the truth isn't. There's a T-shirt slogan for you.

On the other hand what does all this have to do with the belief(as in faith) and the belief of scientists in various phenomena, theories etc?

You picked a word("truth") from my post and wrote an irrelevant(but kinda interesting) comment.

We were talking about the absurdity of believing in something(like god) rather than believing that something might hold true.

And then, you're just playing with words, you're not actually making a point.

If one would want to be concise they would say that everything can be true or false, for specific values of truthiness or falsiness under a particular context.

Case in point: Newtonian physics is true under a macroscopic context.

PS. I don't wear T-shirts that bear aphorisms.

> When [scientists] perform comprehensive experiments then, depending on the results, [they] finally know what the truth is.

and contrasted that with the beliefs of religious people. Your assertion isn't quite true, and I explained why.

Then you told me off for (a) not reading your fine comment; (b) irrelevance; and (c) having poor apparel recommendations.

I concede the last point gracefully. Have a great weekend.

b) Compared to the greater point, which was the dishonesty of equating "believe-in" to "believe-that", it was a bit irrelevant. Yet, as I said, interesting. Also I explained why this kind of nitpicking doesn't offer much(IMHO), by giving the example of how far we can go by playing with truthiness/falsiness values.

c) Hey, there's no accounting for taste! Also, I didn't judge. I just said that I don't wear them.

Have an even greater weekend

The only things actually pertinent to monotheistic doctrines are "invisible" and "living".

> Scientists do not believe in parallel universes, dark matter and all the other stuff you mentioned.

Of course they do. They create models and then try to interpret them using what looks more like philosophy than hard science. What they get sometimes is nothing short of unsubstantiated belief in absurd things. But as long as they don't try to pass that as the scientific truth, we don't mind. Crazy beliefs might lead to new discoveries, specially in that nebulous phase of hypothesis formulation.

Read the definition from wikipedia: "Belief is the state of mind in which a person thinks something to be the case, with or without there being empirical evidence to prove that something is the case with factual certainty"

The reason why you're confused is simple; you conflate casual speech with literal definitions. When you hear scientists say "I believe that... blah blah" is a figure of speech. In the same way I used "what the hell" but I really don't believe in hell :)

What they mean actually is "I hypothesize that ... blah blah". That's why you won't see any scientific papers saying "I believe that the number must be something around... 42".

And by the way, even if they believed in the sense that you said, any evidence contrary to their beliefs would make them adjust their beliefs ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_We_Believe_But_Cannot_Pro...

There's a whole book with responses from real scientists regarding this.

Basing your professional opinion of someone on anything other than their professional work strikes me as very 'unsciency'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime

Belief A has no rational basis. Belief B has a rational basis. If you believe A yet have proven B, that doesn't make B wrong. Even if believe that it was A which led you to the discovery.

>If you believe A yet have proven B, that doesn't make B wrong.

It makes you wrong. All the time you spend as a proponent for A is wasted.

I agree that it's better not to waste your time believing A if you can avoid it.

Non sequitur. What you believe is separated from your work. Just like when you were a kid and your math homework had nothing to do with the fact that you believed wrestling was real.

1. quite a few people in middle America are poorly educated because of their religion and politics, and the political system, permit them to elect ideological morons to school councils, and those fuckwits are ruining facts. There are so many line item "vetos" editorializing history and science books that school book publishers have thousands of derivatives of a particular book title and edition to cater to every county in the country. So it's a circular problem that the American education system is itself political.

2. Middle Americans used to be relatively wealthier than they are now, because we used to believe, as a country, that is was a bad idea for a handful of people to end up with all the marbles. And that wealth meant that at one time, Americans as a whole were some of the most well traveled people in the world. Now, something like 80% of Americans don't even have a passport.

And that means confusing the difference between "culture and achievement" with condescending assholes which you do in fact get on the coasts; just like there are ignorant assholes in middle America. If we were more well traveled, we'd know the difference, and we'd properly be condescending to the assholes, and we'd embrace more of the people who just want to get good things done, instead of being so adversarial all the time.

You know, if one wants to thoroughly embrace stereotypes and all.

Please point out to me where I said that middle America has no culture and we're all friendly, and that the coasts are nothing but cultured snobs.

While you're doing that, look up the definition of "flyover states" and tell me what it says and why I probably brought it up.

Out of curiosity, do you think it is possible that a government-monopolized school system could be anything other than political?

This isn't a thing only liberals do to conservatives, it goes the the other way when conservatives are in the majority. I experienced it first hand.

Most people treat politics like sports teams, you're born a republican/democrat the same way you're born a fan of the local football team. So they automatically divide the world into the "in-group" and "out-group" and just blindly rage against the other "team" like the home crowd boos the opposing team.

There is a reason the founders were fearful of tyranny of the majority.

It's great ammunition for certain politicians (like Trump or his UK and European counterparts).

Of course, the implicit "having a more left-er political spectrum is better" opinion is assumed, which is almost always the case for contra-American political claims, but in your defense, may not be the case here.

And most European countries don't even have socialized health care, just basically the UK.

[1] http://france.angloinfo.com/healthcare/health-system/health-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Germany#Public_i... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Russia

The closest thing to European style left is Bernie Sanders, but he's such an outlier that he's considered a commie in the US, while in Europe he'd be center-left.

But relatively speaking, the pattern holds true even in places with different political norms and what not. The media is disdain for people who don't agree with the academic/media/whatever narrative are vilified, they turn to candidates with some questionable views because they don't treat them terribly and it just starts spiraling out of control.

As an American, I find it amusing the same way I find it amusing when someone points out the sky is blue, or the Earth is round.

That's simply not true, and a drastic oversimplification of American politics.

It is true that there are two mainstream America political parties. However, anyone is free to run as an Independent or under the banner of any other party they choose, whether that be the Green Party or the Libertarian Party. Here is an example ballot, showing that more than just Mitt Romney and Barack Obama were on the 2012 federal election ballot: http://www.sos.ms.gov/links/elections/home/tab1/GE12%20Sampl...

As you can see, the Constitution Party, Libertarian Party, Green Party, and Reform Party also appeared on the ballot.

It is true that voters seldom vote for people outside the Republican or Democratic parties. (Two notable recent exceptions are Bernie Sanders, formerly Democratic Socialist who switched to Democrat, and Joe Lieberman, Independent) Why is this? Because for the most part, people are happiest with one of those two. How's that possible? Because there's an enormous amount of political range within a party. Basically anyone can up and announce that they're a Republican at any time, and that's that. Ron Paul and John Kasich can be in the same party and nobody blinks an eye. That's why you hear expressions like 'Tea Party Republicans' or 'Blue Dog Democrats' or 'Southern Democrats'. There's a lot more variety in the party than you see in European parties and party members are free to do basically whatever they want while in office. They don't have to vote in blocs.

At the same time, Americans vote for damn near every position imaginable. Federal government is largely divorced from most people's everyday concerns; you get a vote for President/Vice-President, two Senators, and a Representative. The policies that affect the average American most are legislated and executed on a local and state level, not a federal level. States have enormous power in America politics. And take my state, for example: I get to vote for Governor, Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor, State Auditor, Secretary of State, State Treasurer, Agriculture Commissioner, State Senator, Insurance Commissioner, Public Service Commissioner, Transportation Commissioner, Supreme Court Justice, District Attorney, and House Representative. On the county level, which is also where an incredible amount of decisions are made, I elect a Supervisor, Constable, Sheriff, Justice Court Judge, Tax Collector, Tax Assessor, Chancery Clerk, Circuit Clerk, School Board Member, Superintendent of Education Coroner, and Prosecuting Attorney. And the more local you get, the less party matters at all.

There isn't a democracy problem in America: most of the most important decisions - education funding, infrastructure development, criminal laws and prosecutions, law enforcement, taxation, utility management, etc - are made on a state level or a hyperlocal city or county level. The reality is that the federal government has comparatively little to do with most people's lives, beyond getting a federal income tax return, the military, Social Security, and Medicare.

The problem is with the people.

It is in practice quite true even if it is not nominally true, and not only that it is true, but the connection between it and the particular kind of poorly-representative electoral system the US has been established by comparative study across democracies.

> There isn't a democracy problem in America

Yes, there is, largely to a very poorly representative electoral system. Lots of elections doesn't make a well-functioning democracy, that takes elections which produce governments that are effectively representative.

Can you explain in what sense American government is not representative?

People freely choosing to vote for people that you don't consider to be in their best interests does not make a government unrepresentative.

There are a few factors that impact representativeness - gerrymandering and the ineligibility of felons and illegal immigrants, for instance, but all-in-all that impact is pretty minor. In particular, of course, at a local and state level, those impacts are reduced along with the scale. There's an unwarranted hyper-focus on federal government because it's the most visible and affects the most citizens, but for most people's day to day lives, it is the least important level of government.

If Americans have a divisive, gridlocked federal government that produces results nobody likes, that's the natural consequence of a divisive, gridlocked populace that doesn't know what it wants (lower taxes! more social security! balance the budget!), not un-representative government.

While 'Winner Takes All' is one way to do representative voting and checking that item off the list, it's one of the worst ways to be representative. CGP Grey has a series of videos on different voting systems and their pros and cons on youtube - start with this one, which goes through the ways 'winner takes all' drives towards worse representation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

Another issue that Grey doesn't mention is that electioneering in the US is so constant and expensive, that politicians can rarely afford to speak in-depth to people without money to donate. It's a subtle effect and not really corruption, but a result of having to endlessly chase the dollars in order to electioneer.

The US has a representative system, no-one's arguing against that. But is it satisfactory or unsatisfactory?

State and local elections are often not winner takes all, but two-round voting. (Really, more than that, if you want to cheat and count the primary election and possible run-offs there.)

Because it produces outcomes where the distribution of power in government does not follow the distribution in the preferences of the electorate (even the distribution as expressed in voting, which is already distorted by tactical accommodation to the known features of the electoral system.)

This is problem stemming largely from the use of single-member winner-take-all elections by majority/runoff or plurality rules, as is the case for most legislative (and many other) elections, and which is compounded, at the federal level, by distribution of representation disproportionately to population (obviously in the Senate, but granularity results in significant variance in district size for House seats, as well.)

Arend Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy provides pretty good coverage of both the degree to which various modern democracies have representative government, the structural features that are associated with effective representation, and the effects that those variations in effectiveness of representation have.

> People freely choosing to vote for people that you don't consider to be in their best interests does not make a government unrepresentative.

True, but America, nevertheless, among modern democracies has a notably poorly representative government.

> There are a few factors that impact representativeness - gerrymandering and the ineligibility of felons and illegal immigrants, for instance, but all-in-all that impact is pretty minor.

Gerrymandering actually has a lot less impact on representativeness than it gets credit for (but it having any significant effect is a product of single-member, winner-take-all districts, which have a very large effect on representativeness, even outside of gerrymandering.)

> In particular, of course, at a local and state level, those impacts are reduced along with the scale.

No, the scale might be reduced, but the effects of gerrymandering and disenfranchisement, such as they are, are not reduced at local scale (and may actually be exacerbated, depending on the locale -- there are locales above and below the national average for distortion from any of those sources.)

Additionally, there are systems used at local scale (such as multiseat elections on a Vote for N system, with N winners) that are frequently used in local elections that are more hostile to effective representation than single-member, winner-take-all districts.

OTOH, the effects of unequal allocation (at least for legislative districts) are reduced at the state level.

> If Americans have a divisive, gridlocked federal government that produces results nobody likes, that's the natural consequence of a divisive, gridlocked populace that doesn't know what it wants (lower taxes! more social security! balance the budget!), not un-representative government.

Well, no, its a product of a combination of unrepresentative government and a Constitutional system deliberately made to have many veto points, which means if the distortions that effect different institutions work in different directions, the result is gridlock.

On top of that, the center in the US is pretty far to the right in European terms; the mainstream of the Republican and Democratic parties (in government, if not in the electorate) have been, I think fairly, described as, respectively, right-wing and center-right in European terms.

But as someone else pointed out elsewhere on the page, I guess it depends on how you define left and right in terms of politics.

The space occupied by the rhetoric might be similar, but the distribution within that space is not; more significantly, the substantive policy outcomes are not similar, particularly on economic/labor/welfare issues. (Consider things like government policies on healthcare, paid sick leave, paid family/maternity/paternity leave, etc.)

In many ways, those items are being addressed on the US state level, as they should. I, for one, have all the things you list available to me. Are some more expensive then they should be? Sure, but most likely if you dig into the truth of the matter it's because of government interference.

In the end, most people want the same things regardless of their government.

He's more right than most parties in the European Left bloc, and there's still fringe groups left of those.

I am always quite shocked to hear of how strong the divide appears to be in the US between, loosely, "religious conservatives" and "non-religious liberals". I've spent approximately zero time in the US, so I can't really tell if it is partly an exaggeration, but the feelings certainly seem to run quite strong across the media spectrum.

I would think that people feel that the way outgroups go about their lives is bonkers, but that most of the ingroup people are crazy in their own right.

For example, there's definitely a north-south tension in England, which does have some cultural aspects to it, but it's in a completely different league from the US situation (as far as I understand that), and beyond the occasional mutual quips, you won't see any real discrimination - that's my experience, anyway.

Even the worst bible-thumping rednecks I know (many, many cousins of both sides of the family) will agree to disagree and behave in a civil manner in the presence of those with whom they disagree.

When I was living in San Francisco, I've been literally run out of coffee shops, restaurants and parties after the wrong person finds out I'm pro-gun.

Come to Seattle, in my RPG group we had 2 people conceal carry and visits to the local range are a common activity for all political persuasions.

One night one of my players brought in a collection of knives he'd just purchased. The MtG players next to us did look a bit.... unsettled as we handed around all the various new sharp toys that'd been brought in.

> They're the ones who say we're not allowed to have jobs if we think the wrong thoughts or have the wrong opinions.

I've seen plenty of people on the right proclaim that "all atheists should be removed from the country" or that "if you aren't Christian you are a traitor to the nation."

The people you are complaining about and the people I am complaining about are all authoritarian, that is the problem, not the left/right spread. The people who cause problems are those who think someone should be in charge and be dictating the rules that everyone must follow.

The actual set of rules being dictated is fairly arbitrary.

>Even the worst bible-thumping rednecks I know (many, many cousins of both sides of the family) will agree to disagree and behave in a civil manner in the presence of those with whom they disagree.

You've got to be kidding me. You (and I) are from the land of Jim Crow. My high school's prom was segregated until the late 90's. I worry for the safety of anyone openly gay in my hometown.

Let's just be honest - every classification of people you can think of has their assholes. It's a fact of life, ignore them and move on.

Thank you for perfectly demonstrating my point.

But to give you a very specific example, you may remember this from the news this year:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Walter_Scott

If you're going to be that snarky, at least be right.

> the number of minorities in my little hometown has increased at a startling rate the past 3 years

Sorry we startled you.

Yeah, like that crazy leftist Joe McCarthy, and his modern-day ilk that try to get teachers fired for being gay or atheist.

No party has a monopoly on nutbags; it just seems that way because of selection bias.

Though, really, "left" and "right" are useless terms without defining your usage of them beforehand. Rest assured, there are many right-wingers who are all too willing to make the personal political and to stifle dissent. In fact, that's more-or-less a signature distinction of the New Right that emerged around the era of Buckley and National Review.

The first paragraph, which appeared to be what was rejected, was a generalization, not a recounting of personal experience.

And, nothing in the post you responded to was any kind of rejection that violates any precept that is particularly common, AFAICT, on the left (it might, I suppose, violate a right-wing stereotype of the left, but, then, that's more a problem of the alignment of the stereotype with reality.)

You are correct. I was wrong.

Again, the term "left" is useless without defining it first. I have no idea what the hell you actually mean when you say "left".

People define themselves by these terms and the terms are also widely used. If you can't figure them out, that's on you.

Is that so? Because I've heard definitions of "right" as variously economically liberal, economically protectionist, socially conservative, socially liberal (as in classical liberalism), non-interventionist in foreign policy, interventionist in foreign policy, anti-statist, statist and so forth.

In fact, all of these contradictory views have belonged or continue to belong to various movements categorized as "right-wing".

So I'm asking about what you mean. Or perhaps you don't mean anything and are simply looking for an ax to grind.

Strawman.

EDIT: I was asking not because I disagreed, but because I was hoping the parent would elaborate on that point. The person who replied to my post did a very good job at that.

That's precisely what the article talks about, and reddit is a great way to experience the kind of bigoted dogmatism the article discusses.

I'm going to use this phrase. Thanks.

Even the snobs in NYC or SF are more tolerable (NYC having a pragmatic undercurrent, and SF at least having a "builder" mentality).

The sheer irony involved in that original comment and his choice of example should have been immediately obvious. The fact it wasn't makes me think, frankly, its OP who is the issue.

The fact I have to put up with bullshit from people who live in the [insert location here] on a regular basis and make condescending comments doesn't mean I assume the entire [insert location here] behaves that way in general. Rather, I recognize that its the specific individuals I deal with in that instance that are the problem and not the general population.

The fact both of you immediately jumped in to defend the generalization and expand on it, frankly, makes it even more ironic to the point of hypocrisy.

It's not incorrect to make broad generalizations about the culture of places. While every place has a broad spectrum of people, every place has identifiable trends and modalities.

Is there some kind of large, documented body of evidence proving what the OP says is true? [ Hint: We have that for racism but we don't for what the OP is stating as far as I'm aware. ]

> Strangely, that rule seems not to apply when it's a progressive talking to a traditionalist. And progressives wonder why they have such a hard time talking to traditionalists? You'd have to be willfully blind.

I'm unaware requiring broad, systemic evidence of discrimination before applying the "this is a problem beyond a few individuals" is a strange standard.

Please, explain why this is an unreasonable standard?

Because you haven't described a standard, you've asked for "broad, systematic evidence." What exactly constitutes "broad, systematic evidence"? If we were to provide you with, say, 20 instances of left wing discrimination against the right, would you admit you're wrong? How these conversations usually go is you demand evidence, we provide evidence, you say our evidence is invalid and round and round we go.

This is called "bringing dialectic to a rhetorical debate". You're not arguing logic or facts, you're arguing emotions. If I'm wrong on that fact, please, describe an exact standard that would convince you the OP is, in fact, correct.

Empirical research by enough different researchers that reasonable people can assume it to be true and not the product of statistical manipulation.

Hell, I won't even hold you to that standard.

Provide lots of things like this:

http://blog.linkedin.com/2015/06/17/measuring-gender-diversi...

I don't care if they are real academics.

There's a certain irony here I can't dismiss. You write three paragraphs about being victimized by stereotyping Middle America, then end your rant by.... stereotyping everyone on the east coast (or those who sought extended education).

The catch there is that knowing Socrates isn't getting you off the side of the road, and that's what I was getting at. I could've explained it better though.

As you said, that's a far easier skill to learn than say programming. However, I have never encountered such an attitude and have lived on both coasts. I think people greatly appreciate skilled mechanics, tradesmen, etc. all over the country. The best can usually charge a premium. That's no different on the coasts.

I doubt this will be a popular opinion: Frankly, I think belief in the supernatural should be screenable in an employment application. Maybe it doesn't affect how you think about the world and how you think about solutions to problems but it could. Maybe you're prone to believing in unsupported theories because you've trained your brain to do so in your private life? Maybe you press on with an idea when you shouldn't. Maybe that will effect your business decisions?

I'm not an atheist. I just think it's an interesting question. I grew up with a lot of Mormons who metaphorically drowned the parts of their brain that were curious about the world. The sad part was that they were required to in order to fit into their community and maintain good familial relations. A lot of them struggled with it and still do. I say it's sad because they could have achieved and contributed a lot more to the world. Now most of them are salesmen, which is a skill they learned on their missions.

I think about this often. As humans, our brains look for social signals for shortcuts (read Robert Cialdini). Do people use religious belief as a shortcut? Do they do so subconsciously? I've never asked someone about their religious beliefs in an interview but if they mentioned it, would I subconsciously reach a different conclusion? Would I be less willing to trust that they have good, objective business sense? Would I want someone who believes in the bible literally as an engineer? What about as a salesman? Maybe for marketing? Does it aid creative thinking or impair it?

Why would you bring up religion in an interview?

If you apply this fairly, it would exclude a lot of people. For example, I meet a lot of people folks here on HN that believe in "human rights" or "natural rights" that don't arise out of legal documents. But if you cut someone open, you can't find any "natural rights" in there, nor has anyone provided experimental evidence characterizing the physics of "natural rights."

I don't mean to pick on them, but just to strengthen your point: almost all of us believe in something supernatural (which doesn't make it any more real, of course.) But what really characterizes people who believe in something supernatural is they believe that thing is natural. Devout Christians do, of course, believe that God transcends nature, having created it, but God is for them an entirely 'natural' thing, a perfectly obvious and eternal truth that everybody should just know, you'd think, an inalienable part of the natural world.

This kind of fundamental belief, or axiom, or cognitive bias, or whatever you want to call it, is very difficult for most people to really identify and understand in themselves.

I don't believe in god or natural rights, so examples raised so far are out.

Maybe markets. I believe that forces like supply and demand are fundamental and essential in all sorts of human interactions. But maybe that's just because I can't transcend some sort of deeply engrained thinking.

Hrmmmmmmmm.

A) Scientists believing in the supernatural should not be hired.

This statement could be correct or not.

B) supernatural events can not be explained with the laws of physics. There is not any experimental evidence of any supernatural event.

This is true.

C) "natural rights" can not be explained with the laws of physics. There is not any experimental evidence of any "natural right" inside a human body. If you cut someone open you can't find any "natural rights" in there.

This seems true, but is false in fact *

D) Thus, we conclude that people believing in natural rights should not be hired.

Not. This is a fallacy because C is not related at all with neither A, nor B. Thus your example can not teach us about if A is false. Is not a proof of anything.

To suggest that people "believe" in a paper with something written on it is equivalent to people "believe" in god is wrong. You can sacrifice a chicken and them put its corpse in a fridge, but you are not trying to make the fridge happier or less angry. Is not a god. Fridges, as laws, are just created by humans to improve the life inside human societies. A law is just a pact, a paper with something written on it its origin and creation can be explained perfectly without to breaking any natural rule. Laws can seem esotheric, but this is not remotely equivalent to such thing as "a supernatural event".

* Yes, C is false. If you cut someone open that believe in natural rights you could find some copies of those "natural rights" of course, as chemical traces saved in the cells that hold the memory and culture of this people. At least for a while.

People tend to have separate approaches towards things they believe are well defined vs things they know require faith.

Here's an alternative view point: Take someone who believes in ghosts, they may believe a ghost exists and is quite capable of grabbing them a beer from the fridge, but I doubt that does mean they sit around waiting for it to happen. They may even ask, but in the mean time they will go get their own beer. So I, as an employer, know can rely on that person to get the job done while at the same time that person may discover new rewarding approaches because they are open minded enough to try out-of-the-box ideas. On the other hand I can also always hire a scientific minded person to do the job, but it's less likely they will find opportunity to disrupt anything.

IMHO I think having a mixed group is the best way to go.

I think there are good reasons for these laws. If it is legal to discriminate in employment against religious minorities, that can contribute to their disconnection from broader society, which could promote radicalisation and similar problems. You also have to consider that there are many countries where religious discrimination is official government policy - how easy is it for an open atheist to get a job in Saudi Arabia? - and for Western countries to prohibit religious discrimination is a good way of sending a message about it at the global level (whether or not anyone in places like Saudi Arabia are listening.)

As a Libertarian, I wouldn't deny you your right to hire whom you please for whatever reasons.

As a Leader, if you were applying to me for that job, I would take the position of "As long as your code works well and you're willing to work hard, you can go home and worship a flaming bag of dog shit and dance naked around it listening to David Bowie for all the fucks I give about it, just please don't show me pictures." and I would mean it.

It's a pretty common attitude among folks brought up in upper middle class people who end up in professional or other high end jobs. It's a Nouveau riche thing.

As far as heavy religious people are concerned, I've learned in general to not judge and let people demonstrate the capability.

One of the most brilliant guys that I ever met was a ultra-orthodox Hasidic dude. He lived by a strict code, but had an amazing discipline, work ethic and creative problem solving approach. He had great technical ability, but also had a unique way of connecting with people and working out complex people problems.

I'm from the South and can't go home without being made fun of for "doing computers".

I'm from the South and have never heard of an adult being made fun of for working with computers. And my family on both paternal and maternal sides is very Southern, having been in SC/NC since before the Revolutionary War.

I have noticed that some family tease a lot about anything and everything, but this seems to cross regions and countries.

There's no need to focus on the example I used. To reply, though, this is something I've encountered in Southern Georgia and I'll say that a) it may have to do with my physical appearance and b) it really isn't bothersome or overly mean spirited. I don't get too hung up on anything like that.

On the other hand, I might just be lucky. Who knows?

In the vast majority of places, no, I'm not surprised at all.

I agree with what you're saying.

I see what you did here

In fact, a scholarly person refusing to learn how to change a flat tire is of benefit to society because it frees their mind to contemplate more complicated matters and allows for less the less ambitious or less capable to still have functions in the economy.

1. AAA isn't always there at your beck and call. 2. The mechanics of changing a flat don't exactly take years of training. 3. Some degree of self-reliance is generally desirable although that degree may be a reasonable topic for debate.

Sure if you don't want to do it, there's nothing wrong with that. But many smart people don't learn simple practical things for the same reason many practical people don't learn intellectual things, they put them in the too hard or too boring basket. You tend to be good at the things you work at, and work at the things you like.

In modern society, is knowing how to change a tire more practical than understanding the basis of argument?

> You tend to be good at the things you work at, and work at the things you like.

You work at those things which bring you utility. It's a subtle difference, but utility includes activities you don't like but which generate income. Ideally, those activities are also beneficial for society. Critical thinking is more highly valued in modern society than is knowing how to change a flat.

I think it speaks to the heart of it. Please feel free to elaborate on why I'm wrong.

But here's how I understood it: He was exaggerating a bit for the purpose of making his argument a little more punchy, and phrases like "most of whom can't even swap a tire for a donut without calling AAA" are clearly meant to have an element of humor to them. You took his words at absolute face value without stopping to think that they might be meant as something else.

Its seems quite likely to be (insulting) hyperbole, but I don't see the humor. (I suppose it kind of sounds funny if you aren't used to the use of the term "donut" to refer to a reduce-size, limited-speed spare tire, since talking about swapping a tire for a donut would in that case be an absurdity.)

The problem I have with the GP is not the literal words (I have no problem with style), but that he's complaining of being stereotyped while spreading a stereotyped anti-intellectual message.

Taking this single little point and then using it to systematically reject the whole argument is an example of what the parent was ranting about.

You have rejected his argument right there.

Nothing says "proselytisation" like walking into a different conversation and announcing your passion for religion.

I think that's your problem. Walking into a discussing and announcing that is a fairly odd thing to do. I've never entered a discussion on reddit and announced I'm an devout atheist. I think people generally bristle at people staking out positions via broad categories.