Liberal bias.

[Lyndon]

No, actually ,we don't.
And BOTH sides of politics have been responsible for some pretty bad decisions around how to handle refugees, which includes detention centres.

yes, we do

 

[Stevicus]

Your assessment is true. I was surprised that Nixon was very supportive of Medicaid and other social health programs. Looking farther back at Eisenhower and he would be viewed as a liberal as well. Reagan would probably be a republican today, but more like a Romney or Flake category.

Upthread I was reading the view about conservatives being divorced from facts, but I always thought Nixon was one of the more intelligent presidents we've had in my lifetime, at least in terms of his understanding of the world situation. But he was also crafty, devious, and devoid of any real ethics or moral compass.

There were other conservatives who were reasonably intelligent at the time, although Reagan's growing popularity seemed to symbolize the dumbing down of conservatism in general. Reagan had more of an "aww shucks" appeal, much like a kindly but slightly senile grandpa, yet a tough old coot when he needed to be. The Bushes were a bit smarter than Reagan, yet they turned out to be some kind of weird cross between Reagan and Nixon, taking the worst parts of both.

The liberals also shifted away from the ideals they once supported in the 60s and early 70s.

 

[Lyndon]

We are not more to the right than the US. Nope, nope.

Depends what you're looking at, Aust healthcare system is to the left of Americas, Aust disability and unemployment programmes can be to the right of Americas, the current Aust PM is to the right of Biden, but to the left of Trump

 

[lewisnotmiller]

yes, we do

There are no forced labour camps in Australia. As crappy as I think our approach to refugees is (and for the record, I think it's crappy) comparing immigration detention centres to gulags in any semi-serious fashion grossly understates the conditions of Soviet forced labour camps, and is hyperbole.

At some point people need to decide if they stand for 'their team' or instead for truth. I'm sick of the left vs right binary circle jerk, frankly.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Depends what you're looking at, Aust healthcare system is to the left of Americas, Aust disability and unemployment programmes can be to the right of Americas, the current Aust PM is to the right of Biden, but to the left of Trump

Ugh. I stand corrected. We are basically Texas, but with functioning gun laws, universal healthcare, government subsidised tertiary education, a realistic minimum wage, and limited impact from the religious conservatives.

I'm not about to suggest that Australia is some left-wing paradise...against many countries I would suggest we sit to the right. But the USA is most certainly not one of them.

 

[Lyndon]

Ugh. I stand corrected. We are basically Texas, but with functioning gun laws, universal healthcare, government subsidised tertiary education, a realistic minimum wage, and limited impact from the religious conservatives.

I'm not about to suggest that Australia is some left-wing paradise...against many countries I would suggest we sit to the right. But the USA is most certainly not one of them.

As a partially disabled Australian American, I looked at moving back to Australia and thoroughly investigated their disability programme, it is significantly worse than US Social Security disability, maybe more similar to the less coverage of US SSI for disabled people that have never payed into Social Security. US unemployment pays much better than than Aust. Job Seeker, but it only lasts a year and doesn't cover people that weren't working legally like Aust Jobseeker does, Aust Job Seeker never pays close to Min wage for full time employment, but US unemployment can often pay that well.

 

[Stevicus]

We are basically Texas, but with functioning gun laws, universal healthcare, government subsidised tertiary education, a realistic minimum wage, and limited impact from the religious conservatives.

 

[Augustus]

Speaking of "platitudes, rather than a reflection of fact"...

Here was I thinking there was plenty of factual evidence that people's strongly held beliefs often influence their thoughts and actions...

 

[Augustus]

One notable thing is that the sciences require a certain level of flexibility and open to change, and that is a big part of the ethics of experimentation and evolving theories. The evolution of theories means they become more accurate and more precise. Why conservatives are less attracted to the sciences probably has more to do with them than the sciences. If you disagree what do you propose the sciences do to be more attractive to a conservative mind set?

Do you think this holds true with the hard sciences/STEM as well as the social sciences?

I have no idea.

What poor track record are you referring to? Give examples.

Psychology, for example, replication rates are around 50%.

 

[Kooky]

Here was I thinking there was plenty of factual evidence that people's strongly held beliefs often influence their thoughts and actions...

Again, you are talking in platitudes. Where do you get your information from that academia is actually dominated by leftists (that is, leftists are controlling dominant positions in academia) and what actual measurable influence does that convey in everyday academic (or public) life?

And what would academicians be biased towards in the first place? "Leftism", is, after all, a rather generic catch-all term for political movements and ideological frameworks ranging from traditional unionism to radical feminism, from social liberalism to Maoism, from old school Keynesian economics to environmentalist activism, from Krugman to Chomsky, from the Frankfurt School to the New York Times opinion page.

 

[F1fan]

Do you think this holds true with the hard sciences/STEM as well as the social sciences?

I have no idea.

The history of science is one of constant readjustment to what is known to be true. Look at Galileo's observations and how that made Aristotle's model obsolete. Look at Einstein's Relativity theory and how that changed physics. Genetics has changed how we understand evolution, and anthropology. We can trace how humans moved over the planet over time and can pin point when people moved. Science is constantly becoming more accurate and precise, and we have to understand that work my make old theories and models obsolete.

Psychology, for example, replication rates are around 50%.

I'm not sure what you are referring to, replication rates? Do you mean repeating experiments for peer review?

The social sciences are examining a moving target, and it's all evolving very fast not that we have instruments available to assess physiological data along with mental states. There are more areas of psychology opening up as well, so perhaps you're seeing these issues as being unreliable.

The social science do deal with more variables than the physical sciences so the standard is only 95% versus 99.95%. That said many studies can achieve a higher than minimum accuracy. When I was in college I did a study that compared religiosity to attitudes towards science. The results were around 99% and demonstrated that the more religious a person is the less they trusted science. It was pretty interesting.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

In America anyway, liberals and conservatives don't just have different ideologies. As I see it, they have very different psychologies that pull them left or right.

Compare feeling like you can't have enough money, guns, walls, and police, and that people who look different as the other to be feared, oppressed, exploited, excluded, and demeaned with the liberal psychology of inclusivity, equality, and diversity. One only need compare Trump and his supporters with Biden and his to see that these are very different kinds of people with different psychologies.

And in America, these groups don't just disagree. They despise one another. The left seems to be catching up on that front, with many American liberals refusing to socialize with Republican supporters, seeing them as immoral and sociopathic for supporting a person like Trump. I don't recall liberals feeling that way about Bush and Reagan supporters. We saw them as fellow Americans that were more conservative, but they weren't considered contemptible for supporting such people, and people weren't refusing to socialize with them as American liberals are doing more and more.

The right is also seen as not very smart, as the responses to the OP imply. How many people called the assumptions underlying that post wrong, and its author indoctrinated? They are seen as easily indoctrinated, and woefully out of step with reality. And now, enemies of democracy and egalitarianism - just like Putin and ISIS, who I also don't want to share a meal with or hear what they want. I'm there with American conservatives now. I just don't care what they think or want, since it's always in opposition to my values and what I would call Americanism - once again, just like Putin and ISIS. And most people would call both of those enemies of America wishing the worst for it. What are we to think of people that agree with them, Americans who want race wars, insurrection, unpunished crime, authoritarian leaders, and fixed elections?

As I said, that's not just a difference of beliefs, it's a different psychology, one that many of us on the left can't relate to and don't want to be around.

Somebody in this thread asked about reconciling that rift. I don't see that happening in my lifetime. It only seems to be widening. It's a blood feud now.

But not where I live in Mexico. Most expats here are liberal, and we pretty much have the same values and beliefs. Look at what we have in common. We see ourselves as citizens of the world, and we were willing and able to live abroad as foreigners, immigrants, and in minority status in our new home. Conservatives are less comfortable living this life, so there are far fewer of them than liberal expats, and consequently, not much of a rift here.

 

[Augustus]

Again, you are talking in platitudes. Where do you get your information from that academia is actually dominated by leftists (that is, leftists are controlling dominant positions in academia) and what actual measurable influence does that convey in everyday academic (or public) life?

And what would academicians be biased towards in the first place? "Leftism", is, after all, a rather generic catch-all term for political movements and ideological frameworks ranging from traditional unionism to radical feminism, from social liberalism to Maoism, from old school Keynesian economics to environmentalist activism, from Krugman to Chomsky, from the Frankfurt School to the New York Times opinion page.

For example :

The makeup of psychology has drifted further and further left for a century, from about an even distribution of Democrats and Republicans to an almost complete absence of faculty who vote Republican now. For example, a survey found that, in 2012, 301 social psychologists reported voting for Obama and four for Romney.

This pattern is not restricted to psychology. One study found that, in social sciences and humanities, self-described "radicals," "activists," and "Marxists" outnumber conventional conservatives by about 10:1. These findings, which are so extreme they might seem to be delusions of rightwing conspiracy theorists, are thoroughly documented in the studies referenced below (under the heading By the Numbers).

Nathan Honeycutt and I recently published a review and model of the way political biases operate in social psychology. This is captured in the figure shown to the left. It represents the idea that researcher politics can and do influence the questions they ask, how they interpret data, and which findings they choose to suppress and never publish. For example, this study found that 17 studies with large nationally representative samples finding no evidence of anti-black bias among whites or the presence of anti-white bias among blacks were never published.

Political Biases in Academia

 

[Augustus]

And we're supposed to be worried that there aren't more fascist Trump supporters to balance it out?

A typically nuanced, rational and fair-minded analysis

 

[F1fan]

In America anyway, liberals and conservatives don't just have different ideologies. As I see it, they have very different psychologies that pull them left or right..

There have been studies and reports about the psychological makeup of people who identify either left or right in politics. Pretty interesting actually. There are very different correlations of assumptions, attitudes, ideals, etc.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

The denial of far left is astounding to say the least by acting as if far leftists don't exist anywhere with such assessments.

What would you consider "far left"? There certainly isn't a significant far left movement active in North America today.

I prefer centerests, but the definitions of left and right today are as slippery as a greased pig.

For a definition, I'd start with the literal centre: a 0, 0 on the Political Compass spectrum.

We can quibble about how far you can get from that centrepoint and still be considered a centrist, but I'd say that a radius around that centrepoint of 2 or 3 is probably a reasonable range for "centrist."

As a reminder, here's the spectrum for the last US presidential election (from this page).

 

[Shadow Wolf]

but i suspect even Jordan Pietersen knows he's a walking oxymoron

Have you read him?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The denial of far left is astounding to say the least by acting as if far leftists don't exist anywhere with such assessments.

I prefer centerests, but the definitions of left and right today are as slippery as a greased pig.

No, the problem arises when those such as yourself see Democrats who lean a bit further left than Liberals, or who are dogmatic loons, and scream them are the far left. Pretty much ignoring those like me, the "legit" far left who would raze the current system to the ground, and burn and salt the lands it was built upon (just watch, you'll occasionally see me even advocating for the abolishment of credit scores and having them so strongly tied to our ability to live).
But, yeah, keep on insisting Cortez and Warren are far left and telling people like me we aren't really far left (it's happened several times here).
Very often perspective of what is "far" is personally defined as "what I most disagree with and those I am less able to conversate with."

 

[RestlessSoul]

Have you read him?

I confess I haven't. Watched a couple of YouTube lectures, which meandered a bit but were very engaging.

Any recommendations?

 

[Kooky]

A typically nuanced, rational and fair-minded analysis

And yet, that seems to be where the author of the article you cited is trying to get at: Leftists are persecuting conservatives (i.e. don't invite them to congresses as much as they do their peers), holding "Inquisitions" (i.e. publish political critiques) and "destroying careers" (i.e. spark public controversies that raise certain authors' profile in the right-wing press).

Leftist "dominance", they argue, leads to purges, persecutions, and research bias in favor of leftist issues such as anti-sexism or anti-racism, and "canonizes" leftist narratives such as discrimination against women being pervasive in academia or the job market.

So what better to do, I ask, than to remove this dominance from the equation, by purging academia of leftists and inserting conservatives to balance out leftist dominance? If leftists have perverted science and are threatening correct truths with their dominant bias, then what other ways are there, than to reduce their numbers in academia?