I have never found any Physics i've studied remotely difficult, the same can't be said for Biology, I quite enjoyed Biology at school but I just couldn't get good marks in it.

Biologists also make discoveries that tend to be far more significant in affecting the world we live in, the "difficult" Physics is for the most part conceptual and won't affect our everyday lives for many years yet.

Has anyone looked at Evolution? Not Darwinian evolution, but modern evolution ideas, they've bloody amazing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/intelligence/images/bell_curve.gif

Human Intelligence: The Bell Curve

Please don't leech images. -DSettahr

The reason those in high education positions (colleges, etc) are liberal is because the educational institutions are so abstracted from "regular life", if you will. Everyone is always praising professors for how smart they are, so they become arrogant and begin thinking to themselves "I am so smart, I am the leader of the (insert field of study) field! Wow, I bet I'm a genius in geopolitics as well! I should start throwing unsubstantiated claims which I have barely researched into my lectures." Now you have a bunch of profs who think they are God's gift to mankind (except they probably don't believe in God loloololololololo) spouting off some totally ignorant bs in unrelated classes.

I've had my chemistry prof start talking about politics and spew some incredibly stupid crap about what we should do about the "energy crisis" (LOL Let's raise the gas tax by 6 dollars, capitalism will invent a magical alternative!!). I've had my philosophy prof talk about his tin foil hat politics for an ENTIRE CLASS PERIOD (President Bush is an evil conniving genius in this sentence, bent on swaying everyone to his ideals, and in the next sentence he's a bumbling bafoon?), where we essentially learned nothing about philosophy.

And all of the students, who adore their profs and have great respect for them, suck it in and assume everything they say is scripture. And then they form their little protest groups, boosting the profs egos some more.

What's missing here? PEOPLE WHO ARE IN TOUCH WITH THE WORLD. The profs aren't; they just teach all day and research academia, and probably read newsweek. The students are obviously not, because none of them *have* real life experience, only social bs experience from high school.

Why does it not work the same way for conservative/libertarian thought? Because they are less based on lofty idealism. When you lose touch, imagination takes control. "Oh, well, this should work! It will solve everyone's problems and is the only right way!"... maybe on paper and in your head...

Colleges are a giant circle jerk for liberal thinking. If you don't think so, you're either kidding yourself or haven't been to college yet.

"Whatever you say, I'm right."

Anyway, that's the biggest bull**** I ever heard. Out of touch with reality? You know **** about these people, bro. When I think 'out of touch with reality', I think 'getting laid warrants empeachment, waging the most nonsense war since Vietnam warrants spontaneous mass ceremonies on the streets for GWB, our savior, sent by God (I saw this on a documentary).' Have counterexamples? Go for it!

You know why most academics/profs are liberal? Because it's impossible to have studied genetics and be anti-abortion. It's impossible to be a psychologist who knows about the nature/nurture controversy and still be anti-homosexual. It's impossible to be a sociologist and not recognize the blatantly obvious, REAL WORLD laws that cause global conflicts like this. Trust me, it goes on.

Yes, there's a proven link between intelligence and education and a proven inverse one between intelligence and conservatism. But these are found by all scientists, with a liberal agenda to kill Jesus, so I dunno...

I agree, to a point.

I think a lot of politics are also opinions.

Okay, first, you cited a source that had people actually liking GWB. Not many people LIKE GWB. They just rather have him than Kerry.

Secondly--no, there's just a proven inverse between conservativism and knowledge. No one knows if the IQ tests that were administered were slanted left, or anything else like that.

Not to mention, Osiris is spot on. If I remember correctly, you don't live in the US. Therefore, you wouldn't know how our college system works.

Trust me, college is a hotbed of liberal activities, if for no other reason than the people ARE out of touch. I don't know about other countries, but this is especially true in the U.S.

Not only did you fail to read my post but you're incredibly ignorant. I'm a biology major. I'm anti-abortion because I feel that it is not within our rights to kill unique individual humans with unique genes, nor should we, evolutionarily speaking. I think we should seek to research homosexuality instead of unquestionably accepting it because, unlike what you may think, we still have *no idea* what homosexuality is or where it comes from, whether it's genetic, hormonal (caused by certain hormonal exposure during gestation, for instance), or maybe "nurture". We just don't know. And your calls for ignorance on the subject (just tolerate, accept, don't try to treat) should not impede medical research/treatment.

Please don't tell me it's impossible to believe what I believe after studying what I've studied. Also, please stop ranting like an idiot.

'Treat' homosexuality? Oh man.

Technically, it IS a disease as it interferes with the propagation of our race. And god only knows what causes it.

Uh.. tragic.

Unique genes huh? So dude, obviously you have done the research. Say we have an organic layer of tissue. Noone gives a ****, right? Say it's a tissue of a mountain gorilla foetus, an endangered species, a gastrula maybe. Nope, noone gives a ****. Imagine now it's a human gastrula, a month old or so - uh oh. This is where the trouble starts. Strange, because if we go by rule of scarcity, the mountain gorilla is more important.

Say it's an insentient, unconscious, "human" non-organism with Patau syndrome. At birth it'll look like this

http://medgen.genetics.utah.edu/photographs/diseases/high/peri009.jpg

In the RARE case that it survives beyond birth, it'll undergo an absolutely miserable, traumatic, short existence.

Enough reasons to abort that defective organism while it's still so utterly small, undeveloped, insentient you'd think, right? I mean, it's a start for a debate. Let's hear what the opposition has to say about it.



Now at this point I'm already thinking wtf. "Unique genes"? "Individual humans"? Let's read on.



WTF. If you want to come up with pseudo-science babble, you've come to the wrong person (on evolution nonetheless). Biology majors don't say stuff like this. Biology majors come up with reasons and arguments. Leave the 'it's human life' thing to the religious.



First, I'm getting a really bad social darwinism vibe from you. 'Treat homosexuality'?

Of course we should accept homosexuals. It's like excommunicating people with blonde hair. Genetic markers have been commonly found across homosexuals. Brain physiology differs. Granted, homosexuality is at the very least multifactorial, but same ****ing thing. One who realizes that homosexuality is probably out of control of those individuals, can't be anti-homosexuality. Period.



Yep - tragic. The least that could be expected from a "biology major" is an intelligent backing up of his 'points'.

Edit: found an even more magical picture

Please don't leech images. -DSettahr

Like being ugly?

Celibacy intereferes with the propagation of our 'race'. And we're closing on the causes of homosexuality.

There's a difference. Celibacy is something that can be stopped or started at any point in time. Homosexuality is not. It's something that most people agree is not a conscious decision.

And I meant species. Dunno why I said race.

o_O

I don't know, that stuff is always there, but it depends on the college. Mine is pretty evenly split, so I don't hear as much. I guess a teahcer can't go off on political tangents when half the class doesn't agree with him or her and gets to fill out student opinion forms on the teacher at the end of the semester. You also have places like NYU where many of the teachers wore black after Bush got re-elected, according one of my friends there. (I'm in the College of Engineering, and I'm not taking a lot of liberal arts courses, so my vision might be a bit skewed)

You really have to filter out biases everywhere, and that's just one more thing. It's really republican where I am (Staten Island in NYC, my dad's the only Democrat on my block) and I sometimes had to hear conservative BS, or at least bias, from my High School teachers.

The ones who deliberately keep their opinions to themselves when teaching are always few and far between.

The opposition says: DON'T KILL IT. Clearly that the baby will not survive mere months after birth (if it does) as you claim. If this is so then let natural causes end the life. Yeah it sucks. But, who are we to decide what unborn child decides to live or be aborted.

1) You use deformation as an argument for abortion. WTF? This is just as silly as using rape as an excuse for abortion. What do you honestly suppose the percentage of deformed abortions/rape abortions are in comparison to run-of-the-mill "I don't want no kid, get rid of it!" abortions? Seriously, that kind of red herring bs will not fly with anyone who thinks about it.

2) Evolutionarily it is in our best interests to have as many offspring as possible to further the species. The introduction of new, possibly superior, gene combinations or even mutations (although ridiculously unlikely) is what evolution is BASED on.

3) Yes treat homosexuality. I have had this argument with so many closed minded liberals it's hard to believe (not saying you are one). From a purely medical standpoint, I think it's perfectly fine to try to "fix" homosexuality. I know for fact there are those who experience homosexual tendancies, but wish they didn't have them. You might say "well, it's the job of society to be accepting and they should just embrace their homosexuality". But I ask, if it is in one's interest not to be homosexual, who are we to say "we're not going to look for a cure, just accept it"? Surely you would agree that we should do our best to help people who want an explanation and "cure" for something undesirable in their minds.
Again, you're going to reply with some idiocy about how they only find it undesirable because of society blah blah blah. Fine, that's a great excuse, but while you're "fixing society" why don't we try to fix this for those who, perhaps seperately or because of society, want to not be homosexual? After all, who are you to say with finitude that one may find one's own homosexuality disagreeable ONLY because of society? That's ridiculously arrogant.
I think it's in everyone's best interests to keep an open mind and proceed with whatever medical research is possible; halting research in favor of societal "tolerance" is a dumbass idea... should we tolerate lepers? (And YES I know that this is not an accurate analogy, but the fact is we don't know what homosexuality really is right now, and "tolerance" advocates often just endorse ignorance on the subject..., leading to the medical society avoiding it from political pressure.)

4) "One who realizes that homosexuality is probably out of control of those individuals, can't be anti-homosexuality." I'm advocating putting it in their control, not rejecting them from society. Reading Comprehension -12 pts.

5) My stand on abortion is a political stand. I reject the idea of abortion beyond brain wave initiation, because these are just another group of people that cannot represent themselves properly, but still feel pain. We should, therefore, consider their rights when deciding what it is in our best interests to do. If you would choose some other cut off point, I will be happy to challenge it. It is either my cutoff point, or you give 5 year olds a test to prevent their own destruction by their parents. A fetus *is not* part of the mother. This is clear, as the mother's immune system would destroy it if it were properly integrated with her body.

Complete at total bull****, pulled from your ***. You have no way of backing that up at all, but I guess if saying it helps prove your point it must be true!

I don't think it's stupid at all. If a woman in the second or even as early as the first trimester of pregnancy finds out her baby is going to die as soon as its born, and if not live a very short life mostly in pain and trauma (the child AND the parents), why not go for the abortion before it develops pain receptors, a thalamus etc... Less traumatic for all sides. They're still 'just' cells. You can scrape stuff like that from inside your mouth easy (put very bluntly). Why wait for it to die after

1 - nine months for the parents of *knowing* pregnancy is only continued in order to give birth to a child which will die after a few hours in the most horrible and traumatic circumstances for all sides. If there's anything more mind****ing than that, let me know.

2 - a very resource-heavy nine months for the mother

3 - physical pain, put simply. Good thing that the child dies so fast.

And you know very well I wasn't talking about 'don't want a kid' type abortions.



Yes, but the cases I'm describing are never fertile, or live long enough to become sexually mature.



I don't know that many gay people, but none of them will take kindly of people treating homosexuality as a disease. The point is, I don't even disagree with that. If it could somehow be 'fixed' before the individual becomes aware of his/her own sexuality, then I'm open to arguments. I never see homosexual people beyond adolescence who are unhappy because of their sexuality though. They're just... people. My own limited experience of course.



Quote you: I think we should seek to research homosexuality instead of unquestionably accepting it



I agree. My case is this:

1- babies are born into the world without a chance of survival, in an environment that is determined by pain and trauma. These case can be predicted and prevented before attachment or consciousness, and therefore should
2- there's little or no debate in neonatology or in any relevant branch of medicine that disputes point one

That's it. For the rest, I think we're talking next to eachother. I agree with you - abortion opens up a lot of room for abuse. In some cases, it's the only humane thing to do.



And it is. We know for a fact, and academics more than others, that homosexuality is not in control of the affected individual. Negative discrimination towards these people (banning them from church, voting A instead of B because B accepts the 'destruction of the sanctity of marriage', denying them an important and emotional institute) is therefore random discrimination. It's literally random. The dude had bad luck. And people who actually know this and have studied this can never be against equal homosexual rights. Thanks for joining in though :/

Inefficiency is seperate from pollutants and modern vehicle release miniscule ammounts of pollutants anyway. But this is hardly related to my original question of what this all has to do with the "global environment".

A debate debate covering all the different issues the separate conservatives and liberals. This is getting disorganized.

In conclusion, I think all of you should give me a dollar.

Yeah... doesn't this board have a 'split thread' function? I have seen it before. Other things of interest could be a merge function, to merge different threads on the same topic into one.

Seems to me there is a merge function. Either that or a moderator might have once cut and pasted one into another. I remember this because as a result, two of DJ Yoshi's posts appeared in a way so that he told himself he didn't know what he was talking about.

1) I'm arguing abortion at large, and in general. You seemed to be doing the same, as you responded to my assertions about abortion at large. However, it is now clear that you are instead arguing for abortion in very tiny, fractions-of-a-percent instances. You can't justify abortion as a whole with tiny exceptions.

2) "I never see homosexual people beyond adolescence who are unhappy because of their sexuality though." I'm talking about people that have always struggled with tendancies, bisexuality perhaps, but maybe have children, or maybe have a wife/husband, or someone they deeply love but are not as attracted to as the same sex. You will not find these people even talking about homosexuality, because they are trying to fight it, because they find it undesirable. Again, perhaps this is a case of "society is the fault", but in that case, we shouldn't be giving people liposuctions either. I firmly believe we should be looking to give people a choice, so they can fight the dice, so to speak.

You quoted me as saying "I think we should seek to research homosexuality instead of unquestionably accepting it ". I see not problem with this statement coinciding with everything else I've said. We shouldn't unquestionably accept homosexuality as a given, an unchangable factor. This does not mean we should not accept the people who choose/accept it in their own lives. I'm not talking about rights here.

I appreciate your last reply as it was much more reasonable and less insulting.

Shut up.

But there is a merge function. Damn admins don't know how to use it right. DAMN YOU BOLSHEVIKS! *shakes fist*

Yeah dude. I think our mutual frustration had its origin in the fact that we were considering different cases. My apologies.

Tests conducted trying to find the source of homosexuality have been flimsy, at best. The most reliable results say that between 25% to 50% may have only a genetic disposition toward homosexuals. Even if this is true, that still leaves 50% to 75% of homosexuals with no genetic disposition toward homosexuality. As it stands, the official cause of homosexuality is "unknown at this time."

Let God sort it out, KILL EM ALL!!!

That's irrelevant. What I'm saying is that homosexuality is beyond control - it's NOT a choice. The academic community is more aware of this than average joe, and there's no doubt academics vote less conservative simply because of this. You can easily extrapolate this to other branches of science and politics as well.

That's not the opinion of the psychological community, and, to be frank, I'll take their opinion over yours.

"The psychological community"? Bull****.

If we can go by the words of my prof of social psychology, and we can, since he's vice-president of the European Association of personality, then it's a nature/nurture interaction. (Edit: ok, I got it now. Belgian-American Jean Willems Fellow of academy year 1973-1974. Got his masters in the university of California, Santa Barbara. President from 1998-2000 of the aforementioned association. Associate editor of Psychologica Belgica. Chief Editor of the European Journal of Personality. That's the 'psychological community' right there)

If we can go by the words of my prof of differential psychology, and we can, since he's secretary of the European Association of Personality, it's a nature/nurture interaction.

If we can go by the words of my prof of developmental psychology, and we can, since she's chairwoman of the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development, it's a nature/nurture interaction. I could go on.

Edit: my prof sociology also disagrees, in all 3 of his research papers on the subject. I have his summary in my sociology textbook right next to me. He disagrees.

Edit: my prof sociobiology also disagrees.

I know of 5+ theories for homosexuality, and only one of them places the primary cause on environment - and even THEN it's outside of control.

"Absolute control over behavior"? That's so pre-17th century.

Edit: 6 theories, forgot the one of evolutionary perspective.

First of all, while I have some interesting things to say about abortion and homosexuality (or at least I think they're interesting ), I'd rather stay on topic and discuss those things elsewhere. So here goes:


True, but when we're talking about large populations of a broad range of intelligence levels, below average does correspond to "not very intelligent". To be honest, from personal experience I'd put the dividing line a little higher than 50% (although of course it's not so much a line, but a gradient). Mind you, personal experience isn't usually the most accurate indicator for population-wide things like this.


Individually, yes, I'm sure there's many well-intentioned reporters in the Main Stream Media. But on a corporate level, the news corporations' only goal is to make money, despite the intentions of any individual within it. It's not like anyone sits down and says "Let's report only the sensational news, so we can make lots of money!" Reporters want to please their bosses by breaking a "big" story, the bosses want to please their bosses by getting good ratings and choosing the most interesting news to broadcast, etc. I read an interesting thing somewhere-or-other that corporations tend to function like a collective organism. It's concerned with self-preservation, and self-preservation means making money.


Ok, if that's what Mort was talking about, that makes sense. I'd have to research it more thorougly to figure out my opinion on it, but it's at least a respectable position. Initially I was responding to Flexor, though, and his comment about it being childish to call Hitler evil because what he did was wrong from Obi's perspective. That sounds more like your run of the mill "everyone has a right to their opinion" stuff (please let me know if I've misread, Flexor).


That's very interesting, considering that there are quite a few academics in the fields you described who hold the positions you claim are impossible for them to hold. In truth, I would think it more likely that the political position of the scientists influences how they interperet their findings. That's just human nature, and scientists are not quite the god-like superhumans in that regard that everybody seems to think they are. Quite frankly, they're no smarter (or not much smarter) than anybody involved in this conversation, and we've all seen what politics does to people on both sides of the issues here.

It is true, however, that more academics are liberal than conservative (though of course there are a large number of conservative academics, too). But what does that signify? In Gallileo's day, the best and brightest scientific minds of the world thought that the sun revolved around the earth. In our day, the best and brightest scientific minds think that abortion is good and Bush is evil. So? The fact that a lot of people believe a certain thing means absolutely nothing, no matter their intelligence. In a hundred years we'll look back and laugh at the silly things we thought were unquestionably true, and wonder how we could possibly have believed them.

A thought just occurred to me: does anyone have a link to that survey that determined the inequality of IQs between liberals and conservatives? I'm interested to know whether that survey was taken globally, or just in the US, and what the exact breakdown of statistics were.

I don't think anyone really believes that abortion is "good", but a large number of people believe it can help reduce suffering.

As for news sensationalism, it happens because subsidiaries and affiliates of news networks like NNN get access to their entire newsreel (including a LOT of unused material), all it takes is one person someone in the world to decide something is news and it becomes news literally overnight (even the the overall bosses had decided not to run with the story). It's a text-book example of a positive-feedback loop.

My notes don't cover the actual statistics :/ . This page seems relevant though: http://www.childrenofmillennium.org/eugenics/pages/articles/scienceintro.htm

Look, about the correlation academism-liberalism: I just think anyone with a thorough scientific education would have a hard time believing some of the more idealistic stances conservatives take. Like 'presenting the evidence after the invasion' wouldn't slip by a lot of those academics. Let's not get into into the validity of the war, but uni guys with a good grasp of criticism and methodology know that that's not the way of doing things.

Similarly for homosexuality: people who studied it know that the issue is more complex than a choice deliberately to affront God or kill morals. I don't think there's any historian, etc... who wouldn't frown at the notion of 'exporting democracy' as a motive for war. Instinctively he'd ask for the real reasons. Surgeons who remove a defective foetus like the one I described above won't accept the sanctity of life or whatever as an excuse. That's where the correlation intelligence/liberalism comes from, I think.

What gets me is how some people don't accept evolution. Evolution is just a mechanism and conceptually it has no major flaws. Yet when people argue it, they argue over areas that scientists have put to rest decades ago rather than current areas of issue.

(may as well throw evolution into the mix, it's really a fascinating topic)

As far as I know evolution is a fact. It does happen. The question that people mean to debate is whether or not evolution is responsible for dragging humans out of the water, into the trees, out of the trees and then to the top of the food chain...

But anyway...

/me ducks

I'm not sure how I'm meant to take that.

As it happens I'm chuckling

I think the theory is sound but I thought there were still some major flaws in proving it. I can't really think of the proper words but seems to me it has something to do with evolution contradicting genetics. Also, the fact that life "happened" is something scientists don't understand either, isn't it? Isn't the best explanation by scientists that life happened on Earth by a series of "accidents"?

I'm actually independent.