I was asked to say something about the following comment:
I don’t know much about it, but I’ve heard there are pretty big cultural differences between the United States and Russia when it comes to acceptance of certain non-scientific modalities, and that they are taken much more seriously in the former USSR.
I find it pretty hilarious that people from a country:
– where huge chunks of population do not “believe” in evolution,
– where many people seriously suggest that creationism should be taught in schools,
– where police officers employ psychics and there are hugely popular shows about that process,
– where there are people who speak in tongues and touch snakes because they are incapable of understanding a metaphor from a book that is thousands of years old,
– where a presidential candidate has to fake that he is religious in order even to be considered,
– where a political figure with a huge following says in public (and keeps insisting!) that the number of contraceptive pills you take depends on the number of sex acts you engage in,
– where there are Departments of Happiness founded at universities,
– where The Secret becomes an instant mega-bestseller;
– where a president bankrupts the country and drags it into two ruinous wars because God told him to,
– where millions of people can’t get the difference between an abortion pill and a morning after pill because the science behind how the pill works is too complex for them
would proclaim with a straight face that people in the FSU they know absolutely nothing about are more anti-scientific.
Not just compared to Russia: http://www.upworthy.com/things-america-is-less-gooder-at-basic-scientific-comprehension?c=o98
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Exactly!
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It’s always seemed a historical curiosity to me that such a rich and powerful country which (up until very recently, at least) had a wonderful education system, could produce such widespread illiteracy of even the most basic scientific knowledge.
If I had to guess, I would say that it’s cultural: Americans seem allergic to the idea that someone’s beliefs can just be flat-out wrong.
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“If I had to guess, I would say that it’s cultural: Americans seem allergic to the idea that someone’s beliefs can just be flat-out wrong.”
– I think this is precisely the problem. The idea that every “belief”, no matter how wrong, barbaric and uninformed, is equally valid is the problem here.
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If you make broad, unscientific generalizations about people based on their sex, you are sexist pig.
If you make broad, unscientific generalizations about people based on their race , you are racist pig.
If you make broad, unscientific generalization about people based on their star sign, you are an astrologist pig.
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Funny. 🙂
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