Politics: 21 September 2010

Ars technica has reported on a study about how skeptics discount scientific consensus by casting doubts on the scientific experts. Basically it says that if an expert says what they want to hear, they go along with it; if not, not. I don’t think there is any doubt of this, but I question the study itself. For one thing, they describe conservatives as “individualistic” and liberals as “hierarchical.” This is a real problem. Unfortunately, I don’t have a link, but it has been pretty well established that conservatives actually value hierarchical structures and acceptance of authority far more than liberals. In fact, what most seems to define liberals is that they do not acceptable authority—instead they mostly value individuality and empathy. In modern American politics, does anyone question that the teabaggers are not for individual freedom, despite what they claim? The group is overwhelmingly socially conservative, which is to say that they believe that proper behavior is comes from some law from on high. I know I have my blind spots, but that does not make my intellectually expansive world view at all equivalent to the anti-intellectual claptrap of American conservatism.

I still believe that video games could be far less pathetic than they now are. In fact, I think that there are many old game ideas that have been abandoned in the name of the current 3-D shot-em-ups. But I’ve seen this commercial for Civilization V with the tag, “What will your civilization stand for?” Fuck! What does any civilization stand for? Self-perpetuation. Or maybe I’ve just lived in America for too long.