What I Heard from Trump Supporters

No it isn't. Scientific thinking isn't just like how a film photograph is taken, i.e. you expose a fresh blank film with no impressions of its own to light and it captures an image.

The unique thing about our minds is that we can analyze our own minds, we can analyze the interpretation of the input from the external world. Look at our own thought process and the way we perceive the world is known as Philosophy, and my main problem with the 'pro-scientific thinking' camp is that they have outright hostility towards philosophy.

Take for example evolution vs creationism debate. Just to be clear, I believe that evolution is the correct explanation of how the world came into being. But it is mindblowing to me how much the pro-evolution side (technically the creationist side too, but I don't care about them) insists on evolution being true and how much they have betted on this.

If tomorrow aliens land and they claim that earth is their landfill, dinosaur bones are their trash, and we are the equivalent of maggots living on their trash who came up with a consistent theory explaining how all the trash fits into our story. My point is that in that case, even though creationists aren't proven to be correct, scientific thinking would take a huge hit.

I can promise you if I go out and post to 100 scientific communities "I don't believe that the theory of evolution is true" and post some clearly non-religious argument against it, nearly all of them will wanna know if I believe in God, whether I believe vaccines cause autism etc.

Once I prove my credibility, then it's followed by link throwing. Remember the point I raised is philosophical, like could an alien life form have created us, can radiometric dating be wrong because we simply haven't observed any aging method to be correct over a million years. But it will be followed by link throwing, not even related to the topic I raised.

These things have nothing to do with whether my argument has merit or not, which is why no amount of link throwing forces me to change my opinion. Changing my opinion relies upon hearing a rational argument, and link throwing does not always mean a rational argument.

Regardless, if said white guy from 1955 said he was uncomfortable about something, or otherwise felt bad, telling him why other people have it worse seems counter productive. Someone always has it worse.

The period 1996-2006 was extremely different when compared to the last several years.

Consumption of media is not the same, and the impact of old media sources is not the same either.

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I do appreciate the correction. I was wrong and your correction Has helped me recall and revise other facts about the empire built by Fox News and Murdoch.

As I recall Fox News is the one which helped make climate change deniers look respectable, and helped build the world we live in today.

More broadly, this seems to be how most of politics (especially recent American politics) operates on either side. Anything is open to debate and discussion as long as it doesn't seriously threaten to make someone change their behavior. You can even persuade someone to change their views, as long as their new views can support the thing they want to keep doing. Humans (myself included) are amazing at rationalizing, and hate serious challenges to their deeply held positions.

But I do think it's a useful pattern to recognize. The best tool I know for genuinely well-intentioned debate is to open with "What would make you change your position on ${issue}?" Unless both people can consciously identify a point or set of points that would be sufficient to alter their belief/behavior, there's not much chance of progress.

No, it's not quite the same, but my point is that this is absolutely a case where the law is not working well, is not 'right' and ought to be fixed.

There are a lot of similarities with MJ legalization: by legalizing, regulating and taxing, states like mine (Oregon) have hurt criminal enterprises and taken in millions of dollars in revenue, and brought a lot of businesses out of the shadows. It's a win all around.