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Evidence of Truthiness :D

Orangey

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Who knew that rhetoric affected people?
 

Thalassa

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You know why I think truthiness is real? Because I just took a social morality quiz, and I got liberal points for thinking homosexuality is genetic but conservative points for thinking other behaviors might be genetic.

And I thought to myself, "well if in reality most things are actually a mix of both genes and environment, but liberals strongly believe homosexuality to be genetic but nothing else; and conservatives strongly believe almost everything EXCEPT homosexuality to be genetic...something doesn't really seem very scientific here."
 

ygolo

My termites win
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Aug 6, 2007
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5,986
Truth and evidence doesn't have an intentional political bias. Genetic basis and biological basis have different meanings. A genetic basis is a biological basis, but a biological basis is not necessarily a genetic basis.

There have been many twin studies, epigenetic studies, genetic studies, neurological studies and so on for homosexuality. You can go to the references section of wikipedia entry for a long list of the evidence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation

Like with haplogroups being linked with certain mating behavior, statistical/numerical reasoning is needed to judge the quality of research.
 
G

Ginkgo

Guest
Did you know that Science Daily funds extremist militias in Uganda?

uganda.jpg
 

Eilonwy

Vulnerability
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Did you know that Science Daily funds extremist militias in Uganda?

uganda.jpg

I believe that's true.

You know, that photo is really decorative. The spirally thing on the clothing is making me sleepy, though.

;)
 
G

garbage

Guest
This isn't so different than concepts such as fuzzy logic, Dempster-Shafer theory, lots of well-researched psychological phenomena, etc.--it's just that Colbert is a pretty accessible reference. But this is a good thing.

People aren't beings of pure logic. We have 'gut feelings' and use our rational brains to .. rationalize those feelings. We all pay attention to (and are presented with) different facts or observations, and phenomena and objects are subject to whatever categorization schemes we place upon them. How problems are framed, defined, and presented has a huge impact on how we solve them--the order of options in a survey, for example, affects which option we choose.

We've known all of this for quite a while :)

This Colbert approach is 'on to something,' though. Any study/report that gets the core idea (that we're all biased and somewhat irrational) across to the general public in a way that they understand is great. We kind of need that sharp slap in the face from time to time.
 
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