Study finds belief in free market economics predicts rejection of science
94 replies, posted
[QUOTE]A strong belief in a hands off approach to economics is tightly linked to the rejection of scientific facts such as climate change, according to research published in [URL="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/03/25/0956797612457686.abstract"][I]Psychological Science[/I][/URL] in late March.
“The conspiracist ideation that all of the world’s scientific academies have conspired together to create a hoax known as global warming has found traction in American mainstream politics,” Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Western Australia and his colleagues wrote in their study.[/QUOTE]
Source: [URL]http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/21/study-finds-belief-in-free-market-economics-predicts-rejection-of-science/[/URL]
I really hope not
Welcome in advance mr Sobotnik, I look forward to your contribution :)
Unsurprising development of the month here, folks.
Well, big company profit [I]is[/I] based on ignoring any and all things that won't net you higher earnings...
I believe strongly in a true free market and I study Nuclear Engineering, I think the main reason that this correlation appears is because lots of Republicans do believe in a free market and that attracts them to the republican party then once they're looking at the party a bit they'll just believe party line simply because they want to believe it which makes this correlation.
[editline]22nd April 2013[/editline]
I'm not American by the way so I might be wrong about the Republican party's views I haven't looked that much into it.
Of course totally free-market economics would result in companies wanting to maintain and control market dominance its just the nature of the free-market machine. However, today's economies are better off mixed as all economies now have at least some element of every type of economy. For example, China is relatively communist in structure but experiments in capitalist projects such as the SEZ's they have set up. Aswell, A lot of state funded projects ultimately kick start the private sector so you need some kind of balance. I mean you now have Space X and other private sector space related industries that all stemmed from NASA (a state funded entity). So really all I'm trying to say is you need an equal and efficient balance of many different principles. What's the point of only learning one martial art when you could benefit from many?
Oh boy amI looking forward to leaving this god awful country. :v
[quote=Abstract of Study]Although nearly all domain experts agree that carbon dioxide emissions are altering the world’s climate, segments of the public remain unconvinced by the scientific evidence. Internet blogs have become a platform for denial of climate change, and bloggers have taken a prominent role in questioning climate science. We report a survey of climate-blog visitors to identify the variables underlying acceptance and rejection of climate science. Our findings parallel those of previous work and show that endorsement of free-market economics predicted rejection of climate science. Endorsement of free markets also predicted the rejection of other established scientific findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer. We additionally show that, above and beyond endorsement of free markets, endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories (e.g., that the Federal Bureau of Investigation killed Martin Luther King, Jr.) predicted rejection of climate science as well as other scientific findings. Our results provide empirical support for previous suggestions that conspiratorial thinking contributes to the rejection of science. Acceptance of science, by contrast, was strongly associated with the perception of a consensus among scientists. [/quote]
You know, I don't think most of your average Free-market supporters think all of that.
Frankly, the way economics works nowadays is more religion than science anyways...
It's hard to be reasonable when your salary depends on you not being.
Or something like that.
I suppose I am an exception, then?
"belief in free market economics" is quite a broad thing though
[editline]22nd April 2013[/editline]
once you zoom in to the level where you can distinguish between the different types of supporters you'll see they cluster into distinct groups - the randians, the transhumanists, the survivalists, the bog-standard economics students, etc
Did you any of you actually read the study? The methodology is so shitty that the results are meaningless. They took people who actively went to climate change denier sites and polled whether they also agreed with free markets.
[B]EDIT:
[/B]I also love how they say denying human caused climate change is the same as "rejection of science." For example, the humanity of a partial birth fetus/baby is undeniable by any scientific standard, but I would venture to guess that people who supported partial birth abortions also were more likely to be against free markets. Are they also rejecting science?
And support for gay marriage correlates with atheism. This study isn't proving cause and effect, it's showing a link that in common parlance is known as the Republican Party. Conservatives are less likely to believe science and more likely to believe in the free market. Go figure.
Paranoid delusions like global warming denialism go hand-in-hand with paranoid delusions about the Illuminati and the Federal Reserve. Not a big surprise here.
It's actually pretty embarrassing that supposedly smart people thought this study would be useful.
Free market economics is viable but not without some regulation. When a profit making machine such as a bank or business needs more profit to satisfy the stock holders. They end up taking bigger risks because of the greater possible profit. There should be some limits but I personally don't think any company should get to big to fail or worse, even unable to be prosecuted.
Remember, economics is not a religion or political ideology. For the most part in mainstream economics, it's simply doing the following:
[b]Trying to understand how goods/services are produced and allocated, changes in production/allocation, and using knowledge gained from this to understand how to improve quality of life.[/b]
[QUOTE=JustExtreme;40379191]Source: [URL]http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/21/study-finds-belief-in-free-market-economics-predicts-rejection-of-science/[/URL][/QUOTE]
Is this a study specifically about the USA or worldwide? Because in the USA, liberal economics are pretty republican and we know what kind of people they are. In Europe, I'm sure liberals, which sprung up as opposition to catholics/protestants/christian members of parliament (and were thus secular) are a lot more on the science side of things.
This is the silliest thing I've read since the "women like bigger penises" article. I don't even know where to begin.
I believe in science, just free market science
More Christians than Biologists so creationism wins, invisible hand has made its decision
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;40379747]"belief in free market economics" is quite a broad thing though
[editline]22nd April 2013[/editline]
once you zoom in to the level where you can distinguish between the different types of supporters you'll see they cluster into distinct groups - the randians, the transhumanists, the survivalists, the bog-standard economics students, etc[/QUOTE]
I can't believe I am agreeing with Dain, but he does have a point. Even European countries that we often consider socialist would claim they have a free market
And I'll bet those beliefs also correlate with a lot of fundamentalist evangelical Christian beliefs.
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_gospel[/url]
This is the heart of the neo-conservative belief structure. Material wealth is the reward that God bestows on the faithful, government regulation is an impedance of God's will, and global warming is a hoax perpetrated by godless liberal scientists to interfere with the God-given right of the wealthy (and therefore faithful) to enrich themselves by exploiting natural resources.
This is the only way people of that degree of wealth and power can rationalize their brutal exploitation of the rest of humanity: I am rewarded for my faith, and everybody else is less faithful than me, otherwise they would be rich too. And I'll just ignore everything Jesus said regarding a rich man's chance of entering Heaven.
sounds completely unrelated
[QUOTE=JerryK;40381125]sounds completely unrelated[/QUOTE]
while it is unrelated, it actually makes sense (as many people have pointed out)
basically, it's saying "REPUBLICANS LIKE REPUBLICAN IDEALS AND DEMOCRATS LIKE DEMOCRATIC IDEALS"
True free market is the dumbest thing ever
one company eventually getting a monopoly on, say, laptops, and charging 10 times the manufacturing cost because they can: you need a laptop and have to get it from them
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;40379747]"belief in free market economics" is quite a broad thing though
[editline]22nd April 2013[/editline]
once you zoom in to the level where you can distinguish between the different types of supporters you'll see they cluster into distinct groups - the randians, the transhumanists, the survivalists, the bog-standard economics students, etc[/QUOTE]
Wha? That's an...interesting way to divide up schools of economic thought.
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