America's Dumbest Generation Becoming . . . Atheists???

Cut his hair short and that image would improve.

"You sound a tad triggered."

Yes, anti-intellectualism does tend to trigger me, you got me there.


"Personal experience amounts for instinctual intelligence, not academic, which can become compartmentalized and theoretical and can segue back into anecdotal mode."

Which do you think is a better way to make assesements about reality, personal anecdotes or data and and studies compiled by experts?


"What feminism used to represent is not the same today."

Can you give me actual examples?


"Feminism is also a prime example of confirmation bias."

I don't think you know what "comfirmation bias" means. You can't just take whatever idealogy and label it as "confirmation bias", otherwise you could just do that with any idalogy ("Conservatism is just confirmation bias"). Do you see why that is silly?


"Conspiracy theories can at times hold some truth at the core of them. They might be distorted and it is also impossible to prove a conspiracy, otherwise it wouldn't become one in the first place. It doesn't mean they can't hold some weight. The source of many is deliberate."

Just because a conspiracy theory has some truth to it doesn't mean it should be taken seriously. For instance, just because Alex Jones says 9-11 was based on a lie (which is true) doesn't mean therefore it was secretly orchestrated by the New World Order. It's fine to just go ahead and dismiss silly conspiracy theories even if that have some grain of truth.


"Psychologists make up shit for relevance most of the time and they change their minds. They want to prove how intelligent they are over the abstract and anecdotal evidence."

And now it's becoming apparent why you defend conspiracy theories, because that's' really the only way you can rationalize your world view. This is actually the same line of reasoning creationists use to justify their scientific illiteracy: "God hating scientists just lie to cover up the truth, they want to prove how intelligent they are over religious people". Do you see why what you said was silly?

Pretty sure propagandized Boomers are still solidly Christian

K, a lot to unpack here, but this especially stands out. Do you think politics, and thus political freedom, are innate, universal things beyond all human conception? Conversely, do you think every human, since the very first (itself an abstract concept, but I digress) have had a concept of politics? Or do you think "politics" itself is a human concept, likely arising to address some sense of societal structure, as a hierarchy, that has been developed (evolved, indoctrinated, etc...) over time? If it is a human inventions, which humans invented it and why? If "for thousands of years" the invention we call politics has been propagated by primarily men (not exclusively, cultures have varied), then would this not be accurately conceptualized as "patriarchy"? If the patriarchy weren't real, women would not have been excluded from, or limited within, the artifice (concept, whatever) of politics; if politics were not conceptualized, "political freedom" would be nonsense word salad.

The very concept of politics exists because humans invented it; political freedom (and oppression) exist because humans invented it and conceptualized - and thus established it relating to human interaction within society - to the benefit of some at the expense of others. If this was in some facility (not needing to be absolute, but in general) to the benefit, or narrative, of men, then that could accurately be called a "patriarchy". If you assert gender (or sex) is a real dichotomy, and if you acknowledge that dichotomy has been unequally manifest within the concept of politics ("it took men thousands of years to gain political freedom" coming before the "blink of an eye" women gained it), then you acknowledge patriarchy, within a political context, is real. Logic. You are literally contradicting your own argument.

That is to say if "politics" exists as a concept, it is a human invention; if this invention has historically favored men (by gaining political freedom first), who then used that concept to in some limit such freedoms (themselves arbitrary and only existing within that man-made concept) of women, that is very literally what the word "patriarchy" is used to describe. You can argue "patriarchy" is an inefficient word to describe the concept, but you can also argue "apple" is an inefficient word to describe its concwpt; neither changes the fact it is these very ideas people understand those words to *mean* (whether you personally agree with that meaning or not, others do enough for those words to have such a commonly understood meaning).

Men did not gain "political freedom" from some abstract concept that humans have spent thousands of years divining; men gained political freedom (and I'd argue the concept of politics is a BS arbitrary power structure itself, and that no one - by gender lines, especially - actually has absolute political freedom within that concept); men gained political freedom via interaction within the arbitrary power structures created by men with the narrative of power belonging to men over women (see: "patriarchy").

As for the rest... "science", too, is an arbitrary (and thus limited, and limiting) concept that originated only a few centuries ago (blip in the scope of humanity) from older concepts, much as its pretty much inevitable that eventually a new concept will grow out of, to eventually replace, "science" as science becomes an archaic concept like alchemy.

As for the DSM... again, itself to document conceptualized pathologies originating in the 19th and 20th centuries, and a living document based on a behaviorist (again, concept, not absolute) perspective of the underlying causes of those pathologies. The DSM has been revised multiple times and will be again. With its next revision, for example autism and ADHD, will likely be broadened; this does not mean autism and ADHD (as neurotypes) will have changed, just that the understanding of them will have broadened (that is, with each revision its acknowledged the previous understanding was incomplete). Likewise, both are themselves words to conceptualize neurotypes that aren't fully understood. Prior to being defined (within this specific context), they still existed, but were conceptualized differently (see: changelings/fae, lol) based on the limited, epistemic understanding of those observing them. It's also well documented, even within empirical research, that a clinicians own recognition of these things will vary by the clinicians own understanding, education, information (older clinicians tend to recognize them less thanyounger, as younger clinicians tend to have a more up to date/broadened understanding). I'd argue neurodivergent people understand, and are able to recognize, neurodivergence in others better than clinicians with outdated 40 year old understandings (clinicians, at least those who stay up to date on new research, progressively realize this, too, hence the DSM being continually revised... because science, as a concept, is not static but rather broadens with this little thing called research... an important part of science). To dismiss the self-experience of people the DSM tries to progressively define is counterproductive to the very concept of science, research, or the DSM itself (that is, if your and/or Maher's mentality/understanding were correct, these things likely never would've been defined, or the definitions still stuck in the understandings from 1940s eugenicists... your fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of science itself does not make for a sound argument here).

It’s not a matter of book smarts or IQ, it’s the ability to think rationally about things.