Either a strong religious belief or the belief that success is the result of hard work.
this post was submitted on 28 May 2026
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How about religion? Is that an option?
That they need to buy cases and cases of water in plastic bottles which they throw in the landfill instead of just drinking their perfectly good tap water.
Ummm, my tap water isn't "perfectly good."
I live in the US, I’m not drinking the tap water lol. That being said you don’t have to buy cases of individual plastic water bottles either.
And yet millions do. Maybe there's something actually wrong with your water, but the vast majority of municipal water in the US is perfectly fine.
If the tap is chemically fine, but still tastes awful, I get buying bottled water instead
Depending on your municipality, sure.
Don't know why you got downvoted. I drank tap water in India and threw up 3 times before leaving the office. I've seen the data center water and it looked worse.
Conservatism.
Just...all of it lol.
Being hesitant to change and wanting to temper out things and make sure things are imolemented effectively is one thing. And ensuring we respect tradition and culture is another (though progressives are more in line with that lol.)
Today's conservatism is just hate and bigotry. And they don't even recognize it as such.
Yeah this drives me crazy. I grew up where the old white men loved boating and fishing in the rivers, bringing the family out to enjoy nature. Now that it's all getting contaminated and turning gross, even the dumbest person who actually valued 'conserving' would realise we actually have to do something.
Instead, we've got billboards up and down the country trashing the Paris agreement and the old white men are only interested in attacking the other tribe. Not a hint of concern for the environment. They're not interested in conserving anything other than their social status and corresponding power.
One of the big ones: motivation.
Most people when talking/thinking about "motivation" are referring to extrinsic motivation.
Even if they make a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic, they basically assume these add together to create "more" motivation.
However, they don't sum together. One crowds out the other, like in a neverending battle.
That science is rational and objective.
In reality, the way that science works is much muddier than most realise. It's full of subjectivity, and this isn't a bug, but a feature. Intuition and tacit knowledge play a big role in basically any research (and this is why I am confident that AI can't replace scientists). Politics are also present at every stage of the process. Science is at its least objective when scientists convince themselves that they're being objective. We can't escape our biases, so we need to actively acknowledge them and embrace the subjectivity of our situated perspectives.
The problem is that talking about this is a great way to piss off other scientists. I've been accused before of "betraying the side", by a scientist who was aware that science has a disproportionately large epistemic platform (epistemic means pertaining to knowledge — basically just that as a result of the huge benefits of scientific advancements in the last century or so, science has been on a bit of a pedestal in terms of trusted expert knowledge in society. Criticising this is seen by a betrayal by some because of the concerning rise in psuedoscience and anti-scientific rhetoric.
However, I'm of the belief that some of what has driven the rise of psuedoscience is that the average person doesn't like to be told "shut up and do what the smart people say". They feel a lot of mistrust towards society (which, in many cases, is entirely reasonable, especially in the case of marginalised groups who have been heavily exploited by science and scientists),
The problem goes far beyond just science, but I think this is certainly an aspect of it. I sympathise with scientists who want to continue to have the privileged position they hold, but I don't think that's helpful in the long term.
Yeah, I wholeheartedly encourage constructive debate and skepticism. However, it doesn't excuse repeating shitty arguments without doing anything thinking or research just because it makes you feel less bad and lets you not do anything.
One example that particularly bothers me was "humans affect on the climate is less than a single volcanic eruption". There are a lot of things you could not trust about scientific reporting, but the base premise of 8 billion people flying around the world using decomposed dinosaur mass is at least an order-of magnitude larger in scale compared to a single volcanic eruption. At that point, you'd have to believe that there isn't really 8 billion people or that oil is actually from somewhere else.
In summary I agree, I just want to add nuance that this doesn't excuse people acting in bad faith. It's important that everyone, not just scientists, recognize their emotions and bias and challenge their own arguments against these (I.e. am I just making this argument because I feel defensive?)
The phrase I've heard is "epistemically privileged." And deservedly because from a standpoint of pure ethics, "science" has done way more good than damage than competing ways of looking at the world.
But let's say someone asks you how a car works. You go into a bit about the internal combustion engine. You explain how little explosions make pistons go. They ask you about these explosions, so you have to take them to a chemist to explain. Then they ask the chemist why does this reaction happen, and the chemist sends them to the physicist. You go through the Newtonian bit, which seems intuitive enough, but when you ask about atoms, you have to go into subatomic physics. Which is something you cannot experience without special equipment that you trust the physicist is telling the truth about.
So, yeah, while the empirical method is fantastic and the best model we have, in the end it relies on faith as much as any religion.
You had me up until,
So, yeah, while the empirical method is fantastic and the best model we have, in the end it relies on faith as much as any religion
I feel like faith is the wrong word because the works that science hath wrought upon our world are due in part to its repeatability. When you follow the steps to build an engine and refine fuel for it, that engine will always run, and if it doesn't, it's due to a parts issue or a fuel issue that can be remediated. It always works because the laws of physics always apply (local variables notwithstanding).
I don't have faith that my engine will start; I have absolute confidence based on my limited understanding aligned with repeated observations. I have evidence; where faith is often analogous to belief without or in spite of the evidence. Not that you may use that definition of faith, necessarily, and that's fine; but that's the definition I'm accustomed to thanks to being raised in a Protestant cult bubble.
Great answer.
That because a problem is real, any proposed solution to it is a good idea, and anyone arguing against a proposed solution doesn't want to solve the problem.
Yes, grease fires are bad. No, you should not use water to put it out. No, that does not mean I am pro-grease-fire??
Tax Brackets. "I got a pay raise and will now be taxed more and make less money than before the raise"
If <=30k was taxed at 25% and 30+k taxed at 30% and you go from 30k to 31k a year, only the 1k is taxed at the higher rate.
Is this really a common misconception?
Yes, unfortunately.
Benefit cliffs do exist however.
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not all "sugar free" subsitute sweetner is sugar free. if you look at ingredients, maltodetrexin, dextrose or equivalent is just sugar in another form. these companies word it in a way to obfuscate that they use actual sugar to sell sweetener as"sugar free". misconceptions about gluten free products, unless you re actually have CELIACs, gluten products wont have noticible effects on you. leaky gut or whater gluten is asscotiate with in healthy people is just marketing and pseudoscience.
Recipes are even worse. "Low sugar" recipe, it uses a shitload of honey or maple syrup instead.
Or that sugar substitutes don't cause diabetes. Diabetes rates took off after diet sodas went mainstream.
That the world is a zero sum game. That in order to have something, someone else has to go without. That in order to be great you have to drag others down.
These people must fail to understand how consensual sex works
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People tend to assume if someone is smart in one thing, they're smart with everything else too.
That's not usually the case.
Yup this is me and my dad, he's great with handy work and has built numerous homes. I am good with technology and can build a server and make my own software. Put us in opposite roles and were both dumbasses.
Or if they are rich, they must be smart or a genius, because they got rich while everyone else did not, its further from the truth, since most of these people come from wealth to begin with. adjacent, same goes for these succesful youtubers/streamers/influencers, these top ones we see all the time dint come from rags to riches, they came from being rich or very well off.
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Irs impossible to build beautiful citys like they used to. It is still possible and cheaper even
Climat ≠ Weather
Artificial leather is better than natural leather for the enviorment (its not. Atleast where i am from you are not allowed to rais cattle just for leather production. And i rather would use all parts of a slaughtered animal that had to die, than poluting nature with chemicals)
I think animal welfare is the bigger factor for most people avoiding leather, and while artificial leather is just plastic and certainly not great environmentally, traditional leather production is also very very much polluting nature with chemicals (Chromium tanning etc. ) plus it still supports the whole factory farming system which is terrible in its own right. I'm hoping fungus based leather or some lab grown variant will bring a real alternative someday.
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