@petergleick

'science, not silence'......love it

@petergleick One of the podcasts I listen to, the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, had an interesting section on why the FDA is banning Red Dye #3 (it's not because it's unsafe).

In short, due to the Supreme Court axing the Chevron Deference, and with this as precedent, using ideology instead of science based policy making is wide open.

The transcript is at
https://www.sgutranscripts.org/wiki/SGU_Episode_1020#FDA_Bans_Red_Dye_No._3_(41:12) - it is also well worth a listen.

@petergleick

The fact that left-wing thought is based on reason and evidence, the right on irrationalism, goes back to the origin of the political division between ‘left’ and ‘right’ – in the seating arrangements in the National Assembly in the French Revolution – those with power and privilege on the speaker’s right, commoners on the left. We should never forget the real basis of this division, which lies not in ideas or values, but in the reality of social class – but following hard on this reality is the fact that those on the left had to argue that people are capable of organising society better, on the basis of reason – the right relied on tradition, religion/superstition, force – ‘authority’ of various kinds, instead of reason.

Right-wing thought IS a rejection of reason and evidence – hence of science - as Sartre puts it, the right wants to stop thinking, ‘longs to become the stone’. This is why the Spanish fascists chanted ‘Death to Intelligence! Long Live Death!!’, why religious fundamentalists always tend to align with the extreme right, why an English politician said ‘This country has had enough of experts’ during the brexit debates, and why a right-wing American politician, in a rare moment of honesty, recently said that he ‘doesn’t care about reality’.