The Mainstream vs. Consensus Dichotomy … Again
Aaron Swartz has recently compared the lack of conservatives at Ivy League universities with the lack of believers in paranormal phenomena there (seen via Boing Boing):
When we apply the mainstream/consensus ratio analysis to alleged paranormal phenomena, we see that Googling paranormal mainstream yields 89,600 hits whereas paranormal consensus yields 19,800.Scary as this is, my preliminary research has discovered some even more shocking facts. I have found that only 1% of Stanford professors believe in telepathy (defined as “communication between minds without using the traditional five senses”), compared with 36% of the general population. And less than half a percent believe “people on this earth are sometimes possessed by the devil”, compared with 49% of those outside the ivory tower. And while 25% of Americans believe in astrology (“the position of the stars and planets can affect people’s lives”), I could only find one Stanford professor who would agree. (All numbers are from mainstream polls, as reported by Sokal.)
This dreadful lack of intellectual diversity is a serious threat to our nation’s youth, who are quietly being propagandized by anti-astrology radicals instead of educated with different points of view. Were I to discover that there were no blacks on the Stanford faculty, the Politically Correct community would be all up in arms. But they have no problem squeezing out prospective faculty members whose views they disagree with.
In any case, the claim by my fellow reactionary crackpots is that a liberal consensus is squeezing out legitimate parts of the mainstream.
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