"And I don’t have a single one of those people in my social circle. It’s not because I’m deliberately avoiding them; I’m pretty live-and-let-live politically, I wouldn’t ostracize someone just for some weird beliefs. And yet, even though I probably know about a hundred fifty people, I am pretty confident that not one of them is creationist." I'm guessing this is just because it's never come up. Maybe it's because I live in the midwest or something but I know a number of creationists, republicans, people against gay marriage etc. and interact with them. While my social circle is certainly influenced by my more liberal politics when there are so many people around I don't see how you can't interact with them as friends, neighbors, coworkers etc. But unless you specifically talk about issues like creationism with them it can easily not come up, we tend to assume people share our politics/opinions unless proven otherwise.
I know a surprising number of creationists in urban Seattle. They hide in plain sight because everyone simply assumes they don't exist, and the people that are creationist never say anything unsolicited that would indicate it. It is like the opposite of the meme about vegans, CrossFit, et al.
You see a similar pattern with gun owners, which every statistic suggests exist in vast numbers even in neighborhoods with politics strongly aligned with anti-gun activists, but almost no one ever publicly admits to owning one. Like with creationism, being a member of this group isn't nearly as much of an affectation of political alignment as people assume.
There are many polite fictions like this in society.
Also living and working in urban Seattle. There’s churches all over the city. It seems odd that people can drive by them all the time in their neighborhood but assume most people in the city are not theists.
For quite a while during my tech years i was one of those people. I assumed most people in the city didn’t believe in that stuff. But it’s so obvious that is a huge group despite the association on a national level of theists being republicans and Seattle not having many republicans. In the city it’s a lot of gun owning, liberal or at least not-republican, theists.
To hit on the gun topic, I’ve discovered so so many people that carry in their vehicles, which as a gun owner I find disturbing. Many more who own but don’t carry. Almost none of the people I’m aware of have stickers or advertise their gun ownership.
I now work at a hospital and it’s made me realize how popular religion is here. So many people working here are some flavor of religious. It really was just a tech thing to assume religion is not followed regularly in the city or amongst coworkers. I wonder if it’s just the heavy antisocial aspect of tech workers to assume everyone around them comes in the same flavor as themselves.
The gun owner example isn't a great one. one of the first rules of gun ownership is to never tell anyone. It's a valuable and deadly asset which gains value from people NOT knowing that you have it.
I do think the gun owner is a good example for the given situation it's referring to.
I'm not sure 'never tell anyone' is a first rule, although I do agree that in many situations one could gain more value from other not knowing you have it.
There are some situations in which sharing possession of such a tool and the knowledge of using one could be beneficial.
Although most of the time, in most situations one would gain advantage in having defensive ability without broadcasting it to the world, and as the parent comment eluded to, one often gets by / through social interactions just fine, and due to some group's disdain for such, often gets by better, without advertising such. imho.
I'm not sure why that makes it a bad example. That's a specific reason why people would avoid bringing it up, but it still means that it's not a prominent affectation that would come up in everyday conversation.
It's a bad example because this specific reason doesn't generalize to other political beliefs like creationism which is what the others in the thread are talking about.
A normal person has as much reason to admit they own a gun as they have a reason to admit they own a mixer. As in, unless you discuss specific topics, it is completely irrelevant.
The difference is that if you go out of your way to tell you have mixer, you are weirdo. If you go out of your way to tell you have a gun, then you are someone who brags about having gun unnecessary, which means weirdo too, but in different way.
I do see what the parent poster meant. Here in Canada, about 1 in 4 households have a firearm. It's over 10% even in large cities like Toronto. Statistically speaking, it seems likely several households in my condominium have firearms. Not quite at American ownership rates, but firearm ownership is far from scarce in Canada. You wouldn't get impression though; most owners are very discreet about it. That same sort of vibe seems to exist in parts of the USA, too.
Do you think people who own guns who live in non-rural areas do so for (a) personal protection, (b) hunting, or (c) sport shooting? I'm not a hunter myself, but (b) and (c) seem pretty reasonable anywhere that you live. However, I never understand the (a) crowd.
For the record, Finland also has very high gun ownership.
It's illegal to conceal a gun here in most cases, particularly a handgun. It technically is legal to walk around with a firearm openly if you have a valid reason to (such as carrying it to and from hunting). But you'll certainly get in trouble if you do that, outside of rural areas where polar bears roam. (One of the most common reasons to own a firearm is protection, but from animals. The bears here can and do eat people.)
It's generally illegal to carry anything as a weapon with the intent of using it as a weapon against a person, even in self-defence, unless you have one of those very rare concealed weapons permits. Knives, pepper spray, and tasers are also illegal in Canada to carry around for self-defence. Though the law does let you use whatever is coincidentally at hand, if you truly must use force as a last resort, to defend from an attacker.
So officially, no, people aren't supposed to be carrying firearms around for protection. American-style "right to defend oneself" with firearms is a bit taboo here. You're also not supposed to keep a firearm loaded at home. But I imagine quite a few do keep shotgun shells nearby and their shotgun safe can be unlocked very quickly.
(a) is common. I don't know that there's anything particularly complex to understand about it - to people who are interested, owning a gun for personal protection is just like owning a stash of food and water for disaster preparedness.
I live in America, and work in agriculture as an agronomist, but live in a very “left leaning” Oregon city.
In rural areas my impression is it a mix of A, B and C in different ratios per person.
In urban areas, it seems primarily A, especially for women. Here pistols are favored, because they are discreet and Supreme hasn’t released an AR-15. Yet. You probably wouldn’t suspect for example my ethnically ambiguous gym coach and his hispanic girlfriend to be packing, but they are very enthusiastic about having the capability of defending themselves from strife. Police after all cannot be relied upon to do anything other than start paperwork about the the mess a criminal or group rioters/looters leave. Consider the sentiments of survivors of Hurricane Katrina are likely to hold.
My impression is there are also periodic mass renewals of interest whenever we elect a new president, or some massive thing like covid or a depression occurs. Obama was often called “gun salesman of the year” in regards to conservatives, and Trump did a bigly job convincing many liberals that the whole “perhaps I need a gun because government” sentiment most commonly associated with rural/conservative areas wasn’t so outrageous after all. Now, for all the posturing and larping of some blowhards, there are vanishingly few who actually think having a civil war would be a grand time. But it doesn’t hurt to be ready, just in case. Especially with the worlds most powerful military involved.
That said, the future of effective defense against governments will be drones, with the classic “heroic personal stand” being far less desirable for obvious reasons.
I myself don’t hunt, but I occasionally shoot for recreation. An AR-15 is basically an engine you can easily modify, playing around with weights, springs, muzzle devices and ammo to achieve silly low recoil. I also for some reason just love troubleshooting firearms. This is a great video about how things function, and how the use of gauging can be used to help find tolerance issues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv6a1hs9U5o
And of course then there’s the whole making holes close together from far away aspect as well. Really tickles my nerdy white guy autism (at least once I got a suppressor, because funny enough I don’t like loud sounds lmao). I didn’t really understand “car guys” who were always fucking with their car until I realized I was doing the same thing.
I tend to mostly carry when I’m up doing agronomy in the foothills, because bear, mountain lions, methheads, deer and dogs (the last two are what I’m most likely to be attacked by). I also have bear spray, and a knife, allowing me to actually deter something not already deterred by my ATV engine, and to react to an ambush attack by a mountain lion (in the event I manage to not immediately have my neck snapped). Now, an actual incident is very unlikely and I certainly don’t operate under some kind of omnipresent terror or anything. After an initial scan of an area I basically go about my day completely preoccupied with other things. But if a motherfucker wants to take me down, they better do it right the first time because I am prepared and willing to drag them down to hell with me.
Fortunately though we don’t have moose here. Those are “I can’t even make you regret it” scary, unless you want to carry a repeating large caliber rifle.
Very good breakdown. I do have to ask, though--have you been attacked by deer before? I've never heard of a deer attack once in my life, unless you count a deer jumping into my windshield an attack.
I haven’t been attacked by a deer, but I’ve had a scary encounter. Came around a corner on my mountain bike and a very large male deer, in season, with a huge rack was aggressively staring me down from 30 yards.
Also had encounters with yaks that were scarier than that (and I know of incidents with cows/bulls).
It seems people think of deer as giant harmless bunny rabbits. But you can get into situations where the big animal with horns feels trapped and threatened and shows you their horns. Bluff charges are a real thing, they show you what’s up.
Fortunately I’ve never actually been charged by an animal, and I’ve seen bears, mountain lions, coyotes, bobcats, yaks, deer, etc at close range in the wild. 99.9% of the time they are just as surprised to see you and book it. Except big cats—they just walk off like bosses.
I've not been attacked by deer yet, but it's a distinct possibility. So far it's only a few badgers (out in kansas) that decided they wanted to be persistently aggressive, though we came to an understanding with some persuasion from a shovel.
Deer are absolutely capable of attack though. While they normally try to just fuck off, there are a few situations where otherwise can happen:
1. For unprovoked attacks, Male deer can be territorial, especially in a rut where they basically get seasonal roid rage and decide to square up even with the creepy things that walk around on two legs. Getting stabbed with antlers and pounded by hooves is dangerous.
2. If deer (male or female) become used to humans because they are being fed, then they lose their timidness and can get mean if they think it'll get them what they want, though they are unlikely to have the goal of killing.
3. They can also attack if their young are nearby. I come across baby deer roughly once a year, and while usually the mom is somewhere else for most of the day, that may not always be the case. I've been in hazelnut orchards, only to realize I almost just stepped on a fawn laying at a base of a tree. Pretty sure this raises both of our heart rates for a while.
4. Deer can also sometimes attack if they feel trapped and panic, generally from entering a neighborhood and having curious humans start coming around.
5. If you hunt deer, sometimes they'll decide to fight back or not be as dead as you think. Fair enough, TBH.
6. They can also become rabid. This is a good time to remind everyone that all animal attacks should immediately be followed up with a medical examination, no matter how minor any injury. You are vastly more likely to survive trying to commit suicide with a gun, than untreated rabies. Tuberculosis and all the other diseases and parasites they carry are also a consideration.
Horses and Cows will also wreck serious shit if they become inclined. Deer, horses and cows each cause something like a few dozen deaths (not to be confused with attacks, which is far greater) each year, similar to dogs. While bears cause something closer to just 1 death per year when averaged out, and mountain lions and rattle snakes are something like 0.25 deaths per year averaged out. All these numbers are very rough, as this is from foggy memory from past investigation, rather than a nice and neat source I have on hand. As an aside, most rattlesnake deaths are from a drunk deciding to mess with a snake, getting bit, and decide they're fine and go to sleep instead of the hospital. Big rattlesnakes aren't really a danger, just take a hint and leave them alone, they are fat and lazy and really don't need your shit.
Comparatively, things like driving my truck around, or even my ATV is a far larger source of danger, with ATV deaths being in the several hundreds per year I believe. But most of those are not likely from people puttering slowly around like me for crop inspection work.
Only slightly related, but prior to Oregon's partial drug legalization a short while ago, there was a non-zero danger of running into someone in the mountains looking after their million dollar weed plots and no interest in witnesses. There were areas that law enforcement would straight up refuse to go because of Reefer Rambos crawling about.
I like how thorough you are, even on a throwaway hacker news comment. I lived in Iowa for most of my life, so we're no stranger to a lot of this. I've never even thought of deers getting rabies, but it makes sense.
We've had out fair share of horse and cow accidents around these parts. Them back hooves are deadly. We used to joke that you have to exceed the number of cow-caused deaths to declare something a serious problem.
> Only slightly related, but prior to Oregon's partial drug legalization a short while ago, there was a non-zero danger of running into someone in the mountains looking after their million dollar weed plots and no interest in witnesses. There were areas that law enforcement would straight up refuse to go because of Reefer Rambos crawling about.
Here, you have to be steering clear of meth labs and moonshine operations out in the woods.
I've seen more of those since living in the southeastern USA, than I ever did in the northeastern USA... despite having lived in Connecticut where gun laws were, until recently, fairly lax for a blue state and there were quite a few stealth gun nuts.
I've almost always heard "creationism" used in a much narrower sense:
> The term creationism most often refers to belief in special creation; the claim that the universe and lifeforms were created as they exist today by divine action, and that the only true explanations are those which are compatible with a Christian fundamentalist literal interpretation of the creation myth found in the Bible's Genesis creation narrative.
It's going to depend on who you are around. Among Catholics, for example, its very common to explicitly distinguish between Young Earth Creationism (YEC) and Old Earth Creationism (OEC) since both positions are considered permissible theological opinions. I try to never use "creationism" unqualified since all Christians and many/most (all?) other religious groups are going to believe in some view about the creation of the universe by some entity or being, the specific way in which that happened will be disputed but ultimately "creation" is universal in that regard.
I’m not sure what you mean by “whole creationism.”
Do you mean a transcendent God who exists outside spacetime and created it ex nihilo? The three Abrahamic faiths definitely believe that.
However there are other faiths that believe spacetime is eternal and that the Creator created the world or possibly the universe out of eternally existing matter. I get the impression that Hindus and maybe Mormons believe something along those lines.
If we abstract we can identify eternal universe vs created universe and intelligently designed universe vs random but we sure did get lucky universe as two independent dimensions. I don’t know of any created/lucky faiths, but the standard model is compatible with eternal/lucky.
Just for the record, there's a fundamentalist Muslim supporter of child marriage and Islamic Jihad (not US-backed-IS version) self-taught software developer who is interested in I2P network, Raku and Theseus OS right here on HN. He is me.
Society is indeed a lot more diverse than 'mainstream' or 'normal' people assume.
Even in San Francisco Trump got over 30% votes. Republicans know better than to publicly voice their affiliation, however, as the career repercussions can be severe.
Most atheist are agnostics who decided they will not arbiter if one religion is more right than other, at least that's my case and most atheist I've discussed with.
I like rites (catholic funeral and Muslim marriage would be my perfect combo) and I enjoy talking spirituality and belief systems with people who believe in one more god than I do. I think Shintoism led to the most interesting discussions in general, but Jehovah's witnesses are the most consistent ones (also I always take so much of their time and they're too polite to tell me to stuff it, I always feel bad after).
This. A decade+ ago I made a Jesus-riding-dinosaurs type joke around a friend I’d known for years. He called me out on it. I knew he was from TX, homeschooled, and a devout 2A supporter, but for some reason I was floored when he said he believed in Creationism and I was wrong. I struggled reconciling that with him being a well educated Bay Area tech worker. A short time later I watched a train wreck on Facebook where a college friend (rigorous engineering school), who had an aptitude for maths and physics, become a Flat Earther.
After that I stopped assuming anything about what others are likely to believe. The past decade has proven that, unfortunately, to be a wise decision.
> (rigorous engineering school), who had an aptitude for maths and physics, become a Flat Earther.
I'd love to hear their math-aware rebuttal to the usual proofs against FE (stuff like horizons, the day-night cycle). Although debates of the sort rarely end well.
I can comment on this since I had a similar co-worker. Well educated in Mechanical Engineering (or perhaps Electrical?) but working as a software engineer. He was a vocal supporter of flat earth and enjoyed debating the subject.
The conversation was always 100% focused on what I could prove in the moment. The general form of his argument was a radical skepticism. If you question the vast majority of people enough you will be able to find a place where they are not solid on the science. He would expertly find and exploit these areas. He was also very conspiratorial, specifically believing that NASA was a government plot to hide government spending that was going towards a corrupt elite.
He was also amazing at not understanding simple concepts when necessary. I remember he had an argument about high-quality photos of the earth seen from space distributed by NASA. It was based on some evidence that they were composite images. He had some totally clueless argument about no being able to project 2d surfaces (like those of photos) onto 3d surfaces like spheres. I mean, that is a pretty standard thing to do in 3d graphics texturing so I asked him about that and he would just get confused. It would almost be like you couldn't explain why 1 + 1 = 2 to him in those moments. Every step of the argument was drawn out and made excruciating.
I became cynical about it eventually. He was reasonably intelligent on almost any subject. I figured he just liked being a Socratic debater type, in the sense that he just loved to push people into corners of science they didn't quite know and prove to them that their own beliefs weren't as solidly founded as they thought. Once I realized that I just stopped any debate on the topic immediately after it started.
That kind of rhetorical mental gymnastics is quite often what happens when we debate people that have a vested interested against a commonly held and supportable belief. The problem I see is that skepticism and contrarianism are commonly conflated with educated, informed criticism by people even well educated and informed in a topic area, but now we have to debate things as fundamental to many other things holding up like the concept of gravity. The implications of a flat earth, for example, are incredibly outrageous and when people want to go to any length to explain away their tightly held and emotionally motivated position it’s not going to turn out to be a very productive conversation whatever topic may be at hand anyway.
Most forms of decently productive discourse tend to involve multiple parties going back and forth with observations and some criticism that’s not taken personally at least so some semblance of an agreed, cogent world is formed from the discussion. This really doesn’t work if people don’t have some very basic fundamentals agreed upon sometimes, especially if they are relevant to the topic. Like it doesn’t matter if someone’s a creationist on an accounting application development team but it probably matters a lot as a policymaker for public sector.
I felt the same way, but if you spend enough time reading FE forums, you’ll find people are presenting themselves pretty earnestly. No doubt any FE’rs on Reddit or 4chan are mostly just baiting, but there are some very real disciples out there.
It’s a little hard to follow the arguments, but I think they’re being made out of honest conviction. It’s a fascinating little corner of the internet, one has to wonder if it will live on.
Are you quite near to where he was in 2014? He said in the article that he lived (at time of writing) in a pretty conservative area:
> I live in a Republican congressional district in a state with a Republican governor. The conservatives are definitely out there. They drive on the same roads as I do, live in the same neighborhoods. But they might as well be made of dark matter. I never meet them.
I agree with OP that it's much more likely that he did meet them, just in contexts where it doesn't come up.
I think that was because he was doing his residency in a place where he would not normally choose to live.
As typical, during that time he was probably so overworked he didn't really interact with any of the locals until his time was up and he moved back out to a self-selected community.
It might not be that these topics just "don't come up" like it's some kind of accident. When people hold these "weird beliefs" as he puts it, [I think] they generally know they are weird and would be embarrassed to bring them up.
I don't think I know any Flat Earthers, but if I actually do, they probably deliberately keep it to themselves because they know that they'd look like kooks by outing themselves. To get more extreme, maybe some of my friends are Nazis, but they sure aren't showing me their memorabilia, not because "it just doesn't come up" but because they know it's wrong and don't want to ostracize themselves.
Maybe eventually people work up the courage to probe a little, they'll use code words and innuendo, and soft dogwhistles, maintaining plausible deniability until they identify their fellow outgroup members. I think I see this behavior in a few of my friends, but they wisely don't come out with it.
Culture war topics being literally banned on /r/ssc combined with that community's imperfect ability in "keeping it together" when some conversation does sneak in leads me to believe that it would be extremely easy to be never found out if you were among them.
A) at the time this was written, Scott lived in the Midwest
B) Scott worked at a hospital at the time, which selects a bit against those who are creationists. In my opinion, probably 40% of the nurses in such a hospital would be creationist, but maybe Scott disagrees with me about that assessment
C) in terms of socialization outside of work, Scott is not an extrovert, so I can imagine arbitrary levels of selection and that it is plausible he did have 0 creationist social acquaintances (maybe the quote is only even talking about his social acquaintances, not his work ones)
I would suspect that as an introvert he just doesn't realize what his social circle really holds, even lightly.
Lots of it doesn't come up, and the "higher in the US money/power structure you get the more you learn to be quiet".
Another is to remember that many people may be technically creationists (the protestant church they go to is young-earth) but they just don't ever think about it at all.
I lived in both places. Almost all the parents of my kids friends in public school in Hayward regularly went to church. I knew not a single person that attended church in Chicago.
I don’t want to like “exception that proves the rule” here, but I overgeneralized the area. I think Scott is in Oakland and runs in pretty specific circles. Probably very different from Hayward. And then Chicago isn’t exactly typical Midwest.
The rate of creationists would also heavily depend on how the question is phrased, because there's not one "creationism" but several, sometimes incompatible, ideologies. Compare these questions:
> Do you believe that a supernatural force created the universe?
> Do believe that God created the earth 6000-10000 years ago?
The first is much broader and would also probably include the origin stories of many non-Abrahamic religions. The second is referring to a specific school of Christian "young earth" creationism.
In the article Scott says he lives in a Republican district in a state with a Republican Governor, so he wasn't in San Francisco at the time he wrote this. I live in a Democrat district in a state with a Democrat governor so I can't imagine the political demographics of where we live are that divergent.
