c/politics · by FoxtrotDeltaTango@sh.itjust.works · 56d

Conservatives are dying at higher rates than liberals. A new study points to mistrust in medicine

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-026-02474-9

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/48724765

276 points · 43 comments · view on lemmy.world

43 Comments

Dryad@lemmy.world · 83 pts · 55d (7 replies)

It’s not just mistrust of medicine, its rejection of science, reason, and the idea that experts actually know what they’re talking about and aren’t just out to get you. Conservativism is now a cult where the only source of truth is the orange man, and science is only useful for him when it makes his ego feel good.

Serinus@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 55d (3 replies)

The "Secretary of War" went a decade without washing his hands.

inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 55d (2 replies)

I had not heard that but... here we are.

"germs are not a real thing".

This should be a disqualification for being taken serious in any regard yet it's just par for the course on fox and in the trump administration.

CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 55d (1 reply)

Doesn't he claim that was a "joke"?

vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 55d

It's a joke in the same way my wannabe highschool bully shoving his hands in my face and chanting I'm not touching you was a joke. Difference is my improved punchline was far better than any follow through either he or Kegsbreath could must, I punch him in the sternum and watched him gasp on the floor like a fish.

Triumph@fedia.io · 3 pts · 55d (2 replies)

Now?

fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net · 3 pts · 55d (1 reply)

Since 10 years or so ago

CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 55d

If only.

WatDabney@sopuli.xyz · 53 pts · 55d (6 replies)

Reality has a left-wing bias.

devaly@ani.social · 8 pts · 55d

Humans are social, just saying

binux@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 55d (4 replies)

I’m inclined to reframe this adage as rationality having a left-wing bias, since, y’know, reality is inherently unbiased. I realize I’m being somewhat pedantic though.

WatDabney@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 55d (3 replies)

I get what you're saying, but I think "reality" actually works better.

Granted that reality is not a conscious agent and thus cannot itself be biased, the simple fact of the matter is that reality corresponds much more with left-wing pronciples and viewpoints than it does right-wing principles and viewpoints.

And yes - it can just as accurately be said that left-wing principles and viewpoints are more rational than right-wing, as demonstrated by the fact that they better accord with reality.

But that puts the focus on the person holding the view, and their rationality or lack thereof, and people (especially right-wingers) tend to dig their heels in when it's suggested that they're irrational, and their immediate tendency is to simply attack whoever makes that suggestion rather than actually considering the possibility.

By shifting the focus to reality itself, one is effectively saying, "Hey - don't look at me. If you have a problem with it, go take it up with reality."

binux@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 55d (2 replies)

the simple fact of the matter is that reality corresponds much more with left-wing pronciples and viewpoints than it does right-wing principles and viewpoints.

I’m not quite as sure it can be said that any abstract ideas or viewpoints can be said to correspond with reality. There’s nothing to say that it’s the case for that as it is with the existence of gravity or the roundness of the Earth. It’d be just as valid for me to appeal to the divine right of royalty as a matter of fact and yet (hopefully) we all know how little weight that actually holds in any practical sense.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that reality isn’t something that can be bound to any one idea or perspective. Reality for, say, a cow is going to be a hell of a lot different from reality for any human being, and neither perspective is any more or less valid than the other. The fact that Humanity is still bickering among itself about the “right” religion and the “right” ideology I believe is proof enough of the nonexistence of any one objective truth when it comes to the things we believe in.

Most importantly though if we presuppose reality to have a bias of any kind then we’re still falling into the pit of human hubris that we’ve fallen into time and again throughout human history, and without a doubt still are. The universe doesn’t have any obligation to adhere to any one of our beliefs, and so when we make absurd leaps in logic based on them we’re setting ourselves up for damage and suffering far outweighing that which was ever necessary. The Crusades, Manifest Destiny, the Great Chinese Famine, the Holocaust… they were all caused at least on a psychological level through blind faith and uncompromising adherence to inherently fallacious ideas. At best there’s nothing productive about those beliefs, and at worst you get something like what I listed above.

WatDabney@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 55d (1 reply)

...reality isn’t something that can be bound to any one idea or perspective. Reality for, say, a cow is going to be a hell of a lot different from reality for any human being, and neither perspective is any more or less valid than the other

I'm reminded of the anecdote of Samuel Johnson's reaction to the assertion that idealism could not be refuted - he kicked a large rock and said, "I refute it thus."

When I said that reality has a left-wing bias, I meant reality. Not the beliefs or subjective experiences that all too many erroneously promote to the position of nominal facts, but actual, demonstrable facts.

Like, for instance, vaccination prevents disease. Climate change is real. Doctors are not part of some international conspiracy to fool you into wasting your money while keeping you away from the miracle cure Ivermectin. Trump lost in 2020. Transgender people are going to continue to exist no matter what your personal opinion of the matter might be. Society is healthier, stronger and more stable when the gap between rich and poor is narrow and everyone is guaranteed food, shelter and medical care. And so on.

In all of those cases and many more, the left wing position corresponds with the actual, demonstrable facts, while the right-wing position does not.

That's exactly what I meant, and all that I meant.

binux@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 55d

Leftist beliefs align more nicely with reality as opposed to rightist beliefs, it doesn’t mean that reality itself adheres strictly to leftist beliefs. Reality governs itself independently of all thought, no matter what patterns and similarities we can interpret between the two. It would be far more appropriate to say that leftism has a reality bias as opposed to the other way around.

Kittywifclaws@piefed.world · 32 pts · 55d (2 replies)

Oh hey! A little find out in a sea of fuck around!

Mister_Hangman@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 55d (1 reply)

More finding out please. Like 50 orders of magnitude more.

HonoraryMancunian@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 55d

That would require conservative ETs to achieve

GuyFawkesV@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 55d

Not fast enough.

harcesz@szmer.info · 17 pts · 55d (1 reply)

So they are kinda right about their social Darwinism? 🤔

FoxtrotDeltaTango@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 50d

Ironic

pelespirit@sh.itjust.works · 14 pts · 55d (1 reply)

Yet by the 2020s, demographic change, public policy and COVID-19 do not fully account for the widening gap in mortality rates. Public opinion data are consistent with a second mechanism: declining trust in medical professionals among right-leaning individuals, including lower willingness to seek care, follow clinical advice or believe in medication effectiveness, even for issues unrelated to COVID-19. These patterns suggest that growing ideological divides in health behaviours are leaving conservative Americans increasingly vulnerable to preventable health risks.

lectricleopard@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 55d

I mean, they voted against their own interests as far as health care is concerned. A rare show of consistency.

SPRUNTnsfw@fedinsfw.app · 9 pts · 55d (1 reply)

Excellent! Now, what can we do to really crank those numbers up?

captainlezbian@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 55d

Stop mandating vaccines but get them anyways

MrSulu@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 55d (3 replies)

When we were simple hunter gatherers, these people weeded themselves out as they are doing now. Hunter gatherers also had "socialist" lifestyles. Working together, looking after each other, the injured, the weak and the old. Quite remarkable

Telemachus93@slrpnk.net · 11 pts · 55d (2 replies)

Hunter gatherers also had "socialist" lifestyles

That view may be outdated. I'm reading David Graeber's and David Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything" where they review anthropological and archaeological evidence and argue that human societies were always very varied.

E.g. they show that this idea you cited came from contact with just three hunter-gatherer societies who already have had contact with western societies and at least one of them was started by a group of runaway slaves. Their egalitarianism was probably a reaction to western authoritarianism.

On the other hand they look at two indigenous societies on the north american west coast. Thos in today's california were very individualist, valued personal wealth (when achieved through hard work and frugality) but hated slavery and had no rulers. Those more to the north were notorious slavers, had an aristocracy and a member of that aristocracy was considered superior if he organized the most wasteful parties.

A point they made at that point was that not only are hunter-gatherer societies not all the same, they might actually have developed important parts of their culture, including egalitarianism vs. authoritarianism in an attempt to be as different as possible from their neighbors they don't like.

In the following chapter they then go on that the first cities in the middle east show no signs of hierarchy, including a patriarchy, and that patriarchy and a warrior aristocracy developed in that region as an answer to these egalitarian, rich cities widening their influence (trade networks, but also colonies). :(

MrSulu@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 55d (1 reply)

I think there is a mixed picture. Certainly sufficient evidence to show individuals with significant injuries living to older age. Across all the primates and apes. However, not sufficiently specialist to debate the point with fine detail.

vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 55d

Also we struggle to create a ground level understanding of how these cultures behaved. We have lots of snapshots that we can composit into something cohesive but finer details tend to be lost.

A weird example of this is a site in Germany with direct evidence of cannibalism to such a large degree that it's bizarre and doesn't match up quite well with models of the cultures in the region at that time. That is until some folks remembered that these are in fact still just people so there's a growing idea that this site may very well represent a cult that emerged from a time of struggle possibly famine.

Ele7en7@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 56d

Shocking I tell you

BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 8 pts · 55d (1 reply)

I'll say it, good. Less evil in the world or those who would vote for it.

Hawanja@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 55d

Too bad, so sad.
Well, anyway...

ThePantser@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 55d

OK, shrug.

tacoplease@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 54d

Shhh, we don't want them to know this.

_stranger_@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 55d