Talk:Essay: RationalWiki user Andrew5, who leans somewhat politically to the right, is an irritating thorn in the side of politically left-leaning RationalWikians and he is an obsessive, officious, serial liar with bad judgment (who is also a wikiholic)

"Given his 3+ month tenure at RationalWiki and his many edits, it appears as if he fits in well at RationalWiki!". I don't read that in the clips presented at all. I read a Discord discussion about a problem user (whom evidently some know from WP) among RW admin, and what to do about him. RobS^{Let's Go Brandon!} 20:33, November 30, 2021 (EST)

Ok. We will agree to disagree then.

But I believe there are plenty of workplaces/clubs where an obsessive, creepy, serial lying weirdo with bad judgment would not last 3+ months if he showed up very regularly.

Furthermore, according to RationalWiki admin Moosolino RationalWiki "attracts all sorts of weird people".Conservative (talk) 21:18, November 30, 2021 (EST)

My local 7-11 attracts all sorts of weird people, too. RW has processes to deal with unwanted or abusive editors, not just arbitrary blocking by anyone with blocking powers. I'm not sure what we disagree about.

Bottomline: Their own words cited in this Essay differ from your conclusion that he "fits right in". Anyone can see that, except possibly you because of your bias and prejudice against RW editors. RobS^{Let's Go Brandon!} 23:12, November 30, 2021 (EST)

RationalWiki editors, political ideologues, cognitive inflexibility and capricious blocking

The abstract for the journal article At Least Bias Is Bipartisan: A Meta-Analytic Comparison of Partisan Bias in Liberals and Conservatives which was published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science states:

"Both liberals and conservatives accuse their political opponents of partisan bias, but is there empirical evidence that one side of the political aisle is indeed more biased than the other? To address this question, we meta-analyzed the results of 51 experimental studies, involving over 18,000 participants, that examined one form of partisan bias—the tendency to evaluate otherwise identical information more favorably when it supports one’s political beliefs or allegiances than when it challenges those beliefs or allegiances. Two hypotheses based on previous literature were tested: an asymmetry hypothesis (predicting greater partisan bias in conservatives than in liberals) and a symmetry hypothesis (predicting equal levels of partisan bias in liberals and conservatives). Mean overall partisan bias was robust (r = .245), and there was strong support for the symmetry hypothesis: Liberals (r = .235) and conservatives (r = .255) showed no difference in mean levels of bias across studies. Moderator analyses reveal this pattern to be consistent across a number of different methodological variations and political topics. Implications of the current findings for the ongoing ideological symmetry debate and the role of partisan bias in scientific discourse and political conflict are discussed."

Arthur C. Brooks wrote in his article Reading Too Much Political News Is Bad for Your Well-Being: "A 2012 survey conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University asked a sample of Americans about their news-consumption habits, and quizzed them about U.S. and international political and economic events. They found that those watching the most partisan television news sources—on both the left and the right—were often less knowledgeable about world events than those who consumed no news at all."

Consider:

The User: Conservative account consists of two users/editors.

Editor 1 of the User: Conservative account is a Bible-believing Protestant who is politically somewhat to the right and slightly libertarian according to a test taken at the Political Compass website in April of 2021 (Please see the graph below for the results of the Political Compass test I took in April of 2021.).

Editor 2 of the User: Conservative account is a political moderate who is an ecumenical Christian (He attends church services at a Catholic Church and a Protestant church, but somewhat leans towards Catholicism). On social issues such as abortion, he is a social conservative.

File:My political compass on April 7th 2021.PNG

The political compass of one the editors of the User: Conservative account. Specifically, it is the political compass of "User: Conservative, Editor 1". The political compass test was taken in April of 2021.

Unlike RationalWikians, I am able to be more objective. I am far more able to look at issues outside an ideological box.

Cognitive flexibility is the ability to adapt our behaviour and thinking in response to the environment. When people are asked to think about multiple concepts simultaneously or change their approach to solving a problem, they need to demonstrate flexible thinking. At RationalWiki, there is not a lot of cognitive flexibility.

Here is an example of RW's cognitive inflexibility: I have an IQ in medical doctors range based on my college entrance example, my chess ranking of 2100, etc. But over and over I hear at RW how I am not that smart. Why? It is because of ideological tribality and cognitive inflexibility. Recently, I helped a website achieve rank among the top 10 websites in terms of the highest traffic gain amount in the English speaking world as far as monthly web visits traffic. The website now receives around 3.5 million extra monthly visits. A dumb person couldn't do that.

Consider the Stroop Color–Word Test: The test is a measure of executive function that measure selective attention and cognitive flexibility. When I have taken the test, I have no problems. I speculate that political ideologues score lower on the Stroop Color-Word Test. So perhaps editing RationalWiki lowers your Stroop Color-Word Test score. I say that political ideologues score lower on the Stroop Color-Word Test, but it might be true.

A case study of RationalWiki's cognitive inflexibility, capricious thinking/blocking

1) I cite: A RationalWiki editor whose username is Christopher wrote at RationalWiki: "Technically...[User: Conservative at Conservapedia].. "shouldn’t have been banned, the vote to ban him was one short of the 2/3 majority that’s needed according to site policy."[1]

In short, RationalWiki broke its own rules when they permabaned me. According to RationalWiki rules, a permaban requires a 66% majority. RationalWiki permabanned me without such a majority.

But their so-called permaban means nothing. I have several sock puppet accounts there now. If I want an account to be banned there, it is not. On the other hand, I know full well that if I stray outside the secular liberal/leftist bubble at RationalWiki, I get into a very high risk of being banned. The farther politically right I go, the higher the risk of being banned.

2) RationalWiki bans people for ideological and capricious reasons.

File:RationalWiki admin admits its website is becoming an echo chamber of its prominent Administrators.png

On May 23, 2020, a RationalWiki (RW) administrator who goes by the moniker Ace McWicked essentially admits that RationalWiki is becoming an echo chamber of its most prominent administrators. In the above quote, LGM is an acronym for RationalWiki administrator LeftyGreenMario. See: Atheism and groupthink

I have seen various admins like LGM, GrammarCommie, etc ban people for capricious reasons. Mostly they were banned due to lack of ideological purity.

Right now, there are debating whether to unban someone and there editing of a wiki they disagree with is being held against them. The wiki is a very close-minded wiki that is an echo chamber.

In certain cases, people who tow an ideological line act irrationally.

RobS response

You expect me or anybody to read all this junk? You are not being cooperative. You're just vomiting all over the discussion page. RobS^{Let's Go Brandon!} 00:33, December 1, 2021 (EST)