the semantic arms race is part of the nature of the beast. 
 
Yep. If two and two making five were part of proper political orthodoxy, simply proving that two and two make four would be next to useless. One must know how to convince people of that fact, which often means attacking the orthodoxy indirectly. 
 
I have butted up against this very basic reality countless times in getting into contentious but useless arguments that only managed to show that I was an asocial philistine.

the mistake that atheists tend to make is that they attack religion without attacking the underlying problem--that is, ideology. of course since atheists tend to believe in left-wing ideology, a handy substitute for religion, this is hardly surprising.  
 
fundamentalist and literalist stupidity is hardly limited to religious people. anybody who takes the phrase "all men are created equal" as a literal statement of 100% sameness is just as insane as someone who believes the earth was created in six 24-hour periods.

It is interesting that Utah is at the top in terms of porn use. My first impression was that it was a reaction to Mormonism. However, browsing through the paper, it appears that Utah's high birth rate (and thus large number of young people) may be the main contributing factor. True, other states have high birthrates, but largely amongst people who tend not to have internet access. (ARRRGH!!! This reminds me of my pet peeve--low birthrates amongst the CogElite).

I am definitely in the "not 100% sure God exists" camp. How can anybody be so sure that God exists (or doesn't)?  
 
I think the arguments by Steven Hawking in A Brief History of Time are the best argument against the existence of God. 
 
(Warning: this is grossly oversimplified and it would be a good idea to read the whole book if you are interested) 
In A Brief History of Time Hawking argues the possibility of a "spherical" universe in which time goes forward when the universe expands but then goes backwards when the universe re-contracts, with the "big bang" and "big crunch" being like poles in imaginary time. This essentially abolishes the idea of a single beginning time of the universe and the need for matter to be created at a point in time. 
 
If true I think the above scenario would abolish the need (if still not the possibility) of a God, gods, or some kind force that could violate the First Law of Thermodynamics.

Unfortunately it is pretty much impossible to deal with complex politically charged topics without a good helping of doublethink. And it takes some brainpower to wade through the nasty, stormy waters of doublethink. Take the example of the multiple, muddled, and politically charged meanings of the word equality (from the appendix of 1984):  
 
For example, All mans are equal was a possible Newspeak sentence, but only in the same sense in which All men are redhaired is a possible Oldspeak sentence. It did not contain a grammatical error, but it expressed a palpable untruth ? i.e. that all men are of equal size, weight, or strength. The concept of political equality no longer existed, and this secondary meaning had accordingly been purged out of the word equal. 
 
The sad part is that there are many people, and many people with a lot of power, who seriously believe that "all men are equal" in the stupid, literal "all men are redhaired" sense. Worse yet, people on the other side (who know that all men are not redhaired, i.e. the same) tend to reject political equality.  
 
Ultimately, a lack of intellectual firepower tends to lead to a choice between belief in empirical equality and a non-belief in political equality. Thus our many political problems.

'Race' and 'population' suffer the same problems as any other concept; that is, the greater the magnification one uses the blurrier things start becoming. Classical mechanics, for example, is useful and precise amongst a pretty wide range of situations, but it most definitely falls apart at atomic and subatomic scales. Similar problems occur with 'region,' 'climate,' etc.

It's better to use useful scientific concepts for expressing scientific ideas, and it's also better to avoid having your scientific vocabulary contaminated by popular ideological vocabulary. 
 
I tend to agree. Certainly within the scientifically informed community it is better to use more precise and less politically charged terms.  
 
The basic problem with society is that it is a lot easier to think in terms of a single 0 or 1 or black/white than in shades of gray much less in color. 0 and 1 are both poor representations of say, 0.51934, and worse yet of a vector or matrix. Even a very precise number would itself be a very poor representation of reality if it were a scalar magnitude or single dimension of a vector.  
 
A large number of people are either incapable of or unwilling to store and process large amounts of data to understand a phenomenon, and usually very large amounts of data are necessary to properly represent a concept. 
 
If the reality of some issue could be represented as {.5323, .4221, .1234, .2344, .8662, .9661}, many, especially in politics, would still try to condense it into a single 0/1 or black/white.  
 
This all goes back to the question of whether pure democracy is a good idea. Of course it is not, and our Founders realized this. Orthodox concepts of Democracy, Capitalism, and Socialism are all horrid ideas. Socialism has tended to have a bad name in the U.S. (maybe somewhat less so as of late), but "democracy" and "capitalism" in their pure forms are just about as stupid.

but what about the possibility of a group of social outcasts intent on giving rise to a species which better encapsulates the set of values which reflect the priorities of nerds. 
 
There already are chemical agents that do this. Recreational drugs have the least negative effects on East Asians and Jews, and the greatest negative effects on the Anglo-Celtic core of the U.S. population, as well as most American Indians/Mestizos and blacks (though some Mediterrainean admixture protect Central American Mestizos to an extent).* The ability to handle recreational drugs seems heavily related to both IQ and executive function, as well as the ability to think for oneself.  
 
Unfortunately for myself, I do not think my executive function is very good. East Asians (and possibly South Asian Americans, I am not sure) seem much more able to spend a lot of time, focus, and mental energy on "dry" subject material, thus the stereotype of Asians studying all the time. I tend to prefer subjects that are more politically charged, which I consider a great weakness. 
 
*The info on high Irish/Anglo Celtic susceptability to additive disorders can be found in The Natural History of Alcoholism by George Vaillant.

I think social and fiscal sanity go hand in hand. Relative economic freedom, excluding the truly wealthy (who are pretty economically free unless they are completely cleaned out)*, is pretty useless if smoking pot=high liklihood of jail time/job loss** or sex=uncontrollable possiblity of children***. I mean I would definitely not want to live under fundamentalist Islamic rule even if I could keep every cent I earned. 
 
*I hardly see why taking home "only" $800K out of $2M vs $1.5M out of $2M, much less taking home "only" $3M out of $20M is onerous, compared to say only taking home $50K out of $200K vs $140K out of $200K which would be atrocious especially in high cost of living areas. NOTE: These are all based on single incomes; married couples should always have the option of filing as single with the exact same brackets as singles filing as single. 
 
**I would also like to add that the DEA is doubly a criminal organization--first directly in its activities, and secondly in how it promotes a violent gangster-controlled drug trade. I certainly don't want these people anywhere near my doctor or pharmacy, much less to gain control over alcohol, tobacco, or "abuse-able" OTC drugs. I guess the ATF already has the latter function to an extent, but their authority is not nearly as broad as the DEA's; they cannot arrest, raid, or dispossess people for simple possession of alcohol, tobacco, OTC drugs, or firearms for that matter. 
 
***A government or agency that enforces laws against birth control, or even abortion in the cases of rape, incest, and severe disabilty is also grossly criminal.