Anti-Pseudoscience Bigotry

A rigid, ideological stance that conflates scientific methodology with the current institutional consensus, treating any challenge to the latter as heresy against the former. It's the belief that science is a monolithic repository of Final Truths rather than a fallible, ongoing process. This bigotry manifests as automatically venerating "official" sources while dismissing all heterodox thinkers, regardless of evidence or argument. It fails to recognize that many revolutionary ideas (germ theory, plate tectonics) began as "pseudoscience" outside the consensus, and that skepticism of institutional authority is sometimes warranted.

Example: A researcher presents preliminary but methodologically sound data suggesting a non-standard mechanism for a well-understood phenomenon. Instead of evaluating the work, established figures immediately brand it "pathological science" and blacklist the researcher from journals. They cite the "overwhelming consensus" as proof the new work must be wrong, committing the appeal-to-authority fallacy. This bigotry protects orthodoxy but stifles the corrective, revolutionary potential that is essential to science's long-term health. Anti-Pseudoscience Bigotry.

by Dumuabzu January 25, 2026

Cognitive Bigotry

The prejudiced belief that one's own reasoning operates purely on logic and evidence, while the reasoning of those who disagree is fundamentally contaminated by cognitive biases, emotions, or lower evolutionary instincts. It is the failure to acknowledge the universality of cognitive biases—they affect everyone, including you. This bigotry creates a caste system of thinkers: the enlightened (us) who see reality clearly, and the deluded (them) who are slaves to heuristics. It ignores the role of values, experiences, and legitimate epistemological differences in shaping conclusions.

Example: A tech executive believes their support for radical life-extension technology is purely rational, based on cost-benefit analyses. They dismiss religious or ethical objections from bioconservatives as being driven by "status quo bias" and "yuck-factor emotionalism." This cognitive bigotry refuses to engage with the substantive philosophical arguments about human nature, destiny, and inequality, instead reducing all opposition to a catalog of cognitive errors. It mistakes one value system (utilitarian calculation) for the absence of bias. Cognitive Bigotry.

by Dumuabzu January 25, 2026

Psychological Bigotry

The pervasive bias that equates mental health diagnoses with diminished credibility, rationality, or moral agency. It operates on the assumption that if someone has a psychiatric label (e.g., depression, anxiety, PTSD, bipolar disorder), their perceptions, memories, and opinions are inherently less reliable or valuable. This leads to "diagnostic overshadowing," where any physical symptom a patient with a mental health history reports is automatically attributed to their psychology, often with tragic medical consequences.

Example: A military veteran with a PTSD diagnosis goes to the ER with acute chest pain. The triage nurse, seeing the PTSD in the chart, assumes it's a panic attack and deprioritizes them. The pain is actually a heart attack, leading to a critical delay. The psychological bigotry here is the automatic inference that the mental health condition explains and devalues the physical complaint. It creates a two-tiered system of believability where the "mentally ill" are presumed to be unreliable narrators of their own bodily experience. Psychological Bigotry.

by Dumuabzu January 25, 2026

Aporophobic Bigotry

The institutional and systemic manifestation of aporophobia—the policies, laws, and social norms designed to punish, exclude, and marginalize poor people. It is the belief system codified into action: that poverty is a contagion to be contained, not a condition to be alleviated; that the poor are a drain on society rather than its most vulnerable members. This bigotry is evident in voter ID laws that disenfranchise the poor, cash bail systems that jail people for poverty, "poor doors" in housing developments, and the underfunding of public schools in low-income districts. It is a structural hostility that blames individuals for systemic outcomes.

Example: A state legislature drastically cuts funding for public transportation in urban centers while increasing subsidies for suburban highways. When challenged, a legislator states, "People who use buses don't pay much in taxes anyway. Let them figure it out." This is aporophobic bigotry: it actively dismantles the infrastructure of mobility for the poor (who rely on buses to get to work) while investing in infrastructure for the affluent, viewing the economic contributions and needs of the poor as negligible and unworthy of public investment. It is policy as punishment for being poor.

by Dumuabzu January 25, 2026

Medicine Bigotry

The underlying prejudiced belief system that makes "medicine slurs" effective: the notion that people who take psychiatric medication are less credible, less rational, and should be quieter. It's the bigotry that equates being medicated with being intellectually or morally deficient, and views medication's primary purpose as making difficult or dissenting people easier to manage. This bigotry stigmatizes both the need for medication and the act of taking it, creating a catch-22 where speaking with passion risks being labeled "unmedicated and unstable," while being openly medicated risks being labeled "too chemically altered to think clearly."

Example: A streamer is open about managing their ADHD with medication. During a live debate, they get rightfully angry about a blatant falsehood. Chat immediately fills with, "Your Vyvanse is talking, not you," and "Calm down, you're overmedicated." The bigotry here frames their legitimate emotional response not as a reaction to dishonesty, but as a pharmaceutical side-effect. It denies their agency and authenticity, reducing their entire persona to a drug interaction, which is both dehumanizing and designed to silence them. Medicine Bigotry.

by Dumuabzu January 25, 2026

Psychosis Bigotry

Systemic discrimination and prejudice against people who experience psychosis, based on the assumption that their perceptions and thoughts are inherently less valuable, reliable, or meaningful. This bigotry extends beyond stigma to affect healthcare (where physical complaints are dismissed as "psychosomatic"), legal rights (deemed unreliable witnesses), housing, and employment. It operates on the core belief that the psychotic mind is a broken version of a "normal" mind, rather than a different way of being that might contain unique insights or perspectives, however distressingly framed.

Example: An artist with a schizophrenia diagnosis creates profound, intricate paintings inspired by their visual hallucinations. The art world criticizes it as "outsider art" (a ghettoizing category) and focuses solely on the diagnosis as a novelty. A gallery show is titled "Art of Madness." This is psychosis bigotry: it reduces the artist's complex creative process and lived experience to a symptom, fetishizing their condition while denying them the status of a deliberate, skilled artist. Their mind is seen as a source of spectacle, not intellect.

by Dumuabzu January 25, 2026