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Master_Pedant
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29 Mar 2010, 9:29 pm

leejosepho wrote:
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
So, why do you think people advocate the political ideas they do?


Personally, I began like the proverbial baby duck simply following the first moving object it saw. Then I bought into the idea of "fighting communism" while building bomb shelters ('50 and '60s) simply because that is what everyone around me was doing. Then I became a defiant "non-conformist" and rebel (thereby conforming) when several friends never made it back from VietNam.

Overall, I think people advocate whatever they think, believe, hope or claim to know is/as "best", and with overall-great varieties of drives and motives.


That really is a non-answer - you've yet to determine how or why people have those beliefs.

A model along the lines of NeantHumain's (summary of the present research) is probably correct. Although I caution him on the "openess" and "intelligence" factors - the studies demonstrating those used comically small samples sizes and probably sufferred from methodological errors.

PZ Myers wrote:
Good grief. This ridiculous study is making the rounds of the atheist community, with its claim that liberals and atheists are smarter than conservatives and religious people. Look at the numbers!

Satoshi Kanazawa wrote:
Young adults who identify themselves as "not at all religious" have an average IQ of 103 during adolescence, while those who identify themselves as "very religious" have an average IQ of 97 during adolescence.


Seriously? Show me the error bars on those measurements. Show me the reliability of IQ as a measure of actual, you know, intelligence. Show me that a 6 point IQ difference matters at all in your interactions with other people, even if it were real. And then to claim that these differences are not only heritable, but evolutionarily significant…jebus, people, you can just glance at it and see that it is complete crap


http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010 ... on_the.php



Awesomelyglorious
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29 Mar 2010, 11:29 pm

Master_Pedant wrote:
leejosepho wrote:
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
So, why do you think people advocate the political ideas they do?


Personally, I began like the proverbial baby duck simply following the first moving object it saw. Then I bought into the idea of "fighting communism" while building bomb shelters ('50 and '60s) simply because that is what everyone around me was doing. Then I became a defiant "non-conformist" and rebel (thereby conforming) when several friends never made it back from VietNam.

Overall, I think people advocate whatever they think, believe, hope or claim to know is/as "best", and with overall-great varieties of drives and motives.


That really is a non-answer - you've yet to determine how or why people have those beliefs.

His personal narrative is certainly an answer though. I mean, there are social trends within the background and people are influenced by these social trends based upon how strong they tend to be in society at the given point in time.

Now, the non-personal narrative is less of an answer, if only because we would hope that people don't advocate things less than the best. At the least though it avoids the mistake of favoritism towards one side or another.

Quote:
A model along the lines of NeantHumain's (summary of the present research) is probably correct. Although I caution him on the "openess" and "intelligence" factors - the studies demonstrating those used comically small samples sizes and probably sufferred from methodological errors.

Well liberal vs conservative is all pretty silly anyway, actually libertarians are the smartest group:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/bra ... r-liberals

"First, he did find a general trend that social conservatives (those who wanted to ban abortion and gay marriage) weren't as gifted as students with a more progressive take on gender roles. But he found the exact opposite pattern with anti-regulation attitudes: The conservatives/libertarians (yay guns boo taxes) appeared to be smarter than their commie compatriots."

So you see, we win. :P



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29 Mar 2010, 11:55 pm

Antonin Scalia made an interesting point when he claimed that his religious beliefs made it such that he thought that executing the wrong person was no big deal as he believes in an afterlife, but that an atheist would not take executing people so lightly. I think it's interesting that the more religious Americans are bigger pushers of LWOPP and the death penalty, throwing people away permanently and effectively ending their lives - well, there's always another one, they say.

I think one reason why Americans are more religious is because there's less security there so people have to use prayer to get through some things that are usually taken care of by governments in other Western countries.



Master_Pedant
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30 Mar 2010, 12:07 am

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/bra ... r-liberals

"First, he did find a general trend that social conservatives (those who wanted to ban abortion and gay marriage) weren't as gifted as students with a more progressive take on gender roles. But he found the exact opposite pattern with anti-regulation attitudes: The conservatives/libertarians (yay guns boo taxes) appeared to be smarter than their commie compatriots."

So you see, we win. :P


1) What is the sample size of that study?
2) What is the margin of error?
3) Where do left-libertarians fit in?



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30 Mar 2010, 12:22 am

Article against politicized research:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/s ... 404397&c=1

I do find the notion that far-leftists and far-rightists tend to have higher IQ's than centrists interesting. IQ isn't rationality, but centrism has always seemed to me to be a horribly cliche position many take just because they believe that the "golden mean" is an absolute.

I'm tired as hell, it's almost one in the morning where I live. Please excuse grammatical and spelling errors.



iamnotaparakeet
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30 Mar 2010, 12:51 am

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
So, why do you think that people advocate the political ideas they do?


Probably there are three, no four, things that affect a person's public political advocation: (1) values that they were taught by government schools or parents, (2) peer pressure, (3) personal experience and, (4) the type of propaganda which personally appeals to them.



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30 Mar 2010, 1:23 am

Master_Pedant wrote:
1) What is the sample size of that study?
2) What is the margin of error?
3) Where do left-libertarians fit in?


To address 1 & 2, it is a joke. I mean, the article is serious, but it is a news article and doesn't give the information anyway.

As for 3, they don't fit in very well. Only 3 metrics were tested: support of the free market, social conservatism, and extremism. Left libertarians will tend to be in the higher IQ category on 2 of the 3, but apparently more support of the market correlates with higher IQ.(and this might just be due to a lot of anti-market idiocy that is displaced than anything else)



leejosepho
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30 Mar 2010, 6:23 am

Master_Pedant wrote:
leejosepho wrote:
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
So, why do you think people advocate the political ideas they do?


Overall, I think people advocate whatever they think, believe, hope or claim to know is/as "best", and with overall-great varieties of drives and motives.


That really is a non-answer - you've yet to determine how or why people have those beliefs.


The "how" is simply because we are capable of having them, and the "why" is because we have instincts and desires to be met and satisfied.

I was not looking at this in the light of politics, religion or philosophy. Such outside influences no longer seem significant to me.


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30 Mar 2010, 6:52 am

leejosepho wrote:
Master_Pedant wrote:
leejosepho wrote:
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
So, why do you think people advocate the political ideas they do?


Overall, I think people advocate whatever they think, believe, hope or claim to know is/as "best", and with overall-great varieties of drives and motives.


That really is a non-answer - you've yet to determine how or why people have those beliefs.


The "how" is simply because we are capable of having them, and the "why" is because we have instincts and desires to be met and satisfied.

I was not looking at this in the light of politics, religion or philosophy. Such outside influences no longer seem significant to me.


Since you find politics, religion and philosophy not pertinent to political attitude I wonder how you consider your comments worthwhile.



Master_Pedant
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30 Mar 2010, 10:29 am

leejosepho wrote:

The "how" is simply because we are capable of having them,


That's a tautological non-explanation.

leejosepho wrote:
and the "why" is because we have instincts and desires to be met and satisfied.


Getting there, but still a bit too generic.



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30 Mar 2010, 10:32 am

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Master_Pedant wrote:
1) What is the sample size of that study?
2) What is the margin of error?
3) Where do left-libertarians fit in?


To address 1 & 2, it is a joke. I mean, the article is serious, but it is a news article and doesn't give the information anyway.

As for 3, they don't fit in very well. Only 3 metrics were tested: support of the free market, social conservatism, and extremism. Left libertarians will tend to be in the higher IQ category on 2 of the 3, but apparently more support of the market correlates with higher IQ.(and this might just be due to a lot of anti-market idiocy that is displaced than anything else)


Is anti-marketism negatively correlated with IQ only if it is moderate? I mean, a Lenninst would be an extremist but also pretty anti-market - does the extremism -> Higher IQ trump the anti-marketism -> lower IQ factor?



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30 Mar 2010, 10:42 am

Master_Pedant wrote:
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Master_Pedant wrote:
1) What is the sample size of that study?
2) What is the margin of error?
3) Where do left-libertarians fit in?


To address 1 & 2, it is a joke. I mean, the article is serious, but it is a news article and doesn't give the information anyway.

As for 3, they don't fit in very well. Only 3 metrics were tested: support of the free market, social conservatism, and extremism. Left libertarians will tend to be in the higher IQ category on 2 of the 3, but apparently more support of the market correlates with higher IQ.(and this might just be due to a lot of anti-market idiocy that is displaced than anything else)


Is anti-marketism negatively correlated with IQ only if it is moderate? I mean, a Lenninst would be an extremist but also pretty anti-market - does the extremism -> Higher IQ trump the anti-marketism -> lower IQ factor?


The so-called invisible hand seems to be in somebody else's pocket in Wall Street these days.



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30 Mar 2010, 11:06 am

Master_Pedant wrote:
I do find the notion that far-leftists and far-rightists tend to have higher IQ's than centrists interesting. IQ isn't rationality, but centrism has always seemed to me to be a horribly cliche position many take just because they believe that the "golden mean" is an absolute.

People with higher IQ are probably more likely to question received belief, and thus to examine fringe ideologies. Of course, the fact that IQ does not correlate with rationality means that profoundly absurd fringe views do sometimes take root in very intelligent people.

To me, one of the strongest arguments for centrism is that it avoids alienating too much of the population and causing civil strife, the way more extreme ideologies would. In this case the golden mean is sometimes a good idea just to avoid pissing people off too badly.


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30 Mar 2010, 3:49 pm

Master_Pedant wrote:
Is anti-marketism negatively correlated with IQ only if it is moderate? I mean, a Lenninst would be an extremist but also pretty anti-market - does the extremism -> Higher IQ trump the anti-marketism -> lower IQ factor?

Well, I really don't know. There likely aren't enough Lennonists in any sample to test for that, and honestly anybody who knows enough about their thoughts to call themselves a "Lennonist" is already selected on intelligence.



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30 Mar 2010, 7:49 pm

Orwell wrote:
To me, one of the strongest arguments for centrism is that it avoids alienating too much of the population and causing civil strife, the way more extreme ideologies would. In this case the golden mean is sometimes a good idea just to avoid pissing people off too badly.

Public opinion can be and is manipulated all the time. Ever heard of "death panels"? The center is where you make it.



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30 Mar 2010, 8:00 pm

Everyone who can be brainwashed is. Everyone else is on this website arguing that they have the perfect political system. :D

Seriously though, I do think that a lot of people get their opinions from advertising alone. Another large bunch get it from education systems. The other 10%(random number) form their own opinions and argue with the other people within that 10% so nothing can ever get done. As to how they that 10% gets their opinion, your guess is probably better than mine, but I'll try anyway. They see a bunch of systems, weigh it with what they have been told about them, compare it with reality, see how it would benefit them, see how it would benefit the ones the care for, see how it would benefit everyone else, think about the worst case scenario, and finally say yes or no. If it was purely rational I am positive we would all agree, so it is biased from person to person. On the bright side we aren't walking political zombies.


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