Extremist libertarians are the smartest political ideology

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http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/b ... n-liberals

Ok, a bit of a joke there, and I certainly do not intend to get too deep into any political psychology debate, but on the link above it argues that economic conservatism correlates with intelligence, as does social liberalism, and finally that extremism correlates with intelligence.

The article itself provides an argument for why the last idea is true, which is that people with extreme beliefs have to defend them more, which makes sense, I could also see the notion that people who would be open to accept an extreme belief would have to do more thinking as well.

As for the ties to social liberalism and economic conservatism and IQ, my theory on this are that these 2 propositions are accepted within the non-expressed logic of our society, and people who accept these ideas are the ones sharp enough to accept the underlying logic that drives our society. That could just be utter crap though.

It would appear that the joke is on the communists...

Interesting article. I wish they had stated how many students were included in the study.

I'm afraid I would fall into the dumber group:

I have my views, but just do not really like telling others what they should do. So, yeah, wishy washy, that's me.

Why, extremists tend to take a narrow view that does not require in depth thinking. Debating with an extremist is difficult because they refuse to look beyond their own narrow view and just repeat their simplistic argument.

True, but I think they tend to win out on average because they aren't going with the flow like a number of centrists do. As can be noted, this is an issue of correlation and it does not say how strong the correlation is. However, working systematically within a group of ideas is still a lot better than what a lot of people do, as they often try to work with a bunch of random ideas.

Lie.

it's been on the communist since the inception of such political idiocy.

Only those without a political ideology are the smart ones. They don't debase themselves in politics.

...I am not one of those people...

Prolly BS

Well, to end up taking an interest in a fringe view, you have to have an interest in politics and at least enough intelligence to tell the different views apart. So yes, I would say extremists are, in some cases, more intelligent than your average person. But, that's not the case where I grew up- Southwest Ohio is ridiculously conservative, to the point where you have to be extremely stupid to swallow the views that our right-wing adopted. But then, it was more social conservatism than economic, and social conservatives are cited as morons in that article.

I have moved from one extreme to the other on several issues, and now I'm beginning to settle in somewhat more moderate territory. I think it has been good for me to experience several different ideologies from within. It has expanded my mind to all the different views that exist, and allows me to understand where people are coming from better.

Lol? No, extremist libertarians just see a futility in political intervention, maybe. Weak. There is no "right" or "wrong" political ideology.

The article states that social liberalism, economic conservatism, and extremism correlate with IQ. (or as the article expresses, people more in that direction have a higher IQ on average) You are right, I did not check to see if there were any effects between the variables such that one would undermine the other, however, I don't see any reason to say "Lie." in response to the idea, especially given that the article does not state that there are problems with combining the effects. I certainly do not see reason to dismiss the article off-hand, at least not without some additional data.



Well, if you look at my original post, I argued that this was somewhat of a joke post, and that I did not want to get too deeply in a political psychology debate, as I do disagree with trying to undermine another person's political views with an appeal to psychology.

Why'd you post it then? Pointless threads like this make people even less inclined to debate seriously. PPR is a joke.

I agree though, that focusing on the traits of the believers and not the beliefs is silly, although it always comes into it at some point.

Well, I don't mind some serious debate, and the original post was not a joke, the link is reasonably credible to the best of my knowledge, but the title of the thread was assuredly a bit of a joke to pull people in. I want people to think, not necessarily debate on this thread, if a debate starts up, fine with me, but I don't want people attacking political ideas through psychoanalysis, even if they psychoanalyze political ideas.

IQ is also correlated with class/material circumstances of family/background, and it may be that the most privileged ( and consequently with higher IQs ) tend to favour those ideas which favour their class?
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