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It's with the conservative authoritarians

It's more like authoritarians of all stripes, but the conservative authoritarians are the loudest and most numerous. (Left wing authoritarians, the ones that waved Mao's little red book or quoted Trotsky or Lenin aren't much of an issue at all these days). There are those who would have a breathalizer (MADD followers) built into the dash of every car, but they're seen as nutty.

Dr. Bob has a nice paper about this stuff:

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~a...

--
BMO

Jesus H. Christ how does this loopy paranoid bullshit get modded up?

If you're really interested, consider reading The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer. He makes the point that traditional conservatism in the US has been largely displaced by authoritarianism -- something that can happen on the right or left but in this case on the right. These aren't grandpa's thrifty, public-spirited Burkean conservatives we're talking about here.

Well, yes, they do. Just look at the popularity of various autocratic authoritarian political parties, from the US Republicans down to the Golden Dawn in Greece.

Certainly, in well-functioning democracies they do not form enough of a majority to actually overthrow the rule of law on its own, but the fact that they can poll up to 40% of the populace easily demonstrates that there is a streak of authoritarian followers in every population.

And yet you have farm, home, and cottage owners living near the shore of Lake Manitoba in the province of Manitoba screaming about the lake getting too much water from the Portage Diversion due to all the recent flooding.

If all the excess flood water could be piped South to thirsty states every spring that would likely make more than just the Lake Manitoba residents happy. Heck, the capital of Winnipeg has a floodway designed to prevent the city from becoming the center of a lake (check out a satellite image south of the city 1997)

Read Bob Altemeyers "The Authoritarians" http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~a...

These people literally do not understand the immeasurable damage they do. At the same time, they think whatever they do is good for society. It is a special, unfortunately widespread, mental disability and one that pushes people into law enforcement, law and government work.

What a bunch of hyper-partisan clap-trap. All on one web page. I've never seen so many Democratic party talking points crammed into one paragraph as they have managed on that web site.

Sorry, but the issue is not attributable to one side of the 2-party duopoly coin, and, no, you can't blame Bush for 5 years of continuing down the same ruinous, tyrannical past. Republicans do not have an exclusive on authoritarianism, any more than Democrats have an exclusive on crony capitalism. If you're writing essays praising TARP and the 2009 Stimulus in one breath, and complaining about income inequality in the next, you obviously have a lot to learn about what the real issues are. Replacing all the Republicans with Democrats is not going to fix a single one of them.

Read Bob Altemeyers "The Authoritarians" http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~a...

These people literally do not understand the immeasurable damage they do. At the same time, they think whatever they do is good for society. It is a special, unfortunately widespread, mental disability and one that pushes people into law enforcement, law and government work.

Simple: People do not want to hear what Snowden says, they want to put their heads in the sand. That makes Snowden a hero and the common citizen that is trying very hard not to see the writing on the wall a cretin. Unfortunately, the world if full of cretins that are so in love with their misconceptions that they fight anybody that points out the truth to them, instead of readjusting their views to the facts.

By now I am convinced that this is perhaps the main problem the human race has. Add to that the fact that most people do not come up with their misconceptions, but take them from "authority" figures that shamelessly manipulate them this way.

Citation (very worthwhile read): "Bob Altemeyer's - The Authoritarians" - http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~a...

Well, cretins that think they are better than others exist in any body variant. That the deaf have them is not a surprise. But supremacy-fantasies are by now well studies: The work by having one or a few leaders and a lot of people that look up to them and accept anything they say as gospel. Bob Altemeyer has written a nice book about this, based on solid research data (it is free): http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~a...

Basically, the only thing this shows is that deaf people are on average just as stupid as non-deaf ones. And no, parents not giving their children the implants without good medical reasons are just doing severe child abuse.

a fifth to quarter of the posters are borderline sociopaths

That would be consistent with the population at large; 20% authoritarian followers, 5% social dominators according to Altemeyer.

The Authoritarians by Bob Altermeyer. A psychological researcher spends a lifetime following up the thread left by researchers like Stanley Milgram's (Obedience to Authority) and lays out once and for all the who, why and how of the authoritarian personality type.
They're always with us, but at this point in time in America, they're clearly at the helm so this is a very relevant - and riveting- book.

If you want to know why people who listen to Limbaugh and Hannity are the way they are and why they're never going to change and why reasoning and evidence is totally irrelevant to the 30% of Americans who fit this profile, then this does more than argue some likely hypothesis; it proves the author's point through the application of the scientific method . Fascinating just for the reveal of his methodology, to see how a scientist even approaches something as amorphous as "authoritarian personality type. This book actually changed my life.

And here it is for free:

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

The others may just not have been willing to admit it. Some research suggests the level of complete idiots in the US is more like 70%: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

Spot on. Have a look a this nice research result collection: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

I am 70% through and authoritarians want strongly to force their views on others, just because, no moral or insight behind it, just psycho behavior.

Right wing authoritarians believe it, because the authorities say so. This free e-book explains it. http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

Well, yes. And since I have read The Authoritarians I also understand why those most religious have the worst moral standards, the lowest empathy and are so often in favor of cruelty, even if their religion forbids it expressively.

when your brain is wired to do what the authorities tell you. Read The Authoritarians http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

See "The Authoritarians" book which I think covers this well.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
It's more slanted towards politically conservative examples of this though. But the same concept works quite well on the liberal side too.

You may have missed the point of the book.

See "The Authoritarians" book which I think covers this well.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
It's more slanted towards politically conservative examples of this though. But the same concept works quite well on the liberal side too.

It's been studied, but you won't like the result, as it is likely partially your fault:

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
N.B. The book is not easy to read, but not too difficult either; but you may want to stick to the main chapters and skip the occasional 30 pages of footnotes. Do take the time to read it carefully (if you print it out, you can have the satisfaction of hurling it against the wall a bit sometimes too).

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

There it is. The classic, all time, full bore, scientifically confirmed explanation of what authoritarianism is.

Everyone has a little authoritarian in them, especially at the point of being "fed up" with others, where ever that is. Therefore, everyone needs to check themselves against it. True civil libertarians (non-Ron Paul types) excel us all in this capability and this makes them what they are.

Maybe there are very extreme circumstances in which some aspects of the civil society's foundations work against civil society. Lincoln thought he found some.

One thing we know, The doings of Julian Assange and Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden and Walter Binney and John Kiriakou and Walter Drake and all the rest of the people who acted in accordance with the values all Americans and the Founding Fathers were inculcated with do not represent those circumstances.

It's amazing to me how unsophisticated the response has been from the administration and by proxy the NSA itself. Presumably they have multiple, best-course-of-action for any eventuality all analyzed beforehand and mapped out. Is THIS response what they have on the books? IS this the best unlimited access to the nations best social and cultural thinkers can produce?

Maybe Assange acted with disregard to national security, he claims to have tried to vet the documents with the NSA and CIA and State Dept but they refused to engage him the way they would have WaPo or the Times. Who knows? Anyways, there's a lot conceptual space between THAT and being a drone worthy terrorist or a traitor. Ditto on down the line.

What's the lesson for us in this specific incident? For the sake of your career, don't drink and Twitter ? Read The Authoritarians at least once a year ? Perform a thorough, searching, honest and skeptical self examination of your values and actions at least as often as you get a haircut?

For a popularization of some scientific studies on this matter, see The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer.

This is always a problem with fixing flaws in a complex narrative. the explanation always uncover new issues.

And, if you carry on down that kind of line, you end up with this.

If you make a habit of reading polls on a a variety of political and social issues, you'll learn a lot about Americans and specifically you might come to the conclusion that about 25-35% of Americans are basically so disconnected from scientific and social reality they're functionally insane and their opinion should ALWAYS and AUTOMATICALLY be classified as "non-truth related".

For instance, and famously, about 46% of Americans don't believe in evolution

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/05/americans-believe-in-creationism_n_1571127.html

But also 10% think that prosecutors who send innocent people to jail should not be prosecuted:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-texas-exoneree-testifies-20130204,0,3950542.story?page=2

25% think Obama is not an American citizen:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20056061-503544.html

30%^ think God decides the outcome of sporting events: http://rt.com/usa/news/super-bowl-result-god-337/

And on and on and on. Watching polls what you'll discover is about 10% of Americans are just outright fascists who wouldn't hesitate to do whatever any right wing authority told them to do, and think it should have been started yesterday. This is also the finding of Bob Altemeyer in his seminal work on authoritarianism :

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/.

right.

About 25-30% believe that events on Earth are assiduously overseen by an all knowing God who "sees them when they're sleeping / and knows if they're awake / and knows if they've been bad of good..." and what happens in everything from their personal life to world events is really of no consequence except to the extent that it is a reflection of an eternal, ongoing battle between good and evil being fought on an unseen cosmic plane. This is something they have this is common with every Muslim extremist who ever strapped a suicide bomb onto himself.

Americans have a deficit of rationality, a deep and persistent belief that something other than outcome based, welfare of humans is the proper measure of human morality, are scientifically illiterate and constitutionally incapable of perceiving in their thinking just the kinds of bugs that the referenced article details.

There's not enough time to reform the American character before we have to take radical and decisive action on global warming. The fact is, democracy stops where science begins. This isn't going to lead to anything good.

The least divisive, least disrupting course of action is for the government to internally and secretly set up an Executive Action team within one the intelligence agencies whose purpose is to discredit, attack and dismantle and neutralize the leaders of the denier terrorist movement. We all know who they are. These *thought leaders* need to be attacked the same way we'd attack any group of terrorists building a bomb named which would have the same long term destructive power as global warming. Denialism is a bomb with the capacity to permanently destroy civilization and the people assembling that bomb are not working in secret. They need to be neutralized and their sources of funding and societal legitimacy attacked through and and all means necessary. They have forfeited their civil rights and constitutional protections. We simply need to deal with them like the world destroying terrorists they are.

You can come to this conclusion now when there's still time to do something about global warming or you can come to this conclusion later, when there's no possibility of doing anything about it and the starvation, the concomitant societal breakdown and mass, uncontrolled immigration, the tidal wave of anti-Western (Big Oil / Big Coal ) terrorism and collapsing centralized governments take not just the denier's civil liberties and Con

Once a politician starts relying on the religious voters, he'll have to support a religion-driven agenda or risk being denounced as a turn-coat and kicked out of office - for a religious voter is a jealous voter.

Not so, apparently:

Once someone becomes a leader of the high RWAs' in-group, he can lie with impunity about the out-groups, himself, whatever, because he knows the followers will seldom check on what he says, nor will they expose themselves to people who set the record straight. Furthermore they will not believe the truth if they somehow get exposed to it, and if the distortions become absolutely undeniable, they will rationalize it away and put it in a box. If the scoundrel's duplicity and hypocrisy lands him on the front page of every daily in the country, the followers will still forgive him if he just says the right things.

The Authoritarians - Bob Altemeyer

Maybe you're right. Fascism thrives when peoples' lives are made more difficult.

<incoherent_rant>
Read these, even though you may call me silly:

Diagnosis (difficult, for adults): Bob Altemeyer - The Authoritarians. It's mostly about authoritarian followers instead of the more colourful and interesting leaders.

Vaccine (for children): J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, especially #5 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and #7 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
It tries to paint, as background to the storyline, how those wizards' society changes as Voldemort regains ascendancy. I'm actually serious, although the point is probably lost on most people: one of the scariest characters in the Harry Potter books, is Dolores Umbridge. Children will probably recognize and understand that kind of character. Makes me think what kind of fascist school experience mrs. Rowling must have had as a girl :-)

Especially now in the USA, you run a risk that after the US Army war vets return from Iraq and Afghanistan, that populist politicians might try to invent a Stab-in-the-back myth (Scooby Doo: "we would have won, if it wasn't for those pesky interfering kids"). See also: Zimbabwe "war vets" (IMHO no coincidence that Chenjerai Hunzvi's nickname was "Hitler").
</incoherent_rant>

Yes, it is bias that made those Samsung designs appear dated back to before the iPhone. It is also not bias that similar pro Apple/anti Samsung images manage to exclude all of these similar designs that predate the iPhone.

All makes sense now. I'm beginning to wonder how highly Apple fans would rate on the authoritarianism scale.

--Jeremy

Well, I AM a scientist and the AC post above me, perfectly explains that INDEED burning coal decreases mass, albeit very slightly. For precise numbers see e,g, this.
We are talking about power generation, so a GWhr generated from fossil fuel reduces the resultant mass by the same amount as a GWhr generated from nuclear reaction. E=mc^2 holds.

The Canadian sociologist Altemeyer (http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/) wrote a (downloadable and VERY readable, except for the 60% footnotes) book about "The Authoritarians" which describes those "masters" (he calls them "Authoritarian Leaders") and "slaves" (he calls them "Authoritarian Followers"). Read it.
I have read "Also Sprach Zarathustra" but I haven't come across your description of the "geeks" in there -- and they aren't mentioned in Altemeyer's book either. Maybe a real sociologist can comment on this.
I think you've made a very interesting point, thanks!

You may be interested to know about this paper, remarkable for its perception of the conservative mentality. Its a tad frightening. The author basically posits that conservative mindset is actually based in a psychology that drives society via politics, religion, etc.

Those are interesting questions. I'll try to answer with a link and with a joke.

Link: I strongly recommend downloading and reading Bob Altemeyer's book "The Authoritarians". In this book (75% scientific footnotes you can skip, 25% mindblowing clearly written sociology research) he makes a clear distinction between "right-wing authoritarian followers" (the main topic of the book) on the one hand (because you can't have a right-wing movement, dictatorship etc. without all those people who just neatly obey what TPTB instruct them to do), and "right-wing authoritarian leaders", who are a rare breed of people who have no scruples at all and happen to have found they are really good at gaining power over the backs of the "right-wing authoritarian followers" which they manipulate and enthuse.


Joke: This is a lame joke, I'm not exactly sure why I'm telling it here on Slashdot, but it felt appropriate somehow so indulge me.

It is a stormy night. Two men are driving on a motorway through the storm, looking stressed-out, tired and wary of the road. The autoradio is on softly but suddenly it gets interrupted by a blaring emergency traffic report:
"Attention! A wrong-way driver(*) has been detected on the E0 road driving northward! Keep to the right and try to signal the driver with your lights!"
Says the driver to his passenger: "ONE wrong-way driver?!?! Hah! I've had to dodge at least TWENTY of those idiots already!"

(*) the joke is marginally more funny in Dutch where the word is "spookrijder" -- "ghost rider".

Read this and weep (you may skip the 2/3rds of the book that contains the footnotes):
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

That is the problem.
They are one in the same.

It's not about scientists spouting on about things outside their field. The problem is scientists in their field... who care passionately about their field. No surprise really.

The example I gave on the bicycle helmet legislation is a real one that I remember reading in the news.

http://umanitoba.ca/news/blogs/blog/2010/08/10/news-release-mandatory-bike-helmet-laws-are-effective-dont-reduce-cycling-habits/

âoeFor provinces without comprehensive helmet legislation, the time to act was yesterday. Our data shows that all-ages helmet legislation is associated with higher use of helmets among children and adults, compared with legislation that only pertains to children. This is the type of legislation that all provinces should be adopting,â

You see here, a scientist recommending action or policy. This happens all the time. Why does it happen? Because this scientist studying this issue is focused solely on his field of study.

But it is this very narrow tunnel vision of scientists in their field that is the problem. This scientist doesn't worry about the economic impact, the impact on personal freedom, the impact on fun, the impact on leisure, the impact on state power...

This is not just an issue of the media. As much as the media does often distort or hype scientific results... the reality is that real professional scientists are recommending policy. The bicycle one is rather tame actually. In other areas such as global warming, education... the scientists are much more involved in policy.

Unfortunately that is a false equivalency.
If you are interested in basing your gross over-generalizations about political groups on fact then I would recommend that you read The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer. Mr. Altemeyer was a Professor of Psychology at the University of Manitoba who spent ~20 years studying the psychological trait of Authoritarianism. The Authoritarians is a summary of his research targeted at a layman audience.
Coles notes:
While it is indisputable that there are some politically left-wing authoritarians the statistics show that authoritarians are overwhelmingly right-wing in their politics.

Your post is very selective about the "facts". If enough people keep thinking your way, we are probably doomed for sure in an age where any disgruntled person can download a plague off the internet and feel justified using it out of either retribution or to achieve some objective that they think will make them "secure" by wiping out most everyone else who might in theory be a threat. Maybe we could try being nice to each other for a change and see how that works out for a while?
http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm

Or:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Prologue
" Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
        And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
        Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, and so the idea was lost, seemingly for ever.
        This is her story."

Were you one of the protesters against the supposedly justified war against Iraq over non-existent weapons of mass destruction. If not, then what moral authority do you speak from? Who was the aggressor there? Hard to accept the implications. Based on your philosophy, how should the USA be labelled for that endeavor, and what should other countries do about that? Can you explain why most other countries consider the USA a far greater threat to world peace than most of the countries it invades?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jun/15/usa.iran

Terrorist attacks have happened many times on US soil, including the US Capitol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States

They have also happened in other countries without those countries losing their democracies.

But sadly, the article suggests the worst terrorism these days seems to be coming *out* of the US Capitol and destroying the fabric of US society both economically and socially. See also:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
"OK, what's this book about? It's about what's happened to the American government lately. It's about the disastrous decisions that government has made. It's about the corruption that rotted the Congress. It's about how traditional conservatism has nearly been destroyed by authoritarianism. It's about how the "Religious Right" teamed up with amoral authoritarian leaders to push its un-democratic agenda onto the country. It's about the United States standing at the crossroads as the next federal election approaches."

Just think about whether you are helping the terrorists win?

Well, there is, for example a three year old paper by Tamada describing the process in some detail. And besides, there was a paper published 48 years ago on the 8th place of the search result that I've shown before that described several methods for uranium extraction, including the predecessors of the approach pursued it Tamada's paper.

This casts some doubt on your ability to research the claims your are making. E.g.: "Nobody extracted anything they just suggested it might be possible", "That makes any cost estimates an exercise in wishful thinking since they don't have a clue what is needed"

No. You're not like "the majority of the population": you have a problem with authority, while most people don't.

The original poster is correct. The majority of the population is very likely to go along with the demands of someone perceived to be in authority. As evidence, I direct your attention to the Milgram Experiments, in which random guys from off the street were asked to administer electrical shocks to total strangers, starting at five volts and going all the way to 450 volts in small increments. The subjects of the experiment believed that the shocks were part of an experiment designed to test the effects of punishment on memory, when in fact the person supposedly receiving the shocks was an actor. And here are the results:

Well, how many people would go all the way to 450 volts in that situation? Milgram asked 39 psychiatrists and they all said NO ONE would. If you ask ordinary people the same question, they say only a pathological fringe element, perhaps one or two percent of the population, would go all the way. Certainly people know they themselves WOULD NOT, COULD NOT, EVER, NEVER do such a thing. So if you know that you would not, could not, that’s what almost everyone says.

Milgram ran 40 men, one at a time, in the situation I just described. All 40 shocked the Learner after he started grunting; all 40 gave the “household voltage” 120 volt shock. Thirty-four went past the 150 volt mark where the Learner demanded to be set free, which means 85% of the Teachers paid less attention to the Learner’s undeniable rights than they did to the Experimenter’s insistence that the study continue. Thereafter a few more people dropped out, one here and one there. Altogether fifteen men got up the gumption to eventually tell the Experimenter, “No, I won’t.” But the other twenty-five men went to 450 volts and threw the switch over and over until the Experimenter told them to stop.

That’s not NONE of them. That’s 62%.

(Writeup by Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarians, pages 225-226)

This and similar experiments have shown repeatedly that resistance to authority is the exception, not the rule. The TSA counts on that.

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism
"Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is a personality and ideological variable studied in political, social, and personality psychology. It is defined by three attitudinal and behavioral clusters which correlate together:[1][2]
      1. Authoritarian submission -- a high degree of submissiveness to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.
      2. Authoritarian aggression -- a general aggressiveness directed against deviants, outgroups, and other people that are perceived to be targets according to established authorities.
      3. Conventionalism -- a high degree of adherence to the traditions and social norms that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities, and a belief that others in one's society should also be required to adhere to these norms.[3]"

Not quite as many as you think. If you'd like some more specific scientific insight into this, I would highly recommend that you read this free e-book by a psychology professor who has spent the last several decades studying these sort of issues. It's a really easy read and I guarantee that you'll learn some new things about authoritarian followers that you didn't know.

...comes from an expatriate, who moved to Canada and became a psychologist. Along the way, he was accused of dodging the draft, accidentally raised a kid who went in to politics, and discovered an alarming (and measurable) character trait that (among other things) brings along with it a willingness to accept any "logical" conclusion they agree with, no matter how faulty the reasoning, and to assert that the reasoning is valid.

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

"The Authoritarians" is available as a free PDF, (~ 250 p), and it's moderatly funny, given that the subject is just what kind of lunacy you can expect when dealing with the hard core neocons and their followers, and where that lunacy comes from. Warning: I lost time reading this, and I normally don't give a rat's ass about psychology. It's that good.

It's hard to me to come to the conclusion I'm wrong when I'm not presented with good arguments why I'm wrong.

I suggest you to read the many, many replies I've got to my original post, they are interesting even the many that simple amount to "well yeah? you suck!". I also posted replies to most of them, I found the exercise refreshing tough it's growing old.

To honor you I did watch the video, since I can't ask you to read this much without giving you some of my attention. Sadly I'm underwhelmed by that video.

You seem to be making an appeal to emotion, that believing in contradictions is not a sign of a little mind but rather a sign of the wonder of humanity.

I call bullshit. Yes, doing stuff we know to be "impossible" (or just very hard) is exhilarating, thus we anticipate this gratification and purposely engage in wild crusades.

But that is just one instance of mental compartmentalization. In fact it doesn't even require mental compartmentalization because these crusades always have goals that are deemed virtually impossible, not *actually* impossible.

Real mental compartmentalization includes lots of silly stuff I'm not even going to list because you can find them online, like here.

So, really, there is a difference between finding gratification in challenging goals, which is what the video is about, and actually believing two opposing things simultaneously, which is what the video *claims* to be talking about, but fails.

Also what I've said is not bias or ignorance, is based on what I've learned from many sources, but got specially in depth from this book (which I referred to in another of my replies, see? I told you you should read that.).

Here is the reference again, its a free download online http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

So before it was a "pro-social gene" and now religiosity is based on group solidarity, the ability to believe contradictory statements, and being simply stupid? I take it these are just your own narrow prejudices and conclusions, then?

"Before" and "now"? It seems you are taking different opinions from different people, ascribing them to me, and then blaming me for being inconsistent.

*i* have (since I read this book...) understood religiosity as a predisposition to group solidarity, the ability to believe contradictory statements and being simply a little stupid.

Nor am I saying that being stupid makes you religious, rather, being smarter and more critical makes you less religious. These two concepts are not the same.

But reallym read this book by a university professor, its called "The Authoritarians". And it is available for free at its web page:

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

For your comments on Buddhist logic, read the other replies I wrote to the other people who chimed in to say basically the same things that you, I've probably written too much about the subject for one day. Thank you.

Bob Altemeyer has spent his life studying this phenomenon: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

He has a book called "The Authoritarians" (PDF here: http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf). It's a fascinating read.

Here is an interesting analysis of Tea Party for your consideration. [PDF, 300k] It agrees with your observation that the Tea Party was formed under Bush (as a response to the "bailout"), but the study goes on to show how the Tea Party has since changed and been used by various forces -- especially around various hot-button issues such as "healthcare reform".

Oh also, concerning the way I want to see things. I'd really love for there to be a viable party that actually wants to reduce the size of our government and restore individual liberties. I'm no fan of Obama, he's scarcely better than Bush. But I haven't seen anything that indicates that the Tea Party is anything but a bunch of frightened reactionaries. They certainly show all the hallmarks of an authoritarian movement.

The tea party can say it's about a lot of things. But actions speak louder than words. When they organize to pressure the government to cut the largest source of spending in the budget, I will believe them that they seriously want to reduce the deficit. That hasn't happened, and I'm not optimistic that it will happen.

Judges, juries and legislatures support the police overwhelmingly on this issue

Honestly, why?

Because some people are hard-wired to cut the authorities a lot of slack -- whether they deserve it or not.

Saw this on /. before and always thought it made for an interesting read on the lock-step authoritarian crowd.

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

But face it - who got the most votes at the last election? People vote for whoever they want so the public policy is going the way they want. Democracy 101.

Ah, but they never get it, do they?

One of the people at my university has gone back to that area a few times and the photos are far better than anything I've seen sofar.

I find the inside pictures of the school especially eerie.

One of the people at my university has gone back to that area a few times and the photos are far better than anything I've seen sofar.

I find the inside pictures of the school especially eerie.

( page 123)

Taboo must be a topic of great interest to you. It seems there can be social inertia despite common individual preference or even broad popularity.

Hm. Your idea of promoting frankness does seem to be a good one. It's not something that "established" personalities can do easily because they're believed to be relatively static and thus less forgivable for mistake or aberrance. "Youthful indiscretion" is a shield that youth can use to embolden their openness. So maybe it's a good thing that social sites are used primarily by youth. (Teach them well and let them lead the way...)

Ah, but it seems also that visibility is a double-edged sword. Sure, if most folks were open about their lives we might find greater tolerance for or even acceptance of evident commonalities. Even to the degree of changing "unfair" laws. That's great. However, unpopularity still remains, and oddity (does not equal) immorality, harmfulness, or bad. In a new era of openness there could be a far greater tendency towards intolerance of deviation, especially since the major in-group would be that much more pervasive. You'd have to assure somehow that oddity tolerance did not evaporate. I think the only truly effective way to do that would be to establish a fundamental value system which folks of all stripes could buy into. With that clarified folks would be able to deduce morality rather than relying on sheer popularity (of intuitively presumed pre-deduced morality).

Oh, hm. It seems that moral decisions resulting from a value system are needed rather than just relying on popularity to vouch for the acceptability of behavior. For example, let's say when all was revealed that a vengeful mindset were overwhelmingly the tendency. That could empower (legally, socially) vengeance. So that there is a edge to the sword, perhaps more appropriately the first edge, in opposition to oddity devaluation, than was the concept of empowering common good nature. Unpopularity does not mean bad, popularity does not mean good. The benefit of empowering common good nature might be the sword's pommel or something. Anyway.

Again, establishing a popular and fundamental value system would be necessary to avoid the fallout from these two main effects of widespread frankness. So maybe come up with some good ideas and travel around teaching folk. As a marketing strategy perhaps get yourself nailed to a tree and we'll all cross our fingers that your ideas take.

• Robbers Cave experiment
• Social Identity Theory
• The Authoritarians

(It's interesting that you call the privacy patch-up a "greedy" solution. Do you mean that in the sense that it's driven by short-sighted personal needs rather than an eye towards greater social benefit? There's one other sense I can imagine for use of "greedy", but it's a quirky perspective that I don't think others would be familiar with. It's fun, though: Impulsiveness can be seen as subverting the welfare of your future self for your current self's satisfaction, and you can cast that future self as something like a different person. Future me == "other", current me = "self". Thus impulsiveness, as opposed to delay of gratification, can be seen as a sort of selfishness.)