Slashdot Mirror
Red Brains vs. Blue Brains?
eLoco writes "From the NYTimes (reg. req.): The Political Brain -- "Why do Republicans and Democrats differ so emphatically? Perhaps it's all in the head." Researchers from UCLA have seem to have found that liberals have, on average, a more active amygdala than conservatives. According to the article, studies of stroke victims "have persuasively shown that the amygdala plays a key role in the creation of emotions like fear or empathy." So is this scientific "proof" that liberals tend to be more compassionate but also more cowardly? [DISCLAIMER: this is not a troll; I am a liberal]. Regardless, this seems to have implications for more than just politics. Favorite quote: "Perhaps we form political affiliations by semiconsciously detecting commonalities with other people, commonalities that ultimately reflect a shared pattern of brain function.""
Its rare that I'm reading an article and end up distracted by the sheer trolliness of it that I can't get any of the science out of it.
Who funds this research??
Stroke victims prefer Bush.
It's all good.
Is anything anyone's fault or decision anymore? Damn I remember when people were fat, drunk, gay, disruptive and Communist of their own volition. Now everything is a malady, issue and disease.
This
A brain is required in the first place.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
[DISCLAIMER: this is not a troll; I am a liberal]
Hence this article should be modded +5 insightful.
I don't think this is true... I think political views can develop, and change. It's not something that you have when you're born...
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
Just because you are against the war in Iraq, doesn't necissarily mean you are against wars 100%.
What? Does this mean voting Republican could be classified as a mental illness?
;-)
Perhaps some kind of medication could get that recalcitrant amygdala up and running again.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
I thought my brain was made of "grey matter"! sorry this is so bad.
That's funny... I rarely make that distinction.
---- http://www.opedog.com/
it works for the target block of voters they have.
Note I am a cold heartless Libertarian that thinks most of the liberals of the world should follow the same rules as a wildlife park when it comes to handouts. DO NOT FEED the Animals lest you make the become dependant.
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
Wait, lemme go get the marshmallows.... MMMM smores
Ok go ahead
This is not a sig
So are we going to start using a Party sorting CAT scanner? [please not slitherin... please not slitherin...]
All of the conservatives I know are more afraid than all of the liberals I know. I would have thought it was the other way around.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Dear Mr. Bush,
Please give us a large research grant.
Love,
Scientists
"Perhaps we form political affiliations by semiconsciously detecting commonalities with other people, commonalities that ultimately reflect a shared pattern of brain function."
This just in! People relate with people who are similar to themselves! What shocking news, I never would have guessed that similar ideas and ways of thought would pull people together...
I'll pull another shocker out of the air too, while we're going for blatantly obvious descriptions of human behavior--people tend to congregate with other people of similar intelligence levels.
That was the worst Red Vs. Blue ever... I didn't even find it slightly funny.
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
Liberals come from cities, Conservatives come from rural areas.
I think it is the lifestyle of where you live that governs the formation of the brain.
Look at this county map. Here is a equally hi correlation to rurality=convervativeness.
Maybe conservatives are inbred, not born? (Laugh, it's a joke, not a troll.)
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
"Perhaps we form political affiliations by semiconsciously detecting commonalities with other people, commonalities that ultimately reflect a shared pattern of brain function."
So people align themselves politically with others who think in a similar way.
Wow, that's groundbreaking stuff. Guess that locks up the Nobel prize for this year!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Anyon?
____________ Do or Do not there is no Try.
Not insulting anyone: but most liberals I know are sorta cowardly, but definitly fearful. They seem to worry about everything...
OK. Your comment is sort of like saying "Not that this applies to anyone personally, but everyone I don't like are morons with no sense of hygeine and even less in the way of morals. They ought to be shot, drawn and quartered, and then shot again for good measure. But please, liberals, don't take that personally!"
If you're going to state your opinion, don't preface it with "I don't really mean this".
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
John Edwards' "two Americas" wouldn't even be an issue. We could have the Republican States of America and the Democratic States of America.
Everyone would be happy, the Republicans could wage war all day long, the Democrats could cook up a socialist union, and best of all, two new opposition parties would mature. Then, when the Reps and Dems had f'd everything up, the new parties could oust the incumbents and the United States could reform, Voltron-like.
Can we PLEASE stop with the hyperbole politics on this site. No one outside the US cares about the red and blue states. Oh look, here's an article about >cough "science" (that's tech related aint it?) that shows that Democrats are both smarter AND more compassionate than Republicans. Let's post it!
I should only have to point out that political parties are IDEOLOGIES and there are plenty of compassionate and non-compassitionate and literate and non-literate people in both parties (or perhaps y'all approve of PETA bombing animal research clinics.)
If you have REAL Science, post it. If you want a politics story MAKE A POLITICS SECTION and then post MULTIPLE political party stories to it. Or is it the simple fact that you head geeks are jealous that you're not Wired magazine!?!
this dudes karma is gonna take a bad beating from bush supporters. help him out buy modding something that actually gives karma
What about libertarians? I call bullshit on this simplistic non-scientific pap. Slashdot might do better posting articles on the scientific basis for spiritualism.
What color are our brains?
Haha, you are correct. :)
I should have just said "most that I know."
__ Jesus Loves you! He died in your place so you would not have to die and go to Hell.
does this mean that we can develop a psychoactive drug that will rid us of those pesky conservatives.
(or liberasls, plenty of other things to troll about)
imagine... doctors controlling elections through drugs. that sounds like some good sci-fi
Both forms of expression can be cured with Prozac.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
So is this scientific "proof" that liberals tend to be more compassionate but also more cowardly?
No. It is, however, flamebait and fodder for the conservatives to jump over.
I'm a liberal. I also am a firm supporter of the 2nd Amendment, and in fact own multiple firearms. Why? Because I believe there may come a time where I need to defend my ideals with violence. I look at my intellectual forbears like Samuel Adams, George Washington, Mahatma Gandhi (not as peace as you believe!), Malcolm X, and other political agitators. Frequently changes can come about through peaceful means, but when peaceful means fail and tyranny rears its ugly head, then blood must be spilled.
In no religious or political tradition is the forceful opposition of tyranny considered a sin or a crime. This is very much a liberal train of thought, in the "power to the people" sense, the fundamental democratic sense. The liberals who founded America did so by violently opposing British tyranny, and they were wholly justified in doing so.
The question is: empathy towards who? I am empathetic towards the oppressed, the poor, and those who do not get treated justly by their governments. I, like Christ Jesus, will agitate for a change in this situation until my dying day. If violence is required to make it happen, then so be it. I hope it does not come to that, but if it will, I will not run from it.
Since there will be medication for curing Republicans very soon. Problem is though: The government will make it a controlled substance because it is a mind altering drug. D'oh!
--- Eat my sig.
maybe our brain becomes the way it is because we are raised using certian parts more than others.
Scientists jump to conclusions quickly.
Republicans are more likely to be conservatives with strong views on issues such as religion, defense and abortion. Strong views tend to correspond more to strong emotions, thus the difference.
So mabey it may be considered fear to run from a guy who is looking to kill you, and mabey it may be braver to just stand up, but I prefer to be a coward, live another day, and come up with a strategy, than be dead and buried just cause I had to stand up to be brave and look tough ...
:)
Vote Kerry!
My Web Site - www.ocean-liners.com
Given that hell is a construct created specifically to scare the ignorant, I find the combination of your post and your .sig delightfully ironic.
dude.
don't feed the trolls. his name is 'jesuspower'
So how long before the Conservatives discover that lefties have "defective brains" and start genetically-engineering them out of the population? :-)
Stick Men
I wouldn't necessarily say that but I would say there is a tendency for liberals to be ruled by emotion whereas conservatives are ruled by intellect.
Again, no insults intended, just an observation. Of course, when it comes to extremes, emotions tend to cancel intellect on both sides.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Reminds me of an episode I heard several months ago... Garrison Keillor was discussing his recent on-show conversion to become a Republican. (roughly paraphrased he said) "Back when I was a democrat and would say something political, I would get letters from Republicans telling me exactly how I was wrong and exactly what they thought of me. Now that I've switched parties, I now get 'hurt' letters from Democrats who are 'hurt' and 'saddened' by my new points of view. I can deal with 'hurt' letters!"
(apologies for without a doubt mangling his hilarious speech)
... that makes us think everything is determined by genes!
So how does this account for Libertarians?
-cf
Those with the blue brain continue to go about their daily lives unaware of the construct that surrounds them, wrapped in an artificial reality of delusion.
Those with the red brain perceive the truth, and are able to see how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
Plus, the red-brainers get to dodge bullets and wear a *really* stylish jacket and glasses
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
So is this scientific "proof" that liberals tend to be more compassionate but also more cowardly?
The amygdala than this. It is responsible for love, hate, fear (all sorts of phobias), tastes, etc... We must understand that we do not control our emotions, as much as we would like to think that we do. Intelligence and reason are always at the service of emotion. In other words, the amydala is the real boss of our brains.
A "more active amygdala" can be good or bad or noth. It may mean that one is more compassionate or more hateful. It may mean that one is very creative or a complete nut. Artists, in general, have amore active amygdala. This probably is the reason that hollywood is liberal and artistically talented at the same time.
It's always someone else's fault.
Right. I mean, check out the conservative line of reasoning:
Example: "I'm not going to go see Fahrehnheit 9/11 for the same reasons liberals won't watch Fox News."
Example: "Vote fraud? Man, the liberals do it to, you just know it. (So it's ok if conservaives do.)"
Example: "Only telling one side of the story is ok, because the liberals do it to."
Example: "It's ok that the President went AWOL during the Vietnam war, beeacuse Bill Clinton got a deferrment."
Example: "It's ok to lie, cheat, and steal because some Democrat somewhere at some point did it, too."
- Left makes people lazy.
- Right sells out to corporations.
- The truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Now, did my brain (activity) change in this process or is this part of an intellectual development?I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
I would just like to say i for one am against this article being posted. We need to be more united, especially in this tense election season. Stories like this serve to divide, and not unite. Let us think of those who came before us, to unite us. Lincoln would say, a forum divided against itself cannot parse, Martin Luther King would ask that we judge not on the appearance of our grammar but the content of our thread. This article says we are wired to be in opposition to each other, and that is patently not true. We can come together and unite as a nation again if we agree to stay clear of that which would divide us. Even a dope brained, bleeding heart, wishy-washy, tree-hugging, godless, long haired hippified liberal pansy could understand that.
Because of Immanual Kant.
Tony
hard core geek-ware
Ok, I'm a registered independent voter, because I like to think for myself. I'm conversative on some issues and liberal on others. And I have my own opinion that don't follow any party lines. So what color brain do I have?
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. --Edmund Burke
Is that anything like the free t-shirt I get when I sign up for a ScrewU Student Mastercard with 32% APR?
Wow, you mean a person's brain could have an effect on what they think? I am shocked!
The red pill, or the blue pill?
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
In the five minutes that this thread has been active, I've seen a number of partisan posts rated "Funny"/"Insightful" to "Troll"/"Offtopic" and back again. It looks like the red/blue brains are fighting to support points of view that they agree with.
I'm waiting to see if the purported ultimate rating of "+5 Troll" will be achieved (if any topic could do it, this is it).
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Sweet... a fellow Libertarian on Slashdot... :)
hard core geek-ware
"Why do Republicans and Democrats differ so emphatically?"
They don't. Politically, both parties are right-wing and have similar ideas about foreign policy, the only difference being that Democrats are a bit more liberal. In terms of voters, both types care more about who has "personality" or who can make the most negative ads instead of who can actually do the job right.
Because they are fake little worlds, seperated from reality, filled with a bunch of people who have no experience of living life outside of a university. Then to top it off they get a lot of government funding.
To start with IAAC (i am a canadian). And I hope this isn't interpreted as american bashing.
I think alot of non-americans are baffled by the this false dichotomy and phony choice which americans are offered. Like most sane people, the bush administration and its actions disgusts me and if i was an american I would vote democratic just to get that administration out, but if you speak to democrats in the states, there is this sense that the democrats represent a moral, leftist mandate, which is laughable. For an accessible discussion, you can just read the chapter on the moral bankruptcy of the clinton in "stupid, white men" for a start. Certainly fellow skull&bones scoiety member kerry is not a liberal in any real sense. Anyone not form the states would cast the democrats as a center-right party.
Maybe this isn't the right forum for this kind of discussion, but it's something that's pissing me off. Especially when this pseudo-scientific crap is used in conjunction with the (mostly) false democratic dialogue.
This isn't a troll. And I don't think canada is much better. It's just that we don't have the same sense of liberal righteousness here and I don't mean the Liberal party, which are moral ly equivalent to the democrats (with a bit more canadian leftishness)
In fact, the article said: In other words, the writers at the NYTimes have guessed that some study that might be conducted in the future might find a difference between the amygdala of Republicans and Democrats.
Yes, the article says that the UCLA study found that the best predictor, in brain scans of volunteers, of the volunteer's political party was amygdala activity levels. But the NYTimes article says nothing about how strong a correlation there was, how many subjects were tested, whether a host of variables (such as socio-economic class, age, etc.) were accounted for. It could have a correlation of
This is how pseudo-science and junk statistics start. A year from now, liberals will be referring to this past study as having "proved" that conservatives are heartless, and conservatives will cite it for proving that liberals are cowards. Why is this worthy of discussion?
I'd like to see the results of a study using a different sample set...one group that see's a significant difference between Democrats and Repulicans, and another group who has a hard time distinguishing between the two.
I'll volunteer to be a part of group II.
"He hated Mexicans, and he was half Mexican. AND he hated irony!"
You are some pretentious liberal, aren't you?
"Perhaps we form political affiliations by semiconsciously detecting commonalities with other people, commonalities that ultimately reflect a shared pattern of brain function."
Can just as easily be stated as:
"We form political affiliations with people who think like we do."
Umm... no shit. Surprise, surprise, everyone: we generally vote differently from people who think and feel differently than we do about life!
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Perhaps Liberals are _really_ simply voting their instinctual ethnic interests and conservatives are a bunch of demasculated ideologues.
I like the type of Reg Free links that you don't actually have to registar to use.... but that's just me.
Your mammas flamebait.
well there are at least three libertarians on /.
...is like internal medicine several hundred years ago. We have some things figured out, we know how to check the pulse and we've learned how to amputate, but we're also on the level of leeches, cauterization, and bloodletting. There are smart men advancing the field, and they are outnumbered by phrenologists, patent medicine salesmen and outright quacks.
To pass this study off as if it can suggest conclusions, of any kind, about the way one kind of party member thinks versus another is exactly the kind of grandstanding, irresponsible and basically incoherent brain science I am sadly used to hearing about.
We don't really understand the role of the amygdala in our consciousness - in fact, we don't understand consciousness even slightly. Even if we don't hear an apologetic revolution in a year or two stemming from one of the many competing theories about other parts of our brain anatomy that may be equally important to our "limbic system," the methodology of the study itself may easily be flawed, if for instance those operating the survey (interviewing and handlnig subjects) or the survey materials (questionaries, etc) caused subjects from one party to feel differently than the other during examinations...
Were it not for the matte gloss of UCLA science, this article would be a much more obvious fit in the New York Post or the National Enquirer than the New York Times.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Look, being compassionate doesn't have to mean helping people through government programs. I think the defining difference is whether you believe you should run towards government as the first solution to a problem. Conservatives don't generally argue that the poor shouldn't be helped (okay, some wacko conservative commentators aside); they argue that government programs are hurting instead of helping and that private efforts might be more effective. That only makes them uncompassionate if you believe that government is the only way to help them.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
he certainly was...
Unfortunately, this study says little about what it is pitched as.
Reading the article, subjects viewed advertisments and images (Bush, 9/11, Mushroom Cloud). Liberals had a more emotional response.
So there is a difference between image and iconic processing. Truly, this says nothing about how a liberal or a conservative processes a political/government-role issue; say, Gay Marriage or Capital Punishment. To accurately make the statement this article claims, a study would need to establish what areas of the brain are active when considering this issue. The outcome may be that Liberals are more emotional. At this time, there's no data on the subject.
Too ... many ... trolls! ... enough ... mod ... points!
Not
[Insert pithy quote here]
Try to ask any honest nueroscientist how much they REALLY know about the human brain, how it works, etc. Most of them will tell you that we don't really understand much at all, nothing we can say with any real confidence. We are just beginning to understand the basic mechanics, and are nowhere near the point where we can say with any confidence what the above article is saying. This kind of article is pure junk science, a thin charade intended to promote an underlying stereotype, nothing more. What would the article say about "cowardly" leftists such as Martin Luther King, Ghandi, etc? How would "conservatives" react if they were faced with armed police in full riot gear, with tear gas, batons, rubber bullets, real bullets if needed, tanks backing them up, fenced in by barbed wire, with helicopters over head, etc., as the protestors next week in New York will be? Oh, that's right, they're the "courageous" ones with the riot gear.
user: iwethey
pass: iwethey
(source: http://www.bugmenot.com/)
I don't see it. I know lots of brave liberals and compassionate conservatives. This reminds me of that trick where you watch "The Wizard of Oz" while listening to the "Dark Side of the Moon", I can almost see it and understand it, but it would help if I was tripping.
This reminds of a similar article a couple of years ago in the NY Times about the difference between male and female brains - which afterwards turned out to be NOT entirely sound as the experiments were not very well done.
My work is with the physics and engineering side of this technology, but I do a bit of reading on and listening to the neuroscience end of things, and it is EXTREMELY difficult to get the right controls for neuroscience experiments like this. And to top it all off, researchers still don't know the basic underlying mechanism of the signal we see in MRI. We know that firing neurons cause neighbouring increases in vascular activity, but how these things are coupled, or even why they happen, are still not known.
Bottom line - these people want attention - and the NY Times is undeservedly giving it to them - as with anything else that is even slightly inflammatory - at least socially and politcally at this stage. Whatever happened to real journalism ?
Funny, not wanting to insult anyone either, but I have always thought of the "liberal" / "conservative" split as the conservatives tend to oversimplify, where the liberals tend to try to think things thru. That, of course, is just my observation.
I divide the conservatives into "thoughtful conservatives", and "knee-jerk conservatives". The latter being those that say things like "this regulation did X that is bad, get rid of all regulation". The liberals into "thoughtful liberals" and "fearfull/protectionist liberals".
But that is just me.
emt 377 emt 4
...or, we (liberals) just don't watch FoxNews.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Thinking that both sides are equally reprehensible. Then I realized I was just parroting what I had been taught, letting cynicism and previously held (but never questioned) beliefs lead me in my thought. So I started doing research, asking questions like "Which party has had more criminals in the past 30 years?" and similar questions. I encourage you to make up your own questions and do your own research. Don't let cynicism get in your way.
from my perspective, I'm going to have to call bullshit on this.
i, started out a radical liberal. But then, as I got older, smarter and grew up, I discovered the simple undeniable fact... that liberalism (in the form of its formalized political ideology of Socialism) does not work, and removes freedom... and those other nasty things like being completely opposed to human nature (the nature to progress, to have incentives to do better)... Socialism removes these incentives.
So, this concept is total bullshit.
Oh yeah, I'm conservative, but I am more compassionate than most liberals. The DIFFERENCE IS I DON'T NEED FUCKING GOVERNMENT TO TELL ME TO BE COMPASSIONATE!
That's the difference -- liberals want to be absolved of their own responsibility to be compassionate and put that responsibility in the hands of a large powerful central government so they don't have to worry about it.
sad robot making broken music
I read news sources other than the NY Times
--------========+++Dont Feed The Lab Techs+++========--------
Only a brain defect could explain the behaviour and beliefs of liberals!
"Perhaps we form political affiliations by semiconsciously detecting commonalities with other people, commonalities that ultimately reflect a shared pattern of brain function."
Wow, I never could have guessed it. You mean to say that we "form a political association" because we agree with the party?
Like OMG! WTF?!#?@
"...fake little worlds, seperated from reality, filled with a bunch of people who have no experience of living life outside of a..."
Sounds like a homeschooled kid, and those tend to be conservative.
Well... that's an obviously wrong and otherwise useless assertion. The emotion that you see from liberals is precisely because Conservatives (those that espouse, but do not behave in a conservative manner) are idealogues and ideology trumps an rational or compassionate argument.
How is it that Conservatives say liberals are "academic elitists" but that Conservatives are the ones governed by intellect?
What if it is not an intellectual/emotional dichotomy, but more like ideology/reason? I think observation (especially in current circumstances) supports the later more completely.
Hey great sites that shows the left express themselves. :)
www.brain-terminal.com
www.protestwarrior.com
Red/Blue, Conservative/Liberal, Democrat/Republican, I call bullshit.
It's all a Punch 'n Judy show to keep the masses hypnotized.
Think about it. The U.S. is only one party away from a dictatorship...
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Not insulting anyone: but most liberals I know are sorta cowardly, but definitly fearful.
Yeah, Ghandi. What a chickenshit. Not like, say, Bush. Or Cheney. Or Wolfowitz. Or Perle. Or all of the other chickenhawks. My, how I admire them!
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
It's interesting to see the results of this study unfold. I'd like to see the experiments and data replicated in some way.
;-)
Forgive me for being sceptical, but from a European perspective, it's hard to see any significant (i.e. more than 5%?) difference between the GOP's and DNC's political viewpoints..
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Nope, public schools all the way through university.
The same coin,
Democrat or Republican, would you like your B.S. baked (for good health )or fried (to keep the cooking oil industry alive)
K
Because their major source of funding comes out of the taxpayer's pockets and they only care about more money for research. Therefore, they give up their individual thoughts on political issues and group vote for the party that promisies them them most of the taxpayers money. They usually take this dispicable act a step further and try to indoctinate their students into a liberal mindset, many times arguing against the very (scientific) principles they are trying to teach in the process. Poor, emotional, group-think, bandwagon jumping, money hungry liberals!
This DOES seem to fit the stereotypical view of conservatives as cold, uncaring, rational, and liberals as passionate and empathetic.
:)
Perhaps a sympton: things like Politically Correctness are commonly derided by conservatives. Perhaps it's just nonsense
I will say that overall it does seem to me that liberal simply care more about politics and issues. They may not be on the average be better informed than a conservative counterpart, but the issues are much more central to their being. I view this as part of the reason why hatred and loathing of Bush is so strong--you hear more people call bush a baby-killing liar than was ever said about Clinton who lied under oath (please, someone correct me) and also bombed decidely innocent targets for which we have had to pay reparations. I'm not trying to make this a partisan post, but in general I think political identity means more to liberals than to conservatives, in an emotional and personal manner.
At the same time, the NYT article is a disturbing mix of scientific fact and incoherent pop psychobabble. I was particularly nonplussed by the author's hypothesis as to how we form our party affiliations and then our political beliefs. The reality is surely far more complex. Consider, for example, the poll on the U.S. election in this week's Economist. Unfortunately you have to pay to see the article, so I'll repeat the results here:
If the election were held today, who would you vote for..?
18-24: Bush: 24, Kerry: 65
25-44: Bush: 40, Kerry: 48
45-64: Bush: 47, Kerry: 45
65+: Bush: 46, Kerry: 43
Now perhaps there is an overall trend towards increasing liberalism in the country (good news, if so), but the conclusion that younger people tend to be more liberal is irresistable. This seems to belie the suggestion that people have innate affinities to Democrats or Republicans that cause them to bond with such people in their youth, forming their political beliefs as a result.
I can't shake the notion that we become cynical and thus more conservative as we get older, with the extent of our right or left-wing bent influenced by genetics, among other things. I can't believe that there are other factors that make us hang out with the blue or red crowd before attaching a specific ideology to our choice, since young people are so overwhelmingly liberal merely by virtue of their youth.
Peer Pressure
So in my country, the Netherlands, the most right-wing conservative party (the VVD) are called "the liberals", as opposed to left-wing Labor and central-spectrum Christian parties.
<grub> Reading
Basically, my entire adult life, up into my 40s, I was conservative. I came from a quite conservative west texas ranching family. However, even though I have always been a very avid reader, I had not really been directly exposed to deliberately and overtly leftist writings until I got on the Internet in the mid 90s. And I really got into the Internet and computers once I was exposed to them (even picked up a second degree, a BS in Comp Sci).
So for the last 8 years or so, I gradually became more and more exposed to direct contact with leftist thought--but only through the Net. I basically rejected leftism, however, but really out of habit. By 2001 or so, I still had not really taken the time to really delve into the deep background and rationale of leftism.
However, my acceptance of radical life extensionism (cryonics, etc), and my acceptance of atheism made me ready to accept a radical change in worldview, I suspect.
Also, the events of 9-11 and its aftermath, and the Iraq war and the media propaganda drive associated with it made me much more aware of just what was going on, with respect to media manipulation. I had come across the ideas of Noam Chomsky in about 1989, but had rejected them--although I had been exposed to them only second hand, through an establishment filter.
These prior events set me up for a move to leftism. THat, and my research into a possible move to another country. I quit my W-2 job last year and went contract. And when contract work died down, I had time to do even more research.
By late last year, I was a confirmed leftist. And I will never look back.
THere is an old saying that a husband will not leave a wife unless he has someone else already waiting for him to make him a comfortable home. In other words, even if his current wife has some real problems, he will not take action unless he can walk right into a better situation.
THe Net offers a leftist community, one that was not possible in meatspace USA, outside of certain locations. With a community of leftists ready to accept strayers from the establishment pack, I think more and more will go Left. Join us!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
How exactly would a young Steven Hawking live in a world where you are king? I am curious. Would he be considered an unhealthy nuisance that economically isn't worth feeding?
To wich of course the perfect comeback would have been. "Yes it does, a diseased weak organ that can only be made to work by the regular appliance of electric shock". Someone fetch me Bush and a cattle prod.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Good distinction.
Being someone who tries to be a "thoughtful conservative" I have found that I often agree with "thoughtful liberals" on many issues.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
All of us Anonymous Cowards are as well.
To a Socialist in Europe, the main US parties are both conservative. (US right wingers will deny this, since they like to denounce the Democrats as socialist, but it's clear that the Democrats would never consider many policies supported by socialist parties in other countries.)
So what happens when you do the same tests in countries with a real left? Are the results more extreme, or do they just map to a different range of political views?
Yep, looks like yet another "Don't blame me for my own problems" epidemics is about to sweep the nation. Maybe there is a medical reason as to why I'm such an asshole. I could blame it on magnetic fields from electrical wires magnetizing my right ear lobe's hair. That's it!
I find it interesting that the poster put a disclaimer in there. "Don't tag me as a troll, I'm one of the guys I'm trolling so it's OK!" Does this make it OK to troll? If so, I might start doing that. Make fun of people who own Nintendos while adding a disclaimer (It's ok, I own one too. I'm allowed to troll these people!)
I also find it interesting that liberals are now trying to find excuses as to why they are they way they are. Is this an admission that they are wrong?
(DISCLAIMER: I'm not trolling the liberals. I'm not conservative and I'm not liberal and I don't give enough of a damn to troll!)
Not neccessarily. I know quite a many liberals who are ruled by intellect. I know for one that I don't subscribe to the ideology because "think of the poor people". I just think it makes more sense to redistribute wealth a little bit, and let people do what they want in their own bedrooms.
Compare this to "think of the children", "homosexuality is wrong because of the bible", etc.
Also, the arguments between redistributing wealth or cutting taxes are both usually backed up by emotion... the emotion is either empathy/compassion (liberals) or greed (conservatives). see "we ought to help the poor" vs. "i EARNED it... so i shouldn't have to give anything back to the society that made it possible for me to earn it"
For the long version, look up "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat", by Oliver Sacks. Look up the chapter entitled "The President's Speech". Amusing from both a political and neurological point of view.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
something you learn. When you are young it's an easy bet that you're liberal. Kids are just so emotional. But the more exposure you get to the real world and how hard you have to work you are likely to become conservative.
Also the utopian Liberal promises wear thin after a while. You start to figure out that the government can't take care of you, and that it takes a lot of hard work to get to where you want to go. You figure out that you can't get along with everyone and that you're better of just being yourself.
Then you just want the government to stay out of your life. Until you need drugs, Medicare or social security, then you become liberal again.
Looking at the Big Money going to both parties, and looking at the party platforms...
Both groups seem merged into one, striving to out do each other to be in the 'center', not really left or right....
It's time to open up American politics to more parties, because these two parties are kinda boring and really outdated.
The Green Party, The Libertarian party, and other parties have serious supporters working toward improving America beyond the simple 'business as usual' politics outlined by the Republocrats and Democans....
Still with me?
Ok, here goes...
Why is it seen as courageous to support war (any war, as US republicans often do) when all you risk is, at most, a slight tax increase. You don't even have to get your fat ass out of your comfy chair! Just order some flags and stickers over the internet (got to "Support The Troops") and watch the fireworks on FOX!
Pay someone to fight and die somewhere far away, destroying someone elses country in the process.
This is not bravery, it's lack of moral and responsibility.
The US should reinstituted the draft ASAP.
If the common voter had a real possibility of having to directly bear the burden of the decisions of the leaders (like the entire population of $INVADED_COUNTRY will) in the event of war, maybe we wouldn't see any cases of going to war on faulty intelligence?
Ask yourselves: How many "brave" conservatives would support a war if it was going to be fought in their hometown?
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Actually, the more interesting quote is this one -
Living in the south, I'm always puzzled at folks who complain about layoffs at their job, terrible traffic from suburban sprawl, crappy schools and poor healthcare, then vote for anyone running for the GOP.
Maybe the way we think alters the physical structures of our brains. Just like if we exercise certain muscles they get bigger.
How does that deny free will?
For a more useful and more rigorous treatment of the origins of conservative/liberal world view and values, read "Moral Politics" by G. Lakoff. It is an excellent and well reasoned book by a Cognitive Linguist.
Lakoff builds coherent metaphor models that support conservative and liberal worldviews. If you are interested in going beyond flamebait and ridiculous attacks (on both sides) this is an excellent book.
I'm not a neurologist, but it seems to me that it's been long understood that the amygdala played a key role in emotions like compassion and empathy, and it's also a long-standing stereotype that liberals exhibit these traits-- so, whaddya know, there's a correlation between amygdala activity and political stance. Seems like a no-brainer to me. The bigger question concerns the nature-nurture debate-- is a more active amygdala the result of cultivating a compassionate personality (nurture) or is it the other way around, that stunted political views are the result of a stunted brain? ;-)
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
I am neither liberal nor conservative but I don't think I have ever heard anybody make the generalizations that you did. Knee-jerk and conservative is an oxymoron. The idea that someone conservative would just change things without thinking doesn't make logicial sense. The same can be said for fearful/protectionist liberals. Liberals tend to encourage change.
Traditionally the breakout would be as such:
Conservative - Small government, little to no social welfare, rule by the elite. This dates back to John Adams even though it has been in parties of several names.
Liberal - Big government, more even distribution of wealth, large social welfare programs, rule by the individual. This dates back to Jefferson.
Now you can add religous zealots to the conservative side and bleeding heart hypocrites to the liberal side.
Feeling more fear doesn't mean that you're cowardly. In fact, if you feel no fear, it's impossible to be courageous, since courage is the overcoming of fear.
The person who is afraid and acts anyway is the courageous one. What's the old saying?
Nick
As opposed to self-centered, emotional cripples and retarded, trailer park dwelling inbreds who vote for Bush? Yay tax-cuts for the rich!
Every time I hear Americans choose between the far right wing and the even further right wing I shudder.
Illegal detainments in Iraq and Cuba.
Vast expansion of secret police powers via "Patriot Act".
World's biggest Military budget (thats a guess) and a military commander chosen in hail of controversy.
If any of the above scares you, and you are American, break the two party system that makes it too easy to buy your government.
Think twice when you are sold something by a fear mongering right winger (of either party).
LS
And to have uncle Dick (Cheney) send someone to take the tests in my place. :-)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Surely I'm not the only one who realised that Republicans (Right Wing) are driven by Left Brain, logical, reason, objective.
True Liberals are touchy-feely, and led by the Right or Artistic brain. So Liberals tend to make decisions based on feeling, what feels right, or subjective; what seems to be good in thier eyes.
True Republicans are factual based, objective, and make decisions based on cause/effect and the facts presented to them.
There will always be people that are after fame/glory rather than standing for what they believe which is why they end up on the wrong team.
You bound to be attracted to those who share your opinions and views. Which is why hippies/new agers rarely have time for suits and politicians.
So wait, this implies that getting a job, saving some money and buying a home cause the amygdala to become less active? That would explain the drastic ideological swing to the right that people undergo once they do those things.
Blaze a trail to the New World
You can't just divide up the population into "conservatives" on one side and "liberals" on another. The fact that Washington appears to be divided so is more of a byproduct of the electoral system than a representation of reality, and even then there is plenty of variety within the parties (compare McCain and Frist or Lieberman and Pelosi). Sure there are some schools of conservative thought that place an emphasis on reason and there are some schools of liberal thought that place an emphasis on emotion, but the respective political positions are not limited to those particular schools. Thus throwing everyone together will not give accurate results.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Yeah, this place is positively infested with you...
Bush is not a coward. Ghandi was. I preffer not to be associated with him.
__ Jesus Loves you! He died in your place so you would not have to die and go to Hell.
if you ACTUALLY look at how they vote and behave, you will plainly see they are exactly alike. They speak of different ideologies but they are the same fetid, fecund creatures.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Of course this brings up the same old question of nature vs. Nurture. Is there a genetic predisposition to be more liberal then conservative. Or if a person chooses to be be more liberal the brain changes the match the new attitude. I tend to believe the second. Because there are States that are majority Liberal (NY) and Majority Consertive (TX) and many of the states with smaller population tend to be more moderate. If it was genetic the large states NY and TX and CA would be far more moderated because there is a larger more diverse population in it. Also colleges (which are predominately liberal) should be more evenly mixed. But yet there is still a near 50/50 split among the population at hole. So I think it is more of an issue of the environment they live in. If they grow up choosing to be liberal they will think more like a liberal and their brans will act accordingly.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Every one of us! No one is exempt.
... so why than, are the women (who are, on our best days, one or two magnitudes smarter than us men (the crime of the century being when us cowardly men...all of us! told young girls, starting at about age 13, to look out thru their eyes, and into the world, and see "us boys" as their equals ... when we knew that they were superior, when the Marxists fiends who brainwashed us tricked us into denying that, by the physiology and electromagnetic construction of their brains, women were our superiors, but we chose not to protect, and encourage the higher geometric efficiency of their minds, but instead we became backstabbling pretty boys, in love our banking frauds and our other-directed cowardices )) and children frightened?
I bring this up, because political left and political right, and liberal and conservative, and etc, are now utterly meaningless notions.
We are all humans
Are "conservatives" not cowards, when they line up to parade around in their spandex panties, like football players? Are they not the "pretty boys" who are too afraid to go to war, so they decide to drop some bombs instead? Are not us "liberal men" not equally as cowardly, when we wisper into the ears of our daughters and say, "look out thru your eyes and see those boys as your equal!" Somewhere, the lying must stop. Is happiness, having a job, but having no country?
The issue is our utterly humiliating political impotence, ultimately the cowardice of men. The issue is not our Marxist-left or Marxist-right dispositions. The more important criteria is not the physiological difference between "conservative cowards," and liberal cowards." The issue is the physiologically, electromagnetically and sociologically established fact, that the neural synapses of a female brain are more closely compacted than that of adult males (dodecahedron v. octahedron), and they function at a higher frequency. The other side of that gift, is that the women and children frighten more easily, and that distorts their political judgment. And that, all is due to the cowardice of us men.
And being the boomer-coward that I am, I apologize that this geometric, physiological and electromatnetic truth is now politically incorrect.
...but is it just me, or are all the positives also starting to get "over-explained". "Good food feels good because... yadda yadda". Free will seems to have less and less with anything you do. While not exactly Pavlov-like in style (does the name ring a bell?), it appears that humans are actually quite suiceptable to manipulation (not really talking about negatives here, but all kinds of influences. Your dad took you to basket games as a kid? That'll lead to... (and so on).
I'd certainly like to keep the illusion that I'm making my own choices. That those neurons up in my brain aren't firing by the same laws of nature as the rest of it. Somehow the idea of being a well-trained neural net doesn't quite appeal to me...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Also, the arguments between redistributing wealth or cutting taxes are both usually backed up by emotion... the emotion is either empathy/compassion (liberals) or greed (conservatives). see "we ought to help the poor" vs. "i EARNED it... so i shouldn't have to give anything back to the society that made it possible for me to earn it"
What a wonderfully-insightful remark! I was thinking along these exact lines on my cycle ride into work this morning; but you have articulated the point in a very succint form. Thanks!
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
So when a person puts a cigarette up to his or her mouth, it triggers the "long incisors" circuit in our brains, and cigarettes get associated with sex in that way.
Boosted in the days of Lili Marlene.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Remember - using parts of your brain affects its development.
Just because liberals tend to have a larger amygdala doesn't mean they were necessarily genetically predispositioned to be that way (and the same is true of republicans of course).
Oh, and this is just a statistical sample - just because a majority are one way doesn't say anything about an individual.
My Journal
Heh. While you raise some valid points,
.. and as a side note, do you think that
I'd also like to point out that:
1) Universities (well, mine, at least) are places of extreme education and knowledge. There is more free thinking and intellectual curiosity about here than any of the crazy "real world" places I visit. In fact, my professors and most of my peers are more educated on the status of the nation and world than pretty well anybody else I come across (admittedly, I spend most of my time with academics).
2) Most professors I know aren't quite so "seperated from reality" as you would like to think. Most own homes and live just like normal people. Most have worked in private industry if that is possible in their field, and if not, have
made an extensive and immersive study into their chosen field. The only exception is my classics professors, and they are still more intelligent and informed than your average citizen by leaps and bounds, and are certainly no less qualified to have opinions just because they happen to work at a school during the day.
3) I think Universities are also slighly liberally biased because I've noticed that a lot my liberal friends believe that one way to change the world is to ensure good education, and one good way to do that is to be a teacher. (Compassionate people also tend to be pulled to teaching, all jokes aside) So, liberals are drawn to education, making it not unreasonable for schools to be liberal.
Universities get too much funding from the government? That they shouldn't get any?
I'm curious. I think government funding of
education is a positive thing.
I was about to write about this very subject on my blog page after spending years thinking about it, amazing co-incidence! Anyway, the truth is, it is obvious. People are different, and some may simply lack those 'components' that enable them to feel specific emotions. This is why Hitler tried to wipe out certain races. He didn't like compasion and creativity meddling with his stone cold vision of a 'utopian' world. And thankfully while he committed terrible acts, some spirits remained to keep us 'free'.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
What differences? You mean just the rhetoric?
Why is SlashDot attempting to 'DoubleClick' software to my systems now?
A young Steven Hawking could walk, talk and support himself. He was also quite an alcoholic to the point of self-destruction. So in the "Grandparent poster's world" he would've lived, worked, and contributed to society like the rest of us. It's old Steven Hawking you should be asking about.
-Ab
Nothing fails quite like prayer.
because private research is willing to spend all kinds of money to wait many years for a payoff. That's why all corporate execs make long term decision and not short term decisions. They'd rather do the good thing for the company than get a huge bonus for meeting their goals this quarter. Uh huh, yeah. And the execs from Enron, Worldcom, et al didn't do anything wrong either.
A similar study has shown that London taxicab drivers have a larger brain component that is associated with directions and pathfinding. Did people with this condition happen to become cab drivers? Or did their brains change as a result of their occupation?
So are liberals liberal because their amyglada is larger, is it larger because they are liberal?
I do undestand associating the two, however. Since American liberal versus American conservative/libertarian isn't a matter of different subjective view points but of evil / good, death / life, destructively stupid / prosperously intelligent, I can understand why a component of the brain associated with irrationalism is found to be larger among 'liberals.'
Instead of assuming that having amygdala leads to certain behaviours, what if increased amygdala is an outcome of behaving in a compassionate manner?
Hopefully, you stay rooted to your terminal on election day. This will help you to avoid contamination by reality (i.e. "meatspace").
It's pink.
No, its a light red.
You know they've got a name for light red, know what it is?
What?
PINK!
In my mind, the main difference between liberals and conservatives is a preference for nature or nurture. This ties in to your idea abou the loss of free will. Disclaimer: I consider myself a conservative, athough I think I have a good understanding of how liberals think because a lot of my friends are liberals and I like to talk about politics. I'd love to hear feedback on this idea to see how valid it is.
Conservatives tend to believe that people behave in the way they do as a result of something about them in particular - their nature. Some people are just good and some people are just bad. Nothing can be done to change or fix the situation- it's just how they are. Good people tend to obey the law, pay taxes, go to church and be good citizens. Bad people don't. When a bad person does something bad, it's because he's a bad person and therefore likely to do bad things.
Liberals, on the other hand, see everyone as more or less products of our environment - the way we are nurtured. We're affected by what goes on around us and the things we see and experience. Bad people are bad not because of some intrinsic difference between them and good people; they're bad because of their childhood or the atmosphere they live in. A bad person does something bad because there was some sort of external influence upon him, causing him to be bad.
To illustrate my point, consider gun control. Conservatives are generally against it - and this makes perfect sense considering their ideas on how people behave. Good people should be allowed to own guns becuase they're good. They'll only use them for self defense and as a result society will be safer. Bad people on the other had, don't have any respect for the law. They'll get their hands on guns regardless of the law, and use the guns to do bad things because they're bad. To a conservative, gun control simply punishes good people and prevents them from defending themselves from the bad people.
Now look at Gun control from the liberal perspective - people are influenced by the environment and the situation they're. Since no one is inherently good or bad, gun control simply decreases the probablity that a given individual will be in possesion of a firearm. This is good because if you have a firearm, you're probably more likely to shoot someone with it. Perhaps if you're angry you wouldn't normally hurt someone, but having a gun in your hand changes your mindset and makes you more likely to do something bad. Gun control legislation is an attempt to remove the external stimulus that can cause people to be bad - so most liberals support it.
Poverty is another example of the difference. There is obviously some sort of connection between poverty and crime. Most of the nations involved in terrorism are not particularly wealthy, and crime is ramapant in poorer urban areas. Why?
Ask a conservative, and most likely she'll tell you that crime causes poverty. No one wants to start a buisness in a crime-ridden city. Because crime prevents economic activity, it causes poverty. To fix the poverty situation, just crack down on the crime. Once you've made the neighborhood safer, jobs will show up and poverty will go away. Note that no attempt is made to explain crime. The Conservative uses crime to explain poverty.
Ask a liberal, and most likely he'll tell you that the poverty causes the crime. If you grow up in a situation devoid of any opportunity for a job and a good life for yourself, you've got a good chance of turning to crime because of the hopelessness and despair of your situation. To fix the situation, you need to get rid of poverty. Try to lure companies in to provide jobs, and the crime will go away once the people have an opportunity for economic advancement. Unlike the conservative, the liberal uses poverty to explain why there's crime.
How does this tie into free will? Conservatives make no effort or attempt to explain why bad people are bad. They just are.
My blog
Homosexuality is genetic
No, actually, *some traits* of homosexuality can be attributed to genetics - but studies of identical twins shows that it is most definitely not solely genetic.
Researchers are discovering that there are many biological and some sociological 'cues' that when present in the proper combination(s) can create sexual desire for members of the same sex.
I think it's more accurate to say that homosexuality is (mostly) biological, rather than learned, behaviour.
liberalism (in the form of its formalized political ideology of Socialism)
Nice strawman, I must admit. Equate "liberalism" with "socialism" and then attack socialism.
Except for the fact that LIBERALISM HAS ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH SOCIALISM, it's one hell of a good argument.
Seems to me that management and conservatives (obviously not the same, but correlated) simply assume that "Anything which can go wrong, won't."
Liberals : Stroke Victims :: Conservatives : Strokes
P.S. Keep pulling it you right-wing fucktard.
"Perhaps we form political affiliations by semiconsciously detecting commonalities with other people, commonalities that ultimately reflect a shared pattern of brain function."
Well, if anyone reading this has EVER taken a psychology course in their life, this statement is as obvious as they come. Almost everything we do is dictated by how our brain developed, which is influenced by many environmental and social factors as a child.
Weather anyone wants to admit it or not, we are largely driven by our biological urges. While it is certainly possible to overcome these urges with your concious mind, it is something most people are not good at.
Our brains are built to take things we see often and begin processing them as patterns. We see patterns and we associate ourselves to ones we find agreeable. The human brain does this to prevent it from having to process redundant information over and over just to come to the same conclusion. In an instinctual way this works exceedingly well, but in social interactions it can be detrimental to healthy conversion of opposing points of view.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
What else could it be determined by...? That doesn't have a basis in physics or chemistry.
But the real issue is what effects do concepts such as personal responsibility have on the brain and consequently on behaviour.
Mod this as troll or funny, I don't care - but when someone makes sweeping, idiotic stereotypes against any group - they shall be mocked.
No go away, or shall I be forced to taunt you a second time...
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
...is what you're raised to believe growing up. This study is bogus.
..this "opposition" Democrats vs Republicans is quite funny.
:o)
I'm french, and you U.S.A. citizens wouldn't believe how different a far left representative (say Lutte Ouvrière, very far left of the communist party) and a far right representative (say Front National, just a little bit left from Adolf H.) are.
Much like the distance between New-York and Washington (Democrats vs Republicans) compared to the distance between Earth and the Sun (LO vs FN).
From this side of the Atlantic Ocean, political life in the U.S.A. seems very strange indeed
s/outside of a university/without their trust fund/
Amazing how, by changing four words your snide little remark now describes the senate.
It's not just the amygdala. Stepford Republicans have less activity anywhere in their brains. No surprise that they resemble hordes of zombies, defying compassion, logic, and anything more complex than pulling a trigger or goosestepping.
--
make install -not war
There are a few things that people don't realize about fMRI (and that practitioners don't like to talk about). Here are a few: 1.) fMRI is a correlational technique. Correlation != causation. 2.) No one REALLY knows what increased blood flow to a certain brain area signifies. And that is what brain imaging techniques like this measure: changes in blood flow. 3.) fMRI relies on manifold t-tests with inadequate adjustments to significance levels. Actual differences could be miniscule and still show up as "significant." This is an interesting result, but take it with a grain of salt. No one can really say what it means. Such small differences in blood flow certainly do NOT have determinate consequences on decision making. I'm not saying that brain activity does not give rise (in a deterministic manner) to mind and decision making. What I am saying is that what is being measured in studies like these are misleading, because they gave people a cartoon image of what is going on in the brain. Sorry for the rant, I just get frustrated with "neuroscientists" that are obsessed with pretty pictures of the brain.
My grandmother is a proud conservative. She is a member of the NRA (she carries a snub-nose .38), listens to conservative talk radio, and hasn't voted for a liberal in more than 20 years.
Of course, she is also deathly afraid to fly because she knows that the "rag heads" will shoot down the plane.
Though your generalization was limited to only the liberals you know, I think it is a bit more difficult to pigeon hole someone based upon their political beliefs. Granted, if you listen to the messages of either side of the political spectrum, your thoughts and fears could definitely be influenced - regardless if the message is about social security or terrorist threat.
From what I've heard of it, listening to conservative talk radio may be why my grandmother is afraid to fly.
I don't know where you got that Gandhi would one day spill blood but that is indeed a very original view. If you are really interested in Gandhi and what is life was about you could begin by reading the wikipedia article. He did go very far in his ideas about not pouring blood. From the know story of his life (and it is very documented) the most absolute thing was not to arm another living beeing. He was vegetarian. Please explain how Gandhi would not be peace.
Very insightful, except the subject line is incorrect. It should read:
!liberal != !compassionate
Could decades of political thought in one direction or the other result in chemical changes in the brain?
We do lots of other things that cause chemical changes in our body, lifestyles that cause certain substances to be more or less abundant in our bodies. Are our brains off limits to such things?
This may be a stupid theory, I don't know; but it seems to me that it would be VERY difficult to establish any causality either way.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
I'd hate to wake up in the hospital as a Republican.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
They used to say that all eddies in bath thubs are supposed to be clockwise in the northern emisphere and anti-clockwise in the southern, because of Coriolis' force.
That until someone calculated the magnitude of this force, and found it totally irrelevant: small disturbances as the vibrations induced by the cat walking in the next room are enough to disrupt the simmetry, and the eddies are pretty much chaotic.
It seems to me that this article has exactly the same attitude of seeing only one pattern, and discarding all others, only because those scientist don't work with them.
In short, political affiliation might have a 0.0000nothing% to do with amygdala or other crap, but it's much more a matter of how one grew up.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
I can't believe nobody has made a Matrix blue pill/red pill reference yet! Neo takes the red pill, symbolizing conservatism, resulting in much violence (Bush?). If he took the blue pill (aka: pussy's way out(no offense, liberals)) he'd just sit there and mope over how there's no Trinity pr0n on the 'net yet.
P.S. This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.
I wish I had mod points to mod you up (don't know why you got modded down). Interesting research by Andrew Newberg (University of Pennsylvania) used imaging techniques to study the differences between the brains of laypeople and religious clergy-type people (Franciscan nuns and Buddhist monks). He found that certain brain regions were stronger in those who meditate often than in the laypeople. He also studies their brains when meditating (or, in the case of the nuns, chanting), and he found an increase in the brain areas during that time period. Coupled with the idea of neural plasticity, it could be that the actual practice does increase those areas (like your exercise analogy).
Newberg has a book out entitled "Why God Won't Go Away." I haven't read it, but I did have the pleasure of seeing him give a seminar at my school last year. There's also a documentary that's being screened called "What the Bleep Do We Know." It's kind of a "Sophie's World" docu/fiction hybrid, but it has interviews with mystics and neuroscientists and philosophers detailing modern ideas about the mind. Again, I haven't seen it (hasn't shown in South Carolina...go figure) but it sounds really interesting.
Thanks!
If only there were only more "thoughtful"-whatevers. Perhaps more real workable compromise could be reached on many matters.
emt 377 emt 4
I AM an emphatic coward, you insensitive clod!
Okay, forgetting that you sound like you belong to a cult, where have you been? Modern media is slanted left, Hollywood is slanted left, the younger generation tends to have liberal leanings. While I don't feel any political pressure, per se, as a conservative, finding a liberal bastion is as difficult as finding the nearest Starbucks.
--trb
There's a lot flaws with this study, and a lot more, naturally, with the press coverage. I won't get into the technical details of the study (I've heard the authors present this work not too long ago), but make some general points.
1) The conservative vs. liberal distinction is not a universal phenomenon. There are, in fact, mostly coalition governments throughought the world (not the two-party system we have here) with plenty of shades of policy difference between them. Thus, politics do not spontaneously organize around some neural divide among people.
2) The fact that amygdalar activation showed the most significant neural distinction betwen conservative and liberals in the scanner does not necessarily indicate that the neural difference is causal, compelling, or anywhere near the most determinating in dividing liberals from conservatives. It only means that were more amygdalar activation, on average, than might be predicted by chance, for democrats. One then wants to ask what items were responsible for this activation, and were the items not images that are most provocative for democrats a priori? That is to say, it would not be surprising to find greater amygdalar ("emotional") response in democrats to say, images of homeless people NOT because they are more "compassionate" people, but because they have been sensitized to these images by their defined party affiliation. Learned salience.
3) Compassion vs. pragmaticism does not neatly carve up even the American political space. Conservatives, traditionally, are pro-death penalty (arguably pragmatic), but are also pro-life (arguably compassionate). Liberals traditionally hold the complementary positions. Of course, even this analysis is simplisitic as conservatives can make arguments for the compassion of the death penalty (justice for the victims), and liberals can make arguments for the compassion of abortion choice (self-determination of the mother).
4) While the article wants to point to some neural division among as the explanation for there being strong cross-class bridging in both parties (i.e. limousine liberals and rural democrats; corporate conservatives and small-town conservatives), the truth is one can offer far more parsimonious accounts. Each class draws its affiliation with a party based on certain aspects that appeal to it uniquely. Corporate conservatives enjoy the fiscal laissez faire of conservative politics, while small-town conservatives value conservative social morals. Academics and aristocrats who feel less tied to tradition identify with progressive democratic social policy, while rural Democrats value the more hands-on fiscal marshalling of liberal politics.
What is far more interesting to me, as a psychologist, is not the neural underpinnings that differentiate the parties (I doubt there are strong ones), but rather the blind polarization that comes with party identity. The capacity for the human brain the rationalize is astounding. It boggles my mind that party ideologues will rationalize all actions of their politicians, but demonize all actions of the opposition, when clearly they would have very different opinions of the actions per se if they were outside a party context. What is fascinating is that this polarization is more than just sophistry: people actually believe that their polarized worldview is correct, and are convinced of their candidates' rectitude. Now THAT plastic capacity of the mind is fascinating and scary.
Republican brains are more of a liability than any help at all. Here's a list of things you have to believe to be a Republican today:
- Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.
- Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.
- The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing UN resolutions against Iraq.
- A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multinational corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.
- Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.
- The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.
- If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.
- A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our longtime allies, then demand their cooperation and money.
- Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.
- HMOs and insurance companies have the best interests of the public at heart.
- Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.
- A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense.
- A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.
- Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.
- The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's driving record is none of our business.
- Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness, and you need our prayers for your recovery.
- You support states' rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have the right to adopt.
- What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant.
--
make install -not war
I'm a nazi, terrorist, pro communist, anti pro-life devil worshipping, capitalist, running dog, zealot.... but it's not my fault... It's my evil gene....
"They'll" start screening for the liberal hormone at preschool and embark on a 3month course of correctional whipping if yer not too careful....
Politics??? Make your own mind up for fucks sake.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Well, which one opens you reality and which one lets you stay into the Matrix dream land ? I do not remember. Anyway it surely has nothing to do with democrats & republicans...
Or has it ?
I remember in Matrix ones who were eager to get out of the lies of the Matrix and those who desired to move into it again, forgetting the tough reality.
I don't know, I am not American, is there any similarity ? Sweet lies or hard reality politics ?
Who's got the blue pill, who's got the red one ?
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
That nasty radium, it's killing me, oh and I wish mercury didn't have such a bad attitue problem.
Computers don't make desicions, they only pick the best solution based on their input.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
because liberals don't try to deny evolution.
- [DISCLAIMER: this is not a troll; I am a liberal].
Wrong on two accounts. First, a true "liberal" nevers calls herself that -- she is "independent" or "centerist". Second, the best trolls are "liberals" -- for proof I offer:-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I would say that temperment determines political affilitation more than anything.
In the old Kiersey temperment sorter, there are four traits that determine temperment, (Extrovert/Introvert, Sense/Intuition, Thinker/Feeler, Percieving/Judging). Our political parties divide mostly along the Thinker/Feeler line. conservatives are the "thinkers", liberals are the "feelers".
Don't believe me? The best evidence of this is the types of insults one side hurls at the other. Traditionally, conservatives have called liberals foolish, softies, bleeding-hearts, etc. while liberals have called conservatives mean, insensitive, cruel, etc.
Also look at the ways each side tries to win over people. Conservatives tend to use logical arguments. (Note: An argument can be logical and still be utter nonsense. I am making no statement as to the validity of their arguments.) Liberals tend to use emotional appeals.
Money quotes:
The individualists recognize that the most effective actions are those taken by individuals, or by short-term voluntary groups of individuals, to address specific needs and concerns. (Where the needs are either long-term or constant, of course, that's a different issue, which I'll explore in a moment.)
Individualists also feel that, in general, people can be trusted to do the right thing. Yes, to use but one example, some people (about half of one percent of a society's population) will always resort to crime rather than work to improve their lot in life -- and that constant 0.5% requires a standing police force to address the issue. But even then, the percentage of police officers to the total population need not be that great, if that's all they're charged with.
To the individualists, who generally trust others, the commission of a crime is not just an offense against society, it's also a betrayal of the common trust -- which is why, for instance, the individualists are in favor of a few laws, but that those few be sternly enforced....
The concept of individualism, it should be noted, finds its greatest expression in areas outside the city. The further away one sits from one's neighbors, the greater the need (and desire) for self-reliance.
Just as individualism seems to flourish most in the country, or even in the outer suburban areas, it's no surprise that collectivism flourishes most in urban areas -- where there is collective housing, where private property is tiny in size, and where it's easy to fall prey to gangs of predators (which form more easily because of the close proximity of other predators).
Finally, the feeling of insecurity is cemented by the constant feeling of helplessness -- of being confronted by forces much larger than the individual. Hence the bogeymen of "capitalists, landlords, and militarists" (as described by James Cannon above), or "the rich" (as espoused by Democrats) and the constant reinforcement of "us vs. them", are all tools used by the collectivists to maintain their "class warfare".
Now, just so you all know, the author (&myself) are members of the VWRC.
Living in mostly rural areas, I have found that I need very little from the local, state, or federal government to live my life. Maybe some roads, perhaps schools if they're any good, emergency services, parks, national defense and maybe one or two other things.
I don't need any government holding my hand or wiping my ass, and charity is best left to churches and private organizations.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
So lets imagine a wheelchair bound (and all the rest) young child that needs tons of care. Would he get it? Knowing that he would end up being a very valuable member of society later in life can't play into it because it isn't known yet.
Terrorism works. Terrorism causes fear, and the people whom terrorism works best on are those who fear the most and are most able to emphatize with victims. This has been aided by modern media, which is able to deliver maximum shock images instantly via a worldwide television network.
I will be moderated down for saying this, but it's on-topic, it's factual, and it's my well reasoned opinion. Not good material for Slashdot, but my conscience dictates my actions.
If we lived in a world of people who were reasonable, no actions would have been taken as a result of the Columbuine killings. Eleven dead teenagers in a nation of hundred of millions equals an inconsequential cause of death. Thirty teenagers had died the previous day in car crashes, but no one stopped driving. The reason Columbine made an impact is because of people who are capable of becoming afraid, and empathizing with victims. They are able to irrationally magnify their fear outside the actual scope of the threat - again with the help of mass media. Hence we got a million people marching on Washington to ban guns, when lightning strikes and airbags both killed more children that year than school shootings.
Irrational fear leads to irrational behaviour. Terrorism works.
So now we have these same people, genetically gifted with empathy and able to feel irrational, choking amounts of fear, banding together to form a political movement. You can call them "liberals" if you want but I'm not really into name-calling. This isn't surprising. The article is full of hokum when it speculates that "people who think alike form political movements". DUH.
The question we need to ask ourselves is: should people who are irrationally ruled by fear decide the fate of our nation? Is this wise?
Perhaps gene therapy will provide a cure for this in the future; for now we have a choice to make on Nov. 2.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
If you really want to learn what the difference is between Conservatives and Liberals, read Moral Politics by George Lakoff. Far more definitive than any brain study could possibly be.
For saying things like that,
my conservative professors would shoot
you if you ever came on their property.
Hmm... probably eat you too.
Bravery, imho, is when you feel the fear, but act without letting the fear deter you.
Dean G.
The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It's the same thing, fear, but it's what you do with it that matters.--Cus D'Amato
Anyway, I think it's usually safer to talk about Republican and Democrat since the historical policies of the parties don't necessarily relate directly to the current makeup or policies of the parties, and the conservative/liberal labels are so often misapplied. Of course, these labels usually need regional context too, since a Democrat in Massachusetts and a Democrat in South Carolina are bound to have quite a few ideological differences.
Skinner is my favorite psychologist. I recommend reading "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" and "Walden Two".
But he wasn't talking about biology as being the determining factor on behaviour.
He was all about conditioning. If you raise a child in a specific manner, the adult will behave in a specific manner. Unless their environment changes (environment meaning just about anything, not just the weather).
He said that behaviour is physiological responses to external stimuli.
And contrary to what people may read on the 'web, his daughter did not commit suicide.
Untrue. If you think media, hollywood, and American youth are slanted left, then you, too, are not at all familiar with the fundamentals of leftist philosophy and have probably never been outside the US.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
to make the amygdala more active (read normal)
You know, of all the studies I can think of as being worth while, this really isn't one of them. And no I didn't read the article... the premise itself is flawed.
First, I've never known the leadership of any political movement, liberal or conservative, to have deep felt compassion, fear, or anything else. I have known political leaders of many shades of belief to be calculating, selfish and manipulative. The simple fact is they wouldn't be leaders if they held the traits attributed to 'liberals'. Are my observations scentific? No, they are completely anecdotal, but i don't believe they're that off base.
Second. I wonder what would happen if the sages of the New York Times or the researchers they are reporting on next asked the question: 'Why do blacks tend to align themselves with the Democrats (in the U.S. of course).' After all, if there are biological precursors to political affiliation, and blacks tend to overwhelmingly support democrats doesn't this express, at the very least, a correlation worth looking into? Maybe I'm being too cold and calculating because clearly such questions are, no doubt, not asked with appropriate sensitivity to the history of western culture's suppression of non-white races and cultures. In short the premise of the study, in a slightly different context, violates the taboos of those reporting on it... I guess this is why so many liberals indulge in moral relativism.
Finally, who the hell cares? What does it matter? What does knowing this crucial fact change? Unless, we're talking about manufacturing people that are pre-wired for a certain political disposition, I suspect nothing... of course, maybe that's why liberal voices seem to be drawn to this story: if you can't beat 'em on ideas, engineer 'em!
Cheers!
SCB
Interesting that you would only mention gay....
You will probably get modded flamebait by claiming that people are fat or drunk by their own choice. Nowadays being fat or drunk is the result of a disease, not life choices.
Your post makes the case better than I can. Nowadays, these are all things that "happen" to us. "She was born gay", "He has a genetic predisposition toward alcoholism", and "They have had a rough life and food gives them comfort".
In America, we have a thriving "culture of victimhood". We blame others for anything bad that happens to use. We point to our genetics to explain away weak spots in our character. And we are offended whenever anyone suggests that we have chosen to live the way we do. We are not simply the sum of our genetics. Haven't you seen Gattaca?
Our genetics define our starting point, but it is possible to exceed our potential.
Note: To assist the moderator to determine if this is flamebait. If you are reading this in the year 2004, defects in character refer to alcoholism (a known bad in 2004). If you are reading this in any other year, I make no claims as to the flamebait content of this message.
To assist the moderator to determine if this is off-subject. I can believe that genetic defects can cause a person to vote Democrat.
These results can be questioned since UCLA is a very liberal institution.
--I'm not less emphatic, I too feel your pain. I just don't care. Now quite whining and get a job.
It has been found that the sky is blue, and E=mc^2 in most situations.
I for one welcome our new [insert main topic] overlords.
Not insulting anyone: but most conservatives I know are sorta evil, but definitly uncompassionate. They seem to hate everyone but themselves...
Time makes more converts than reason
try
THe man who mistook his wife for a hat an Exelent and elightening book.
or perhaps, Phantoms in the Brain, if you want to explore the one limit of your free will.
Or destructive emotions, if you want to explore ways of changing your brain chemistry.
People arn't ' fat, drunk, gay, disruptive, Communist', niggers, yanks or spiks, there people.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I would have categorized that entirely differently. In the current state of the nation, ruling conservatives seem to have reacted out of fear and anger, rahter than trying to address the true causes of events that take place in the world. One man's intellect is another man's pussyfooting, I suppose.
Like we really can define the cause of empathy? Fear maybe since it is a rather simple emotion but empathy? ,stupid, heartless, brain washed, and or just evil. What a load of crap this is.
Frankly I find the extrem left and right are almost identical in there closed mindedness and methods. They are both sure they are keepers of the truth and to disagree with them means you are
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Our founding fathers were liberal in every sense, do think modern Republicans would want separation of church and state? The term liberal however has in many ways been hijacked by the more "leftist" elements of the Democratic party. If you want to meet a "real" liberal, go find a "Libertarian"......
You gotta be joking. The Media slanted left? Starbucks as a "liberal bastion"? Sweet Jesus, I can't stop laughing - you poor ignorant fool! Starbucks as a liberal bastion! Now I think I've heard it all!!
I'm wondering about the evolutionary aspect of this difference. It's very clear that no combination of law, religion, or political ideology will lead to peace, respect for others, and reasonable care of the planet. Maybe our only hope for long term survival is if evolution is mofifying our nature, away from the extreme parochialism we see today.
Scaring the ignorant is only a beneficial side effect. While hell in the literal supernatual sense may or may not exist, both religionists and atheists alike have done their part to recreate a rather authentic Hell right here on Earth. I suggest that an alternative name for this entire planet be "Hell".
When will the US synch up with the rest of the world and use red for left and blue for right??
Why do Americans think the Soviet flag was red?
This will end up with the wrong country being invaded some day. Change while it's not too late!!
Fan of Noam Chomsky? You have my empathy. That must have been a pretty bad mid-life crisis you went through.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Isn't that Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker's mother?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Do you know what a false dichotomy is? You seem to think that volition and the physical world are somehow in conflict. Um... why?
Allow me to misrepresent you. You just thought so. Rather, you did not really think. You assumed so. It just seems that way. Guess what! You are wrong. Scientific investigation often reveals facts that are contrary to your arbitrary assumptions about the ways the world works. The brain is a biochemical machine, not a magic mass of gray goop.
You would think so wouldn't you. This is a perfect description of a neocon though. Another good description of a neocon would be "radical" and yet that is another word not commonly associated with conservative, hence "neoconservative".
Time makes more converts than reason
I wonder if this is related to the observation that conservatives tend to order their beef rare and to twirl spaghetti onto their fork, while liberals tend to order their beef more fully cooked, and tend to cut their spaghetti? (No, really - take a survey. I didn't believe it either until I asked a bunch of friends. I got ~80% correlation. Weird).
Geez, how hard can it be? The difference between Reps and Dems is so pronounced exactly because the political system has only two parties. Go to any country where there are many (or one, or none at all) and you won't find the same kind of obsession.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
"[DISCLAIMER: this is not a troll; I am a liberal]."
/. article a troll.
/. editors pick up and then preach back to the choir.
The disclaimer alone made the
It's good information, but I fail to see the insight in adding the political commentaries that the liberal/democratic
[DISCLAIMER: this is not a troll; I am a moderate republican].
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
I think you're ignoring the natural laws/causes and their effects. Take an idiot savant and compare him to someone who's struggled years to acquire the level of master a savant has at the same chosen instrument of choice. Both can be true: Ability can be inherited or acquired. I think both have their place but the current bent is towards 'fixed' causes and also so these people can make money off them. But you have to respect the limitations of the tools and ability to measure the causes in the age which you live.
Abilities, propensities, inclinations to behaviours are biological, dietary and enviornmental. To say otherwise is pure ignorance. Many peoples behaviour, abilities can be categorized, predicted, etc. Our ability to determine peoples potential acdemically, skillwise, weaknesses and propensity to make certain choices is only going to increase with time.
This is a philosophical argument and you seem to be implying that we have 'free will'. Take for example: Why is it so difficult to be celibate for a lot of people? Simple answer: Biology.
In many countries, this study would be meaningless or impossible. I'm starting to believe that the US two party system has profoundly impaired the way Americans think about politics. Like the tribe that was recently studied that only had words for "one", "two", and "many" that could barely keep track of numbers as high as four, we, as a culture that lacks the nuances of a system such as a several-party parliamentary democracy, are doomed to think of politics as a neverending battle between two ends of a one-dimensional scale. Granted, we know at a conscious level that our own system actually is a bit more nuanced than that, just like that tribe knows that numbers higher than two are distinct from each other, but this is our default way of thinking, and deviating from it requires more effort than we're typically inclined to put ourselves through in our everyday life.
This is why we had 70% of the population believing that the 9/11 highjackers were Iraqi, rather than being mostly Saudi. All they knew was that they looked Arab and the Iraqis are mostly Arab and they're the bad guys. (Don't get me started on "bad guys") This is why Bush's resignation wasn't immediately demanded by the American people when he said "You're either with us or you're against us." This is why Michael Moore can put together a movie that shows that a lot of the people who are trying to attack us are connected to people that our government supports, and people react as though this is an insightful or inflamatory accusation, when foreign news has been reporting on this rather dispassionately for years.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Hey lay off... it's not my fault I think I'm a victim, it's because I'm an American in 2004.... hmmm stretching it?
How are your own brain and genes external forces?
The brain is an organ that functions according to physical laws, but it's also an organ that's evolved to respond to a social environment where people are held accountable. You don't need a soul or some mysterious and magical process of free will to hold people accountable. In fact, you can argue the opposite of that, because if your will was totally unconstrained then the bad consequencies of your actions under the law would have no power to dissuade you from doing them.
Steven Pinker explains this in greater depth than I can here in his book The Blank Slate , which demolishes cherished and commonly held myths about human nature, including the blank slate of the title and the ghost in the machine myth. The book is a good summary of current knowledge of the brain and human nature, but most importantly, it analyzes those commonly held myths about human nature and explains both why they're false and why we don't need to believe them to sustain our society.
"In the US is is not legally possible to have a consentual sexual relationship with a subordinate."
Has the USA outlawed heterosexual relationships?
Also living in the south, perhaps the answer is because these things are not the fault of republicans.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Funny how no matter what side you're on, the rest of the world always seems like it's against you. Seems like all you wacky lefties and righties should start realizing this sooner or later. It's just a bit tiresome to see... One after the other:
Liberal: OMGWTF! the whole world is full of conservatisim and the media is a conservative propaganda whore
Conservative: Lord save me. The world is full of liberal baby killing sinners and the media is fueling the fire! FOX news is the only balanced source of news in the whole world!
The reality of the situation is that both sides are just about on equal ground. Things are slightly skewed towards the conservative right now because our president is a staunch conservative. As the election gets closer, the population is beginning to re-evaluate their views and things are balancing out even a little more. FOXnews even ran a story with a slightly liberal slant the other day. I don't remember what it was, but I do remember it left me just slightly dumbfounded.
Me? I guess I would be tagged as a liberal if it came down to it. I'm not proud of it, but there really isn't anywhere else to go if you don't accept the current wave of morality that's sweeping the nation.
I actually was referring to universities as a whole, including the students. Just wanted to make that clear since it seems like you may have thought I was referring to just professors.
When I said universities get goverment funding I didn't mean they get too much or too little. I was just making the point that they rely in the government heavily which tends to be a liberal value. I am all for government funding of schools, if it wern't for some grants I got, I would have had to work 60 hours a week instead of 40 while going to school full-time.
BTW, good points.
So which brain is the one that is oxygen starved and therefore blue?
So now you can test kids and see how many conservatives vs. liberal there will be in 10, 20, etc years? Should make for more fun in predicting the elections.
I wonder what the margin of error would be? Can you predict how many will register to vote and will?
Finally! A reasonable usage for "Abortion on Demand!" - just test for the active amygdala, wait until the day of birth, pull that little squirmer down the birth canal, saw off the top of it's head, and vacuum!
I expect every true liberal will be thrilled!
(Score:-5, Conservative)
Don't be taken in by this idiot--he has accounts under the names bonch and Overly Critical Guy. He has a history of astroturfing for Microsoft, bashing anything Open Source, using lies and half-truths to get modded up, karma whoring, and the usual trolling (under his bonch account, he got a troll posted to the front page of Slashdot).
All you have to do to check the veracity of this is to look at the posting history of his two old personnae (linked above) and his current one to figure it out.
Please do not mod this jerk up--every time you do the Slashdot S/N ratio goes down while bonch/Overly Critical Guy/rd_syringe just laughs at you.
This has been a public service announcement
That statement is so short-sighted...
;-)
You completely ignore that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Maybe I, having been rasied by my parents, would be in s simular situation?
My parents are republican. I can't stand GWB. I don't like Kerry either. I've taken the tests and done the research, and I have found that I am Libertairian. Middle-to a hair left of the spectrum too.
My mom would complain about how the school system was brain washing us kids (I have a sister) into thinking gay was ok. Even though our teachers and county was suburb to rural in nature. My school was flat-out rural. I don't have a problem with gay people as long as they don't make me feel incomfotable.
Now maybe there are social dynamics that are not being considered here that are forcea at play. Maybe liberals, being close and more reliant on each other tend to take the group opinion more. Maybe rural people are told in church what to believe, and the family tradision of church keeps that re-inforced.
There is a simple way to test your thoery. Swap people around. See if they hold on to their views, if the conform, or if they incorperate the local population's stand in with their own. It'd sure make a nice Fox reality TV show.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Oh well thats just what I think
P.S. when did "family" values start to mean "christian" values?
I think of Republicans as blue-bloods and Democrats as leftist reds.
A couple elections ago TV networks started using the opposite convention in their maps and the colors stuck. Now people use these map colors as a metaphore for national sentiment.
Cowardice is not feeling fear; it is allowing fear to control action or behavior.
Courage is the trait evinced by those who refuse to bow to their fear.
Courage seems impossible in those who do not feel fear.
My "snide little remark" was not meant to be snide. It is exactly how I view universities and having graduated from a rather large one and working at another, I think I have at least a decent perspective.
I don't know how much your substitution applies to the Senate. It sounds more like a lot of the California kids who went to the U of Arizona driving their BWM's and having their ways paid. So even with you substitution it still very much applies to universities. Now had to said s/outside a university/without be told how they should think by lobbyists/...
Change "university" to "military" and you have a perfect description of most lifetime career military folks.
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
This is an age old arguement of envrionment versus genetics in determining the way a child will develop.
The genetics can certainly point in particular directions, but people can also train to overcome a problem, or think a different way, or fight a natural tendancy.
So, while some people might be predisposed to be more liberal in their leaning or conservative, it is a lot like someone predisposed to being overweight. It might take more work to lean the other way, but people, if they see the value, can do it.
Personally, I've swung from liberal to conservative, back to liberal. Politically, I find different issues are more important to me depending on the times.
Read the article!!!!Absolutely not true!
The researchers discovered "amygdala activity responding to certain images of violence" as they watched political ads. The NY Times author (not a researcher), wishing to score a quick one, speculated "Consider this possibility: the scientists do an exhaustive survey and it turns out that liberal brains have, on average, more active amygdalas than conservative ones." But that was just his speculation!
Moral: never trust /.
This is bad science at best. It is not correct or logically sound to equate a specific brain function or region with politics and jump to that conclusion.
Finding commonalities is fine, but all of group A must pertain that exact set of attributes or else the logic fails. For example, if even one Democrat is a heartless, unfeeling, masochist, then then it cannot be said to be true.
Similarly, claiming a tautology that all Republicans are war mongerers will equally fail the condition.
Remember folks, science must be accompanied by logic and sound reasoning, less it become worthless to human knowledge as a whole.
I know people who politically and religiously believe that all forms of violence against groups are evil.
Evil as in Microsoft? Evil as in SCO? Evil as in evil spirits? Evil as in assholes?
People who think in terms of good/evil as far as philosophy goes probably need to refine their philosophy a bit more. Evil is an useful abstraction for dealing with people like Darl McBride, but not necessarily of deeper value as philosophical concept.
I believe that it is wrong as well, but my human fallacies will lead me to accept wrongdoing as a solution to wrongdoing.
Belief in concepts like wrongdoing is a human fallacy as well. In the world of energy and particles, there are no "emotions", or "wrongdoings". It's a human fallacy to be concerned about dying in the first place - be it your own death, the death of a loved one or the death of an enemy.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
You seem to lack empathy.
And good sir, how do you know that hell doesn't exist?
What we do is determined by our biological makeup and the inputs from our environment. This I believe. However, does this automatically mean that we should not be held responsible for our actions? Should we despair that we are being controlled and accept that nothing we do matters?
If you assume strict determinism, then biology and environment cannot be seen as mere outside influences that control us. They are what *define* us. They are an expression of who we are as people. In my opinion, the real reason we at first shy away from the thought of determinism is that since we often (falsely) think of our formative biology and environment as states and events apart from ourselves, we feel like we're being manipulated from without. This viewpoint is incorrect.
Happy people make bad consumers.
They display RGB all the time.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Holy shit. I'm liberal myself, but your post is just... highly disturbing... weird.
"Perhaps we form political affiliations by semiconsciously detecting commonalities with other people, commonalities that ultimately reflect a shared pattern of brain function."
Duuh. What did he think before? The Blue Fairy waves her wand and bestows a solid-gold Republican or Democrat badge?
People support groups which think more or less as they do. The only surprise here is finding a physical locus for this commonality.
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
Love,
rd_syringe (aka Overly Critical Guy aka bonch)
In many instances, morons waste all their time arguing about whether some outcome is a choice or whether some behavior is right. Your post is a call to the real issue.
Wake up, dumbasses all around! What made men who like to play with their peepees together turn out that way is not very important. The real issue is what we ought to do about it. As with most issues, the answer is obvious to the non-retarded minority.
Treat them as justly and humanely as we can.
What country are we talking about? Oh yes, the United States. So why is a completely different society's conception of "left" and "right" relevant to this discussion? It isn't. Stay out of this.
My dumb summary: People who are more empathetic and/or fearful tend to be more liberal. Also, people who are more empathetic and/or fearful have a more developed empathy-fear gland in their brain. It doesn't seem really ground-breaking to me, although it may be the kind of thing that sounds obvious when it's proven, but the theory wasn't supported until now.
I think the most interesting thing about this article is the second-to-last paragraph, which mentions that there is a crucial link between rational decision-making and emotional devlopement. I didn't know that, but I think it's cool and it explains a few of things. It's (another) reason why hard AI is going to take forever to build. It sheds some light on why political conversations tend to end in "look that's just the way I feel about it. Republicans (Democrats) are just evil (overly idealistic) and you can't convince me otherwise."
By the way, I think the article will become dated as the Republican and Democratic parties change. There's no inherent reason why one is conservative and the other liberal, and because they both try to cover the center (those of us with, presumably, average-sized amygdalas), they tend to shift around a lot.
I would direct open-minded, thinking types to compare "conservative" responses to "liberal" responses on this thread. I think you might see a pattern: that liberals are more fairminded, more thoughtful, and less knee-jerk reactionary. Conservative responses are more likely to attack on a personal level, really without giving any real thought to a situation.
Homo sapiens is a thinker, although we can be programmed. I was programmed for most of my life. We all are. But as thinkers, we can break our programming. If we learn to trust each other, and live to our better natures, we can build a better world. Go study up on Sweden and Denmark, or even Canada, or France.
Be a thinker, not a reactionary, programmed citizenbot....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Funny, not wanting to insult anyone either, but I've always thought of the "liberal" / "conservative" split as the artificial distinction created by the puppetmaster who controls both parties. Some years the definition changes (btw, is the GOP the fiscally responsible party again, or do I have to wait a few more years?).
Anyone that thinks of themself as either a liberal or a conservative has some serious neuron deficiency issues.
I've finally figured it all out, though it's taken no small part of my adult life. For the simple-minded, I offer this metaphor:
In the middle of the night, a crazed lunatic breaks in. Silently, he puts the chloroformed rag over your face... and the first thing you know, you wake up in his dungeon. For weeks, you scream your head off... but the truth is, no one is ever going to rescue you. The day you realize this, the crazy nutjob walks in. And he says "I may be a crazed lunatic, but I believe in being fair. Thus, I give you a choice. I can torture you with this red hot iron, or with this taser on your testicles. Some rules though. #1 Neither is particularly less painful than the others. #2 Your choice will affect which torture you recieve, but it won't always be the one you voted for. #3 From time to time, I may offer third options, but it is a two party system... so don't expect them to ever happen."
Would you bother to "vote"? One *is* as bad as the other, your choice may not win, and all you're doing is encouraging the nutjob even further. In this metaphorical scenario, it would be a bad idea to "vote", wouldn't it? Why then, is it any different in presidential elections?
In that situation, your best bet is to figure a way out of the madness. For the longest time, I had trouble figuring out what the analogy is for politics. I'm not ready for this presidential campaign, but I'm working on the idea for a "rock the write-in vote" sort of campaign. I don't care who you vote for as long as the guy isn't on the ballot. Let's see just how badly we can fuck things up!
I live in Iowa, my grandfather and uncle are farmers, and they're both liberals in every sense of the word, but they vote Republican.
Why? Farm subsidies. The Republicans are VERY big on keeping farmers and their farms in business(to get their votes, of course), and keeping the ridiculous pork-barrel subsidies going for as long as possible. Farmers are a HUGE constituency for the Republicans. Many, MANY farmers rely on those subsidies.
He ran for parliament as a liberal in 1906 at the age of 32 to for god's sake. Before that he was a member of the conservative party. Exactly backwards from that little misattributed maxim. He remained a member of the liberals into his 50s.
The parent's question has some truth to it. We shouldn't care whether someone has a red or blue brain. It's when they have hands of blue that you need to run.
No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
So basically, you traded one set of unquestioningly dogmatic beliefs for another?
Congratulations.
No, I think the difference between the two parties is who they believe should get the food, healthcare, shelter, and education.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Girls who smoke don't care what goes in their mouth.
Most political analysis trys to take a scientific process, which is reasonable of course. So people look for trends, and apply stochastic processes to attempt to gauge present and future results based on historical evidence.
But, usually, most people think of a presidential election as a "choose the lesser of two evils" exercise.
It is not very often, though, that one of the candidates is almost univerally regarded as a complete moron, or who has the sorts of conflicts of interest that would make going to war into a profitable venture for himself and other members of his party.
When just about everybody in the country thinks the president is a total crook, it doesn't make sense to act like it's business as usual and just look at statistics from past elections.
Parent is not "insightful", it's "funny". In the present political climate I'd be considered a liberal, and it made me laugh.
From what I can tell, most people form their political beliefs because of what their parents believe.
It may be that, as a result of contemplating compassion, liberals activate this amygdala in their brains resulting in heightening fear. Which may be why liberals are prone to overreacting to and spreading conspiracy theories, whether justified or not.
Now some of the stances of liberals tends to make much more sense, such as opposition to guns. While it is ironic that as a conservative, I disagree with their stance on guns because I want to be able to protect myself and my family. Though, it is not that I have any immediate fear of something happening in the near future, I concieve that it could and want to be prepared.
I think, the liberals believe that if you remove guns entirely from the population you will gain ubiquitous safety. They fear the availability of guns in the hands of criminals. I look at things more practically though. Criminals are going to get their hands on a weapon any weapon (perhaps even a gun even if you had a 100% no guns law). Taking guns away from law abiding citizens who are only concerned with their own safety only hurts them in the end.
As for things like pro-choice, I think liberals feel that way due to compassion for what mothers who don't want children have to endure. Whereas conservatives are only concerned with the life of the individual being taken away.
The problem of more or less government in peoples lives is decidely split even between republicans and democrats. Though we live in interesting times, which has caused the creation (approved by both parties) of laws and institutions which dig deeper into peoples lives. Again, for liberals, this compassion factor my be what plays a role.
Traditionally, democrats want more government in peoples lives whereas republicans want to be left alone as much as possible. Conservatives are extremely sensitive about their individuality, privacy and personal rights. Whereas democrats are also concerned with privacy and rights but not at the expense of projects to benefit mankind and the environment. This also reflects itself in budget decisions by both parties. Democrats tend to favor welfare projects, stricter control over human behavior and actions. Such as not allowing people to burn wood in chimneys, taking away guns, supporting affirmative action, controlling creative freedoms like tipper gore's attempts to ban types of lyrics, etc.
Liberals tend to be wary of going to war, though they'll go at it when necessary (clinton's somalia & kosovo & afghanistan attacks). Republicans seem to have a more military view of the world, seeing aliances, enemies and immediate goals. Though Bush originally stated he didn't want to build nations, his tune changed after witnessing 9/11.
Wow this turned into a long response. Hope you found it interesting.
Disclaimer: Although I am conservative, I am truly trying to be objective here. Feel free to ignore any personal opinions that might have slipped in.
While this article leaves no proof, it is interesting to think that all mass groupings of people (including politics) might have to do with similar brain patterns. Never really thought about it that way before.
--Paul
Unixpunx
I'm not a troll, I just happened to be under this bridge and felt like jumping at you when I saw you coming.
I have on occasion attempted to find out exactly what the difference is, and on all previous attempts have got precisely nowhere: all the various arguments I've found seem to be making artificial distinctions.
Can someone sum up the differences briefly for me, and any other geographically-advantaged readers?
You can never lump people into just two groups. Although the experiment may be legitimate, the conclusion is completely psuedo-science. Black/White, NAZI/Jew, Fit/Weak, Christian/Muslim; all these are false divisions meant to keep the people occupied on topics other than what is really important. This "scientist's" conslusions are just as divisive, and based on equally poor logic.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
The opposite of logic is not illogic, but hummor. Or at least head scratching confusion. Either reaction is accpetable.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Check out the book Moral Politics. I finished reading it this weekend. A cognitive scientist approaches politics with the tools of his trade. The thesis is so dead on that is almost appears obvious: that politics is not determined by a logical examination of facts or self-interest, but is indeed determined by mental metaphors; that the key metaphor for the structuring of government is the structuring of family; that the hierarchy of the Strict Father and the Nurturant Parent, when transfered to the political realm, describe not only the obvious, but also the seemingly contradictory opinions of each side. The Strict Father metaphor teaches tough love, that children grow through following the natural order, becoming strong and self-reliant, and that self-reliance can be taught by a system of punishment and reward. The Nurturant Parent espouses a nuturant and understanding place for a child to grow, where through questioning, an empathic and internalized worldview will create a good person. Each side does use a consistent moral framework, but that those frames can view the world completely differently.
As I said, in broad strokes it appears so simple and obvious, but in the details, it is really impressive.
Would you find the view that Republicans and Democrats differ emphatically. Sure, there are a few differences, like there are differences between cerise and cochineal, but from anywhere else on the planet, they look to occupy rather similar parts of the political spectrum.
I think that most people [except the ones on /. of course ;-] don't decide on their political affiliation using their reason, analyzing the agenda of each political party with thier pros and cons, they make a moral or emotial judgement anyway. In other words it is more moral issues like abortion, stem cell research that poeple will pay attention too rather than budget planning or tax cuts.
I would be considered a "Liberal" on most people's scale.
But I'm pro-gun. And I favour a strong military (but I oppose "Star Wars" because I don't think it is necessary now nor do I believe that it would work even if it was necessary). I also believe in more State's rights and a reduced federal government.
"Conservatives tend to believe that people behave in the way they do as a result of something about them in particular - their nature."
I also believe that. But I also believe that the way they were raised affects their choices. Someone who craves power can go into politics or religion or financials or just be an abusive husband.
"Some people are just good and some people are just bad."
Good and bad are personal evaluations. Saddam is "bad" but the US government thought Saddam was "good" when he was fighting Iran.
Personally, I thought one tin-pot dictator was fighting a authoratarian theocracy and I didn't see any "good" in either side.
"Liberals, on the other hand, see everyone as more or less products of our environment - the way we are nurtured."
But our environments do shape the choices we have. It takes someone with a LOT of self-focus to overcome the obstacles of his environment.
So, someone with a lot of character (an internal trait) can overcome his environment, but most people do not have that and become products of their environment.
"To illustrate my point, consider gun control."
I'm completely in favour of the 2nd Amendment.
-but-
I'm also in favour of a waiting period. I don't want someone buying a gun because he just found out his wife is cheating on him. I'm also in favour of registering guns which includes ballistics. A bullet pulled from a murder victim should be traced back to the gun that fired it and the person who purchased it.
I believe that 99%+ of the people who own guns are responsible gun owners and no threat to themselves or society.
But I also believe that a responsible gun owner would register his weapons, properly secure them and immediately report any that were stolen. This is his responsibility to society. When you exercise certain rights, you take on certain responsibilities.
So, is that "Conservative" or "Liberal"?
"Poverty is another example of the difference."
Easily answered by my previous statement about character and environment. Those with weak to average character will end up as products of their environment. Those with strong character will overcome those obstacles.
Now, take Enron and such. Crime does not depend upon poverty.
"How does this tie into free will? Conservatives make no effort or attempt to explain why bad people are bad. They just are."
Which is why I am not a Conservative.
"Liberals, on the other hand, attempt to explain bad behavior. They say it's a result of our upbringing or our environment. By attempting to explain it, they don't leave a lot of room for free will to say that the people made the choice to be bad."
I believe that people do make their own choice.
Here's an example: Exercise.
Everyone (Conservatives and Liberals) knows that you should exercise. Yet not many people do. Is that because they are "bad" people who have chosen not to exercise? Or is it because the parents didn't love them enough?
I believe that it is because most people do not have the character to force themselves to do what they know is good for them and would rather take the easy way.
As in the exercise example, so as in Life.
What a steaming pile of horseshit. What, "I can't help who I vote for, it's my brain's fault"? Did my tax dollars go to pay for that tripe? Can I ask for a refund?
And it's further horseshit because it only focuses on two parties. Does this mean that the Socialist and Communist parties in the USA have very active amygdala? Do the Libertarians not have an amygdala at all?
And since when is fear only a "democratic emotion"? Is it really "I'm a Republican, I don't know fear!" I'm sorry, but is any real science going on anymore?
Just move along folks, there's nothing to see here, just more bunk.
" To a Socialist in Europe, the main US parties are both conservative."
That's because the European Socialist parties are so FAR left, that they're ready to fall off the globe.
This election is a testament to the fact that their are real, far-ranging differences between the Republicans and Democrats. George Wallace was famous for saying that there's not "a dime's worth of difference between the two parties". That's just not true anymore. Both parties have moved much farther along their ideological sides in the past two decades. The GOP is much more right wing, and the Democrats are much more left wing. The only difference between the American Democrats and the European Socialists is that the Dems don't have a plank in the party platform calling for public ownership of production. There's no current call for single-payer health care in the Democratic platform, but it HAS been tried before, and sooner or later, will re-appear in the platform as soon as the party thinks that it's feasable to do so.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
SHINY! When I read the blurb, I was hoping there would be Firefly reference. Thank goodness I didn't even have to scroll for it. There's hope in the world
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
There is a "slight" difference between making a mistake on intelligence and outright lying about the war. The rest of the world is not as blind as US citizens about the truth behind this war. It was never about WMDs but green pieces of paper with dead presidents on them in the coffins of Haliburton and Co. Just why Rumsfeld wanted to bomb Iraq on September the 12th without ANY proof whatsoever that Iraq was involved?
Hell, this war was planned way before 9/11, 9/11 and the fear/anger it generated was nothing more than a perfect opportunity for Dick and Co. to move forward with their plan.
Not to mention, when the USA will elect a non moron for president, one who actually can speak and spell out simple words like "nuclear", then maybe the rest of the world will show more compassion and understanding.
I wonder how this correlation is in other countries. I live in sweden and consider myself a communist. I can agree that many of my friends in our party is quite "wimpy" and we care a lot about others (however I dont know if we have more active amygdalas than others). What I am wondering is this:
In europe where the left-right scale is to the left if the US political scale, have communists/socialists even more active amygdalas than the american democrats (or the average european vs. the average american for that matter), or is it simply that (generally) the person that becomes democrat in the american society becomes a socialist in the european society?
Also I am wondering if the correlation can be on the otherway? That your political views (results of how you are raised, what you read, what you think, your experiences in life, etc) shapes your brains and if you "go left" your amygdala gets more active?
perhaps this sounds reasonable at first glance, but the overwhelming majority of the people I know are Thinker-type computer scientists (disclaimer: I am a Feeler-type computer scientist) who are also decidedly liberal. there are, um, actually many good logical reasons to think "liberally".
You are talking about the parties, I am talking about the people that constitute those parties.
The knee-jerk conservative / fearfull/protectionist liberal is one that supports the party line regardless. Ditto-heads come to mind. Those who do not apply their intellect to decide or choose.
emt 377 emt 4
From an upcoming paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology: People in negative mood states think more logically.
From the URL:
If you'd rather be happy than correct, you're more likely to vote Democrat. (G'wan, relax in the safety of your own delusions, rather than confront reality, ya hippie freaks!)
If you'd rather be correct than happy, you're more likely to vote Republican. Because you don't get to be CEO of Intel without knowing that "Only the paranoid survive!" (What a shocking display of greed and insensitivity, where's his compassion, won't somebody please think of the chillllllllldrun!)
Looks like the stereotypes for both parties hold true. And the stereotypes are valid for a reason -- a person's choice of Party doesn't make their brain work a certain way... their brain merely predisposes them towards joining a certain Party.
(Of course, when I'm elected Emperor, I'll advance humanity by deeming my opponents mentally-ill. And as an exercise in compassion, I'll even help them get better. W00t!)
As a legal necessity, any biological or emotional predisposition towards a sexual relationship of any kind is considered "choice."
I don't think any "emotional predisposition" or any feeling at all is a matter of choice. Feelings aren't right or wrong, they just are. Feelings happen automatically. We have no choice in how we feel. Choice comes in once we choose how to act upon our feelings.
Though I'm confused by your words, "As a legal necessity." What do you mean? Does the law (in your country) define feelings as choices? If so, then the law is wrong.
Hence, I judge false your statement that "being homosexual is a choice," as a person who is homosexual didn't choose to be turned on my same-gender sexual activity any more than they choose to prefer chocolate to vanilla. And yes, much to the distaste (pun intended) of some prominent and vocal homosexual activists, tastes change.
I'm gay, by the way, insomuch that "gay" is defined completely by my culture and not by science.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Do you mean for that to include the ones blowing up Iraqi police stations without any apparent regard for Iraqi civilians nearby? Even if you regard anybody presently in the Iraqi police as a traitor or whatever (which is tendentious at best), it's hard to make that argument about random civilians who happen to be walking past a police station at the wrong moment. The guys doing that stuff haven't won too many points with the Iraqi people.
Meanwhile, al-Sadr appears to have been involved in the killing of a rival Shi'ite cleric a year or two ago. More power for him, you see.
The folks fighting the US in Iraq are not monolithic. They are not necessarily idealized comic-book heroes. They do not enjoy the unambiguous support of all sensible Iraqi patriots. You'll notice that Sistani, who frankly loathes the US, is not backing al-Sadr.
And for both you and the guy with the "dawn of the US" comment above, do you make a distinction between the American Revolution and the Russian one, the French one, or the Chinese one? Howzabout Pol Pot, are you a big Pol Pot fan? Yeah? Glad to hear it!
There are good revolutions and bad ones. I understand that you think the presence or absence of mass murder is just a sort of irrelevant technicality, but the people who get killed may actually have the gall to disagree! Bottom line: Much of the resistance in Iraq nowadays is coming from the Islamist perspective, where the solution to every problem is seen as... more Islam! And killing people. Like the Left in the West, Islamists tend to regard killing as an inherent good, regardless of who gets killed or why (if the "good guys" get killed, that's an excuse to kill more "bad guys" (civilians, mostly)). Islam can be, and often has been, the basis of functional civil institutions on a large scale, but that's not the same brand of Islam. Anglicanism is the basis for functional civil institutions; Christian Identity is not and cannot be. There is a difference between sane Islam and insane Islam just as there is between sane Christianity and insane Christianity. The Islam of al Qaeda and friends is not the Islam of the Golden Age, which for its time was tolerant, cosmopolitan, and reasonable. Nor is it the original Islam of Mohammed, which was a bit rough around the edges, but which was focussed on building, not on destroying. If Mohammed had been a mere xenophobic thug like these folks, he would not be remembered. The irony, of course, is that those Good Old Days are precisely what the Islamists think they're going to restore.
I wish we weren't in Iraq. I don't think we're fixing anything there any more than al-Sadr ever will. But let's not pretend that the resistance folks you admire in Iraq are ever going to generate anything but more bloody chaos.
You know, like Libertarians are Social and Economic Liberals. I love how many right wing americans have no idea about political theory and think "Liberal"'s an insult.
Statistically, US Republican and Democrat policies differ by roughly 5% across the board. There is little or no difference in electing either pary.
If both parties are functionally the same, how can any differences in brain organization incline an individual to one or the other party?
Hey, I'm the author of fortune-mod-firefly ;) I couldn't resist.
No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
Not unlike those who do a lot of walking develop their leg muscles.
Actually, no, it doesn't prove that. It's as just as plausible an inference from the correlation claimed as the other way around, is all.
The interesting thing is that the other way around is almost invariably the first and often the only inference made, when correlations like this are found. "Gotta be the genes". Genes cause CNS diferences which cause behavior, is the knee-jerk reaction.
In fact it's just as plausible that something that happened after conception changed behavior which changed CNS. And the evidence here does not favor one inference over the other.
What the heck do you mean that legal necessity requires us to treat biological factors as choice?
Are you implying that people with Turette's choose to exhibit their symptoms? Are you saying that epileptics choose to occasionally have a seizure?
I think it's a bit disingenious to categorically say homosexuality is a choice and that's that. Homosexuality simply is. Period. Much like people with blue eyes simple exist. There's no choice, it's just there.
If the current administration could figure it out, I believe you would before long since they'd just declare the democrats to be non-lawful combatants.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Or is it a troll?
Personally, I see it not so much as an artificial distinction, but as that both parties are really very close on most subjects, and therefore tend to try to magnify the small differences there are and paint them as huge issues that deserve your attention and vote.
I would agree that following the party line is not good, and that one should not "color" oneself in these ways. On some subjects, I side with conservatives, and on some, I agree with liberals, and on most, I see some truth coming from both. My issue is that most people are sheep on these subjects, and just pick someone and follow( cue the Life of Brian jokes / imagry ) and without further thought or reflection go along.
Thank you for an interesting response.
emt 377 emt 4
Reading the fine print in the article allows flamebait for the liberals too.
In short, not only are Democrats compassionate but cowardly, but Republicans are logical in theory but brain-damaged in practice. =)//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
... there are Semitic people who are not Jewish.
And good sir, how do you know that hell doesn't exist?
How do you know that Xenu doesn't exist? Or that Isis, Osiris, and Ra don't exist? Or what about Hades or the Elysian Fields?
Do you have any verifiable evidence at all to support your claim for the existence of "Hell"?
If liberals have a heightened sense of fear, then why do all of the censervatives seem to think that America needs to attack any country that has muslims in it before the muslims start a Jihad/Holy war/WW3?
There is this right wing guy at work that never stops saying 'Life is like a dark alley'.
Everything that the government is doing points to a (wolfovitz doctrine themed) neo-conservative doctrine of 'hit them before they have the chance to think about pondering whether they might like to begin to have the capability to hit us'. And the liberals are the scared ones?
George II -- Spreading Freedom and American values, one bomb at a time.
SUPPORT THE FIRST AMMENDMENT.
USE THE SECOND.
I find American leftist (I hate to use liberal and confuse it with real, classical liberalism as taught in Poli Sci) distaste for firearms to be unusual and a historical abberation. As recently as the 1970s in the US, leftist groups consistently identified firearm ownership as critical to defense of their groups from right-wing opponents. The Black Panthers and the SLA all made use of firearms.
In the 70s, though, there was an increasing merging pacifism within the US left, and a likely desire to disassociate themselves of the more violent actions of groups like the SLA.
I think most of the anti-firearms aspects of current American leftism has as much to do with being "anti-conservative" as it does with being pacifist.
I'm unaware of any revolutionary or significant political movements that arose out of pacifism. Ghandhi is cited, but it's a gross oversimplification. I think Mao said it best -- political power grows out of a barrel of a gun.
I very much like your ideas. Personally I have become a bleeding heart liberal over the years, and your statement just confirms that =)
I think you really have something here. I do not believe there naturally evil people in the world. I think there are people who have been acting evil for so long they can't be helped. I think there are people who are so far gone they are hopeless. But I do believe that these are not "naturally" evil people. They are people with a tendency toward the dark (like Skywalker) who as a result of that tendency, make some bad choices and walked a dark path for a while. But even Vegeta (dragonballZ) was redeemed.
I think you are dead on with the "concervatives" view of right and wrong. That is Pres Bush all the way.
As a side note, I don't think the other guy that posted was trying to piss you off. He just seemed to be picking a point as to WHY liberals try to figure out the cause of people actions. I think this is a small diff with your theory. I think for the most part he was agreeing with you. He unfortunetely picked a rather touchy example to make his point, but I don't think the intent was to offend.
I have to say, I wish I had more conservative friends who really thought about all this, and could make a non emotional statement like you did.
One thing I would differ on is a change I think I'm seeing in the Rebublican Party. ( a "slightly" different group than the "conservatives").
While before in their effort to look for reasons, liberals tend to be labeled as more emotional. I think the Republicans saw value in this. So while they are the party of "right & wrong, black & white" they have a tendancy these days to then become very emotional about their choice. All the yelling and vocal outbursts you see on FOX and MSNBC.
I think this is very very smart on their part. They are holding true to the good vs evil movement, but are making emotional cases as well to bring over voters.
This is a change from before the Regan erra. The Republicans are playing much much tougher baseball now.
It's going to be an interesting year =)
Things are slightly skewed towards the conservative right now because our president is a staunch conservative.
I don't know about this...if this were the case, the media would be agreeing with him and biased against John Kerry. That hasn't been the case. Bush has been routed by nearly every media outlet.
Read "Bias" by Bernie Goldberg...while it tends to read like a 150 page rant against Dan "The Dan" Rather, he has a number of people in the news business on record, and through personal testimony, submitting that it's nearly a given that the media is biased towards the left. I'm not talking about ads on Nightline saying "Bush is a Moron", I'm talking about subtle spin being placed on the issue by news reporters...not editorialists (read: Dan Rather, NOT O'Reilly). Some of his citations even wonder why he would bother to make that statement, like it's an unspoken truth about the business. It's a decent read, nothing that's going to lite a fire under you, but interesting.
--trb
Oh, so the ENTIRE party is reading the same web site?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The amygdala has also been linked to preceptions of "cosmic-connectedness," for want of a better word, or better yet the deep belief of existance of God Nova: 'Secrets of the Mind' and so therefore one would expect the more religious to be Democrats not Republicans.
[please not slitherin... please not slitherin...]
Oh, it's not that bad. They get cool t-shirts and everything.
I looks like you've got a little of both in you. I certaintly don't beleive that no one is affected by the way they were brought up, nor do I mean to imply that liberals don't think that some immutable personal characterstics determine behavior. What I meant to do was a establish a simple theoretical basis for the two different ideologies, and show how this theoretical basis gives rise to differing opinions on societal phenomona.
Your idea of character determining the outcome of a person born into a poor situation looks like a very reasonable mix of the idea of personal characteristics (character) determining what we do, and the idea that our behavior is shaped and molded by our environments.
I don't at all mean to say that conservatives think it doesn't matter whether you're born into poverty, whereas liberals think that means all the difference in the world. It's just my observation that conservatives tend to see personal character flaws and inhibitions as being the primary reason why some people can't achieve personal wealth and satisfaction. That's one reason why they don't like things such as affirmative action and welfare - because they feel that such actions don't do anything to help inviduals who are having trouble succeeding develop a personal intiative and drive.
Liberals, on the other hand, seem to believe that it's mainly institutional and environmental factors that prevent some people from suceeding. I'm not a liberal myself, and so my understanding of what they beleive and why comes mainly from years of arguing and talking with my liberal friends, in an attempt to find out just what exactly is different about us that makes us see the world so differently. Maybe I'm way off base with the idea that liberals see societal factors as the main agents in preventing some people from succeeding, but that's the impression I've gotten repeatedly.
I know that the idea of saying some people are good and some people are bad is entirely based upon opinion in the real world; for the sake of my post it was just a model. I'm a conservative myself, but I'm also an agostic who doesn't beleive in any objective moral truth, and I have my personal doubts as to the existence of right and wrong. So I don't label people as 'good' or 'bad' per se, but I do strongly beleive in the idea that certain people are prone to behave in certain ways, and there isn't much you can do about it.
As for your enron example, I think it validates the Conservative model of thinking but goes against the liberal model. The guys who pulled that stunt were anything but poor, but they still did bad things. What they did destroyed their company and put a lot of people in a bad financial situation - thus crime caused poverty.
My blog
This might explain the fact that I've seen a definite personality difference between liberals and conservatives. In fact, the personality difference is usually more profound than their actual policy disagreements, at least from my perspective. Now, the great thing about being a libertarian is that there are libertarians of both liberal and conservative personality types, who nonetheless share the same views. (To name a prominent libertarian of each personality type: Mary Ruwart seems to be a liberal personality type while Walter Williams is a conservative personality type.)
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
this reminds of a scene in a movie, probably woody allen's... where the son of the main characther was republican... an avid republican. Then in some plot twist they found out that the boy has a coagulum in his head, and after it's removal, he becames a democrat.
In scanning the response I would have thought such a group that haunts /. would have seen the parallel before now. Instead, everyone is arguing red/blue politics.
So, if the study has any bearing at all, it relates far more to age and gender. The politics of the country are drawn clearly along those boundaries.
Emotional fear responses, compassion masks fear quite often, are generally a feminine response and among the young. The young emulate their adult influence and most young people have far more female than male influence. Therefore, most young people display emotional fear responses into their environment.
As you age, you tend to begin receiving far more male influence and begin developing masculine responses.
Masculine responses tend to veer away from emotion since controlling agression is a balancing act in masculine responses. Therefore, logic and reason is required to achieve a balance toward naked aggression and fear related responses.
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
The existence of loudmouthed idiots holding a belief does not invalidate that belief.
Universities (well, mine, at least) are places of extreme education and knowledge.
No doubt they are. The real question is, extreme education and knowledge of what? Are professors waxing endlessly over James Joyce's _Ulysses_ and what they "think it means"? Or are they stuyding sciences that will yield technological breakthroughs that will, say, cure cancer? I think you will agree with me that not all knowledge is equal in value, and that there is at least some of the education that goes on in Universities that amounts to nothing more than intellectual jack-off sessions.
my professors and most of my peers are more educated on the status of the nation and world than pretty well anybody else I come across
The real question in, educated on the status of the nation and world from which perspective? Naturally, I am asking which premises you take before you talk about "the status of the nation and the world." For instance, do you assume that the abolition of private property is The One True Path to World Peace?
Most professors I know aren't quite so "seperated from reality" as you would like to think. Most own homes and live just like normal people. Most have worked in private industry if that is possible in their field, and if not, have
made an extensive and immersive study into their chosen field.
You fail to admit that many professors are tenured, unlike most everyone else in the non-academic sector. Reality is that if you do a bad job, then you will be fired. Non-reality is that if you do a bad job, you will never be fired no matter what. This non-reality is what many college professors enjoy, and I believe that their thoughts and reasoning is fermented in an environment in which the job insecurity brought on by working of the free market doesn't apply.
I've noticed that a lot my liberal friends believe that one way to change the world is to ensure good education, and one good way to do that is to be a teacher.
If the professor uses the power that they have over their students to "educate" them in the wonders of communism, then I see them as no different from the Christian who "educates" them in the wonder of Christ. This is preaching, not teaching.
So, liberals are drawn to education, making it not unreasonable for schools to be liberal.
The fact that many liberals define capitalism as evil has something to do with it as well. Why should liberals be expected to sweat it out in the free market when they could relax under the comfortable umbrella of tenure and "educate" young, impressionable minds about the One True Way?
I think government funding of education is a positive thing.
Naturally. Catholic schools will teach their students that catholicism is the answer. Jewish schools will teach their students that Judaism is the answer. Government schools will teach their students that government is the answer. And what is the answer to all the world's problems in the minds of so many "liberals"? Government.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Two major fallacies with this whole idea.
/case of the Mondays //shut up and leave me alone
First of all it assumes that the 'left' is 'empithetical'. Which is very subjective. For instance I don't believe the left is very empithetical to unborn children.
Secondly it assumes that all people fall into one side or the other. Not only untrue, but quite frankly media BS and stupid. Someone watches to much CNN. There are plenty of people who agree with some issues on both sides, personally anyone who agrees with everything spouted off by the 'left' or the 'right' without deciding on each issue for themselves is a blind sheep.
And finally as a bonus, it assumes the 'left' and the 'right' are different which they aren't except in the trollish social issues such as abortion and homosexuality where there are no clear answers and actually doing something either way is going to piss off half the population.
Government should be modded -1 flamebait
OH AND FOR AN OFFTOPIC RANT.. the stupid fricking lameness filter should be shot. CAN'T YOU CHECK IF I'M ONLY DOING ONE LINE SEPARATED OUT???? ITS PERL, ITS NOT THAT HARD
The Anti-Blog
Old folks depend on their kids to support them in developing nations. So they have as many kids as possible, which results in alarming population growth. This is not the answer.
Arizona. Go have a look at Arizona's voting distribution. See the big blue at the top? That's Coconino county. It's a highly rural area. The only city is Flagstaff, which is quite small and accounts for less than half the population.
Now there's a darker red county below it, and then a lighter red one below that. That's Maricopa county, home of the Phoenix metro area. That's a HUGE metro, one of the fastest growing in the country. Phoenix itself is bigger than San Diego, Boston, and Dallas. The entire metro was 2.5million people as of the 2000 census and has grown considerably since then.
So here you have a large rural county (I believe the largest county in the nation) voting liberal, and a quite populus urban county voting conservative.
I do recognise that there is a positive correlation between rural-conservative and urban-liberal, but it is quite obvious that there are some other factors there.
You make a very common mistake when you combine economic leftism with social leftism.
Social leftism is about political correctness, racial sensitivity, abortion, gun control, and the other assorted "acceptable" politics of establishment, mainstream American politics and media. These are the items that are on the table when it comes to the American political "debate."
The mainstream media is certainly leftist, when it comes to social leftism.
Economic leftism centers are progressive taxation, i.e,. taxing the wealthy and upper income earners at a much higher rate than everyone else, and using that money to fund universal healthcare, daycare, welfare, education, and other social programs.
The mainstream media is decidedly NOT leftist when it comes to economics. And economic leftism is really what feeds the bulldog. Social leftism is a sop, and in fact, social leftism is quite useful as a tool of social division for the upper income earners, the wealthy and the corporations.
Economic leftism is anathema to the mainstream media.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Amygdala activity is behavior. It's not hardwired, it is reflected in the behavior of the person, and reflects it. Genetics might create a predispositon towards some emotional postures, or cycles. But saying we learn to empathize, or to ignore, is another way of saying we grow a degree of amygdala development and activity.
--
make install -not war
We can encourage people to exercise self-control and restraint of our genetic traits that might be harmful so that we can all get along and create a world worth living in.
We assign blame and responsibility to people in order to allocate punishments and rewards. Punishment and reward are just tools that we use to control other people's behavior. If we are already controlling human behavior using moral prescription, money, and the legal system, why should we deny ourselves the benefit gained by using the behavioral technologies that science yields?
...and how does your concept of "national security" involve infringing on our God-given rights, using the media to create widespread fear (e.g. duct-tape and plastic bagging, etc.), and attacking the Middle East (and planning to since Day One of the current administration)?
You don't sound too libertarian to me. You sound like a rather weak-spined "political migrant" who latched onto the libertarian ideology for the ego boost, and jumped to the neoconservative camp (since that's where all the beta-male jingoists are these days).
Advertisers care, particularly political advertisers. This is a clue toward how to make GWB's crude attempt to label himself a "compassionate conservative" work.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Finding out the cause of the problem is not always about victimhood (although, yes, some want to run away from any personal blame). Discovering the cause of a problem helps one in finding solutions.
A person who is depressed does not always have a simple choice to just "get over it" as other people do. Some have an actual biological problem, or severe traumatic event that will need medication to fix, or intense help through therapy. They aren't crying victim for their biological inhibitions, they are just trying to find a solution to solve their problem.
One solution will not work for everyone because the cause of the problem can be completely different. Smoking addiction is an example of this. There are some who are barely affected by chemical or behavioral addiction and can stop smoking with relative ease. Some people have a behavioral addiction to smoking who are unaffected from using the patch. They then have to discover they have a different addiction, and chewing nicotine gum could work. These people aren't inferior; they just have a different cause for the same problem.
Even still, a nicotine patch or nicotine gum won't help some smokers. Their problem isn't only an oral behavioral addiction, but a hand behavioral addiction. Another solution for that is a nicotine toothpick to satisfy both chemical addiction and behavioral addiction for the hands and mouth.
If we had just labeled all smokers who couldn't quit as lazy by choice, we would have never discovered the root cause of the problem and the various different solutions for it. If we don't keep trying to uncover where the problem is coming from we stunt our ability to discover solutions.
Some may be thinking that discovering that liberals and conservatives have different brain functions means that we can find a "solution" to this "problem." We should either label liberals as mentally deficient because they are too emotional, or label conservatives as mentally deficient because they are not empathetic enough.
What's wrong with just noting differences? Just because we discover why some people are left handed doesn't mean we have to "solve" the "left handedness problem."
Although those with depression, schizophrenia, and other "mental disorders" are open to solutions that will alter their mind so they are "normal," that does not mean anyone with a different brain function from "normal" should be fixed.
Hell, we did try to solve the "left handedness problem," for some god knows why reason to conform everyone into a normalcy. But, eventually we got over the obsession to fix the "problem" and we let left handed people alone.
What confuses me is why the public has to be convinced to allow or deny each individual issue instead of the core stance as a whole: just because something is not average does not mean it is wrong. No, instead all the public seems to comprehend is: just because you are left handed, doesn't mean it has to be fixed.
So, we allow the left handed issue to slide without grasping the larger issue that something being non-average does not automatically mean it is wrong. The only time something is actually wrong and needs to be fixed is when the individual has a problem with him/herself, the individual is legally incompetent, or the individual's actions are criminal (the validity of the crime to be debated as we've seen in Texas with consensual anal sex). If an "issue" does not fit one of those three categories, it should not be labeled as a problem that needs to be fixed.
One's core identity is developed from how the brain functions which is in hand influenced by nature and nurture. Who we are is much more than just our physical bodies but also our thoughts, behaviors, etc. Our identity is essentially all we are, and changing that can be seen as killing off the old identity and creating another.
If given the choice, no liberal or conservative would want to undergo a procedure to "fix" their "mental defect." That thought should be ke
I always find it interesting that people jump on the limitations of liberty in the US as being a "conservative" or "right wing" indicator. This is interesting given that these liberties are ones you do not have in most of Europe. Camera monitoring is quite common, for example. In the UK and Germany that I know of they have and are increasing the amount of cameras to watch their citizens. They are for everything from watching traffic to catching criminals. In France you find that the laws are much more in the facour of the police, in relation to obtaining and using evidence, than in the US.
There are plenty of arguments that the US is taking a conservative swing as of late, and I think few people, liberal or conservative, would disagree it's happening (only if it is good or not). However, the increased police powers aren't one of them. That's more an authoritarian-libertarian issue. Like I said, in liberal Europe, you frequently discover that freedoms that are not only taken for granted but codified into law in the US just do not exist.
I am not arguing wether this is good or bad in any case, but simply calling your attention to the fact. To try and say that increased monitoring and police is a "liberal" or "conservative" thing is incorrect.
The amygdala is used for not just fear, but also pleasure. It's linked to autism, PTSD, and narcolepsy/depression. It's also the primary center used for classical conditioning. There is no research indicating that a 'larger' amygdala is more active.
Want to educate yourself? Go read a wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala
Th ere are a lot of pitfalls to avoid when reading psychology papers, because a lot of it is just nonsense. One is directed research: investigating a narrow part of a large phenomenon in order to prove a specific point, even if the rest of the information makes it invalid. While it is interesting that the amygdala is larger in democrats, it doesn't prove any stereotypes.
However: Duh, certain traits and functionalities are linked in the brain, so you can line up certain stereotypes that will prove generally true. It's probably also true that certain traits are generally true of certain races, and stereotypes can be "proven" that way as well - it's just rather frightening research to do, and perhaps immoral as well.
...are you suggesting that USA knew Iraq was "a bad guy" when they sold them all those nasty WMDs?
Come ooon!!! You're being a little too suspicious here!!
I don't have a sig.
Wow!!! A link to an article telling the truth about stem cell research is flamebait? Wow, that's really telling. Can't let facts get in the way of a good lie, I suppose. (now that's flamebait.. can the moderators see the difference?)
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Does anybody know a link to the original research paper? NY Times may or may not have it correct.
Except that conservatives like to believe that gays 'choose' their orientation and that kids are easily 'perverted' by exposure to homosexuality. The truth is that conservatives and liberals have an agenda quite different to what you are talking about and will pick and choose whichever part of nature/nurture serves their ends.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Or were you genetically predisposed to alcoholism? But what about willpower to fight that alcoholism? You could just choose not to drink, right? Well, sure -- unless you're genes say that you lack willpower. But it's still your fault, because you chose to drive to the bar, rather than take a cab... Only you live somewhere where you can't get a cab easily. You live there because that's where you were born, so it's not your fault either.
The thing is, there will always be great reasons, excuses and explanations for things. That's great. It increases knowledge. But it's a mistake that just because there's a reason for something means that there's an excuse for it, and that punishment should be lighter.
If I lop off my neighbor's head in a fit of rage, and people discover that I have a genetic abnormality, a chemical dependency, or a troubled upbringing that made it harder for me to control myself, that doesn't make the neighbor any less dead, and shouldn't necessarily make my punishment any less severe. What it should definitely do is affect the nature of my rehabilitation (anger management therapy vs. chemical treatment vs. gene therapy), and it should possibly be used to help spot other people with the same problem before they go nuts.
If my genes, upbringing and chemicals dictate I'm a controlled, rational, thinking person and I kill my neighbor because I'm bored, I should be punished for that action. If instead, I'm an alcoholic with a troubled upbringing with a genetic predisposition to fits of rage, I should perhaps be held less accountable for losing it and killing my neighbor. On the other hand, knowing that I have problems like this, I should be punished for having alcohol nearby, and having a deadly weapon nearby. The sum of these various punishments should probably be essentially the same as the person without excuses. On the other hand, if I didn't know I had all these issues, then maybe I shouldn't be punished as severely... but maybe I should be punished for not bothering to investigate problems I'd had with alcohol in the past, or with rage, etc. If someone has all these problems, it's not like they manifest themselves suddenly, out of the blue. That is when they should start looking into their problems and trying to make sure that they don't allow themselves to get into a situation where they lose control. If they don't, then that's why they should be punished.
Quite insightful, generally, but overlooking two of the major aspects of the discussion of "Liberals" and "Conservatives" in the US (and, I expect, elsewhere):
1. As idiotic as it may sound, in the US, "Liberal" is a synonym for "Democrat" and "Conservative" is a synonym for "Republican". (Elsewhere, I understand, the party names are differenct, but the effect is the same.) This means that those labeled as "Liberal" are frequently not at all what a dictionary would discribe as liberal, and those who are labeled "Conservative" are usually completely opposed to conservative approaches to government.
2. People view the "Liberals" and "Conservatives" as if they were football teams. If you are a fan of the "Liberals", you root for the Democrats in every contest. If you are a "Conservative", any ongoing productive relationship with a Democrat will have you branded a traitor to the Republican party. In either case, if you don't follow the party leader's guidance exactly, you will be shunned, even if you continue to wear your team's logo merchandise and participate in team events (see John McCain and Joe Lieberman).
The only thing more detestable to either a "Conser vative"/Republican or a "Liberal"/Democrat than the opposing party is a another party altogether (e.g. Libertarian, Green, etc.) Those are considered "outsiders" and "losers" who "don't understand/belong in the [so-called] two-party system".
In short, most people are neither aware of, nor interested in, the issues affect them most. They are simply concerned with whether their "team" gets to take home the trophy at the end of the season.
If you read this entire post, there may be an extremely small chance that this does not describe your behaviour.
Whenever a study like this comes out, I cringe at the quick association of causation. For simplicity's sake: correlation does not equal causation.
This study for example: Even if we take it as indisputable fact that "liberals" have more activity in a certain part of the brain than "conservatives", does that mean that "more activity in that part of the brain makes you conservative"?(I question the lumping of all people into either "liberals" or "conservatives", which is why I put them in quotes)
No. Wouldn't it make sense to say "different ways of thinking about things will lead to different kinds of activity in different parts of the brain"? Add that to this statement: "People who identify with the same party affiliation are likely to think about things in the same way."
So maybe it's not your brain activity that determines your party affiliation, but your point-of-view and way-of-thinking-about-things that determines both your brain activity and what political party you're likely to choose to affiliate yourself with. But, as you say, it seems like people start out assuming that your behavior is "caused" by patterns of brain activity, and then read the "evidence" only with the aim of "discovering which brain activity is the cause".
If it's the latter then it might be that free will doesnt exist, but we would never know for sure.
>The only real difference between Vietnam and Iraq
>is that the insugency doesn't have any state
>backing them with weapons
Oops. Even before the US entered Iraq an Iranian force of over 5,000 was send in. Their first job was to kill all moderate shi'ites (the dominant religion in Persian Iran and Arabian Southern Iraq). Next objective was to create an atmosphere in which every Iraqi associates American Democracy efforts with insecurity, death, and poverty. Only than will the Iraqi people reject this 'foreign concept' of democracy. A democracy in Iraq is the most threatning geopolitical change that could happen to the Iranian theocracy.
(Ever wondered why Israel is so quiet since the invasion in Iraq, why there a no more suicide bombers like before? Iran has kept that conflict at a rather constant level that suited their interests, not the palestinian needs. Now they have diverted their resources to Iraq and the US, giving Israel a temporary period of rest.)
That doesn't make you any less of a fag.
Republicans have commandeered fear. They use fear to lead the people.
And Democrats have commandeered victims. They tell all the black folks, and any other identifiable minority folks, to vote Democrat because they are all poor victims.
And Democrats have commandeered fear too. They tell people to vote for Democrats because Republicans aren't sufficiently anti-gun, and they imply that if you vote Republican you might die due to a lack of "gun control". They tell everyone to vote Democrat because the Republicans want to take lunch away from starving school children, they want to throw feeble old people out into the streets to die, they want to take away all funding for AIDS research so an epidemic could kill everyone, etc.
Also, I am dismayed by how the Democrats are the party of attacking their opponents. Republicans aren't just less effective leaders, they are bad people who want to do evil things and must be stopped!!!
Disclaimer: I am a libertarian, which means both Republicans and Democrats hate my politics. I think the Second Amendment actually means what it says, so the Democrats don't like me. I think the government should stay the heck away from victimless crimes and stay out of people's bedrooms, so the Republicans don't like me. I think the schools should be run by local school boards, not the Federal government, so neither side likes me.
In practice I tend to vote Republican because I dislike the Democrat candidate more than the Republican candidate. Our government is already too big, and the Democrats want to make it bigger; at least some of the Republicans sometimes resist making it bigger (although their record is far from perfect). Actually, I'll vote Libertarian for any candidate who has even a slender chance to win, and sometimes I'll vote Libertarian even if there is no possible chance.
I wonder what that brain scan thingy would make of me.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Political views definitely change over time.
But then again, so does your brain's tendency towards certain levels of activity in certain areas, chemical balance, and such.
Rule #1: Correlation does not mean causation.
Rule #2: Correlation does not mean causation.
Rule #3: Correlation does not mean causation.
Rule #4: Correlation does not mean causation.
Rule #5: Correlation does not mean causation.
Feeling fear is a prerequisite for cowardice but it is also a prequisite for bravery. Without fear, one cannot be brave, just insane or stupidly reckless. Bravery is feeling fear and yet doing what must be done IN SPITE of fear.
Thus, I would have to conclude that those with a heightened sense of empathy and fear are more disposed towards true bravery while those without these attributes are more in line with recklessness and coldness. Interestingly, this seems to describe the difference pretty completely between conservatives and liberals/progressives. The latter feels empathy for those around them, both human and nonhuman and seeks to minimize their pain and fear. They also experience fear but nonetheless are often able to dig up true bravery and stand against the cold and unfeeling robotons (conservatives) regardless of personal consequences.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I think fear and empathy can be very important qualities. By "fear" I don't mean shaking and peeing your pants; and by "empathy", I'm not referring to crying after watching Titanic with a box of bon-bons. I'm referring to caution and the ability to understand people you may need to confront or represent.
For anyone who's interested, there's a fairly cool DVD out called "The Fog of War." The Fog of War is a (academy award winning) documentary which focuses on former secretary of defense McNamara. The documentary spends a lot of time reviewing the flawed decision making process which surrounded the Vietnam war.
Whether you like McNamara or think he's an SOB, he spends a lot of time talking about how a lack of empathy screwed us over in Vietnam. Although we may have felt bad for South Vietnam, we didn't take the time to do our homework. We never really researched the history and ideologies of North / South Vietnam and China, and that bit us in the butt. A similar thing happened in Iraq. We expected to be greeted with flowers and open arms, but now we're being shot at.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
It sounds like the line about Conservatives being heartless, and it's an election year, so it's probably a Gartner study. :>
Putting people in monetary bondage, chosing their schools for them, doing _nothing_ for the War on Poverty (which was their idea) sounds like things in the 'heartless' column, to me.
I heard, and I'd love to find the link to confirm it, that under Bush (41) more black millionaires were made than any time before.
Can anyone find that demographic? (Don't fight Jesse Jackson to reveal it; he wouldn't want to you to know his reason to exist is gone.)
:) Trust me; Conservative aren't heartless, not by a longshot. They don't all wear pinstripes and work on the Republican ticket, either...
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Judging character of the President != judging the character of someone who comments on whether Bush has the proper character to be President (which he obviously does not!)
If I say Leftism is good and Bush is Bad, it is certainly logical for you to say that Leftism is bad and Bush is good, and hopefully provide some evidence or reasoning behind your assertion.
But if I say leftism is good, and you accuse me of having a "mid-life crisis" (see post above) or accuse me of being in a cult (see post above), then you are logically unsound in your argument.
BTW, being President requires a certain character, and Bush does not have that character.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Ummmm. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Nothing. Even Der Fuhrer has admitted this. They can always Cheney the truth by saying that the real connecting evidence is a matter of national security and therefore 'top secret,' but Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 until the US invaded. Now Radical Islam has the war it always wanted. I think Cheney and Rumsfeld made a major tactical error. Never give your enemy what it wants.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I don't know that it doesn't exist. In the same way that I don't know that cheese sandwiches that play tennis don't exist.
And, just out of curiosity, do you think John Kerry has that character?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Initially I was going to argue that secular humanism has theological implications, but I see your point that it is actually a belief system since it generally displaces other more traditional beliefs.
That said secular humanism is gaining in popularity because there are so few arbitrary moral positions that alienate potential believers. Many popular religions have issues with gender and sexuality that drive potential believers away. If I were gay why would I choose to believe in a god that tells me I am doing wrong?
There are still morals in secular humanism, but they are based on observations of results rather than dogma written by cult leaders thousands of years ago. Murder is wrong because it violates the rights of the individual. Homosexuality is not wrong because it doesn't hurt anyone at all.
If people got the opportunity to choose their beliefs then secular humanism would be in the majority worldwide. Sadly most people don't really choose; they go along with their family beliefs.
I was pretty riled up about this whole presidential election thing too, but now I'm not even going to vote. I'm pretty well-informed (or so I think) on all sides of issues and looking forward to voting this November. Then I went to a John Kerry rally, and everything changed. This was my first political rally an I was blown away by the mindlessness of the crowd. People were getting way too excited and it was mob mentality. Nobody paid attention to a word he said, they all just cheerd and waved their signs after he'd pause his speech. I"m sure G W B rallies are exactly like this. I was so affected by this that I decided the only smart move is to not vote for either candidate.
I'm sick of all this get out the vote crap now too. I think it only legitimizes these smarmy campaigns and brainwashingly hypnotic rallies. So this November, don't vote for anyone except yourself. There's no difference and it's all just photo ops and Bruce Springsteen songs.
http://www.commaecho.com
"Perhaps we form political affiliations by semiconsciously detecting commonalities with other people, commonalities that ultimately reflect a shared pattern of brain function."
I have no political affiliations (even with most anarchists or even most so-called Transhumanists) and few commonalities with other people (other than junk food, movies and babes.)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"Perhaps blind people should stop letting their genetically predisposed problem be a problem. It's their choice to be blind right?"
Let me correct the previous poster with a better example. Since we are talking about:
"However, we are not bound to act out of them" - [desires and urges].
Maybe we should talk about the root of it all - decision-making, desire and love.
Maybe we should just consciously decide to outlaw these - oops! That's a decision.
Deciding you want to fuck a M vs. a F is nothing more than a choice. Based on desire, of course, but that is completely a human URGE, which is based on genetics and experience.
So let's throw them all out, shoot up on drugs and watch the boob TOOB all day long.
Or does your religion also look down upon laziness and gluttony, the most prominent american characteristics of this new century??
I am in the same place. Kerry for President, republicans for Congress. Gridlock '04!
Sadly, I think this may be one of those seismic shifts in party platforms that takes place every generation. It may be quite a few years before there is a true conservative party again. If I had to guess, it would be that the democrats are migrating there.
Milo
By and large, both determinists and those who believe in the concept of free will agree that humans have the ability to make decisions. The philosophical difference between the two groups is that a determinist tends to rigorously question why certain decisions are made over others.
When asked why someone did something, someone who attributes human behavior to free will may be content with self-reported answers such as "I felt like it" or "I wanted to". A determinist may ask "why did you feel like it", "what made you want such a thing?".
I have free will in the sense that I can make decisions, but I did not implement the decision-making algorithms that control my behavior. I never programmed myself to prefer peanuts to cashews, or to be attracted to waist to hip ratios of 0.7. Nor did I set the temperature that would make me retreat from a heat source.
An event is either caused by a preceding event, or it is random. I like to think that most of my decisions are controlled rather than random. If my decisions are random, is that really such a good thing? I would like to hear an opinion regarding weather human behavior is controlled or random from a proponent of free will.
I consider myself a determinist because I understand that my behavior is under the control of my history of punishment and reward.
I hypothesize that free will was a concept manufactured to defend a god that was either stupid enough of cruel enough or sufficiently reckless to create things like the tree of knowledge and the devil.
Liberals play emotions like fear? Are you serious? There are certainly emotions that liberals play to, but conservatives pretty much own the patent on fear. That's what most of the War on Terror is about (particularly the parts that require the surrender of civil liberties) as well as the elevation by the GOP of institutionalized homophobia to a constitutional status. Fear and its political exploitation is the very foundation of GWB's entire administration and campaign.
Liberals make decisions on feelings. Conservatives make decisions on reason.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
You realize that Gattaca is science fiction movie? You know, those things that could be farther from truth than Michael Moore's 'documentaries' :)
you wrote:
"It was Winston Churchill, and he said that if you are under 30 and not liberal, you've no heart, and if you're over 30 and not conservative, you've no brain."
And of course Churchill was born to the manor, silver spoon, blue blood, born rich, etc. And that statement of his was perfectly logical for those of his cohort, his rich upper class brethren and kin. They often are liberal while young, at college, etc. But when older, they rediscover where their own best interests lie. Their hearts harden. They run for office/sit for Parliament, etc., and make sure the unwashed working class masses cannot get their paws on the upper class wealth. THey do have a brain, and so they become conservative.
But for the rest of us, the unwashed working class masses, that saying should, in a sense, be inverted, or at least, by the time we get old, we should be liberal. Or at least, we should be, unless we get rich (by definition a minority).
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Exactly. Fear keeps us from walking into traps, no matter how tempting the bait. Empathy allows us to predict what others are likely to do. The Iraq trap was baited with oil. The bait looked good. Get the oil, sell it to pay for the war. Fear and common sense should have kept us out. Empathy would have allowed us to predict that the citizens of Iraq would have resisted our occupation, blown up the pipelines. Hampered by inactive or damaged amygdalas, the Neo-Cons walked in, took the bait, got themselves embroiled in a stupid war. When Kerry tried to caution them about blundering around in minefields, they accused him of being too "sensitive."
Say what you will about Florid, but that is exactly what we have. There is a program called "Florida Bright Future Scholarships" where a high school GPA of 3.5 or higher and a Florida high school diploma gets you 100% of a state school's tuition, and 3.0 gets you 75%. Florida state schools include the University of Florida, which is a very good school, and even if you only get the 75%, tuition is still quite reasonable in state. Look here and here for info.
And EVERYONE was disadvantaged when they came here. Georgia used to be an English penal (prison) colony, with WHITE prisoners, and, like Australia, turned out just fine.
I also highly recommend Dr. Sowell's "The Vision of the Anointed". Amazon's running a special on the pair for $28.77.
...derided by their peers saying that getting an education and trying to work and better themselves, they are accused of acting 'white'. [...]The sad thing is...when you hear someone say things like this...even if they ARE black, like Bill Cosby has done recently
Ok, I'll bite: When exactly did Dr. Cosby accuse young education-seeking Blacks of "acting white"?
"...the fact that secular humanism is a theological proposition..."
So far you've sounded quite rational, but to call this a fact without any backup seems quite the opposite to me.
Just to make sure I knew what I was talking about, I took a look at www.secularhumanism.org. Here's a quote from the site:
"Secular humanists accept a world view or philosophy called naturalism, in which the physical laws of the universe are not superseded by non-material or supernatural entities such as demons, gods, or other 'spiritual' beings outside the realm of the natural universe."
If this is a theological proposition, it is only weakly so. It really doesn't ask whether God or gods exist, it just refuses the occurrence of miracles. How much less theological could one be? How could one be much less theological? I don't mean those as rhetorical questions.
It amazes me how American politics can be so binary. There are more then just two opinions in the world. All this squabbling between two political parties with almost the same ideas makes American politics look like a childish debate. What is even more pathetic is that it seems that Americans seem buy into this crap by labeling each other with catch phrases used by these politicians. Now we have psychological studies on it too.Come on! Stop aiding bigotry through linking this garbage.
Before this goes too far, allow me to clarify my political beliefs. I don't believe in "Conservative" or "Liberal". I see things as interactions between the following:
... etc.
:)
#1. The Rights of individuals
#2. Those individuals' Responsibilities to society
#3. Society's Rights
#4. Society's Responsibilities to the individual
Gun control. I believe the individual has a Right to own a gun, but by exercising that Right, the individual also incures a greater Responsibility to keep Society (other people) from any harm from that choice. Failing to fulfil your Responsibilities is a crime. Example, you bring a gun into your house but fail to secure it and your kid kills someone with it (either accidentally by showing it off or intentionally when angry). You are charged with a crime (the same crime regardless of whether the shooting is accidental or intentional).
"What I meant to do was a establish a simple theoretical basis for the two different ideologies, and show how this theoretical basis gives rise to differing opinions on societal phenomona."
I can understand that. I'd also like to point out that "Conservatives" and "Liberals" also diverge on the CORRECT way to deal with the problems (not just what causes the problems).
"It's just my observation that conservatives tend to see personal character flaws and inhibitions as being the primary reason why some people can't achieve personal wealth and satisfaction."
As a generalization, based upon what I hear on talk radio and such, I can agree with that. But that might just be the loudest voices I'm hearing and not the general belief.
"That's one reason why they don't like things such as affirmative action and welfare - because they feel that such actions don't do anything to help inviduals who are having trouble succeeding develop a personal intiative and drive."
-and-
"Liberals, on the other hand, seem to believe that it's mainly institutional and environmental factors that prevent some people from suceeding."
Here's the funny part: I believe that it is mainly institutional and environmental factors that support people. If your daddy was rich when he died, most likely you will be rich when you die. If your daddy was poor when he died, most likely you will be poor when you die. If your daddy was middle-class
I believe that the Conservative middle class and above are just rationalizing their place in the hierarchy. They want to believe that they got there because they worked hard.
But I know poor families who work more hours a week than those people. It's more family than choices.
But I also believe that poor people who say that the system is holding them back are, most often, rationalizing also. It is more difficult to overcome the obstacles when you're poor or a minority or do not have a supportive family or whatever, but it can be done.
Example: I believe that if G.W. Bush had been born to a poor family, he would NOT be President yet (nor would he have finished high school).
"So I don't label people as 'good' or 'bad' per se, but I do strongly beleive in the idea that certain people are prone to behave in certain ways, and there isn't much you can do about it."
Cool. I think I can agree with that. BUT! There is another side to that...
Can you agree that MOST of the "good" people currently inhabiting the middle-class would act the same as MOST of the people currently inhabiting the lower-class currently act IF the only change was that they were born into that family?
This is what I believe. Sure, there are some individuals who will choose crime no matter what (either mugging, armed robbery or Enron-style looting). But I believe that the majority of people could be switched between economic states and they would "choose" to act exactly the same as the other people in that class "choose" to act.
"As for your enron example, I think it validates the Conservative model of thinking but goes against the liberal model."
Pretty much.
That's why I included it. But I believe it is an extreme instance and that the majority of people would not act that way.
Liberalism is a mental disease. It is the false confusion that emotion is intellect.
Score & Karma: SASA: Slashdot Approval Seekers Anonymous
a lot of people in Romania use the expression (approx translation)
"what, are your amigdals blocking your throat?"
as a substitute for
"what, you don' have the balls to do it?"
i always though thats only a "nicer language" substitute ... now looks like they had a deeper insight
Why do Republicans intimate that Democrats are weak when it comes to war or fighting for "FREEDOM"?
...
WW1 Woodrow Wilson - Democrat
WW2 Theodore Roosevelt - Democrat
Korea Harry Truman - Democrat
Bay of Pigs JFK Democrat
Vietnam JFK & Lyndon B. Johnson - Democrats
Veterans - Al Gore, John Kerry,
Shirkers - GW, Cheney,
NIXON acolytes Cheney, Rumsfeld
"it just refuses the occurrence of miracles."
You don't call that a theological proposition, or only "weakly so"? How _more_ theological could you be? This statement says that "either there is no God, or if there is a God, He does NOT do X." That's a plainly theological statement.
Engineering and the Ultimate
If it is the case that "liberals" and "conservatives" have different brains, why don't similar divisions of political views exist all over the planet. Perhaps you Americans really are a breed apart...
Fee-yucking gak!
Your entire rant was information free. Simply your opinion stated in a very psuedo-authoritive way. Provide some reasons why leftism is superior.
And, Chomsky fer Crissakes!
Only if you never took a science course.
Oh, and to the troll who thinks this confirms their suspicions - he's got it bass-ackwards. Those on the left make choices based on their enlightened self-interest (getting the community to pay for their kids' schooling, instead of shouldering the burden themselves, protecting themselves against big business as a group, etc), while the Republicans make their choices based on emotion and ideology.
Time to start singing "Every Sperm Is Sacred", while we attack Iraq, and stop stem cell research, and family planning funding...?
mark
"Perhaps we form political affiliations by semiconsciously detecting commonalities with other people, commonalities that ultimately reflect a shared pattern of brain function."
Those who have the ability to think and do for themselves are Republicans.
Those who won't think for themselves and choose follow the crowd and want the government to hold their hands and subsidize their lack of a sense of personal responsibility are Democrats.
Look at this checklist to understand how a republicans mind works.
t m
The following checklist summarizes all if not most of the psychological or psychiatric defects or deformities that psychologists and criminologists thought, at one time, were indicative of psychopathy. These indicators were often the basis for insanity pleas, mitigating circumstances, or just understanding criminals in the early 20th century. Today, much of it is used by the law as aggravating circumstances. Please note that this list contains many items which are presently regarded as myths or falsehoods about criminals.
Freudian slips of the tongue (indicative of mental conflict)
Guilt feelings (covered up, but wants to be punished for something)
Uses defense mechanism of projection (blaming others for own faults)
Uses defense mechanism of displacement (ditching, self-handicapping, settling for 2nd best, being own worst enemy, but feels entitled to something or being 1st)
Oral fixation (smokes or always has to have something in mouth)
Oedipus complex (or other love/hate relationship with parents)
Comes from dysfunctional family or broken home (absent or abusive father)
Impervious to fear, anxiety, depression, or remorse (unremorseful) Superficially charming, a real cool cat (manipulative and conning)
Inability to love or express emotions deeply, can't respond to kindness (cold)
Pathological lying (for no reason at all, can't help self)
No self-insight (doesn't reflect much upon own personality makeup)
No self-humor (can't stand to be the butt of jokes or can't laugh at self)
A fairly high IQ (good grades in school or disparity in achievement) Uses neologisms (makes up strange new words, abbreviations, or sayings)
Fascination with fire (or death, or purified ways to destroy something)
Cruelty to animals (or doesn't like animals)
Lack of probity, courtesy, or doesn't tolerate society's "niceties" or obligations
Moody, obsessive-compulsive, suffers from one or more phobias
Does not tend to learn from mistakes unless immediate punishment given
Lack of formal-operational thinking (tends to think in concrete, black-or-white terms)
Identity conflict (often with delayed adolescence, hasn't grown up in certain ways)
Preconventional morality (thinks things are wrong only because it might lead to punishment or it's not in his/her best interests right now, failure to understand disparities between own behavior and socially acceptable behavior, often in trouble with law)
http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/301/psycpath.h
Republicans believe everyone is seperate and they are ego centric. Democrats view everyone as connected and so they want to help others.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Seastead this.
For many of us, aging is accompanied by the atrophy :(]
or degeneration of specific brain subsystems [consider
Parkinson's a severe example, age related
memory loss a more typical and benign example].
The reported finding combined with the assumption
that the amygdala might specifically slow down in
some aging brains would go long way toward
explaining why so many of my friends who once
told me not to trust anyone over 30 now tell me
they don't listen to anyone but Rush.
[I am really museumpeace but too old to remember my password
I accept that there's no such thing as free will, but the idea that it renders law and morality void is silly. If there's no free will, then decisions are made by mechanically weighing the result of the actions. If the human machine knows in advance that something is against the law and will result in punishment, then it is less likely to break that law.
Morality is similar to law, they just tend to be the less straightforward things that keep societies running smoothly. Take the commandment about not "coveting" your neighbor's wife. Objectively, it's hard to put your finger on anything that's wrong about that. Nobody is physically deprived of anything, nobody is physically hurt. What's the problem? The problem is simply human nature. There's less friction in society if people don't do that. What's good for society is good for its individual members (and for their children, and thus their genes), even if it goes against their short term interests. Things that are immoral are bad decisions for the human computer, so they're valid things to follow.
The only logical way of dealing with the concept of there being no free will is to act as if there is free will. If there isn't free will, then you're not actually making the decision. If there is free will, then you're making the only correct decision. The only wrong decision you can possibly make is to act like there isn't free will when there actually is.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Perhaps we form political affiliations by semiconsciously detecting commonalities with other people, commonalities that ultimately reflect a shared pattern of brain function.
Or, perhaps we form political affiliations by CONSCIOUSLY detecting commonalities with other people?
I mean please, do people really wake up one morning and, somewhere between their 3rd and 4th spoonful of Capt Crunch suddenly feel a powerful attraction toward a certain party? Hardly. I would hope most people would decide on their political affiliations after some contemplation, but maybe this is too much to ask.
Or, I suppose a lot of people choose their political affiliation based on their parents' choices, and then never examine them. Frighteningly this may be a large group.
I agree with the basic premise that there is a fundamentally different outlook between people of the two political camps in the US. I (as a conservative) find dyed-in-the-wool Liberals frighteningly naive. My best friend who IS such a Liberal probably finds me disturbingly heartless.
HOWEVER, I strongly respect him and his intellect, and I trust he does the same for me. We disagree on a number of issues, but we're still friends since 20+ years.
What I don't like is the public climate of real hatred that is growning between the two sides. I see fewer people willing to discuss issues that they disagree about, preferring to shout and stomp their feet. I suppose it's an extension of piss-poor US education, but it seems that between the parties there's a lot of heat but very little light.
As a conservative, I do wonder why it is that people grow generally more conservative as they grow older. I'd be curious to figure out what that means, without the flaming trolls having their say...
-Styopa
In 1863 the Negro was told that he was free as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation. But he was not given any land to make that freedom meaningful.
In 1976, I was told I was free as a result of reaching 18 years of age. All I was given was instructions that I needed to go out and join the job market... even though I'm white, I was given no property, and no special birthright. While I did not suffer under slavery (some of today's kids might think the tight discipline of my youth was slavery, but it was not), the "meaningfulness" of my freedom was entirely tied to what I was willing to make of it, just as the "meaningfulness" of the 1863 slave's freedom was. Today, it is illegal to discriminate against anyone in hiring, based upon a variety of criteria, unless they're a white male under the age of 50. Most of these people never owned a slave, and were never in a position to have denied someone else a job because of the color of their skin. And the unfairness of that makes it damn hard for them to accept the idea that someone will less education or less skills has priority over them... or that anyone from these "privileged" groups who didn't need the special programs to succeed really did make it on their own.
Walter E. Williams once related that, when faced with a choice of doctors where he only knew the age and race of the doctors, how he would make his choice. If they were both in their late 50s, and one was black, he'd take the black doctor, because he knew that this man had worked hard to get where he was.
But, if they were in their 30s, he'd go with the white doctor, because he would have no way of knowing if the black doctor had gotten through on his skills, or the need for the university to fulfill its quotas.
This is not the desired result of affirmative action, but it is the common one. It only gets worse when people use the argument that removing race-based quotas hurts blacks, purpetuating the myth that blacks aren't smart enough to succeed on their own.
During slavery blacks were not allowed to get married. The biggest slaves were paired by force with each other. So you say the problem is cultural? Who's fault is that?
"There are many other minorities in this country that dont seem to have these kinds of problems...or at least not ones like these that tend to grind generation after generation into a dead end life that just propogates itself...
"
Slavery for hundreds of years will destroy any culture.
You are right we are not all created equal, but what does this have to do with minorities? Every race has talented people so you make a point about nothing perhaps in an attempt to shift the topic onto other issues.
Do I sense subtle spin here? Do you work for FoxNews?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
The other problem would be the fact that discrimination continues to exist even today, and that until the 1960's people of color were not even allowed to sit in the same room with white people.
Most of these people of course who survived the segregation period went on to have children and these children most likely were taught to distrust the government and that America is not going to tolerate them.
So you do have a point, I think you are on the mark with your hypothesis. The solution would be to just wait for about 20-40 years. It's going to take longer than one generation.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
The fact is, they are Satans in human form.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
What about Bad Brains?
If this flawed biology triumphs over freewill, i.e. producing a serial killer, doesn't the law of natural selection demand this individual be eliminated so that the human race becomes stronger instead of digressing?
The point: whether the result of biology or freewill, the punishment should be the same.
Obviously this guy is a republican and the basis for the republican agenda is survival of the fittest. Which can be simplified to mean never help anyone but yourself.
Your material comes from the movie with Julia Styles.
I found it very enlighteing. Could ghetto geeks comfim it is a true scenario?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
3) I think Universities are also slighly liberally biased because I've noticed that a lot my liberal friends believe that one way to change the world is to ensure good education, and one good way to do that is to be a teacher.
I would add to this the idea that liberals seem to be less likely to take economic risks. This may indeed be rooted in that whole fear thing related to in the article. Given this premise, liberals would be more likely to stay in the educational system, sacrificing wealth for stability/modicum of happiness. Economic risk takers would take the chance and venture out into entrepreneurial world...and leave a safe but less lucrative environment.
Universities tend to be pretty liberal in their ideology. I had a teacher who always geve everyone the same grade. Everyone got a C as long as you showed up for class. His explanation is that it is not fair for some kids to get a better grade than the others who did not have the same advantages. I guess that it is not fair that some people are smarter than others or are willing to work harder than others, so everyone should be the same. Isn't tenue a great thing. This guy should be unemployed not teaching a 400 level course at a large university.
It might have been S. Harris...
#!
"However, it would be silly to say, "He chose to, it's his fault." With a knowledge of the causes
of fatness, drunkeness, homosexuality, etc, we can
take steps toward undoing what should be undone and preventing what may be."
I agree with the fatness and drunkeness, but why homosexuality? What medical condition has been seen to be caused by having a relationship with the same sex? Fatness is obesity, and drunkenness is alcoholism; both shown to have huge negative impacts on health.
Why not just leave gays alone, and let them live their life on their own terms?
Well, whatever. I'm glad we can have serious political debates on slashdot.
Where in my comment did I meantion the GOP or the current administration? The conservative movement is dead.
Balanced budget Amendment - Dead
States Rights - Dead
Pro-Life Movement - Dead....and before you say otherwise look at where my tax money is going. Its paying for abortions in this country and others around the world.
School Choice - Dead. The GOP has owned most State Goverments forever and has no help from either the current Administration or from the party in giving school choice. Instead GWB and Ted "I killed my Girl Friend" Kennedy wrote the waste of money no Child Left behind bill.
And then what do they do? They try to pander to the Religious Right over gay marrage where most of us could care less who has a civil contract. All the time knowing the issue would never pass anyway........Check it again. I Never said anything about the current administration.
Why dont you try discussing the comment rather than lauching a attack that has NOTHING to do with my posting.
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
The Democrats want a strong America and the best way to have a strong America is to unite America instead of dividing America up and forcing everyone to compete with each other. The way to fight terrorism is the same in that you must fight it not just with force as the mentally ill republicans believe but also with a carrot. This means you must actually help countries who stop being terrorists to prevent new terrorists from forming. Terrorism forms when survival of the fittest mentality is taken to the extreme and the losers decide to stop playing by the rules. This means we should ease up on the competition with ourselves.
You have a very reasonable perspective (and I suspect one that we will all have to take when materialism finally trumps dualism) however the way I look at it is that if "free will" arises from purely physical means, and if we someday have the scientific knowledge to trace every cause and effect from your genes through all your experiences to some action you produce, should you really be held responsible for those actions any more than a hurricaine should be held responsible for its distruction?
Yes. We allocate responsibility in order to control other people's behavior. We could try to punish a hurricane for destroying a village, but it wouldn't change the hurricane's future behavior. Many legal systems have the means to limit the punishment of people for whom it would be ineffective (as is the case with the insanity defense). This has led some to erroneously believe that if it is found that certain criminal behaviors may have been elicited by environmental and biological influences, that the defendant should no longer be punished. A determinist understands that finding a cause does not necessarily render the powers of reward and punishment useless.
Note that this is NOT an article about Bush in any way, and in fact is an article provided by an HMO (Cigna). However, there is a very strong correlation with Bush's behavior to the point of it being scarey.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Take a look at what http://fundrace.org/ reports for the zip code 87544 (Los Alamos New Mexico). It seems that most of the people and money there support democrats. In addition, the big Bush money in Los Alamos comes from not from scientists who work at the lab but from realtors, etc. I'm not sure what to make of it.
My guess is that people who think and re-think things for a living (folks like myself) oppose Bush's unreflective faith based decision factory approach.
"I am a liberal"
"I am a republican"
I'd like to see a medical study on those people who feel a need to put themselves into a neat little defined box with label, rather than just have their own opinions, beliefs and motivations and vote as best as they can according to that?
I find it very hard to believe that anyone can have political and other opinions and beliefs so perfectly aligned to any particular side that they can go around calling themselves "Party X" or "Party Y".
What the hell is wrong with THOSE brains?
a lot of that came about from necessity. You are a family, best income you have is close to minimum wage, with zero benefits. Say you go get welfare, make close to that in a check, but more importantly you get medical coverage now. That's where a lot of the broken families starting in the mid 60s came from, now it's common. It's also the law, people living low income and getting AFDC for the kids can only have one parent at home, as far as I know. If both parents there, SOL.
Abortion is murder (simple biological fact, aborted human life == dead human)
And what does it matter?
We have laws against killing *mature* humans in place specifically because a society where killing mature humans is allowed is much less effective -- if I have to run around with a gun and be suspicious of everyone, I get a lot less done. Most people have no problems with killing cows or pigs, say. Zillions of sperm die each day. The only people that have a problem with killing a fetus are those that have chosen as a fundamental value that killing a fetus is unacceptable. I'm all for letting people decide that killing *their* fetus is unacceptable, just as I am all for letting people pray in the direction of Mecca. What I take issue with is when people try to force their values on other people, values which have no pragmatic backing.
gay marriage is just a continuation of our unelected judges writing law in clear violation of their Constitutional restraints
I'm lost as to what you mean. First, the primary people allowing gay marriage have been *elected* *administrators*, like the mayor of San Francisco. Second, the role of the judge is to interpret law. Neither the law nor the US Consitution forbids gay marriage. In the United States, unless something is specifically made illegal, it is legal. Judges have looked at our legal code and said "nope, nothing banning it". The only way they'd be writing law is if they decided in the *other* direction.
Conservatives have *tried* to push through national law banning gay marriage and it has been shot down by the bulk of America. This is just the majority speaking, nothing more.
sex ed shouldn't be entrusted to the government education monopoly
I'll call bullshit again. You are free to send your child to a private school, to homeschool them, or what-have-you. Sex ed is an *extremely* PC process that makes no value statements. The question is simply whether or not children should remain ignorant of something that has huge social impact and is a significant chunk of our biology.
social programs should be funded by voluntary contributions and not tax money confiscated by force (try not paying your taxes sometime)
We tried that, early on in the United States. The federal government had no power to ensure itself any income. It didn't work, because not surprisingly, nobody wanted to fund it.
a rather large subset of Muslims have declared war on all Americans who don't think and act as they do (that includes you)
"Rather large subset"? There are *millions* of Muslims in the United States *alone* that aren't out "declaring war". And how did you manage to forget about abortion clinic bombings and shootings?
and we have to deal with that, and we shouldn't make environmentalism a substitute for traditional religion.
There are people who irrationally support environmentalism -- "we can't hurt the cute fluffy kitties in the rainforests!" However, there are very clear and accepted economic, game-theoretic reasons for supporting environmentalism -- it's a public-good problem, where it is in the interest of individuals to damage the environment for short-term profit, even if it winds up hurting everyone down the road. Environment-protecting laws were not made by legislators looking at fluffy kitties.
Most atheists are frauds who find substitute deities (environmentalism, Communism, heck just look at all the Castro worshippers).
No. Neither environmentalism nor communism is a religion. They are a set of techniques and analysis for dealing with a public good and government, respectively. There are no fundamental, axiomic values that must be accepted as a part of either, as is necessary to be a Christian.
May we never see th
"War Crimes and the American Conscience"
http://vax.vmi.edu/MARION/AAU-8559
If you honestly think vietnam has no relavance in today's debate, you really do need to revisit your history. This book, published in 1970, paints the very picture of the current state of affairs as related to the policies enacted during the vietnam war. I find it chilling in its accuracy of predicting how many of the bad policies that brought us into vietnam are sadly being repeated today.
It's not a hard book to find, and should be avaible in your local library. It's hardly a biased political rant, but a oft times freighting bi-partisan fact sheet of the Congressional Conference on War and National Responsibility of 1970.
We are not in new territory, it just has a different name, a different face, but same broken policies and ideologies.
That's a lot of other hands.
Your ramble illustrates the very predicament we are in - you keep second-guessing the criminal in your story. You are treating responsibility as a multi-hued spectrum. I don't think it has that many colors; unless you are certifiable (and I mean rubber-room, not members of Prozac Nation), you should be held responsible for your actions. No excuses! Back in college, I got a DUI, spent the night in jail and had my license suspended. "Oh, your honor, but I was emotionally distraught over breaking up with my boyfriend! My parents took me out of therapy too early! Everyone in my family is an abusive booze-hound! I should be on anti-depressants to keep me from drinking!" Bullshit. I messed up, I paid for it. I am sick of everyone's excuses for acting like dorks being the catalysts for some new research or drug or media blitz.
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
From the outside (i.e. the rest of the world) it is really difficult for us to tell the difference between Republicans and Democrats.
They both seem to have very similar platforms.. they both are owned by big business.. and members of both parties can't go 30 seconds without saying "the American People(tm)" or "the Real Issues(tm)".
You may be onto something with the temperment scale, but you are way out of line making gross overgeneralizations about liberals using emotions and conservatives using logic. Your disclaimer is also utter bullshit: "Note: An argument can be logical and still be utter nonsense. I am making no statement as to the validity of their arguments.)" WTF is that sentence? Even in the temperment scale, a logical argument is an argument presented with facts and reason. An emotional one is one that appeals to the persons feelings that may or may not be logical. If you ask me, every US politican is using the latter, period.
First of all, I pride myself on both being very logical and very liberal. Pick an argument, I'll tell you the "party line" of the democrats and I'll tell you why it makes logical sense.
I'll also give you the conservative line and logically tell you what's up with that point of view and the logic behind that.
Frankly, most politicians are thinkers, it's the american public who are mostly feelers. That's on both sides of the party line.
Most arguments are presented to the american public as emotional ones, not logical ones. Logical ones take too much time to explain, and most americans, hell probably most people in the world, won't get them.
For example, take abortion. The conservative line is usually that "abortion is murder!" or something like. The liberal line is "Don't take away a woman's right to control her own body!" The first argument is simple, the second not so much. Both are emotional, because they sound like political battle cries.
But just because an argument is simple doesn't mean it's logical. In fact in a serious and calm debate, there are tons of issues you could bring up. What if the woman was raped? What if it could kill the mother or cause severe medical complications at birth? What if the fetus has severe health problems? What if the baby will grow up in severe poverty? The issue isn't black and white and it's very complicated. This is why laws are complicated, they have to take care of many different contingencies.
However, you can't explain this type of shit to the average american, they glaze over or get upset because they think you are patronizing them, or are so gung ho about their position that they can't see logic. The politicians know this and play to that with slogans and catch phrases.
I would like to hope and think more logical thinkers are democrats, because republicans more often take the black and white stance, since it's easier to sell ("Oh if you are pro abortion you must be against america and pro killing babies!") Bush himself uses this tactic all the time, especially in the "war on terrorism."
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I've never eaten dog meat before, even though some cultures do. I have no desire to eat dog meat. Sure, I don't *know* if I'd like it, but I have no drive to try it. I consider myself straight, and like dog meat, I have no drive or desire to try gay sex.
It's scary being a Flash and Flex developer on Slashdot. You guys are unnaturally rabid.
You mentioned choices
So you believe gay's choose to be gay? Do you believe people choose to be born in a slum vs a mansion?
People are given a hand and everyone has a different card. This means it takes more work for someone born in a slum to be successful than it takes someone born in a mansion. Most people who are successful were born into it and very few people in the USA actually immigrated here and in the same lifetime become rich or even middle class.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
I'm bulling the BS card on this whole article
They said there were some people who actually believed any part of what SBVFT is saying, but I've never actually seen one before.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Think twice when you are sold something by a fear mongering right winger (of either party).
Or by someone who wants to eliminate your liberal vote, by claiming that you should waste your vote by giving it to someone that can't beat Bush.
The only political thing that does is hand the election to Bush, and give us another four years of him (and this time, with no worries about re-election).
If you really want to effect change, agitate for voting reform, to a system that doesn't essentially guarantee a two-party system. *Fix* the system. Throwing a tantrum and just making stupid voting decisions within the existing system doesn't help you, and *does* help those that are politically opposed to you.
May we never see th
There is too much moderation abuse in this thread. I can't read /. upside down (by upscoring troll moderations and downscoring the karma whores) and get my daily troll fix because too much signal is in my noise!
I noted that many of the countries practise a level of survelience that is not done in the US, though some want to introduce. My point is that people call it facist and right wing when the US does it, but seem ot be fine with it when Europe does it.
Here's a news flash for you Europeans: There are plenty of Americans that know about Europe. If you doubt me on the camera, do a quick Google for uk surveillance cameras or germany surveillance cameras.
I am not saying that it is a bad thing, or that people are less free for it. What I am saying is that screaming about the increased monitoring ala Patriot as right wing while ignoring higher levels of surveillance in Europe is hypocritical and unbalanced.
Oh and PS, I'm Canadian (and American, you can be both).
It's all about making everyone fight each other.
Christians vs Athiests.
Gays vs Straights.
Winners vs Losers.
So can't you see what the agenda is? While everyone is busy fighting each other the country, media, congress is slowly being hiijacked. Obviously it works.
Genetics do decide if you are good or bad, but they do not decide they how. The people who work at companies like Phillip Morris or Enron are bad people yet successful and then you have drug dealers in the slums who go to jail who are bad.
Bad is bad, and this country has more bad people in it than good. If most people are bad why decide to only focus on the bad when they are poor?
Yes theres terrorists, yes theres drugdealers and thieves robbing people, theres also thieves who will rob you intellectually and who will scam you out of money yet somehow you don't see them on tv.
If this is a war of good vs evil, why only focus on the poor who are evil? Does having money suddenly make you good?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
> In America, we have a thriving "culture of victimhood". We blame others for
> anything bad that happens to use. We point to our genetics to explain away weak
> spots in our character. And we are offended whenever anyone suggests that we
> have chosen to live the way we do. We are not simply the sum of our genetics.
> Haven't you seen Gattaca?
Ive seen Gattaca, have you seen Big Trouble in Little China? Rockin movie, one of my all time favorites. Proves that we are not the sum of our genetics, we can be enhanced by ancient chineese potions and occasionaly need to fight ancient demons.
Seriously though... I don't really believe this whole "culture of victemhood". It seems to be just the latest version of old arguments about whether people are in the situations they are in solely because of how smart they are and how hard they work, or if they are simply products of extrernal situations (like the genes their parents gave them.
I want to blame the media for example. You hear all these sound bites about this is healthy, that is not healthy, etc. However thats all you hear. As often as not, its poorly researched and misunderstood. Take for example one of my pet peves....
Marijuana use was linked to heart attacks. As I read the article I notice that first of all the study that they got this from had not been studying this at all, but had instead been studying something else entirely. Secondly they were citing stats like "X percent of the marijuana smokers in the study had a heart attack within 24 hours of last smoking". What do we notice here? Well if they are daily smokers, and they randomly have a heat attack, there is a 100% chance that it will be within 24 hours of smoking.
Every other day? 50% chance. Overall the group that smoked pot had a 2 % increase over the non-pot-smokers... and to top it all off, the number of pot smokers was very small. To the point that one or two individuals would be statistically signifigant.
Basically when you sat down and worked out the numbers, they hadn't proved anything, they showed a small potnetial anomaly, one which might warrent its own study even, but they hadn't shown a real link, not like the newspapers were putting in their headlines.
Note, the papers hardly talked at all about the main focus of the study, they didn't care. Pot is news. Lame ass boring studies are not.
This is what really irks me, the media does such a piss poor job of coverage. Nothing is in depth. Its all sound bytes. A journalist I know said it best "When I get a report, I read the first 17 pages, because I know that nobody else is going to read past page 3. Whenever you read an article that quotes a report, you will never see a quote thats from past page 3. So I figure if I get to page 17, I am doing pretty good"
Of course, I can't blame the media, because they are just spewing out what sells, and sound bytes sell... its what people want, they want everything well digested and given to them in small bite sized peices.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
This makes me wonder if marijuana effects the amygdala.
Anarchy is the answer.
The sheer subjectiveness of both the classification and evaluation methods in a non-double blind study put this on the level of a pub debate rather than science. Note that the "research" has not been completed and has not been reviewed and published by a journal. Not that the pseudo-science matters, it is obvious that the reason the story was picked up was to stir up the old right versus left debate (as evidenced in the posts here)
However, I fear that the fact that so many people just assumed the science is true because it was convenient to believe, reflects the recent and scary trend of promoting or supressing "scientific facts" depending on how they fit into one's belief system. The classic example was Lysenko in the Soviet Union who demolished Soviet genetics due to the promotion of "nurture" type Lamarckian inheritance in concordance with communist beliefs. Harmless enough, until millions die from crop failures - at least in some small part due to choosing the wrong strains of wheat. Simularly, while red vs blue brains may be fun to believe - remember that electroshock, lobotomies, split-brain "therapies" still exist largely because of an uncritical public. Or to paraphrase Douglas Adams - it's OK to think that white is black - until a car hits you at a zebra crossing..
I find it interesting how certain matters of biblical principal are conveniently over looked by those who argue them so readily.
"And the swine, because he parteth the hoof, and is cloven-footed, but cheweth not the cud, he is unclean unto you."
Of course that's just the tip of the iceburg. Simple acts like cutting, writing, or seperating things on teh sabbath also go against biblical principal. Not only that, many of these statutes are repeated multiple times in the old testemant which might imply that they are as, if not more important then biblical laws surrounding male/male relationships (also of note is the fact that lesbian relationships are never condoned).
The Bible is, primarily a book that is meant to teach compasion between man and man, man and animal, and, of course, advises people to have ltos of little jewish babies. The rules against homosexuality fall under the same page as rules against masterbation (they lessen the number of babies). As far as I know, the new testemant was an appendix, not an amendent of the old testemant.
Until someone likes you looks past all those damn trees, sees the forest, and actually starts following those Biblical principals you laud so highly (human compassion being far more important then laws concerned with seed spillage), kindly do everyone a favour and STFU n00b.
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
Didn't 911 happen under Bush? Didn't he already let us get attacked and we want to go with this individual again?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Smoking and car crashes kill more citizens of the United States each week and month, respectively, than terrorism *ever* has, all deaths combined. Why are we spending far more "fighting the War on Terror" than we are on automobile safety research?
May we never see th
(it's funny, laugh)
The problem with that voting record is the same as the Vietnam one. Prior to 2000, John Kerry had a spent a long time in the senate. He has a long voting record that you can look at, both for good or bad things. In that same time, George W. Bush had spent almost no time in public office, except for a stint as the (largely ceremonial) governor of Texas. If you want to judge him on his record, you're really limited to looking at the last 4 years -- and I don't think even his supporters would say that what he's done over that time period is typical for him. He's had to deal with some unusual, exceptional situations. So, you have to compare a man with a long record against a man without a record.
The same thing is true about the whole Vietnam mess. John Kerry received 3 purple hearts, a bronze star and a silver star. People can debate the validity of those medals for a long time, but they can't compare them to George W. Bush's medals because he doesn't have any. Is it worse to have done some heroic things, but then maybe exaggerated them a bit, or is it better to have done nothing at all?
Is it better to have a mixed record of some good and some bad, or is it better to have no record at all? That seems to be the main question here.
Whatever happens, I predict that the winner will be a former Yale student, and a member of the Skull and Bones society. In the end, isn't that what counts?
Can't we all just get along.......
A small problem with the idea that the black situation has worsened with the advent of welfare, educational reforms, and affirmative action:
It is not only not confirmed but explicitly denied by the vast majority of statistical analysis. High School Diploma attainment rates have risen for blacks since the civil rights movement, the overall poverty rate has fallen from the 60s (15% prior to the Great Society, 11% during the Clinton heyday, 12% I believe now.) Black participation in the fields of medicine, engineering, law, and higher education has risen. Teen pregnancy rates have dropped.
And so on.....
The "war on terror" is promoted by U.S. weapons manufacturers, for profit. The manufacturers show no interest in politics; they are equal opportunity killers.
The U.S. government has created more terror than any nation ever, in the history of the world. In the article, History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories, see the heading, "The U.S. government has bombed 24 countries since the Second World War."
Only someone ignorant of the activities of the U.S. government would think that the attack on 9/11/2001 was the beginning of something.
well since public schools have dropped creationism in favor of evolution what did you expect?
Elwood: Ah... what kind of music do you usually have here? Claire: Oh we got both kinds. We got Country, AND Western.
As if genuine political belief fell into two simple, easily identified categories of "Liberal" and "Conservative".
Do Libertarians no longer exist in the US today?
Anarchists?
Socialists?
Greens?
Etc. etc.
I usually find that studies of human biology underpinning human behavior say far more about the prejudices of the scientists conducting the research, than about any underlying scientific observations they might be "discovering".
And the rigidly dualist categorization of ideology into center-right and far-right creeps into so much of daily life in the US, where you are continually required to choose ideological Coke or ideological Pepsi. Water is not on the menu.
This affirms what I have believed for some time. Liberal Feel and Conservatives Think.
Slashdot - Where the slash is most definitely to the left.
If, as a man, you look at another man's hairy ass and say to yourself "Damn! I just gotta get me some of that!!" then you are most certainly gay.
Or bisexual.
If, on the other hand, you look at another man's hair ass and think to yourself "What the hell is that?! Put some dammed pants on you freak!" then you are most certainly not gay.
Yes. It means that you are homophobic.
And if you just think "Huh, an ass. I wonder why he isn't wearing any pants?" and cruise on your way, you are neither homosexual or homophobic.
Most Americans are irrationally homophobic to some degree.
May we never see th
Point taken, but its [homosexuality is] not a trait that lends itself well to being passed on. In terms of successive generations, it is a hinderance to reproduction so it will eventually be eliminated from the gene pool.
Kind of like posting to Slashdot?
May we never see th
I wonder who's funding this study. Most of the liberals I've met have always been the gutsiest, most arrogant bastards I know without the slightest concern for whom they offend or the consequences of their actions. Most of the conservatives I know (including myself) live in morbid fear of offending anyone and pretty much give away the ranch while cowering in the dark sucking our thumbs.
GW doesn't count as a Republican:
There goes my karma, as I intentionally stoke the flames...
Conservatives in the U.S. want if everyone in the U.S. to be white, Christian heterosexuals, in favor of unlimited guns, with no constraints on business, but morals legislated as tightly as Saudi Arabia's.
If you aren't ideologically and genotypically conformant to the above, then you are bad and wrong.
Liberals know that everyone is not the above, do not require it, and work with it.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
In the modern US that activity would be considered pedophilia so what is gay or acceptable gay activity (just as what is hetereosexual or acceptable hetereosexual activity) depends to a large part on the society doing the judging.
In Romeo and Juliet, which I guess can be considered reasonably high culture, Juliet was thirteen years old. I'd say our current taboos are also a function of post-Victorian social influence.
May we never see th
From all the jokes I've seen, they're too cowardly to even ask a girl out on a date!
John Kerry is a Joke!
Those under 30 who are conservative don't have a heart.
Those over 30 who are liberal don't have a brain.
John Kerry is a Joke!
They are able to irrationally magnify their fear outside the actual scope of the threat - again with the help of mass media. Hence we got a million people marching on Washington to ban guns, when lightning strikes and airbags both killed more children that year than school shootings.
I think this pretty much sums up the "how" of tyranny. September 11 was a wake up call; suddenly, I felt more afraid of my own countrymen than of the terrorists. I realized, that just like Nazi Germany, the "fear of terror" would be used to justify and defend truly reprehensible, un-American practices.
What really rankles me is that I'm hearing people defend unjust practices with the fear of what might happen. Anything could happen. The Sun could blow up tomorrow and kill us all. But are we buying heat sheilds and fighting a "war on solar expansion"? No. Instead, we are committing offenses against human dignity in an effort to stop what might happen in the future.
Am I the only one who sees a problem with this? Those whom have become slaves to fear are a far greater threat to freedom than Al Queada could ever be. 9/11 was merely a catalyst that allowed our government to commit atrocities on a scale far greater than the terrorists could have ever imagined. My country has been hurt by 9/11, but sadly, it was our own countrymen who did the greatest damage; they poured out the gasoline; Al Queada threw the match.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Chomsky makes the NONmainstream arguments. That is a Good Thing. And BTW, I rejected Chomsky's arguments 15 years ago when I read of them secondhand. But when I read them first hand in the last year or so, I had already pretty much come to the same conclusions myself, independently, although I did not have the massive evidence that Chomsky and the rest of the Left have.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I'm just asking.
Viet-Nam was started by Kennedy, and hugely expanded by Johnson. It was ended by Nixon.
Both A-Bombs were dropped by a Democrate.
The USA entered both World Wars under Democrates.
Various conservatives groups have been lavishly generous to various chartible causes. Conservatives just don't like the present welfare system.
Or, do conservatives like the welfare system? Social programs grew twice as much under the Regan administration, than the Carter administration.
IANAPsy.... yet. I'm a Masters student in counseling psychology and Myers-Briggs is a specialty of mine.
The mapping you want is SJ:Conservative::NF:Liberal, not T:Conservative::F:Liberal. You actually want the Kiersean Temperaments (NT, NF, SJ, SP) for this, not the Myers-Briggs Type Axes (I/E, N/S, T/F or J/P).
NTs are all over the map. SPs are generally uninvolved.
Of course, that's merely a statistical observation. Individuals will vary.
HTH. HAND!
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
If you're interested in continuing this discussion you'll answer the questions I posed, which I said were not rhetorical.
If sigmund freud could see this slashdot colomn, what the heck would he say? Probably:
..shieza"
"what the hell is this device you showed me?"
You respond: "A computer."
Freud: "My id hurts, and my ego just popped out of my super ego."
You say, "Well I can print this out for you..."
Freud:"WHA.. WHAT!
I said it was the biggest factor. Polls and studies have all shown this for decades. Yes, there are exceptions that derive from special circumstances, but the majority of political beliefs are based on upbringing. That's the point I was trying to make. It's the same with organized religion (to me, political parties and religions are the same).
neither do conservatives. (hint: Republicans aren't conservatives aren't the religious far-right.)
I'd ask people what is the point of belief? Do you really need things that you cannot prove to be true or false? It is a very old-fashoned way of thinking. Honestly: what is the difference between a belief and an opinion? Nothing.
Surely people make decisions based on information they have. Do you really need to make things up and say they are true/false to rationalize your opinions and decisions. Maybe some people need made-up reasons to feel ok about themselves and their decisions.
As for affirmative action, I remember a book written by one of the directors of Lockheed's Skunk Works in California. He stated that they were constantly violating affirmative action quotas, dispite hiring every qualified hispanic engineer they could. There were lots of hispanics in the area, but hispanic engineers did not exist for the most part. I think his exact words were '[they] did not go to college.' There is a reason that the quotas are the way they are, they may not be totally fair, but what you suggest is not practical.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
still leaving them with a military equal to any possible coalition of forces
We have no desire to be 'equal' or have a 'fair fight' with any potential enemy or group thereof. We want to be able to thouroughly and utterly crush any potential enemy while losing as few of our guys as possible. We have the resources to set things up this way, so we do.
Our military isn't for the freakin school playground, where you might be concerned about fair contests.
Our military is for War. It exists to kill our enemies and break their things. Why would we want the enemy to have an equal shot at doing the same damage to us?
And don't forget that europe got it's security for free from the US during the entire cold war. We placed troops all over europe because we were sick of having to jump into european problems and clean them up- the world wars, for example. Putting our troops in Europe meant that anyone who wanted a war in Europe would have to kill Americans. And We have been a fearsome force since WW2, so such a thing was never done.
Unfortunately, as often charity goes, it has come back to bite us in the ass. Much of Europe, unaccustomed to putting their own lives and militaries on the line to secure their freedom, have come to think that peace is the natural way of things, and they didn't spend 50 years hiding behind uncle sam while he kept the soviet bear at bay.
Society, at any level, is secured by the credible threat of violence. For that threat of violence to be credible, it must be fear-inspiring, and used on those who step out of line. The United States Military fits the bill. You should be thankful for it.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Maybe he was confused, like this guy?
(Just so you know, the above is safe for work, and quite funny to boot.)
And if you were a ``conservative'' who merely accepted his conservatism without question, that is, you never checked into the issues and the conservative reasoning behind those issues, you knew nothing about conservatism when you called yourself a conservative and you know nothing about it now.
I guess I'm saying I'm not very positively impressed by your ``conversion'' which to a great extent is the appropriate word. Liberals are very religious about their politics, and there are definitely religious overtones to your posting. I don't want your Church of the Left (capitalization is as you put it) ruling this country.
Affirmative Action is such bullsh*t- I don't think that any group should stand to benefit in any employment/admissions process just based on something such as the color of their skin. Before I am accused of being a racist by those of more liberal persuasions, I am Asian (biologically, at least) and would stand to benefit from some affirmative action programs. Black people in America (not all but many) are constantly complaining about the perceived inequality between themselves and the rest of America, but they will never acheive equality if we continue to treat them inequally with affirmative action. Anyway, back to the topic, I have noticed that the more emotional people that I know tend to be more of the liberal persuasion, but this is not necessarily a general rule, while many of the conservatives that I know (including myself, I suppose) do not tend to exhibit as much emotion, so I'm sure that this study has some merit.
... no one is straight up Liberal or Conservative, Democratic or Republican. If you are, then you have allowed your beliefs and thoughts to be shaped by one political group or another.
100% of people should have beliefs and thoughts in either camps and should not agree with one camp or the other 100% of the time. But we all know what makes the masses the masses, don't we. Simply put, people don't want to think for themselves. At least in this country's short history, we have incredible evidence of such.
Ah yes, perhaps we will hit that great political evolutionary stage where the collective lightbulb will ding on top of everyone's head. I pray to God that will happen in my grandchildren's lifetime.
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
Did you read this as a new episode of RvsB?
... What the f**k are you talking about?!!...
I just wonder if Caboose is dumb enough to be a liberal...
or republican....
or politician...
or whatever...
i dont know man... but it keeps me awake at night...
Conservative stranglehold? As in the singular Fox News channel? Rupert Murdoch is hardly a stranglehold of anything but terrible 'caught on tape' tv shows.
And I think anyone who looked over history, especially recent history would say we are sliding left, not right. Think of the most outrageous 'liberal' of 50yrs ago vs. today's super-hippies. Quite a difference.
-bZj
.sig
Liberals think they're voting for people that will fix people's lives.
Conservatives think they're voting for people that will stop fixing people's lives.
The truth is, no one has fixed anything, and no one is going to stop trying to fix things.
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
Since we are on the personal experience sharing thing, let me chip in mine:
:P). Both of us could have gotten away with the same thing this guy did, under the name of affirmative action. Heck, we might even be rich too, just like that guy. But that was the wrong thing to do.
While in college, I was involved in Student Senate and met my girlfriend who was in Student Court. While dealing with one of the senate bills, we came across a rather disturbing case.
The medical school at our university had admitted a minority student several years back based on affirmative action. But this student did not do well in medical school. In fact, he was doing so poorly, that he was kicked out of the medical school.
This student then filed a case with the state, indicating that he was "underprivileged" and should be allowed back into the medical school based on affirmative action, and he also asked for emotional damage, amounting to $100,000.
When we were first reviewing this case, everyone was like: "What? You've gotta be kidding me. You flunked out of school. It had nothing to do with your skin color. Get over it." But in just a matter weeks, we learned the results: the student won! He not only received the damage he sued for, he was also allowed back to school. And because of this incident, I guess professors were afraid of failing him, and he eventually graduated and got his M.D.
My girlfriend is a minority pacific islander, and I am Chinese (I don't consider myself a minority since there are so many Chinese people in the world
The sad part is, nobody wanted to look bad, so they all sided with this guy who flunked out of school. I later learned that the school was ordered to "give the student another chance", which is ridiculous to me.
Higher learning should be based on merit, not skin color. The seat this guy took up in medical school, could have been given to another motivated individual, who actually deserves to go to medical school. This guy obviously did not have what it takes to become a M.D., I mean, come on, if you are already in medical school and you are still playing the race card to explain your poor performance, you obviously don't have your life together.
I support affirmative action up until college level, because I believe in today's society, everyone is entitled to a college education (opening a can of worms here I am sure...). But I do not think there should be any affirmative action at the graduate or post-graduate level. It is not your right to go to a graduate school, you need to earn it, and your skin color has nothing to do with it.
"Atheism has been around forever. It is older than Religion"
It is not older than religion any more than orange is older than colors. Atheism is a religion itself.
"Every person on the planet, including yourself, was born an atheist"
You probably mean that they were born something like an agnostic. That is, without religious faith. Later, the vast majority get religious faith of one kind or another. Including among these. The atheists are the ones who get the faith that there is no God/etc.
"The only reason you think he's smarter than his opponents is because HE DOESN'T HAVE ideas.
Hate to break it to, Gore lied about those ideas. Even though he boasted of it on CNN, he did not invent the Internet. He also did not break the Love Canal story.
Bend to our higher order of rationality, you emoting, non-vulcan lessers.
9 9/ qid=1093304520/sr=ka-1/ref=pd_ka_1/104-0683350-421 1957
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/06700329
I for one welcome our older, wiser Republican masters.
If cars were maliciously plotting to kill us in large numbers, then I think we would be worried about them. If cars were trying to produce nerve gas or dirty bombs, then we would be more worried about them.
My other first post is car post.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
"Secular humanists accept a world view or philosophy called naturalism, in which the physical laws of the universe are not superseded by non-material or supernatural entities such as demons, gods, or other 'spiritual' beings outside the realm of the natural universe."
Or in other words, everything that happens does so because of those natural laws, not God. Or yet again, that God, if he exists, does not do anything that we can notice. This is a definition of what god does or does not do, and is at its core a theological statement.
"How much less theological could one be? How could one be much less theological?" By not talking about what god does or does not do.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
I just want to throw out a comment here:
Walter E. Williams once related that, when faced with a choice of doctors where he only knew the age and race of the doctors, how he would make his choice.
Although I can't find the article right now, there was a study of medical students in the mid-90's. (I want to say it was done by UC San Diego, but I could be wrong). The results of the research found that there was a slight difference between 1st year med-students admitted solely on merit, and other 1st year med-students who were admitted to school through affirmative action programs. When those same students were followed up in their second year, there was NO DIFFERENCE.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
Disclaimer: I'm not from the US and never have been there.
There is another alternative you are not considering. Put the poor in caravans. Look at how well eminem turned out.
He's successful.
What if the reason why certain portions of a liberal/conservative brain develops the way it does because of one's point of view? I mean, if studies of jet fighter pilots demonstrate how the nervous rewires itself, why can't the mind rewire itself too?
Are they saying that we are born either liberal or conservative? That would require that they take a fairly large sample and monitor their development for several decades; so I doubt that. So, alternatively, I suspect that they are seeing the effect (the rewired brain) and assuming that it is the cause.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
You did see that chinese guy who was in the parade at the olympics right :-) 7 foot 5 or something like that...
Obviously counterexamples abound, such as President Bush, or vice president Cheney, who both lack compassion but are still quite cowardly. Are they conservatives or liberals?
Damn... that's impressive.
"DISCLAIMER: this is not a troll; I am a liberal"
Why would anyone admit that? I have more respect for trolls.....
And the international globalist technofeudalists have an answer to that problem, they plan on bumping off huge numbers of the worlds populations, the "useless eaters" including inside the US during the next two decades. You can fully expect to see some strange super plagues and whatnot in the future, which they will claim just miraculously and automagically got created in nature.
The concept even has a name, it's called "stealth war" and the technique is called "slow plagues".
An added bonus for them is they will get to have the accumulated wealth of millions of elderly transferred to them, plus have the serf labor of the middle years productive classes, and the use of the younger folks as mercenaries (drafted soldiers and people who volunteer out of desparation for employment) and for other types of semi forced labor.
And it's because of precisely this subject, they can run the numbers and ran them from day one, it's just not sustainable, especially as the planet is running out of petroleum and water. We are at a critical juncture right now. A major part of the Iraq war for instance was not only oil, but control of the water, iraq has the largest supplies in the middle east. One of the next targets will be sudan, for the same reason, oil and water. Iran will be in between most likely, but I more expect they will try for an internal coup there first, seeing as how it's a pretty hard target.
So.....what's all this have to do with Princess Amygdala? Will she survive the Clone Conventions in Boston and New York? Will she be abducted by Darth Cheney? Will she make it to Episode III????
' "How much less theological could one be? How could one be much less theological?" By not talking about what god does or does not do. '
Okay, now back to public schools. It's been about 15 years since I went to high school, but I don't recall any of my teachers mentioning God or a lack thereof, or any sort of miracles or lack thereof, except in response to a question by one of the students or as part of curriculum that abstractly discussed various peoples' belief systems. That seems to me like sufficient avoidance of theological matters for the state to claim a separation between its school and the church.
Do you agree? What evangelism of secular humanism, blatant or subtle, have you seen in public schools?
Try this on for size. What about teaching that all languages came from one language that was spoken in a city called Babel, That there was a worldwide flood about 3000 BC or so, and that adultry will cause the destruction of our culture if not stamped out. Note that I did not say that god did, or is involved in any way with these things. So that can be taught in schools too right? Of course not. This is subtle evangelism of christianity (or possibly judasim). How? Some of the conclusions that come from accepting the christian theology are being taught. Secular humanism is being taught in the public schools in just the same manner. It is harder to spot. What really is the difference between teaching what Newton discovered about gravity and social scientists' conclusions about society? Not much, at least on the surface. Only by carefull study of the research can you be sure that the conclusions of the social scientists are based soley on the facts, and not on their religious beliefs. (I am including secular humanism as a religion here, this applies as well to secular hunamism as it does to christianity.) Some examples here might be teaching that homosexuality is an 'alternative lifestyle' instead of a sin,* That masterbation is 'normal and acceptable' vs evil, and other sex ed subjects. Enviromental issues come up here. Are we supposed to 'have dominion over animals' or preserve biodiversity and preserve the natural environment? Both conclusions are religiously based, not (usually) scientific.
And yes, I am aware of the deadlock here. How do you teach anything then? I am afraid that public schools and separation of church and state, as currently interpreted, are incompatible. At this point you might want to check /. user names. I am not the person you started this thread with, and he and I probably have different views. So, a direct answer to your question, "What evangelism of secular humanism, blatant or subtle, have you seen in public schools?" A fair bit, although not near as much as the christian right does. And it is almost all subtle. There is also some (less, but still...) christian evangelism too.
*I am not implying here that it is or isn't, it's just an example. Same for the other examples.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
I note that the claim: [quote=johnnyb] Stalin killed by the tens of millions, Hitler killed about 6 million. I don't think that the death toll from the entire history of religious persecution matches that done by atheism in this century alone.[/quote] First of all, both Japan and Nazi Germnay killed considerably more people than Stalin. Japan too was led by a God Emperor, so you cannot absolve religion of killing fewer people just this century. Hitler's toll of 5-6 million Jews was the Jews alone. Contrary to Jewish propoganda, propagated by Leftist apologists, far more people of other races were killed by Hitler than Jews! The Ukrainians were at least one set of victims that are curiously ignored. http://www.infoukes.com/history/ww2/page-19.html Jews Killed Davies, Europe A History (1998): 5,571,300 (puts the minimum at 4,871,000 and the maximum at 6,271,500.) Nuremberg indictment: 5,700,000 (accepted by Britannica) Soviet Prisoners of War killed: * Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War: 3,000,000 We are up to 9 million dead already for Hitler and the death toll hasn't even started. Roma (Gypsies): * Ian Hancock, "Responses to the Romani Holocaust" in Is the Holocaust Unique? (A. Rosenbaum, ed.) cites these: o US Holocaust Memorial Museum: 250,000 o "several published estimates": >1,000,000 o Pauwels and Bergier: 750,000 o Financial Times (London): 500-750,000 in death camps and another million shot outside. 10 million now. # Homosexuals: * Rummel: 220,000 10.22 million. # Euthanasia of Handicapped: * Hugh G. Gallagher: 275,000, citing Breggin (in Century of Genocide, Samuel Totten, ed., (1997)) 10.475 Air Raids * Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): "an estimated 500,000 Soviet citizens died from German bomb attacks." * Belgrade * London * Stalingrad 11 million now. Victims of Wehrmacht: * Acc2 historical exhibit curated by Hannes Heer: The common soldiers of the Wehrmacht murdered 1.5M Jews, 3.3M POWs + 5-7M non-Jewish civilians (17 May 1995 Agence France Presse; 22 Feb. 1997 AP) Other political prisoners: * Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century (1998): over one million died in concentration camps, not counting those deliberately targeted for extermination. Hitler comes in for 24-25 million dead already. This death toll *excludes* the amount of dead from WW2, which can be laid at Hitler's doorstep. The amount of dead people from World War 2 amounts to approximately 35 million. This gives a total of 59 million. This safely blows away Stalin's lead as a mass murderer. But it is good to remember on what basis Hitler made his decisions . "Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith. . . we need believing people." (From Hitler's speech, April 26, 1933, during negotiations which led to the Nazi-Vatican Concordat of 1933.) You reap what you sow. Christianity is the cause of rape, torture, murder and all other evil.
Media outlets misinterpret it and distort it because they're lazy and sensationalistic, no matter what their political beliefs (cue the Liberal Media conspiracy theorists and the Fox News haters)
Message board dweebs jump all over it to justify their own personal agendas and pet peeves including my favorite the "No one takes responsibilty for their actions anymore" crowd, ignoring completely that there's no one out there saying "Hey, I can't help being a Republican, my whosit in my brain is under powered!"
Get out of the way of the scientists, we can all check back in 20 or 30 years when we actually KNOW SOMETHING.That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
are fools.
I'm a graduate student in neuroscience. After reading your post, I performed several searches on PubMed, which is a search engine for all peer-reviewed medical and biomedical research journals. I found that nothing has been published on activation of the amygdala in Democrats vs. Republicans, conservatives vs. liberals, or any number of other searches. The New York Times article you referred to also did not quote any published papers or show any data. Before you start arguing about the significance of fundamental brain differences between liberals and conservatives, you should consider that there is no scientifically vaildated data on this. The New York Times certainly isn't a bastion of scientific criticism or a valid scientific source for that matter. Maybe UCLA researchers have gotten some prelimiary data that people are excited about, but unless the research has been peer-reviewed, published and hopefully confirmed by multiple groups, it's just an unverified claim. 9 times out of 10 these unpublished (but sometimes highly publicized) data turn out to be bogus.
Perhaps. However, I don't believe the US went into Iraq solely for oil. Yet, oil was a big "bonus" for a lot of greedy bastards (Haliburton got those government contracts with bidding, and that's a GIANT no no when you're dealing with millions in federal funding).
But, back to "empathy." When I look at empathy and Iraq I don't quite see the same thing you do. I see/saw...
a) an inability to empathize with opinions of most other 1st world industrialized nations. If you can't convince like minded people (with sophisticated intelligence agencies) about your cause, then you should seriously reevaluate your plans.
b) an inability to empathize with the Iraqi people. They have a very different culture, a very different history, and a very different communication structure. They interpret our actions differently then we do, and our soldiers interpret their actions differently then they do. A good military operation take this into account. Any crusty old general will tell you this.
It's like a dog humping a porcupine. The porcupine isn't the most dangerous thing in the world, and the dog means no harm, it only wants to love the porcupine. However, the porcupine doesn't view a gyrating dog on it's back as a friend... and the dog's go'na get stung with some quills. If the dog was smart enough, it should have approached the porcupine differently.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
> You were brought up in a household who, by your race, has an average income of 40,577,
> compared to 25,050 for your average african american household
And when my household income starts getting topped up to that level because I'm white, you'll have a point.
White people aren't a tight-knit conspiracy that looks out for its own. I didn't get extra "white boy" money growing up, or a leg up on university admissions, or any other supposed benefit of being white. I can't call up GWB on the "white boy phone" for a favor. I can't say "hey Billy G, spare a fellow whitey a few million?" I don't get jack shit for being white. (Which is as it should be - how weird would it be if I actually got stock options for being white?)
"White people" may control most of the money and power in this country, but that doesn't provide any benefit to 95% of actual white folks.
Until people realize that poverty is the problem, not race, we're going to get moronic "you grew up rich because you're white!" and equally moronic "you're lazy because you're black!" muddying the waters and causing nothing but trouble.
> I suggest you take a look at White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
Looked. Most of the items she lists don't apply to me, and I'm both white _and_ male.
1) When was the last time a CS guy was surrounded by mostly white folks?
2) Student - we can't be the pickiest about housing.
3) I've had neighbors call the police because I complained about their incessantly barking dog. Hardly "neutral or pleasant".
4) True, I can usually go shopping alone - I've only been stalked twice recently (1 male, 1 female).
5) True, although this point can't tell the difference between neutral and disadvantaged minorities. White people in Japan aren't particularly disadvantaged, but they're not the ones on tv there.
6) Partly true - Europeans + Arabs (with Indian and Chinese knowledge) = Western Civ, by the teaching I've had. So 1 in 3.
7) True, although this point can't tell the difference between neutral and disadvantaged minorities. Again, white people in Japan aren't going to find loads of European-style food in the supermarkets, but that doesn't mean they're discriminated against.
8) True - bashing white people is very popular now. I'm not sure how that advantages me, though.
9) Slightly true (most popular music is very heavily black-influenced), mostly true (although - again - failing to distinguish between neutral and disadvantaged minority groups), and true (because I keep simple hair; other white folk I know have lengthy salon quests).
And so on.
Most of the points the author makes may be true FOR HER, but she's making a huge assumption that her anecdotal evidence somehow applies to every other white person. Moreover, she's confusing "wealthy privilege" and "majority privilege" with "white privilege", and claims a variety of points that aren't particularly relevant (unless she's trying to claim that those white people in Japan are discriminated against).
Not to say there isn't serious and disturbing racism that minorities in the US face on a regular basis - I've heard some hair-raising stories from close friends - but sloppy, poorly-thought-out nonsense like that "knapsack" article is _hardly_ helping.
Atheism is okay, however.
Correlation doesn't say anything about causality!
And don't you forget that.
The amygdala is more classically known for its role in agression and mad passion. Both a cat and a bull have had electrodes placed to stimulate the amygydala and were alternatively induced to attack or be passionate. (The bull just stopped charging and licked its lips.) If we followed this research then the liberal slogan would be "Make Love *and* War." -M
A lot of people are intelligent yet lazy, a lot of people work hard but are stupid. How do you know the cause of failure? Perhaps it's all about how motivated you are?
Race means culture. The skin and hair do not really require lots of genes yet race is decided based on something as genetically superficial?
How about we decide race based on worth ethic? People who work hard are of a completely seperate race from people who don't? In this case we have people who work hard who come from every skin color as well intelligence from every skin color. I've gone to college and when I was there I've met people from every possible race combination and every one of them had above average intelligence.
Race is cultural not genetic, if you want people to have a work ethic you have to teach them to have one. Perhaps this should be taught in school to children at a younger age instead of hoping the parents come from a cultural backround thats achievement based instead of tribal.
George Bush is of the lazy tribal race yet hes president of the USA so lets please stop with the cultural bias and racism. If you truely believe that intelligence is genetic then you also believe most of the people in the south including Mr.Bush have the bad genes.
The highest IQ's come from Asia but this does not really say that Asian's as a race are "better" than another race. Instead of comparing races lets compare individuals. When you compare races it does make you seem racist.
Since when was race defined by physique? Every race has its atheletes and genetic freaks. The worlds strongest man was once named Arnold, Physique has nothing to do with winning in sports.
You cannot group all blacks in one group as atheletes or runners. You have guys like Tiger Woods playing golf, you have black musicians, you have black actors and comedians, you have black doctors and lawyers. The average black person is not a genetic freak just like the average white person is not a genetic freak so when you do tests on genetic freaks the conclusions only apply to genetic freaks. Should we test Arnold or white hockey players to try and prove whites are better at dealing with cold weather or riding on skates? Whats the point of this?
Before I am accused of being a racist by those of more liberal persuasions, I am Asian (biologically, at least) and would stand to benefit from some affirmative action programs. Black people in America (not all but many) are constantly complaining about the perceived inequality between themselves and the rest of America, but they will never acheive equality if we continue to treat them inequally with affirmative action.
Do you have statistics which prove without a doubt that blacks are the majority of people who benefit from Affirmative Action? Honestly theres not that many blacks in this country and theres just as many if not more hispanics and asians. What is your point? Why is every issue a black and white issue as if the other groups in this country don't go on welfare and arent struggling too.
Finally if you are Asian how do you know you actually earned your job? The reason affirmative action exists is because if it didnt, you'd never be able to find a job unless you worked for an asian company, blacks would never be able to find a job unless they worked for a black company, and most workplaces would be extremely segregated just like most communities were in historical evidence.
People who are anti welfare are actually making the situation worse. What other option exists besides prison for people who arent smart enough or too lazy to work?
With welfare at least they could work part time, at least they'd be contributing to society and buying their own food. Why the hell do we want to build all these prisons to throw the poor into when we can just give them an education so they can work hard and get a job and if not then giving them welfare seems like a better option than to give them a prison cell.
Also its less costly to give someone welfare because at some point they might actually get a job. When you put someone in prison they'll never get a job when they come out.
Damn 0x0d0a, you rule. I always go out of my way to read your comments, and once again you didn't disappoint.
Keep up the good work!
umm... how about politics in general. No need to point fingers at the USA for this one. Its human nature.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
Since everything that is emotional is also physical, how do you decide if a person has an active (insert brain component) because of their decisions or makes their decisions because of an active brain component. To whip out the old saw, correlation doesn't prove causation. Can we use this technique to predict a person's political affiliation from childhood? Could it be used to alter a person's political affiliation?
I think that given the methodology of science, most detectable corrolations between the spiritual and the physical will be described as the physical causing the spiritual. Makes for a self fufilling prophecy that we are who we are because of what we are. It's already been decided that free will is an illusion, and scientists are now going about gathering the data to prove it. And that 'proof' will have an effect on how we think in the same way that notions of 'free will' did.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
I think you might be right about media bias, but I also think that the media tends to shift it's lean from the left to the right and vice-versa a lot more quickly than the general populus. In terms of the general populus, I think we're still leaning a little bit to the right. I don't really have much to base this on...just a general feeling. Of course, I live in Texas...so it's hard for me not to feel that way with all the fundamentalists I have to deal with on a daily basis.
but I challenge you and anyone else that feels the need for the myth of free will to provide one piece of objective, observable, and repeatable evidence that free will exists.
Science has already decided what it's answer here will be, considering that only physically measurable things are considered valid evidence. However, such assertions are not predictive, and thus not useful. And the purpose of science is not so much to generate 'truth' as it is to generate predictive value. If a statement can't be used to predict the outcome of an event, then it isn't useful.
Look at it this way. If I propose a theory of climate change that says "There are two essential phases for earth's climate; A phase of change and a phase of relative stability." This is useless. What other phases can their be other than change and stability. A scientific statement is only as valuable as it is predictive.
Game theory can show that games such as the human genetic system, which is self altering, are irreducably complex and non-determinsitic. It's even possible to make simple non-deterministic computer programs. Humans consciousness is a self altering system which responds to its environment, and such systems are almost always non-determinisitic and irreducably complex. In the case of people, they are motivated as well. So the argument that people are 100% deterministic, and it's only our lack of knowledge that prevents us from predicting everything that they do, is false.
While humans are more deterinistic than others at particular times, hindsight is 20/20. It's easy to explain things after the fact, but impossible to predict 100% of a person's actions based on biological information (though I'm sure you could make many predictions based on that information.)
The problem is that nobody has a 100% 'free will.' It's constrained by a variety of biological impulses and urges which make us predictable. But not totally so. And we can 'self alter' in such a way which makes rigidly deterministic view of human consciousness less predictive, which I believe is what the previous poster aluded to.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Impressive.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You may have noted that people trend Liberal when young, and then trend Conservative as they age. The exceptions to these trends merely test them.
That's because as people age they tend to get bitter and jaded about social topics until they really don't give a damn.
No, I don't think that's it. It seems to me that when I discuss social issues with young people, they focus on the emotional, "touchy-feely" aspects of the issues. They see what the suffering and outcomes, but don't really have workable solutions. They say things such as, "Man, like, just imagine if everyone in the country donated a dollar, you'd have like, $300 million, then you could save ALL the whales. They should just raise everybody's taxes a dollar."
The young haven't been part of the system long enough to see the big picture. They don't understand that the economy is, for the most part, a closed system. You can't funnel money into one program without taking it from another, or raising taxes. "So raise taxes," they say, without understanding that doing so would affect inflation, interest rates, housing, welfare, and even crime (the vast majority of crime is committed by poor people). It's a complex balancing act.
But since they can't understand that yet, they by default focus on what they *can* understand, which unfortunately is often overly simplistic, like, "all I know is, that guy doesn't have a home, he's living on the streets, he's done nothing wrong, and we should give him a home." Young people, and liberals in general, tend to have a "gimmie" attitude, where they feel entitled to things. They see that we live in a rich society, and thus feel that they deserve the best healthcare, the best schools, and a good job. The American dream, basically. They want these things, because they see other, older people with them. Note that I said "older."
And that's where we get into the other half of this comparison. Those "older" people who have the retirement savings, the home, the nice car, and the good education are usually conservatives. Conservatives often start out as Liberals, but become disillusioned when they realize that society isn't going to give them the handouts they feel they deserve. So they set to work earning the things they want for themselves, and become bitter at the government for not helping them as much as they feel it should've.
Conservatives then develop the attitude that since they had to work hard for what they've got, then everybody else should have to work hard, too. They feel that people don't deserve free handouts - they should have to work for them. The see the government robbing their paychecks of thousands of dollars every month, and they see the ungrateful benefactors of those taxes complaining that they want even more, and they tend to develop an "us versus them" attitude. By now, they've aged enough to have been paying taxes for quite a few years, and have seen little change. They've seen the real sacrifices they've had to make in order to get the house, the car, the education fund for their kids. They feel like the government hasn't done anything for them financially, and they see all this money being funneled into programs for people who they perceive as lazy, and thus, undeserving.
The aged conservative feels that since he's successful, and has worked hard and sacrificed, then therefore anyone can be successful if they work hard and sacrifice. The corralary, of course, being that all those unsuccessful people he sees out there, benefitting from his tax dollars, must therefore be lazy, and unwilling to sacrifice. He perceives that those poor people (who are usually liberal), are demanding the same things that Mr. Conservative has, but they don't want to work for it.
Neither side is completely justified. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the middle. But it is certainly interesting to listen to the opinions of a young, naive, liberal student and contrast them with an older, conservative relative.
Just food for thought, not meant as a troll or flamebait.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
The real /. trolls obviously aren't trying hard enough any more, shameon them.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
"There is no overriding purpose to marriage. It is a personal choice between 2 people"
Biblically, marriage was not limited to just 2.
"Don't try to legislate my morality"
As long as you remember that all law legislates morality.
I think the study suggests that liberals are more likely to be responsive to their environment. That is... "sensitive" in one way or the other. Which (now that I think about it) fits with Kerry's recent comment about a more sensitive approach to fighting terrorism. And it's probably also important to consider that it may not necessarily be that the more active amygdala leads to more liberal political ideology. Causality could be in the other direction... like being liberal is a way of exercising your amygdala... then I started to think... what about those "knee-jerk" ("I know what to do and here I go...") attitudes of many conservatives (probably related to that sense of moral righteousness). Again, I think it's just that their sensitivity comes in spurts... and that has to do with being quick to act, but not quick to feel and truly "respond" in the full sense of the word. In any case, thinking about what it truly *means* to be a liberal or conservative probably has a lot to do with *change* and how readily we embrace change. If the amygdala is all about emotion and emotion leads to action (for or against something, fight/flight, approach/avoidance) then those who really consider whether to act or not would fit with those who have an active amygdala...? maybe?
The point of any experiment is to confirm (or disconfirm) a hypothesis. In order to find out whether the hypothesis is true, you perform the experiment. The hypothesis for cryonics is the following: it is possible to perfuse a recently decreased person with cryopreservatives (antifreeze) and place them in liquid nitrogen, and revive them N years from now. No one knows whether that hypothesis is true or false. Therefore, an experiment will be conducted in order to confirm or disconfirm that cryonics hypothesis.
The people performing the cryonics experiment do not know whether cryonics will work. That is why they are performing the experiment. Penn and Teller do not know if cryonics will work. No one knows. Just saying that cryonics will not work is not sufficient to disconfirm this hypothesis. THat is why the cryonics experiment is being performed.
As a consequence of confirming the hypothesis, should the cryonics hypothesis be confirmed, the test subjects (the "experimental group", in the parlance of experimental science) will be revived in a future world where they may well be virtually immortal. That is why I have volunteered to be a test subject for the cryonics experiment. I would like to live more. A lot more.
The "control group," i.e., all the rest of the humans on the planet, will not be affected by the outcome of the cryonics experiment.
I believe in the power of science and rationality. THat is why I "converted" from the Right to the Left.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Nope, wrong. 9/11 was a byproduct of the U.S. showing weakness throughout the 1990's by having an inconsistent foreign policy that was ready to turn and run every time it had it's nose bloodied. Showing weakness to guys like UBL gave them the "green light". Peace through strength, baby.
And discern shit. You need the dataset and some serious clustering/discriminant analysis, then make the map. Which is probably what they did, and if you know anything about ESRI products and how easy it is to noodle with the breaks among these indicators, then you would be very suspect of any thing like this. Simple matter is this: human studies have too much variance over space to make this anything other than an guess at such distributions.
BTW, there has been a long, long debate over what constitutes 'rural' and what constitutes 'urban.' It not clearcut at all. See Pierce Lewis' and Wilbur Zelinsky's work over the past 40 years. Not even the geographers can tell the difference for sure.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
In response to nations nationalizing their oil resources, the U.S. government initiated much of the violence, before Usama bin Laden was born. This was to help increase the profit of U.S. and British oil companies.
Having a lot of weapons, and using them often, is an indication of fundamental weakness, not strength.
Don't be taken in by this idiot--he has accounts under the names bonch and Overly Critical Guy. He has a history of astroturfing for Microsoft, bashing anything Open Source, using lies and half-truths to get modded up, karma whoring, and the usual trolling (under his bonch account, he got a troll posted to the front page of Slashdot).
All you have to do to check the veracity of this is to look at the posting history of his two old personnae (linked above) and his current one to figure it out.
Please do not mod this jerk up--every time you do the Slashdot S/N ratio goes down while bonch/Overly Critical Guy/rd_syringe just laughs at you.
This has been a public service announcement
Also it's a viscious lie that Lincoln institued the Emancipation of slaves simply to thwart those rascally Southern Republican States of the Confederacy since they were pretty much the only ones that had slaves. And besides all the slaves in Northern states which were controlled by the Democrats got their freedom after only a few more years wait. Weren't they lucky!
Yesiree, there's no denying that the Republican party is full of Racism. Why, the very audacity of them proposing that race not be considered at all when doing things like student admissions. It's way past too late to go down a road like that now!
Interesting & thought-provoking missive...
I have always told people that I had a Republican head & a Democratic heart. I, too, started out as a conservative (but not the current definition of a conversative) but have slowly steadily slid toward the Left, not the radical left...but definitely moderated my positions after realizing things weren't as simple as I thought. (Duh)
It would seem that even having a moderate stance these days would be considered "Left" or "Right" depending on which party member you asking.
Since the media is composed of people and all people have biases, it would be reasonable to say that the media is biased. Are all biases bad?
However, I would advocate for good, strong, objective journalism, so we may all become better independent thinkers. The Net is an excellent medium to hear all of the voices, read the original materials, and make your own decisions.
Nerdus Maximus (mostly a wannabe, but you have to have goals)
This has already been theorized in this JE (mine).
I wonder if this means they found the source of T/F. I/E seems to have to do with dopamine. One more to go!
Have you read my journal today?
Maybe not where you are, but where I am, it's a very very big issue. Of course, I'm in a more or less rural area. There are anti-abortion billboards all over the place. There is a large number of anti-abortion voters who will not vote for sombody they think is pro-choice.
I don't read AC A human right
So teaching things that are demonstrably true via evidence is "evangelism" -- i think you need a dictionary, a college english course and a course in logic
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
When your making a speech to a large audience, it's not about "zinging" people with words they may not understand. It's about being concise yet able to get his point accross in a manor that everyone (or mostly) can understand.
If you want someone that is condescending and "acts" like he is an intellectual, then perhaps someone like John F. Kerry would appeal
to you.
Life is not for the lazy.