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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.""
Stroke victims prefer Bush.
It's all good.
[DISCLAIMER: this is not a troll; I am a liberal]
Hence this article should be modded +5 insightful.
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?
That's funny... I rarely make that distinction.
---- http://www.opedog.com/
So are we going to start using a Party sorting CAT scanner? [please not slitherin... please not slitherin...]
Dear Mr. Bush,
Please give us a large research grant.
Love,
Scientists
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!
And maybe liberals are caused by inhaling too much pollution. :-)
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
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.
Well, the article summary interested me, so I conducted my own unbiased, completely unfunded research on this issue.
Within a matter of seconds, I found that people who agree with me on political issues are rather brainy. On the other hand, I found that people who disagree with me on political issues are extremely braindead.
This, indeed, is good new for libertarians everywhere.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
It's not my fault that I refuse to take responsibility for my actions!
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
... that makes us think everything is determined by genes!
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).
Our brains are free to be whatever color we want.
I prefer clear.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
The red pill, or the blue pill?
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
well there are at least three libertarians on /.
I'm glad I live in Canada then, where we aren't so deathly afraid of one hole in the body over the other that we'd change our country's founding document to try to keep the "bad scary people" away.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
A friend of mine didn't realize he was gay until he'd already slept with several men
See, that right there is a dead giveaway.
Finkployd
This is an interesting Catch 22 for moderation as it appears the GNAA posts might actually be *on topic* for once!
I never thought I'd see this day.
Plant a tree in a developing country.
And maybe Conservatives spend so much time around bullshit that they don't notice the smell when it comes from their party.
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
> Please get your facts straight.
"Please get your facts straight "?! I'm deeply offended!
Or at least I would be, if I was a Queer Homo Deviant (QHD).
(Yes, bad joke, but don't mod me down. Arguably, I couldn't help myself.)
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
I heard an advert on the radio a few weeks ago that summed up the whole compensation culture thing:
If you've been in an accident and you think it was someone else's fault...
But I always thought accidents were nobodies' fault?
---
"I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be."
The really shocking news is we now have scientific proof that the US/UK two-party democracy is the only right system for mankind.
More refined distinctions between schools of thought in the multi-party systems in continental Europe are unnecessary and confusing to our brains.
We don't need environmentalists, socialists, communists, social democrats, social liberals, social christians, conservative liberals, christian conservatives, constitutional christians, conservative nationalists, national socialists etc. Just "blue" and "red" will do fine. There is no such thing as a "green" brain, and nazis do not exist. They are just "blue" and "red". Or vice versa.
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.
Clearly your amygdala isn't as active as mine, or you would have said, "spherically challenged, libationally oriented, sexually curious, placidly impaired, or democratically impeded"
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
I completely agree. President bush for example is quite the thinker. And if you have been lucky to hear his speaches -- well they are nothing but irrefutable logic.
And you are right that conservatives use more logical arguments. To prove this I will sum up every single argument conservatives have used in the past four years:
"how dare you question the president, you must hate America"
You see there is nothing emotional about this. It is all pure logic.
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.
You seem to lack empathy.
They display RGB all the time.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
I'm not sure why I'm conservative. Maybe something to do with the way I was brought up?
My blog
What about Bad Brains?
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!
Yeah, I can feel the love just RADIATING from you!
It matters because :
Your brain doesn't belong to you if it's all chemistry, it belongs to whomever knows most about brain chemistry. What if the "electro-chemical mumbo-jumbo" was modified
by, say, your toothpaste so that when it came time to decide what sort of Breakfast Cereal you want, your brain's already tilted towards Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs by Acme(*)? Sure, that's all paranoid delusional rambling, and there are legal safeguards (at least in the US) to keep that from happening, but it's a possibility.
OTOH, if the human mind is unquantifiable, then there's no storing your brainscan in a computer, no Computer AI that can pass a Turing Test (**) and each human mind is fundamentally unique, and unmeasurable because of quantum uncertainty.
So this is why there's so much fuss and bluster about this. It boils down to how the world works, all in this argument about Free Will vs. Biology. It comes down to what is, at this point, scientifically unprovable faiths. That's why people are so fervent about it: It's a matter of faith.
-Poster Child for Anonymous Cowards.
(*) note that I'm using the same Acme company as Wiley E. Coyote does, and not any RL company in my example. CYA.
(**) YMMV, ref. Blade Runner's retina test (and the high difficulty of determining androids like Rachel) vs the commonality that snowflakes are never blue, never hot to the touch, and never taste like grapes.
We don't have free will but we chose to ignor that?
That's funny.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.