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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.""
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
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%.
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
"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.
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
What about libertarians? I call bullshit on this simplistic non-scientific pap. Slashdot might do better posting articles on the scientific basis for spiritualism.
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.
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.
So how long before the Conservatives discover that lefties have "defective brains" and start genetically-engineering them out of the population? :-)
Stick Men
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)
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.
- 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.
The red pill, or the blue pill?
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Don't laugh -- some Berkeley researchers were claiming that last year. This is a potentially interesting line of study in psychology but it's handled by people with such outrageous bias (and worse, complete obliviousness to their biases) that almost everything they generate is garbage.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
lol, that's just politics man. if you honestly believe that conservatives are politically worse than liberals, or vice versa, you're just silly. politics are politics. doesn't matter which side you're on.
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.
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?
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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?
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."
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?
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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
..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
While I don't think it makes sense to lump people under over-broad monikers like "conservatives" or "liberals," it is a good point to make that there are fear-based politics in all areas of the political gamut. Some people exploit these fears as the basis for evangelism for their politics. Examples by issue:
gay rights - fear of God, fear of ostracision and oppression, fear of unfamiliar
civil liberties - fear of police state, fear of terrorism
foreign policy - fear of other races, nations, ideologies, responsibility, terrorism
free/fair trade - fear of slavery, marginalization, money, corruption
gun control - fear of tyranny, fear of gun violence
abortion - fear of God, fear of loss of paternal control, responsibility
welfare - fear of abandonment, helplessness, government, unjust loss, responsibility
environmentalism - fear of apocalypse/wasteland dystopia/social darwinism
There are many other faces to these issues, but fear is often evoked to gain support for the less sensational bits.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
Summary: Bush scored a 1206 on his SAT, which scores to a modern era equivalent of 1280, which puts him in the 88 percentile, or about 10 times as smart as the average Slashdot smartass.
.12*290 million Americans more qualified for the job! (Okay, so that's an over-simplification). I think the President should be at least in the 99th percentile when it comes to intelligence. The job is too important to leave up to someone who is only moderately intelligent.
Guess what? The SAT isn't a true measure of intelligence. Also, there's a high correlation between wealth and high SAT scores, because rich people are simply better able to pay for the classes and training necessary to score better on the SAT. It doesn't measure intelligence - if it did, it wouldn't be possible to study for it.
And by the way, I got a 1580, so I still feel qualified to judge Bush as stupid. Anyway, why should we have someone who leads the U.S. be only in the 88th percentile (assuming that it measures intelligence anyway)? That means that there are roughly
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
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.
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
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!!
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
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.
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.
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 /.
They display RGB all the time.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
Wrong. Between 1973 and 2002, the US accounted for less than 1% of all Iraqi arms imports. And the WMD that he did use wasn't from us, either. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute concluded that the weapons used were either from Japan or Germany:
The UN report provides only negative evidence of the origin of the mustard gas sample. The absence in the sample analysed in Sweden and Switzerland of polysulphides and of more than a trace of sulphur indicates that it is not of past US-government manufacture, for all US mustard was made by the Levinstein process from ethylene and mixed sulphur chlorides. That process is also said to have been the one used by the USSR. From similar reasoning, British-made mustard, too, can probably be ruled out, even though substantial stocks were once held at British depots in the Middle East. For more positive evidence other sources of information must be used. Over the years since the mid-1960s quite a lot of information has been published purporting to describe Iraqi chemical weapons, but much of it is contradictory and all of it is of a reliability which SIPRI is in no position to judge. A major caveat must be entered: chemical warfare is such an emotive subject that it lends itself very readily to campaigns of disinformation and black propaganda, campaigns which the politics both of the Gulf War and of the current chemical-weapons negotiations have unquestionably stimulated to no small degree.
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.
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
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 believe you have it backwards. Bill Cosby was accussed of acting white because he encouraged young blacks to get an education.
The parent post is referring to Dr. Cosby's assigning culpability to the black community for perpetuating a culture that derides academic and financial success. Jesse Jackson was there too and heard the message, but sadly many in the audience were miffed because Dr. Cosby wasn't just blaming "the man", but instead told them to take some personal responsibility. This happened a few months ago, IIRC.
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.
What about Bad Brains?
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.
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.
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
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..
So, considering how many times you referred to the free market, I'm guessing that's what you consider to be the "One True Way." Now who's preaching?
Very funny, but untrue, and Bush's stupidity is a common myth supported by his occasional inability to be coherent.
And his lack of knowledge about, say, geography or foreign nations. And the fact that he fucked up at college. And the fact that he totally screwed up the oil company position that he was given. As a matter of fact, I've yet to see one thing presented that Bush has been competent at.
May we never see th
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.
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.
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.
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
I'm glad you replied. Slamming both candidates equally is only honest when both candidates are equal. There's a myth going around that this kind of "balance" is a bigger virtue than honesty or accuracy. Just because some conmen like to use "bias" as a knee-jerk weapon-word, doesn't mean you have an excuse to take your critical faculties offline.
For the record, I don't belong to any party, and find plenty to dislike with both "sides of the aisle." It doesn't make the candidates, or my opinion of them, in any way equal.
The fact is, you stand apart dramatically from the crowd by claiming that you were concerned about Kerry's record before SBVFT.
I am interested in how you became concerned with Kerry's war record long before the current smear campaign, and in general, how we could, under the present circumstances, reach any kind of believable new conclusion about Kerry's service.
Given what I've read so far, absenting credible witnesses forming any kind of consensus (which there appears to be none) the people who awarded the medals were in the best position to know what happened. And then on the other side we have the paymasters for the SBVFT, who have means, motive, and a long, well-storied history of staggeringly dishonest and audacious smear campaigns.
To put that side by side with a criticism of Bush's service is a bit unequal, I think - in fact, just being in the comparison hurts the actual veteran considerably.
But nonetheless I am open to your ideas on this. Please, and show me how you reached this conclusion. I am willing to be convinced.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Sure.
In the USA, the center of the political spectrum is a bit more averse to change than the rest of the world, and it always has been. Britain is similar in this regard, though they've moved a bit more than we have. In countries where the center has shifted significantly in one direction or another, communism(far left), fascism(far right), theocracy, socialism, or other such undesirable government has been the result, and the majority of Americans want no part in anything like that. Despite arguments between the left and the right, the center is usually where the correct course of action is, and that's where our leaders usually take us. And as I've said, that center doesn't move much.
From the American point of view, the rest of the world has been drifting leftward steadliy since World War II. Heavy socialist programs such as national health care and welfare (I believe you brits call it 'the dole') have become the norm in Europe and Canada due to weakness on the right and the need for social programs to rebuild from World War II. Here, those early leftist programs were resisted because we didn't need to rebuild as much as the rest of the world. We needed to demobilize and build up our Military-industrial infrastructure to combat the future war with the Soviets that never happend. As a result, where the rest of the world took a step left, we stepped right -- traditionally stronger than the left. The only way Kennedy got elected in the early 60's was because he was so rightward leaning in this regard. He ran on being tough on communism. That (and Richard J. Daley) won him the election.
The most significant leftward movement in the US over the last century has, ironically, not been due to our legislative or executive branches of government, but due to our activist judiciary. Abortion rights, desegregation, women's rights, have all been leftward movements imposed on the US by the courts(not that this is a bad thing!).
Many view the problem here as where our lawmakers come from. Our senatorial elections have become a contest between millionaires to see who can buy themselves a seat. Our presidential elections have become less "who do we want to have the job," and more "I'm going to vote for the guy I dislike the least". The result is an elected official who noone really likes, and who does a pretty lousy job. Jimmy Carter was elected the same way that GWB was elected: because too many people disliked the alternative.
In response to your question, the Democratic party is the further left of the two. Some of their planks include abortion rights, healthcare reform, pro-labor legislation, larger government entitlements (the Republicans criticize them for "tax and spend" legislation), redistribution of wealth from the upper classes to the lower, greater attention to social issues, and opposing anything that comes from the Republicans. The Republican party is the further right of the two. Their planks include the rights of the unborn, lower taxes, degregulation of business and other pro-business legislation (including stricter copyright legislation), smaller government through shrinking social services, and opposing anything that comes from the Democrats.
The interesting thing today is that, because of the disaster that the Bush presidency has been, we're looking at a large-scale leftward movement of the country, similar to the rightward movement when Reagan replaced Carter. (But I must say that John Kerry is no Ronald Reagan. He's just not charismatic enough. He's not winning this election as much as Bush is losing it.) Though this leftward movement will happen, look for it to reverse in two years for the congressional elections, as it did after Clinton was elected. Conservatives will wake up and realize that they're conservatives again, because Bush will no longer be there to hate.
The reason that non-Americans see so little difference is that the one area where the American political parties have little disagreement in is foriegn policy. Whatever else happens in November, remember this: US foriegn policy will not change much, regardless of who is elected.
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.
One, maybe two? Are you kidding? A lack of education so extreme that people were proactively discouraged from learning even to read, is supposed to work its way out in two generations?
...
> There are plenty of examples in history of poor uneducated people teaching themselvs and going somewhere.
Will you people *ever* stop taking refuge in special cases, and focus on the general case?
> as bad or worse than anything done to the blacks since slavery
Once again, you add in an incredibly restrictive condition - "since slavery". persecution of Europe's Jews (as well as middle eastern and african Jews) varied in intensity notably throughout time and place (in some cases as bad as the inquisition, in others even preferential treatment, but usually slightly negative as a whole).
> Where are the wealthy black buisnessmen, the black scientists and engineers?
You know that they exist. My energy bill goes to a company whose CEO is black (Alliant). They're just not particularly common. Does the black population as a whole at present (only 50 years after the end of segregation) have as high of a percent of scholars and high level businessmen as American jews, commonly descended from the wealther and more educated of European jews? Of course not. How do they compare to the world's Jewish populations as whole (despite just coming out of segregation following slavery), which includes the slavic jews who weren't able to emigrate, for example? Harder to say.
> They are no longer black by culture
You should tell that to a black man I know around here. He's headed several law deparments at different schools, and recently defeated an ordinance that the city passed to target his hobby of car collecting (he keeps the cars in his front yard, and they didn't like it). He was a devout MLK follower, and is involved in all sorts of black advocacy organizations. They are anything but "white by culture" in really any respect. I find this pretty typical, actually.
> you wanted them to be based
I didn't describe how I *wanted* quotas. I described how they are, and how they have always been. You, like most people, have a horribly distorted version of how they work.
No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
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?