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Is "Left" Vs. "Right" Hard-coded Into Your Brain?
New submitter kyjellyfish writes "Research published in the journal PLOS ONE, suggests that your parents 'Left
or 'Right' party affiliations are not the only factor at work shaping a person's political identity. Differences in opinion between 'Lefties' and 'Righties' may reflect specific physiological processes. In research performed over 10 years ago, brain scans showed that London cab drivers' gray matter grew larger to help them store a mental map of the city."
From the article: "Other scans have shown that brain regions associated with risk and uncertainty, such as the fear-processing amygdala, differ in structure in liberals and conservatives. And different architecture means different behavior. Liberals tend to seek out novelty and uncertainty, while conservatives exhibit strong changes in attitude to threatening situations. The former are more willing to accept risk, while the latter tends to have more intense physical reactions to threatening stimuli."
So what the article is saying is that conservatives are pussies. Gotchya.
That the pussified liberals are afraid of stubbing their toes so they live in a perpetual state of fear that drives their desire to control others, while big brave conservative tough-guys are out protecting the world with hard-nosed risk taking and freedom-spreading.
I was a hard-core conservative a few years ago, now I'm a hard-core liberal.
Did my brain rewire itself?
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
I was a hard-core conservative a few years ago, now I'm a hard-core liberal.
Did my brain rewire itself?
Nope, your brain is just fucked up; "hard-core" leanings toward any political party these days is insane.
Kind of. Through the wonder of plasticity your brain can manage to reform a (partially) functioning consciousness, even in the face of catastrophic damage. Did you receive a blow to the head or experience a stroke?
Nope, your brain is just fucked up
I came here to say this, since I'm socially liberal and fiscally conservative - neither party offers either of those...
"hard-core" leanings toward any political party these days is insane.
Then I lol'd.
Nope, you're just bipartisan.
So how does this work in a traditionally free country like America, where conservatives favor freedom of the individual, with its inherent risk that an individual might fail, while the liberals want the government to guarantee the health safety and happiness of every human being and remove all risk from life?
Perhaps it is explained that what the conservatives fear is not risk, but loss of control. American conservatives are afraid to place their fates into the hands of the elected experts on human happiness.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
I think it means that you really have no opinions of your own and just follow the crowd blindly.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The article actually specifically points out that the brain can develop in response to certain stimuli. So yeah.
It's not hardwired: If it were, we'd be able to do these scans at birth or an early age and find similar patterns. But we don't. Which means the brain's structure changes in order to specialize in certain thought and behavior patterns. The fact that this applies to politics as well as, say, geospatial, tasks, should be absolutely no surprise.
It's disengenuous to suggest these things are hard-wired because they imply they cannot be changed. Except they can: I've known many people who, after experiencing a significant emotional event, altered their politics, religious affiliation, and even base personality traits. The human brain is exceptionally malleable. This study only offers a snapshot at a particular point in time and suggests that if certain structural properties are present, the thinking pattern is likely to be of a certain type. It does not say whether that structure was present before, after, or the extent to which it can be changed, and if so, how quickly.
It's like taking a photograph of a car driving down the road and assuming that it's on that road, and only that road, forever.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Your brain most likely reflects your views. Neuroplasticity and the such.
There is a whole bunch of evidence for Neuroplasticity (your brain rewiring itself due to input, behaviour changes and illness), so it is possible.
Nope. You probably just have a very strong need to identify with a group. When you decided the group you had identified with had disappointed you somehow (not hard with the current crop of Republicans if you haven't completely closed your mind to inconvenient facts) you switched to the only other available option. If you're not in the USA, well, the Repulicans aren't the only hypocritical right wing party that is fanning and exploiting fear, greed, and jealousy to gain power.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Now, pay attention. London cabbies are NOT born with expanded gray matter. They are "normal" people, become cabbies, get expanded gray matter.
Now, can your brain rewire itself?
Research suggests that yes, it can.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
Oh look, it's news reinforcing the false premise of the two party system.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
"Liberals" (in the modern US sense of progressives / left wing) are enormously fearful and risk averse: they want governmental protection against unemployment, against medical expenses, against global warming, against guns, and lots of other things. Granted, the nature of these fears are seemingly more rational and plausible than those of conservatives (who seem to fear anything from the wrath of God to being tempted into homosexuality by gay marriage), but they are still driven by fear.
The only group who isn't driven by fear is libertarians, people who actually have trust in their ability to make a living somehow and survive in an uncertain and changing world, independent of God or government help. Libertarians are often linked with "conservatives", but they are more accurately described as classical liberals.
Now, can your brain rewire itself? Research suggests that yes, it can.
Which is an incredibly dull and obvious conclusion. Of course it can: Otherwise we'd still think and act like infant children. All we've managed to do here is look closely enough at the brain that we can start to see landscape features and make inferences from that which are broadly true for others which have similar features. Which is no small achievement, but this is confirmatory research -- it tells us something we already knew, to a high degree of confidence.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Is there treatment for that? Or is the rubber room the only option?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I was a hard-core conservative a few years ago, now I'm a hard-core liberal.
Did my brain rewire itself?
It's more likely that your definition if conservative and liberal changed.
My people call themselves conservative or liberal, while meaning totally different things.
Infact, the original meaning isn't left right :
the normal opposite of "conservative" would be "progessive" ( sticking to what's known to work versus taking the risk of trying new things ).
the normal opposite of "liberal" , would be authoritarian ( liberalism favoring more freedom , whereas authoritarianism favoring less freedom ( more control by state ) ). Although there is also the distinction between liberal (state should ensure freedom ) and libertarian ( state should be minimized, thus providing more freedom)
Left : more personal freedom, less economic freedom.
Right : more economic freedom, less personal freedom.
For example, you could be a left-leaning conservative liberal, which would mean that you value freedom, with emphasis on personal freedom, but prefer to stick to tried and true policies for achieving this ( just an example, I'm not saying you are ) .
Slipping shoelaces ?
I find the "left" and "right" people stupid and offensive to humanity. And these fruitpies love to think every person is either left or right. Is there an antidote other than murdering all these lefty and righty dittoheads. GAH
I'll leave the compilation of counterexamples to you.
Neither "hard-core conservative" nor "hard-core liberal" refer to any political party. Ideologies perhaps. You could equate Tea-Partiers to the former and Occupiers to the latter, but neither group appears to have much faith in their "designated party" from the 2-party system we've got. Liberals complain that Obama is perpetuating and strengthening heavily criticized policies from GWB. Meanwhile, the conservatives have been throwing their stalwarts (Arlen Spector, John McCain, and now Chuck Hagel, et al) under the bus for not being suitably uncompromising about their core ideologies. And the GOP is torn apart as their try to pander to this group while distancing themselves from nutjobs such as Todd Akin.
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This study only discovers what liberal brains look like, not whether they are liberal because of their brain, or their brain developed in that fashion because they are liberal.
Worthless Science. Who paid for this worthless study?
Another batch of liberals trying to justify their existence. Heard it before.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Mod parent up. I wish we could count on our respective parties to uphold some core values. I don't vote for Democrats because I expect some return in the form of liberalization of government or society. Disappointment after disappointment has taught me not to do that. I vote for Democrats because I don't want more Scalias and Thomases deciding what the Constitution really means, and because I don't want the Bushes and Palins and Ryans and Romneys of the world pushing their crazy world views on us all.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
If conservatives are risk averse, why are a strong majority of successful businessmen and entrepreneurs conservative? Please don't say it's because greed and the desire to keep their money overpowers their inherent timidity at the world. That would be incredibly smug.
If liberals love uncertainly and novelty, why are they the ones who push for the certainty and banality of pervasive welfare programs? Please don't say it's because their inherent love of "people" overpowers their personal inclination for uncertainty. That would be incredibly patronizing.
Right : more economic freedom
Well...Maybe, if you happen to be a corporation.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Yes, of course it did.
How could you have different thoughts without different physical events happening in your brain?
Any change in behavior or cognition is accompanied by a change in the brain.
If I had to guess, you're probably just reacting to negative experiences. I find many self-ascribed "liberals" and "conservatives" aren't consistently liberal or conservative in their mindset, but are just adamantly anti-conservative or anti-liberal based on caricatures and stereotypes formed either through peer groups or personal experience. These are the people who find it easy to bring up the perceived wrongs committed by the other side, but will have a lot of trouble explaining their own positions without strings of platitudes and the fallacy of begging the question.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
From the article Not by Twins Alone: Using the Extended Family Design to Investigate Genetic Influence on Political Beliefs
Variance components estimates of political and social attitudes suggest a substantial level of genetic influence, but the results have been challenged because they rely on data from twins only. In this analysis, we include responses from parents and nontwin full siblings of twins, account for measurement error by using a panel design, and estimate genetic and environmental variance by maximum-likelihood structural equation modeling. By doing so, we address the central concerns of critics, including that the twin-only design offers no verification of either the equal environments or random mating assumptions. Moving beyond the twin-only design leads to the conclusion that for most political and social attitudes, genetic influences account for an even greater proportion of individual differences than reported by studies using more limited data and more elementary estimation techniques. These findings make it increasingly difficult to deny that—however indirectly—genetics plays a role in the formation of political and social attitudes.
The article can be found here.
This is complex indeed.
If I read the article correctly, the differences can be summed up thus:
Conservatives fear change - which leads to thinking that the current state of affairs is the best possible one and should never change
Liberals fear conflict - which leads to pandering and decisions by committee or focus-group that try to please everyone
Both groups need to recognize that we are actually capable of acting in a way that is contrary to our biological biases in the same way as we are able to resist these urges in the same way as we are able to resist going to the toilet until we reach a commode.
Real political philosophy is not a one-dimensional "right" or "left". I know it is hard for some people to grasp, but you can't describe everything political on that stupid scale.
... since americans are among the most uninformed electorates on the planet today. The average american, and average slashdot poster is CLUELESS about politics.
The reality is america is totally hard right, obama would have been not long ago a moderate republican (which is hard right the rest of the world). So you have a bunch of clueless americans who are voting between basically what amounts to the same flavor of hard right ideology with little difference. Many americans then make a big stink about their uninformed political views and opinions.
Reality is the average american is too ignorant/stupid to have any kind of informed political view of america given the huge amount of propaganda that pervades their media and education system.
Science, in studies like this, manages to forget science. Science is finding what is wrong with your idea.
These folks (and all people who practice epidemiology irrationally, which is most) get lost in death and forget life.
God: "I don't leave footprints!"
conservatives want you to take individual risk, but tell you exactly what you can and cant do
Incorrect. Conservatives are for individual risk, and ALSO states rights which are inherently letting people do what they want to do.
liberals on the other hand want you to live your live as free as possible
HA HA HA HA HO HE HO HA HA HA HO HE
Oh yeah, that's why they like regulation so much, because it grants you so much "freedom" - freedom from being able to choose anything but a "safe" path the government agrees is best for you.
No, liberals are the party of Control - always have been, always will be.
Until you figure that out you'll keep voting in people you think are making you more free while they turn the screws tighter each year.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wall Street did not understand they were taking any risks. Therefore they do not qualify to be liberals.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
... seems to be wired for big-endian.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
You clearly wouldn't know "extreme left" if it bit you in the butt. What passes for "left" in the USA is the extreme right most everywhere else.
For instance, the Dutch VVD is the closest we get to you democrats, they are a RIGHT wing party. Left wing is the SP and they are socialists. Real socialists. In France there still are communist parties AND they have quite recently been part of governments (Miterand, I think was the last).
The Republicans are in EU terms, extreme right and with that I mean one step away from goose stepping.
A thing to remember is that for instance the French LOVE big government, to them it means the system is working. Which it more or less is. The Germans KNOW what to much freedom can lead to, they know that some censorship is a price to pay for being the most evil country on the face of the earth, starting WW3 would not be appreciated by the world and so they ban certain books and parties. And it works so well that when they copied from the BBC the idea of Germany's greatest German they were so not worried about their citizens they excluded Hitler from the nominees... who could ONLY be included in the first place because they allowed Austrians in the list of greatest Germans... some people never learn.
The US was founded by people who LEFT the rest of the world because they didn't agree with the local systems. The rest of the world is populated by those who didn't find the local system objectionable enough to leave. This is a major issue with migration, it is rarely an entire balanced population that moves but rather a subset of a "normal" balanced population.
A clear example of this is/was Australia. They got more men then women because more men then women emigrated to find their fortune. Could it be that if a migration stream mostly consisted of say puritans fleeing from a country where they were not free to prosecute would influence they new home land and make it different from their old land because the "rest" is missing?
Mind you, that could lead to some nasty thoughts... what happens to a group of people who were picked for their properties as slaves... what if the only people to migrate are the poor who couldn't make a success in their old country? A population build up of fortune seekers?
Nasty... but if you are willing to entertain the thought that migration populations are subsets of a "normal" population, then some issues can be explained quite easily (why the US is so puritan and gun loving for instance.)
Mind you, a co-worker from Chili was forced to go through a course teaching him about Holland... in the book it told him that in Holland family is not as important as in other countries... right... I know several people who live in the same street as their parents and their grandparents are only a few minutes away. My co-workers LEFT his family on another CONTINENT and in 4 years had visited them ONCE!
To who does family then matter more? THINK before you answer. In CHILI family might matter more BUT not to THIS particular Chilian person who didn't MIND not seeing his family for years!
An emigrant/immigrants is a SPECIAL person DIFFERENT from all others in his home land because he LEFT IT BEHIND!
The US is made out of emigrants and slaves and tiny amount of natives. The EU is made of natives and a tiny amount of immigrants (really right wingers, it is less then 5% and that is counting everyone whose grandfather wasn't born in the same EU country).
It explains a lot, if you are willing to think.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Classification error to identify lefties as 'liberals'. My hypothesis has always been that lefties are 'anti-authority', probably because they resented their father. In Russia, lefties hated the Tsar, now the same kind hate the Communists, or whoever else is in power. Similar everywhere.
Ask then answer: what changes when a Western regime changes, from Democrat to Republican and from Labour to Coalition? NOTHING. Nothing changes, the fraud, murder and corruption, the kiddie fiddling and forced adoption carries on regardless, because of a simple truth: the same people are in charge. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are two sides of the same fence, as are Milliband, Cameron and Clegg. They are puppets, being played to distract the rest of us from what is really going on: those in control of the fraud money are taking our possessions and more importantly our CHILDREN for their own and treating us like the slaves we all are. The puppet masters operate behind dark velvetine curtains, secret and unknown to the rest of us, and they're slowly realising that one day soon those curtains will be drawn back and they will be exposed for all to see.
The Romans had a name for this tactic of conquest: it was called "Divide and Conquer". Get this left-v-right crap out of your heads and start to realise that you're all being played.
Have you ever published with Nature or even read one of their articles? Anyone who has knows that you basically have to send them two articles: one ultra-brief one that gets published in the journal, and another exceptionally detailed one that ends up in the supplementary online material.
In summary: your complaints about Nature are moot because you are an ignorant cunt.
i don't see anything about the rat race in his post. The deal is simple - if it's your choice to be more social and grind less at work, accept the consequences (eg lower standard of living, low disposable income) like an adult. The choice is fine, but the oversized sense of entitlement would be wrong, as it would have to be funded by people who might hate work just much as you if not more, but don't skip the hard parts of life, who have the fruits of their labor taken from them.
Indeed. Now take into account that both big US parties are really conservative. And that cowards will do any and all amoral, insane and stupid thing to deal with their fear. Explains a lot, doesn't it?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The results are highly doubtable. First, political left or right, or alternatively, liberal or conservative are very imprecise categories and not universal across countries. In political science, the opposite of liberal (with no restrictions) is totalitarian. While economic models may range between community/state driven to private/company driven or planed and market economy.
In eastern Europe lefts are conservatives in the meaning of they are against change and want to keep their power. Right wing people are totalitarian and want to keep the power too. No side is liberal.
What they found out (again) people who can cope better with change tend to fear change less.
Okay, so how does that explain why Conservatives are less risk averse, and more willing to support things, like no-fault insurance, jettisoning guaranteed government programs (including social security, medicare/medicaid) for market solutions, and so on? Put that on a ballot anywhere, and you'll see Liberals howling about people being thrown to the wolves, while Conservatives will try and make a pitch that while risky, it would be more rewarding. In fact, the only thing that Conservatives are conservative about are social issues, and that too is in fact not there - if one looks at the divorce rates and out of wedlock births even in Conservative families. Like Bristol Palin, anyone?
Novelty-seeking is more useful in social situations, while threat-awareness is more useful when you don't trust social situations and believe the underlying sociological dynamics will be more determinative.
Futurist Traditionalism
You're either out for the individual (and Selfish) or out for the herd/pack/tribe (and Social).
So you support people roaming the streets screaming 'BURN THE JEWS!'?
Too much freedom for hate speech in Germany led to the Nazi party coming into power (and then abolishing nearly all freedom).
If you read the artcile (yeah, I know few slashdotters bother to RTFA) did you notice that you did not need to pay for it, regardless of where you were? Did you notice you are free to download it and redistribute it any way you like?
PLoS (and others now, as well) is providing open access publishing. Work is still peer reviewed but nothing is held behind a paywall.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Because we're ALL left or right? What a bunch of horseshit. It's this sort of black and white thinking, and now "science" that keeps us from making any progress. If there's one thing the last 100 years have taught us about politics, it's that both the left and the right are completely full of shit. Organized stupidity is not the way to get things done.
They are if they remained consistent and the party changed around them.
If there is no true imminent danger of any jews actually being burnt, then yes I support it. I won't join them of course, but I support their right to say it.
If on the other hand it sounded like a real plan - something like "Tomorrow at 6:00 am, we gather here and burn this neighborhood of jews to the ground!", then that is punishable because it is tied to a specific actionable plan to do damage.
But if I walk around saying "I will KILL all brown eyed people on the planet!", that just makes me a loony, not a criminal.
I'm leftwing, left handed, left footed, left eyed, left penised and have migraines on the RIGHT side of my head. So I guess I am hard wired in everything.
This journal should try to answer that question first before making silly correlations between party affiliation and personality traits.
Left and Right, Liberals and Conservatists, was originally a distinction that made sense at the beginning of democracy: do we try to keep a system similar to what was before (conservatists) or do we try for something new and different (liberals).
Obviously, you don't want to ever keep trying for something new and different. All you end up with if you do that is change for the sake of change, instability, and needlessly complicated laws piled on top of each other. In current times, it is actually the right wing that enacts the most new laws, which is quite opposed to what you'd expect since they're therefore the ones doing change. Oh, there certainly are some real evolutions wanted by the lefties, such as legislating marijuana, which probably should have happened decades ago but hasn't due to ill-placed conservatist convictions, but it's mostly a small mediatic issue with little relevance in the grand scheme of things.
So what is the difference between left and right, really? You could say it's that right wing governments want to minimize government spending and taxation, while left wing wants to use taxpayer money to provide a baseline of quality to a variety of services (health, pension, transport, telecommunications...). A savvy person would think the first approach is best as governments are not able to efficiently run services, while it is good to have a minimum service for the latter. Yet in the past decades government spending has always been highest with right wing governments.
There are actually many issues where you'll find that the distinction is not clearly cut or has varied considerably among history.
In the end, Left or Right, it doesn't mean anything other than who's sponsoring you.
I think the research passes the smell test. It makes sense that two groups of people that can look at the same topic and have wildly differing opinions probably have some structural difference in the organ that creates those opinions. If you look past the "conservatives are pussies, liberals are daredevils" flamebait, there are a lot of interesting questions like how do those structures form and change? Perhaps those questions can be answered by reading the article? Hopefully some other readers out there are also interested in the science. Unfortunately after a quick scan through the comments I didn't see any neuroscience or biology types chiming in. Just right vs left vs not left enough.
The linear left right is too simplistic. A better but more complex description would not just ask what someones position is on an issue but at what level (individual, family, voluntary group, neighborhood, town, county, state, national, world) a binding agreement should be made and enforced on that issue. A person can be personally conservative (traditional morality) and yet have a live and let live attitude. A person can also claim to be liberal and yet want to force everyone to do as they say.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
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"Wherever determinism appears, controversy attends, raising spectres of days when colonialists, eugenicists, public health officials, and political idealists believed they could cure the human condition through manipulation and force."....oh, wait. Wrong tense, anyway.
This is probably correct. I went from Republican, to Libertarian, to anarchist, over about 8 years. It's not that my views changed all that much (they did change a little), but mostly I just realized that not only were Republicans not the party of freedom, but that there was no party of freedom, or rather, that freedom doesn't come from government. My core desire (to be allowed to act according to my own reason) remained the same.
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Yes, someone saw it!
Plasticity! No it's not plastic but the ability to modify. I think what the author,OP is trying to say is that the left and right hemispheres are "evolutionized" to handle certain aspects on the left (mundane) and right (creative). Does this mean that being Liberal frees up your right-hemisphere for more intelligence and creativity. Most of the cerebral matter controlling parts of your body are on the opposite side of the part it is controlling. Hypothetically, possible blood flow issue as when one side is strained the muscles tend to transfer part of that energy all the way up (jaw clenched attempting to pull the door free of it's hinges). Besides all the flamebait I read on this article, it does make some sense. Now you can't say conservatives as pussies or cats as cats are independent. They are more like dogs that follow a lead dog. This trait to may be rewired but it may be that it's built along the hardwired part that makes it hard to change. Many traits like religious beliefs, gang or group affiliation are hard to change. These actions all fall into the same realm of forced choice or upbringing. It can be done, but it takes stronger influence.
"We are all just a few neurons short of being crazy, one good short circuit in the purkinje clusters and you are toast"
What this doesn't answer is whether these differences are primarily genetic or environmental. My family and I have rather different political philosophies (to the point that Thanksgiving dinners are getting increasingly aggravating for me), and I wonder whether I'm a mutant, or is it because I've had such different life experiences from them? I am pretty risk-averse for a "liberal" (under this model), so maybe I've just been through enough examples of conservatism being proved wrong (or at least wrong-hearted) to make me an outlier.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Is this research done by Conservatives or Liberals? I need to know before I praise it or trash it!
I wish the bias weren't so obvious in the post. They might as well have said that all conservatives are actually apes and that liberals are so advanced because they are willing to throw away anything old for something new and shiny. New equals better, always, and therefore opposition of a new bill rightly makes one a monkey. There are a great many things that are replaceable and worth looking at in regards to reform; there are other things still which don't need to be tampered with because they work. It has everything to do with our definitions of broken. Perhaps opposition can bring about some good, and having either party run unchecked would probably be disastrous. We should know this by now. Liberal doesn't equal good any more than Conservative equals bad. On the contrary, they are both beginning to mean very little of worth in my mind.
Am i the only one that feels "Hard-Coded" should be the word in quotes, not Left and Right.
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Look, I know it's hard enough to get editors that perform basic functions like "make sure the link isn't just blog or product pimping" or "make sure that article hasn't been posted already", so asking them to actually PARSE the text and edit it is expecting a lot....but really, could you slant the language in the summary more?
"From the article: "Other scans have shown that brain regions associated with risk and uncertainty, such as the fear-processing amygdala, differ in structure in liberals and conservatives. And different architecture means different behavior. Liberals tend to seek out novelty and uncertainty, while conservatives exhibit strong changes in attitude to threatening situations. The former are more willing to accept risk, while the latter tends to have more intense physical reactions to threatening stimuli.""
So when liberals do it, its 'novelty, uncertainty' or 'risk'.
When conservatives do it, it's 'threatening'.
No, no editorial bias there.
Would it read differently if we reversed the words used, and said that liberals seek out 'threatening' situations and conservatives avoid risk and uncertainty? Meaning (roughly) the same, but it kinda makes liberals look rather stupid in turn.
Further, from the article: "The researchers found that liberals and conservatives donâ(TM)t differ in the risks they do or donâ(TM)t take" and âoeIf you went to Vegas, you wonâ(TM)t be able to tell whoâ(TM)s a Democrat or whoâ(TM)s a Republican". The summary says that they react very differently (when in fact, the article only says their brains 'light up' differently), but their actual behavior is indistinguishable.
Finally, the conclusion of the article says it quite clearly that the dynamic nature of the brain constantly reconfiguring itself means that we really cannot assert that anything is hard-coded...in DIRECT opposition to the summary header.
The actual studies are fascinating, shitty /. summary notwithstanding, for a couple of reasons:
1) to me it seems obvious, that the articles have the cause/effect reversed as well. It's not that our politics set our brain patterns; our brain patterns no doubt are expressed in our worldview/politics.
2) it's even more curious that the differences in response are NOT reflected in behavior - that's absolutely bizarre.
-Styopa
Left and right are not the only options. http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz
Left : more personal freedom, less economic freedom. Right : more economic freedom, less personal freedom.
The left right spectrum is a poor way to judge these things, personal freedoms like guns, who they can hire (discrimination laws, closed shop laws), and what schools public money can be used for (charter schools), are all personal freedoms that most conservatives believe in. The two big freedoms that many conservatives oppose is abortion, they believe the baby's right to live supersedes the mother's right to choose, and gay marriage, which they believe is a religious sacrament, I personally believe that the government should not treat people any different married or not and should not be performing religious sacraments.
Most of these contradictions are due to pandering, so a simple political spectrum line no where near defines conservative and liberal, there is no universal definition.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
You don't have to actually do the killing. Making specific plans to do it is enough. Bin Laden didn't personally lead the planes into the twin towers, but he made specific concrete plans to do so.
The keywords are specific, imminent, and concrete plans.
But what if people do burn the jews? Do the screamers keep their right to scream when it's nearly certain to result in deaths, even if they themselves are not likely to do the killing?
Define "nearly certain". Give me an example. If I scream "Let's kill everyone with long hair!", is it "nearly certain" that it'll happen? How is that different from saying "Let's kill all the jews!"?
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A person can also claim to be liberal and yet want to force everyone to do as they say.
A person can claim to be a fish but it doesn't give them gills. If you want to control people's personal lives, you're not a liberal. If you want to control business, you're not a conservative. Left, right, that's national. Our left is many nations' right, maybe most. But we have a far left and a left of left, too. We're not going to institute their policies if we can't even institute those of the left, at least, those which are actually leftist.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you scream while marching down the street in the company of a few hundred angry men that have been known to get violet at the slightest provocation for example.
It's called flip-flopping. Did you change girlfriends and thus political leanings?
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What are you screaming? Does it include specific plans to kill people? If so, then that's illegal. But if you're just generally spreading hate without any specific intentions of violence, then it's ok even if people die.
If people are killed, then only those who actually did the killing are responsible. Spreading hate is perfectly acceptable. It makes you a jerk and an asshole, but not a criminal.
a few hundred angry men that have been known to get violent at the slightest provocation for example.
That is their problem. How can I take responsibility for the immaturity and stupidity of other people?
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So much depends on the questions, how they are phrased, what topics. A selection of typical politically charged questions infused with specific wording and phrasing can easily make for a desired outcome.
Oh, let's ask questions about fear on a political spectrum.
"Do you trust the government?"
"Are you concerned the government is over-stepping it's bounds?"
"Do you fear the U.S. government becoming a tyrannical state."
"Do you fear politicians taking away your rights?"
Wow...conservatives answered yes, liberals no. Clearly, conservatives are fearful.
STOP
"Do you fear being stopped by a police officer?"
"Do you fear politicians taking away your freedom of choice?"
"Do you fear the influence of religion in politics."
Wait, the liberals answer yes, and conservatives answered no. Clearly the liberals are full of fear.
Seriously, without a clear insight into their questions. And the specific wording. It is hard to give this study much more credence than a piece of toast with butter on it.
And to some degree, amenable to reason. As he got older, my late father was a right-wingnut, Limbaugh listening crazy. While some of this was the dementia, even as a younger person, he had always been right-ish, and/or libertarian leaning. Both my sister and I, in contrast, are moderate, conservative on some issues, liberal on others, and open to changes based on facts, despite the best efforts of my father to have us join in on his fanaticism fun.
The difference is that we grew up reading a lot, went to college, and didn't grow up poor and feeling constantly under threat. Moreover, we weren't forced to go to a church (Despite this, my sister now attends regularly), or engage in team sports - the major sources of educational propaganda in the USA. It makes a difference.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
You'll often hear in such studies that conservatives operate from a place of fear.
That's not really a bad thing a lot of the time. Life is pretty dangerous. As the recent economic crises showed, big risk can become big problems.
And of course progressives seek novelty and uncertainly. That's also not really bad thing a lot of the time. You can discover new things. Sometimes the 'bad things' don't out to be as bad...
There's also the MBTI scale (INTP, INFJ, INTJ...) classification as well.
A lot of it might even be good from an evolutionary perspective... kind of like epi-genetics. If you gave birth to your child during a famine, then your child will actually be genetically tuned to store more fat... taking into account the famine.
Who knows how this all plays in with politics. If you were raised in disorder, maybe you crave authority or something... I don't know. Just guessing
They're all useful mode of thinking.
And yes, they don't all match directly to political movements.
When it comes to the environment, liberals/progressives seem to operate like a conservative... and conservatives operate like progressives.
Anyone who says "too much freedom" causes evil is part of the problem. Try cracking a history book. The Nazi party came to power because Germany had social and economic problems and the people decided to let the government "fix" it.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I was a hard-core conservative a few years ago, now I'm a hard-core liberal.
Did my brain rewire itself?
If you're anything like me, it was just a little bit of logic that finally went through your head. I was a card-carrying Libertarian until I really thought about the goals I would set for society. For instance, socialized medicine sounds restrictive, but the result is that for most people it means greater economic freedom, not less. How? Because if you are not forced to worry about health care coverage when switching between jobs or starting your own business, you are much more able to do so. Similarly, if you tax the rich heavily and require employers to provide a living wage, you have a healthy middle class and a flowing economy where more people are more free to pursue their goals. Conservatives might talk about "freedom" a lot, but it's only a theoretical freedom -- without the means to pursue your goals, the "freedom" to do so is meaningless.
And the Nazis were able to legally rise into (total) power because it was fine and dandy for them to preach (and carry out) attacks on opposing political parties. Even when it was known that they routinely attack their opponents they were still not prosecuted, and the leaders who encouraged these attacks were free to continue doing so.
That's the kind of freedom I oppose - the freedom do encourage and order violence while being protected by law just because you don't specify which member of the target group you want killed first.
There is a relatively scientific and objective description of a fish. Not so with the liberal and conservative labels. How many times do you read he/she isn't a real liberal/conservative?
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
, the conservatives have been throwing their stalwarts (Arlen Spector, John McCain, and now Chuck Hagel, et al)
Stalwart, not how I would describe a former Democrat, the guy everybody in Washington would go to for a quote from a Republican to bad mouth other Republicans, and the dude who lost his shit about the surge, and doesn't have the courage to admit he lost his shit. +5 insightful, I think not.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
Exactly. That's the problem with this idiotic article. The "right" vs. "left" distinction applies mainly to the US and its inbred two-nearly-identical-party system
No, it refers to the seating in the Estates General early in the French Revolution, a pattern that became obsolete within months even there. Edmund Burke would have been as appalled by the Nazis (conservative in practice if socialistic in rhetoric before it achieved power) as he was by the French Revolution, to pick one conservative icon.
Jerry Pournelle got his PolySci PhD with a dissertation that pointed this out and proposed a two dimensional system of statist/individualist and rationalist/nonrationalist axes. Adam Smith's Invisible Hand makes any system advocating capitalism nonrationalist (except for Ayn Rand's) since the idea is that capitalism's superior results are an emergent behavior of economic systems, as opposed to Communism's rationalistic certainty of the model of Economic Determinism, which in practice fails for anything larger than an extended family or hunter-gatherer band. I am certain that more axes could be defined (most Libertarians that I know will fall away once drug legalization occurs, especially if pot is taxed like cigarettes, so that could be an axis, for example).
Is that liberals are upset that people like you are scared of everything and, rather than let you inflict your fear on everyone else, they call you out on your ignorance and fear, making you even more scared.
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I played Dungeons and Dragons back before it was cool.
When was that? And where -- I noticed that it was common among Army and private school veterans years before I first even heard of it (that is, once I heard of it, I examined the histories of the long-time players).
Too much Freedom itself isn't the problem, it's a sort of truism though meant to reflect what can be a serious problem.
Your freedom to swing your fist ends at my face, so to speak. But without govenrment or an apparatus to "defend" freedoms there's absolutely nothing stopping you from doing it anyway. Therefore if the other person decides their fist should be lodged firmly in my gut we can say the other person has "too much freedom" because they are so free from the practical consequences (punishment) for their actions that they now use their freedom to act to remove my freedom to act.
The answer isn't to make people "un free" the answer is to make people more accountable for their actions and the consequences thereof. Make power accountable and things fall nicely into place. Put a cop between me and Fisty McSwinger and I we both might be better off. The Cop prevents him from hitting me and as a result we both go off and do our own thing peacably.
In an interconnected, interdependent world those with power over others should by definition be less free than those without. Their power should be held accountable to the people. Our entire system of government is based on this idea. What the founders just never imagined was how private business could slowly evolve into today's government-challenging international behemoths. Nobody imagined a private chartered corporation could render entire swathes of nation states impotent to its whims and all done through the seductive powers of commerce.
The real issue isn't so much "too much freedom" or "too little freedom" it's "too little accountability to the people in institutions of power" and that includes governments as much as big businesses. Which, when you think about it, companies like G.E., Apple, etc. are like their own little private nations for the money they make and the influence they wield in national governments. Call me crazy, but I don't think a market system that has excelled at anything other than being able to continuously produce novel luxury goods and entertainment should be able to hold sway over the policies of national governments ostensibly formed to help support all of their citizens and not just the exclusive aims of their richest 1% or 0.1%.
err, that has NOT EXCELLED at anything other than being able to continuously produce novel luxury goods*
So you support people roaming the streets screaming 'BURN THE JEWS!'?
Depends. If it qualifies as incitement to commit a crime (i.e. if someone is likely to listen and follow up), then no. If it's just some mad ramblings, then yes.
Too much freedom for hate speech in Germany led to the Nazi party coming into power (and then abolishing nearly all freedom).
It wasn't too much freedom for hate speech in Germany that led to Nazis gaining power. It was the sorry shape in which the state was left in after WW1. Nazis were a revolutionary movement - they didn't care about laws all that much, and they broke many of them on their way to power.
This kind of statement drives me crazy. Do you really think that the fact that people were allowed to SAY those things caused the holocaust and thus freedom somehow caused the holocaust? The problem, from what I've read, was that the general public in Germany at the time was on board with blaming their problems on the Jews, confiscating their property, placing specific restrictions on them, etc.
A common misconception is that freedom means "I can do whatever I want". That's anarchy, not freedom. Real freedom means being able to do pretty much what you want *as long as you aren't hurting or interfering with anyone else*. That last part is very important. Pre-war germany may have been a very free place for anti-semites but it wasn't a free place for Jews. If they had actually had protections for everyone then it wouldn't have made any difference how much some people spouted off about the Jews. Not that I think that people screaming hatred is a good thing (and you could certainly make the argument that this is a form of harm) but the question that matters is why people didn't reject that crap outright instead of getting on board with it.
Twenty years ago I was extremely conservative. Now I'm much more moderate, and would even be considered liberal on some issues. Did my brain physically change? I'm skeptical.
Proverbs 21:19
Ever since WW2 (even before, if you are prepared to acknowledge the existence of Wilhelm Reich) psychologists have taken an interest in politics. I've found these sources to be particularly enlightening:
Eysenck ('this country' refers to the UK)
Altemeyer (PDF)
Most Americans, in my view, have been deliberately confused by their authoritarians calling themselves 'social conservatives' and talking as if 'liberal' was the opposite of 'conservative', whereas it is really the opposite of 'authoritarian' and orthogonal to 'conservative' (whose opposite is 'radical').
I don't see how universal background checks are at the expense of freedoms anymore than a driver's license, fishing license, hunting license etc is.
I was going to use some of my mod points in this topic, but I can't let this go unanswered. There are many problems with "universal background checks", but the main thing I want to say is that none of those licenses require a background check, which is a far more intrusive procedure. AFAIK, nobody gets denied a driver's license because they once got busted for smoking pot. I'm surprised that you can't see the difference between a license, even a license with a test, and a background check.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
There are safety features in transmission systems used since the 1950s that were not present. In many countries they are required by law but in the USA exceptions are made for the older electricity distribution companies and self regulation is expected but of course doesn't really happen and you get whatever third world quality shit can be gotten away with - libertarianism at work.
Does that clear up your mistake where you are going on about house wiring? Please go to the effort of understanding what has been written before accusing the writer of ignorance.
In a meritocracy, you don't have entrenched elites because somebody better can come along and either usurp them, replace them, or uproot them entirely. Our PC revolution is a case in point. Computers were first IBM, then Apple, then Microsoft, and now cell phones. Whatever's best wins. Yes, that rutheless approach to the economy has its social ill effects, as we say "oh jeez, the idiot that invested in that startup should now have nearly the limitless power over all of society because he or she picked the right cell phone stock". To a certain extent, the great debates over left vs right have to do with society's powers being vested in a constantly churning entrepreneurial and investment class versus a more fixed academic class, the former claiming objectivity through test in the markets as a mark of better human understanding, and the latter, testing through selection of peers through rigorous examination. Both though, think they have the best process for determining what is merit, and what neither get, is what to do with society when you have an increasing population that doesn't give a damn about either, either because they can't win under either set of rules, or they just don't give a damn.
This is my sig.
I'm generally pro-gun but there are some items on both sides that I find absolutely ridiculous when it comes to debating guns:
a) The 2nd Amendment / Constitutional Miscast -
The 2nd amendment has to be taken in conjunction with Section 8 of the Constitution itself. The intent, and the mythology of the American revolution was that an armed citizenry rose up and overthrew the mighty British Empire by pioneering guerilla warfare and turning America into a pro-VietNam or Iraq. The fact is, it was a regular, professional army, that did much of the job. But, be that as it may, the idea of turning America into an uber viet nam in case we are invaded could certainly work in this day and age, and so to that end, it follows, in the minds of the framers, that yes, we, the people, all of us, are the militia, and yes, we are all by the 2nd amendment allowed to have not just guns, but military style rifles if we are to judge the intent of the militia by the standard of the day. So on that point, liberals are dead wrong. But, on the flipside of the coin, having an armed citizenry also meant that there would be no standing army at all. No bases overseas. No invasions of sovereign nations. So, for both sides of the aisle, if we were going to be constitutional, we'd -eliminate- the standing army, let states control the tanks and heavy stuff, and then, the citizenry would be armed to deal with invaders. Liberals and Conservatives are both right, for pieces of the argument, but both lie as well.
b) The It's Not Fully Automatic Strawman
Has anyone who has ever made this argument every really tried to shoot an assault rifle on full auto - if they had one? Bottom line is, full auto fricking sucks. The barrel climbs, you waste rounds. You have to change magazines more often and you aren't as effective. So saying today's semi-auto assault rifles aren't as good as their military counterparts is a bit of a strawman - fully auto for a rifle in a 30 round mag simply isn't as good for many defensive purposes, except for suppression of enemy fire, and for that, chances are, that's probably not as good as a belt fed minigun or a .50 cal.
c) The gun deaths vs violent crime statistic
Gun control advocates like to show lower gun deaths in gun control countries. But violent crime rates also tend to soar in gun control countries. Home invasions, beatings, etc. The advantage is that, to the left, less people get killed is probably better than more people getting robbed or rate. Conservatives would be tempted to disagree, but their own stance on rape and abortion is so ridiculous ...
d) The "mentally ill" red herring.
The vast majority of gun deaths are not caused by some crazy guy going postal. For the most part, gun deaths are usually caused by a guy whose poor, in a relationship breakup, and is looking at child support, losing his kids, and what not, and he flips his shit. Or, he's in a gang fighting over turf. Most of the time, drugs or alcohol are involved. Screening for mental illness, saying say that, bipolar people should not have guns, isn't going to make a statistical dent in anything. There's no reliable test that can say "hey, are you going to gun down a movie theater".
e) The "we can actually ban them" argument.
The USA cannot even ban fricking illegal drugs. If people want them, people will get them. You only need to buy a gun once, and then hide it. Heck, they are easy enough to make.
This is my sig.
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There is a problem with what we call left and right: it may denote in fact two lefts and two rights.
This seems to carry a contradiction. A libertarian would want to limit the intrusion of the state in its life. However, a socialist knows that the law, that is the state, is the only way to limit the power of the capitalists and promote equality among citizen.
This is the contradiction between liberty and equality. Pushing liberty too far leads to ultraliberalism, where the wealthier rules. Pushing equality too far leads to an oppresive state. French stateman Maximilien Robespierre added brotherhood to liberty and equality in order to balance them, creating France motto that is still currently in use: Liberté, égalité, fraternité
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An old study on London (crabby) cab drivers tells us about differences between lest and right? This is what I call hard(on) research. Guess what scans of the researchers biases will show!
For some people, it is monkey see, monkey do. Their friends convince each other to vote one way, and then that individual votes the same way, for fear of making a mistake. Who wants to vote for the losing candidate? It is a kind of mob mentality.
But when I look at my personal practices, I vote, not for the party, but for the candidate who will best represent my community. I have switched several times in my life.
And no, I am not ambidextrous handed or ambidextrous in voting because I don't care. I usually choose the more proactive candidate, because I know s/he will do a better job.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
See if you can find the old movie, Mediocrity. It seem appropriate, although the last time I searched I couldn't find it. All references had been replaced with more modern "stuff" , short films, or artsy stuff. The right Mediocrity is about two people who end up being frozen and awaken in a world where the average IQ is today's equivalent of 20..
The "study" did not take impartial data, then construct a hypothesis. Instead, "evidence" was constructed to support a pre-determined conclusion.
No actual research was involved.
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It doesn't seem to follow that the political leanings of an individual are "hard-coded" from the premises of the research (low-level cognitive processes are correlated with political leanings, low-level cognitive processes are influenced by genetics). The article and discussion are treating the issue like your involuntary cognitive tendency determines your outlook. It seems equally likely that your cognitive tendencies (I'm referring to the amygdala/right-wing vs. insula/left-wing) are the result of environmental influences. Your cognitive tendencies could be shaped by the environment and then they result in the observable behavior of political associations. Genetic influence should be viewed in terms of predispositions towards behaviors and attitudes, rather than a wholly deterministic force. Thus the term "hard-coded" doesn't seem accurate because while a genetic predisposition may exist you can't rule out the effect of environment.
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Late reply here but one issue with this choice is that the consequences are not linear. Were everyone to work 3 days a week you would be better off in one sense than if you were the only person doing so. This occurs because things like property prices are determined by how much money/work people have available to spend. In this sense we are constrained by society.
Counter to this, the individual does benefit in other senses from everyone else working more, such as increased technology and abundance leading to the possibility of increased welfare.
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