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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.
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.
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.
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There is a whole bunch of evidence for Neuroplasticity (your brain rewiring itself due to input, behaviour changes and illness), so it is possible.
When you vote for the lesser of two evils, you get ever increasing evil.
"His name was James Damore."
I have to admit that a big part of my connservatism comes from fear. I was bullied a lot as a kid. And it wasn't unsual for the bullying to be multiple people against me. Now that I'm an adult, I don't want to be bullied anymore, by anyone. And I especially don't want to be placed in a posiition where I have no recourse against the unreasonable demands of others that are backed up by violence.
The biggest threat I see in this regard is the government. I mean, I need a minimal level of government to enforce the law that says no one else can use force against me. But if the government does just that, then I can just walk away from anyone else who wants to harass me. Microsoft can push a lousy OS, but I don't have to buy it. NBC, CBS, and ABC can produce hours and hours of lousy reality TV programming, but I don't have to watch.
Only the government remains as being able to come to where I live or work, tell me what to do, and use force to back it up. If there is some question about whether what I did is ok, then at best I get a trial where the same poor social skills and poor persuasion skills that made me a victim in school are likely to make me a victim of a lawyer and a jury.
Perhaps one might argue that because we live in a democracy, the laws will be just and good and I shouldn't mind following them. That's true if the laws are minimal. But if the laws are numerous and easily made, they are likely to be based on the whims of the public and whatever mood their in. Part of the reason I didn't fit in at school is that I like different things. Chances are that I won't have the same tastes and passions as the majority of voters. And did I mention my poor persuasive skills? I won't be the one who is able to get a majority of voters to see things my way.
I want a government that will protect my rights and the rights of those around me, and do very little beyond that because whenever the government does more, my freedom to be different diminishes, and the freedom to be different is the very core of all freedoms.
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.
So how does this work in a traditionally free country like America...
Please stop. You're suggesting that the brains from one country are somehow different from that of another country. If we change 'country' out for 'race', it should be painfully obvious what the problem here is.
American conservatives are afraid to place their fates into the hands of the elected experts on human happiness.
You really shouldn't comment on the complex political landscape of another country whose citizens you apparently have little regular contact with. It makes you look like an idiot. No, "american" conservatives are just like "british" conservatives which are just like "african" conservatives, which are just like every conservative. Ever. The definition of conservativism doesn't change because of the country you're in. Perhaps its expression does, but the study here isn't about expression, but reaction. In that, conservatives broadly and as an aggregate group, are simply risk-averse. And because of how the human mind operates, an unknown risk is almost always subjectively larger in a person's mind than a known one. This is why we spent trillions of dollars combatting terrorism (an unknown risk) while both retrospectively and at the time, it could have easily been shown that a known risk (drunk driving) costs far more lives.
To extrapolate from a specific behavior (risk aversion) a complete political ideology is... at best... dubious.
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Oh look, it's news reinforcing the false premise of the two party system.
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"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.
No, American conservatives are very fearful. They fear terrorists, and demand the government protect them, even if that means loss of rights. They fear criminals, and demand guns to defend themselves, even though statistics clearly show that having a gun in your home puts you at greater risk. They fear gays and Muslims and commies and immigrants and regulations. They're not bad people, they just like life as it is, and are fearful of anything that might cause changes in their current life style.
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 ?
In the US, the labels are wrong and everything is forced into a false dichotomy. In fact, there are a number of identifiable groups of voters: Christian conservatives, nationalists/fascists, progressives/socialists, liberals/libertarians, and a few smaller ones like environmentalists. A different way of looking at it is the four combinations of fiscal/social conservatives/liberals.
Fiscal liberals and social conservatives are both motivated by fear, the former by fear of economic disaster, and the latter by fear of social change. The only group reasonably free of fear is those who are fiscal conservatives and social liberals.
see thats a weird crossover, conservatives want you to take individual risk, but tell you exactly what you can and cant do, liberals on the other hand want you to live your live as free as possible, as long as the government oversees each aspect of it
so, do you want a bunch of GOD fearin, Jesus lovin, gun totin, conservatives telling you how to live your life, or do you want big brother, oppressive, if your not a victim your the problem liberals telling you how to live your life?
I want them to both fuck off
Well, at least the way I hear it used on the news, American conservatives are very different from Chinese and Russian conservatives. American, Chinese, and Russian conservatives do have something in common - they want to preserve the status quo or even revert in some ways to how things were before. But "how things were before" is very different depending on the country. For an American conservative, the desire is to return to a time of less government intrusion in people's lives. For Chinese and Russian conservatives the desire is to return to a time of much greater government intrusion into people's lives.
Islamic conservatives provide another example of "conservative" that is very different from an American conservative (and actually pretty different from an American liberal too). Although I suppose if you really look at some of the societies the Islamic conservatives are actually very conservative because they are attempting to change (or have recently changed) their countries to be very different from what they were before. For example, women in Iran and Egypt used to walk around with their heads uncovered, now the so-called "conservatives" have forced them to start covering their hair or face harassment.
An American conservatives my be similar to a British conservative - I don't follow British politics much so I can't say for sure, but an American conservatives is very different from many conservatives throughout the world.
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.
One of the top conservative magazines in the country, the National Review, has an editorial policy of supporting drug legalization.
You have a point on gays. That is one of the few areas where conservative rhetoric has been very out of line with the general conservative philosophy. The marriage thing isn't really an issue of freedom - nothing stops gays from having religious ceremonies and making lifetime commitments - it's more an issue of forcing others to agree that gay marriage is good, or at least to pretend to - for example note the recent lawsuits against a photographer and a cakemaker who refused to participate in a gay wedding. However the laws against sodomy were a violation of freedom and too many conservatives supported those laws. (though as a constitutional issue the laws were valid - the Supreme Court unsuprisingly screwed up again - but just because the Constution allows a state to make a law doesn't mean the statue should make that law.)
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.
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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Right : more economic freedom
Well...Maybe, if you happen to be a corporation.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
I don't see them favoring the rights of women very much or gays. That is the major reason that I just can not support them.
It doesn't matter what my views on abortion are. I don't have the right to impose them on someone else.
My views are the same on gay marriage. It is not something I will do but that does not change that others want to do it and they should have that option.
The republicans say they are the party of small government and getting government out of peoples lives but they don't act like it. Also I will say the democrats are just as bad but on different issues.
If the republicans would actually accept these social issues and actually be the party of smaller government it would be much easier to support them. However their history indicates this is just a talking point and not an actual action they take when given power.
I don't like the democrats either but they have tended to be far more accepting of other lifestyles and choices over the last 20 years or so and do more to push technology. Right now most people still don't realize that many of the jobs are gone and will never be coming back and our society is not really trained for the kinds of work that is needed now.
I am not saying that everyone needs a college education but there are good jobs that do need trained technicians that we should be teaching people to do and it doesn't matter if you are a democrat or republican. If you can find a program that costs $x and pays back >$x in tax revenue it is a good idea to do it since it puts more people to work and makes them productive citizens.
It is so tiring to hear ideas painted with liberal or conservative and then automatically thrown out. In many areas we need welders, electricians, etc but the funding is not there to get people out of poverty to train for those jobs and end the cycle. We also have a pretty decaying infrastructure in this company and are losing a LOT of jobs to places like germany with better infrastructure.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
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.
... 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.
I don't think it's at all reversed. Here's how I rationalized it: At a low level, people with "conservative" brains tend to be risk-averse. As a result they engage in less risky and novel behaviors, and overall have more positive (or less tragically negative?) outcomes. The end result is that they tend to be more self-reliant, and in their higher cognition don't see why one should need an extensive social safety net, and therefore oppose it. Conversely, people with "liberal" brains seek out novelty and therefore expose themselves to more risk. As a result, some liberals end up with tragically bad outcomes, and the ones who don't (i.e., have trained themselves to be appropriately risk-averse) can cognitively understand how one might end up in a bad spot. This, coupled with their tendency towards feelings of connectedness and presumably empathy, result in a greater desire for more extensive social safety nets.
Put another way, conservative brains are all like, "Well, I would never let myself get into that position. Even if I did, I'd get myself out of it. I don't see why they deserve help." and liberal brains are all like, "Even if that person didn't make the best choices at every juncture in their life (or even made lots of bad ones), I can totally understand how they made the choices they did. At some less wise point in my life, I might have made the same decisions. They deserve our help."
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.
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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.
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Unfortunately, marriage has many secular and economic implications that religious ceremonies and lifetime commitments do not in of themselves encode. For equal protection under the law, marriage (the legal institution) is necessary. People can wring their hands all they want about how homosexual unions may be legally equivalent to heterosexual marriage but, if the two should be identical legal constructs, it begs the question why different language should be needed to describe them. If not the word marriage, why not not simply reword all legislation with the more neutral 'civil union' as the norm and remove contentious words such as "marriage" altogether?
:)
Yes, I know I'm just setting it up for the "omg teh gays r destroying ur marriage, see!! see!!" response.
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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.
The marriage thing isn't really an issue of freedom - nothing stops gays from having religious ceremonies and making lifetime commitments - it's more an issue of forcing others to agree that gay marriage is good
You know, I'd have no problem with churches banning gay marriage and stopping gay people from having the religious ceremonies. They are free to have pretty much any views - consistent or self-contradictory - that they want, and I'm free to point and laugh at them. The thing I find indefensible is that a gay person who has been in a monogamous relationship with another for 20 years is not permitted to be their next of kin for legal purposes, while a drunk heterosexual couple that just met and stumbles into a wedding chapel can get this - along with certain tax breaks - immediately. These legal rights should be granted to any couple (or even group) that wishes to have them, not reserved for certain combinations of genitalia.
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No, American conservatives are very fearful. They fear terrorists, and demand the government protect them, even if that means loss of rights. They fear criminals, and demand guns to defend themselves, even though statistics clearly show that having a gun in your home puts you at greater risk. They fear gays and Muslims and commies and immigrants and regulations. They're not bad people, they just like life as it is, and are fearful of anything that might cause changes in their current life style.
What I can't disagree with anything you said, it is incomplete. In addition, "liberals" are fearful of personal responsibility and a free market.
Both sides are based on fear of freedom.
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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.
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