As someone who deals with conservatism as a psychological dysfunction, I have to call that study’s claim moronic without even having to click on that spam link and read what it says.
If you’re sincerely curious about social attitudes, it suffices to say that you, your family, my family, all our friends’ families, our national or ethnic group of people, our societies or even our civilization, we are not any different in the last several thousand years.
All the atrocities people have committed in recorded history can be repeated again at any time, because there is no perceptible or quantifiable level of biological evolution in that very short time scale to justify any change in social behavior of human beings.
So, you may ask, what explains the diametrically opposed attitudes of conservatives that want to exploit and abuse others for profit, and the rest of the enlightened humans that don’t?
It all falls back to individual choice to be moral or not, and the sliver of development we made as intelligence species in the past 1,000 years to develop secular philosophies to provide a guide for our behavior, rather than the eternal superstition, fear and hate that all religions and conservatism are based on.
Where’s all the “scientific terminology” he’s jsut making whatever he wants? I don’t see it, nor do I see him making a claim that liberals are genuinely “evolving” as a separate kind of human being splitting off from conservative human beings, like sapiens split from erectus, and that is what he would have had to mean in order to be “pretending” to use it in a scientific context.
Instead, he used it in its casual meaning of “better-more enlightened- more advanced” and because he was talking about it in relation to genuine physical differences, he put quotes around it to indicate: “I mean the usual meaning, but since it’s in relation to this scientific study about the brain, and could maybe be misunderstood to be an assertion about genuine evolution, I’m putitng quotes around it to make sure you understand I’m not actually suggesting that liberals are evolving into a separate species.”
That you need this explained to you is amazing to me. And makes me think maybe you don’t, you’re just annoyed at the whole thing so you are nitpicking at his use of the word.
Take a look at where he said “emphasis mine”. Look, this whole thread is a pseudoscientist’s wet dream. If you are going to take a bunch of arbitrary values, scientifically, and then state that your side is superior because of the arbitrary terms you selectively taken from the data, then it’s just pseudo-pop-mumbo-jumbo-woo-woo horseshit.
He used or added emphasis to scientific terminology to describe his biases. It’s pseudoscience. It’s pop science. It’s science-fiction. It’s science perverted for political use. First sentence on Wikipedia tells you what pseudoscience is and its not off the mark.
To help you distinguish the two:
The OP: Used words like evolution, emphasized a misuse of jargon like primitive brain, medical diagnoses like personality disorder, emphasized a misuse of the term gray matter, and did not even unbiasedly report all the results poorly reported in the article. He was not using the terms in everyday language. He was attempting to couch his biases in scientific language. Pseudoscience.
Science: the only science, and I say that loosely, that you might find in the article is that conservatives and liberals are different on a number of traits. It’s just association or correlation.
Anyway I’m glad I now understand you are able to distinguish specialists’ from laymans’ use of shared words but have absolutely no understanding of the difference between science and pseudoscience. I thought woo-woo would be enough given what you were writing earlier.
The notion that complex cognitive expressions like political views have some biological explaination or predeliction in gross anatomy that we can easily view is a recurring one … and so far it has always proven to be, without exception for who makes it or for what purpose, pseudo-science.
The notion that someone would tend to favour one set of economic or social theories over another because of the gross organization of their brain ought to be laughably absurd - it is seriously reminicent of phrenology:
Making some impressive leaps for a guy who has made it clear he cannot distinguish between someone’s own words and the bolding they add to a quotation.
Since you have already conceded that you are wrong by avoiding the subject, I will now argue your new point because it is actually more interesting than the quack science OP.
The OP EMPHASIZED specific phrases and listed a subset of the results from the article. In effect, they are as much his opinion as anything else he said. The last two sentences are highlighting something known in scientific circles as ‘the obvious’, which shares the same definition in all other circles.
I look forward to your next nitpick or goalpost shift.
Yet women and men is also a very broad, very diverse set of groups. Yes, they are easily definable by what is between their legs (or genetic makeup if you prefer) but beyond that you have problems ascribing psychological traits to either group. Men are, statistically, more violent than women. That said there are downright peaceful men and downright violent women. Men have a predilection towards violence more than women do but you cannot say with certainty whether a given man or woman would resort to violence only knowing their gender.
We can come up with a binary set of groups for this as well. People who voted for Obama and people who voted for McCain. Or people who register to vote in republican primaries versus people who register to vote in democratic primaries.
Yes, within those groups you will have a lot of variation of beliefs and motivations.
What we do know however is that conservatives are seemingly more likely to be motivated by fear and less likely to have truth sway them.
Certainly liberals will be guilty of that to an extent as well. However, there is nothing like the extent of pandering to fear and untruths on the left that there is on the right. This goes back to the Southern Strategy and it is done because it works.
So, it is not unreasonable to ask what it is about that group (conservatives) that allows for such misinformation to work. Is it how their brain is wired? Is it how they were taught? Some combination of the two? This is no different, in essences, than asking why males are more prone to violence.
I suspect it is a combination of the two. Some people are wired in such a way that they are predisposed to react in certain ways and not others. Upbringing/education can reinforce or mitigate various predilections. Just as men may be more disposed to violence they can learn to not resort to violence and control themselves. Males are partly wired for violence and partly taught it.
I do not think that humans are evolving into two species…the conservative species and the liberal species. I think it is apparent though that there are real differences between the two groups and it is worth exploring why one person will accept a literal untruth (provably so in no uncertain terms), gleefully ignore the correct answer and believe the untruth instead.
In short, why is one group more prone to willful ignorance?
What connection do you see between religious belief and this subject? Do you think that because conservatives are more likely to be strongly religious (according to Gallup, at least) that they are therefore more likely to, say, believe in a “young Earth?” Or is it because something about them is physiologically different in them that they believe strongly in both?
The “conservatives” I know in real life are similar to me: they believe in Science, they do not believe in “young Earth” or “intelligent design”, they do not believe there were WMDs in Iraq, they do not believe that Obama is a Kenyan citizen, they do not believe there would be “death panels”, etc. But also, I note that pretty much all them are areligious, only going to church for weddings and funerals. So what’s the cause and what’s the effect?
I think there are ways to try to determine this; the study in question here does not seem to satisfy that, from what parts of it I’ve been able to read. I’ve sent a letter off to the lead researcher asking him some questions, so perhaps I’ll get an answer.
Perhaps there is an answer to this but looks like and chicken and egg question to me.
Are those who are conservative prone to religion?
Are those who are religious prone to conservatism?
Does it matter?
From my perspective believing in religion (wholesale at least) requires believing in a lot of things that are provably untrue or, at the least, simply unprovable.
That someone who can believe in death panels can also believe in a Young Earth does not seem so surprising. Yes, they are two wholly different and unrelated things but they both require the person to believe something despite all evidence to the contrary.
So again, you get to why a certain group of people are willing to believe things that are simply, provably, not true.
“…conservatives are more likely to be strongly religious (according to Gallup, at least)…”
Yes, there are liberals who are religious.
As has been noted these things tend to fall apart on an individual basis. Just as men are more prone to violence than women tells you nothing about what a given individual will do. Women can and certainly do resort to violence as well.
Overall though it is without doubt there are a lot more men in jail for committing violent crimes than women.
So too, overall, conservatives tend to be more religious than liberals (if Gallup is to be believed).
The definition of “strongly” religious is ambiguous. Liberals may be less likely to be dogmatic about religion, or they may be less likely to belong to traditional religions, or they may be less likely to strictly practice religion, but that doesn’t tell us anything about how many liberals believe in something that’s unprovable.
It doesn’t matter what the definition of religion is. I was responding to Vinyl Turnip’s statement here:
If a liberal believes in god or any other kind of woo-y non-provable stuff, it’s all part of believing in non-provable stuff. Hardcore religion isn’t the only thing that qualifies.