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kzn
United States1218 Posts
If it came across as something other than an opinion, that was a mistake. [edit] Not to mention I'm not even remotely convinced that the kind of intelligence I'm talking about is accurately measured by IQ, which is the only remotely good measure of intelligence we have. | ||
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LonelyMargarita
1845 Posts
On July 05 2010 20:55 kzn wrote: Its an opinion. The only studies I've seen have shown very small differences, and I'm not too sure about their validity. If it came across as something other than an opinion, that was a mistake. [edit] Not to mention I'm not even remotely convinced that the kind of intelligence I'm talking about is accurately measured by IQ, which is the only remotely good measure of intelligence we have. I believe studies have shown a correlation between amount of higher education and political liberalism. It doesn't have anything to do with intelligence, but simply the fact that the longer you are in college, the greater percentage of your adult life you spend in a very liberal environment. If I remember correctly, there are notably more liberal PhD's than conservative PhD's (also because there's not much you can do with a PhD other than spend your life in academia). Environment is probably the primary influence on an individual's political tendencies. | ||
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whatever
Mexico693 Posts
On July 05 2010 20:55 kzn wrote: Its an opinion. The only studies I've seen have shown very small differences, and I'm not too sure about their validity. If it came across as something other than an opinion, that was a mistake. [edit] Not to mention I'm not even remotely convinced that the kind of intelligence I'm talking about is accurately measured by IQ, which is the only remotely good measure of intelligence we have. Yeah attributing only intelligence to political views seems so simple and I wish it was that easy, there are just to many factors to take into account, from upbringing, social status, mental and physical health and so on, I wouldn't even be surprised the role intelligence takes on this is much less than we think. And then there's the problem of kinds of intelligence that you ponted out but this thread isn't really about this. On topic though, my experience on the internet has been the opposite, I actually feel it is mostly populated by conservative views. | ||
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Dakk
Sweden572 Posts
I am guessing you want me to tell you if i think that there is a liberal "base" in the internet? That in the bottom, it is liberal? I do believe that everyone has the right to almost everywhere on the planet , write their own feelings adn thoughts, But i do not think that you can write whatever you want on a forum, WITHOUT being critizsed. There is always someone that does not feel your way and that HAS to point it out.. | ||
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kzn
United States1218 Posts
On July 05 2010 21:10 whatever wrote:Yeah attributing only intelligence to political views seems so simple and I wish it was that easy, there are just to many factors to take into account, from upbringing, social status, mental and physical health and so on, I wouldn't even be surprised the role intelligence takes on this is much less than we think. Well that part is motivated by my belief that, at the end of the day, political disagreements (and, indeed, disagreements of all kinds) can be divided into two distinct groups: differences that root from different opinions, and differences that root from flawed arguments or incomplete knowledge. For instance, lets take Universal Healthcare. There are actually two distinct arguments going on with this issue, although most people don't seem to notice this. There's the answer to the question "should everyone have access to healthcare of X standard, regardless of ability to pay" - and this is essentially an opinion, as it turns on moral concerns and these cannot be argued to anything like a solid conclusion. This, as with most opinions, is almost certainly something that has way more to do with upbringing, social status, and so forth than intelligence. But the other argument is how to go about providing such access, if you take it as given that it should be. This is an argument that, I think, has a single, clear, correct answer (and its not single-payer). Its an empirical question, which turns on economic facts and how people make decisions. I think most political disagreement, even between conservatives and liberals (rather than moderate liberals and "progressives", for instance) is actually disagreements of this kind, rather than the first, and this is why I posit a link to intelligence. Less intelligent people are (again, an opinion that I can't really support with data) more likely to take a position that "feels" right without evaluating it rigorously and completely, and thus more likely to end up with liberal positions - up to a point, at which point the intelligence has dropped to a point that evaluation of a position becomes extremely difficult on its own, and people revert to "DEY TUK OUR JOBS" | ||
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lOvOlUNiMEDiA
United States643 Posts
On July 05 2010 19:42 Neobick wrote: Depending how you define bias? Nothing is surely objective, so there are biases everywhere. And internet is a big place without an agenda, so to notice a general bias there you have to look really closely. Every opinion is represented on net. Edit: My definition of bias is only seeing things from one side, or giving one side an unfair advantage- Is it objective that nothing is objective? Come on, man, Plato dealt with this kind of relativism more than 2000 years ago. | ||
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kzn
United States1218 Posts
You can't actually deal with strong skeptic positions on objective reality. They're pretty silly positions, but as far as argumentation goes they're rock solid. | ||
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Doctorasul
Romania1145 Posts
From an American perspective the internet definitely has a liberal bias, in that the average internet user is ultra-liberal when compared to the average American. I think this is so because information flow on the internet is very hard to control, as opposed to other forms of media, exposure to more diverse viewpoints is hard to avoid on the internet, creating a bubble of isolation from opposing viewpoints can be achieved more easily on tv channels (see Fox News) or newspapers. It could also be true that those actually interested in finding out the truth are more inclined to go to the internet to find it instead of believing what some "news organisation" is feeding them. It is not my intent to insult anyone and I think there are some legitimate points to be made by conservatives but it seems to me that the more information you have, the more interested in the truth you are, the more you are aware of all the arguments, the more you are intelectually honest in debates.. in general the more liberal you are. The American right's disdain for academia is telling in this regard. | ||
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HnR)hT
United States3468 Posts
I don't think that's the right way of putting it. The word bias as it's used in politics is almost meaningless, for it suggests that there's such a thing as a "neutral center." The way I would put it is that a certain ideology that can be broadly called "the left" is predominant. Let me analyze the reasons for this from a somewhat different point of view than the posters above. Here's a couple: 1) The universal belief in progress, from the 19th century on, is more useful for leftist propaganda than for reactionary propaganda (I use the word "reactionary" in a value-neutral sense). The slogans and catchwords of anti-racism and of "social justice" speak to the contemporary man's deepest desires and presuppositions, and can be used to manipulate him to act in ways that have little to do with actual justice. Even "right-wing" propaganda must take into account that modern man believes in progress, in happiness, in perfectability of mankind, and so on. Thus the Right is always fighting an uphill battle. 2) The advancement of technology undercuts those who want to argue in favor of reducing the role of government. Many scientific and technical projects require the level of organization and funding that can only be provided by a strong central government. Also, because of growing technical complexity, maximum efficiency requires that vital government decisions are made by experts; hence the need for a growing bureaucracy and the continual expansion of the size and number of government agencies. 3) The horrors of the World Wars and the crime of the Holocaust have left an indelible imprint in the collective Western consciousness. The chief culprits of these disasters have been identified (in the view of most) as racial prejudce and nationalism. Thus nationalism and racial prejudce have been hastily replaced by their extreme opposites: an irrational belief in "diversity" and "tolerance." This has led, among other things, to a situation unprecedented in human history, where the Western countries are allowing immigration of tens of millions of persons from another civilization on a nonreciprocal basis. Although today both the "right-wing" and the "left-wing" parties pay obeisance to this myth, the Left is naturally more attuned to it and therefore benefits. | ||
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MangoTango
United States3670 Posts
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HnR)hT
United States3468 Posts
I'm making an assumption here that with increasing intelligence comes increasing empathy, which is tenuous, to be sure - but certainly as intelligence increases the capacity we have for worrying about issues which are not of direct importance to our own wellbeing increases. I'm pretty sure there exists statistical evidence that this is true. IIRC Charles Murray has written on this in The Bell Curve or somewhere else. | ||
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Zato-1
Chile4253 Posts
On July 05 2010 21:21 Doctorasul wrote: Maybe our Danish, Norwegian or Swedish members can confirm, but would you be able to convince anyone in northern Europe you are a liberal just because you accept evolution, don't go to church too often, think abortion should obviously be legal and have no issues with homosexuals? I'm guessing that would just be "normal" around those parts. This is very sensible. As a south american who follows US politics, I think the main problem is that the current Republican leadership is way out of touch with reality. I'm not saying all Republicans are bad- I thought Rudy Guiliani and John McCain were pretty good as far as politicians go (before they turned sharply to the right during the primaries and elections for the presidency), and Ron Paul (technically from the Republican party, even though he's a libertarian) is great. I know your average netizen's opinion on Glenn Beck is pretty bad, but from what little footage I've actually seen of him on YouTube, he doesn't sound terrible at all. And then, you have Sarah Palin. Seriously? How can that fanatic have so much support? It blows my mind. For the 2008 US presidential elections, The Economist made an online poll- If the rest of the world could vote, who would they pick between Obama (Democrat, Blue) and McCain (Republican, Red)? + Show Spoiler + I could only find a screenshot of the application showing who they'd elect on each country, Red or Blue: ![[image loading]](http://hothouse.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/economist-300x215.jpg) In most countries, the voting wasn't even close- Obama had an overwhelming majority, usually 70%+. The world hated G.W. Bush, and with good reason: He valued loyalty over competence, and his governments were terrible. What's worse, the current Republican leadership is of the same line; all politics, no content, overly religious and mistrusting of reason. A large portion of the rest of the world would find the Christian branch of the Republican Party (which is their most visible face) simply ridiculous. As long as they stay that way, they'll simply stay out of touch with the rest of the world- giving the rest of the world (and the internet, I suppose) a 'liberal bias'. | ||
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minus_human
4784 Posts
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Tyraz
New Zealand310 Posts
Ofcourse it doesn't help that republicans have quite a few policies that are on pretty morally shakey ground: - Gun control (extreme interpretation of the Second Amendment) - Abortion (pro life) - Gay Rights (no same sex marrages) - Immigration (deport those without a visa) - Health Care (based on economics, not on need) | ||
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Biochemist
United States1008 Posts
Nice essay on intellect being correlated with liberal-ness, but I somewhat disagree. It's no secret that academicians (particularly social "scientists") are largely liberal, but people often use that correlation to make the conclusion that it's the "correct" viewpoint. Well it's no surprise that a bunch of bleeding-heart hippies who want to live in a utopian world are going to cherish socialist philosophies, but that doesn't mean that socialist philosophies are actually, in practice, going to help create a utopia. They just help create nanny states where as many people as possible mooch off those who actually generate wealth. Edit: I think a fundamental difference here is that I do not believe in the perfectibility of mankind, at least certainly not in my great-grandchildren's lifetimes. If I did, perhaps I would believe it might be possible to create a perfectly egalitarian state | ||
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McDonalds
Liechtenstein2244 Posts
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kzn
United States1218 Posts
On July 05 2010 21:53 Tyraz wrote:Ofcourse it doesn't help that republicans have quite a few policies that are on pretty morally shakey ground: Hold on here. You may well be right that the arguments offered by republicans in support of the following issues are bad or shakey, but with the exception of same sex marriage, not a single issue you've named cannot be defended rigorously and completely to a solid conclusion shared with republicans. I can do it if you want me to - although it will be an essay. | ||
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exeprime
United Kingdom643 Posts
On July 05 2010 21:21 Doctorasul wrote: It is not my intent to insult anyone and I think there are some legitimate points to be made by conservatives but it seems to me that the more information you have, the more interested in the truth you are, the more you are aware of all the arguments, the more you are intelectually honest in debates.. in general the more liberal you are. The American right's disdain for academia is telling in this regard. The academic system in general is pretty left-slanted, since teaching is a "liberal" discipline in itself - just like you'd probably find a lot more "conservatives" in upper management positions for big companies. Also, as a student of economics, as far as my experience goes, the more people know about economics and the better they understand its systemic character, the more "conservative" their economic views are. Anywho, let me just make it clear that as far as I go, I consider myself a classical liberal, which is pretty close to the american libertarianism, I guess, but not *quite* the same thing though. To me, the whole international political environment today feels like it's a revival of the 60s - the internet is full of modern-day hippies that protest against war, corporations, rich people and want weed legalized. Now, the issues themselves are some very good issues to think about and challenge, but it feels to me like the vast majority of people approach them in a very shallow manner, brand a lot of things as being "evil" and refuse to see that reality is rarely as black and white as they see it. Makes me wonder if 2030 will be like the 80s and everyone will praise the values of free-market capitalism, low taxation and minimal state intervention. | ||
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kzn
United States1218 Posts
On July 05 2010 22:05 Biochemist wrote:Nice essay on intellect being correlated with liberal-ness, but I somewhat disagree. It's no secret that academicians (particularly social "scientists" are largely liberal, but people often use that correlation to make the conclusion that it's the "correct" viewpoint. Well it's no surprise that a bunch of bleeding-heart hippies who want to live in a utopian world are going to cherish socialist philosophies, but that doesn't mean that socialist philosophies are actually, in practice, going to help create a utopia. They just help create nanny states where as many people as possible mooch off those who actually generate wealth. That is almost precisely my point. I'm positing that as intelligence increases, people get better at fully thinking through a position, and become more empathetic, leading to a correlation between intelligence and "socialist" positions until intelligence reaches a threshold value where people follow "socialism" through to its logical conclusion and realize its hypocritical and self-destructive. Its more a matter of threshold values than a true correlation, I suppose, but I do think my final claim, that conservatives are over-represented at the extremes of an intelligence distribution, is actually empirically correct. | ||
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kzn
United States1218 Posts
On July 05 2010 22:12 exeprime wrote:Makes me wonder if 2030 will be like the 80s and everyone will praise the values of free-market capitalism, low taxation and minimal state intervention. Lets hope so! Econ-brofist | ||
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