Science proves it, Conservatives think less.

Har har.. lol!

- N

 

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True. But - and this is a major point that everyone here seems to be forgetting - they also demonstrated that the liberals actually performed better at specific tasks that required them to modify their habits in accordance with the introduction of new information.

For example, one of their tests involved the subject hitting a button as quickly as possible every time an M was flashed on the screen, but not when a W was flashed on the screen. The brain has trouble quickly distinguishing an M from a W (some sort of symmetry thing, I guess) so when people are in a hurry they tend to mix them up. Initially they flashed vastly more Ms than Ws, so the person became habituated to hitting the button almost every time a letter appeared. Then, after a certain length of time, they switched so that they were suddenly displaying far more Ws than Ms. The liberals were quicker to adapt to the change than the conservatives, who (for a while) kept hitting the button most of the time even though Ws were now appearing instead of Ms.

That is the context in which we should consider these fmri results. It's not as if they simply noted that liberals had more brain activity in the part of the brain that's responsible for adapting to new information; the increased brain activity was coupled to an improved ability to adapt habit to fit new circumstances. Also, they showed that stronger liberalism was associated with greater brain activity and quicker adaptability in the test.

You can read the actual paper here, if you have access to the journal: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn1979.html

 

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If this doesn't prove the article is correct then I don't know what does.

 

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I'll consider it. I'm not encouraged by US conservatives helping out Turkish ones, I will say; do you have a link to this?

 

Nasor:

Greater responsivity to change. That is interesting. But your link requires registration, and I'm curious about the sample size.

Perhaps not, but I know plenty of liberals who have the same problem with reading. I have a friend who can't make statements on politics without sounding like a post-80s punk song and I live in a town where political sentiment seems to be summed up by "Bush lied: soldiers died."

Americans generally fail to pay attention, Americans generally fail to read critically, Americans are dominated by images and half-conceived sentiments.

 

I've known those types, too, who are just as slogan-dependent as their conservative neighbors, but the applicable difference (at least, that I observe) is that they tend to get angry about restricted perspectives, not broad ones. But even that is a matter of definitions. Some racists would accuse that insisting on equality under the law regardless of ethnic origin is a narrow perspective.

If I don't raise a glass, it's only because it's not something to celebrate.

Perhaps it's an issue to be considered in another topic, but I do wonder why Americans have such poor critical-reading skills. It's easy enough to blame "media" or "television", but that's not the whole of it. There are some customs among our diverse population that actually discourage critical thinking. What I can't figure, though, is how this faction is so influential. It can't all be religion, can it?

 

Touche. I think that it might really boil down to a feeling of weakness. Take a certain poster, applauded even by those who would disagree with his politics as "valuable." Certainly he's not valuable for his insights, for his learning or his unique perspective. What he's respected for is (imo) the image of toughness and redneck prowess. Now take someone who's more urbane: one of the first things you get from a broad education is the understanding that you may be wrong, that very intelligent people have been consistantly wrong, and that even when you are right, the truth is variegated and open to interpretation.

This is not a strong position. Critical analysis is not a strong stance, "what's wrong with you that you question the things you should thrive on?" Take how strongly we feminists have responded to allegation of sexual inferiority - I'm not fat, I'm not gay, I like sex! - we responded to the point of making feminism one big, semi-critical issue of Cosmo, all sex-and-relationships focused. I remember my reluctance to use the p-word, society can't be male dominated because then that would require really critical work and strident focus.

I digress. To be dominant you must give the impression of being immobile, and "there's more than one interpretation," "more data would be best," those statements belie the fluidity of fact. It's not very rugged to admit the possibility of error, much less that error might be (as Nietzsche would have it) a necessary condition of truth.

 

And, it will make history when it does.

BTW- How many soldiers died in one day in World War 2, Civil War compared to four years?

That is not to demean their deaths, but to put some perspective on it. Of course, you will have a clever answer. After all, socialist lefties are smarter than anyone on the right. Science proved it!! Good enough for me.

 

I think males are being insulted on the last line; but, lacking focus, I'm not sure how. Duhr.

 

Let's ride bikes!

 

There's a book out last year that compiles the evidence for Ohio in '04. It's damning, without even considering that a couple of people were actually indicted over their vote tampering.

Florida in '01, of course - where a uniquely misprinted set of poorly designed ballots ended up in one of the most elderly and Dem districts in the state, where several thousand mostly Dem people were stricken from the voter rolls improperly, where two of the US Supreme Court Justices who overruled the Florida Court should have recused themselves for immediate conflict of interest, and where a gang of uniformly-dressed brown-shirted thugs bussed in from Young Republican chapters in other states actually stopped people from counting votes by physical threat - was pretty rank.

And voting machines all over the country in both elections - where the exit polls that had always worked pretty well in the past suddenly failed to match the untraceable voting machine tallies that boosted Republican votes - causing the press to - - (drum roll) - - quit taking exit polls.

Btu here we may be runnimg up against some kind of greater "liberal" tendency to consider a new possibility seriously. The only people who are paying much attention to such things are not the American Legion and PTA and other defenders of voting probity, as should be, but lefty liberal types who roll it in with animal rights and gun registration.

 

Ach. What is the name of this book?

 

http://www.academychicago.com/conyers.html

I misremembered - it's not a complete compilation, just a record of official testimony to the investigative committee. There's even more stuff, scattered around the web at places like Black Box Voting.

 

John Conyers and Gore Vidal? Wow. That's amusing...

Your diatribe, was that in reference to the 2000 presidential election (you wrote 2001)? If so, it isn't all that objective, either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000_Florida_results

 

Note the "in a specific area" part. Perhaps, like males and females, conservatives and liberals use different parts of their brains.

Reminds me of a joke.

A guy is observing an autopsy. While there, he see two brains. One is the brain of a scientist and the other the brain of a politician. One of the brains is large, and pink, and healthy looking. The other is kind of shriveled up and grey. The guy says, "That larger brain must be the scientist's". The doctor says, "No, that's the politician's". "I don't understand" says the man, "Why is the politician's brain larger? Was he more intellegent?" "No, no, no. Of course not." Says the doctor. "You see, the scientist's brain is old and tired. It's worn out. While the politician's brain......Well. It's never been used!"​

 

Quite possible, or conservatives are cinservatives because of differences in the way they approach a problem.

 

Tiassa
Perhaps it's an issue to be considered in another topic, but I do wonder why Americans have such poor critical-reading skills. It's easy enough to blame "media" or "television", but that's not the whole of it. There are some customs among our diverse population that actually discourage critical thinking. What I can't figure, though, is how this faction is so influential. It can't all be religion, can it?

-"Education" in schools is one of the main roots of the problem, in school you are taught "what is it" instead "why is it" i.e. instead that we examine how frogs influence its environment and what is the purpose of frogs we cut it to pieces to see what it is.
-Think about it, we are taught matters 10 years or so in this context, only after that we are taught ethics, philosophy and so on, that is if you are able to educate yourself.
-And its just not the americans, its happening everywhere in "modern civilizations".

 

It's the conservative contribution to global warming.

 

Sadly yes, the ability to think is fast becoming a rare commodity

 

Yes, but whether you think or not doesn't really affect the energy consumption of the brain, it merely affects society.