Whiny conservatives

I'd dream up a long, whiny response but... err... it might not be in my best interests 

favorite recently heard political quote:

"A conservative is a liberal who got mugged.

A liberal is a conservative who got outsourced."

A sample of 95 is pathetically small, I cant take this study seriously as thats just to few people to make any conclusion from.

Sean Trane wrote: sleeper wrote: A sample of 95 is pathetically small, I cant take this study seriously as thats just to few people to make any conclusion from. agree with the sample size but ____________________________________  quote: favorite recently heard political quote: "A conservative is a liberal who got mugged. A liberal is a conservative who got outsourced." _________________________________________ this is a good one and not that far away from the truth it does not take much for a succesful liberal (once he has his place in the sun on the pyramid), to want to close doors after he came in

I agree with both of you.  Like I said, this was the funniest thing I read all week.  If you do a Google for this article, you'll find both conservative and liberal editorialists and bloggers who have pointed out both that the sample size is unscientifically small, and the conclusions take some liberties with respect to assumptions.

Also Sean Trane, you are somewhat right about liberals sometimes being more interested in speaking the rhetoric than in actually living it, but that of course is a generalization which may or may not be true for all liberals.

The paragraph in the article I actually found most interesting was this one (which I think gets closer to explaning the differences between liberals and conservatives than studying nursery school behavior does):

"...the work suggests that personality and emotions play a bigger role in our political leanings than we think. All of us, liberal or conservative, feel as though we've reached our political opinions by carefully weighing the evidence and exercising our best judgment. But it could be that all of that careful reasoning is just after-the-fact self-justification. What if personality forms our political outlook, with reason coming along behind, rationalizing after the fact?"

Edited by ClemofNazareth

Trouserpress wrote: I had literally zero confidence until the age of about 14. I'm now an extremely left-wing young man, and generally rather non-conformist to boot. Studies and statistics are often irrelevant but never more so than when applied to people.

Not sure I totally agree with that.  If you subscribe to the concept of divine right of free will (and I do), then you would be correct in suggesting individuals all have the right and capability to choose to act in pretty much any way they choose to, whether predictable, rational, or even logical, so an individual always has the power to defy any statistics or odds with respect to behaviors.

That being said, a young man whose family has a demonstrated history of heart disease has a three times higher likelyhood of contracting heart disease himself.  Persons whose bloodstreams contain significantly higher levels of lead than has been found to be normal are much more likely to develop psychosis, as well as tissue cancers.  Those are statistics about people that are accurate, predictable, and relevent. 

Even with free will, we are all in large part made up of millions of biological and chemical reactions, many of which are rather subject to scientific reason.  So I'm not so quick to dismiss scientific analysis of human tendencies, even of this study didn't do a very good job of it.

Trouserpress wrote: ClemofNazareth wrote: Trouserpress wrote: I had literally zero confidence until the age of about 14. I'm now an extremely left-wing young man, and generally rather non-conformist to boot. Studies and statistics are often irrelevant but never more so than when applied to people. Not sure I totally agree with that.  If you subscribe to the concept of divine right of free will (and I do), then you would be correct in suggesting individuals all have the right and capability to choose to act in pretty much any way they choose to, whether predictable, rational, or even logical, so an individual always has the power to defy any statistics or odds with respect to behaviors. That being said, a young man whose family has a demonstrated history of heart disease has a three times higher likelyhood of contracting heart disease himself.  Persons whose bloodstreams contain significantly higher levels of lead than has been found to be normal are much more likely to develop psychosis, as well as tissue cancers.  Those are statistics about people that are accurate, predictable, and relevent.  Even with free will, we are all in large part made up of millions of biological and chemical reactions, many of which are rather subject to scientific reason.  So I'm not so quick to dismiss scientific analysis of human tendencies, even of this study didn't do a very good job of it. You're quite right of course. I was being very general in my statement. Medical statistics make a lot of sense, of course. I do feel that it's impossible to really summarise personalities, though, and apart from anything else futile. What has this study achieved? The chance for lefties like myself to feel slightly smug? I'm sure there are far more aspects to the study than what the article focused on (such is the way in which journalism operates), but it does seem to be somewhat pointless.

Well the study was very poorly done, and in that respect it is pretty worthless.  The issue raised that I think is important though, is the question about why those in the left and those in the right feel so differently and so passionately about their respective positions on social, political, religious, and environmental issues.  The comment I highlighted suggests that there is much more to these positions than logic and reason. 

I think the study came to a wrong conclusion by suggesting personality is a key determinant.  I do think environmental factors such as social influences are strong determinants as well, but I do wonder if there are biological factors that we are not yet aware of that help to determine which way we end up leaning on social issues.

Tony R is my hero