Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ

yup clinton isnt ugly at all.. Probably better looking than Leno, Letterman, etc. He has the charisma to be a great late night talk show host. I don't know I always thought Clinton would be great in hollywood. He'd sure make a lot of $$$$ not that he needs any more though

 

Before you w00t it up, what relation is it? Proportional or inversely proportional?

 

i was just quoting a great poster's sig as it seemed pretty appropriate to his post.

 

True enough, by current standards, you and your party would skip "liberal" and now label him some variation of communist/fascist or other inapplicable term. Of course the same Could be said for George 1, Reagan, Nixon etc.

 

hey!!!

:grin:

 

hehehe.

 

i thought you wern't allowed to have sex until you were married

 

I don't give this study a lot of credibiltiy. The definition of liberalism isn't helping its reputation either.

 

Yeah, I'm going to take the results of this study with a grain of salt BUT I happen to be all three.

Just sayin'

 

What's wrong with it? (Referring to the definition of liberalism, although I guess I'm wondering about your problem with the study itself, too.)

 

Somebody has to explain to me what the heck liberalism means. I have no idea, seriously.

 

Of course. You are a socialist. I am assuming you are a social democrat. Nothing wrong with that.

If only we could have college education for all without massive indebtedness, good pensions, good vacations and decent public health for all etc.

I guess it is easier to become a multi-millionaire here.

I have heard that the Dutch stock market has actually outperformed the US one for the last 50 --or quite a few-- years.

 

I theorize that people with below average IQ's need structure such as religion to guide them through life since they are not as good at thinking for themselves. Conservatism also has more structure than liberalism. Its these people that bring down the average for these groups. Its not that conservative and religious people are dumber, its that religion and conservatism attracts the dumb people which brings down the average.

 

....and who funded this study? So much waste.

 

Since it runs somewhat counter to what I already believe, it creates cognitive dissonance for me, which I can treat by discrediting and then ignoring the information that caused the dissonance in the first place.

Besides that, it just feels like the study was built with a bias. Though the authors say they are conservative (and I have to assume they mean they care for those near them more than they do for strangers ), they've chosen to measure IQ against a host of behaviors deemed to be "progressive." Maybe there were a bunch of other progressive-neutral behaviors measured, but they weren't mentioned. So, it feels agenda-driven and, therefore, suspect.

As for the definition of liberalism, educated men can disagree on what it is, but they can't agree that liberalism is essentially caring about strangers. And, that certainly isn't "American liberalism." With that definition, a whole lot of American liberals are going to be surprised to learn they are actually conservatives (while I'm surprised to learn I'm liberal). So, confusing commonly-held understandings about "liberal" and "conservative" with this caricature of a definition will end up as a conflation in the minds of the people who read about the study. They'll decide regular political conservatives (who oppose abortion, support the death penalty, want to guard the border, rein in spending, and so on) are the same set at these don't-care-about-strangers conservatives and assign them a stereotype of being low-IQ. It is disingenous and casts another shadow on the good-faith of the study in my eyes.

 

zing!

 

My guess, and it was just an assumption on my part since I haven't studied the study at all, was that the definition of liberal versus conservative came from existing psychological studies, some of which have been posted here, that identify a clear correlation between having certain types of values and being conservative. I don't remember the exact details, but those studies show that liberals and conservatives both value helping others, but conservatives also place value on the group, authority and sanctity. It seemed to me it was that distinction that they were referring to.

I could be completely wrong. I didn't look closely at the study itself. The explanation in the article certainly does seem rather awkward. But if my theory above is correct, it does make sense given the conclusions they draw. The values of loyalty, respect and purity are based largely on evolutionary adaptations (as are other values) so the idea of reasoning that they aren't really that important goes against our evolutionary instincts, as does atheism and monogamy for men.

It comes across as insulting towards conservatives, but my feeling was that was just how it was translated in the article, and not exactly what they used in the study.

 

You may be right about that, but they only mention the loyalty dynamic, not the others. And, it is still disingenuous to call it liberal if it is merely a behavior that is correlated with self-identification as a liberal. That might be the journalist's fault. But, since I'm simultaneously too lazy and too busy to look at the actual study, I'll just write off the whole thing on the basis of this one article.

 

Makes sense. As a liberal atheist in a monogamous relationship, I'm going to assume it's all true and valid so that I can feed my superiority complex.

 

IQ test results are misleading; It's alot of puzzle/math based thinking.