None of these are clever enough to click
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Via Yahoo, from LiveScience d0t com:
Stephanie Pappas / Yahoo! News:
Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to PrejudiceThe research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.
“Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood,” he said.
Controversy ahead
The findings combine three hot-button topics.
“They’ve pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics,” said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. “When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it’s bound to upset somebody.” [MORE]
And so, WHO draws themselves up in high mor(on)al dudgeon?
I’ll tell you who:
Jim Hoft / The Gateway Pundit: Canadian Professor: Conservatives Are Dumb Racists
BigFurHat / iOwnTheWorld.com: Now Wait A Damn Minute
John Hinderaker / Power Line: Yahoo News Casually Smears Conservatives
GottaLaff / The Political Carnival: Confirmed: Low IQ, conservative beliefs linked to prejudice, per study
Matthew Balan / NewsBusters.org blogs: Yahoo Trumpets Study Supposedly Linking Conservatism to Low IQ
Thers / Whiskey Fire: Going to Be a Scream
Somehow, the words “Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice” caused the elite of the Rightie Blogosmear to use their protean command of logick to formulate the logical statement (Low IQ) + (Conservative Beliefs) = Prejudice and instantly turn it inside-out into the strange self-insult (Conservative) = Stupid + Racist.*
[* Hint: NEITHER formulation precisely describes the conclusions of the study. Oversimplification generally leads to embarrassment. Wanna-Be Sophists please note.]
And, evidently, since the jackboot fits, they IMMEDIATELY stick up for the ‘stupid racists’ of their absurd formulation…
How DARE them scientists call ALL OF US CONSERVATIVES STOOPID RACISTS!!?!
Quod Erat Demonstrandum, evidently.
This was way too easy.
If they keep tossing up these juicy softballs I’ll be rusty when they start whizzing the stupid racist fastballs by the plate.
Did I say “softballs”? I meant “meatballs.”
Courage.
It’s hard to believe it took a university researcher to study this before coming to the obvious conclusion that we all have known for years. Way to go Hart, I would have missed that since I no longer use Yahoo, or more commonly pronounced “yay-hoo”, as in dumb. When I did have a yahoo home page, I always thought that their news picks were usually slanted to the right, so this is surprising that they would report this.
Thanks, Wild Bill. If memory serves, you’re now stuck with the poster boy for yay-hooism back in the state. Must’ve been a relief to have him in South Carolina and Iowa and anywhere NOT Texas.
Mitt’s plan for illegal immigrants and self deportation is quite idiotic to Me. Or the trickle down theory that made homeless people much more common. And on and on . The people who come up with this stuff seem clever enough to sell it to folks dumb enough to accept them. So my conclusion is so-called clever people can get less clever people to go along with the program to keep the so-called clever people in power.
Well, he’s a SALESMAN, fundamentally. And the whole modern idea of marketing isn’t to sell a decent product. It’s to force the feeble-minded to bend to your will.
The right-wing detractors of the article were likely (and understandably) reacting to the sensationalist form of the article title and the opening paragraph (and more), all of which veers from the “truth” of the cited study. The opening sentence is an outright lie. There are gentler ways to put it, and they weren’t alluded to until late in the article. The article was designed to inflame an outgroup, and make an ingroup feel superior.
If one is genuinely interested in how prejudice works, first-hand, then one only need to look inside themselves if this article made them feel good at first blush, and second-, and third-….
I agree, David. The problem that we generally face (the result of the war on brains) is that journalists and the general public have zero notion how to analyze and discuss a scientific matter. The lede exists solely (in this case) to get that “LOOK AT ME!” attention for the article. It worked, but whatever was found by the Canadians drops out of the analysis and turns into manipulations of a syllogism based solely on a headline.
[see: "Mysteries of the Universe Revealed #412: Headlines" 12-09-09]
The formulation I mentioned above? Well, (low IQ) + (conservative ideology) = (prejudice) is an unforgivable reductionist formulation. Manipulating those variables doesn’t tell one anything, even though one might manipulate them correctly — and not INcorrectly and illogically, as the Right Wing bloggers did.
The biggest problem that I have with the whole thing is a lot deeper than that: it is filled with that current scientific assumption that (chemicals) + (stimulus) = (consciousness).
Increasingly, modern science would like to see “consciousness” as a mere series of chemical reactions, and, by implication, we could chemically alter the brains of “low IQ” people to get rid of their “prejudice.”
Well, hell, “prejudice” in its purest sense is HOW WE DEAL WITH THE WORLD.
You don’t taste every cup of coffee as if it were the first time. You assume (pre-judging) that it will taste like coffee and have the effect of coffee. You don’t know it, you prejudge it, based on past experience, and save you actual sentience for things that are new. You execute the sophisticated subroutine called “brush my teeth” but are thinking about the office, or that cup of coffee that was too strong. “Conditioned automatisms” my teacher used to call them. And conditioned automatisms are a bug part of the Human Operating System.
Many are seen as “prejudice.”
Where do you draw the line between robotic reactions and “prejudice”? And what are “conservative” beliefs?
I have grave concerns about the deepest assumptions of such a study, and about science’s current models of “consciousness.” Materialistic and reductionist, assuming a unitary consciousness, and, perhaps, occasionally, a “subconscious” — which is the psychological term for the “soul” in drag.
And, of course “low IQ” is, itself a highly questionable concept.
(I define intelligence pragmatically: if you are happy, you are intelligent. If you are miserable, you are less intelligent.)
At the same time, the present conservative “ideology” (an odd term for a form of thought devoid of ideas) deserves all the opprobrium that can be mustered.
Being thoughtful is well and good, but we are not in a thoughtful time; we are in a dangerous time.
There is a time for analysis (literally a “dissolving”) and that dissolving can dissolve anything, including your existence (solipsism). And there is a moment of synthesis and moving on.
Don’t make the same mistake Archimedes did; recall and learn from his untimely demise.
While I have questions about the whole epistemological framework that surrounds the study, the reporting and discussion, down to the most elemental levels, there is no question that the Republican Party is filled with stupid bigots. We can gild the lily any way we’d like, but they are a clear and present danger, and that’s where I focus my attention.
Now, a question: WHAT, in MY analysis of the logical mess made of the article by the Rightie Blogosphere is incorrect? (Since I confined myself to their response, and NOT to deep analysis of the study?)
And they are what concern me.
“WHAT, in MY analysis of the logical mess made of the article by the Rightie Blogosphere is incorrect?” Not much about your analysis of their analyses was incorrect, from what you provided. But their analyses were shallow. They were merely a superficial reaction to the main aim of the article: to inflame.
One of the first slavos in this “the other side has mental problems” campaign was “The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness,” by Dr. Lyle Rossiter; and greatly magnified and profited therefrom by Michael Savage. Tripe. These studies don’t prove anything definitive. I can do a study and manipulate statistics any way I desire. All of us, including scientists, find what we want to find. What is missed in our present milieu is the meaning of “Conservative” and “Liberal.” We all have innate impulses for both, and both have pathological extremes.
I wrote in another thread that “I see attempts at false equivalency all the time: “Both sides do it”…in the interest of duck, dodge, and weave in the fog of obfuscation. Both sides “do it,” but one side does it far-and-away more. The most salient fact in these kinds of articles/studies from both sides is that one side is so often anti-intellectual/anti-science out of one side of their mouth, and, out of the other side, completely twitterpated over any scientifically-appearing essay or study which makes them look or feel good or appear more efficacious; and the opponent ideology is consistently pro-intellectual/pro-science. Without knowing for certain the factuality of any scientific study whatsoever, that fact speaks volumes without the need for the proof of any complex study.” In other words, the Conservative side fails the Coherency Test of Truth, Correspondence Test notwithstanding (which good science could determine).
In the food-fight of scientific studies, that is where they fail most egregiously; not in their reactive responses to what baloney was just thrown back at them.
Therein I assent to what I consider to be a gross difference between ideological “sides” in this kind of mud-slinging. One side has been notably eliminationist in its tactics for quite awhile. I don’t want to slip into that mindset by default of merely being involved in the same kind of food-fight or mud-wrestling. If we wrestle with Ugly too much, we get Ugly. It’s contagious. On that point, I must admit–that during our initial exchange–I was involved in simultaneous political threads that made me enter into an abbreviated commentary exchange with you that was just a bare cut above the play-ground style of “your mama.” I noticed it, and parked it. I failed to express the best crux of what I was thinking because I was spreading myself too thin, too short, and was spending too much time and energy in some fractious places. I don’t want to be ugly, or obtusely short, and I apologize if I was.
And, about having the last word: there is much truth to that…for all of us, I believe. My words don’t need to be the last, they just need to be the most potent. I am very happy to let you have the last words if they approximate the expressions, “I totally agree” or “You are right.”
Aren’t you?
I don’t disagree with anything you say, David.
In fact, I agree.
I think the “coherency test” really is the crux of a lot of it.
Western Epistemology is incredibly screwed up, as in, Santa Claus and the U.S. Government occupy the same level of “existence.” They don’t exist, but they DO. Money falls into this category, as well, since the second no one believes in it, it ceases to be other than printing.
There is that assumption that logical consistency is fundamental to the nature of the Universe — generally proposed by those who believe that irrational “faith” trumps logic — when there seems more and more evidence to refute that notion than to confirm it.
The Great Divide, if I might restate your notion slightly, is between those with “perfect certitude” (the Religious Right/Libertarian Ideologues/Neocons) and those with perfect INcertitude (virtually all Democrats and all whom the blight of Postmodernism has touched).
Which inevitably leads us to those who are perfectly wrong arguing with those who are perfectly insecure.
Since nature abhors a vacuum, the “perfectly wrong” side has been winning policy debates for the past 30 years, even though the empirical evidence shows conclusively that those policies are disastrous. But the “perfectly uncertain” can never quite have enough evidence not to “give the benefit of the doubt” to insane formulations.
That “benefit” has bankrupted and nation and ruined the prospects of a generation.
What we need is perfect almost certitude, and I think we’re moving in that direction. Right now, a house built on sand, of cards fights it out with a castle in the air.
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=219946791432527&id=100000153801467¬if_t=like
Many blended quotes are teased out of my mind, ranging from Bertrand Russell, to Alfred North Whitehead, to MLK, to Terry Pratchett, to Einstein, to Mark Twain, to Aldous Huxley on the interrelated subjects of cocksureness, stupidity, ignorance, doubt, liberalism, an open mind…and the panapoly of divergent ideas that can be stuffed in there for simultaneous cohabitation and consideration.
Steven Pinker wrote recently about the Better Angels of our nature, and the evolution of humankind that has taken place over the centuries/millennia, including human morality. I think he is right, even if its sure progression can be very messy and ugly when viewed discretely in relatively small snippets of time.
Sometimes I think it best to embrace a kind of ideological Aikido and let the opponent’s momentum carry them through to the inevitable brickwall they are headed for…faster and harder. A couple of instances: The Tea-Party momentum in Arizona lead them to the sell-off of their Capital property; then, they realized what a dumb thing that was and bought it back for more than they sold it for. They are now widely seen to be stupid in all its glory in broad daylight. Another: I believe Indiana just passed a bill to teach Creationism in public schools. I say, alrighty, go ahead. It will backfire. Teaching actual science alongside pseudo-science will only serve to exponentially widen the population of people that recognize baloney when they see it, and recognize the dishonesty of the purveyors of that baloney. Continually arguing against it will keep the thing alive forever while letting it go ahead and hit the inevitable brickwall will be more likely to end the debate. Progress.
There are a few things that I don’t think that way about. Regressive policies on civil rights is one. Going backwards any form of eliminationism is unacceptable, always. That’s why I am very sensitive to any slip into it from any direction. My ultimate enemies aren’t people, but ideas. God help me if I ever have to kill people just because they wouldn’t give up on the most dangerous ideas that have always been tragic failures several times. I will have become what I hate.
To paraphrase Huxley, as best my memory serves, “To crusade more against evil in the world than for goodness in oneself never makes the world a better place, but rather much worse.”
As you say…Courage.
Well put, David.