rolling explaining conservatism

There's like five long-reads every week concerned with figuring out the complex thoughts of the Trump-voter, but one poll that shows black voters like Bernie Sanders fine, and it's SEE!! And the quest for understanding stops.

― Frederik B, Friday, July 21, 2017 11:29 AM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So the reason for this is that these people's voting habits created an international crisis.

Colorado stayed blue. So no. I'd wager the 'unmarked' thingy has a lot to do with it.

In fact, Colorado has become progressively more blue over the years. So why not investigate that instead?

Instead of investigating why a dangerous reactioary party controls all three branches of the federal government and also dominates state governments?

Yes

Quite simply. Understand your allies in this fight, instead of your enemies.

Why not...both?

lots of americans prefer giving each other shit to cooperating in any meaningful sense, fred

'shrewd' frontier skepticism

Upthread, I infodumped neurological studies on physiological differences between conservative and liberal brains. Evolutionary psychologists have been at it too, particularly with respect to the "behavioral immune system" of the disgust response. One can expose people to images and smells unrelated to politics, and the intensity of their response predicts their politics.

Tybur et al, 2010. Extending the behavioral immune system to political psychology: Are political conservatism and disgust sensitivity really related?. Evolutionary Psychology, 8(4), p.147470491000800406.
Inbar et al 2012. Disgust sensitivity, political conservatism, and voting. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3(5), pp.537-544.
Terrizzi et al, 2013. The behavioral immune system and social conservatism: A meta-analysis. Evolution and Human Behavior, 34(2), pp.99-108.
Pizarro et al 2014, Politics, pathogens, and disgust.
Feinberg et al, 2014. Gut check: Reappraisal of disgust helps explain liberal–conservative differences on issues of purity. Emotion, 14(3), p.513.
Clark & Fessler, 2015. The role of disgust in norms, and of norms in disgust research: Why liberals shouldn’t be morally disgusted by moral disgust. Topoi, 34(2), pp.483-498.
Brenner & Inbar, Y., 2015. Disgust sensitivity predicts political ideology and policy attitudes in the Netherlands. European Journal of Social Psychology, 45(1), pp.27-38.

As with innate racism, we're fighting some deep-seated instincts here. It will be uphill all the way.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/07/alt-right-william-regnery-richard-spencer/

nurture > nature

Depends on whether you follow tabula rasa 20th century anthropologists, or the data. Both play a role.

is there any evidence that disgust sensitivity is genetic?

also sanpaku, maybe i'm confused about your argument here but from the very first link u posted:

"Here, we test a hypothesis that political conservatism functions as a pathogen-avoidance strategy. Across three studies, we consistently find no relationship between sensitivity to pathogen disgust and multiple measures of political conservatism."

Similar heritability to other mental predispositions, it seems:

approximately half of the variation in pathogen, sexual, and moral disgust is due to genetic effects

Sherlock et al, 2016. The quantitative genetics of disgust sensitivity. Emotion, 16(1), p.43.

Bivariate correlations revealed that conservatism was weakly related to sensitivity to sexual disgust, r = .13, p < .05, but not moral disgust, r = .07, p = .17, or pathogen disgust, r = .03, p = .64.

not a surprise about sexual disgust and no correlation w/ moral or pathogen which suggests this theory is doa

Mostly posted that first study as an early review of the arguments. The 2013 meta-analysis of 24 studies which found a positive relation is the most recent I've found.

Psychology is in the midst of a repeatability crisis, but I thought this angle on what underlies conservatism was worth mentioning.

it's definitely an interesting theory esp if you believe (as i do) that conservatism is [at least partially] about sensitivity to threat / degradation of social structure / society - but even if it were explanatory it doesn't give us much imo. it just indicates that there are metrics that replicate the ideology and that might have a genetic factor. i personally caution skepticism about its value tho.

Psychology is in the midst of a repeatability crisis

"In the midst of" implies there was a time when it wasn't, and that perhaps there will be a time when it won't be.

NRO is more fun than this thread.

"You can't understand everyone" might be true in terms of pure pedantry but it's still the best ideal to strive towards imo.

If we're talking purely strategically though, and within a US elections context, the biggest priority would probably be to understand people who didn't vote at all. The reason that ppl prioritize "understanding" Trump voters over allies with different tactical/ideological viewpoints is that they view Trump voters as Other and allies as part of Us. Which is flawed reasoning to a degree but it's more true than untrue.

The biggest priority for Democrats in the US should always be understanding why they can't drive turnout the way conservatism does

But they're more concerned with fundraising

Upthread, I infodumped neurological studies on physiological differences between conservative and liberal brains. Evolutionary psychologists have been at it too, particularly with respect to the "behavioral immune system" of the disgust response. One can expose people to images and smells unrelated to politics, and the intensity of their response predicts their politics.

As with innate racism, we're fighting some deep-seated instincts here. It will be uphill all the way.

― полезные дурак (Sanpaku)

counterargument a to this theory: the motherfucking president

yes those other people that are all horrible are so tribal and divisive and that is why they are bad people

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau)

this post was on the other thread but was clearly meant for this one and honestly isn't going to make the thread worse at this point

who said i was only talking about other people? i stopped thinking of myself as a "good person" when that ilx thread told me to several years ago

the motherfucking president

A germophobe who described HRC leaving a stage to use the restroom as "disgusting" IIRC. He fits the model.

Rushomancy is getting somewhere. I have a lot on my plate right now, and appearing open-minded toward people who hate me (on a forum they don't read)is not a high priority.

A germophobe who described HRC leaving a stage to use the restroom as "disgusting" IIRC. He fits the model.

― полезные дурак (Sanpaku)

at the risk of overexplaining, i meant that he is a grotesque and revolting human being.

Focusing on them at all is rather more the puzzler

What's the biggest number Dems can get to turn out and vote for them and still be Dems.

Fuck 'republicans' but also fuck snobbery about eating up those middle ground votes, regardless of where the middle ground takes you. Else stop pretending you care who is president

Fuck 'republicans' but also fuck snobbery about eating up those middle ground votes, regardless of where the middle ground takes you.

― jk rowling obituary thread (darraghmac)

the "middle ground" is regression to the mean. which is, statistically, totally inappropriate given the individual data points here. ballpark figure, 40% of this america scores at 0, 40% scores at 100, 20% don't honestly give a fuck either way. for the democrats to look at those numbers and say "well we should just run america at 50" is stupid and inappropriate.

XP: lots of germophobes hate the smell of bleach, but will spray it over their kitchens/bathrooms in their germocidal crusades. Likewise roach spray.

Most Trump voters know he is the most vulgar individual to ever run for president. They don't care, so long as he promises to remove the "contamination" near them. Muslims, non-European immigrants, urban blacks etc.

i'm sure trump voters hate the taste of bleach just as much as they hate the smell of bleach.

the "middle ground" is regression to the mean. which is, statistically, totally inappropriate given the individual data points here. ballpark figure, 40% of this america scores at 0, 40% scores at 100, 20% don't honestly give a fuck either way. for the democrats to look at those numbers and say "well we should just run america at 50" is stupid and inappropriate.

― The Saga of Rodney Stooksbury (rushomancy), Saturday, 22 July 2017 15:10 (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In English

i think he's saying politics aren't bell-shaped they're more u-shaped

regardless of where the middle ground takes you

"better skills!" and our old friend the ash-heap, in that order

it's a wild saturday over here

http://i.imgur.com/ACStkmM.jpg

"center" should have been rush's "20% don't honestly give a fuck either way" i guess

Ah yes, your classic n64 controller curve xp

Yeah idk that's not what was said but I mean rushomancy \-_-/

"better skills!" and our old friend the ash-heap, in that order

― difficult listening hour, Saturday, 22 July 2017 20:05 (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And again, I'm not saying that you *should* care who wins your two horse race, it's not for me to say, yknow?

i don't think you follow

I'm always open to that possibility tbh, as long as the explanation is forthcoming and entertaining (you have good form imo)

for whatever it might be worth, or nothing, I didn't mean the Dems need to do outreach to habitual non-voters who DGAF, I meant they need to focus on getting their own registered voters and blue-leaning independents to show up and vote the line the way Repubs do on the regular

i find it's pretty hard to get a good grasp on whether 'dems should move left to solidify the base' is like actually objectively strategically true, or if i just believe that because it's what i want them to do anyways

i don't trust any of us to have a clear take on that tbh

as the electorate has polarized, it is absolutely a better strategy.

median voter theory works assuming there are a decent number of voters are legit swing votes that will go for the most appropriately moderate option in front of them. but this doesn't describe a very large number of voters. base enthusiasm is what wins elections. this doesn't mean it's best to go as far to one direction or the other, but to go for the median of your base, the peaks of those bimodal distribution curves upthread. if your base is more jacked than theirs, you win.

It's not quite that simple, since 'the base' of the party isn't really Bernie-voters (who instead were independents, which is why Bernie did so well in open primaries), when instead the most loyally democratic demographic is black women. But yeah, there is not the slightest evidence that there's particularly many voters to pick up by a move further to the center, while it sure seems as if a number of leftist policies has broad appeal. From afar, it seems most fights are really over what kinds of leftist policy should be embraced and to what extent, feminist, anti-racist, economic, more directly labor, etc.

ctrl-f me where i said bernie, son

as the electorate has polarized, it is absolutely a better strategy.

a decent number of voters are legit swing votes that will go for the most appropriately moderate option in front of them. but this doesn't describe a very large number of voters. base enthusiasm is what wins elections. this doesn't mean it's best to go as far to one direction or the other, but to go for the median of your base, the peaks of those bimodal distribution curves upthread. if your base is more jacked than theirs, you win.

yeah see this just sounds like the stories we tell ourselves