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Thomas comments on The Illusion of Sameness - Less Wrong
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Comments (73)
What the "liberal" has to do here? It's not as clever as it sounds to be "liberal".
In the US, when you compare intelligence to self-identifying political views, there are two correlations that stand out: 1) more intelligent means more likely to have non-moderate views 2) more intelligent are more likely to self-identify as liberal, or support policies generally thought of as liberal. That is, there's movement away from identifying as centrist or moderate to either extreme, and more of that movement is to the left end of the spectrum. These results are fairly robust, see for example the GSS, using WORDSUM as a proxy for intelligence (it is highly correlated with IQ).
Also, people who self-identify as not religious are also much more likely to self-identify as liberal, and both political leanings and religious leanings are highly hereditary. Again, see GSS data. Note that this correlation becomes weaker if you hold fixed to a specific degree of intelligence, but it still exists.
So, the comment is making correct conclusions. Obviously there are some caveats, such as the issue that intelligence is not necessarily correlated with rationality or correctness, and that memetic issues could potentially cause an anti-correlation. There's also evidence that by some metrics, liberals know less about politics and current events. See for example this Pew study(pdf) where Democrats know less on average than Republicans. (This may be due to income issues, since there's a correlation between political knowledge level and income, and unfortunately Pew hasn't published the raw data to examine that issue in detail. )
But overall, nothing stated in the original post is at all unreasonable.
Upvoted for summarizing data rather than merely providing another anecdote.
When taking into account that we are likley to be not just ideologically more extreme than average but also more divided (than say a random gathering of the "highly educated") since many of us here are metacontrarians, it seems like a very good idea to strictly adhere to the "no mindkillers" rule on political discussion.
I'm not an US citizen, so my knowledge of US politics may not be deep enough to grasp some of the subleties of the topic, but my overall impression was that unless you are very rich, it is in your best interest - and thus clever - to be liberal.
But I guess this part of the discussion borders "Politics is a Mind-Killer", so if you wish to inform me why it isn't clever to be liberal, it's probably best if we take the discussion to PMs.
It's weird how often people express this idea.
Since the marginal effect of your political affiliation upon the policies of a nation of 300 Million people is trivial, we shouldn't really expect it to be "in your interest" to vote for the bloc that promises you income transfers/lower taxes, etc. Rather, it is "clever" for people to vote their affiliations (i.e. what their family, friends, and coworkers vote for). This model actually correlates with the way people actually vote.
It is clever to say that you vote your affiliations.
Our 'voting' instincts come from a (slightly misapplied) execution of strategies that are adapted for political environments where support is giving via public declaration rather than anonymous ballot. At a national and global level it may well be one of humanity's greatest weaknesses.
The rationalist Bradley effect, if you will.
There was a clever exploit of this trick in the first post-WW2 Italian general election: the opposing choices were a Communist-Socialist alliance versus a Catholic-led conservative coalition, and one of the strongest Catholic slogans was: In the voting booth, God sees you - Stalin doesn't!
Brilliant anecdote, I'll use that one. Thanks. :)
Local government elections do exist. In those contexts it might make more sense to vote on policy issues. But in practice, most local government policy issues have little to do with the standard left/right divide. Moreover, the strength of affiliation issues becomes even more severe when people actually know the candidates.
First of all, which country are you from? The word 'liberal' means very different things in the political discourse of America and Europe.
I'm from Germany. I got the impression that liberal is used as synonymous with "Democrat" in the american political discourse, and that the Democrats would be roughly center-right in german political terms.
Best interest isn't always that same as economic self-interest. If one cares more about certain social and cultural issues more than how much money one has it might make sense to vote conservative. Also, the issue of how well the policies advocated by liberals maximize the economic well-being of the poor is contested.
I think the original post fell well within "politics is the mind killer", and voted it down for that reason.
That seems unfair given that the viewpoint the OP discussed as surprising is one that is far from the mainstream on any end of the political spectrum. Would you consider it to be too potentially mind-killing if someone mentioned say Conservapedia? Where do you draw the line?
The post was about people who don't think like the original poster more broadly.
Although political discussions could be problematic for several reasons, I don't encourage downvoting just because a post comes close to the forbidden territory. It seems that the present discussion could have cleared some misconceptions and have a positive effect. There are few strongly upvoted comments, like this one, which seem to indicate that partial agreement can be found.
My sense is the comments were upvoted because they did a good job explaining the problems with the original post, not because they're likely to be of much lasting value outside of that context. Partial agreement can be found, but so can flame wars. Everything has upsides; the question is whether they outweigh the downsides.
I am a U.S. citizen, and the subtleties of the subject often escape me as well. However, I suggest that the American rich tend to be "liberal" (meaning left-of-center in the American spectrum). This would include both what passes for our aristocracy (see, the Kennedys and Rockefellers) and our nouveau riche. An entrepreneurial blogger has launched a small industry based on the preferences of fashionable left-leaning upper-middle-class white hipsters.
If anything, the American right wing is a middle- to lower-middle-class phenomenon.
The American rich tend to vote Republican. In poor states like Mississippi there is a strong correlation between higher income and voting Republican, but in rich states like Connecticut there is a much weaker correlation between income and party.
I see the first graph on this site defines "rich" as $150,000 in income, and on that basis said "richer people continue to lean Republican." However, the same page showed that the pattern broke down as incomes rose above about $200,000 in annual income. That second graph suggested that the really rich would not tend to vote Republican.
I'd summarize the graph as: probability of voting Republican increases with income up to $70,000 or so, where it reaches a plateau.
There are some hints of a pattern above that, but within the income range where they have data there are only slight changes which are inconsistent from election to election. What's clear from their graphs is that someone with a $250,000 income has about the same chance of voting Republican as someone with a $75,000 income, and both are much more likely to vote Republican than someone with an income under $30,000.
Rich northeastern states tend to be relatively Democratic, and there is only a weak relationship between income and party within those states. The upper-middle-class liberals in that region are the main target of Stuff White People Like. But in the country as a whole there is a clear relationship between income and voting Republican, at least over most of the income distribution (although they don't have the data to say what happens within the richest 1%).
Edit: I misread the post as "if you are rich" and not "unless you are very rich."