AspiringRationalist comments on The uniquely awful example of theism - Less Wrong

36 Post author: gjm 10 April 2009 12:30AM

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Comment author: AspiringRationalist 20 March 2012 07:29:54PM *  0 points [-]

Support for legalizing marijuana is negatively correlated with age. I could not find statistics by age, but I would imagine that older Americans, being generally more conservative, are more likely to oppose abortion. Voter turnout increases with age, so although legalizing marijuana and banning abortion have similar overall levels of support, banning abortion has higher support among people whose opinions politicians care about (voters).

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 20 March 2012 07:55:32PM 2 points [-]

Does it really decline with age, or did older people form their values in a different culture? It's possible people's values are stable over time but people born a long time ago were more likely to form different values from the ones formed by people born more recently. Has anyone tried to distinguish between these possibilities?

Comment author: gwern 20 March 2012 07:59:04PM 1 point [-]
Comment author: AspiringRationalist 24 March 2012 08:13:17AM 0 points [-]

Pardon my sloppy phrasing. I did not intend to imply causality one way or another, merely the correlation. I edited the original comment to reflect my intent.

Comment author: hairyfigment 22 March 2012 08:00:31PM 0 points [-]

Robert Altemeyer reports a correlation between a likely-related attitude (support for 'traditional' authority) and -- not age, but having children. Continued education has a stronger apparent effect in the opposite direction. But I don't think he directly addresses this question.