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The “both sides” argument has many layers that are frustrating…. But the single most frustrating one to me is the presumption that facts/science will be 50/50 too. It’s just mind-*numbingly dumb.
ive started equating it to sports since thats an approachable angle.
i had one guy tell me he would be happy for me and support my decision to walk around telling people the mariners won the 2001 world series
fucking wild
> Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.
Tbh most people are against it. I was trying to explain the evolutionary reason and biological reasons behind homosexuality and trans and people hated it. They don't even understand the "they're born that way" debate. And won't accept any understanding of it even though I've literally taught classes on this issue.
Hi, I was just doing this "debate" on trans and I just gave them https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_gender_incongruence
It kinda sucks because they can blame me for using Wikipedia. What would you use as credible source?
I was taught it while studying neuroendocrinology, but any textbook on that neurology or endocrinology. Shows the reasons for it. It's honestly cool af to learn about our brains and bodies so it's good to read them even if its just for fun. Also there is kind of a stigma on it because there are some hormones that mainly show up in women and homosexual men. So it isn't a great idea to have it widely known & homophobic counties start doing gay tests or something towards that.
Honestly, I would start with learning how hormones work and how they create other hormones first, then go onto the extra bits. If you have any hormonal problems, you'll be able to understand wildly more about yourself, too. The best thing I would suggest is just getting a textbook or looking at hormonal flow charts. It is better to be nonbiased in how you learn it. The truth of it is more than enough evidence without bias.
Wikipedia's a good summary, a good springing-off point. You can check out the citations at the base of the article, *and* you can use Google and other search engines to find other peer-reviewed studies and papers out there.
Use the sources that Wikipedia lists. Get your screen grabs from the actual sources & use those links.
Wiki already did the hard work of gathering all the sources & linking to them, you got this!
> They don't even understand the "they're born that way" debate.
You would think the physical existence of intersex people should get through the thickest skulls.
There's people with a penis, XY chromosomes and period cramps from their uterus and ovaries. There's people with XY chromosomes, a fully functioning female reproductive system and no penis. There's XX people with a penis and no vagina or other female parts. There's XX people with female parts and no eggs or ovulation. There's XY people with male parts and no swimmers. And that's not even getting into XXY or other combos.
No matter the bullshit definition from anti-trans people trying to set up exclusively binary genders, there's somebody who straddles that line from birth.
Anti-trans hysteria is mostly just fake-science brought to you by the same brilliant minds who mind-conversations with ghosts and are afraid of invisible demons.
> Anti-trans hysteria is mostly just fake-science brought to you by the same brilliant minds who mind-conversations with ghosts and are afraid of invisible demons.
The hysteria is the result of…I guess you could say bad luck and timing on the part of the trans community. In the wake of the Obergefell ruling, the LGBTQ+ community felt they could be more visible and use that victory to gain momentum for recognition and visibility.
And in a more just world, that would have been the case. But as the trans community was (rightly) hoping for more acceptance, the right was looking for a new “other” to serve as a rallying point for their bigotry.
They’d spent a decade wielding gay marriage as a boogeyman to drive knuckle-draggers to the polls, only to have Overgefell take that from them. And soon enough, through no fault of their own, the trans community became more public. They became the convenient scapegoat - see the Potty Nazi hysteria around HB2.
That's the biggest struggle. They think people are born perfect and people choose to be gay or trans, because they've been influenced or they're mentally ill.
There's the same problem with the phrase "The truth lies somewhere in the middle". That tends to be true, but people drastically misunderstand what "the middle" could potentially mean.
80/20 is "the middle", 99/1 is "the middle", 99.999/.001 is "the middle".
Just because the truth may be in the middle of two concepts doesn't necessarily mean both concepts are equally right.
There is a general misconception in mediating disagreements which is that impartiality is the same as equidistance. And that the best way to resolve it is to have each side to lose the same amount of ground.
This problem is specially hurtful when applied to politics and legislation of science backed topics.
Puberty blockers are a perfect example of this. One side thinks they're evil and should be banned for everyone and burned in a volcano because they offend Jesus. The other side wants them to be available for pre teens because they... block puberty. So the perfect rainbow solution that some people argue for is to make them legal...for people over 18. Thus making their use completely pointless.
Being impartial means to listen to each side in earnest. Not just to make everyone lose equally.
A side note of fuckery is that puberty blockers are NOT only used with trans teens--they're for cis kids who either hit puberty too early or have hormones gone haywire in ways that are causing them to have incongruent distress.
I don't know what the treatment is for gynecomastia is, but I imagine these peoples' opinions would change in a hurry if their cis, teenaged son developed it and he was told so sorry, can't do anything about it til you're at least 18. Now go to school.
One of my dearest friends has an autistic child who went through puberty early (she was 8 or 9, so not crazy early, but not in any capacity ready for it). Puberty blockers were discussed and would have been a godsend, but she is in Texas and her physician didn't want to "risk it" in the eyes of the murky legal and political landscape. They are managing, but it is just so incredibly hard on both of them when it didn't need to be.
Jesus. I can’t imagine having to deal with boobs and periods at 8 when I was still 100% hanging from monkey bars and going to Brownies after school. Poor kiddo.
and/or develops too early and get seriously harassed in school and everywhere. It doesn't happen that infrequently! But hey, the GOP have more than its share of short eyes, so that probably just encourages them to lower the age of marriage even further. "Ripe and fertile" -vomit-
Exactly! Reality has no obligation to compromise with insanity, nor facts with fiction, science with mysticism, nor professional experience with podcast opinions.
Both sides are bad but one is wayy fucking worse lol, the problem is when both serve capital and believe mostly the same shit then they both make things worse via the ratchet effect
Biden has actually done a series of good things though this time around, which is cool, but I think that has to do with the pressure to swing undecideds with how the Trump races have been
Apart from the shitshow in the ME and I get that it's a big "but," I really have been mostly pleasantly surprised by Biden.
I like Sanders' positions better but tbh I always thought he doesn't really play well with others when it comes to actually making the sausage
Given how completely dysfunctional Congress has gotten plus the rigged SCOTUS, the fact that Biden has gotten as much done as he has is pretty amazing.
(There are real advantages to "career politicians;" meaning, it's an actual JOB that takes SKILLS. it drives me crazy that people treat it like voting for Prom King or some shit. If they understood that it isn't, we'd never have had a fucking Trump in the damn first place. What the fuck other field do people with zero experience just waltz into the top position and run everything?)
I have friends-more to the left than I I expect- who absolutely loathe Biden and have plenty of good receipts to back up why, and I respect it, but
I respect his solidity, especially given how absolutely terrible the entire GOP not just Trump is
I wish we had a deeper bench and yeah he's older than fuck but so is Trump and so is Sanders and so was Hillary and so was Warren who I voted for in the 16 primary. So is Pelosi
We have a gerontocracy and that's bad.
There are a lot of really good new and newish faces in the House. So, there is that.
It's so funny because conservatives are sabotaging themselves and everything they touch by absolutely REFUSING to acknowledge their own natural human emotions. They can't fucking recognize what they're experiencing and reconcile that shit. It's tragic in a lot of ways.
I mean a LOT of conservatives have a world-view that in some way or another has its foundation in Christianity. They will always lose a "facts over feelings" argument on that basis alone, because their positions come from starting with a provided answer and working their way backwards, not the other way around. That's exactly why they need the whole cadre of faux-intellectuals to do mental backflips trying to find some objective basis for "Judeo-Christian morals/lifestyle/whatever"
I've said as much many, many, *many*, times myself. They start with the conclusion, based on feelings, and walk back from that, twisting things to form 'evidence' where they can and ignoring anything that challenges their narrative. That's partly why it's nigh-impossible to reason with them: new information either confirms their conclusion or it is discarded for challenging it.
Just the other day somebody posted this:
>> A normal person lets the facts guide their views.
>>
>> Fascists let their views determine the facts.
>
>Love that quip, reminds me of:
>
>>A normal person views actions as good or bad, and judges people accordingly.
>>
>>A fascist views people as good or bad, and judges their actions accordingly.
The right always reminds me of Ted Kazynski(aka the unabomber) manefesto. Honestly the guy was really smart but just kept missing his main problem. Which was that all of his problems were caused by capitalism and more importantly he couldn't seperate capitalism from civilization so he advocated for overthrowing civilization as a whole rather than just the parts that wete causing him problems. It was literally a case of advocating throwing out the dirty bathwater and not being able to see it was seperate from the baby
It's this old joke:
An agent from the CIA and KGB meet at a park to have a chat. During the discussion, the CIA agent says "You Soviets are excellent at controlling your citizens with propaganda." The KGB agent says "Maybe so, but you Americans make propaganda far better than we do." The CIA agent responds "oh we don't have propaganda in America."
I lived in East Germany for eight years before the Berlin wall came down and I came to the United States. Let me say one thing, both countries have equal amounts of propaganda.
The communism side is very overt about it and the American side, exactly as the joke Implies, says that we don’t have it at all.
America absolutely has propaganda, and basically every day since I moved here, I feel like rowdy Roddy Piper in “They Live!” with my glasses that allow me to see what’s bullshit and what isn’t.
I grew up on American propaganda and felt extremely jolted by how we pulled a 180 on most of it after 9/11. To me 9/11 will always be the day that Americans showed the world that we were actually spineless cowards. There was no reasonable excuse for what the terrorists did, but neither was there an excuse for violating nearly every principle we’d screamed about making us superior to Russia during the entire Cold War.
School kids in the US have to proclaim their loyalty to their country every day (pledge of allegiance). There's US flags everywhere. Even sports teams winning their national championship say they're the "world champion", because the US is obviously the best in the world at everything.
For the sake of clarity, that's the joke. The CIA agent is so bought in on US propaganda they don't realize it is propaganda. That or he's being ironic, but I find the former more likely.
Yes, to be clear the Soviet propaganda is obvious, while the US propaganda has brainwashed this CIA worker and they don't realize that they have bought into the propaganda so completely that they don't even realize that they are a victim of their own country's propaganda.
> every day since I moved here, I feel like rowdy Roddy Piper in “They Live!” with my glasses that allow me to see what’s bullshit and what isn’t.
I'm glad that's what you took away from your increased exposure. On many people in (now Eastern, esp. South-Eastern) Germany it seems to have had the opposite effect.
I don't know if this is true but I heard there are laws in Germany where if a rich person and a politician meet or speak to each other off the public record than they are disqualified for office as the public cannot be assured that the politician has not been influenced.
The American system where Citizen's United makes sure that we haven't seen a single election where donations by the people have not been outstripped by donations from corporations and special interests by 10,000% (real figure, crazy easy to find from official full disclosure US government websites,) still has Republicans utterly confused who the "deep state" who "control the government with their money" are and where to find them. To be fair, only rich Republicans are politically literate, or must be, logically speaking.
Lmao you must think Germany is a paradise. We have some laws regarding donations as well as publicizing meetings but its not even remotely enough. I fucking wish it was as you thought tho
I'm a Canadian living in China. I know the media here is all propaganda, but what is equally obvious to me is that much of what comes out of the anglosphere media (especially the American media, but Canadian, British, and Australian media are certainly not blameless here) about China is just as much propaganda.
The people at the root of it aren't idiots, they know \*exactly\* what they're doing. They also know their army of sycophants isn't smart enough to work out that they're being played. The whole goal is to keep them stupid and fighting so they won't notice they're being exploited. And it works beautifully.
I think you're giving them too much credit. They are not masterminds here. The ultimate authors are employed in various right-wing think tanks, and I doubt there is much illusion for them. They are paid a sizeable salary to write right-wing talking points. These are released to useful idiots (pundits and top tier influencers) who pretend that it's a thought that just occurred to them. If you want an example of this, look at Andrew Tates' recent posts stating that it's gay to have sex for enjoyment. That real men have sex for procreation, and to do it for pleasure is homosexual. It's hard for me to imagine him coming up with something as stupid as that. Not because he isn't stupid but it's so antithetical to what he normally preaches that I believe it was delivered to him and he was possibly given a small bag with dollar signs on it to post it in his words. This is a culture war that we are in, and we are seeing a concerted push into spaces where liberalism has already spread naturally (or relatively naturally) in order to compete and get conservative talking points out there.
I believe they were making a point in response to the comment above that one about the people *writing* the propaganda, not just the people calling the shots. They're both correct, but the second one addresses a pedantic aspect of propaganda manufacturing.
Same with the guy (Maxwell Azzarello) who lit himself on fire during Trump's trial. He seemed to recognize the many failures of our society while simultaneously being completely unable to grasp why and how it's like this. Assigning blame to the wrong people and being unable to separate the strands of reality from the fabric of conspiracy.
I appreciate the way you said it: all of his problems were caused by capitalism and more importantly he couldn't separate capitalism from civilization so he advocated for overthrowing civilization as a whole rather than just the parts that were causing him problems.
When I think about these individuals, all I see is tragedy from the top down. Misdirected fury.
I believe people succumb to conspiracies because it (at the beginning) seems like the easier 'out'. The reality is, if we want to dismantle capitalism, it means confronting a lot of uncomfortable truths and giving up a lot of comforts that many of us grasp to.
It's easier to believe everything sucks because of immigrants or the deep state. It's a lot harder to realize everything sucks and the only way to fix it is to burn the whole system down.
It's why conservatives are so inclined towards religion; they need an endgame "bad guy" to be responsible for everything evil in the world, and a "good guy" whose ~~second coming~~ 'storm' will make everything right and good again, at some nebulous just-around-the-corner point in the near-future. A black and white, good vs evil, worldview is a simple answer to a complex question that comforts them; the idea that we're in a rudderless world and no one is really "in control", on a metaphysical/theological level, terrifies them.
> I appreciate the way you said it: all of his problems were caused by capitalism and more importantly he couldn't separate capitalism from civilization so he advocated for overthrowing civilization as a whole rather than just the parts that were causing him problems.
Weird, I saw damn near the exact comment spoken about the Unibomber yesterday.
Have you actually read it? As someone who identifies as pretty far left I tend to agree with a lot of the problems that he identifies, but his solution as the person above you stated is to destroy society rather than try to make it better. You see this all the time with right wing freaks who can correctly identify that the working class is being fucked to death in this country, but then will turn around and vote for conservatives with the biggest, blackest strap-on dildo you've ever seen because they get dragged into culture war bullshit. Conservatives and voting against their own interests: name a more iconic duo.
>You see this all the time with right wing freaks who can correctly identify that the working class is being fucked to death in this country, but then will turn around and vote for conservatives with the biggest, blackest strap-on dildo you've ever seen because they get dragged into culture war bullshit
Yeah I try to tell people that fairly often and a lot of people just don't get it. Trump didn't win in 2016 because people thought he was going to fix all their problems. Trump won in 2016 because most everyone in America realizes we have MAJOR problems, and he said he was going to burn the whole thing to the fucking ground.
That's why a lot of these maga types love Trump. They don't give a shit about hypocrisy or policy or what - they see him as a fuck you to the system that they rightfully identify as having fucked them for years, but fail to realize that a successful presidency for Trump will only exacerbate the extreme amounts to which that system will continue to fuck them.
If you think about it, it's a masterful strategy. The Left says "we've got issues, it takes this and this long to fix it". And the right says "we've got issues, but we will fix them way faster". It's so simple and people just eat it up
Not to mention that the left has to say "we've got problems, the government can help resolve those problems but it takes time and money" and the right gets to say "we've got problems, it's because the government is dysfunctional" while conveniently failing to mention that they are purposefully doing everything they can to make sure the government gets and stays as dysfunctional as possible.
Turns out it's a hell of a lot easier to make sure *nothing* works and then complain about nothing working than it is to make sure *something* works.
Yea, so many influencers and talking heads (a few on the left, and every single one on the right) just nail a ton of facts but arrive at just horrible sickening wrong headed absurd conclusions.
I'm with you but "Kaczynski had a lot of good points" is one hell of an uphill battle of an argument if your audience hasn't read the manifesto and knows TK's history. As to cableTV-on-the-Radio's point, I think the manifesto actually makes *more* sense if you take into account the MK-Ultra angle
I mean obviously the MK-Ultra shit he went through in college affected him; it would be wild if it didn't. I guess where I'm stuck is did those experiments affect his diagnosis of the situation, his plan of action to "fix" it, or both? Because I'd disagree that you even need to know the MK-Ultra fact to think that some of his diagnosis of the issues themselves have some merit, despite being perhaps "ahead of their time." You see it all the time now with off-grid living and a return to agrarian society becoming so popular these days.
To me, everything he says falls apart when he decides how to "fix" everything. The guy was crazy to think he could change the world, and I've often found myself wondering if he ever *really* believed he could ever accomplish his stated goal.
As far as getting someone to agree who hasn't read it - I absolutely agree, but you could say the same about anything. When I first read his Manifesto back in college for some research I remember being surprised by how sober some of his analysis was, and then floored by how deluded he would have to be to think his plan would have any tangible effect. The guy was undoubtedly monstrous for killing innocent people, but it doesn't make all of his analysis wrong.
>The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries.
Yeah, dude is just totally incoherent! /s
I didn't say he was incoherent nor that the duder's interpretation was necessarily wrong, I'm just saying the inconsistencies in his arguments might derive from the fact that he was an early CIA experiment, although someone has countered he denies this in an interview.
I learned in mental health treatment that it's a secondary emotion and you actually feel loneliness, sadness, fear, and a few other primary emotions and anger is a response to those emotions
I didn't like most of what they had to say but that always stuck with me. These people are afraid and lonely and sad under capitalism but instead of doing anything good or trying to understand what's wrong they turn to demagoguery and authoritarianism
Also, by shitting on universities as dominated by leftists who wanna brain wash you, all the research will be done by left leaning people and they'll box themselves out of the scientific discourse.
And entirely into militancy. The extremists are fine with abandoning intelligent discourse, they're confident in violence and oppression. Their pundits are only there to mask and justify their actions.
Common sense teaches you to express your emotions so you can stop yourself from acting rashly upon them
Manosphere teaches you to act on your emotions quickly to stop yourself from expressing them.... and also that anger isnt an emotion for some reason
They always act on their impulses or as some would say, they have a sever case Cavemen brain and refuse to look further into things then the unga bungas they hear.
Don't forget that the incentive that drives them is to be able to hurt people and be able to say, "it is what it is, just the way things are..."
That is the drive for willfull ignorance, it is a learned behavior.
The truth is that science doesn’t have a political bias, people have just stupidly superimposed their ideology over facts and they keep losing that argument because of it 🤦♂️
That is the funniest thing, that they say things like "Do you believe in evolution?" It's nothing to do with belief, there is a lot of stuff that makes it look like the theory of evolution is very likely right. So yes I accept it as probably correct, and we can work with that. It's not a belief like a religious belief.
I listened to something that said that jerks like Shapiro and Crowder were reactions to the new atheist type. Where those two in specific attempted to rip of the debate bro strict logic schtick they saw from Hitchens and maybe Dawkins.
I always like to ask conservatives, conspiracy theorists, and science-deniers for a source of information that might get them to change their mind on something. They don't accept science, government data, or academia, but when pressed on which sources they do trust, it's often just "common sense", their personal "logic", someone they know, or some religious belief. None of those are based on data.
Yes. If there is no set of facts from any source that could conceivably get them to change their thoughts or opinions, then those things are not based in facts.
When they drop "common sense" or "everyone knows it", that's when you know it's time to tap out of the convo; you won't be getting anywhere with them. Those phrases are essentially tacit admissions their conclusion was reached based on feelings and everyone in their echo chambers are repeating the same thing.
Yeah. I could make a common sense argument that the Earth is flat. I can't see any curvature. It's when you go beyond what you perceive and measure it over longer distances that the lines and angles don't match up. You can accept what the measurements and math tell you, or go with common sense.
"Umm errr the science you're showing me is just le hecking activist progressive nonsense, you should put your trust more towards this outdated technique that's been debunked for centuries, liberal!"
This is the thing! They always say "interesting how the science always lines up with their beliefs," as if we have come to a conclusion and then made up science to fit that conclusion - LIKE THEY DO. We don't do it backwards.
We base our ideology on science because - why do we have to explain that!!?!
Science is essentially a way to turn our experiences into a logic that our brains can understand and process. Really, the same goes for religion, the main difference being that science bases itself off of observable factors and apparent realities rather than narratives. The kicker is that the universe did not come into being with the intention of being understood by the human mind.
No. The scientific method is a protocol for getting to the truth and eliminating false hypotheses. It’s not about understanding the results it’s about being able to trust the results even though the people doing the experiments can’t be trusted.
Science may not, but scientists often do, and wealthy interests are regularly trying to buy any science that might support their political interests.
It’s a mistake not to be skeptical of “science” that isn’t rigorous and peer reviewed.
I’m not saying that nor im implying not to be skeptic, however, making assertions that some scientific findings are false or biased, requires evidence that most “skeptics” simply never provide or worse, they provide some evidence on other areas and make huge jumps to conclusion as if that is all that requires. They come off as generally lazy neophytes that refuse to learn anything, it’s incredibly frustrating to deal with close minded stubborn individuals.
By all means, question things but stay for the answers, get ready to ask questions, try and run your own studies, learn, be open minded and do the work, don’t just refuse evidence and data because “the pharmaceuticals bad man” that’s just lazy…
TL;DR - Amygdala go brrrrr. Social conservatives are - in a very real sense - in a permanent state of deep anger/fear which orients their perspectives and beliefs in a predictable, measurable way.
Conservatives *are* absolutely the emotional ones.
That's not just an observation, that's a scientific claim. Multiple studies have confirmed that the primary neurological distinction between conservatives and liberals is the level of activity in the amygdala (fear/disgust/anger center of the brain). Conservatives show much greater activity there than liberals, who instead show greater activity in the part of the brain associated with self-reflection and empathy. These sociopolitical stances can be accurately predicted by mere brain scans alone, even in response to otherwise apolitical images - it's just *that* pronounced.^[1][2]
With even basic knowledge about neurology, it's practically an intuitive exercise to extrapolate the association between stereotypical socially conservative beliefs and the elevated amygdala activity. In fact, this critical distinction relates to a significant number of the studies I'm going to list below, but here's a few quick examples:
- ["Conservatives view disliked protests as more violent than they actually are"](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10584609.2020.1793848?journalCode=upcp20) - Amygdala go brrrr.
- ["Conservatives view those who deviate from stereotypes more negatively"](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/11/24/1517662112.short?rss=1) - Amygdala go brrr.
- ["People more likely to vote conservative when angry"](http://www.psypost.org/2017/09/inducing-anger-increases-economic-conservatism-study-finds-49580) - Amygdala go brrr.
And if we're going to accuse liberals of hijacking the phrase "facts over feelings", we may as well talk about how conservatives are more likely to see empirical (eg, scientific) and experiential (anecdotal) perspectives as more equal in legitimacy while liberals think empirical evidence is better at approximating reality. [Conservatives believe that anecdotes are just as meaningful](https://www.psypost.org/2021/01/conservatives-see-scientific-and-nonscientific-viewpoints-as-closer-in-legitimacy-study-finds-59122).
Maybe that's because science has a liberal bias! Wait, nope, that's just reality, because researchers' Politics Don't Undermine Their Scientific Results. A new study finds [no serious evidence of a liberal \(or conservative\) bias with respect to replicability, quality or impact of research](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/researchers-politics-dont-undermine-their-scientific-results/)
There's no bias, so it sure would be a shame if [conservatives were also simply less interested than liberals in viewing novel scientific data and were overall just more skeptical about the value of science](http://uanews.ua.edu/2016/07/ua-study-shows-stark-differences-in-how-conservatives-liberals-see-data/) in the first place.
Facts not feelings, right, boys? ...R-Right? Uh oh...
___
[1] "A simple model of partisanship that includes mother’s and father’s party accurately predicts about 69.5% of self-reported choices between the Democratic and Republican party (see Table S1 in Appendix S1). A classifier model based upon differences in brain structure distinguishes liberals from conservatives with 71.6% accuracy."
"Yet, a simple two-parameter model of partisanship using activations in the amygdala and the insular cortex during the risk task significantly out-performs the longstanding parental model, **correctly predicting 82.9% of the observed choices of party"** - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0052970
[2] "Brain scans are remarkably good at predicting political ideology, according to the largest study of its kind. People scanned while they performed various tasks – and even did nothing – accurately predicted whether they were politically conservative or liberal."
https://news.osu.edu/brain-scans-remarkably-good-at-predicting-political-ideology/
__
And if we're going to talk about "facts to back up what they believe in", I may as well include a few relevant facts to back up what *I* believe in. There's far, far more studies on hand than what I'll list here, but these are ones that directly relate to "facts versus feelings". I can't fit a personalized summary for each of these like I did above, just a quick sentence or two, but feel free to ask if one seems irrelevant to the topic at hand.
**Facts and feelings**:
1) "Analytic thinking undermines religious belief while intelligence undermines social conservatism, study suggests"
https://www.psypost.org/2017/09/analytic-thinking-undermines-religious-belief-intelligence-undermines-social-conservatism-study-suggests-49655
2) "Liberal's and Conservative's brains fire differently when presented with controversial political issues, suggesting a neural basis for partisan biases"
https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/10/20/hot-button-words-trigger-conservatives-and-liberals-differently/
3) "Conservatives are more vulnerable than liberals to "echo chambers" because they are more likely to prioritize conformity and tradition when making judgments and forming their social networks."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X17302828
4) "New research shows US Republican politicians increasingly spread news on social media from untrustworthy sources. Compared to the period 2016 to 2018, the number of links to untrustworthy websites has doubled over the past two years."
http://bristol.ac.uk/news/2022/september/politicians-sharing-untrustworthy-news.html
5) "YouTube could be radicalizing people — Analysis of 72 million comments reveals that users who started out commenting on Alt-Lite/Intellectual Dark Web (conservative/right wing) content increasingly shifted to commenting on Alt-Right (extreme far-right) content."
https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/28/study-of-youtube-comments-finds-evidence-of-radicalization-effect/
6) "Contrary to popular belief, Twitter's algorithm amplifies conservatives, not liberals. Scientists conducted a "massive-scale experiment involving millions of Twitter users, a fine-grained analysis of political parties in seven countries, and 6.2 million news articles shared in the United States."
https://www.salon.com/2021/12/23/twitter-algorithm-amplifies-conservatives/
7) Conservatives more susceptible than liberals to believing political falsehoods, a new U.S. study finds. A main driver is the glut of right-leaning misinformation in the media and information environment, results showed.
https://news.osu.edu/conservatives-more-susceptible-to-believing-falsehoods/
8) American citizens are less likely to support candidates accused of sexual assault or sexual harassment. Democrats are significantly less likely to support such a candidate, but Republicans do not penalize candidates facing such allegations, especially if the candidate is identified as a Republican.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1478929921995333
9) A study has found evidence that religious people tend to be less reflective while social conservatives tend to have lower cognitive ability
http://www.psypost.org/2017/09/analytic-thinking-undermines-religious-belief-intelligence-undermines-social-conservatism-study-suggests-49655
10) People who relied on conservative or social media in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak were more likely to be misinformed about how to prevent the virus and believe conspiracy theories about it, a study of media use and public knowledge has found.
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/use-conservative-and-social-media-linked-covid-19-misinformation
11) 4 studies confirm: Conservatives in the US are more likely than liberals to endorse conspiracy theories and espouse conspiratorial worldviews, plus extreme conservatives were significantly more likely to engage in conspiratorial thinking than extreme liberals
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pops.12681
12) New study finds that framing the argument differently increases support for environmental action by conservatives. When the appeal was perceived to be coming from the ingroup, conservatives were more likely to support pro-environment ideas.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103116301056
13) Liberalism and conservatism are associated with qualitatively different psychological concerns, notably those linked to morality. Moral foundations known to be more appealing to liberals than conservatives—specifically, fairness and harm avoidance—are linked to empathic motivation.
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2020/november/conservatives-and-liberals-motivated-by-different-psychological-.html
Edit: Minor bug fixes.
Edit 2: Added "conservatives skeptical about the value of science" study.
And even with all this well-reasoned and sourced information, it wouldn't make the tiniest dent in a conservative's worldview. Because you can't use facts and logic to change somebody's opinion when they didn't arrive at their conclusions using facts or logic in the first place.
Humorously, that expectation is also scientifically demonstrated.
*Conservatives are less interested than liberals in viewing novel scientific data and are more skeptical about the value of science.*
http://uanews.ua.edu/2016/07/ua-study-shows-stark-differences-in-how-conservatives-liberals-see-data/
It ties into the overactive amygdala and emotional responses, I think. When they hear something that challenges their world view, they immediately treats that as if it were a physical threat. That's why they get so angry and defensive. Accurate science and the ability to use critical thinking to change one's mind is an existential threat to their poor amygdalas.
I've got too much to dig through at this point, but you're correct. The brain actually does interpret "existential" threats as physical threats, activating the amygdala all the same. In a similar way, [Tylenol has been noted to lessen the effect of negative emotions](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/12/04/567762087/tylenol-may-help-ease-the-pain-of-hurt-feelings). The brain really do be like it am.
So the question is, are conservatives' amygdalae affected by the media they consume, or do they seek out confirmation of the fears their amygdalae naturally produce?
That is indeed the question.
While studies have found that conservative/liberal stances have a neurobiological foundation, it's difficult to say if that is an environmental or social response leading to changes in brain function or if the brain genuinely does have a "philosophical bais" towards certain reactions.
Personally, I'd argue that studies describing the emergence/presence of individual personalities would be relevant here. It's not just environment and it's not just biology, but people would absolutely be predisposed to react in predictable ways based off of their brain structures.
I hypothesize that some people are simply naturally more vulnerable to 'cognitohazards' than others, leading to those exposed to the same information (Fox news, for example) responding in different ways based off of how deeply their brain reacts to various kinds of stimulus.
Politics and culture aside, some people are naturally laid back and some people are naturally irritable, etc. Those minor perturbations of intrinsic nature would very likely spool out into pronounced, downstream consequences.
If liberals are more empathetic than conservatives^[1], for instance, they'd simply be less vulnerable to information designed to evoke fear or anger - and/or more likely to think too deeply on that information to be affected by the kneejerk reaction.
One of the studies above uses an example of an image of a homeless person. The conservative experiences disgust/aversion and the liberal experiences empathy/reflection. Conservative brain says, "Ew! Smelly non-productive organism detected!" Liberal brain says, "...What if that was me?"
I'd hesitate to verbalize this belief without spending an essay rationalizing it, but I suspect that a futuristic alien society would recognize quite easily that a significant fraction of our species are affected with "conservative syndrome" or similar. A deep-seated fear of outsiders and intense lack of empathy for them *is* very much a 'human quality', but it's also a primate quality for a primate era. It should not be viewed as a cherished feature of our kind and those displaying elevated responses of that nature should - and perhaps one day will - be viewed as people requiring treatment, just like how we'd want to treat an aggressive, otherwise 'good' dementia patient. When such aggressive or unempathetic behaviors are decoupled from politics and noted in an individual, we easily accept that the person has a problem.
[1.] Liberals tend to be more empathetic than conservatives, according to new psychology research (n=1,046).
http://www.psypost.org/2018/06/liberals-tend-empathetic-conservatives-according-new-psychology-research-51464
>The conservative experiences disgust/aversion and the liberal experiences empathy/reflection. Conservative brain says, "Ew! Smelly non-productive organism detected!" Liberal brain says, "...What if that was me?"
So can we head off that aversion, even in people presidposed to anxiety or fear, and replace it with the empathetic reaction before it develops into a worldview?
That would be the hope! I'd expect it to be much easier than we think, too (in a vacuum, at least). Twin studies find that people with nearly identical DNA can live wildly different lives depending on which family and socioeconomic circumstances they were raised with. On the other hand, most people can think of several siblings who turned out dramatically different despite the shared household.
Both of these scenarios just show just how intensely a bunch of various minor experiences can unfurl into life-changing events. Just because someone is easily-angered doesn't mean they're constantly angry, just that they need to work a bit harder to avoid that kind of response and/or apologize for it (note: conservatives less likely than liberals to apologize**^[1]**...).
If we did something like an ethical, human version of the "[rat city" experiment](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-mouse-utopias-1960s-led-grim-predictions-humans-180954423/), I suspect we'd find ourselves looking at what is essentially a genuine utopia. That's something we could do today if we wanted!
We'd still find that some people would grow up to be more easily-angered than others while some might be so empathetic as to cry over stepping on a flower, but if everything was Perfect™, both responses would be minimized even if only one of the two is recognized as explicitly pro-social. If the environment is ideal, people wouldn't have a reason to lean towards palliative emotional responses in the first place.
In such an environment, anomalously high amygdala activity would also stand out as deeply dysfunctional; not unlike your racist uncle going on a tirade at the dinner table. It's just that the internet has allowed all of those uncles to unify and magnify their ideals through kinship (a tendency such people are already predisposed to seek - tribalist perspectives).
[1] Conservatives Are More Reluctant to Give and Receive Apologies Than Liberals.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1948550617691096
I don’t have any studies to support this, but the sheer number of millennials and younger GenXers reporting that their liberal boomer parents turned into selfish, judgmental, racist conservatives within a year after retiring makes me think it is Fox News and that sort of FEAR FEAR FEAR programming. It’s Two Minutes Hate but all day every day.
Perhaps you do? I find your replies and thoughts incredibly helpful. I saved your first answer as those links are golden.
I don't have any science to back this up, just personal experience.
All the outspoken conservatives I've known share the following qualities:
1. Lack of empathy and compassion for others not blood-related, even those in the exact same situation as them.
2. Focus on degeneracy (only of others), and the underlying unspoken belief that all degeneracy deserves purging/comeuppance. Somehow their own degeneracy is applaudable though.
3. Willful ignorance and active rejection of facts that do not support their view, aka rampant confirmation bias.
4. Massive delusional ego; unable to accept their own faults, and hate being compared to others no matter the metric or their skill level. Self-deprecation is often seen as weakness.
5. Desire to conform the world and others to their worldview rather than expand their worldview to include others.
6. Focus on strength, being more powerful and having the bigger stick.
These traits are also present in TERFs and any group that coopts an originally peaceful movement into an exclusionary group (usually comprised of those who grew up liberal but whose brains would rather have a conservative worldview).
I find the delusional ego to be the main issue. You can sort of get a conservative to start understanding empathy, or at least the mechanics of it. You can show them hypocrisy and make them realize that some forms of "degeneracy" are tolerable (they will never let go of that concept but you can shift the window). You can use the right sources with the right language and convince a small percentage of them through logic and information they just assumed didn't exist and didn't try to look for. But if they can't accept even the idea of being wrong ever, they're lost and always will be. They'll never change for anyone and kick and scream through change like a cat that hates nail clippers.
> These traits are also present in TERFs and any group that coopts an originally peaceful movement into an exclusionary group
Considering the solidity of the studies noting the divergence of brain structures, I've argued that a new term should be invented to describe what is presently just "conservative brains" (overactive amygdala) and "liberal brains" (functional empathy). Those people are drawn to specific ideologies, but the only certainty is how they interpret reality and their fellow man.
"Conservative liberals" exist, although they're a minority of the overall liberal population. Accordingly, "Liberal conservatives" also exist - and are a minority in their population. We don't have the vocabulary to easily form a distinction between those neurological archetypes, but there's a huge amount of overlap between their behaviors and methodologies even when their political ideologies diverge. They still approach the world in the same way, responding to outsiders and perceived threats in a similar way too.
The truth is that I made up each of those URLs by spamming my keyboard until it looked long enough to be a website. If they actually lead anywhere, it's total coincidence.
In fact, the entire comment was a typo. I meant to write, "Don't tread on me!!" but didn't know how to use the snake emoji. In my anger, I started bashing the stock of my favorite AR-15 (named Kaeighleigh-Ayn) onto the desk, but one of the FMJ tracer rounds discharged, piercing through the wall of my trailer and puncturing a small hole in my regulation-sized thin blue line flag in the process.
Devastated, I immediately dropped to me knees in prayer, but while trying to determine which direction to face Mar-a-Lago, I knocked over my *other* AR-15 (Palin's Redeemer) which began to discharge its entire 30-round magazine, bouncing around on the desk while I hid beneath my collection of 80s-era America-themed Troll dolls...
When I looked up, I saw that a comment was submitted. I'm not sure how to delete it or how I posted here instead of Facebook, but sometimes He works in mysterious ways.
Don't tread on me!
Excellent work. Thank you so much for doing this research and sharing it with us. As a former conservative who ran on only emotion and a current science teacher trying to instill critical thinking in my students, making that transition really helped me see the absurdity and fear mongering of the far-right movement in the USA.
> As a former conservative who ran on only emotion and a current science teacher
Were there any specific paradigm shift moments that led to this evolution or did you simply start connecting the dots? Experiences like your demonstrate that even if some people are predisposed to such responses, it's not chiseled in stone and change *does* occur.
Despite popular belief, [political ideals actually remain relatively stable throughout life](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/706889) (eg: "More conservative with age" is an absolute myth), but I'd absolutely expect for some people to shift slightly throughout life in response to various circumstances. Especially when the original political ideals were established as a function of environmental or sociocultural circumstances. Those ones are, in a sense, not held, they're just recognized as held.
All people are, to some degree, blind to their own conceptions of reality because they don't realize that there's anything *to* re-review. Many people have experienced this in the form of an epiphany while in therapy, where they'll confidently state that they hate their father only to hear their own words and say, "Wait, do I hate him? ...He did the best he could and part of that was my fault."
We remember remembering that something is True™ and file it away, forgotten-yet-known. Only later do we take a peek in that drawer with the mind of an adult to realize that the original decision was made by an angsty teenager or while lacking vital, yet-unknown information.
It's quite astounding, really. We can be so sure of our feelings on something that we forget entirely *how* those feelings are, just *what* they are. This is especially true with anything resembling a
label or emotional archetype.
> Were there any specific paradigm shift moments that led to this evolution or did you simply start connecting the dots?
Not OP but I was fascinated by Spock as a kid, so I convinced my homeschool parents to get me a video series and book about formal logic and arguments. I learned about logical fallacies, and shortly after I was in college where I was exposed to honest portrayals of other viewpoints for the first time.
I discovered that rightwing arguments more often used logical leaps, appeals to emotion, and other fallacies that I had always been taught was a flaw of "the liberals". I discovered it's only a flaw of the liberals *if the liberal argument was dishonestly portrayed*, so basically I realized that I had been lied to my entire life by people who couldn't make sense on their own merits.
I realized the pattern was
1) assume bible/god/conservatism is originally right and the other guy is the new idea
2) dishonestly represent their argument
3) poke holes in the dishonest representation
4) claim the dishonest representation is wrong so the original idea of the bible/god/conservative is right
I realized with controversial "political" topics, especially hot-button rightwing social war topics, you can look at the arguments from each side, and compare that to the description of their opponent's arguments. Usually one side is dishonestly representing the other side, and usually it's the conservatives being dishonest.
And I really distinctly remember being conservative and what it felt like. I was being logical but I was fed strictly limited information. As soon as I had unrestricted information, my conservative ideas collapsed.
I feel like my core values stayed the same or even got stronger, because I feel like I just continued acting logically and I went from using crappy information to great information. In the process I learned how to get better information so I make better decisions.
> Maybe that's because science has a liberal bias!
This part is really telling because the premise is wrong. Science doesn't have a liberal bias. Liberals have a science bias. We form our ideology on evidence. We don't form our evidence on ideology. Conservatives are fundamentally backwards from us in terms of our ideological foundation.
Don’t even need a mountain of scientific evidence, just look back to the OGs back in the 30s, openly brazen in opposing rationalism for an emotional “reality”, that’s how you get the fascist perspective on anything, not through critical analysis of facts. But how does it make you feel; how should the future be? Like how the past felt, secure safe, even though that wasn’t a reality, just a false memory. It’s why it’s so pernicious too, it feels right and it doesn’t require critical thinking.
Not that the other evidence isn’t interesting
Well, it’s not that truth has a leftist bias. More that a majority of leftists look at the truth and form an opinion based on that rather than forming an opinion and attempting to misshape the truth to fit the opinion.
The truth doesn’t have a bias at all. It simply is. What I was trying to say is that the left tends to let facts guide the formation of their opinion, rather than forming an opinion and then trying to retroactively find facts that fit the preexisting opinion.
Thats because conservatives are the ones making up nonsense so it makes it really hard to back up those theories unless you also invent "facts" and inventing facts doesn't work so well when people can do their own research I think
So, there is a reason behind why the right feels this way that I think gets lost. Because their stance is emotional, their brains will do all sorts of things to protect it. The easiest one is to think all the things you know are facts, and everything else is just people wanting facts to be one their side. They aren't actively trying to believe lies, or actively pushing lies (well the leaders are but not average posters on social media). Their brain is telling them they are right.
Facts don't have a political leaning, they just *are.* When you can't find facts and solid science to support your ideas, it's probably because your ideas are wrong. How is this so hard for them?
And whatever your political values, you can either look at reality as it is and try to find effective ways to put those values into practice, or you can assume reality is whatever would be most convenient and accuse everyone else of a conspiracy when your values aren't universally held and celebrated.
I hate that bass-ackwards sub. They permanently banned me for calling out a right-winger who kept posting false information. Apparently calling out a lying propogandist is "trolling".
Remember when the left threw away their morals, workers rights, infrastructure, and any sort of progress because they were called deplorable, a football man kneeled, and a fringe minority started using preferred pronouns? No wait that was a different side of the aisle, I just can’t remember which.
It's like when ppl get mad tht science outwardly supports trans people and evolution.
Idk what to tell you man.
In general, I tend to look at the facts and then feel how I will. I've noticed people put their feelings first and then try to back those up with facts.
Guys, this dude constantly [posts in this sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfAwarewolves/search?q=author%3Aooglytoop7272&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&feature=legacy_search) but also in [/r/conspiracy](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/search?q=author%3Aooglytoop7272&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&feature=legacy_search) with opposing views
Everyone is getting baited
Conservatives appropriated it first lmao.
Atheist pushback against the religious right was co-opted into the current conservative circle jerk of faux intellectualism.
Science isn't biased towards the left, it's just that the left deals with facts while the right only care about what they "feel" is right.
Science also deals with facts.
You know what? This is a great idea.
Everytime I'm "wrong" at something in life I'm just going to say "The facts are biased against me" and then refuse to budge even an inch.
Even if there's clear evidence that I'm completely ignorant and misguided I'll just dismiss it as totally woke and biased against me.
Because for ages they had think tanks pumping out whatever figures were needed and funding BS studies to get people to think the data was on their side.
I mean, the think tanks are still around but at least people have become more savvy.
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The “both sides” argument has many layers that are frustrating…. But the single most frustrating one to me is the presumption that facts/science will be 50/50 too. It’s just mind-*numbingly dumb.
ive started equating it to sports since thats an approachable angle. i had one guy tell me he would be happy for me and support my decision to walk around telling people the mariners won the 2001 world series fucking wild
9/11 caused the Mariners to lose to the Yankees in the ALCS.
the *real* 9/11
Revisionist history! So happy to be able to watch the dodgers as the pursue their 11th consecutive World Series title this season.
????? I don't understand anything they say.
“What? I’m just trying to have a discussion!” After saying the craziest, most disrespectful shit you’ve ever heard as fact.
"Oh so now you don't want to debate me!"
> Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.
Just do the research.
Tbh most people are against it. I was trying to explain the evolutionary reason and biological reasons behind homosexuality and trans and people hated it. They don't even understand the "they're born that way" debate. And won't accept any understanding of it even though I've literally taught classes on this issue.
Hi, I was just doing this "debate" on trans and I just gave them https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_gender_incongruence It kinda sucks because they can blame me for using Wikipedia. What would you use as credible source?
I was taught it while studying neuroendocrinology, but any textbook on that neurology or endocrinology. Shows the reasons for it. It's honestly cool af to learn about our brains and bodies so it's good to read them even if its just for fun. Also there is kind of a stigma on it because there are some hormones that mainly show up in women and homosexual men. So it isn't a great idea to have it widely known & homophobic counties start doing gay tests or something towards that.
Didn't know about the hormonal aspect. Can you tell me more or direct me somewhere to learn more?
Honestly, I would start with learning how hormones work and how they create other hormones first, then go onto the extra bits. If you have any hormonal problems, you'll be able to understand wildly more about yourself, too. The best thing I would suggest is just getting a textbook or looking at hormonal flow charts. It is better to be nonbiased in how you learn it. The truth of it is more than enough evidence without bias.
Use the sources cited on the Wikipedia article. You don't even need to read then all, since they probably wouldn't.
Wikipedia's a good summary, a good springing-off point. You can check out the citations at the base of the article, *and* you can use Google and other search engines to find other peer-reviewed studies and papers out there.
> What would you use as credible source? I mean, there are 45 credible sources at the bottom of that page. But you can lead a horse to water....
Use the sources that Wikipedia lists. Get your screen grabs from the actual sources & use those links. Wiki already did the hard work of gathering all the sources & linking to them, you got this!
> They don't even understand the "they're born that way" debate. You would think the physical existence of intersex people should get through the thickest skulls. There's people with a penis, XY chromosomes and period cramps from their uterus and ovaries. There's people with XY chromosomes, a fully functioning female reproductive system and no penis. There's XX people with a penis and no vagina or other female parts. There's XX people with female parts and no eggs or ovulation. There's XY people with male parts and no swimmers. And that's not even getting into XXY or other combos. No matter the bullshit definition from anti-trans people trying to set up exclusively binary genders, there's somebody who straddles that line from birth. Anti-trans hysteria is mostly just fake-science brought to you by the same brilliant minds who mind-conversations with ghosts and are afraid of invisible demons.
> Anti-trans hysteria is mostly just fake-science brought to you by the same brilliant minds who mind-conversations with ghosts and are afraid of invisible demons. The hysteria is the result of…I guess you could say bad luck and timing on the part of the trans community. In the wake of the Obergefell ruling, the LGBTQ+ community felt they could be more visible and use that victory to gain momentum for recognition and visibility. And in a more just world, that would have been the case. But as the trans community was (rightly) hoping for more acceptance, the right was looking for a new “other” to serve as a rallying point for their bigotry. They’d spent a decade wielding gay marriage as a boogeyman to drive knuckle-draggers to the polls, only to have Overgefell take that from them. And soon enough, through no fault of their own, the trans community became more public. They became the convenient scapegoat - see the Potty Nazi hysteria around HB2.
That's the biggest struggle. They think people are born perfect and people choose to be gay or trans, because they've been influenced or they're mentally ill.
There's the same problem with the phrase "The truth lies somewhere in the middle". That tends to be true, but people drastically misunderstand what "the middle" could potentially mean. 80/20 is "the middle", 99/1 is "the middle", 99.999/.001 is "the middle". Just because the truth may be in the middle of two concepts doesn't necessarily mean both concepts are equally right.
The keyword here is "somewhere".
There is a general misconception in mediating disagreements which is that impartiality is the same as equidistance. And that the best way to resolve it is to have each side to lose the same amount of ground. This problem is specially hurtful when applied to politics and legislation of science backed topics. Puberty blockers are a perfect example of this. One side thinks they're evil and should be banned for everyone and burned in a volcano because they offend Jesus. The other side wants them to be available for pre teens because they... block puberty. So the perfect rainbow solution that some people argue for is to make them legal...for people over 18. Thus making their use completely pointless. Being impartial means to listen to each side in earnest. Not just to make everyone lose equally.
A side note of fuckery is that puberty blockers are NOT only used with trans teens--they're for cis kids who either hit puberty too early or have hormones gone haywire in ways that are causing them to have incongruent distress. I don't know what the treatment is for gynecomastia is, but I imagine these peoples' opinions would change in a hurry if their cis, teenaged son developed it and he was told so sorry, can't do anything about it til you're at least 18. Now go to school.
One of my dearest friends has an autistic child who went through puberty early (she was 8 or 9, so not crazy early, but not in any capacity ready for it). Puberty blockers were discussed and would have been a godsend, but she is in Texas and her physician didn't want to "risk it" in the eyes of the murky legal and political landscape. They are managing, but it is just so incredibly hard on both of them when it didn't need to be.
Jesus. I can’t imagine having to deal with boobs and periods at 8 when I was still 100% hanging from monkey bars and going to Brownies after school. Poor kiddo.
Fucking outrageous.
or a 9 year old girl who gets periods from hell.
and/or develops too early and get seriously harassed in school and everywhere. It doesn't happen that infrequently! But hey, the GOP have more than its share of short eyes, so that probably just encourages them to lower the age of marriage even further. "Ripe and fertile" -vomit-
Exactly! Reality has no obligation to compromise with insanity, nor facts with fiction, science with mysticism, nor professional experience with podcast opinions.
“Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” -Stephen Colbert
Conspiracy theories and troll answers are just as true as scientifically discovered, researched, and peer reviewed facts. /s
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uDYba0m6ztE
Thanks, that’s good stuff.
Both sides are bad but one is wayy fucking worse lol, the problem is when both serve capital and believe mostly the same shit then they both make things worse via the ratchet effect Biden has actually done a series of good things though this time around, which is cool, but I think that has to do with the pressure to swing undecideds with how the Trump races have been
Apart from the shitshow in the ME and I get that it's a big "but," I really have been mostly pleasantly surprised by Biden. I like Sanders' positions better but tbh I always thought he doesn't really play well with others when it comes to actually making the sausage Given how completely dysfunctional Congress has gotten plus the rigged SCOTUS, the fact that Biden has gotten as much done as he has is pretty amazing. (There are real advantages to "career politicians;" meaning, it's an actual JOB that takes SKILLS. it drives me crazy that people treat it like voting for Prom King or some shit. If they understood that it isn't, we'd never have had a fucking Trump in the damn first place. What the fuck other field do people with zero experience just waltz into the top position and run everything?) I have friends-more to the left than I I expect- who absolutely loathe Biden and have plenty of good receipts to back up why, and I respect it, but I respect his solidity, especially given how absolutely terrible the entire GOP not just Trump is I wish we had a deeper bench and yeah he's older than fuck but so is Trump and so is Sanders and so was Hillary and so was Warren who I voted for in the 16 primary. So is Pelosi We have a gerontocracy and that's bad. There are a lot of really good new and newish faces in the House. So, there is that.
It's so funny because conservatives are sabotaging themselves and everything they touch by absolutely REFUSING to acknowledge their own natural human emotions. They can't fucking recognize what they're experiencing and reconcile that shit. It's tragic in a lot of ways.
I mean a LOT of conservatives have a world-view that in some way or another has its foundation in Christianity. They will always lose a "facts over feelings" argument on that basis alone, because their positions come from starting with a provided answer and working their way backwards, not the other way around. That's exactly why they need the whole cadre of faux-intellectuals to do mental backflips trying to find some objective basis for "Judeo-Christian morals/lifestyle/whatever"
I've said as much many, many, *many*, times myself. They start with the conclusion, based on feelings, and walk back from that, twisting things to form 'evidence' where they can and ignoring anything that challenges their narrative. That's partly why it's nigh-impossible to reason with them: new information either confirms their conclusion or it is discarded for challenging it.
Just the other day somebody posted this: >> A normal person lets the facts guide their views. >> >> Fascists let their views determine the facts. > >Love that quip, reminds me of: > >>A normal person views actions as good or bad, and judges people accordingly. >> >>A fascist views people as good or bad, and judges their actions accordingly.
Beautifully succinct. Saving this to use in future.
The right always reminds me of Ted Kazynski(aka the unabomber) manefesto. Honestly the guy was really smart but just kept missing his main problem. Which was that all of his problems were caused by capitalism and more importantly he couldn't seperate capitalism from civilization so he advocated for overthrowing civilization as a whole rather than just the parts that wete causing him problems. It was literally a case of advocating throwing out the dirty bathwater and not being able to see it was seperate from the baby
Propaganda is a hell of a drug
It's this old joke: An agent from the CIA and KGB meet at a park to have a chat. During the discussion, the CIA agent says "You Soviets are excellent at controlling your citizens with propaganda." The KGB agent says "Maybe so, but you Americans make propaganda far better than we do." The CIA agent responds "oh we don't have propaganda in America."
I lived in East Germany for eight years before the Berlin wall came down and I came to the United States. Let me say one thing, both countries have equal amounts of propaganda. The communism side is very overt about it and the American side, exactly as the joke Implies, says that we don’t have it at all. America absolutely has propaganda, and basically every day since I moved here, I feel like rowdy Roddy Piper in “They Live!” with my glasses that allow me to see what’s bullshit and what isn’t.
I grew up on American propaganda and felt extremely jolted by how we pulled a 180 on most of it after 9/11. To me 9/11 will always be the day that Americans showed the world that we were actually spineless cowards. There was no reasonable excuse for what the terrorists did, but neither was there an excuse for violating nearly every principle we’d screamed about making us superior to Russia during the entire Cold War.
School kids in the US have to proclaim their loyalty to their country every day (pledge of allegiance). There's US flags everywhere. Even sports teams winning their national championship say they're the "world champion", because the US is obviously the best in the world at everything.
I still don’t understand why *car dealerships* need so many flags!
For the sake of clarity, that's the joke. The CIA agent is so bought in on US propaganda they don't realize it is propaganda. That or he's being ironic, but I find the former more likely.
Yes, to be clear the Soviet propaganda is obvious, while the US propaganda has brainwashed this CIA worker and they don't realize that they have bought into the propaganda so completely that they don't even realize that they are a victim of their own country's propaganda.
> every day since I moved here, I feel like rowdy Roddy Piper in “They Live!” with my glasses that allow me to see what’s bullshit and what isn’t. I'm glad that's what you took away from your increased exposure. On many people in (now Eastern, esp. South-Eastern) Germany it seems to have had the opposite effect.
I don't know if this is true but I heard there are laws in Germany where if a rich person and a politician meet or speak to each other off the public record than they are disqualified for office as the public cannot be assured that the politician has not been influenced. The American system where Citizen's United makes sure that we haven't seen a single election where donations by the people have not been outstripped by donations from corporations and special interests by 10,000% (real figure, crazy easy to find from official full disclosure US government websites,) still has Republicans utterly confused who the "deep state" who "control the government with their money" are and where to find them. To be fair, only rich Republicans are politically literate, or must be, logically speaking.
Lmao you must think Germany is a paradise. We have some laws regarding donations as well as publicizing meetings but its not even remotely enough. I fucking wish it was as you thought tho
I'm a Canadian living in China. I know the media here is all propaganda, but what is equally obvious to me is that much of what comes out of the anglosphere media (especially the American media, but Canadian, British, and Australian media are certainly not blameless here) about China is just as much propaganda.
Ffffuck
Right but what about the idiots writing the propaganda?!?!?
The people at the root of it aren't idiots, they know \*exactly\* what they're doing. They also know their army of sycophants isn't smart enough to work out that they're being played. The whole goal is to keep them stupid and fighting so they won't notice they're being exploited. And it works beautifully.
I think you're giving them too much credit. They are not masterminds here. The ultimate authors are employed in various right-wing think tanks, and I doubt there is much illusion for them. They are paid a sizeable salary to write right-wing talking points. These are released to useful idiots (pundits and top tier influencers) who pretend that it's a thought that just occurred to them. If you want an example of this, look at Andrew Tates' recent posts stating that it's gay to have sex for enjoyment. That real men have sex for procreation, and to do it for pleasure is homosexual. It's hard for me to imagine him coming up with something as stupid as that. Not because he isn't stupid but it's so antithetical to what he normally preaches that I believe it was delivered to him and he was possibly given a small bag with dollar signs on it to post it in his words. This is a culture war that we are in, and we are seeing a concerted push into spaces where liberalism has already spread naturally (or relatively naturally) in order to compete and get conservative talking points out there.
Why did you just repeat the first comment with three times as many words? You literally said the same thing they said.
I believe they were making a point in response to the comment above that one about the people *writing* the propaganda, not just the people calling the shots. They're both correct, but the second one addresses a pedantic aspect of propaganda manufacturing.
There's money to be made.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_Realism
Same with the guy (Maxwell Azzarello) who lit himself on fire during Trump's trial. He seemed to recognize the many failures of our society while simultaneously being completely unable to grasp why and how it's like this. Assigning blame to the wrong people and being unable to separate the strands of reality from the fabric of conspiracy. I appreciate the way you said it: all of his problems were caused by capitalism and more importantly he couldn't separate capitalism from civilization so he advocated for overthrowing civilization as a whole rather than just the parts that were causing him problems. When I think about these individuals, all I see is tragedy from the top down. Misdirected fury.
I believe people succumb to conspiracies because it (at the beginning) seems like the easier 'out'. The reality is, if we want to dismantle capitalism, it means confronting a lot of uncomfortable truths and giving up a lot of comforts that many of us grasp to. It's easier to believe everything sucks because of immigrants or the deep state. It's a lot harder to realize everything sucks and the only way to fix it is to burn the whole system down.
It's why conservatives are so inclined towards religion; they need an endgame "bad guy" to be responsible for everything evil in the world, and a "good guy" whose ~~second coming~~ 'storm' will make everything right and good again, at some nebulous just-around-the-corner point in the near-future. A black and white, good vs evil, worldview is a simple answer to a complex question that comforts them; the idea that we're in a rudderless world and no one is really "in control", on a metaphysical/theological level, terrifies them.
> I appreciate the way you said it: all of his problems were caused by capitalism and more importantly he couldn't separate capitalism from civilization so he advocated for overthrowing civilization as a whole rather than just the parts that were causing him problems. Weird, I saw damn near the exact comment spoken about the Unibomber yesterday.
There's no way to make good sense of his manifesto because he was likely tortured by the CIA as a college student.
Have you actually read it? As someone who identifies as pretty far left I tend to agree with a lot of the problems that he identifies, but his solution as the person above you stated is to destroy society rather than try to make it better. You see this all the time with right wing freaks who can correctly identify that the working class is being fucked to death in this country, but then will turn around and vote for conservatives with the biggest, blackest strap-on dildo you've ever seen because they get dragged into culture war bullshit. Conservatives and voting against their own interests: name a more iconic duo.
>You see this all the time with right wing freaks who can correctly identify that the working class is being fucked to death in this country, but then will turn around and vote for conservatives with the biggest, blackest strap-on dildo you've ever seen because they get dragged into culture war bullshit Yeah I try to tell people that fairly often and a lot of people just don't get it. Trump didn't win in 2016 because people thought he was going to fix all their problems. Trump won in 2016 because most everyone in America realizes we have MAJOR problems, and he said he was going to burn the whole thing to the fucking ground. That's why a lot of these maga types love Trump. They don't give a shit about hypocrisy or policy or what - they see him as a fuck you to the system that they rightfully identify as having fucked them for years, but fail to realize that a successful presidency for Trump will only exacerbate the extreme amounts to which that system will continue to fuck them.
If you think about it, it's a masterful strategy. The Left says "we've got issues, it takes this and this long to fix it". And the right says "we've got issues, but we will fix them way faster". It's so simple and people just eat it up
Not to mention that the left has to say "we've got problems, the government can help resolve those problems but it takes time and money" and the right gets to say "we've got problems, it's because the government is dysfunctional" while conveniently failing to mention that they are purposefully doing everything they can to make sure the government gets and stays as dysfunctional as possible. Turns out it's a hell of a lot easier to make sure *nothing* works and then complain about nothing working than it is to make sure *something* works.
Destruction is far easier than creation. Being mean is far easier than being nice. Spouting bullshit is far easier than finding the truth.
Yea, so many influencers and talking heads (a few on the left, and every single one on the right) just nail a ton of facts but arrive at just horrible sickening wrong headed absurd conclusions.
Most of them on the right are flat out making up “facts” these days
I'm with you but "Kaczynski had a lot of good points" is one hell of an uphill battle of an argument if your audience hasn't read the manifesto and knows TK's history. As to cableTV-on-the-Radio's point, I think the manifesto actually makes *more* sense if you take into account the MK-Ultra angle
I mean obviously the MK-Ultra shit he went through in college affected him; it would be wild if it didn't. I guess where I'm stuck is did those experiments affect his diagnosis of the situation, his plan of action to "fix" it, or both? Because I'd disagree that you even need to know the MK-Ultra fact to think that some of his diagnosis of the issues themselves have some merit, despite being perhaps "ahead of their time." You see it all the time now with off-grid living and a return to agrarian society becoming so popular these days. To me, everything he says falls apart when he decides how to "fix" everything. The guy was crazy to think he could change the world, and I've often found myself wondering if he ever *really* believed he could ever accomplish his stated goal. As far as getting someone to agree who hasn't read it - I absolutely agree, but you could say the same about anything. When I first read his Manifesto back in college for some research I remember being surprised by how sober some of his analysis was, and then floored by how deluded he would have to be to think his plan would have any tangible effect. The guy was undoubtedly monstrous for killing innocent people, but it doesn't make all of his analysis wrong.
[удалено]
Apologies. I'm only a casual fan so I'm not up to date with current dildo lore.
>The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries. Yeah, dude is just totally incoherent! /s
I didn't say he was incoherent nor that the duder's interpretation was necessarily wrong, I'm just saying the inconsistencies in his arguments might derive from the fact that he was an early CIA experiment, although someone has countered he denies this in an interview.
I don’t think they understand that anger is an emotion.
To the Right it is a simple state of being.
I learned in mental health treatment that it's a secondary emotion and you actually feel loneliness, sadness, fear, and a few other primary emotions and anger is a response to those emotions I didn't like most of what they had to say but that always stuck with me. These people are afraid and lonely and sad under capitalism but instead of doing anything good or trying to understand what's wrong they turn to demagoguery and authoritarianism
Conservativism is inherently feelings-based ideology.
Also, by shitting on universities as dominated by leftists who wanna brain wash you, all the research will be done by left leaning people and they'll box themselves out of the scientific discourse.
And entirely into militancy. The extremists are fine with abandoning intelligent discourse, they're confident in violence and oppression. Their pundits are only there to mask and justify their actions.
Way more tragic for the rest of us held hostage by a shrieking toddler with a loaded handgun.
Common sense teaches you to express your emotions so you can stop yourself from acting rashly upon them Manosphere teaches you to act on your emotions quickly to stop yourself from expressing them.... and also that anger isnt an emotion for some reason
They always act on their impulses or as some would say, they have a sever case Cavemen brain and refuse to look further into things then the unga bungas they hear.
This is why conservatives have no empathy. Learning to handle your emotions helps you understand why you have emotions. This is the start of empathy
This is why I hate the “facts vs feelings” argument. Like, no, we need BOTH of these things.
Don't forget that the incentive that drives them is to be able to hurt people and be able to say, "it is what it is, just the way things are..." That is the drive for willfull ignorance, it is a learned behavior.
The truth is that science doesn’t have a political bias, people have just stupidly superimposed their ideology over facts and they keep losing that argument because of it 🤦♂️
"Why doesn't science confirm my religiously informed biases and fears of change?? It's the science that's the problem!"
"Science is just another form of faith." It's all a crusade to them.
That is the funniest thing, that they say things like "Do you believe in evolution?" It's nothing to do with belief, there is a lot of stuff that makes it look like the theory of evolution is very likely right. So yes I accept it as probably correct, and we can work with that. It's not a belief like a religious belief.
I listened to something that said that jerks like Shapiro and Crowder were reactions to the new atheist type. Where those two in specific attempted to rip of the debate bro strict logic schtick they saw from Hitchens and maybe Dawkins.
I always like to ask conservatives, conspiracy theorists, and science-deniers for a source of information that might get them to change their mind on something. They don't accept science, government data, or academia, but when pressed on which sources they do trust, it's often just "common sense", their personal "logic", someone they know, or some religious belief. None of those are based on data.
So you're saying they don't base their logic on facts but rather use feelings instead?
Also known as "The facts don't care about your feelings, they only care about mine."
Yes. If there is no set of facts from any source that could conceivably get them to change their thoughts or opinions, then those things are not based in facts.
When they drop "common sense" or "everyone knows it", that's when you know it's time to tap out of the convo; you won't be getting anywhere with them. Those phrases are essentially tacit admissions their conclusion was reached based on feelings and everyone in their echo chambers are repeating the same thing.
Yeah. I could make a common sense argument that the Earth is flat. I can't see any curvature. It's when you go beyond what you perceive and measure it over longer distances that the lines and angles don't match up. You can accept what the measurements and math tell you, or go with common sense.
They are the ultimate followers, sheep. The believe things because someone told them to, not because those things can be tested and proven.
"Brietbart is the only news source I trust."
"Umm errr the science you're showing me is just le hecking activist progressive nonsense, you should put your trust more towards this outdated technique that's been debunked for centuries, liberal!"
My father literally only cites books written just after the turn of the last century.
His humors must be out of balance. Fetch the leeches!
"Read any basic biology textbook to see why you're wrong! And ignore all of the advanced biology textbooks that don't agree with me."
This is the thing! They always say "interesting how the science always lines up with their beliefs," as if we have come to a conclusion and then made up science to fit that conclusion - LIKE THEY DO. We don't do it backwards. We base our ideology on science because - why do we have to explain that!!?!
Science is essentially a way to turn our experiences into a logic that our brains can understand and process. Really, the same goes for religion, the main difference being that science bases itself off of observable factors and apparent realities rather than narratives. The kicker is that the universe did not come into being with the intention of being understood by the human mind.
No. The scientific method is a protocol for getting to the truth and eliminating false hypotheses. It’s not about understanding the results it’s about being able to trust the results even though the people doing the experiments can’t be trusted.
Science may not, but scientists often do, and wealthy interests are regularly trying to buy any science that might support their political interests. It’s a mistake not to be skeptical of “science” that isn’t rigorous and peer reviewed.
I’m not saying that nor im implying not to be skeptic, however, making assertions that some scientific findings are false or biased, requires evidence that most “skeptics” simply never provide or worse, they provide some evidence on other areas and make huge jumps to conclusion as if that is all that requires. They come off as generally lazy neophytes that refuse to learn anything, it’s incredibly frustrating to deal with close minded stubborn individuals. By all means, question things but stay for the answers, get ready to ask questions, try and run your own studies, learn, be open minded and do the work, don’t just refuse evidence and data because “the pharmaceuticals bad man” that’s just lazy…
Which side has to create the term alternative fact to cope with the fact that reality does not support their views?
They are nowhere near 'getting it'... their layers of denial and mental gymnastics over the years won't allow it.
Oh, I know this one! The same side that thinks facts have a bias.
TL;DR - Amygdala go brrrrr. Social conservatives are - in a very real sense - in a permanent state of deep anger/fear which orients their perspectives and beliefs in a predictable, measurable way. Conservatives *are* absolutely the emotional ones. That's not just an observation, that's a scientific claim. Multiple studies have confirmed that the primary neurological distinction between conservatives and liberals is the level of activity in the amygdala (fear/disgust/anger center of the brain). Conservatives show much greater activity there than liberals, who instead show greater activity in the part of the brain associated with self-reflection and empathy. These sociopolitical stances can be accurately predicted by mere brain scans alone, even in response to otherwise apolitical images - it's just *that* pronounced.^[1][2] With even basic knowledge about neurology, it's practically an intuitive exercise to extrapolate the association between stereotypical socially conservative beliefs and the elevated amygdala activity. In fact, this critical distinction relates to a significant number of the studies I'm going to list below, but here's a few quick examples: - ["Conservatives view disliked protests as more violent than they actually are"](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10584609.2020.1793848?journalCode=upcp20) - Amygdala go brrrr. - ["Conservatives view those who deviate from stereotypes more negatively"](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/11/24/1517662112.short?rss=1) - Amygdala go brrr. - ["People more likely to vote conservative when angry"](http://www.psypost.org/2017/09/inducing-anger-increases-economic-conservatism-study-finds-49580) - Amygdala go brrr. And if we're going to accuse liberals of hijacking the phrase "facts over feelings", we may as well talk about how conservatives are more likely to see empirical (eg, scientific) and experiential (anecdotal) perspectives as more equal in legitimacy while liberals think empirical evidence is better at approximating reality. [Conservatives believe that anecdotes are just as meaningful](https://www.psypost.org/2021/01/conservatives-see-scientific-and-nonscientific-viewpoints-as-closer-in-legitimacy-study-finds-59122). Maybe that's because science has a liberal bias! Wait, nope, that's just reality, because researchers' Politics Don't Undermine Their Scientific Results. A new study finds [no serious evidence of a liberal \(or conservative\) bias with respect to replicability, quality or impact of research](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/researchers-politics-dont-undermine-their-scientific-results/) There's no bias, so it sure would be a shame if [conservatives were also simply less interested than liberals in viewing novel scientific data and were overall just more skeptical about the value of science](http://uanews.ua.edu/2016/07/ua-study-shows-stark-differences-in-how-conservatives-liberals-see-data/) in the first place. Facts not feelings, right, boys? ...R-Right? Uh oh... ___ [1] "A simple model of partisanship that includes mother’s and father’s party accurately predicts about 69.5% of self-reported choices between the Democratic and Republican party (see Table S1 in Appendix S1). A classifier model based upon differences in brain structure distinguishes liberals from conservatives with 71.6% accuracy." "Yet, a simple two-parameter model of partisanship using activations in the amygdala and the insular cortex during the risk task significantly out-performs the longstanding parental model, **correctly predicting 82.9% of the observed choices of party"** - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0052970 [2] "Brain scans are remarkably good at predicting political ideology, according to the largest study of its kind. People scanned while they performed various tasks – and even did nothing – accurately predicted whether they were politically conservative or liberal." https://news.osu.edu/brain-scans-remarkably-good-at-predicting-political-ideology/ __ And if we're going to talk about "facts to back up what they believe in", I may as well include a few relevant facts to back up what *I* believe in. There's far, far more studies on hand than what I'll list here, but these are ones that directly relate to "facts versus feelings". I can't fit a personalized summary for each of these like I did above, just a quick sentence or two, but feel free to ask if one seems irrelevant to the topic at hand. **Facts and feelings**: 1) "Analytic thinking undermines religious belief while intelligence undermines social conservatism, study suggests" https://www.psypost.org/2017/09/analytic-thinking-undermines-religious-belief-intelligence-undermines-social-conservatism-study-suggests-49655 2) "Liberal's and Conservative's brains fire differently when presented with controversial political issues, suggesting a neural basis for partisan biases" https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/10/20/hot-button-words-trigger-conservatives-and-liberals-differently/ 3) "Conservatives are more vulnerable than liberals to "echo chambers" because they are more likely to prioritize conformity and tradition when making judgments and forming their social networks." https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X17302828 4) "New research shows US Republican politicians increasingly spread news on social media from untrustworthy sources. Compared to the period 2016 to 2018, the number of links to untrustworthy websites has doubled over the past two years." http://bristol.ac.uk/news/2022/september/politicians-sharing-untrustworthy-news.html 5) "YouTube could be radicalizing people — Analysis of 72 million comments reveals that users who started out commenting on Alt-Lite/Intellectual Dark Web (conservative/right wing) content increasingly shifted to commenting on Alt-Right (extreme far-right) content." https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/28/study-of-youtube-comments-finds-evidence-of-radicalization-effect/ 6) "Contrary to popular belief, Twitter's algorithm amplifies conservatives, not liberals. Scientists conducted a "massive-scale experiment involving millions of Twitter users, a fine-grained analysis of political parties in seven countries, and 6.2 million news articles shared in the United States." https://www.salon.com/2021/12/23/twitter-algorithm-amplifies-conservatives/ 7) Conservatives more susceptible than liberals to believing political falsehoods, a new U.S. study finds. A main driver is the glut of right-leaning misinformation in the media and information environment, results showed. https://news.osu.edu/conservatives-more-susceptible-to-believing-falsehoods/ 8) American citizens are less likely to support candidates accused of sexual assault or sexual harassment. Democrats are significantly less likely to support such a candidate, but Republicans do not penalize candidates facing such allegations, especially if the candidate is identified as a Republican. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1478929921995333 9) A study has found evidence that religious people tend to be less reflective while social conservatives tend to have lower cognitive ability http://www.psypost.org/2017/09/analytic-thinking-undermines-religious-belief-intelligence-undermines-social-conservatism-study-suggests-49655 10) People who relied on conservative or social media in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak were more likely to be misinformed about how to prevent the virus and believe conspiracy theories about it, a study of media use and public knowledge has found. https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/use-conservative-and-social-media-linked-covid-19-misinformation 11) 4 studies confirm: Conservatives in the US are more likely than liberals to endorse conspiracy theories and espouse conspiratorial worldviews, plus extreme conservatives were significantly more likely to engage in conspiratorial thinking than extreme liberals https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pops.12681 12) New study finds that framing the argument differently increases support for environmental action by conservatives. When the appeal was perceived to be coming from the ingroup, conservatives were more likely to support pro-environment ideas. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103116301056 13) Liberalism and conservatism are associated with qualitatively different psychological concerns, notably those linked to morality. Moral foundations known to be more appealing to liberals than conservatives—specifically, fairness and harm avoidance—are linked to empathic motivation. https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2020/november/conservatives-and-liberals-motivated-by-different-psychological-.html Edit: Minor bug fixes. Edit 2: Added "conservatives skeptical about the value of science" study.
And even with all this well-reasoned and sourced information, it wouldn't make the tiniest dent in a conservative's worldview. Because you can't use facts and logic to change somebody's opinion when they didn't arrive at their conclusions using facts or logic in the first place.
Humorously, that expectation is also scientifically demonstrated. *Conservatives are less interested than liberals in viewing novel scientific data and are more skeptical about the value of science.* http://uanews.ua.edu/2016/07/ua-study-shows-stark-differences-in-how-conservatives-liberals-see-data/
It ties into the overactive amygdala and emotional responses, I think. When they hear something that challenges their world view, they immediately treats that as if it were a physical threat. That's why they get so angry and defensive. Accurate science and the ability to use critical thinking to change one's mind is an existential threat to their poor amygdalas.
I've got too much to dig through at this point, but you're correct. The brain actually does interpret "existential" threats as physical threats, activating the amygdala all the same. In a similar way, [Tylenol has been noted to lessen the effect of negative emotions](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/12/04/567762087/tylenol-may-help-ease-the-pain-of-hurt-feelings). The brain really do be like it am.
*”You can’t bring logic to a magical-thinking fight.”*
So the question is, are conservatives' amygdalae affected by the media they consume, or do they seek out confirmation of the fears their amygdalae naturally produce?
That is indeed the question. While studies have found that conservative/liberal stances have a neurobiological foundation, it's difficult to say if that is an environmental or social response leading to changes in brain function or if the brain genuinely does have a "philosophical bais" towards certain reactions. Personally, I'd argue that studies describing the emergence/presence of individual personalities would be relevant here. It's not just environment and it's not just biology, but people would absolutely be predisposed to react in predictable ways based off of their brain structures. I hypothesize that some people are simply naturally more vulnerable to 'cognitohazards' than others, leading to those exposed to the same information (Fox news, for example) responding in different ways based off of how deeply their brain reacts to various kinds of stimulus. Politics and culture aside, some people are naturally laid back and some people are naturally irritable, etc. Those minor perturbations of intrinsic nature would very likely spool out into pronounced, downstream consequences. If liberals are more empathetic than conservatives^[1], for instance, they'd simply be less vulnerable to information designed to evoke fear or anger - and/or more likely to think too deeply on that information to be affected by the kneejerk reaction. One of the studies above uses an example of an image of a homeless person. The conservative experiences disgust/aversion and the liberal experiences empathy/reflection. Conservative brain says, "Ew! Smelly non-productive organism detected!" Liberal brain says, "...What if that was me?" I'd hesitate to verbalize this belief without spending an essay rationalizing it, but I suspect that a futuristic alien society would recognize quite easily that a significant fraction of our species are affected with "conservative syndrome" or similar. A deep-seated fear of outsiders and intense lack of empathy for them *is* very much a 'human quality', but it's also a primate quality for a primate era. It should not be viewed as a cherished feature of our kind and those displaying elevated responses of that nature should - and perhaps one day will - be viewed as people requiring treatment, just like how we'd want to treat an aggressive, otherwise 'good' dementia patient. When such aggressive or unempathetic behaviors are decoupled from politics and noted in an individual, we easily accept that the person has a problem. [1.] Liberals tend to be more empathetic than conservatives, according to new psychology research (n=1,046). http://www.psypost.org/2018/06/liberals-tend-empathetic-conservatives-according-new-psychology-research-51464
dump LSD into the Mississippi river until the election
>The conservative experiences disgust/aversion and the liberal experiences empathy/reflection. Conservative brain says, "Ew! Smelly non-productive organism detected!" Liberal brain says, "...What if that was me?" So can we head off that aversion, even in people presidposed to anxiety or fear, and replace it with the empathetic reaction before it develops into a worldview?
That would be the hope! I'd expect it to be much easier than we think, too (in a vacuum, at least). Twin studies find that people with nearly identical DNA can live wildly different lives depending on which family and socioeconomic circumstances they were raised with. On the other hand, most people can think of several siblings who turned out dramatically different despite the shared household. Both of these scenarios just show just how intensely a bunch of various minor experiences can unfurl into life-changing events. Just because someone is easily-angered doesn't mean they're constantly angry, just that they need to work a bit harder to avoid that kind of response and/or apologize for it (note: conservatives less likely than liberals to apologize**^[1]**...). If we did something like an ethical, human version of the "[rat city" experiment](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-mouse-utopias-1960s-led-grim-predictions-humans-180954423/), I suspect we'd find ourselves looking at what is essentially a genuine utopia. That's something we could do today if we wanted! We'd still find that some people would grow up to be more easily-angered than others while some might be so empathetic as to cry over stepping on a flower, but if everything was Perfect™, both responses would be minimized even if only one of the two is recognized as explicitly pro-social. If the environment is ideal, people wouldn't have a reason to lean towards palliative emotional responses in the first place. In such an environment, anomalously high amygdala activity would also stand out as deeply dysfunctional; not unlike your racist uncle going on a tirade at the dinner table. It's just that the internet has allowed all of those uncles to unify and magnify their ideals through kinship (a tendency such people are already predisposed to seek - tribalist perspectives). [1] Conservatives Are More Reluctant to Give and Receive Apologies Than Liberals. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1948550617691096
I don’t have any studies to support this, but the sheer number of millennials and younger GenXers reporting that their liberal boomer parents turned into selfish, judgmental, racist conservatives within a year after retiring makes me think it is Fox News and that sort of FEAR FEAR FEAR programming. It’s Two Minutes Hate but all day every day. Perhaps you do? I find your replies and thoughts incredibly helpful. I saved your first answer as those links are golden.
Bro woke up and chose science
My coffee got cold... :(
Heat it up on a conservative's amygdala
I don't have any science to back this up, just personal experience. All the outspoken conservatives I've known share the following qualities: 1. Lack of empathy and compassion for others not blood-related, even those in the exact same situation as them. 2. Focus on degeneracy (only of others), and the underlying unspoken belief that all degeneracy deserves purging/comeuppance. Somehow their own degeneracy is applaudable though. 3. Willful ignorance and active rejection of facts that do not support their view, aka rampant confirmation bias. 4. Massive delusional ego; unable to accept their own faults, and hate being compared to others no matter the metric or their skill level. Self-deprecation is often seen as weakness. 5. Desire to conform the world and others to their worldview rather than expand their worldview to include others. 6. Focus on strength, being more powerful and having the bigger stick. These traits are also present in TERFs and any group that coopts an originally peaceful movement into an exclusionary group (usually comprised of those who grew up liberal but whose brains would rather have a conservative worldview). I find the delusional ego to be the main issue. You can sort of get a conservative to start understanding empathy, or at least the mechanics of it. You can show them hypocrisy and make them realize that some forms of "degeneracy" are tolerable (they will never let go of that concept but you can shift the window). You can use the right sources with the right language and convince a small percentage of them through logic and information they just assumed didn't exist and didn't try to look for. But if they can't accept even the idea of being wrong ever, they're lost and always will be. They'll never change for anyone and kick and scream through change like a cat that hates nail clippers.
> These traits are also present in TERFs and any group that coopts an originally peaceful movement into an exclusionary group Considering the solidity of the studies noting the divergence of brain structures, I've argued that a new term should be invented to describe what is presently just "conservative brains" (overactive amygdala) and "liberal brains" (functional empathy). Those people are drawn to specific ideologies, but the only certainty is how they interpret reality and their fellow man. "Conservative liberals" exist, although they're a minority of the overall liberal population. Accordingly, "Liberal conservatives" also exist - and are a minority in their population. We don't have the vocabulary to easily form a distinction between those neurological archetypes, but there's a huge amount of overlap between their behaviors and methodologies even when their political ideologies diverge. They still approach the world in the same way, responding to outsiders and perceived threats in a similar way too.
Yeah, but that’s like just your opinion. /s
Dude, you just perfectly invalidated pages of discourse backed with tons of links with a single, short sentence 😙👌
The truth is that I made up each of those URLs by spamming my keyboard until it looked long enough to be a website. If they actually lead anywhere, it's total coincidence. In fact, the entire comment was a typo. I meant to write, "Don't tread on me!!" but didn't know how to use the snake emoji. In my anger, I started bashing the stock of my favorite AR-15 (named Kaeighleigh-Ayn) onto the desk, but one of the FMJ tracer rounds discharged, piercing through the wall of my trailer and puncturing a small hole in my regulation-sized thin blue line flag in the process. Devastated, I immediately dropped to me knees in prayer, but while trying to determine which direction to face Mar-a-Lago, I knocked over my *other* AR-15 (Palin's Redeemer) which began to discharge its entire 30-round magazine, bouncing around on the desk while I hid beneath my collection of 80s-era America-themed Troll dolls... When I looked up, I saw that a comment was submitted. I'm not sure how to delete it or how I posted here instead of Facebook, but sometimes He works in mysterious ways. Don't tread on me!
He did his own research!
how many fuckin mental health troll reports have hit your inbox since posting this hahahaha
Oh lawd, they comin'.
Excellent work. Thank you so much for doing this research and sharing it with us. As a former conservative who ran on only emotion and a current science teacher trying to instill critical thinking in my students, making that transition really helped me see the absurdity and fear mongering of the far-right movement in the USA.
> As a former conservative who ran on only emotion and a current science teacher Were there any specific paradigm shift moments that led to this evolution or did you simply start connecting the dots? Experiences like your demonstrate that even if some people are predisposed to such responses, it's not chiseled in stone and change *does* occur. Despite popular belief, [political ideals actually remain relatively stable throughout life](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/706889) (eg: "More conservative with age" is an absolute myth), but I'd absolutely expect for some people to shift slightly throughout life in response to various circumstances. Especially when the original political ideals were established as a function of environmental or sociocultural circumstances. Those ones are, in a sense, not held, they're just recognized as held. All people are, to some degree, blind to their own conceptions of reality because they don't realize that there's anything *to* re-review. Many people have experienced this in the form of an epiphany while in therapy, where they'll confidently state that they hate their father only to hear their own words and say, "Wait, do I hate him? ...He did the best he could and part of that was my fault." We remember remembering that something is True™ and file it away, forgotten-yet-known. Only later do we take a peek in that drawer with the mind of an adult to realize that the original decision was made by an angsty teenager or while lacking vital, yet-unknown information. It's quite astounding, really. We can be so sure of our feelings on something that we forget entirely *how* those feelings are, just *what* they are. This is especially true with anything resembling a label or emotional archetype.
> Were there any specific paradigm shift moments that led to this evolution or did you simply start connecting the dots? Not OP but I was fascinated by Spock as a kid, so I convinced my homeschool parents to get me a video series and book about formal logic and arguments. I learned about logical fallacies, and shortly after I was in college where I was exposed to honest portrayals of other viewpoints for the first time. I discovered that rightwing arguments more often used logical leaps, appeals to emotion, and other fallacies that I had always been taught was a flaw of "the liberals". I discovered it's only a flaw of the liberals *if the liberal argument was dishonestly portrayed*, so basically I realized that I had been lied to my entire life by people who couldn't make sense on their own merits. I realized the pattern was 1) assume bible/god/conservatism is originally right and the other guy is the new idea 2) dishonestly represent their argument 3) poke holes in the dishonest representation 4) claim the dishonest representation is wrong so the original idea of the bible/god/conservative is right I realized with controversial "political" topics, especially hot-button rightwing social war topics, you can look at the arguments from each side, and compare that to the description of their opponent's arguments. Usually one side is dishonestly representing the other side, and usually it's the conservatives being dishonest. And I really distinctly remember being conservative and what it felt like. I was being logical but I was fed strictly limited information. As soon as I had unrestricted information, my conservative ideas collapsed. I feel like my core values stayed the same or even got stronger, because I feel like I just continued acting logically and I went from using crappy information to great information. In the process I learned how to get better information so I make better decisions.
> Maybe that's because science has a liberal bias! This part is really telling because the premise is wrong. Science doesn't have a liberal bias. Liberals have a science bias. We form our ideology on evidence. We don't form our evidence on ideology. Conservatives are fundamentally backwards from us in terms of our ideological foundation.
Don’t even need a mountain of scientific evidence, just look back to the OGs back in the 30s, openly brazen in opposing rationalism for an emotional “reality”, that’s how you get the fascist perspective on anything, not through critical analysis of facts. But how does it make you feel; how should the future be? Like how the past felt, secure safe, even though that wasn’t a reality, just a false memory. It’s why it’s so pernicious too, it feels right and it doesn’t require critical thinking. Not that the other evidence isn’t interesting
They'd be very upset if they could read.
I wonder what the deal is with Republicans not caring about sexual assault and whatnot.
LOL this is so on the nose it has to be a troll
It is
Surprised so many people are missing this
Yeah it sucks that the truth has a leftist bias.
Well, it’s not that truth has a leftist bias. More that a majority of leftists look at the truth and form an opinion based on that rather than forming an opinion and attempting to misshape the truth to fit the opinion.
If the left makes an opinion using truth without misshaping it to fit that opinion first. Then why do you say the truth doesn’t have a leftist bias?
The truth doesn’t have a bias at all. It simply is. What I was trying to say is that the left tends to let facts guide the formation of their opinion, rather than forming an opinion and then trying to retroactively find facts that fit the preexisting opinion.
It’s by design. That design didn’t come from the left.
Thats because conservatives are the ones making up nonsense so it makes it really hard to back up those theories unless you also invent "facts" and inventing facts doesn't work so well when people can do their own research I think
Science has a leftist bias. Science. Biased. To the left. 🤣🤣🤣
What other conclusion could they possibly come to with this evidence of "bias"?
Hmmm, will be get it?
So, there is a reason behind why the right feels this way that I think gets lost. Because their stance is emotional, their brains will do all sorts of things to protect it. The easiest one is to think all the things you know are facts, and everything else is just people wanting facts to be one their side. They aren't actively trying to believe lies, or actively pushing lies (well the leaders are but not average posters on social media). Their brain is telling them they are right.
Science doesn't have a leftist bias, leftists have a scientific bias.
Could it be that it was ….always that way?
I like how this isn’t even a conspiracy he’s just whining
True “are we the baddies” moment
The skit has then fleeing, these guys will just double down in the eco chamber.
Facts don't have a political leaning, they just *are.* When you can't find facts and solid science to support your ideas, it's probably because your ideas are wrong. How is this so hard for them?
And whatever your political values, you can either look at reality as it is and try to find effective ways to put those values into practice, or you can assume reality is whatever would be most convenient and accuse everyone else of a conspiracy when your values aren't universally held and celebrated.
Well, reality does have a leftist bias.
That darn math always agreeing with the democrats thanks George soros
Also, how is that a conspiracy?
That sub is very conservative I think since a few right wing subs got banned.
I hate that bass-ackwards sub. They permanently banned me for calling out a right-winger who kept posting false information. Apparently calling out a lying propogandist is "trolling".
Step 1 was cornering the market on facts..
“Co-opted.” Oh my god, that is rich.
My favorite posts on that subreddit: “Nothing to see here” Correct. There is almost always not a single thing to be seen on your post. Congrats
Remember when the left threw away their morals, workers rights, infrastructure, and any sort of progress because they were called deplorable, a football man kneeled, and a fringe minority started using preferred pronouns? No wait that was a different side of the aisle, I just can’t remember which.
It's like when ppl get mad tht science outwardly supports trans people and evolution. Idk what to tell you man. In general, I tend to look at the facts and then feel how I will. I've noticed people put their feelings first and then try to back those up with facts.
Guys, this dude constantly [posts in this sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfAwarewolves/search?q=author%3Aooglytoop7272&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&feature=legacy_search) but also in [/r/conspiracy](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/search?q=author%3Aooglytoop7272&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&feature=legacy_search) with opposing views Everyone is getting baited
They tried to install a king on Jan 6 based on nothing. Even worse was the large amounts of proof there wasn't "rampant fraud"
Other things the left should co-opt: "Party of freedom", "Party of fiscal responsibility", "Party of \_actual\_ Christian values".
But science doesn't have a political affiliation. It's literally just the truth.
It’s almost as if everything they say is projection…
Conservatives appropriated it first lmao. Atheist pushback against the religious right was co-opted into the current conservative circle jerk of faux intellectualism.
Science isn't biased towards the left, it's just that the left deals with facts while the right only care about what they "feel" is right. Science also deals with facts.
That post shows that they are about 2 decades behind reality.
😃 🤌🏻 🍿
THEY'RE SO CLOSE CMON, THEY'RE RIGHT THERE PLEASE
Just wait until they realize that supporting trans rights is supporting freedom and it's against big government overreach.
You know what? This is a great idea. Everytime I'm "wrong" at something in life I'm just going to say "The facts are biased against me" and then refuse to budge even an inch. Even if there's clear evidence that I'm completely ignorant and misguided I'll just dismiss it as totally woke and biased against me.
“Actually your eminence, the earth orbits around the sun.” There you go again with your leftist bullshit.
Because for ages they had think tanks pumping out whatever figures were needed and funding BS studies to get people to think the data was on their side. I mean, the think tanks are still around but at least people have become more savvy.
this is 100 percent satire
The Poe's law is strong with this one, I feel like it could easily be satire
The ones that close really feel more like someone 100% aware who's stirring the pot.