Sincere question for conservatives about political correctness

[coloradocowboi]

Okay, I mean this in good faith because it is truly difficult for me to understand.

I don’t think that statistics or data should be cited to justify believing in stereotypes. People are too complex and diverse to collapse into little, easily digestible nuggets like “Jews are smart” or “gay men have lots of sex” even though gay men on average do get laid more and Jewish people do in average attain advanced degrees at a higher rate.

It becomes dangerous imo when it lurches into “Black people commit more crimes” or “illegal immigrants commit more rapes,” which are arguments that conservatives often make, and then cite data to justify. The prevailing sense, even with a lot of moderate democrats actually, is that if the data says it’s true then it’s just “pc speak” to insist otherwise.

If that is case tho, why then is it “inappropriate” or “condescending” to make the claim that conservatives are lower iq, less critical thinking, and more susceptible to emotional manipulation than democrats when there is just as much evidence for such a claim? One study published last week suggested people infected by toxoplasma gondii (the infamous “mind control” protist) also are far more likely to be socially conservative. In fact, except for one study that excluded academic leftists and essentially defined conservatism as neoliberalism, every study has found that liberals are smarter, more open minded, etc

In summary, if it’s just political correctness to reject statistics based discussions of “black on black crime”, for instance, is it not also the case that we need to have more open discussions about the ways that intellectual impairment, mental illness, and an overactive amygdala contribute to political conservatism?

[Torie]

You imprudently started skating on thin ice, and then low and behold when it got to "the ways that intellectual impairment, mental illness, and an overactive amygdala contribute to political conservatism," it cracked, and you don't have a life jacket.

Sad. I presume this is trolling. We shall find out how many are duped by it.

[Aurelius]

Okay, I mean this in good faith because it is truly difficult for me to understand.

I don’t think that statistics or data should be cited to justify believing in stereotypes. People are too complex and diverse to collapse into little, easily digestible nuggets like “Jews are smart” or “gay men have lots of sex” even though gay men on average do get laid more and Jewish people do in average attain advanced degrees at a higher rate.

Most stereotypes are accurate at the group level. The problem is when people apply them at the individual level. But group level differences are absolutely relevant in policymaking and in society. STI prevention and awareness should be targeted especially at gay men because as a group they have so much sex. Any "equity" initiative that seeks to reduce Jews to 2% of university admissions to match their share of the population is doomed to fail.

It becomes dangerous imo when it lurches into “Black people commit more crimes” or “illegal immigrants commit more rapes,” which are arguments that conservatives often make, and then cite data to justify. The prevailing sense, even with a lot of moderate democrats actually, is that if the data says it’s true then it’s just “pc speak” to insist otherwise.

Black people do commit more crimes. This is a fact, not a mere argument. I can't speak to the one about illegal immigrants and rapes - wouldn't be surprised either way on that one.

If you think facts are "dangerous", that's your problem, not a problem with the facts.

If that is case tho, why then is it “inappropriate” or “condescending” to make the claim that conservatives are lower iq, less critical thinking, and more susceptible to emotional manipulation than democrats when there is just as much evidence for such a claim? One study published last week suggested people infected by toxoplasma gondii (the infamous “mind control” protist) also are far more likely to be socially conservative. In fact, except for one study that excluded academic leftists and essentially defined conservatism as neoliberalism, every study has found that liberals are smarter, more open minded, etc

"Openness to experience", which is what you are referring to as open-mindedness, is not an inherently good or bad thing. As for authoritarian personalities, for a long time the bulk of the research was on right wing authoritarianism, and for a long time many denied that there was even such a thing as a left wing authoritarian personality, but more recent research has shown this to be false.

I'm not familiar with the research on IQ and political affiliation. I would not necessarily disbelieve good studies showing that conservatives as a group have IQs 3 or 4 points lower than liberals as a group. My intuition, though, is that the top and bottom quartiles of IQ are disproportionately liberal and Democratic, and the middle quartiles disproportionately conservative and Republican.

Jonathan Haidt entered psychology seeking to figure out what was "wrong" with conservatives, hoping that this would shine light on how to more effectively turn them into liberals. He eventually rejected this wrongheaded approach, but his investigations on the topic formed the root of moral foundations theory.

It's also worth being skeptical of studies coming from a field of study where there are something like 50 liberals for every conservative. This doesn't mean we should pretend the studies don't exist or reject them out of hand, it just means we should read them very critically, the same way we'd treat a study from a Chinese university claiming that covid originated in Europe, not China. Almost nobody, not even academics, is a perfect, morally pure being who would never even think of using the tools of their trade in service of personal aims.

In summary, if it’s just political correctness to reject statistics based discussions of “black on black crime”, for instance, is it not also the case that we need to have more open discussions about the ways that intellectual impairment, mental illness, and an overactive amygdala contribute to political conservatism?

The evidence about political ideology and mental illness is the exact opposite of what you're suggesting.

[coloradocowboi]

You imprudently started skating on thin ice, and then low and behold when it got to "the ways that intellectual impairment, mental illness, and an overactive amygdala contribute to political conservatism," it cracked, and you don't have a life jacket.

Sad. I presume this is trolling. We shall find out how many are duped by it.

Except the part where I said I believe in none of it. It’s not true, factually speaking that conservatives are stupider than democrats because that question can’t be answered factually

But my point is and remains why is it a taboo topic for conservatives when they are fine with people on Fox News drawing links between IQ and race? If conversations about “black on black” crime are necessary, despite political correctness, why can’t we talk about the fact that at least one team of scientists think conservatism is caused by toxoplasma gondii?

Anyway, you’re a liberal and it would be inauthentic to not be offended by such things. But all the conservatives I’ve asked on Reddit actually had really thoughtful, interesting answers. I wanted to see how the conservatives here responded?

TLDR: I don’t think all conservatism is a mental illness. But I’m wondering what the “facts don’t care about your feelings” crowd thinks about the fact that many academic psychologists do?

[Hindsight was 2020]

You imprudently started skating on thin ice, and then low and behold when it got to "the ways that intellectual impairment, mental illness, and an overactive amygdala contribute to political conservatism," it cracked, and you don't have a life jacket.

Sad. I presume this is trolling. We shall find out how many are duped by it.

While the OP does seem to be trolling it is fair to point out there are many conservative posters and people in general who love to talk about the “hard realities” that normally boil down to stereotypes about black people being criminals, Mexican immigrants being rapist, Muslims being terrorists, etc.. but will flip the f out if conservatives are attacked in a similar manner

[coloradocowboi]

Okay, I mean this in good faith because it is truly difficult for me to understand.

I don’t think that statistics or data should be cited to justify believing in stereotypes. People are too complex and diverse to collapse into little, easily digestible nuggets like “Jews are smart” or “gay men have lots of sex” even though gay men on average do get laid more and Jewish people do in average attain advanced degrees at a higher rate.

Most stereotypes are accurate at the group level. The problem is when people apply them at the individual level. But group level differences are absolutely relevant in policymaking and in society. STI prevention and awareness should be targeted especially at gay men because as a group they have so much sex. Any "equity" initiative that seeks to reduce Jews to 2% of university admissions to match their share of the population is doomed to fail.

It becomes dangerous imo when it lurches into “Black people commit more crimes” or “illegal immigrants commit more rapes,” which are arguments that conservatives often make, and then cite data to justify. The prevailing sense, even with a lot of moderate democrats actually, is that if the data says it’s true then it’s just “pc speak” to insist otherwise.

Black people do commit more crimes. This is a fact, not a mere argument. I can't speak to the one about illegal immigrants and rapes - wouldn't be surprised either way on that one.

If you think facts are "dangerous", that's your problem, not a problem with the facts.

If that is case tho, why then is it “inappropriate” or “condescending” to make the claim that conservatives are lower iq, less critical thinking, and more susceptible to emotional manipulation than democrats when there is just as much evidence for such a claim? One study published last week suggested people infected by toxoplasma gondii (the infamous “mind control” protist) also are far more likely to be socially conservative. In fact, except for one study that excluded academic leftists and essentially defined conservatism as neoliberalism, every study has found that liberals are smarter, more open minded, etc

"Openness to experience", which is what you are referring to as open-mindedness, is not an inherently good or bad thing. As for authoritarian personalities, for a long time the bulk of the research was on right wing authoritarianism, and for a long time many denied that there was even such a thing as a left wing authoritarian personality, but more recent research has shown this to be false.

I'm not familiar with the research on IQ and political affiliation. I would not necessarily disbelieve good studies showing that conservatives as a group have IQs 3 or 4 points lower than liberals as a group. My intuition, though, is that the top and bottom quartiles of IQ are disproportionately liberal and Democratic, and the middle quartiles disproportionately conservative and Republican.

In summary, if it’s just political correctness to reject statistics based discussions of “black on black crime”, for instance, is it not also the case that we need to have more open discussions about the ways that intellectual impairment, mental illness, and an overactive amygdala contribute to political conservatism?

The evidence about political ideology and mental illness is the exact opposite of what you're suggesting.

Put conservative paranoia and fear into Google scholar, regarding the mental illness point, but that was a very interesting study you linked there.

I do think one thing that is so interesting about your response is you actually seem to be less offended than the liberal responder. One thing I will also concede conservatives - they score low on openness but very high on resilience, something score poorly on.

Again, I would take all of this with a grain of salt. Another study found, surprise surprise, that culturally liberal/fiscally conservative people score highest on IQ tests. They are all methodologically sound and can even be true while they contradict each other. Thanks again for the thoughtful response!

[Torie]

You want "conservatives" here to discuss with you the contention by some alleged academics that their political beliefs are due to mental illness? At least you defined "mental illness," as a function of brain deformity, so one does not get bogged down in semantics.

You know what this particular "liberal" thinks? Glad you asked. I think this whole line of inquiry smacks of class snobbery from liberals with advanced degrees that in a culture where offending peoples' feelings and sensibilities is infra dig, and subject to sanctions, except in certain categories, one being un-clubable and un-hip conservatives, preferably rural religious ones with guns and beer bellies.  You will be kicked off the island for using the wrong pronoun, even if due to mere negligence, but certainly not, perish the thought,  for attributing one's political beliefs, if conservative, to deformed brains.

[coloradocowboi]

You want "conservatives" here to discuss with you the contention by some alleged academics that their political beliefs are due to mental illness? At least you defined "mental illness," as a function of brain deformity.

You know what this particular "liberal" thinks? Glad you asked. I think this whole line of inquiry smacks of class snobbery from liberals with advanced degrees that in a culture where offending peoples' feelings and sensibilities is infra dig, and subject to sanctions, except in certain categories, one being un-clubable and un-hip conservatives, preferably rural religious ones with guns and beer bellies.  You will be kicked off the island for using the wrong pronoun, even if due to mere negligence, but certainly not, perish the thought,  for attributing ones political beliefs, if conservative, to deformed brains.

Well as a leftist, I’ll just say your liberal umbrage is also pretty stereotypical. I am a person of faith and a diagnosed schizophrenic (which btw is not caused by brain abnormalities). Again, read my TLDR it’s gonna be fine. If anything, the thoughtful responses I am getting from conservatives is testament enough that these studies are at least partly bullsh**t

[Aurelius]

Okay, I mean this in good faith because it is truly difficult for me to understand.

I don’t think that statistics or data should be cited to justify believing in stereotypes. People are too complex and diverse to collapse into little, easily digestible nuggets like “Jews are smart” or “gay men have lots of sex” even though gay men on average do get laid more and Jewish people do in average attain advanced degrees at a higher rate.

Most stereotypes are accurate at the group level. The problem is when people apply them at the individual level. But group level differences are absolutely relevant in policymaking and in society. STI prevention and awareness should be targeted especially at gay men because as a group they have so much sex. Any "equity" initiative that seeks to reduce Jews to 2% of university admissions to match their share of the population is doomed to fail.

It becomes dangerous imo when it lurches into “Black people commit more crimes” or “illegal immigrants commit more rapes,” which are arguments that conservatives often make, and then cite data to justify. The prevailing sense, even with a lot of moderate democrats actually, is that if the data says it’s true then it’s just “pc speak” to insist otherwise.

Black people do commit more crimes. This is a fact, not a mere argument. I can't speak to the one about illegal immigrants and rapes - wouldn't be surprised either way on that one.

If you think facts are "dangerous", that's your problem, not a problem with the facts.

If that is case tho, why then is it “inappropriate” or “condescending” to make the claim that conservatives are lower iq, less critical thinking, and more susceptible to emotional manipulation than democrats when there is just as much evidence for such a claim? One study published last week suggested people infected by toxoplasma gondii (the infamous “mind control” protist) also are far more likely to be socially conservative. In fact, except for one study that excluded academic leftists and essentially defined conservatism as neoliberalism, every study has found that liberals are smarter, more open minded, etc

"Openness to experience", which is what you are referring to as open-mindedness, is not an inherently good or bad thing. As for authoritarian personalities, for a long time the bulk of the research was on right wing authoritarianism, and for a long time many denied that there was even such a thing as a left wing authoritarian personality, but more recent research has shown this to be false.

I'm not familiar with the research on IQ and political affiliation. I would not necessarily disbelieve good studies showing that conservatives as a group have IQs 3 or 4 points lower than liberals as a group. My intuition, though, is that the top and bottom quartiles of IQ are disproportionately liberal and Democratic, and the middle quartiles disproportionately conservative and Republican.

In summary, if it’s just political correctness to reject statistics based discussions of “black on black crime”, for instance, is it not also the case that we need to have more open discussions about the ways that intellectual impairment, mental illness, and an overactive amygdala contribute to political conservatism?

The evidence about political ideology and mental illness is the exact opposite of what you're suggesting.

Put conservative paranoia and fear into Google scholar, regarding the mental illness point, but that was a very interesting study you linked there.

I do think one thing that is so interesting about your response is you actually seem to be less offended than the liberal responder. One thing I will also concede conservatives - they score low on openness but very high on resilience, something score poorly on.

Again, I would take all of this with a grain of salt. Another study found, surprise surprise, that culturally liberal/fiscally conservative people score highest on IQ tests. They are all methodologically sound and can even be true while they contradict each other. Thanks again for the thoughtful response!

Tbh this is the kind of thing that is intended as a trolly gotcha 99% of the time, but you said you're engaging in good faith so I responded in return, and your replies so far seem to bear this out.

There's little that annoys me more than offense-taking treated as an expression of virtue, and I try not to be hypocritical about that.

Btw, I added a couple paragraphs to my response to your 3rd paragraph that didn't make it through until after your reply.

"Jonathan Haidt entered psychology seeking to figure out what was "wrong" with conservatives, hoping that this would shine light on how to more effectively turn them into liberals. He eventually rejected this wrongheaded approach, but his investigations on the topic formed the root of moral foundations theory.

It's also worth being skeptical of studies coming from a field of study where there are something like 50 liberals for every conservative. This doesn't mean we should pretend the studies don't exist or reject them out of hand, it just means we should read them very critically, the same way we'd treat a study from a Chinese university claiming that covid originated in Europe, not China. Almost nobody, not even academics, is a perfect, morally pure being who would never even think of using the tools of their trade in service of personal aims."

You want "conservatives" here to discuss with you the contention by some alleged academics that their political beliefs are due to mental illness? At least you defined "mental illness," as a function of brain deformity.

You know what this particular "liberal" thinks? Glad you asked. I think this whole line of inquiry smacks of class snobbery from liberals with advanced degrees that in a culture where offending peoples' feelings and sensibilities is infra dig, and subject to sanctions, except in certain categories, one being un-clubable and un-hip conservatives, preferably rural religious ones with guns and beer bellies.  You will be kicked off the island for using the wrong pronoun, even if due to mere negligence, but certainly not, perish the thought,  for attributing ones political beliefs, if conservative, to deformed brains.

Well as a leftist, I’ll just say your liberal umbrage is also pretty stereotypical. I am a person of faith and a diagnosed schizophrenic (which btw is not caused by brain abnormalities). Again, read my TLDR it’s gonna be fine. If anything, the thoughtful responses I am getting from conservatives is testament enough that these studies are at least partly bullsh**t

This is actually the same fallacy I mentioned earlier about groups vs individuals. Just because you are getting thoughtful responses from individuals doesn't necessarily say anything about the group as a whole. Yes, there are a lot of reasons to be very skeptical of these studies, but that doesn't necessarily mean that their claims can't possibly be true or that these qualities can't be measured at all.

To the contrary, IQ in particular is a very robust and highly correlated measure (i.e. no one has yet come up with a test of intelligence that does not positively correlate with the rest of the tests of intelligence). The current zeitgeist, especially on but not limited to the left, is very strongly tilted toward the nurture view in the nature vs nurture debate, when the reality incorporates much more of the nature view than most realize or want to admit. IIRC IQ is something like 60% heritable. So yes, it is a tangible thing that can be measured at both the individual and group level, although for obvious reasons there should be a very high bar for claims that some group has a higher/lower IQ than other groups - much higher for example than the bar for claiming that some groups commit crime at lower/higher rates, which the FBI is able to determine using pretty straightforward methods.

Remember that this is a forum about election maps. Most people don't have fully thought out ideological frameworks like a lot of us on here do. In general, it seems that people have a few strong core beliefs, and combined with the general human tendency to follow incentives and self-interest this lands them on one "tribe" or the other. Then the things they don't have particularly strong preexisting beliefs or investments in get backfilled by the general sentiment of whichever side they landed on.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

I've always felt that liberals were more likely to have mental illness while conservatives were more likely to have developmental issues.

[Mercenary]

It is not wise to judge everyone based on statistic of a group since there are many outliers.
Statistics can certainly tell you about the majority, but they do nothing to tell you about the individual.  Be thoughtful and don't make an idiot out of yourself, don't be prejudice of individuals based on the group they belong to.

If that is "political correctness", then so be it. Although I've generally considered myself politically incorrect because even if I don't seek to intentionally offend, I don't care if someone happens to take offense at something I say.

I will sometimes comment on a group, but if I speak to an individual of that group then I won't apply the same comment to them specifically.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

"Here's a study about IQ and political views, what might this mean?"  That's fine and good.  Using it in a polemic way to say that low IQ discredits a view is something else.  Whether or not it's offensive, it's just not very thoughtful or intelligent in itself.  Could be there's some adaptive reason why it makes more sense for lower IQ people to be more conservative on average, or for higher IQ people to be more liberal on average.  Or maybe it has to do with the divergent social environments that people end up in based on their IQ during their development.  Whatever it is, it doesn't follow that higher IQ individuals are objectively more correct in their social values.

There's disagreement about how much to interpret IQ as meaning, but at least it's a standardized measure that's been widely tested, and has shown correlation with other  measures of success or accomplishment.  On the other hand something like "susceptible to emotional manipulation" doesn't have a standard definition, and is just going to be based on a very particular lab experiment that gets abstracted in ways that are going to be very debatable.

Regarding toxoplasma infection, the most studied effect is increased risk-taking behavior.  That it would correlate with social conservatism also (at least in women) and economic equity values in men thus might be a bit surprising, but if the study is right and it does, any possible reason for this is far from known.