
This Machine Can Tell Whether You're Liberal or Conservative - fixedd
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2014/04/inquiring-minds-john-hibbing-physiology-ideology
======
jerf
More generally, it seems the more we look into the seemingly-simple emotion of
disgust, the more complicated it gets. While I hate to just drop a Wikipedia
page in a comment link, it seems to be a pretty good starting point on the
topic:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgust](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgust)
It's fascinating stuff.

The other nice thing about this article is that it seems to refrain from
judgments, which is a problem this general field has had. First, study
scientifically. Then, if necessary, judge unscientifically as needed. (No
sarcasm. A judgment here is necessarily by definition unscientific, but that
doesn't make it wrong... just unscientific, and don't forget it. Unscientific
is not a synonym of "wrong" any more than scientific is a synonym of
"correct".) However I think that when you study the differences carefully, and
with an open mind, it becomes much more difficult to say that one side is
_right_ and one side is _wrong_ on the question of "the proper level of
disgust". Disgust is a blunt instrument, like any other emotional reaction,
and turning something so broad and vague "up" or "down" inevitably results in
errors either way. This is especially true when you remember that not all
humans live in the same situations... for a middle-class American living in a
safe neighborhood, excessive paranoia about out-groups is probably
unreasonable, but for someone living in a tribal area, insufficient paranoia
about out-groups may very well get you killed.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
Disgust is only one of the relevant psychometric dimensions in Jonathan
Haidt's model, which is where this bit comes from. In a nutshell, Haidt found
that liberals reason about moral problems almost exclusively through the lens
of fairness, while Consevatives use a larger "moral toolbox."

[http://www.moralfoundations.org/](http://www.moralfoundations.org/)

One of the more interesting observations out of Haidt's work is that
conservatives can reliably articulate the ideas of liberals as a liberal
would. But the inverse is not true. Liberals have difficulty emulating
perspectives that include concepts such as the divine.

~~~
gnaritas
> Liberals have difficulty emulating perspectives that include concepts such
> as the divine.

I would hope so, since divine _anything_ is simply ignorant and doesn't belong
in any moral toolbox.

~~~
c0achmcguirk
> I would hope so, since divine anything is simply ignorant and doesn't belong
> in any moral toolbox.

Please save your intolerant ignorance for your atheist message boards. There
is nothing ignorant about belief in God.

~~~
gnaritas
> There is nothing ignorant about belief in God.

There's little more ignorant than an adult who still has an imaginary friend
and insists he's real.

~~~
c0achmcguirk
> There's little more ignorant than an adult who still has an imaginary friend
> and insists he's real.

Oooh, can I argue the same way? I mean, by begging the question and arguing
using ipse dixit?

Here goes:

There's little more ignorant than an adult who doesn't believe in God.

~~~
gnaritas
Oh you've confused an insult for an argument; not surprising for one who prays
to the sky. Go find some fellow delusional people in a church or something,
this is Hacker News, not the Delusional Daily.

~~~
c0achmcguirk
Feel better?

So back to your original comment about moral toolboxes--what would belong in
yours? How do they get there? What morals do you think others should follow?

~~~
gnaritas
> Feel better?

Do you? Do you need to go pray now?

> So back to your original comment about moral toolboxes--what would belong in
> yours? How do they get there? What morals do you think others should follow?

Reality based morality like secular humanism, not ignorance passed down from
iron age savages who didn't know fuck all about the world and thought Gods
made things happen.

~~~
c0achmcguirk
> Reality based morality like secular humanism, not ignorance passed down from
> iron age savages who didn't know fuck all about the world and thought Gods
> made things happen.

Sounds pretty arbitrary. How do you choose the right morals? Coin toss? Can
you say someone else is wrong?

~~~
gnaritas
> Sounds pretty arbitrary.

As opposed to fairly tales, please, you don't get to accuse reasoning as
arbitrary while following nonsense made up by savages from the iron age. If
anything is arbitrary, it's the shit you call divine.

~~~
c0achmcguirk
I noticed you're ignoring my questions. Perhaps you're noticing your dilemma?
I'll type slower to help you follow along:

How do you choose the right morals? Coin toss? Can you say someone else is
wrong?

~~~
gnaritas
I did not ignore it, I clearly said _secular humanism_ [1] and later said
_reasoning_ which is how it works. Rather than asking me more stupid questions
I've already answered, go look up how secular humanism arrives at such
answers, they are there.

Morality should be reasoned about, not blindly accepted from the demands of
ancient savages. You have a brain, try and use it. At the very least, pay
attention when your questions are answered so you don't foolishly keep
repeating them due to a lack of reading comprehension.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_humanism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_humanism)

~~~
c0achmcguirk
But you didn't answer the questions. You should spend less time on insults and
more on thinking through your answers.

How do you choose the RIGHT (as in, not wrong) morals? In a dispute between
two very smart secular humanists who have different morals is there a RIGHT
moral code and a wrong one?

Can you say someone else is "wrong" given your understanding of morality?

~~~
gnaritas
Once again, I did answer the question, you're just too lazy to see it. You
should spend more time reading what I gave you. There's no such thing as
absolute right and wrong; right and wrong are agreements between people and
what's considered right and wrong change over time and must be worked out
through reason and debate. Had you spent an ounce of effort reading the link I
gave you, you wouldn't still be asking the same questions since the whole
point of secular morality is to answer those questions.

If you think right and wrong can be defined by ignorant people from thousands
of years ago, you're being foolish. If you think God defines right and wrong,
you're just beyond help.

~~~
c0achmcguirk
Are you being consistent here?

I've known no atheist who actually _believes_ the nonsense that "right and
wrong are agreements between people." They don't actually live their life that
way when talking about girls not being able to go to school in Afghanistan or
whether it was okay for the Marquis de Sade to torture women for pleasure. How
does the atheist impose his moral code on another with consistency when they
say with their mouths that "there's no such thing as absolute right and
wrong?"

In other words, what would the atheist argue to punish Hitler? After all,
German society had redefined humanity to exclude Jews. Hitler was acting
consistently within his society's moral code. My worldview (Christian Theistic
Worldview, btw) absolutely has no problem saying Hitler was wrong. Right and
wrong make sense given the Christian's set of axioms. Not so with the atheist
who relies on links to Wikipedia sites: "But Mr. Judge, Hitler wasn't wrong
per se, I just disagree with his reasoning as per secular humanism which is
TEH AWESOME!!!!111"

How would you characterize your beliefs on the existence of non-material
things? Do you believe in a ghost or spirit? Are there non-material objects
that exist given your view of the world? For example, is there such a thing as
a "law" that governs our thoughts or the natural world?

PS: Why the need for insults? I think we can both learn from each other, but
your mocking tone is a bit much.

~~~
gnaritas
I'll tell you what, despite the fact that I don't and can't consider this a
serious conversation because I consider you delusional and incapable of reason
(all theists are), I'll play nice since you are.

> I've known no atheist who actually believes the nonsense that "right and
> wrong are agreements between people."

I wager you don't understand atheists well enough to have a clue how they
actually think because reasoning is a foreign concept to a mind that thinks
divine decree is source enough for answers.

There is no such thing as absolute right and wrong, that's not an opinion,
that's a fact. If right and wrong were absolute, there'd be no disagreement
about what constitutes right and wrong. Right and wrong are determined by the
individual and negotiated by society into laws. To even attempt to claim
there's a such thing as absolute right and wrong you must demonstrate a source
for said absolutes and no one in the history of mankind has been able to do so
because it doesn't exist.

Christians (and others) currently conduct in barbarism otherwise known as
genital mutilation that any reasoning person sees as clearly wrong, yet you
have no problem cutting parts off babies. I think that's wrong, you likely
don't, why... because there are no absolutes.

Christian morals are certainly not absolute, they evolve over time, because
they, like all morals, are the result of negotiation among individuals.

> After all, German society had redefined humanity to exclude Jews.

And the rest of the world reasoned this was wrong and acted to stop him. See
how that works, reasoning among people.

> Hitler was acting consistently within his society's moral code.

But not within the moral code of those who had the power to stop him. Again,
reasoning between people.

> My world-view absolutely has no problem saying Hitler was wrong.

Nor do atheists or any other reasoning people. That you think others have
trouble saying Hitler was wrong simply shows how badly you understand how
others think.

> Right and wrong make sense given the Christian's set of axioms.

No they don't. You worship a mass murderer (from your own perspective) and say
murder is wrong. If you think Christians are moral I have news for you,
Christians are some of the worst examples of mankind that exist. You teach
fear and ignorance, you teach discrimination and hate, you oppress those you
don't agree with all the while claiming you're being oppressed.

You are no better than the Taliban; you are in fact the American equivalent.

> Not so with the atheist

False, reasoning always makes sense and always arrives at equal or better
answers than following rules lain down by ignorant savages from millennia ago.

> How would you characterize your beliefs on the existence of non-material
> things?

Depends on what you mean by non-material.

> Do you believe in a ghost or spirit?

There's no evidence that would warrant a belief in such things.

> Are there non-material objects that exist given your view of the world? For
> example, is there such a thing as a "law" that governs our thoughts or the
> natural world?

Depends on what you mean by governs. Again, you and I are animals evolved from
more violent past animals grasping to survive in a world full of other violent
animals. The natural world exists, and follows what appear to be consistent
rules that are merely the side effects of the nature of matter and energy; we
call these rules Physics.

------
vilhelm_s
The Last Psychiatrist wrote some interesting commentary about the Science
paper that this article mentions. "[T]he actual finding isn't that
conservatives are fearful; it's that liberals seem not to exhibit much
response to scary photos. But it's actually a little worse than that."
([http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/09/either_conservatives_...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/09/either_conservatives_are_cowar.html))

~~~
satellitecat
On it being "worse" and liberals being unafraid in the way psychopaths are --
it could be that they are unafraid of things that can't hurt them, like the
"scary" staged photo in the article. Maybe if they used realistic pictures,
they'd get an actual response. And of course a picture of something scary and
something actually scary is quite different.

Makes me remember when I found a video online of a guy getting attacked by a
lionesss. At first I thought it was fake or that the guy would get away, but
when I realized it was real and saw him getting more and more tired of
fighting the lioness off, I started feeling sick.

So a different takeaway could be that conservative-types are scared of
imagined or suggested dangers or that liberal-types are better at
discriminating between real and fake dangers. So I think it's more about the
way the imaginations of the people work.

~~~
humanrebar
The thesis of the blog post wasn't that liberals are psychopaths. It was this:

"You can blame the general news media for being lazy and/or retarded. But the
authors of the study are directly to blame for purposely skewing the results
to the conclusion that conservatives are cowards.... When you write something,
you must be aware of how people will read it. Since it is very obvious how
this study will be taken, it is the authors' responsibility to prevent it from
happening. Notice that they did not, anywhere write the equally plausible
possibility that liberals inexplicably exhibit much less fear than would be
expected"

~~~
satellitecat
I know, just that they behave similarly to the pictures shown. My point was
just that I think the reason liberal-type people don't react to the image can
be either that the images themselves are not dangerous, or that the images do
not depict actual scary situations (the model with the spider on her head is
not actually scared or in danger).

(Whereas a psychopath, lacking empathy, would not react much to even real
images)

------
JoshTriplett
It's dangerous to take a result like this and speculate on reasons, without
developing proof that supports those reasons. The research mentioned in the
article measured one particular trait which seems to be correlated with
expressed political views, and provides the evidence for that (eye-tracking
data); however, the article goes on to propose reasons for that trait and
correlation, without justifying the _reasons_ with any evidence. Perhaps the
underlying research gives reasons, or perhaps it doesn't, but either way the
article seems irresponsible to report those reasons without supporting
evidence.

This article also assumes a single axis, single-variable political spectrum
from liberal to conservative, which is an absurdly simplistic view.

The one thing that does seem notable in the article is the conclusion, though.
Put that together with Duverger's Law
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law)),
which explains why we have two political parties in the first place, and
perhaps the article's research explains where we got the rather odd party
division we have, rather than a more useful one. I dislike the conclusion that
this might make compromise easier
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation)),
but perhaps if we can recognize the current liberal/conservative distinction
(as expressed in politics today) as a difference that has little to do with
useful political views, perhaps we can talk less about the hot-button items
that currently make up news and campaigns, and start getting issues that
_matter_ into the political spectrum.

~~~
gboudrias
From the outside, it has looked for a long time as if avoiding issues that
matter is the whole point of your political system. No offense, we (Canada)
are not much better, but your problems in that regard seem more dire.

~~~
humanrebar
Just because there isn't a consensus doesn't mean that issues are avoided.

Many questions do not have answers that two-thirds of the country can agree
on. For small questions, perhaps that's harmful. However, for large questions,
it's definitely a feature of the system that the electorate is forced to
deliberate until wider agreement is reached.

Are there issue in particular that you think are important yet avoided?

~~~
JoshTriplett
> Many questions do not have answers that two-thirds of the country can agree
> on. For small questions, perhaps that's harmful. However, for large
> questions, it's definitely a feature of the system that the electorate is
> forced to deliberate until wider agreement is reached.

It's not a feature, however, to spend so much time butting heads over a small
handful of issues that nothing else gets much discussion time, and that
everything else has to rally under one of those big banners to get noticed or
get action taken. Some issues just need to be written off as disproportionate
time-sinks that nobody will ever agree on. Disagreement at the level you're
talking about is a strong sign that there's no strong consensus in any one
direction, which itself provides strong evidence that government should stay
out of those issues.

> Are there issue in particular that you think are important yet avoided?

Among many other things, we seem to have completely lost the small/large
government distinction that used to characterize the two parties, in favor of
a large/large government that only argues about what to do with itself. The
question of doing nothing never comes up or gets any discussion time at all.
Whichever side of that distinction you might favor, I think it's pretty
clearly worthy of consideration.

I'd also love to see more active discussion, consideration, and avoidance of
the Overton window
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window))
as a political failure mode, rather than business as usual.

------
nateabele
As with most other articles about politics, it's easy to miss the forest
through the trees. There's one most important, indisputable point: that we can
generally be divided into two groups politically, and those divisions go well
beyond opinions developed over time.

How you classify these groups (liberal vs. conservative, individualist vs.
collectivist, voluntaryist vs. statist -- I tend to use the language of i vs.
c) doesn't really matter. The two groups exist and are verifiably
distinguishable.

The important part (and I say this as a libertarian) is that both groups are
necessary to the health of a functioning society. It is both useful and
necessary for (I'm generalizing here) one group to focus on individualistic
pursuits while the other focuses on the well-being of the collective at large
-- and we probably would have a healthy, functioning society if each side
could appreciate the other's differences of perspective.

Instead, both sides are mutually antagonistic, and exploited by the political
class, which almost always acts in its own exclusive interest.

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _we probably would have a healthy, functioning society if each side could
> appreciate the other 's differences of perspective._

But, what this article/study suggests is that those differences are hard-wired
and almost visceral. This would explain why it is so difficult for each side
to appreciate the other's perspective, as well as why it's so easy for the
political class to exploit both.

------
caidan
That picture at the top is horrifying. Looks like she is undergoing the
Ludovico technique [http://ia.media-
imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjAxODIxMDQwNl5BMl5Ban...](http://ia.media-
imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjAxODIxMDQwNl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTA0MTk4Mw@@._V1_SX640_SY720_.jpg)

~~~
stackcollision
How could they do that to Ludwig Van!?

------
patrickmay
Left/right or liberal/conservative are false dichotomies, at least in U.S.
politics. Both major parties are willing to use coercion to achieve their
goals, and they don't even differ very much in what those goals are.

The real divide is between authoritarians and anti-authoritarians. It would be
interesting to see a similar study (or the results of this study re-analyzed)
with liberal/conservative replaced with authoritarian/live-and-let-live.

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
I disagree. I find that Conservatives generally "conserve" a society's
traditions, culture, religion, and way of life while Liberals "liberate" a
society from it's traditions, culture, religion, and way of life. When taken
to an extreme Conservatives can accidentally stagnate a society by holding it
back from ideas that further it (see: conservative southern states, Islamic
extremist countries), while Liberals can accidentally destroy a society
altogether by giving it away in pieces (see: Israel, liberal immigration
policies, Islamification of Europe).

They're both extremes on a spectrum. One prevents new ideas that a society
wants, the other forces new ideas that a society isn't ready for.

~~~
humanrebar
What you describe is a Burkean brand of conservatism, though there are others.

If conservatism was purely about defending the status quo, it would be liberal
to enact a flat tax, restructure school funding to work through vouchers, or
replace social security with private savings accounts.

There are many other reasons that people are conservative or liberal. I would
argue that the most prevalent are various flavors of identity politics.

------
dghf
This sounds a lot like Robert Shea's & Robert Anton Wilson's division of
humanity into neophiles and neophobes in the _Illuminatus!_ trilogy.

------
peterkelly
But what if I take the results this machine gives, and then immediately start
supporting candidates at the opposite end of the spectrum?

~~~
tormeh
Um... Then you'll vote for a party you don't agree with. Your point was?

~~~
peterkelly
It was an attempted joke referencing the halting problem. Never mind ;)

------
wreegab
I questioned that a population can be categorized in only two sets. It's
unfortunate that a lot of people buy into this, and end up trying to be as
faithful to one of the label as they can, just like a fan will dedicate
himself/herself to a specific sport team for no good reason really than just
picking a side and sticking to it.

~~~
gnaritas
> I questioned that a population can be categorized in only two sets.

Bald, Not Bald. Q.E.D.

------
gadders
That article wears its heart on its sleeve a bit, doesn't it? "This is why
Conservatives believe all those weird things!"

~~~
luma
The article is from Mother Jones, and they don't really attempt to hide their
own agenda as a rule.

------
a8da6b0c91d
Some other features that can help classify a liberal:

Weaker upper and lower body strength. Weaker immune system, lower T-cell
counts. Weaker ability to detect odors and tastes like burning smoke and acrid
compounds.

~~~
jksmith
Not to mention excellent fashion sense. Conservatives are so Carharrt.

~~~
jksmith
Finally, I've been taken seriously on this board.

------
rubyn00bie
I always thought it was pretty easy to tell being human.... One's an asshole,
and one's not! _zing_

Update after downvotes: apparently no one reading this has a sense of humor,
liberal or conservative.

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _apparently no one reading this has a sense of humor_

Of course, the other possibility is that they do.

