We see college kids who obviously would identify as being liberal, who simply want to shutdown any opposing opinions to their beliefs.
Used to be the left was open to other ideas. Not today.
The left is plenty open to ideas, just not bad ones.
According to Leftists ANY idea that's not Leftist is a "bad" idea.
They're the MOST intolerant of people.
We see college kids who obviously would identify as being liberal, who simply want to shutdown any opposing opinions to their beliefs.
Used to be the left was open to other ideas. Not today.
The left is plenty open to ideas, just not bad ones.
I'll pretend, I tell myself. Pretending is safer than believing.
― Sarah Miller, The Lost Crown
Baby, you are barking up the wrong tree....
You just keep on believing what you write and want to believe....For my part, kidding aside, I don't know what inspires liberal's views, but I know that
four researchers -- John T. Jost, Arie W. Kruglanski, Jack Glaser, and Frank J. Sulloway -- have identified the motivational factors that lead folks to adhere to conservative ideology. And just what are those motivating factors?
Many different theoretical accounts of conservatism over the past 50 years have stressed motivational underpinnings, but they have identified different needs as critical. Our review brings these diverse accounts together for the first time. Variables significantly associated with conservatism, we now know, include:
Though you make the claim that liberals are "the most" intolerant of people, I cannot find any credible research that supports that assertion, or even that supports the charge that liberals are at all by and large, if not "the most," intolerant people. In contrast, I can find lots that supports a similar assertion that conservatives are intolerant. Indeed the conservative phenomenon and the behaviors exhibited by conservatives has so mystified deep thinkers that they have looked exhaustively into just what's going on in the hearts and minds of conservatives. What are some of their findings?
- "Reliance on quick, efficient, and "low effort" thought processes yields conservative ideologies, while effortful and deliberate reasoning yields liberal ideologies."
[P]olitical conservatism is promoted when people rely on low-effort thinking. When effortful, deliberate responding is disrupted or disengaged, thought processes become quick and efficient; these conditions promote conservative ideology… low-effort thought might promote political conservatism because its concepts are easier to process, and processing fluency increases attitude endorsement.
Four studies support our assertion that low-effort thinking promotes political conservatism... Our findings suggest that conservative ways of thinking are basic, normal, and perhaps natural.
Source: "
Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism"
- "Liberals have more tolerance to uncertainty (bigger anterior cingulate cortex), and conservatives have more sensitivity to fear (bigger right amygdala)."
In a large sample of young adults, we related self-reported political attitudes to gray matter volume using structural MRI [magnetic resonance imaging]. We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala...
...[O]ur findings are consistent with the proposal that political orientation is associated with psychological processes for managing fear and uncertainty. The amygdala has many functions, including fear processing. Individuals with a larger amygdala are more sensitive to fear, which, taken together with our findings, might suggest the testable hypothesis that individuals with larger amygdala are more inclined to integrate conservative views into their belief systems... our finding of an association between anterior cingulate cortex [ACC] may be linked with tolerance to uncertainty. One of the functions of the anterior cingulate cortex is to monitor uncertainty and conflicts. Thus it is conceivable that individuals with a larger ACC have a higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept more liberal views.
Source: "
Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults"
- "Liberals are more open-minded and creative whereas conservatives are more orderly and better organized."
We obtained consistent and converging evidence that personality differences between liberals and conservatives are robust, replicable, and behaviorally significant, especially with respect to social (vs. economic) dimensions of ideology. In general, liberals are more open-minded, creative, curious, and novelty seeking, whereas conservatives are more orderly, conventional, and better organized... A special advantage of our final two studies is that they show personality differences between liberals and conservatives not only on self-report trait measures but also on unobtrusive, nonverbal measures of interaction style and behavioral residue.
Source: "
The Secret Lives of Liberals and Conservatives: Personality Profiles, Interaction Styles, and the Things They Leave Behind"
- "When faced with a conflict, liberals are more likely than conservatives to alter their habitual response when cues indicate it is necessary."
[We] found that greater liberalism was associated with stronger conflict-related anterior cingulate activity, suggesting greater neurocognitive sensitivity to cues for altering a habitual response pattern...
Our results are consistent with the view that political orientation, in part, reflects individual differences in the functioning of a general mechanism related to cognitive control and self-regulation. Stronger conservatism (versus liberalism) was associated with less neurocognitive sensitivity to response conflicts. At the behavioral level, conservatives were also more likely to make errors of commission. Although a liberal orientation was associated with better performance on the response-inhibition task examined here, conservatives would presumably perform better on tasks in which a more fixed response style is optimal.
Source: "
Neurocognitive Correlates of Liberalism and Conservatism"
I can't do anything to stop you from believing the claim you made, but I can and have provided plenty of credible research that contradicts it. I haven't asked you to simply accept my assertions in refutation of your claim. I haven't that degree of arrogance. You, on the other hand, have done precisely that: offered your claim with nothing, not one damn thing, that credibly shows it to be so.
So I ask you....Have you found any credible research -- peer reviewed, methodologically documented and sound -- that supports your assertion? If so, let's see it because right now, your claim, while it may be reassuring to readers here, quite simply doesn't "hold water."
It sounds plausible enough tonight, but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.
― H.G. Wells, The Time Machine
Each of
the points you put up can be interpreted as Republicans tend to live a 'binary' life.
Black is black. White is white. Evil is bad. Committing crimes is wrong. Etc.
LIBs see the world in a 'thousand shades of gray'.
Black is never really black. There's no such thing as white.
There's no way to change either of those groups.
But
if your house is being broken into and the neighbor on your right has a NRA sign on his fence and your neighbor on you left has a 'Gay Pride' sign on his fence I KNOW who you are going to run to for help.
And so do you all.
Red:
Well, yes, one could interpret what I wrote in myriad ways, some of which will logically issue from what I posted and some of which will not.
The assertion my post addressed is the one that claims liberals are intolerant people, indeed "the most intolerant of people." My post's content makes and argues in support of only one assertion: it has not been shown that liberals are intolerant or that liberals are more intolerant than is anyone else, and liberals, however intolerant they be, are less intolerant than are conservatives. (The post's thesis is in the paragraph immediately preceding the first emboldened bullet point.) My post's thesis is in direct opposition to the assertion member Lucy Hamilton made.
[Careful readers will observe that Ms. Hamilton didn't say anything else, so there's no way for me to have addressed anything else without putting words in her mouth.]
I supported my thesis by stating that I looked for and found nothing credible that supported the claim of liberals being intolerant and by showing that I found multiple credible research studies that do show conservatives are motivated by intolerance and several other things. I also shared the results from one study that shows liberals
are more open-minded than are conservatives (the "Secret Lives" study) and from another that discovered that liberals are more likely than conservatives to alter their habitual responses (the "Neurocognitive" study). In light of the content I shared, the accurate interpretation to have of it is that if liberals can rightly be called intolerant, and even if one may credibly assert that liberals are intolerant, multiple credible research studies have shown/found that liberals are yet less intolerant than are conservatives.
Now if one wants to refute or discredit those studies results, and thereupon the conclusions and inferences drawn from them, there are legitimate ways to do so, not all of which necessarily apply to the studies I cited, but all of which call one to prove the study does not comply with one or more of the
tenets of the scientific method..
Strong bases for legitimately discrediting the study, its results, conclusions and inferences, provided the refutations are contextually accurate, include:
- Methodologically -- One can prove (not merely claim) that the mathematical/statistical methods the researchers/scientists used are materially flawed or misapplied.
- Pragmatically -- If one is not going to dispute a study's methodology, one can conduct one's own scientific-method-compliant study/tests and legitimately show that the results obtained by the researchers I noted are not repeatable using the same methodology they did.
- Pragmatically -- If one is not going to dispute a study's methodology, one can use the study's raw data and evaluate it using the same methodology and determine whether the same results occur.
- Integrity -- Prove (not merely claim) the data collected/presented in the study was fabricated.
- Interpretively -- Prove (not merely claim) that the test fails to meet the "independence" requirement of the scientific method.
Weak and/or partial bases of counterargument -- Theses bases for opposing a study's results, conclusions, and credibility/merit use the same approaches noted above; however, they present immaterial flaws, that is shortcomings that do not alter the merit/veracity of key conclusions, but that indicate additional research is necessary to confirm or clarify a minor aspect of the study's results, conclusions and inferences. This tends to be something that happens with many studies.
When one reads a study and sees the remarks about the study's limitations, it's possible that a majority of the pre-publication reviewers of the study presented minor points of contention and those points in turn led to the "limiting factors" remarks/disclaimers being included in the study. Of course, some researchers know the limits of the valid and truthful interpretations of their study's findings and will just include them from the get-go. There's no way to know what inspired the inclusion of "limiting factor" remarks and disclaimers.
One thing that is not a legitimate refutation of a credible study is to merely say one doesn't agree with the findings and that makes the findings invalid/inaccurate. To do that with regard to a study that's been published in a peer reviewed journal is to basically say that at least four highly trained experts in a field whose "business" it is to know what they are doing and talking about don't, but "you" do. If that's not the height of arrogance, I don't know what is.
Blue, which is Off Topic:
That has nothing to do with the thesis of my post nor that of Lucy Hamilton, or whether liberals or conservatives are tolerant or intolerant of anything politically oriented.
FWIW, if my house were being broken into and I'm unable to stop it from happening and therefore decide flight is the immediately best option, the one course of action I would not pursue after successfully and safely escaping from the felon/building will not be returning to the building to confront them.
Where is the sense in even considering that option? Why would I opt to flee to a place of safety, only to then return and willfully put my being and/or someone else's at risk over objects in my home? Whatever is in my home that they want to steal, they can have if they can carry it out and I, in that situation, determined that fleeing instead of staying and fighting them over my possessions be what I'm going to do and I manage to do so effectively and safely. I don't own anything for which I'd choose to risk being mortally harmed to retain possession of it, not even the stuff I have that's pricey, rare, and/or irreplaceable.
