Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent

[OldLady]

....1) Linking intelligence levels with a couple of handpicked "liberal" attitudes does not warrant the claim in the title.
....

??? The study/author doesn't draw a correlation between intelligence and liberal attitudes. Dr. Kanazawa identified the correlation between intelligence and liberal people, and then he tested to determine whether the correlations could be legitimately extrapolated to the population as a whole. (You'll recall he performed the study using two sample groups, one consisting of ~700 individuals and one consisting of ~20K individuals. That second group's size is part of why the "p-values" are so small.) The people self-identified as being liberal or conservative and the study uses some questions and statements to confirm, control for, and consistently apply the meaning of "liberal" as defined in the study.

That doesn't refute what I said. Just so ya know.

 

[320 Years of History]

....1) Linking intelligence levels with a couple of handpicked "liberal" attitudes does not warrant the claim in the title.
....

??? The study/author doesn't draw a correlation between intelligence and liberal attitudes. Dr. Kanazawa identified the correlation between intelligence and liberal people, and then he tested to determine whether the correlations could be legitimately extrapolated to the population as a whole. (You'll recall he performed the study using two sample groups, one consisting of ~700 individuals and one consisting of ~20K individuals. That second group's size is part of why the "p-values" are so small.) The people self-identified as being liberal or conservative and the study uses some questions and statements to confirm, control for, and consistently apply the meaning of "liberal" as defined in the study.

That doesn't refute what I said. Just so ya know.

Just pointing out the inaccuracy of the first point. I have nothing I care to say about the remainder of the post.

 

[Dogmaphobe]

Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa has spent a his life researching the correlation between intelligence and a wide variety of vastly more demonstrable human traits and behaviors. Even the most cursory look at his CV reveals that he is not at all reticent to critically examine the socio-psychological behaviors that to many are deemed sacrosanct, and he doesn't mind stirring the pot by titling his papers controversially, often using blunt laymen's language rather than arcane academic lingo.

• Intelligence and physical attractiveness
  
• Intelligence and homosexuality
  
• A longitudinal study of sex differences in intelligence at ages 7, 11 and 16 years
  
• Why night owls are more intelligent
  
• Mating intelligence and general intelligence as independent constructs
  
• De gustibus est disputandum [I particularly like this paper's title.]
  
• Why we love our children
  
• Why father absence might precipitate early menarche: the role of polygyny
  
• Why monogamy?
  
• Theories of the value of children: a new approach

But, as interesting be the papers noted above and others he's written, the one this is about is the one noted in the title. Read the paper to find out why it's title as it is and what Dr. Kanazawa found and how he found it. His work speaks for itself.

If you have some credible basis for refuting his findings, by all means do share. If you just don't agree because you don't like his findings, or for a different vacuous reason, this is not the thread for you to share that about yourself.

The problem is ideology. These groups may or may not be more intelligent than others (and my personal guess is that they are, in general), but once they allow themselves to fall victim to a partisan ideology, their intelligence is badly compromised, even wasted.

Adherence to a hardcore partisan ideology distorts perceptions (incoming information), thought processes (internal analysis) and dissemination (outgoing communication in the form of spin, distortion, deflect, lies) to the point where an otherwise intelligent person has willingly detached themselves from reality. All they see, all they know, is their ideological echo chamber, their little side of the playground.

Once a person has allowed themselves to fall prey, they become narcissistic, intolerant of new ideas & possibilities, and worst of all for an intelligent person, incurious and rigid.
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Yep.

I see it in terms of the degree of ego any given individual invests in a group identity. Those who are extremely conformist invest such ego to the degree that if the group is threatened, they feel threatened. Those who are non-conformist do not feel this same need to protect the group. When it gets down to it, the whole issue of liberalism vs conservatism is not being treated in this thread in terms of principles, but in group identity.

Instead of viewing the link between intelligence and conforming to a political tribe, I would say the truer indication would be between intelligence and non-conformity. It is between the rare iconoclasts, heretics and free-thinkers and the hundred townspeople chasing them with pitchforks.

 

[320 Years of History]

the link between intelligence and conforming to a political tribe

That dimension/concept is what the author means when he writes of and explains the role of "evolutionarily novel values."

 

[320 Years of History]

The problem is ideology.

Ideology isn't the problem in my mind. Low intelligence and people's unwillingness to objectively boost their intelligence/knowledge are what I see as the problems.

once they allow themselves to fall victim to a partisan ideology

(continuing the idea from just above)

I honestly believe that intelligent folks don't allow themselves to fall prey to ideology. I think bright people critically consider the position first and, upon determining that it "holds enough water," ascribe to the ideology the promotes the position afterwards. Were one as a matter of course to reverse the sequence -- that is, buying the ideology before buying the case for a given ideology or a position it espouses -- one can't credibly consider oneself intelligent.

 

[Mac1958]

The problem is ideology.

Ideology isn't the problem in my mind. Low intelligence and people's unwillingness to objectively boost their intelligence/knowledge are what I see as the problems.

once they allow themselves to fall victim to a partisan ideology

(continuing the idea from just above)

I honestly believe that intelligent folks don't allow themselves to fall prey to ideology. I think bright people critically consider the position first and, upon determining that it "holds enough water," ascribe to the ideology the promotes the position afterwards. Were one as a matter of course to reverse the sequence -- that is, buying the ideology before buying the case for a given ideology or a position it espouses -- one can't credibly consider oneself intelligent.

I've struggled with the intelligence/ideology issue. But since I've seen plenty of (what I consider to be) intelligent people fall into that trap, I've essentially but the two on two different tracks, acting uncorrelated from each other.

Personal story: The single most intelligent person I know is a partisan ideologue. So I've tried to reconcile this by keep the two separate.

Of course, I could be completely WRONG.


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[Coyote]

Thread has been moved to General Discussion - it's a bit too much of a "baiting" thread to work in CDZ and it's a bit of a call out in the OP's final statement.

 

[OldLady]

As I predicted. Thank you, thank you, no need for applause.