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Evidence that parasite prevalence predicts authoritarianism (2013)

journals.plos.org

61–70 of 98 posts

Re: Evidence that parasite prevalence predicts authoritarianism (2013)

#61

The elephant in the room is almost certainly that poverty causes both parasites and authoritarianism

That's not the elephant in the room. That some obvious speculation over the contents that everybody will understand but has no place in a scientific paper.

Or, in other words, the paper's title does mean "hey, we got some more evidence that poverty causes authoritarianism (or the other way around)", it's just encoded in Academish.

Re: Evidence that parasite prevalence predicts authoritarianism (2013)

#62
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liberal? I'm the most left leaning person I know and am involved in local politics. I'm pretty sure most of my cohort opposes forfeiting our sovereignty to financiers. But I'd say outrage, vs fear, is my prime motivator. FWIW I've adopted Jonathan Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory, until something better comes along. None of the personality traits are correct or incorrect. They just are. I'm just trying to understand…

Haidt's pretty cool, but I disagree with how you explained his ideas. Best executive summary of Haidt I know of is this bar chart: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dh7OHIPVMAA-OJk.jpg Usually folks I know who lean as far left as you prefer labels like anarchist, or socialist -- since liberal is what the imf / world bank people call themselves!

I currently believe something like OCEAN explains something like MFT.

Ya, labels suck. I'm "liberal" in the sense that I support whatever works and embrace change. Adam Smith, Marx, others all made some great points, many of which have been lost, but progress marches on and we must adapt.

Re: Evidence that parasite prevalence predicts authoritarianism (2013)

#63
One area--perhaps the only one--where the Scientologists are right:

Damian R. Murray AFFILIATION Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Mark Schaller AFFILIATION Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Peter Suedfeld AFFILIATION Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Re: Evidence that parasite prevalence predicts authoritarianism (2013)

#64
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that the way it's phrased guides the mind to jump to a particular conclusion.

No, you jumped to a conclusion. "Predicts" is not a synonym of "causes," and any confusion you may experience would be solved by reading what they wrote.

It's not a direct synonym but it's also where my mind went after reading the title

Re: Evidence that parasite prevalence predicts authoritarianism (2013)

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you jumped to a conclusion. "Predicts" is not a synonym of "causes," and any confusion you may experience would be solved by reading what they wrote.

It's not a direct synonym but it's also where my mind went after reading the title

So what other word would you have used for an article about a statistical prediction? This is a scientific text, "to predict" has a well-understood meaning within the field of statistics and it's not a synonym for "causes".

Re: Evidence that parasite prevalence predicts authoritarianism (2013)

#66
post #17

The elephant in the room is almost certainly that poverty causes both parasites and authoritarianism

Or is it authoritarianism that causes poverty and parasites?

I don't think authoritarianism intrinsically causes either of those things. It could just easily do the opposite -- it depends entirely on what the authoritarian government decides to use its power for.

Re: Evidence that parasite prevalence predicts authoritarianism (2013)

#67
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title states that parasite prevalence predicts authoritarianism, not causes it. That's not a causation hypothesis.

My point is that the way it's phrased guides the mind to jump to a particular conclusion.

the way it's phrased causes me to jump to a conclusion but I would not claim that it guides my mind. The error is in my reasoning (system 2 being lazy), _not_ in the phrasing.

Re: Evidence that parasite prevalence predicts authoritarianism (2013)

#68
post #37

The elephant in the room is almost certainly that poverty causes both parasites and authoritarianism

If you read the study, this is obviously addressed - please try to provide specific feedback on the methodology they used that you feel do not address your concerns rather than assuming the authors did not consider obvious points.

Low power study, sample size of 31, p-value of 0.04, and a regression stating that somehow gdp per capita, gini coefficient were not significant?

Shrug. Sounds tenuous.

Re: Evidence that parasite prevalence predicts authoritarianism (2013)

#70
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a direct synonym but it's also where my mind went after reading the title

So what other word would you have used for an article about a statistical prediction ? This is a scientific text, "to predict" has a well-understood meaning within the field of statistics and it's not a synonym for "causes".

Does "correlate" or "correlation" work? Confession: I didn't read the article.
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