This Machine Can Tell Whether You're Liberal or Conservative • Hacker News Board

Re: This Machine Can Tell Whether You're Liberal or Conservative

#41

Post by humanrebar » Wed, Apr 09, 2014, 5:08 PM UTC

satellitecat wrote: post #28

vilhelm_s wrote: post #18

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_... )

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 atta…

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"

Re: This Machine Can Tell Whether You're Liberal or Conservative

#42

Post by JoshTriplett » Wed, Apr 09, 2014, 5:12 PM UTC

gboudrias wrote: post #34

JoshTriplett wrote: post #23

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 wi…

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.

> 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,

None taken; I find that a problem myself. Though I'd characterize it less as "avoiding issues that matter" and more as "over-inflating issues that don't, crowding out everything else".

When I look at politics elsewhere, though, I tend to see the same issue, just shifted elsewhere on the spectrum; I don't think this problem is unique to US politics.

Re: This Machine Can Tell Whether You're Liberal or Conservative

#43

Post by patrickmay » Wed, Apr 09, 2014, 5:14 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #29

patrickmay wrote: post #10

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 autho…

Your point is internally inconsistent. Authoritarianism is one dimension along which people can differ, but empirically, most people are more or less authoritarian. It's a point which you essentially concede by noting that both parties in the U.S. are authoritarian (and so are most political parties throughout the developed world). So how can you justify calling authoritarianism versus anti-authoritarianism the "real…

Please see my comment above. My perception is that the two major parties are controlled by authoritarians, leaving anti-authoritarians no good alternative. They can either vote with the religious fundies or vote with the Nanny statists. By the nature of the system, anti-authoritarians are disenfranchised.

Re: This Machine Can Tell Whether You're Liberal or Conservative

#44

Post by devindotcom » Wed, Apr 09, 2014, 5:15 PM UTC

JonnieCache wrote: post #22

gknoy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note for the squeamish: There's a photo of one of the fear-inducing (kinda) pictures near the bottom of the blog post. I would like to have some brain bleach for the memory of that picture. Logically, it shouldn't be scary. I'm pretty sure it's photoshopped... and yet part of me wants to squirm away from even looking at it in the peripheral vision. Ew ew ew.

By not describing the content of the picture you're just encouraging people to go and look at it :)

Can confirm this. Went to link and scrolled all the way down. it's not too bad.

Re: This Machine Can Tell Whether You're Liberal or Conservative

#45

Post by humanrebar » Wed, Apr 09, 2014, 5:15 PM UTC

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #25

patrickmay wrote: post #10

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 autho…

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 ac…

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.

Re: This Machine Can Tell Whether You're Liberal or Conservative

#46

Post by humanrebar » Wed, Apr 09, 2014, 5:20 PM UTC

patrickmay wrote: post #39

aptwebapps wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between left and right may seem less to you than that between authoritarians and anti-authoritarians but what about the numbers? If the former has a roughly 50/50 split in the general population and the latter is 90/10 (I have no idea), then it's not surprising that the former is considered more important.

True, real numbers would be helpful. My perception is that, in the U.S., the fiscal conservatives would be more logically aligned with the social liberals since the freedom to live as one wishes valued by the latter is more consistent with the small government ideals of the former. It seems that whether a person with such views ends up in the Republican or Democrat camp depends on if they are better able to hold thei…

Real numbers:

http://www.electionstudies.org/nesguide/toptable/tab3_1.htm

According to those numbers, there are consistently more conservatives than liberals, but about half of the population either identifies as moderate or doesn't identify with anything.

Re: This Machine Can Tell Whether You're Liberal or Conservative

#47

Post by satellitecat » Wed, Apr 09, 2014, 5:20 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #41

satellitecat wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 atta…

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…

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)

Re: This Machine Can Tell Whether You're Liberal or Conservative

#48

Post by thesimpsons1022 » Wed, Apr 09, 2014, 5:23 PM UTC

josephschmoe wrote: post #36

vilhelm_s wrote: post #18

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_... )

The image felt very fake to me. If a spider were on my face, I would freak out internally, stand very still and slowly put my hand next to it to give it a way off so it doesn't bite my face. If a spider landed on my face, I'd be flailing my arms back and forth trying to swat the spider away freaking out. The neutral response is the proper one - if I saw someone screaming and standing still with a spider on their face…

seriously. I didn't even react to that picture. it didn't scare me in the least, the spider seemed too fake. if I saw this spider in real life id be scared. now I know my mother who is very conservative would have freaked out if she saw that picture.

Re: This Machine Can Tell Whether You're Liberal or Conservative

#49

Post by JoshTriplett » Wed, Apr 09, 2014, 5:26 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #37

gboudrias wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

> 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) as a political failure mode, rather than business as usual.

Re: This Machine Can Tell Whether You're Liberal or Conservative

#50

Post by thesimpsons1022 » Wed, Apr 09, 2014, 5:29 PM UTC

satellitecat wrote: post #35

thedufer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote doesn't seem right, either. The population is something like 50/50 liberal/conservative, right? So compared to the average person, it seems that this indicates both that conservatives are more fearful than average and that liberals are closer to a particular form of psychopathy. Choosing either one of these and ignoring the other shows a pretty clear bias.

I don't think there's a 50/50 split. It's just that with a 2-party system like in the US, it's natural that they will roughly split the vote.

I think most people are too ignorant to even be either party but instead vote narrowly on issues that benefit them or stupid stuff. that's why we end up with divided government with the president as one party and congress as others.