Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

phys.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 307 posts

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#31

Post by 2trill2spill »

baddox wrote: post #20
2trill2spill wrote: post #2

> Now, well into the 21st century, researchers led by the University of Cambridge have detected remnants of the pioneer personality in US populations of once inhospitable mountainous territory, particularly in the Midwest. As a person who was born and raised in the Midwest[1], just where are these mountainous regions they speak of in the Midwest? There's the black hills[2] and that's pretty much it. I wonder what def…

How about the Ozarks? They may not be the most visually impressive mountains, but I would at least consider the St. Francois Mountains in southern Missouri to be part of the Midwest.

The Ozarks are awesome but I wouldn't consider them mountains just big hills. The St Francois mountains for example are only 1700 feet above sea level. Minnesota also has many points above 2000 feet that are awesome but again I wouldn't consider them Mountains either. There's no official definition of a mountain however so its all in the eye of the beholder.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#32

Post by bluntfang »

briga wrote: post #8

The early settlers of North American were in some sense selected by personality. It must have taken a certain sort of risk-taking personality to give up everything and climb aboard a crowded rickety passenger ship for a month-long journey to a vast and mostly uninhabited land. The people who arrived in America and decided to take it one step further by moving away from the crowded cities of the east into the vast and…

>The early settlers of North American were in some sense selected by personality. It must have taken a certain sort of risk-taking personality to give up everything and climb aboard a crowded rickety passenger ship for a month-long journey to a vast and mostly uninhabited land.

Many early settlers were criminals. I wonder if that personality selection shines through.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_transportation#Transport...

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#33

Post by rjsw »

falcolas wrote: post #6
2trill2spill wrote: post #2

> Now, well into the 21st century, researchers led by the University of Cambridge have detected remnants of the pioneer personality in US populations of once inhospitable mountainous territory, particularly in the Midwest. As a person who was born and raised in the Midwest[1], just where are these mountainous regions they speak of in the Midwest? There's the black hills[2] and that's pretty much it. I wonder what def…

As someone who lives in this "Intermountain West", I've never heard of the "Intermountain West" term before your post. It seems like a term that someone came up with, but it's never caught on. I've typically heard of us referred to as the Western US (as opposed to the West Coast).

The term is used for regional sporting organizations.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#34

Post by aebtebeten »

supernova87a wrote: post #27

Well, to whatever extent this is true, I'd like to know -- 1) Whether this is something very special to the US, versus happens in every country, and is a fact of life in remote / non-city areas, and 2) Does this call for a certain approach to how to effectively govern or design public policy if there is a east/west or city/suburban vs. rural social divide? Attitudes in themselves are not a problem. Inability to have…

The actual article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0930-x

Paywalled, so I haven't checked my question

3) Do people from the University of Cambridge underestimate self-segregation due to US population mobility?

(FWIW, local politics in my country does anecdotally skew rural/right urban/left, but we fortunately have many other different divisions whose axes are uncorrelated with that particular one. I firmly believe having more than two major parties helps immensely on this front.)

Incidentally, my ultra-low-dimensional model after 2016 was "how far away does a US voter live from the largest city in their watershed?" It remains to be seen if this simplistic metric predicts anything useful in 2020.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#35

Post by clairity »

chrisco255 wrote: post #24
baddox wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the Ozarks? They may not be the most visually impressive mountains, but I would at least consider the St. Francois Mountains in southern Missouri to be part of the Midwest.

The Ozarks extend into Arkansas, and I would say that's sort of where the south meets the Midwest. The people from the Ozarks, from my touring of the area in Arkansas, with the strong folk music tradition and the diet, remind me more of Appalachia than out West.

i would consider all of the ozarks part of the south, splitting missouri roughly in half between south and midwest. eastern oklahoma and even (rural) eastern texas is more south than southwest too.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#36

Post by arminiusreturns »

Can anecdotally confirm. Sometimes it quite annoys me that those personality traits are so embedded in myself though, because it seems to constantly be a headbutting of cultures that so many Americans on the coastal big cities just don't get or approve of, and love to condescendingly talk about that kind of personality as lesser or barbarous in some way.

I love the mountains and freedom they offered me, the lessons they taught me, and the beauty and solitude from an exhausting world they provided. After the war when I became an atheist, I would tell others in the community when they asked me to go to church that the mountains are my church.

All that said, I doubt it will last. There is a huge influx of people (not just retirees, but refugees from the coastal cities) who would be considered rich into mountain communities, driving out the locals by prices and changing the demographic hugely. I keep a close eye on land for sale and land parcels that used to be huge are starting to be divided into 5 acre parcels and sold off... I can already see the distant future of this, turning mountain towns into you have to be rich towns like Aspen, and it makes me very sad.

I can't wait till we have independent space travel, which is when I believe the frontier spirit will be reborn again. Humanity will need it then again! Alas, I probably won't live that long.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#37

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

chmod600 wrote: post #26
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly prone to those kinds of things, but I think there are interesting questions that can only be answered by this kind of analysis. (For example, it seems plausibly related to why American gun culture is so much stronger and more popular than in other countries, even those with comparably permissive gun ownership laws.)

I'm skepical of putting a scientific veneer over such analysis. If that's the point you'd like to make, go ahead and make it, but leave science out of it.

I'm not sure what you mean. Why shouldn't the methods of science be used to tackle these kinds of questions?

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#38

Post by vikramkr »

crocodiletears wrote: post #23
2trill2spill wrote: post #2

> Now, well into the 21st century, researchers led by the University of Cambridge have detected remnants of the pioneer personality in US populations of once inhospitable mountainous territory, particularly in the Midwest. As a person who was born and raised in the Midwest[1], just where are these mountainous regions they speak of in the Midwest? There's the black hills[2] and that's pretty much it. I wonder what def…

Pretty sure 'midwest' has taken over as a more polite version of 'flyover country' in the minds of many in our more uhh elite institutions. I'm sure we're not worth distinguishing. Outside of the cities, we're all just barbarian backwaters.

It's from a UK institution. I'd be surprised if the average member of that institution could distinguish US cities either. I assure you that people in coastal US cities are fully capable of distinguishing the mountainy place where there's legal weed from the flat place where there's corn. As a former midwesterner though, wouldn't feel confident about assuring you of anything more than that. Except during election season. For like 3 weeks everyone suddenly becomes an expert on Iowa and Ohio.

An old but relevant meme titled "how non-Americans see america":

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/051/807/26e...

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#39

Post by mamon »

bluntfang wrote: post #32
briga wrote: post #8

The early settlers of North American were in some sense selected by personality. It must have taken a certain sort of risk-taking personality to give up everything and climb aboard a crowded rickety passenger ship for a month-long journey to a vast and mostly uninhabited land. The people who arrived in America and decided to take it one step further by moving away from the crowded cities of the east into the vast and…

>The early settlers of North American were in some sense selected by personality. It must have taken a certain sort of risk-taking personality to give up everything and climb aboard a crowded rickety passenger ship for a month-long journey to a vast and mostly uninhabited land. Many early settlers were criminals. I wonder if that personality selection shines through. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_transportation…

Being a criminal, especially in times when many crimes were punishable by death, it also requires a risk-taking personality, so GP's point still stands.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#40

Post by throwaway0a5e »

RobRivera wrote: post #29
crocodiletears wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure 'midwest' has taken over as a more polite version of 'flyover country' in the minds of many in our more uhh elite institutions. I'm sure we're not worth distinguishing. Outside of the cities, we're all just barbarian backwaters.

Its more fun rolling as a barb anyways.

Yeah the problem with that is all the rich people seem to have plenty of time on their hands to tell you how to live your life.
Post reply on HN