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Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#91

Post by sandworm101 »

vowelless wrote: post #75

This has always confused me. There are some rich texts based on beautiful rigor on the side of the conservatives like freidman and Hayek. Goldwater also approaches things in a very principled manner. Arthur brooks' latest book is similar. On the other than, I have not come across any liberal text, yet, that makes a good convincing case for liberalism. I would love to get some recommendations. I'm interested in princi…

I think the point is that there are no defined left-wing foundational texts, that it arises with education across disciplines. Liberalism is a product of a variety of educations, not the creation of any one person or group.

Read scientific studies on animal migration patterns. Then hit basic astronomy. Then particle physics. Then every episode of the Simpsons.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#92

Post by realusername »

jadyoyster wrote: post #84
realusername wrote: post #69

Unpopular opinion on HN, but people are mostly liberals when the current system works for them and it's even more visible as observe the political spectrum outside the US. It's easier to say "the market solves everything" when it works for you. When it does not work for them, they turn either to the right or the left side. As the current system is mostly falling apart for the middle class, you then have a raising far…

You're thinking of what "liberal" means in most of Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism But the article talks about a different kind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_the_United_State...

Oh interesting, I'm indeed French and it's interesting to see that it does not mean the same thing, I've misinterpreted parts of the article then. Actually, even on wikipedia, the content between the same pages is completely different, interesting to see !

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#93

Post by syats »

The article isn't very well written, but it does raise an interesting question. However, this question requires a clear definition of what is meant by liberal, which is a non trivial matter: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-orig...

My to cents: Let's start by defining "liberal" as those who hold the belief that the current Trend in social, economic or political developments will result in them having a better life. The opposite of that is the quintessential "conservative" adagio that "things are getting worse and worse". What exactly constitutes that trend is up for debate, but I think a precise definition isn't essential for this argument.

Since the percentage of the population that is highly educated is increasing (for whatever definition of "highly"), we can infer that access to education isn't only hereditary. That is, there are some of us who are now highly educated but who's parents were not (yes, it still is mostly hereditary, and almost for sure we will inherit that to our children). This, in turn, results in better standards of living for us than for our parents. So, locally, the trend, seems for us to be moving in the right direction. We vote for continuing this trend of more education for more people, of more access to healthcare for more people, and so on, because if it weren't for that trend we'd be struggling like our parents did.

Compound to that the rich-get-richer phenomena, and then our children will probably keep benefiting from this, so they will most likely also be "liberal". Only when a social revolution removes our now-hereditary privileges will we turn into "conservatives".

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#94

Post by catawbasam »

petewailes wrote: post #55
gaius wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because you aren't going to be afraid of something when you understand that it's not something you need to fear Such as a highly educated media worker, has no fear of the factory closing because the company has found somewhere with lower taxes and relaxed pollution laws? This is the appeal of Trump: he is the only candidate who doesn't want to send his demographics jobs offshore. It absolutely makes perfect sense for…

Or maybe the factory closing is a net benefit long term. Was losing millions of jobs in the farming sector a bad thing? Or the automation of the glass industry in the 1930's and 1940's that increased production and cleaned up emissions? Is the move to driverless vehicles and what that'll do to the logistics industry bad? There's lots of examples of people losing jobs. That's sad for the individual, but long term it's…

Not saying you're entirely wrong, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you yourself aren't in immediate danger of having your job eliminated. If you were, I'm guessing you'd see another side of the story.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#95

Post by brbsix »

psychometry wrote: post #43
zxcvcxz wrote: post #33

Just like to point out the members of the T9 lean libertarian. https://web.archive.org/web/20150226234712/http://www.triple... T9 (Triple 9) is a high IQ society similar to Mensa, but which only accepts members whose IQ is in the .999 percentile. It's a non-scientific poll, but in my experience while lots of my college friends were liberal, lots of my professors and the smartest people I know lean libertarian.

IQ societies aren't representative of the IQ range they require. I have a feeling people who feel the need to join one of those groups are more socially disaffected and have lower empathy than the their non-member IQ peers, which certainly correlates with a libertarian outlook. And I haven't found your comment about libertarianism being rampant among professors to be true at all . Where did you go to school? That wou…

> have lower empathy than the their non-member IQ peers, which certainly correlates with a libertarian outlook

I frequently hear this sentiment from the left, and it's terribly disheartening. It's something akin to "You don't want the government to provide everyone with a car? You must not like people having cars!" or "You don't want the government to arrest people for drinking soda? You must want everyone to die of obesity!". Libertarians aren't unemphatic, they simply have different solutions.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#96

Post by 13years »

Higher education both attracts and produces mindsets which solve problems through planning, engineering and designing.

There is a natural tendency to use your methodology of problem solving on all problems. So we tend to produce a greater collection of social engineering and central economic planning advocates. We want to design a greater society. We want to design a greater economy.

Even when you look at highly educated vs slightly more highly educated in the same field you see the same shift in mindset. The divergence between Fellow, Architect, Engineer is that at each higher level there is a greater degree if centralization mindset of design.

There is a potential fallacy that should be evident that you can not necessarily and simply equate more education with always producing the correct perspectives and therefore liberal view points are the correct positions. As in the above, we in engineering fields know the value higher levels of discipline, yet we also are fully aware of the problems resulting from high level engineers and architects who design their perfect systems which don't work in the real world.

Higher education produces problem solving disciplines that are very useful and powerful, yet these same disciplines also are subject to error as well as they typically can't quantify the numerous variables in large systems thinking

For more around this topic, this was a great talk working with systems greater than our human capacity to understand them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGaFcI2UNrI

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#97

Post by vlehto »

flashman wrote: post #30
random_upvoter wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the real answer is closer to "it's easy to be tolerant and broad-minded if you don't feel threatened". You're answer boils down to "because liberals are right and the others are wrong". But there isn't really such a thing as a wrong political opinion. People's political choices are based on their experience of the world. The whole premise of democracy is that if you take the mean of everybody's personal exper…

> You're answer boils down to "because liberals are right and the others are wrong" I disagree. I read the OP's answer as, "The more education you have, the more you're prepared to accept the possibility that you're wrong." This leads to a greater acceptance of viewpoints (or at least the right to hold them) which you don't necessarily agree with, which is basically liberalism in a nutshell.

There are lots of people who support "liberalist" policies but don't accept opposing views. For example animal rights activists.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#98

Post by snowwolf »

gjulianm wrote: post #68
petewailes wrote: post #3

Pithy answer: because you aren't going to be afraid of something when you understand that it's not something you need to fear. When you have a simple world view, nuance is always going to escape you. An educated person can understand that the world isn't simple, which will lead to a more liberal view, as liberal views tend to be based on the assumption that angry, narrow world view responses aren't a good thing. Some…

I find this comment to be borderline insulting, even when my political views are very liberal. Basically, what I read in your comment (maybe I'm misreading it) is that not having a liberal view means that the person does not understand the world, has an angry response, ignores the complexities of life and does not understand anything. So, instead of just trying to understand what do these people think, feel and fear…

"A degree just gives you knowledge in a specific area, and does not make anyone more intelligent just by having it."

I've always felt the most beneficial part of higher education isn't the knowledge gained but the way you are taught to get it - Through research and critical thinking.

That isn't to say that people who don't have a higher education aren't capable of these things, but as a proportion of the population I think you'll find a greater competence in those with a higher education.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#99

Post by vlehto »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #40
petewailes wrote: post #3

Pithy answer: because you aren't going to be afraid of something when you understand that it's not something you need to fear. When you have a simple world view, nuance is always going to escape you. An educated person can understand that the world isn't simple, which will lead to a more liberal view, as liberal views tend to be based on the assumption that angry, narrow world view responses aren't a good thing. Some…

There's some research that suggest climate change and evolution denial go up (by certain measures) as the respondants understanding of the issues goes up. The answer is apparently that the smarter you are, the more likely you are to have absorbed this information, but also, the more likely you are to realise that your social group expects you to answer in a certain way. For people outside the social groups that have…

For climate change it makes perfect sense. Who would wish their grandchildren dead?

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#100

Post by drexel »

realusername wrote: post #92
jadyoyster wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're thinking of what "liberal" means in most of Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism But the article talks about a different kind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_the_United_State...

Oh interesting, I'm indeed French and it's interesting to see that it does not mean the same thing, I've misinterpreted parts of the article then. Actually, even on wikipedia, the content between the same pages is completely different, interesting to see !

Liberal basically means the opposite of what it used to mean in the U.S.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

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