yoda,
you could easily be right. when i say 'it seems' i'm not talking in absolutes.
who, pubs or dems are more b/w militaristic?
That's a pretty loaded question. Republicans are certainly more likely to support a given military action, it seems, but it doesn't follow that their support is "black and white."
seen that article on pub/lib m.r.i. deductions? pubs have enlarged 'fear' centers, dems 'open minded' oriented.
Yup, I did see that. You know how they determined this? They showed people people with varying political views either one letter or another, and they were told to tap a button if one showed up, but not the other. Then they had the first letter show up more often to try to get them to press in a "kneejerk" fashion, and conservatives tended to press it more. That's it. That's all you have to do to get people to pass this stuff around the Internet. Nobody notices or cares when the people who conduct these studies say they "could" explain things (which is what happened in this case) -- they just assume that they do. It's called confirmation bias.
There are other issues, of course. If I were a liberal and I decided to put stock in this experiment, I'd probably phrase it just as you have: liberals are "open-minded" and conservatives are just afraid. And if I were a conservative, I'd say it meant that liberals were wishy-washy and never stood for anything, and conservatives were better judges of how to protect us, and it would be just as supported by the available evidence.
In fact, I just went Googling around a bit more...and that's exactly how the finding was described in one instance, by
CBS news:
"Liberals are better able to cope better with conflicting information, while conservatives are better at recognizing and responding to threats,"
Strangely, this quote wasn't in any of the articles I found on the subject.
There are lots of silly studies or polls like this, and the degree to which you believe them is the degree to which you want them to be true. Like the one that says
conservatives have better love lives. They get passed around because they're tawdry and provocative, and few idealogues are happy with simple disagreement. They need to believe there's something actually, physically wrong or different with the other side.
it does seem to me people tend to exaggerate while anonymously using the written word on forums.
perhaps not here- i hope so.
you say- 'Wow, that was probably the most awkward, forced political insult I've ever heard'.
i find that hard to believe.... not an exaggeration?
Oh, I don't know; it certainly might have been. But what of it? Is it particularly relevant whether it's the most awkward political insult I've heard, or just
among the most?
Regardless, while it's certainly true that people say lots of foolish (or hateful) things when they can do so anonymously, that sure isn't happening here. My name's all over this site.
i just realized it's maybe a bit uncool to do politics here. if so, i'm sorry about that. i'm not here to bait. i say this because of your use of 'awkward/forced'. in my defense, it was a movie with some political undertones- it seems to me.
It's totally fine to do politics, though we usually keep it in the Intermission forum. And while it's absolutely true that
Avatar has political undertones, and it's totally acceptable to discuss them in this very thread, that doesn't seem to be what happened here. You didn't segue by talking about Iraq, or Native Americans, or some other thing that parallels the film. You segued to criticizing conservatives by saying some people think everything either sucks or is great, and see things in black and white "like republicans." That's what I was jarred by it. It's such a weird way to try to drag politics into the discussion. And, on top of that, it's just a shallow generalization about a very large group of people, which you can rest assured I'm never going to be down with.
Reply to Topic
