Why People Vote Republican
edge.org
edge.org
I hate the OT police too, but this clearly does not belong here.
I should have changed the title to something less inflamatory, but I just used the original post tile because I didn't feel like coming up with something else. I figured that the people on hacker news would be sharp enough to read and analyze the content of the article, not just the title that I chose.
Wow. No bias there. What a schmuck.
In fact, in many places the evidence he collects could very well disprove his theory but he ignores those implications (such as when he finds Conservatives have an easier time seeing the view of those they disagree with but then goes on to essentially call them simple minded idealogues)
There is a big problem with this. It is a very polite way to say "Why aren't most muscular men violent rapists and criminals? We know they could physically intimidate people into giving them what they want -- so it's confusing that they act against their own interests by living in an orderly, law-abiding society."
Most of the Republicans I know don't vote because they think their one vote in a hundred million will produce so much economic benefit to themselves that it's worth the cost of showing up to vote. What kind of crazy person votes this way? Does the author not know people who behave in a certain way because they think it's right, not because they think they'll derive direct, material benefits? That would make it a less fun mystery to solve, I guess.
The author in his very first sentence disproves his own theory by saying...
What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies?
The problem is, he bases his entire thesis on this misconception that any working class person who votes for a Republican is somehow voting "against their self interest" (which by the way shows how someone's own self interest can pervert a study if they let it)
The truth is, since the advent of modern economic theory there have been two differing perspectives on how to create wealth. One side believes that it's best to give money to corporations who will then hire people which in turn creates more jobs and more wealth. The other is to give money to individuals who will buy more stuff forcing corporations to hire more people and hence create jobs and more wealth.
These are both logical perspectives and the reason they persist is because neither can be conclusively disproven.
With that fairly simple logical explanation Mr. Haidt's thesis goes down the tubes in it's entirety. Both of the above stated theories produce wealth for the working class if the theory is correct and hence neither is necessarily "against the best interest" of any class of people.
You can click "Jump to Highlights" at the top if you don't feel like scrolling down.
His thesis is built around the idea that there must be an irrational reason for certain people to vote Republican. He then goes out in search of that reason and the bulk of the article is him pursuing that reason which he eventually deems to be a focus on moral concerns that Democrats ignore. But if his thesis was wrong from the outset (which is what I contend in my original comment) than the rest is just fruit of a poisonous tree. Because if “working class” people have a reason to rationally vote Republican than any argument he makes as to why they would irrationally vote Republican is, at best, incomplete and at worst completely wrong.
I saw your original comment (don’t know why you changed it there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it) and for the record I did click on the links and took some of the quizzes (there were a lot). But again I think his bias prevented him from formulating questions that delivered anything but what he wanted to see (which in turn leads to his focus on values in the first place)
The quizzes I took focused not on values but on the root of values which is largely irrelevant. So when he asked whether people “think God would approve” as a reason for holding a certain value he’s trying to target what he perceives to be irrational reasons for values rather than looking at the values themselves.
The truth is that most actual values are shared between both Republicans and Democrats. Take Gun Control. One side believes we shouldn’t put restrictions on guns because it gives honest people a way to defend themselves while the other believes we should limit gun ownership to keep those guns out of the hands of people who would abuse them. The value behind each position is “to have a society with less violence” the disagreement is just in how to achieve the value.
So the conclusion he comes up with (that conservatives have a different set of values) is an inaccurate one generated by biased process.
That is my point. The author went in with a pre-defined bias which it turn corrupts his conclusion.
That some 40 years later the same discredited pseudo-scientific psychobabble is floating around is an excellent example of people believing what they want to believe.
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon."
On-Topic: [...] anything that gratifies one's intellectual
curiosity.
Off-Topic: *Most* stories about politics, or crime, or
sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new
phenomenon. [...] If they'd cover it on TV news, it's
probably off-topic.
Maybe people vote a certain way because they, like, believe in the same things. Why does it have to be more complicated than that?
That's what the democrats keep thinking, Which is why they can't win an election. It might be fashionable to say that you are not "into" politics and go about putting green symbols on your website, but politics how ever slimy and unwholesome and unfashionable could have saved 100,000 + 4000 people from being dead without any reason.
That point aside, the article is about how to hack peoples minds. (short ans: by making a sincere effort to understand them)