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We know that endocrine disrupters are more or less ubiquitous in modern society. Plastic containers, cosmetics, food, detergent, etc. if your hypothesis is true we should see a similar effect in nearly all groups, not just the mentioned subset of engineers. Do you feel this is also the case?
But yeah, I have to imagine these effects are society-wide with varying strength for different sub-populations. This is consistent with various macro-scale observations like decreasing population-wide male fertility.
Right, what I’m saying is based on your hypothesis we should expect a population-wide boom in socialism. Based on how it tends to be at the intersection of multiple demographics (young people, more educated people, people who live in certain cities) I would expect that there’s not a significant environmentally-driven biological driver, unless there’s a specific environmental factor that exists primarily and only at the intersection of these demographics.
Like maybe you could say, MacBook pros specifically are causing socialism. Personally I don’t find this plausible but that would be an example of an environmental factor that largely affects urban young white collar workers :)
Correct, which is also consistent with observed data.
> unless there’s a specific environmental factor that exists primarily and only at the intersection of these demographics
I've described two - sedentary lifestyle and diet.
Even the fattest guy in alabama is probably not sitting in an office all day, and he's probably not cholesterol-deficient.
> maybe you could say, MacBook pros specifically are causing socialism
The difference is with endocrine disruptors we have a pretty clear causal model of the process.
What you might expect to predict then is that socialism peaks in well-off suburbs of medium-to-large cities where people take the car everywhere but largely do not have physical labor in their job. This is not the case however, well off management types are significantly less likely to be socialist compared to young urban dwellers who walk or bike a lot.
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Regarding cholesterol I have no idea, I had never even heard of “cholesterol deficient” because I’ve spent my whole adult life trying to keep myself from dangerously high levels of cholesterol. You can find CDC risk maps for the latter, not sure about the former. Lol
I was referring more to the fact that coastal software engineers tend to be testosterone-deficient as a group, which strongly affects political alignment. E.g. https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/project/155441/version/V... or https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6717495/
That's an interesting response to a scientific study published in a peer-reviewed journal that says testosterone supplementation causes people who hold left-wing political views to shift rightward in their political compass.
It's likely not conclusive, it's just one study after all, but I think a less-dismissive response is probably warranted. You are responding to the parent poster as if they are entering the conversation with an agenda, but the way you are responding informs any third-party readers that actually you are the one engaging in this conversation with an agenda and not taking the charitable read of the other posters comments as aligned to the HN guidelines.
I'd encourage you to read the HN guidelines, read the studies they linked, and then respond with something less snarky and dismissive and more substantive.