k wrote:

Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M.

In other words, liberals are not as big a bunch of fuck-ups as conservatives. Case closed.

[Meh. I don't see this experiment as compelling at all, and I'm sure it's not terribly helpful. Do I believe that conservatives are more rigid thinkers than liberals? Yes, of course, but I don't need an EEG for that... I just need to look at their actions.

Also, there's no mention of this in the article, but was "W" picked on purpose? It is just because M and W are nearly (and in many typefaces exactly) mirror images of each other? Because I think the external associations to the letter W might skew the results somewhat. As in, a lot. Without knowing if they considered this (I'm sure they must have, but how?), I call shenanigans. -k]

Please also note they mention they then did the reverse version with the W showing up the majority of the time and then they didn't hit the button when they should have have. Either way, I stick by the screw up statement. They're reacting incorrectly in either case.

Mike the Usurper wrote:

Please also note they mention they then did the reverse version with the W showing up the majority of the time and then they didn't hit the button when they should have have. Either way, I stick by the screw up statement. They're reacting incorrectly in either case.

Not to belabor something i think is pointless, but I disagree with your interpretation. The article says

Researchers got the same results when they repeated the experiment in reverse, asking another set of participants to tap when a W appeared.

Unless the writer is very sloppy, "same result" refers to the habituation evidenced by the "conservative" groups. That is, in the reverse case, they didn't not press W, they merely also pressed when it was M. So why W and M. Why not A and Q? Repeat this experiment with a bunch of other letters, and for that matter, with other symbols, and I'll start taking it more seriously.

Again, I'm no neuroscientist, and i have no love for the kind of conservatism that is popular today (which is to say, not really conservatism at all, as i understand it), but this thing proves little, if anything, and even if it is accurate in it's small way, does more harm than good if pressed too much.

In short, I don't give a fuck how their brains are wired, I oppose them on the logic of my position and the fallacy of their own. Stuff like this undermines the notion of logical opposition by reducing the debate to some kind of determinism.

k wrote:

Mike the Usurper wrote:

Please also note they mention they then did the reverse version with the W showing up the majority of the time and then they didn't hit the button when they should have have. Either way, I stick by the screw up statement. They're reacting incorrectly in either case.

Not to belabor something i think is pointless, but I disagree with your interpretation. The article says

Researchers got the same results when they repeated the experiment in reverse, asking another set of participants to tap when a W appeared.

Unless the writer is very sloppy, "same result" refers to the habituation evidenced by the "conservative" groups. That is, in the reverse case, they didn't not press W, they merely also pressed when it was M. So why W and M. Why not A and Q? Repeat this experiment with a bunch of other letters, and for that matter, with other symbols, and I'll start taking it more seriously.

Again, I'm no neuroscientist, and i have no love for the kind of conservatism that is popular today (which is to say, not really conservatism at all, as i understand it), but this thing proves little, if anything, and even if it is accurate in it's small way, does more harm than good if pressed too much.

In short, I don't give a fuck how their brains are wired, I oppose them on the logic of my position and the fallacy of their own. Stuff like this undermines the notion of logical opposition by reducing the debate to some kind of determinism.

From the way it is written, what it describes is, they repeat the experiment, with w's predominant, and the result is, the "conservative brain fails to hit the bitton when the M pops up, i.e. in the first case, they hit the button when they should not, and then do not hit the button when they should. This is a COGNITIVE function. Recognizing the appropriate response is something learnable. Failing to do so means you're stealing oxygen from those of us who are able to learn from our mistakes, because chickens and monkeys and pavlov's dogs are able to do so.

Is it deterministic? Sure. It means some people are hard wired to believe whatever stupid thing someone introduces. Is that hard wired across the species? Now we're entering into some VERY deterministic concepts. That, I don't have a clear cut answer to, but I can guarantee, it misused the target.

Don't you see that this article is one hundred pervcent correct in all of it's assumptions. You wouldn't know evidence if it jumped up and bit you on the ass, son!

k wrote:

Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M.

In other words, liberals are not as big a bunch of fuck-ups as conservatives. Case closed.

[Meh. I don't see this experiment as compelling at all, and I'm sure it's not terribly helpful. Do I believe that conservatives are more rigid thinkers than liberals? Yes, of course, but I don't need an EEG for that... I just need to look at their actions.

Also, there's no mention of this in the article, but was "W" picked on purpose? It is just because M and W are nearly (and in many typefaces exactly) mirror images of each other? Because I think the external associations to the letter W might skew the results somewhat. As in, a lot. Without knowing if they considered this (I'm sure they must have, but how?), I call shenanigans. -k]