[HN Gopher] Individuals who share an ideology have more similar ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Individuals who share an ideology have more similar neural
       representations
        
       Author : INGELRII
       Score  : 52 points
       Date   : 2023-02-10 12:14 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.science.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
        
       | DougN7 wrote:
       | I wonder which is the cause and which is the effect. Aren't
       | neural pathways changed by experience?
        
       | kalimanzaro wrote:
       | What does this imply for the following state (of mind), if it had
       | basis in reality?
       | 
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology
        
         | harimau777 wrote:
         | I think that people confuse the tech-bro subculture with the
         | wider developer subculture. My experience has been that the
         | developer subculture is often more progressive than
         | libertarian.
        
           | Jensson wrote:
           | The developer subculture is mostly pro meritocracy, so it
           | isn't really modern progressive. Developers were progressive
           | when meritocracy was progressive, but now they aren't.
        
             | badcppdev wrote:
             | I don't think the "developer subculture" is clearly bounded
             | or uniform geographically. You state that the developer
             | subculture has stayed with pro-meritocracy but I think it
             | has changed.
             | 
             | Where could we find a definition to check that we were
             | referring to the same thing?
        
               | Jensson wrote:
               | From the internal forums at Google, from what I see
               | online and have seen offline.
               | 
               | Modern progressive anti-meritocracy people might be loud,
               | but they are a small minority, even at Google at the
               | height of progressivism there you would see pro-
               | meritocracy views winning out strongly among developers.
               | You also see it here, I feel most here on HN are pro
               | meritocracy. There are some progressives around who go
               | into every thread about the topic and post a lot, but
               | meritocracy views and topics tend to get upvoted.
        
       | snowpid wrote:
       | It is very typical for such kind of paper using only the American
       | political system and with a brief overview the authors arent
       | aware of that flaw (also very typical)
       | 
       | It might be at least interesting to see the hypothesis tested in
       | a multi - party - system or countries with a less polarised
       | society. Even similar polarised countries might be an interesting
       | study subject as an parallel experiment..
        
         | sotruexdg wrote:
         | This seems like the WEIRD research subject fallacy due to the
         | groups selected.
         | 
         | https://www.google.com/search?q=weird%20research%20
         | 
         | They could test religious ideologies, wonder if they would get
         | the same thing.
        
         | syzarian wrote:
         | Maybe they should say, "individuals who share the same American
         | ideology".
         | 
         | What is interesting to me is this part of the abstract:
         | 
         |  _...revealing that polarization can arise from differences in
         | the brain's affective valuations of political concepts._
         | 
         | I wonder if things are reversed in the sense that consuming the
         | same sort of news content causes those peoples' brains to end
         | up with the same affective valuations. I know nothing about
         | neuroscience but it seems if we took someone with centrist or
         | left leaning views and subjected them to only political news
         | from very right wing sources for a long time maybe their brains
         | would be altered.
         | 
         | Is it reasonable to wonder if similarities in brain responses
         | to political concepts comes from consuming the same sort of
         | media messages? Is Fox News (or left wing equivalent)
         | unwittingly changing our brains (brain washing)?
        
           | rayiner wrote:
           | I suspect the opposite is true. Political orientation likely
           | maps onto personality traits: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-
           | politics-55834023. The relevant political issues of the time
           | may then cause people to react to them differently depending
           | on personality traits, and cause people with similar traits
           | to coalesce into like minded coalitions.
           | 
           | That being said, psychology is a pseudoscience so who knows
           | what anything is anyway.
        
             | syzarian wrote:
             | People can be "brainwashed" or "deprogrammed". Does this
             | change the brain? Certainly the direction you propose is
             | plausible. I wonder what the direction of the cause/effect
             | is.
        
               | rayiner wrote:
               | Can they? https://theconversation.com/the-brainwashing-
               | myth-99272
        
               | edgyquant wrote:
               | Yes and no amount of random articles will convince people
               | this obvious fact is untrue. People can be conditioned
               | and brainwashed just as I can breathe the air.
        
               | syzarian wrote:
               | That's a nice article. This line stood out to me:
               | 
               |  _This commitment arose from their conversion experiences
               | and their gradual, conditioned acceptance of ethical
               | misbehavior._
               | 
               | I don't have a formal definition of "brainwashing". That
               | term, to me, is akin to _gradual, conditioned
               | acceptance_. From my reading of the article the author
               | and I seem to have different perceptions of what the word
               | "brainwashing" means. He does say that people are moving
               | away from the term "brainwashing" and using terms like
               | "coercive persuasion".
               | 
               | This line too stood out to me:
               | 
               |  _We don't say that soldiers are brainwashed to kill
               | other people; that's basic training._
               | 
               | I actually would say that soldiers are brainwashed. I use
               | that term in a colloquial sense. I use in the sense of
               | the video linked to below.
               | 
               | Let me state my question in a different way, does
               | _gradual, conditioned acceptance_ change one's brain in
               | any significant way?
               | 
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n2gryg9Yvk
        
             | edgyquant wrote:
             | >Political orientation likely maps onto personality traits:
             | 
             | Then explain political realignments. I personally have
             | completely switched political parties in the last year, and
             | I am not a 24 year old who's brain wasn't developed.
        
               | rayiner wrote:
               | Your brain does chemically change later in life,
               | especially when you have kids. Apart from that, political
               | parties are coalitions of different groups, and those
               | coalitions (and the parties) change as the salient issues
               | change. COVID was a good example of this, where the "fuck
               | the establishment" types Trump recently brought into the
               | GOP clashed with the "conformity and order" Romney types
               | that traditionally controlled the GOP. My county, which
               | includes Annapolis, went for Romney in 2012 and for Larry
               | Hogan by 38 points, but Biden by 14. The area has a large
               | military officer presence, and their inclination toward
               | conformity, discipline, and order cut differently during
               | COVID than when other issues were more salient.
        
         | ergonaught wrote:
         | Do you expect that human brain adaptation occurs differently
         | for some reason in environments where "individuals who share an
         | ideology" happen to not be sharing "American" ideologies?
        
           | anotheraccount9 wrote:
           | I think he meant to test this outside a 0-1 choice of
           | ideology.
        
             | snowpid wrote:
             | yes, multi-party systems dont have an usual 0-1 binary
             | thinking.
        
           | snowpid wrote:
           | it might be a case for societies where is a stronger group
           | identification (e.g. identification for the nation)
           | 
           | And again, American political system is rather unique in the
           | Western world. At least it should discussed in the discussion
           | chapter.
        
             | luckylion wrote:
             | > it might be a case for societies where is a stronger
             | group identification (e.g. identification for the nation)
             | 
             | Did you mean nation as in ethnicity? Because otherwise I
             | think the US's identification with the nation is pretty
             | strong across both camps.
             | 
             | > And again, American political system is rather unique in
             | the Western world.
             | 
             | It is? Even with multiple small parties, you'll still
             | largely get ideological camps. It's rare that you have
             | parties that pick their ideas from all over the place.
        
               | snowpid wrote:
               | In some nations some political decisions are consensus
               | (e.g. NHS in UK, Russia as an enemy in Ukraine)
               | 
               | Nation can be seen as an consensus ideology and if you
               | share some opinions you can get along better on other
               | topics.
        
               | luckylion wrote:
               | Sure, and _some_ political decisions have broad consensus
               | in the US as well, e.g. Medicaid. But that really doesn
               | 't say much, because other topics are different and the
               | NHS being broadly accepted doesn't help with collectivism
               | vs individualism, pro/anti-EU etc.
        
               | snowpid wrote:
               | to refer back to my original point: Other nations have a
               | more common ground so the study result might not apply to
               | other countries. I think I showed enough reasonable
               | arguments for that potencial case.
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | > _Nation can be seen as an consensus ideology and if you
               | share some opinions you can get along better on other
               | topics._
               | 
               | In some sense, it's the job of public education,
               | particularly through the curricula of history and $local-
               | official-language, to _establish_ that consensus ideology
               | - to create unity by exposing everyone to the same large
               | landscape of stories, opinions and beliefs, so that any
               | two people of a nation can quickly establish some common
               | ground between themselves and get along.
        
               | luckylion wrote:
               | > to create unity by exposing everyone to the same large
               | landscape of stories, opinions and beliefs
               | 
               | Or, in other words: to the same reality (it doesn't
               | matter whether it's factually accurate, only that it's
               | widely shared).
               | 
               | Is there a way back to more shared reality without one
               | side wiping out the other? A common threat that just
               | makes the differences in perception meaningless next to
               | the shared perception of that threat? Aliens invading
               | would probably help, at least temporarily. Maybe, if you
               | keep that up for two generations, they'll have forgotten
               | most of the ideological identities that had divided them,
               | and will only rediscover them after some amount of
               | lasting peace?
        
           | bluetomcat wrote:
           | In non-media-hyped societies, voters of different parties can
           | sit on the same table and talk about their lives without ever
           | touching political issues. This kind of polarisation is a US
           | phenomenon that is spreading worldwide like wildfire through
           | mass-media outlets.
        
             | luckylion wrote:
             | Yeah, I'm sure that would've gone over well in Germany in
             | the 30ies, NSDAP members and KPD members discussing their
             | lives without touching political issues.
        
               | snowpid wrote:
               | Weimar in the 30ies was heavely poralised.
        
               | luckylion wrote:
               | It was, but it wasn't "a US phenomenon that is spreading
               | worldwide like wildfire through mass-media outlets".
               | People don't need mass-media with a 24-hours news-cycle
               | and social media bubbles to get polarized.
        
               | adamrezich wrote:
               | but the internet connections in our pockets certainly
               | don't help things either
        
               | bluetomcat wrote:
               | Case in point from where I live: Bulgaria. Just 10 years
               | ago I can remember a time when Facebook was used
               | primarily for sharing family photos and journeys. Now it
               | has become a toxic pit where grumpy and bitter aunties
               | are reading fake news and writing insulting name-calling
               | comments after anyone who expresses disagreement.
               | Political figures are impulsively posting short write-
               | ups, full of emotional hatred. Short memes and news-
               | invented neologisms are circulating all over the societal
               | discourse. Problems that were once non-existent in
               | Bulgarian society, are now discussed with vehement
               | enthusiasm and basic misunderstanding.
        
               | luckylion wrote:
               | Unfortunately we don't have access to an alternate
               | universe where Bulgaria has taken the same trajectory in
               | all things but Facebook, Twitter etc had been banned.
               | 
               | But my guess is: it wouldn't have mattered. I don't
               | believe that we get that behavior because Facebook
               | enables us to be petty. I believe that we get that
               | behavior because of the circumstances (i.e. rapidly
               | changing economical and cultural environment that make
               | people fearful and uncertain and will make them fall back
               | on their core values) and people realizing that you can
               | convince/manipulate others better if you deliver your
               | messages in a short, meme-style format, appeal to their
               | emotions, play into identity politics and "own" the other
               | side. Even if you outlawed Facebook, once politicians,
               | activists etc realize that this works, they'll use it in
               | whatever media you allow.
               | 
               | The only winning move (individually) is not to play, at
               | least that's my experience. You can tune out, concentrate
               | on whatever you deem important and the world won't fall
               | apart just because you're not spending your time and
               | energy explaining to people that they're being
               | manipulated, because after all, most things move slowly.
               | Before each election, everybody speaks as if this was the
               | one that matters. As if, should they lose this time, all
               | is lost because _they_ will destroy everything. And
               | afterwards, everything just trots on as it always has
               | (Yes, I 'm sure there are exceptions, but in most
               | countries the situation isn't exceptional). And if you do
               | play and try to educate others about their manipulated
               | intellects, all they'll see is that you are being
               | manipulated and you're now trying to manipulate them. It
               | feels great sometimes to tell them off and get applause,
               | but you won't change hearts and minds, and you should be
               | aware that it's a game.
               | 
               | On the other hand, I firmly believe: if you want to
               | improve society, hug the bitter aunties, ask them how
               | they've been and share some traditional food you can bond
               | over, that'll make it much easier to communicate and find
               | common ground.
        
               | n4r9 wrote:
               | Hmm, is the article talking about party members, or just
               | people who identify with certain beliefs? Its seems to me
               | like you risk comparing apples and oranges.
        
           | coldtea wrote:
           | Yes.
           | 
           | Because American "ideologies" also correlate strongly to city
           | vs rural, skin color and ethnicity, and other factors, which
           | is not necessarily the case in many/most countries whereas
           | there might be more choices, and the kind of people believing
           | in each more equally diatributed...
        
             | dauertewigkeit wrote:
             | I live in Germany and I would say, that is very much the
             | case here, in fact probably more so than in the US.
             | 
             | And in any case, why would you expect this to not be the
             | case? Should people in different living circumstances
             | magically have the same beliefs, interests and desires?
        
               | coldtea wrote:
               | > _Should people in different living circumstances
               | magically have the same beliefs, interests and desires?_
               | 
               | Magically no, just practically. Which is often the case,
               | because the ideologies concerned don't touch on rural vs
               | urban "beliefs, interests and desires" but other
               | divisions, like progressive vs conservative,
               | environmental vs economic push, nationalist vs
               | regionalist, and others. Sometimes the "beliefs,
               | interests and desires" are even irrelevant, as dominant
               | parties offer the same kind of programs, and it's just
               | party loyalty that gets one to one or the other.
               | 
               | Germany has 5 parties in parliament (with sizable
               | representation), the US has had two for a good while
               | (with insignificant independent inroads). German party
               | ideology is much more segreggated and divided among
               | states than in Germany. Germany is much more homogeneous
               | by population. And many other factors besides.
        
             | qikInNdOutReply wrote:
             | You obviously did not get around much, and never ventured
             | out of your peer group abroad. If anything, humans are
             | remarkably similar, and that similarity transfers even to
             | the ugly of racism, sexism etc.
             | 
             | Just because some country has no empire to project the
             | ugly, doesent mean its not there.
        
               | coldtea wrote:
               | I've actually travelled all around the world (including
               | the US), but thanks for the irrelevant ad-hominem...
               | 
               | > _If anything, humans are remarkably similar, and that
               | similarity transfers even to the ugly of racism, sexism
               | etc._
               | 
               | Which is neither here, nor there.
               | 
               | Nor does every country/culture has the same levels of
               | racism, sexism, etc. Same way they don't have the same
               | levels of religiousness, mass shootings, and so on.
        
               | qikInNdOutReply wrote:
               | Naw, alot of the mass shooting is just empire violence,
               | the individual thinking itself something elevated by
               | virtue of being part of society, can no longer take
               | insults/setbacks and goes on a rampage against the
               | insulting other and its future.
               | 
               | Its all been there and it has been widespread, though not
               | always in this shape and form.
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duel
               | 
               | The religousness of the US and its conservatives are not
               | that rare either. Iran comes to mind.
        
       | cainxinth wrote:
       | Yet another reason to discount the philosophical concept of free
       | will. We are all born with genes we didn't choose and raised by
       | people we didn't choose in environments we didn't choose... and
       | any 'choices' we make thereafter are heavily influenced by those
       | factors, all of which were completely out of our control.
        
         | meitham wrote:
         | All my choices are influenced by these microbes in my gut, they
         | outnumber my cells, it's them not me typing this response now!
        
           | cainxinth wrote:
           | Joking aside, can I ask two things? 1. Do you actually
           | believe strongly in the concept of free will? And 2. Are you
           | at least moderately successful in life?
           | 
           | I've found that successful people generally don't like the
           | idea that their achievements might not be the product of
           | their own clever and freely made choices.
        
             | meitham wrote:
             | I am moderately successful in life, and I do believe in
             | free will, but I also attribute much of my success to luck,
             | and only smaller part to making the right choices.
        
         | MadSudaca wrote:
         | Ok, let's imagine we all agree that free will doesn't exist.
         | Now what?
        
           | haswell wrote:
           | If we all _actually_ accepted this today, incarceration and
           | policing reforms become an immediate moral imperative, as
           | would changing attitudes about the behaviors of those around
           | us. The resulting societal changes would arguably change the
           | world for the better.
           | 
           | The notion that individuals should be punished for
           | circumstances outside of their control is as problematic as
           | jailing someone for getting the flu.
           | 
           | This isn't to claim that criminal behavior is acceptable or
           | that nothing should be done about it, but the change in
           | understanding of the behavior itself would immediately demand
           | a shift towards rehabilitation instead of
           | punishment/vengeance.
           | 
           | Some people are still gonna have to be locked up, just like
           | critically ill patients require ongoing care. But headlines
           | like "scientists make breakthrough discovery in correcting
           | brain chemistry that leads to sociopathy" will be as exciting
           | as headlines about cancer cures.
        
             | HideousKojima wrote:
             | >If we all actually accepted this today, incarceration and
             | policing reforms become an immediate moral imperative.
             | 
             | Nope, I have no free will with which to choose to stop
             | imprisoning people in horrible conditions.
        
               | bena wrote:
               | Yeah, it's hilarious because it's a useless question and
               | a useless answer.
               | 
               | Because what they're asking is "What if we could
               | fundamentally change existence?" That's what it would
               | take to perform these reforms without the existence of
               | free will. Because people wouldn't have the choice to do
               | whatever.
               | 
               | So while we would have to accept that not only are
               | criminals incapable of doing anything different, but also
               | the police are incapable of doing anything different, and
               | the people hiring them, etc. Turtles all the way down.
               | 
               | Nothing changes.
        
             | jeremyjh wrote:
             | It would change nothing. We incarcerate to deter crime, and
             | deterrents are a factor in decisions regardless of if you
             | believe free will is a meaningful concept.
        
           | luckylion wrote:
           | Political persuasion is now a protected class.
        
         | m3047 wrote:
         | In my opinion this is a failure of systems thinking: "Your
         | (money / horse / car / thinking) is no good use this (money /
         | horse / car / thinking) instead."
         | 
         | There is an epistemological problem with evaluating the
         | objectivity and authority of such statements, as well as a
         | question of fitness for local conditions. These things can be
         | in conflict, there is no one global correct answer.
        
       | Scubabear68 wrote:
       | Prior to reading the article, I had a mental model of a joke
       | headline "scientists find people who think alike think alike".
       | 
       | But as others say here, using binary US politics in this kind of
       | research makes little sense.
        
       | agoose77 wrote:
       | Has anyone looked at the sketchy figures? Talk about jumping to
       | conclusions ...
        
       | wrycoder wrote:
       | The study purports to document physical characteristics in
       | Republican and Democratic brains related to the good vibes
       | associated with preaching to the choir.
        
       | meitham wrote:
       | There's an old Arabic philosophy that also suggests facial
       | similarities between people that share similar thinking, or more
       | like your facial features will develop according to your
       | personality traits so eventually your look will converge to your
       | likeminded. The theory goes further by classifying these looks
       | into the closest animal and the traits from that animal.
        
         | suslik wrote:
         | The specific theory is bogus, but is the general principle
         | completely unthinkable? For instance, some facial features
         | might correlate with hormone exposure during development, which
         | in turn might correlate with brain development and thus
         | character traits. Might not be a very strong correlation, of
         | course, but human brains are exceptional in pattern recognition
         | when it comes to facial features.
        
         | WaitWaitWha wrote:
         | Isn't there something similar elsewhere where the owners and
         | dogs are supposed to look or behave like each other?
         | 
         | edit: search for "Like owner, like dog"
         | 
         | e.g., https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/smarter-you-
         | think/20...
        
         | AstixAndBelix wrote:
         | If you look similar you probably come from the same place. If
         | you come from the same place you were probably exposed to the
         | same culture. If you were exposed to the same culture you
         | probably hold very similar worldviews.
         | 
         | I mean, it's not that deep of a theory, especially in the old
         | days were people moved a lot less and culture norms were
         | strongly enforced
        
           | harimau777 wrote:
           | I suppose that it could also be true that the facial
           | expressions that someone regularly makes influences the
           | wrinkles that develop as they age.
        
           | meitham wrote:
           | No. Another kind user @badcppdev posted links to these
           | theories up in the thread. You will find these various
           | similarities across cultures and races, and you will find
           | differences within one family and village.
        
             | AstixAndBelix wrote:
             | What he linked is not relevant to what I said, plus I used
             | a probabilistic and not deterministic argument.
             | 
             | You could deduce where people came from by how they looked
             | because the world was much more inbred and isolated in the
             | past. As such you could correlate physical characteristic
             | with cultural upbringings and thus worldviews.
        
         | badcppdev wrote:
         | So like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology but for the
         | front of your head rather than the top.
         | 
         | I've just found it's referred to as:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiognomy
         | 
         | See also:
         | 
         | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphology
         | 
         | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmistry
        
           | meitham wrote:
           | Thank you for putting all the references for something I
           | vaguely came across. I will have a very long read this
           | evening
        
           | jdmtheNth wrote:
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science
        
       | chiefalchemist wrote:
       | Or is it: Similar neural representation leds to shared ideology?
        
       | jrsj wrote:
       | How long until it's a common part of the interview process to do
       | a brain scan for wrongthink?
        
       | pfdietz wrote:
       | Sabine Hossenfelder tweets sarcastically on this.
       | 
       | https://twitter.com/skdh/status/1623728595297345538
        
         | messe wrote:
         | Relevant xkcd "Linear Regression": https://xkcd.com/1725/
        
           | kelipso wrote:
           | From one of the authors: "It's not a linear regression. This
           | representation is a typical mistake when using mixed effect
           | statistics. It is a "dyadic regression" which is a complex
           | mixed effects procedure. We avoid such representation for ME
           | but reviewers ask."
           | (https://twitter.com/ulugeyik/status/1623654892639330304)
           | 
           | So there's more to the story but that graph is really easy to
           | make fun of because it looks like a linear regression.
        
             | messe wrote:
             | Interesting. That's not from the authors though:
             | https://twitter.com/ulugeyik/status/1623749246322089984
        
               | kelipso wrote:
               | Oh ok, just seemed like it from the way he talked but
               | yeah, it is dyadic regression so there's more the story
               | (no idea what it is) but it's still such a terrible graph
               | that I would never want to put in a paper.
        
         | syzarian wrote:
         | Expert with controversial opinions in her area of expertise
         | feels qualified to criticize the work of experts in an area she
         | knows nothing about.
         | 
         | EDIT: Turns out it's a dyadic regression and Sabine doesn't
         | know what she is talking about.
        
           | jerf wrote:
           | Brain Thing Correlates With Other Brain Thing is the expected
           | result of _any_ two Brain Things, because _all_ the Brain
           | Things correlate. The failure here is a variant of the
           | Streetlight Effect; we looked for this one correlation, we
           | found it, so it must be important. It 's not, unless it's
           | really strong, because in this space, everything correlates
           | to everything. To be _important_ , there needs to be
           | something more than "a correlation"; that's so expected as to
           | be a near zero-bit contribution to science. For there _not_
           | to be _any_ correlation would actually be the surprising
           | thing!
        
             | syzarian wrote:
             | From my brief reading on dyadic regression your first
             | sentence is why dyadic regressions are used in the
             | circumstances of the paper. I don't know the validity of
             | the paper but I do strongly suspect Sabine doesn't either
             | and that her Tweet says more about her ignorance of the
             | topic than it does about the validity of the paper.
        
               | jerf wrote:
               | I find there is a substantial difference between the
               | intended performance of statistical tools intended to
               | compensate for such things, and the actual performance of
               | such tools. See also the attempt to filter out
               | "confounding" variables in more normal statistical
               | analyses; I personally believe that the effectiveness of
               | such tools are _extremely_ overstated and overestimated.
               | There is a certain intrinsic circularity to any such
               | tool.
        
           | abnry wrote:
           | I mean, do you honestly think that the graph represents a
           | good linear fit?
        
             | syzarian wrote:
             | The data does not appear to me to represent a function.
             | There is a lot of verticality to the data. It's doesn't
             | appear to me to be logistic, exponential, or a higher
             | degree polynomial. What is the best model? I don't know.
             | I'm not a statistician or a neuroscientist. Maybe they have
             | reasons for doing a linear fit in this case that we aren't
             | aware of. Typically experts have reasons for what they do
             | and their reasons would seem reasonable to me if I knew
             | what they did.
        
           | dopu wrote:
           | I don't know who she is, but you don't need to be
           | neuroscientist or a statistician to see how laughably bad
           | that correlation claim is.
        
             | syzarian wrote:
             | I don't know neuroscience. I do know that sometimes there
             | is so little known about a given area that one has to grasp
             | at straws so to speak. You look for clues and present the
             | findings. I don't know what one does with the data
             | represented. It appears to me that the data doesn't
             | represent a function. There's a lot of "verticality" in the
             | data. It's obviously not exponential, logarithmic, or
             | parabolic or some other higher degree polynomial. So how
             | does one fit such data? I don't know. Is it dumb to use
             | linear fit? Or is it common practice with such data?
        
       | Jensson wrote:
       | This is a very important part:
       | 
       | > It is important to note that throughout our analyses, the topic
       | of immigration elicited the strongest polarized response. That
       | these effects did not extend to the other political topics is
       | likely the result of the political climate at the time of data
       | collection, which took place at the beginning of 2019, only a few
       | months after D. Trump introduced the Build the Wall, Enforce the
       | Law Act.
       | 
       | So it doesn't seem that there is a difference in general, just
       | that the climate then created a very different environment for
       | the sides. They didn't find such differences on abortion or black
       | lives matter, its just immigration in a very special time.
        
       | moremetadata wrote:
       | > Through targeted online and field recruiting (N = 360), we
       | invited 44 participants (equally split among liberals and
       | conservatives) to participate in a study on political cognition
       | 
       | And thats your problem with science. We dont know how old these
       | people are, we dont know the selection process, ie were they all
       | recruited down the local Masonic Lodge, or at a University, or at
       | a Church.
       | 
       | More data is needed on the recruitment processes in order to
       | eliminate any selection or manipulation bias, otherwise am I
       | watching a scientific magic show?
       | 
       | We dont know if these people are Early Adopters on the Everett
       | Rogers Diffusion of innovations curve.
       | 
       | It might be better to title this study, fMRI used to map Social
       | Conformity as studied by people like Solomon Asch or fMRI used to
       | map Authority to Obedience as studied by people like Stanley
       | Milgram and more recently Phillip Zimbardo, where the
       | idea's/ideology are the authority.
       | 
       | Would that be fair?
        
       | version_five wrote:
       | I'm extremely skeptical of anything that stereotypes like this.
       | Let's see if this holds up, my money's on it turning out to be a
       | kind of phrenology
        
         | ugjka wrote:
         | Pushing paper count is easy (and get some headlines)
        
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