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Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

89 points by xvirk 10y ago

ryall 10y ago
Because empathy requires effort and a certain level of intellect. My personal experience is that less educated people tend to view the world through a filter of their own experiences and don't realise (or choose to ignore) the possibility of a situation vastly different to their own. Highly educated people are exposed to philosophies and opinions that provoke thought and analysis. They are used to engaging in thought experiments and utilising imagination to consider many facets of an issue. I suppose you could say that they are trained to think rather than view something at face value.
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petewailes 10y ago
Pithy answer: because you aren't going to be afraid of something when you understand that it's not something you need to fear. When you have a simple world view, nuance is always going to escape you. An educated person can understand that the world isn't simple, which will lead to a more liberal view, as liberal views tend to be based on the assumption that angry, narrow world view responses aren't a good thing. Someone who sees things in black and white, ignoring the complexities of life, will respond with simple, ignorant answers. Examples: climate change denial, anti-vax, religion... They're the intellectual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting, rather than seeking to actually understand anything. It's worth noting that all these things are driven by fear of things people don't understand. Someone who understands how vaccinations work, why we do them, why they're made the way they are can't be afraid of them, and thus won't be against them. But most people aren't in that camp, which opens the door for people to make bad choices. It's hard getting people to be want to be informed and right, when it means they might have to disagree with their social group.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  However it seems the majority of anti-vaxxers are liberals
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - tempestn 10y ago
    The fact that most highly educated are liberal doesn't imply that most liberals are highly educated. I would guess (and hope) that most anti-vaxers are not highly educated, liberal or not.
    - sandworm101 10y ago
      Perhaps not highly educated in the sciences. Many US schools allow students to graduate without any real exposure to science.
      - tempestn 10y ago
        We're talking about post-graduate degrees though. I would hope that most people with advanced degrees would have the critical thinking skills to understand the net benefits of vaccination, even without formal training in science.
        raverbashing 10y ago
        > . I would hope that most people with advanced degrees would have the critical thinking skills to understand the net benefits of vaccination Yeaaaaah. No. Not really But to be honest a lot of people trained in "hard fields" have some trouble with concepts that are "easier" for the people in the humanities field
        sandworm101 10y ago
        The lawyers? I know them. Most have no understanding of the metric system. Their science education stopped in grade school.
Fej 10y ago
The two parties have been getting more polarized, that much is clear. The problem with the GOP from an educated person's perspective is that many, if not most of its politicians get elected through anti-intellectual rhetoric. Trump is the most extreme example of this. He makes no actual arguments and just attacks his detractors. An educated group taught to embrace science will certainly take issue with leaders who ignore it. Additionally, the GOP is the party of creationists and climate deniers. That is just too extreme of an anti-intellectual slant to tolerate.
- laksjd 10y ago
  I'm sure many intellectuals are driven away from the GOP because of these issues, however the studies mentioned in the article seemed to be about people's actual political beliefs, not just which party they end up voting for.
- gallonofmilk 10y ago
  > GOP is the party of creationists and climate deniers... how is this statement different than e.g. "the democratic party is the party of socialists and communists"? they're both bold assertions on a large group of people that are unlikely to be true for the majority... to be honest it just sounds smug
  - sandworm101 10y ago
    Except that you do not see democrats stumping about the benefits of communism. You do see GOP candidates openly denying climate change and denouncing Darwinism as a left-wing plot. One has decided to become more extreme than the other.
    - vixen99 10y ago
      Climate change? What does that mean? It used to be global warming but the facts were so blatantly unsupportive that the sly shift to 'climate change' was adopted. Now it's a mantra for unthinking people. But it works because heads I win, tails you lose. The climate is always changing. Temperature changes are slight and hedged with ifs and buts. Now if you mean that the CO2 level in the atmosphere has increased from the pre-industrial levels of around 270 parts per million to 400 parts per million today then I'm with you. Recalling that life on earth would be impossible were the level to reduce to less than around 120 ppm, let's get this into perspective. Meanwhile Arctic Greenland is indeed turning green (NASA study). https://youtu.be/Yi8SFOJffFA https://youtu.be/Yi8SFOJffFA while the temperature in that area has remained unchanged over the past 16 years prior to this year's El Nino. Anyway, I'm sure that the greening of the Arctic and of many places elsewhere as evidenced by satellite imagery is a disastrous phenomenon we should discourage. “An ancient forest has thawed from under a melting glacier in Alaska and is now exposed to the world for the first time in more than 1,000 years.". An observation probably invented by some imaginative climate denier? As Judith Curry has said: "Efforts to link dangerous impacts of extreme weather events to human-caused warming are misleading and unsupported by evidence. Climate change is a ‘wicked problem’ and ill-suited to a ‘command and control’ solution. It has been estimated that the U.S. national commitments to the UN to reduce emissions by 28% will prevent three hundredths of a degree centigrade in warming by 2100...".
perilous333 10y ago
There is a curious (albeit incomplete) parallel here to Moldbug's theory of the five castes of the United States.
- internaut 10y ago
  Funny you should mention He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, because in this very thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11829796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11829796 I love watching Mr Bug's thought percolate through the Net. I can only imagine this is what it must have been like for the first proto-Communists as Karl Marx went to town.
  - vlehto 10y ago
    I kind of went to deep end of the pool. The dude points out widely believed lies. The argues that because they we're lies, complete opposite must be true. And because you believe opposite is true, then you ought to take opposite political stance than the lying people. But because the opposite is weak ass conservative party that only defines itself as opposite of the democratic party, you need to go back in time to find genuine alternative. So you go back to monarchists. Which surprisingly fits snuggly with hard core libertarian views. Libertarian monarchism with attitude of "Lets cut the crap, someone is anyhow pulling all the strings, might as well be public knowledge. It's going to be pretty much like nowadays, except you're not going to be lied to." The whole thing is incredibly anglocentric, mostly doesn't take into account geopolitics and gets into weirdly pacifist streak. Which only suits monarchism if you pick the period of 1840 - 1910. (As if war/violence is the only problem of human kind.) It's exactly what U.S. needs if it's going to follow the footsteps of roman republic. You guys are still way too fervent with this democracy thing if you aim for Imperial future.
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nickysielicki 10y ago
This question doesn't get enough attention. I thought this article was pretty shoddy, though. > The growing number of women with advanced degrees is part of it, as well-educated women tend to be especially left-leaning. "Why are the highly educated so liberal?"... "Because highly educated women are liberal, and there are more highly-educated women." Well that explains everything. /s
- tempestn 10y ago
  Certainly if you only read one third of one paragraph of the article it would seem shoddy. You even paraphrased that snippet to delete the part that clearly states it's only a partial explanation: "The growing number of women with advanced degrees is part of it, as well-educated women tend to be especially left-leaning."
  - nickysielicki 10y ago
    I didn't edit the snippet at all. But let's look at the whole paragraph: What explains the consolidation of the highly educated into a liberal bloc? The growing number of women with advanced degrees is part of it, as well-educated women tend to be especially left-leaning. Equally important is the Republican Party’s move to the right since the 1980s — at odds with the social liberalism that has long characterized the well educated — alongside the perception that conservatives are anti-intellectual, hostile to science and at war with the university. He posed the question "What explains the consolidation of the highly educated into a liberal bloc?" Then answered it by saying that it could be because of more highly-educated women, because they tend to be particularly left-leaning. What does that "explain"? The core question is why education tends towards left political views. A related question is why this is seen moreso in women. But suggesting that this tendency is explained, even partially, by the demographics on which the tenancy is seen is tautological... Unless there's some obvious reason I'm missing that women should be more susceptible to this bias?
newacct23 10y ago
51% of college graduates voted for Romney in 2012 while only 48% for Obama Romney actually lost with highschool educated only and he lost significantly with postgraduate studies only getting 42% of the vote with Obama getting 55%. So really the trend is that academics are liberal, not the highly educated. (That 3% gap in college grads likely accounts for a larger percentage of the population than the massive 13% gap among grad degree holders) http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/how-groups-voted-2012/ http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups... edit: another source that adds evidence to my argument Professors in humanities that identify as Republican range from 6 to 11 percent. Social Sciences 7 and 9 percent 2% of English professors are Republican. Meanwhile 18% of social scientists are Marxists. This evidence leads me to believe that Academics self select to be liberal and that people with a conservative mindset do not find academia appealing for whatever reason. The reason I rule it has little to do with intelligence of the groups is the prevalence of Marxism amongst academics. Intelligent people that use evidence to reason about their beliefs wouldn't be Marxist. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-of-liberal-intolerance.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confessio...
- pron 10y ago
  The article defines highly educated as people with advanced degrees. They are not academics. I doubt anyone would classify the general population of all college graduates (i.e. from all colleges) in the US as highly educated.
  - newacct23 10y ago
    >The article defines highly educated as people with advanced degrees. They are not academics Definition from article: >But the most highly educated Americans — those who have attended graduate or professional school — are starting to come together as a political bloc. Doctors make up 1/3 of a percent of the US population (they don't necessarily have Phds) http://www.wisegeek.org/what-percent-of-the-us-population-do-doctors-comprise.htm http://www.wisegeek.org/what-percent-of-the-us-population-do... Doctors chose Romney over Obama 55% to 36%. http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/01/survey-doctors-choose-romney-over-obama/ http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/01/survey-doctors-choose-romn... 1.68% of Americans have a Phd (actually significantly more than I expected and significantly more than I think deserve to be handed out). I really wonder how many of these people do practical work. I can't find statistics to prove my bias so we will have to leave it as is unless someone can find some.
vegancap 10y ago
Probably because the education system, in most western countries is largely subsidised by government. So the professors, and the teachers who are largely on public payroll, are bound to be less critical of government, than, say someone in the private sector. Which in turn will permeate those who they teach. It's in their best interest to then spread ideals which uphold their government funding.
- psychometry 10y ago
  Well that's...a reach. There's more to the American liberal outlook than support for government programs. I'm guessing you didn't read the article; you might want to do that first and attempt a more substantial comment later.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    If there were "more to the American liberal outlook than support for government programs", a thoughtful ("substantial"?) comment would have given us some examples of such, and then related those examples somehow to the proposition under discussion. Your comment, instead, amounts to "RTFA!"
  - vegancap 10y ago
    Yes I did read the whole article, I'm not going to write a rebuttal for each and every point it makes, just to quell your patronising remarks. Telling me to 'make a more substantial comment later' apart from being pretty rude, doesn't actually discredit the point I made about public education being intrinsically skewed in favour of where its funding originates.
sandworm101 10y ago
For perspective, what in the US is called "liberal" in the rest of the world is rather to the right of centre. The two parties are pulling apart from each other but to outsiders they remain very similar both in policy and ideology, at least at the national level. Neither is talking of actual reform, only incremental change.
- lake99 10y ago
  > in the rest of the world is rather to the right of centre I find "rest of the world" hard to justify. The Indian right-wing are Hindu hardliners, but economically not all that different from the "center-left" INC, both of which, are IMO, way more left-wing than the US Democratic party when it comes to economics. Socially, all parties here pander to their regional (as opposed to national) voterbases. The Pakistani right-wing also seems to oppose economic liberalism (i.e. capitalism). Looking beyond this region, each country seems to have its own "left-right" divide, while not sharing much in the ideology of another country's "left-right" divide.
  - ionised 10y ago
    Rest of the western/developed world perhaps.
    - lake99 10y ago
      No, on this very page, we seem to have a couple of Australians and a few Europeans, expressing how these terms mean something else in their countries. I don't know how South Americans use these terms, but I expect them to be closer to the European sense.
blowski 10y ago
And I guess the converse question which has vexed socialists for decades - why do so many of the poor vote for centre-right, business-friendly parties? For example, why did so many working class people vote for Thatcher in UK in the 1980s? Why are they not massively in favour of Jeremy Corbyn right now? I'm not saying it's irrational. But sometimes it's odd to hear people who need the government to subsidise their minimum wage zero-hours income just for basic survival defending the Conservative Party's economic manifesto. I read "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" some years ago, and this question really stuck with me.
- vlehto 10y ago
  I've noticed that typically poor men are not very left leaning compared to women. For a man it's somehow incredibly difficult to vote for some member of "intelligentsia" who is very condescending towards you. If men go left, they usually go radical "taking back what is rightfully ours". If you fall short of that, it's lot better to lure in poor men by promising more jobs. And they have noticed how economic growth seems to correlate with jobs. Who talks about GDP? Is he condescending? Paying less taxes and this dude makes this GDP thing go nicely and then I get better paying job? Sounds good. For women it's more like "oh the government is helping me to take care of the kids". It matters less if the politician is condescending, as you are kind of funneling that to your kids.
- tommeader 10y ago
  I read your comment and had a quick think, and it occurred to me that it's likely to do with nationalism. Most liberal political parties' views on immigration etc. tend to put off the voters you are talking about. Most of the right winged parties tend to emphasise (taking your example) British business and there's a lot of dey tuk urrr jerrbbs syndrome that comes from these types.
  - blowski 10y ago
    Why do they believe it? Obviously, in any one election you can say it's the headlines of the day combined with the personalities of the leaders. So are working class people repeatedly irrational in voting for right-wing parties? Interestingly, UKIP are combining left-wing economics with right-wing social policies, and have made a lot of ground with the working class. Arguably, this is Trump's constituency in the US as well.
drexel 10y ago
Here's an alternative perspective from the nytimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-of-liberal-intolerance.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confessio...
zxcvcxz 10y ago
Just like to point out the members of the T9 lean libertarian. https://web.archive.org/web/20150226234712/http://www.triplenine.org/poll/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150226234712/http://www.triple... T9 (Triple 9) is a high IQ society similar to Mensa, but which only accepts members whose IQ is in the .999 percentile. It's a non-scientific poll, but in my experience while lots of my college friends were liberal, lots of my professors and the smartest people I know lean libertarian.
- psychometry 10y ago
  IQ societies aren't representative of the IQ range they require. I have a feeling people who feel the need to join one of those groups are more socially disaffected and have lower empathy than the their non-member IQ peers, which certainly correlates with a libertarian outlook. And I haven't found your comment about libertarianism being rampant among professors to be true at all. Where did you go to school? That would be very much outside the norm.
  - zxcvcxz 10y ago
    >IQ societies aren't representative of the IQ range they require. And having an advanced degree doesn't mean you have a high IQ or are even particularly smart. >I have a feeling people who feel the need to join one of those groups are more socially disaffected and have lower empathy than the their non-member IQ peers Have a source? Anyway a lot of people are invited to join these groups when they're young, and I'd argue liberals are more likely to seek out the approval of others. >And I haven't found your comment about libertarianism being rampant among professors to be true at all. Where did you go to school? That would be very much outside the norm. I went to a mildly prestigious university. I have a Masters in CS and a Bachelors in Mathematics. I think it's likely that my teachers were more libertarian because I took very few liberal-arts classes, where I noticed the more liberal professors were. Usually the ones that lean libertarian are old white guys. My Asian professors didn't seem into politics at all and the few female professors I had also didn't seem politically oriented. I had one chemistry professor though who would go on and on about how much he hated the government and regulations and how good things were back when he could obtain [illegal chemical] easily. Honestly the only time politics seem to come up is when the professor has some issue with some government regulation. I can see how it might seem like many professors are liberal though, they believe in global warming, vaccines, human rights, but it turns out that many libertarians believe in all that stuff too.
arjun1296 10y ago
I believe myself to be a liberal. However, I still believe that the question asked "Why are the highly educated so liberal?" in itself is a loaded question.
back_beyond 10y ago
The highly educated can afford to be liberal. This demographic tends to be wealthier. Greater wealth means less required assistance and, therefore, greater opportunity to advocate on the behalf of others. Such is my experience.
- back_beyond 10y ago
  However, that isn't to say it's the sole factor. Not by a long ways.
whatok 10y ago
Superiority complex leading to a savior complex.
pete_b 10y ago
Pithy answer 2: because they are economically privileged. The headline is a broad generalisation, and as another broad generalisation poorer people are more religious and more conservative because they have harder lives, bleaker temporal outlooks and hope for a better life 'beyond'.
- MagnumOpus 10y ago
  I think your "pithy answer" won't stand up to actuall polling. Highly educated low-wealth/low-income people tend to be socially liberal and probably skew socially leftist (think postdocs, school teachers, humanities PhDs). High-wealth low-education people probably skew to the right (self-employed craftsmen, sports people, "old money" heirs).
known 10y ago
1. They're less susceptible to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases 2. They like to explore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_interdependence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_interdependence
realusername 10y ago
Unpopular opinion on HN, but people are mostly liberals when the current system works for them and it's even more visible as observe the political spectrum outside the US. It's easier to say "the market solves everything" when it works for you. When it does not work for them, they turn either to the right or the left side. As the current system is mostly falling apart for the middle class, you then have a raising far-left and far-right as a consequence. That's also why the vast majority of rich people are liberals.
- tehwalrus 10y ago
  What do you think Liberal means? In the UK, as well as in the USA, it generally doesn't mean "the market solves everything" (You might be thinking of Libertarianism[1]). The article explicitly references redistributive economic views, quite the reverse of the market-centric view you attach to the label. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism
  - Raticide 10y ago
    In Aus the right wing party is the Liberal party.
    - gonzo41 10y ago
      Mapping Australian politics to the USA is crazy. All sides end up being really left in comparison. Even sanders views on guns are right wing in Australia.
  - eivarv 10y ago
    Generally, when people say "liberal" in Europe they mean "economically liberal", while people mean "socially liberal" in the US.
    - ionised 10y ago
      I've always used 'liberal' in the socially liberal sense (I'm from the UK). Here we tend to use 'neo-liberal' to describe the laissez-faire attitude towards economics.
fab13n 10y ago
I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening competitive mindset. So sure, one way is to protect myself and those I love behind a gated community. But that's pretty much voluntarily throwing myself to jail, I'd rather make it less necessary for others to be aggressive against my kin. I believe it requires more (and smarter) redistribution. Another reason why it's my selfish interest, as a professional expert, to continuously reshuffle wealth, is that my social value resides in what I know and in my ability to learn, not in my family's accumulated wealth. Stabilising accumulated wealth, especially across generations, would make it harder to use my skills in order to climb higher on the social ladder. Is my education a factor in this view? Probably. * It helps me grasping some sociological insights which ought to be obvious. For instance, while hearing political speeches about wealth (re)distribution, I stay aware that the property laws are a social construct that must be agreed upon and can be altered at will by society, not a natural (let alone a God-given) law. * It exposed me to a lot of competition, in school then at work, and although I've been a winner on average, I aspire to more fulfilling activities than turning others into losers. I have no revenge to take on others people, I don't enjoy crushing them. * Having gone from penniless undergrad to minimum-wage PhD student to well-paid junior then senior specialist, I've experienced a variety of wealth levels. As a result I'm convinced that once basic needs are addressed, monetary incentives don't work the way Adam Smith' sycophants pretend they do. Money's meaningful as a way to keep score, and to compare myself among my social peers; but taxes don't affect that much, as long as they don't reverse relative wealth between potential peers.
- Kurtz79 10y ago
  "I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening competitive mindset." That's mostly my rationale for being in favor of (moderate) wealth redistribution, which on surface would be against my interests, as someone by no means wealthy but with an above-median income. What's the point of having money if you cannot walk safely among people ?
vowelless 10y ago
This has always confused me. There are some rich texts based on beautiful rigor on the side of the conservatives like freidman and Hayek. Goldwater also approaches things in a very principled manner. Arthur brooks' latest book is similar. On the other than, I have not come across any liberal text, yet, that makes a good convincing case for liberalism. I would love to get some recommendations. I'm interested in principled arguments for liberalism. If there are so many highly educated people who are liberal, I would assume there are certain foundational texts that argue their position. Basically, I'm looking for "freedom to choose" of the left.
- sandworm101 10y ago
  I think the point is that there are no defined left-wing foundational texts, that it arises with education across disciplines. Liberalism is a product of a variety of educations, not the creation of any one person or group. Read scientific studies on animal migration patterns. Then hit basic astronomy. Then particle physics. Then every episode of the Simpsons.
- todd8 10y ago
  A classic text on the philosophical underpinnings of (US) liberalism with regard to economic redistribution policies is A Theory of Justice by John Rawls, a renowned professor of philosophy at Harvard. After reading Rawls, I'd suggest maybe reading Robert Nozick's libertarian leaning Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick was another distinguished philosopher from Harvard writing about the same time as Rawls. Nozick comes to a completely different conclusion than Rawls. Both books are good and completely accessible to an ordinary reader (i.e. philosophy degree not required). However, they are serious and not as entertaining as the Friedmans' Free to Choose. While the two philosophy books address the question of what should a fair society look like from a philosophical perspective, I feel they don't address the aspects of human nature that have proven troublesome in socialist economies as well as Free to Choose. Finally another classic, The Fatal Conceit by F. A. Hayek considers the practicality of socialism from an economic position in a more focused way. Like the previously mentioned books, it is an easy read. These books may not reflect cutting edge thought, having been written in the 70's and 80's, but they were a useful starting point for me when I started to think about these issues more deeply and they are considered seminal works that in my opinion shouldn't be skipped while studying the questions of political and economic theory. A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell further reflects on this question and makes some conclusions about why smart people end up disagreeing in such fundamental ways. I find Sowell's thinking and writing to be clear and well expressed. Finally, an interesting book addresses the puzzling and related question of why does the academic community so easily accommodate views so antithetical to a scientific world view. I believe that this at the heart of the questions raised by the original NYT piece. The book is Higher Superstition by Gross and Levitt. While interesting this book is erudite and seems directed to narrower audience than those mentioned above, expecting a well-read reader. [1] Rawls, A theory of justice. http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Justice-John-Rawls/dp/0674000781/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464954851&sr=1-1&keywords=a+theory+of+justice http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Justice-John-Rawls/dp/067400078... [2] Nozick, Anarchy, state and utopia. http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/0465051006/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464954914&sr=1-1&keywords=anarchy+state+and+utopia+robert+nozick http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/... [3] Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to choose: a personal statement. http://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-Statement-Milton-Friedman/dp/0156334607/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464954944&sr=1-1&keywords=free+to+choose+milton+friedman http://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-Statement-Milton-Friedman/... [4] Hayek and Bartley, The fatal conceit: the errors of socialism. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_9?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=fatal+conceit&sprefix=fatal+con%2Cstripbooks%2C171 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_9?url=search-alias%... [5] Gross and Levitt, Higher superstition: the academic left and its quarrels with science. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+academic+lefts+attack+on+science&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Athe+academic+lefts+attack+on+science http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dst...
syats 10y ago
The article isn't very well written, but it does raise an interesting question. However, this question requires a clear definition of what is meant by liberal, which is a non trivial matter: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-origin-of-liberalism/283780/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-orig... My to cents: Let's start by defining "liberal" as those who hold the belief that the current Trend in social, economic or political developments will result in them having a better life. The opposite of that is the quintessential "conservative" adagio that "things are getting worse and worse". What exactly constitutes that trend is up for debate, but I think a precise definition isn't essential for this argument. Since the percentage of the population that is highly educated is increasing (for whatever definition of "highly"), we can infer that access to education isn't only hereditary. That is, there are some of us who are now highly educated but who's parents were not (yes, it still is mostly hereditary, and almost for sure we will inherit that to our children). This, in turn, results in better standards of living for us than for our parents. So, locally, the trend, seems for us to be moving in the right direction. We vote for continuing this trend of more education for more people, of more access to healthcare for more people, and so on, because if it weren't for that trend we'd be struggling like our parents did. Compound to that the rich-get-richer phenomena, and then our children will probably keep benefiting from this, so they will most likely also be "liberal". Only when a social revolution removes our now-hereditary privileges will we turn into "conservatives".
- burfog 10y ago
  "some of us who are now highly educated but who's parents were not [...] results in better standards of living for us than for our parents. So, locally, the trend, seems for us to be moving in the right direction." Say what? In the 1950s, you graduated from high school (or even dropped out) and then went to work in the steel mill or car factory. (there were no robots and we didn't trade with China) You could support a family on that one income: house, car, wife, kids, etc. Lately, you get your BA and then work 3 different part-time jobs. If you get the MA, and find somebody else who does, then the two of you can both work jobs and get a place of your own. Your student loans will be huge. Forget about kids.
13years 10y ago
Higher education both attracts and produces mindsets which solve problems through planning, engineering and designing. There is a natural tendency to use your methodology of problem solving on all problems. So we tend to produce a greater collection of social engineering and central economic planning advocates. We want to design a greater society. We want to design a greater economy. Even when you look at highly educated vs slightly more highly educated in the same field you see the same shift in mindset. The divergence between Fellow, Architect, Engineer is that at each higher level there is a greater degree if centralization mindset of design. There is a potential fallacy that should be evident that you can not necessarily and simply equate more education with always producing the correct perspectives and therefore liberal view points are the correct positions. As in the above, we in engineering fields know the value higher levels of discipline, yet we also are fully aware of the problems resulting from high level engineers and architects who design their perfect systems which don't work in the real world. Higher education produces problem solving disciplines that are very useful and powerful, yet these same disciplines also are subject to error as well as they typically can't quantify the numerous variables in large systems thinking For more around this topic, this was a great talk working with systems greater than our human capacity to understand them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGaFcI2UNrI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGaFcI2UNrI
- internaut 10y ago
  > There is a potential fallacy that should be evident that you can not necessarily and simply equate more education with always producing the correct perspectives and therefore liberal view points are the correct positions. This. If there existed a world in which only liberals were right all the time conservatism would have been selected out of the gene pool by now. That's not a metaphor. Political tribes have been battling for probably tens of thousands of years. There is too much world for one true path.
  - Joof 10y ago
    Honestly, there is too much world for 2 true paths. A multiparty system sounds nice from here.
Criticism123 10y ago
>nytimes.com You might as well post from Pravda.
wrgrossman 10y ago
I worked at a private University (as a conservative leaning independent) for 7 years. I found the University to be a hostile work environment for conservatives. In my case as well as others, that I met while there, it was enough to dissuade us from pursuing an advanced degree. I worked with many wonderful academics, they are people that I still count among the smartest and kindest people that I have ever met. At the same time, they could be absolutely vicious towards conservative or religious ideals or individuals. There was regular conflict over the Catholic University's traditional masses and other gatherings. They would wrap themselves in a cloak of "Academic Freedom" as they denounced anything that they viewed as religious infringing on their positions. It wasn't just religious issues that brought out the worst of them. I still remember how on the first anniversary of 9/11 a number of professors refused to participate in the memorial ceremony because the University's ROTC would be the color guard. They deemed their presence to be sending the wrong message and a validation of the war in Afghanistan. All in all, it left a bad taste in my mouth and as time grew on it was no longer a place that I wished to be. If it wasn't for an online option at a different school, then I never would have pursued my masters degree.
- tim333 10y ago
  Re the 9/11 thing, if you are someone who dislikes the killing of innocent people it seems reasonable to be horrified by the original 9/11 killings of three thousand odd people and also horrified by Bush/Cheney using that as a justification to do stuff leading to the deaths of many times as many innocent people. It seems quite reasonable to avoid condoning that.
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - wrgrossman 10y ago
    I won't disagree that that feeling is reasonable or justified. I've worked at a number of places where someone who felt that way would have been supported if they chose not to participate. That being said, Academia is the only place where I have worked that it was considered okay to demand that others not be allowed to participate. Especially, demanding that students who may or may not feel the same way be barred from attending.
patrickg_zill 10y ago
It never seems to occur to anyone that maybe, just maybe ... there is an anti-conservative selection pressure or bias? Look at the "nomenklatura" in USSR times - they were all good Party members, and they too, had the higher university degrees. If you weren't a Party member or in other ways, indicated disloyalty to the prevailing political worldview ... you didn't get admitted to the choice spots. How many "Western-style free market" (however defined) professors with tenure, were there in Moscow, in 1987? Must mean that as an economic perspective it was wholly discredited, right?
- gozur88 10y ago
  This. It boils down to tenure. An open conservative is not going to get tenure outside the hard sciences, so there's not much reason to get a PhD.
panglott 10y ago
These kinds of threads tend to be self-congratulatory, and obviously the answer is "self-selection". But I'll bite. Most of the conservative professors I have known in the Humanities have been in (military) history and classics, where they are likely drawn to classical or martial virtues. Economics professors are generally some variety of libertarian. Many Humanities professors are devout Christians. But I've never known a professor to be an intolerant, hard-core social conservative. And perhaps that's because the only personality trait that has a correlation with intelligence is "openness to experience". A certain kind of liberality is necessary in academia.
SixSigma 10y ago
The most question begging headline you will see this week.
ljw1001 10y ago
Because they're highly educated.
ilaksh 10y ago
The short answer is 'watch Game of Thrones'. Liberal means different things in different countries. Generally speaking people's beliefs follow their group association rather than the other way. In many US groups this means adopting 'liberal' ideas. There is also the history of conflict between religious traditions that are Judeo-Christian-Islamic and more pagan or Satanic belief systems.
r2dnb 10y ago
I think I'll be heavily down-voted for posting that on HN but in my opinion the reason most college graduates are liberal is that - whether we want to admit or not - colleges teach liberalism. I'm not saying that Big Brother is behind this, I think it "just happened" for many reasons. As a consequence while most liberals think that they have the answer for life, the universe and everything and that they are objective, independent and "scientific" thinkers, they are more often than not just regurgitating packaged values that have been impressed on them. You'll always see that 80% of the people are followers. The system teaches liberalism, so 80% of the people going through the system will be liberal just by following - often unconsciously. 10% of the remaining will choose to be liberal out of true critical thinking while the 10 remaining percents won't be. Those who haven't been through the system (drop outs, high school graduates, etc.) are more likely to have more diverse opinions. Which are then dismissed by flagging them as "opinions mostly held by uneducated people". But what I've found is that education systems barely teach anything. For all the knowledge we've been presented, we just "really know" a ridiculous tiny fraction of it. This is why nowadays, you don't even need to be "smart" in the academical sense of the term to be in the top 5%, you just need to be a critical thinker in your field and think out of the box. Because it is indeed an extremely hard thing to do once you've been through college, as you've been nurturing the illusion that you learned most of the things you actually memorized. Many packaged values and referentials have thereby been patterned on your mind. For all these reasons, it is in my opinion unlikely that most people won't feel liberal after going through college.
peterashford 10y ago
I'd question the other side: why are conservatives so stupid? They aren't all, of course, but there's a strong correlation between low IQ and holding a conservative world view.
norea-armozel 10y ago
I would say that I'm liberal, but not what most people consider liberal by some standards since my politics are closer to mutualism crossed with geolibertarianism. So, I get the occasional "huh" from people when explaining what govt policies I support like LVT, promotion of unions and/or worker owned businesses, and the like.

89 points by xvirk 10y ago

ryall 10y ago

Because empathy requires effort and a certain level of intellect. My personal experience is that less educated people tend to view the world through a filter of their own experiences and don't realise (or choose to ignore) the possibility of a situation vastly different to their own. Highly educated people are exposed to philosophies and opinions that provoke thought and analysis. They are used to engaging in thought experiments and utilising imagination to consider many facets of an issue. I suppose you could say that they are trained to think rather than view something at face value.

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petewailes 10y ago

Pithy answer: because you aren't going to be afraid of something when you understand that it's not something you need to fear. When you have a simple world view, nuance is always going to escape you. An educated person can understand that the world isn't simple, which will lead to a more liberal view, as liberal views tend to be based on the assumption that angry, narrow world view responses aren't a good thing. Someone who sees things in black and white, ignoring the complexities of life, will respond with simple, ignorant answers. Examples: climate change denial, anti-vax, religion... They're the intellectual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting, rather than seeking to actually understand anything. It's worth noting that all these things are driven by fear of things people don't understand. Someone who understands how vaccinations work, why we do them, why they're made the way they are can't be afraid of them, and thus won't be against them. But most people aren't in that camp, which opens the door for people to make bad choices. It's hard getting people to be want to be informed and right, when it means they might have to disagree with their social group.

raverbashing 10y ago
However it seems the majority of anti-vaxxers are liberals
- deleted 10y ago
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- tempestn 10y ago
  The fact that most highly educated are liberal doesn't imply that most liberals are highly educated. I would guess (and hope) that most anti-vaxers are not highly educated, liberal or not.
  - sandworm101 10y ago
    Perhaps not highly educated in the sciences. Many US schools allow students to graduate without any real exposure to science.
    - tempestn 10y ago
      We're talking about post-graduate degrees though. I would hope that most people with advanced degrees would have the critical thinking skills to understand the net benefits of vaccination, even without formal training in science.
      - raverbashing 10y ago
        > . I would hope that most people with advanced degrees would have the critical thinking skills to understand the net benefits of vaccination Yeaaaaah. No. Not really But to be honest a lot of people trained in "hard fields" have some trouble with concepts that are "easier" for the people in the humanities field
      - sandworm101 10y ago
        The lawyers? I know them. Most have no understanding of the metric system. Their science education stopped in grade school.

Fej 10y ago

The two parties have been getting more polarized, that much is clear. The problem with the GOP from an educated person's perspective is that many, if not most of its politicians get elected through anti-intellectual rhetoric. Trump is the most extreme example of this. He makes no actual arguments and just attacks his detractors. An educated group taught to embrace science will certainly take issue with leaders who ignore it. Additionally, the GOP is the party of creationists and climate deniers. That is just too extreme of an anti-intellectual slant to tolerate.

laksjd 10y ago
I'm sure many intellectuals are driven away from the GOP because of these issues, however the studies mentioned in the article seemed to be about people's actual political beliefs, not just which party they end up voting for.
gallonofmilk 10y ago
> GOP is the party of creationists and climate deniers... how is this statement different than e.g. "the democratic party is the party of socialists and communists"? they're both bold assertions on a large group of people that are unlikely to be true for the majority... to be honest it just sounds smug
- sandworm101 10y ago
  Except that you do not see democrats stumping about the benefits of communism. You do see GOP candidates openly denying climate change and denouncing Darwinism as a left-wing plot. One has decided to become more extreme than the other.
  - vixen99 10y ago
    Climate change? What does that mean? It used to be global warming but the facts were so blatantly unsupportive that the sly shift to 'climate change' was adopted. Now it's a mantra for unthinking people. But it works because heads I win, tails you lose. The climate is always changing. Temperature changes are slight and hedged with ifs and buts. Now if you mean that the CO2 level in the atmosphere has increased from the pre-industrial levels of around 270 parts per million to 400 parts per million today then I'm with you. Recalling that life on earth would be impossible were the level to reduce to less than around 120 ppm, let's get this into perspective. Meanwhile Arctic Greenland is indeed turning green (NASA study). https://youtu.be/Yi8SFOJffFA https://youtu.be/Yi8SFOJffFA while the temperature in that area has remained unchanged over the past 16 years prior to this year's El Nino. Anyway, I'm sure that the greening of the Arctic and of many places elsewhere as evidenced by satellite imagery is a disastrous phenomenon we should discourage. “An ancient forest has thawed from under a melting glacier in Alaska and is now exposed to the world for the first time in more than 1,000 years.". An observation probably invented by some imaginative climate denier? As Judith Curry has said: "Efforts to link dangerous impacts of extreme weather events to human-caused warming are misleading and unsupported by evidence. Climate change is a ‘wicked problem’ and ill-suited to a ‘command and control’ solution. It has been estimated that the U.S. national commitments to the UN to reduce emissions by 28% will prevent three hundredths of a degree centigrade in warming by 2100...".

perilous333 10y ago

There is a curious (albeit incomplete) parallel here to Moldbug's theory of the five castes of the United States.

internaut 10y ago
Funny you should mention He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, because in this very thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11829796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11829796 I love watching Mr Bug's thought percolate through the Net. I can only imagine this is what it must have been like for the first proto-Communists as Karl Marx went to town.
- vlehto 10y ago
  I kind of went to deep end of the pool. The dude points out widely believed lies. The argues that because they we're lies, complete opposite must be true. And because you believe opposite is true, then you ought to take opposite political stance than the lying people. But because the opposite is weak ass conservative party that only defines itself as opposite of the democratic party, you need to go back in time to find genuine alternative. So you go back to monarchists. Which surprisingly fits snuggly with hard core libertarian views. Libertarian monarchism with attitude of "Lets cut the crap, someone is anyhow pulling all the strings, might as well be public knowledge. It's going to be pretty much like nowadays, except you're not going to be lied to." The whole thing is incredibly anglocentric, mostly doesn't take into account geopolitics and gets into weirdly pacifist streak. Which only suits monarchism if you pick the period of 1840 - 1910. (As if war/violence is the only problem of human kind.) It's exactly what U.S. needs if it's going to follow the footsteps of roman republic. You guys are still way too fervent with this democracy thing if you aim for Imperial future.

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nickysielicki 10y ago

This question doesn't get enough attention. I thought this article was pretty shoddy, though. > The growing number of women with advanced degrees is part of it, as well-educated women tend to be especially left-leaning. "Why are the highly educated so liberal?"... "Because highly educated women are liberal, and there are more highly-educated women." Well that explains everything. /s

tempestn 10y ago
Certainly if you only read one third of one paragraph of the article it would seem shoddy. You even paraphrased that snippet to delete the part that clearly states it's only a partial explanation: "The growing number of women with advanced degrees is part of it, as well-educated women tend to be especially left-leaning."
- nickysielicki 10y ago
  I didn't edit the snippet at all. But let's look at the whole paragraph: What explains the consolidation of the highly educated into a liberal bloc? The growing number of women with advanced degrees is part of it, as well-educated women tend to be especially left-leaning. Equally important is the Republican Party’s move to the right since the 1980s — at odds with the social liberalism that has long characterized the well educated — alongside the perception that conservatives are anti-intellectual, hostile to science and at war with the university. He posed the question "What explains the consolidation of the highly educated into a liberal bloc?" Then answered it by saying that it could be because of more highly-educated women, because they tend to be particularly left-leaning. What does that "explain"? The core question is why education tends towards left political views. A related question is why this is seen moreso in women. But suggesting that this tendency is explained, even partially, by the demographics on which the tenancy is seen is tautological... Unless there's some obvious reason I'm missing that women should be more susceptible to this bias?

newacct23 10y ago

51% of college graduates voted for Romney in 2012 while only 48% for Obama Romney actually lost with highschool educated only and he lost significantly with postgraduate studies only getting 42% of the vote with Obama getting 55%. So really the trend is that academics are liberal, not the highly educated. (That 3% gap in college grads likely accounts for a larger percentage of the population than the massive 13% gap among grad degree holders) http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/how-groups-voted-2012/ http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups... edit: another source that adds evidence to my argument Professors in humanities that identify as Republican range from 6 to 11 percent. Social Sciences 7 and 9 percent 2% of English professors are Republican. Meanwhile 18% of social scientists are Marxists. This evidence leads me to believe that Academics self select to be liberal and that people with a conservative mindset do not find academia appealing for whatever reason. The reason I rule it has little to do with intelligence of the groups is the prevalence of Marxism amongst academics. Intelligent people that use evidence to reason about their beliefs wouldn't be Marxist. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-of-liberal-intolerance.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confessio...

pron 10y ago
The article defines highly educated as people with advanced degrees. They are not academics. I doubt anyone would classify the general population of all college graduates (i.e. from all colleges) in the US as highly educated.
- newacct23 10y ago
  >The article defines highly educated as people with advanced degrees. They are not academics Definition from article: >But the most highly educated Americans — those who have attended graduate or professional school — are starting to come together as a political bloc. Doctors make up 1/3 of a percent of the US population (they don't necessarily have Phds) http://www.wisegeek.org/what-percent-of-the-us-population-do-doctors-comprise.htm http://www.wisegeek.org/what-percent-of-the-us-population-do... Doctors chose Romney over Obama 55% to 36%. http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/01/survey-doctors-choose-romney-over-obama/ http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/01/survey-doctors-choose-romn... 1.68% of Americans have a Phd (actually significantly more than I expected and significantly more than I think deserve to be handed out). I really wonder how many of these people do practical work. I can't find statistics to prove my bias so we will have to leave it as is unless someone can find some.

vegancap 10y ago

Probably because the education system, in most western countries is largely subsidised by government. So the professors, and the teachers who are largely on public payroll, are bound to be less critical of government, than, say someone in the private sector. Which in turn will permeate those who they teach. It's in their best interest to then spread ideals which uphold their government funding.

psychometry 10y ago
Well that's...a reach. There's more to the American liberal outlook than support for government programs. I'm guessing you didn't read the article; you might want to do that first and attempt a more substantial comment later.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  If there were "more to the American liberal outlook than support for government programs", a thoughtful ("substantial"?) comment would have given us some examples of such, and then related those examples somehow to the proposition under discussion. Your comment, instead, amounts to "RTFA!"
- vegancap 10y ago
  Yes I did read the whole article, I'm not going to write a rebuttal for each and every point it makes, just to quell your patronising remarks. Telling me to 'make a more substantial comment later' apart from being pretty rude, doesn't actually discredit the point I made about public education being intrinsically skewed in favour of where its funding originates.

sandworm101 10y ago

For perspective, what in the US is called "liberal" in the rest of the world is rather to the right of centre. The two parties are pulling apart from each other but to outsiders they remain very similar both in policy and ideology, at least at the national level. Neither is talking of actual reform, only incremental change.

lake99 10y ago
> in the rest of the world is rather to the right of centre I find "rest of the world" hard to justify. The Indian right-wing are Hindu hardliners, but economically not all that different from the "center-left" INC, both of which, are IMO, way more left-wing than the US Democratic party when it comes to economics. Socially, all parties here pander to their regional (as opposed to national) voterbases. The Pakistani right-wing also seems to oppose economic liberalism (i.e. capitalism). Looking beyond this region, each country seems to have its own "left-right" divide, while not sharing much in the ideology of another country's "left-right" divide.
- ionised 10y ago
  Rest of the western/developed world perhaps.
  - lake99 10y ago
    No, on this very page, we seem to have a couple of Australians and a few Europeans, expressing how these terms mean something else in their countries. I don't know how South Americans use these terms, but I expect them to be closer to the European sense.

blowski 10y ago

And I guess the converse question which has vexed socialists for decades - why do so many of the poor vote for centre-right, business-friendly parties? For example, why did so many working class people vote for Thatcher in UK in the 1980s? Why are they not massively in favour of Jeremy Corbyn right now? I'm not saying it's irrational. But sometimes it's odd to hear people who need the government to subsidise their minimum wage zero-hours income just for basic survival defending the Conservative Party's economic manifesto. I read "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" some years ago, and this question really stuck with me.

vlehto 10y ago
I've noticed that typically poor men are not very left leaning compared to women. For a man it's somehow incredibly difficult to vote for some member of "intelligentsia" who is very condescending towards you. If men go left, they usually go radical "taking back what is rightfully ours". If you fall short of that, it's lot better to lure in poor men by promising more jobs. And they have noticed how economic growth seems to correlate with jobs. Who talks about GDP? Is he condescending? Paying less taxes and this dude makes this GDP thing go nicely and then I get better paying job? Sounds good. For women it's more like "oh the government is helping me to take care of the kids". It matters less if the politician is condescending, as you are kind of funneling that to your kids.
tommeader 10y ago
I read your comment and had a quick think, and it occurred to me that it's likely to do with nationalism. Most liberal political parties' views on immigration etc. tend to put off the voters you are talking about. Most of the right winged parties tend to emphasise (taking your example) British business and there's a lot of dey tuk urrr jerrbbs syndrome that comes from these types.
- blowski 10y ago
  Why do they believe it? Obviously, in any one election you can say it's the headlines of the day combined with the personalities of the leaders. So are working class people repeatedly irrational in voting for right-wing parties? Interestingly, UKIP are combining left-wing economics with right-wing social policies, and have made a lot of ground with the working class. Arguably, this is Trump's constituency in the US as well.

drexel 10y ago

Here's an alternative perspective from the nytimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-of-liberal-intolerance.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confessio...

zxcvcxz 10y ago

Just like to point out the members of the T9 lean libertarian. https://web.archive.org/web/20150226234712/http://www.triplenine.org/poll/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150226234712/http://www.triple... T9 (Triple 9) is a high IQ society similar to Mensa, but which only accepts members whose IQ is in the .999 percentile. It's a non-scientific poll, but in my experience while lots of my college friends were liberal, lots of my professors and the smartest people I know lean libertarian.

psychometry 10y ago
IQ societies aren't representative of the IQ range they require. I have a feeling people who feel the need to join one of those groups are more socially disaffected and have lower empathy than the their non-member IQ peers, which certainly correlates with a libertarian outlook. And I haven't found your comment about libertarianism being rampant among professors to be true at all. Where did you go to school? That would be very much outside the norm.
- zxcvcxz 10y ago
  >IQ societies aren't representative of the IQ range they require. And having an advanced degree doesn't mean you have a high IQ or are even particularly smart. >I have a feeling people who feel the need to join one of those groups are more socially disaffected and have lower empathy than the their non-member IQ peers Have a source? Anyway a lot of people are invited to join these groups when they're young, and I'd argue liberals are more likely to seek out the approval of others. >And I haven't found your comment about libertarianism being rampant among professors to be true at all. Where did you go to school? That would be very much outside the norm. I went to a mildly prestigious university. I have a Masters in CS and a Bachelors in Mathematics. I think it's likely that my teachers were more libertarian because I took very few liberal-arts classes, where I noticed the more liberal professors were. Usually the ones that lean libertarian are old white guys. My Asian professors didn't seem into politics at all and the few female professors I had also didn't seem politically oriented. I had one chemistry professor though who would go on and on about how much he hated the government and regulations and how good things were back when he could obtain [illegal chemical] easily. Honestly the only time politics seem to come up is when the professor has some issue with some government regulation. I can see how it might seem like many professors are liberal though, they believe in global warming, vaccines, human rights, but it turns out that many libertarians believe in all that stuff too.

arjun1296 10y ago

I believe myself to be a liberal. However, I still believe that the question asked "Why are the highly educated so liberal?" in itself is a loaded question.

back_beyond 10y ago

The highly educated can afford to be liberal. This demographic tends to be wealthier. Greater wealth means less required assistance and, therefore, greater opportunity to advocate on the behalf of others. Such is my experience.

back_beyond 10y ago
However, that isn't to say it's the sole factor. Not by a long ways.

whatok 10y ago

Superiority complex leading to a savior complex.

pete_b 10y ago

Pithy answer 2: because they are economically privileged. The headline is a broad generalisation, and as another broad generalisation poorer people are more religious and more conservative because they have harder lives, bleaker temporal outlooks and hope for a better life 'beyond'.

MagnumOpus 10y ago
I think your "pithy answer" won't stand up to actuall polling. Highly educated low-wealth/low-income people tend to be socially liberal and probably skew socially leftist (think postdocs, school teachers, humanities PhDs). High-wealth low-education people probably skew to the right (self-employed craftsmen, sports people, "old money" heirs).

known 10y ago

1. They're less susceptible to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases 2. They like to explore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_interdependence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_interdependence

realusername 10y ago

Unpopular opinion on HN, but people are mostly liberals when the current system works for them and it's even more visible as observe the political spectrum outside the US. It's easier to say "the market solves everything" when it works for you. When it does not work for them, they turn either to the right or the left side. As the current system is mostly falling apart for the middle class, you then have a raising far-left and far-right as a consequence. That's also why the vast majority of rich people are liberals.

tehwalrus 10y ago
What do you think Liberal means? In the UK, as well as in the USA, it generally doesn't mean "the market solves everything" (You might be thinking of Libertarianism[1]). The article explicitly references redistributive economic views, quite the reverse of the market-centric view you attach to the label. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism
- Raticide 10y ago
  In Aus the right wing party is the Liberal party.
  - gonzo41 10y ago
    Mapping Australian politics to the USA is crazy. All sides end up being really left in comparison. Even sanders views on guns are right wing in Australia.
- eivarv 10y ago
  Generally, when people say "liberal" in Europe they mean "economically liberal", while people mean "socially liberal" in the US.
  - ionised 10y ago
    I've always used 'liberal' in the socially liberal sense (I'm from the UK). Here we tend to use 'neo-liberal' to describe the laissez-faire attitude towards economics.

fab13n 10y ago

I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening competitive mindset. So sure, one way is to protect myself and those I love behind a gated community. But that's pretty much voluntarily throwing myself to jail, I'd rather make it less necessary for others to be aggressive against my kin. I believe it requires more (and smarter) redistribution. Another reason why it's my selfish interest, as a professional expert, to continuously reshuffle wealth, is that my social value resides in what I know and in my ability to learn, not in my family's accumulated wealth. Stabilising accumulated wealth, especially across generations, would make it harder to use my skills in order to climb higher on the social ladder. Is my education a factor in this view? Probably. * It helps me grasping some sociological insights which ought to be obvious. For instance, while hearing political speeches about wealth (re)distribution, I stay aware that the property laws are a social construct that must be agreed upon and can be altered at will by society, not a natural (let alone a God-given) law. * It exposed me to a lot of competition, in school then at work, and although I've been a winner on average, I aspire to more fulfilling activities than turning others into losers. I have no revenge to take on others people, I don't enjoy crushing them. * Having gone from penniless undergrad to minimum-wage PhD student to well-paid junior then senior specialist, I've experienced a variety of wealth levels. As a result I'm convinced that once basic needs are addressed, monetary incentives don't work the way Adam Smith' sycophants pretend they do. Money's meaningful as a way to keep score, and to compare myself among my social peers; but taxes don't affect that much, as long as they don't reverse relative wealth between potential peers.

Kurtz79 10y ago
"I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening competitive mindset." That's mostly my rationale for being in favor of (moderate) wealth redistribution, which on surface would be against my interests, as someone by no means wealthy but with an above-median income. What's the point of having money if you cannot walk safely among people ?

vowelless 10y ago

This has always confused me. There are some rich texts based on beautiful rigor on the side of the conservatives like freidman and Hayek. Goldwater also approaches things in a very principled manner. Arthur brooks' latest book is similar. On the other than, I have not come across any liberal text, yet, that makes a good convincing case for liberalism. I would love to get some recommendations. I'm interested in principled arguments for liberalism. If there are so many highly educated people who are liberal, I would assume there are certain foundational texts that argue their position. Basically, I'm looking for "freedom to choose" of the left.

sandworm101 10y ago
I think the point is that there are no defined left-wing foundational texts, that it arises with education across disciplines. Liberalism is a product of a variety of educations, not the creation of any one person or group. Read scientific studies on animal migration patterns. Then hit basic astronomy. Then particle physics. Then every episode of the Simpsons.
todd8 10y ago
A classic text on the philosophical underpinnings of (US) liberalism with regard to economic redistribution policies is A Theory of Justice by John Rawls, a renowned professor of philosophy at Harvard. After reading Rawls, I'd suggest maybe reading Robert Nozick's libertarian leaning Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick was another distinguished philosopher from Harvard writing about the same time as Rawls. Nozick comes to a completely different conclusion than Rawls. Both books are good and completely accessible to an ordinary reader (i.e. philosophy degree not required). However, they are serious and not as entertaining as the Friedmans' Free to Choose. While the two philosophy books address the question of what should a fair society look like from a philosophical perspective, I feel they don't address the aspects of human nature that have proven troublesome in socialist economies as well as Free to Choose. Finally another classic, The Fatal Conceit by F. A. Hayek considers the practicality of socialism from an economic position in a more focused way. Like the previously mentioned books, it is an easy read. These books may not reflect cutting edge thought, having been written in the 70's and 80's, but they were a useful starting point for me when I started to think about these issues more deeply and they are considered seminal works that in my opinion shouldn't be skipped while studying the questions of political and economic theory. A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell further reflects on this question and makes some conclusions about why smart people end up disagreeing in such fundamental ways. I find Sowell's thinking and writing to be clear and well expressed. Finally, an interesting book addresses the puzzling and related question of why does the academic community so easily accommodate views so antithetical to a scientific world view. I believe that this at the heart of the questions raised by the original NYT piece. The book is Higher Superstition by Gross and Levitt. While interesting this book is erudite and seems directed to narrower audience than those mentioned above, expecting a well-read reader. [1] Rawls, A theory of justice. http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Justice-John-Rawls/dp/0674000781/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464954851&sr=1-1&keywords=a+theory+of+justice http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Justice-John-Rawls/dp/067400078... [2] Nozick, Anarchy, state and utopia. http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/0465051006/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464954914&sr=1-1&keywords=anarchy+state+and+utopia+robert+nozick http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/... [3] Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to choose: a personal statement. http://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-Statement-Milton-Friedman/dp/0156334607/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464954944&sr=1-1&keywords=free+to+choose+milton+friedman http://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-Statement-Milton-Friedman/... [4] Hayek and Bartley, The fatal conceit: the errors of socialism. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_9?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=fatal+conceit&sprefix=fatal+con%2Cstripbooks%2C171 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_9?url=search-alias%... [5] Gross and Levitt, Higher superstition: the academic left and its quarrels with science. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+academic+lefts+attack+on+science&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Athe+academic+lefts+attack+on+science http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dst...

syats 10y ago

The article isn't very well written, but it does raise an interesting question. However, this question requires a clear definition of what is meant by liberal, which is a non trivial matter: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-origin-of-liberalism/283780/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-orig... My to cents: Let's start by defining "liberal" as those who hold the belief that the current Trend in social, economic or political developments will result in them having a better life. The opposite of that is the quintessential "conservative" adagio that "things are getting worse and worse". What exactly constitutes that trend is up for debate, but I think a precise definition isn't essential for this argument. Since the percentage of the population that is highly educated is increasing (for whatever definition of "highly"), we can infer that access to education isn't only hereditary. That is, there are some of us who are now highly educated but who's parents were not (yes, it still is mostly hereditary, and almost for sure we will inherit that to our children). This, in turn, results in better standards of living for us than for our parents. So, locally, the trend, seems for us to be moving in the right direction. We vote for continuing this trend of more education for more people, of more access to healthcare for more people, and so on, because if it weren't for that trend we'd be struggling like our parents did. Compound to that the rich-get-richer phenomena, and then our children will probably keep benefiting from this, so they will most likely also be "liberal". Only when a social revolution removes our now-hereditary privileges will we turn into "conservatives".

burfog 10y ago
"some of us who are now highly educated but who's parents were not [...] results in better standards of living for us than for our parents. So, locally, the trend, seems for us to be moving in the right direction." Say what? In the 1950s, you graduated from high school (or even dropped out) and then went to work in the steel mill or car factory. (there were no robots and we didn't trade with China) You could support a family on that one income: house, car, wife, kids, etc. Lately, you get your BA and then work 3 different part-time jobs. If you get the MA, and find somebody else who does, then the two of you can both work jobs and get a place of your own. Your student loans will be huge. Forget about kids.

13years 10y ago

Higher education both attracts and produces mindsets which solve problems through planning, engineering and designing. There is a natural tendency to use your methodology of problem solving on all problems. So we tend to produce a greater collection of social engineering and central economic planning advocates. We want to design a greater society. We want to design a greater economy. Even when you look at highly educated vs slightly more highly educated in the same field you see the same shift in mindset. The divergence between Fellow, Architect, Engineer is that at each higher level there is a greater degree if centralization mindset of design. There is a potential fallacy that should be evident that you can not necessarily and simply equate more education with always producing the correct perspectives and therefore liberal view points are the correct positions. As in the above, we in engineering fields know the value higher levels of discipline, yet we also are fully aware of the problems resulting from high level engineers and architects who design their perfect systems which don't work in the real world. Higher education produces problem solving disciplines that are very useful and powerful, yet these same disciplines also are subject to error as well as they typically can't quantify the numerous variables in large systems thinking For more around this topic, this was a great talk working with systems greater than our human capacity to understand them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGaFcI2UNrI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGaFcI2UNrI

internaut 10y ago
> There is a potential fallacy that should be evident that you can not necessarily and simply equate more education with always producing the correct perspectives and therefore liberal view points are the correct positions. This. If there existed a world in which only liberals were right all the time conservatism would have been selected out of the gene pool by now. That's not a metaphor. Political tribes have been battling for probably tens of thousands of years. There is too much world for one true path.
- Joof 10y ago
  Honestly, there is too much world for 2 true paths. A multiparty system sounds nice from here.

Criticism123 10y ago

>nytimes.com You might as well post from Pravda.

wrgrossman 10y ago

I worked at a private University (as a conservative leaning independent) for 7 years. I found the University to be a hostile work environment for conservatives. In my case as well as others, that I met while there, it was enough to dissuade us from pursuing an advanced degree. I worked with many wonderful academics, they are people that I still count among the smartest and kindest people that I have ever met. At the same time, they could be absolutely vicious towards conservative or religious ideals or individuals. There was regular conflict over the Catholic University's traditional masses and other gatherings. They would wrap themselves in a cloak of "Academic Freedom" as they denounced anything that they viewed as religious infringing on their positions. It wasn't just religious issues that brought out the worst of them. I still remember how on the first anniversary of 9/11 a number of professors refused to participate in the memorial ceremony because the University's ROTC would be the color guard. They deemed their presence to be sending the wrong message and a validation of the war in Afghanistan. All in all, it left a bad taste in my mouth and as time grew on it was no longer a place that I wished to be. If it wasn't for an online option at a different school, then I never would have pursued my masters degree.

tim333 10y ago
Re the 9/11 thing, if you are someone who dislikes the killing of innocent people it seems reasonable to be horrified by the original 9/11 killings of three thousand odd people and also horrified by Bush/Cheney using that as a justification to do stuff leading to the deaths of many times as many innocent people. It seems quite reasonable to avoid condoning that.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- wrgrossman 10y ago
  I won't disagree that that feeling is reasonable or justified. I've worked at a number of places where someone who felt that way would have been supported if they chose not to participate. That being said, Academia is the only place where I have worked that it was considered okay to demand that others not be allowed to participate. Especially, demanding that students who may or may not feel the same way be barred from attending.

patrickg_zill 10y ago

It never seems to occur to anyone that maybe, just maybe ... there is an anti-conservative selection pressure or bias? Look at the "nomenklatura" in USSR times - they were all good Party members, and they too, had the higher university degrees. If you weren't a Party member or in other ways, indicated disloyalty to the prevailing political worldview ... you didn't get admitted to the choice spots. How many "Western-style free market" (however defined) professors with tenure, were there in Moscow, in 1987? Must mean that as an economic perspective it was wholly discredited, right?

gozur88 10y ago
This. It boils down to tenure. An open conservative is not going to get tenure outside the hard sciences, so there's not much reason to get a PhD.

panglott 10y ago

These kinds of threads tend to be self-congratulatory, and obviously the answer is "self-selection". But I'll bite. Most of the conservative professors I have known in the Humanities have been in (military) history and classics, where they are likely drawn to classical or martial virtues. Economics professors are generally some variety of libertarian. Many Humanities professors are devout Christians. But I've never known a professor to be an intolerant, hard-core social conservative. And perhaps that's because the only personality trait that has a correlation with intelligence is "openness to experience". A certain kind of liberality is necessary in academia.

SixSigma 10y ago

The most question begging headline you will see this week.

ljw1001 10y ago

Because they're highly educated.

ilaksh 10y ago

The short answer is 'watch Game of Thrones'. Liberal means different things in different countries. Generally speaking people's beliefs follow their group association rather than the other way. In many US groups this means adopting 'liberal' ideas. There is also the history of conflict between religious traditions that are Judeo-Christian-Islamic and more pagan or Satanic belief systems.

r2dnb 10y ago

I think I'll be heavily down-voted for posting that on HN but in my opinion the reason most college graduates are liberal is that - whether we want to admit or not - colleges teach liberalism. I'm not saying that Big Brother is behind this, I think it "just happened" for many reasons. As a consequence while most liberals think that they have the answer for life, the universe and everything and that they are objective, independent and "scientific" thinkers, they are more often than not just regurgitating packaged values that have been impressed on them. You'll always see that 80% of the people are followers. The system teaches liberalism, so 80% of the people going through the system will be liberal just by following - often unconsciously. 10% of the remaining will choose to be liberal out of true critical thinking while the 10 remaining percents won't be. Those who haven't been through the system (drop outs, high school graduates, etc.) are more likely to have more diverse opinions. Which are then dismissed by flagging them as "opinions mostly held by uneducated people". But what I've found is that education systems barely teach anything. For all the knowledge we've been presented, we just "really know" a ridiculous tiny fraction of it. This is why nowadays, you don't even need to be "smart" in the academical sense of the term to be in the top 5%, you just need to be a critical thinker in your field and think out of the box. Because it is indeed an extremely hard thing to do once you've been through college, as you've been nurturing the illusion that you learned most of the things you actually memorized. Many packaged values and referentials have thereby been patterned on your mind. For all these reasons, it is in my opinion unlikely that most people won't feel liberal after going through college.

peterashford 10y ago

I'd question the other side: why are conservatives so stupid? They aren't all, of course, but there's a strong correlation between low IQ and holding a conservative world view.

norea-armozel 10y ago

I would say that I'm liberal, but not what most people consider liberal by some standards since my politics are closer to mutualism crossed with geolibertarianism. So, I get the occasional "huh" from people when explaining what govt policies I support like LVT, promotion of unions and/or worker owned businesses, and the like.