7 ms·

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 vie

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
  [deleted]
- 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.
  - 13years 10y ago
    Yet Silicon Valley has been noted as having disproportionately low vaccination rates. http://www.wired.com/2015/02/closer-look-silicon-valleys-dismal-vaccination-numbers/ http://www.wired.com/2015/02/closer-look-silicon-valleys-dis...
- petewailes 10y ago
  Fear and ignorance don't respect party lines. There's things liberal people are likely to be wrong about, and there's things illiberal people are likely to be wrong about. The issue is where people fear a situation or outcome, and then draw their answers from their peers, who are also either un or ill-informed on the subject. Then you get bad answers to important questions, which no-one goes back to question (because now disagreeing with the answer means disagreeing with your social group).
- gd1 10y ago
  And anti-GMO. Anti-nuclear. Organic food enthusiasts. Anti modern farming. Naturopathy and homeopathy believers. The type of people who think that global warming causes more hurricanes for example.
random_upvoter 10y ago
Perhaps the real answer is closer to "it's easy to be tolerant and broad-minded if you don't feel threatened". You're answer boils down to "because liberals are right and the others are wrong". But there isn't really such a thing as a wrong political opinion. People's political choices are based on their experience of the world. The whole premise of democracy is that if you take the mean of everybody's personal experience you will arrive -- more or less, and with some difficulty -- at the right answer.
- petewailes 10y ago
  Pretty much. And you're generally not threatened of things you understand. Most things in the world aren't actually scary. That's not to say there's nothing to be scared of out there - obviously there is. But there's a difference between knowing something is worth worrying about, and being badly informed or not informed at all, and thus being scared of it. * Thing not to be scared of: vaccinations for your kids * Thing to be scared of: long term effects of climate change I'd take higher levels of education to mean that you're more exposed to being wrong about things, thus more accepting of the idea that you might be wrong, and more likely to change your view on finding out you are. The more educational levels you pass through, the more you have it beaten in to you that you don't know as much as you think you do, and you're wrong to greater or lesser degrees a lot of time, about a lot of things.
  - _yosefk 10y ago
    Erm... I wouldn't say that the average liberal feels that there's much they don't know, and that they might be wrong about a lot of things. (I wouldn't say that the average conservative is like that, either.) I believe that academia is the perfect place for the formation of cliques which over time exclude non-believers. Right now there's a powerful liberal clique in academia - but over time it could be replaced by anything, really. At some point eugenics were all the rage, today it's taboo, etc. And since educated people pass through the academia, and receive a lot of information filtered through the leading clique, they're likely to share the clique's views. (Whether, on top of that, educated people also simply exhibit less critical thinking and original opinions based on their own experience than the average person I don't know; I wouldn't be surprised by it being either true or false, I can certainly construct a believable narrative explaining both possibilities.) Speaking of eugenics and such... how do I put this, in hindsight people reevaluate their ideas wrt what's scary, and the British Labor and Liberal parties' insistence that Nazi Germany wasn't particularly scary seems to me to be a pretty good example. I think this shows that "you're generally not threatened of things you understand" sometimes is less accurate than "you're not threatened of things that you completely misunderstand, while those who do understand them are right to be scared shitless about them." And sometimes, like in this case, "you" are more liberal than "them", and sometimes it's the reverse.
Kaizyn 10y ago
May I refer you to an oldie but goodie: 'The Disadvantages of an Elite Education' by William Deresiewicz: https://theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/ https://theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite...
- TruthAndDare 10y ago
  >It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. Hehe, the obvious hole in his education was of course that he couldn't fix his pipes himself. :) Anyway, would you care to summarize or just briefly mention what point the article argues?
  - mywittyname 10y ago
    TL;DR: The purpose of ivy league schools seems to be to teach people the entitlements of being part of an elite class. With that comes a complete ignorance to the fact that there are smarter, more diligent people that don't get into elite universities. [cites the behavior of numerous Yale graduates]
nickysielicki 10y ago
If I listen closely, I'm pretty sure that I can hear you patting yourself on the back through my computer. Your comment boils down to saying, "Because education opens your mind," which is completely asinine. Political science and philosophy are not young fields. Where would Aristotle, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Locke, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin or Madison fall today? Are you telling me that you find it reasonable to think that none of them would find themselves on the right, because they're uneducated, have a simple world view, and can't appreciate nuance? I like this website more when I don't click the political articles.
- tremon 10y ago
  Where would Aristotle, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Locke, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin or Madison fall today That's an uninteresting question. Environments change, and so do our definitions. I don't know much about your founding fathers beyond the Declaration of Independence, but I'd say all those mentioned were progressives in their own time.
- petewailes 10y ago
  I didn't say left or right, or Democrat/Republican once. I specifically chose examples that would reflect that both sides of the political spectrum get wrong. The left doesn't have exclusive ownership of liberalism, nor does the right always find itself to be illiberal. Fear and ignorance however can abound on both sides, leading to illiberal opinions. I'm sure some of those mentioned would be left and right, as well as anyone else you might want to bring up. There's parts of Aristotle's Politics and Ethics that would most certainly place him on the right of the political spectrum. But that's got nothing to do with liberal views.
  - nickysielicki 10y ago
    > I didn't say left or right, or Democrat/Republican once. Okay, but the article did, and so do the statistics, and that was certainly the framing of your original comment. The crux of the question is why our universities are churning out individuals that align so strongly with the politics of the left, not necessarily liberalism. I am completely comfortable admitting that policies of the right are sold more often with FUD than policies of the left. What I resent is the implication that there isn't an argument to be made beyond the FUD.
gaius 10y ago
because you aren't going to be afraid of something when you understand that it's not something you need to fear Such as a highly educated media worker, has no fear of the factory closing because the company has found somewhere with lower taxes and relaxed pollution laws? This is the appeal of Trump: he is the only candidate who doesn't want to send his demographics jobs offshore. It absolutely makes perfect sense for a significant number of voters to prefer him. I am really astonished at how many "liberals" despite their "high intellect" don't seem to get that there is a whole world outside their little bubble.
- bobwaycott 10y ago
  Oh, I think they get it just fine. They simply choose not to give into it.
- petewailes 10y ago
  Or maybe the factory closing is a net benefit long term. Was losing millions of jobs in the farming sector a bad thing? Or the automation of the glass industry in the 1930's and 1940's that increased production and cleaned up emissions? Is the move to driverless vehicles and what that'll do to the logistics industry bad? There's lots of examples of people losing jobs. That's sad for the individual, but long term it's generally good for the country. It'd be easy to say no to those forms of progress that hurt workers, but it'd be the wrong decision in the long run. No-one said making the right choice has to be victimless, or that the wrong one has to be hard.
  - gaius 10y ago
    Sure, but telling an ordinary worker that they need to give up their livelihood in the now, for a net long term benefit that he or she may not live to see, is a hard sell.
    - avz 10y ago
      > telling an ordinary worker that they need to give up their livelihood What you need to tell the worker is not that they need to give up their livelihood, but that they need to retrain. Still painful, but much less. Also, there are ways to reduce and relieve the pain of retraining. And who knows for many people acquiring new skills and contacts may even turn out to be exciting and fun. We need a politician with the guts to openly explain to the public that retraining is a necessity instead of fostering delusions that the old jobs can be kept. In fact, the progress in the development of self-driving cars combined with the fact that the most common job in most states is a truck driver [1] make this something of an emergency. [1] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...
edanm 10y ago
Is this actually true? Plenty of former Russians are very anti socialist, because of their experience with communism. They would say that their larger experience causes them to fear things that sound good in theory, but are terrible in practice. Either way, I doubt you could get away with saying they have a simple worldview without nuance. I think your view really boils down to "i'm right they're wrong, so of course education and experience would cause anyone to be on my side!"
- mapleoin 10y ago
  How does one get to be a former Russian?
  - dagw 10y ago
    By moving to, and taking up citizenship in, a new country.
  - ionised 10y ago
    Perhaps they meant former 'Soviets'
  - dao- 10y ago
    By giving up your citizenship.
  - tremon 10y ago
    By being born under the iron curtain, then having your country liberated after the fall of the USSR.
- bobwaycott 10y ago
  How can one be a "former Russian"? Also, socialism != communism. Also, Stalinism != communism.
  - joncrocks 10y ago
    By becoming a true Scotsman?
TruthAndDare 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. I guess we are all are against some things. For my own part, I don't see that when there is something I feel is wrong, it is always, or even usually, because I am afraid of it. Furthermore, some things (strong AI; synthetic biology), I have become afraid of by understanding some of it. > 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. Oh, my. I am all for vaccinations, but the reason is simply that I find the people who claim that vaccinations do not cause autism (or whatever negative consequence) more credible than those who claim that they do. It's not even about my own education, it's about what sources of information I find trustworthy. I couldn't possibly say anything myself about how vaccinations and autism are or are not related.
ZeroGravitas 10y ago
There's some research that suggest climate change and evolution denial go up (by certain measures) as the respondants understanding of the issues goes up. The answer is apparently that the smarter you are, the more likely you are to have absorbed this information, but also, the more likely you are to realise that your social group expects you to answer in a certain way. For people outside the social groups that have rejected evolution/climate change, more knowledge helps rather than hurts. So it's not just about ignorance.
- vlehto 10y ago
  For climate change it makes perfect sense. Who would wish their grandchildren dead?
gjulianm 10y ago
I find this comment to be borderline insulting, even when my political views are very liberal. Basically, what I read in your comment (maybe I'm misreading it) is that not having a liberal view means that the person does not understand the world, has an angry response, ignores the complexities of life and does not understand anything. So, instead of just trying to understand what do these people think, feel and fear we just assume we're superior and think they're ignorant? Of course, there are ignorant conservatives, just as there are ignorant liberals. There are also really smart conservatives who have a really strong foundation and understand how the world works. They just have another view of which are the solutions to our problems, but it's really hard to say which is the "right" and which is the "wrong" view. I also find surprising that religion is in the same bucket as climate change denial or anti-vaccinations. I've meet a lot of religious people who have already tried to understand things and have found that they believe in a god, or whatever, and that does not make them more or less intelligent, it's just a personal belief. Finally, the correlation "higher education => magic knowledge of everything" is plainly not true, not even "in some cases". A degree just gives you knowledge in a specific area, and does not make anyone more intelligent just by having it. It is not a badge of superiority. As someone said in another reply, this is just an attitude of "liberals are right, conservatives are not", but there's no right political view as of now.
- rimantas 10y ago
  Yes, religion in the same bucket (and largely responsible for the existence of the bucket itself). Why look for answers when they all are in THE BOOK? > A degree just gives you knowledge in a specific area, and > does not make anyone more intelligent just by having it. In many (most?) cases a degree also means that you became familiar and aquired skills needed for problems solving and answer finding. And even if raw intelligence may be the same it gives tremendous advantage.
  - gjulianm 10y ago
    Not every religious person is a hardcore bible reader who does not question anything. In fact, most believers I've met are in the opposite end: they know most of the tales of the bible are just tales, and accept the scientific methods and explanations. They just believe there's also a god or something out there. Regarding the degree thing, you may or may not acquire them. The degree just requires you to demonstrate a certain knowledge and skills, but not necessarily problem solving and answer finding. If you apply yourself and have good teachers, you can certainly learn it, but it's not that much different of a situation than when you're working in some job or doing things by yourself. It's not necessary nor sufficient, and definitely not even in most cases.
beardicus 10y ago
I don't mind this answer in general, but liberals also have big issues with anti-vax and anti-gmo sentiments. I don't think they're immune to uniformed fear-mongering and sticking their fingers in their ears.
bluecalm 10y ago
>>Examples: climate change denial, anti-vax, religion... They're the intellectual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting They aren't, you just don't understand it. Anti-vax people are often very well educated. Their position is that you can't trust the pharmaceutical corporation and the government to put health of the citizens above their profit. 99%+ of the population is in no position to make their own judgement about climate change or effectiveness of medical procedures. What most people do is choose who to believe. You choose to believe the government and the researches, some people don't. From purely incentive based analysis maybe those people are rational after all as they are very clearly not aligned in the interest of general population (the whole thing relies on assuming there would be enough whistleblowers among researchers and that they are in general ethical - both very shaky assumptions). >>It's worth noting that all these things are driven by fear of things people don't understand. No, they just don't believes the same authority figures as you do. >>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. This comment is equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting rather than seeking to actually understand the position of others. Thinking like yours is a problem because it skips over actual problems: misaligned incentives, lack of transparency, history of corruption and politically motivated government policies (for example with anti-fat pro grain diet policy).
- jrs235 10y ago
  Thank you for the well written rebuttal and points. Highly educated people are exposed to more ideas and theories leading them to less likely BLINDLY believe what "authority" figures say/claim and that they (the highly educated person) could be wrong due to or that not enough information is known [at this time] to make or change their own determination of what or who to believe. They are more likely to be open minded because they are cognizant of blind spots.
WayneBro 10y ago
> Examples: climate change denial, anti-vax, religion... It's just a tad naive to list the entirety of religion with climate-change and anti-vax and then conclude that the sole reason that religion exists is "fear of things people don't understand". Do you know anything about religion at all or are you just parroting what you read in the news about American Christianity? It's funny to me because this kind of thinking seems to indicate that you are "Someone who sees things in black and white, ignoring the complexities of life, [who] will respond with simple, ignorant answers." Furthermore, the vast majority of people who are pro-vax and anti-religion have made up their mind based on nothing more than social cues. They're not scientists and they have to trust what they're told just like most people.
SaasDeveloper1 10y ago
You could make the same argument against the "scholar" who spends their life in university and research. They are highly educated and practically useless as they accomplish little of substance towards "enlightenment." A socialist utopia sounds great when confined to the walls of the Ivy League but the individual who actually works for a living is far too wise for such nonsense.

raverbashing 10y ago

However it seems the majority of anti-vaxxers are liberals

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
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.
- 13years 10y ago
  Yet Silicon Valley has been noted as having disproportionately low vaccination rates. http://www.wired.com/2015/02/closer-look-silicon-valleys-dismal-vaccination-numbers/ http://www.wired.com/2015/02/closer-look-silicon-valleys-dis...
petewailes 10y ago
Fear and ignorance don't respect party lines. There's things liberal people are likely to be wrong about, and there's things illiberal people are likely to be wrong about. The issue is where people fear a situation or outcome, and then draw their answers from their peers, who are also either un or ill-informed on the subject. Then you get bad answers to important questions, which no-one goes back to question (because now disagreeing with the answer means disagreeing with your social group).
gd1 10y ago
And anti-GMO. Anti-nuclear. Organic food enthusiasts. Anti modern farming. Naturopathy and homeopathy believers. The type of people who think that global warming causes more hurricanes for example.

random_upvoter 10y ago

Perhaps the real answer is closer to "it's easy to be tolerant and broad-minded if you don't feel threatened". You're answer boils down to "because liberals are right and the others are wrong". But there isn't really such a thing as a wrong political opinion. People's political choices are based on their experience of the world. The whole premise of democracy is that if you take the mean of everybody's personal experience you will arrive -- more or less, and with some difficulty -- at the right answer.

petewailes 10y ago
Pretty much. And you're generally not threatened of things you understand. Most things in the world aren't actually scary. That's not to say there's nothing to be scared of out there - obviously there is. But there's a difference between knowing something is worth worrying about, and being badly informed or not informed at all, and thus being scared of it. * Thing not to be scared of: vaccinations for your kids * Thing to be scared of: long term effects of climate change I'd take higher levels of education to mean that you're more exposed to being wrong about things, thus more accepting of the idea that you might be wrong, and more likely to change your view on finding out you are. The more educational levels you pass through, the more you have it beaten in to you that you don't know as much as you think you do, and you're wrong to greater or lesser degrees a lot of time, about a lot of things.
- _yosefk 10y ago
  Erm... I wouldn't say that the average liberal feels that there's much they don't know, and that they might be wrong about a lot of things. (I wouldn't say that the average conservative is like that, either.) I believe that academia is the perfect place for the formation of cliques which over time exclude non-believers. Right now there's a powerful liberal clique in academia - but over time it could be replaced by anything, really. At some point eugenics were all the rage, today it's taboo, etc. And since educated people pass through the academia, and receive a lot of information filtered through the leading clique, they're likely to share the clique's views. (Whether, on top of that, educated people also simply exhibit less critical thinking and original opinions based on their own experience than the average person I don't know; I wouldn't be surprised by it being either true or false, I can certainly construct a believable narrative explaining both possibilities.) Speaking of eugenics and such... how do I put this, in hindsight people reevaluate their ideas wrt what's scary, and the British Labor and Liberal parties' insistence that Nazi Germany wasn't particularly scary seems to me to be a pretty good example. I think this shows that "you're generally not threatened of things you understand" sometimes is less accurate than "you're not threatened of things that you completely misunderstand, while those who do understand them are right to be scared shitless about them." And sometimes, like in this case, "you" are more liberal than "them", and sometimes it's the reverse.

Kaizyn 10y ago

May I refer you to an oldie but goodie: 'The Disadvantages of an Elite Education' by William Deresiewicz: https://theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/ https://theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite...

TruthAndDare 10y ago
>It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. Hehe, the obvious hole in his education was of course that he couldn't fix his pipes himself. :) Anyway, would you care to summarize or just briefly mention what point the article argues?
- mywittyname 10y ago
  TL;DR: The purpose of ivy league schools seems to be to teach people the entitlements of being part of an elite class. With that comes a complete ignorance to the fact that there are smarter, more diligent people that don't get into elite universities. [cites the behavior of numerous Yale graduates]

nickysielicki 10y ago

If I listen closely, I'm pretty sure that I can hear you patting yourself on the back through my computer. Your comment boils down to saying, "Because education opens your mind," which is completely asinine. Political science and philosophy are not young fields. Where would Aristotle, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Locke, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin or Madison fall today? Are you telling me that you find it reasonable to think that none of them would find themselves on the right, because they're uneducated, have a simple world view, and can't appreciate nuance? I like this website more when I don't click the political articles.

tremon 10y ago
Where would Aristotle, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Locke, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin or Madison fall today That's an uninteresting question. Environments change, and so do our definitions. I don't know much about your founding fathers beyond the Declaration of Independence, but I'd say all those mentioned were progressives in their own time.
petewailes 10y ago
I didn't say left or right, or Democrat/Republican once. I specifically chose examples that would reflect that both sides of the political spectrum get wrong. The left doesn't have exclusive ownership of liberalism, nor does the right always find itself to be illiberal. Fear and ignorance however can abound on both sides, leading to illiberal opinions. I'm sure some of those mentioned would be left and right, as well as anyone else you might want to bring up. There's parts of Aristotle's Politics and Ethics that would most certainly place him on the right of the political spectrum. But that's got nothing to do with liberal views.
- nickysielicki 10y ago
  > I didn't say left or right, or Democrat/Republican once. Okay, but the article did, and so do the statistics, and that was certainly the framing of your original comment. The crux of the question is why our universities are churning out individuals that align so strongly with the politics of the left, not necessarily liberalism. I am completely comfortable admitting that policies of the right are sold more often with FUD than policies of the left. What I resent is the implication that there isn't an argument to be made beyond the FUD.

gaius 10y ago

because you aren't going to be afraid of something when you understand that it's not something you need to fear Such as a highly educated media worker, has no fear of the factory closing because the company has found somewhere with lower taxes and relaxed pollution laws? This is the appeal of Trump: he is the only candidate who doesn't want to send his demographics jobs offshore. It absolutely makes perfect sense for a significant number of voters to prefer him. I am really astonished at how many "liberals" despite their "high intellect" don't seem to get that there is a whole world outside their little bubble.

bobwaycott 10y ago
Oh, I think they get it just fine. They simply choose not to give into it.
petewailes 10y ago
Or maybe the factory closing is a net benefit long term. Was losing millions of jobs in the farming sector a bad thing? Or the automation of the glass industry in the 1930's and 1940's that increased production and cleaned up emissions? Is the move to driverless vehicles and what that'll do to the logistics industry bad? There's lots of examples of people losing jobs. That's sad for the individual, but long term it's generally good for the country. It'd be easy to say no to those forms of progress that hurt workers, but it'd be the wrong decision in the long run. No-one said making the right choice has to be victimless, or that the wrong one has to be hard.
- gaius 10y ago
  Sure, but telling an ordinary worker that they need to give up their livelihood in the now, for a net long term benefit that he or she may not live to see, is a hard sell.
  - avz 10y ago
    > telling an ordinary worker that they need to give up their livelihood What you need to tell the worker is not that they need to give up their livelihood, but that they need to retrain. Still painful, but much less. Also, there are ways to reduce and relieve the pain of retraining. And who knows for many people acquiring new skills and contacts may even turn out to be exciting and fun. We need a politician with the guts to openly explain to the public that retraining is a necessity instead of fostering delusions that the old jobs can be kept. In fact, the progress in the development of self-driving cars combined with the fact that the most common job in most states is a truck driver [1] make this something of an emergency. [1] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...

edanm 10y ago

Is this actually true? Plenty of former Russians are very anti socialist, because of their experience with communism. They would say that their larger experience causes them to fear things that sound good in theory, but are terrible in practice. Either way, I doubt you could get away with saying they have a simple worldview without nuance. I think your view really boils down to "i'm right they're wrong, so of course education and experience would cause anyone to be on my side!"

mapleoin 10y ago
How does one get to be a former Russian?
- dagw 10y ago
  By moving to, and taking up citizenship in, a new country.
- ionised 10y ago
  Perhaps they meant former 'Soviets'
- dao- 10y ago
  By giving up your citizenship.
- tremon 10y ago
  By being born under the iron curtain, then having your country liberated after the fall of the USSR.
bobwaycott 10y ago
How can one be a "former Russian"? Also, socialism != communism. Also, Stalinism != communism.
- joncrocks 10y ago
  By becoming a true Scotsman?

TruthAndDare 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. I guess we are all are against some things. For my own part, I don't see that when there is something I feel is wrong, it is always, or even usually, because I am afraid of it. Furthermore, some things (strong AI; synthetic biology), I have become afraid of by understanding some of it. > 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. Oh, my. I am all for vaccinations, but the reason is simply that I find the people who claim that vaccinations do not cause autism (or whatever negative consequence) more credible than those who claim that they do. It's not even about my own education, it's about what sources of information I find trustworthy. I couldn't possibly say anything myself about how vaccinations and autism are or are not related.

ZeroGravitas 10y ago

There's some research that suggest climate change and evolution denial go up (by certain measures) as the respondants understanding of the issues goes up. The answer is apparently that the smarter you are, the more likely you are to have absorbed this information, but also, the more likely you are to realise that your social group expects you to answer in a certain way. For people outside the social groups that have rejected evolution/climate change, more knowledge helps rather than hurts. So it's not just about ignorance.

vlehto 10y ago
For climate change it makes perfect sense. Who would wish their grandchildren dead?

gjulianm 10y ago

I find this comment to be borderline insulting, even when my political views are very liberal. Basically, what I read in your comment (maybe I'm misreading it) is that not having a liberal view means that the person does not understand the world, has an angry response, ignores the complexities of life and does not understand anything. So, instead of just trying to understand what do these people think, feel and fear we just assume we're superior and think they're ignorant? Of course, there are ignorant conservatives, just as there are ignorant liberals. There are also really smart conservatives who have a really strong foundation and understand how the world works. They just have another view of which are the solutions to our problems, but it's really hard to say which is the "right" and which is the "wrong" view. I also find surprising that religion is in the same bucket as climate change denial or anti-vaccinations. I've meet a lot of religious people who have already tried to understand things and have found that they believe in a god, or whatever, and that does not make them more or less intelligent, it's just a personal belief. Finally, the correlation "higher education => magic knowledge of everything" is plainly not true, not even "in some cases". A degree just gives you knowledge in a specific area, and does not make anyone more intelligent just by having it. It is not a badge of superiority. As someone said in another reply, this is just an attitude of "liberals are right, conservatives are not", but there's no right political view as of now.

rimantas 10y ago
Yes, religion in the same bucket (and largely responsible for the existence of the bucket itself). Why look for answers when they all are in THE BOOK? > A degree just gives you knowledge in a specific area, and > does not make anyone more intelligent just by having it. In many (most?) cases a degree also means that you became familiar and aquired skills needed for problems solving and answer finding. And even if raw intelligence may be the same it gives tremendous advantage.
- gjulianm 10y ago
  Not every religious person is a hardcore bible reader who does not question anything. In fact, most believers I've met are in the opposite end: they know most of the tales of the bible are just tales, and accept the scientific methods and explanations. They just believe there's also a god or something out there. Regarding the degree thing, you may or may not acquire them. The degree just requires you to demonstrate a certain knowledge and skills, but not necessarily problem solving and answer finding. If you apply yourself and have good teachers, you can certainly learn it, but it's not that much different of a situation than when you're working in some job or doing things by yourself. It's not necessary nor sufficient, and definitely not even in most cases.

beardicus 10y ago

I don't mind this answer in general, but liberals also have big issues with anti-vax and anti-gmo sentiments. I don't think they're immune to uniformed fear-mongering and sticking their fingers in their ears.

bluecalm 10y ago

>>Examples: climate change denial, anti-vax, religion... They're the intellectual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting They aren't, you just don't understand it. Anti-vax people are often very well educated. Their position is that you can't trust the pharmaceutical corporation and the government to put health of the citizens above their profit. 99%+ of the population is in no position to make their own judgement about climate change or effectiveness of medical procedures. What most people do is choose who to believe. You choose to believe the government and the researches, some people don't. From purely incentive based analysis maybe those people are rational after all as they are very clearly not aligned in the interest of general population (the whole thing relies on assuming there would be enough whistleblowers among researchers and that they are in general ethical - both very shaky assumptions). >>It's worth noting that all these things are driven by fear of things people don't understand. No, they just don't believes the same authority figures as you do. >>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. This comment is equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting rather than seeking to actually understand the position of others. Thinking like yours is a problem because it skips over actual problems: misaligned incentives, lack of transparency, history of corruption and politically motivated government policies (for example with anti-fat pro grain diet policy).

jrs235 10y ago
Thank you for the well written rebuttal and points. Highly educated people are exposed to more ideas and theories leading them to less likely BLINDLY believe what "authority" figures say/claim and that they (the highly educated person) could be wrong due to or that not enough information is known [at this time] to make or change their own determination of what or who to believe. They are more likely to be open minded because they are cognizant of blind spots.

WayneBro 10y ago

> Examples: climate change denial, anti-vax, religion... It's just a tad naive to list the entirety of religion with climate-change and anti-vax and then conclude that the sole reason that religion exists is "fear of things people don't understand". Do you know anything about religion at all or are you just parroting what you read in the news about American Christianity? It's funny to me because this kind of thinking seems to indicate that you are "Someone who sees things in black and white, ignoring the complexities of life, [who] will respond with simple, ignorant answers." Furthermore, the vast majority of people who are pro-vax and anti-religion have made up their mind based on nothing more than social cues. They're not scientists and they have to trust what they're told just like most people.

SaasDeveloper1 10y ago

You could make the same argument against the "scholar" who spends their life in university and research. They are highly educated and practically useless as they accomplish little of substance towards "enlightenment." A socialist utopia sounds great when confined to the walls of the Ivy League but the individual who actually works for a living is far too wise for such nonsense.