22 ms·

Cognitive ability is a powerful predictor of political tolerance

240 points by mpweiher 4y ago

mypastself 4y ago
So that’s why I’m so tolerant of those idiots on the other side of the political spectrum… In all seriousness, as I don’t have access to the full text, I’m wondering how they measured tolerance in particular.
- atoav 4y ago
  In the methods section they mention a survey. So that is likely how they meassured it. Of course the particulars would be more interesting, but for this access to the paper would be needed.
- tomlockwood 4y ago
  Yeah same, the definition of tolerance is very important here. Like for example I think a lot of people would view me as very intolerant of transphobia, but I doorknocked 1000 doors in our recent state election here, so in some ways I'm very tolerant when encountering people that don't agree with me.
  - atoav 4y ago
    Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance springs to mind where he postulates that every free society that aims to remain just that: free has to be intolerant to certain opinions that (should they become too widespread) would endanger the freedoms of others as well. Freedom is a complicated thing, because it has both positive and negative definitions. You can have the freedom to do what you want on the one hand but also have the freedom to be placed into certain situations (e.g. tortured) on the other hand. Now obviously there is going to be a collision space where somebody wants to excersise the positive freedom to do a certain thing that hurts the negative freedom of another perspn or a group of persons to not be subjected to that very thing. Freedom in that sense is the attempt to constantly balance those two sides and allow the individual to be as free as possible, while also preventing malicous actors to take away the freedoms of others. The thing is that freedom in that sense takes constant effort and adjustment to keep alive and up date and this goes beyond just writing new laws and enforcing them. Intolerance toward the intolerant is a crucial thought if you want to keep your and everybody elses freedom as it is.
    - endominus 4y ago
      The paradox of tolerance, as it is commonly argued, has to be one of the worst philosophical arguments actually taken seriously. It basically boils down to an argument from fear - We all believe in the importance of {Sacred Value}, but the Evil Ones are coming to take {Sacred Value} away! By using our own good natures and {Sacred Value} against us, they will claim power, and then destroy {Sacred Value}! The only way to stop them is to destroy {Sacred Value}, thereby depriving them of the ability to use it against us! Incidentally, here's what Karl Popper himself had to say on the matter; "Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."[0] The form of "intolerance towards the intolerant" he actually discusses in his essay is rather far removed from the sweeping authority to suppression that it bestows in the eyes of many of the people who invoke it. He does not recommend censoring or removing any liberties of the intolerant, unless and until they respond to rational argument by force. Unless they instruct followers to disregard rational argument as itself deceptive. Unless they are inciting actual criminal activity. The idea that some ideas are in and of themselves too dangerous to allow to exist in the public domain, that rational argument should be monitored, controlled, and suppressed to ensure that "tolerance" remains is nowhere to be seen. It is only when the methods of a liberal democracy (that is, open conversation, debate, the marketplace of ideas) fail catastrophically that Popper sees the need for open intolerance towards those who answer argument with violence. In fact, the argument of the "paradox of tolerance" is actually, you may be surprised to learn, an argument in favor of autocracy. Its whole point is that liberal democracies can't sustain themselves without a "benevolent despot". Popper was arguing against that idea. Per Wikipedia, again; "In the context of chapter 7 of Popper's work, specifically, section II, the note on the paradox of tolerance is intended as further explanation of Popper's rebuttal specific to the paradox as a rationale for autocracy: why political institutions within liberal democracies are preferable to Plato's vision of despotism, and through such institutions, the paradox can be avoided. Nonetheless, alternative interpretations are often misattributed to Popper in defense of extra-judicial (including violent) suppression of intolerance such as hate speech, outside of democratic institutions, an idea which Popper himself never espoused." [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
  - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
    I dont see how canvassing for a political agenda is tolerance of opposition. Sure, you'll run into people who disagree with you, but you don't tolerate their POV and are actively encouraging political action against their POV.
    - tomlockwood 4y ago
      Actually, a lot more listening happens on a successful doorknock than most people would think. Listening and really hearing people is necessary, much more necessary than making a specific political point.
    - Ensorceled 4y ago
      This is a ludicrous definition of tolerance of opposition, if any active campaigning for your position is considered "intolerance"
      - tomlockwood 4y ago
        Also yeah, while I was actively campaigning I met many people from other parties - and the other side of the aisle, and stood next to them outside voting booths and had some nice conversations.
    - enkid 4y ago
      Encouraging people to rethink their political position isn't intolerant unless it cross over to some sort of coercion. There has to be an ability to argue what a best policy is, or there would be no reason for democracy in the first place.
- endominus 4y ago
  The first sentence of the introduction clarifies the definition of "political tolerance", which seems to be a term of art; "Citizen support for the rights and liberties of even those political groups that they dislike, commonly termed political tolerance, is an important element of liberal democracy." So what is being measured is support for the civil liberties of political groups that are disliked by the respondent. Survey respondents were given a list of groups and asked to rate, from -4 to 4, a. how much they liked that group, and b. how much they would protect that group's rights.
  - tomlockwood 4y ago
    Also worth pointing out that this was a sample of only Mechanical Turk users in America, and members of the Danish Military in Denmark.
    - jfengel 4y ago
      Draftees in Denmark, which includes all men, plus women who volunteer. So it's skewed, but not quite as skewed as if you used only self selected people. I am told by people who do this kind of research that using Mechanical Turk isn't as pointless as it would sound. I have to take them at their word in that.
      - wheelinsupial 4y ago
        What do they say about Mechanical Turk? Is it that it's more representative of non-American point of view?
        jfengel 4y ago
        In this case they filtered for Americans. They put some effort into validating identity, and into ensuring that you are taking the survey seriously (trap questions, for example). It doesn't strike me as sufficient but it's not my field.
        4y ago
- ohCh6zos 4y ago
  Given the summary I think they mean the "I hate your ideas but will defend your rights" kind of tolerance.
- mcculley 4y ago
  We all have access. Thank you, Sci-Hub! https://sci-hub.se/downloads/2021-09-02/07/rasmussen2021.pdf?download=true https://sci-hub.se/downloads/2021-09-02/07/rasmussen2021.pdf...
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  Looking into the paper (see the sci-hub link), it's a bit odd. Data source is Mechanical Turk respondents in the USA, and Danish military draftees in Europe, who had to take a 'cognitive ability test'. "Political groups" don't include members of political parties - they have 'neo-Nazis', 'Christian fundamentalists', 'socialists' and 'communists'. Seems like there are a great many other groups one could list. Social science papers are notorious for being non-replicabale and based on non-representative samples, so I doubt these conclusions really mean much.
  - tbrownaw 4y ago
    I don't see tolerance or threat columns for "socialists" and "communists" listed in the results table?
    - svnt 4y ago
      They are in Table 1 but not the results.
Joel_Mckay 4y ago
Mostly vote for whoever I think causes the least amount of damage. I don't believe in branding, or false dichotomies masquerading as a democratic process. If Lord Buckethead ran internationally, the policies would poll well in my area. =)
voxadam 4y ago
Full paper: https://sci-hub.ru/https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jopy.12667 https://sci-hub.ru/https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/1...
- tomlockwood 4y ago
  So their samples were drawn from Mechanical Turk users and the Danish military, exclusively? I'm dubious about how representative these samples are.
  - runeks 4y ago
    True. But it's an interesting result regardless of whether it can be extrapolated to the general population.
    - tomlockwood 4y ago
      I personally think it's interesting only to a certain group of people with a particular worldview. I think it's academic value is suspect.
giantg2 4y ago
It's not that powerful of a predictor. I know many intelligent people who absolutely hate the opposite party. Although I do see some truth to the overall idea. I have also seen many average or below average people parroting whatever inflammatory stuff they heard from the media or others, without even understanding the topic.
- throwaway5Am1k 4y ago
  >I know many intelligent people who absolutely hate the opposite party. Intelligent or simply well educated?
  - adam_arthur 4y ago
    Usually its the latter rather than the former
  - swayvil 4y ago
    Or well spoken. It's amazing how intelligent you sound when you talk good.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      I have the opposite problem. I speak western Pennsylvanian. "There's patches of slippy ice down by the crick."
    - therealdrag0 4y ago
      Reminds me of the YouTube video where participants had to rank each others intelligence. And the person who sorta took a leadership role in the socializing ended up being lower and some of the more jar-head types were pretty high if not highest.
      - yasenn 4y ago
        Would you remember the link?
xcambar 4y ago
I'm afraid the title could be misread as "I'm tolerant so I'm more clever than you" or "the population of democratic nations are more intelligent than nondemocratic". All of that is obviously bullshit if you give it 2s of thoughts. That being said, democratic countries typically focus greatly on 1/ free speech (a driver of diversity) and 2/ education, which certainly is a good driver for cognitive ability, and might very well be a good driver for tolerance as well.
biggerChris 4y ago
The title reads like me saying, “ I’m smart because I work with 3 year olds and put up with their annoying voice and bullshit”.
pca006132 4y ago
You probably don't want to mess with someone who is both dumb and with low political tolerance. Now you can reduce this to avoiding people who are dumb...
lr4444lr 4y ago
> with larger effects than education This is absolutely no surprise to those of us centrists who live in East coast blue cities.
tomlockwood 4y ago
I wonder how consequential this paper is? It has been cited once but appears to have been widely retweeted. Is it a particularly good paper?
- tomlockwood 4y ago
  Having a look at mentions of "political tolerance" in academic papers, it seems like there's been a great deal of discussion surrounding this since the 50s.
holmesworcester 4y ago
Yikes. Maybe this is why we tend to get less politically tolerant as we get older.
- Redilon 4y ago
  Anecdotally people in their mid/late twenties + thirties are often the most tolerant. Teenagers and young adults are often more extreme in their views and hence often less tolerant. I'd argue the reason some grow less tolerant in the later half of their life is just that people often just stop giving a shit.
  - ip26 4y ago
    Or perhaps they grow tired of tolerating things that (empirically) keep leading to the same bad outcome. Also known as wisdom, when cast in another light.
    - TeMPOraL 4y ago
      Yup. Same conclusion I accidentally reached today, randomly thinking about the adage that old people lean a certain way. Perhaps it's not stupidity, perhaps it's just experience and less emotional volatility. They've experienced how easy it is to be an earnest believer and activist for an idea that later they learned to be misguided, or completely wrong. They've understood that real life is more sophisticated, that simplistic ideas, even pursued with best of intentions, will do more harm than good. There may be some degree of exhaustion and no longer caring about things too, of course.
brainchild-adam 4y ago
Tied to this topic seems to be the ability to tolerate unpleasant emotions. My impression is that avoiding negative emotions is something we all impulsively attempt, and it takes practice to increase one's ability to tolerate them. This, in turn, seems necessary to tolerate positions so different to our own that they cause us to feel threatened, which can, if the fear is intense enough, lead to outright hatred. I assume quite some intolerance can be linked to this principle. It seems our earlier evolutionary impulses (fight, flight in this case) can easily take over unless we not only learn to become aware of them but also to tolerate them.
- gavinray 4y ago
  I don't know that it's necessarily so much unpleasant emotions Let me paint a picture: My maternal grandparents are country folk, from Kentucky. My grandfather was an electrical engineer and a sort of whizz kid type. Architected/drafted and built his own house, made youngest highest-ranking naval officer in Coast Guard history, stuff of that sort. Having lived their entire lives together, they are on very different sides of the political spectrum. My grandmother is... unfortunately, a somewhat stereotypical Kentucky old white lady. You can guess her stance on things like immigrants and who she voted for. I love her but I have to try to blank out some of the things she says. My grandfather on the other hand will just say things like "Well, you have to try to see it from their side.", and "Don't you think that's a bit of a generalization?" But God help you if you cross the old man. I've done it once in my life and rarely seen a scarier thing. So (IME), you can have political tolerance separate of your emotional tolerance and emotional experiences. Political tolerance (for me) really boils down to: "Treat others how you want to be treated; Live and let live" which seems to me the most logical/reasonable way to go about it.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    > "... Live and let live" which seems to me the most logical/reasonable way to go about it. Only if you assume we're not a society, and that there's no social benefits to enforcing socially desirable behaviors and suppress socially undesirable ones.
water8 4y ago
jwmoz 4y ago
That's quite interesting. I always found it difficult to relate to the left/right binary hatred.
JackFr 4y ago
I find academic fads fascinating. "Intelligence" has become a taboo word, and so we find "cognitive ability" in its place, which is I guess a shibboleth for the in-group when you mean intelligence.
- contravariant 4y ago
  Given how often intelligence is conflated with education or knowledge I don't think they're trying to avoid the word per se they're just trying to be explicit. They do use the term intelligence in the article itself.
  - runeks 4y ago
    How do they measure "cognitive ability" in this study? If it's just IQ the then why not just write "high-IQ" and avoid the ambiguity? EDIT: See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33855704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33855704
- cinntaile 4y ago
  That's not an academic fad, it's just how languages organically evolve. The connotation of words shifts over time. Retard was ok before, now people say braindead instead. Switching one "medical" condition for another doesn't really change much but here we are because one is considered more ok than the other. In the future it'll be something else again.
  - svnt 4y ago
    Braindead people are the least able to defend themselves of any living humans. The fact that we use their condition as an insult is unconscionable. I don’t know if I’m being sarcastic or not anymore.
- spookie 4y ago
  I believe cognitive ability to be more concrete, clearer. In all honesty.
motohagiography 4y ago
I can say that tolerance requires a capability for abstraction that is not intuitive to everyone. When we take things personally or respond emotionally, it is because we have reached the limit of our ability to reason about them abstractly. An example would be someone attached to a solution to a problem at work. They reach for emotional tools when they run out of ability to reason about it as categories or as objects. Some people don't bother with abstract reason at all and just act with whatever tools on whatever makes them central. The most seductive aspect of a lot of current political discourse is that it elevates and centers people with limited cognitive ability and offers them redemption and exaltation in exchange for channeling their smaller urges like envy and malice. It's an ancient hustle, imo. Politically and physically, it doesn't matter how intelligent you or your group are if you are outnumbered by a herd that responds to the appeals and actuation of its lower instincts. Enjoy the ride. The whole thing is quite a spectacle.
- mway 4y ago
  > [...] it doesn't matter how intelligent you or your group are if you are outnumbered by a herd that responds to the appeals and actuation of its lower instincts. Quite so, at least empirically speaking (in my own observations, anyway). I guess a natural follow up would be, is there any feasible external (to such a group) or general (trans-group) impetus to either (a) increase abstract reasoning or (b) avoid "baser" framing, assuming that's not intrinsically pointless? Obviously with e.g. politics, this is the goal of many folks (to incite emotionally rather than engage rationally, or to mask emotion as rationality), but I wonder how feasible it is to increase rational discussion (through abstraction, or other means) about rational topics for the sake of productive discourse.
  - prirun 4y ago
    It seems that encouraging this would have to start at a very young age, in elementary school. Parents may not have the capability (cognitive ability) or time to instill this kind of thinking in their kids. However, school is usually a place where authority, hierarchy, and group-think is reinforced rather than questioned. I can't see schools encouraging kids to do thought experiments like "Let's say your parents don't like it that a boy wants to have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend. Instead of you just believing whatever your parents say, let's talk about why they believe that, how they might be getting it wrong, and why it's okay if you don't agree with them." Actually, some schools are trying that, with the predictable backlash from parents and others in the local community.
temptemptemp111 4y ago
ltbarcly3 4y ago
Is cognitive ability a euphemism for intelligence or something more specific?
the-printer 4y ago
Studies like this are dangerous. 1. Scientific articles are almost like luxury clickbait these days. Let’s be frank: how many of us paid even the minimum of 12 USD for 48-hour access to the complete study and know what they even mean by the title? 2. This study in particular will likely engender the notion, that will now be taken as fact, that political intolerance is indicative of lack of “cognitive ability” (whatever that means). This point itself is an assumption, because the abstract consists of stanzas of loaded jargon.
- jebronie 4y ago
  - dang 4y ago
    You've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly. We ban accounts that do that—as a matter of fact, I briefly just banned you—but then I took a look at your comment history and decided to warn you instead. Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN in the intended spirit from now on? Among other things that means curious conversation, no personal attacks, and no swipes.
- wheelinsupial 4y ago
  > how many of us paid even the minimum of 12 USD for 48-hour access to the complete study and know what they even mean by the title? I know not everyone on HN has a degree or access to college / university, but for those that do, don't you have alumni library access privileges?
- ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
  > science is dangerous Is this really the level of discussion we're having now?
  - the-printer 4y ago
    You have betrayed the nature of the angle-bracketed blockquote. Granted my initial response was prior to reading the article, I feel the same independent of the study in question, if not…stronger even, in spite of my errors. Perhaps my error itself is a testament to what I was saying. To entertain your intentional misquote, of course science has the capacity for danger. Is science some sort of monolithic and infallible structure that is incapable of being manipulated to inflict harm? Are you cognitively able to tolerate that?
tbrownaw 4y ago
This paper is available on sci-hub. # What do they mean by "cognitive ability"? > Our Danish sample was selected using a registry of military draftees, which has been in operation since 2006. We drew our sample from the subset of the registry which had taken a cognitive ability test. > For our American sample, 2,766 respondents completed our survey using MTurk in September and October 2014. > The Danish Draftee Board administered the Børge Priens Prøve (BPP; Kousgaard, 2003) to the draftee sample. This 78- item test has a correlation of .82 with the full Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Mortensen et al., 1989). We have access only to the composite BPP score > MTurk participants completed the 16-item International Cognitive Ability Resource measure (Condon & Revelle, 2014). # What do they mean by "tolerance"? > First, questions of tolerance concern whether one thinks a group's fundamental rights (particularly pertaining to expression) should or should not be protected. This is, conceptually, not the same as asking whether one likes or has a positive affect for the group in question, although some psychological studies appear to treat it as such. > To say that questions of affect and tolerance are different is not to say they are entirely separable. The relationship between these domains in fact represents the second key element to operationalizing tolerance. Specifically, tolerance only meaningfully applies to groups that one might be motivated to restrict—that is, those one dislikes or otherwise opposes (Gibson, 2013; Sullivan et al., 1982). > A third element related to assessing tolerance is that the frequently observed discrepancy between an individual's generalized commitments to tolerance and the tolerance they endorse for specific groups makes the assessment of tolerance a distinctively complicated task (Gibson, 2013) # What groups did they ask about people's tolerance of? > Right/Christian Fundamentalists > Neo-Nazis
- tbrownaw 4y ago
  This does not appear to be the standard "university graduates have more leftist social values" that the title initially looked like it might be.
  - the-printer 4y ago
    The actual content of the article is underwhelming and mildly comical. Maybe the collective responses that can be gleaned from the comments here are as telling as the actual study.
toss1 4y ago
Now, what is the cognitive ability required to not only understand and be tolerant of other political points of view, but also recognize that this has limits, first and best highlighted by Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance [0]. "Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them..." And managing this paradox of tolerance requires even higher cognitive load than simply being absolutely tolerant, but constant judgements, and maintaining stability on a very 'slippery slope'. [0] https://www.politicalempathyproject.org/blog-posts/karl-poppers-paradox-of-tolerance-and-what-it-teaches-us-about-political-polarization https://www.politicalempathyproject.org/blog-posts/karl-popp...
- JetAlone 4y ago
  It's not a paradox, it's a contradiction. The "open society" is a closed circuit.
  - toss1 4y ago
    That should probably be taken up with Popper, who named the thing. ;-) Yes it is a self-contradicting property of an open society, 'tho I'm not sure that rules out it being a paradox either/also.
uptownfunk 4y ago
Let’s assume tolerance means tolerance of viewpoints which disagree with our own position. From an evolutionary lens, if someone disagrees with us, then aren’t we predisposed not to tolerate since tolerating would be at odds with our own survival? That’s the sort of lazy evaluation approach. A more nuanced take could be that being tolerant also encourages us to revisit our own position and improve it if need be enabling a greater likelihood of survival.
- halkony 4y ago
  This approach seems to assume that there is one "correct" position that optimizes likelihood of survival. With biology, it's not like evolution approaches a "limit" of the perfect species, so the most valuable opinion for a decision making species is whatever is needed in the moment. In fact, we gain a lot of evolutionary advantage by outsourcing our opinions to other members of the species. Tolerance gives us mental capacity to worry about our immediate problems. Also consider that disagreement takes psychological, emotional, and sometimes physical resources to act on properly. Disagreement can be expensive and won't always pay off. So that's probably why humans are evolutionary predisposed to agreement.
stackedinserter 4y ago
"I'm tolerant to those who have opposing views, just want to shut them up, de-platform and bully their employers to make them non-hireable" /s
- mgrthrow 4y ago
  - nilespotter 4y ago
  - psychphysic 4y ago
    BTW if you or anyone in this thread do not know of how this all started check out the Metcalf sniper attacks[0]. Basically suspiciously after a weakness in power infrastructure was identified it was exploited. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack
    - mgrthrow 4y ago
      Last night, there was an attack on several power stations by armed right wing groups in North Carolina to shut down drag shows.
      - psychphysic 4y ago
        The winning move here is not to be involved in politics at all (that would be the highest level of tolerance). Greeks had it the wrong way around.
  - realjhol 4y ago
    - mgrthrow 4y ago
      It's performance art with no child inappropriate content? It is no different than "why is it so important to you for characters at Disneyland to be able to perform for kids." Drag is not inherently an inappropriate performance art. Yes, sexual drag shows exist. No, not all drag shows are sexual.
js2 4y ago
> The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. -- Bertrand Russell (1933) in “The Triumph of Stupidity” https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/03/04/self-doubt/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/03/04/self-doubt/
brundolf 4y ago
Seeing a lot of self-congratulatory nodding here I'll just say, this doesn't necessarily line up with my experience. The extremely intelligent people I know are every bit as likely to be politically intolerant as the less-intelligent people I know. They just have different reasons (overconfidence in their own logic/education, in their mental modeling, in the stupidity of the other side, etc) Would be curious to see a study where one high-IQ group is shown a fictional study with this conclusion and one isn't
- dTal 4y ago
  In corner A, a published and peer reviewed N=2408 study that tracks political tolerance and its stability over several years across two countries. In corner B, your personal qualitative impression of your immediate acquaintance group. Is it possible that your skepticism is itself an example of overconfidence?
  - throwoutway 4y ago
    Skepticism can lead to hypothesis which can lead to new studies which can be superior to previous studies
    - dTal 4y ago
      Sure. There's nothing wrong with saying "this is counterintuitive to me, and I think it's worth exploring with an open mind why my mental model and the study diverge." But it's not really an interesting contribution to the dialogue to say "meh, I don't buy it" without any kind of followup. What are we meant to do with that?
      - Godel_unicode 4y ago
        Good job that’s not what they did then, I suppose. They gave examples of why they’re skeptical, theories about what might be causing those discrepancies, and proposed an experiment for how to tease that out. You are meant to engage with what they actually wrote.
runeks 4y ago
For anyone else curious how they measured "cognitive ability", here's the relevant section from the paper[1]: Børge Priens Prøve The Danish Draftee Board administered the Børge Priens Prøve (BPP; Kousgaard, 2003) to the draftee sample. This 78-item test has a correlation of .82 with the full Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Mortensen et al., 1989). We have access only to the composite BPP score, but a study of its four subtests demonstrated that Cronbach's alpha for the four tests, composed of verbal analogies, number sequences, letter matrices, and geometric figures, ranged from 0.72 to 0.82 (Hartmann & Teasdale, 2005). International cognitive ability resource MTurk participants completed the 16-item International Cognitive Ability Resource measure (Condon & Revelle, 2014). Alpha reliability was high (0.80), and strong convergent validity has been reported for the test (such as a correlation of 0.81 with the Shipley-2 measure of cognitive abilities: Condon & Revelle, 2014). [1] https://sci-hub.ru/downloads/2021-09-02/07/rasmussen2021.pdf https://sci-hub.ru/downloads/2021-09-02/07/rasmussen2021.pdf
omarhaneef 4y ago
N+1 theory on why this may be the case: Cognitive ability is forged in reading and discussions. After you’ve seen the arguments rehearsed hundreds of times you’ve become inundated and exhausted by the arguments and counter arguments from both sides of many debates.
- d0100 4y ago
  I'd like if ChatGPT would know what are the most common arguments (as word-for-word as possbile) for X, where it started and how people picked up and how often it gets repeated. For example "crossed state lines"
lo_zamoyski 4y ago
Some commentary... - Without access to the article and the author's definitions, I have some concern about the use of the word "ideals" in relation to tolerance as tolerance is less a matter of ideals and more a matter of being able to endure what we regard as disagreeable. It's something like patience. We can't show tolerance or patience for what we regard as good. - Today, we often construe tolerance as an obligation to accept and agree with ideas you disagree with (or else risk being called a bigot). Those who seem to be more vocal about the need for tolerance are often some of the nastiest people you'll meet. To quote Marcuse, "What is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression." - What, then, does this article say about our universities? Our culture? Where is the tolerance of people with political views other than those now practically sanctioned by the state? - That cognitive ability should correlate highly with whatever is held to be an ideal in a culture is not especially surprising given that children who do well in school often do so because of how well they've conformed their thinking to what they've been taught. What is the difference between a child who receives high marks in a school following a curriculum laced with Nazi or Soviet propaganda versus one celebrating liberal or progressive values or something else? I am reminded of a story by Czeslaw Milosz in which he was addressing the problem of why so many intellectuals went along with the tyranny of the communist regime, and why he did not. His poetic answer was that it had less to do with reason and more to do with a "revolt of the stomach". What I take that to mean is that the "stomach" stands here for conscience (which is ultimately a matter of intellect, virtue, and rightly ordered will), and that intellectuals are great at rationalizing the hand that feeds them or threatens them if they do not possess properly formed consciences and virtue. If a certain understanding of tolerance is promoted in schools, then that's the version of tolerance I will expect most graduates to hold. You might even put on a show of considerate listening of the most absurd and obviously bad claims because you don't want to appear boorish and not because you're actually examining the claim seriously. - While it's true that greater cognitive ability means a greater potential ability to examine claims, raw cognitive ability alone is worthless without virtue. You have to be honest, you have to have practice reasoning, you have to want to examine a belief fairly, you have to possess humility so you can know where your knowledge ends and therefore where your capacity to judge the truth of a claim ends, and you must not be swayed by ulterior motives like the desire for social approval or fear of disapproval. You should also have nothing to do with stupid, nonstarter ideas like skepticism or relativism or whatever else is used to justify false varieties of tolerance.
hristov 4y ago
Now there is a very clever bit of mind control.
dragonwriter 4y ago
Full text is paywalled, and I’m not interested in paying to see it, but if I did, what I’d be looking at is the operationalization of “political tolerance” and “cognitive ability”, particularly the former. I’ve found that studies with the kind of conclusion this has often use very dubious methods of operationalizing complex variables, particularly the dependent variable, such that while the conclusion may be true with the given operational definitions, it is far from clear that it corresponds in any close way to what most people hearing the conclusion would understand it to mean without seeing the particular operationalization in use.
- tbrownaw 4y ago
  > Full text is paywalled, and I’m not interested in paying to see it, $diety bless sci-hub
guerrilla 4y ago
I'd bet on this not replicating, but if it were to, it would remind me a lot of Idiocracy. The "smart" people will tolerate the fascists until they are eliminated by them (keeping in mind this nearly happened in recent history.)
gnicholas 4y ago
This is interesting since cognitive ability can exacerbate confirmation bias, which would suggest the opposite conclusion regarding political tolerance. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stretching-theory/201903/are-you-too-smart-think-wisely https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stretching-theory/20...
chrismsimpson 4y ago
Smart people have a high tolerance for bullsh*t? Seems legit..
verdenti 4y ago
GoblinSlayer 4y ago
If tolerance is intolerant of intolerance and politics is intolerant, then tolerance is indistinguishable from intolerance.
- psychphysic 4y ago
  I'm so politically tolerant I haven't voted in 6 years. I must be a genius by now.

240 points by mpweiher 4y ago

So that’s why I’m so tolerant of those idiots on the other side of the political spectrum… In all seriousness, as I don’t have access to the full text, I’m wondering how they measured tolerance in particular.

atoav 4y ago
In the methods section they mention a survey. So that is likely how they meassured it. Of course the particulars would be more interesting, but for this access to the paper would be needed.
tomlockwood 4y ago
Yeah same, the definition of tolerance is very important here. Like for example I think a lot of people would view me as very intolerant of transphobia, but I doorknocked 1000 doors in our recent state election here, so in some ways I'm very tolerant when encountering people that don't agree with me.
- atoav 4y ago
  Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance springs to mind where he postulates that every free society that aims to remain just that: free has to be intolerant to certain opinions that (should they become too widespread) would endanger the freedoms of others as well. Freedom is a complicated thing, because it has both positive and negative definitions. You can have the freedom to do what you want on the one hand but also have the freedom to be placed into certain situations (e.g. tortured) on the other hand. Now obviously there is going to be a collision space where somebody wants to excersise the positive freedom to do a certain thing that hurts the negative freedom of another perspn or a group of persons to not be subjected to that very thing. Freedom in that sense is the attempt to constantly balance those two sides and allow the individual to be as free as possible, while also preventing malicous actors to take away the freedoms of others. The thing is that freedom in that sense takes constant effort and adjustment to keep alive and up date and this goes beyond just writing new laws and enforcing them. Intolerance toward the intolerant is a crucial thought if you want to keep your and everybody elses freedom as it is.
  - endominus 4y ago
    The paradox of tolerance, as it is commonly argued, has to be one of the worst philosophical arguments actually taken seriously. It basically boils down to an argument from fear - We all believe in the importance of {Sacred Value}, but the Evil Ones are coming to take {Sacred Value} away! By using our own good natures and {Sacred Value} against us, they will claim power, and then destroy {Sacred Value}! The only way to stop them is to destroy {Sacred Value}, thereby depriving them of the ability to use it against us! Incidentally, here's what Karl Popper himself had to say on the matter; "Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."[0] The form of "intolerance towards the intolerant" he actually discusses in his essay is rather far removed from the sweeping authority to suppression that it bestows in the eyes of many of the people who invoke it. He does not recommend censoring or removing any liberties of the intolerant, unless and until they respond to rational argument by force. Unless they instruct followers to disregard rational argument as itself deceptive. Unless they are inciting actual criminal activity. The idea that some ideas are in and of themselves too dangerous to allow to exist in the public domain, that rational argument should be monitored, controlled, and suppressed to ensure that "tolerance" remains is nowhere to be seen. It is only when the methods of a liberal democracy (that is, open conversation, debate, the marketplace of ideas) fail catastrophically that Popper sees the need for open intolerance towards those who answer argument with violence. In fact, the argument of the "paradox of tolerance" is actually, you may be surprised to learn, an argument in favor of autocracy. Its whole point is that liberal democracies can't sustain themselves without a "benevolent despot". Popper was arguing against that idea. Per Wikipedia, again; "In the context of chapter 7 of Popper's work, specifically, section II, the note on the paradox of tolerance is intended as further explanation of Popper's rebuttal specific to the paradox as a rationale for autocracy: why political institutions within liberal democracies are preferable to Plato's vision of despotism, and through such institutions, the paradox can be avoided. Nonetheless, alternative interpretations are often misattributed to Popper in defense of extra-judicial (including violent) suppression of intolerance such as hate speech, outside of democratic institutions, an idea which Popper himself never espoused." [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- ThunderSizzle 4y ago
  I dont see how canvassing for a political agenda is tolerance of opposition. Sure, you'll run into people who disagree with you, but you don't tolerate their POV and are actively encouraging political action against their POV.
  - tomlockwood 4y ago
    Actually, a lot more listening happens on a successful doorknock than most people would think. Listening and really hearing people is necessary, much more necessary than making a specific political point.
  - Ensorceled 4y ago
    This is a ludicrous definition of tolerance of opposition, if any active campaigning for your position is considered "intolerance"
    - tomlockwood 4y ago
      Also yeah, while I was actively campaigning I met many people from other parties - and the other side of the aisle, and stood next to them outside voting booths and had some nice conversations.
  - enkid 4y ago
    Encouraging people to rethink their political position isn't intolerant unless it cross over to some sort of coercion. There has to be an ability to argue what a best policy is, or there would be no reason for democracy in the first place.
endominus 4y ago
The first sentence of the introduction clarifies the definition of "political tolerance", which seems to be a term of art; "Citizen support for the rights and liberties of even those political groups that they dislike, commonly termed political tolerance, is an important element of liberal democracy." So what is being measured is support for the civil liberties of political groups that are disliked by the respondent. Survey respondents were given a list of groups and asked to rate, from -4 to 4, a. how much they liked that group, and b. how much they would protect that group's rights.
- tomlockwood 4y ago
  Also worth pointing out that this was a sample of only Mechanical Turk users in America, and members of the Danish Military in Denmark.
  - jfengel 4y ago
    Draftees in Denmark, which includes all men, plus women who volunteer. So it's skewed, but not quite as skewed as if you used only self selected people. I am told by people who do this kind of research that using Mechanical Turk isn't as pointless as it would sound. I have to take them at their word in that.
    - wheelinsupial 4y ago
      What do they say about Mechanical Turk? Is it that it's more representative of non-American point of view?
      - jfengel 4y ago
        In this case they filtered for Americans. They put some effort into validating identity, and into ensuring that you are taking the survey seriously (trap questions, for example). It doesn't strike me as sufficient but it's not my field.
        4y ago
ohCh6zos 4y ago
Given the summary I think they mean the "I hate your ideas but will defend your rights" kind of tolerance.
mcculley 4y ago
We all have access. Thank you, Sci-Hub! https://sci-hub.se/downloads/2021-09-02/07/rasmussen2021.pdf?download=true https://sci-hub.se/downloads/2021-09-02/07/rasmussen2021.pdf...
photochemsyn 4y ago
Looking into the paper (see the sci-hub link), it's a bit odd. Data source is Mechanical Turk respondents in the USA, and Danish military draftees in Europe, who had to take a 'cognitive ability test'. "Political groups" don't include members of political parties - they have 'neo-Nazis', 'Christian fundamentalists', 'socialists' and 'communists'. Seems like there are a great many other groups one could list. Social science papers are notorious for being non-replicabale and based on non-representative samples, so I doubt these conclusions really mean much.
- tbrownaw 4y ago
  I don't see tolerance or threat columns for "socialists" and "communists" listed in the results table?
  - svnt 4y ago
    They are in Table 1 but not the results.

Joel_Mckay 4y ago

Mostly vote for whoever I think causes the least amount of damage. I don't believe in branding, or false dichotomies masquerading as a democratic process. If Lord Buckethead ran internationally, the policies would poll well in my area. =)

voxadam 4y ago

Full paper: https://sci-hub.ru/https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jopy.12667 https://sci-hub.ru/https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/1...

tomlockwood 4y ago
So their samples were drawn from Mechanical Turk users and the Danish military, exclusively? I'm dubious about how representative these samples are.
- runeks 4y ago
  True. But it's an interesting result regardless of whether it can be extrapolated to the general population.
  - tomlockwood 4y ago
    I personally think it's interesting only to a certain group of people with a particular worldview. I think it's academic value is suspect.

giantg2 4y ago

It's not that powerful of a predictor. I know many intelligent people who absolutely hate the opposite party. Although I do see some truth to the overall idea. I have also seen many average or below average people parroting whatever inflammatory stuff they heard from the media or others, without even understanding the topic.

throwaway5Am1k 4y ago
>I know many intelligent people who absolutely hate the opposite party. Intelligent or simply well educated?
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  Usually its the latter rather than the former
- swayvil 4y ago
  Or well spoken. It's amazing how intelligent you sound when you talk good.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    I have the opposite problem. I speak western Pennsylvanian. "There's patches of slippy ice down by the crick."
  - therealdrag0 4y ago
    Reminds me of the YouTube video where participants had to rank each others intelligence. And the person who sorta took a leadership role in the socializing ended up being lower and some of the more jar-head types were pretty high if not highest.
    - yasenn 4y ago
      Would you remember the link?

xcambar 4y ago

I'm afraid the title could be misread as "I'm tolerant so I'm more clever than you" or "the population of democratic nations are more intelligent than nondemocratic". All of that is obviously bullshit if you give it 2s of thoughts. That being said, democratic countries typically focus greatly on 1/ free speech (a driver of diversity) and 2/ education, which certainly is a good driver for cognitive ability, and might very well be a good driver for tolerance as well.

biggerChris 4y ago

The title reads like me saying, “ I’m smart because I work with 3 year olds and put up with their annoying voice and bullshit”.

pca006132 4y ago

You probably don't want to mess with someone who is both dumb and with low political tolerance. Now you can reduce this to avoiding people who are dumb...

lr4444lr 4y ago

> with larger effects than education This is absolutely no surprise to those of us centrists who live in East coast blue cities.

tomlockwood 4y ago

I wonder how consequential this paper is? It has been cited once but appears to have been widely retweeted. Is it a particularly good paper?

tomlockwood 4y ago
Having a look at mentions of "political tolerance" in academic papers, it seems like there's been a great deal of discussion surrounding this since the 50s.

holmesworcester 4y ago

Yikes. Maybe this is why we tend to get less politically tolerant as we get older.

Redilon 4y ago
Anecdotally people in their mid/late twenties + thirties are often the most tolerant. Teenagers and young adults are often more extreme in their views and hence often less tolerant. I'd argue the reason some grow less tolerant in the later half of their life is just that people often just stop giving a shit.
- ip26 4y ago
  Or perhaps they grow tired of tolerating things that (empirically) keep leading to the same bad outcome. Also known as wisdom, when cast in another light.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    Yup. Same conclusion I accidentally reached today, randomly thinking about the adage that old people lean a certain way. Perhaps it's not stupidity, perhaps it's just experience and less emotional volatility. They've experienced how easy it is to be an earnest believer and activist for an idea that later they learned to be misguided, or completely wrong. They've understood that real life is more sophisticated, that simplistic ideas, even pursued with best of intentions, will do more harm than good. There may be some degree of exhaustion and no longer caring about things too, of course.

brainchild-adam 4y ago

Tied to this topic seems to be the ability to tolerate unpleasant emotions. My impression is that avoiding negative emotions is something we all impulsively attempt, and it takes practice to increase one's ability to tolerate them. This, in turn, seems necessary to tolerate positions so different to our own that they cause us to feel threatened, which can, if the fear is intense enough, lead to outright hatred. I assume quite some intolerance can be linked to this principle. It seems our earlier evolutionary impulses (fight, flight in this case) can easily take over unless we not only learn to become aware of them but also to tolerate them.

gavinray 4y ago
I don't know that it's necessarily so much unpleasant emotions Let me paint a picture: My maternal grandparents are country folk, from Kentucky. My grandfather was an electrical engineer and a sort of whizz kid type. Architected/drafted and built his own house, made youngest highest-ranking naval officer in Coast Guard history, stuff of that sort. Having lived their entire lives together, they are on very different sides of the political spectrum. My grandmother is... unfortunately, a somewhat stereotypical Kentucky old white lady. You can guess her stance on things like immigrants and who she voted for. I love her but I have to try to blank out some of the things she says. My grandfather on the other hand will just say things like "Well, you have to try to see it from their side.", and "Don't you think that's a bit of a generalization?" But God help you if you cross the old man. I've done it once in my life and rarely seen a scarier thing. So (IME), you can have political tolerance separate of your emotional tolerance and emotional experiences. Political tolerance (for me) really boils down to: "Treat others how you want to be treated; Live and let live" which seems to me the most logical/reasonable way to go about it.
- rayiner 4y ago
  > "... Live and let live" which seems to me the most logical/reasonable way to go about it. Only if you assume we're not a society, and that there's no social benefits to enforcing socially desirable behaviors and suppress socially undesirable ones.

water8 4y ago

jwmoz 4y ago

That's quite interesting. I always found it difficult to relate to the left/right binary hatred.

JackFr 4y ago

I find academic fads fascinating. "Intelligence" has become a taboo word, and so we find "cognitive ability" in its place, which is I guess a shibboleth for the in-group when you mean intelligence.

contravariant 4y ago
Given how often intelligence is conflated with education or knowledge I don't think they're trying to avoid the word per se they're just trying to be explicit. They do use the term intelligence in the article itself.
- runeks 4y ago
  How do they measure "cognitive ability" in this study? If it's just IQ the then why not just write "high-IQ" and avoid the ambiguity? EDIT: See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33855704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33855704
cinntaile 4y ago
That's not an academic fad, it's just how languages organically evolve. The connotation of words shifts over time. Retard was ok before, now people say braindead instead. Switching one "medical" condition for another doesn't really change much but here we are because one is considered more ok than the other. In the future it'll be something else again.
- svnt 4y ago
  Braindead people are the least able to defend themselves of any living humans. The fact that we use their condition as an insult is unconscionable. I don’t know if I’m being sarcastic or not anymore.
spookie 4y ago
I believe cognitive ability to be more concrete, clearer. In all honesty.

motohagiography 4y ago

I can say that tolerance requires a capability for abstraction that is not intuitive to everyone. When we take things personally or respond emotionally, it is because we have reached the limit of our ability to reason about them abstractly. An example would be someone attached to a solution to a problem at work. They reach for emotional tools when they run out of ability to reason about it as categories or as objects. Some people don't bother with abstract reason at all and just act with whatever tools on whatever makes them central. The most seductive aspect of a lot of current political discourse is that it elevates and centers people with limited cognitive ability and offers them redemption and exaltation in exchange for channeling their smaller urges like envy and malice. It's an ancient hustle, imo. Politically and physically, it doesn't matter how intelligent you or your group are if you are outnumbered by a herd that responds to the appeals and actuation of its lower instincts. Enjoy the ride. The whole thing is quite a spectacle.

mway 4y ago
> [...] it doesn't matter how intelligent you or your group are if you are outnumbered by a herd that responds to the appeals and actuation of its lower instincts. Quite so, at least empirically speaking (in my own observations, anyway). I guess a natural follow up would be, is there any feasible external (to such a group) or general (trans-group) impetus to either (a) increase abstract reasoning or (b) avoid "baser" framing, assuming that's not intrinsically pointless? Obviously with e.g. politics, this is the goal of many folks (to incite emotionally rather than engage rationally, or to mask emotion as rationality), but I wonder how feasible it is to increase rational discussion (through abstraction, or other means) about rational topics for the sake of productive discourse.
- prirun 4y ago
  It seems that encouraging this would have to start at a very young age, in elementary school. Parents may not have the capability (cognitive ability) or time to instill this kind of thinking in their kids. However, school is usually a place where authority, hierarchy, and group-think is reinforced rather than questioned. I can't see schools encouraging kids to do thought experiments like "Let's say your parents don't like it that a boy wants to have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend. Instead of you just believing whatever your parents say, let's talk about why they believe that, how they might be getting it wrong, and why it's okay if you don't agree with them." Actually, some schools are trying that, with the predictable backlash from parents and others in the local community.

temptemptemp111 4y ago

ltbarcly3 4y ago

Is cognitive ability a euphemism for intelligence or something more specific?

the-printer 4y ago

Studies like this are dangerous. 1. Scientific articles are almost like luxury clickbait these days. Let’s be frank: how many of us paid even the minimum of 12 USD for 48-hour access to the complete study and know what they even mean by the title? 2. This study in particular will likely engender the notion, that will now be taken as fact, that political intolerance is indicative of lack of “cognitive ability” (whatever that means). This point itself is an assumption, because the abstract consists of stanzas of loaded jargon.

jebronie 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  You've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly. We ban accounts that do that—as a matter of fact, I briefly just banned you—but then I took a look at your comment history and decided to warn you instead. Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN in the intended spirit from now on? Among other things that means curious conversation, no personal attacks, and no swipes.
wheelinsupial 4y ago
> how many of us paid even the minimum of 12 USD for 48-hour access to the complete study and know what they even mean by the title? I know not everyone on HN has a degree or access to college / university, but for those that do, don't you have alumni library access privileges?
ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
> science is dangerous Is this really the level of discussion we're having now?
- the-printer 4y ago
  You have betrayed the nature of the angle-bracketed blockquote. Granted my initial response was prior to reading the article, I feel the same independent of the study in question, if not…stronger even, in spite of my errors. Perhaps my error itself is a testament to what I was saying. To entertain your intentional misquote, of course science has the capacity for danger. Is science some sort of monolithic and infallible structure that is incapable of being manipulated to inflict harm? Are you cognitively able to tolerate that?

tbrownaw 4y ago

This paper is available on sci-hub. # What do they mean by "cognitive ability"? > Our Danish sample was selected using a registry of military draftees, which has been in operation since 2006. We drew our sample from the subset of the registry which had taken a cognitive ability test. > For our American sample, 2,766 respondents completed our survey using MTurk in September and October 2014. > The Danish Draftee Board administered the Børge Priens Prøve (BPP; Kousgaard, 2003) to the draftee sample. This 78- item test has a correlation of .82 with the full Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Mortensen et al., 1989). We have access only to the composite BPP score > MTurk participants completed the 16-item International Cognitive Ability Resource measure (Condon & Revelle, 2014). # What do they mean by "tolerance"? > First, questions of tolerance concern whether one thinks a group's fundamental rights (particularly pertaining to expression) should or should not be protected. This is, conceptually, not the same as asking whether one likes or has a positive affect for the group in question, although some psychological studies appear to treat it as such. > To say that questions of affect and tolerance are different is not to say they are entirely separable. The relationship between these domains in fact represents the second key element to operationalizing tolerance. Specifically, tolerance only meaningfully applies to groups that one might be motivated to restrict—that is, those one dislikes or otherwise opposes (Gibson, 2013; Sullivan et al., 1982). > A third element related to assessing tolerance is that the frequently observed discrepancy between an individual's generalized commitments to tolerance and the tolerance they endorse for specific groups makes the assessment of tolerance a distinctively complicated task (Gibson, 2013) # What groups did they ask about people's tolerance of? > Right/Christian Fundamentalists > Neo-Nazis

tbrownaw 4y ago
This does not appear to be the standard "university graduates have more leftist social values" that the title initially looked like it might be.
- the-printer 4y ago
  The actual content of the article is underwhelming and mildly comical. Maybe the collective responses that can be gleaned from the comments here are as telling as the actual study.

toss1 4y ago

Now, what is the cognitive ability required to not only understand and be tolerant of other political points of view, but also recognize that this has limits, first and best highlighted by Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance [0]. "Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them..." And managing this paradox of tolerance requires even higher cognitive load than simply being absolutely tolerant, but constant judgements, and maintaining stability on a very 'slippery slope'. [0] https://www.politicalempathyproject.org/blog-posts/karl-poppers-paradox-of-tolerance-and-what-it-teaches-us-about-political-polarization https://www.politicalempathyproject.org/blog-posts/karl-popp...

JetAlone 4y ago
It's not a paradox, it's a contradiction. The "open society" is a closed circuit.
- toss1 4y ago
  That should probably be taken up with Popper, who named the thing. ;-) Yes it is a self-contradicting property of an open society, 'tho I'm not sure that rules out it being a paradox either/also.

uptownfunk 4y ago

Let’s assume tolerance means tolerance of viewpoints which disagree with our own position. From an evolutionary lens, if someone disagrees with us, then aren’t we predisposed not to tolerate since tolerating would be at odds with our own survival? That’s the sort of lazy evaluation approach. A more nuanced take could be that being tolerant also encourages us to revisit our own position and improve it if need be enabling a greater likelihood of survival.

halkony 4y ago
This approach seems to assume that there is one "correct" position that optimizes likelihood of survival. With biology, it's not like evolution approaches a "limit" of the perfect species, so the most valuable opinion for a decision making species is whatever is needed in the moment. In fact, we gain a lot of evolutionary advantage by outsourcing our opinions to other members of the species. Tolerance gives us mental capacity to worry about our immediate problems. Also consider that disagreement takes psychological, emotional, and sometimes physical resources to act on properly. Disagreement can be expensive and won't always pay off. So that's probably why humans are evolutionary predisposed to agreement.

stackedinserter 4y ago

"I'm tolerant to those who have opposing views, just want to shut them up, de-platform and bully their employers to make them non-hireable" /s

mgrthrow 4y ago
- nilespotter 4y ago
- psychphysic 4y ago
  BTW if you or anyone in this thread do not know of how this all started check out the Metcalf sniper attacks[0]. Basically suspiciously after a weakness in power infrastructure was identified it was exploited. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack
  - mgrthrow 4y ago
    Last night, there was an attack on several power stations by armed right wing groups in North Carolina to shut down drag shows.
    - psychphysic 4y ago
      The winning move here is not to be involved in politics at all (that would be the highest level of tolerance). Greeks had it the wrong way around.
- realjhol 4y ago
  - mgrthrow 4y ago
    It's performance art with no child inappropriate content? It is no different than "why is it so important to you for characters at Disneyland to be able to perform for kids." Drag is not inherently an inappropriate performance art. Yes, sexual drag shows exist. No, not all drag shows are sexual.

js2 4y ago

> The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. -- Bertrand Russell (1933) in “The Triumph of Stupidity” https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/03/04/self-doubt/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/03/04/self-doubt/

brundolf 4y ago

Seeing a lot of self-congratulatory nodding here I'll just say, this doesn't necessarily line up with my experience. The extremely intelligent people I know are every bit as likely to be politically intolerant as the less-intelligent people I know. They just have different reasons (overconfidence in their own logic/education, in their mental modeling, in the stupidity of the other side, etc) Would be curious to see a study where one high-IQ group is shown a fictional study with this conclusion and one isn't

dTal 4y ago
In corner A, a published and peer reviewed N=2408 study that tracks political tolerance and its stability over several years across two countries. In corner B, your personal qualitative impression of your immediate acquaintance group. Is it possible that your skepticism is itself an example of overconfidence?
- throwoutway 4y ago
  Skepticism can lead to hypothesis which can lead to new studies which can be superior to previous studies
  - dTal 4y ago
    Sure. There's nothing wrong with saying "this is counterintuitive to me, and I think it's worth exploring with an open mind why my mental model and the study diverge." But it's not really an interesting contribution to the dialogue to say "meh, I don't buy it" without any kind of followup. What are we meant to do with that?
    - Godel_unicode 4y ago
      Good job that’s not what they did then, I suppose. They gave examples of why they’re skeptical, theories about what might be causing those discrepancies, and proposed an experiment for how to tease that out. You are meant to engage with what they actually wrote.

runeks 4y ago

For anyone else curious how they measured "cognitive ability", here's the relevant section from the paper[1]: Børge Priens Prøve The Danish Draftee Board administered the Børge Priens Prøve (BPP; Kousgaard, 2003) to the draftee sample. This 78-item test has a correlation of .82 with the full Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Mortensen et al., 1989). We have access only to the composite BPP score, but a study of its four subtests demonstrated that Cronbach's alpha for the four tests, composed of verbal analogies, number sequences, letter matrices, and geometric figures, ranged from 0.72 to 0.82 (Hartmann & Teasdale, 2005). International cognitive ability resource MTurk participants completed the 16-item International Cognitive Ability Resource measure (Condon & Revelle, 2014). Alpha reliability was high (0.80), and strong convergent validity has been reported for the test (such as a correlation of 0.81 with the Shipley-2 measure of cognitive abilities: Condon & Revelle, 2014). [1] https://sci-hub.ru/downloads/2021-09-02/07/rasmussen2021.pdf https://sci-hub.ru/downloads/2021-09-02/07/rasmussen2021.pdf

omarhaneef 4y ago

N+1 theory on why this may be the case: Cognitive ability is forged in reading and discussions. After you’ve seen the arguments rehearsed hundreds of times you’ve become inundated and exhausted by the arguments and counter arguments from both sides of many debates.

d0100 4y ago
I'd like if ChatGPT would know what are the most common arguments (as word-for-word as possbile) for X, where it started and how people picked up and how often it gets repeated. For example "crossed state lines"

lo_zamoyski 4y ago

Some commentary... - Without access to the article and the author's definitions, I have some concern about the use of the word "ideals" in relation to tolerance as tolerance is less a matter of ideals and more a matter of being able to endure what we regard as disagreeable. It's something like patience. We can't show tolerance or patience for what we regard as good. - Today, we often construe tolerance as an obligation to accept and agree with ideas you disagree with (or else risk being called a bigot). Those who seem to be more vocal about the need for tolerance are often some of the nastiest people you'll meet. To quote Marcuse, "What is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression." - What, then, does this article say about our universities? Our culture? Where is the tolerance of people with political views other than those now practically sanctioned by the state? - That cognitive ability should correlate highly with whatever is held to be an ideal in a culture is not especially surprising given that children who do well in school often do so because of how well they've conformed their thinking to what they've been taught. What is the difference between a child who receives high marks in a school following a curriculum laced with Nazi or Soviet propaganda versus one celebrating liberal or progressive values or something else? I am reminded of a story by Czeslaw Milosz in which he was addressing the problem of why so many intellectuals went along with the tyranny of the communist regime, and why he did not. His poetic answer was that it had less to do with reason and more to do with a "revolt of the stomach". What I take that to mean is that the "stomach" stands here for conscience (which is ultimately a matter of intellect, virtue, and rightly ordered will), and that intellectuals are great at rationalizing the hand that feeds them or threatens them if they do not possess properly formed consciences and virtue. If a certain understanding of tolerance is promoted in schools, then that's the version of tolerance I will expect most graduates to hold. You might even put on a show of considerate listening of the most absurd and obviously bad claims because you don't want to appear boorish and not because you're actually examining the claim seriously. - While it's true that greater cognitive ability means a greater potential ability to examine claims, raw cognitive ability alone is worthless without virtue. You have to be honest, you have to have practice reasoning, you have to want to examine a belief fairly, you have to possess humility so you can know where your knowledge ends and therefore where your capacity to judge the truth of a claim ends, and you must not be swayed by ulterior motives like the desire for social approval or fear of disapproval. You should also have nothing to do with stupid, nonstarter ideas like skepticism or relativism or whatever else is used to justify false varieties of tolerance.

hristov 4y ago

Now there is a very clever bit of mind control.

dragonwriter 4y ago

Full text is paywalled, and I’m not interested in paying to see it, but if I did, what I’d be looking at is the operationalization of “political tolerance” and “cognitive ability”, particularly the former. I’ve found that studies with the kind of conclusion this has often use very dubious methods of operationalizing complex variables, particularly the dependent variable, such that while the conclusion may be true with the given operational definitions, it is far from clear that it corresponds in any close way to what most people hearing the conclusion would understand it to mean without seeing the particular operationalization in use.

tbrownaw 4y ago
> Full text is paywalled, and I’m not interested in paying to see it, $diety bless sci-hub

guerrilla 4y ago

I'd bet on this not replicating, but if it were to, it would remind me a lot of Idiocracy. The "smart" people will tolerate the fascists until they are eliminated by them (keeping in mind this nearly happened in recent history.)

gnicholas 4y ago

This is interesting since cognitive ability can exacerbate confirmation bias, which would suggest the opposite conclusion regarding political tolerance. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stretching-theory/201903/are-you-too-smart-think-wisely https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stretching-theory/20...

chrismsimpson 4y ago

Smart people have a high tolerance for bullsh*t? Seems legit..

verdenti 4y ago

GoblinSlayer 4y ago

If tolerance is intolerant of intolerance and politics is intolerant, then tolerance is indistinguishable from intolerance.

psychphysic 4y ago
I'm so politically tolerant I haven't voted in 6 years. I must be a genius by now.