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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Pablo is dead right on everything else he studies and with his work on utilitarianism, but to assert that conservatives are inherently dumber is a diversion from his usual sterling arguments. The social conservatives-- opposed to gay marriage, for example-- were separated in the study from the libertarian conservatives (or "classical liberals" as Thomas Jefferson was) who hold that position for intellectual, not strictly emotional, reasons. The libertarian conservatives were smarter than the self-identified liberals according to the study.

I'm not sure whether the study broke liberals down into social conservative and socially liberal subsets, but it should have to be fair because let's keep in mind that many liberals also hold one or more of these positions (on abortion and gay marriage). It was an overwhelming number of Democrats, for example, who voted down California's gay marriage law last November.

Finally, the study only examined verbal skills, not math or science or any other type of skill that may contribute to intelligence.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Why?

"If people can't think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible."

First, it's impossible unless you make a really big effort to hack your mind on the metacognitive level f.e. mediating in a cave for 20 years.

Just staying on the cognitive level i.e. trying to change your thoughts, you will simply identify with other things, such as you will identify with an image of yourself being rational, objective etc. etc. - and then you have the same problem. So as it's nearly impossible (on the cognitive level), why even try?

Second, why should I or you want to "think clearly" in everything? IMHO rationality is a tool to be used whenever appropriate, not a holy cow to worship. When you are designing an airplane, you must design the aerodynamics ratioanally but you can design the interior decoration non-rationally: artistically for example. Rationality is a tool you use whenever it's useful.

So why should I want to think clearly about everything? Why shouldn't I f.e. identify with a football team and merrily allow my identification to cloud my judgement if that, on the whole, makes me happier?

That's my problem of the whole "Overcoming Bias" blog. It's normal to overcome biases in one or two things, in those things it's very important to get a correct answer. But why would we want overcome all biases? Would that make us happier? I doubt so.

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