Comment by rkts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rkts | Hacker News Reader

Please tell me I'm not the only one who recoils at the inference from

"Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W"

to

"Based on the results, he said, liberals could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas."

!

As the article notes, political orientation is correlated with a lot of things: income, education, religion, race/ethnicity, etc. Even if they tried to control for any possible confounding variables (the article doesn't mention whether they did), I'm very skeptical that they've successfully isolated a causal relationship between liberalism/conservatism and some innate brain capacity that makes you good at pressing a button at the right time.

Of course they haven't. However, considering the letter they chose, I wonder if the whole thing is a put-on...

[notices that every other comment attached to this link just got -1'd]

And here I was hoping that drive-by downmodding was confined to reddit.

If you don't like the story, fine. But don't take it out on the people who... as it happens, also thought the story was worthless, but found that worthlessness worth mentioning.

You're correct. One user downmodded every comment on this thread. Maybe I'll add protections against that. In the meantime I upmodded them all myself.

Thanks; it's appreciated. And yes, I think protection against that kind of thing would be useful (but it's sad that it's necessary even here).

I thought this is politics without even reading the article and was so angry I downmodded all 3 or 4 comments that were here. Sorry about that. I just don't want HN to be another reddit.

It may have been posted as a political link, but the methodology was so flawed that it became interesting anyway. :)

As for my interest: I quit a psych degree after a year because the teaching of experimental psychology convinced me that it isn't a serious science. Experiments like this are sadly not uncommon - experimenters decide what they want to quantify, but then measure whatever they can, no matter how tenuous the link between the two.

I upmodded you, mojuba. Divided America is stupid - it is tragic.

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