What straw-man?

The passage you object to is merely a reductio ad absurdum of your own beliefs. Your latest comment likewise reads like nothing but a reductio ad absurdum of Richard Dawkins.

By the way, that straw-man strategy does not work on grown-ups.

After several snarky remarks (and yes, to answer your rhetorical question, it is in your imagination), you summarize this way:

Here is the problem, kiddies. Only fools and/or materialists (same thing, really) believe people are simply things. Or machines. Or animals. All attempts at explaining human behavior that do not involve recognition of man’s immortal soul and free will are dangerous and will lead (and have lead!) inevitably to incorrect conclusions, at best. At worst, they will lead(and have lead!) to the abolition of humanity and incomprehensible horror. (See: “twentieth century, history”)

This is as ludicrous as responding to a a Bible study by writing:

Here is the problem, kiddies. Only fools and/or spiritualists (same thing, really) believe people are simply souls. Or ghosts. Or spooks. All attempts at explaining human behavior that do not involve recognition of man’s status as an animal and biological mechanisms are dangerous and will lead (and have lead!) inevitably to incorrect conclusions, at best. At worst, they will lead(and have lead!) to the abolition of humanity and incomprehensible horror. (See: “middle ages, history”)

Obviously, such a combination of rhetoric and half-truths paints a deceptive picture.

Actually, the very consideration of 'conservative' and 'liberal' needs to be rethought, since whatever genetic link is present is probably related more to specific issues or types of issues or manners of looking at the world which have generally but not entirely come to be associated with different parties or the bipolar con-lib dynamic; or more likely, I wonder: the very personal OODA process. Since I am no scientist, I can only vaguely express my impression: most issues related to taste or personal proclivities are probably related to the ways we experience various forms, such as proportions, shapes, harmonies, disharmonies, and so forth. Slight alterations in these have an aggregate effect on the 'larger' issues.

“Hah, I wonder if Amethyst hasn't considered the possibility that the 'conservative'-related genes are dominant whereas the 'liberal'-related genes are recessive!”

That's the neat thing about this research: that's an unknown empirical question. It may be, it may not be. This stuff is wide open.

“Actually, the very consideration of 'conservative' and 'liberal' needs to be rethought, since whatever genetic link is present is probably related more to specific issues or types of issues or manners of looking at the world which have generally but not entirely come to be associated with different parties or the bipolar con-lib dynamic;”

You're right. At the lecture, John Hibbing proposed “Contextualist” and “Absolutist” as possible underlying phenotypes, but again (a) we don't know and (b) a factual answer should be out there.

Research by one of his understudies in Australia indicates vote-choice is an indirect effect through political orientation, and that there is not a “democrat” genotype. so much as a “contextualist” genotype.

Fantastic comment!

“Since I am no scientist, I can only vaguely express my impression: most issues related to taste or personal proclivities are probably related to the ways we experience various forms, such as proportions, shapes, harmonies, disharmonies, and so forth. Slight alterations in these have an aggregate effect on the 'larger' issues.”

NLPers would say these submodality processing patterns and metamodels are THE genetic key to these differences, and the Boyd model, in which observations play a key role in the orientation model, would seem to support that opinion.

It would be interesting to see if combinations of these mind mechanisms generally correlated to “contextualist/absolutist”!

Cheers,

Mike

Regards,
TDL

P.S. I still have to dedicate an entire weekend and just read some of the series you have produced Dan. I keep procrastinating on that though (huge commitment of time and I think my brain might explode.)

I agree somewhat. In fact, today I've been thinking that the contextualist/absolutist paradigm is a dichotomy that appears to be an absolutist framing of these things! (An absolute dichotomy.)

My guess would be this: If we could isolate what Mike has called the “submodality processing patterns and metamodels” — perhaps also isolate each of these as they relate to each of the five basic physical senses — you will find that there's a broad mix in each individual of 'absolutist' or 'contextualist' renderings. So for instance, my interpretation of the harmonies of smells might be 'absolutist' whereas my interpretation of visual cues might be 'contextualist'; and so forth. (In truth, it would probably be broken down further; e.g., consider my 'rendering' of visual colors, visual shapes, visual proportions, and so forth — just in the 'sight' domain. For one I might have an 'absolutist' rendering, for another a 'contextualist' rendering, etc.)

The question become even more complex if we consider how each person not only experiences but interprets the passage of time, as well as 'the past' & 'the present' & 'the future.' These may in fact be aggregates of so many smaller modalities. But I bring this up because the general association of 'conservative' with time seems somewhat absolutist and contextualist together — i.e., traditionalism — whereas for the liberal progressive it also seems absolutist and contextualist although you find more likelihood of anti-traditionalism; so I wonder if it's that fine mix of various submodalities that makes this difference between wanting to adhere to long-standing patterns or wanting to shake things up.

You're all thinking exactly right. This is a really fun thread. Remember that the /original/ article that started this research, the most downloaded article in the American Political Science Association's history, is available free online. [1]

TDL,

You're right that these are predispositions. We are not talking about “genetic determinism.” We are not slaves of our genes.

Now, these are predispositions that develop and strengthen. The genetic impact on political orientation appears to start around age 20 and go up from there. But this is an effect, not a sole cause.

Curtis & Mike,

Your hesitations about absolutism and contextualism are wise. We really don't know what's going on here. The Absolutist-Contextualist split is a working hypothesis to support further research, but only that.

We have this set of variables that correlates with the American left-right split, and a similar (but not identical) set of variables that correlate with the Australian left-right split. There's a tremendous amount of overlap, but some categories are unique to one or the other (Australian “conservatives” tend to be royalists, an idea that would be met by scorn & charges of treason from the Weekly Standard.) So it makes sense that there is not an “abortion gene,” a “monarchy gene,” etc, but some genetic influence that in one environment helps influence an American conservative, in another helps influence an Australian conservative, etc.

Whatever this is, it seems to be independent of almost everything. “Liberalism” is weekly correlated with “Openness” in the OCEAN Big Five personalithy model (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) but only with openness and only weekly.

We know something is going on here. We don't know what.

The next stage of research is to give people functional MRIs while answering political questions. Maybe they'll be a neurophysiological difference between conservatives and liberals in answering these questions. If that's the case, we can assume the genetic effect on politics works through something big like that. If not, then go onto something else.

It's amazing research. There's a lot of open questions. There are many discoveries to be made.
[1] http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/GeneticsAPSR0505.pdf