Monday, March 15, 2010

Study Finds Liberals are Smarter

The evolutionary reasons discussed in this article that may be behind this phenomenon are interesting and give me some hope that we're continuing to move forward as a species: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/26/liberals.atheists.sex.intelligence/

"The adoption of some evolutionarily novel ideas makes some sense in terms of moving the species forward," said George Washington University leadership professor James Bailey, who was not involved in the study. "It also makes perfect sense that more intelligent people -- people with, sort of, more intellectual firepower -- are likely to be the ones to do that."

I think that in focusing too much on what benefits individuals from an evolutionary standpoint the scientists quoted might be missing something that liberals inherently understand. That as social animals what benefits the whole group advantages both the group and the individuals in the group for better survival and reproduction. Humans have survived and flourished because we're social animals so it's a mistake to focus too much on natural selection at the indvidual level to the exclusion of social group that the species thrives in which has progressed from small tribes to nations to countries like America for which the term "nation" is really a misnomer and with hope eventually to the whole planet. If we can't make this next leap to a global society, I'm not sure we'll be around long.

At least we now know the reasons our arguments are more soundly constructed and reasoned. Yet there must be room for improvement In my case I've got the liberal monogamous male thing going, but I guess I'm not quite smart enough to be an atheist. It just escapes me how claiming to know the unknowable is smart.

BTW, I figured something out about the haloscan comments. If you cut and paste something in, you'll often get an error that you've exceeded the 3000 character limit, even if you not even close. It's due to the formating from the source document. But if you first paste it into the Notepad program, which at least on my computer is under Accessories, that will remove all formating and solve the problem . . . unless, that is, if you really do have over 3000.

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