Intelligence, education, and political activity

Friday, January 23, 2015


It just can't be true that people with more education would tend to align with the "conservative" Republican party. "However, in most national and regional studies on voting behavior... just such a relationship is typically observed..."
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2778029?sid=21105143536851&uid=3739256&uid=2129&uid=4&uid=2&uid=3739848&uid=70

Really?? But we are taught to assume the opposite. After all "for every one percentage point increase in college graduates in a state, the percentage of Democratic identifiers increases by 0.75 percent":
http://www.progressivepolicy.org/blog/more-college-graduates-more-democratic-voters/

But wait... the research results are actually all over the board:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/unique-everybody-else/201305/intelligence-and-politics-have-complex-relationship

So, if you want to understand how human political activity, there is a lot to absorb. But if you want to find research that confirms what you want to be true, there is a lot to choose from.

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I teach them all the good I can, and recommend them to others from whom I think they will get some moral benefit. And the treasures that the wise men of old have left us in their writings I open and explore with my friends. If we come on any good thing, we extract it, and we set much store on being useful to one another. - Socrates, Memorabilia
 
 
 
What we maintain is that in none of the problems of life can men afford to lose sight of the storehouse bequeathed to them by the ancients. In the complexus of everything which differentiates man from the brute creation, the voice of antiquity must be heard...

-H. Browne, quoted in "Classics and Citizenship" The Classical Quarterly, 1920