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Why are so many social scientists left-liberal?

135

Comments

  • #62
    20Cent
    Registered Users Posts: 8,939 ✭✭✭20Cent


    Scientists are liberal because they deal In facts and reality has a liberal bias.


  • #63
    Littlekittylou
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,357 ✭✭✭Littlekittylou


    Eramen wrote: »
    I can't imagine this being true. Publicly at least, a person can't 'afford' to be overtly 'right-wing' in college in the way you're saying. You'd simply be branded a heretic and all your opinions will be rendered null, never mind the possibility of sabotaging your own grades by professors who won't take kindly to you disagreeing, however meagerly, with their seemingly unquestionable-god-like views.

    This is how leftism works. They may espouse 'tolerance' but this only extends to their own causes. Anyone who isn't one of them is fair game in their pursuit of total social uniformity. It's a political-religion that will tolerate no substitutes or alternatives. How many times do this have to be shown?

    Disagree with anything the trendies 'stand for', whether LGBT, gay marriage, abortion, immigration, rampant welfarism, and you'll see what kind of sad, narcissistic bigots the left harbours.

    Would you like me to fashion you a tin foil hat? Little tip it might attract the sun you will get a fabulous tan but I would wear sunscreen.:)


  • #64
    Eramen
    Registered Users Posts: 776 ✭✭✭Eramen


    bodice ripper wrote: »
    awful lot of butthurt right-wingers in here :P


    Bet you never thought you'd even be saying that on boards? The leftist Borg 'opinion-monopoly' is now over.

    The whimpering, self-abasing guilt-complex that is leftism just ain't sexy and everyone knows it. The New Right is where it's at - Booh-Yeah! :cool:


  • #65
    reprise
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,372 ✭✭✭reprise


    Littlekittylou wrote: »
    way is there any truth in the assertion that business graduates are more right wing? Or am I just making that up?

    Am I lying?

    It's irrelevant to the topic.

    STEM and harder disciplines such as business are simply less susceptible to whim, bias or corruption of results.

    On a practical level, a computer program doesn't give a toss if you are a bleeding heart looper or a ruthless dictator.


  • #66
    reprise
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,372 ✭✭✭reprise


    bodice ripper wrote: »
    awful lot of butthurt right-wingers in here :P

    Hey doodles, careful now. :)


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  • #67
    Sand
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,605 ✭✭✭✭Sand


    Depends on what is meant by left-liberal (liberal to me means something more suited to the right than the left but I'll assume he means the First-World-Problems-Left), but in any way the answer is likely group dynamics. You don't find many anarcho-capitalists in Labour. In a subjective, peer reviewed field like social science where your career is defined by how your work is received by the group you really want to ensure you fall in line with the prevailing group-think. The response for non-compliance can vary from harrumphing to "Two Minutes Hate". The latter seems to be more prevalent in the frankly crazy US university circuit from what I see.

    How it got to the point that this is the prevailing orthodoxy is up for debate, but once it is the prevailing orthodoxy it is very hard to change it bar some sort of external shock.


  • #68
    bodice ripper
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,681 ✭✭✭bodice ripper


    Eramen wrote: »
    Bet you never thought you even be saying that on boards? The leftist Borg 'opinion-monopoly' is now over.

    The whimpering, self-abasing guilt-complex that is leftism just ain't sexy. The New Right is where it's at. :cool:


    What?


  • #69
    bodice ripper
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,681 ✭✭✭bodice ripper


    reprise wrote: »
    Hey doodles, careful now. :)


    also what?


  • #70
    Nodin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 46,938 ✭✭✭✭Nodin


    Eramen wrote: »
    Bet you never thought you even be saying that on boards? The leftist Borg 'opinion-monopoly' is now over.

    The whimpering, self-abasing guilt-complex that is leftism just ain't sexy. The New Right is where it's at. :cool:


    One minute they're persecuting you, next they're hiding away whimpering. Which is it man? Get the story straight.


  • #71
    Eramen
    Registered Users Posts: 776 ✭✭✭Eramen


    Nodin wrote: »
    One minute they're persecuting you, next they're hiding away whimpering. Which is it man? Get the story straight.


    What I'm saying Noddy is that peak liberalism occurred in 1992 and it's over now. What's not to understand? When the Baby-boomers tick off that's it.

    As a parallel with oil supply, the cost of being a leftist is going to increase substantially over the coming decades, to the point that nobody will want to be a leftist, as other better, more efficient solutions are being found and embraced.


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  • #72
    shruikan2553
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,113 ✭✭✭shruikan2553


    Eramen wrote: »
    What I'm saying Noddy is that peak liberalism occurred in 1992 and it's over now. What's not to understand? When the Baby-boomers tick off that's it.

    As a parallel with oil supply, the cost of being a leftist is going to increase substantially over the coming decades, to the point that nobody will want to be a leftist, as other better, more efficient substitutes are being found and embraced.

    So they will be joining the trendy Borg collective you complained about before?


  • #73
    reprise
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,372 ✭✭✭reprise


    shruikan2553 wrote: »
    So they will be joining the trendy Borg collective you complained about before?

    Who knows what will happen when they grow up :)


  • #74
    KomradeBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,981 ✭✭✭KomradeBishop


    Eugene Norman wrote: »
    Climate change is just one aspect of the argument against further growth. However climate change is related to the amount of heat retained, not produced, which is a problem of how the earth traps heat. And not internally generated heat either, the energy from the sun is vastly greater than the extra heat produced by human activities ( a lot of which is just releasing stored solar energy anyway).

    I would need to look at that paper but it sounds very dubious indeed. Is there a specific thread on this or are you willing to start one?

    EDIT: Read the link. That's a physicist who doesn't really understand the first law of thermodynamics
    There is a semi-related thread where I posted about it in Humanities before:
    https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057346118

    Even if you made the Earth far more efficient at radiating waste heat into space, you still have the link from exponential growth->energy production->waste heat, so all that changes is the time it takes to have problems.
    Permanent economic growth is physically impossible.

    His application of the law of thermodynamics is incredibly simple to understand: You can't convert energy from one type to another with 100% efficiency (which is what happens during power generation), it is physically impossible, so during the conversion some energy will be converted to waste heat.


  • #75
    Eramen
    Registered Users Posts: 776 ✭✭✭Eramen


    reprise wrote: »
    Who knows what will happen when they grow up :)


    Perhaps the kids and grand kids will react against the sodden ol' [leftist] crap that Daddy and Mammy 'believed in' - that left them without a decent future, as well as utterly destroying our European continent?.. Which is already happening.

    Just like the current crop [30-50 age group] rebelled against 'Holy Catholic Ireland something, something..' History repeats, only this time it's in favour of the majority and not the plethora of psychopathic minority interests who have been so happy to tell us how to live for the last 50 years and who could not have failed more miserably.


  • #76
    KomradeBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,981 ✭✭✭KomradeBishop


    Eugene Norman wrote: »
    1) Misuse of Extrapolation: He says energy growth at 3% a year will double in about 23 years. Thats true but the percentage really matters when you extrapolate: At 1% energy usage will double every 70 years. At .5% it takes about 140 years. 0.1% growth takes 700 years to double. Historically energy growth in the US has been 3% per year, in the future it won't be as we will see in the next answer.
    At 1% it would take 900 years for the earth to reach boiling point - not that great a difference, on the grand scale of things - it still signifies that it is physically impossible to avoid.

    At 0.1%, it would take 9000 years - and humans have been around for at least that long, no reason to think we won't be around then - it's still physically impossible to keep growth in energy use going like that, so he's not really misusing extrapolation.

    At 0.1% growth, you'd practically already be within reach of a steady state economy anyway, and you wouldn't have much room for expanding economic growth (certainly not enough, to avoid constant economic crisis, due to how the monetary system and buildup of debt works - I think I elaborated on that in the Humanities thread).
    Eugene Norman wrote: »
    2) The US is a particularly disingenuous example because the USA grew it's population from about 1M or fewer ( he starts in 1650 so he starts with the colonies) to about 340M now. This is clearly higher than the rest of the world, or we would have a few trillion persons on the planet.

    The big step change per capita in energy usage is in going to a technological society from a pre-industrial society. The US both did that and grew it's population exponentially.
    In technological societies energy and GDP per capita are weakly coupled, or not coupled at all. Don't believe me? Google this phrase: energy usage U.S.. So when he says So even if population stabilizes, we are accustomed to per-capita energy growth: total energy would have to continue growing to maintain such a trend, its wrong or a lie.
    It takes energy to produce goods (many of which the US gets from China these days, so it's not going to show in US energy usage charts) - economic growth comes from an increase in production of goods and provision of services; it all requires energy.

    Here is the worldwide increase in energy production over the last 200 years (averaging more than 2.5% per year increase since WWII, using 6x more energy since then):
    https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/world-energy-consumption-by-source.png
    Eugene Norman wrote: »
    3) he then says
    ...
    The 2.3% is incorrect as we have seen from 1 and 2 but this is just wrong. He's not talking about carbon buildup ( which is an issue) but lets take him at his word and ignore the trapping of energy caused by extra carbon. I think he's probably wrong about how efficiently the Earth loses heat anyway, but he is treating all human "created" energy, including from renewables, as endogenous and additional to the energy from the Sun. Thats ludicrous. If we have an economy based on solar, or wind for instance we are just using energy which is already coming in.

    for example the wind gets it's energy from the difference in heat and pressure around a world heated by the Sun (his infrared), it imparts energy to turbines amongst other things and loses some energy in the process, the turbines turn that energy gained from the wind to electricity and some heat. Nothing has been created or destroyed, the account balances. The same amount of energy needs to be released as if humans were not on the planet at all. Thats true of all energy which uses the power of the Sun ( solar, wind and Hydro - hydro because the energy used to evaporate water is infrared, it overcomes gravity as evaporate thus gains potential gravitational energy, the water falls as rain and doesn't lose all of its potential energy if it doesn't fall to sea level, so we use trap the potential energy as kinetic energy when the water joins a river and down hills). It looks like he's ignoring renewables and is assuming a new endogenous energy source which adds energy not already here. Maybe Fusion.

    We can have very large finite growth with renewables even if energy was growing as fast as he claims ( the limit is the limit of the Suns energy hitting the Earth*), but given there is little or no coupling between economic growth and energy in technologically advanced societies, and we use renewables, we could say almost infinite. First law.


    Which is good because the only steady state economies which have ever worked are feudalist.


    * of course utopian technologist think we don't have to stop there. We can trap Sun's rays external to the Earth and redirect them.
    The 2.3% is incorrect - as I've shown, it's actually >2.5%!

    Yes, he's not talking about carbon, he's talking about just energy production - it does not matter if that energy is from the sun: All energy conversions are subject to the laws of thermodynamics, and produce waste heat.

    Even if you can efficiently use up all the energy the Sun sends the Earth's way, that only buys you time (and not that much, when you consider that the growth is exponential - at 2.3%, Earth itself would put out as much energy as the Sun, after 1400 years) - so it's still physically impossible to go on with neverending growth.

    The point is: Growth will have to be finite (which I don't think you disagree with?) - current mainstream economic theory, most especially due to the way the monetary system works, depends upon it being effectively infinite.


  • #77
    shruikan2553
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,113 ✭✭✭shruikan2553


    I'll give the right one thing, they can provide more over-dramatic reactions than a showing of Hamlet featuring an all gay cast.


  • #78
    reprise
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,372 ✭✭✭reprise


    shruikan2553 wrote: »
    I'll give the right one thing, they can provide more over-dramatic reactions than a showing of Hamlet featuring an all gay cast.

    Really? Hysterical queers?

    Isn't that the kind of generalisation that pretty much leaves the left asphyxiated?


  • #79
    shruikan2553
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,113 ✭✭✭shruikan2553


    reprise wrote: »
    Really? Hysterical queers?

    Isn't that the kind of generalisation that pretty much leaves the left asphyxiated?

    If you spent half the time debating the stances of the left that you spend just giving out about them you might risk having a reasonable debate with a person.

    A circlejerk over how the world is dying because of them and only the right can save the day is much more entertaining.


  • #80
    reprise
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,372 ✭✭✭reprise


    shruikan2553 wrote: »
    If you spent half the time debating the stances of the left that you spend just giving out about them you might risk having a reasonable debate with a person.

    A circlejerk over how the world is dying because of them and only the right can save the day is much more entertaining.

    You think I should try have a serious debate with the kind of people who pull queers playing Shakespeare out of a hat?


  • #81
    MadYaker
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,268 ✭✭✭✭MadYaker


    There is a reason that higher educated people tend to be more liberal and left leaning in terms of politics......

    Not all conservatives are stupid people, but all stupid people are conservatives.


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  • #82
    reprise
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,372 ✭✭✭reprise


    MadYaker wrote: »
    There is a reason that higher educated people tend to be more liberal and left leaning in terms of politics......

    Not all conservatives are stupid people, but all stupid people are conservatives.

    Need I say anything more shruikan2553?


  • #83
    shruikan2553
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,113 ✭✭✭shruikan2553


    reprise wrote: »
    You think I should try have a serious debate with the kind of people who pull queers playing Shakespeare out of a hat?

    Oh no, of course not. Agreeing with people pulling the destruction of the future and continents out of a hat is far more suitable for you.
    reprise wrote: »
    Need I say anything more shruikan2553?

    As I said, left and right are more of just a pissing contest with very little of actual worth from either.


  • #84
    reprise
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,372 ✭✭✭reprise


    shruikan2553 wrote: »
    Oh no, of course not. Agreeing with people pulling the destruction of the future and continents out of a hat is far more suitable for you.

    I am enjoying the debate. I am sure we can throw in a tete a tete about the thespian joys of an all lesbian, Jesus Christ Superstar in due course.


  • #85
    bnt
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,031 ✭✭✭✭bnt


    Haven't read the whole thread - I would need to be a social scientist myself to care that much - but it does seem to me that being "liberal" is correlated with liking people in general. If, on the other hand, you have more experience of people and have seen "the evil that men do", then you tend towards the "conservative" side of the political spectrum. It's not a coincidence that people tend (statistically) to become more "conservative" as they grow older.

    Death has this much to be said for it:
    You don’t have to get out of bed for it.
    Wherever you happen to be
    They bring it to you—free.

    — Kingsley Amis



  • #86
    Aurum
    Registered Users Posts: 176 ✭✭Aurum


    Science is basically evidence based analysis, mostly to test a hypothesis. Political Science, Social Science etc. can be viewed as science when the researchers use sound methodology and adhere to an evidence based approach. However, it can often be done terribly, by the type of researcher that Feynman mentioned in the clip posted earlier, in which case it ceases to be scientific.

    Also, the liberal/conservative dichotomy is just silly. Hardly anyone is entirely left wing or right wing in their views.
    Eramen wrote: »
    it's very damn tiresome when you're repeatedly dealing with the Borg collective who aren't capable of rationalising beyond their own emotions.

    Ah but the Borg are inherently unemotional. Were you thinking of Klingons perhaps? They're quite emotional. Not sure how liberal they are though. Probably sub-par scientists too.


  • #87
    Adamantium
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,563 ✭✭✭Adamantium


    20Cent wrote: »
    Scientists are liberal because they deal In facts and reality has a liberal bias.

    Actually I always thought those that dealing with cold hard numbers and facts would be a very conservative mindset at the top levels. If reality had a liberal bias, the laws of the universe would be self aware and be ever changing. They're not. Reality is pretty dull and predictable.
    MadYaker wrote: »
    There is a reason that higher educated people tend to be more liberal and left leaning in terms of politics......

    Not all conservatives are stupid people, but all stupid people are conservatives.

    Because a stupid person couldn't ever be one of your own?


  • #88
    RobYourBuilder
    Registered Users Posts: 1,541 ✭✭✭RobYourBuilder


    As human beings, I think that we are all useless f'cks.


  • #89
    ToddyDoody
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,417 ✭✭✭ToddyDoody


    Hitler was a social scientist of sorts, was he right wing?


  • #90
    Jon Stark
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,304 ✭✭✭Jon Stark


    The article raises a fair point in regards to research and people manipulating their data to suit a result they wanted from the beginning, but I think it's a little unfair to level that specifically at social science. It's generally a problem across all academia.

    As for social scientists being left-liberal, my degree is in social science but I wouldn't describe myself as your typical "lefty" with across the board left views. That certainly wasn't the catalyst for me studying it anyway. I guess I was basically coming from a background of simple curiosity about the mechanisms of society and the players within it.


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  • #91
    TheBeardedLady
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,086 ✭✭✭TheBeardedLady


    bnt wrote: »
    Haven't read the whole thread - I would need to be a social scientist myself to care that much - but it does seem to me that being "liberal" is correlated with liking people in general. If, on the other hand, you have more experience of people and have seen "the evil that men do", then you tend towards the "conservative" side of the political spectrum. It's not a coincidence that people tend (statistically) to become more "conservative" as they grow older.

    Are you basing that on the false Winston Churchill quote?


    The opposite has been proven, actually:

    http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/voter-conservative-aging-liberal-120119.htm

    http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/getting-more-liberal-with-age/?_r=0

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/25/1058455/-Mythbusters-People-Get-More-Conservative-As-They-Age-Right


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