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Why are so many social scientists left-liberal?

reprise

William Reville posed the question in the Irish Times:

He opines:

Every social scientist I ever met was liberal-left. This uniformity always struck me as very odd. I accidentally came across a new, rigorous academic analysis of this question in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences. The authors are worried by recent problems in social psychology research, including fraud and problems with replicating results

Further:

Psychology has robustly demonstrated the value of diversity of viewpoints for improving creativity, discovery and problem-solving. The authors conclude that lack of political diversity undermines much social-psychological science by embedding liberal values into the research questions and methods, by steering researchers away from politically unpalatable research topics and results, and encouraging conclusions to be drawn that mischaracterise liberals and conservatives. Of course, homogeneously conservative social sciences would face the same problem as homogeneously left-liberal social sciences.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/why-are-so-many-social-scientists-left-liberal-1.2082755

I expect young people to be liberal and a lot of social science is young, but I have suspected that there is more than a little group think involved for some time in social science with the potential for driving disastrous social policy.

What do people think?

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Karl Stein

reprise wrote: »

An opinion piece based on this:

Political Diversity Will Improve Social Psychological Science

https://journals.cambridge.org/images/fileUpload/documents/Duarte-Haidt_BBS-D-14-00108_preprint.pdf

An opinion piece nonetheless. Oh, and he doesn't seem so interested in political diversity as he is with people in social science being 'left-liberal' whatever that reductive term might mean. Surely political diversity would include communists, anarchists, leftist-authoritarians, fascists and all sorts from the political spectrum?

reprise

Karl Stein wrote: »

An opinion piece nonetheless. Oh, and he doesn't seem so interested in political diversity as he is with people in social science being 'left-liberal' whatever that reductive term might mean. Surely political diversity would include, communists, anarchists, leftist-authoritarians, fascists and all sorts from the political spectrum?

from the abstract:

The underrepresentation of nonliberals
in social psychology is most likely due to a combination of self-selection, hostile
climate, and discrimination. We close with recommendations for increasing political
diversity in social psychology

This would suggest liberal and then everyone else.

suicide_circus

Dont think you'll get much support for those contrary notions here, reprise.

Karl Stein

reprise wrote: »

This would suggest liberal and then everyone else.

'Liberal and then everyone else'.

The entirety of political/societal/behavioural views and opinions broken into two strands: 'liberals' and 'everyone else'.

Or in other words 'utter bollocks'.

reprise

Karl Stein wrote: »

'Liberal and then everyone else'.

The entirety of political/societal/behavioural views and opinions broken into two strands: 'liberals' and 'everyone else'.

Or in other words 'utter bollocks'.

If untrue only. Scary if not.

reprise

suicide_circus wrote: »

Dont think you'll get much support for those contrary notions here, reprise.

You don't say.......

The_Valeyard

Venus In Furs wrote: »

So far, kings and a bishop have posted. I await pawns, queens, knights and rooks.

Im actually a Time Lord if that helps.

Ostrom

KomradeBishop wrote: »

In what way is environmentalism co-opted by ecological economics? Do you view ecological economics as bad?

I've not read up on ecological economics as much as other economic schools, but (led by guys like Herman Daly), it definitely seems to be doing a lot of important work on putting together economic theories which don't depend upon neverending-growth (of the kind which makes climate change inevitable), as our current monetary system does.

Ecological economics does little to challenge neoclassical growth theory - Daly and Rogen were lone voices although I agree with their criticisms of the assumption of unlimited growth. Ecological economics has hastened the creation of carbon trading systems and resource valuation which I tend to view as bad, since they limit the problem of environmental damage to imperfect markets. My opinion is they missed an important opportunity by overemphasising the problem of measurement and quantification at the expense of theory - just my opinion.

Eugene Norman

Environmentalists and the old school left - which was very much pro growth -- are not the same ideology.

Steady state economies won't ever work.

TheBeardedLady

I do agree with what he's essentially saying but the very fact that the field is full of lefties says it all, really. I doubt they're discriminating against right-wingers who want to get into the field - they simply mustn't have that much of an interest.

JuliusCaesar

I suppose, from my own perspective, the more you know about a person and their influences and opportunities, the more understanding you have of their behaviour and possible motives. This is why I've no patience with the 'hang 'em, flog 'em, lock 'em up and throw away the key' brigade and tabloid approach to social problems.

It doesn't mean I have endless patience when I am threatened by a bunch of shouting teenagers as I go about my non-work life, alas.

KomradeBishop

Eugene Norman wrote: »

Environmentalists and the old school left - which was very much pro growth -- are not the same ideology.

Steady state economies won't ever work.

Steady state economies (no-growth economies) are pretty much an inevitability, if we're to avoid long-term climate change and eventual destruction of a habitable planet.

As explained well here by an ex-NASA physicist, economic growth is inextricably tied to growth in energy production, and the laws of thermodynamics dictate that increased energy production leads to an increase in waste heat being put into the atmosphere - driving global warming.

To give an idea of how utterly absurd the idea of neverending growth is - paraphrased from that article:
At the current rate of economic growth, the increase in waste-heat being put into the atmosphere, means the Earth's surface would reach 100°C in 400 years - obviously this is unsustainable, and the world economy/environment would come apart long before then.

Unsurprisingly, mainstream economists think that they can just ignore physical-laws/reality once again.

tritium

TheBeardedLady wrote: »

I do agree with what he's essentially saying but the very fact that the field is full of lefties says it all, really. I doubt they're discriminating against right-wingers who want to get into the field - they simply mustn't have that much of an interest.

It reminds me of a picture of a well known physicist (Rutherford I think) surrounded by a number of his students. Many of the students would themselves go on to Nobel prizes or great esteem. The question is how much of that was their own ability and how much was through the exposure to such a major figure and the opportunities it created.

Basically its human nature to be more sympathetic to those of a similar view to us. Given social science is a largely academic field it seems likely that if some of the prominent people there have a particular political or social leaning then they'll also champion people of a similar ilk. This I'd speculate on no evidence whatsoever might be even more pronounced in social science where the social and academic views are so interrelated.

Consider then how this could drive hiring of new faculty members, awarding PhDs, peer review of papers etc. Once a critical mass is reached it becomes difficult for other views to get a look in or not be dismissed. When you have some of the radical views that form in academia actively feeding into a discipline, as it must with social science, this again becomes exacerbated.

Yet as reville points out, this dynamic is unrepresentative of the wider society.

Eugene Norman

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Steady state economies (no-growth economies) are pretty much an inevitability, if we're to avoid long-term climate change and eventual destruction of a habitable planet.

As explained well ... by an ex-NASA physicist, economic growth is inextricably tied to growth in energy production, and the laws of thermodynamics dictate that increased energy production leads to an increase in waste heat being put into the atmosphere - driving global warming.

To give an idea of how utterly absurd the idea of neverending growth is - paraphrased from that article:
At the current rate of economic growth, the increase in waste-heat being put into the atmosphere, means the Earth's surface would reach 100°C in 400 years - obviously this is unsustainable, and the world economy/environment would come apart long before then.

Unsurprisingly, mainstream economists think that they can just ignore physical-laws/reality once again.

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

conorhal

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

I suppose, from my own perspective, the more you know about a person and their influences and opportunities, the more understanding you have of their behaviour and possible motives. This is why I've no patience with the 'hang 'em, flog 'em, lock 'em up and throw away the key' brigade and tabloid approach to social problems.

It doesn't mean I have endless patience when I am threatened by a bunch of shouting teenagers as I go about my non-work life, alas.

But! but! but! The poor chilers are only suffering, according to Emile Durheim anyhow, the effects of anomie, induced by a corporatist culture that constantly throws their disadvantage in their face!

Beware an '-ology' that has a 'soci' in front of it. We love fake sciences these days. They should be shunted back to philosophy 101 and left there.

endacl

The Backwards Man wrote: »

People can think you're lefter than Trotsky or righter than the KKK depending on what perspective they have on your opinion when in reality you are probably somewhere around the middle.

conorhal

KomradeBishop wrote: »

In what way is environmentalism co-opted by ecological economics? Do you view ecological economics as bad?

I've not read up on ecological economics as much as other economic schools, but (led by guys like Herman Daly), it definitely seems to be doing a lot of important work on putting together economic theories which don't depend upon neverending-growth (of the kind which makes climate change inevitable), as our current monetary system does.

*cough*carbon-trading*cough* a new comodities market for the 1% to make a fortune selling the option to polute to countries on behalf of nations that would love the opportunity to polute if only they could afford to. There are plenty of scam opportunities to make a packet from trading and subsidies in the enviornmentalism shell game.

FURET

The notion that there are social scientists and political scientists is a terminological absurdity in my view. I've met medievalist historians who self-describe as scientists. Richard Feynman (an actual scientist) had the right of it when he said that these things are not science.

conorhal

FURET wrote: »

The notion that there are social scientists and political scientists is a terminological absurdity in my view. I've met medievalist historians who self-describe as scientists. Richard Feynman (an actual scientist) had the right of it when he said that these things are not science.

Because it simply has to be said.

The Corinthian

The King of Moo wrote: »

Basically, a social scientist is going to be looking at society on a macro level and more likely to be aware of different social groups and be more open-minded about different groups and lifestyles.
A conservative individual is generally less likely to be concerned with people different from themselves and more concerned with maintaining their own position.

And social scientists are likely to be fairly well educated and therefore more exposed to information about the world and be more open-minded.

Four legs good! Two legs bad!

steddyeddy wrote: »

It goes beyond that. Most scientists are liberal people.

Liberal does not imply left-liberal.

Eugene Norman

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Steady state economies (no-growth economies) are pretty much an inevitability, if we're to avoid long-term climate change and eventual destruction of a habitable planet.

As explained well here by an ex-NASA physicist, economic growth is inextricably tied to growth in energy production, and the laws of thermodynamics dictate that increased energy production leads to an increase in waste heat being put into the atmosphere - driving global warming.

To give an idea of how utterly absurd the idea of neverending growth is - paraphrased from that article:
At the current rate of economic growth, the increase in waste-heat being put into the atmosphere, means the Earth's surface would reach 100°C in 400 years - obviously this is unsustainable, and the world economy/environment would come apart long before then.

Unsurprisingly, mainstream economists think that they can just ignore physical-laws/reality once again.

so finished the link.

It's a socratic dialog between a physicist and an economist. Since the physicist is writing the socratic dialog, unsurprisingly he won. Unfortunately there are three major errors.

1) Mathematical. Basically he's just extrapolating.
2) Logic. He assumes economic and energy growth are eternally coupled.
3) Science: He gets the first law wrong.

Not surprisingly therefore, we can grow and won't get to 100 degrees centigrade in 400 years.

Heres why in detail.

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.

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.

3) he then says

Second, thermodynamic limits impose a cap to energy growth lest we cook ourselves. I’m not talking about global warming, CO2 build-up, etc. I’m talking about radiating the spent energy into space. I assume you’re happy to confine our conversation to Earth, foregoing the spectre of an exodus to space, colonizing planets, living the Star Trek life, etc.

.. Earth has only one mechanism for releasing heat to space, and that’s via (infrared) radiation. We understand the phenomenon perfectly well, and can predict the surface temperature of the planet as a function of how much energy the human race produces. The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate (conveniently chosen to represent a 10× increase every century), we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years. [Pained expression from economist.] And this statement is independent of technology. Even if we don’t have a name for the energy source yet, as long as it obeys thermodynamics, we cook ourselves with perpetual energy increase.

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.

reprise

FURET wrote: »

The notion that there are social scientists and political scientists is a terminological absurdity in my view. I've met medievalist historians who self-describe as scientists. Richard Feynman (an actual scientist) had the right of it when he said that these things are not science.

This.

"Social science is an example of a science which is not a science... They follow the forms... but they don't get any laws."

Eramen

Turtwig wrote: »

Reality is left liberal. :pac:

Lol, everyone is equal and such things... evidence?

I think you find that it's the Left-collective that's against reality. They have unresolved self-esteem issues that can't ever work in tandem with reason or facts. This cult exhibits forms of ideological group-think to the extreme which will always make this so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2-7vqIL6nc

Littlekittylou

reprise wrote: »

William Reville posed the question in the Irish Times:

He opines:

Further:

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/why-are-so-many-social-scientists-left-liberal-1.2082755

I expect young people to be liberal and a lot of social science is young, but I have suspected that there is more than a little group think involved for some time in social science with the potential for driving disastrous social policy.

What do people think?

Why are so many business graduates right wingers? Same conspiracy theories?:rolleyes:

Perhaps being a social scientist means liking society?

I wouldn't know I am not one.

Anyway is there any truth in the assertion that business graduates are more right wing? Or am I just making that up?

Am I lying?

Eramen

Littlekittylou wrote: »

Why are so many business graduates right wingers? Same conspiracy theories?:rolleyes:

Perhaps being a social scientist means liking society?

I wouldn't know I am not one.

Anyway is there any truth in the assertion that business graduates are more right wing? Or am I just making that up?

Am I lying?

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 does 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.

shruikan2553

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, LGBT, gay marriage, abortion, immigration and you'll see what kind of sad, narcissistic bigots the left harbours.

How is this any different to the "right"?

Some people have some idea that they are so original because they dont believe the left and they must be the ones who are right because they arent like everyone else.

Really the people who just side with whatever is left/right are idiots, neither side will have the answers for everything and it just becomes some sort of pissing contest because they are left/right they must be the right ones.

Eramen

shruikan2553 wrote: »

How is this any different to the "right"?

Some people have some idea that they are so original because they dont believe the left and they must be the ones who are right because they arent like everyone else.

The right can be the same (notably in the US), but at least they can be reasoned with, adhere to decent standards of sociability and politeness and have the tendency to be in productive, long-term employment.

To many leftists these notions are completely foreign. Try to engage them with reason and it won't be long until they single you out as a fascist or bigot. AH is replete with examples. Leftists just want to be liked, I get it, they get with what's 'trendy', but it's very damn tiresome when you're repeatedly dealing with the Borg collective who aren't capable of rationalising beyond their own emotions.

This is how 'feelings' and 'sensitivity' have replaced hard facts and responsibility in our society. Emotional drivel now comes first and thus everything has become intellectually and morally stagnant. Leftists don't actually 'stand' for anything, except for their continued safety and life of ease, provided for them by the very institutions and social structure they constantly hate on and accuse of being 'evil'.

bodice ripper

awful lot of butthurt right-wingers in here :P

shruikan2553

Eramen wrote: »

The right can be the same (notably in the US), but at least they can be reasoned with, adhere to decent standards of sociability and politeness and have the tendency to be in long-term employment.

To many leftists these notions are foreign are completely foreign. Try to engage them with reason and it won't be long until they single you out as a fascist or bigot. AH is replete with examples. Leftists just want to be liked, I get it, they get with what's 'trendy', but it's very damn tiresome when you're repeatedly dealing with the Borg collective who aren't capable of rationalising beyond their own emotions.

This is why 'feelings' and 'sensitivity' have replaced hard facts and responsibility in our society. Emotional drivel now comes first.

Which is exactly my point. Everything you said can switched around or directly applied to the right.

As an example. one of the popular arguments against SSM is that they just dont agree with it, falling into you "This is why 'feelings' and 'sensitivity' have replaced hard facts and responsibility in our society. Emotional drivel now comes first." which would be a more popular opinion on the right.

Being left or right doesnt make you a special snowflake, just 2 different borg collectives.

Nodin

bodice ripper wrote: »

awful lot of butthurt right-wingers in here :P

Shush now. If we're nice Eramen might tell us who the elite who run the world are. He apparently knows.