Here I am, staring into the "Doug's Breakfast" again! I just can't help
myself!
Same theme, Owen. No change. You are looking for scientific
explanations for fundamentalist human behavior, rather than religious
ones.
I think Owen is looking for scientific explanations for why the election
(appears to be) so close, given how much evidence there is for the need
for an extreme change in our government, not for the motivation of the
many (but not all) of McCain/Palin supporters who come from a religious
fundamentalist perspective.
I'd estimate no more than 50% of the Red voters are voting Red for these
(religious/racist) reasons. For example, my own parents are neither
Christian nor Racist, yet they still believe that liberal excesses are
more dangerous than what we have just been through (8 or 28 years,
depending on your measure). I don't get it, but I DO know that you can
vote Red without being a religious fundamentalist. My parents may be
the exception, but I don't think so. Hell, *I* voted for Reagan because
in my own limited view/ignorance in my youth thought I was shutting down
this very same thing (in the person of Jimmy Carter) in favor of a good
honest actor who didn't speak southern and didn't invoke "Christian Values".
No Central Limit Theorem.
I was more than half serious when I invoked the Lagrange model of
orbital stability in two-body gravitational systems. I also believe
that some application of the central limit theorem might be invoked as
well. Some sampling theory might help too. For example: When one
side (or the other) mobilizes and gets a groundswell of support, it is
not surprising that the other side will react in kind. To the extent
that everyone operates (politically) on a continuum between far left and
far right (which I find a sad and probably self-reinforcing way of
being) and can be polarized by greed or fear (or rhetoric) away from the
center, it does seem that we would get a central-limit-esque bimodal
distribution. I think this is why candidates often try to appear
"centrist" during an election, to try to pick up part of the "other
hump", while the radicals on both sides try to polarize the issues to
get those humps separated cleanly.
I prefer a higher-dimensional model (like as many dimensions as there
are issues? which if you press me, I will probably claim is uncountable
or fractal or something) or at least the two-body orbit model. In that
one, I personally tend to wander between L4 and L5 with only the
occasional visit to L1 and with little or no interest in L3 or L2.. the
issues are almost never so simple. For example, I can believe in the
right to own guns without wanting (most) people to own guns and I can
believe in the right to have abortions without wanting (most) people to
have abortions, or the right for individuals to create and apply wealth
without wanting them to use that to inhibit other's ability to do the
same, etc. ad nauseum.
No stochastic ABM rules.
Doug's question about "why people have a fondness, almost a need to be
told what they should think" is part of "flocking" (more aptly packing,
herding, banding?) instincts, and *does* suggest some stochastic ABM
rules might capture at least *some* of the results we see.
No scientific proof.
We still have little or no data in this realm (as far as I know), so it
is hard to imagine more than some scientific models semi-validated only
by anecdotal evidence and scant/weak data sources (polls, election
results). So I agree, no scientific "proof" of much at all.
Belief in the divine imperative of the right to stone 13 year old rape
victims is based in religious dogma.
A niggling point, but I think said "stoners" believe it is their
*imperative* not their *right*... a subtle but important point. If we
take it to be them acting on their "right" then it is easy to judge them
wrongly.
Belief that Barack Obama is a Muslim, or even more importantly is
*not* a "Good Christian" is fed by religious dogma.
Check this out:
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/mccainpalin-supporters-let-their-rac
Now, instead of looking for a scientific explanation of why those
folks are acting this way, perhaps we should be investigating why it
has been socially acceptable to teach people that this type of
behavior is acceptable?
I think xenophobia is deeply rooted and in our modern culture it looks
like "racism" or "classism". I think it is very natural for
territorial herd/pack/band animals to treat others of their own species
which are not identifiable as of their group, as enemies. I wish we
had transcended this by now, but it doesn't surprise me that we go to it.
And I agree with Doug that we should be looking at this more carefully,
and looking at it across the board. We should, for example, throw
Political Correctness into the blender with Religious Fundamentalism
before we pour it into the analyzers and spread it in the petri dishes.
I think the deeper question is "what makes us act in ways that do not
appear to have much if any survival value?" or "where is the
enlightenment in enlightened self-interest?". And I think the answer(s)
might be somewhere in the difference of (and tension between?) survival
of the individual and survival of the group (and of the species too I
suppose).
carry on,
- Steve
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