Obviously Barry found the study of interest... What interests me is that I can't recall anything anywhere near as numerically complex as the question the study deals with ever having been discussed on FFL, so no one here has ever had the opportunity to "prove" how much smarter they are than others on that level of numerical reasoning.
Which means that Barry is only fantasizing about which members of FFL might be numerate enough for this study to call their political reasoning in question. I'm happy to say I'm not one of them; I'm blissfully innumerate. So he can cross me off his list. Sorry, Barry. ;-) Barry wrote: One that might be of interest to those who seem compelled to "prove" how much smarter they are than others. As a quote from the article and the research it reports on says: A recent study by Yale's Dan M. Kahan and colleagues might be thought to call these truisms of democratic political culture into question. According to the finding, the better you are at reasoning numerically, the more likely you are to let your political bias skew your quantitative reasoning. Put another way, the brainier you are, the better you can twist facts to your own pre-existing convictions. And that's what you will tend to do. http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/11/01/242138044/the-smarter-you-are-the-stupider-you-are?ft=1&f= http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/11/01/242138044/the-smarter-you-are-the-stupider-you-are?ft=1&f= http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/11/01/242138044/the-smarter-you-are-the-stupider-you-are?ft=1&f= http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/11/01/242138044/the-smarter-you-are-the-stupider-you-are?ft=1&f=