The Actual Threat to Democracy

tstorm823

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Nah. You're just bad at understanding things. Don't worry though. I'm sure you have other talents.
I suspect you're projecting here. The "work" I was denigrating was the sort of thing where an already wealthy enough family sends a kid to college, who uses the degree to get a job for a corporation too big to realize they're just sitting at a desk watching youtube most of the day. Those sorts of jobs are by and for wealthier people than someone like a roofer.

This conversation is about how poor, working class people apparently just aren't educated enough to be liberal, and you're accusing the only person disputing that of classism.
 

Silvanus

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This is going to be a test for you. Are you capable of conceding a point? Cause this is as black and white as it's ever going to be:
Yeah, I hadn't spotted that line. That's both specious and insulting. I was mainly looking at the line you quoted in your reply, but that's my bad for not properly inspecting the initial post as a whole.

Point stands that the line you quoted has more basis than the response you gave to it, which was reverse snobbery and speculation.
 

tstorm823

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Yeah, I hadn't spotted that line. That's both specious and insulting. I was mainly looking at the line you quoted in your reply, but that's my bad for not properly inspecting the initial post as a whole.
What if I told you that you had already responded to this post:
This tangent began not only with a causative claim, "the more educated you are, the more liberal your stance is going to be", it outright said "very specifically, they're not intelligent enough to be liberal". I'm arguing with that nonsense, you're not going to defend that, you're doing the thing again.
It did not have the underline the first time, I added that now for emphasis.
 

Cheetodust

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I suspect you're projecting here. The "work" I was denigrating was the sort of thing where an already wealthy enough family sends a kid to college, who uses the degree to get a job for a corporation too big to realize they're just sitting at a desk watching youtube most of the day. Those sorts of jobs are by and for wealthier people than someone like a roofer.

This conversation is about how poor, working class people apparently just aren't educated enough to be liberal, and you're accusing the only person disputing that of classism.
Except it isn't really because you've added the claim that educated people who do "real work" lean Conservative. Which you also haven't backed up
 

Ag3ma

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As recently as 2016, the conventional wisdom that STEM fields are more conservative than not held true:
I'm just going to point out here that that is a Master's thesis extrapolating from data from another source which is not well tailored to address the fundamental question, and also a very modest sample size (~160 STEM workers). It is not a strong study to use to underpin your claim. It is quite a thoughtful thesis though, as it explains its limitations in decent detail.
 
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Satinavian

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As recently as 2016, the conventional wisdom that STEM fields are more conservative than not held true:
Ok, that is one master thesis using one source. Also the thesis might be from 2016, but the data comes from 2010. But true, they get this result.

But a quick google search gives us this (repeatedly referenced in many other results)
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2009/07/09/section-4-scientists-politics-and-religion/
and this
https://psmag.com/social-justice/study-science-promotes-leftward-leanings-93350
and even a recent nature article
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01382-3
claiming the opposite.

And that is without doing any deep digging or considering other countries. (You know, neither me nor Silvanus are actually US based)
 
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Silvanus

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What if I told you that you had already responded to this post:

It did not have the underline the first time, I added that now for emphasis.
....at which point I replied that I wasn't defending that perspective, but was rather arguing with what you did say.
 

tstorm823

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Except it isn't really because you've added the claim that educated people who do "real work" lean Conservative. Which you also haven't backed up
What isn't what?
Ok, that is one master thesis using one source. Also the thesis might be from 2016, but the data comes from 2010. But true, they get this result.

But a quick google search gives us this (repeatedly referenced in many other results)
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2009/07/09/section-4-scientists-politics-and-religion/
and this
https://psmag.com/social-justice/study-science-promotes-leftward-leanings-93350
and even a recent nature article
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01382-3
claiming the opposite.
Those aren't claiming the opposite. Your articles are missing 75% of the letters in STEM, and include only the letter most likely to be working for a university or the government.
....at which point I replied that I wasn't defending that perspective, but was rather arguing with what you did say.
That people with conservative opinions may hold them based on knowledge gained through their experience, rather than as a consequence of ignorance?
 

tstorm823

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I'm just going to point out here that that is a Master's thesis extrapolating from data from another source which is not well tailored to address the fundamental question, and also a very modest sample size (~160 STEM workers). It is not a strong study to use to underpin your claim. It is quite a thoughtful thesis though, as it explains its limitations in decent detail.
I am limited in what I can use to support my claim in as much as Satinavian wants to use the word STEM as a single entity but then consider only parts of it. I needed someone using that acronym.
 

Silvanus

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That people with conservative opinions may hold them based on knowledge gained through their experience, rather than as a consequence of ignorance?
That having more experience of work makes people lean right (but only 'real work', of course).
 

tstorm823

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That having more experience of work makes people lean right (but only 'real work', of course).
I believe I had enough "like"s and qualifiers in my response to be sure I wasn't making a firm, causative claim. The closest I got was a deliberate inversion of the exact quote I was responding to, done that way for snark.
 

Silvanus

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I believe I had enough "like"s and qualifiers in my response to be sure I wasn't making a firm, causative claim. The closest I got was a deliberate inversion of the exact quote I was responding to, done that way for snark.
Indeed, it's been implication rather than direct causative claim, because that's easier to deny.

Fact remains you wanted people to believe that real salt-of-the-earth work experience is likelier to lead people to the right, while silly fluffy higher education and namby-pamby fake jobs lead people to the left.
 

Satinavian

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Those aren't claiming the opposite. Your articles are missing 75% of the letters in STEM, and include only the letter most likely to be working for a university or the government.
Ok.
"Technology" doesn't really have degrees separate from science and engineering, so you can omit that. Or is this supposed to be IT ? we can run with IT.

Googling engineering and political leaning :

http://verdantlabs.com/politics_of_professions/index.html
Engineers : 71%/29% democrat/republican. Where does the data come from ? Oh, campaign donation data, seems legit. They also have Mathematicians as a 90%/10% split in favor of democrats., IT at 74%/26% in favor of democrats. And science again similar.

I could probably look further but i am not sure it is worth the time. The other components of STEM unsurprisingly seem not much different at all from the science part.
 

Ag3ma

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That people with conservative opinions may hold them based on knowledge gained through their experience, rather than as a consequence of ignorance?
Well, in a sense conservative opinions are likely to be associated with knowledge and experience.

For instance, a male aerospace engineer working for a private arms company in Texas is likely to be more conservative than a female aerospace engineer who works for a public institution in New Jersey. I don't think it's going to be the actual engineering work they're doing that's the big difference in their political views.
 

tstorm823

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Ok.
"Technology" doesn't really have degrees separate from science and engineering, so you can omit that. Or is this supposed to be IT ? we can run with IT.

Googling engineering and political leaning :

http://verdantlabs.com/politics_of_professions/index.html
Engineers : 71%/29% democrat/republican. Where does the data come from ? Oh, campaign donation data, seems legit. They also have Mathematicians as a 90%/10% split in favor of democrats., IT at 74%/26% in favor of democrats. And science again similar.

I could probably look further but i am not sure it is worth the time. The other components of STEM unsurprisingly seem not much different at all from the science part.
No, that doesn't seem legit. A sample of only people who gave campaign contributions in an unstated timeframe is not good data for figuring out real numbers overall. Look at that number for engineering, look at it broken down by discipline.
1685121295380.png

Their mean ratio for engineers as a whole is nearly identical to the second most blue subcategory, which environmental engineering isn't really a big enough field to meaningfully change the number overall, even if they were far off that mean. Assuming they didn't mess up the numbers for this infographic (which I am assuming this), this suggests that political contributions from software engineers (many of who don't have degrees in the first place) are so numerous as to outweigh every other type listed. This does not mean engineers lean left, more likely it's a result of most engineers not making active campaign contributions while big tech employees notoriously flood the coffers of Democrats. But they're all out in California, that's what people in California do, that's not really tied to career or education.
Fact remains you wanted people to believe that real salt-of-the-earth work experience is likelier to lead people to the right, while silly fluffy higher education and namby-pamby fake jobs lead people to the left.
Are you denying those correlations, or are you just upset at the silly adjectives you added?
Well, in a sense conservative opinions are likely to be associated with knowledge and experience.

For instance, a male aerospace engineer working for a private arms company in Texas is likely to be more conservative than a female aerospace engineer who works for a public institution in New Jersey. I don't think it's going to be the actual engineering work they're doing that's the big difference in their political views.
Most private enterprise leans right, most careers funded through the government lean left, that all makes sense. Relative to factors like age, income, place of residence, etc, I'm not really married to the idea that education has any particularly strong effect on political leaning, and I believe the attempts I've seen at longitudinal data on this agree that people don't leave college particularly more or less liberal than when they entered. The relationship might be just correlation caused by compounding variables. Like twice as many people are getting degrees now than did 50 years ago, so the population with degrees skews younger than without. Or institutions with significant graduate and doctoral programs are predominantly inside major cities. Being young and living in a city (at least here) are long established correlates to liberalism, and education could just be a ride-along factor.

But if we are to consider the possibility that time in education impacts political leanings, I don't think the conclusion that conservatism is just ignorance that can be educated out of people holds water given any deeper analysis.
 

Kwak

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I don't think the conclusion that conservatism is just ignorance that can be educated out of people holds water given any deeper analysis.
That is true, it is a carefully considered deliberate decision to embrace cruelty.
 

Silvanus

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Are you denying those correlations, or are you just upset at the silly adjectives you added?
A correlation between working more and leaning right has no good evidence, that's right. You backed it up through speculation and snobbery about certain kinds of job you don't like, which I described with silly adjectives to pay the appropriate level of respect (none).
 
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tstorm823

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A correlation between working more and leaning right has no good evidence, that's right.
If the vast majority of adults are either in school or in the workforce, and more years of higher education correlates to relatively more liberalism, then the inverse is also true. Relative to those who spend more time on schooling, those who spent that time in the work force are more conservative. It's the same correlation presented differently.
 

Bedinsis

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If the vast majority of adults are either in school or in the workforce, and more years of higher education correlates to relatively more liberalism, then the inverse is also true. Relative to those who spend more time on schooling, those who spent that time in the work force are more conservative. It's the same correlation presented differently.
That presumes that there are only two ideologies one can lean towards.
 
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