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PaperclipPerfector  26d ago (text post)   36916 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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That jpeg is actually misleading, the original question listed a bunch of groups from closest to furthest away, from family to foreigners to animals to plants, and to choose the point where you no longer morally care.

The way it was set up, it is literally impossible to say you care about foreigners more than about the close ones, the assumption that literally everyone cares about their family more than about strangers, about human strangers more than animals and so on was just baked into the study.

So if anyone says that study proves democrats care more about animals than people, they are wrong.

That jpeg is actually misleading, the original question listed a bunch of groups from closest to furthest away, from family to foreigners to animals to plants, and to choose the point where you no longer morally care.

Knowyourmeme was wrong about that, though to be fair they're better than regular journalists.

From the original article (link should bring you directly to Methods, Study 3a, procedure):

All participants completed a moral allocation task, in which participants allocated 100 “moral units” among the following 16 categories...

[...]

We also explained to participants that these categories were non-overlapping such that giving to one category (e.g., extended family) would not include an inclusive category (e.g., immediate family).

created the heatmap shown. Afterwards:

In addition, participants also completed a more qualitative measure of the extent of their moral circle by clicking on rungs extending outward and representing the same categories as in the moral allocation task (see Supplementary Note 4).

and supplementary note 4 is shown in the knowyourmeme post.

EDIT: nvm, they just reused the same term to refer to two different things.

Yes thanks for the sources, I didn't know that allocating points was part of the study, but apparently that part was irrelevant to the heatmap.

https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41467-019-12227-0/MediaObjects/41467_2019_12227_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Please click on a number that depicts the extent of your moral circle. Note that in this scale, the number you select includes the numbers below it as well. So, if you select 10 (all mammals), you are also including numbers 1-9 (up to 'all people on all continents') in your moral circle.

That data was not used to generate the heatmap.

>Heatmaps indicating highest moral allocation by ideology, Study 3a.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12227-0/figures/5

EDIT: nvm, they just reused the same term to refer to two different things.

In addition, participants also completed a more qualitative measure of the extent of their moral circle by clicking on rungs extending outward and representing the same categories as in the moral allocation task (see Supplementary Note 4). This measure allowed us to create heatmaps to visualize the relative sizes of liberals’ and conservatives’ moral circles.

Does this not say that heatmaps were made out of what they used in supplementary note 4?

I had to dig into their data source to be sure, but it seems you're right. The "allocation" in the caption is talking about the "extent" in the main body, not the "allocation" there. The raw data of the heatmaps is x/y coordinates where they clicked.

The way it was set up, it is literally impossible to say you care about foreigners more than about the close ones

Why? Iirc it was simply a matter of assigning 100 points to different categories.

No, as far as I remember it was not about assigning points, it was about choosing the size of the moral circle, if you look at the graph each circle has the previous smaller circle included within, that imagery is intentional, that is how the participants were meant to interpret it, when they choose animals (big circle) the humans (small circle) is included within.

Yes, you're right.

Finally, we assessed the heatmaps generated by participants’ clicks on the rung they felt best represented the extent of their moral circle.

The size of the moral circle was examined in that study, but was not used to generate the heatmap:

Heatmaps indicating highest moral allocation by ideology, Study 3a.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12227-0/figures/5

EDIT: nvm, they just reused the same term to refer to two different things.

Well they explicitly say heatmaps were made from the size of the moral circle, and I don't see any other heatmap besides that one.

Heatmaps indicating highest moral allocation by ideology, Study 3a.

Sounds vague enough that I don't think i have to change my interpretation, even if the wording kinda sound like they're talking about the points allocation.

Every liberal I know would in fact not choose a tree over their family, even if they care about the environment, if your interpretation is right that goes against what you can just see with the naked eye.

Liberals are not these caricatures that "care about rocks more than about their families", please ask any liberal you know if they care less about someone the more closely related they are to them, if they would rather cut a tree or a family member, they are not actually insane.

Sounds vague enough that...

I came down on the other side of that vagueness, but their raw data source is the pixel people clicked on, which is undeniable evidence for your interpretation of that.

Liberals are not these caricatures that "care about rocks more than about their families", please ask any liberal you know if they care less about someone the more closely related they are to them, if they would rather cut a tree or a family member, they are not actually insane.

I have, and that's why I found it plausible. Humans as equal to everything else in the universe is not at all outlandish of a statement. (As to whether they would actually follow that through to its conclusion? Nah, I doubt it. It's all talk.)

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