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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3346 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 16, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Very generally speaking, Conservatism is based in risk avoidance: the core conflict is basically a risk/reward evaluation of courses of action, weighing potential benefits of further societal optimization against potential dangers of disrupting a currently-mostly-functional complex dynamic system. It seems like such a thing might well have genetic components.

Individualism vs. Collectivism also seems as though it could well be genetically influenced: different species are gregarious to different extents, and that almost certainly interplays with genetics. Williams syndrome in humans is a clear display of genetic changes to sociability and desire for the presence of others.

Besides, if we accept that genetics affect I.Q., well then obviously--the genes that give the low IQs are the liberal genes, duh! (jkjk don't hurt me)

I'm skeptical of the risk/reward definition of conservatism. Sure, Chesterton's fence fits, but risk/reward fails to explain a lot of the ethos. Some of it is more along the lines of the hygiene hypothesis--insularity, self-reliance, concentric obligations. Other parts are appeals to familiarity and comfort. Basically, I think reducing conservatism to a strategy elides the values-based reasons.

But yes, risk tolerance, gregariousness, and various other social or intellectual dynamics surely prejudice people towards one or another ideology. Even without considering the environment, I don't believe that polygenic soup would count as a "liberal gene."

Yeah, I agree with everything you've said here. "Multiple genes could likely prejudice toward ideologies" is a better way to put it than "liberal gene", with the relative strength of that prejudice tough to decouple.

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