Thursday, June 23, 2005

The Eugenics Argument should be Right Around the Corner

I thought racist-classist-sexist-ageist "conditioning" is what was wrong with the world?

Is it the selective "gay gene" argument, or the übermensch argument that they're going to make of this? I give Kos and Atrios 48 hours.

Why would it only apply to one sort of ideology? Do they only study "their own", and identifying others' beliefs as a defect?

The New York Times reports on a sketchy study of political attitudes. This is not the beginning of a "three guys are sitting at a bar" joke:

«Three political scientists . . . combed survey data from two large continuing studies including more than 8,000 sets of twins.

From an extensive battery of surveys on personality traits, religious beliefs and other psychological factors, the researchers selected 28 questions most relevant to political behavior. The questions asked people "to please indicate whether or not you agree with each topic," or are uncertain on issues like property taxes, capitalism, unions and X-rated movies. Most of the twins had a mixture of conservative and progressive views. But over all, they leaned slightly one way or the other.»

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