Dilbert Bridges the Liberal/Conservative Divide.

I've often said that Dilbert is "the story of my life."

Well, this recent strip is, IMHO, the funniest (and most true) ever.

This strip has triggered quite an active cross-discussion on the Dilbert website. Unfortunately, some of the comments are "flaming" (hostile and insulting interaction), so be forewarned.

However, one comment that caught my eye included a pithy P. J. O'Rourke quote:

"The second item in the liberal creed, after self-righteousness, is unaccountability. Liberals have invented whole college majors — psychology, sociology, women's studies — to prove that nothing is anybody's fault. No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers. A callous pragmatist might favor abortion and capital punishment. A devout Christian would sanction neither. But it takes years of therapy to arrive at the liberal view."

-- P.J. O'Rourke

This strip also plays into the Liberal/Conservative (L/C) theme of quite a few postings on this blog, with links to some below.

Just click on the blue titles to read them. Some include serious, extended, courteous cross-discussion
between me and my friends and colleagues, including the Chairman of my PhD committee, Howard Pattee. Some of those may even qualify to be published alongside the dialogs and writings about Socrates by Plato and Aristotle. Enjoy!

L-MINDS AND C-MINDS

A series of Topics and Comments on the Liberal Mind (L-Mind) or Conservative Mind (C-Mind) we observe in many of our fellow human beings.
Click for: 1 - Fallibility, 2 - More on..., 3 - Origin of..., 4 - Plato and Aristotle..., 5 - Even More on ...,6 - L/C Persistence, 7 - Still More on, 8 - L/C Presentation, 9 - Back to L/C Basics, 10 - L/C Mental Health, 11 - Voting and Notions of Fairness, 12 - L/C Good Vibes vs Good Deeds, 13 - Lessons from Tuskegee Experiment, 14 - Haidt's Paper: What the Democrats Don't Get, 15 - Carbon Tax a Loser (Too Bad), 16 - L/C Minds and Temper, 17 - Vi and Ira: L/C Minds on AP Video, 18 - Haidt's TED Talk: L/C Five Channels of Morality.

Ira Glickstein

Labels on Main Topic Postings

I've noticed that Joel has begun putting labels at the end of his new Main Topic postings.

GREAT IDEA!

I went back and put labels on a few older postings.

If we do this for all new Main Topics, it will help Blog members find related Main Topics and the Comments under them.

Here is how they work:

The Author of a new Main Topic puts the labels (e.g,, L/C, liberal, conservative, mental health, ...) in the box at the bottom of the posting.

A reader can click on the label at the end of the posting and see all the other postings with the same label.

Ain't that great!

Ira

L/C Mental Health

This posting relates to our previous discussions of the limitations of polls and our L-mind C-mind dichotomy. The following, from Gallup indicates a linear relationship between self-reported mental health and party affilliation.



According to Gallup, "Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report having excellent mental health, compared to 43% of independents and 38% of Democrats. This relationship between party identification and reports of excellent mental health persists even within categories of income, age, gender, church attendance, and education."

The following chart shows that even low-income Republicans report better mental health than Democrats with similar incomes. As expected, Democrats with higher incomes report 17% better mental health than Democrats with lower incomes, but high-income Republicans report 19% better mental health than high-income Democrats and 36% bettter mental health than low-income Democrats!

Of course, Democrats and Republicans do not exactly map to L-mind and C-mind, but that is at least an approximation.

Some portion of the population will not participate in polls and others will tell the pollsters what they think they want to hear or what will make the pollster think more highly of them - or they may lie outright. Thus, despite the best efforts of the pollsters, the results may or may not represent the actual opinions of the total population.

Never-the-less, poll results may be the best information available for certain things. Also, the high visibility of polls indicates that media audiences tend to pay attention to them.

On the other hand, since the differences are so strong (20% difference between Republicans and Democrats) there is a good chance the conclusions are true. Therefore all you L-minds, if you adopt some C-mind attitudes, your mental health may actually improve (or, at least, you may think it has improved! :^)

Ira Glickstein

(feeling mentally healthy)

Back to L/C basics

Before we became enmeshed in these statistical concerns, which I think illustrate the near fruitlessness of population studies, Howard brought up an interesting concern. I've reexamined my principle that C-Minds make moral judgments about personal problems based upon broader impact. (Recall that Fred said that he couldn't keep bowling with Ricky, because it would encourage cheating in the general population. Ethel tried to sympathize with and forgive Rickie's yielding to temptation.) Even though Howard's torture case doesn't quite fit the situation, I'll revise my analysis.

Both L-Minds and C-Minds will examine specific applications when offered a piece of global legislation or general policy. If one proposes a policy which outlaws the use of torture (I won't bother to define this term, since Howard and Ira disagree as to its meaning.) then all kinds of minds will demand that nebulous terms be clearly defined. All kinds of minds will ask "what if?" (As I've said before, I'm not interested in what politicians say, since they are motivated by electoral and partisan considerations that obscure their L/C Mindedness.)

Hmmm. Now that I think about it, I may have spoken too soon. Maybe specifics are not a universal desire. Two cases come to mind. The ERA was opposed by many C-Minds, because it was too general and would place too many issues in the hands of the courts. L-Minds argued the general principle was sufficient and that the courts could iron out the details. The same was true for the Americans with Disabilities Act. The law was lacking in specifics and subject to judicial interpretation. The latter resulted in the removal of street toilet facilities in New York City, because they couldn't be made wheelchair accessible. So, I guess I'm still uncertain about the underlying principle. I believe it's there but I can't seem to find it.


I would just like to clarify something. The kind of principles I'm looking for, should allow one to design an expert system capable of doing what you and I easily do intuitively. The expert program would be able to take any problem whether public or personal and select an L-Mind or C-Mind position. If it is a rule-based system we ought to be able to set of rules that would make this possible. ( I'll let someone else worry about the parser.) I believe this thought experiment will reveal some interesting things about the thinking process. With respect -Joel