Originally posted by: CycloWizard
Originally posted by: davestar
er, shouldn't you know how your reply applies to my post?
I do know, but apparently it was a little over your head. At least, that's what I assume since you completely ducked it.
hmmm, considering that your post was 95% about liberals feigning intellectualism and conservatives being more open to honest debate, i think i responded directly to the meat of your post.
in regards to charity, yeah, it looks like there's some evidence that conservatives give to charity more than liberals. however, that is entirely related to their religious views and not their political views. it just so happens that religious people tend to be conservative because the republican party has been pandering to them for 30+ years.
look, we both know the question that we're arguing in this situation: are liberals or conservatives more intellectual? i'll gladly agree that the fringe liberals apply little or no intellectual rigor to their views. however, i maintain that the higher average level of education of self-described liberals (as compared to conservatives) is a pretty good indicator that intellectualism is a left-leaning trait. that's why it matters that there's a correlation.
No one is arguing whether they are more intellectual. I simply stated that liberals feign intellectualism while eschewing it in practice by denigrating those who disagree with them on subjective matters. And I'm still waiting for any evidence that there is a correlation between education and political worldviews.
again, the fringe of both sides denigrates those who disagree with them. this should be no surprise to anyone. i am not trying to defend the dmcowen674s of the world.
evidence of correlation between education and political worldviews?
Here you go.
"Liberals have the highest education level of any typology group"
"Educational differences between Liberals and Conservative Democrats are nearly as large (49% vs. 16%). "
i assume you mean "endorsee"?
Stop assuming and read what I wrote. If I suggest that people should vote for candidate X, then I am hoping that people without a brain of their own will vote for candidate X, effectively increasing my number of votes. The natural result is that X also gets more votes. Try to keep up.
i did read what you wrote. i was pointing out that unlike what you said, the endorser himself is not collecting any votes - the endorsee is the vote getter. try to keep up.[/quote]
i choose who i choose based on independent research and opinions of those i respect. if 76 nobel laureates (ppl whose opinions i respect) lined up behind mccain, that would give me pause. i would revisit my research. i wouldn't dismiss their opinions out of hand because they don't support my candidate.
but yes, you're right - those endorsements do sway people without minds of their own. however, you're always going to have "people without minds of their own" and i'd rather have those people swayed by nobel laureates rather than Toby Keith or Alec Baldwin.
I'd rather those people not vote. And you are mistaken if you think I'm voting for McCain.
i made no guess as to who you are voting for. i simply stated that if 76 nobel laureates lined up behind mccain,
i would want to know why.
talking points? please. i'm an engineer. i saw the same stuff you saw in undergrad. i have anecdotes too. that doesn't change the fact that a middle-class asian family is much more likely to press its children to go into engineering/medicine/etc than is a middle-class american family.
The fact that the kid is pressed into it is exactly why we are ahead. People here choose to go into engineering of their own free will. I did it because I'm one of the biggest dorks in the western hemisphere, not because my parents wanted me to do it. My Indian classmates are here because they took a test at the age of 16. That test told them their future, regardless of their personal drive or motivation.
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your story sounds nice and comforting to americans, but it just does not reflect what is happening in the real world. i'm sure you'll agree that the number of science and engineering articles in major peer-reviewed journals is a good metric by which to measure the quality of a country's engineers. well,
this story confirms what i've been saying - quality engineering is on the rise in India and Asia and is stagnating in the US. From the article:
"In an unexpected development in the early 1990s, the absolute number of science and engineering (S&E) articles published by U.S.-based authors in the world's major peer-reviewed journals plateaued. This was a change from a rise in the number of publications over at least the two preceding decades. With some variation, this trend occurred across different categories of institutions, different institutional sectors, and different fields of research. It occurred despite continued increases in resource inputs, such as funds and personnel, that support research and development (R&D).
In other developed countries?a group of 15 members of the European Union (the EU-15) and Japan?the absolute number of articles continued to grow throughout most of the 1992?2003 period. During the mid- to late 1990s, the number of articles published by EU scientists surpassed those published by their U.S. counterparts, and the difference between Japanese and U.S. article output narrowed. Late in the period, growth in the number of articles produced in some of these developed countries showed signs of slowing.
The trend in number of S&E articles produced in four developing East Asian economies (the East Asia-4) was markedly different. This group exhibited strong growth in the number of articles, number of influential articles, and percentage of overall output classified as influential. Nonetheless, because the East Asia-4 began the period with a much less mature S&E research establishment than the three S&E publishing centers named above, it continued to lag behind them on the measures examined."