Board index › Topical Discussion › Politics, Philosophy, and Religion

Belief systems and cognitive styles

Page 2 of 2 [ 22 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2

Previous topic | Next topic

Awesomelyglorious
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 17 Dec 2005
Gender: Male
Posts: 13,157
Location: Omnipresent

05 Aug 2010, 1:28 pm

ruveyn wrote:
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Orwell wrote:
NeantHumain wrote:
Engineering: mostly more conservative

Not necessarily. A lot of engineers have the attitude that things need to be fixed, and this could extend to supporting progressive political causes. I would see them as similar to scientists in this respect.

Note the "mostly". Engineers often tend to enter the field for financial reasons, the field itself doesn't tend towards opening one's mind, and as we both already know, the engineering mindset tends to strangely support ideas like intelligent design.

Generally speaking, any vocational field will lead to people becoming more conservative.


Do you have proper poll data showing that engineers tend to be conservative? I know engineers are more cognizant of the constraints of nature than are software types. That is because engineers bend metal and software types write code so they are much less constrained by natural factors.

As to the latter, on what basis to you claim that a vocational field will lead to conservatism. All vocational fields? Some vocational fields? And where is the data backing up your claim?

ruveyn

ruveyn, I don't have the data with me at the moment. It is something I have read in polls in the past however. The claim is also made in this paper on page 14 http://www.jewishresearch.org/PDFs2/Fac ... ey_Web.pdf However, I have not been able to track down the original research.

The basis is poll data. This also makes sense given how disciplines look at themselves in relationship to their world.



NeantHumain
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 24 Jun 2004
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 4,837
Location: St. Louis, Missouri

05 Aug 2010, 7:25 pm

Orwell wrote:
NeantHumain wrote:
Engineering: mostly more conservative

Not necessarily. A lot of engineers have the attitude that things need to be fixed, and this could extend to supporting progressive political causes. I would see them as similar to scientists in this respect.

True, but I'm going on statistics I saw on a website somewhere that I can't remember well enough to just cite directly with a link.



SoSayWeAll
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 29 May 2010
Age: 41
Gender: Female
Posts: 623

05 Aug 2010, 10:02 pm

Ah, but what about those who are neither conservative nor liberal? And I don't mean the ones who are apathetic or haven't made up their minds, but the ones who have firmly come to believe something clearly defined, that is of neither extreme.


_________________
Official diagnosis: ADHD, synesthesia. Aspie quiz result (unofficial test): Like Frodo--I'm a halfling? ;) 110/200 NT, 109/200 Aspie.


Awesomelyglorious
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 17 Dec 2005
Gender: Male
Posts: 13,157
Location: Omnipresent

05 Aug 2010, 10:42 pm

SoSayWeAll wrote:
Ah, but what about those who are neither conservative nor liberal? And I don't mean the ones who are apathetic or haven't made up their minds, but the ones who have firmly come to believe something clearly defined, that is of neither extreme.

It really depends on what they come to believe. I mean, there are a lot of ideologies that aren't just "conservative or liberal" in any narrow sense, and there are moderates. And well.... the two are different. The same holds to people who take non-standard roads elsewhere.



Mutate
Velociraptor
Velociraptor

User avatar

Joined: 10 May 2005
Age: 41
Gender: Male
Posts: 497

06 Aug 2010, 1:47 am

IMO ( as someone who has known both "liberal" and "literal" believers) I think it matters what their natural mindset is, if they are a conservative first they will see the conservative beleifs in the bible, if they are socialist or equal rights activist they will see things backing up that. I think everyone who follows the bible has to ignore some parts as it condradicts itself. A pro gay christian follows the parts about Jesus' love and ignores the anti-gay parts, a rich money-making christian concentrates on the wealthy old testament figures and how their wealth is approved and celebrated, and ignores Jesus' socialist/anti capitalist sounding dialogue.



techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,529
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi

06 Aug 2010, 8:17 pm

This used to bother the heck out of me, I always took this as a conformity issue and that there was a 'whole hat' to be worn with certain beliefs. It may well come down to the limits of human perception and since people gravitate to illusions to the extent that they do its not surprising that when they have a stance on something that actually happens to be right its mostly on sheer dumb luck. You can really only do so much when your strategy of dealing with reality is identify which direction it lies in and sprinting the other way as hard and fast as you can.