Political-genetic theory is studied

[TechBear_Seattle]

Political-genetic theory is studied

LINCOLN, Neb. - Politics may not be in the blood, but it could be in the genes. That's the theory a team of political scientists and geneticists is trying to prove with extensive studies of twins, genes and brain scans.

"I perfectly understand that some people are skeptical," said John R. Hibbing, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who is involved in the research.

The idea goes back more than 2000 years, said John Alford, associate professor of political science at Rice University, who is working with Hibbing.

In 350 B.C., Aristotle wrote, "Man is by nature a political animal."

Now, Alford said, scientists are trying to improve on that.

Genetic researchers are trying to prove that social attitudes can be inherited, and have discovered strong correlations between the two.

The complete article can be read at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061102/ap_on_sc/politics_genetics

[sui generis]

1. I hope so

back when we were a bunch of monkeys running around to see who's gene line would get to go on I think the monkeys who learned to fight against individual's unfair brute strength by effectively rallying many brutes were the ones who lived to pass on their genes. The original leveling drift.

My opinion on Ghandi pacifism is that it only works when your opponent has a conscience or something of great value to lose, but you risk your life on that bet. I'm suspecting that overall, pacifism as a genetic trait is less successful in civilizations with weapons of mass destruction and the will to use them.

I'm observing that in the confrontation between ethics and amorality, however, the leveling drift drifts back, and people who are willing to break the rules and cheat when everyone else is obsessed with the rules are the ones who will win.

Finally, not a lawyer, but in a society of words, the ones who control the language we use to describe the taboo and the unacceptable are the ones who can cheat in plain sight. So as we humiliate people to death while effectively questioning them, and as inexplicable voting irregularities are overriden by supreme court justices on the absurdia of preserving the handpicked candidate from political harm and hardship, the nice guys lose.

We know who the monsters are, and now finally we're figuring out they are real. I hope this election proves that we don't need torches and pitchforks to get rid of them, but unless something changes in the future they are going to start eating sheep again, sooner or later.

[HereSince1628]

3. This'll be especially interesting to watch develop.

Evolutionary Psychology often hands up highly debatable concepts and this is essentially evolutionary sociology. Just think of all those good old arguments about Kin Selection and Altruism that we lived through following the publishing of E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology. All resurrected again decades after my grad school experiences...much fun for an old fart.

[sui generis]

5. so from your handle I'm guessing

grad school in 1649?

:evilgrin:

I dimly remember that now that you mention it. Maybe a better analysis would be to determine how some of the precepts of gaming theory support a population that selects for members capable of symbolic manipulation, abstract thinking, planning, and the ability to communicate complex concepts.

Just the same, there are as many flexible willows as there are rigid oaks. Is the non-science fiction answer that nature selects best for whoever produces the greatest amount of hardiest and adaptable offspring the most efficiently? There are lots of sheep too.

[HereSince1628]

8. Oh, yeah, lot's of folks have approached coalition forming and such

using gaming theory. Monogamy vs. Polygamy vs. "Cheating" it's all in there. Mix liberally with notions about heritable neurological modules that deal with the common problem of living as a sub-dominant, it's all gonna get thrown in and mixed around. Again.

This'll be much more fun than debunking intelligent design arguments.

[sui generis]

10. actually now I'm curious

debunking aside, please educate.

Aren't social constructs actually emergent behaviors? That would mean that you wouldn't code for a complex behavior but for the simple set of reflexive or instinctive behaviors that combine to form those seemingly more complex observations.

I think I can roughly see how you would get to a neurological "module" from that; build the machine and the chips at the factory, let the user evolve the software. Hardware is heritable, software is not.

Something like that?

[HereSince1628]

12. The modularity of the brain idea is credited to Jerry Fedor back in 1935

--see if you've been heresince1628 you just run into these things, LOL --

It began with the idea that the brain wasn't a general purpose problem solver but is sub-divided into special problem solvers (and I would add that the evolution of sensory organs was probably a result of things that provided inputs that facilitated special solutions not possible without them--evolutionary psychology speculates that the brain probably also evolved capacities that made it a better to handle special problem solving.) The much more recent work about this was that of Tooby and also of Cosmoides...the folks who were instrumental in developing evolutionary psychology.

Much of the work remains controversial and folks like Stephen Jay Gould (a guy with strongly progressive socialist sentiments who REALLY disliked the notion of being born into a fate) was very skeptical about it all.

Nonetheless, in other animals there is observable capacity to learn some things and not others. No non-human has shown the capacity to associate radiation exposure with later sickness, although the capacity to associate getting sick after one exposure to a food, and almost never forgetting it, is a powerful ability in all mammals. Think about it, almost everyone has food aversions as a result of mis-association. My SO cannot bring herself to eat purple jelly-beans.

We have a powerful capacity for learning and remembering a food aversion and not such a powerful capacity for learning the rules of differential calculus and remembering them. Evolutionary biologists would say this is the sort of heritable underlying capacity they are talking about.

This is an idea that underlies the notion that in humans sexual preference is something that a person can be born with. Controversial? Absolutely. But I've read a lot of threads on DU that seem to suggest a large number of people accept that notion.

But if you can be born with a bias in gender preference what other preferences could exist that are resting on underlying biology?

[sui generis]

15. ah, so in the crude "hardware" model I used

some pf our biological "machines" could come with a chip designed specifically for processing visual information in a way that is markedly different from how it processes and stores symbolic information and sense of identity.

I'm the opposite on food - but oddly I used to be a picky eater but now there is absolutely nothing I won't eat or at least try, with no trepidation. I guess you can "unlearn" xenophobic mis-associations too, and maybe there's a module that just "overrides" other modules when a rational conclusion can be reached.

Isn't there also a feedback timing issue with radiation poisoning? For instance, when you ingest something highly toxic, you have sense memory for the taste, but your liver is almost immediately trying to force an emetic reaction, whereas in radiation poisoning it's pervasive and one would have to tie it to a known "external" event rather than reaction to a primary sensory stimulus.

From a hobby of playing with cognitive theory, I like the agent hypothesis, which may be physiologically similar to neurological modules. You are saying that there is a theory that sensory organ development may be tied to sensory input that facilitated "solutions" but I'd also guess those solutions would have to be tied to something that allowed an organism to avoid death or procreate more successfully.

Perhaps just as there are "mis" associations on food aversions there may be "mis" associations on gender affection for the same reasons. Not making any kind of judgement, normative or otherwise in that statement, but. . . .

Darn good thing we let the brocolli haters get married! Could you imagine?

[HereSince1628]

17. About associative learning...yes time is an important element

in getting an association correct.

Many common food poisonings take days to develop, but get blamed by the sufferer on items in the last meal or two. The novelty to the sufferer of foods in these meals also is important. Novel foods and unusual seasonings get the blame before foods that are familiar and usually do not cause illness.

Fundamental problem solving in an evolutinoary sense is ALL about survival and reproduction

Many animal groups evolved "heads" where the sensory organs essential to survival are located forward relative to the dominant direction of motion of the animal. Getting bad news early as you move into a hostil environment is a good thing. And having your neural processing immediately closeby shortens the path and the time it takes for stimulus to reach the brain and be percieved

Testable? Well, "Heads" aren't too important to animals like anemones and corals that live attached to a substrate and don't usually move in one direction relative to some axis of the body.

[AlienGirl]

2. What kind of rerun is this?

[kenny blankenship]

4. Social attitudes are indeed inherited--the way property is inherited

not the way hair color or baldness are inherited.
Most people "inherit" the same religious faith as their parents had too, but no one is stupid enough to call that genetic.

[sui generis]

7. but the underlying physiology

that people of faith who are the most moved by "faith" may actually be experiencing something akin to a mild parietal lobe seizure means that people who "feel the same way" about faith might pass those kinds of traits on to their offspring, laying the groundwork for faith to more consistently prevail over reason in that gene line.

Yeah, it is all speculative mumbo jumbo but I also think it's not all black or white for sure if you scratch below the surface and ditch socially biased normative ideas about genetic inheritance.

[TechBear_Seattle]

13. The genetic components seem to involve personality traits

People who are inherently more agressive, more xenophobic, etc. are going to be more attracted to a set of doctrines and principles than someone who is more inclined to cooperation, more xenophilic, etc. And it is pretty established that such personality traits are genetic to a large extent (although, of course, modified by upbringing and experience.)

Studies like this have been going on for a while; I remember reading about them in college sociology classes. The data that is collected includes siblings raised in separate households. One of the results that keeps coming up is that children whose parents both tend towards either end of the socio-political spectrum will also tend towards the same end, even when raised almost from birth by parents of the opposite end.

[unpossibles]

6. I disagree - and frankly what about the people like me

who grew up in a Conservative family?

[HereSince1628]

11. Ever read Frank Sulloway (sp?) interesting reading on how

birth order may influence allegience or rebellion from the family group.

Surely these things require learning...a capacity to realize where you are in a dominance hierarchy like a family and to make decisions about belonging or not undoubtedly based on that learning are not to hard to imagine riding upon heritable structures and functionability.

The real issue is such an idea can be presented in a testable manner that allows it's treatment within science. Stephen Jay Gould disliked evolutionary psychologist much for what he called just-so stories. That's a big part of what is going to create a clash that is going to be fun to watch.

[unpossibles]

14. good point. My older brother is a yuppie. I love him

but growing up I saw him as a negative influence most of the time.

[bananas]

9. "school prayer, nuclear power, women's liberation and the death penalty"

Consider how people change their views, sometimes several times, on these issues during their life, and the reasons people change their viewpoints, they have a long way to go to proving their hypothesis. What was that old saying - "anyone under 30 who isn't a liberal has no heart, anyone over than 30 has no head" - maybe they will find an age-dependent gene, like puberty and menopause.

"About 8,000 sets of identical and fraternal twins answered a series of questions on topics such as school prayer, nuclear power, women's liberation and the death penalty."

[HereSince1628]

16. You somewhat conflate the issue of policy issues and the fundamentals of politics

as it would be considered in behavioral and cognative science.

Politics in this sense is about deciding if you are a leader or a follower, and whether you choose one type of leader or one type of a policy to advocate or to be an adherent of--its also about coalition forming or joining versus abandoning and being independent and such.

[bananas]

18. I don't think so

This particular group of researchers seems to focus on a hypothetical left/right gene, not "leader or follower".

Here's a NYT article from last year about them:
"Many people who are genetically conservative may be brought up as Democrats, and some who are genetically more progressive may be raised as Republicans, the researchers say."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/21/science/21gene.html?ei=5090&en=dde7d8feedd2f87f&ex=1277006400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

and here's a quote from the "Genes and Ideologies" paper mentioned in the OP article critiquing these folk:
"I then question the cogency, from a historical and theoretical perspective, of proposing the existence of “liberal” and “conservative” “phenotypes” and “genotypes.” My argument has implications beyond the findings of Alford, Funk, and Hibbing, ..."
http://www.pubpol.duke.edu/research/papers/SAN06-07.pdf

[AlienGirl]

19. This way lies Rump Of Skunk And Madness

Attributing social attitudes and action to inherent genetic traits hasn't been a good idea ever.

Tucker