The effect of Education on voting trends…
Found on @neiltyson
https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/266758023177981952)
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Everyone who is saying this is unscientific. Tyson didn't make any claims or interpretations, he simply put up the facts. Obviously this isn't enough to make any scientific conclusions but it is food for thought nonetheless.
I'm surprised at Neil. This is a classic case of faulty logic, akin to saying "I put my left sock on before my right sock last Sunday, and my favorite sports team won. That must be the reason why."
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Anyone with a 10th grade education recognizes what this set of stats doesn't prove. If you reached the conclusions suggested to you but unsupported by the graph's limited data, you should at least go back and get your GED. I've used this cheap tactic to promote Democratic politics before too..it only goes over because so many liberals are so enamored of their own "superior intellect" they suspend their vaunted skepticism.
@ShowerBench Your skepticism is refreshing. A very simple rule of thumb, "Statistics never prove anything". Statistics can only shed light on the probability of some event occurring.
@Yuuuck @Greatly Fatigued @ShowerBench No, never. All statistics can do is reduce uncertainty, but not eliminate it.
@ShowerBench while i cant join on you the liberals enamored with their own superior intellect, I can join you on the fact that "If you reached the conclusions suggested to you but unsupported by the graph's limited data, you should at least go back and get your GED."
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@ediblegenius Not all but a lot..similar to right wingers' unfounded moral superiority conceit. They're probably tweeting an equally informative graph showing state proportions of weekly churchgoers.
Ugh what a crybaby. I'm not on the show dummy. Nobody drags Fez down but Fez and he can defend himself even if he does it by inventing straw men and never reading what anyone actually says. ("showerbitch" is a good one though, ouch)
@Bads @ShowerBench @ediblegenius That's funny. I didn't realize Shower was female, my apologies. I still think ShowerBench is refreshingly cogent.
Listening to Fez get "drug down" is the most frustratingly, entertaining radio I've ever heard. If there was the equivalent of an Oscar or Emmy for radio performances the guy playing Fez deserves multiple awards.
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@Mikfin @ShowerBench @ediblegenius Showbench is nothing but a troll, and not a very good one at that. How many times has her bullshit drug Fez down from having a good day to a shitty day. Showerbitch, nobody cares about your opinion, please stop giving it. You aren't helping Fez, you aren't helping the show and you are not smart, witty or entertaining, just stop it.
@ShowerBench @ediblegenius I don't care whether you agree with him or not, ShowerBench's presence and participation ups the collective IQ of the Ibang by at least a couple points.
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Correlation is not necessarily causation but generally states with a lot of higher education facilities vote democrat, some of this can be attributed to the fact that democrats are more likely to vote for education spending so economically it makes sense for people involved with some facet of the educational system to vote for the candidate more likely to increase their funding.
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@Docintoxicated You have a nice idea, but it you would need to prove causation for many many of your observations before you even begin to dwell on the question of education and how people vote. Does attending a college = education? Does education = intelligence? Does voting for one party signify anything about applications of that supposed intelligence? Is there one type of intelligence? Can we quantify the levels of intelligence(s) between uneducated and educated?
@Greatly Fatigued @Docintoxicated We can and do quantify intelligence in many manners it's really dependent on what facet of intelligence you wish to quantify and what criteria you intend to do with. For the purpose of the study they were not quantifying intelligence but the number of individuals who have degrees, but like I said correlation is not necessarily causation however a strongly associated correlation can be a good predictor of trends. As for my own testimonial account living in a state where the capital has the highest number of higher education institutions per capita and collectively they wield immense economic and political power educational funding is a crucial issue and those perceived as being pro-education funding (usually democrats) almost always win office.
@Docintoxicated @Greatly Fatigued
I am sorry, but this study is unscientific hogwash. Indeed, as with correlation between smoking and cancer, correlation can occasionally be a strong predictor, but it is ALWAYS a second best method of explanation. The most important parts of any statistical study are the methods used and the assumptions made and unless you approach them skeptically and rigorously you are at best going to be fooled.
The parameters relevant to intelligence are well beyond human understanding, much less calculation. Many things can be readily quantified, but in the end all that matters is the usefulness of the parameter being quantified. Check out some A.I. experiments. I.Q. tests are terrible measures of anything other than the ability to take the tests themselves.
As for your personal observations:
Do not take the general for the particular or the particular for the general.
Very interesting discussion!
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With it being such a close race this doesn't really illustrate much. Plenty of people here in state #4 voted for Romney instead of Obama and are college educated. Stick to the real science Neil not pseudo social political science
@CardiffGiant11 theres no point in trying with some of this crowd its like talking to a wall
@TBVickroy @CardiffGiant11 vickroy, frankly as much as my facts mean nothing to you, your opinions mean nothing to me
@ediblegenius well said. I didn't vote for Obama either time and found his first term to be terrible. I hoped after he was elected that he would succeed but in my opinion he didn't. Now that's he's been elected again I have hope that he succeeds again. In this case I would love to be proven wrong
Clarification by proven wrong I mean to have my gut feeling that he will do poorly again be proven wrong
Level of education means nothing, this boils down to two emotional issues, abortion and gay marriage, women turned out in record numbers again and swung the election to Obama. The bottom line is women vote more on emotion than being rational or using common sense, if the republicans drop the abortion BS and go by the Christian mantra "love the sinner, hate the sin" and just let gays have the right to be as miserable as us hetros they would sweep elections. You can be religious but the country is based on government being free of religion since they realized churches influenced too much control over politics. I don't agree with gay marriage but its not my place to judge anyone, I'm not religious and the way gay partners have been shit on by not being legally recognized is a shame. Families keeping out gay partners while they may be in the hospital must be torture to them and people need to be shown how it affects them to bring the populace around.
Education factors in to the understanding and processing of how those wedge issues would affect their lives and the country.
@TBVickroy that is bullshit, it would barely affect any of them in the slightest and if they were really educated they would understand you can't keep spending your way out of a deficit.
Did Fez go to college? Regardless of the answer it kind of blows Degrassi's theory out of the water, no?
@cal5000 Implicit in Tyson's theory/post is that education equals intelligence and that Obama's voters are more intelligent. If Fez went to college it would disprove the former, if he didn't go to college it would disprove the latter.
@cal5000 @Mikfin well simple, he voted Obama for the gay marriage issue nothing else and almost all blacks voted Obama and they have like a 20-30% of going to college. Emotions have more to do with elections and the dems know this, its why they win lately.
I'm sorry but I went to a top university, and I would hardly saying that having a college degree would qualify you as "educated" or that being educated qualifies you as smart. It was one of the easiest things I have ever done in my life. Not to mention that a college campus tends to be one of the most liberal places in the US. This statistic means very little to me.
So 20 out of 50 tells the whole story ? They're all being duped by clever "marketing" if you will:
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/now-with-alex-wagner/49745959#49745959
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This is controversial. Ill say this.. "dumber" people are usually drawn in by simple jingoism.. like "The Bible" "Go America!" "The Flag" "Traditional values!" ect. The republicans are good at that stuff.
@Rorschach7 "Dumber" people are also drawn in by pseudointellectualism. Be skeptical.
@Rorschach7 or the dems which bring in votes with saying they are going to take abortion or force a big through for hetro marriage only or they are going to take away Medicare and social security!!!! None of that will happen, or it will be replaced or the bills will fail.
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@Rorschach7 I agree with you in part, but just remember that Obama dominated those that voted who had no high school education. In the end, smart and stupid people vote for either side for a plethora of reasons, I just hate generalizations like Democrats = all smart people, Republicans- all stupid people
@cal5000 @Rorschach7 as I have said before, all my stats are coming from CNN, a supposedly leftist organization
@Amsterclam @Rorschach7 that's a fair point, but what I'm getting at is the trend this graph shows is leading to a false conclusion , if you read this as the states with more smart people voted for obama you would be incorrect, its coincidence, because these states also happen to hold a large portion of the population and variables in that population outside of educated voters are really why these states vote blue
@Chris_EsT @Rorschach7 There was alot of details behind the message--there tends not to be alot of details behind the flag and bible beyond "obey"
@Chris_EsT @Rorschach7 Im not saying they dont do it.. Im saying the republicans are better at it.
@Chris_EsT @Rorschach7 Ive seen these polls my whole life. The less educated you are the more likely you are to be nationalistic and believe in god too.. thats another reason why the less educated like the Republicans better. Its not all 100% but the things trend this way. For every William F Buckley you have a 100 David Dukes.
