So, the amygdala doesn't just impact fear response, it also does anger, anxiety, and stress. An overactive amygdala negatively impacts your ability to think clearly.
It's still just as funny as the flat Earthers that keep accidentally proving that the Earth is round
Which is itself extra funny because I believe they both knew this and measured its circumference in ancient Egypt using two faraway towers, if I'm remembering that episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos correctly.
Fear and rage force you to use unreliable heuristics instead of critical thinking and analysis resulting in poorer choices, it's why so much propaganda relies on triggering those emotional states to get you to stop thinking and accept the message. Less fear in decision making is a beneficial mutation.
I've been saying this forever, but, like, these people really need to go back and reread Chicken Little. They're getting Fox News, getting scared, and reacting based off of what Fox is telling them, and not what the Chicken Little's are telling them.
The sky is not falling.
Take a deep breath, calm the fuck down, and chill. Everything's okay. As long as we stop freaking out.
Except everything isn't okay.... Everything is actually really, really bad. Not for me personally, as a white cis man everything is fine. But for so many people the world is a bad and dangerous place right now, and that terrifies and stresses me the fuck out.
But, and hear me out, if the people that were constantly freaking out and terrified all of the time were to chill a little bit, the world would improve dramatically, almost instantaneously.
We are in a period of time where calmness is the most vital thing for our leaders and for the people.
And if you can't make it yourself, store bought is fine.
There is no point in being scared and stressed for the sake of it. If you're not channeling those emotions into real action, you're really just better off chilling tf out until there is some real and immediate threat to stress about.
I'm autistic and have an oversized amygdala but that doesn't stop me from being leftist. I just feel compassion for everyone human. Still struggling with the compassion for animals that I eat.
ironically i fear the SHIT out of right wingers, because they seem to actively want me to suffer before i die, for the crime of not being able to have a job
Which is itself a form of suffering, imagine the humanity they miss out on and what you'd be without it. Liberalism and fascism are ideologies that subsist on the concept that there is an imaginary amount of violence that can be inflicted outward to relieve internal suffering.
There are a lot of “liberals” in the United States who are actually leftists, they’ve just been propagandized their whole lives into believing that’s what liberal is, and that “commies” are right-wing authoritarians. We need to awaken them.
I can't tell if you're joking, or if you actually meant to suggest that liberalism in the US -- the most violent and destructive ideological hegemony in human history -- could be socialism in a trenchcoat because some liberals sleep better with welfare liberal policies as opposed to the more honest and open genocide.
You know socialism was already popular in the US, right? For fifty years before WW2 it gained traction and its advocates successfully clawed away concessional labour rights and social-welfare programs. Y'know what happened? It did improve the conditions for workers in the US; and the institutions of white supremacy and patriarchy effectively disarmed its popularity once privileged classes got theirs. You're claiming to be a communist of some sort, yet have neglected a material analysis of this history. They will reward people who subscribe to liberalism with better material security, and we know it works very well.
Liberals in the US believe what they believe because they correctly identify that so long as this system exists, they will be guaranteed something above any colonized people. They aren't fucking stupid, they don't have to have theoretical language to apply intuitive knowledge on their position in an empire. Liberalism is a result of their position in that society, not some form of victimization that compromises some innate moral purity.
When I say they suffer, it's because of the fundamental ways in which a person who subscribes to that system must sever their connection to humanity and the world to maintain their comfort. It isn't because they're powerless.
Veganism is my unattended moral compromise.
I am positive that future generations will look at us and our factory farming and, aghast, see us as the monsters as we are - much like we look back at slaveowners, even those who were against the institution at the time.
Since I am not living in or near the wild and not hunting for my own food, it is clear to me that veganism is the only real moral choice, and yet I still participate.
I am complicit in this delightful supreme pizza and complicit in this breaded chicken sandwich.
Factory farming is the problem, not animal husbandry. If the whole world went vegan, do you think the vegetables we eat would not be altered to better serve yield rather than quality? Do you think pesticides would not be used in staggering levels? Do you think vegetables aren't alive so it's okay to eat them? If it doesn't have a face, it's cool to eat? Life is sustained by consuming other life, the world over. I agree that industrial farming is disgusting and cruel, but not just to animals.
Killing animals for taste pleasure is morally wrong, weather it happens in a factory farm or on that mythical uncles farm that tottaly loves and pets his animals to death.
And yes, it's ok to kill plants because they do not feel pain. They can't feel pain because they lack a nervous system to do so as well as an evolutionary reason for pain to exist.
And even if plants feel pain, it takes MUCH more plants to feed animals to then feed humans.
It isn't morally wrong, it goes against your morals maybe, but that doesn't make it wrong. We are allowed to disagree and you are free to choose the diet you prefer, as are the rest of us.
Nah, it's morally wrong and if you are honest you will actually agree. Let me explain:
Let's set a moral baseline that we both agree with.
Shooting a random person that has done no harm to anyone in the head without their explicit consent is morally bad, yes?
Now, what is different about, say, a pig that makes it less than morally bad to kill the pig? If we then apply that difference to that random human again, is it now less than morally bad to kill them?
The honest answer (and one that I can at least accept) is: there is no such difference.
The pig is food. I will eat the pig. I won't eat the human. The pig isn't indiscriminately murdered, it is slaughtered for food. We as a society still think it is morally right to kill someone convicted of a crime in some places. While I don't agree with that, those states do. If morals can be grey, it's because they are. Morality is a human construct. What's moral today can be immoral tomorrow.
"what is different about a pig that makes it less than morally bad to kill the pig?"
oh, the classic rhetorical trap of "name the trait" which always devolves into a no-true-scotsman. on its face it's purely a spectrum fallacy. the inability to identify a singular trait or even a set of traits that differentiate humans from pigs doesn't change the fact that they are fundamentally different.
please, no one fall for this line of discussion. it's just an exercise in shaming and time-wasting.
it takes MUCH more plants to feed animals to then feed humans.
most of the plants fed to animals are parts of plants we can't or won't eat. a great example is soy: we run over 4/5 of the global crop through an oil press and extract what we want, and feed the leftover plant matter to animals. no more plants are harmed in this process, and we conserve resources by getting food back from the animals.
Not to the levels you can expect if it is all industrialized. You are correct though. A strawberry from 50 years ago tastes a million times better than the monstrosities we buy today as a quick example.
Trust me, the more explorations I do on the nature of consciousness, the more I wrestle with all of that.
I don’t believe that it is inherently wrong to kill in order to eat. But as a species we don’t. Which isn’t to say there aren’t members of our species who very much do still need to kill to eat.
But I don’t need to kill to eat, and I’ve outsourced that killing so it feels like more of an abstraction than it is. I can at the very least acknowledge this.
Which I think is almost worse... think about concentration/extermination camps (which I think our animal industry is basically)
And it's perfectly healthy to be vegan (maybe even more healthy at this point when done right, than meat consumption).
My main reason though for that is less moral than just wanting to be less wasteful, i.e. meat is just inefficient. I predict that we at some point will move past meat consumption, it's just not necessary, even when considering taste...
I'm not even sure about plants not having something similar as a nervous system. They live on different timescale, but it's impressive what e.g. Trees in forests are capable of (with a little help of funghi)
The smell of cut grass is the grass warning other grass that doom is upon them. Plants communicate in ways we can't understand in the same way as they don't make noise. They don't like being harvested anymore than an animal does.
Whatever this dumb shit is, is a reaction to that. As usual, they project their own shortcomings on their enemies.
In any case, what it comes down to is basic empathy and morality. If you care for others, you tend to vote left. If you care for only yourself and your self-interests, you vote right. There is no debating that, it's stated right there in the fucking ideology.
About a third of the illiterates in the US just don't speak English. They may be literate just fine in their native tongue, but that rate captures English literacy.
I'm not saying that that number is wrong per se but it would be better to see a curve based on age brackets
If for instance 25% of adults are over 90 then it wouldn't be surprising if they couldn't read properly. (Not saying that that's true, just as an example)
I hadn't played the games myself, was just watching challenge runs and heard it the first way only until I read the name and wondered if the guy I was watching had a stroke
One could frame this as "Leftists are more naive and reckless, while Conservatives are cautious". I wouldn't, but I can see someone make that argument.
Went to a Mediterranean restaurant for dinner with my wife. We celebrated her birthday, and so decided to check the dessert menu. We generally don't get dessert, just never really lie thing, but this menu has a dessert called amygdalopita, which piques my interest. Why would they name it after part of the brain?
And so upon further research, we discovered that the Greek word αμύγδαλο (amýgdalo) means almond. And this really got my wheels turning, because it brought back memory of EMT classes, way back in like 2003, where they talked about the amygdala being named such due tonit being almond shaped.
So I like a dessert that not only tasted great, but also helped me make connections, maybe fire off some neurons I hadn't in a while.
"A larger amygdala is primarily associated with increased anxiety, heightened emotional reactivity, and stress-related disorders, often acting as a hyper-active "threat detector" Symptoms frequently include persistent fearfulness, depression, irritability, and hypervigilance, as the brain over-processes neutral stimuli as threats."
Whoever made the original meme is an absolute moron.
I'm guessing they think it helps them wake up and see the truth that they are being exploited on, while they see people with a smaller amygdala as like mindless sheep that just takes in any info and takes that as doctrine.
The thing that they don't consider though, is that fear and anger is often a form of control.
Conservatives don't know anything about the person they voted for. They don't know anything about how their government functions. They don't know anything about their Constitution.
I promise they don't know what an amygdala is or what it does.
I feel like this had to have been a shitpost that a chud just took too seriously and reposted unironically, right?? Like, there almost no way this was originally made unironically... right??? Its just too on the nose
Edit: you know what, nvm. I forgot the fucking whitehouse posted call of duty footage as actual combat footage unironically. We are just that cooked i guess
Nah please, we need younger actually representatives of the population, not ancient people (as much as I like Sanders). There's various young progressive candidates that are suitable when the Dems allow them...
I've seen some interesting discussion of this linked to the idea of survive/thrive strategies. Is the world a dangerous place that calls for avoiding risks and protecting what you have, or is it full of opportunities and calls for exploring and being open to novelty? Neither inclination is fundamentally wrong. But I'm not sure how to reconcile that with modern "rightists" who want to burn down the system and aren't conservative in the lowercase-C sense.
They value being in some kind of 'tribe' to a literally irrational extent.
Hence, black and white, ingroup vs outgroup thinking.
Then combine that with half of them hate themselves (mostly because of the peer pressure that comes from their tribe) and are literally in a suicidal apocalyptic death cult.
So when the death cult says 'destroy', they don't want to lose their group identity, because without that, they are nothing, so, they destroy.
But I'm not sure how to reconcile that with modern "rightists" who want to burn down the system and aren't conservative in the lowercase-C sense.
The Republican party (and conservatism as a movement) are full-blown reactionaries. I like this passage from Corey Robin'sThe Reactionary Mind:
People who aren’t conservative often fail to realize this, but conservatism really does speak to and for people who have lost something. It may be a landed estate or the privileges of white skin, the unquestioned authority of a husband or the untrammeled rights of a factory owner. The loss may be as material as money or as ethereal as a sense of standing. It may be a loss of something that was never legitimately owned in the first place; it may, when compared with what the conservative retains, be small. Even so, it is a loss, and nothing is ever so cherished as that which we no longer possess. It used to be one of the great virtues of the left that it alone understood the often zero- sum nature of politics, where the gains of one class necessarily entail the losses of another. But as that sense of conflict diminishes on the left, it has fallen to the right to remind voters that there really are losers in politics and that it is they— and only they— who speak for them. “All conservatism begins with loss,” Andrew Sullivan rightly notes, which makes conservatism not the Party of Order, as Mill and others have claimed, but the party of the loser.
The chief aim of the loser is not— and indeed cannot be— preservation or protection. It is recovery and restoration.
And from another section:
There’s a fairly simple reason for the embrace of radicalism on the right, and it has to do with the reactionary imperative that lies at the core of conservative doctrine. The conservative not only opposes the left; he also believes that the left has been in the driver’s seat since, depending on who’s counting, the French Revolution or the Reformation. If he is to preserve what he values, the conservative must declare war against the culture as it is.
I just now saw this and... that is a much erudite explanation than I gave... I will have to check out this Corey Robin.
I think these ideas, and what I said, are mutually true.
What do you think?
Basically, yes, conservatives either literally are losers or fear loss, to horrifically paraphrase Robin... and also, their replacement identity, their group identity that has supplanted their personal identity, which includes being directed to war against certain ideas and concepts, well, they can't not perform those ideas, otherwise, its another existentual criss.
First, they lost or failed at something core to their personal identity, then they subsume themself into the aggrieved group identity... and if they renege against or fail at the performance of the group identity... well now they have another existential crisis, suffer another kind of identity loss.
Conservatism, as a trauma response.
I just also want to note the immense cognitive dissonance between the actual, fear-based conservative mindset of 'zero-sum'... and their purported belief in the 'free market', much of which totally fails to be any kind of logically coherent without the idea that... an unregulated market generally (or even always) leads to a 'positive-sum' situation.
They lie about how they actually think, and tell you the thing that very often actually is zero-sum in reality... is broadly mutually beneficial... and that you're wrong/evil if you disagree.
You should definitely read the book if it's a topic that interests you; it's the best overview of conservatism that I've read. I'd say you're pretty well aligned with what he wrote within, too.
Well they are afraid of the system, which they think is out to get them. See white nationalists who claim they are being persecuted, "deep state", various conspiracy theories, need for guns for self protection, etc, etc. I don't see anything hard to reconcile.
Conservatism typically assumes that much of the world is a zero-sum game, so for one to prosper someone else must be worse off. Instead of them collaborating for a better outcome.
Since we're sharing fun facts, conservatism and authoritarianism is unsurprisingly correlated with high levels of obedience in things like the Milgrim shock experiment replications. Something akin to 90% compared to the original 60% (which was already quite high since they only had white men at the time).
They're also more likely to choose selfish options in things like the prisoners dilemma, too!
Stay close to the tree line. Learn to identify plants with poisonous oils. Stockpile the leaves that are like paper. If you must run a fire, use clean burning fuels, to avoid disclosing location. Dig a deep hole and build a privacy wall out of poisonous vines.
Having enlarged and/or over active amygdalas would go a long way to explaining a lot of traits expressed by conservatives. That includes their fear of going to going to the grocery store without a gun on their hip.
I credit an intense compassion for animals and resulting veganism to my autism.
Just wanted to put that in this thread without making it a direct response to anyone. Sometimes it can be incredibly alienating and disconcerting to encounter people online who say they can't be vegan because they're autistic. It's a very diverse spectrum with a multitude of manifestations, and I'd like to go on record as proof that it swings toward positive outcomes and not only negative ones.
probably won't be able to find out how your own brain is structured without getting a scan, but your local university neuroscience lab might be interested in a free test subject and would give you a scan in exchange for studying your brain.
I am guilty of thinking about the same thing when it comes to "Conservatives". I catch myself wondering if they are actually human or if they are all mentally retarded due to lead poisoning.
Around 40,000 to 50,000 years ago we had other species of humans running around with us, like Neanderthals and over a dozen other species if you go back further. These would have seemed like aliens to our ancestors. What if Conservatives are a slightly different version of human.
The lead poisoning thing actually makes sense for the Baby Boomer generationand Generation X. We used leaded gasoline during their lifetimes. These people could all be mentally deficient ... and we are letting them run the world when they should be in a mental hospital somewhere.**
Honestly is more surprising any human is relatively rational. We are animals after all. I'm starting to realize thinking deeply about anything might be the exception not the rule. Most people are idiots
I agree ... our species is meant to be a social animal and they have broken down our social structures. They have turned the social animal into a predator that preys upon its own .... that's called cannibalism.
There were actually some studies that showed either an over-active amygdala causing anxiety or and under-developed rest of the brain couldn’t cope with the output of the amygdala or something to that effect; and that made people experiencing it more susceptible to conservatism.
So it’s like another dimension of the autism spectrum, except you’re just scared as shit of everything everyone tells you. Better believe in the same God as everyone around you, just in case.
The level of dumb necessary to state what's said in OP's meme is just staggering and emblematic of the right- misunderstand everything and boil it down to the most basic YES vs NO proposition possible, then blame everyone else for your own shortcomings.
It's so fucking tiresome.
Galileo: "I think it's actually the Earth that moves around the Sun."
Papacy: "RAAAWR! U AR WRONG AND HEATHEN BURN ON PYRE EVIL MAN!"
Galileo: "Shit I can't argue with that I take it back I guess."
Doesn't the amygdala handle processing strong emotions rather than causing them, meaning that an underactive one would be less able to handle said strong emotions?
I have never had my amygdala scanned so I don't know where I sit.
I know I am very liberal/leftist as far as politics go, and I don't really care about the differentials of definitions of those terms. It just means that I am anti-conservative and pro freedom, and I don't care what the correct word for that is.
But, that being said, like, most of the time I'm pretty calm, but when I am not calm, it is very, very difficult for me to regulate my emotions, even as a full-grown adult.
I typically have to lock my body and everything to keep from reacting yelling and screaming and everything when I have powerful emotions.
I've gotten very good at that, but it is always painful and a struggle to not react based off of the emotions of the moment for me.
Crazy that they boast about having an overactive amygdala but deny it when people say they are acting crazy and paranoid.
Also, side note: conflation of liberal and leftist as if they're the same is kind of a pet peeve of mine. They are very much not the same thing. Those who know know.
Isn't competition in the US just another way of fearing being a less than person? I've known healthy competitors that just compete with themselves, but it's rare.
Not sure what you mean, but yes hyper competitiveness leads to less value for human life.
My point was that it’s a negative sum game, we are all competing with each other in an unhealthy manner, in which we are all poorer collectively as a result.
And it’s not even helping evolution since merit isn’t correlated to financial success.
I'm saying that competitiveness usually also comes from fear.
My point was that it’s a negative sum game, we are all competing with each other in an unhealthy manner, in which we are all poorer collectively as a result.
So, the amygdala doesn't just impact fear response, it also does anger, anxiety, and stress. An overactive amygdala negatively impacts your ability to think clearly.
Just like alligators. They're so ornery because they have all them teeth and no toothbrush
Well looks like mama was wrong!
I understood that reference
we cant give in to the thinkers!
No worries, conservatives have no use for thinking anyways.
HA HA take that COMMIE you're braver than me due to your genetic superiority! ^oh ^wait
I didn't have fascists scientifically proving that they're cowards on my 2026 bingo card.
It's still just as funny as the flat Earthers that keep accidentally proving that the Earth is round
Which is itself extra funny because I believe they both knew this and measured its circumference in ancient Egypt using two faraway towers, if I'm remembering that episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos correctly.
Eratosthenes, to within 10% of the modern value. They think, I don’t think they’re 100% on the exact size of his measurement unit. Stadia?
Fun fact: Conservativism can be linked to Lead and/or Mercury exposure
Or brain damage
Without clicking I knew who you linked to.
There's no better man than Fetterman
asanexampleofbraindamageAnyone who is 50+ is lead brained.
Fear is, famously, an excellent impetus for rational decision-making. (/s just in case)
Fear and rage force you to use unreliable heuristics instead of critical thinking and analysis resulting in poorer choices, it's why so much propaganda relies on triggering those emotional states to get you to stop thinking and accept the message. Less fear in decision making is a beneficial mutation.
I've been saying this forever, but, like, these people really need to go back and reread Chicken Little. They're getting Fox News, getting scared, and reacting based off of what Fox is telling them, and not what the Chicken Little's are telling them.
The sky is not falling.
Take a deep breath, calm the fuck down, and chill. Everything's okay. As long as we stop freaking out.
Ha ha ha, Chicken Little is way above the reading level of most Conservatives.
Except everything isn't okay.... Everything is actually really, really bad. Not for me personally, as a white cis man everything is fine. But for so many people the world is a bad and dangerous place right now, and that terrifies and stresses me the fuck out.
But, and hear me out, if the people that were constantly freaking out and terrified all of the time were to chill a little bit, the world would improve dramatically, almost instantaneously.
We are in a period of time where calmness is the most vital thing for our leaders and for the people.
And if you can't make it yourself, store bought is fine.
There is no point in being scared and stressed for the sake of it. If you're not channeling those emotions into real action, you're really just better off chilling tf out until there is some real and immediate threat to stress about.
If those people could read, they’d be … less upset, I guess.
"I ain't no chicken, 'n' I gots the truck nuts t' prove it!"
I'm autistic and have an oversized amygdala but that doesn't stop me from being leftist. I just feel compassion for everyone human. Still struggling with the compassion for animals that I eat.
ironically i fear the SHIT out of right wingers, because they seem to actively want me to suffer before i die, for the crime of not being able to have a job
To be fair, they want everyone but themselves personally to suffer and die.
Which is itself a form of suffering, imagine the humanity they miss out on and what you'd be without it. Liberalism and fascism are ideologies that subsist on the concept that there is an imaginary amount of violence that can be inflicted outward to relieve internal suffering.
There are a lot of “liberals” in the United States who are actually leftists, they’ve just been propagandized their whole lives into believing that’s what liberal is, and that “commies” are right-wing authoritarians. We need to awaken them.
Not all the “libs” are Bill Maher.
I can't tell if you're joking, or if you actually meant to suggest that liberalism in the US -- the most violent and destructive ideological hegemony in human history -- could be socialism in a trenchcoat because some liberals sleep better with welfare liberal policies as opposed to the more honest and open genocide.
You know socialism was already popular in the US, right? For fifty years before WW2 it gained traction and its advocates successfully clawed away concessional labour rights and social-welfare programs. Y'know what happened? It did improve the conditions for workers in the US; and the institutions of white supremacy and patriarchy effectively disarmed its popularity once privileged classes got theirs. You're claiming to be a communist of some sort, yet have neglected a material analysis of this history. They will reward people who subscribe to liberalism with better material security, and we know it works very well.
Liberals in the US believe what they believe because they correctly identify that so long as this system exists, they will be guaranteed something above any colonized people. They aren't fucking stupid, they don't have to have theoretical language to apply intuitive knowledge on their position in an empire. Liberalism is a result of their position in that society, not some form of victimization that compromises some innate moral purity.
When I say they suffer, it's because of the fundamental ways in which a person who subscribes to that system must sever their connection to humanity and the world to maintain their comfort. It isn't because they're powerless.
Or there is no benefit to introspection. there is no party left of democrats, so it doesn’t change my vote either way.
Learned helplessness.
The fear of dying of starvation should motivate you to contribute in society ::: spoiler spoiler /s :::
Veganism is my unattended moral compromise. I am positive that future generations will look at us and our factory farming and, aghast, see us as the monsters as we are - much like we look back at slaveowners, even those who were against the institution at the time.
Since I am not living in or near the wild and not hunting for my own food, it is clear to me that veganism is the only real moral choice, and yet I still participate.
I am complicit in this delightful supreme pizza and complicit in this breaded chicken sandwich.
I feel your shame friend. We have so little opportunity to do the right thing, and we still fail.
Factory farming is the problem, not animal husbandry. If the whole world went vegan, do you think the vegetables we eat would not be altered to better serve yield rather than quality? Do you think pesticides would not be used in staggering levels? Do you think vegetables aren't alive so it's okay to eat them? If it doesn't have a face, it's cool to eat? Life is sustained by consuming other life, the world over. I agree that industrial farming is disgusting and cruel, but not just to animals.
Killing animals for taste pleasure is morally wrong, weather it happens in a factory farm or on that mythical uncles farm that tottaly loves and pets his animals to death.
And yes, it's ok to kill plants because they do not feel pain. They can't feel pain because they lack a nervous system to do so as well as an evolutionary reason for pain to exist.
And even if plants feel pain, it takes MUCH more plants to feed animals to then feed humans.
It isn't morally wrong, it goes against your morals maybe, but that doesn't make it wrong. We are allowed to disagree and you are free to choose the diet you prefer, as are the rest of us.
Nah, it's morally wrong and if you are honest you will actually agree. Let me explain:
Let's set a moral baseline that we both agree with. Shooting a random person that has done no harm to anyone in the head without their explicit consent is morally bad, yes?
Now, what is different about, say, a pig that makes it less than morally bad to kill the pig? If we then apply that difference to that random human again, is it now less than morally bad to kill them?
The honest answer (and one that I can at least accept) is: there is no such difference.
What is your answer?
The pig is food. I will eat the pig. I won't eat the human. The pig isn't indiscriminately murdered, it is slaughtered for food. We as a society still think it is morally right to kill someone convicted of a crime in some places. While I don't agree with that, those states do. If morals can be grey, it's because they are. Morality is a human construct. What's moral today can be immoral tomorrow.
the "name the trait" argument is so well known vegans just call it "ntt". they're not here in good faith; they think they have a gotcha.
So if someone declares you food, is it now moral for them to slit your throat and butcher you?
"what is different about a pig that makes it less than morally bad to kill the pig?"
oh, the classic rhetorical trap of "name the trait" which always devolves into a no-true-scotsman. on its face it's purely a spectrum fallacy. the inability to identify a singular trait or even a set of traits that differentiate humans from pigs doesn't change the fact that they are fundamentally different.
please, no one fall for this line of discussion. it's just an exercise in shaming and time-wasting.
"I can't answer this, so it must be a trick."
Ok then.
most of the plants fed to animals are parts of plants we can't or won't eat. a great example is soy: we run over 4/5 of the global crop through an oil press and extract what we want, and feed the leftover plant matter to animals. no more plants are harmed in this process, and we conserve resources by getting food back from the animals.
you can't prove this
what a gish gallop. you sure you didn't have any more righteous claims too stack in?
I was directly adressing the points brought up by the other person. What did you contribute?
no one does that, anyway. but even if they did, what is wrong with it? eating animals is fine.
Farming is already optimized for yield.
Not to the levels you can expect if it is all industrialized. You are correct though. A strawberry from 50 years ago tastes a million times better than the monstrosities we buy today as a quick example.
Trust me, the more explorations I do on the nature of consciousness, the more I wrestle with all of that.
I don’t believe that it is inherently wrong to kill in order to eat. But as a species we don’t. Which isn’t to say there aren’t members of our species who very much do still need to kill to eat.
But I don’t need to kill to eat, and I’ve outsourced that killing so it feels like more of an abstraction than it is. I can at the very least acknowledge this.
Which I think is almost worse... think about concentration/extermination camps (which I think our animal industry is basically)
And it's perfectly healthy to be vegan (maybe even more healthy at this point when done right, than meat consumption).
My main reason though for that is less moral than just wanting to be less wasteful, i.e. meat is just inefficient. I predict that we at some point will move past meat consumption, it's just not necessary, even when considering taste...
Plants don't have nervous systems, which appear to be what enables suffering
Did you mean to say plants instead of animals, or...?
Yep, sure did. Thanks for the correction
I'm not even sure about plants not having something similar as a nervous system. They live on different timescale, but it's impressive what e.g. Trees in forests are capable of (with a little help of funghi)
The smell of cut grass is the grass warning other grass that doom is upon them. Plants communicate in ways we can't understand in the same way as they don't make noise. They don't like being harvested anymore than an animal does.
And how do you suppose that warning response leads to qualia?
Yes?!
The band?
I feel bad for the forks and spoons in the drawer which didn't get used that day... My amygdala must be an absolute fuckin' HOG
It's worth buying your meat from places with good practices
I'm fortunate enough to have some permaculture farms nearby
Drop acid and watch Samsara
The best solution to that struggle is to not eat animals
It's because you're autistic!
The better educated you are, the more left leaning you tend to be:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideological-gap-between-more-and-less-educated-adults/
Conservatives tend to be dismissive of science and empirical evidence:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160713172717.htm
Higher verbal IQ correlates with liberal attitudes:
https://www.psypost.org/verbal-iq-predicts-political-participation-and-liberal-attitudes-twice-as-strongly-as-performance-iq/
Whatever this dumb shit is, is a reaction to that. As usual, they project their own shortcomings on their enemies.
In any case, what it comes down to is basic empathy and morality. If you care for others, you tend to vote left. If you care for only yourself and your self-interests, you vote right. There is no debating that, it's stated right there in the fucking ideology.
How can you not mention the awesome studies on bullshit.
https://jspp.psychopen.eu/index.php/jspp/article/download/6565/6565.pdf/
Conservatives fall for bullshit.
About a third of the illiterates in the US just don't speak English. They may be literate just fine in their native tongue, but that rate captures English literacy.
I'm not saying that that number is wrong per se but it would be better to see a curve based on age brackets
If for instance 25% of adults are over 90 then it wouldn't be surprising if they couldn't read properly. (Not saying that that's true, just as an example)
I appreciate the effort but conservatives are not reading any studies.
Kinda like they refuse to admit we all came from Africa and and thus our ancestors are black.
POV:
You just aggravated someone with an 'undersized' amygdala.
I'd say that amygdala is regular sized, since it's activating a fight response
I sure hope that kid's doing well.
No wonder Republicans are so phobic of everything. They got overinflated amygdalas. Amygdalas so big they look like this:
Excuse me, thats amygdala. Its very different from amygdala.
Ah-meeg-doll-uh vs Uh-mig-dull-uh.
(seriously heard it pronounced the first way in so many BB videos; like it was a person's first and last name)
I hadn't played the games myself, was just watching challenge runs and heard it the first way only until I read the name and wondered if the guy I was watching had a stroke
Conservatives are more afraid of everything, and respond in anger. How the fuck is that "better"?
Those are “manly” emotions! But also don’t forget that we are better for running countries because we’re so calm and cool.
One could frame this as "Leftists are more naive and reckless, while Conservatives are cautious". I wouldn't, but I can see someone make that argument.
Through the power of sarcasm.
Ah, the typical nazi idea of correlating random body measurements with complex behavioral and emotional patterns.
You mean the Brit/American eugenics idea.
Hitler was a great fan of these racists so he sent a dr Mengele to study the superior Nordic race at Carnegie's American Eugenics Society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eugenics_Society_Exhibit_(1930s)._Image_from_Wellcome_Library.jpg
Amygdala's wardrobe in "A Phantom Menace" was overactive
Amidalin.
Amygdalia.
A McDonalds.
A man
A plan
Amygdala
The queen of mixed signals
Went to a Mediterranean restaurant for dinner with my wife. We celebrated her birthday, and so decided to check the dessert menu. We generally don't get dessert, just never really lie thing, but this menu has a dessert called amygdalopita, which piques my interest. Why would they name it after part of the brain?
And so upon further research, we discovered that the Greek word αμύγδαλο (amýgdalo) means almond. And this really got my wheels turning, because it brought back memory of EMT classes, way back in like 2003, where they talked about the amygdala being named such due tonit being almond shaped.
So I like a dessert that not only tasted great, but also helped me make connections, maybe fire off some neurons I hadn't in a while.
In Flemish/Dutch the toncills (Tonsillae palatinae) are called almonds
You ate brains for dessert?!
For the curious ones, from Psychology Today:
"A larger amygdala is primarily associated with increased anxiety, heightened emotional reactivity, and stress-related disorders, often acting as a hyper-active "threat detector" Symptoms frequently include persistent fearfulness, depression, irritability, and hypervigilance, as the brain over-processes neutral stimuli as threats."
Whoever made the original meme is an absolute moron.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201311/the-size-and-connectivity-the-amygdala-predicts-anxiety
FWIW, wp:Amygdala.
OMG they are so detached from reality that they are bragging about being terrified?
I'm guessing they think it helps them wake up and see the truth that they are being exploited on, while they see people with a smaller amygdala as like mindless sheep that just takes in any info and takes that as doctrine.
The thing that they don't consider though, is that fear and anger is often a form of control.
It's because they think we take in information the same way they do.
The process in which they construct understanding:
How real understanding is best constructed:
You can't change minds if you don't know how their minds work.
Conservatives don't know anything about the person they voted for. They don't know anything about how their government functions. They don't know anything about their Constitution.
I promise they don't know what an amygdala is or what it does.
"Be afraid." We have people posting "Be afraid." with 0% irony.
What?
I feel like this had to have been a shitpost that a chud just took too seriously and reposted unironically, right?? Like, there almost no way this was originally made unironically... right??? Its just too on the nose
Edit: you know what, nvm. I forgot the fucking whitehouse posted call of duty footage as actual combat footage unironically. We are just that cooked i guess
Good shitposting is no longer possible, because now there's too many people who actually believe in stupid-shit.
conservatives have a hyerptrophied amygdala due to always constantly feeling fear.
Tiny amygdala
Big dick
Hat3rs will h8
Sanders 2028
Nah please, we need younger actually representatives of the population, not ancient people (as much as I like Sanders). There's various young progressive candidates that are suitable when the Dems allow them...
I've seen some interesting discussion of this linked to the idea of survive/thrive strategies. Is the world a dangerous place that calls for avoiding risks and protecting what you have, or is it full of opportunities and calls for exploring and being open to novelty? Neither inclination is fundamentally wrong. But I'm not sure how to reconcile that with modern "rightists" who want to burn down the system and aren't conservative in the lowercase-C sense.
Fear of non-conformity.
They value being in some kind of 'tribe' to a literally irrational extent.
Hence, black and white, ingroup vs outgroup thinking.
Then combine that with half of them hate themselves (mostly because of the peer pressure that comes from their tribe) and are literally in a suicidal apocalyptic death cult.
So when the death cult says 'destroy', they don't want to lose their group identity, because without that, they are nothing, so, they destroy.
The Republican party (and conservatism as a movement) are full-blown reactionaries. I like this passage from Corey Robin'sThe Reactionary Mind:
And from another section:
I just now saw this and... that is a much erudite explanation than I gave... I will have to check out this Corey Robin.
I think these ideas, and what I said, are mutually true.
What do you think?
Basically, yes, conservatives either literally are losers or fear loss, to horrifically paraphrase Robin... and also, their replacement identity, their group identity that has supplanted their personal identity, which includes being directed to war against certain ideas and concepts, well, they can't not perform those ideas, otherwise, its another existentual criss.
First, they lost or failed at something core to their personal identity, then they subsume themself into the aggrieved group identity... and if they renege against or fail at the performance of the group identity... well now they have another existential crisis, suffer another kind of identity loss.
Conservatism, as a trauma response.
I just also want to note the immense cognitive dissonance between the actual, fear-based conservative mindset of 'zero-sum'... and their purported belief in the 'free market', much of which totally fails to be any kind of logically coherent without the idea that... an unregulated market generally (or even always) leads to a 'positive-sum' situation.
They lie about how they actually think, and tell you the thing that very often actually is zero-sum in reality... is broadly mutually beneficial... and that you're wrong/evil if you disagree.
Its... all projection.
Quite a logical short circuit.
You should definitely read the book if it's a topic that interests you; it's the best overview of conservatism that I've read. I'd say you're pretty well aligned with what he wrote within, too.
Well they are afraid of the system, which they think is out to get them. See white nationalists who claim they are being persecuted, "deep state", various conspiracy theories, need for guns for self protection, etc, etc. I don't see anything hard to reconcile.
Conservatism typically assumes that much of the world is a zero-sum game, so for one to prosper someone else must be worse off. Instead of them collaborating for a better outcome.
"I'm afraid more often and that's why I'm a terrible person!"
who need they amygdalussy ate
I'm willing to bet no one has ever said this before.
I'm just like Ghoulia from Monster High:
We're literally twins
Since we're sharing fun facts, conservatism and authoritarianism is unsurprisingly correlated with high levels of obedience in things like the Milgrim shock experiment replications. Something akin to 90% compared to the original 60% (which was already quite high since they only had white men at the time).
They're also more likely to choose selfish options in things like the prisoners dilemma, too!
(Edit, if you wanna read more there's an open source textbook I use: https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/ )
Let me guess: illegal in Florida?
Good question, but it's technically not sociology so... maybe not? Oh wait no, psychologists also acknowledge racism as existing so probably illegal.
The average American reads at an elementary school level, and many are functionally illiterate. Here is a case in point.
Stay close to the tree line. Learn to identify plants with poisonous oils. Stockpile the leaves that are like paper. If you must run a fire, use clean burning fuels, to avoid disclosing location. Dig a deep hole and build a privacy wall out of poisonous vines.
Edit that was for something else lol
It may have been for something else, but it's weirdly applicable here...
Now that I've lost the narrative, and that's an unacceptable thing to say
Ironic that right-wingers seem to be particularly enamoured of the “It’s afraid” meme then (doubly ironic that it’s from an anti-fascist parody).
"I'm more scared than you!" Is a weird flex.
Let's just say I get scared real easy.
I'm a leftist and I have an anxiety disorder! Checkmate, conservatives
Kazakhstan has superior amygdala. All other countries have inferior amygdala
Having enlarged and/or over active amygdalas would go a long way to explaining a lot of traits expressed by conservatives. That includes their fear of going to going to the grocery store without a gun on their hip.
That would actually make a lot of sense.
And it's wild to brag about it.
I credit an intense compassion for animals and resulting veganism to my autism.
Just wanted to put that in this thread without making it a direct response to anyone. Sometimes it can be incredibly alienating and disconcerting to encounter people online who say they can't be vegan because they're autistic. It's a very diverse spectrum with a multitude of manifestations, and I'd like to go on record as proof that it swings toward positive outcomes and not only negative ones.
Same :)
That's actually interesting, and I'd love to see the studies behind that (and then see if I can find out how my own brain is structured).
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/conservative-and-liberal-brains-might-have-some-real-differences/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11519434/
Thank you!
probably won't be able to find out how your own brain is structured without getting a scan, but your local university neuroscience lab might be interested in a free test subject and would give you a scan in exchange for studying your brain.
As long as I survive, sure. Granted, that requires trusting Rutgers, but hey, maybe I can.
Hi, I'm a coward bc I'm not a leftist isn't the flex you think it is.
I got mine removed and now I'm seizing the means of production.
Funny how conservatives aren't afraid of disease. You probably need a decent frontal lobe for that.
They are so afraid that they pretend to ignore diseases all together.
I am guilty of thinking about the same thing when it comes to "Conservatives". I catch myself wondering if they are actually human or if they are all mentally retarded due to lead poisoning.
Around 40,000 to 50,000 years ago we had other species of humans running around with us, like Neanderthals and over a dozen other species if you go back further. These would have seemed like aliens to our ancestors. What if Conservatives are a slightly different version of human.
The lead poisoning thing actually makes sense for the Baby Boomer generationand Generation X. We used leaded gasoline during their lifetimes. These people could all be mentally deficient ... and we are letting them run the world when they should be in a mental hospital somewhere.**
We have social media instead of lead poisoning now where youtube algorithm tries pulling you into the alt-right pipeline bimonthly.
for a second I read that as "bismuthly"
Honestly is more surprising any human is relatively rational. We are animals after all. I'm starting to realize thinking deeply about anything might be the exception not the rule. Most people are idiots
It's really hard to like people the more you see of their behavior and "intelligence"
I agree ... our species is meant to be a social animal and they have broken down our social structures. They have turned the social animal into a predator that preys upon its own .... that's called cannibalism.
Same human species, different traumas. Conservatives have daddy issues, while we have mommy issues
what if I don't have either?
Then you're boring and unable to function socially
well that's just not very nice.
Indeed
Weird flex but ok
Isn't right-wing views correlate with cognitive decline?
There were actually some studies that showed either an over-active amygdala causing anxiety or and under-developed rest of the brain couldn’t cope with the output of the amygdala or something to that effect; and that made people experiencing it more susceptible to conservatism.
So it’s like another dimension of the autism spectrum, except you’re just scared as shit of everything everyone tells you. Better believe in the same God as everyone around you, just in case.
The level of dumb necessary to state what's said in OP's meme is just staggering and emblematic of the right- misunderstand everything and boil it down to the most basic YES vs NO proposition possible, then blame everyone else for your own shortcomings.
It's so fucking tiresome.
Galileo: "I think it's actually the Earth that moves around the Sun."
Papacy: "RAAAWR! U AR WRONG AND HEATHEN BURN ON PYRE EVIL MAN!"
Galileo: "Shit I can't argue with that I take it back I guess."
Got no idea about the size of my amygdala, but I'm really good at being anxious and depressed. Small but mighty I guess
I'm suspicious of damn near everyone and am still somehow liberal.
Doesn't the amygdala handle processing strong emotions rather than causing them, meaning that an underactive one would be less able to handle said strong emotions?
I have never had my amygdala scanned so I don't know where I sit.
I know I am very liberal/leftist as far as politics go, and I don't really care about the differentials of definitions of those terms. It just means that I am anti-conservative and pro freedom, and I don't care what the correct word for that is.
But, that being said, like, most of the time I'm pretty calm, but when I am not calm, it is very, very difficult for me to regulate my emotions, even as a full-grown adult.
I typically have to lock my body and everything to keep from reacting yelling and screaming and everything when I have powerful emotions.
I've gotten very good at that, but it is always painful and a struggle to not react based off of the emotions of the moment for me.
Psyop to devalue human genetic diversity in the eyes of the general public!!!
Can anyone tell me what a mutational load is though? Never heard of this before in my life
EDIT: I googled but feel free to explain for others
I gave your mom a mutational load last night
*Raphael high-fives Michaelangelo *
Crazy that they boast about having an overactive amygdala but deny it when people say they are acting crazy and paranoid.
Also, side note: conflation of liberal and leftist as if they're the same is kind of a pet peeve of mine. They are very much not the same thing. Those who know know.
Lol inferior agenda. It probably means they think whatever they got going on is better, but it sounds like they're bragging about bad time management
Internet arguments about brain science always get wild fast. Most of the time the science is a lot more complicated than the memes make it look.
So conservatives are lizard people ?
pikachuface.gif
Since as humans we essentially rule the earth, it makes a lot of sense for us to adapt to a new reality that shouldn’t need fear.
But that’s assuming we wouldn’t just spend all our time competing with each other in a negative sum game.
Isn't competition in the US just another way of fearing being a less than person? I've known healthy competitors that just compete with themselves, but it's rare.
Not sure what you mean, but yes hyper competitiveness leads to less value for human life.
My point was that it’s a negative sum game, we are all competing with each other in an unhealthy manner, in which we are all poorer collectively as a result.
And it’s not even helping evolution since merit isn’t correlated to financial success.
I'm saying that competitiveness usually also comes from fear.
100% agree