Liberal vs. Conservative: A Neuroscientific Analysis with Gail Saltz | Big Think 

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Is anyone watching this during covid-19 times to try to figure out wtf is wrong with our country?

This also speaks to how a system of education can be used to increase open-mindedness or close-mindedness. Moving away from creating informed world citizens to a system that creates employees may have contributed to these differences.

I grew up in a conservative house, neighborhood, community, and had all conservative friends. I gradually had to give them all up and/or was rejected because I became increasingly liberal. I DO think it's from the brain: I'm just unusually open to new experiences and people, and I've always done risky things. I do creative work. Traditional ways bore or exasperate me. It's how I'm wired. It was painful, though, losing all that community. Wish I'd understood this earlier.

I consider myself a liberal, but I still find it difficult to talk to many liberals. Having an intellectually honest conversation about any controversial issue with someone on either extreme end of the political spectrum is damn near impossible and requires the patience of a buddhist monk.

Professor: this isn't _everyone_ Everyone: phew... it doesn't apply to me

I’ve noticed the problem across the political spectrum seems to be a lack of nuance ever since the rise of social media especially Twitter.

“Some people are able to absorb new information, process it, and adjust their view of the world based on what they’ve learned. Other people have lizard brains.” I feel that’s what she really wanted to say

This is why fear mongering is so effective among those who try to influence people on the right. It would be particularly effective against an other (scapegoats) because it plays on loyalty to the group.

I don't recognise this American thing of talking about Liberals and Conservatives (with Caps) as complete irreconcilable opposites. Uncapitalized, liberal and conservative are labels you attach to a view or an opinion, not a person. Most people are a mixture of liberal and conservative, depending on the topic.

Even though this makes a lot of sense and is most likely a good scientific look at the brain functions of liberals vs conservatives, it would have been nice to have specific studies and information cited. It is really hard to make sure information is accurate if it is not straight from the horse's mouth. Without cited evidence, anyone can dispute it, and the arguments won't always be logical.

What I find interesting is the idea that is very prevalent in the US that one should never change one's mind about anything. As I've grown older I've become more liberal as I realized that so much of what I had been taught by my church was pure junk.

I think if you stop at the 6:00 minute mark on the video she explains that some people hear you differently based on being a liberal or conservative. I thought that was insightful considering what we have gone through since March.

95 dislikes...i wonder what group of people refused to accept this new information

Why is everyone in the comments so but hurt? They were vary fair in this video and tried to keep all bias out.

On Facebook, there was one woman where I was not sure who she even was, but she seemed particularly awful, spouting conspiracy theories, covid misinformation, right-wing partisan liberal-bashing. Then I discovered to my shock that she had been a secretary where I had worked for many years, one of the nicest people, that I had liked quite well.. I was not sure if I should take it as a sign that there is hope, or as a sign that there is no hope. It must be in a small way similar to how a parent must feel when a good kid falls in with a bad crowd, and starts picking up bad habits, surly attitudes, and so on. A lot of people in this world are very nice and polite, never presenting any noticeable problem, in a certain context, *if* you fit into their mold on all key aspects. But if they are narrow on a particular subject, be it race, or religion, or sexual orientation, or politics, and if you fall outside of their mold on any key area, then you see an ugly side that you otherwise would never see. A lot of people are better at heart than their politics. Their politics reflect not so much who they are, but what they have been turned into. If you inject snake venom into someone's veins, it will have an inevitable effect. Similarly, when politicians and their propaganda machines start injecting a steady diet of twisted information, intended to rile people up, make them feel angry, make them suspicious, make them feel wronged, directing their resentment by vilifying scapegoats, this unfortunately works. It has an effect and it changes people for the worse. The only way this will stop is if those who resort to such tactics start getting punished at the voting booths for it, until it no longer appears to be a winning strategy.

The issue with this video is that the findings of the study do not support the conclusions that are being drawn here. The anterior cingulate cortex and amygdala have large number of functions: both are involved in pain processing, fear processing among others. You cannot possibly conclude from that study that conservatives are more emotionally reactive, and that liberals are more open minded. The fact that liberals are more open minded is already known in the scientific literature and the results are being mapped artificially to observed differences in brain structure. There needs to be significantly more studies on the topic to be able to draw any kind of conclusion.

She is really going out of her way not to insult anyones intelligence or portray them as black and white. anyone who is offended is just unreachably stubborn and petty Some of the comments however are genuinely very rude that part is reasonable

I don't understand why conservatives are mad about this video, it says they have brains!

My predictions: liberals will find this video interesting and conservatives will find it scary.

Remember when you got your hand slapped for writing with your left hand? Remember when dyslexic kids used to be called stupid? Remember this when you think of the gay people.

My favorite quote from Warhammer kinda sums it up: "An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded." Being open-minded is good, up until the point bad ideas entrench themselves in your head. If that happens, you are no longer open-minded. Being close-minded protects you from bad ideas and offers stability of mind, focus and safety. However, lack of change leads to stagnation. We don't want that. Balance the two, like all things.

Comment section is ridiculous. The psychiatrist is providing NON-PARTISAN facts, yet everybody immediately politicizes them.

This is really interesting. This might partly explain why younger people tend to be more liberal, because their brains are more neuroplastic and more receptive to change and novel ideas

The gun issue is very interesting, I actually see it as an issue where both sides could come to an agreement generally if the rhetoric is turned down from either end. I have pro gun friends who believe in background checks and pro gun control friends who have zero interest in taking guns away from law abiding citizens. There's an achievable middle ground if each side comes to the table in good faith. Just my thoughts based on what I've observed, I could be wrong though

Some deeply religious people will say that even if they were presented with incontrovertible evidence falsifying their beliefs, then they hope their faith would remain strong enough to not be changed by evidence. This could go along way towards explaining that reaction.

So liberals are more open-minded and conservatives are more paranoid?

immediately I started laughing, considering the most usual complaint from conservatives towards progressives like me is: "snowflake, too emotional, easily offended, unable to decide based on facts and logic":-D I mean, of course I know they are projecting a lot. Thats what a person does. But its still funny hearing it from a psychiatrist.

This is so interesting. I've said for years that the brain structure of conservatives and liberals has to be different and that's why it is so difficult for liberals and conservatives to understand one another. It also impacts mental-health therapy as liberals are more willing to accept new ways of looking at a problem whereas conservatives tend to shut down when new ideas and behavior patterns are suggested.

on average, about 70% of people support progressive issues on an issue by issue bases. my question is what percentage of people classify themselves as part of a group they may not really be in line with?

Another way to tell the difference between conservatives and liberals would be to study who actually watch this entire video before voting or commenting...

As an old school liberal, I’d read something similar years ago that referred psychologically to liberals as “open construct” people & conservatives as “closed construct” people. My conservative acquaintances never seemed to regard this as a complement. 😂 This feels like the biochemical underpinning. She gives some good suggestions.

Conservative media makes so much more sense when you know this information.

Change can be a good thing. Change can also be a bad thing. The best thing to do is balance openness to change with skepticism of it. Yours sincerely Boring centrist

I'd love to see similar work done using the Political Compass metric as the framework, rather than just the typical left-right spectrum.

Sounds like a lot of this conservative vs. liberal conflict comes down to a lack of common language. Right wingers can't seem to be able to tell the difference between an actual liberal, a socialist, or a communist; and left wingers are slowly becoming unable to tell the difference between a conservative and a fascist. Society needs a complete reset and re-education on what all of these terms actually mean and on an individual level apply these definitions introspectively to understand what their political standing actually is. But I think I'm just preaching to choir here.

I’d be very curious to see the same tests conducted on two groups of subjects - those who were primarily born/lived in an urban setting vs those who lived in rural environments - regardless of their political affiliation. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same physiological traits are observed, in particular given the premise that the brain’s plasticity will adapt to the environment. Regardless, it seems that our socio-political stance is more ingrained than we probably think and our impression that our cognitive maturity will rise above any physiological influence is potentially wrong. To put it simply, we aren’t as smart as we think we are and at the end of the day, how are brains are physically wired has more impact than our hubris which purports our consciousness as being able to overcome our primitive mammalian brains.

I would be a conservative based on this video. But I’m very left wing on the political issues. I think this is because policies like single payer health care, a strong social safety net, and strong regulation of the economy all creates stability and order which is important to conservatives. So people’s minds can absolutely be changed depending on how one frames the argument.

I think what we need to take home from this is that all humans have an inherent bias when it comes to information and values, and to get out of the gridlock we are experiencing in many nations politics, we have to focus purely on the facts and being willing to experiment to find solutions outside of what we intrinsically feel is right. It takes a principled mind to admit to yourself that I may not be the best judge of what the right way forward is on a particular issue. But we need some kind of neutral ground.

This is fascinating. Why aren't we all talking about this more. But the depressing part is (for liberals) if conservatives are inherently resistant to change, and don't want to hear new information like the science that this person is presenting, then they won't buy into this idea and consider how this is affecting our politics.

Some people's brain structure makes it hard or impossible for them to absorb new info and change course accordingly. Isn't that the same as saying they're stupid?

This video could have been at least 10 minutes shorter.

1.6 thousand conservatives got all emotional and discounted the science.

I think 'elastic' would be a better term than 'plastic' to describe the young brain. But I think the stronger difference between us is not liberal/conservative but rather authoritarian/non-authoritarian.

sounds about right; 70% of conservatives would have _no idea_ what the hell this woman is talking about...

I need to understand what the hell is going on in this country right now racially and politically.

Imagine actually getting upset over two gay people getting married. Like, legit angry. What a way to go through life.

When listening to this you also have to remember that she’s talking about fundamental personality traits not political parties. Being a democrat doesn’t make you fundamentally liberal, etc.

An amygdala, not an elephant, should be the symbol of the Republican Party.

For most of human history, there were no labels of "liberal and conservative" nor do all human societies today. Personally, I wish we would move beyond the use of these labels.

This gave me a million more questions than answers... I have always been the kind of person who gets both sides of the concern and have a very hard time forming a personal opinion. Where does that even leave me....

The analysis I have from my own experience is: Liberal: Progressive, but fails to ever consider consequence or take responsibility for what could possibly come out of such ideas. "Everything is bad, so lets make it better without realizing things get absolutely worse." Conservative: Preservation of value, but prone to put nationalism first before intelligence. "Murica is the best at everything, even though its not."

Irony: Conservatives won't take in this new information, hence will continue to assert Liberals are the emotional ones. :D

It seems important to separate the conservative/liberal voter from conservative/liberal philosophy. The small government, increased freedom principles trumpeted by the right would seem to be in direct contradiction with the increased fear sensitivity of its supporters. This is probably why politicians on the right that get elected tend not to practice what they preach

Sources? I'd like to take a look at the studies

I read very early before preschool and my mother belonged to a book club that mailed out the classics on a monthly basis. I read these fiction books voraciously and even though I was very young and naive the descriptions of varying religions, politics and moral/personal behaviors influenced me in that I viewed the world around me in an open way. This viewpoint was far more inclusive because of all the variety I had absorbed in having read diverse selections of fiction.

The brain is like a muscle. More activity in an area will increase that area's volume and strength.

Knowledge is power, and Berniecrats are powerful because they're understanding that the taxes they pay should go to things they desire. #truth

Do conservatives seek out emotional fear somewhat like an addiction? Also, do liberals seek out logical or risk-taking emotional experiences rather like an addiction?

Was the study done on neurotypical population or were neurodivergent people included as well? As an Autistic adult, I do hate everything that disrupts stability and routine (conservative), yet I am very receptive to new scientific information (liberal), although I can be very slow at processing it due to learning disabilities.

This explains to me why so many Conservatives remain so loyal to Trump despite the almost constant scandals, turmoil and uncivil discourse.

the whole time i'm watching this im thinking "i dont believe one word of this bullshit but maybe that just means im a conservative... fuck"

So easy to intuit her political position. The flight or fight response, to me, indicates a decision-making response. Depending on the situation, either could be a rational response. The other position, to me, appeared to be based on an emotional and, therefore, not rational response.

It makes sense that brain structure has something to do with political leanings. However, environmental factors, and personal experiences should also be taken into consideration. I used to be a Republican when my first registered to vote but eventually I became more liberal in my thinking as I grew older.

We need to dispel the notion that Independents fall between Conservatives and Liberals. I'm an Independent because the Democratic party is too conservative.

She's right on some aspects. I was a liberal, checked new info and became conservative.

In this comment section: far right conservatives and center right conservatives entirely missing what this doctor explained about brain structures. Second, people who can't also take the liberty to look at the video description to look this doctor up, find more info on her, where she got her info, possibly contact her directly (since she has her own practice), and send her an email or something.

She did a great job not making it seem like the group that makes decisions based primarily on fear isn’t inherently worse off

Am I the only one that thinks that 99.99% of people have no idea what's the exact definition of a liberal and conservative, but they still fight about it because politics.

This also squares nicely with Lakoff's "strict father" morality vs. "nurturant parent" morality in explaining people's views and beliefs and decision making.

I probably have a huge amygdala, I lose my temper easily and act on emotion. But when I’m calm, I use my rational brain, and that’s why I’m on the left. My whole family is conservative and religious except for me.

It is amusing that you are proud of the realization that conservatives are stronger in maintaining the status-quo and fearful of change and that liberals are more open to change and adding new information! You know what the words "conservative" and "liberal" mean, don't you?! I mean LITERALLY! :D

Where is the link to this study. Please source.

Conservatives have brains that let them protect their values and be loyal to their beliefs and their history, that let them be aware of what went wrong in the past so they don't take useless risks. In this way a Conservative can be a better person. Liberals have brains open to innovations and science, they are aware of social issues and are empathic to someone who is different from them with no prejudice. In this way a liberal can be a better person. See, different paths, same destination.

I grew up in a family whose parents made no comments about guns....but my grandparents and two of my uncles enjoyed using guns...(in their childhood they were bringing home food for the family) I am 74 therefore you see the difference in cultures. My father never owned a gun after the war but was a staunch Conservative more for financial reasons (he was very ambitious and eventually owned three businesses) and was involved in state and local politics. Obviously I thought of myself as a conservative but while I was in college I had 3 very good friends who later admitted to me they were gay......I don't understand and never will why gay marriage was so anathema to the conservatives. I was living in New England when the first school shooting took place and it seemed the "use of guns" had entered a different phase. I understand the position of both sides but more because it was a tool for the "US VS THEM" change in our culture.

Can you pin the peer review study, was this published in any major scientific journal like njom or science? Just looking to read it myself. These seems interesting, I really want to read the methods and materials of the study.

I find this to validate what I have seen in my family and throughout my social network. I appreciate the suggestions about how liberals and conservatives can tap into each other's modes of thinking in order to better present their ideas.

I had to watch this incredibly interesting video twice, 'cause the first time I couldn't help but be distracted by the though "This comment section will be amusing. In a scary way."

Think whatever you want, just do it critically. The 5 Steps to Critical Thinking: What is critical thinking? In general, critical thinking refers to actively questioning statements rather than blindly accepting them. Critical thinking results in radical free will. 1. The critical thinker is flexible yet maintains an attitude of healthy skepticism. Critical thinkers are open to new information, ideas, and claims. They genuinely consider alternative explanations and possibilities. However, this open-mindedness is tempered by a healthy sense of skepticism (Hyman, 2007). The critical thinker consistently asks, “What evidence supports this claim?” 2. The critical thinker scrutinizes the evidence before drawing conclusions. Critical thinkers strive to weigh all the available evidence before arriving at conclusions. And, in evaluating evidence, critical thinkers distinguish between empirical evidence versus opinions based on feelings or personal experience. 3. The critical thinker can assume other perspectives. Critical thinkers are not imprisoned by their own points of view. Nor are they limited in their capacity to imagine life experiences and perspectives that are fundamentally different from their own. Rather, the critical thinker strives to understand and evaluate issues from many different angles. 4. The critical thinker is aware of biases and assumptions. In evaluating evidence and ideas, critical thinkers strive to identify the biases and assumptions that are inherent in any argument (Riggio & Halpern, 2006). Critical thinkers also try to identify and minimize the influence of their own biases. 5. The critical thinker engages in reflective thinking. Critical thinkers avoid knee-jerk responses. Instead, critical thinkers are reflective. Most complex issues are unlikely to have a simple solution. Therefore, critical thinkers resist the temptation to sidestep complexity by boiling an issue down to an either/or, yes/no kind of proposition. Instead, the critical thinker expects and accepts complexity (Halpern, 2007). Critical thinking is not a single skill, but rather a set of attitudes and thinking skills. As is true with any set of skills, you can get better at these skills with practice. In a nut shell, critical thinking is the active process of minimizing preconceptions and biases while evaluating evidence, determining the conclusions that can be reasonably be drawn from evidence, and considering alternative explanations for research findings or other phenomena. CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS >Why might other people want to discourage you from critical thinking? >In what situations is it probably most difficult or challenging for you to exercise critical thinking skills? Why? > What can you do or say to encourage others to use critical thinking in evaluating questionable claims or assertions?

I wonder if it’s evolutionary? Imagine when we were cavemen. Liberal people shared with strangers and potentially prospered because the grateful strangers then shared what they could and it was mutually beneficial. On the other hand, conservative cavemen did not share and possibly prospered because they kept everything to their own clan. Either scenario could still lead to conservatives and liberals prospering and passing on their DNA, but especially for conservatives, it would not lead to breading with liberal people. Lol, it’s still like that now, liberal people and conservative people tend to marry other liberal or conservative people.

Well, it's not one person one vote. Voter suppression and the electoral college has taught us that.

What I find interesting is that she stated that liberal neural structures made people more likely to accept new information and change their mind. I'm a moderate centrist who knows many people on both sides of the aisle, and has frequent conversations and debates with them. What I have found is that people who identify on the extreme left, are the most stubborn people I've ever talked to. Not only are they usually unwilling to absorb new information and reexamine their positions, they typically respond to any information that doesn't support their own ideological positions in an emotional way, forsaking rational debate to accuse the other of being racist, sexist, (insert minority group)phobic, etc. Certainly this can be true for those on the extreme right as well, which is kind of my point. Ideologically extreme people are rarely interested in having their ideals challenged, because why would you? What happens if you find out your wrong? Everything you based your life on could turn out to be bs. That's why what I'm interested in is trying to get people to recognize that being extremely ideological, regardless of the ideology itself, is inevitably going to lead people to make mistakes, ignore, or worse dehumanize people they disagree with, and generally keep their heads up their own asses all their lives....

Conservatives be like: this video of new information is bs

I am interested to know more about the study. I don't recall hearing the name or seeing a link in the description (unless I missed it). I am a moderate conservative and consider myself open-minded and willing to change my opinion based upon new evidence/research, regardless of my bias going into it. So, am I kidding myself or am I an outlier? Were the studies conducted on people more on the fringes or closer to the middle? What was the sample size? Demographics? Etc... While I am absolutely not taking anything away from this video (I thoroughly enjoyed it), but not posting references/sources (again, unless I missed it) is not academically honest.

It's a bit of a stretch, but we know that certain genes are "turned on" or "turned off" in certain situations or environments. I have to wonder if gene selection doesn't somehow take into account not just the passing on of genes, but also whether they are activated or not. Anecdotally, it seems to me that conservatives often try to create a world suited to their particular views and prejudices. They seem more comfortable in a world like human beings lived in for hundreds of thousands of years, a more tribal, more traditional and less evidenced-based world. Conservative attitudes would have been appropriate and beneficial to human thriving for hundreds of thousands of years. The tribalism we see at play in fundamentalist christians and muslims, the amped-up hostility towards the other tribe, would have made perfect sense in small tribal societies competing for resources. We now find ourselves in a situation where this impedes human thriving. In a world where no one in power has conservative values, everyone is very quickly fed and clothed. We're at a point where we actually produce resources, and this is based on cooperation, not competition. Conservative attitudes, driven unconsciously, of course, seem to want not just to make us progress more slowly, but rather seem to want us to regress backward to a more primitive societal structure like we see in lower primates. This view can be evidenced in almost any issue. Take abortion, where we have an overwhelming instinct to reproduce. It's literally the purpose of life. The traditional instinct is to breed. We see conservatives actually reproducing faster than liberals (cf Mike Judges Idiocracy). This is in a situation where population is driving environmental and natural resource management issues that threaten human existence. The rational, objective thing to do is to make birth control and sex education the norm and slow or reverse population growth. The smart thing for humanity to do going forward is obvious, but we see conservatives being opposed to this in every way and giving incredibly irrational reasons for their views. The end result of this regressivism, and we can imagine this being played out throughout time on a small scale, is that we will over populate the environment, in this case, the entire world, and be reduced to barbarism and eventually revert back to an illiterate tribal society. Even how we take in information is impacted by this liberal-conservative dichotomy. In primitive cultures, prior to written language, we would have been completely dependent on tradition being passed down. You could not google how to open a coconut. You would have only been able to get this information by it being passed down from authority figures within the tribe. Innovation would have been discouraged because there would have been a coconut opening procedure that had worked and allowed the tribe to flourish. We see this resistance to change in modern conservatives also, where they seem to be completely unwilling to judge things based on a modern world. Their opposition to gays for examples seems to harken back to a past where, to borrow from Monty Python, every sperm is sacred and where humanity needed to out-reproduce a high infant mortality rate. The end result again of all these conservative behaviors seems to that it creates an environment that is less open, more fearful (everyone needs to armed!), more backward, less informed. In other words, it creates an environment that is suited to conservative thinking. Take conscious rationalization out of it, observe people as if they are monkeys, and see if you don't see this tendency in conservative actions to create the environment where these actions would be appropriate. The "doubling down" almost always happens on one side of the political spectrum. What I tend to hear from the left is exactly what Dr. Satlz does here. I hear should be open and listen to each other, and conservatives have valid ideas too. Horseshit. Two plus two is four. It's not a reasonable compromise when someone says it's five to agree to four and a half. Argumentation does not work the way that the professor imagines. If we look a Roe v Wade, a Solomonic compromise between the right and the left if there ever was one, we see the left arguing the middle position, that abortion is bad but sometimes necessary, and we see the right arguing that little magic babies live in stem cells. We also see the subsequent erosion of women's rights. The left needs to _quit_ compromising with the right. President Obama has tried to do this for 8 years and has gotten egg on his face every time. The _right_ has pretty much been _wrong_ about everything for four decades. Compromising with conservatives is going to get us nuclear war and an earth too warm for human existence. We need to "double down," triple down, and be every bit as intransigent as the conservatives. It is moral cowardice to be right, correct, and then not effectively advocate for that right. If you're in a burning building and someone is advocating to throw gasoline on the fire to put it out, you don't try to have calm, reasonable discussion with them. You dismiss their input and talk amongst the reasonable people for a solution. Gun control is a good example of this. Statistics say gun ownership makes you _less_ safe. This is simply a fact. The reason that we cannot proceed on gun control is not because both sides cannot effectively communicate. It's because the right, conservatives, cannot accept this simple _fact._ No one credible is advocating for banning guns. Guns aren't banned in Australia or the UK. They simply require a great deal more training prior to allowing private citizens to own guns. Fully automatic weapons in the US aren't banned. We simply require a great deal more training and authorization before we allow someone to own a fully automatic weapon. The right, conservatives, are simply _wrong_ on gun control, but this again gets back to argumentation. They are wrong on the facts, but they are much, much better at advocating their position, and not just because it is a simplistic one that is easy to argue. They toe the line that any kind of regulation on gun ownership is bad, and they don't compromise.

This should be taught before every student starts their first post-secondary education. Great stuff.

Sounds like we're talking about wise thinkers vs stubborn feelers to me. That being said, I wonder what other dimensions there are. Notably, there are authoritarian and egalitarian divisions within the right and the left - the people who want to force their life styles on to others, and those who don't. Within that division, there is a group of frequently intelligent and compassionate people who are thought leaders that probably don't want to be political leaders, and therefore ought to be.

I love this video for so many different reasons (besides it being a ‘new’ piece of information which makes me happy) It’s a breath of fresh air to get practical advice on how to communicate better instead of just screaming/repeating or just avoiding political topics in its entirety

"flight or fright response"

Brilliantly explained. Gives alot of insight & guidance for achieving better liberal/conservative communication

I love it how she's trying so hard as to use non-pejorative adjectives, with euphemism as a not-liking-change trait vs the classical tolerance to risk & change and the confusion conflation of "information" to "inferior" (reptilian, ironically) brain or r-complex evolutionary more basic/essential

Links to these studies, please :)

What are the 3 best books for a lay person on this subject?

I'd call myself 'independant' and I would 100% be on board with being part of a study about that.

Fight or flight can easily be controlled through proper training. It was because of my conservative Christian studies that I learned how to calm myself down and analyze whatever stressful circumstance I find myself in. The simple act of breathing through your nose places your body in “rest and digest”.

fast food is a public health issue/ guns a public health issue. both answers are no. The issue is those who use either irresponsibly. Blaming guns for people being killed is like blaming spoons & forks for making people fat.

Thankyou for your beautiful work. Can you link the studies?

It would be interesting to look at the bell curve showing the percentages of those whose brain development has a larger anterior cingulate gyrus or larger right amygdala superimposed upon the entire population just to see if the percentage of those that fall in the center would equal the percentage of those that do not vote.

I believe liberals and conservatives complement each other in the ability to create stable and creative community structures. This is why we've survived this long. But when we get pulled apart by fears, that is when instability can happen.

Thanks for including the transcript!