[charles brough]

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

What's ridiculous is this whole thread's attempt to split and categorize people, their priorities, and their political affiliations solely on assumed and unsubstantiated hemispherical dominance.

I agree totally. This guy is way out, rude, argumentative, qubbles, judgemental, etc I'm not responding to anything he writes any more.

[questor]

''You sort of have to hand it to the liberals in that they just keep pushing with their R side emotional fuel. Not all their ideas are logical, but the emotions causes the tide to turn. It is sort of the party that keeps emotionally pushing for change and slowly chips away.''

This is definitely one of liberalism's big problems. They have to continue inventing the wheel at great cost to the citizens. There is a constant social
experiment being conducted that is frustrating and expensive. Our school system is an excellent example. Washington D C spends about $17,000. per year per student and yields a product that can neither read nor write at the level of kids from other schools that spend less than $15,000. This has been the case for many years and they can't figure out what to do about it. Why could they not study the successful schools and follow their lead? The reason is that R-brainers cannot easily understand cause and effect. The same thing with taxes. The liberals cannot grasp the fact that lower taxes allow people more money in their pockets which they can spend to keep our economy moving or to create small businesses. They constantly talk about ''change''.
What would they like to change? Do they want more taxes to pay for social
experiments? Do thay want more liberal judges? Do they want a socialistic society which have proved to be failures?
In my social encounters with R-brainers, I have perceived certain traits:
1. They do not understand cause and effect.
2. They do not easily change their minds when presented with facts when the facts are contrary to their beliefs.
3. They are generally ego centric.
4. It is difficult for them to have a discussion without shouting.
5. They live in the now- lessons learned by experience of others or history
does not impact their thinking.
6. It is difficult for them to verbalize a sensible solution to a complex problem.
Some may say this is generalization, but I would point you to the current political candidates to see if you can see these traits for yourself.
The bottom line to this dicussion is that it would seem that the best leader would be someone who is rational, able to understand the future effects of his actions, able to calmy discuss options and has the best interest of the country at heart.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by questor

In my social encounters with R-brainers, I have perceived certain traits…

Questor, what is your criteria for determining that a person you encounter socially is an “R-brainer”? What technique, if any, have you used to measure or obtain measurements of the actual brain activity of people on whom you’ve applied this criteria, to validate it’s accuracy?

Please refer to an accepted encyclopedic article on the subject of right and left-brainedness, such as the previously linked-to wikipedia article “Lateralization of brain function”, especially the cautions concerning “pseudoscientific exaggerations”. If you disagree with these articles, please state so.

I fear that you are a victim of popular pseudoscience equating brain development and anatomy with behavior, and using poorly controlled, anecdotal “statistics” to support these claims. Historically, such misguidance has had very dire social consequences – a well-know example is the pseudoscientific theory of Phrenology. Influential in the 19th centuries, it became notorious when it was revived by Nazi scientists in the 1940s to support claims of racial superiority and inferiority instrumental in the Holocaust.

The idea that a well-known self-identifying terms, such as “liberal” and “conservative”, can be mapped to measurable anatomical and physiological traits is an intriguing one, but without the support of objective scientific experiments, such speculation is baseless.

[charles brough]

It is really convenient to have a couple of catagories you can put people in like that. All who don't think like you go in one and all those who you do like go in the other. That makes it real scientific!

[questor]

Maybe someone would answer these questions:
1. Why is the US educational system falling behind?
2. Does political correctness help or hurt our society?
3. Who or what is impeding the progresss of African Americans?
4. Will tax cuts help or hurt our economy?
5. Who should pay the higher taxes?
6. Will you pay 10% higher taxes to help pay the national debt?
7. Under what circumstances should we fight a war?
8. Should the US government be allowed to fire incompetent workers?
9. Should unions be allowed to collect money from their members for PAC's?
10. Should legal and illegal immigration to the US be halted or continued?

[InfiniteNow]

The answers to your questions have no relevance to the neural circuitry of the homo sapien brain, nor you or Pioneer's/HydrogenBond's presumed and subjectively interpreted dominance of one of it's hemispheres among various members of the population. This entire thread ignores the impact of the corpus callosum and the varying sizes and impact thereof, and my statement regarding the corpus callosum doesn't even begin to reference the rest of the logical fallacies and false premises you and HB are guilty of in this thread.

[questor]

I really don't care where the thoughts originate, and I daresay no one else
understands this arcane science at this point. What I am interested in is how two people can view the same event and come up with two different perceptions of the event. The questions I posed would demonstrate to me
how there may be people reading this thread who be interested in this exercise. If you have some information that would shed light on this, I would be happy to read it.

[InfiniteNow]

Originally Posted by questor

I really don't care where the thoughts originate, and I daresay no one else
understands this arcane science at this point. What I am interested in is how two people can view the same event and come up with two different perceptions of the event.

If you are "truly" interested in this, then I advise you let go of your preconceived notions of left and right brainedness, and explore each interpretation at the level of the individual.


No matter what you read and see, it first passes through your own perceptual and experiential filters... as it does for every other being on the planet.

[questor]

Infy, I started this thread because I have observed that liberals and conservatives can view the same problem or event and their brains interpret
the event with opposite conclusions. This should be obvious when one reads a newspaper or views one of the political debates. I do not think every
individual interprets this way, but I think a majority do. Easy proof of this would be gained by attending the web-sites Daily Kos and Red State. Why is this important? Because we elect leaders to rule our lives and would like to have the best qualified to do the job. I am going to repost the brain characteristics from this site:
Right Brain Left Brain Inventory

Right Brain Inventory
• Visual, focusing on images, patterns
• Intuitive, led by feelings
• Process ideas simultaneously
• 'Mind photos' used to remember things, writing things down or illustrating them helps you remember
• Make lateral connections from information
• See the whole first, then the details
• Organisation ends to be lacking
• Free association
• Like to know why you're doing something or why rules exist (reasons)
• No sense of time
• May have trouble with spelling and finding words to express yourself
• Enjoy touching and feeling actual objects (sensory input)
• Trouble prioritising, so often late, impulsive
• Unlikely to read instruction manual before trying

Left Brain Inventory
• Verbal, focusing on words, symbols, numbers
• Analytical, led by logic
• Process ideas sequentially, step by step
Words used to remember things, remember names rather than faces
• Make logical deductions from information
• Work up to the whole step by step, focusing on details, information organised
• Highly organised
• Like making lists and planning
• Likely to follow rules without questioning them
• Good at keeping track of time
• Spelling and mathematical formula easily memorised
• Enjoy observing
• Plan ahead
• Likely read an instruction manual before trying
In reading these two lists I see some very undesirable traits for a right brain person who is to lead the largest business and the most powerful country in the world. I am not an expert on neural activity or thought production, but these characteristics are repeated in quite a bit of literature on the internet.
My personal contacts and conversations with many people lead me to believe these characteristics are accurate.

[freeztar]

A major hole, if not gaping abyss, in your argument, Questor, is that brain hemispheres are not binary. For example, I have tested to be close to the middle with a slight leaning to the left brain. People exhibit a full spectrum of the extremes.