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Having advanced degrees correlates with having a higher IQ.
Lower IQ voters are more prone to rely on political rhetoric than to use on their own analytical skills to research mildly complex issues.
To be blunt, they don't have the intellect to vote in their own family's self interest as defined properly.
Goes hand in hand with religiosity, the lowest IQ nations are the most religious nations. The highest IQ nations rate the most secular.
You are confusing education with IQ.
And your stereotypes are quite juvenile. There are extremely smart people with advanced degrees, four year degrees and no degree. And there are extremely stupid people in those categories as well. There are also very smart people and very stupid people who are very religious. There are highly educated people and people with no education who are religious.
Your use of averages is totally useless and implies group behavior that is highly misleading.
An advanced degree is quite an accomplishment, but it doesn't mean you are smart or have a high IQ. It just means you worked hard and got a degree.
Get out and meet more people....Not only do I know several, I have one in my family.
Let me put it this way. My mother has a PhD. Many of my mother's friends also have PhDs. Every single one of my first cousins who is of age has an advanced degree, or is working on one. Many have PhDs.
I live in a town where 77% of adults have at least a BA and many have PhDs yet I have never met a complete moron with a PhD.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hot_Handz
There are plenty of these people who exist....But there are indeed plenty of folks who are indeed more intelligent and capable than their better accomplished counterparts...probably more than you care to acknowledge.
Your comment would have been a little more honest if you said that people with PhD's are more diligent on a whole....That would undoubtedly be true.
You also should consider that many people who have had access to the path to a PhD are involved in legacy admissions and/or come from wealth.
Now your just reading more into my comment then I intended, but that response does make me wonder, what exactly is your educational background? It seems you resent people with PhDs.
Last edited by Randomstudent; 03-16-2012 at 10:40 AM..
And your stereotypes are quite juvenile. There are extremely smart people with advanced degrees, four year degrees and no degree. And there are extremely stupid people in those categories as well. There are also very smart people and very stupid people who are very religious. There are highly educated people and people with no education who are religious.
Your use of averages is totally useless and implies group behavior that is highly misleading.
An advanced degree is quite an accomplishment, but it doesn't mean you are smart or have a high IQ. It just means you worked hard and got a degree.
I only half agree with you. It is like straight A students. I think a person with a graduate degree or who earns straight As in a tough major in college is probably highly intelligent. It is very unlikely to see an extremely stupid person with an MD or earned doctorate. However, I agree that there is no guarantee that an uneducated person is of less intelligence or knowledge.
However, I disagree that there is no correlation between intelligence and education. People holding higher degrees are more intelligent, on average, than the less educated, though individuals will violate this. This is the whole point of a correlation coefficient, to quantify the mean, not the individuals.
But IQ by itself is of limited utility. It shows a logarithmic relationship with achievement. Very low IQ people do not earn Nobel Prizes, but anyone with an IQ over 120 has a shot (variation above about 120 is less than other personal qualities, like work ethic and parential education). However, a high degree of education is like certification. It means you are of at least average or higher intelligence, and that you spent years reading, writing, analyzing facts, arguments, and data and are likely to be an informed citizen. An uneducated person could do all these things too, but the odds are against it.
Viewed across the body politic, it argues forcefully that the more educated voters are, on average, more likely to be knowledgeable and discerning voters. I would argue that averages are far from the meaningless, as the strength of a political society is controlled less by the exceptional voter than the general, normative qualities of the electorate.
Let me put it this way. My mother has a PhD. Many of my mother's friends also have PhDs. Every single one of my first cousins who is of age has an advanced degree, or is working on one. Many have PhDs.
I live in a town where 77% of adults have at least a BA and many have PhDs yet I have never met a complete moron with a PhD.
I guess we'd have to define what a "complete moron" is....
A mother of 3, the oldest being 6 (at the time), who decided to finish up her BA all the way to get her PhD in Psychology from Columbia while her husband carried the load and struggled....BURIED herself in 160k + in loans...can't find a job that will make a dent in her debt AND now is depressed because she missed a large chunk of her childrens formative years...
I'd call that a moron.
My mother, who now passed, was an LPN for a private practice. One of the partners specialized in internal medicine and gastroenterology . Obviously, being a physician, had her PhD. She perforated an obscene number of patients during practice...And one conversation with her would totally remove any doubts as to why.
No because the young have been indoctrinated by leftist professors. The longer they stay in school the deeper entrenched they are in the warped liberal worldview.
How dare those darn professors teach kids how to think on their own and not follow in the ignorance that their parents and religious leaders have drilled into their heads I guess this is the reason that many of the kids from ultra conservative famillies go far away from home as possible
A college degree is only a piece of paper, what you are able to do with it is what makes you smart... for those who can't do anything they want with it, they'll choose the Democrats because they think failure should be rewarded... for those who are able to do something with their lives, they'll be Republicans... so there you are... and those without degrees who made something with their lives, they'll be Republicans as well...
How dare those darn professors teach kids how to think on their own and not follow in the ignorance that their parents and religious leaders have drilled into their heads I guess this is the reason that many of the kids from ultra conservative famillies go far away from home as possible
This is nonsense. In college it's on a class by class, professor by professor situation. Some professors are open to discourse and meaningful dialogue even if it doesn't match their attitudes, and opinions. Others simply want you to parrot them if you want to pass the class.
But overall with the exception to Jesuit schools, and other religious schools (BYU for example) and a few politically conservative ones, most colleges and Universities are overwhelmingly liberal. This is especially true for the most prestigeous of them that includes all 8 Ivys and other top tier schools such as Stanford, Ucal berkeley etc.
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I guess this is the reason that many of the kids from ultra conservative famillies go far away from home as possible 
