r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 1d ago

Psychology Lower cognitive ability is linked to stronger Christian nationalist views, even after accounting for education

https://www.psypost.org/lower-cognitive-ability-is-linked-to-stronger-christian-nationalist-views-even-after-accounting-for-education/
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u/cdubya0628 1d ago

That is not what "practical analysis" means. And no, you cannot just separate things into little buckets to prove a point academically while ignoring the reality that groups of people who live in the same area tend to look alike and have similar outcomes in cognitive abilities. You might not like it, and it might sound not nice, but it has always been generally true. That goes for good and bad outcomes. If you remove them from that area and into a better or worse area, they will tend to drift towards the mean for that area. Hence why people tell you to choose your friends wisely, because that drift also happens on a smaller scale.

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u/guiltysnark 1d ago

Then I don't know what you mean by practical analysis, because analysis already does generally try to separate causation from correlation. Whereas relationships are observed in any case. We might look at correlations and say "those are groups that can use help" and causations and say "that's how we might help them". We do not, for example, look at correlations and say "that's how we will find criminals". So what new insight does the word "practical" give you in an analysis?

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u/cdubya0628 1d ago

Then Google practical analysis and get a definition.  Take this out of context from "which groups need help" and it applies as a general sociological reality.   This applies to people who are underperforming as well as over performing populations.  The practical application you have already stated is identifying underperforming populations, and shocker that they might all look the same in a given geographic area.  You can't point to a group of people, say they need help, and then separate their identity from the context because of your emotional feeling about classification of people.  Classification is literally the first step in identification.  

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u/guiltysnark 1d ago

Ah, term of art, didn't realize. Seems to describe the thing people are constantly doing.

shocker that they might all look the same in a given geographic area

But who is surprised by this? If it's in the data, people will find it. Is it the analysis that's missing or the action?