One Graph To Rule Them All
This is my graph on different aspects of political ideology . I made it in Paint. Its a good graph, it explains a lot. Here is the analysis.
The X axis is political ideology. The left side is liberal, the right side is conservative. The Y axis is simply high and low.
Hunter-Gatherer Fitness Level
The purple line indicates HG fitness. As it becomes higher it moves to the right, and vice versa. As we know from my article, conservatives have high HG fitness, and liberals do not. It is the defining feature of political ideology, it is the cause of political ideology. Therefore the correlation is 1. If you have peak HG fitness, you are peak conservative.
Rationalism/Spatial Ability
As we know from my other article, spatial ability is the common factor among all rational people. It is the defining feature. If you have a high spatial ability, you are highly rational. No exceptions. They are therefore termed together.
As we see from the graph, conservatives are more rational than liberals. It is difficult to find studies that show this, but it is definitely true for several reasons - an obvious one being that men are more rational (proven) and men are also more conservative. However, the correlation with ideology is not 1.
The correlation is probably more like 0.3-0.6. If you are conservative, you are likely more rational, but its not a guarantee. It is possible to find rational liberals, and irrational conservatives.
This is because higher spatial ability does improve HG fitness, but often comes with a trade-off. More intelligent people are typically weaker/skinnier. Brains and muscle are both metabolically expensive, and in our ancestral past nobody people could afford to be both smart and big.
That is why the orange line has a gradient that is more gradual than purple.
Conformism
I havn’t written about this yet, so I will do it now. Lets get some definitions down:
HG fitness - the level of success in a HG environment (largely determined by immune system, strength, height and spatial ability).
Rationalism - the capacity to be objective, lack of self-deception, lack of cognitive bias.
Conformism - behaviour in accordance with social norms, risk aversion.
It is important to understand that rationalism and conformism can both be evolutionarily adaptive. Being irrational can assist in deceiving others. Being conformist can save energy usually reserved for strategical life planning.
It is also important to understand that conformism and rationalism don’t have a lot in common. It is possible to be low in conformism and both high and low in rationality. Same goes for high levels of conformity, with a smaller range.
Who are the most conformist people? The obvious answer is women (there are studies on this). Women are more conformist because they can afford to be. They are so reproductively useful compared to men, that human groups will almost always try and preserve the life of women. If women do not rock the boat, they will almost always get to reproduce.
If they were less conformist, their likelihood of reproducing can only go down. It probably would go down because they would be more risk-seeking, and they would be killed more before reproducing.
Women are more attractive than men, on average. Another group that is high in conformism (according to my observations) is attractive men. Attractive people in general do not need to do much to reproduce. They have great immune systems (facial attractiveness is generally a reflection of immunity). People choose them as partners because of this.
People who are ugly and strong try to achieve things, people who are ugly and weak try to make a lot of friends. Liberals are weaker (low HG fitness), and conservatives are stronger.
It makes perfect sense that the closer to the center one is, politically speaking, the more conformist they will be. They are the swing voters.
The far right is extremely non-conformist. The far left is also extremely non-conformist. Right now the Overton window is skewed to the left, but even if it wasn’t, they would still be advocating for equality, because that is their life strategy. Their survival (in a hunter-gatherer world) depends on it.
Sex
Females are more liberal than males, which is why their peak is slightly left of center. They also cluster to the center more, which is why the line is steeper than the males.
You can see that males outnumber females on the far left, and completely dominate on the far right, just as in real life.
And that’s all I can think of for now. How these concepts relate to political ideology has been on my mind for some years now, and I think this graph explains it all reasonably well.