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Definitely feel like a lot of my peers are suddenly being weirdly conservative in a way that’s been hard to adjust to

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reminds me of the fact that some studies revealed that the human brain as it ages naturally tends to develop more conservative views (which sort of makes sense from a purely evolutionary standpoint i guess? but we're way past that)

27/7/25, 11:52 am0 reposts0 likes

Steve Klabnik

@steveklabnik.com

27 July 2025

I’m very skeptical of this

Flo

@skade.bsky.social

28 July 2025

Relevant paper: those that _do_ change self-ident(!) tend to go left to right. "If those who are not liberal at 20 have no hearts and those who are not conservative at 30 have no brains, there are many people in this world without either hearts or brains." digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcont...

digitalcommons.unl.edudigitalcommons.unl.edu

Flo

@skade.bsky.social

28 July 2025

However, it's super-complex. E.g. one of the going theories is that if your surrounding is pre-dominantly conservative, it's just more likely that you pick up some of those ideas. Another one is that people may actually not change their opinions, but change their self-identification.

Flo

@skade.bsky.social

28 July 2025

Also, those studies are _usually_ conducted in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) settings. It'll be very hard to construct _any_ evolutionary statement out of that.