Academics don't have any experience in the real world. They haven't run businesses, they haven't managed large complex budgets, they haven't experienced financial pressure, failure or success of any significance, and therefore don't understand the intricacies and volatility of markets and human behaviour to provide any insight beyond what an 80s textbook can already provide. That's why people pay thousands of dollars to listen to Bill Gates but no one gives a fuck what the local economics professor thinks.

It's a bit like a golf swing. You can read all about the ins and outs of perfect golf swing, but until you get your hands on the club you don't really know what you're doing.

I'd much rather here from proven business people like Kroger and Turnbull who have hands on real world experience and success than some jumped up academic with all his charts and stats.

phrases like leftards and right wing troglodytes amaze me. Why would someone speak of half the country that way? I once knew a pastor who got fired* in part because of his tendency to say leftard. smh

On the left it can shock people that research shows that conservatives are more generous even if you control for religiosity and class. This remains true if you only look at non religious and non partisan charity. To their credit some aggressive lefties can be open to such evidence against stingy conservative stereotypes. Though not all
On the right a leftie can't win. If they are poor they are a bum that should get a job. If they are rich the are a champaigne socialist and a hypocrite (how they are a hypocrite for complaining about a system that benefits them is lost on me) if they are uneducated they are too stupid to be conservative, if they are educated they are educated fools and elitists.

I get that people are passionate. But its a wonder to behold people I grew up with becoming 'that guy" where all they talk about is how evil someone from the other side is with people snickering about how strange and jerkish they have become. Can't see anyone getting converted to their cause

*"encouraged to move on to God's greater plan for their life" church speak for fired.

A recent study that I posted on here showed that religious children are less empathetic (I reckon I know the reasons why)
I would be interested if the charitable based studies showed total income or percentage of income
Additionally, I would argue in a more left wing based society, the need for charity is less thanks to a greater social safety net

Trusted sources like the ABC?
My god.:oops:

A profit based news organisation is more likely to be biased than a not for profit news organisation, ceteris paribus
Basic logic

Should we demand for yet another costly independent commission to once again find that the ABC is not biased?

It would also be interesting on those studies you mention how religiosity was controlled for - one might donate because their religious book dictates they do, not because of the underlying need for empathy, so to speak

:-k o:) [-x :-$ :-$ :-$

-PB

Buying a ticket to heaven so to speak.

I know both sides of Christians. Ones who do it as a 'paying it forward' type of thing. Others who are just charitable people. Can't paint them all the same colour sir.

The problem with using a single study is that somewhere in the literature there is usually a study showing just about anything (coffee causes diabetes! coffee prevents diabetes!) So confidence in something grows as one looks at many studies using different methodologies and then looks at metastudies which combine all these studies and then even look for biases in the field using funnel plots.

That study you mentioned was published in a biology journal indicating that it probably had too many methodological flaws to get past peer review in its own field (social science)

There are generally three types of studies done when looking at religiosity and morality
1. interviews about behavior
2. non obtrusive observation
3. game experiments
It is generally expected that one looks at charity as a percentage of income, and controls for gender, class, race, education level, political views and nationality because all of these have an effect on charitable giving (not all monotonic! The middle class is the stingiest followed by the rich followed by the poor. So class and generosity is complicated).
All three methods have limitations but they tend to converge to find the following correlations
1. religiosity has a strong positive effect on charitable giving, even to secular charities (some studies show that the religiosity is no longer a predictor if the receiver of the charity is an out group such as a homosexual recipient from a religious group that has negative views of homosexuals)
2. religiosity has a strong positive effect on altruism toward strangers
3. religiosity is a moderate deterrent on crime
4. religiosity has a positive effect on race based prejudice
5. religiosity has no effect on rape myth acceptance
6. religiosity has no effect on gender based prejudice
7. religiosity reduces frequency of rape
8. religiosity reduces frequency of intimate partner violence
9. religiosity reduces rates of divorce
10. religiosity increases politeness
11. religiosity is strongly correlated with political conservatism if one is white and western. For other races the effect often disappears and can even go the other way. This effect appears to be most strong among white religious/non religious people who grew up with the cold war
A really useful tool to get a survey of the literature is to go to google scholar (scholar.google.com) put in key words "religiosity and ..." then look at the abstracts of every paper on the first page or so (they usually give results) and also click on the links "cited by" to see who is rebutting or building on the work

The ABC is a profit based news organisation, they just called it "funding" rather than profit.

But he has his intellectual academic studies as conclusive proof of his arguments. What do you have sir?

"Independent" :oops: :lol: :lol: :oops: :oops: :lol: :lol: :oops: :oops:

Anecdotal evidence.

It doesn't take a genius to accept that M.R has this one right.

here the literature is less conclusive but i've looked at this element less

defining religiosity is very difficult.
There is "extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity"
someone who is extrinsically religious is using religion as a means to an end
1. business connections found at a church
2. an ethnic minority finding people within their minority
3. a political figure wanting to get more votes
vs intrinsically religious those who see religion as the end its self

the limited literature on extrinsically religious seems to show that being so makes you less moral in every way in contrast to intrinsic religiosity. Here is the thing though - how do you know that someone is being honest about their motivations for religion?

for religiosity the most common measures I have seen is
1. frequency of religious activity (go to a place of worship/ read a text/ pray)
2. rating how important their religion is to them on a scale (say 1 to 10)

Also attitudes about God might make a difference if it is a God centered religion. A loving God may have a better effect than a vengeful God but I have seen studies that show both (loving God more common) but I'm not yet certain which way the science will go. If a vengeful God has a better effect then a loving God then it would corroborate duty being a motive rather than empathy. There are studies that corroborate this too. But its a very good question

There's no real difference between left and right donations and generosity. People on the left like to buy iphones, fancy cars and ps4's as much as anyone, at the expense of some poor starving kid in Africa. When was the last time you forewent that smartphone upgrade and gave the money to charity? That titillating feeling we get opening up a new iphone and being in awe of its sleek scratch free metallic surface and its subtle curves trumps that starving kids need to put food in his mouth every time.

If people on the left did donate more, perhaps they might feel compelled to out of guilt rather than underlying empathy, so to speak.

actually the surprising finding of social science is that conservatives give more even if you control for religion.
This is in the USA of course it may not be true in Australia

here is an interesting discussion with a left wing atheist about these surprising findings
https://www.edge.org/conversation/jonathan_haidt-moral-psychology-and-the-misunderstanding-of-religion
having said that I strongly recommend using google scholar to get an overview of the literature

Edited by grazorblade: 16/5/2016 02:01:26 PM

So if the ABC in your eyes isn't a trust source, then what is?

-PB

Sky News :cool:

There's certainly a philanthropic streak amongst the rich in the US that is not as prevalent here.

??????
Although I have a leaning, I haven't determined either way yet!!
EDIT: But I do agree with the implication of your statement regarding 'buying a ticket to heaven' - there is a large portion of religious people who are so due to fear of impending eternal annihilation

Edited by Murdoch Rags Ltd: 16/5/2016 02:10:23 PM

no way clive palmer magnamously offered to be our technical technical director!

If I were to make a guess based on anecdotal evidence I would say part of the picture is the right being more individualistic and when it comes to their charitable side they might be more prone to believe an individual to make a difference.

:lol:

Yes I would agree with your observation, and I can respect their point of view though I don't entirely agree with it.

You get far more balance with Sky News than ABC, that's for sure.

Although you get righties like Bolt, Kenny, Jones and Murray, you get plenty of lefties too like Speers, Richardson, Grant , Keneally and Perrett.

The ABC is just all lefty , boutique bullshit.

This is stupid beyond words. The description you gave of academia is just not how most university depts operate any more, especially once you are outside of the politics and philosophy depts.

Your treasured right wing neo-liberal viewpoint only exists because of the work of the Chicago School of Economics in the 1970s.

In areas like Economics, you need the theoretical underpinnings to be able to look at the macro economy.

You can talk to all the business people you want, they can only describe to you the conditions at the micro level. They cannot see the forest (the whole economy) for the trees (running an individual business).

You have a view of academia that has been out of date for about 20 years.

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

-PB

Hahahahahaha this is A-1 trolling. For a minute I almost thought you believed this!

That was pretty funny. Chapeau rusty =d>

His view rings true in engineering. It still does. I have to do CPD units (continued lectures) for my accreditation.

Some of the shit I hear from the lecturers (people who have pHD's and masters) is scary. They'd get buried on a work site within an hour :lol:

If you actually watched Sky News you would see they present a diverse range of views, unlike ABC which all liberal, progressive bullshit. You actually get a balanced range of commentators on Sky, such as the names I previously mentioned, can you name any conservative shows or commentators on the ABC?

I didn't think so.