Logic

Logic is like a sewer: What you get out of it depends on what you put into it. 

It's great for some tasks, like getting rid of garbage. But when you actually have to wade out into the pool, and start sorting carefully between garbage and non-garbage, it can be worse than useless: A blind that covers the subjective nature of of our priorities, and the ambiguity of the words that make up the premises.

Interesting Correlations

Ilana pointed me to this article from OKCUPID, because a friend of hers had crunched the numbers.

The Best Questions For A First Date

I was fascinated, particularly by some of the corellations towards the end.

What's it most important for potential partners in a couple to agree on?
The top 3 user-rated match questions are

"Is God imporant in your life?"

"Is sex the most important part of a relationship?"

"Does smoking disgust you?"

However, in 85% of the couples formed with the help of OKCUPID, people had diverging answers to one or more on their answers to these questions. On the other hand, a whopping 32% agree on all of these:

"Wouldn't it be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat?"
"Do you like horror movies?"

"Have you ever traveled round another country alone?"

Are political beliefs corellated with anything else?
On OKCUPID, people have an opportunity to state whether they prefer simplicity over complexty, or vice versa. People who prefer simplicity turn out to be twice as likely to be conservative than liberal, and the other way around.

On questions like

"Should burning your country's flag be illegal?"

"Should the death penalty be abolished?"

"Should the marriage be legal?"

"Should evolution and creationism to be taught side-by-side in schools?"

 It turns out that the people who "prefer simplicity" are twice as likely to answer these questions in a "conservative" way. People who "prefer complexity", on the other hand, are twice as likely to lean in the liberal direction.

I'm wondering whether this has anything to do with the S/N difference in the MBTI system.  Somebody ought to look into this.


And what about religious beliefs?

One of the questions in the OKCUPID questionnaire is "Do spelling and grammar mistakes annoy you?". It turns outthat people who answer no to this, are twice as likely to be at least moderately religious than people who answered yes. Maybe this is a question of tolerance, i.e. that religious people are more okay with small mistakes than other people.

However, the article also looks into another possibility, expressed by this graph that I let speak for itself: