I think it’s interesting that the two most influential conservatives of the late 20th century (Ronald Reagan & Margaret Thatcher) both sadly suffered from dementia in later life. Is this just a coincidence? There’s been some research linking conservatism to somewhat lower IQ, so perhaps conservatism is a sign that the brain is compromised in some way which may make one more vulnerable to dementia in later life.
On the other hand Margaret Thatcher was obviously extremely bright to have come from nothing to be the most powerful woman in the World in a male dominated field during a time of great sexism; and unlike Hillary and so many other women who rise to power, she was a self-made woman who didn’t have a powerful husband or father to pave the way. However even extremely high IQ people can have subtle cognitive problems that turn into dementia in old age.
This scene from the movie The Iron Lady implies Thatcher was becoming demented while still in office:
What’s fascinating about the scene is it implies her social IQ was the first to decline. Had she taken an IQ test at that time she would have likely done very well because she could still recall facts (only one t in the word “poverty”) and unleash a very coherent and articulate tirade, but subtle cognitive problems made her oblivious to how abusive and hysterical she seemed to others and the political harm this would cause her. These cognitive functions are not well sampled by IQ tests.
Although I thought this was an extremely well acted, well written movie, shame on actress Meryl Streep and writer Abi Morgan for making a movie that focused on Thatcher’s dementia, and one that was released while Thatcher was still alive and suffering. I suspect both Streep and Morgan are liberals and I fear this was an attempt to diminish one of the most extraordinary women of all time…a way of punishing her for being conservative. On the other hand the movie was tastefully done and in some ways a sympathetic portrayal.
The person Meryl Streep was born to play is Hillary, but she wont because as a liberal, she wouldn’t want to undermine Hillary with a realistic portrayal.
Pumpkin Person 
It’s cognitively easier to be conservative than liberal.
Yes, I think you nailed it quite succinctly. Conservatism is the default position…the natural position. Thus it requires more thought to be anything else.
Nope. Is easy note the objective reality. Abstractions or subjective reality is much more complex because have more details among the most important patterns as human behaviour generalizations or stereotypes. ”majority explain a entire group”, generally a negative enphasis.
People flatter themselves that their views and opinions are rational. They’re mostly not. They’re a mix of heredity and environment like everything else. In fact, MRI’s can usually distinguish between liberals and conservatives because they literally have differences in their brain structures. Studies have long shown that most people develop their opinions first and then use reason to justify them after.
Some studies found oversocialized people tend to be strong positive immune response because higher exposition to crowd pathogens.
”conservatives” and (socially) ”liberals” cannot be good proxies to understand why this virtuous women sadly turn demented people in their end life’s.
Other studies found elderly liberal people tend to be more conservative than in their younghood. It was what i understand because i read this news a 3 years before and very superficially. Seems, liberals are or tend to be more neotenic than conservatives, brain mature slowly.
People who are right brain hemisphere have strong improvement after brain ‘stroke’ ( derrame cerebral in portuguese). In neuropolitics, liberals was more ” right brained” than conservatives.
i checked my genome for the SNPedia popular searches…or at leat the genome BGI sent me…and…
risk for alzheimer’s…normal.
warrior gene…half warrior, half worrier.
now let’s listen to black african genius:
behavior genetics is bullshit with very few “hits” to date, but i did check my genome for alzheimer’s risk.
i’m “normal”.
i also tried checking for HIV immunity (1% of Europeans), it was one of the SNPedia popular searches, but the seach function came up with nothing. it should come up with a + or – for a full genome. maybe BGI didn’t do a full genome???
and they didn’t do my mitochondrail DNA apparently…which is like the Y chromosome from the mother.
and SNPedia had a supposed SNP variant for alcoholism.
i didn’t have it.
Meanwhile, Ozzy Osbourne’s genome said…
http://nypost.com/2010/11/03/new-study-shows-rocker-ozzy-osbourne-is-a-genetic-mutant-report/
indeed. i’m a “slow metabolizer” of coffee according to SNPedia.
coffee irritates my stomach too.
and by “i didn’t have it” i meant my variant was the “normal” one. not a mutant.
even the high priest of behavior genetics (and self-described liberal and RC btw) Plomin has said that alcoholism is IN FACT NOT very heritable at all despite the “common wisdom”.
Mugabe will die and Hitler died a Roman Catholic.
Robert Plomin isn’t the god of behavioral genetics. All behaviors have heritabilities of 50% if not much higher.
If it’s bullshit then how come behavioral geneticists have published this paper proving IQ’s connection to brain variables? http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289615000616
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The idea that Thatcher “came from nothing” is patent nonsense. Her father was a successful grocer and Methodist preacher and sometime politician. Her primary school education was funded on the public nut, but that’s where it ends. She was educated on scholarships, largely during a war in which most women were making bombs or planting crops and she ultimately married a millionaire – which most women clearly did not.
She was a rabid Conservative virtually from birth and apparently never saw any reason to examine that faith, presumably because it served her well.
This is not normal, rational intellectual development.
It describes a perpetual child.
It describes the classic sociopath.
The women was mentally ill and she did immense damage to Britain and the world.
I’m surprised nobody has brought up that both Reagan and Thatcher infamously had short sleep schedules which is heavily correlated with both Alzheimer’s and dementia. Bill Clinton (who looks like absolute death nowadays) and Donald Trump are also in that same club. Trumps father also died of Alzheimer’s.