The Crowd 321: Artificial Ethics

Hi Crowd! Christian nationalists are dumb. No really. A new study published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion finds that “Americans with lower scores on a vocabulary test commonly used to measure cognitive ability are more likely to endorse Christian nationalist beliefs, even when accounting for their overall level of education.” This builds on previous research showing significant knowledge gaps in Christian nationalist adults which is most often explained by “motivated reasoning and siloed information sources” and goes a step further documenting a relation not just to what information they had available to them, but to actual cognitive ability. That is, a person’s capacity to learn, apply new information, and engage in the complex reasoning required for critical thinking. This quote is a banger: “To the extent that belief systems like Christian nationalism appeal to those Americans who for whatever reason tend to be less adept at thinking carefully and effectively,…