Is evidence-based politics possible?

If one asks conservatives, liberals and others if their personal politics and policy choices are mostly rational and evidence-based, most (maybe about 95%) would say yes. If one asks one side whether the opposition's politics is mostly rational and evidence-based, most (maybe about 90%) would say no. It is reasonable to assume that about 35% of adult Americans are more or less liberal, about 35% are more or less conservative and about 20% are a mix of the two or something else.

Presumably most people, > 50%, in the mixed/other group sees maybe about half of liberal and conservative politics and policy choices as mostly rational and evidence-based, with the other half not so rational and evidence-based.

From Dissident Politics' objective point of view[1], that situation is reasonably accurate. It constitutes compelling evidence that the politics and policy choices of at least 50% of Americans is not mostly rational and evidence-based. That's just simple math and logic.

Evidence-based politics is possible in theory

If there is a political will politics can be made to be much more objective than it is now. In a recent article, In Praise of Human Guinea Pigs, The Economist observed that to "live in a modern democracy is to be  experimented on by policymakers from cradle to grave." Citing education and prison policy and experimental medicine, The Economist went on to argue that "without evidence, those setting policy for schools and prisons are little better than a doctor relying on leeches and bloodletting. Citizens, as much as patients, deserve to know that the treatments they endure do actually work."

The Economist was arguing for using the randomized controlled trial concept that guides new medicine development to political policy development. DP has argued for the about same thing. The concept of evidence-based politics is simple, easy to apply and injects a degree of objectivity into politics that currently doesn't exist.

From DP's public interest point of view, there is no logic in opposing evidence-based politics. 

Evidence-based politics is impossible in practice . . . .

because American politics is not public interest-oriented

Unfortunately, there are "rational" arguments to not implement evidence-based politics from other points of view. Those points of view are personal ideology and/or economic self-interest.

Despite a powerful rationale to adopt evidence-based politics in American politics from an objective point of view, it simply isn't possible now. Overwhelmingly powerful forces oppose both objective evidence and unbiased reason in politics. For example, conservatives and/or threatened special interests oppose generating data that they believe would undermine their ideology and/or economic interests. That is true for gun control, objective policy analysis, climate science and other topics. Research shows that the political power of economic (and maybe ideological) special interests backed by money utterly trumps both public opinion and any desire for objectivity:

“In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover … even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.”

That sad reality reflects the fact that American politics is dominated by wealthy, organized special interests who want their own needs and desires attended to. Service from the two-party system to those interests occurs with little or no regard to objective evidence or an objectively defined conception of the public interest. Instead, special interests simply assert what they want best serves the public interest and our political leaders and both parties in power provide the demanded services in return for the money.

Other than parties, politicians and special interests in the two-party system, no one denies that American politics is a pay-to-play system:

"There's no shame anymore. . . . . We've blown past the ethical standards; we now play on the edge of the legal standards. . . . . money and its pursuit [have] paralyzed Washington. . . . . Nothing truly important for the country is getting done."

Reason or logic and evidence have nothing to do with the situation. That's why evidence-based politics is impossible for the time being.

Footnote:
1.  An objective point of view: Politics has to be (1) based on facts (reality) and logic (common sense) that are as unbiased by subjective personal political ideology or morals and/or self-interest as human cognitive biology can reasonably allow and (2) those unbiased facts and logic must be focused on service to an objectively defined conception of the public interest (general welfare).

There is at least one way to make the mostly subjective public interest concept materially more objective. One does that by subjecting all significant subjective ideology or moral beliefs to a transparent competition among policy choices to find the best choice based on the unbiased facts and logic, i.e., all policy choices have to win on the objective merits, not on people's subjective beliefs. Human cognitive biology does not allow for near-perfect objectivity, except maybe for a very few people with unusual brain structure or function, so this is about the best that be done in view of (i) how the human brain evolved and works and (ii) a political system that is dominated by constitutionally protected spin (lies, misinformation, deceit, opacity, withheld information, etc) and detachment from both unspun reality and unbiased common sense.

All significant ideological/moral political beliefs in American politics currently includes liberal, conservative, capitalist, socialist, libertarian and various strains of Christianity and Judaism. Moderate beliefs are not included because moderates mostly hold a mix of extreme liberal and conservative morals or ideological beliefs. Apparently, there are few or no real political moderates in America.

If anyone can conceive of, or is aware of, a better conception of how to inject more fact- and logic-based objectivity into politics based on current understanding of our fundamentally intuitive-subjective (and morally judgmental and intolerant) human cognitive biology, Dissident Politics would very much like to hear about it. 

Fear and fairness: Impediments to knowledge

Most issues in politics are more complicated than most partisans think. It is usually hard to know enough to make a truly informed decision among competing policy choices. To make matters more complex, competing policy choices are almost always backed by either by (i) different sets of facts and spin, and/or (ii) insufficient information for a reasonably informed decision. 

Most voter opinions on most issues are based on a combination of false facts and personal political ideology or morals. Personal political ideology-morals, e.g., liberalism and conservatism, fosters false fact beliefs in most people. That is an inherent aspect of the largely intuitive biology of human cognition. Most policy choices are therefore overwhelmingly subjective-emotional and error prone relative to what's best for the public interest.

To be more objective-rational than subjective-intuitive, personal policy choices need to be based as much or more on unbiased, unspun facts and reason, than on subjective personal ideology or morals. Unfortunately for average citizens there are several major barriers that make access to unbiased facts difficult or impossible. Two barriers are fear and fairness.

The fear barrier

For people with deeply held political beliefs or ideology-morals, it can be frightening or impossible to honestly face facts. Unbiased facts are independent of personal beliefs and they often undermine personal beliefs. An excellent way to avoid facing facts is to block the work or research needed to obtain relevant facts about an issue. That is a tactic that conservatives have used, sometimes to great effect. It is not clear if liberals resort to this fact-blocking method.

Examples of research killing include a very successful effort by pro-gun politicians, mostly conservatives, gun manufacturers and the pro-gun lobby to squelch federal funding for research into the public health impacts of gun ownership. That coordinated effort began in 1996, three years after an article in The New England Journal of Medicine showed that gun ownership was a risk factor for homicide in the home. Groups such as the NRA continue to block federal funding for research.

Conservatives have also blocked or tried to block federal funding for (i) independent, objective analysis of various technical issues to inform congress and (ii) NASA’s research on climate science based on false arguments.

Efforts to block research that conservatives believe would undermine their ideology are based more on fear of what unbiased facts would show than anything else. There is no other obvious credible explanation.

The fairness barrier

Obtaining unbiased data often requires controlled experiments with different groups, control and/or experimental groups, being subject to different conditions. Controls are usually needed for comparing the effect of one test condition with another. Without controls, it is hard or impossible to objectively measure and compare one condition or policy choice with another. Despite the need for controls in experiments or policy option tests, resistance sometimes crops up because it is perceived to be unfair to treat different groups of people differently.

The Wall Street Journal reported an example of fairness barrier interference with research and how it can be overcome at least sometimes. A researcher was interested in seeing if there would be academic and attendance differences between students attending an urban high school who received a free lunch compared to students who didn’t. The researcher wanted to randomly pick students who would get the free lunch but the school blocked the research arguing it was unfair to not give all students a free lunch. Fairness blocked research.

A few months later the researcher went back to the same school but informed administrators that he had only enough money to give half the students a free lunch and the administrators could pick who got the free lunches. The administrators suggested randomly picking which students got the free lunches and which didn’t. The researcher got his experiment because it was framed as sufficiently fair from the point of view of the people with the power to allow or block the research.

Again, the relevance of the subjective-intuitive nature of human cognition to politics makes itself abundantly clear. The open question is whether American society is ready to accept the basic nature of how our brains see and think about the world and conclude it is time for a different, smarter way of doing politics.

One year anniversary; A progress summary

The widely known and feared but respected Dissident Politics (DP) political juggernaut celebrates its one-year anniversary on February 10. What year it has has been! The DP project continued building on 10 years searching for answers with the search driven by discontent with the two-party system and curiosity about why American politics is so irrational and disconnected from reality. How to fix it was the other driving inquiry. Great strides in understanding were made (the epiphany). Progress on how to fix things hit a massive brick wall.

The rational politics epiphany

DP's early years of looking for answers eventually made it clear that if there were any answers, they were to be found in the social sciences. The biology and psychology of human cognition and, to a lesser extent, political science. After reading and thinking about the social science, it became clear in July of 2015 that a simple political ideology or set of morals can be stated that are designed to reduce the reality (fact) and common sense (logic) distorting power of normal subjective or intuitive human cognition.

The objective ideology or morals concept is simple: People can adopt a belief in reliance on (i) unbiased facts and (ii) unbiased logic to find and implement the political policies that best serve (iii) an objectively defined conception of the public interest. Based on current understanding of how the human mind sees and thinks about the world and issues it faces, there is no insurmountable biological or legal barrier that blocks adopting a political ideology that strives for greater objectivity and grounding in unbiased facts. Of course, perfect objectivity is impossible for most or all human to ever attain in politics. Humans are intrinsically intuitive-emotional and morally intolerant and judgmental creatures. The objective politics concept is described, e.g., here, here and here. Some of the supporting social science is described in DP book reviews here and here.

Humans are biologically incapable of perfect objectivity or rationality because that's just how we evolved. Nonetheless, there is no reason to believe that American society couldn't move in that direction if there was a will to do so. Of course, that assumes one believes that politics based at least somewhat more on reason and unspun reality would be an improvement over the current irrational, fantasy-based nonsense that passes for political thinking and rhetoric under our current two-party system. It all depends on how one sees these things.
 

The vicious and the civilized right

In the early years, DP's belief in the vacuous, reality-detached basis of American politics came from many hours of interaction with the fine folks who spend time at hard core conservative websites such as National Review Online, Breitbart, The Blaze, The Federalist and Washington Times. In that time, DP interacted with hundreds or maybe several thousands of different people in an exchange of views on dozens of different issues. Dealing with those playful conservatives was enlightening.

The fine folks at those websites tended to characterize DP personally, or DP's pragmatic, rational take on issues, with insightful observations such as stupid, liar, idiot, brain washed by the left, intentionally uninformed, anti-Semite, racist, communist, fool, heartless and, from one puzzlingly irate libertarian, Nazi. DP learned very little from those folks. There were some thoughtful conservatives who could rise above emotion and engage in a sustained civilized discussion. Despite the occasional civility and sometimes reasonable rationality, it was clear that for the civilized, facts and logic were both trapped by conservative, anti-government ideology or morals.

What about the uncivilized? Well, for that crowd, there's no point trying to discuss anything unless one agrees with what they know to be true and right. For them politics is akin to religion. It is infallible and not open to question or debate.

Overall, policy choices that were liberal or otherwise not considered conservative were simply unacceptable to essentially every conservative at every site for every issue. Non-conservative solutions to problems received little or no consideration whatever. The degree of lockstep uniformity among conservatives was astounding. Of course, that comes from an objective pragmatist and seeing a narrow ideology at work. To conservatives, there is nothing remarkable about it at all. DP stopped spending much time at conservative sites, having learned what there is to know and tiring of either getting kicked off of websites (National Review, twice) or being called really nasty names, usually for no particular reason (Breitbart was the clear winner in that hotly contested category).

All in all, no subset of conservatives would buy into the objective or rational politics concept. To the extent they understood the issue, they uniformly believe that they already were objective and fully grounded in facts and logic. The only issue from their point of view was the sheer irrationality and self-delusion of liberals and independents who disagreed with them. In other words, the intuitive biology of human cognition applied only to the political opposition, not themselves. In short, conservative ideology doesn't let most conservatives understand the concept.

Observations that American politics is ideologically narrow is not unique to DP. DP sees American political ideology (liberal, conservative, capitalist, socialist, Christian, etc) as generally too small to accommodate unbiased facts and unbiased logic, which are what they are without regard to anyone's ideology. Because of that American political ideology or morals are seriously logic- and reality-distorting. Again, that's just how the biology human cognition coupled with ideology and a morally judgmental nature works in the real world with real people. Its all about the biology.

The restrained independents

In August 2015, a few weeks after the July rational politics epiphany, DP began submitting articles for the online site IVN. IVN graciously accepted DP's essays for publication. IVN is focused on independent voters, voter registration and electoral reform. DP frequently comments there on articles by other authors and in response to reader's comments on DP essays, which IVN publishes under the clever pseudonym "Dissident Politics." Many of the folks at IVN are more familiar than most with the concept on rational politics and its biological basis.

The response to the concept has been polite but restrained. Many of the people there appear to be relatively open minded and seem to understand the subjective-intuitive nature of politics and undesirable aspects thereof. Nonetheless, they cannot see any way to make it work in practice, possibly because they understand at some level the difficulty of getting people to be more rational about politics. Despite their skepticism, they are a polite, informative bunch of folks and pleasant to deal with.

The liberals

In mid-2015 DP began spending serious time interacting with people at liberal websites such as Daily Kos, Salon, Mother Jones and Crooks and Liars. DP blogs on Daily Kos under the pseudonym pragmatic1, e.g., describing how to make politics objective and arguing that reason (logic) can be compatible with our inherently intuitive-irrational nature. So far, the liberal crowd has been much more polite than the conservatives, more or less like the independents, but harder to engage in sustained back and forth than civilized conservatives (one anarchist has been the exception so far). So far, the concept of objective politics isn't resonating with liberals any more than it is with independents.

The early going suggests that most liberals, like conservatives, see problems with ideologically-based fact and logic distortion as being confined to conservatives. Nonetheless, liberals are generally more open minded and a few seem to be concerned or puzzled about what it is that DP keeps going on about. For some, something seems to feel not quite right, but they just can't put a finger on it.

The brick wall

To complete the round up of DP's first year, DP's quest to fix politics hit a massive brick and concrete wall. First, fixing politics means convincing people to reject the ideology and/or morals of the left and right in favor the ideology and/or morals of objective politics. resistance to questioning one's own ideology or morals is no surprise, but it isn't encouraging either. This is an aspect of human cognitive biology - we dislike challenges to our deeply held beliefs and resist serious self-questioning.

Unfortunately, American society continues to drift away from reason and toward intuition, subjectivity and emotion-based moral judgment. Fear, anger, hate, distrust and misinformation continue to dominate calm, intelligent reason and cold, hard fact. That's good for both parties and the special interests who fund them. Unfortunately, it's a very bad thing for the public interest from an objective point of view. DP holds an objective point of view.

The brick wall consists of the bricks of human cognitive biology and the unconscious biases and unconscious, intolerant moralistic judgments that flow therefrom. The concrete that holds the bricks together is constitutionally protected free speech including the relentless pander and spin (as previously defined and analyzed) that dominates political world views and policy choices.

Thinking about this led to a surprising question about the net value of free speech in American politics.

The surprising question

The unexpected question that DP's inquiries led to was whether free speech in the two-party system is actually more harmful than helpful to the public interest. To DP's knowledge, no one has seriously asked that question of American politics in recent times. Everyone simply, especially the federal courts, assumes that free speech has to be more good than bad.

However, there is no evidence to prove that point is true. By contrast, there is evidence that spin in politics can be at least potentially more harmful than beneficial to the public interest, e.g., (i) fact check organizations suggest that there is a lot of untrue speech and shaded truth in two-party political rhetoric, and (ii) hundreds of millions of special interest anonymous money in political elections. Answering the relative harm vs. benefit question is beyond DP's capacity. The answer depends on how one defines the "public interest", which is currently a meaningless, purely subjective concept in American politics.

The year ahead

DP is aware of the adage, allegedly Einstein's: "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Trying to convince people to reject subjective political ideology-morals in favor of objectivity may be insanity. Maybe DP is years or generations too early for the objective politics message to resonate. Maybe DP is the wrong messenger. Maybe American politics under the Constitution and free speech can never rise above its current overwhelmingly irrational basis. The arguments between the left and right today, or variants, do sound an awful lot like the arguments between (1) the Founding Fathers who never came close to resolving their differences in their lifetimes and (2) competing politicians, tribes, societies and nations from the beginning of recorded human history. In DP's opinion, that latter concern is unnecessarily defeatist or pessimistic. 

Despite the difficulties, it's worth another year of effort to float the objective politics concept to see if it resonates with any segment of American society. The religious community seems unpromising, but there's no sense prejudging everyone in a broad group. A few initial contacts with online atheist-agnostic communities have not been encouraging. One small but seemingly exceptionally open-minded and receptive group is at Something to Consider. Exploring those folks merits is on the agenda.

Well politics fans, that wraps up another (OK, the only) year in review for the explosive DP juggernaut.

The irrationality of Iowa first

NPR and some other media outlets have aired interviews with Iowans on why Iowa always gets to go first. Who goes second get far less coverage, but the same logic presumably applies. If what some Iowans say is representative of at least half of its residents, most are an arrogant bunch. More disturbingly but not surprisingly, Iowans are not logical.

The Iowa is best “rationale”

Like most empty political rhetoric, there is usually a big disconnect between rhetoric and the real world. The rational for why Iowa and New Hampshire should always go first and second fits that pattern. For Iowa first, one politically active Iowan argues this: “The real reason we're first in the nation now is because of what we do. We take this real seriously . . . . You know, we ask really good questions. We ask follow-up questions . . . . We look them in the eye like I am you right now. It's real. It's one-on-one vetting of candidates. Are you for real? Not a TV spot, not money — what's in your heart?" Ah yes, that’s the good old, tried and true, being serious, asking questions and follow-ups and looking into someone’s eyeballs to see their hearts rationale.

Looking into eyes and hearts falls short of former president Dubya’s more sophisticated analytic technique of looking into eyeballs and souls tactic, but it’s a good start. As Dubya put it regarding his tactic as applied to the murderous Vladimir Putin: “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. . . . I was able to get a sense of his soul.” That worked out well, didn’t it? Anyway, eyeball and heart looking is one reason for Iowa first.

Among other things, that vacuous drivel ignores the fact that candidates don’t spend nearly as much time in other states. Most residents (maybe 99.999%) in most other states have essentially no chance to look any candidate in the eye and ask anything. In states other than Iowa or New Hampshire, there is nothing to take seriously in person or any candidate eyeballs and heart to stare into. How many cozy town hall meetings have all major candidates held in California, Texas, Colorado, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Montana, Ohio, Nebraska or dozens of other states since last June? None is much closer to the mark than 20. Zero is probably the correct answer for every one of those of states.

Obviously, the feeble “Iowa is best rationale” says that since Iowans pay attention, that implies that no one else does and thus no other state deserve to go first. That’s sheer nonsense. And offensive.

Another Iowa first rationale rejects the obvious differences between Iowa and the rest of the country. An Iowan rebuttal to that argument is this: “Is it fair that Iowa goes first? What's fair in politics? I mean, seriously. Yeah, OK, we're like 97 percent white, and we're really rural, and we don't look like a microcosm of America. But so what?”

Ah yes, that’s the good old rock-solid “but so what” rationale coupled with the “politics isn’t fair” sucker punch. At least the admission of unfairness strikes a chord of reality. That’s one plucked string of the harp that rings true.

Yet another rationale is the good old, “if not Iowa then who?” argument. The obvious answer to that non-rationale is easy: Anyone but Iowa and New Hampshire. Who goes first and second could rotate among one or more states or regions of the country.

An indefensible, irrational process

The enormous impact of Iowa and New Hampshire on selecting presidential candidates is indefensible and irrational. In Iowa, it skews the process at the national via an indefensibly arcane caucus process. For Iowa, only 20-25% of the voting age population usually participate in its caucuses. With a population of 3.1 million and about 2.1 million registered voters, a grand total of about 420,000 to 525,000 Iowa voters get to significantly decide who the rest of us get to support or not. Some of those lucky few out of the over 150 million registered American voters have a chance to look into candidate’s eyes, see candidate hearts, ask their questions, follow-up questions and then decide in their cozy, small state comfort who the rest of us gets to vote for.

To be fair, many or most Iowa and New Hampshire residents may not feel superior about their unwarranted role. Americans are not always blinded by their ideology or morals. Some understand the unfairness inherent in our system of politics. With America’s corrupt two-party system, things usually are the way they are because that serves the two parties’ perceived needs. If Iowa forever goes first and New Hampshire forever second, that is because the two parties see that serves their own interests. Rationality and fairness have nothing to do with it.