Obituary: Daniel Kahneman

Dan Kahneman died at 90. His 2011 book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, was a significant influence on how I understand people and politics. Fast refers to the unconscious mind and Slow to consciousness. Although he was a psychologist and not trained in economics, he won an economics Nobel Prize in 2002 for his Prospect Theory. That theory focuses on how humans make asymmetric decisions when facing risk, particularly financial risk. A core discovery was that pain comes more easily than pleasure, hence asymmetry in decision-making. 

 

Part of a NYT obituary comments:

As opposed to traditional economics, which assumes that human beings generally act in fully rational ways and that any exceptions tend to disappear as the stakes are raised, the behavioral school is based on exposing hard-wired mental biases that can warp judgment, often with counterintuitive results.

“His central message could not be more important,” the Harvard psychologist and author Steven Pinker told The Guardian in 2014, “namely, that human reason left to its own devices is apt to engage in a number of fallacies and systematic errors, so if we want to make better decisions in our personal lives and as a society, we ought to be aware of these biases and seek workarounds. That’s a powerful and important discovery.”

Professor Kahneman delighted in pointing out and explaining what he called universal brain “kinks.” The most important of these, the behaviorists hold, is loss-aversion: Why, for example, does the loss of $100 hurt about twice as much as the gaining of $100 brings pleasure? [an aspect of Prospect Theory]

Khaneman in 2002

If I recall right, during the 1967 war in Isreal, Khaneman flew back to Israel and volunteered for the Army. He was put to work as a psychologist to look for things that would help the Israeli military. He founded lots of improvements that are still in place. One was looking in Israeli army trash to find foods the soldiers liked and disliked. Disliked foods were in the garbage, but not foods the soldiers liked. The army changed its military rations after that.

Khaneman also looked at mistakes and successes that military officers and enlisted personnel made to see what individual traits correlated with success and failure among both groups. He came up with a questionnaire that was highly effective in spotting people who would be good as officers and ones who would not. My recollection is that his questionnaire or variants of it has been adopted by essentially all militaries in all or nearly all countries. 

After Prospect Theory came out, I recall seeing graphs of pain and pleasure being plotted based on empirical data of how humans actually respond to gains and losses. It was literally graphable on a piece of paper. The curve was not symmetrical. Pain counted for more than equal gain.

Khaneman was the real deal. He was a true expert, not a blowhard pretender.

The toxic power of Israel in American politics

Israel is a small country, about the size of New Jersey. It has a tiny population, less than 10 million. It receives more American foreign aid than any other country. It appears to have more political power in American politics than any other country, although Russia may be close or even more influential. Israel aggressively defends itself against any threat, real, reasonably perceived or faux, fabricated. Since 1948, America has supported and defended that pipsqueak little country time and time again, often or usually to the significant detriment of US interests and international standing. 

A WaPo opinion by Perry Bacon discusses how Israel intends to change the US congress to make the US more pro-Israel than it already is:  

The House’s left was right about Gaza. 

That could cost them their seats.

Some of the best members of Congress could be ousted this year. They are facing huge spending campaigns against them, as punishment for taking positions not shared by the wealthy and powerful, most notably their strong opposition to Israel’s military actions in Gaza.

The targets of Israel 

Eighteen members of the House, all Democrats, started calling for a cease-fire months ago, as it became clear Israel’s response to the attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7 would be full-scale destruction of Gaza. .... All 18 of these members are Americans of color. Several were elected with the help of leftist groups such as Justice Democrats and the Working Families Party.

The very pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee seems to think these members are having an effect, too — and therefore it wants them out of office. AIPAC has recruited more moderate Democrats to run against these progressives in primaries and will reportedly back those challengers with tens of millions of dollars.

These members are in real danger of losing. They are very liberal on economic issues, too, calling for higher taxes on the wealthy and more regulations on corporations. So there isn’t going to be a heavily funded super PAC coming in on their side to save them.

That is how Israel plays hardball politics in America. American defenders of Israel reject criticism of this targeting of Democrats by saying that if they lose their seats in congress it is because voters do not support them. That argument conveniently ignores the corruption of American politics by the Citizens United USSC decision that legalized corruption of politics by money.

Qs: 

1. Is it unreasonable for Americans (like me -- I see Israel as more enemy than friend) to be angry at Israel for explicitly using our corrupted pay-to-play system of politics to target Democrats in congress who advocate for a ceasefire to try to protect innocent, starving Palestinians?

2. Is it reasonable to justify Israel targeting Democrats who want a ceasefire simply because it is legal to use special interest money posing as free speech to obliterate political opposition instead of letting voters decide for themselves on a level playing field among candidates?

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Some context for the wonks

Things like this are why I have soured on supporting Israel.

1. Israel Has Formed a Task Force to Carry Out Covert Campaigns at US Universities -- A major Israeli news site says Israel’s foreign affairs and diaspora affairs ministries are behind the operation. Under the heading “Legal Axis,” the Israeli government plan calls for “taking legal action outside the law [what ‘outside the law’ means exactly is not specified in the YnetNews article] against activities and organizations that pose a threat to Jewish and Israeli students on campuses, such as Students for Justice in Palestine.”

MBFC analysis of YnetNews

2. Draft UN Report Finds Israel Has Met Threshold for Genocide -- “Israel’s genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage of a long-standing settler-colonial process of erasure.”

3. Israel Is a Strategic Liability for the United States -- The special relationship does not benefit Washington and is endangering U.S. interests across the globe. Unwavering U.S. support for Israel has been a consistent element of U.S. Middle East policy since the establishment of the state in 1948. President John F. Kennedy coined the phrase “special relationship” in 1962, explaining that Washington’s ties to the state were “really comparable only to that which it has with Britain over a wide range of world affairs.” By 2013, then-Vice President Biden argued that “it’s not only a long-standing moral commitment; it’s a strategic commitment.” Washington continues to provide Israel with roughly $3.8 billion annually in addition to other arms deals and security benefits. (Some of the other top recipients of U.S. aid, such as Egypt and Jordan, receive large amounts in exchange for maintaining normalized relations with Israel). Israel and its supporters are hugely influential in Washington, commanding attention on both sides of the political aisle through different forms of direct and indirect lobbying and influence.

MBFC analysis of Foreign Policy

4. The Israeli right undermines Biden’s Middle East agenda -- The right-wing prime minister has spent much of his political career chipping away at the prospect of a two-state solution and came back to power with allies further to the right who explicitly reject any talk of Palestinian statehood. They also advocate further Jewish settlement of the West Bank and even of war-blighted Gaza. The rhetoric coming from within Israel has made U.S. attempts to hatch a regional plan to calm the crisis more difficult.

5. American traitor, Israeli hero -- The Pollard case shows that the interests of Israel and America are often sharply at odds. The U.S. government’s announcement that Jonathan Pollard will soon gain his release from prison is cause for celebration in Israel, and understandably so. There, Pollard is considered a patriot and hero. By engaging in espionage on Israel’s behalf, he placed himself at great risk. Once caught, he endured considerable punishment — 30 years in a federal penitentiary. Israelis have no problem grasping why their take on Pollard and ours should differ. They fully understand that on many occasions U.S. and Israeli security interests are at odds. And when that occurs they do not doubt what comes first. It’s Americans, insisting that “no daylight” exists between the United States and Israel, who perpetuate a false understanding of this relationship — a pretense that may benefit Israel, but certainly does not benefit the United States. .... Their hero is simultaneously our traitor because the prerequisites of Israeli safety and well-being differ from the prerequisites of American safety and well-being. (Jonathan Pollard, the American who spied for Israel, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987. While working for US naval intelligence, he had stolen suitcases full of top secret documents and passed them on to Israel. Last Friday, having spent 30 years in prison, he reached the end of that sentence and was released on parole at the age of 62. Pollard was, as he insists, acting out of love for Israel and concern for its security – and, despite the wads of cash and fat diamonds he was paid for his spying, despite the allegations that he tried to sell sensitive US intel secrets to other countries, too, Pollard’s self-proclaimed motivations are what bind Israelis to him.) 

MBFC analysis of Politico Europe

NOTES: 

1. For decades Israel has, and still does, aggressively spy on the US and what they learn is sometimes used against us. 

2. I strongly disagree with the argument that Israel knows Israel’s best interests. Looking back at decades of blood and misery, Israel has consistently undermined its own best interests in the name of extremist theocratic, authoritarian Zionism and the arrogance, hate and bigotry it inspires. If the US had forced and maintained a two-state solution for the benefit of Israel and the Palestinians long ago, the current war very likely would not have happened. Would not have happened because it could not have happened if the two states were monitored and peace competently militarily enforced. Now it is too late for that. In the US, a directly analogous situation is America’s extremist authoritarian radical right constantly blocking laws that would deal with the US-Mexico border situation.

Embarrassing or…?

(please view the following link):

https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/charlie-sykes-trump-is-commodifying-the-bible-during-holy-week-207767109764

Questions:

• Is this shenanigan yesterday, by Donald Trump, helpful to or doing a disservice to “real Christianity?” 
• Shouldn’t “real Christians” be embarrassed about this?  If not, why not?
• Is it yet another case of his being “Not perfect, just forgiven”?

How do you see it?

(by PrimalSoup)

Biden campaign slams DJT (finally); Regarding DJT’s lies & slanders campaign

Maybe months of widespread criticism of Biden’s feeble campaign tactics is starting to sink in. His campaign released this statement recently.

That is starting to get to the point. Let’s see if this continues or if it is just a one-off fluke. 

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Meanwhile, DJT’s campaign of lies and slanders is firing on all 3⅓ cylinders. MTN (Meidas Touch News) reports that he is taking published news items from various sources, deleting inconvenient bits, and then reposting the whitewashed article on Lies Antisocial. The example MTN cites is an article from the National Review, which is sympathetic to DJT:

The article covered District Attorney Alvin Braggs’ prosecution of Trump, accusing Bragg of manipulating business records. It’s ironic that Trump is manipulating coverage of this topic. The National Review is right leaning and supports DJT, but Trump nonetheless deleted many inconvenient facts from the piece. Here’s a summary of the unfavorable items that DJT deleted from the National Review article (the original NR article is here):

1. Stormy Daniels claim of an affair with Trump is credible

2. Trump's bookkeeping “might indeed have been a minor crime”

3. Federal prosecutors probably believe Trump’s NDA was “motivated by his election prospects”

4. The hush money “expenditure [is] within the coverage of federal campaign-finance law”

5. An admission that “Trump booked” the hush money payment “as if it had been for a different purpose”

6. Trump's payment to then lawyer Michael Cohen “significantly exceeded the $130,000 loan amount”

7. Trump insisting that he was paying Cohen for legal services "would muddy the water"

8. Trump’s Access Hollywood tape will be heard a evidence

9. Trump boasted “about being sexually aggressive with women” in the Access Hollywood tape

10. Trump wanted to cover up his “unsavory disclosures of a sexual nature” after the Access Hollywood tape story broke “about a month before Election Day”

11. Trump’s National Enquirer friends alerted Cohen to Stormy Daniels “demand to be paid for her silence”

12. Trump wanted to delay payment hoping Election Day would pass and he could pay less, but pressure from Daniels’ lawyer remained

13. Cohen paid Stormy Daniels on October 26 “after getting assurance that Trump would pay him back post-election”

14. Trump’s affair with Playboy model Karen McDougal and subsequent effort to buy McDougal’s silence will be used as evidence against Trump 

15. Trump’s effort to payoff a Trump Tower doorman who claimed “that Trump fathered a child out of wedlock in the 1980s”

16. Bragg claims these payoffs are campaign expenditures that Trump was attempting to hide

17. Bragg is attempting to prove Trump committed a felony under New York’s business records falsification provision and acted with “an intent to defraud” which included “an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the admission thereof”

For just one article, that is a heck of a lot of whitewashing! Many gallons of paint there. MTN asserts that this is the 3rd whitewashed article that it found on Lies Antisocial so far in March. Lies and deceit are now fully normalized and morally accepted by America's radical right authoritarian wealth and power movement. Will that same poison overwhelm all other places in America? Probably not, but the impact of increasing blatancy of lies and deceit will be interesting to watch.  

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Israel continues to slowly absorb Palestine by taking land. The WaPo reports:

Israel announces largest West Bank land seizure

since 1993 during Blinken visit

Israel’s far-right [authoritarian] finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, announced the seizure of 10 square kilometers (3.8 square miles) of Palestinian territory in the West Bank on Friday. The move marks the single largest land seizure by the Israeli government since the 1993 Oslo accords, according to Peace Now, a settlement watchdog group.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law. Still, Israel has used land orders like the one issued Friday to gain control over 16 percent of Palestinian-controlled lands in the West Bank.

More than 40 percent of the West Bank is under the control of Israeli settlers, according to the Israel-based rights group B’Tselem, and more than half-a-million Jewish residents now live in the West Bank. Israel’s government has also used incentive programs to move Jewish residents into West Bank settlements, where more than 200 settlements and unofficial outposts have fractured the Palestinian territory and displaced Palestinian residents. In recent years, the Housing Ministry has offered subsidized apartments in the West Bank through a lottery system.

This data does not make sense to me because my  

understanding was that Israel has assimilated a lot more 

than a mere 38 sq kilometers 

Palestinians have little ability to stop the land transfers. After the 1967 war, Israel issued a military order that stopped the process of land registration across the West Bank. Now families lack the paperwork to prove that they have private ownership over their land. And tax records, the only other evidence of West Bank property rights, are not accepted by Israeli authorities.

If West Bank Palestinians cannot prove they own their own land, Israel would seem to be in a position to keep absorbing land until all of it is Israeli. The next step would be ethnic cleansing of the West Bank or something worse.

News bit: Once again, DJT gets off the hook as US justice system collapses

The Hill reports:

Appeals court pauses $464M judgment in Trump’s 

New York fraud case

A New York appeals court on Monday temporarily stopped the clock on the looming enforcement of a multimillion-dollar judgment against former President Trump and his company over deceitful business practices.

In a terse order, a five-judge state appeals court panel said it would pause the enforcement of the $464 million judgment against Trump, the Trump Organization and top executives, plus interest, if within 10 days they post a $175 million bond.  

New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office had urged the state appeals court to make Trump put up a full bond before pausing the eye-popping judgment.

The office argued that there is no rule limiting Trump to a single bond from a single surety for the full judgment amount. Instead, he could seek several bonds to limit “any individual surety’s risk” and still post the full amount, they said.

The appeals court order Monday also paused the enforcement of other penalties, including those barring Trump and top executives from serving in top leadership positions in New York businesses for several years.

What can one say? It looks increasingly likely that DJT will never face any serious consequences for his treason and crimes. Maybe he will get a wrist slap or two and a stern talking to, but that is about all.

Q: Is the US system of justice (i) in full-blown collapse or close to it, (ii) just fine and dandy or close to fine and dandy, or (iii) something in between?

Going woke, one mind at a time; CN hate & lies du jour; A restraint on social media poison?

Several sources are reporting that US senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has gone woke about DJT. CNN reports:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, aghast at Donald Trump’s candidacy and the direction of her party, won’t rule out bolting from the GOP.

The veteran Alaska Republican, one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial amid the aftermath of January 6, 2021, is done with the former president and said she “absolutely” would not vote for him.

“I wish that as Republicans, we had … a nominee that I could get behind,” Murkowski told CNN. “I certainly can’t get behind Donald Trump.”

Wow, it took her this long to see the blatantly obvious? Bravo Lisa, do it again! (sarcasm)

If I recall right, Murkowski, along with Maine senator Susan Collins, were reassured by DJT’s morally rotted Supreme Court nominees that abortion rights protected by Roe v. Wade would remain viable law. At the time, I thought, OMG!! How freaking blind, clueless and tribal are these people, or are they cynical liars, just plain stupid or some combination? At the time, cynical liar seemed to be the single best explanation. Now maybe the best explanation is blind, clueless and tribal coupled with stupid. 

That is the problem with trying to get into the minds of people doing politics. They lie as easily as they breathe. Some of them are shockingly ignorant to the point of being literally stupid. Oh well, the quest for insight and knowledge continues.

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Christian nationalism (CN). What can one say. Sacred CN poison, hate, bigotry, mendacity, hypocrisy, corruption, sexual perversions (yup, I said it -- and do mean perversions) and lust for Christian Sharia theocracy are all out in the open now. Most everyone can see it for what it is. Well, maybe not Murkowski, Collins and the clueless. Who knows what they can see, if much of anything. 

Mediaite reports: Kellyanne Conway Claims Democrats Are ‘Hostile to Religion’ and Are ‘Jogging and Having Brunch’ Instead of Attending Church -- Fox News contributor Kellyanne Conway said Democrats are hemorrhaging non-White voters thanks in large part to their “hostility to religion.” “Now, the other thing that’s so interesting about this – particularly with the minority groups, Kellyanne – there’s a cultural point here,” host Larry Kudlow said. “They’re tired of the Democrats’ woke[ness] and cancel culture and no Americana, no American history, and so forth. That whole story has backfired on Democrats. And these are working folks, right? These are Latinos, these are African Americans.”

As time passes, I increasingly want to cancel (i) Faux News lies and slanders, (ii) fake CN American history, and (iii) TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party) lies, sleaze & slanders.

CN operatives are hypocrites. They are deeply insulting, shamelessly mendacious and profoundly threatening to normal Americans, including real Christians. They have declared all-out war on respect for us regular people, and on truth, reason, our democracy and our civil liberties. I want all of their tax breaks revoked.

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Reuters reports about a possible private sector-imposed restraint on the lies, slanders, crackpot conspiracy theories and the like on the Reddit social media platform. This one is a puzzler. Reuters reports:

Reddit may need to ramp up spending on 

content moderation, analysts say

Reddit will need to spend heavily on content moderation as it may face greater scrutiny as a public company, analysts said, threatening its longstanding policy of relying on an army of volunteers to maintain order on its platform.

The newly listed company warned in its initial public offering (IPO) paperwork that its unique approach to content moderation can sometimes subject it to disruptions like in 2023, when several moderators protested against its decision to charge third-party app developers for access to its data.

Depending on volunteers is not sustainable, given the regulatory scrutiny that the company will now face, said Julian Klymochko, CEO of alternative investment solutions firm Accelerate Financial Technologies.

“It's like relying on unpaid labor when the company has nearly a billion dollars in revenue,” he added. Reddit reported revenue of $804 million in 2023, according to an earlier filing. 

Reddit will need to make substantial investments in trust and safety, which could lead to a “dramatic” rise in expenses, Klymochko said.  

A spokesperson for Reddit said that alongside moderators, it also had robust internal safety teams, which used a combination of artificial intelligence, machine learning and human review to enforce its content policy.  

The company would need to ramp up spending on anti-misinformation efforts especially as the U.S. prepares for the presidential election later this year.

If Reddit needs to limit toxic content to keep advertisers, why doesn’t that same pressure apply to X, Facebook, YouTube, DJT’s “Lies Antisocial” and other social media platforms? It is possible there is a limit to the darkness, immorality and evil that advertisers will tolerate? This baffles me. Maybe there is a ray of hope somewhere in the toxic mess called social media.