Thursday, March 21, 2019
A 6 minute segment, Bully Idol, by Bill Maher explains the logic behind the belief by many Evangelical Christians that President Trump is a modern day Cyrus and was put in office by God. Maher's recitation of the facts and logic enlightens the basis for the gulf in perceptions of reality that is tearing America apart. Despite the comedy, the underlying facts and logic Maher describes are basically sound.
https://youtu.be/rQBIBjbpzoQ
B&B orig: 3/9/19
Thursday, March 21, 2019
Free Will: Do We Have It Or Not?
Thursday, March 21, 2019
The TED Radio Hour program that NPR aired yesterday, Hardwired, examines the matter of free will and factors that affect both behavior and health. The broadcast was in four 10-13 minute segments, which are here: https://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/?showDate=2019-03-08
In the first segment neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky argues that there is no such thing as human free will. He argues that that appears to be acts of free will are simply manifestations of biology we do not understand. Everything is predetermined and we simply live our lives according to factors and forces we cannot control and may never be able to fully understand. Sapolsky pointed to a famous experiment where judges set punishment for convicts. In that experiment, which I think has been questioned at least once, showed that punishments were most strongly correlated with how hungry the judges were, which correlated with lower blood sugar levels.
In the 2nd segment, geneticist Moshe Szyf points to our genes as hardware that is mutable over time. He cites a situation where pregnant women were in a period of unusual stress for a period of time. This capacity of DNA to be chemically altered by experience amounts to an experiential identity. That identity arises from personal experiences that chemically changes the DNA of developing fetuses ('epigenetic' changes). Over the next 50 years, the babies subjected to stress developed more autoimmune diseases, metabolic diseases and autism than babies that were not subject to the same source of stress. As the stress level increased, so did the level of later disease.
Referring to this and other research, Szyf argues that DNA is dynamic due to epigenetic changes from life experiences over time. He sees that at least some human free will can arise from the interactions between individuals and external influences such as family, language, culture and so forth. In his view, epigenetic DNA phenomena is a source of some free will. He points to lower levels of stress in modern life compared to life thousands of years ago as a major factor.
In the 3rd segment, pediatrician Nadine Burke discusses how stress in children manifest as various problems including asthma, ADHD, skin rashes, autoimmune diseases, and so forth. She found a high correlation between traumatic stress (domestic violence, drug abuse, divorce, parental mental illness, etc.) and child health. Stress exerts influences after birth including susceptibility to diseases and risky behavior. That is consistent with life experiences exerting influence on behavior and health.
In the 4th segment psychologist Brian Little argues that we are born with traits that constrain our free will. He sees behavior and free will arising from our genes (biogenic authenticity), social forces that constrain behavior (sociogenic authenticity), and what we make of ourselves over our lifetimes (idiogenic authenticity). The latter influence can be at odds with the one or both of the former and the confluence of the three make us unique, which he implies is a course of free will.
On balance, the information presented here makes it sound like humans have, at most, little free will and what there is, is constrained. That is not a comforting conclusion. But is it correct? Is it too early to draw that conclusion, or is the science settled enough? If it is correct, what are the implications for politics?
B&B orig: 3/10/19
The TED Radio Hour program that NPR aired yesterday, Hardwired, examines the matter of free will and factors that affect both behavior and health. The broadcast was in four 10-13 minute segments, which are here: https://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/?showDate=2019-03-08
In the first segment neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky argues that there is no such thing as human free will. He argues that that appears to be acts of free will are simply manifestations of biology we do not understand. Everything is predetermined and we simply live our lives according to factors and forces we cannot control and may never be able to fully understand. Sapolsky pointed to a famous experiment where judges set punishment for convicts. In that experiment, which I think has been questioned at least once, showed that punishments were most strongly correlated with how hungry the judges were, which correlated with lower blood sugar levels.
In the 2nd segment, geneticist Moshe Szyf points to our genes as hardware that is mutable over time. He cites a situation where pregnant women were in a period of unusual stress for a period of time. This capacity of DNA to be chemically altered by experience amounts to an experiential identity. That identity arises from personal experiences that chemically changes the DNA of developing fetuses ('epigenetic' changes). Over the next 50 years, the babies subjected to stress developed more autoimmune diseases, metabolic diseases and autism than babies that were not subject to the same source of stress. As the stress level increased, so did the level of later disease.
Referring to this and other research, Szyf argues that DNA is dynamic due to epigenetic changes from life experiences over time. He sees that at least some human free will can arise from the interactions between individuals and external influences such as family, language, culture and so forth. In his view, epigenetic DNA phenomena is a source of some free will. He points to lower levels of stress in modern life compared to life thousands of years ago as a major factor.
In the 3rd segment, pediatrician Nadine Burke discusses how stress in children manifest as various problems including asthma, ADHD, skin rashes, autoimmune diseases, and so forth. She found a high correlation between traumatic stress (domestic violence, drug abuse, divorce, parental mental illness, etc.) and child health. Stress exerts influences after birth including susceptibility to diseases and risky behavior. That is consistent with life experiences exerting influence on behavior and health.
In the 4th segment psychologist Brian Little argues that we are born with traits that constrain our free will. He sees behavior and free will arising from our genes (biogenic authenticity), social forces that constrain behavior (sociogenic authenticity), and what we make of ourselves over our lifetimes (idiogenic authenticity). The latter influence can be at odds with the one or both of the former and the confluence of the three make us unique, which he implies is a course of free will.
On balance, the information presented here makes it sound like humans have, at most, little free will and what there is, is constrained. That is not a comforting conclusion. But is it correct? Is it too early to draw that conclusion, or is the science settled enough? If it is correct, what are the implications for politics?
B&B orig: 3/10/19
The Biology Of Nationalism
Thursday, March 21, 2019
In an article in Foreign Policy magazine, This Is Your Brain on Nationalism: The Biology of Us and Them, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky describes the cognitive biology of nationalism. A three minute interview by Fareed Zakaria with Sapolsky about this article and nationalism is here: https://www.facebook.com/fareedzakaria/videos/what-neuroscience-has-to-do-with-nationalism/1172179109608632/
Humans have a strong impulse to sort people into us and them groups. Sorting happens unconsciously. It is fast, taking about one-tenth of a second, and occurs before we are aware of any assessment. A portion of the brain that regulates fear and aggression reacts quickly, and a few seconds later the region of the brain that is crucial for impulse control and emotional regulation (prefrontal cortex) activates and normally suppresses the initial negative impulse. The unconscious brain reaction to images of faces of people of another race are different than images of same-race faces.
Sapolsky argues this is driven by evolution, which shaped how our brains perceive and think about sensory inputs from the world. He asserts that nationalism is a critically important phenomenon:
Is America capable of trying to harness nationalism in some way akin to Sapolsky's suggestion?
B&B orig: 3/11/19
In an article in Foreign Policy magazine, This Is Your Brain on Nationalism: The Biology of Us and Them, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky describes the cognitive biology of nationalism. A three minute interview by Fareed Zakaria with Sapolsky about this article and nationalism is here: https://www.facebook.com/fareedzakaria/videos/what-neuroscience-has-to-do-with-nationalism/1172179109608632/
Humans have a strong impulse to sort people into us and them groups. Sorting happens unconsciously. It is fast, taking about one-tenth of a second, and occurs before we are aware of any assessment. A portion of the brain that regulates fear and aggression reacts quickly, and a few seconds later the region of the brain that is crucial for impulse control and emotional regulation (prefrontal cortex) activates and normally suppresses the initial negative impulse. The unconscious brain reaction to images of faces of people of another race are different than images of same-race faces.
Sapolsky argues this is driven by evolution, which shaped how our brains perceive and think about sensory inputs from the world. He asserts that nationalism is a critically important phenomenon:
To understand the dynamics of human group identity, including the resurgence of nationalism—that potentially most destructive form of in-group bias—requires grasping the biological and cognitive underpinnings that shape them.
Such an analysis offers little grounds for optimism. Our brains distinguish between in-group members and outsiders in a fraction of a second, and they encourage us to be kind to the former but hostile to the latter. These biases are automatic and unconscious and emerge at astonishingly young ages. . . . . Humans can rein in their instincts and build societies that divert group competition to arenas less destructive than warfare, yet the psychological bases for tribalism persist, even when people understand that their loyalty to their nation, skin color, god, or sports team is as random as the toss of a coin. At the level of the human mind, little prevents new teammates from once again becoming tomorrow’s enemies.One aspect of our cognitive biology is that biases against out-groups is often learned, although some are completely innate or nearly so. Infants pick up on cues from parents and caregivers about who is in-group and who is out-group, and race is a key marker the brain picks up on. Sapolsky comments:
Put simply, neurobiology, endocrinology, and developmental psychology all paint a grim picture of our lives as social beings. When it comes to group belonging, humans don’t seem too far from the families of chimps killing each other in the forests of Uganda: people’s most fundamental allegiance is to the familiar. Anything or anyone else is likely to be met, at least initially, with a measure of skepticism, fear, or hostility. In practice, humans can second-guess and tame their aggressive tendencies toward the Other. Yet doing so is usually a secondary, corrective step.
For all this pessimism, there is a crucial difference between humans and those warring chimps. The human tendency toward in-group bias runs deep, but it is relatively value-neutral. Although human biology makes the rapid, implicit formation of us-them dichotomies virtually inevitable, who counts as an outsider is not fixed. In fact, it can change in an instant.Nationalism: The sorting trait applies to nationalism and globalism:
At its best, nationalism and patriotism can prompt people to pay their taxes and care for their nation’s have-nots, including unrelated people they have never met and will never meet. But because this solidarity has historically been built on strong cultural markers of pseudo-kinship, it is easily destabilized, particularly by the forces of globalization, which can make people who were once the archetypes of their culture feel irrelevant and bring them into contact with very different sorts of neighbors than their grand-parents had. Confronted with such a disruption, tax-paying civic nationalism can quickly devolve into something much darker: a dehumanizing hatred that turns Jews into “vermin,” Tutsis into “cockroaches,” or Muslims into “terrorists.” Today, this toxic brand of nationalism is making a comeback across the globe, spurred on by political leaders eager to exploit it for electoral advantage.
In the face of this resurgence, the temptation is strong to appeal to people’s sense of reason. Surely, if people were to understand how arbitrary nationalism is, the concept would appear ludicrous. Nationalism is a product of human cognition, so cognition should be able to dismantle it, too.
Yet this is wishful thinking. In reality, knowing that our various social bonds are essentially random does little to weaken them. . . . . The pull of us-versus-them thinking is strong even when the arbitrariness of social boundaries is utterly transparent, to say nothing of when it is woven into a complex narrative about loyalty to the fatherland. You can’t reason people out of a stance they weren’t reasoned into in the first place.Sapolsky argues that we could try to harness nationalist dynamics and not fight or condemn them. That would mean leaders need to avoid jingoism and xenophobia, and appeal to people’s innate in-group tendencies to socialize or incentivize cooperation and accountability. In this political scenario, nationalist pride is rooted in a country’s ability to do social good such as care for the elderly, teaching children empathy, and ensuring increased social mobility.
Is America capable of trying to harness nationalism in some way akin to Sapolsky's suggestion?
B&B orig: 3/11/19
The Conservative Agenda Comes Out of the Dark
Thursday, March 21, 2019
The Washington Post has looked at what President Trump proposed in his 2020 budget. This is it:
Domestic spending collapses and defense spending explodes. The budget proposes cutting (1) Medicare by $84.5 billion/year over 10 years, (2) Medicaid by $24.1 billion/year over 10 years, and (3) by $22 billion/year over 10 years Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps). It adds more than $33 billion to Defense, which totals $718 billion for 2020. At that level, defense spending amounts to 57% of the proposed federal discretionary budget.
The conservative vision of governance could not be clearer. Trump's budget is not going to pass congress and that is not what it is intended to do. Instead, conservatism has finally grown a pair. It now has the balls to be brutally honest about how that ideology sees the federal government and spending priorities.
That Trump promised not to touch Medicare and Medicaid in the 2016 election is not relevant or important to Trump, conservatives or pro-Trump populists. Conservatism apparently feels that now is the time to make an open run at the vision of America it has been working toward for at least the last 30 years. People will get a chance to approve or disapprove by their votes in the 2020 elections.
B&B orig: 3/12/19
The Washington Post has looked at what President Trump proposed in his 2020 budget. This is it:
Domestic spending collapses and defense spending explodes. The budget proposes cutting (1) Medicare by $84.5 billion/year over 10 years, (2) Medicaid by $24.1 billion/year over 10 years, and (3) by $22 billion/year over 10 years Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps). It adds more than $33 billion to Defense, which totals $718 billion for 2020. At that level, defense spending amounts to 57% of the proposed federal discretionary budget.
The conservative vision of governance could not be clearer. Trump's budget is not going to pass congress and that is not what it is intended to do. Instead, conservatism has finally grown a pair. It now has the balls to be brutally honest about how that ideology sees the federal government and spending priorities.
That Trump promised not to touch Medicare and Medicaid in the 2016 election is not relevant or important to Trump, conservatives or pro-Trump populists. Conservatism apparently feels that now is the time to make an open run at the vision of America it has been working toward for at least the last 30 years. People will get a chance to approve or disapprove by their votes in the 2020 elections.
B&B orig: 3/12/19
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