Book Review: Behave

Robert Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst: “. . . . when the frontal cortex [conscious reason] labors hard on some cognitive task, immediately afterward individuals are more aggressive, less empathic, charitable and honest. Metaphorically, the frontal cortex says, ‘Screw it. I’m tired and don’t feel like thinking about my fellow human.’”

“We implicitly divide the world into Us and Them, and prefer the former. We are easily manipulated, even subliminally and within seconds, as to who counts as each. . . . . ‘Me’ versus ‘us’ (being prosocial within your group) is easier than ‘us’ versus ‘them’ (prosociality between groups).”

SUMMARY: In Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (Penguin Press, 2017), author Robert Sapolsky (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sapolsky) looks broadly at the collective impacts of what is known about genetics, endocrinology, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, culture, society, history, evolution and laws of nature on the biology of human behavior. He asks an interesting question: Is enough known to reasonably support an evidence-based belief that humans can progress in terms of more peace, freedom and prosperity, with less war, oppression and poverty? In essence, can the human species learn enough to help survive its self-destructive tendencies? Because of complication and uncertainty, Sapolsky’s answer is an unsettling maybe.

REVIEW: Sapolsky is a neuroendocrinologist and a professor of biology, neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford University. Behave is written for a lay audience and easy to read. It is a long book (675 pages plus 38 pages of appendices on neuroscience, endocrinology and proteins) that covers a large amount of relevant information from many species. Complicated concepts are explained clearly with modest use of carefully explained technical jargon. Sapolsky’s mindset is holistic. He integrates the various influences on human behavior, e.g., culture, age, and hormone status, more than other authors have done to date. In considering sources of human behavior he rejects categorical simple-cause thinking, e.g., gene X caused this behavior, but hormone Y caused that behavior, while religion Z caused yet another behavior, and by golly, that war 1300 years ago caused yesterday’s bloody mess. The evidence says that all influences are relevant, including what happened in the second, minutes, hours, days and centuries before someone does something. Sapolsky describes behavior and the science by referring to those various time frames and their relevance.

Nature vs. nurture: A repeated theme is interplay between nature and nurture. Evolution provides a mechanism to insure that the influence of genes is lessened by allowing time for a key part of the brain to experience life before maturing. The human frontal cortex, significantly responsible for moral thinking and decisions, is the last part of the brain to mature. That part of the brain is done growing up by the mid-twenties. Existing evidence suggests that this long maturation time limits the impact of genes on adult thinking and behavior.

Once mature, frontal cortex functioning appears to be more influenced by experience, culture and family. The frontal cortex significantly shapes, among other things, adult decision making, risk-taking, morals and identity. The absence of activity by the adolescent frontal cortex underpins many teenage behaviors, frustrating, good, bad, dumb, weird, brilliant and bizarre. Other brain regions that affect behavior are mature in adolescents, but their impact isn’t modulated like it is in adults with a mature frontal cortex.

Another repeated theme is rapid, unconscious characterization of people into US and Them. Humans and many animals share this trait in some form or another. The trait exists in human infants. Mental discrimination of people into groups is based on everything from race, gender and kinship to meaningless traits. This trait has been exploited for millennia by politicians and warlords to create divisions among groups of people, even when the actual differences are insignificant. This is happening in spades in American politics today. It is a source of bad behavior.

Despite his obvious command of science in various fields, Sapolsky does not articulate a clear path to peace and better behavior. His admonition is for forgiveness and tolerance. The most hopeful lesson comes from human history, which generally reflects a capacity of cultures to improve over time. It is not yet known if knowledge of human cognitive and social biology can make a meaningful difference in fostering progress. That’s disappointing.

Despite Sapolsky’s obvious optimism for a better world through science, he leaves a clear impression that it is still too early to know how to extrapolate from science to culture and society:

“It’s complicated. Nothing seems to cause anything; instead everything just modulates something else. . . . . Eventually it can seem hopeless that you can actually fix something, can make things better. But we have no choice but to try.”

At least there is a reason for hope in the uncertainty. Maybe someday knowledge of human behavioral biology can be translated into social good.

B&B orig: 9/16/17

Book review: One Nation After Trump

The Washington Post published the following review of One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported by Beverly Gage, a teacher of U.S. political history at Yale. The book is authored by E.J. Dionne (liberal - Washington Post columnist), Norman J. Ornstein (conservative - American Enterprise Institute) Thomas E. Mann (non-partisan - Brookings Institute).

Gage writes:

“President Trump is not forever. At some point in the not-too-distant future, he will no longer be president, and it will be time to assess the post-storm damage and begin the recovery process. We don’t know when this will happen: this year or next, in 2021 or 2025. . . . . But it will happen, and the people in the best position to take advantage of that moment will be those who are already thinking about where we ought to go next.

. . . . Their [the author's] bipartisan — or, perhaps, tripartisan — work seems intended to send the rest of us a message: It’s time to find some common ground before obstructionism, demagoguery, fake news and racial resentment become the dominant features of our national politics. . . . .

The book begins with an assessment of the 2016 election, asking how on earth we ended up with our reality-star “Normless President.” Its emphasis is less on Trump, however, than on the long-term structural and cultural changes that made his election possible. The authors have no patience for a “both sides” argument about the degradation of our political culture. They lay the blame firmly within the Republican Party, where a process of “radicalization” that began in the 1980s has now resulted in a “Jurassic Park”-style disaster, with the creators of that change unable to control their own monster.

. . . . .

So what is to be done? If the book’s first half focuses on the sorry state of things today, the second half focuses on how to not make the same mistakes in the future. The authors claim to be genuinely — if tentatively — hopeful about what Trump’s election may ultimately yield for American civic life. “We believe that the popular mobilization and national soul-searching he has aroused could be the occasion for an era of democratic renewal,” they write. But that will happen only if Trump’s opponents across the political spectrum come up with “a hopeful and unifying alternative.”

The authors present an impressive list of policy ideas designed to do just that and perhaps even to dispel some of Trump’s allure within the MAGA base. They make a distinction between the “legitimate” (read: economic) grievances of Trump voters and the illegitimate expression of those grievances in the politics of racial and nativist resentment. They chastise Democrats for paying insufficient attention to the real pain of working-class voters, sidelined for decades by deindustrialization and now by an incomplete recovery from the financial crisis. But they insist — rightly — that any attempt to address those problems cannot come at the expense of other social justice movements.

. . . . .

It is hard to object to much about these plans, with their emphasis on fairness and comity and partisan goodwill. And yet there is something incongruous about the authors’ belief that good policy, judiciously presented, will yield the desired political transformation. As the authors note, one of the more depressing lessons of the 2016 election was that policy simply didn’t matter much. Nobody, including his own voters, thought Trump had much policy expertise. On the campaign trail, however, his abuse of wonks and elites and bureaucrats seemed to work in his favor.

In this context, a book that draws upon the best research of Harvard political scientists, Atlantic writers and think-tank staffers seems like a leap of faith as much as a matter of hard-nosed analysis. Some of the authors’ calls for unity have a similar wishful-thinking quality. “The imperative of turning back Trump and Trumpism will require unusual forms of discipline and commitment,” they write. “It will mean not allowing the ideological and tactical battles with the Democratic Party between factions loosely defined as Clinton and Sanders Democrats to tear it asunder.” Great! But how, exactly, will that happen?”

In an interview on today's To The Point program broadcast by KCRW, host Warren Olney did a 10 minute interview with Ornstein.[1] Ornstein pointed out poll data showing that voters who felt unfair treatment compared to other racial groups tended to be a solid base of Trump's core supporters. The MAGA mindset comes with a list of fairly common traits that include protectionism and xenophobia, sometimes tinged with racism.

Questions: Is it fair to lay most of the blame for incivility, extremism, a non-compromise mindset and a dysfunctional federal government on republicans? Does the plan that Doinne, Ornstein and Mann lay out seem plausible, or is partisan distrust and animosity too much to fix in anything short of a sustained multi-generational effort?

Footnote:
1. Ornstein and Mann wrote the 2012 book It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With The New Politics of Extremism. In it they write: “One of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

B&B orig: 9/29/17

Book Review: The Quartet

California wild rose

“I confess that I do not entirely approve this Constitution at present, but Sir, I am not sure I shall never approve it. . . . In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its Faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government is necessary for us. . . . . I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. . . . . It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this System approaching so near to Perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our Enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear how our Councils are Confounded, like those of the Builders of Babel, and that our States are on the Point of Separation, only to meet, hereafter, for the purposes of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and I am not sure that it is not the best.” Benjamin Franklin, 1787, stating his consent, if not approval of the new US Constitution

“Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose that what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. . . . . But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. . . . . institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.” Thomas Jefferson, 1816, looking back and commenting on the Constitution and social change

In his 2015 book[1], The Quartet: Orchestrating The Second American Revolution, historian Joseph Ellis argues that the American revolution was two separate revolutions, both of which were probably necessary to launch the American Republic. Ellis singles out the four Founders who worked closely together and were necessary for the successful outcome of the 2nd revolution, Washington (roughly, the legitimizer), Hamilton (the firebrand), Madison (the thinker) and John Jay (the diplomat). Two other key players were Robert Morris (wealthy financier) and Gouvernor Morris ( the orator). All six of those Founders were nationalists who wanted a strong central government with tax and veto power over the existing 13 states.

The ultimate outcome of the first revolution, the war of independence, created a situation where the colonies and later settlement of the continent could lead to various political outcomes. Ellis argues that the second revolution pitted confederationists against nationalists, and the ultimate nationalist victory came with the ratification of the US Constitution and then the Bill of Rights.

According to Ellis, most Americans and politicians were confederationists who opposed the constitution. They wanted to stay with the existing post-war Articles of Confederation (AoC) and sovereign states that could act more as independent nations than as a cohesive political unit or a single nation with a central government.

Ellis relies heavily on primary sources, including Quartet members own written words. One thing that was very clear, until just before the Continental Congress called for a convention to amend the Articles of Confederation, Quartet members believed that there was no chance for the nationalist cause to replace the AoC with a new national constitution. Two unexpected events led to the possibility that the nationalist cause might have some reasonable chance of success. One was Shay's Rebellion, a small revolt of farmers in western Massachusetts. The press grossly overstated the rebellion's significance. For whatever reasons, both Washington and Madison came to believe that American independence could be lost to later events as the colonies splintered into regional groups and/or as Britain or Spain intervened to reassert control in the face of disunited colonies. In hindsight, both Washington and Madison badly misjudged the rebellion's significance, but it nonetheless was a necessary part of their mindset before the constitutional convention.

The second unexpected event was the refusal of conservatives from all colonies except New York to attend the convention. That left two groups to attend, the nationalists and moderates who wanted to amend the AoC, but not replace it. Without pro-AoC conservatives in attendance, the chance of nationalist success went from low (~1%?) to about 50:50, based on the numbers of nationalists and moderates that were picked to attend.

Ellis's book conveys two points that are highly relevant and important in modern American politics.

Compromise and ambiguity was necessary: At the end of the convention with the convention's approval of the Constitution, Washington, Hamilton and Madison all thought they had failed the nationalist cause and that the US would remain a confederation doomed to ultimate failure via dissolution, civil war and then obscurity. That was the fate of all past confederations until that point.

Circumstances at the convention forced compromises and ambiguities in the distribution of power between the central government and the states. Madison used "the People" as a repository of power in cases where central vs. state governments was at issue. That helped cloud the issue of exactly where power resided. The best the Quartet could do was to create enough ambiguity in the constitution to render the issue of who had what power a matter that needed to be negotiated on a case-by-case basis.

Although they believed they failed, the Quartet later came to see that the Constitution, coupled with the Bill of Rights accomplished as much as could have been done at the time under the prevailing pro-state, anti-federal circumstances. Public fear of King George was palpable and so was fear of any central government with any political power. Franklin may have been the convention attendee who most clearly saw the nationalist merits of the Constitution at the time. If nothing else, he had more life perspective than any of the Quartet members.

Ambiguity means flexibility: Since the Constitution intentionally left many matters ambiguous, that necessitated later negotiations and political machinations to address new situations as they arose. The Founders knew that they could not predict all exigencies a new nation would face.

Referring to Jefferson's 1816 comments quoted above, Ellis concludes The Quartet like this: “Jefferson spoke for almost all the prominent members of the revolutionary generation in urging posterity not to regard their political prescriptions as sacred script. It is richly ironic that one of the few original intentions they all shared was opposition to any judicial doctrine of ‘original intent.’ To be sure, they all wished to be remembered, but they did not want to be embalmed.”

Questions:
If ambiguity is built into the concept of federal vs state power, what objective basis exists, if any, can one point to and find the “Founder’s intent” for modern political issues that implicate use of power or the balance of state vs federal power?

In view of current political circumstances, does America need a 3rd revolution of some sort to defend itself against demagoguery riding on dark free speech, including the dark speech that American’s enemies, especially Russia, use against to divide and weaken us?

Is Madison’s vision of a large republic with counterbalancing interests to keep demagoguery and tyranny in check still working in the US? Did it ever work?

Did the Founders generally believe that the constitution is a living document because, e.g., (i) as Jefferson put it, “laws and institutions must also go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind”, and/or (ii) as Ellis put it, “It is richly ironic that one of the few original intentions [all the most prominent members of the revolutionary generation] shared was opposition to any judicial doctrine of ‘original intent’”

Is refusal to compromise in modern two-party politics evidence of political success or failure?

Footnote:
Ellis's book is easy to read and cites plenty of sources for many of the book's points. Many of the references are to primary sources. The book is short, 220 pages plus appendices, e.g., the Articles of Confederation. Ellis has been criticized for omitting some relevant history, but in a 220-page book that is understandable. Thousands of pages of history have been written on the constitutional convention.

One historian includes this in his critique: “The weakness of “The Quartet” is that it does not look past the figures standing center stage in Ellis’s story. As a result, Ellis omits or plays down the politics that led to the Convention and the Constitution — the institutions and processes that gave rise to and sustained the movement to reform the government of the United States, as well as the debates on framing, ratifying and implementing the Constitution.”

B&B orig: 10/10/17

Book Review: The Death Of Expertise

The thesis of Tom Nichols’ 2017 book, The Death Of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge And Why It Matters, posits that widespread rejection and distrust of expert knowledge. He argues this amounts to a democratic dysfunction that can easily lead to some form of mob rule or autocracy. Nichols is a professor of national security affairs and expert on Russian politics.

In this short, easy to read book, Nichols builds a compelling case that Americans’ anti-elitist attitudes are moving the U.S. toward some form of mob rule or autocracy, a trend that, in Nichols’ opinion, Donald Trump’s presidency reflects. Although Nichols points to concrete actions that experts can take by increasing their own transparency, accountability and public engagement, he is ultimately not optimistic: “Tragically, I suspect that a possible resolution will lie in a disaster as yet unforeseen. It may be a [major] war or a [major] economic collapse. . . . . It may be in the emergence of an ignorant demagoguery, a process already underway in the United States and Europe, or the rise to power of a technocracy that finally runs out of patience and thus dispenses with voting as anything other than a formality.”

Nichols lays much of the blame on the American people and their distrusting attitudes toward experts, knowledge itself and democratic institutions. “The death of expertise is not just a rejection of existing knowledge. It is fundamentally a rejection of science and dispassionate rationality, which are foundations of modern civilization.” He asserts that for “the average American”, their knowledge base is so low it has passed “uninformed” and “misinformed” to a level that is “aggressively wrong”. Many Americans just believe “dumb things” and often reject information that undermines false beliefs.

Nichols is aware that significant natural barriers against respect for knowledge and experts lie in human cognitive biology: “ We all suffer from problems, for example, like ‘confirmation bias,’ the natural tendency to only accept evidence that confirms what we already believe.” He argues that human biases are easily and routinely exploited by an ocean of online sources that are “making many of us dumber,” “meaner” and “enabling and reinforcing our human failings.” Maybe calling cognitive biases ‘failings’ misses the mark a little. Biases are normal and served well in early human evolution.

The problem is that in complex modern societies, playing on that biology is the key route that demagogues, autocrats and tyrants take in their runs for power. Understanding of that point dates at least back to Plato and Aristotle, both of whom were acutely aware of this human aspect of politics. This issue is extremely serious, not trivial.

Nichols sees flaws in modern higher education: “When students become valued clients instead of learners, they gain a great deal of self-esteem, but precious little knowledge; worse, they do not develop the habits of critical thinking . . . .” And, economic pressures on the press aren't helpful either: “In this hypercompetitive media environment, editors and producers no longer have the patience -- or the financial luxury -- to allow journalists to develop their own expertise and deep knowledge of a subject.”[1] This media critique raises the question of whether a free press operating in a capitalist, for-profit environment can ever be up to the task of reasonably informing a public that hungers far more for entertainment and self-affirming content than ice cold, usually uncomfortable knowledge. That's a question for the experts to chew on.

The death spiral: Nichols sees the current state of affairs as one where distrust in experts and knowledge has led America to enter a death spiral that “presents an immediate danger of decay either into rule by the mob or toward elitist technocracy . . . . and both threaten the United States today. . . . . the most disturbing aspect of the American march toward ignorance is not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge.”

Focus on fostering transparency, finding good leaders and boosting institutional efficacy, not issues: From this observer's cognitive and social biology-based point of view, Nichols paints a picture of a society overwhelmed by an ocean of false information and effective cognitive manipulation,[2] an economically stressed professional press unable to keep up with events, inept institutions such as congress and a failing higher education system. Maybe Nichols would dispute that picture, but that is how this reader sees it.

Regardless, if that is a reasonably accurate description of the American condition, then Nichol’s call for American citizens to become better informed won't succeed. Other analyses of democracy and social and technological complexity make it clear that it is impossible for citizens to be even ‘reasonably’ informed on enough issues to make ‘informed’ voting decisions.[3] Nichols himself says almost the same thing: “. . . . there are not simply enough hours in the day for a legislator, even in a city council or a small US state . . . . to master all of the issues modern policymaking requires.”

A plausible alternative option that might break out of the death spiral is to focus not on understanding issues, an impossible task, but on trying to foster more transparency, find good leaders somehow, e.g., look for morality and honesty, and look for institutional efficacy as evidence of good governance. Whether that would have any impact is an open question, but at least it’s another way to think about things. Questions: Does Nichols put too much blame on ordinary citizens and too little on other things such as America’s corrupted pay-to-play two-party system or ideologically-inspired gridlock in governance?

Is Nichols too pessimistic about where America is heading?

Footnote:
1. Nichols cites the fascinating case of Ben Rhodes playing an inexperienced press corps to sell president Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Rhodes was Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser. A dysfunctional congress was in the background was a key driver of the press manipulation. “We created an echo chamber,” he admitted when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. . . . . When I asked whether the prospect of this same kind of far-reaching spin campaign being run by a different administration is something that scares him, he admitted that it does. “I mean, I’d prefer a sober, reasoned public debate after which members of congress reflect and take a vote,” he said shrugging. “But that's impossible. . . . . The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old . . . . They literally know nothing. Rhode’s implication was clear. Not only did he think the public was too stupid to understand the deal -- which was not wrong . . . . --but that everyone else, including congress, was too stupid to get it as well.”

Nichols calls this incident intolerable and assigns blame all around, including experts’ share of blame, but notes that “. . . . there is only one group of people who must bear the ultimate responsibility for this state of affairs, and only they can change any of it: the citizens of the United States of America.”

2. Regarding cognitive manipulation, Nichols comments: “Emotion is an unassailable defense against expertise, a moat of anger and resentment in which reason and knowledge quickly drown. And when students learn that emotion trumps everything else, it is a lesson they will take with them for the rest of their lives.”

All a speaker needs to do is provoke an emotion(s) such as fear, anger, hate, disgust and/or distrust. Once that is accomplished, they have disabled the listener’s conscious reason and made their message far more persuasive regardless of its truth or falsity.

3. Regarding politics, two social scientists comment in their book Democracy for Realists: “. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”

B&B orig: 10/18/17; DP repost 5/18/20