Church-state separation

Donald Trump recently promised anti-abortion groups that he would nominate anti-abortion judges to the supreme court. Although past republican candidates likely would have done so without saying it in public, this may be the first time a presidential candidate has publicly promised to do this.

Other Trump promises include a vow to made the Hyde Amendment permanent law and to eliminate the Johnson Amendment and funding for Planned Parenthood. The former amendment blocks use of tax dollars for abortions and the latter keeps religious organization from openly endorsing or opposing political candidates if they want to retain their tax exempt status. Anti-abortion and evangelical groups are ecstatic.

Based on his current rhetoric, one can argue that Trump advocates breaking down the church-state barrier at least as much as any major party nominee since the end of the second world war. Given the circumstances, Trump could get his way if he is elected in November. Although liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (83 years old) apparently has no intention of retiring any time soon, her public appearances clearly show she is very frail. How much longer she remains on the bench is not necessarily up to her formidable willpower. It is reasonable to believe that it is more likely than not that Justice Ginsberg's health will not allow her to remain on the bench until the end of the next president's term.

If Trump winds up with two of his picks on the supreme court, the door opens to remove much of what's left of the barrier between church and state. A second Trump term would no doubt give him one or two more slots to fill. That would ensure the end of any meaningful protection of the state (and taxpayers) from the church. Theocracy, first soft and quiet, then later harder, louder and more demanding, just might be in America's near future.

Every candidate for president always claims that their election is critical because the country is at a critical time in history. For this election, that just might be more true than spin for a change. Church-state separation is just one aspect of what would make it true.

Update: As of August 2019, the argument that the 2016 election was exceptionally important has turned out to be true.

B&B orig: 10/3/16

Unconscious bias in preschool

Navy Blue Angels at Miramar airshow 2012

(view from my office window)

A recent two-part study of 135 preschool teachers revealed a pervasive bias toward the children they teach. Teacher bias was reflected by their unconscious eye movements. Specifically, teachers unconsciously spent more time looking at black male children for signs of disruptive behavior than at children of other races.

Study part 1:To examine this unconscious behavior, lead researcher Walter Gilliam conducted an experiment that deceived the teachers about the study's purpose. The teachers were told "We are interested in learning about how teachers detect challenging behavior in the classroom. Sometimes this involves seeing behavior before it becomes problematic. The video segments you are about to view are of preschoolers engaging in various activities. Some clips may or may not contain challenging behaviors. Your job is to press the enter key on the external keypad every time you see a behavior that could become a potential challenge."

The real purpose of the study was to measure the teacher's eye movements as they watched the videos to see if there were any biases in how they watched children. Each video showed a black boy and girl and a white boy and girl, none of whom were engaging in any challenging behavior.

When teachers expected bad behavior, who did they watch? According to Gilliam, "what we found was exactly what we expected based on the rates at which children are expelled from preschool programs. Teachers looked more at the black children than the white children, and they looked specifically more at the African-American boy."

Statistics show that black children are 3.6 times more likely to be suspended from preschool than white children. Black children account for about 19 percent of all preschoolers, but nearly half of preschoolers who get suspended. Part of the reason for that could be that teachers spend more time focused on their black students, expecting bad behavior. According to Gilliam, "if you look for something in one place, that's the only place you can typically find it."

Asked to identify the child they believed needed the most attention, 42% of teachers identified the black boy, 34% identified the white boy, while 13% and 10% identified the white and black girls respectively.

Study part 2:Despite the bias reflected in the eye movement data, a second part of the study generated a counter intuitive result. The teachers were given a one-paragraph vignette to read, describing a child disrupting a class, including hitting, scratching, and toy-throwing. The child in the vignette was randomly assigned what researchers considered a stereotypical name (DeShawn, Latoya, Jake, Emily), and subjects were asked to rate the severity of the behavior on a scale of one to five.

White teachers consistently held black students to a lower standard, rating their behavior as less severe than the same behavior of white students. That data accords with research about how people can apply different standards and expectations of others based on stereotypes and implicit bias. If white teachers believe that black boys are more likely to behave badly, they may be less surprised by that behavior and rate it less severely. On the other hand, black teachers did the opposite and held black students to a higher standard, i.e., they rated black student behavior as consistently more severe than that of white students.

Some of the teachers were given information about the disruptive child's home life, to see if it generated empathy in the teachers. Teachers who received the background information reacted with more empathy and lowered their assessment of bad behavior's severity, but only if the teacher and student were of the same race.

According to Gilliam, "if the race of the teacher and the child were different and [the teacher] received this background information, severity rates skyrocketed. . . . [those] teachers ended up feeling that the behavioral problems were hopeless and that very little could be done to actually improve the situation."

That result is consistent with research on empathy. "When people feel some kind of shared connection to folks, when they hear more about their misfortunes, they feel more empathic to them. But if they feel that they are different from each other . . . . it may actually cause them to perceive that person in a more negative light."

Routine unconscious bias: This study is just another routine demonstration of how unconscious biases distort reality to generate false realities, false beliefs and behaviors that the misinformation inspires. Unconscious biases distort (i) what we think we see, (ii) and how we think about what we think we saw. The human mind is a two-layered distortion machine. The first layer of distortion arises in our unconscious minds and the second arises in how we apply conscious reason or common sense to the false realities we believe in.

Questions: Does the data described in this study have any real world relevance to outcomes for school children? Do unconscious biases distort reality or facts and how we think about it?

The NPR broadcast of this story is here:

B&B orig: 9/28/16

Moral courage in politics

Most core concepts in politics are defined mostly by how people view them. Definitions may exist in dictionaries, but politically different people looking at the same thing often see different or even opposite things. Most (>95% ?) liberals and conservatives who are active in and/or ideological about their politics firmly believe that they stand on great or even sacred political principles or morals. They know that their ideological beliefs have survived the test of time and delivered great benefits to humanity. They know that their politics is firmly grounded in both unbiased truth and clear-headed reason. That mind set tends to see itself as standing in a valiant, patriotic defense of true reason and truth against an onslaught of evil, tyranny, self-deluded stupidity, cynical self-interest or things about like that. That mind set generally sees the political opposition as practicing politics firmly grounded in heavily biased truth and lies, rigid partisan ideology and addle-brained reason that borders on, or is, sheer nonsense.

It’s fair to say that most politically engaged people would sincerely characterize themselves and their efforts as being driven by true moral courage. A Wikipedia discussion about moral courage says this about the concept: Moral courage is the courage to take action for moral reasons despite the risk of adverse consequences. Courage is required to take action when one has doubts or fears about the consequences. Moral courage therefore involves deliberation or careful thought. Reflex action or dogmatic fanaticism do not involve moral courage because such impulsive actions are not based upon moral reasoning.

Given the common, opposing views that the left and the right have of each other as people mostly unable to deal honestly with truth, both sides would no doubt consider their own side to employ moral courage in their own politics. Many people on one side may see most people on the other side as having only some or no moral courage at all.

Does that thinking and belief by either side stand up to scrutiny? Not according to cognitive and social science. And not according to simple logic.

The science disconnect: Science finds that most or all people see political issues and think about them through a lens of intolerant, self-righteous personal morals or ideology. Facts and logic that undermines or contradicts those moral beliefs are usually either flatly rejected or rationalized away. One scientist put it this way: “We do moral reasoning not to reconstruct why we ourselves came to a judgment; we reason to find the best possible reasons why somebody else ought to join us in our judgment. . . . . The rider (conscious reason) is skilled at fabricating post hoc explanations for whatever the elephant (unconscious moralistic thinking) has just done, and it is good at finding reasons to justify whatever the elephant wants to do next. . . . . We make our first judgments rapidly, and we are dreadful at seeking out evidence that might disconfirm those initial judgments.”

The logic disconnect: If it is true, as partisans on the left and right argue, that the opposition’s thinking and perceptions of reality is heavily distorted by a reality- and reason-distorting ideology or mind set (or other things such as self-interest), then neither side practices moral courage in politics. That’s an example of impulse actions that are not based upon moral reasoning. No authority says that both the left and right cannot be mostly correct in arguing that the other side acts on ideological impulse instead of deliberation or careful thought, i.e., not morally courageous.

The interesting thing about the pure logic argument is that it is supported by science. In that regard, the logic argument isn’t just a thought disconnected from everything else. It’s a hypothesis (theory?) supported by a great deal of research and evidence.

Is moral courage possible at all?: Practicing perfect moral courage is impossible if it requires perfect knowledge. Perfection in anything is impossible, as argued here before. Nonetheless, it is possible to practice an imperfect but recognizable form of moral courage if one acknowledges one’s own cognitive nature and honestly tries to deal with it. How can that be done? Since existing political ideologies are known fact- and reason-distorters, adopting a political ideology that fosters reductions in ideologically-inspired distortions is a real step toward moral courage. One example of such an ideology has been described here. Obviously, other variants or articulations of that ideology are possible, but the point is to reduce unrestrained fact and reason distortion that underpins standard that underpins standard subjective politics.

Of course, accepting that requires the intestinal fortitude to try to see unbiased reality and unbiased, reasoned argument for what they are instead of accepting the false realities and reason that create the liberal and conservative worlds that most partisans now view the world through.

B&B orig: 9/22/16; DP 8/13/19; DP repost 5/31/20

Are honest politicians electable?

One rather persuasive, reasonably rational person argued that, in general, politicians who try to be honest about their campaign rhetoric are often or usually more likely to lose than win. Lies appear to be more powerful than honesty and that seems to accord with science.

The argument for more lies: People aren't rational about politics and their opinions are mostly based on things that aren't true. When a politician is honest and candid, it gives the opponent a chance to distort what the politician says, use it to attack the speaker and that rallies the attacker's supporters and casts doubt among undecided voters. Hillary Clinton is under constant attack as being an incessant liar. Attempts to explain matters can make the situation worse.

Lies often don't faze most supporters of a given politician but they do cast doubt on the opponent's reputation with most everyone else. In view of that, candidates should be aggressive and persistent about lying and denying the truth the upsides outweigh the downsides. Neither candidate has more to lose than to gain. Being honest is an impediment to any candidate being elected. Hard core supporters generally believe what they want whether it's true or not and their job is to win, not to make the world a better place by fostering honesty.

The reality and logic in the argument: That argument is fairly grounded in both reality (fact) and logic. Available evidence from social science is that most people are irrational about politics and most hold beliefs that are significantly grounded in false facts and flawed common sense. The rationale is that there's more to be gained by lying than by honesty.

That argument seems reasonable. It's well-known that misinformation including lies is sticky for many people. Once we get a false idea into our minds, correcting can be difficult or impossible, especially when the correct information contradicts beliefs or values that people hold. Trying to change false beliefs by presenting true but psychologically unpleasant information often elicits a backfire effect that actually reinforces belief in the false information.

In one paper, two misinformation researchers observed: “But many citizens may base their policy preferences on false, misleading, or unsubstantiated information that they believe to be true. . . . . authoritative statements of fact (such as those provided by a survey interviewer to a subject) are not reflective of how citizens typically receive information. Instead, people typically receive corrective information within “objective” news reports pitting two sides of an argument against each other, which is significantly more ambiguous than receiving a correct answer from an omniscient source. In such cases, citizens are likely to resist or reject arguments and evidence contradicting their opinions.”

If it is true that we are entering or in a post-truth world of politics, the argument that honest politicians may generally have disadvantages relative to less honest politicians makes sense from a cognitive science POV. Getting a feel for the veracity of the pro-liar politician hypothesis would probably take at least another 1 or 2 presidential elections and thus not be clear until 2016 or 2020.

B&B orig: 9/17/16