Original Biopolitics and Bionews post: August 30, 2016
In his book, The Righteous Mind, Why Good People Are Divided By Politics And Religion, Johnathan Haidt (pronounced 'height') described the Moral Foundations Theory. The theory is an anthropology-based hypothesis that Haidt and another psychologist, Craig Joseph, developed to explain differences in moral reasoning and beliefs between liberals, conservatives and others.
The theory posits that there's more to morality than just harm and fairness. It posits that six moral concepts or foundations shape our beliefs, reason and behaviors in politics and other areas of life. The foundations and their associated intuitions-emotions are (1) harm-care (compassion or lack thereof), (2) fairness-unfairness (anger, gratitude, guilt), (3) loyalty-betrayal (group pride, rage at traitors), (4) authority-subversion (respect, fear), (5) sanctity-degradation (disgust) and (6) liberty-oppression (resentment or hatred at domination).
The six foundations presumably evolved as response triggers to threats or adaptive challenges our ancestors faced. Modern triggers can differ from what our ancestors faced, e.g., loyalty to a nation or sports team can trigger the loyalty-betrayal moral in some or most people in different ways.
Haidt analogizes moral foundations to taste receptors: “. . . . morality is like cuisine: it’s a cultural construction, influenced by accidents of environment and history, but it’s not so flexible that anything goes. . . . . Cuisines vary, but they all must please tongues equipped with the same five taste receptors. Moral matrices vary, but they all must please righteous minds equipped with the same six social receptors.”
Large surveys led to the observation that in going from a spectrum of people from politically very liberal to moderate to very conservative, the importance of the care and fairness morals decreased in most people, while the loyalty, authority and sanctity morals increased. The harm-care and fairness-unfairness morals significantly shapes liberal thinking and belief, while the loyalty-betrayal authority- subversion and sanctity-degradation morals significantly shapes conservative minds.
Haidt observes that the moral palettes of liberals and conservatives are such that you can usually tell one from the other by asking what qualities they would want in their dog or other questions that are intended to elicit a response by a specific moral foundation.* This kind of morals-based thinking and preference appears to significantly shape thinking and belief related to issues in politics.
* For example, how much would you need to be paid to stick a tiny, harmless sterile hypodermic needle into (i) your own arm, and (ii) the arm of a child you don't know. For people to whom it matters, that question pair triggers the harm-care moral response and the answers generally correlate with the influence of the harm-care moral on a person’s politics and beliefs.
Libertarians & the cerebral style: In one large survey study, Haidt examined the moral foundations that libertarians displayed. Haidt's group reported this: “Libertarians are an increasingly prominent ideological group in U.S. politics . . . . Compared to self-identified liberals and conservatives, libertarians showed 1) stronger endorsement of individual liberty as their foremost guiding principle, and weaker endorsement of all other moral principles; 2) a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional cognitive style; and 3) lower interdependence and social relatedness. As predicted by intuitionist theories concerning the origins of moral reasoning, libertarian values showed convergent relationships with libertarian emotional dispositions and social preferences.” Iyer R, Koleva S, Graham J, Ditto P, Haidt J (2012) Understanding Libertarian Morality: The Psychological Dispositions of Self-Identified Libertarians. PLoS ONE 7(8):e42366. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0042366
Morals-based politics is another avenue to begin to understand innate, intractable differences between adherents of differing ideologies. What is interesting and important about this study, are the observations that (i) libertarians are an increasingly prominent group, and (ii) “a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional cognitive style.” Both are evidence that groups of Americans can and do adopt a new political ideology and can apply conscious reason, i.e., “Haidt’s rider” (conscious or cerebral reasoning) to their politics to a measurably higher degree relative to other groups that operate under a more “emotional cognitive style” or cognition more dominated by unconscious intuition (Haidt's elephant).
Questions: How convincing is the argument that libertarians use a relatively cerebral (conscious reason) style compared to liberals and/or conservatives who are asserted to employ a more “emotional cognitive style” (unconscious intuition) in thinking about politics? Would a more cerebral style necessarily be better? Is the moral foundations theory persuasive or is it still only an academic hypothesis with little real world relevance?
Saturday, March 16, 2019
Book review: The Righteous Mind
March 16, 2019
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Johnathan Haidt, Pantheon Books 2012 Dr. Haidt is a social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at NYU’s Stern School of Business. He wrote The Righteous Mind to “at least do what we can to understand why we are so easily divided into hostile groups, each one certain of its righteousness.” He explains: “My goal in this book is to drain some of the heat, anger, and divisiveness out of these topics and replace them with awe, wonder, and curiosity.”
In view of America’s increasing political polarization, Haidt clearly has his work cut out for him. To find answers, Haidt focuses on the inherent moralistic, self-righteous nature of human cognition and thinking about politics and religion. Through the ages, there were three basic conceptions of the roles of reason (~ conscious logic) and passion (unconscious intuition, emotion) in human thinking and behavior. Plato (~428-348 BC) argued that reason dominated in intellectual elites called “philosophers”, but that average people were mostly controlled by their passions. David Hume (1711-1776) argued that reason or conscious thinking was nothing more than a slave to human passions. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) argued that reason and passions were about equal in their influence.
According to Haidt, the debate is over: “Hume was right. The mind is divided into parts, like a rider (controlled processes) on an elephant (automatic processes). The rider evolved to serve the elephant. . . . . intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. Therefore, if you want to change someone’s mind about a moral or political issue, talk to the elephant first.”
Our intuitive (unconscious) morals and judgments tend to be more subjective, personal and emotional than objective and rational (conscious). Haidt points out that we are designed by evolution to be “narrowly moralistic and intolerant.” That leads to self-righteousness and the associated hostility and distrust of other points of views that the trait generates. Regarding the divisiveness of politics, Haidt asserts that “our righteous minds guarantee that our cooperative groups will always be cursed by moralistic strife.”
Our unconscious “moral intuitions (i.e., judgments) arise automatically and almost instantaneously, long before moral reasoning has a chance to get started, and those first intuitions tend to drive our later reasoning.” Initial intuitions driving later reasoning exemplifies some of our many unconscious cognitive biases, e.g., ideologically-based motivated reasoning, which distorts both facts we become aware of and the common sense we apply to the reality we think we see.
The book’s central metaphor “is that the mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is our conscious reasoning—the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware. The elephant is the other 99 percent of mental processes—the ones that occur outside of awareness but that actually govern most of our behavior.”
Haidt observes that there are two different sets of morals and rhetorical styles that tend to characterize liberals and conservatives: “Republicans understand moral psychology. Democrats don’t. Republicans have long understood that the elephant is in charge of political behavior, not the rider, and they know how elephants work. Their slogans, political commercials and speeches go straight for the gut . . . . Republicans don’t just aim to cause fear, as some Democrats charge. They trigger the full range of intuitions described by Moral Foundations Theory.”
The problem: On reading The Righteous Mind, the depth and breadth of problem for politics becomes uncomfortably clear for anyone hoping to ever find a way to rationalize politics. Haidt sums it up nicely: “Western philosophy has been worshiping reason and distrusting the passions for thousands of years. . . . I’ll refer to this worshipful attitude throughout this book as the rationalist delusion. I call it a delusion because when a group of people make something sacred, the members of the cult lose the ability to think clearly about it. Morality binds and blinds. The true believers produce pious fantasies that don’t match reality, and at some point somebody comes along to knock the idol off its pedestal. . . . . 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 is skilled at fabricating post hoc explanations for whatever the elephant 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.”
In other words, conscious reason (the rider) serves unconscious intuition and that’s the powerful but intolerant and moralistic beast that Haidt calls the elephant.
Two additional observations merit mention. First, Haidt points out that “traits can be innate without being hardwired or universal. The brain is like a book, the first draft of which is written by the genes during fetal development. No chapters are complete at birth . . . . But not a single chapter . . . . consists of blank pages on which a society can inscribe any conceivable set of words. . . . Nature provides a first draft, which experience then revises. . . . . ‘Built-in’ does not mean unmalleable; it means organized in advance of experience.”
Second, Haidt asserts that Hume “went too far” by arguing that reason is merely a “slave” of the passions. He argues that although intuition dominates, it is “neither dumb nor despotic” and it “can be shaped by reasoning.” He likens the situation as one of a lawyer (the rider) and a client (the elephant). Sometimes the lawyer can talk the client out of doing something dumb, sometimes not. The elephant may be a big, powerful beast, but it’s not stupid and it can learn. Haidt’s assertion that we “will always be cursed by moralistic strife” is his personal moral judgment that our intuitive, righteous nature is a curse, not a blessing or a source of wisdom. In this regard, his instinct is closer to Plato’s moral judgment about how things ought to be than Hume or Jefferson. Or, at least that’s how I read it.
Questions: Does Haidt’s portrayal of the interplay between unconscious intuition and morals and conscious reason or common sense seem reasonable? Are human societies forever doomed (or blessed with), for better or worse, to rely on the moralistic, unconscious processes that have characterized politics since humans invented it thousands of years ago? Does Haidt’s vision of human cognition reasonably accord with the vision that Norretranders portrayed in his book, The User Illusion?
Is it possible that Jefferson was closer to the mark than Hume, and if not, could that be possible in a society that largely operates under a set of morals or political principles that are explicitly designed to tip the balance of power from the elephant to the rider? Can anyone ever rise to the level of one of Plato’s enlightened philosophers, and if so, is that a good thing or not?
Original Biopolitics and Bionews post: August 29, 2016; DP posts: 3/16/19, 4/9/20
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Johnathan Haidt, Pantheon Books 2012 Dr. Haidt is a social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at NYU’s Stern School of Business. He wrote The Righteous Mind to “at least do what we can to understand why we are so easily divided into hostile groups, each one certain of its righteousness.” He explains: “My goal in this book is to drain some of the heat, anger, and divisiveness out of these topics and replace them with awe, wonder, and curiosity.”
In view of America’s increasing political polarization, Haidt clearly has his work cut out for him. To find answers, Haidt focuses on the inherent moralistic, self-righteous nature of human cognition and thinking about politics and religion. Through the ages, there were three basic conceptions of the roles of reason (~ conscious logic) and passion (unconscious intuition, emotion) in human thinking and behavior. Plato (~428-348 BC) argued that reason dominated in intellectual elites called “philosophers”, but that average people were mostly controlled by their passions. David Hume (1711-1776) argued that reason or conscious thinking was nothing more than a slave to human passions. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) argued that reason and passions were about equal in their influence.
According to Haidt, the debate is over: “Hume was right. The mind is divided into parts, like a rider (controlled processes) on an elephant (automatic processes). The rider evolved to serve the elephant. . . . . intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. Therefore, if you want to change someone’s mind about a moral or political issue, talk to the elephant first.”
Our intuitive (unconscious) morals and judgments tend to be more subjective, personal and emotional than objective and rational (conscious). Haidt points out that we are designed by evolution to be “narrowly moralistic and intolerant.” That leads to self-righteousness and the associated hostility and distrust of other points of views that the trait generates. Regarding the divisiveness of politics, Haidt asserts that “our righteous minds guarantee that our cooperative groups will always be cursed by moralistic strife.”
Our unconscious “moral intuitions (i.e., judgments) arise automatically and almost instantaneously, long before moral reasoning has a chance to get started, and those first intuitions tend to drive our later reasoning.” Initial intuitions driving later reasoning exemplifies some of our many unconscious cognitive biases, e.g., ideologically-based motivated reasoning, which distorts both facts we become aware of and the common sense we apply to the reality we think we see.
The book’s central metaphor “is that the mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is our conscious reasoning—the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware. The elephant is the other 99 percent of mental processes—the ones that occur outside of awareness but that actually govern most of our behavior.”
Haidt observes that there are two different sets of morals and rhetorical styles that tend to characterize liberals and conservatives: “Republicans understand moral psychology. Democrats don’t. Republicans have long understood that the elephant is in charge of political behavior, not the rider, and they know how elephants work. Their slogans, political commercials and speeches go straight for the gut . . . . Republicans don’t just aim to cause fear, as some Democrats charge. They trigger the full range of intuitions described by Moral Foundations Theory.”
The problem: On reading The Righteous Mind, the depth and breadth of problem for politics becomes uncomfortably clear for anyone hoping to ever find a way to rationalize politics. Haidt sums it up nicely: “Western philosophy has been worshiping reason and distrusting the passions for thousands of years. . . . I’ll refer to this worshipful attitude throughout this book as the rationalist delusion. I call it a delusion because when a group of people make something sacred, the members of the cult lose the ability to think clearly about it. Morality binds and blinds. The true believers produce pious fantasies that don’t match reality, and at some point somebody comes along to knock the idol off its pedestal. . . . . 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 is skilled at fabricating post hoc explanations for whatever the elephant 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.”
In other words, conscious reason (the rider) serves unconscious intuition and that’s the powerful but intolerant and moralistic beast that Haidt calls the elephant.
Two additional observations merit mention. First, Haidt points out that “traits can be innate without being hardwired or universal. The brain is like a book, the first draft of which is written by the genes during fetal development. No chapters are complete at birth . . . . But not a single chapter . . . . consists of blank pages on which a society can inscribe any conceivable set of words. . . . Nature provides a first draft, which experience then revises. . . . . ‘Built-in’ does not mean unmalleable; it means organized in advance of experience.”
Second, Haidt asserts that Hume “went too far” by arguing that reason is merely a “slave” of the passions. He argues that although intuition dominates, it is “neither dumb nor despotic” and it “can be shaped by reasoning.” He likens the situation as one of a lawyer (the rider) and a client (the elephant). Sometimes the lawyer can talk the client out of doing something dumb, sometimes not. The elephant may be a big, powerful beast, but it’s not stupid and it can learn. Haidt’s assertion that we “will always be cursed by moralistic strife” is his personal moral judgment that our intuitive, righteous nature is a curse, not a blessing or a source of wisdom. In this regard, his instinct is closer to Plato’s moral judgment about how things ought to be than Hume or Jefferson. Or, at least that’s how I read it.
Questions: Does Haidt’s portrayal of the interplay between unconscious intuition and morals and conscious reason or common sense seem reasonable? Are human societies forever doomed (or blessed with), for better or worse, to rely on the moralistic, unconscious processes that have characterized politics since humans invented it thousands of years ago? Does Haidt’s vision of human cognition reasonably accord with the vision that Norretranders portrayed in his book, The User Illusion?
Is it possible that Jefferson was closer to the mark than Hume, and if not, could that be possible in a society that largely operates under a set of morals or political principles that are explicitly designed to tip the balance of power from the elephant to the rider? Can anyone ever rise to the level of one of Plato’s enlightened philosophers, and if so, is that a good thing or not?
Original Biopolitics and Bionews post: August 29, 2016; DP posts: 3/16/19, 4/9/20
When political rhetoric and debate becomes meaningless
The Washing Post reports that many military veterans are favor Donald Trump, in large part because they see the Iraq war as a failure and a tragic waste of lives and money. Compared to a 10% overall lead for Clinton, two recent polls show a lead of 11% and 14% for Trump among military voters.
Former marine sergeant Evan McAllister feels that way. The WP reoprts that “the war he fought was a harebrained mission planned by Republicans, rubber-stamped by Democrats and, in the end, lost to al-Qaeda’s brutal successor. The foreign policy establishment of both parties got his friends killed for no reason, he said, so come Election Day, he is voting for the man he believes answers to neither Democrats nor Republicans: Donald Trump. ‘Most veterans . . . they see their country lost to the corrupt. And Trump comes along all of a sudden and calls out the corrupt on both sides of the aisle.’”
According to another former marine, “‘I think there’s a pretty sour taste in a lot of guys’ mouths about Iraq and about what happened there,” said Jim Webb Jr., a Marine veteran, Trump supporter, son of former U.S. senator Jim Webb (D-Va.) and one of McAllister’s platoon mates. ‘You pour time and effort and blood into something, and you see it pissed away, and you think, ‘How did I spend my twenties?’” Those are good reasons to support Donald Trump, right? After all, Hillary Clinton rubber stamped the Iraq war while in the US Senate and one can reasonably argue it was a failure. Or, are they such good reasons?
Mendacity, deceit & misinformation: According to the fact checkers, there's false information coming from the mouths of both presidential candidates. There's nothing unusual about that. It's all constitutionally protected free speech. Nonetheless, it doesn't hurt to keep the situation in mind. Here's PolitiFacts's profile of Clinton and Trump:
Hillary Clinton's profile
Donald Trump's profile
Of course that's just how one source sees it. At least some if not most Trump supporters vehemently deny the data and accuse PolitiFact of routine anti-conservative and anti-Trump bias. In the minds of those Trump supporters PolitiFact data is simply false and therefore meaningless or even proof of Trump's honesty. Another fact checking source, FactCheck.org also finds a lot of false information coming from the two candidates, with Clinton maybe doing better than Trump in terms of honest rhetoric. Fact checking of Trump's repeated claims that he opposed the Iraq war before it started shows the claims are false, although Trump apparently began expressing reservations about it some months after it started. FactCheck reports a financial incentive, an impending junk bond sale, for Trump to oppose the Iraq war. Uncertainty that new wars tend to create make new financing more complicated or difficult.
Do facts matter? Regardless of what the facts may be, does it really matter? Social and cognitive science research argues that (i) elections do not produce responsive governments, (ii) social or group identity, not facts, is the most important driver of perceptions of reality, belief and behavior for voters, and (iii) and the unconscious human mind is a powerful distorter of fact and conscious thinking or reason. Humans are expert at distorting or denying and rationalizing away inconvenient truths. We fully believe our own rationalizations. The human desire to believe what we want is powerful and unconscious. We believe we are rational and base our beliefs on solid facts when the evidence is usually to the contrary. So, when a candidate says something that provokes intense criticism and then dismisses it as "sarcasm" or a joke, that candidate's followers accept it, while the opponent's supporters do not.
When fact checkers assert a candidate has lied, the candidate's supporters tend to reject that, or accept it but downplay or distort its importance. Of course, that assumes there is an objective basis on which to assess the importance of a lie when evaluating a candidate's suitability for office. Under the circumstances, one can reasonably argue that most political rhetoric is mostly meaningless. If that's not a believable proposition, consider how very little credibility (i) most Trump supporters accord almost anything that Clinton says, and (ii) most Clinton supporters accord almost anything that Trump says. If fact checkers do provide some objective data, it appears to have little or no influence on at least strong supporters of either candidate.
Question: Is most political campaign rhetoric meaningless?
Former marine sergeant Evan McAllister feels that way. The WP reoprts that “the war he fought was a harebrained mission planned by Republicans, rubber-stamped by Democrats and, in the end, lost to al-Qaeda’s brutal successor. The foreign policy establishment of both parties got his friends killed for no reason, he said, so come Election Day, he is voting for the man he believes answers to neither Democrats nor Republicans: Donald Trump. ‘Most veterans . . . they see their country lost to the corrupt. And Trump comes along all of a sudden and calls out the corrupt on both sides of the aisle.’”
According to another former marine, “‘I think there’s a pretty sour taste in a lot of guys’ mouths about Iraq and about what happened there,” said Jim Webb Jr., a Marine veteran, Trump supporter, son of former U.S. senator Jim Webb (D-Va.) and one of McAllister’s platoon mates. ‘You pour time and effort and blood into something, and you see it pissed away, and you think, ‘How did I spend my twenties?’” Those are good reasons to support Donald Trump, right? After all, Hillary Clinton rubber stamped the Iraq war while in the US Senate and one can reasonably argue it was a failure. Or, are they such good reasons?
Mendacity, deceit & misinformation: According to the fact checkers, there's false information coming from the mouths of both presidential candidates. There's nothing unusual about that. It's all constitutionally protected free speech. Nonetheless, it doesn't hurt to keep the situation in mind. Here's PolitiFacts's profile of Clinton and Trump:
Hillary Clinton's profile
Donald Trump's profile
Of course that's just how one source sees it. At least some if not most Trump supporters vehemently deny the data and accuse PolitiFact of routine anti-conservative and anti-Trump bias. In the minds of those Trump supporters PolitiFact data is simply false and therefore meaningless or even proof of Trump's honesty. Another fact checking source, FactCheck.org also finds a lot of false information coming from the two candidates, with Clinton maybe doing better than Trump in terms of honest rhetoric. Fact checking of Trump's repeated claims that he opposed the Iraq war before it started shows the claims are false, although Trump apparently began expressing reservations about it some months after it started. FactCheck reports a financial incentive, an impending junk bond sale, for Trump to oppose the Iraq war. Uncertainty that new wars tend to create make new financing more complicated or difficult.
Do facts matter? Regardless of what the facts may be, does it really matter? Social and cognitive science research argues that (i) elections do not produce responsive governments, (ii) social or group identity, not facts, is the most important driver of perceptions of reality, belief and behavior for voters, and (iii) and the unconscious human mind is a powerful distorter of fact and conscious thinking or reason. Humans are expert at distorting or denying and rationalizing away inconvenient truths. We fully believe our own rationalizations. The human desire to believe what we want is powerful and unconscious. We believe we are rational and base our beliefs on solid facts when the evidence is usually to the contrary. So, when a candidate says something that provokes intense criticism and then dismisses it as "sarcasm" or a joke, that candidate's followers accept it, while the opponent's supporters do not.
When fact checkers assert a candidate has lied, the candidate's supporters tend to reject that, or accept it but downplay or distort its importance. Of course, that assumes there is an objective basis on which to assess the importance of a lie when evaluating a candidate's suitability for office. Under the circumstances, one can reasonably argue that most political rhetoric is mostly meaningless. If that's not a believable proposition, consider how very little credibility (i) most Trump supporters accord almost anything that Clinton says, and (ii) most Clinton supporters accord almost anything that Trump says. If fact checkers do provide some objective data, it appears to have little or no influence on at least strong supporters of either candidate.
Question: Is most political campaign rhetoric meaningless?
What the unconscious mind thinks of interracial marriage
The human mind operates simultaneously on two fundamentally different tracts, unconscious thinking and conscious thinking. Recent estimates accord unconscious thinking with about 95-99.9% of human mental bandwidth, decision-making influence or "firepower." The rest is our conscious thinking. Conscious and unconscious thinking or decisions can be in conflict. The split human reaction to interracial marriage is a case in point.
A recent Washington Post article describes brain responses to photos of same-race and different race married heterosexual couples. The article is based on data published in a recent paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology "Yuck, you disgust me! Affective bias against interracial couples" Brain scans of people who claim to have no disapproval of or bias against interracial couples show disgust or disapproval of photos that show interracial couples (black and white), but not photos of black couples or white couples. According to the WP article, "Researchers found that the insula, a part of the brain that registers disgust, was highly active when participants viewed the photos of the interracial couples, but was not highly engaged when viewers saw the images of same-race couples, whether they were white or black." This shows the possibility of disconnects between what the unconscious mind sees, thinks and decides, i.e., disgust toward interracial couples, and what the conscious mind sees, thinks and decides, i.e., acceptance of interracial couples.
What may be unusual about this difference of opinion is that, at least for young people (college student volunteers in this case), the conscious mind dictates personal belief and behavior toward interracial couples despite a contrary innate unconscious belief or judgment. For politics and social matters like this, that triumph of the weak human conscious mind over our powerful unconscious mind is the rare exception, not the rule. For better or worse, that's just the nature of what evolution conferred on the human species in terms of how we see and think about what we think we see in the world.
Questions: Does the data show disgust, or is data obtained from the human brain simply not believable? Is it possible that our unconscious mind can be so powerful compared to our conscious thoughts and reason?
A recent Washington Post article describes brain responses to photos of same-race and different race married heterosexual couples. The article is based on data published in a recent paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology "Yuck, you disgust me! Affective bias against interracial couples" Brain scans of people who claim to have no disapproval of or bias against interracial couples show disgust or disapproval of photos that show interracial couples (black and white), but not photos of black couples or white couples. According to the WP article, "Researchers found that the insula, a part of the brain that registers disgust, was highly active when participants viewed the photos of the interracial couples, but was not highly engaged when viewers saw the images of same-race couples, whether they were white or black." This shows the possibility of disconnects between what the unconscious mind sees, thinks and decides, i.e., disgust toward interracial couples, and what the conscious mind sees, thinks and decides, i.e., acceptance of interracial couples.
What may be unusual about this difference of opinion is that, at least for young people (college student volunteers in this case), the conscious mind dictates personal belief and behavior toward interracial couples despite a contrary innate unconscious belief or judgment. For politics and social matters like this, that triumph of the weak human conscious mind over our powerful unconscious mind is the rare exception, not the rule. For better or worse, that's just the nature of what evolution conferred on the human species in terms of how we see and think about what we think we see in the world.
Questions: Does the data show disgust, or is data obtained from the human brain simply not believable? Is it possible that our unconscious mind can be so powerful compared to our conscious thoughts and reason?
Book Review: Democracy For Realists
In their book, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, social scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels (Princeton University Press, 2016) describe the major disconnect between what people believe democracy should be, what it really is and why it exists. The difference flows from human social and cognitive biology.
That's no surprise. Human biology dictates that people's beliefs, perceptions and thinking about politics are usually more personal or subjective than objective and fact-based.
In democracies, the typical voter believes that people have preferences for what government should do and they pick leaders or vote their preferences in ballot initiatives. That then leads to majority preference becoming policy, which in turn, legitimizes government because the people consented through their votes. In that vision, government is ethical and has the people's interests at heart. That folk theory isn't how democracy works. The authors point out that the false definition leads to cynicism and unhappiness: “One consequence of our reliance on old definitions is that the modern American does not look at democracy before he defines it; he defines it first and then is confused by what he sees. We become cynical about democracy because the public does not act the way the simplistic definition of democracy says it should act, or we try to whip the public into doing things it does not want to do, is unable to do, and has too much sense to do. The crisis here is not a crisis in democracy but a crisis in theory.” That reflects the reality that people don’t or, because of their social and cognitive biology, can't pay enough attention to politics for the folk theory to work as people believe it should work. Humans are biologically too limited to truly understand what’s going on even if they tried. The authors put it like this: “. . . . 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.”
Where have I seen this before? That describes reality based on what sentient humans can reasonably do. It's not a criticism of the human condition. Democracy and all or nearly all issues in politics are far too complex for voters to rationally deal with based on facts and unbiased reason. Instead, we have to simplify reality and apply heavily biased reason (common sense) to what we think we see. For the most part, what we believe we see is more illusion than objective reality. The authors acknowledge the problem: “The result may not be very comfortable or comforting. Nonetheless, we believe that a democratic theory worthy of serious social influence must engage with the findings of modern social science.” Although Democracy For Realists dissects popular democratic theory and analyzes science and historical data from the last hundred years or so, the exercise is about analyzing the role of human social and cognitive biology in democracy. Our false beliefs about democracy are shaped by human biology, not political theory. The authors research finds that the most important driver of voter belief and behavior is personal social or group identity, not ideology or theory.
For most voters, race, tribe and clan are more important than anything else. That manifests as irrational voter thinking and behavior. For example, the “will of the people” that’s central to the folk theory is a mostly a myth. People are divided on most everything and they usually don’t know what they really want. Average voters usually do not have enough knowledge to rationally make such determinations. For example, voter opinions can be very sensitive to variation in how questions are worded. This reflects a powerful unconscious bias called framing effects. For example, in one 1980’s survey, about 64% said there was too little federal spending on “assistance to the poor” but only about 23% said that there was too little spending on “welfare.” The 1980s was the decade when vilification of “welfare” was common from the political right. The word welfare had been co-opted and reframed as a bad thing. Similarly, before the 1991 Gulf War, about 63% said they were willing to “use military force”, but less than 50% were willing to “engage in combat”, while less than 30% were willing to “go to war.” The subjective nature of political concepts is obvious, i.e., assistance vs. welfare and military force vs. combat vs. war. What was the will of the people? One can argue that serving the will of the people under the folk theory of democracy is more chasing phantom than doing the obvious.
Other aspects of voter behavior also make serving the people's will difficult at best. For example, voters are usually irrational about rewarding and punishing politicians for their performance in office. Incumbents are routinely punished at the polls for floods, drought, offshore shark attacks on swimmers, a recent local university football team's loss and, more importantly, when things are going badly in the last few months of the politicians current term in office. Where's the logic in any of that? Why should an incumbent worry about the people's will, when the people don't reward or punish on that basis? Incentives matter. Achen and Bartels show that there are sound biological reasons for why elections don't produce responsive governments.
Questions: Is the vision of democracy that Achen and Bartels portray reasonably accurate, nonsense or something else? If their vision is reasonably accurate, what, if anything can or should average voters do? Or, is what we have the about best that can be expected from the subjective (personal) biological basis of human social and cognitive biology? Is trying to understand and serve the will of the people the highest calling of democratic governments, or, would something else such as serving the "public interest"** constitute a better focus?
** Defined, for example, here: http://dispol.blogspot.com/2015/12/serving-public-interest.html
In democracies, the typical voter believes that people have preferences for what government should do and they pick leaders or vote their preferences in ballot initiatives. That then leads to majority preference becoming policy, which in turn, legitimizes government because the people consented through their votes. In that vision, government is ethical and has the people's interests at heart. That folk theory isn't how democracy works. The authors point out that the false definition leads to cynicism and unhappiness: “One consequence of our reliance on old definitions is that the modern American does not look at democracy before he defines it; he defines it first and then is confused by what he sees. We become cynical about democracy because the public does not act the way the simplistic definition of democracy says it should act, or we try to whip the public into doing things it does not want to do, is unable to do, and has too much sense to do. The crisis here is not a crisis in democracy but a crisis in theory.” That reflects the reality that people don’t or, because of their social and cognitive biology, can't pay enough attention to politics for the folk theory to work as people believe it should work. Humans are biologically too limited to truly understand what’s going on even if they tried. The authors put it like this: “. . . . 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.”
Where have I seen this before? That describes reality based on what sentient humans can reasonably do. It's not a criticism of the human condition. Democracy and all or nearly all issues in politics are far too complex for voters to rationally deal with based on facts and unbiased reason. Instead, we have to simplify reality and apply heavily biased reason (common sense) to what we think we see. For the most part, what we believe we see is more illusion than objective reality. The authors acknowledge the problem: “The result may not be very comfortable or comforting. Nonetheless, we believe that a democratic theory worthy of serious social influence must engage with the findings of modern social science.” Although Democracy For Realists dissects popular democratic theory and analyzes science and historical data from the last hundred years or so, the exercise is about analyzing the role of human social and cognitive biology in democracy. Our false beliefs about democracy are shaped by human biology, not political theory. The authors research finds that the most important driver of voter belief and behavior is personal social or group identity, not ideology or theory.
For most voters, race, tribe and clan are more important than anything else. That manifests as irrational voter thinking and behavior. For example, the “will of the people” that’s central to the folk theory is a mostly a myth. People are divided on most everything and they usually don’t know what they really want. Average voters usually do not have enough knowledge to rationally make such determinations. For example, voter opinions can be very sensitive to variation in how questions are worded. This reflects a powerful unconscious bias called framing effects. For example, in one 1980’s survey, about 64% said there was too little federal spending on “assistance to the poor” but only about 23% said that there was too little spending on “welfare.” The 1980s was the decade when vilification of “welfare” was common from the political right. The word welfare had been co-opted and reframed as a bad thing. Similarly, before the 1991 Gulf War, about 63% said they were willing to “use military force”, but less than 50% were willing to “engage in combat”, while less than 30% were willing to “go to war.” The subjective nature of political concepts is obvious, i.e., assistance vs. welfare and military force vs. combat vs. war. What was the will of the people? One can argue that serving the will of the people under the folk theory of democracy is more chasing phantom than doing the obvious.
Other aspects of voter behavior also make serving the people's will difficult at best. For example, voters are usually irrational about rewarding and punishing politicians for their performance in office. Incumbents are routinely punished at the polls for floods, drought, offshore shark attacks on swimmers, a recent local university football team's loss and, more importantly, when things are going badly in the last few months of the politicians current term in office. Where's the logic in any of that? Why should an incumbent worry about the people's will, when the people don't reward or punish on that basis? Incentives matter. Achen and Bartels show that there are sound biological reasons for why elections don't produce responsive governments.
Questions: Is the vision of democracy that Achen and Bartels portray reasonably accurate, nonsense or something else? If their vision is reasonably accurate, what, if anything can or should average voters do? Or, is what we have the about best that can be expected from the subjective (personal) biological basis of human social and cognitive biology? Is trying to understand and serve the will of the people the highest calling of democratic governments, or, would something else such as serving the "public interest"** constitute a better focus?
** Defined, for example, here: http://dispol.blogspot.com/2015/12/serving-public-interest.html
The Human Species Greatest Threat
The human species faces a number of threats that could damage civilization or, in the worst case, lead to extinction. A major nuclear war would at least significantly damage civilization. At least hundreds of millions of people would die. Polluting human activity could initiate a chain reaction that leads to a toxic environment and possibly human extinction. Various climate change episodes that caused mass land animal extinctions are known, e.g., anoxic events and the Permian-Triassic extinction event or Great Dying of about 252 million years ago. Given incomplete human knowledge, it is possible that human activity could trigger such an event without human awareness until it is too late to save the species.
If humans do wind up damaging or destroying modern civilization or even annihilating the human species, the ultimate cause would necessarily come from some sort of human behavior that is at least theoretically avoidable. The question is, what is mankind's greatest survival threat?
This discussion excludes threats that humans simply cannot affect or prevent, e.g., a mass extinction caused by eruption of a supervolcano.
Volcanic eruption - a micro-pipsqueak compared to a supervolcano blast The human cognition threat: From a cognitive and social science point of view, the greatest threat lies in the nature of human cognition and the irrational politics it engenders. That directly reflects human biology. In turn, that directly reflects the intellectual firepower that evolution endowed the human species with. Whatever mental capacity humans have as individuals and when acting in groups or societies, it was undeniably sufficient to get humans to where we are today. The unanswered question is whether what evolution resulted in is sufficient to survive our technology and ability to kill ourselves off. Under the circumstances, humanity's greatest threat lies in the psychology of being human. The very nature of human sentience and the individual and group behavior that flow therefrom are the seeds of human self-annihilation. If, when and why the seeds might sprout are open questions. Nonetheless, the seeds are real and viable. Within the last century, research from cognitive, social and other relevant branches of science proved that all humans are driven mostly by our unconscious minds, which are intuitive-emotional-moral. In terms of politics and religion, output from our unconscious minds are not mostly fact- and logic-based. Powerful unconscious biases heavily affect what little we wind up becoming consciously aware of. As a consequence, we are not primarily driven by objective fact or logic. Instead, (i) false perceptions of reality or facts, and (ii) conscious thinking (reason or common sense) that is heavily influenced by powerful unconscious biases drives thought, belief and behavior. Although we are sentient and conscious, unconscious (intuitive-emotional-moral) mental bandwidth or thinking is 100 million to 100 billion times more powerful than conscious thought. For better or worse, the human mental constitution dominated by unconscious intuitive knowledge and thought was sufficient for modern humans to survive and dominate. None of that is a criticism of humans or their intellectual makeup. Those are objective facts based on modern science. That biology applies to politics and it always has. In other words, politics is mostly irrational and based on false information, conscious thinking (common sense) that is heavily biased by unconscious personal beliefs and morals and evolutionary biases that all humans share. Misinformation is easy to acquire and very hard to reject, especially when it rejecting it undermines personal ideology, belief or morals. Often or usually, there is insufficient information or situations are too complex or opaque for true objectivity. The unconscious human mind nonetheless has to act in the face of that. In their 2016 book Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce responsive Governments, social scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels summarized the human condition in politics like this: “. . . . 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.” All modern societies operate under some form of government and political system. What nations, societies, groups and individuals do and don't do is governed by human biology. That is mostly governed by our heavily biased, unconscious perceptions of reality (facts) and thinking. That irrationality, disconnection from reality and associated group behavior, including a lack of empathy toward outsiders, is where the greatest threat to the human species resides. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/08ac2aa91bc4949a3f76eb5e07aebd51f89bb8bae7fc73a1b5295c3e48a32e56.jpg
Questions: Is humanity's greatest threat the imperfect cognitive and social biology that underpins politics? If it is, can our weak, usually deceived and misinformed conscious minds do anything to change the status quo? Or, as some cognitive and social scientists at least imply, are humans destined to never rise much above their innate cognitive and social biology, leaving the fate of the human species up to irrational biology?
Volcanic eruption - a micro-pipsqueak compared to a supervolcano blast The human cognition threat: From a cognitive and social science point of view, the greatest threat lies in the nature of human cognition and the irrational politics it engenders. That directly reflects human biology. In turn, that directly reflects the intellectual firepower that evolution endowed the human species with. Whatever mental capacity humans have as individuals and when acting in groups or societies, it was undeniably sufficient to get humans to where we are today. The unanswered question is whether what evolution resulted in is sufficient to survive our technology and ability to kill ourselves off. Under the circumstances, humanity's greatest threat lies in the psychology of being human. The very nature of human sentience and the individual and group behavior that flow therefrom are the seeds of human self-annihilation. If, when and why the seeds might sprout are open questions. Nonetheless, the seeds are real and viable. Within the last century, research from cognitive, social and other relevant branches of science proved that all humans are driven mostly by our unconscious minds, which are intuitive-emotional-moral. In terms of politics and religion, output from our unconscious minds are not mostly fact- and logic-based. Powerful unconscious biases heavily affect what little we wind up becoming consciously aware of. As a consequence, we are not primarily driven by objective fact or logic. Instead, (i) false perceptions of reality or facts, and (ii) conscious thinking (reason or common sense) that is heavily influenced by powerful unconscious biases drives thought, belief and behavior. Although we are sentient and conscious, unconscious (intuitive-emotional-moral) mental bandwidth or thinking is 100 million to 100 billion times more powerful than conscious thought. For better or worse, the human mental constitution dominated by unconscious intuitive knowledge and thought was sufficient for modern humans to survive and dominate. None of that is a criticism of humans or their intellectual makeup. Those are objective facts based on modern science. That biology applies to politics and it always has. In other words, politics is mostly irrational and based on false information, conscious thinking (common sense) that is heavily biased by unconscious personal beliefs and morals and evolutionary biases that all humans share. Misinformation is easy to acquire and very hard to reject, especially when it rejecting it undermines personal ideology, belief or morals. Often or usually, there is insufficient information or situations are too complex or opaque for true objectivity. The unconscious human mind nonetheless has to act in the face of that. In their 2016 book Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce responsive Governments, social scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels summarized the human condition in politics like this: “. . . . 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.” All modern societies operate under some form of government and political system. What nations, societies, groups and individuals do and don't do is governed by human biology. That is mostly governed by our heavily biased, unconscious perceptions of reality (facts) and thinking. That irrationality, disconnection from reality and associated group behavior, including a lack of empathy toward outsiders, is where the greatest threat to the human species resides. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/08ac2aa91bc4949a3f76eb5e07aebd51f89bb8bae7fc73a1b5295c3e48a32e56.jpg
Questions: Is humanity's greatest threat the imperfect cognitive and social biology that underpins politics? If it is, can our weak, usually deceived and misinformed conscious minds do anything to change the status quo? Or, as some cognitive and social scientists at least imply, are humans destined to never rise much above their innate cognitive and social biology, leaving the fate of the human species up to irrational biology?
Book Review: The User Illusion
In The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down To Size (Penguin Books, 1991, English translation 1998), Danish science writer Tor Norretranders dissects the powerful illusion that humans believe that what they see and think is accurate or real. The User Illusion (TUI) relentlessly describes human consciousness and the biological basis for the false realities that we believe are real. TUI is about the constraints on knowledge. The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the curse of always increasing disorder (entropy), information theory and mathematics all make it clear that all sentient beings in the universe operate under severe information constraints. That includes the limits on the human mind. To believe otherwise is a mistake, or more accurately, an illusion.
TUI’s chapter 6, The Bandwidth of Consciousness, gets right to the heart of matters. Going there is an enlightening but humbling experience. When awake, the information flow from human sensory nerves to the brain is about 11.2 million bits per second, with the eyes bringing in about 10 million bits per second, the skin about 1 million bits per second, with the ears and nose each bringing in about 100,000 thousand bits per second. That’s a lot, right? No, it isn’t. The real world operates at unknowable trillions of gigabits/second, so what we see or perceive isn’t much. It’s puny, actually. Fortunately, humans needed only enough capacity to survive, not to know the future 10 or 100 years in advance or to see a color we can’t see through human eyes with just three different color sensing cell types (red, green, blue). For human survival, three colors was good enough. Evidence of evolutionary success is a planet population of about 7.4 billion humans that’s rapidly heading toward 8 billion.
Given that context, that 11.2 million bits/second may sound feeble but things are much weirder than just that. The 11.2 million bits/second are flowing into our unconscious minds. We are not conscious of all of that. So, what is the bandwidth of consciousness? How much of the 11.2 million bits/second we sense do we become aware of? The answer is about 1-50 bits/second. That’s the estimated rate at which human consciousness processes the information it is aware of. Silently reading this discussion consumes about 45 bits/second, reading aloud consumes about 30 bits/second, multiplying and adding two numbers consumes about 12 bits/second, counting objects consumes about 3 bits/second and distinguishing between different degrees of taste sweetness consumes about 1 bit/second.
What’s going on here??: It’s fair to ask what's really going on and why does our brain operate this way. The answer to the last question is that (i) it’s all that was needed to survive, and (ii) the laws of nature and the nature of humans, which are severely limited in data processing capacity. The human brain is large relative to body size but nonetheless only it processes information at a maximum rate of about 11.2 million bits/second, most of which we never become consciously aware of. That's human bandwidth because that’s what evolution resulted in. What’s going on is our unconscious mind taking in information at about 11.2 million bits/second, discarding or withholding from consciousness what’s not important or needed, which is about 50 bits/second or less, and then presenting the little trickle of important information to consciousness. That’s how much conscious bandwidth (consciousness) that humans needed to survive, e.g., to finagle sex, spot and run away from a hungry saber tooth cat before being eaten, find or hunt food, or do whatever was needed to survive. In modern times, our mental bandwidth is sufficient to do modern jobs, build civilization and advance human knowledge. Where things get very strange is in the presentation of the little trickle to consciousness. Discussing that step is a different discussion, but a glimpse of it as applied to politics is in the Democracy for Realists book review. This discussion focuses on the human brain operating system and the inputs and outputs it deals with and creates.
If one accepts the veracity of the science and Norretrander’s narrative, it is fair to say that the world that humans think they see is more illusion than real. Other chapters of TUI and the science behind the observations reinforce this reality of human cognition and its limits. For example, chapter 9, The Half-Second Delay, describes how our unconscious minds make decisions about 0.5 second before we become aware of what it is we have unconsciously decided. Although there's room for some disagreement about it, we consciously believe that we made a decision about 0.5 second before we became aware of it. Current data suggests that decisions can be made unconsciously about 7 to 10 seconds before we're aware of the decision. We trick ourselves. In other words, we operate under an illusion that our conscious mind makes decisions when that's the exception. The rule is that our unconscious minds are calling the shots most of the time. When it comes to perceiving reality, the low-bandwidth signal the brain uses to create a picture is a simulation that we routinely mistake for reality. As Norretranders sees it, consciousness is a fraud. That’s the user illusion.
TUI’s chapter 6, The Bandwidth of Consciousness, gets right to the heart of matters. Going there is an enlightening but humbling experience. When awake, the information flow from human sensory nerves to the brain is about 11.2 million bits per second, with the eyes bringing in about 10 million bits per second, the skin about 1 million bits per second, with the ears and nose each bringing in about 100,000 thousand bits per second. That’s a lot, right? No, it isn’t. The real world operates at unknowable trillions of gigabits/second, so what we see or perceive isn’t much. It’s puny, actually. Fortunately, humans needed only enough capacity to survive, not to know the future 10 or 100 years in advance or to see a color we can’t see through human eyes with just three different color sensing cell types (red, green, blue). For human survival, three colors was good enough. Evidence of evolutionary success is a planet population of about 7.4 billion humans that’s rapidly heading toward 8 billion.
Given that context, that 11.2 million bits/second may sound feeble but things are much weirder than just that. The 11.2 million bits/second are flowing into our unconscious minds. We are not conscious of all of that. So, what is the bandwidth of consciousness? How much of the 11.2 million bits/second we sense do we become aware of? The answer is about 1-50 bits/second. That’s the estimated rate at which human consciousness processes the information it is aware of. Silently reading this discussion consumes about 45 bits/second, reading aloud consumes about 30 bits/second, multiplying and adding two numbers consumes about 12 bits/second, counting objects consumes about 3 bits/second and distinguishing between different degrees of taste sweetness consumes about 1 bit/second.
What’s going on here??: It’s fair to ask what's really going on and why does our brain operate this way. The answer to the last question is that (i) it’s all that was needed to survive, and (ii) the laws of nature and the nature of humans, which are severely limited in data processing capacity. The human brain is large relative to body size but nonetheless only it processes information at a maximum rate of about 11.2 million bits/second, most of which we never become consciously aware of. That's human bandwidth because that’s what evolution resulted in. What’s going on is our unconscious mind taking in information at about 11.2 million bits/second, discarding or withholding from consciousness what’s not important or needed, which is about 50 bits/second or less, and then presenting the little trickle of important information to consciousness. That’s how much conscious bandwidth (consciousness) that humans needed to survive, e.g., to finagle sex, spot and run away from a hungry saber tooth cat before being eaten, find or hunt food, or do whatever was needed to survive. In modern times, our mental bandwidth is sufficient to do modern jobs, build civilization and advance human knowledge. Where things get very strange is in the presentation of the little trickle to consciousness. Discussing that step is a different discussion, but a glimpse of it as applied to politics is in the Democracy for Realists book review. This discussion focuses on the human brain operating system and the inputs and outputs it deals with and creates.
If one accepts the veracity of the science and Norretrander’s narrative, it is fair to say that the world that humans think they see is more illusion than real. Other chapters of TUI and the science behind the observations reinforce this reality of human cognition and its limits. For example, chapter 9, The Half-Second Delay, describes how our unconscious minds make decisions about 0.5 second before we become aware of what it is we have unconsciously decided. Although there's room for some disagreement about it, we consciously believe that we made a decision about 0.5 second before we became aware of it. Current data suggests that decisions can be made unconsciously about 7 to 10 seconds before we're aware of the decision. We trick ourselves. In other words, we operate under an illusion that our conscious mind makes decisions when that's the exception. The rule is that our unconscious minds are calling the shots most of the time. When it comes to perceiving reality, the low-bandwidth signal the brain uses to create a picture is a simulation that we routinely mistake for reality. As Norretranders sees it, consciousness is a fraud. That’s the user illusion.
Monday, August 6, 2018
Cognitive Science: Reason as a Secular Moral
Monday, August 6, 2018
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images
A 2016 peer-reviewed paper by psychologist Tomas Ståhl and colleagues at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Exeter suggests that some people see reason and evidence as a secular moral issue. Those people tend to consider the rationality of another's beliefs as evidence of their morality or lack thereof.
According to the paper’s abstract: “In the present article we demonstrate stable individual differences in the extent to which a reliance on logic and evidence in the formation and evaluation of beliefs is perceived as a moral virtue, and a reliance on less rational processes is perceived as a vice. We refer to this individual difference variable as moralized rationality. . . . Results show that the Moralized Rationality Scale (MRS) is internally consistent, and captures something distinct from the personal importance people attach to being rational (Studies 1–3). Furthermore, the MRS has high test-retest reliability (Study 4), is conceptually distinct from frequently used measures of individual differences in moral values, and it is negatively related to common beliefs that are not supported by scientific evidence (Study 5).” Ståhl T, Zaal MP, Skitka LJ (2016) Moralized Rationality: Relying on Logic and Evidence in the Formation and Evaluation of Belief Can Be Seen as a Moral Issue. PLoS ONE 11(11): e0166332.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0166332.
According to Ståhl’s paper, “People who moralize rationality should not only respond more strongly to irrational (vs. rational) acts, but also towards the actors themselves. . . . . a central finding in the moral psychology literature is that differences in moral values and attitudes lead to intolerance. For example, the more morally convicted people are on a particular issue (i.e., the more their stance is grounded in their fundamental beliefs about what is right or wrong), the more they prefer to distance themselves socially from those who are attitudinally dissimilar.”
ScienceDaily commented on the paper: moral rationalists see less rational individuals as “less moral; prefer to distance themselves from them; and under some circumstances, even prefer them to be punished for their irrational behavior . . . . By contrast, individuals who moralized rationality judged others who were perceived as rational as more moral and worthy of praise. . . . While morality is commonly linked to religiosity and a belief in God, the current research identifies a secular moral value and how it may affect individuals' interpersonal relations and societal engagement.” ScienceDaily also noted that “in the wake of a presidential election that often kept fact-checkers busy, Ståhl (the paper’s lead researcher) says the findings would suggest a possible avenue to more productive political discourse that would encourage a culture in which it is viewed as a virtue to evaluate beliefs based on logical reasoning and the available evidence. . . . . ‘In such a climate, politicians would get credit for engaging in a rational intellectually honest argument . . . . They would also think twice before making unfounded claims, because it would be perceived as immoral.’”
Since most people believe they are mostly or always quite rational, it seems reasonable to argue that rationality is a moral issue. The finding of personal value for evidence-based rational thinking about political issues suggests it be a possible basis for a political principle or moral value in political ideology.
A 2016 peer-reviewed paper by psychologist Tomas Ståhl and colleagues at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Exeter suggests that some people see reason and evidence as a secular moral issue. Those people tend to consider the rationality of another's beliefs as evidence of their morality or lack thereof.
According to the paper’s abstract: “In the present article we demonstrate stable individual differences in the extent to which a reliance on logic and evidence in the formation and evaluation of beliefs is perceived as a moral virtue, and a reliance on less rational processes is perceived as a vice. We refer to this individual difference variable as moralized rationality. . . . Results show that the Moralized Rationality Scale (MRS) is internally consistent, and captures something distinct from the personal importance people attach to being rational (Studies 1–3). Furthermore, the MRS has high test-retest reliability (Study 4), is conceptually distinct from frequently used measures of individual differences in moral values, and it is negatively related to common beliefs that are not supported by scientific evidence (Study 5).” Ståhl T, Zaal MP, Skitka LJ (2016) Moralized Rationality: Relying on Logic and Evidence in the Formation and Evaluation of Belief Can Be Seen as a Moral Issue. PLoS ONE 11(11): e0166332.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0166332.
According to Ståhl’s paper, “People who moralize rationality should not only respond more strongly to irrational (vs. rational) acts, but also towards the actors themselves. . . . . a central finding in the moral psychology literature is that differences in moral values and attitudes lead to intolerance. For example, the more morally convicted people are on a particular issue (i.e., the more their stance is grounded in their fundamental beliefs about what is right or wrong), the more they prefer to distance themselves socially from those who are attitudinally dissimilar.”
ScienceDaily commented on the paper: moral rationalists see less rational individuals as “less moral; prefer to distance themselves from them; and under some circumstances, even prefer them to be punished for their irrational behavior . . . . By contrast, individuals who moralized rationality judged others who were perceived as rational as more moral and worthy of praise. . . . While morality is commonly linked to religiosity and a belief in God, the current research identifies a secular moral value and how it may affect individuals' interpersonal relations and societal engagement.” ScienceDaily also noted that “in the wake of a presidential election that often kept fact-checkers busy, Ståhl (the paper’s lead researcher) says the findings would suggest a possible avenue to more productive political discourse that would encourage a culture in which it is viewed as a virtue to evaluate beliefs based on logical reasoning and the available evidence. . . . . ‘In such a climate, politicians would get credit for engaging in a rational intellectually honest argument . . . . They would also think twice before making unfounded claims, because it would be perceived as immoral.’”
Since most people believe they are mostly or always quite rational, it seems reasonable to argue that rationality is a moral issue. The finding of personal value for evidence-based rational thinking about political issues suggests it be a possible basis for a political principle or moral value in political ideology.
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Unchangable political beliefs
Neuroscientists at the University of Southern California have published a
paper, Neural correlates of maintaining one’s political
beliefs in the face of counterevidence (Scientific
Reports, 6, No. 39589, December 2016;
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep39589 ), describing brain responses
to evidence that contradicts personal political beliefs. Areas of the
brain that are activated by contrary evidence include the amygdala and
insular cortex. Those areas are associated with emotion,
decision-making, threat perception and feelings of anxiety.
When self-described political liberals were presented with evidence that contradicted eight strongly held political beliefs, the amygdala and insular cortex were more activated than when they were presented with evidence that contradicted eight strongly held, but non-political beliefs. When asked to rate their beliefs after seeing the contrary evidence, people’s beliefs about the non-political topics decreased in strength, but they didn’t significantly change the degree of their faith in their political beliefs. The contrary evidence was five statements of fact that contradicted each of the political and non-political beliefs.
According to the paper: “People often discount evidence that contradicts their firmly held beliefs. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms that govern this behavior. We used neuroimaging to investigate the neural systems involved in maintaining belief in the face of counterevidence, presenting 40 liberals with arguments that contradicted their strongly held political and non-political views. Challenges to political beliefs produced increased activity in the default mode network—a set of interconnected structures associated with self-representation and disengagement from the external world. . . . We also found that participants who changed their minds more showed less BOLD* signal [detectable brain activity] in the insula and the amygdala when evaluating counterevidence. These results highlight the role of emotion in belief-change resistance and offer insight into the neural systems involved in belief maintenance, motivated reasoning, and related phenomena.”
* BOLD: blood oxygen level dependent
The amygdala are the green areas in the brain scan
The amygdala and insular cortex are brain areas associated with thinking about personal identity and abstract or deep thinking that disengages from present reality.
The paper puts the research into context: “Few things are as fundamental to human progress as our ability to arrive at a shared understanding of the world. The advancement of science depends on this, as does the accumulation of cultural knowledge in general. Every collaboration, whether in the solitude of a marriage or in a formal alliance between nations, requires that the beliefs of those involved remain open to mutual influence through conversation. Data on any topic—from climate science to epidemiology—must first be successfully communicated and <em>believed</em> before it can inform personal behavior or public policy. Viewed in this light, the inability to change another person’s mind through evidence and argument, or to have one’s own mind changed in turn, stands out as a problem of great societal importance. Both human knowledge and human cooperation depend upon such feats of cognitive and emotional flexibility.”
Other observations from the paper: “It is well known that people often resist changing their beliefs when directly challenged, especially when these beliefs are central to their identity. In some cases, exposure to counterevidence may even increase a person’s confidence that his or her cherished beliefs are true. . . . One model of belief maintenance holds that when confronted with counterevidence, people experience negative emotions borne of conflict between the perceived importance of their existing beliefs and the uncertainty created by the new information.”
The human mind very much dislikes uncertainty. It is extremely adept at quickly and unconsciously removing uncertainty via rationalization and just making stuff up until uncertainty goes away.
The paper raises some obvious questions. Is an inability to change another person’s mind through evidence and argument, or to have one’s own mind changed, a significant social problem? Is it more ethical or moral to retain one’s core beliefs, even when faced with evidence that those beliefs are factually wrong? In other words, is it better to stand on ideological or moral principle, or, is cognitive and emotional flexibility (pragmatism) a more ethical or moral mind set?
ScienceDaily also discusses this paper: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161223115757.htm
When self-described political liberals were presented with evidence that contradicted eight strongly held political beliefs, the amygdala and insular cortex were more activated than when they were presented with evidence that contradicted eight strongly held, but non-political beliefs. When asked to rate their beliefs after seeing the contrary evidence, people’s beliefs about the non-political topics decreased in strength, but they didn’t significantly change the degree of their faith in their political beliefs. The contrary evidence was five statements of fact that contradicted each of the political and non-political beliefs.
According to the paper: “People often discount evidence that contradicts their firmly held beliefs. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms that govern this behavior. We used neuroimaging to investigate the neural systems involved in maintaining belief in the face of counterevidence, presenting 40 liberals with arguments that contradicted their strongly held political and non-political views. Challenges to political beliefs produced increased activity in the default mode network—a set of interconnected structures associated with self-representation and disengagement from the external world. . . . We also found that participants who changed their minds more showed less BOLD* signal [detectable brain activity] in the insula and the amygdala when evaluating counterevidence. These results highlight the role of emotion in belief-change resistance and offer insight into the neural systems involved in belief maintenance, motivated reasoning, and related phenomena.”
* BOLD: blood oxygen level dependent
The amygdala are the green areas in the brain scan
The amygdala and insular cortex are brain areas associated with thinking about personal identity and abstract or deep thinking that disengages from present reality.
The paper puts the research into context: “Few things are as fundamental to human progress as our ability to arrive at a shared understanding of the world. The advancement of science depends on this, as does the accumulation of cultural knowledge in general. Every collaboration, whether in the solitude of a marriage or in a formal alliance between nations, requires that the beliefs of those involved remain open to mutual influence through conversation. Data on any topic—from climate science to epidemiology—must first be successfully communicated and <em>believed</em> before it can inform personal behavior or public policy. Viewed in this light, the inability to change another person’s mind through evidence and argument, or to have one’s own mind changed in turn, stands out as a problem of great societal importance. Both human knowledge and human cooperation depend upon such feats of cognitive and emotional flexibility.”
Other observations from the paper: “It is well known that people often resist changing their beliefs when directly challenged, especially when these beliefs are central to their identity. In some cases, exposure to counterevidence may even increase a person’s confidence that his or her cherished beliefs are true. . . . One model of belief maintenance holds that when confronted with counterevidence, people experience negative emotions borne of conflict between the perceived importance of their existing beliefs and the uncertainty created by the new information.”
The human mind very much dislikes uncertainty. It is extremely adept at quickly and unconsciously removing uncertainty via rationalization and just making stuff up until uncertainty goes away.
The paper raises some obvious questions. Is an inability to change another person’s mind through evidence and argument, or to have one’s own mind changed, a significant social problem? Is it more ethical or moral to retain one’s core beliefs, even when faced with evidence that those beliefs are factually wrong? In other words, is it better to stand on ideological or moral principle, or, is cognitive and emotional flexibility (pragmatism) a more ethical or moral mind set?
ScienceDaily also discusses this paper: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161223115757.htm
Saturday, December 24, 2016
The awakening: The mainstream media and post truth politics
In the last 6 months or so, and
especially the last month, the number of references to social and cognitive
science in politics and politics-related mainstream media articles and
broadcasts seems to have skyrocketed. That’s based on the MSM sources mostly
relied on for information cited as truth here at B&B.[1] The reason behind
the new interest in the intersection between cognitive and social science with
politics is clearly being driven by the explosion of fake news and the rapid rise
of post truth politics that coincides with the rise of Donald Trump and American
populism.
If interest in the biological science
of politics is real, it’s arguably literally the best thing that has happened to
both American politics and the MSM since the founding of the Republic.
Obviously, there’s a pro-science bias behind that opinion. Maybe B&B is
seeing something that’s not there, but it sure is a convincing illusion.
Getting to the point: The clearest and most pointed and detailed acknowledgement
of the role of science in post truth politics comes from the December 22, 2016
broadcast of Warren Onley’s program To
The Point (the 51 minute podcast is here, Barbara Bogaev guest hosting for
Olney).
The program’s title is The year in (fake)
news. Some of the program’s comments and their location in the podcast are described
below.
The program is in 3 parts. The
first part is irrelevant. The second is the 32 minute core fake news broadcast (The way forward in a post-truth world) and
the last 10-minute segment, Talking point,
describes (i) some of the science behind the human mind, (ii) it’s hard wiring
to be irrational, and (iii) it’s susceptibility to fake news via social media.
0:25 to 1:00: The rise of post
truth politics coincides with the rise of the power and influence of social
media and its algorithms, which have ‘supercharged’ fake news and its potency. Fake
news has sometimes caused violence. It’s now nearly impossible for opposing
partisans to agree on facts. This new free speech technology represents a new threat
to democracy. The role of the MSM, technology companies and educators will have
in untangling the bogus from the real is unclear.
8:20-9:00: Fake news is as old as
“news itself.” What’s new is social media technology and the speed and potency
it confers on fake news. Ad sales and algorithms help spread false stories,
e.g., Trump won the popular vote.
9:35-10:48: Fake news needs to be
defined because it’s in the eye of the beholder. Despite a long fake news
pedigree, it’s now different in terms of its power and speed. The modern
version of fake news differs from old fake news by the difference in (i) it’s
degree of intensity and speed, (ii) it’s reality distorting and persuasive
power, partly due to its ability to present one plausible sounding partisan
view without a counterpoint.
10:54-12:22: Fake news is also driven
by the conflation of entertainment and news. People now have a hard
distinguishing news from entertainment. News and entertainment are now more or
less the same thing. Donald Trump is a natural result of the conflation.
13:19-13:50: One effect of fake
news is its power to portray a sustaining image of the goodness of your side
and the evil of the other side. The data indicates that the effect applies to
both sides but is more pronounced for the conservative side, led by Fox News,
than for the left, meaning that people on the right tend to be more susceptible
to fake news compared to liberals.
14:27-15:34: Cultural change is
also relevant. General distrust of the MSM has risen, especially on the right.
Since the 1950’s, conservatives have been accusing the MSM of liberal bias. Conservatives
now tend to evaluate or weigh news based on its ideology, not its objectivity. That
opens the door for fake news that fits their ideological beliefs.
15:57-16:40: Some people run fake
news web sites for ideological-political purposes and some do it for money (discussed previously).
16:48-18:00: Motivated reasoning
(a powerful unconscious fact and reason distorting bias, discussed previously),
generates (i) a susceptibility to believe what fits personal ideology and world
beliefs, and (ii) reject what doesn’t fit. That biology feeds into why people
go to and believe in the content that fake news sites generate, even if the belief
is factually wrong. This happens to both liberals and conservatives, but is more
prevalent among conservatives.
19:05-19:33: Media literacy means
being more critical and skeptical, but calibrating those responses via personal
judgment. [A point of frustration: Once again, no one has any answer to the
critical question of who to trust. Everyone keeps throwing that responsibility back
on the individual. That ask is both unreasonable and literally impossible for
most people. It’s not going to happen now, or probably ever.]
19:39-20:36: Some recent studies suggest
that students through college level have trouble with distinguishing fake from
real news stories, especially for things you really want to believe.
20:50-21:48: One danger of fake
news is that it effectively makes all news fake whether it’s fake or not. Fake news
is a real threat to all news organizations. One upside is that real news outlets
like the New York Times are seeing an uptick in subscriptions, which seems to
be a response to the rise of Trump and fake news.
The rest of the podcast continues
in this vein. Incredible as it may seem to some people, one topic touched on is
discussing why true facts matter and how easy it now is to find ‘facts’, real
or not, to support just about anything that a person wants to believe.
Footnote:
1. B&B’s most relied-on sources for
information: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, The
Economist, Bloomberg Businessweek, NPR, and NPR affiliate broadcasts, e.g.,
Warren Olney’s To The Point program
that’s broadcast by KCRW in Santa Monica.
Social science & mainstream politics
Central themes here at Dissident Politics include the
intractable irrationality and incoherence of politics and the lack of
impact by modern social and cognitive science on the situation. In the
wake of Donald Trump's shocking election, that just might be starting to
change. This is something worth following to see if it's temporary, like a cat coughing up a hairball, or if something new
in political thinking is beginning to coalesce into some meaningful mind
set change.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal on December 22, 2016, Hoover Institution senior fellow John H. Cochrane sounded like he was beginning to wake up to the reality of how democracy really works in the real world. The Hoover Institution is an influential, hard core conservative think tank at Stanford University. Cochrane, an economist, was refreshingly candid about his learning moments:
“I have learned some deep lessons from this election and especially its aftermath. Like most policy-wonk types I supposed that people care about policies, and about results, and vote accordingly. And are amenable to sensible discussion about policy, and sensible negotiation. . . . What has become very clear to me since the election is a fact probably blindingly obvious to real students of politics—that’s not at all how it works. Most people vote by cultural affinity, brand, values, and a sense of personal identity. To the extent policy matters at all, it’s part of the buzzwords, propaganda and tag lines thrown back and forth. These things are related to where you live and who you interact with on a regular basis, which is why geographic polarization is such a problem—and why measures like the electoral college, which push our democracy to have more even representation of tribal and partisan alignments and identities are so important.”
That’s an indication that what social and cognitive science, including political science, have been saying about politics and how it works is beginning to sink in with at least some members the punditocracy. Those folks are serious and principled about reality-based democracy and rationality.
Of course, pundits who are in it to win at all costs have been aware of the science for decades. They successfully used the knowledge to deceive and manipulate to get what they want. In 2016, that crass class of players finally got what they have been angling for. They have created the new world of post truth politics that’s now threatening American democracy and other Western liberal democracies. For that crowd, truth is irrelevant. Winning is everything. Deceit and lies are key ingredients.
What’s new is that some principled pundits and members of the mainstream media are beginning to wake up to the threat. A period of trial and error to figure out how to deal with the lies and deceit has started. Depending on which side of the truth you’re on, that’s either good or bad.
All of that raises some questions. Are we really in a new era of post truth politics, or has it always been post truth? Does the situation seem different only because of the rise of fake news sites and sources? Or, is it meaningfully different because social media and online propaganda sources have risen in influence? Or, is post truth politics nothing to be concerned with since lies and deceit in politics are constitutionally protected free speech?
Southern Steenbok
Writing in the Wall Street Journal on December 22, 2016, Hoover Institution senior fellow John H. Cochrane sounded like he was beginning to wake up to the reality of how democracy really works in the real world. The Hoover Institution is an influential, hard core conservative think tank at Stanford University. Cochrane, an economist, was refreshingly candid about his learning moments:
“I have learned some deep lessons from this election and especially its aftermath. Like most policy-wonk types I supposed that people care about policies, and about results, and vote accordingly. And are amenable to sensible discussion about policy, and sensible negotiation. . . . What has become very clear to me since the election is a fact probably blindingly obvious to real students of politics—that’s not at all how it works. Most people vote by cultural affinity, brand, values, and a sense of personal identity. To the extent policy matters at all, it’s part of the buzzwords, propaganda and tag lines thrown back and forth. These things are related to where you live and who you interact with on a regular basis, which is why geographic polarization is such a problem—and why measures like the electoral college, which push our democracy to have more even representation of tribal and partisan alignments and identities are so important.”
That’s an indication that what social and cognitive science, including political science, have been saying about politics and how it works is beginning to sink in with at least some members the punditocracy. Those folks are serious and principled about reality-based democracy and rationality.
Of course, pundits who are in it to win at all costs have been aware of the science for decades. They successfully used the knowledge to deceive and manipulate to get what they want. In 2016, that crass class of players finally got what they have been angling for. They have created the new world of post truth politics that’s now threatening American democracy and other Western liberal democracies. For that crowd, truth is irrelevant. Winning is everything. Deceit and lies are key ingredients.
What’s new is that some principled pundits and members of the mainstream media are beginning to wake up to the threat. A period of trial and error to figure out how to deal with the lies and deceit has started. Depending on which side of the truth you’re on, that’s either good or bad.
All of that raises some questions. Are we really in a new era of post truth politics, or has it always been post truth? Does the situation seem different only because of the rise of fake news sites and sources? Or, is it meaningfully different because social media and online propaganda sources have risen in influence? Or, is post truth politics nothing to be concerned with since lies and deceit in politics are constitutionally protected free speech?
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