Original Biopolitics and Bionews post: September 2, 2016
In Superforecasting: The Art & Science of Prediction, social scientist Philip E. Tetlock and journalist Dan Gardner (Crown Publishers, September 2015) observe that at its heart, political policy is usually about predicting the future. The exercise boils down to finding and implementing policies that will do best for the public interest (general welfare or common good), regardless of how one defines the concept.
What most accurately describes the essence of intelligent, objective, public service-oriented politics? Is it primarily an honest competition among the dominant ideologies of our times, defense of one’s social identity, a self-interested quest for money, influence or power, or some combination thereof? Does it boil down to understanding the biological functioning of the human mind and how it sees and thinks about the world? Is it something else entirely?
Subject to caveats, Superforecasting comes down on the side of getting brain biology or cognition right. Everything else is subordinate. Superforecasting describes Tetlock's research into asking what factors, if any, can be identified that contribute to a person’s ability to predict the future. Tetlock asks how well intellectually engaged but otherwise non-professional people can do. The performance of volunteers is compared against experts, including professional national security analysts with access to classified information.
The conscious-unconscious balance: What Tetlock and his team found was that interplay between dominant, unconscious, fact- and common sense-distorting intuitive human cognitive thinking (“System 1” or the “elephant” as described before) and our far less-powerful but conscious, rational thinking (“System 2” or the “rider”) was a key factor in how well people predicted future events. The imbalance of power or bandwidth between conscious thinking and unconsciousness thinking is estimated to be at least 100,000-fold in favor of unconsciousness. The trick to optimal performance appears to be found in people who are able to strike a balance between the two modes of thinking, with the conscious mind constantly self-analyzing to reduce fact distortions and logic biases or flaws that the unconscious mind constantly generates.
Tetlock observes that a “defining feature of intuitive judgment is its insensitivity to the quality of the evidence on which the judgment is based. It has to be that way. System 1 can only do its job of delivering strong conclusions at lightning speed if it never pauses to wonder whether the evidence at hand is flawed or inadequate, or if there is better evidence elsewhere. . . . . we are creative confabulators hardwired to invent stories that impose coherence on the world.”
Coherence can arise even when there's insufficient information. In essence, the human mind evolved an ‘allergy’ to ambiguity, contradictions and concepts that are threatening to personal morals, identity and/or self-interest. To deal with that, we rapidly and unconsciously rationalize those uncomfortable things by denying or distorting them.
It turns out, that with some training and the right mind set, a few people, “superforecasters”, routinely trounce professional experts at predicting future events. Based on a 4-year study, Tetlock’s “Good Judgment Project”, funded by the DoD’s Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, about 2,800 volunteers made over a million predictions on topics that ranged from potential conflicts between countries to currency and commodity, e.g., oil price fluctuations. The predictions had to be precise enough to be analyzed and scored.
About 1% of the 2,800 volunteers turned out to be superforecasters who beat national security analysts by about 30% at the end of the first year. One even beat commodities futures markets by 40%.
The superforecaster volunteers did whatever they could to get information, but they nonetheless beat professional analysts who were backed by computers and programmers, spies, spy satellites, drones, informants, databases, newspapers, books and whatever else that professionals with security clearances have access to. As Tetlock put it, “. . . . these superforecasters are amateurs forecasting global events in their spare time with whatever information they can dig up. Yet they somehow managed to set the performance bar high enough that even the professionals have struggled to get over it, let alone clear it with enough room to justify their offices, salaries and pensions.”
What makes superforecasters so good?: The top 1-2% of volunteers were analyzed for personal traits. In general, superforecasters tended to be people who were open-minded about collecting information, their world view and opposing opinions. They were also able to step outside of themselves and look at problems from an “outside view.” To do that they searched out and integrated other opinions into their own thinking.
Those traits go counter to the standard human tendency to seek out information that confirms what we already know or want to believe. That bias is called confirmation bias.
The open minded trait also tended to reduce unconscious System 1 distortion of problems and potential outcomes by other unconscious cognitive biases such as the powerful but subtle “what you see is all there is” bias, hindsight bias and scope insensitivity, i.e., not giving proper weight to the scope of a problem.
Superforecasters tended to break complex questions down into component parts so that relevant factors could be considered separately. That tends to reduce unconscious bias-induced fact and logic distortions. In general, superforecaster susceptibility to unconscious biases was lower than for other volunteers in the GJP. That appeared to be due mostly to their capacity to use conscious (System 2) thinking to recognize and then reduce unconscious (System 1) biases.
Analysis revealed that superforecasters tended to share 15 traits including (i) cautiousness based on an innate knowledge that little or nothing was certain, (ii) being reflective, i.e., introspective and self-critical, (iii) being comfortable with numbers and probabilities, (iv) being pragmatic and not wedded to any particular agenda or ideology, and, most importantly, (v) intelligence, and (vi) being comfortable with (a) updating personal beliefs or opinions and (b) belief in self-improvement (having a growth mindset). Tetlock refers to that mind set as being in “perpeutal beta” mode.
Unlike political ideologues, superforecasters tended to be pragmatic, i.e., they generally did not try to “squeeze complex problems into the preferred cause-effect templates [or treat] what did not fit as irrelevant distractions.” Compare that with politicians who promise to govern as proud progressives or patriotic conservatives and the voters who respond to those appeals.
What the best forecasters knew about a topic and their political ideology was less important than how they thought about problems, gathered information and then updated thinking and changed their minds based on new information.
The best engaged in an endless process of information and perspective gathering, weighing information relevance and questioning and updating their own judgments when it made sense, i.e., they were in “perpetual beta” mode. Doing that required effort and discipline. Political ideological rigor such as conservatism or liberalism was generally detrimental.
Regarding common superforecaster traits, Tetlock observed that “a brilliant puzzle solver may have the raw material for forecasting, but if he also doesn’t have an appetite for questioning basic, emotionally-charged beliefs he will often be at a disadvantage relative to a less intelligent person who has a greater capacity for self-critical thinking.”
Superforecasters have a real capacity for self-critical thinking. Political, economic and religious ideology is mostly beside the point. Instead, they are actively open-minded, e.g., “beliefs are hypotheses to be tested, not treasures to be protected.”
Tetlock asserts that politicians and partisan pundits opining on all sorts of things routinely fall prey to (i) not checking their assumptions against reality, (ii) making predictions that can’t be measured for success or failure, and/or (iii) knowingly lying to advance their agendas. Politicians, partisan pundits and experts are usually wrong because of their blinding ideological rigidity and/or self- or group-interest and the intellectual dishonesty that accompanies those mind sets. Given the nature of political rhetoric that dominates the two-party system and the biology of human cognition, it is reasonable to argue that most of what is said or written about politics is more spin (meaningless rhetoric or lies-deceit) than not.
Questions: Is Tetlock’s finding of superforecasters real, and if so, does that point to a meaningful (teachable) human potential to at least partially rationalize politics for individuals, groups, societies or nations? Why or why not? After the WMD disaster in Iraq, US Intelligence agencies funded Tetlock’s research and then adopted his techniques to assess intelligence analysts: Will “better” intelligence assessments reduce the frequency or magnitude of mistakes that rigid liberal or conservative politicians tend to make? Would it be any different if the politicians calling the shots are centrists, moderates, socialists, libertarians, anarchists or cognitive science-based, pragmatists focused on problem solving with little or no regard to political ideology or economic theory?
Saturday, March 16, 2019
The moral palette of political ideology
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?
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?
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)