The Biology Of Nationalism

Thursday, March 21, 2019


In an article in Foreign Policy magazine, This Is Your Brain on Nationalism: The Biology of Us and Them, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky describes the cognitive biology of nationalism. A three minute interview by Fareed Zakaria with Sapolsky about this article and nationalism is here: https://www.facebook.com/fareedzakaria/videos/what-neuroscience-has-to-do-with-nationalism/1172179109608632/

 Humans have a strong impulse to sort people into us and them groups. Sorting happens unconsciously. It is fast, taking about one-tenth of a second, and occurs before we are aware of any assessment. A portion of the brain that regulates fear and aggression reacts quickly, and a few seconds later the region of the brain that is crucial for impulse control and emotional regulation (prefrontal cortex) activates and normally suppresses the initial negative impulse. The unconscious brain reaction to images of faces of people of another race are different than images of same-race faces.

 Sapolsky argues this is driven by evolution, which shaped how our brains perceive and think about sensory inputs from the world. He asserts that nationalism is a critically important phenomenon:

To understand the dynamics of human group identity, including the resurgence of nationalism—that potentially most destructive form of in-group bias—requires grasping the biological and cognitive underpinnings that shape them.

Such an analysis offers little grounds for optimism. Our brains distinguish between in-group members and outsiders in a fraction of a second, and they encourage us to be kind to the former but hostile to the latter. These biases are automatic and unconscious and emerge at astonishingly young ages. . . . . Humans can rein in their instincts and build societies that divert group competition to arenas less destructive than warfare, yet the psychological bases for tribalism persist, even when people understand that their loyalty to their nation, skin color, god, or sports team is as random as the toss of a coin. At the level of the human mind, little prevents new teammates from once again becoming tomorrow’s enemies.

One aspect of our cognitive biology is that biases against out-groups is often learned, although some are completely innate or nearly so. Infants pick up on cues from parents and caregivers about who is in-group and who is out-group, and race is a key marker the brain picks up on. Sapolsky comments:

Put simply, neurobiology, endocrinology, and developmental psychology all paint a grim picture of our lives as social beings. When it comes to group belonging, humans don’t seem too far from the families of chimps killing each other in the forests of Uganda: people’s most fundamental allegiance is to the familiar. Anything or anyone else is likely to be met, at least initially, with a measure of skepticism, fear, or hostility. In practice, humans can second-guess and tame their aggressive tendencies toward the Other. Yet doing so is usually a secondary, corrective step.

For all this pessimism, there is a crucial difference between humans and those warring chimps. The human tendency toward in-group bias runs deep, but it is relatively value-neutral. Although human biology makes the rapid, implicit formation of us-them dichotomies virtually inevitable, who counts as an outsider is not fixed. In fact, it can change in an instant.

Nationalism: The sorting trait applies to nationalism and globalism:

At its best, nationalism and patriotism can prompt people to pay their taxes and care for their nation’s have-nots, including unrelated people they have never met and will never meet. But because this solidarity has historically been built on strong cultural markers of pseudo-kinship, it is easily destabilized, particularly by the forces of globalization, which can make people who were once the archetypes of their culture feel irrelevant and bring them into contact with very different sorts of neighbors than their grand-parents had. Confronted with such a disruption, tax-paying civic nationalism can quickly devolve into something much darker: a dehumanizing hatred that turns Jews into “vermin,” Tutsis into “cockroaches,” or Muslims into “terrorists.” Today, this toxic brand of nationalism is making a comeback across the globe, spurred on by political leaders eager to exploit it for electoral advantage.

In the face of this resurgence, the temptation is strong to appeal to people’s sense of reason. Surely, if people were to understand how arbitrary nationalism is, the concept would appear ludicrous. Nationalism is a product of human cognition, so cognition should be able to dismantle it, too.

Yet this is wishful thinking. In reality, knowing that our various social bonds are essentially random does little to weaken them. . . . . The pull of us-versus-them thinking is strong even when the arbitrariness of social boundaries is utterly transparent, to say nothing of when it is woven into a complex narrative about loyalty to the fatherland. You can’t reason people out of a stance they weren’t reasoned into in the first place.

 Sapolsky argues that we could try to harness nationalist dynamics and not fight or condemn them. That would mean leaders need to avoid jingoism and xenophobia, and appeal to people’s innate in-group tendencies to socialize or incentivize cooperation and accountability. In this political scenario, nationalist pride is rooted in a country’s ability to do social good such as care for the elderly, teaching children empathy, and ensuring increased social mobility.

 Is America capable of trying to harness nationalism in some way akin to Sapolsky's suggestion?

B&B orig: 3/11/19

The Conservative Agenda Comes Out of the Dark

Thursday, March 21, 2019

The Washington Post has looked at what President Trump proposed in his 2020 budget. This is it:

 Domestic spending collapses and defense spending explodes. The budget proposes cutting (1) Medicare by $84.5 billion/year over 10 years, (2) Medicaid by $24.1 billion/year over 10 years, and (3) by $22 billion/year over 10 years Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps). It adds more than $33 billion to Defense, which totals $718 billion for 2020. At that level, defense spending amounts to 57% of the proposed federal discretionary budget.

 The conservative vision of governance could not be clearer. Trump's budget is not going to pass congress and that is not what it is intended to do. Instead, conservatism has finally grown a pair. It now has the balls to be brutally honest about how that ideology sees the federal government and spending priorities.

 That Trump promised not to touch Medicare and Medicaid in the 2016 election is not relevant or important to Trump, conservatives or pro-Trump populists. Conservatism apparently feels that now is the time to make an open run at the vision of America it has been working toward for at least the last 30 years. People will get a chance to approve or disapprove by their votes in the 2020 elections.

B&B orig: 3/12/19

The Rule of Law: Not Nearly as Objective as People Think

Thursday, March 21, 2019


A New York Times article, Old Rape Kits Finally Got Tested. 64 Attackers Were Convicted., reports that a push to test old rape kits is leading to convictions of attackers and rapists.

Ms. Sudbeck’s [rape] case is one of thousands that have gotten a second look from investigators since the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., committed $38 million in forfeiture money to help other jurisdictions test rape kits. Since the grants began being distributed in 2015, the evidence kits have led to 165 prosecutions in cases that were all but forgotten. So far, 64 of those have resulted in convictions.

Rarely have public dollars from a local prosecutor’s office been so directly tied to results with such national implications. The initiative has paid to get about 55,000 rape kits tested in 32 law enforcement agencies in 20 states, among them the police departments in Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Miami, Memphis, Austin, Tex., and Kansas City, Mo. Nearly half produced DNA matches strong enough to be added to the F.B.I.’s nationwide database of genetic profiles. About 9,200 of those matched with DNA profiles in the system, providing new leads and potential evidence.

Past failure to vindicate the rule of law by not testing rape kits is just one kind of subjectivity that suffuses the rule of law. It is a moral outrage and fairly common. Recently House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated that it is not worth impeaching President Trump unless there is overwhelming evidence that could convince even congressional republicans. It is very likely that whatever evidence is available will not lead congressional republicans to vote to impeach Trump. Another congressional democrat commented that impeaching Trump can't be done unless there is a major public opinion shift to support impeachment. It is very likely that whatever evidence is available will not lead Trump supporters to want to see him impeached.

All of that makes impeachment a subjective exercise in partisan politics, not something based on the rule of law, evidence or logic. Convicted felon Paul Manafort received a 37-month sentence for 8 major felonies. Federal sentencing guidelines posited a 19-24 year sentence for what Manafort did. The federal judge in Manafort’s case was openly biased against and hostile to special counsel Mueller's prosecution of Manafort. In imposing the light sentence, the judge said that Manafort's life was “mostly blameless.” Since Manafort is a long term criminal, the judge’s sentence spared Manafort out of anger at Mueller, not based on the gravity of Manafort’s crimes. In this instance, the rule of law was almost purely subjective. It was heavily rigged in favor of white, white collar criminals.

  Some political philosophy on the Rule of Law concept: In a paper, Is The Rule Of Law An Essentially ContestedConcept (In Florida)?, a researcher analyzed how the 2000 election was treated by the courts. The paper comments:

For legal and political philosophers, one item of particular interest was the constant reference in public appeals of almost all the participants to the venerable ideal we call “the rule of law.” The references were legion, and often at odds with one another. This was true of every phase of the debacle. “One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the rule of law.” (dissent in the Supreme Court 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore Vice President Gore took the high line that public criticism of the courts was precluded by the Rule of Law. Yet plainly, many on his side thought that in the circumstances they could do nothing better for the Rule of Law than to condemn the majority's decision as shameful.

The paper’s author, Jeremy Waldron, points out that even before the Bush v. Gore decision, theorists were inching toward the conclusion that the rule of law concept was meaningless. Quoting one theorist, Judith Shklar:

It would not be very difficult to show that the phrase “the Rule of Law” has become meaningless thanks to ideological abuse and general over-use. It may well have become just another one of those self-congratulatory rhetorical devices that grace the public utterances of Anglo-American politicians. No intellectual effort therefore need be wasted on this bit of ruling-class chatter.

Waldron goes on to write that on Shklar's view, invoking the Rule of Law as an authority is “incapable of driving one's argument very much further forward than the argument could have driven on its own. . . . . at the end of the day, many will have formed the impression that the utterance of those magic words meant precious little more than "Hooray for our side!” Despite Shklar’s harsh assessment, Waldron points out that there might be real value in trying to rationalize the rule of law concept. The urgent, important problem that Waldron describes is how to make the law rule instead of having men rule using the law as an excuse to get what they want. Waldron's paper is complex, but it boils down to trying to find a solution to the problem of rule by men instead of by law. I think there are avenues to at least try that, but outcomes are not knowable without the necessary experimentation. That is for a different discussion focused on that issue.

 For this discussion it is sufficient to assert that the Rule of Law related to political matters is often, maybe usually, as or more subjective (ideological or in-group vs out-group) than objective. That is a significant source of political and social polarization in American society, e.g., the 2015 Obergefell Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage. In turn, that polarization can arguably constitute an existential threat to liberal democracy and possibly modern civilization, and maybe even the fate of the human species. Fixing the Rule of Law to at least some non-trivial extent seems to be a critically important task on the road to trying to rationalize politics relative to what it is now. That assumes partial rationalization is possible. Political rationalization really has its work cut out for it.

B&B orig: 3/13/19

The Subtle Power of Propaganda

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

 In his short but mind blowing 1923 masterpiece on propaganda, Crystallizing Public Opinion, Edward Bernays describes his profession as a master propagandist. In his time, he was unsurpassed as a manipulator of mass public opinion. Bernays is considered by many historians to be one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century. He, along with a few other masters of 'public relations' (Bernays invented the term) transformed America from a needs based society to a desires based society. Bernays and a couple of other propagandists working for the US government coaxed a reluctant America to enter into the mindless slaughter of World War I, successfully using the powerful propaganda line of making the world safe for democracy. German Nazis learned their propaganda techniques from Bernays. After he learned that the Nazis were using his techniques to control public opinion and persecute people, he wrote this: They were using my books as the basis for a destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me, but I knew any human activity can be used for social purposes or misused for antisocial ones.

 Bernays invented the term 'public relations' for propaganda after the Nazis made the phrase synonymous with lies, deceit, trickery, baseless emotional manipulation and authoritarianism. He went to his grave believing that using propaganda or public relations techniques to manipulate public opinion was for social good because the real goal of 'proper' propaganda is always social. History has proven that he was wrong about this and propaganda or public relations is still seen by many or most people as essentially antisocial, not essentially social. What Bernays taught the world was how to manipulate mass public opinion for any purpose, not merely for social good.

  Cigarettes and light bulbs: To sell more cigarettes, Bernays created an advertising campaign that made women who smoked in public seem to be empowered and independent creatures of wisdom and grace. He coined the phrase 'torches of freedom' for cigarettes and successfully made it socially acceptable for women to smoke in public. Obviously, conning both men and women into accepting women smoking in public did little or nothing to empower women, but that didn't matter. Cigarette sales skyrocketed, which was the only point of the ad campaign. Bernays also turned public opinion to acceptance of private ownership of electrical utilities after powerful individuals saw the vast amounts of money they could make by selling electricity themselves instead of having governments control the sales. Bernays' propaganda was a critical factor is establishing America's current capitalist vision of very powerful, very self-interested electrical utility companies. Opinions will differ as to how that has played out for the public interest in the last century or so.

  Politics, truth and propaganda: Despite his dubious claim that he used propaganda only for the public good, see cigarettes above, Bernays was no fool about exactly what terrors and mass slaughter it could unleash. Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, was acutely aware of the science of his time. He understood people's minds as well as anyone, and far better than most. His comments in Crystallizing Public Opinion make that clear. He wrote:

“It is manifestly impossible for either side in [a political] dispute to obtain a totally unbiased point of view as to the other side. . . . . The only difference between ‘propaganda’ and ‘education’, really, is in the point of view. The advocacy of what we believe in is education. The advocacy of what we don’t believe in is propaganda. . . . . Political, economic and moral judgments, as we have seen, are more often expressions of crowd psychology and herd reaction than the result of the calm exercise of judgment. . . . . Intolerance is almost inevitably accompanied by a natural and true inability to comprehend or make allowance for opposite points of view. . . . We find here with significant uniformity what one psychologist has called ‘logic-proof compartments.’ The logic-proof compartment has always been with us.”

His characterization of politics and truth strike this observer as stunningly accurate and deeply disturbing. Bernays clearly described in 1923 what is now the irrational and reality- and reason-untethered thing we call American politics in 2019. His comment on the relativity of truth depending on point of view is spot on.

And, when a modern American politician or business mogul gets in hot water over some scandal, their usual first impulse is to call out a public relations folks to formulate the spin and lies they will use against the public to cool the water down so they can stay in power and effectively argue they never did what they did. That spin & lie trick is playing out with a vengeance right now in Washington politics. Propaganda lives. Propaganda works. President Trump is living proof.

 A 4-hour documentary on Bernays life and influence is here: https://youtu.be/eJ3RzGoQC4s

Does Absolute Free Speech Mean Fairness, Objectivity and Impartiality?

Saturday, March 16, 2019

  “But it cannot be the duty, because it is not the right, of the state to protect the public against false doctrine. The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech, and religion. In this field, every person must be his own watchman for truth, because the forefathers did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us.” U.S. Supreme Court in Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 545 (1945)

 
Moderator message at the former Political Rhetoric Busters Disqus channel and its reincarnation as a Word Press blog

 Some people advocate absolute free speech or something close to it. Some may even want to remove limits on speech that incites imminent violence, is defamatory, child porn, and/or false advertising. It is the case that allowing all speech, except what can now be punished or proscribed, is tantamount to being fair, objective and impartial? If so, that means that dark free speech[1] is fair, objective and impartial.

 But on the other hand, facts, truths and logic are often bitterly contested. For example, people who deny that global warming is real or caused mostly by human activities disagree about the science, the data and its interpretation. They usually also attack the scientists as liars, incompetent, ignorant of basic science, and/ or enemies of the state. The two sides rely on different, incompatible sets of facts and logic. Minds do not change.

 The Supreme Court made it clear that because judges have no idea of how to separate honest from dishonest speech, the Constitution protects dark free speech as much as honest free speech.

 History, and cognitive and social sciences make it clear that dark speech is more persuasive than honest speech. Evolution hard-wired human brains to respond more strongly to threats and the negative emotions threat elicits. In practice, this means that dark speech is easily made to be stronger than honest speech, e.g., by lying, exaggerating and so forth. For example, President Trump’s claim that there is an emergency along the Mexico border is considered by most people to be a false alarm.[2] Nonetheless, that alarm is persuasive to many people, especially when people crossing the border are falsely portrayed as murdering, raping, pedophile narco terrorists.

  Ban the speaker: The political right often criticizes the left as intolerant of opposing speech. They point to instances where speakers on college campuses are disinvited to speak. The left responds that the speakers are socially damaging in various ways, e.g., they are liars, or they foment unwarranted fear, hate, intolerance, etc.

 In view of his past history of fomenting hate and racism, Australia canceled a visa for Milo Yiannopoulos to visit there. The Guardian reports: “Immigration minister David Coleman said on Saturday that comments about Islam made by Yiannopoulos in the wake of the Christchurch [New Zealand]massacre were ‘appalling and foment hatred and division’ and he would not be allowed in the country.”

 The shooter in the Christchurch New Zealand mass murder was explicit in his ‘manifesto’ that he was murdering to divide people about guns and he used social media to spread his message of racist rage and hate while he slaughtered innocents and showed it online in real time.

 Given history and human biology is it fair, objective and impartial to let people use dark free speech against the public? Or, because the courts have held there is no way to tell truth from lies, (1) allowing dark speech free reign is fair, objective and/or impartial, and (2) that’s the best that inherently flawed humans can do in view of their cognitive limitations?

Footnotes:
1. Dark free speech: lies, deceit, unwarranted emotional manipulation such as fomenting unwarranted fear, hate, anger, intolerance, bigotry or racism, unwarranted opacity to hide relevant facts or truths.

 2. “Numerous polls suggest Trump’s decision was popular among his Republican base. But his decision to use executive authority to fund a wall along the southern border is opposed by a clear majority of the public. That is reflected in six polls taken from early January to early March. By roughly a 2-to-1 margin, Americans oppose Trump’s decision to use emergency powers to build a border wall. That’s a wider margin than the Senate resolution to overturn Trump’s declaration of a national emergency, which passed 59 to 41.”

A pragmatic ideology

Original Biopolitics and Bionews post: September 3, 2106

 Current cognitive and social science of politics strongly suggests that humans generally have a very limited capacity to see unbiased reality or facts and apply unbiased common sense to the reality they think they see. The situation is complicated and multi-faceted. Evolution resulted in a human mental capacity that was at least sufficient for modern humans to survive the early days. Building existing human civilization has been based on about the same mental firepower our modern ancestors had. What evolution conferred was a mind that operates using (i) a high bandwidth unconscious mind or mental processes that can process about 11 million bits of information per second, and (ii) a very low bandwidth conscious mind that can process at most about 45-50 bits per second.



 Although our conscious mind believes it is aware of a great deal and is in control of decision-making and behavior, that perception of reality is more illusion than real. Our unconscious thinking exerts much more control over decision-making and behavior than we are aware of. Our conscious mind plays into the illusion. Unconscious innate biases, personal morals, social identity and political ideology all inject distortions into our perceptions of reality or facts and our application of common sense. Conscious reason acts primarily to rationalize or defend unconscious beliefs and rationales, even when they are wrong. False unconscious beliefs include a widespread fundamental misunderstanding of democracy. Our political thinking and behaviors are usually based on major disconnects with reality. Our unconscious mind is usually moralistic, self-righteous and intolerant. That creates a human social situation where “our righteous minds guarantee that our cooperative groups will always be cursed by moralistic strife.” Based on that description of the human condition, it's reasonable to believe that mostly irrational human politics cannot be made demonstrably more rational. That may or may not be true.

Some evidence that suggests that at least some people can operate with significantly less bias in perceiving reality and conscious reasoning. They are measurably more rational than average. The finding of superforecasters among average people and their mental traits suggests that politics might be partially rationalizable for at least some people, if not societies or nations as a whole. Research observations on how superforecasters improve over time, i.e., predict, get feedback, revise, and then repeat, there is reason to believe that evidence-based politics could be a route to better policy. Although the effort is in its infancy, there is some real-world evidence that cognitive science-based political policy can be simple but very successful. The trick is figuring a way to how to deal with personal morals, self-interest and other unconscious distortion sources that impedes politics based on less biased reality and common sense.



 If it’s possible to rationalize mainstream politics at all, accepting the reality of human cognition and behavior is necessary. There’s no point in denying reality and trying to propose false reality-based solutions. Given that, one needs to accept that (i) politics is fundamentally a matter of personal morals, ideology, and self- or group identity, and (ii) current political, economic, religious and/or philosophical moral sets or ideologies, e.g., liberalism, conservatism, capitalism, socialism, libertarianism, anarchy, etc, are fundamental to what makes people tick in terms of politics. One can argue that since existing ideological or moral frameworks have failed to rationalize politics beyond what it is now, and probably always has been, then a new moral or ideological framework is necessary (although maybe not sufficient).

Since morals are personal and they vary significantly among people, there’s no reason to believe that a set of morals or ideological principles cannot be conceived that could temper or significantly substitute for existing morals such as the care-harm moral foundation that tends to drive liberal perceptions and beliefs, or the loyalty-betrayal and other foundations that drives conservatives.

  How can one rationalize politics?: Why swim upstream if there’s a potential solution to be had by swimming downstream with the cognitive current? Morals or variants thereof that essentially everyone already claims to adhere to (even though science says that’s just not the case) seems like a good place to start. Most people (> 97% ?) of all political ideologies claim that they (i) work with unbiased facts, and (ii) unbiased common sense. And, most people believe that their politics and beliefs best serve the public interest (general welfare or common good). Few or no people say they rely on personally biased facts and common sense or that that’s the best way to do politics, although social science argues that that’s exactly how politics works for most people. 



  Three pragmatic morals: If that’s the case, then a set of three already widely accepted morals or political principles that might operate to rationalize politics to some extent without being rejected out of hand. They are (i) fidelity to less biased facts, and (ii) fidelity to less biased common sense, both of which (iii) are applied in service to the public interest.

  Service to the public interest: Service to the public interest means governance based on identifying a rational, optimum balance between serving public, individual and commercial interests based on an objective, fact- and logic-based analysis of competing policy choices, while (1) being reasonably transparent and responsive to public opinion, (2) protecting and growing the American economy, (3) fostering individual economic and personal growth opportunity, (4) defending personal freedoms and the American standard of living, (5) protecting national security and the environment, (6) increasing transparency, competition and efficiency in commerce when possible, and (7) fostering global peace, stability and prosperity whenever reasonably possible, all of which is constrained by (i) honest, reality-based fiscal sustainability that limits the scope and size of government and regulation to no more than what is needed and (ii) genuine respect for the U.S. constitution and the rule of law with a particular concern for limiting unwarranted legal complexity and ambiguity to limit opportunities to subvert the constitution and the law.

  As explained here, that conception of the public interest is broad. It reflects the reality that politics is a competition for influence and money among competing interests and ideologies, all of whom essentially always claim they want what’s best for the public interest. A broad conception encompasses concepts that fully engage all competing interests, morals and ideologies, e.g., (i) national security defense (a conservative moral or concern), (ii) concern for fostering peace and environmental protection (liberal) and (iii) defense of personal freedom (libertarian). Although broad, that public service conception is meaningfully constrained by the first two pragmatic morals, less biased fact and less biased common sense. For regular “subjective” or non-pragmatic politics, neither of those are powerful constraints on most people’s perceptions of reality or facts or their conscious thinking about politics. That’s not intended as a criticism of people’s approach to or thinking about politics. It’s intended to be a non-judgmental statement of fact based on research evidence: For politics, “. . . . 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 [intellectually] 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.” https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/72344a6b7c17faaffe1763b324dbcbda3aa2425aa88a63f6779a42e00a4bd011.png

 In essence, what a broad conception service to the public interest does is to see it as the concept is bigger than special interests and bigger than everything shown on this map of morals-based politics. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/714643f01c9a0338188c3c7a72078ff702c1f6fee2fa198c04e1f82b5e4503cd.png In other words, the public interest is bigger than special interests and personal morals or ideologies.

  Criticisms: Many or most liberals, conservatives, libertarians and others will instantly jump all over this “political ideology” as nonsense. For example, how could such a broad conception of serving the public interest make one iota of difference in how political debate occurs now? That’s a good, reasonable question, the answer to which is already given in the discussion, i.e., fidelity to less biased fact and less biased common sense. The assumption is that in the long run, politics better grounded in reality and reason would make a difference for the better.

Many people who see a threat to their own beliefs and ideologies will reject that as nonsense. They already believe (know) that they employ unbiased fact and logic to politics, although the scientific evidence strongly argues that’s not true. Plenty of other criticisms can be raised. Some libertarians and/or conservatives might claim that this subverts personal freedoms and that the concept pays only lip service to defense of personal freedoms. In other words, this ideology seems at best meaningless or at worst a Trojan horse of some sort, e.g., a smoke screen for socialism, fascism and/or tyranny. From a pragmatic POV, it’s easy to see, understand and anticipate that reaction from people trapped in their standard subjective political ideologies, e.g., liberals, conservatives, libertarians, socialists, etc. What this conception does is it forces everyone and every ideology to (i) defend their policy choices on the basis of a less distorted world view and less biased common sense, and (ii) pay more than self-deluded and/or cynical lip service to serving the public interest. Everyone has to win arguments on less spun merits. For standard ideologues, that makes this brand of “pragmatic politics” an absolute nonstarter. It’s dead on arrival. That’s why politics based on these three political principles may be or actually is a new ideology. Who in their right mind would ever conceive of such a wacky thing? This won’t work for liberals, conservatives, libertarians, socialists or believers in any other existing ideology or set of morals I am aware of. To accept this set of political morals, one has to move away from existing mind sets and accept this proposal for what it is, i.e., advocacy of a cold, harsh competition in a brutal marketplace of less spun ideas and arguments based on less spun facts and realities. Some thought has gone into this. Here are responses to a list of criticisms to this three morals-based political ideology.

  Questions: Does proposing a three morals-based pragmatic political ideology make any sense? Is it too utopian to be a reasonable means to partially rationalize politics? Could it ever appeal to more than just a few people? What has been overlooked in the morals or articulation of the public interest? What’s the fatal flaw(s) in the underlying reality and/or rationale? Do the existence of superforecasters provide a template for social change, or are those people intellectual freaks or flukes that cannot guide widespread social change?

 Is it pointless to even discuss such an approach to politics because people will never allow, or as David Hume argued in the 18th century, are incapable of subjugating standard personal moral foundations (their passions) to facts and logic? Would it matter if many people, say 4-5% of adult Americans, did adopt this pragmatic mind set, e.g., they formed a vocal group or tribe that young people could identify with and begin to adopt in lieu of never having to switch from any existing standard ideology?