Religious Logic: Trump is Cyrus

Thursday, March 21, 2019

 A 6 minute segment, Bully Idol, by Bill Maher explains the logic behind the belief by many Evangelical Christians that President Trump is a modern day Cyrus and was put in office by God. Maher's recitation of the facts and logic enlightens the basis for the gulf in perceptions of reality that is tearing America apart. Despite the comedy, the underlying facts and logic Maher describes are basically sound.

 https://youtu.be/rQBIBjbpzoQ

 B&B orig: 3/9/19

Free Will: Do We Have It Or Not?

Thursday, March 21, 2019

 The TED Radio Hour program that NPR aired yesterday, Hardwired, examines the matter of free will and factors that affect both behavior and health. The broadcast was in four 10-13 minute segments, which are here: https://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/?showDate=2019-03-08

 In the first segment neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky argues that there is no such thing as human free will. He argues that that appears to be acts of free will are simply manifestations of biology we do not understand. Everything is predetermined and we simply live our lives according to factors and forces we cannot control and may never be able to fully understand. Sapolsky pointed to a famous experiment where judges set punishment for convicts. In that experiment, which I think has been questioned at least once, showed that punishments were most strongly correlated with how hungry the judges were, which correlated with lower blood sugar levels.

 In the 2nd segment, geneticist Moshe Szyf points to our genes as hardware that is mutable over time. He cites a situation where pregnant women were in a period of unusual stress for a period of time. This capacity of DNA to be chemically altered by experience amounts to an experiential identity. That identity arises from personal experiences that chemically changes the DNA of developing fetuses ('epigenetic' changes). Over the next 50 years, the babies subjected to stress developed more autoimmune diseases, metabolic diseases and autism than babies that were not subject to the same source of stress. As the stress level increased, so did the level of later disease.

 Referring to this and other research, Szyf argues that DNA is dynamic due to epigenetic changes from life experiences over time. He sees that at least some human free will can arise from the interactions between individuals and external influences such as family, language, culture and so forth. In his view, epigenetic DNA phenomena is a source of some free will. He points to lower levels of stress in modern life compared to life thousands of years ago as a major factor.

 In the 3rd segment, pediatrician Nadine Burke discusses how stress in children manifest as various problems including asthma, ADHD, skin rashes, autoimmune diseases, and so forth. She found a high correlation between traumatic stress (domestic violence, drug abuse, divorce, parental mental illness, etc.) and child health. Stress exerts influences after birth including susceptibility to diseases and risky behavior. That is consistent with life experiences exerting influence on behavior and health.

 In the 4th segment psychologist Brian Little argues that we are born with traits that constrain our free will. He sees behavior and free will arising from our genes (biogenic authenticity), social forces that constrain behavior (sociogenic authenticity), and what we make of ourselves over our lifetimes (idiogenic authenticity). The latter influence can be at odds with the one or both of the former and the confluence of the three make us unique, which he implies is a course of free will.

 On balance, the information presented here makes it sound like humans have, at most, little free will and what there is, is constrained. That is not a comforting conclusion. But is it correct? Is it too early to draw that conclusion, or is the science settled enough? If it is correct, what are the implications for politics?

 B&B orig: 3/10/19

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