Are honest politicians electable?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

B&B orig: 9/17/16

The new war: Post-truth politics

An aide to President George W. Bush speaking to New York Times reporter Ron Suskind in 2004: “The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That's not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’”

“A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.” Alex Hybel quoting Ronald Reagan’s 1986 comments in his 1993 book Power Over Rationality: The Bush Administration and the Gulf Crisis.

“The age of neutral journalism has passed. It is impossible because what you select from the huge sea of information is already subjective.” Dmitry Kiselyov, a prominent Russian propagandist, quoted in a September 2016 article, “Yes, I’d lie to you,” in The Economist magazine.

“‘I think it’s going to get stranger and stranger’ for people to listen to the advice of experts whose views are informed only by their subjective judgment. . . . ‘So what I want is that human expert paired with a computer to overcome the human cognitive limitations and biases.” IBM computer engineer David Ferrucci quoted in Philip Tetlock’s 2015 book Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction.

The new war: There’s a new war going on in politics and societies in the US and everywhere else. The stakes in this new war are just as high as they were in World War II or the current war against terrorism. It is more important than the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq. The war is on truth and it is fought online and in the media. In a recent article, “Yes, I’d lie to you”, The Economist magazine argues that we live in a “post-truth world.” The introductory quotes point to the reality of the new war and some hint of the underlying human cognitive traits that make this kind of war both possible and important.

The Economist argues that the assaults on truth we face now in politics is fundamentally different than what we have experienced in the recent past. Governments that include China, Russia and Turkey now routinely flood social media with misinformation to confuse and distract from reality and then to reshape it. Reality and truth are diluted to the point that they have become weak and ineffective in shaping public understanding of the world and opinions. Reality and truth have become secondary to plays on human instinct and intuition and people’s thinking about national policy.

One can argue that reality and truth are now more subservient to ideological or other agendas, usually hidden, than it ever has been in all of human history. What’s different now that supports this argument are two recent developments. First, widespread access to social media and mass communications (cell phones, etc) has never existed in all of human history. Second, mankind’s social and cognitive science knowledge of just how easy it is to manipulate and distort perceptions of reality and facts on a mass scale has exploded in recent decades. The toxic fruits of social and cognitive science advances are becoming painfully apparent.

That brave new world of political thinking applies to the US. That is reflected in the 2004 comment by the Bush aide to the New York Times: “That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” There is real truth in what that mind set is saying. Once one acts, it really does create a new reality, e.g., an invasion of Iraq created the reality. “Studying that reality -- judiciously” were unimportant, i.e., considering the facts that prevailed before that war, the very real possibility of no WMD, didn’t matter.** Instincts, intuitions, emotions and morals, not cold hard facts, underpin the post-truth mind set. Reality has a role that ranges from secondary to no role. If one know how to play the mind game, human cognition and personal morals and beliefs trump everything else, including facts, reality and common sense.

** The NYT article included this on Bush’s thinking before invading Iraq: “Look, I want your vote. I'm not going to debate it with you.” When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, “Look, I'm not going to debate it with you.”

The Economist article makes points that flesh out the concept and reality of the post-truth world and the new war that rages right now.

1. The “backfire effect”, a cognitive bias that makes many people (~30-70% ?) reject truth that corrects falsity is in full-blown effect right now in the Clinton vs. Trump war for hearts and minds. The Economist observes: “Given such biases, it is somewhat surprising that people can ever agree on facts, particularly in politics.” (one can ask if “people” (e.g., >75% ?) ever agree on facts in US politics)

2. The loss of trust in political and social institutions makes the post-truth world (and war) possible because people are free to accept or reject whatever they want. There’s a widespread public sentiment that “people in this country have had enough of experts” and there’s a yearning for politicians who are “authentic” and willing to “tell it how it is.” The loss of trust in politics and the press-media are real and relevant. There’s no gatekeeper for truth that people can agree on.

3. Regarding social media and content that is either true or false, research shows that “there is no advantage to being correct.” People who see false information tend to give it credibility and spread it. The backfire effect prevents subsequent correcting truth from changing the minds of many people. (in other words, it’s better to lie and defend the lie than to try to be honest; that assumes that lies can and do shape “better” realities than honesty)

4. Quoting an observer of events in Turkey: “Information glut is the new censorship. Even I can no longer really tell what is happening in parts of Turkey.” Governments can flood social media with propaganda to dilute real information to the point that it is impossible to determine truth from lies, even for determined fact checkers.

B&B orig: 9/16/16

Cognitive Biology: Reality vs. perception in politics

Moon at dawn

That people can and do perceive something like a speech very differently probably isn't new to most people. What is new is mankind's understanding of how those differences in perception arise.

The biology of cognition & perception vs. reality: Cognitive science now understands that the human mind evolved to create perceptions of reality that may or may not have much objective truth in them. The conscious human mind processes information at a low rate or bandwidth of about 2-45 bits/second. By contrast, our unconscious minds process about 11 million bits/second and it brings to our conscious attention the little dribble of info that it thinks we need to be aware of. What's lost is just stuff our unconscious minds decides we don't need to know about. The process of bringing that trickle of information to our attention is fascinating.

Our unconscious minds creates powerful illusions, which include (i) a firmly-held, often unshakeable, belief that our conscious mind is in control of what we see, think and decide to do, and (ii) what we do become aware of accurately reflects reality without bias or distortion. One author refers to how we perceive our conscious minds as the User Illusion.

When biology and politics collide: On July 7, 2106 an armed gunman shot and killed 5 Dallas Texas police officers and injured 11 others including 9 police officers. A few days after the shooting, president Obama went to Dallas and gave a speech about the event. How different people reacted to that speech is a garden variety example of what happens when biology crashes into politics.

A Washington Post editorial characterized Obama’s Dallas speech like this: “President Obama gave a majestic speech in Dallas, one of the best of his presidency, at once a soaring tribute to slain police officers and an affirmation of peaceful protest. But he was wrong about one thing: On race, sadly, we are as divided as we seem. This condition is not due to anything Obama has said or done. He bends so far backward to avoid giving offense, even to those who richly deserve offending, that he must need regular sessions with a chiropractor. The racial divide, which has its roots in lingering claims of white supremacy, has been there all along.”

By contrast, an editorial at Breitbart characterized the speech like this: “President Barack Obama converted the commemoration of five Dallas police officers killed by a cop-hating African-American into an extended speech in support of the radical Black Lives Matter movement. . . . . the bulk of his speech broadcast the progressive claim that America is racist because racism prevents all groups from prospering as well as other groups.”

The best-liked comment to the Breitbart editorial characterized Obama's speech like this: “This man has no shame. The disrespect he showed today was breathtaking. I could not believe what I was reading. The man is pure evil!”

Finally, CNN characterized the president's speech like this: “President Barack Obama on Tuesday emotionally hailed the bravery of America's police forces at a memorial for five officers gunned down in Dallas, but warned the despair of minority communities who see the criminal justice system weighted against them must not be ignored. In a soaring address, Obama said that a week of violence and racial tension had exposed the deepest fault lines in American democracy and acknowledged that the events of a traumatic week left the nation shocked and fearful. But ultimately, after one of the most searching discourses on race of his presidency, he concluded that the country's divides were not as acute as they often seemed.”

Characterizations of Obama's speech included, (i) an explicit understatement of racism, (ii) an implied overstatement of racism, (iii) an expression of pure evil, and (iv) a balanced, nuanced assessment of a complex social situation.

In the minds of each of those speakers, their vision of reality is sincere and believed to be objectively true and accurate. For those people, their perceptions are reality. Differences of opinion in politics like this are routine. That shows what can happen when human cognitive biology gets its hands (neurons, actually) on reality and unconsciously filters it to conform to personal world views, morals and beliefs.

That's why politics is more subjective than objective. It has to be that way because that's how the human mind works.

B&B orig: 9/15/16

Lies in Politics

Sunrise

A lead editorial in The Economist "The Art of the Lie", has this to say about the lie in politics: "Consider how far Donald Trump is estranged from fact. He inhabits a fantastical realm where Barack Obama's birth certificate was faked, the president founded Islamic State (IS), the Clintons are killers and the father of a rival was with Lee Harvey Oswald before he shot John F. Kennedy. . . . Mr. Trump is a leading exponent of "post-truth" politics -- a reliance on assertions that feel true but have no basis in fact. His brazenness is not punished, but taken as evidence of his willingness to stand up to elite power. . . . The lies of men like Trump . . . . are not intended to convince the elites, whom their target voters neither trust nor like, but to reinforce prejudices."

The Economist, aware of Clinton's lies, refers to Trump as "The Lord of the Lies."

That assessment jives with the cognitive and social science that says that such estrangement from reality isn't just cognitively possible, but it's likely how humans have practiced politics since modern humans or maybe even pre-modern human species invented politics tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago.

The Economist's editorial urges that, despite past political hubris and a lack of humility by politicians generally, "pro-truthers stand and be counted." Those folks seem to be a bit concerned. That's reasonable. Obviously, every person makes their own choices for their own personal reasons. I'm standing and demand to be counted as a pro-truther. Despite Clinton's documented lies, they are much less threatening to American democracy than Trump's lies. Of course, that's just my personal opinion, which is informed more by cognitive and social science than political rhetoric or ideology.

B&B orig: 9/12/16

The Tax Gap: Congress Doesn’t Care

In a 2015 comment on increasing risks to tax law enforcement by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Government Accounting Office observed that "since 2010, IRS’s budget has been reduced by about 10 percent, and IRS enforcement performance and staffing levels have declined." IRS analysis of tax data showed that tax evasion (illegal non-payment of taxes owed -- the "net tax gap") amounted to $290 for tax year 2001 and and $385 billion for 2006, an increase of $19 billion/year.

At that rate of increase, the net tax gap would be about $575 billion for 2016, although recent informal IRS estimates put tax evasion at closer to $400 billion.

Congress has been warned for years that the IRS needs a higher budget to provide customer service, e.g., answer phone calls, and reduce the annual level of tax cheating. Congresses controlled by both parties have ignored the warnings, and in recent years, it has reduced IRS's budget. The IRS budget cut for 2016 is estimated to be over $500 million.

According to one source, IRS critics argue that the budget cuts educing the IRS budget “will result in more efficient use of funds and more accountability to the American people.” Some or most congressional republicans see the IRS as abusing its power and want to see the IRS shrink as a way to become more efficient and less abusive.

In 2012, I asked the IRS office in charge of fielding IRS operations questions when it planned to do another detailed tax compliance study to see what level of tax evasion existed after the 2001 and 2006 studies. That office said that they wouldn't answer the question because it was outside their purview. I rechecked and confirmed that that office was responsible for answering the question.

Congress has a track record of threatening federal agencies with budget cuts to curtail generation of data that congress doesn't the public to become aware of. For example, congress has effectively blocked federal funding of research into the public health impacts of gun ownership since 1996. I took the IRS's non-answer to my question as an indication that congress had threatened the IRS with even bigger budget cuts if it conducted another detailed tax evasion study. Presumably, tax evasion has been increasing since 2006 and congress doesn't want the public to know how bad tax cheating really is, even if congressional actions have gutted IRS functions and left many honest taxpayers on their own and many tax cheats unpunished.

Over the years, tax cheats have not paid trillions, even though the estimated return on investment is about $4 dollars collected for each dollar added to the IRS enforcement budget. The IRS Commissioner observed that “essentially, the government is losing billions to achieve budget savings of a few hundred million dollars.”

For people who value the rule of law, the situation can easily be seen as one where years of corrupt and incompetent, but bipartisan congresses have accepted massive tax evasion in return for campaign contributions, to vindicate anti-government ideology, curb real or perceived abuses and/or other reasons.

One observer sees the situation as “Congress' gift to tax cheats.”

If the concern over IRS abuse is real and non-trivial, should that concern trump the rule of law, or, is this a situation where congress fully supports the rule of law, and there is no cause and effect correlation between reduced IRS budgets and massive annual tax evasion? Is it plausible that congress threatened the IRS and forced it to prevent any further analysis of the size of tax cheating, thereby keeping the data and the issue off the public's radar screens?

If you are an honest taxpayer who pays your full federal tax bill, does roughly $400-$600 billion per year in tax evasion seem fair or reasonable? Does it matter that there would be a 4:1 return on investment in tax law enforcement for at least a portion (~ 80-85% ?) of evaded taxes? Is the situation one of (i) congressional corruption, (ii) congressional incompetence, (iii) justified anti-government ideology, (iv) some of all three, (v) none of those, or (vi) a combination of multiple factors?

B&B orig: 9/6/16

BSing vs. lying in politics

A well-known hard core conservative pundit, David Harsanyi writing at the hard core conservative site The Federalist, once argued the proposition that president Obama was a good BSer but a bad liar. It was posited like this: “Politicians break their promises and modify their positions all the time, of course. They BS us about their opinions and carefully craft identities that are palatable to the average voter. When a person enters this political universe, we need accept that most of the things we hear are, at best, poetic truths. But, yet, there is still a big difference between BSing and lying . . . .” According to the unreliable interwebs, BSing occurs “when someone has no f****ng clue what they are talking about, yet insists on trying to get others to believe him/her.”

The lament cites the “horrendous” job the political-media complex does because it routinely engages in “industrialized spin”, which was argued to be a bad thing that happens all the time. The author criticized misinformed, deceitful politics in general and president Obama's penchant to lie in particular. Obama allegedly always has a clue and therefore he does lies instead of BS.

Regarding the lies, BS, misinformation, deceit and spin in politics, politics-related social science research shows it's common, maybe the rule, not the exception. Politics really is based significantly on what one can argue is objectively false facts and objectively flawed common sense. Of course, that's not surprising in view of how weak and powerless human conscious thinking or bandwidth is relative to our much more powerful unconscious minds. That is true for democracies and probably all other forms of governance. In democracies, the typical voter has an inaccurate belief in how democracy really works or, more accurately, should work. A false belief in what “the will of the people” actually amounts to leads to cynicism. That's a bad thing for sure.

Writing an opinion piece entitled “The unbearable stench of Trump's B.S.” in the Washington Post on August 4, 2016, pragmatic commentator Fareed Zakaria asserts that Donald trump is an inveterate “bullshit artist” based on how the moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt (Princeton) distinguishes lies from BS in his 1986 book On Bullshit:

“Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a specific point. . . . In order to invent a lie at all, [the teller of a lie] must think he knows what is true.” By contrast, BS “is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all . . . except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says.” The BSer’s “focus is panoramic rather than particular” and he has “more spacious opportunities for improvisation, color, and imaginative play. This is less a matter of craft than of art. Hence the familiar notion of the ‘bullshit artist.’ ”

One can ask, so what? Why does any of this make any difference given how misinformation- or deceit-based and self-interested political rhetoric and thinking is? After all, almost all misinformation, lies and BS are constitutionally protected free political/commercial speech. Nobody files lawsuits. Nothing can and/or should be done about it because (i) congress no longer governs due to gridlock, and (ii) regardless of chronic congressional constipation, difficulty in governing is baked into the constitution and the constitution protects it. Leave it alone.

That's a rational, reasonable argument. Reasonable, that is, if one wants to stay with irrational politics based on objectively false reality and flawed common sense.

Maybe nothing can be done. However, there's no prohibition on bringing this up to inform the public about it over and over and over. Cognitive science is clear: repetition often works for breathing life into both truth and outrageous BS or lies.

One final point. Zakaria writes: “This [BS] has been Trump’s mode all his life. He boasts — and boasts and boasts — about his business, his buildings, his books, his wives. Much of it is a concoction of hyperbole and falsehoods. And when he’s found out, he’s like that guy we have all met at a bar who makes wild claims but when confronted with the truth, quickly responds, ‘I knew that!’ . . . . Harry Frankfurt concludes that liars and truth-tellers are both acutely aware of facts and truths. They are just choosing to play on opposite sides of the same game to serve their own ends. The B.S. artist, however, has lost all connection with reality. He pays no attention to the truth. ‘By virtue of this’, Frankfurt writes, ‘bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies are.’ ”

So, are Frankfurt and Zakaria right to argue that BS is a greater enemy of truth than lies? Or, is it irrelevant because politics is so hopelessly mired in fantasy and irrational nonsense that it makes no difference?

B&B orig: 8/10/16

Lies & BS in politics

Fog at sunrise

The issue of politicians, business people and the mainstream media lying to the American people is a hot issue in the 2016 elections. Lying to the American people can take several forms, the most obvious is a statement of fact that is false. The speaker may or may not know of or care about the falsity. Other kinds of lies include (i) withholding facts that undermine or contradict public statements, and (ii) taking actions that undermine or contradict public statements. None of the foregoing kinds of lies is illegal, unless a line is crossed, e.g., a politician inciting violence or treason, or false advertising by a business.

No one denies that politicians lie. One conservative commentator writing for The Federalist put it this way: “Politicians break their promises and modify their positions all the time, of course. They BS us about their opinions and carefully craft identities that are palatable to the average voter. When a person enters this political universe, we need accept that most of the things we hear are, at best, poetic truths. But, yet, there is still a big difference between BSing and lying– though the latter is . . . . pardonable if you happen to be lying for the cause.”

According to the Urban Dictionary, BSing happens “when someone has no f***ing clue what they are talking about, yet insists on trying to get others to believe him/her.” Apparently, that accords with how academia sees the lies vs. BS difference.

Given pipartisan bitterness, some historical context is appropriate.

The founding Fathers and the 1787 Constitutional Convention: The Constitutional Convention took place over about 4 months in 1787 in Philadelphia. The public was told that the Convention was convened to fix the Articles of Confederation. However, key founders including Washington, Madison, Adams and Hamilton wanted to replace the Articles as America’s political operating system with a new form of government.

The delegates elected George Washington to preside. Washington’s rules were that (1) Madison would take notes, (2) the delegates were not allowed to leak any of the proceedings and debate to the press or public, and (3) at the end of the convention, Madison’s notes would be burned and never seen by the public. Washington knew that if the public were fully informed of the proceedings as they developed, opponents would be able to sway public opinion against the new Constitution. Instead, the public would be presented with a completed Constitution that they could accept or reject. Sixteen of the 55 participating delegates refused to sign the final document because they disagreed with the new form of government it embodied.

That is an example of politicians, the founding Fathers, saying or doing one thing in private or among themselves and saying (or doing) contrary things to the public. The founders were lying to the American people, not BSing them. At least, they knew exactly what they were doing.

There are many other examples of US politicians lying to the American people.

F.D.R. & World War II: In his 1940 run for re-election, F.D.R.’s campaign relied heavily on promises to keep America out of World War II. For example, F.D.R. said this on October 30, 1940: “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” Despite that, a F.D.R. sympathizer (a Stanford historian) justified his deception this way: “Franklin Roosevelt repeatedly deceived the American people during the period before Pearl Harbor ... He was like the physician who must tell the patient lies for the patient's own good.”

F.D.R.’s inner circle was aware of his intentions because many of his actions before Pearl Harbor actively fostered (probably forced) US entry into the war.

Lyndon Johnson & the Vietnam War: Before US entry into the Vietnam War, President Johnson lied the American people about a non-existent attack on a US Naval vessel in the Gulf of Tonkin that was falsely asserted to have occurred on August 4, 1964. An attack on a US vessel did occur two days earlier, but the second attack was fabricated for public consumption to generate support for US entry into a Vietnam War.

The cigarette industry’s lies: Lies to the public were routinely used for decades to sell cigarettes. For legal and public relations reasons, the industry “continues to deny that it is clear that smoking causes lung cancer.” Other industry lies include denial of cigarette addiction despite knowing “since the 1960s that the crucial selling point of its product is the chemical dependence of its customers.”

Mitt Romney & the 2012 campaign: Romney told a private campaign donor audience that Obama’s supporters would vote for Obama “no matter what”, arguing that they account for 47% of voters and therefore he did not “worry about those people.” That’s an example of a candidate saying one thing to one audience (rich donors) and never saying it to the American people.

The 2016 presidential election: Hillary Clinton is under fire for saying different things to the public and private audiences and other kinds of lies. That’s like Romney and the Founding Fathers. Fact checkers show that Trump lies much more than Clinton. What, if any qualitative or quantitative differences between the two are there? How is the average American to judge the differences in terms of fitness for elected office?

If nothing else, it should help to put lying or BSing to the public in at least some (not complete) context. It’s not even clear if lying is worse than BSing. At least with the liar, they know the truth. The BSer just doesn’t care. There’s one difference between Clinton and Trump. Clinton isn’t nearly as much a a BSer as Trump is.

Does being a less frequent liar vs. a more frequent liar/BSer make a meaningful difference? Is Lying better, worse or about the same relative to BSing? Or, does lying and/or BSing 'for the cause' justify misleading the American public making Clinton and Trump about the same?

B&B orig: 10/16/16