Partisan Ideology Wrecks Reason: An Example

A New York Times article today nicely illustrates the power of partisan, bias-based ideology to trash conscious reason but still be used as support for false beliefs. Regarding the CIA investigation of the Saudi murder of US-based reporter Jamal Khashoggi as ordered by the murdering goon Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, the NYT writes:

“Mr. Graham [ Senator Lindsey Graham - R-SC] had initially threatened to withhold support for legislative priorities until he was briefed by Ms. Haspel. He said on Tuesday that it was clear Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Mattis were being ‘good soldiers’ for the White House when they briefed senators last week.

But he also called their assessments misleading, and alluded to Mr. Mattis’s insistence that American officials had seen ‘no smoking gun’ to indicate Prince Mohammed was to blame in Mr. Khashoggi’s killing.

‘There is not a smoking gun, there’s a smoking saw,’ Mr. Graham said.

‘You have to be willfully blind’ not to see it, he said.”

The situation is simple and clear. Graham characterizes Pompeo and Mattis, as ‘good soldiers’ who are willfully blind in their support of President Trump. Graham also says there is not a smoking gun, but there is a smoking saw referring to the bone saw the goons that Mohammed bin Salman ordered to murder Mr. Khashoggi used in his murder.

How can good soldiers possibly be willfully blind? Isn't willful blindness evidence of an incompetent and/or stupid soldier? That happens when the person expressing that kind of irrational drivel, Senator Graham, puts partisan advantage over the good of the country and the truth. That mindset directly reflects the current republican and populist view that partisan advantage is a higher moral value than service to the public interest. With that corrupt, incompetent mindset, any non-trivial sign of partisan loyalty absolves partisan crooks, liars and traitors of any significant criticism, much less any professional or criminal liability, for betraying the public interest in favor of republican partisan interest.

By now, this is just routine Trump brand politics under the immoral, corrupt, incompetent liar Trump and his now cowed into stupid submission political party called the GOP.

Or, is that too harsh an assessment? Is Senator Graham an insightful patriot fighting for the American people and the public interest? Did Mattis and Pompeo just make an honest mistake or are they corrupt ideologues who hold partisan advantage a higher moral value than service to the public interest and the truth?

In a liberal democracy like America, do political means, e.g., lies, blind stupidity, blind loyalty, etc., justify the ends?

B&B orig: 12/5/18

Analysis of single-stimulus measurement of animal-reminder disgust reliably differentiated between conservatives and liberals

Author Rob Smith

I expect this thread reprises material from a study that Germaine has already presented. The study is entitled Nonpolitical Images Evoke Neural Predictors of Political Ideology.

The images used to evoke animal-reminder-disgust were body mutilation images.

Analysis of MRIs showing areas of brain activation, when subjects were shown body mutilation images, was able to reliably distinguish between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives were found to respond to mutilation images in ways that increased activation in areas of the brain that have been found in previous studies to correspond to increased negative affective valence.

One thing I find of interest is the strong association that two "hot button" political issues, gun control and abortion, have with "body mutilation".

The first thing I notice here is that neither liberals nor conservatives are consistently seeking to lessen or prevent body mutilation in their positions on these issues. So there is not a simple, "Conservatives seek to lessen body mutilation and liberals are OK with it" response, or the reverse, happening.

I am wondering if other issues directly associated with body-mutilation have also been "hot button" political issues in the past. Or whether the apparent links between the political issues of gun control and abortion and animal-reminder-disgust are actually coincidental.

Some other political issues that might directly intersect with body mutilation would appear to be; compulsory car seat-belt, motorcycle and cycling helmet legislation, traffic safety regulations, especially speed limits, industrial safety legislation, declaration of war and commitment of soldiers to armed conflict, militarization of police forces, readiness of police to use deadly force, laws protecting pedestrians from vehicular traffic, restrictions on walkers accessing areas containing large carnivores, air safety regulations, regulation of the training and practice of surgery, regulation of patient safety in hospitals, nursing and aged care facilities, & regulation of prisoner safety in detention facilities.

Looking at this this it appears that many issues included are not "hot button" ones but are rather seen as of being low priority/low importance.

Clearly this is a very informal exploration that just scratches the topic. But there is some indication that the possibility of body mutilation in real life is insufficient by itself to have an issue become a "hot button" political issue.

If others want to add more political issues that intersect with body mutilation in real life, or give an alternative analysis of the data and experiment then please do so.

B&B orig: 12/6/18

Personal Morals vs Social Context: A Science of Politics Paradox?

“I do not myself believe that many people do things because they think they are the right thing to do . . . . I do not think that knowledge of what is morally right is motivational in any serious sense for anyone except a handful of saints.” Richard Posner commenting about the influence of social context (society) on personal morals from his point of view as a US federal judge

Society not only controls our movements, but shapes our identity, our thought, and our emotions. . . . . [in large part social institutions are] structures of our own consciousness. Sociologist Peter Berger commenting on the power of social institutions to shape perceptions of reality and how we think about what we think we see

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. Psychologist Johnathan Haidt commenting on the basis for political thinking in the context of the individual

The foregoing observations raise the question about where the balance of power in the human mind resides. Are we mostly individual, independent thinkers, or are we mostly social creatures who see and act as members of the herd who usually go with the herd?

The debate dates back to Plato (we're members of the herd) and Aristotle (we're independent). The dispute underpins a debate about governance that dates at least back to Plato and Aristotle and continues today. The modern debate pits belief that authoritarian rule is best (Plato's choice) against belief that democratic rule is best (Aristotle's choice). In modern America, that more or less boils down to support for populist rulers like President Trump versus support for democratic norms, e.g., respect for truth and a free press, that existed in the US until Trump crushed them.

What is more influential, personal morals and thinking, or social influences? If we are Plato's herd creatures, he argued that benevolent authoritarian rule would be best because the herd is a spooky, emotional thing that is easily spooked and provoked into unwarranted fear, anger, hate and so forth. If Trump really is an example of an authoritarian, he appears to be a corrupt, not benevolent (virtuous) kind of authoritarian that Plato tried to argue against.

On the other hand, the malicious or corrupt 'Trump type' is probably part of what drove Aristotle to reject authoritarianism in favor of democracy. Of course, the problem with that is that Trump was sort of democratically elected. That shows the weakness in Aristotle's reasoning -- democracies can be corrupt. Authoritarian regimes can rise by persuading people to support a strong man. Complicating this for Trump is illegal Russian influence. Trump might have been a truly legitimate president, and that cloud of contention would would not be hanging over him and his presidency. Enough American voters in 2016 saw more good than bad in Trump and they (with Russia) helped elect a bad leader.

Is there a conflict between Haidt's conception of how the mind works with politics and the social creature conception expressed by Posner and Berger? Are we social sheeple or independent thinkers? Given how modern science sees this, there arguably is no significant conflict because both personal and social influences can and probably usually do operate simultaneously most or all of the time. That said, existing evidence suggests that most people are more influenced by social context and social identity than pure individual perceptions of reality and thinking.

That assessment makes sense because, if nothing else, doing all the thinking for one's self imposes a very high cognitive load. It is literally impossible to think everything through as an individual. Reliance on the herd helps to reduce the cognitive load to something semi-manageable. This isn't a matter of human stupidity. It is a matter of limited innate human cognitive data processing power that has to operate in an ocean of dark free speech intended to mislead, deceive and emotionally manipulate.

Was the situation about the same in ancient times? Probably. Human traits and temperaments do not seem to have changed much since Plato and Aristotle debated. They clearly saw and understood liars, deceivers, brutes and blowhards making runs for power. They tried to figure ways to avoid bad leadership through government structures intended to block bad governance. They wound up at odds. Since then no solution to the bad leader problem has been found.

There may be no full solution, because the problem is innate to human cognitive biology and social behavior. Maybe the best the species can do is to design a partial solution where government structure makes it hard for bad leaders to do bad things and almost impossible to do very bad things. If nothing else, it looks like building consensus for a better form of government will have to take account of individual and social influences because both are relevant.

B&B orig: 12/7/18

Former Trump Administration Official: Trump Wants to Commit Illegal Acts

The Washington Post and other sources are commenting that former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has commented on President Trump's character. WaPO writes in its article entitled Rex Tillerson on Trump: ‘Undisciplined, doesn’t like to read’ and tries to do illegal things:

“The fired secretary of state, who while in office reportedly called Trump a ‘moron’ (and declined to deny it), expounded on his thoughts on the president in a rare interview with CBS News’s Bob Schieffer in Houston.

It wasn’t difficult to read between the lines. Tillerson said Trump is ‘pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read’ and repeatedly attempted to do illegal things.

‘What was challenging for me coming from the disciplined, highly process-oriented ExxonMobil corporation,’ Tillerson said, was ‘to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just kind of says, ‘This is what I believe.’

‘He acts on his instincts; in some respects, that looks like impulsiveness,’ Tillerson said. ‘But it’s not his intent to act on impulse. I think he really is trying to act on his instincts.’

‘I will be honest with you: It troubles me that the American people seem to want to know so little about issues — that they are satisfied with 128 characters,’ Tillerson said.

He was quick to say that that wasn’t meant as a shot at Trump but our political system more broadly. Next to his other comments, though, it wasn’t difficult to see he was lumping Trump with all those Americans who aren’t intellectually curious enough about policy and the actual details of U.S. government.”

Two points merit comment. First, Tillerson is far too generous in arguing that Trump isn’t being impulsive, but instead says he isn’t trying to be impulsive. That is pure baloney. Trump does not care if he is impulsive, crude, vulgar or anything other than what he wants to be in each moment. In that regard, Tillerson seriously misreads the man he worked for.

Second, this reporting points to the possibility that although not all Trump appointed officials are utterly corrupt, Trump will weed less corrupt out and replace them with the more corrupt. That is cause for profound concern.

And, of course, Trump hits back with Trump brand blither. He Tweeted today that Tillerson is as “dumb as a rock,” was “lazy as hell” and “didn't have the mental capacity needed” as the nation's top diplomat.

There is a whole lot of projecting going on in Trump’s Tweets. They accurately describe Trump himself on those points, lazy and dumb.

Or, is that too harsh an assessment? If so, why?

As of September 2, 2018, Trump has visited his golf courses on 25% of his 590 days in office. That dwarfs prior presidents play time and it does not include hundreds of hours of Trump’s ‘executive time’ watching TV, Tweeting on people and just plain farting around like the clueless, uncaring boob that he is.

B&B orig: 12/7/18

A New Category of Lie: The Bottomless Pinocchio

Trump’s 14 Bottomless Pinocchio lies

The Washington Post fact checker has instituted a new category of political lie. WaPo writes:

“Trump’s willingness to constantly repeat false claims has posed a unique challenge to fact-checkers. Most politicians quickly drop a Four-Pinocchio claim, either out of a duty to be accurate or concern that spreading false information could be politically damaging.

Not Trump. The president keeps going long after the facts are clear, in what appears to be a deliberate effort to replace the truth with his own, far more favorable, version of it. He is not merely making gaffes or misstating things, he is purposely injecting false information into the national conversation.

To accurately reflect this phenomenon, The Washington Post Fact Checker is introducing a new category — the Bottomless Pinocchio. That dubious distinction will be awarded to politicians who repeat a false claim so many times that they are, in effect, engaging in campaigns of disinformation.

The bar for the Bottomless Pinocchio is high: The claims must have received three or four Pinocchios from The Fact Checker, and they must have been repeated at least 20 times. Twenty is a sufficiently robust number that there can be no question the politician is aware that his or her facts are wrong. The list of Bottomless Pinocchios will be maintained on its own landing page ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/fact-checker-most-repeated-disinformation/?utm_term=.5636f7c7acab ).

The Fact Checker has not identified statements from any other current elected official who meets the standard other than Trump. In fact, 14 statements made by the president immediately qualify for the list.”

It is good to see fact checkers applying rigorous standards to political lying.[1] This is more evidence that as a lying politician, Trump is both qualitatively and quantitatively different than any other politician. In his blatant contempt for truth and reason, Trump is unique, at least since the rise of fact checking, if not in all American history

. Footnote:
1. If it were up to B&B, the number of repeat lies to establish campaigns of disinformation would be ten. Once a lie has been repeated on ten separate occasions, that is sufficient evidence for rational people to call it a disinformation campaign.

B&B orig: 12/10/18

Post truth politics: A partisan echo chamber

A recent Washington Post article describes a real-world example of how detached from truth politics can be. It also reveals how financially successful that post truth politics can be.

WaPo interviewed Paris Wade and Ben Goldman, the founders of the post truth, pro-Trump website LibertyWritersNews.com. Wade and Goldman are recent university graduates who were unable to get jobs that paid more than low wages. On discovering that post truth journalism could be financially lucrative, they started their new careers. The following illustrate the cognitive power and appeal of post truth journalism as practiced by Wade and Goldman:

1. Before starting LibertyWritersNews (LWN), Wade's revelation about the power of false information came from an article he wrote in about 10 minutes claiming proof that North Korea was experimenting on humans. He backed his fake story up with what Wade called a “totally misleading” photograph of a fleshy mass. Wade published the story and it made $120. According to the WaPO article, Wade observed that “it was a revelation: You have to trick people into reading the news.” (That Wade referred to the fake story as news instead of a fabrication reflects disregard for that bit of nuance)

2. Wade commented on a LWN article titled “THE TRUTH IS OUT! The Media Doesn’t Want You To See What Hillary Did After Losing... .” Wade observed that “nothing in this article is anti-media, but I’ve used this headline a thousand times. Violence and chaos and aggressive wording is what people are attracted to.” Goldman added “our audience does not trust the mainstream media. It’s definitely easier to hook them with that.” Wade added that “there’s not a ton of thought put into it. Other than it frames the story so it gets a click.”

3. In response to LWN articles, readers respond with things like (i) “YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE I TRUST TO REPORT THE TRUTH” and (ii) “Arrest and hang him for war crimes” (in response to an old LWN article headline about George Soros, but with no connection to the article itself -- the old headline is reused because it keeps getting clicks). Wade and Goldman dismiss reader reactions like that. According to the WaPo article, “Goldman and Wade often tell each other they aren’t creating anything that’s not already there, that they’re simply fanning it, that readers know not to take their hyperbole and embellishments seriously. And even if the comments suggest otherwise, they try not to pay them too much attention.”

4. “There are times when Wade wonders what it would be like to write an article he truly believes in. ‘In a perfect world’, it would have nuance and balance and long paragraphs and take longer than 10 minutes to compose. It would make people think. But he never writes it, he says, because no one would click on it, so what would be the point?”

Indeed, why should any news or entertainment source bother with balance, nuance or any concern for truth in politics? What's the point? That's boring. And, it doesn't feel nearly as good as instantly responding to false realities that arouse irrational emotional responses. It require no conscious reason or effort but feels so very good.

Who knows? Maybe post truth politics is the ultimate in empty calories for the mind. It's just harmless brain candy, right?

B&B orig: 11/22/16