Trump's Legitimacy: A Thought Experiment

New York Magazine reports that vice president Mike Pence is alleging that US intelligence found that Russian attacks on the 2016 elections did not lead to president Trump's election or even have any effect whatever. In an interview with Axios Pence stated: “Irrespective of efforts that were made in 2016 by foreign powers, it is the universal conclusion of our intelligence communities that none of those efforts had any impact on the outcome of the 2016 election.”

NYM characterizes the Pence assertion like this: “He is lying” and “this is unequivocally false.”

A formal US intelligence assessment released last month concluded that Russia “aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.” The assessment took no position on whether this interference had any effect on the election. The intelligence report stated: “We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election.”

In testimony before congress earlier this week, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats stated that “there should be no doubt that Russia perceives its past efforts as successful and views the 2018 U.S. midterm elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations.”

A thought experiment: There's no way to prove or disprove this, but it is possible that Russian influence was a necessary factor in Trump's win. Specifically, Clinton lost by about 107,000 votes spread among three states, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Given that, what is the probability that pro-Trump Russian influence, including the effects of hacking and Wikileaking damaging stolen emails were, along with other factors like the Comey investigations and his pronouncement of Clinton's email 'carelessness', was enough to make a 107,000 vote difference in three states? If Clinton had won those three states, she would have won the election.

The vote difference could have come from people (i) not voting for Clinton or anyone else due at least in part to the Russian attack on her candidacy, or (ii) voting for another candidate, including Trump. No one can know the answer. Most people whose votes were affected probably cannot say for certain how much of an influence the Russian attack had on their own vote choice.

Mental calculations like this tend to be more grounded in biased unconscious thinking, than in cold, unemotional conscious reason (logic). Most people simply cannot know whether Russian influence was needed to tip their vote choice one way or another. That's just a matter of human biology, not political ideology.

Given the uncertainty, people will believe what they want and they cannot be proven wrong. However, simple logic says that it is likely that Russian attacks did affect some voters. Doing that was the whole point of the Russian attacks. People who say the Russians affected no one is simply not credible.

All things considered, it is reasonable to conclude there is a about a two-thirds (66.66%) chance that Trump is an illegitimate president who is in power now due to Russian interference.

The Kenyan Muslim ISIS terrorist: On this point, it is worth remembering, millions of people (about 20% of American adults in 2010) believed that Obama was not an American citizen despite contrary evidence, i.e., his birth certificate. In this situation, there is more evidence to support belief that Trump is an illegitimate president that what supported any belief that Obama was illegitimate. In addition, many Americans believed Obama to be an ISIS operative and supporter of terrorism, based mostly or completely on unsubstantiated, partisan conspiracy theory.

So, when Trump, his supporters or his administration makes illogical claims that the Russians had no influence and US intelligence proves that, it is just another reality- and logic-detached pro-Trump lie. Unfortunately, such lies incur no political or legal consequences for causing the damage this kind of false rhetoric inflicts on the American republic, its people and civil society.

B&B orig: 2/15/18

The NRA Blocks Gun Violence Research

Since 1996, the NRA has effectively blocked research on the public health impacts of gun ownership. This 1993 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine triggered the NRA's ire and the congressional ban three years later -- gun violence data gets in the way of gun maker's revenue streams.

No solution can be perfect: Nothing we can do in a society awash in hundreds of millions of guns can fix this with perfection. What we can do is try to reduce the incidence of slaughter, even if it is imperfect and even if it costs some money. After all, since both parties are OK with allowing tax cheats to steal $400 - $600 billion/year from the US treasury and not lift a finger to stop that staggering degree of theft from honest people and businesses, America can afford a few billion/year to do at least try to block some of the slaughter, e.g., by requiring universal background checks.

Even if that is a 100% failure, it would show society's respect for the slaughtered innocents. In that case, the money would be far better spent than in allowing thieves to rob us blind every fucking year with bipartisan approval.

As far as I am concerned, showing some tangible degree of respect for the dead is far more important than conservative and/or vehemently pro-gun, anti-public safety politicians blowing baseless smoke about why they oppose reasonable (yes, REASONABLE) attempts at gun control.

The old days: This is a topic I've been harping on for some years now. Here's my post from June of 2015 on my previous site Dissident Politics.

IS THE DEBATE OVER GUNS POINTLESS?

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

The matter of guns, gun violence and the endless gun regulation debate flares up after each mass murder. The body count this time is nine innocents. This debate is now routine. A massacre occurs, both sides reiterate their arguments, the press moves on, emotions cool and nothing changes very much. Meanwhile, about 31,000 Americans die each year from gun violence (11,000 homicides and 21,000 suicides) and another 71,000 are injured. Like it or not, empty debate followed by little or no change has been society's response over the last decade or two.[1]

Given that, it is fair to argue that the current debate over the slaughter in Charleston, SC is mostly pointless. To the extent any societal response occurs, changes are at the state level and new state laws tend to expands guns rights more than restrict. Despite the NRA and gun advocates belief to the contrary, federal law under President Obama has expanded gun rights. Meaningful new regulation, e.g., universal background checks to try to prevent insane people from getting guns, is nowhere on the horizon. That appears to be a consequence of deep public distrust in the federal government coupled with a polarized, corrupt congress.

Since congress is hopelessly gridlocked on this and most other issues, it is unrealistic to expect reasonable new federal legislation that might have some impact, assuming there is anything that can be affected for the better. With hundreds of millions of guns in American society, criminals, haters and most insane people can usually get guns if they want them. Maybe it is too late to do anything in service to the public interest. If that is true, calls for any additional gun regulation are pointless.

Gun advocates, the NRA and gun manufacturers use every mass killing incident as a rationale to reduce gun restrictions so that good guys with guns can shoot bad guys (with guns) who are doing bad things. That logic will probably never be dislodged, especially by the endless arguments the two sides ineffectively throw at each other. On this issue, as most others in politics, the two sides are simply talking past each other with little or no policy impacts.

Where's the data?: There is a discouraging aspect of this issue. Federal funds for research on the public health impact of gun violence cannot be obtained in practice. Researchers fear career damage from venturing into the political morass. Research is at a standstill and has been halted since 1996 due mostly to conservative opposition. The American public cannot truly know or assess the overall impact of guns on public health. This situation reflects the profoundly corrupt nature of politics[2] under the two-party system. Special interests including the NRA and gun manufacturers have effectively blocked federal funding for gun violence research since 1996, presumably because they fear the data may show guns and gun use to carry costs that are far higher than the benefits. Some of limited data that is available suggests that at least in domestic settings guns are a harmful influence: "Rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance."[3]

Under the circumstances, the current debate over gun violence is pointless on three grounds: First, both sides in the gun debate point to the same data and draw opposite conclusions about what policy choices make sense - neither side budges. Second, even if most Americans were to prefer an arguably reasonable new law, e.g., universal background checks, special interest money effectively blocks that. Finally, since rigorous, unbiased research is not available to the American public and policy makers, the debate is based on assumptions about public health impacts that are simply not known.

Footnotes:
1. Dissident Politics (DP) is not arguing here for any additional new gun law or restriction. DP is arguing (1) that the current debate is empty and pointless and (2) for an honest debate that is based on transparent research, unspun facts and unbiased logic to fairly assess the good and bad public health impacts of guns in American society. It is possible that even without the corrupting influence of gun money on the two-party system, most Americans would want to keep the laws more or less the same despite the knowledge that the costs, about 31 thousand deaths and about 71 thousand injuries plus associated medical and law enforcement costs, are acceptable. That could be true even if unbiased research shows the costs are high and the benefits amount to very few or no lives saved, very little or no crime prevented and much personal satisfaction or feelings of security with gun ownership. That is a possible outcome. Americans more or less now accept about 88,000 alcohol-related deaths and about 480,000 cigarette-related deaths each year, so logically, Americans might be willing to accept a high-cost, low-benefit gun situation. 2. Dissident Politics defines political corruption to include serving special interest demands at the expense of the public interest. That definition accords with U.S. laws that were passed over 100 years ago. Corruption of governments by special interest money is a millennia-old phenomenon. Under the current two-party system, special interest money has sufficiently more influence than service to the public interest that the system is fundamentally corrupt, in DP opinion. Research supports the opinion that special interest money in politics has far more influence on policy than what the American people want or the public interest would reasonably require: “Our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts.”

3. Calls to restart federal funding on this issue are likely to fail. That too, reflects the domination of the public interest by special interest money. Given the power of the NRA and gun manufacturers, it is very unlikely that federally funded research can be restarted any time soon. Maybe the best that can be done is to identify public interest funding for rigorous, unbiased research on the true costs (murders, injuries, suicides, etc.) and benefits (personal security, psychological well-being, bad guys shot dead or incapacitated, etc.) of gun ownership and use in American society. Only that kind of analysis will reveal the scope of the public health impacts, good and bad, of gun violence. If the costs are shown to be very high relative to the benefits, which is probably the case, that just might foster an informed, but commensurate, societal response.

B&B orig: 2/15/18

Conservative-Capitalist Attacks on Knowledge Quietly Continue

“The business of business is business and profit, not making the nation or world a better place. The business of government is making the nation or world a better place, not just protecting business.” -- paraphrasing Germaine, probably sometime in the last few years

The New York Times is reporting on another quiet, unexplained bureaucrat firing at the behest of conservative and capitalist pro-business, anti-government ideology. This time, a top scientist in the EPA who works on children’s health issues has been quietly placed on administrative leave with no explanation. She continues to receive pay and benefits. For now.

The NYT writes: “Dr. Ruth Etzel, a pediatrician and epidemiologist who has been a leader in children’s environmental health for 30 years, joined the E.P.A. in 2015 after having served as a senior officer for environmental health research at the World Health Organization. She was placed on administrative leave late Tuesday and asked to hand over her badge, keys and cellphone, according to an E.P.A. official familiar with the decision who was not authorized to discuss the move and who asked not to be identified.

The official said Dr. Etzel was not facing disciplinary action and would continue to receive pay and benefits. No explanation was offered to the staff on Tuesday.

Public health experts said that, since the start of the Trump administration, they had seen a clash between the E.P.A.’s top leadership, appointed by a president who has pushed for weakening environmental rules, and the children’s health office.”

An EPA spokesman refused to give a reason for the administrative leave, and claimed that no anti-science or anti-EPA agenda was in play regarding cuts in EPA size and leadership. Given the Trump administration’s complete disregard for inconvenient research and inconvenient truth, it is reasonable to believe this is just another quiet attack on knowledge and truth. There really is an anti-science and anti-EPA agenda in play. The EPA gets in the way of profits and its work undermines conservatism, which (falsely) holds that (i) government cannot do anything right, and (ii) it cannot generally be involved in regulating businesses or property because that is unconstitutional.

This is a topic that deserves constant attention. Killing off research and blocking access to knowledge is a tactic that is now well-established with American conservatism, and now populism. The easiest way to deceive the public is to keep it in the dark and feed it BS. That is what is happening before our very eyes.https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-biopoliticsandbionews/the_nra_blocks_gun_violence_research/ B&B orig: 9/27/18

The Science of Dishonesty

A 2016 article examined brain responses to dishonesty. This area of science is important. Dishonesty significantly affects major areas of life including politics. The researchers commented that anecdotal evidence indicates that digressions from a moral code tend to be seen as “a series of small breaches that grow over time.” Their paper, The Brain Adapts to Dishonesty, describes empirical evidence for increasing self-serving dishonesty over time. Their data uncovered a plausible neural mechanism showing the brain’s adaptation to dishonesty.

The scientists wrote: “Behaviorally, we show that the extent to which participants engage in self-serving dishonesty increases with repetition. Using fMRI [brain scans] we show that signal reduction in the amygdala is sensitive to the history of dishonest behavior, consistent with adaptation. Critically, the extent of amygdala BOLD [biological activity seen in brain scans] reduction to dishonesty on a present decision relative to the last, predicts the magnitude of escalation of self-serving dishonesty on the next decision. The findings uncover a biological mechanism that supports a ‘slippery slope’: what begins as small acts of dishonesty can escalate into larger instances.

Many dishonest acts are speculatively traced back to a sequence of smaller transgressions that gradually escalated. From financial fraud, to plagiarism, online scams and scientific misconduct, deceivers retrospectively describe how minor dishonest decisions snowballed into significant ones over time(1–4). Despite the dramatic impact of these acts on economics(5,6), policy(7) and education(8), we do not have a clear understanding of how and why small transgressions may gradually lead to larger ones. Here, we set out to empirically demonstrate dishonesty escalation in a controlled laboratory setting and examine the underlying mechanism.

People often perceive self-serving dishonesty as morally wrong(9) and report uneasiness when engaging in such behavior(10). Consistent with these reports, physiological(11) and neurological(12) measures of emotional arousal are observed when people deceive. Blocking such signals pharmacologically results in significant increases in dishonesty. For example, in one study students who had taken and responded to a mild sympatholytic agent were twice as likely to cheat on an exam than those who took a placebo(13). Thus, in the absence of an affective signal that can help curb dishonesty, people may engage in more frequent and severe acts”

The researchers conclusions include these observations: “Dishonesty significantly impacts our personal lives(9) and public institutions(34). Here, we provide empirical evidence that dishonesty gradually increases with repetition when all else is held constant (see(35) for dishonesty escalation in response to escalating rewards). . . . . Our results also suggest that dishonesty escalation is contingent on the motivation for the dishonest act. Specifically, while the magnitude of dishonesty was driven both by considerations of benefit to the self and benefit to the other [benefit another person(s) might gain], the escalation of dishonesty, as well as the amygdala’s response to it over time, was best accounted for by whether dishonesty was self-serving.”

In other words, dishonesty for self-interest appears to be a more powerful motivator than dishonesty that would benefit someone else.

Politics - A Personal Comment: America has entered in a new norm where dishonesty is rampant. There is no way to reconcile the clashing versions of reality, facts and reason that conservatives and populists generally adhere to compared to the versions that many or most others tend to adhere to. To the extent there is objective evidence, this norm is reflected in dishonesty by elected conservative-populist politicians. For example, president Trump has amassed an impressive list of at least 5,000 instances of making false or misleading claims as of September 2018. That record is probably unmatched by any other US president.

Given other aspects of the science of politics, to be discussed in subsequent discussions, it is likely that at least for the time being the new norm cannot be reversed and returned to the level of dishonesty that characterized politics sometime before the rise of Trump. That said, the new norm is not all due to Trump. The rise of dishonesty in politics has been growing for several decades. Trump just came along at the right time and demolished old norms that made dishonesty less attractive. Now, there is little political downside to be dishonest, at least on the political right, while the upside appears to be enormous.

Information source: The quotes given above are taken from the authors’ manuscript, which is here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5238933/

The final, reviewed and edited paper is published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, which is behind a paywall here: https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.4426

B&B orig:10/7/18

The Social Science of Opinions About Abortion

Now that Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed on the Supreme Court, it is reasonable to believe that the new justice would either vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, or vote in support of state laws that continue to narrow abortion rights to the point that abortion is, for at least some women, not practically available. The latter seems less likely given Kavanaugh’s publicly stated beliefs.

In the case of Judge Kavanaugh, at least one source argues his position on Roe v. Wade is that it is inconsistent with the proper test for what can be considered an unenumerated constitutional right.

But what about what the people want?: As a general proposition, it is reasonable to think that what the American people want is largely beside the point. Recent research indicated that public opinion has limited impact on policy choices, with most influence coming from wealthy individuals and organizations representing business interests: “Our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts.”

That concern aside, survey data indicates a significant amount of public support for at least some abortion rights, although results vary among polls. Historical polling by Gallup indicates complexity in opinions. How questions about abortion are worded has a strong effect on poll results.

A January 2017 Pew Research Center article indicates that 59% of Americans approved of abortion in all or most situations. Pew comments: “When it comes to the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 ruling, about seven-in-ten Americans (69%) say Roe v. Wade should not be completely overturned.” Public opinion, however, is nuanced. Poll data shows that most Americans support abortion early in pregnancy, but most oppose it later in a pregnancy. Support for abortion rights drops from about 60% in the 1st trimester to about 28% by the start of the 3rd trimester. Thus, if public opinion had influence, the Roe decision would left more or less intact.

Existing data indicates that most of the opposition to any abortion rights comes from religious Americans, which varies among religious groups.

Source: http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/views-about-abortion/

Other recent poll data indicates a rather surprising degree of incoherence in public opinion: “But I’ve spent a lot of time talking to friends and family and the people I meet in my reporting about how they view the issue. Here’s what I’ve learned: they don’t live in this world of absolutes. Abortion views are indeed strongly held, but what most discourse misses is the nuance — the personal factors and situations that influence how each individual thinks about the issue. Our poll confirms my anecdotal findings: 39 percent of Americans don’t choose a label in the debate.”

One poll respondent expressed his views like this: “From my point of view, I believe all babies go to heaven. And if this baby were to live a life where it would be abused . . . it’s just really hard to explain. It gets into the rights of the woman, and her body, at the same time. It just sometimes gets really hazy on each side.” The poll data reflects the moral confusion and complexity of the issue.

But if one rewords the abortion question to focus on women, the results vary.

Additional nuance in opinions is revealed in questions about what Americans want a woman’s abortion experience to be like.

The Vox poll also found that talking to people about abortion can make a difference: “If you find the one-in-three-women [who have had an abortion] statistic surprising, you’re not alone: when we told participants in our poll this figure, 73 percent of them said it was higher than they expected. One possible explanation for why this shocks people: we don’t talk much about abortion. The one-in-three figure suggests there’s a decent chance that most of us know a woman who has terminated a pregnancy. But only four in 10 of our poll respondents tell us they’ve talked to someone about their abortion experience or decision.”

If that poll data is correct, it appears that simply discussing an abortion experience or decision increases support for a woman’s access to abortion services. How much that increase would be if all Americans were to engage in an abortion conversation cannot be determined from this data. Nonetheless, the moral complexity of the issue and the effects of society in shaping public opinion cannot be ignored. In essence, the Vox poll reveals that life experiences, and personal moral and social factors, all contribute to how people form their opinions. Cognitive and social science indicates those human traits dominate politics and political thinking. This data also suggests that there is significantly more common ground on abortion than most Americans might believe. If that is true, one can argue that this issue should be far less divisive than is now commonly described and perceived.

B&B orig: 10/22/18

Political Thinking: The Brain’s Timeline

----------------------------------------- BRAIN FACTS ------------------------------------------- 

The unconscious mind is estimated to process about 11 million bits of information per second when awake, about 10 million/second for sight, about 1 million/second for hearing and less for other senses. It does parallel processing and works with thousands or millions of memories, some or many of which are not accessible to consciousness.

By contrast, the conscious mind is estimated to be able to process about 1-500 bits of information per second, depending on the task at hand. Consciousness operates by serial processing and can work with an estimated 5-9 memories at one time, processing each independently of the others.

In their 2103 book, The Rationalizing Voter, political scientists Milton Lodge and Charles Taber posit a hypothesis about how people react to political content or information and then form beliefs. In describing their hypothesis, the John Q Public model of political thinking, the authors touch on the timeline the brain or mind operates on to form critically important initial reactions to politics-related inputs.

This helps put the nature political thinking into some context.

At time zero, information is perceived, usually something such as an image is seen, or words are heard. An example is the image in this picture, which is taken from a political ad that Mike Huckabee aired when he was running for president in 2008.

On seeing the image, the mind immediately but unconsciously recognizes the Christian cross in the shelf behind Huckabee.[1] That is time zero. Within about 300-400 milliseconds (~0.3 to 0.4 seconds), the brain has reacted emotionally and the unconscious mind has subjectively experienced the physiological emotion. Psychologists call the subjective experience being in an affective state.

The subjective experience to an emotion can be positive or negative, and strong, medium or weak (ambiguous). At about the same time and in the seconds thereafter, the unconscious mind gathers memories that it decides to place in our consciousness.

Becoming fully conscious of an input is a process that takes about 700-2500 milliseconds. The process starts at about 300-400 milliseconds, once the initial unconscious experience is well underway and maturing. Early on at about 300-400 milliseconds there is a vague consciousness with an experienced sense of positive and/or negative feeling. The authors call the mental state about 300 millisecond to fully conscious at about 1,000 to 2,500 milliseconds ‘preconsciousness’.

Lodge and Taber describe the process like this: “Most of this processing -- the establishment of affect, meaning and intentions -- is subterranean [unconscious, then unconscious and preconscious], each process following one upon the other in about a second of time. An inkling of conscious awareness begins 300-400 milliseconds after stimulus exposure with a felt sense of positive and/or negative feeling, followed by a rudimentary semantic understanding of the concept, both of which are based entirely on unconscious prior processes. People can report simple like-dislike judgments in about 500-800 milliseconds, and make simple semantic categorizations in about 700-1000 milliseconds, depending in part on whether on the priming context facilitates or inhibits comprehension. It takes somewhat longer (1,000-2,500 milliseconds) to provide a scaled response, and even longer to answer open-ended questions. Were we to ask a committed republican to evaluate Secretary of State Hillary Clinton using a simple like/dislike response, it would take about 700 milliseconds to hit the dislike button.”

Lodge & Taber’s mention of the priming context refers to things that make content easier or harder to comprehend. For example, it is easier to comprehend Mike Huckabee’s image with a Christian cross in the background, that it is to comprehend Donald Trump or Kim Jong Un with a Christian cross in the background. All sorts of things , both expected and unexpected, exert priming effects and that affects the time it takes to become fully conscious of political content, and how it is evaluated.

Long story short, unconscious thinking dominates how we perceive and think about political content, much of it happening in less than a second, which is generally before full but slow conscious reason can be brought to bear.

Footnote:
1. Huckabee claims the cross was not intended to be an appeal to Christian imagery. Professional political observers assert (i) it acts as a powerful stimulus on the way to forming opinion about the ad, whether Huckabee intended it or not, and (ii) Huckabee could not be so dense as to not realize exactly what we was doing and why. Playing these kinds of emotional tricks are well-known to all politicians (and marketers-persuaders in general), and if there are any exceptions, they are failures and need to find another day job.

B&B orig: 10/27/18