Random Thoughts

“Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism when hate of people other than your own comes first.” Charles de Gaulle

“We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.” Chris Mooney, science writer

 “The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.” Carl Sagan

“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.” Abe Lincoln

“The human mind is programmed for survival, not for truth.” John Gray, English philosopher (b. 1948)

“When my brothers try to draw a circle to exclude me, I shall draw a bigger circle to include them.” Pauli Murray, transgender activist

US security agencies found that Russia and China listen to Trump as he talks on his unsecured iphone. Trump vilified Clinton in the 2016 campaign for her email server being unsecured and her sloppiness about security.

B&B orig: 11/11/18

Perceiving Reality by Controlled Hallucination

A major research focus tries to understand how people perceive reality. Originally, perception was generally believed to be a process of directly perceiving the world as it is based on signals the senses send to the brain. In that hypothesis, the brain signals or perceives what the reality is by limited processing or finessing of sense inputs. Thus, when a person looked at an apple, the brain was believed to do limited processing of the visual input into a perception that it is an apple, which is food. That is considered a bottom-up process because the brain has a relatively limited effect on direct perceptions of reality and what the senses are sensing directly reflects reality. In this model, external sensory inputs from sense organs are the main drivers of perception and the brain plays a smaller role in perception.

A more recent hypothesis proposes an opposite way of processing sense inputs. In this model, the “prediction machine model”, the brain exerts a greater influence on what is perceived relative to sense inputs from the eyes, ears, skin, etc. Here, the brain processes sense inputs by making predictions about what is being sensed based on prior experience. When for visual input from looking at an apple, the brain considers hypotheses for what the apple is or could be. The visual input acts mainly as a way to transmit prediction errors to the brain. Such input to the brain acts to rectify incorrect brain hypotheses about what is being sensed. This is considered to be a top-down mechanism of perceiving reality because the brain is the primary reality-perceiving organ, not the senses.

Thus, in essence, the newer model is a process of controlled hallucination (brain hypotheses), not direct perception of reality by sense organs. This model holds that the reality we perceive is  not a direct reflection of the objective external world. Instead, we perceive our brain’s predictions of what is causing our senses to respond as they do. Because no two brains are alike,[1] no two perceived realities will probably be exactly alike. Over time with repeated experience, the brain gets better and better at being correct about what is perceived for many things, but not necessarily all things.

Relevance to politics

The implications of the more recent model for politics could be important. In politics, a person’s brain isn’t just perceiving an apple or smelling a rose. It is trying to discern reality from extremely complex inputs. Those inputs usually implicate one or more powerful unconscious influencers of reality, including a person’s morals, ideology, religion, identity, gender, race, tribe or party affiliation and their social situation. Perceptions of an apple involve a relatively high degree of predictive accuracy by the brain. Clinically healthy people do not mistake an apple for a hamster or an orange.

By contrast, a political speech, especially one intended to mislead and trigger automatic, irrational emotional responses, will lead to a broad spectrum of perceptions that range from perceptions of mostly or completely fact, truth or reason to mostly or completely lies, deceit, emotional manipulation or irrational reasoning. In politics, two minds will rarely or never perceive the same reality from the same complex input. Even a simple political input such as a Christian cross behind a speaker evokes responses that range from positive to negative.

The process of the brain getting better at guessing about perceptions of reality is important. For example, social media echo chambers tend to reinforce perceptions of facts, truths and sound reasoning, even if they happen to false, wrong or flawed. Over time, false, wrong or flawed perceptions are reinforced and become harder to correct. That has been confirmed by cognitive and social science research. That research is consistent with prediction machine model of the brain’s role in perceiving reality, and distorting it into something it isn't when the conditions for reality distortion or denial are present.

In politics, those conditions seem to be present all the time. Their effects arguably include great social damage due to false perceptions of reality.[2]

Source: Scientific American, September 2019

Footnotes:
1. As discussed here before, people vary in their range of experiences that constitute real hallucination. The brain structure associated with reality monitoring ranges from normal, to smaller to absent and that correlates with (not necessarily causes) different frequencies of perceived hallucinations. The machine prediction model of perception sees hallucinations as a form of uncontrolled perception, not as something the brain simply makes up from nothing. In hallucinations, sensory inputs, e.g., something a person sees or smells, are considered to be failing to correct the brain's hypothesis of reality when the brain makes a mistake and either perceives something that either isn't there or perceives a distorted version of something that is there.

2. With any luck, working out how the brain perceives reality just might lead to better ways of communicating that could minimize distortions of facts, truths and reason or logic. If that turns out to be possible, it might present a pathway forward that relies less on conflict and violence than would otherwise be the case. Although the human species has been becoming less violent and brutal over the centuries, that aspect of our nature could still lead to major disaster.

A major miss-step in our history, that had helped take us to the brink?

 this is a re-post form another now closed board.

While contemplating our current problems as a country, I sometimes reflect on the Might Have Beens, where we as a nation took the wrong turns which brought us here.

One of the regrets I have for our nation is that McCain did not win the Republican primaries in 2000.
McCain won the New Hampshire primary in a landslide, and nearly upended the coronation of Bush II. Bush's adoption of a negative smear campaign was the only thing that saved him in South Carolina.
https://www.azcentral.com/s...
https://www.thenation.com/a...
I consider this a tragedy for the country. Bush, while a well-meaning man, was a real lightweight both mentally and in his character, and was dominated by his political advisor Karl Rove, and VP Cheney for the first 6 years of his presidency. McCain had character in spades, and rejected the divisiveness that Rove and Cheney urged on Bush II. Overall, I thought McCain would have been a far better president. But there were specific disasters, that are much less of a judgement call than this, which Bush's win over McCain lead to.

One was 9-11. I doubt that a more security focussed Prez could have prevented 9-11, but there is a chance.

Of more certainty, the Bush presidency produced four disasters for this country, which McCain would have avoided:

* Iraq War
* torture and abandonment of due process
* Extreme disconnect between Military/Security agencies, and the populace
* Massive budget deficits

As a military strategist, I am fairly confident that McCain would not have undertaken a 2nd discretionary war (Iraq), when the first and necessary war (Al Qaida) had not yet been won.
McCain led the effort to overturn the torture program of the Bush admin, so he would not have
supported the torture, renditions, incommunicado detentions, etc that Bush adopted from the world's dictatorships.

McCain would not have called upon Americans to go out shopping, when their service members
were at war. Our service people were always stunned when they rotated home, and it was like there was no war. This should have started with 9-11. Rather than a paternalistic "I will do everything possible to never let this happen again" (IE, torture, violate civil rights, etc), McCain would have honored the dead as HEROES, not VICTIMS! A nation at war, fighting for the Enlightenment values of Human Rights, Religious Tolerance, and Democracy would have been far more resistant to the anti-military/security conspiracy theories of the Truthers, and of the anti-muslim religious bigotry.

As the leading deficit hawk in congress, McCain would not have already emptied our bank account before the Great Recession hit.

Bush gets the blame for the Great Recession, unjustifiably. This was actually a Bush strength, and the best thing he did in his presidency. He created the bank rescue fund, and prevented a second Great Depression. McCain may have mismanaged this recession, and turned it into a depression -- but I don't have reason to think that he would have been less competent than Bush, so this is not a reasonable expectation from a McCain win.

So, the four greatest disasters of the Bush presidency would have been avoided, with no obvious downsides, if the right man had carried the day.

Instead, the pursuit of negative politics, and smearing one's opponents, was pretty much enshrined as the way to win elections!

So -- was this one of the major national missteps on the way to our current climate of partisan hostility and non-communication? Or am I totally misjudging what happened in 2000 and its consequences?

Is Moral Authority Inherent in Fact, Truth and Logic?

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

Constitutionally protected free speech includes facts, truths, and sound reasoning, (collectively, honest free speech), and lies, including lies of omission or truth-hiding, flawed reasoning and unwarranted emotional manipulation (collectively, dark free speech). Unless a legal line is allegedly crossed, e.g., defamation, incitement to violence or false advertising, the courts usually won't even consider lies or flawed reasoning because that isn't what the law is for. Unless someone crosses a legal line or is testifying under oath and lies to the court (perjury), the courts do not see any difference between truth and lies or sound reasoning and flawed reasoning. Outside the courtroom, the scope of free speech in public is vast. Politicians, ideologues, pundits and marketers are all free to do an essentially unlimited amount of lying and flawed reasoning to the public with no legal liability.

When considering the scope of free speech in public, moral authority seems to be equal to all forms of free speech from the legal point of view. What about from a social point point of view?

When asked about politics, most people would say that their perceptions of reality and reasoning is firmly grounded in facts and logic. In general, most would claim to dislike and not employ things like lies, deceit, unwarranted opacity (truth-hiding), and maybe also unwarranted emotional manipulation such as fomenting irrational fear, hate, distrust or bigotry. It is reasonable to believe that over about 85% of adults would claim they prefer facts, truths and sound reasoning over lies, deceit, truth-hiding, flawed reasoning and probably also emotional manipulation.

It is also reasonable to believe that some people believe that at least for politics, the means justify the ends, and thus they are willing to admit that they would lie, deceive, hide truth, apply flawed reasoning and emotionally manipulate to get what they want.

Assuming there is a social preference for honest free speech in politics, does that reflect a belief that there is usually more moral authority or value in honest free speech compared to dark free speech? If it isn't a matter of morality or ethics, then what is basis for the preference?

And, what about people who would not hesitate to use dark free speech in politics to get what they want? They can morally justify lies, deceit and emotional manipulation as a way to achieve good social outcomes, which justifies their behavior. They can even morally justify it as something that benefits themselves, but that benefit then flows to the rest of society. They can also justify dark free speech as something that God would approve of.

Is there more moral authority or value inherent in relying on fact, truth and logic than in relying on lies, deceit, unwarranted opacity and unwarranted emotional manipulation? Or, is it the case that morals and moral behavior are so personal and so subjective that there is no point in even trying to discern any kind of socially meaningful difference between honest free speech and dark free speech?

Political Correctness: More Moral Than Politically Incorrect

In a 20-minute video, Reverend Rob Schenck discusses the dangers of harsh, politically incorrect rhetoric by political and religious leaders speaking in public. At present, many conservatives and populists believe that political correctness has been a detriment to America and its society. In essence, Schenck is arguing the opposite. He backs his argument up with real world examples of what he is talking about. Schenck, an Evangelical Minister, wrote My Words Led to Violence. Now Trump's are too for Time magazine (August 6, 2019).



Schenck's harsh anti-abortion rhetoric helped dehumanize pro-abortion people, calling doctors who perform abortions murderers, and other names. That was his attempt to dehumanize the people he bitterly opposed and morally condemned. 1:35 He considered pro-abortion people to be morally defective and not worthy of the same respect as an anti-abortion person. 11:10

In an article for Time magazine Schenck wrote: "As a national anti-abortion leader for more than 30 years, I routinely used inflammatory language from the podium. At rallies for the activist anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue, I depicted doctors who performed abortions as murderers, callous profiteers in misery, monsters and even pigs."

After one doctor that Schenck rhetorically attacked in public was murdered, Schenck reflected on what role he had in fomenting the killing. He finally came to believe that humanity was God's greatest gift and all people are human and all deserve the same dignity and respect.12:50 Now, his message is one of being careful about not using harsh political rhetoric in public. He has come to believe that some people in an audience look for permission in the words of political speakers on a powerful speaking platform. 15:10 Schenck points out that the president has the most powerful stage in the world and he must understand that his words can foment violence. Some people will take from harsh political rhetoric permission to "act on their most hideous impulses," regardless of whether the speaker intended such permission or not. 16:05 Once a person is dehumanized, someone inevitably will go out and hunt them down and unleash their murderous impulses.

Schenck argues that the president can and must stop the harsh rhetoric because sooner or later, someone innocent will be murdered by a listener who heard permission to kill in the president's words, again, regardless of whether permission was intended or not.

Some of what Schenck refers to has already happened. Trump's harsh rhetoric has stirred some people to try to murder people in groups that the president has vilified and dehumanized. Only intervention by police prevented the murders that Trump has authorized by his immoral, politically incorrect rhetoric. For example, a California man was arrested and charged with making threatening calls to Boston Globe journalists after Trump's attacks on the press: "A California man was charged Thursday with threatening to shoot and kill Boston Globe journalists, calling them “the enemy of the people,” in response to the newspaper’s nationwide editorial campaign denouncing President Trump’s political attacks against the press."

As far as Evangelical support for the president, Schenck sees Evangelicals supporting Trump as having "made a deal with the devil", asserting that "we've sold our principles for political gain."  17:15 He sees the situation as trading respect for human life for degrading of human life. 17:35 In his opinion, Evangelical support for Trump amounts to "a bid for political power." 18:15

Book Review: The Knowledge Illusion

Now if arguments were in themselves enough to make men good, they would justly . . . . have won very great rewards . . . . But as things are . . . . they are not able to encourage the many to nobility and goodness . . . . What argument would remold such people? It is hard, if not impossible, to remove by argument the traits that have long since been incorporated by character. Aristotle on the distinction between unconscious intuitive-emotional vs conscious deliberative thinking

Summary: The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone (Riverhead Books, New York, 2017), like the 1991 book, The User Illusion, focuses on how the human mind operates in a bubble of self-deceit about how much it knows and understands. The User Illusion, emphasizes human data processing power, information theory, the second law of thermodynamics and the physiology of cognition as it was understood at the time. The Knowledge Illusion uses current cognitive and social biology research to ask basically the same questions about the human condition. Both come to the essentially the same conclusion about the vast gulf between how little humans can and do know compared to how much they think they know.

The Knowledge Illusion builds on the existing concept of innate human limitations. The book describes profound insights about what human cognitive limitations mean for how we do politics and most everything else, and by clear implication, the well-being of the human species.

Review: The Knowledge Illusion was written by two cognitive scientists, Steve Sloman (cognitive, linguistic and psychological science professor, Brown University, Editor-In-Chief of the journal Cognition) and Philip Fernbach (professor of marketing, University of Colorado, Leeds School of Business). Fernbach's academic affiliation points out a segment of American society, marketing, that has long understood human cognitive and social and used that knowledge to sell the public. Along with politicians, political groups and special interests backed by professional public relations efforts, marketers are experts in human cognitive biology and how to appeal to the unconscious human mind to get what they want.

The Knowledge Illusion is very easy to read and well organized. It is written for a general audience. It uses a only a few technical terms, which makes it easy to focus on the ideas without much effort to digest terminology. The few core technical terms that are used are important and necessary to describe the book's core concepts. This book is well worth reading for anyone wanting easy access to some current insights about (i) how the human mind perceives, thinks about and deals with the world and politics, and (ii) how to see and do things differently.

The following illustrates where the current science stands.

1: A test for ignorance - the illusion of understanding: It wasn't until 1998 that a simple, reliable method to measure self-deceit was devised. This test has turned out to be very reliable: “We have been studying psychological phenomena for a long time and it is rare to come across one as robust as the illusion of understanding.” The basic test consists of the following three questions. 1. On a scale of 1 to 7 (1 = no understanding, 7 = complete understanding), how well do you understand X, where X is anything from how zippers or flush toilets work, or how well do you understand a political issue?
2. In as much detail as you can give, how does X work or what is X, e.g., how does a zipper work or what is the thinking behind climate change belief?
3. On the 1 to 7 scale, how well do you understand X?
What happens is that when most, not all, people find they know little or nothing about the topic at hand, their score drops. Their illusion of understanding (called the “illusion of explanatory depth”) has been broken. When these questions center on issues that implicate politics such as climate change or genetically modified foods, people with extreme beliefs tend to become less certain and less extreme.

Authors Sloman and Fernbach point out that this method of punching holes in personal belief works by using question 2 to force people to think outside their personal belief systems. The simple belief- or ideology-neutral question ‘how does it work?’ isn't psychologically threatening until people people begin to realize how little they actually know. That cognitive trick forces recognition of reality vs belief disconnects. By the time people understand their own ignorance, it is too late to raise personal belief defenses.

For political issues, this veil of ignorance-piercing cannot be done by providing explanations of climate change or genetically modified foods and then pointing to policies that make sense based on reality. That direct attack method simply doesn't work. Most people have to be ‘tricked’ into seeing their own ignorance, making external facts and logic unpersuasive.

2: Two minds and two operating systems: Unconscious-emotional and conscious deliberative: Sloman and Fernbach describe data showing that people who tend to think slowly and consciously do not show a statistically significant drop in their scores in the ignorance test described above. People who are fast, intuitive, unconscious thinkers, about 80% of adults, generally show a significant score drop in the 3-question ignorance test.

Interestingly, the following three question test is sufficient to distinguish unconscious, intuitive thinkers from conscious, reasoning thinkers (answers at footnote 1 below).
1. A bat and a ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
2. There is a patch of lily pads in a lake. The patch doubles in size every day. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?
3. If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long does it take 100 machine to make 100 widgets?
People who get all three questions right are slow, conscious thinkers, while people who get one or more wrong are fast intuitive thinkers, e.g., various differences between the groups are measurable. The three questions are designed to make the incorrect answer jump right out, which is what most people respond with. By contrast, not responding with the wrong answer requires a mindset that, in essence, checks its work before answering. The slow thinkers do not change their scores in the ignorance test because they are more deliberative about what they think they know. Deliberative thinkers are better grounded in reality than intuitive thinkers.

3: We don't like seeing our personal illusions shattered: Shattering political illusions by coaxing people to think outside their belief systems elicits a backlash in response to (i) seeing reality for what it is, and (ii) how different reality is from what personal belief was. The implication for political leadership is obvious. Sloman and Fernbach sum it up like this:

“Unfortunately, the procedure does have a cost. Exposing people's illusions can upset them. . . . We had hoped that shattering the illusion of understanding would make people more curious and more open to new information . . . . This is not what we have found. If anything, people are less inclined to seek new information after finding out that they were wrong. . . . . people don't like having their illusion shattered. In the words of Voltaire: ‘Illusion is the first of all pleasures.’ . . . . People like to feel successful, not incompetent. . . . . A good leader must be able to help people realize their ignorance without making them feel stupid. This is not easy.”

Echoing Aristotle, Sloman and Fernbach observe that “scientific attitudes are not based on rational evaluation of evidence, and therefore providing information does not change them. Attitudes are determined instead by a host of contextual and cultural factors that make then largely immune to change. . . . . beliefs are deeply intertwined with other beliefs, shared cultural values, and our identities. . . . . The power that culture has over cognition just swamps [any] attempts at education.”

Importantly, the authors constantly point out that the world is far too complex for people to have broad, deep knowledge. They argue that, in view of amazingly severe human cognitive limitations, we have no choice but use other people and the world itself for data and analysis. The ramifications of that shoot through all of politics. That's where illusions of knowledge come from.

The Knowledge Illusion is highly recommended. There is much more to it, and this short review cannot do the book justice. In particular, this book will help (i) people with the moral courage to begin a serious, unsettling journey in self-reflection, and (ii) people interested in trying to understand why politics is what it is.

This stuff isn't for the faint of heart or for hard core political ideologues. For people open to it, this kind of knowledge can challenge and upset a person's worldview and self-image. That's not the ideologue's mindset.

Footnote:
1. (1) The ball costs 5 cents, (2) 47 days, (3) 5 minutes (each machine takes 5 minutes to make one item).

B&B orig: 9/5/17