Coronavirus and Politically Unsolid Ground

Things have become so strange with politics in recent weeks that it's hard to get a feel for solid ground under one’s feet. Spin and propaganda utterly dominate facts and reality.

The AP reported yesterday that the White House is muzzling public health officials to make the Coronavirus pandemic look like it isn’t a pandemic or anything to worry about: “NEW YORK (AP) — The White House overruled health officials who wanted to recommend that elderly and physically fragile Americans be advised not to fly on commercial airlines because of the new coronavirus, a federal official told The Associated Press. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention submitted the plan as a way of trying to control the virus, but White House officials ordered the air travel recommendation be removed, said the official who had direct knowledge of the plan. Trump administration officials have since suggested certain people should consider not traveling, but have stopped short of the stronger guidance sought by the CDC. 

The person who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity did not have authorization to talk about the matter. The person did not have direct knowledge about why the decision to kill the language was made or who made the call. 

Administration officials disputed the person’s account. In a tweet, the press secretary for Vice President Mike Pence, Katie Miller, said that ‘it was never a recommendation to the Task Force’ and called the AP story ‘complete fiction.’ On Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci — the head of infectious diseases at the National Institutes of Health and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force — said ‘no one overruled anybody.’”

As is often or usually the case these days, the American people are presented with two completely opposed versions of reality. Either the CDC wanted to warn people at risk to not fly, or it did not want to give that warning. Who should be trusted? A narcissistic and self-centered, incompetent, liar president with a track record of well over 16,000 false and misleading statements or a federal agency employee trying to get information out to warn people of real world risks? Who should one trust?

Under the circumstances, including the known and undeniable susceptibility of elderly and physically fragile people to the Coronavirus, it is reasonable to believe that the president is muzzling health care professionals to serve his political and economic interests at the expense of public health.

Given the bumbling incompetence of the president personally and his cowed, inept administration in dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic, it is also reasonable to think it is more likely than not (maybe about a 60% chance) that within about a year, the American people will have herd immunity. The bumbling and fumbling Trump administration is probably going to allow this virus to spread free and wild. That will give rise to herd immunity. Of course, tens or hundreds of thousands of susceptible Americans will die in the process. If that scenario comes to pass, it is fair and balanced to blame the president personally and every single person in his administration who enabled this incompetence and failure.

Actually, since the president neutered America’s capacity to deal with a pandemic by firing the US pandemic response team in 2018[1] and trying to significantly defund the CDC, he and his enablers deserve blame for the death of every single American from the Coronavirus. Based on the facts, one can now reasonably and fairly call our incompetent narcissist president a killer.

Questions: Is calling the president a killer hyperbolic, unfair and/or not reasonably supported by the facts? Or, does a president have limited or no accountability for his actions that later turn out to have been unforced mistakes due to incompetence or any other cause?


Footnote: 
1. “It’s thus true that the Trump administration axed the executive branch team responsible for coordinating a response to a pandemic and did not replace it, eliminating Ziemer’s position and reassigning others, although Bolton was the executive at the top of the National Security Council chain of command at the time.”

Liars, Damned Liars, and Politicians

Politicians knowingly make promises they have no intention of delivering on, because it's how they get elected and stay elected. At best, even if they do genuinely want the same things they're promising they'll pursue they know they haven't a chance in hell of getting most of their agenda items off the ground.

Like spies, politicians are effectively paid to lie - even your favorite politician lies to you. If you watch a politician you'll get a much more accurate read of what they're about than if you listen to them.

Try putting your politicians on mute and looking at their voting records. Look at the bills they sponsor. Look especially at the unsexy bills like spending authorizations, and you can find a truer picture of what they support.

Bernie isn't as left as he appears to be. Obama wasn't much of a reformer either. He governed as a functionary. Change indeed.

Hillary by any account was right of Obama based on her record. In 2005 she introduced an anti-flag burning law, just for example, and perhaps more importantly, she's the quintessential war candidate, having never found a war she didn't want to sign other people's kids up to fight.

You can expect Biden to govern like Obama did which won't work now. Compromising with Republicans now is like compromising with a sack of rabid badgers. Biden isn't the guy you want having your six in a knife fight. He's ill equipped to deal with them.

Forget the rhetoric.

Politicians don't run on truth, they run on promises, and promises are fungible in politics.

"Truth"… some brainstorming

We talk a lot about truth here, on Germaine’s political blog.  I’m going to go rogue and infiltrate it with some dastardly philosophy.  (Apologies Germaine. ;)  My quest: A search for the correct definition of “truth.”

Truth is an interesting concept.  Saying that truth is “the absence of falsehood” seems like too simple a definition to me and does not get at the essence of what I am looking for.  I rather fancy one of Webster’s definitions:

3a : the property of being in accord with fact or reality

but I still feel that such a definition does not tell the whole story.  Why?  Because all realities are not created equal.  I think I might have mentioned that before here.  Who’s to say whose reality is more legitimate, more real, than another’s?  To the person experiencing something, it becomes their reality, their “truth.”  So in that sense, truth seems to have the ability to be relative / subjective / malleable.  Ouuu.

Can we equate the word “truth” with the word “fact?”  What makes something a fact versus a truth?  What’s the difference?  When I think about trying to define “fact” (or even “truth”), I think it is “a something that can be no other way than what it is.”  “…can be no other way than what it is??”  There’s an interesting phrase.  Many things can be other ways than what they are and still be a “factual / truthful something.”  Take a simple example like an aluminum can.  It could be open, closed, full, empty, crushed, to name a few ways it can “be.”  Granted, it’s still a can, but not that “can be no other way than what it is.”  It can be many qualifying ways, while maintaining its “can-ness.”

Let’s forget cans for now.  When looking for a bottom line definition of truth, maybe I need to add the element of time into the mix.  A “truth” is something that “can be no other way than what it is at any given moment in time.”  This could be what I’m looking for, yet I still don’t feel happy with my definition.  I’m saying that truth, and by extension a fact (or would that be the other way around?), can be a fleeting thing, some kind of dynamic thing, a variable.  And so, by this train of thought, it certainly can’t be something absolute.  Some would say I’m over complicating it, but I’m just trying to get to the truth of what is truth?

In my mind, it seems like truth should be an absolute concept.  And some “truths” do not change at any given moment in time.  For example, the concept of the number three.  It cannot be something other than what it is, no matter how much time passes.  Numbers can be represented in the physical (perceptual), but they are comprehended in the mental (conceptual).  Could this be a key element in understanding truth?  Would it be right to say that truth is a concept (mental) supported by precept (physical)?  This sounds pretty good but we know from jury duty that circumstantial (inferred) evidence (i.e., missing hard evidence) doesn’t necessarily get to the “actual” (uh-oh, I’m introducing a new variable) truth of some matter.  It seems that I am back to square one, saying that truth can vary based on one person’s mental conception, versus another’s.  No, this argument does not fly either.

Does truth depend on some kind of “majority opinion” to be valid?  No.  Opinions can vary from society to society.  But if we all agree that a certain color, such as green, is truly green, no matter what the society in question says, then that must be some kind of “absolute truth.”  We can measure the frequency of that color and it will always show “green” on the scale.  A colorblind person may not see green but would likely agree that what everyone else sees is what we will define as “green,” based on the measurement.  An immutable "truth consensus” is reached, no matter what anyone else says.

So does the ability to measure something and always get the same results play into “what is truth?”  I think I am getting closer but can I think of any exceptions to the rule?  Are there any truths that cannot be measured?  How about the notion of “love?”

For example, I may declare that I love someone and the truth of that matter could only be measured by others in how I treat that so-called loved one.  An outside observer not familiar with me personally may see me scold my loved one, or do something mean to them, and claim that I “truly” do not love that person, based on observed behavior at that moment in time.  But I could declare that their measurement / analysis of the situation would not be the truth.  Because they are not me, they have no way of knowing how true my feelings of what I call “love” are.  Such “love truths” are personal, not accessible by an outside observer, but we personally believe them to be “truths” nevertheless.  I still have to ask, what about these feelings make them “a truth?”

At what point does something become “true”… or “true enough?”  If something is 50.001% true, is it truth?  Conversely, if something is 49.999% not true, is it not truth?  Can something be partial truth?  We hear it all the time: Well, that’s partially true.  But this is not getting me any closer to understanding truth, and if it is relative or absolute.  I want to understand the essence of truth, after all the fluff has boiled off.

Some would say I need to drag the God concept and religion into the mix.  But to me, that only confuses the question and muddies the waters.  And it makes me feel like I’m grasping for straws.  Scrap this idea.

So, which is it?  What is truth?  Is truth relative or absolute?  Is there some kind of bottom line definition when it comes to truth?  If so, please state it for me.  My definitions seem to be all over the board.  I’ve done a lot of describing, but not any bottom-line defining.  Maybe, like good and evil, that’s the best we can do, try to describe it, when contemplating “truth.”  Maybe that’s why Webster referred to it as a “property.”  I do think it can be both relative and absolute.  How do you know which it is? 

Help me out and give me your thoughts on “what is truth” and “how can we know it?”

(Please excuse any typos and non-sequiturs in my stream of thought. :) Feeling too lazy to review. :(

Election Tactics 2020: Infiltrate and Smear

Eric Prince - sleazeball and 007 wannabe

The New York Times reports that the Trump campaign is hiring professional spies to infiltrate Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other anti-Trump groups. Presumably, the campaign of whoever the dems nominate for president will be infiltrated too. Given the president’s unfettered reliance on dark free speech (lies, deceit, unwarranted opacity, unwarranted emotional manipulation, logic fallacies, etc.), it is reasonable to expect that this tactic will lead to words being taken out of context and/or misconstrued in various ways to damage democratic candidates.

The war of dark free speech and sleaze is intensifying. We at new levels of extreme sleaze and lies the Trump Party and the president are willing to engage in to stay in power.

The NYT writes: 

“WASHINGTON — Erik Prince, the security contractor with close ties to the Trump administration, has in recent years helped recruit former American and British spies for secretive intelligence-gathering operations that included infiltrating Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda, according to interviews and documents. 

One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers’ unions in the nation. Mr. Seddon directed an undercover operative to secretly tape the union’s local leaders and try to gather information that could be made public to damage the organization, documents show. 

Using a different alias the next year, the same undercover operative infiltrated the congressional campaign of Abigail Spanberger, then a former C.I.A. officer who went on to win an important House seat in Virginia as a Democrat. The campaign discovered the operative and fired her. 

Both operations were run by Project Veritas, a conservative group that has gained attention using hidden cameras and microphones for sting operations on news organizations, Democratic politicians and liberal advocacy groups. Mr. Seddon’s role in the teachers’ union operation — detailed in internal Project Veritas emails that have emerged from the discovery process of a court battle between the group and the union — has not previously been reported, nor has Mr. Prince’s role in recruiting Mr. Seddon for the group’s activities.”

Everything that people in a democratic campaign say will now be misconstrued and ruthlessly used against them. The real power of dark free speech to destroy democracies and the rule of law will become clearer in the coming months. We live in interesting times.

Conservative Attacks on Inconvenient Science Continue

The president's minions are inserting lies about climate science into various official documents. The New York Times reports:

“An official at the Interior Department embarked on a campaign that has inserted misleading language about climate change — including debunked claims that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is beneficial — into the agency’s scientific reports, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. 

The misleading language appears in at least nine reports, including environmental studies and impact statements on major watersheds in the American West that could be used to justify allocating increasingly scarce water to farmers at the expense of wildlife conservation and fisheries. 

The effort was led by Indur M. Goklany, a longtime Interior Department employee who, in 2017 near the start of the Trump administration, was promoted to the office of the deputy secretary with responsibility for reviewing the agency’s climate policies. The Interior Department’s scientific work is the basis for critical decisions about water and mineral rights affecting millions of Americans and hundreds of millions of acres of land. 

The wording, known internally as the “Goks uncertainty language” based on Mr. Goklany’s nickname, inaccurately claims that there is a lack of consensus among scientists that the earth is warming. In Interior Department emails to scientists, Mr. Goklany pushed misleading interpretations of climate science, saying it “may be overestimating the rate of global warming, for whatever reason;” climate modeling has largely predicted global warming accurately. The final language states inaccurately that some studies have found the earth to be warming, while others have not. 

He also instructed department scientists to add that rising carbon dioxide — the main force driving global warming — is beneficial because it “may increase plant water use efficiency” and “lengthen the agricultural growing season.” Both assertions misrepresent the scientific consensus that, overall, climate change will result in severe disruptions to global agriculture and significant reductions in crop yields.”

These lies and the intended deceit is part the president’s administration. They are aligned with his belief that climate change is a hoax. It is therefore fair and reasonable to add these lies to his total under the ‘buck stops at the top’ theory of government accountability. For the record, the president’s total of false and misleading statements was 16,241 at the end of year three.

Conservative and populist hostility to both inconvenient science and inconvenient truth and their tolerance of the blatant debasement of both are anti-democratic, authoritarian, corrupt and deeply immoral. Trump and Trump Party conservatism-populism seem to thrive in this anti-truth and anti-science political milieu.

Chapter Review: An Evolutionarily Informed Study of Moral Psychology

“Philosophers, research scientists, and scholars across the academy have been wrestling with how to define, measure and think about morality for thousands of years. .... Why is it that the study of morality such a difficult task? .... While the human mind is not usually considered an impediment to scientific progress, it may present particular barriers to accurate models of the nature of morality and moral psychology. This is not the first research question that has been hampered by the fact that science is done by humans. Often, the problem is that we have a powerful intuition or perception of how the world seems or ought to be that gets in the way of scientifically understanding how the world really is. .... Here and elsewhere, the fact that human intuition or perception does not well map the real world has made humans worse at real science. .... Whatever the specific design of our psychology turns out to be, results have been collected that make it very hard to believe that this design is simply a machine for uncovering the objective truth of the world.”--Max Krasnow, Moral Psychology: A Multidisciplinary Guide, 2017, page 29


The 2017 book Moral Psychology: A Multidisciplinary Guide, edited by Benjamin Voyer and Tor Tarantola, is an academic publication intended to begin a process of unifying research on the extremely and subtle difficult topic of morality. Chapter 2, An Evolutionarily Informed Study of Moral Psychology, was written by Max Krasnow, an evolutionary psychologist at Harvard.

This book is written for an academic audience of researchers and scholars who pursue the study of morality-related topics such as what morals are, where they come from and why, and what they do. To advance knowledge to a higher level, researchers in a range of disciplines including psychology, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, evolutionary biology, cognitive biology, neuroscience and computer science need to become more aware of what other disciplines are doing and have discovered. This book will generally be quite difficult for a lay audience to understand. Given the complexity of morality, convergence and merging of knowledge from all disciplines will be necessary to move knowledge from its current level of infancy to a basis that can accelerate progress. Right now, progress is painfully slow.

Why morals are not intended or needed to reflect objective truth

Assuming that evolutionary forces shaped morals and moral behavior, Krasnow argues there are three closely related reasons that morality does not need to reflect objective truth. That does not mean that morals and behaviors that morals motivate are nonsense or useless. Disconnect from objective truth reflects the severely limited data processing bandwidth of the human brain in the face of an essentially infinitely complex world. That world includes humans, human societies, and technology and environments that change over time.

Krasnow’s first reason for the reality disconnect is that it is often the case that knowing objective truth is completely irrelevant to survival. A human who understands that gravity is a distortion of space-time has no survival advantage over another who knows enough to not to walk over the edge of a cliff or fall out of a tree because things that are not supported by the ground or a tree will fall to ground, which that can hurt a lot. In such situations, random mutations will lead to increasing survival fitness, but not necessarily increasing objective knowledge. This evolutionary pressure applied to morals and moral behavior.

Krasnow’s second, related reason is that there is an evolutionary pressure asymmetry in penalties for some mistakes in perceptions of reality. A well-known example is the fear and automatic defense response. A person mistaking some ground-level movement caused by a breeze for a snake and jumping away, suffers only a minimal loss of effort to avoid a non-existent threat. Here the goal isn't objective accuracy. The goal is not getting bitten by a snake. By contrast, the penalty for ignoring a movement that turns out to be a snake can inflict a very high penalty for being wrong if the person gets bitten.

In terms of cooperative behavior with strangers, usually considered to be a moral thing to do, tentative, limited cooperation can lead to more cooperation. That can lead to a higher payoff if the stranger turns out to be trustworthy. If the stranger is untrustworthy from the outset, the penalty for misplaced trust is low. In Pleistocene times (about 2.6 million years ago until about 11,700 years ago) when morals are believed to be shaped most prominently, people lived in small groups and everyone knew everyone else. Under those social conditions, cheaters were spotted pretty fast. A significant level of cheating was not possible for long. By contrast, in modern times a Ponzi scheme that runs for years is possible because people don't know each other. Ponzi schemers play on the normal human default tendency to trust. Presumably, most people would consider a Ponzi scheme to be immoral to at least some extent.

Krasnow’s third reason focuses on the fact that humans are inherently social creatures. We cooperated in groups to survive and that meant engaging social behaviors that helped the group to survive. Thus appearances to others that a person in the group is cooperative and does good deeds, even if no payoff is obvious, typically leads to social acceptance in the group. That social acceptance enhances the good person’s survival fitness. Thus, beliefs, behaviors and opinions that signal pro-social cooperativity can conflict with the objective world but nonetheless still be selected for. Krasnow points out that this is tricky. If a pro-social acting person is seen to be insincere, it tends to dampen social acceptance. People tend to distrust phonies. Krasnow comments: “In the moral domain, the selection pressures responsible for our moral sentiments -- our concern for the sick, our outrage at the oppressor, etc. -- may be more about what these sentiments signal to others than anything to do with objective truth seeking.”

Krasnow argues that those three reasons are why we often disconnect morals and moral beliefs and behaviors from objective reality: “Taking these points together -- that the objective truth is often fitness irrelevant, that the right kind of error is often ecologically rational, and that the adaptive problem is at least sometimes about changing someone else’s behavior -- helps suggest a program for an evolutionarily informed study of human moral psychology. The first task is to identify the major filters -- that is, the adaptive problems -- that components of moral psychology have been designed to solve.”