Book Review: The Death of Expertise

The thesis of Tom Nichols’ 2017 book, The Death Of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge And Why It Matters, posits that widespread rejection and distrust of expert knowledge. He argues this amounts to a democratic dysfunction that can easily lead to some form of mob rule or autocracy. Nichols is a professor of national security affairs and expert on Russian politics.

In this short, easy to read book, Nichols builds a compelling case that Americans’ anti-elitist attitudes are moving the U.S. toward some form of mob rule or autocracy, a trend that, in Nichols’ opinion, Donald Trump’s presidency reflects. Although Nichols points to concrete actions that experts can take by increasing their own transparency, accountability and public engagement, he is ultimately not optimistic: “Tragically, I suspect that a possible resolution will lie in a disaster as yet unforeseen. It may be a [major] war or a [major] economic collapse. . . . . It may be in the emergence of an ignorant demagoguery, a process already underway in the United States and Europe, or the rise to power of a technocracy that finally runs out of patience and thus dispenses with voting as anything other than a formality.”

Nichols lays much of the blame on the American people and their distrusting attitudes toward experts, knowledge itself and democratic institutions. “The death of expertise is not just a rejection of existing knowledge. It is fundamentally a rejection of science and dispassionate rationality, which are foundations of modern civilization.” He asserts that for “the average American”, their knowledge base is so low it has passed “uninformed” and “misinformed” to a level that is “aggressively wrong”. Many Americans just believe “dumb things” and often reject information that undermines false beliefs.

Nichols is aware that significant natural barriers against respect for knowledge and experts lie in human cognitive biology: “ We all suffer from problems, for example, like ‘confirmation bias,’ the natural tendency to only accept evidence that confirms what we already believe.” He argues that human biases are easily and routinely exploited by an ocean of online sources that are “making many of us dumber,” “meaner” and “enabling and reinforcing our human failings.” Maybe calling cognitive biases ‘failings’ misses the mark a little. Biases are normal and served well in early human evolution.

The problem is that in complex modern societies, playing on that biology is the key route that demagogues, autocrats and tyrants take in their runs for power. Understanding of that point dates at least back to Plato and Aristotle, both of whom were acutely aware of this human aspect of politics. This issue is extremely serious, not trivial.

Nichols sees flaws in modern higher education: “When students become valued clients instead of learners, they gain a great deal of self-esteem, but precious little knowledge; worse, they do not develop the habits of critical thinking . . . .” And, economic pressures on the press aren't helpful either: “In this hypercompetitive media environment, editors and producers no longer have the patience -- or the financial luxury -- to allow journalists to develop their own expertise and deep knowledge of a subject.”[1] This media critique raises the question of whether a free press operating in a capitalist, for-profit environment can ever be up to the task of reasonably informing a public that hungers far more for entertainment and self-affirming content than ice cold, usually uncomfortable knowledge. That's a question for the experts to chew on.

The death spiral: Nichols sees the current state of affairs as one where distrust in experts and knowledge has led America to enter a death spiral that “presents an immediate danger of decay either into rule by the mob or toward elitist technocracy . . . . and both threaten the United States today. . . . . the most disturbing aspect of the American march toward ignorance is not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge.”

Focus on fostering transparency, finding good leaders and boosting institutional efficacy, not issues: From this observer's cognitive and social biology-based point of view, Nichols paints a picture of a society overwhelmed by an ocean of false information and effective cognitive manipulation,[2] an economically stressed professional press unable to keep up with events, inept institutions such as congress and a failing higher education system. Maybe Nichols would dispute that picture, but that is how this reader sees it.

Regardless, if that is a reasonably accurate description of the American condition, then Nichol’s call for American citizens to become better informed won't succeed. Other analyses of democracy and social and technological complexity make it clear that it is impossible for citizens to be even ‘reasonably’ informed on enough issues to make ‘informed’ voting decisions.[3] Nichols himself says almost the same thing: “. . . . there are not simply enough hours in the day for a legislator, even in a city council or a small US state . . . . to master all of the issues modern policymaking requires.”

A plausible alternative option that might break out of the death spiral is to focus not on understanding issues, an impossible task, but on trying to foster more transparency, find good leaders somehow, e.g., look for morality and honesty, and look for institutional efficacy as evidence of good governance. Whether that would have any impact is an open question, but at least it’s another way to think about things. Questions: Does Nichols put too much blame on ordinary citizens and too little on other things such as America’s corrupted pay-to-play two-party system or ideologically-inspired gridlock in governance?

Is Nichols too pessimistic about where America is heading?

Footnotes:
1. Nichols cites the fascinating case of Ben Rhodes playing an inexperienced press corps to sell president Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Rhodes was Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser. A dysfunctional congress was in the background was a key driver of the press manipulation. “We created an echo chamber,” he admitted when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. . . . . When I asked whether the prospect of this same kind of far-reaching spin campaign being run by a different administration is something that scares him, he admitted that it does. “I mean, I’d prefer a sober, reasoned public debate after which members of congress reflect and take a vote,” he said shrugging. “But that's impossible. . . . . The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old . . . . They literally know nothing. Rhode’s implication was clear. Not only did he think the public was too stupid to understand the deal -- which was not wrong . . . . --but that everyone else, including congress, was too stupid to get it as well.”

Nichols calls this incident intolerable and assigns blame all around, including experts’ share of blame, but notes that “. . . . there is only one group of people who must bear the ultimate responsibility for this state of affairs, and only they can change any of it: the citizens of the United States of America.”

2. Regarding cognitive manipulation, Nichols comments: “Emotion is an unassailable defense against expertise, a moat of anger and resentment in which reason and knowledge quickly drown. And when students learn that emotion trumps everything else, it is a lesson they will take with them for the rest of their lives.”

All a speaker needs to do is provoke an emotion(s) such as fear, anger, hate, disgust and/or distrust. Once that is accomplished, they have disabled the listener’s conscious reason and made their message far more persuasive regardless of its truth or falsity.

3. Regarding politics, two social scientists comment in their book Democracy for Realists: “. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”



B&B orig: 10/18/17; DP repost 5/18/20

Asymmetry Between Professional Journalism and Propaganda

Ronan, a fine young man in a complicated world

CONTEXT

Professional new reporting is tedious, difficult and complicated. Information sources often lie, have secret agendas and/or withhold or distort key facts that undermine a narrative they want to convey. To make the situation worse, reporters face enormous time pressure and a need to deliver clean dramatic narratives to a public that is easily bored with just facts and sound reasoning. Drama and violence catches the attention of eyeballs and minds, not dull facts, nuance and shades of gray.

Some of that (~40% ?) reflects how the human mind evolved. Humans like bright shiny things that are easy to comprehend and outrage, laugh or feel smug and self-righteous about. That emotional reacting is a lot of fun. But some, probably most, of that pro-infoTAINMENT mindset results from our culture and its relentless winner-take-all, polarized for-profit lack of morality. The market for human attention is intense and full on 24/7/365. Almost everyone with something to sell is desperate for the attention of as many people as possible. The ones not desperate for attention are usually selling something illegal.

Dissecting a reporter

A New York Times article, Is Ronan Farrow Too Good to Be True?, goes through some of Farrow's reporting and raises concerns about how close to, or over, the edge of professionalism vs sensationalism the reporter has come on several occasions. The article is full of tedious facts, context and analysis. It is definitely not infotainment. It is info. The key point of the article is that coming too close to the fuzzy gray line or crossing into or past it imposes a serious cost on professional journalism. Call it the damage zone.

The NYT is clear that Farrow did not make anything up. He just crossed into the damage zone several times. That hurts the credibility of all professional journalism. In these polarized times with rampant mass propaganda, coming into to the damage zone gets exaggerated and used to smear everyone else the tribe does not like.

The NYT writes about one incident:

“It was a breathtaking story, written by The New Yorker’s marquee reporter and published with an attention-grabbing headline: “Missing Files Motivated the Leak of Michael Cohen’s Financial Records.” 

In it, the reporter, Ronan Farrow, suggests something suspicious unfolding inside the Treasury Department: A civil servant had noticed that records about Mr. Cohen, the personal lawyer for President Trump, mysteriously vanished from a government database in the spring of 2018. Mr. Farrow quotes the anonymous public servant as saying he was so concerned about the records’ disappearance that he leaked other financial reports to the media to sound a public alarm about Mr. Cohen’s financial activities. 

The story set off a frenzied reaction, with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes calling it “an amazing shocking story about a whistle-blower” and his colleague Rachel Maddow describing it as “a meteor strike.” Congressional Democrats demanded answers, and the Treasury Department promised to investigate. 

Two years after publication, little of Mr. Farrow’s article holds up, according to prosecutors and court documents. The Treasury Department records on Michael Cohen never went “missing.” That was merely the story put forward by the civil servant, an Internal Revenue Service analyst named John Fry, who later pleaded guilty to illegally leaking confidential information.”

What happened was that Cohen’s financial records were just put on restricted access. That is a normal practice in government to prevent leaks. The records never disappeared. Farrow's source either lied to him or was unaware that the records were simply subject to restricted access. The now-disgraced lawyer, Michael Avenatti, encouraged Fry to leak the documents. The NYT article comments that Avenatti was “barely mentioned in Mr. Farrow’s article.” The NYT characterized Avenatti as “a passionate antagonist of Mr. Cohen.”

Scrupulous attention to mind numbing details like this is what distinguishes professional journalism from dark free speech.[1] The NYT analysis of content that Farrow generates indicates that it is sometimes misleading. That fits my definition of crossing into the damage zone. NYT puts it like this:

“His work, though, reveals the weakness of a kind of resistance journalism that has thrived in the age of Donald Trump: That if reporters swim ably along with the tides of social media and produce damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest voices, the old rules of fairness and open-mindedness can seem more like impediments than essential journalistic imperatives.

That can be a dangerous approach, particularly in a moment when the idea of truth and a shared set of facts is under assault.”

What is the point here?

The point to be made is that the line between journalistic professionalism and most everything else is often complicated to clearly see, hard to avoid and easy to step into or across. As the NYT points out, when a reporter fails to disclose what they do not know for sure, a dull story is converted into a dramatic story. Telling people a great story, but then saying that although X is true, Y and Z have not been corroborated. That is a real buzz kill.

What it does show is, among other things, (1) how the human mind greatly prefers the simple dramatic to the complicated and/or ordinary, (2) how the human mind rapidly and unconsciously fills in undisclosed details to make an incomplete or ambiguous story into a satisfying but dramatic narrative, (3) how easy it is for a reporter trying to be professional to cross into the damage zone, knowingly or not, and (4) how much professional, social and economic pressure there is to cross into the damage zone, morality be damned.

For professional journalists, if the world of things they can say without entering the damage zone is X, the world of things the dark free speech artist can say is literally about 1,000X. Think about that. The playing field is heavily tilted to favor dark free speech over honest free speech. Dark free speech has about 1,000 players on the field for every player that honest free speech can muster.

That is how the human mind evolved. That is how our morals be damned, for-profit culture plays the game.


Footnote:
1. Dark free speech: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism, and (4) ideologically-driven motivated reasoning and other ideologically-driven biases that unreasonably distort reality and reason. (my label, my definition)

Dogs go through puberty angst as adolescents just like humans

Teenage dogs also rebel.

New research finds that canines aren’t immune to the puberty blues: Pooches also act out when they go through adolescence just like their human best friends.

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters, scientists from the UK’s University of Nottingham and Newcastle University present evidence that pups act out similarly to human teens when they are going through puberty. In the breeds researchers analyzed — Labradors, golden retrievers and crossbreeds of the two — these teen years generally occur when the canines are between six and nine months old.

While in their pubescent months, researchers found that dogs were more likely to ignore commands from their caregivers — but not strangers — and were overall harder to train. Dogs who felt insecure about their relationship to their owner, authors found, exacerbated the behavior. In pups, this is characterized by increased anxiety and attention-seeking when separated from an owner. Insecure female dogs had an increased likelihood of reaching puberty earlier, the authors found.

“This is a very important time in a dog’s life,” explains lead author Dr. Lucy Asher in a press release.

Owners should keep doggy puberty in mind before putting a pup in its adolescence up for adoption or going through the adoption process, the study adds.

“This is when dogs are often re-homed because they are no longer a cute little puppy and suddenly, their owners find they are more challenging and they can no longer control them or train them,” adds Asher. “But as with human teenage children, owners need to be aware that their dog is going through a phase and it will pass.”

The authors acknowledge that their research, while groundbreaking, is considered common knowledge by some.

“Many dog owners and professionals have long known or suspected that dog behavior can become more difficult when they go through puberty,” says co-author Dr. Naomi Harvey. “But until now there has been no empirical record of this. Our results show that the behavior changes seen in dogs closely parallel that of parent-child relationships, as dog-owner conflict is specific to the dog’s primary caregiver and just as with human teenagers, this is a passing phase.”

And yelling at your pooch won’t make it pass faster, studies show, it just will ruin their fluffy lives.

“It’s very important that owners don’t punish their dogs for disobedience or start to pull away from them emotionally at this time,” says Asher. “This would be likely to make any problem behavior worse, as it does in human teens.”

https://nypost.com/2020/05/13/dogs-go-through-puberty-angst-as-adolescents-just-like-us-study/

Trying to Understand Another Person is Hard

Sorry, this is a long OP. It just strikes me as important and enlightening about what I believe is a deadly serious problem that just doesn't seem to get much attention.

Distrust in experts, government and/or anyone or group outside the tribe

Context

Minds disagreeing over most anything political rarely change. About the best one can hope for is to understand why there is disagreement. In my experience it is usually almost impossible to understand why another person thinks the way they do and thus why they believe what they believe. The level of American public distrust in both science and data is already shocking to the point of being literally terrifying. And, at least some empirical evidence indicates the plague is worsening, e.g., in the case of anti-vaccine beliefs, which are on the rise.

Given the seriousness of reality and reason disconnects, it seems important to try to understand the reasons for disagreement. People can at least see why disagreements exist on almost all political or politicized issues. The following two examples highlight how hard it is to try to come to a good basis for understanding. It takes effort, time and patience. And, I suspect that simply being persistent in trying to understand is often threatening to some degree. Persistence and focus tends to force people to examine their own beliefs and the basis in reality and reason for them. That psychological discomfort is probably why it is so difficult to come to a clear understanding most of the time (~95% ?).

On distrust in objective data

This comes from a recent discussion that raised the matter of political division that has led to both the president and the congressional GOP to single out and attack democratic states in both tax laws and federal spending.

Comment: Common sense informs you lower taxes leaves more money in pockets of tax paying families. An example of this is the California sales tax rate is 7.25% while in Oklahoma this tax rate is 4.5%. Applying common sense this is exceedingly easy to realize which population on a per capita basis enjoys more pocket change - rattle-trap pickup drivers on dirt roads! Data is endlessly available to you via Google research. However, common sense is more reliable.

My response: Common sense is an essentially contested concept. That is why I prefer data as the starting point to understand the reality of something. Thus, your example using sales taxes may be right or it may be wrong. It may be too narrow and focus only on money. Data is more objective than common sense. Political realities can be counterintuitive and this could be one such case.

 In terms of disposable income, CA ranks 7th and OK ranks 39th. The poverty rate in CA (13.2%) and OK (13.6%) are about the same, so higher taxes in CA don't seem to push a higher proportion of people into poverty.

For things other than just money, California ranks higher (30th) in provision of healthcare compared to Oklahoma (45th). In terms of happiness of residents, CA ranks 4th and OK ranks 43rd. For health of residents, CA ranks 17th and OK ranks 43rd.

I think your common sense assertion that lower taxes leaves more money in pockets of tax paying families is contradicted by facts, at least in the case of CA compared to OK. What do you think in view of the data?

Response to response: No response as of 5 days later.

On trying to understand the anti-vaccine mindset

When is distrust warranted, and when isn't it?

This is from a discussion on the rise of anti-vaxx disinformation and baseless conspiracy theories about a Covid-19 vaccine, which doesn't even exist yet. As far as I can tell, a basis in existing facts for such beliefs is nonexistent because the vaccine is nonexistent. Nonetheless, some intelligent, articulate people firmly believe something(s) is or will be bad enough about the Covid-19 vaccines in development that they seemingly will refuse to take it. That rigid anti-vaxx attitude is manifest regardless of bad effects on public health that it would probably lead to. Contrary data and reasoning in support of a new vaccine are almost completely irrelevant.

Comment 1: The problem with "trust the science" as a philosophy of politics is that nobody has a really satisfying answer to what happens when we do trust the science, and life ends up worse. At least we can hold politicians accountable when we don't fare well. Even when we cannot or do not hold them accountable, it's a bit easier to accept our misfortune for the simple fact that we put them there, and we made a mistake.

But I didn't have any say in who creates the epidemiological models. I don't have a platform on which to dispute what biochemists say about vaccination. If they say it's safe, my wants and needs, my self-determination and dignity, are of no consequence. And when the predictive models don't predict what they say they will, the argument is always "you can't hold us accountable, because we merely did what the data showed." And even if we were to still hold them accountable in our hearts and minds, in spite of their defenses, there's no way we can hold them accountable in action, because they exist and persist in a regime wholly insulated from public nomination or condemnation.

The reason I trust politics more than I trust science is because politicians have skin in the game. They, like scientists, look at the data. They weigh alternatives. They assess risk. And they create policy based on all of that.

But the difference between politicians and scientists is that when they make a decision, and they get it wrong, or the violate basic rights, they get punished via the criminal law, the ballot box, separation of powers, the courts, and in the extreme case, open rebellion or revolution. It may not be their fault they make bad decisions, but they have to pay the price anyway. It is one of the burdens of leadership. It is the price they pay for being instruments of the public trust.

That's why I supported the Italian courts for bringing the case against the seismologists. Because if science and scientists want a more active role in policy, if they want to be instruments of the public trust, they have to be willing to suffer the consequences when their science causes harm, or violates basic rights of person, or tramples long cherished customs and norms. If they want to replace politicians in a democratic system, they must become accountable to the deimos.

My response:

The problem with "trust the science" as a philosophy of politics is that nobody has a really satisfying answer to what happens when we do trust the science, and life ends up worse.

I think the answer is self-evident. When life ends up worse, fix it, learn from it and try not to do it again. That is the point of science. Science, like everything else that humans do is imperfect and will lead to lethal mistakes from time to time, e.g., thalidomide. So far, I think that there has not been a disaster of that magnitude in drug development since thalidomide. That looks to me to be a case of science learning from a mistake in the 1950s and trying to not make it again.

Steven Pinker's book, Enlightenment Now, makes a compelling case that the benefits of science progress far outweigh the downsides for hundreds of millions of people.

But I didn't have any say in who creates the epidemiological models. I don't have a platform on which to dispute what biochemists say about vaccination. If they say it's safe, my wants and needs, my self-determination and dignity, are of no consequence.

The models and data are made public. Unlike most of politics (~95% ?), most of science (~99.9% ?) is transparent (protocols and data are put online for everyone to rip to pieces, confirm or otherwise play with), open to expert and public criticism and subject to revision or reversal based on (1) new evidence and/or (2) compelling expert or public criticism. That is nothing like politics. Politics is mostly irrational. Science is mostly rational, at least to the extent that humans can be rational.

If experts say a vaccine is safe, then the existing data, not ideology, self-interest or motivated reasoning, indicates that the vaccine is safe. The FDA is there with trained experts to (1) review the data and arguments that a vaccine is safe, and (2) reject those data and/or arguments if it deems them to be not convincing. What else can fallible humans do?

Assertions of safety are not purely made up. They are based on the totality of relevant evidence. Drug and vaccine development is a sincere but fallible human attempt to empower people's wants, needs, self-determination and dignity, by keeping them alive and healthier than they would be without the drugs or vaccines. How does developing a new drug or vaccine undermine anyone's wants, needs, self-determination or dignity? Dead people don't have any wants, needs, self-determination or dignity.

But the difference between politicians and scientists is that when they make a decision, and they get it wrong, or the violate basic rights, they get punished via the criminal law, the ballot box, separation of powers, the courts, and in the extreme case, open rebellion or revolution.

I disagree. Empirical evidence make it clear that politicians are not particularly accountable in democracies. Voter memories are short and usually flawed due to bias, tribalism, self-interest, infantile reasoning and etc. In the book, Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do not Produce Responsive Governments, researchers comment on the human condition and politics: “. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”

By contrast, when a scientist screws up by faking data and gets caught, they are usually severely reprimanded and often fired, a career-ending event. I see nothing close to the accountability imposed on politicians compared to scientists. The courts don't examine much of anything political, especially now under Trump and the Trump Party who have now significantly neutered both law enforcement and courts in the federal government and in red states. At least for most elected politicians and wealthy people and interests, the rule of law has degenerated into a politicized essentially contested concept. It is now just a sick joke to a large extent.

Comment 2: That the judgment was reversed in the Italian case doesn't mean they shouldn't have been brought to trial at all. The Italian people and the Italian state needed justice. A cynic would say they wanted vengeance, but whether we look at it cynically or not, simply saying "sorry, better luck next time" wasn't going to cut it.

Now perhaps you might say that the public outrage at the scientists was one of those infantile reasoning things, biased, self-interested, and so on, and ought to be ignored for the sake of enlightened progress and "the greater good." But that seems awfully contemptuous and callous to expect the people who suffered to do that for science's sake. To expect them to just let it all slide is a thing that I believe to be far more inhuman and unreasonable than human and reasonable.

Someone had to be brought to account. Due process was followed bringing the charges and securing the conviction. Due process was also respected by allowing the appeal for overturning the lower court's decision. Justice was served. And the alternative would have been far worse, with people (those infantile folks who don't think 'rationally') taking justice into their own hands, where due process matters less than getting one's due by any means necessary.

It's good of us to realize that science and scientists make mistakes. The problem is that, like I said, what to do when science does make mistakes is not very satisfying. Merely saying "fix it, learn from it and try not to do it again" is not good enough. People have got to pay a high price when they put their faith in somebody, or some institution, or some study, and they end up worse because of it.

To expect common people to just keep on forgiving technocratic elites, moving past it, giving people the benefit of the doubt all the time is, quite frankly, demanding that the people practice an overly Christian attitude towards science and technology purveyors that we can in no way rationally expect people to practice. And we ask common people to do this towards powerful and influential institutions that have the power and prestige of science, technology, and industry (and the three are more intertwined than not, making science anything but totally disinterested).

That sort of "forgive and let's do better, because science is self-correcting" is the same sort of argument of the Libertarians who say that the market is self-correcting, because if you aren't getting good service, you have the right to refuse to pay for more service. Sure, you can hold companies accountable by refusing to give them more dollars, but who or what is going to hold them accountable for the dollars that were already spent?

Government and politics. They are the ones who are held accountable when things go wrong, because--quite frankly--they are the only ones that we can, futile as it may be.

It won't be the medical experts, for example, that will have to bear the responsibility for the things the state does now on their behalf. It'll be the politicians. It'll be the police. It'll be the state.

But medical experts are not politicians. Their concern is with health, but politicians have to weigh more concerns than simply health. They have to be concerned with things like civil liberties, basic human rights, and the will of both the majority, and whatever minorities think differently than the majority.

You asked perhaps a rhetorical question of "How does developing a new drug or vaccine undermine anyone's wants, needs, self-determination or dignity?" Developing it isn't the issue. Making it mandatory is the issue. Requiring its use to participate in civil society is the issue. Because even if it was safe, and had no side effects, and could or would be very beneficial to public health, we have a long tradition in this country, and much legal precedent, that people don't have the right to require others go through medical procedures, or take drugs, or submit to medical care, even if there's very good reasons for the insistence.

Unreasonable? Perhaps. But that's our custom. The good thing is that we don't have to insist that people be wise in the way we need them to be in order for them to change. We can use due process too, just like the Italians used due process against the scientists.

My 2nd response:

That the judgment was reversed in the Italian case doesn't mean they shouldn't have been brought to trial at all.

I understand that and agree. That wasn't my point. The point I was trying to make is that the situation is complicated. Seismologists started bickering among themselves, which tells me that this is not a simple black and white situation, even for experts. If the experts cannot agree among themselves, how the hell are judges supposed to know more than experts about the underlying science and then apply a law that is probably ambiguous in its language? That was my point.

Now perhaps you might say that the public outrage at the scientists was one of those infantile reasoning things, biased, self-interested, and so on, and ought to be ignored for the sake of enlightened progress and "the greater good."

No, I am not saying that. What I would argue, again, is that things like this are very complicated and there is more than a little room for subjective judgments. For example, I bet the Italian law is ambiguous in its language making the original court judgment significantly or mostly subjective.

I do not ignore public sentiment, nor does my political ideology, pragmatic rationalism. In fact, pragmatic rationalism elevates public opinion to a higher position of influence than any other political, economic, philosophical or religious ideology that I am aware of. It is the only ideology I am aware of that explicitly demands real consideration of and accounting for public opinion, not mere lip service, in making and implementing policy. As far as I know, all the other ideologies are either silent about public opinion or they claim they are directly responsive to it. Science has shown the latter claim to be mostly lip service and a deflection from the fact that the ideology is more powerful and held in higher regard than mere public opinion.

It's good of us to realize that science and scientists make mistakes. The problem is that, like I said, what to do when science does make mistakes is not very satisfying. Merely saying "fix it, learn from it and try not to do it again" is not good enough.

Of course scientists make mistakes. How can they possibly not make mistakes? They are human. You argue that fix it, learn from it and try not to do it again is not good enough when scientists make honest mistakes as human beings inevitably will sooner or later. Fine. What protocol or method do you have that's better? I'm completely open to all reasonable possibilities. I would greatly prefer it if you did have a better and good enough way to deal with things like this. What is your better and "good enough" way?

Government and politics. They are the ones who are held accountable when things go wrong, because--quite frankly--they are the only ones that we can, futile as it may be.

Government should be held accountable for things under their control that go wrong. Right now, we are in a period where government under the GOP is withdrawing from transparency, accountability, competence and honest governance. I know the dem party had a hand in getting us to this dismal point. But right now, the populist and conservative right is driving this country toward some sort of semi-lawless, authoritarian kleptocracy tinged with an intolerant, vengeful Christian theocratic streak.

I know, that sounds insane to you. But it honestly looks exactly that way to me. That is only one example of thousands or millions of examples showing just how amazingly personal and subjective political reality and reasoning is in the real world in real time, right now. That is what modern cognitive and social sciences are uniform in showing about the human condition. Those experts don't even debate this any more. They have moved on to trying to understand it in increasingly higher resolution as more research data comes in.

..... we have a long tradition in this country, and much legal precedent, that people don't have the right to require others go through medical procedures, or take drugs, or submit to medical care, even if there's very good reasons for the insistence

I think there's a misunderstanding here.The original legal precedents were that government has the power to require people to go through medical procedures. At one time, states could force women to be sterilized if they could not afford to raise their offspring, were deemed to be "imbeciles", or etc. That has since been reversed.

The Supreme Court recognizes the 14th-Amendment due process right to protect people against arbitrary legislative actions. The test is a simple "rational review" standard. That means that legislation (1) cannot be unreasonable, arbitrary, or capricious, and (2) must have a substantial relation to the legislative objective, which is public health in this case. The courts give this only minimal scrutiny to see if the law is "rationally related" to a "legitimate government purpose." If it is, then the law is constitutional. Almost all laws meet this test. A law has to be so nuts and/or incoherent that it is a joke on its face before federal courts will strike it down. That is a very rare event.

Even for a law a state cannot think of a rational reason to have, the courts will think one up for them to find the law constitutional.

Also, the Supreme Court recognizes each states’ “police power.” That gives the states authority to enact all kinds of health laws to protect people, including quarantine and vaccination laws.

One source commented on mandatory vaccines: "In 1905 the Supreme Court addressed mandatory vaccinations in regard to smallpox in Jacobson v Massachusetts. There the Court ruled that the police power of a state absolutely included reasonable regulations established by legislature to protect public health and safety. Such regulations do not violate the 14th Amendment right to liberty because they fall within the many restraints to which every person is necessarily subjected for the common good. Real liberty for all cannot exist if each individual is allowed to act without regard to the injury that his or her actions might cause others; liberty is constrained by law. The Court went on to determine in Jacobson that a state may require vaccination if the board of health deems it necessary for public health or safety."

Comment 3: Pending at 1 day.


Questions: Is it not important to try to understand the basis for minds in disagreement, e.g., because people can just compromise without understanding the basis for disagreements (assuming both sides are willing to compromise)?

Is persistent, focused questioning about the basis in facts and personal reasoning unpleasant or unfair to the point of being (i) more personally or socially harmful than beneficial, or (ii) more immoral than moral?

The President's Not Surprising 2020 Campaign Strategy

An article in the New York Times analyzes the president’s campaign strategy for 2020. The assessment so far indicates that the campaign is likely to be much like that used for the 2016 election. That election consisted of an endless barrage of false and misleading assertions of facts and unfounded attacks on the president’s political rivals. His tactics included touting false conspiracy theories and playing on social divisions to foment unwarranted distrust in both political opposition and government itself.

The NYT writes:

“Even by President Trump’s standards, it was a rampage: He attacked a government whistle-blower who was telling Congress that the coronavirus pandemic had been mismanaged. He criticized the governor of Pennsylvania, who has resisted reopening businesses. He railed against former President Barack Obama, linking him to a conspiracy theory and demanding he answer questions before the Senate about the federal investigation of Michael T. Flynn. 

And Mr. Trump lashed out at Joseph R. Biden Jr., his Democratic challenger. In an interview with a sympathetic columnist, Mr. Trump smeared him as a doddering candidate who “doesn’t know he’s alive.” The caustic attack coincided with a barrage of digital ads from Mr. Trump’s campaign mocking Mr. Biden for verbal miscues and implying that he is in mental decline. 

That was all on Thursday. 

Far from a one-day onslaught, it was a climactic moment in a weeklong lurch by Mr. Trump back to ​​the darkest tactics that defined his rise to political power. 

His attacks over the last week on Mr. Obama have showcased Mr. Trump’s persistent determination to weaponize those tools to bolster a favorite political narrative, one that distorts the facts about Mr. Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser, in order to spin sinister implications about the previous administration. 

But Mr. Trump also appears to genuinely believe many of the conspiratorial claims he makes, people close to him say, and his anger at Mr. Obama is informed less by political strategy than by an unbending — and unsubstantiated — belief that the former president was personally involved in a plot against him. 

Over the last week, the Trump campaign has spent at least $880,000 on Facebook ads attacking Mr. Biden. 

Mr. Trump has also been warned by Republican veterans that his efforts to define Mr. Biden in negative terms so far have been slow or ineffective. At a meeting with political advisers this week that included Karl Rove, the top strategist for former President George W. Bush, Mr. Rove warned Mr. Trump that he had fallen behind in the task of damaging Mr. Biden, people familiar with the meeting said.”

Apparently, the top campaign priority is damaging Biden with a massive barrage of lies, smears and fabricated conspiracy theories. Another priority is fabricating baeless conspiracy theories about President Obama in an effort to discredit (i) the Mueller investigation, and (ii) the role that Russia played in getting the president to win the electoral college.

Facebook is not innocent

Lies and crackpot conspiracies will flow copiously from Facebook in the coming months. One can see why Facebook refuses to block lies and unfounded conspiracies in political ads that politicians buy. There is just too much money to pass up. Maybe as importantly, blocking the president’s political lies runs the risk of crossing a viciously vindictive, thin-skinned president. Facebook’s lack of moral courage in defense of profits will help the president further disinform, confuse, distract and polarize Americans. That damage is on Zuckerberg.

Commercial Loan Shenanigans: A Looming Financial Disaster is on the Horizon

ProPublica reports that a whistleblower complaint filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that fraud in loans on commercial properties is increasing. This echoes the fraud in financial residential real estate that lead to the 2008 housing market collapse. Back then, residential home values were often inflated and the borrower's ability to repay the loan was also frequently overstated. Those home loan were bundled into securities and sold. The securities collapsed leading to tens of billions in losses for investors who bought the fraudulent securities.

ProPublica writes:

“Twelve years later, there’s evidence something similar is happening again. 

Some of the world’s biggest banks — including Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank — as well as other lenders have engaged in a systematic fraud that allowed them to award borrowers bigger loans than were supported by their true financials, according to a previously unreported whistleblower complaint submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission last year. 

Whereas the fraud during the last crisis was in residential mortgages, the complaint claims this time it’s happening in commercial properties like office buildings, apartment complexes and retail centers. The complaint focuses on the loans that are gathered into pools whose worth can exceed $1 billion and turned into bonds sold to investors, known as CMBS (for commercial mortgage-backed securities).”

ProPublica looked at six loans in CMBS packages and found the whistleblower complaint to be accurate. In particular, past profits reported for some buildings were listed as much as 30% higher than the profits previously reported for the same buildings and same years. That is not supposed to happen. Regulators are supposed to flag anomalies like that and find out if fraudulent loans are being made. Given the virulently anti-government and anti-regulation attitude of the president and his appointees, one can reasonably believe that honest regulators have been ordered to allow fraud like this.

The shenanigans include wiping out of some expenses for a commercial building that were listed in earlier loan documents. No explanation is given for disappeared expenses. By falsely claiming lower expenses to operate a building, a fraudulent loan, the loan is more profitable for the lender. The problem is that the risk of default on the loan increases. If too many defaults happen, that can lead to another financial meltdown similar to that in 2008.

With trillions of dollars committed to bailouts, overvaluations in commercial real estate now constitute a much larger risk than before the pandemic slammed the economy. In fact, data from early April showed a sharp spike in missed payments to bondholders for CMBS that hold loans from hotels and retail stores. ProPublica comments that the default rate is expected to increase because of Covid-19 economic lockdowns.

Not surprisingly, the Trump administration is moving after lobbying by commercial real estate organizations to prop these loans up. Commercial real estate groups lobbied for federal support after warning about a possible commercial mortgage crash. In response, the Federal Reserve pledged to prop up CMBS by loaning money to investors and letting them use their CMBS as collateral. Once again, taxpayers could be on the hook for tens or hundreds of billions in bad loans.

Also not surprisingly, the Mortgage Bankers Association, representing institutions who make money on bad loans backed by taxpayers, claims they are unaware of any such fraudulent activities and have no other comments to make. Their comment: “We aren’t aware of this occurring and really don’t have anything to add.” So much for concern among financial institutions. Why should they care if bad loan risk is on taxpayers and not themselves? What have they got to lose? Under current political conditions, they have little or nothing to lose, but a lot of profit to gain.

After the 2008 disaster, this kind of corruption wasn't supposed to be able to happen again. Regulators were supposed to stop this kind of criminal activity before it became widespread. Regardless, it appears to be happening again. Coupled with corruption and incompetence, financial disaster is what a anti-government and anti-regulation mindset can allow.