Something on the serious side, for a weekend…

 

I like the emails I get from BigThink.com, one of my favorite online sites.  They give you a lot to think about.  Here’s a good one:

Everyday Philosophy: Are Stoicism and Buddhism unhealthy philosophies?

• This week we look at the philosophy of non-attachment and ask how healthy it is.

• To answer our question, we look at the idea of “spiritual bypassing” and how detachment should not be done lightly.

Great questions, IMO.  

Have you ever gotten to the point where you think, “F it!”? That usually happens when we reach some “critical mass” moment, an inflection point, where we are exacerbated and no longer, well, give a “F”.  We’ve been “pushed that far.”  No longer giving a “F” also happens when people reach a point of “desperation.”  Things/situations no longer matter, and you lose all sense of morality, fairness, reason.  You’ve, at least temporarily, had it!

When does detachment cross the healthy border? People often say, “Don’t take things to heart.” “Accept without pride. “Let go.” But at some point, this becomes too much. But where? How do we know?

– Jiri, Czechia

Q1: What do you think?  When does detachment cross the healthy border?

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NOW, LET'S WORK RELIGION INTO THE PICTURE

Welwood: Religion is not therapy

Religion is a great comfort to many people. In fact, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Friedreich Nietzsche, and B.F. Skinner all argued that it’s a defining characteristic of religion to act as a defense mechanism. It’s a balm to soothe our pains and a crutch to keep us from falling.

Q2: Do you have any kind of “spiritual crutch?”  Is there some concept that provides you with a sense of spiritual understanding about your world that helps you cope?

Link to the full article here.

(by PrimalSoup)

First time we’ve ever done it…

No, not that. 😜  My husband and I voted for the first time today using in-person early voting.  Other than in 2020, where we used mail-in ballots because of the pandemic, we’ve always gone to our assigned precinct to vote on actual Election Day. 

It went well. There were a lot of people there at Board of Elections site, but we didn’t have to wait except for about 1-2 minutes to get checked in.

How about you?  Have you early voted yet?  

(by PrimalSoup)

Global warming update; Political parties as a religious group; Trump court documents release

The carbon energy sector apparently has a version of something akin to Project 2025: Trump has vowed to gut climate rules. Oil lobbyists have a plan ready. 

As companies fall short on methane emission reductions, a top trade group has crafted a road map for dismantling key Biden administration rules. An influential oil and gas industry group whose members were aggressively pursued for campaign cash by Donald Trump has drafted detailed plans for dismantling landmark Biden administration climate rules after the presidential election, according to internal documents obtained by The Washington Post. 

The plans were drawn up by the American Exploration and Production Council, or AXPC, a group of 30 mostly independent oil and gas producers, including several major oil companies. They reveal a comprehensive industry effort to reverse climate initiatives advanced during nearly four years of Democratic leadership. At the same time, the documents contain confidential data showing that industry’s voluntary initiatives to cut emissions have fallen short.

That is not surprising. Trump and the GOP have been openly hostile to environmental regulations and the concept of human-cause global warming for a long time. The carbon sector will probably get a good opportunity to vindicate its policy preferences if Trump is elected next month. 

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An NYT opinion (not paywalled) about the persistent near-even split in American politics posits an explanation that I believe significantly explains the divide:

I think the reason for all this is that political parties no longer serve the function they used to. In days gone by, parties were political organizations designed to win elections and gain power. Party leaders would expand their coalitions toward that end. Today, on the other hand, in an increasingly secular age, political parties are better seen as religious organizations that exist to provide believers with meaning, membership and moral sanctification. If that’s your purpose, of course you have to stick to the existing gospel. You have to focus your attention on affirming the creed of the current true believers. You get so buried within the walls of your own catechism, you can’t even imagine what it would be like to think outside it.

When parties were primarily political organizations, they were led by elected officials and party bosses. Now that parties are more like quasi-religions, power lies with priesthood — the dispersed array of media figures, podcast hosts and activists who run the conversation, define party orthodoxy and determine the boundaries of acceptable belief.

A lot of social science evidence supports the idea that the two parties significantly act as religions. In my opinion (and in Perplexity's evidence-based opinion), that is more true for the GOP than the Dem Party. Other major factors are (i) two fundamentally different perceptions of reality that the two sides of the divide appears to be mostly grounded in, and (ii) two fundamentally different mental types or mindsets divided over perceptions of democracy. Both sides claim a pro-democracy stance, but one is arguably a lot less pro-democracy than the other. However, since "democracy" is an essentially contested concept, those differences of opinion are unresolvable and politically dealt with by compromise or force.

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The federal judge in Trump's election interference case has released over 1,500 pages of filings, with some (many?) of the pages redacted. Trump argued that the release constituted election interference. The judge rejected that argument. Some of the judges comments regarding rejecting Trump's complaints and explaining her reasoning:

Defendant’s request does not engage with the six relevant factors for sealing. Instead, he argues that keeping the Appendix under seal for another month will serve other interests. Ultimately, none of those arguments are persuasive.

Setting aside the oxymoronic proposition that the public’s understanding of this case will be enhanced by withholding information about it, any public debate about the issues in this case has no bearing on the court’s resolution of those issues.

Finally, and relatedly, Defendant claims that the “asymmetric release of charged allegations and related documents during early voting creates a concerning appearance of election interference.” Motion at 5. There is undoubtedly a public interest in courts not inserting themselves into elections, or appearing to do so. See id. at 6. But litigation’s incidental effects on politics are not the same as a court’s intentional interference with them. As a result, it is in fact Defendant’s requested relief that risks undermining that public interest: If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute—or appear to be— election interference. The court will therefore continue to keep political considerations out of its decision-making, rather than incorporating them as Defendant requests. Any argument about “what needs to happen before or shouldn’t happen before the election is not relevant here.” Tr. of Arraignment and Status Conference at 29, ECF No. 232. 

Rather, his objection is to the Appendix’s release “during a highly contested political campaign.” Motion at 4. But a President’s “capacity . . . as a candidate for office” is “unofficial” and does not implicate the concerns animating his official immunity. Id. at 2340; see id. at 2332. Accordingly, the court has repeatedly stressed that “Defendant’s concern with the political consequences of these proceedings does not bear on the pretrial schedule.” Op. & Order at 3, ECF No. 243. (emphases added)

This exemplifies the constant cat and mouse game that Trump plays with the courts. Here the judge argued that (1) releasing the documents is incidental to normal litigation practice, which is true, and (2) not releasing the documents constitutes election interference by Trump himself. That is a fascinating argument. 

Despite cat and mouse, Trump won smashingly and possibly (probably?) decisively when the supreme court held a few months ago that Trump is immune from criminal prosecution associated with crimes committed in the course of undefined "official acts" by the president. Sometimes the mouse wins, sometimes the cat. Sometimes democracy loses.

The following comments reflect how I see the truly frightening situation the federal courts are now locked into:

Peanut gallery denizen: This is a reasonable, just, and well thought out response by the judge. What scares me is that there are judges, I’m looking at you Texas and Florida, that are so deep into the cult that they’d do just the opposite.

Peanut 2: Which is ultimately why Donald’s first presidency was so damaging. I think it’s possible his first presidency ended the Union and we’re just waiting for the right Supreme Court case. His second one, if it occurred, would finish the job. 

Peanut 3: She put into words something which SHOULDN’T need to be said. But she had too, nonetheless, because of the numerous motions incorporating requests to withhold information from this case otherwise available in a normal case. Sealing prosecution and/or defendant arguments is the exception, not the norm.

About the Harris debate with Faux News

I didn't listen to most of it, but read the WaPo and NYT assessments of it. From those descriptions, it sounds like Harris did a really good job. The criticisms from Faux and the radical right generally fit with that assessment.

One thing she did that was outstanding:

• Harris hit back hard when Bret Bair slammed her about immigration and violence. She pointed directly to the Republicans sabotaging their own border control bill. What she apparently did not say was that instead of Joe Biden or herself apologizing to the American family that had a young child murdered by immigrants, Republican hypocrites should be apologizing because they blocked their own border security bill.

And, Harris hit back hard again when Baier showed a video clip of Trump whining about being threatened by alleged bogus Democrat court prosecutions. Harris turned that back against Baier and pointed out how Trump keeps threatening critics, the press and Democrats with prosecutions and jail for simply criticizing Trump. 

Criticisms of Germaine; Why resort to authority over personal opinion?

In the last couple of weeks I have received a fair amount of explicit or implicit criticisms. If I recall right they boil down to six things:

1. Arrogance in how I express myself
2. Seeing the world in black and white, maybe part of the arrogance problem
3. Relying too much on experts to guide my opinions
4. Being way too alarmist about various authoritarian threats to American democracy, the rule of law, and civil liberties from Trump and the MAGA movement (kleptocratic autocracy, plutocracy and Christian theocracy)
5. Being too biased or unreasonable by being trapped in partisan identity politics 
6. Being way too partisan in favor of extreme liberalism, although the labels socialist or communist have not yet popped up

Those criticisms are sincere and come from people of good will, so I take them seriously. In short, they blow me away. I’ve apparently been seriously blind to my own flaws. I thought I was basically the opposite of criticisms #1 and #2. Regarding #4, I thought that I was very careful to lay out a lot of evidence to support my deep fears about America turning into some form of a bigoted, authoritarian kleptocracy. Criticism #5 baffles me because I don’t know what identity I am trapped in.

However, there is both truth and misunderstanding behind criticism #6. I am very partisan from in favor of pragmatic rationalism and its core moral values. But pragmatic rationalism is not liberalism or politically left. It is something else. I thought it was mostly centrist. Assuming I was an exemplar of pragmatic rationalism and being usually in accord with majority public opinion about most things with poll data, centrism felt like a reasonable label. However, Perplexity convinced me I am not a centrist. Instead, Perplexity gave what I believe is a more accurate description of my brand of politics:  

“Pragmatic rationalism, as presented by Germaine, aims to transcend conventional political labels and ideologies. It focuses on using cognitive biology and social behavior insights to counteract biases and promote more rational decision-making in politics and policy. 

While Germaine may touch on issues that align with various points on the political spectrum, his overall framework appears to be an attempt to create a meta-ideology that critiques and aims to improve upon traditional political thinking.

Given this information, it would be most accurate to describe Germaine’s political stance as: Unconventional/Alternative: Rather than fitting into established categories like far left, left, or centrist, Germaine’s pragmatic rationalism represents an attempt to forge a new approach to politics based on cognitive science and rational analysis.”

In my opinion, that nails it. That is me, and I am partisan about it. 

Q: What other criticisms reasonably apply to Germaine and/or pragmatic rationalism?

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Personal opinion vs. expert opinion 

This post raises the question, as one critic put it about criticism #3, “why debate if it comes down to dueling AUTHORITIES to dismiss personal analysis and verification. .... why debate seriously if one cannot produce their own analysis and verification, relying on dueling authorities, dismissing each other as posters...or worse, assigning authority based on partisan and identity bias?”

Accompanying that question was a personally concerning assertion of insult, “I'll say it again: what if I show extreme investing success vs Suzie Orman or Robert Kiyosaki, being called a clown relative to them. And by the way...that is EXACTLY what some more or less have said in our community .... asserting I’m a clown vs their authorities...this from some posters perceived to be authoritative by many members of this community.”

Maybe unreasonable reliance on expert opinion is a big personal blind spot. And I very much I hope I did not call the commenter a clown because it is insulting. If I did, I’m truly sorry.

Rethinking the line of argument that commenter has been asserting here for a long time, I can see how arguing that successful active investing can be a significant source of personal wealth. That seems to be a solid truth. What I have no feeling for at all is (1) how one can reliably do that (the commenter makes it sound fairly easy), and (2) how to translate personal financial success into a political force that would stand in defense of morally vastly superior pluralist, secular democracy** to some form of morally rotted corrupt authoritarianism. 

** Yes, democracy over authoritarianism evinces solid partisanship and my moral logic. I am a partisan.

For me, there is a big disconnect between the goal of pragmatic rationalism, namely counteracting biases and promoting more rational decision-making in politics and policy. How to bridge that gap? Not all successful stock market investors will be pro-democracy. Some will be pro-authoritarian. What glue is there to tie financial success with democracy?

Hence my deep confusion about what role successful investing would have as a political strategy or mindset. But I do often adopt the opinions of what I believe are well-meaning, honest experts in various aspects of politics because I am not an expert. I know that experts are often or usually wrong in their predictions, a situation that is so well documented that I consider it to be a fact, not a debatable truth (book review 1, book review 2, book review 3).

Q1: What am I missing here by not seeing major connections between secular democracy politics and personal success in finance? I think I am missing something, but cannot put a finger on it.

Q2: How often should individual analysis and opinion trump expert analysis opinion, sometimes, usually, all the time, etc.? 

Let’s discuss the concept of “lying”...

We are constantly lied to, and by all kinds of nefarious (often agenda-filled) people. Those lies could be perpetrated by:  

• Doctors or other medical professionals

• Politicians

• Religious communities

• MSM 

• Cable networks 

• Social media

• Telemarketers/commercialism

• Used car salesmen

• You name it

Do you think most/a majority of people love/want to be lied to?  If yes, why:

• It makes them feel better

• It helps them avoid something undesirable

• It validates what they want to hear

• Other

For that matter, what percent of people (I’ll call it) enjoy lying to others (possibly in my list above)? 

• Do you know any people that you suspect often lie to you? Or,

• People who lie to others because they expect a lie back?

What about exaggerations?

• Is exaggerating really a lie?  

• Hard Yes

• Hard No

• May or may not be

• Circumstance dependent

• Or, is it that exaggerations add “intrigue and entertainment value” to a story, so it’s not really officially lying? 

• On a scale of 1-10 how many lies are merely exaggerations?  More than half the time?

• If several, how egregious of a lie are they? 

• 1 = itsy-bitsy … 10 =  whopper

• Are these questions impossible to answer (without lying yourself)?

Lots of complicated questions about this concept of lying.  But people are complicated beings with all kinds of agendas.  I’m just wondering how lying fits into being a human.

Take your time and think it over.  Then, talk about your personal feelings about lying; the good, the bad and the ugly of it. You can pick and choose among questions or just give your overall assessment of lying without getting in the weeds. Your call.

(by PrimalSoup)