Book Review: Rules for Radicals

“WHAT FOLLOWS IS for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away. .... A major revolution to be won in the immediate future is the dissipation of man’s illusion that his own welfare can be separated from that of all others.”

Saul Alinsky’s 1971 book, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, presents rationales and tactics in the struggle for power between the Haves (rich people and powerful special interests) and their nominal allies, the Have-a-Little, Want Mores (~middle class), against the Have Nots (~poor people, discriminated against minorities). Some of what Alinsky discusses appears to remain viable today, but some seems dated and co-opted by how politics and the two-party system has changed since 1971. 

Alinsky's book has inspired a slew of books by conservatives that claim to counteract what Alinsky outlined, e.g., Rules for Conservatives: A Response to Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky and Rules for Radical Conservatives: Beating the Left at Its Own Game to Take Back America. The conservative response seems largely oblivious to the fact that much of what Alinsky is fighting for is what most Republicans at least claim to be fighting for. 

Republicans hate his guts

That includes concern for the public interest, more power and freedom for middle class and poor people and means to make them more self-reliant. Alinsky himself seems to be more pragmatic than radical liberal, commenting that “Parts of the far left have gone so far in the political circle that they are now all but indistinguishable from the extreme right. .... When there are people [radical leftists who espouse assassinations, murders and bombings] .... we are dealing with people who are merely hiding psychosis behind a political mask.”

 

Regarding freedom, the public interest and self-reliance, Alinsky wrote, “People cannot be free unless they are willing to sacrifice some of their interests to guarantee the freedom of others. The price of democracy is the ongoing pursuit of the common good by all people. .... We are not here concerned with people who profess democratic faith but yearn for the dark security of dependency where they can be spared the burden of decisions. .... Those who can, should be encouraged to grow; for the others, the fault lies not in the system, but in themselves.”

Those comments on freedom and self-reliance sound like Republican talking points. What Republicans probably hate is Alinsky’s concern for the public interest or general welfare. That concept implies there is a role for government, taxes, spending and democracy, which are evil, theft, tyranny and distributed power. That seems to be what terrifies and angers Republicans the most.

On the Haves, Alinsky wrote: “The Haves want to keep things as they are and are opposed to change. Thermopolitocally they are cold and determined to freeze the status quo.”

Ideology, propaganda, revolution & other stuff

Alinsky commented on dogma or ideology: “This book will not contain any panacea or dogma: I detest dogma. .... Dogma is the enemy of human freedom. .... no ideology should be more specific than that of America's Founding Fathers: ‘For the general welfare.’” Unfortunately, it is the case that ‘the general welfare’ is an essentially contested concept. Most elite Republicans hate it, but pay cynical lip service to it, just to keep the faithful deceived and betrayed by a false belief tat GOP elites are actually on the side of their rank & file.

Alinsky commented on propaganda in defense of the status quo: “From the Haves, on the other hand, there has come an unceasing flood of literature justifying the status quo. Religious, economic, social, political and legal tracts endlessly attack all revolutionary ideas and action for change as immoral, fallacious, and against God, country and mother.” IMO, that is still the case today, except the situation is much worse.

Regarding the colossal mistake the Have-Nots made in letting the Haves frame them as communists: “The Have-Nots of the world ..... desperately seeking revolutionary writings can find such literature only from the communists, both red and yellow. Since in this literature all ideas are embedded in the language of communism, revolution appears synonymous with communism. .... Today revolution has become synonymous with communism while capitalism is synonymous with status quo.” The Haves are desperately fighting for their vision of America, which is basically (i) brutal laissez-faire capitalism and its accompanying power and wealth inequality, or (ii) something as close to it as they can buy from government. The more corrupt the government, the closer ruthless rich people can get.

I've written on the awesome but mostly unconscious power of framing here.

Alinsky argues that some or most of the Have-a-Little, Want Mores (the middle class) are stalemated by their own conflict in wanting more but also protecting what they have. He calls this group the Do-Nothings. A doing nothing mindset is a powerful that favors the Haves, and the Haves know it. “These Do-Nothings profess a commitment to social change for ideals of justice.” 

Of interest, the Haves, often aided by some or most of the Do-Nothings deploy the tried and true delay tactic, “now is not the time to talk or think about X,” where X is something current the Haves oppose and want to make go away. For them, there never will be a time to talk about it and public attention inevitably moves on to other things. 

Alinsky also cites a pile of rules with some commentary. Here are some.

The first rule of the ethics of means and ends is that “one’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue. We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.”

“The second rule of the ethics of means and ends is that the judgment of the ethics of means is dependent on the political position of those sitting in judgment. To the British [the Declaration of Independence] was a statement notorious for its deceit by omission. .... the Bill of Particulars attesting to the reasons for the revolution cited all of the injustices which the colonists felt that England had been guilty of, but listed none of the benefits. [The Founders] knew that a list of the many constructive benefits of the British Empire to the colonists would have so diluted the urgency of the call to arms as to have been self-defeating.” 

If that assertion is true, and it probably is, one can believe that right off the bat, Americans came out of the gate in a state of delusion induced by the standard propaganda tactic of being completely one-sided about the framing and truth of an issue. For context, Americans did not want to engage in WWI. A massive government propaganda campaign was necessary to coax them into changing their minds. That propaganda campaign was loaded to the gills with lies, slanders, tricks, smoke and mirrors, e.g., war was necessary to make the world safe for democracy. And, we all remember the deceit and propaganda that was used to coax America into the Vietnam war disaster.

US government pro-WWI propaganda poster

“The fifth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that concerns with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa. .... if one lacks the luxury of a choice and is possessed of only one means the ethical question will never arise; automatically the lone means becomes endowed with a moral spirit. .... To me ethics is doing what is best for the most.”

There seems to be some internal conflict in how Alinsky views the morality of politics and power. Everyone claims that what they want does the best for the most. And when there is only one mean to an end, that alone imbues it with morality and justification. Maybe pragmatism requires that belief and maybe it is justifiable because what is best for the most is usually (almost always?) almost purely subjective. 

Alinsky’s views on morality raise the question of propaganda, deceit, lies, dehumanizing slanders, motivated reasoning, etc. The American people arguably were tricked into the Revolutionary War. They definitely were tricked into WWI and Vietnam. No one can know how history would have played out if the colonists and Americans later had not been tricked into those wars. It is possible that America, the environment, civilization and mankind generally would be better off. 

Another point Alinsky makes that is worth mention relates to compromise and democracy. He wrote: “A society devoid of compromise is totalitarian. If I had to define a free and open society in one word, the word would be ‘compromise.’” 

Alinsky also lays out rules of power tactics that indicate how the Have-Nots can take power from the Haves by means of doing what is possible and acceptable to those fighting for power.[1]

Questions: When there is no choice and deceit, lies and dehumanization of political opposition is necessary to move people to action (or inaction), is it justified? Does pragmatism really mandate that all means are acceptable in view of inherently moral ends? Pragmatic rationalism as I envision it holds core, semi-universal moral values in fidelity to actual facts, true truths and sound reasoning (as opposed to lies, false truths and motivated reasoning), so does that make it not pragmatic in Alinsky’s moral universe, e.g., is it just semi-pragmatic rationalism at most, or is it neither pragmatic nor rational?

Footnote: 

1. “The seventh rule: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to church on Sunday mornings. .... From the moment the tactician engages in conflict, his enemy is time.

The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Obviously there is no point to tactics unless one has a target upon which to center the attacks. It should be borne in mind that the target is always trying to shift responsibility to get out of being the target. .... The forces for change much keep this in mind and pin that target down securely.”

The Gettysburg Address: Where America Isn't Today

“I confess that I do not entirely approve this Constitution at present, but Sir, I am not sure I shall never approve it. . . . In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its Faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government is necessary for us. . . . . I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. . . . . It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this System approaching so near to Perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our Enemies. who are waiting with confidence to hear how our Councils are Confounded, like those of the Builders of Babel, and that our States are on the Point of Separation, only to meet, hereafter, for the purposes of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and I am not sure that it is not the best. . . . . On the whole, Sir, I cannot help expressing a Wish, that every Member of the Convention, who may still have Objections to it, would with me on this Occasion doubt a little of his own Infallibility, and to make manifest our Unanimity, put his Name to this instrument.” Benjamin Franklin, 1787, stating his consent to the new US Constitution

The Gettysburg Address struck me as reflecting something that is now largely lost in much of American society. It refers to our, origins, and the war and sacrifices that social division fomented. It expresses a sentiment that despite our often bitter, unresolvable disagreements, there is still something valuable and decent here to fight for. As Ben Franklin astutely pointed out in 1787, we never were perfect right from the get go. Despite that, we only do what we can under the circumstances we find ourselves. Doing that requires sacrifice for the common good, despite some ideological claims that the collective interest is inferior and inimical to the sacred individual and sacred their property. Lincoln didn't see it that way in 1863. Not by a long shot. Neither do I.[1]

The Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. —Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863

Society seems to usually progress slowly. Sometimes, its spurts ahead for a while. Sometimes it goes in reverse, as it is doing now. We have quite a way to go to get back to where I think we were earlier in my lifetime. What could lead to a reversal of the reversal isn't clear, but is probably isn't going to just be pragmatic rationalism alone. That seems to be a glue that's emotionally too weak to cement the social social vision and cohesion that Lincoln tried to foment in 1863 and we now desperately need again.


Footnote:
1. For a while, maybe the last year or so, one thing that has felt deficient about pragmatic rationalism is its lack of some sort of a spiritual or emotional component. Not necessarily religious or supernatural, but something. It isn't clear what that component (moral value?) might be.

Pragmatic rationalism: Summary and links to discussions

The context

Intolerance is almost inevitably accompanied by a natural and true inability to comprehend or make allowance for opposite points of view. . . . We find here with significant uniformity what one psychologist has called ‘logic-proof compartments.’ The logic-proof compartment has always been with us. -- Master propagandist Edward Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion, 1923

We found ourselves at the end of chapter 3 with a dystopian assessment of democracy, an apparent ill-suited match between the mental apparatus of the public and the high-minded requirements of democracy: People should be well informed about politically important matters, but they are not. People should think rationally, but they most often do not. -- Political psychologist George Marcus, Political Psychology: Neuroscience, Genetics, and Politics, 2013

“. . . . 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.” -- Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels, Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do not Produce Responsive Governments, 2016

The tedious thing

The issue of my political ideology comes up from time to time, usually when I'm being criticized as unreasonably biased, partisan, socialist, stupid or whatever. It's tedious to repeatedly explain my ideology, pragmatic rationalism (PR). A post summarizing it and linking to past posts is in order. 

Short summary: PR is an ideology based on moral values of (i) acceptance of facts, true truths and sound reasoning, especially whenever they are inconvenient or cognitive dissonance-inducing, (ii) service to the public interest (it's complicated but it favors democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, transparency, honesty, balancing of public and private interests, reasonable regulation of commerce, etc.), and (iii) reasonable compromise to ward off authoritarianism.

PR is intended to be an anti-biasing, anti-ideology ideology. It is intended to help reduce emotion to increase rationality and acceptance of inconvenient facts, truths and sound reasoning. It mostly ignores things like conservatism, liberalism, socialism, capitalism, Christianity and so forth. Disputes about those are essentially contested, and thus for the most part resolvable only by compromise or brute force. 

PR focuses mostly on what most people claim their politics is based on, facts, true truths, sound reasoning, what's best for the people and the country (service to the public interest) and for pro-democracy people, reasonable compromise. Things like personal morals, self-esteem and group loyalty are baked into the 'service to the public interest' moral value. Maybe most of those can be called less contested concepts, especially facts. Despite facts being either mostly or completely objective, they are still often contested, usually they are inconvenient, i.e., when they generate cognitive dissonance.

PR is an anti-biasing, anti-ideology ideology: Political, economic and religious ideologies tend to lead the believer's mind to distort, deny or downplay facts, reality, truths and sound reasoning that are inconvenient. Humans hate cognitive dissonance, ambiguity and uncertainty. The human mind evolved to rationalize uncomfortable things into other things or nothings that are more psychologically comfortable. (June 3, 2019 post)

An attempted brief explanation of PR: It's not clear this attempt succeeds, but it's there. (Dec. 28, 2019 post)

Shared traits of bad leaders: Books teach that bad leaders tend to be ruthlessly demagogic and authoritarian. They usually (~97% of the time?) rely more on deceit, lies, slanders, irrational, emotional manipulation and flawed motivated reasoning. The emotional manipulation usually appeals to and foments negative emotions such as unwarranted fear, anger, hate, bigotry, intolerance and distrust, all of which tend to divide and polarize societies. Propaganda based significantly or completely on motivated reasoning generally makes arguments on some combination of emotional manipulation, logic flaws, deceit, lies, opacity and slanders of target individuals, groups and/or nations. (Aug. 10, 2019 post) 

Self-criticism of PR: Many criticisms can be leveled at PR, e.g., it is impractical for whole societies, especially ones awash in propaganda, opacity and deceit like the US. That is probably true. Nonetheless, considering criticisms helps to clarify what might be possible and what probably isn't. (Aug. 13, 2015 post)

How PR fits with social science research: Short answer is that PR fits. It should fit because it is built largely on human cognitive biology, neuroscience, psychology, social behavior science and related sciences. There's also a strong streak of moral philosophy inherent in PR. 

This quote from a 2013 book chapter on ideology exemplifies the fit:

While I will review a great deal of important research on the structure and determinants of political ideology in this chapter it is important not to lose sight of the implications of low levels of political knowledge, instability in measures of issues preferences, and multiple dimensions of issue preferences when evaluating research on individual-level political ideology. At a minimum, these findings encourage us to consider models of ideology that do not require a great deal of sophistication from most people and to be aware of the limits of ideology among nonelites. --- Feldman, S. (2013). Political ideology. In L. Huddy, D. O. Sears, & J. S. Levy (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political psychology (pp. 591–626). Oxford University Press.

Based on that, a test for PR asks if it is too sophisticated for nonelites to adopt a pro-rationalism mindset that looks to facts, true truths and sound reasoning as a major basis for political thinking and belief. (Aug. 15, 2021 post)

Complexity is unavoidably embedded in PR: Politics is very complicated, despite strenuous argument from some that it isn't. It just is. That is inherent in the human condition and the workings of the human mind. Therefore, PR is necessarily complicated, although at one time I used to naïvely think it was simple. Now I know better.

For example, service to the public interest and many of the concepts it includes are complex because they are essentially contested. There is thus no authoritative definition or agreement on definitions about when and how they apply in various circumstances. That is an unavoidable aspect of politics. That is why reasonable compromise is necessary in a democracy. In a dictatorship, autocracy, neo-fascism, plutocracy or other non-democratic form of government, definitions and compromise are at the whim of the person or people in power. (July 11, 2020 post)

Corporate Politics and Physicists Modeling Political Instability

Wild turkeys in the hay

Shawn Griffiths at IVN writes on modeling studies that are beginning to dissect and shed light on growing instability in US elections. Relevant to this is the fact that two private political corporations, the Republican and Democratic Parties, are largely in control of the deeper systemic problems in our elections process. Griffiths writes:

“A research group out of MIT, for instance, has shown how the same mathematical formulas that help scientists understand certain phenomena in the physical world can be used to analyze the growing instability in US elections -- an instability these researchers acknowledge is partly due to growing polarization between the two parties and the structure of party primaries. 

‘Our country seems more divided than ever, with election outcomes resembling a pendulum swinging with ever increasing force,’ MIT doctoral student in Physics, Alexander Siegenfeld, told MIT News. He adds that in these ‘unstable’ elections, “a small change in electorate opinion can dramatically swing the election outcome, just as the direction of a small push to a boulder perched on top of a hill can dramatically change its final location.’ 

The study’s analysis identifies a transition in elections beginning in 1970, from a period where elections captured the greater preference of voters to increasing instability that has resulted in an undemocratic phenomenon the study calls ‘negative representation’. In other words, election outcomes increasingly swing further in the opposite direction of the greater preference of voters.”

MIT News writes this about the research:

The findings appear in the journal Nature Physics, in a paper by Alexander Siegenfeld, a doctoral student in physics at MIT, and Yaneer Bar-Yam, the president of the New England Complex Systems Institute. 

“Our country seems more divided than ever, with election outcomes resembling a pendulum swinging with ever increasing force,” Siegenfeld says. In this regime of “unstable” elections, he says, “a small change in electorate opinion can dramatically swing the election outcome, just as the direction of a small push to a boulder perched on top of a hill can dramatically change its final location.” 

That’s partly a result of an increasingly polarized electorate, he explains. The researchers drew from a previous analysis that went through the Republican and Democratic party platforms in every presidential election year since 1944 and counted the number of polarizing words using a combination of machine learning and human analysis. The numbers show a relatively stable situation before 1970 but a dramatic increase in polarization since then. 

The team then found that the Ising model, which was developed to explain the behavior of ferromagnets and other physical systems, is mathematically equivalent to certain models of elections and accurately describes the onset of instability in electoral systems. 

“What happened in 1970 is a phase transition[1] like the boiling of water. Elections went from stable to unstable,” explained Bar-Yam. 

The increasing instability also results in part from the structure of party primary systems, which have greatly increased their role in candidate selection since the ’70s. Because the voters in primaries tend to have more extreme partisan views than those of the general electorate, politicians are more inclined to take positions to appeal to those voters — positions that may be more extreme than those favored by more mainstream voters, and thus less likely to win in the general election. 

This long-term shift from a stable to unstable electoral situation closely resembles what happens to a ferromagnetic metal exposed to a magnetic field, Siegenfeld says, and can be described by the same mathematical formulas. But why should formulas derived for such unrelated subject matter be relevant to this field? 

Siegenfeld says that’s because in physics, it’s not always necessary to know the details of the underlying objects or mechanisms to be able to produce useful and meaningful results. He compares that to the way physicists were able to describe the behavior of sound waves — which are essentially the aggregate motions of atoms — with great precision, long before they knew about the existence of atoms. 

“When we apply physics to understanding the fundamental particles of our universe, we don’t actually know the underlying details of the theories,” he says. “Yet we can still make incredibly accurate predictions.”

This looks like an at least partial explanation for why so many Americans are unhappy with the two party system. It could help explain why the outcomes of elections seems to lead to government that is not responsive to majority public opinion.[2] The concept of negative representation is something that never occurred to me. But, as the physicists describe the concept, it seems spot on in describing what is going on in America’s increasingly minority-driven politics. Maybe the physicists are starting to get a handle on what’s going on and where we can possibly look for solutions, e.g., democratic and republican corporate ownership of the electoral process.


Footnotes: 
1. Reference to phase transition is compatible with seeing politics as a complex adaptive system and the transition period we are in as a bifurcation point that such systems undergo from time to time. It may be the case that over time this line of research can lead to deeper insights about both politics and human history in general. As long as there is sufficient data to input to the model, the predictions and/or explanations could be very helpful to inform strategies to foster long-term human survival and well being. Time will tell.

2. The very first consideration in the core ‘service to the public interest’ moral of pragmatic rationalism is, and always has been, reasonable consideration for majority public opinion, e.g., “being reasonably responsive to public opinion.” It seems that as more data accumulates, pragmatic rationalism increasingly looks to be directly relevant to try to at least partly fix what what is broken in US politics.

Some thoughts on ideology in politics, cognitive biology and pragmatic rationalism

Context

My ideology, pragmatic rationalism, is intended to function as an anti-biasing, anti-ideology ideology. The core concepts are based on what human social behavior and cognitive science tells us about sources of flawed politics and policy such as bias, error, irrational distrust, false beliefs and flawed reasoning (motivated reasoning). Political, religious and/or economic ideologies, constitute major sources of flawed politics. With the dominant ideology-based mindset, politics and policy are largely grounded in ideology and competition for ideological influence. In the pragmatic rationalist mindset, the hope is to shift politics and policy from mostly ideology-based to somewhat more empirical evidence and sound reason-based. Nothing can be perfect, but it's at least theoretically possible to do better. That's the hope. Some evidence supports this possibility for at least some people.

Ideologues of all flavors of ideology strenuously claim (1) they are empirical evidence and sound reason-based, and (2) political opposition and opposing groups and institutions are not. Evidence from social science convincingly shows that is simply not true most of the time for most issues. Politics usually significantly disconnected from evidence and sound reasoning is settled science. Like human-cause climate change, this not something that experts still dispute. 

A 2013 research paper 

The concept of ideology can be difficult to reconcile with empirical research on political knowledge and belief system organization. First, ideology is a construct that is used at multiple levels. Political ideologies exist as formal systems of political thought. Texts on Marxism, liberalism, conservatism, and fascism develop elaborate interpretations of social, economic, and political arrangements and offer prescriptions for political actions. In somewhat less structured ways, ideologies operate at the societal level to organize political debate by allowing political parties to offer more or less coherent policy platforms. And, in the primary focus of this chapter, ideology is also used to describe the ways in which people organize their political attitudes and beliefs. It is easy to introduce confusion into discussions of ideology by blurring the lines between these levels of analysis. Some connections between these levels should exist, but we must not make the mistake of assuming that there are straightforward relationships between these varied uses of ideology. While I will review a great deal of important research on the structure and determinants of political ideology in this chapter it is important not to lose sight of the implications of low levels of political knowledge, instability in measures of issues preferences, and multiple dimensions of issue preferences when evaluating research on individual-level political ideology. At a minimum, these findings encourage us to consider models of ideology that do not require a great deal of sophistication from most people and to be aware of the limits of ideology among nonelites. --- Feldman, S. (2013). Political ideology. In L. Huddy, D. O. Sears, & J. S. Levy (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political psychology (pp. 591–626). Oxford University Press.

What that says is that average people generally do not apply ideology in sophisticated or consistent ways. My interpretation is that ideology can be used as a glue to help hold groups of people together, while at the same time be a framework lens to inform or misinform people and to divide societies by creating in-groups (e.g., Republicans) with credibility and trust and out-groups without (e.g., Democrats). 

Another 2013 research paper 

Decision scientists have identified various plausible sources of ideological polarization over climate change, gun violence, national security, and like issues that turn on empirical evidence. This paper describes a study of three of them: the predominance of heuristic-driven information processing by members of the public; ideologically motivated reasoning; and the cognitive-style correlates of political conservativism. The study generated both observational and experimental data inconsistent with the hypothesis that political conservatism is distinctively associated with either unreflective thinking or motivated reasoning. Conservatives did no better or worse than liberals on the Cognitive Reflection Test (Frederick, 2005), an objective measure of information-processing dispositions associated with cognitive biases. In addition, the study found that ideologically motivated reasoning is not a consequence of over-reliance on heuristic or intuitive forms of reasoning generally. On the contrary, subjects who scored highest in cognitive reflection were the most likely to display ideologically motivated cognition. These findings corroborated an alternative hypothesis, which identifies ideologically motivated cognition as a form of information processing that promotes individuals’ interests in forming and maintaining beliefs that signify their loyalty to important affinity groups. 

Much more perplexing, however, are the ubiquity and ferocity of ideological conflicts over facts that turn on empirical evidence. Democrats (by and large) fervently believe that human activity is responsible for global warming, Republicans (by and large) that it is not (Pew Research Center, 2012). --- Ideology, Motivated Reasoning, and Cognitive Reflection: An Experimental Study; Judgment and Decision Making, 8, 407-24 (2013) Cultural Cognition Lab Working Paper No. 107 Yale Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 272

Clearly, even before the ex-president rose to power, researchers were well-aware of the phenomenon of people fighting over empirically true facts. Political observers had written on that years ago. The data here indicates that this does not have anything to do with differences in cognitive ability, roughly intelligence. It is grounded in psychological and social factors such as tribe and ideology.

A 2015 paper abstract

In this commentary, we embed the volume’s contributions on public beliefs about science in a broader theoretical discussion of motivated political reasoning. The studies presented in the preceding section of the volume consistently find evidence for hyperskepticism toward scientific evidence among ideologues, no matter the domain or context—and this skepticism seems to be stronger among conservatives than liberals. Here, we show that these patterns can be understood as part of a general tendency among individuals to defend their prior attitudes and actively challenge attitudinally incongruent arguments, a tendency that appears to be evident among liberals and conservatives alike. We integrate the empirical results reported in this volume into a broader theoretical discussion of the John Q. Public model of information processing and motivated reasoning, which posits that both affective and cognitive reactions to events are triggered unconsciously. We find that the work in this volume is largely consistent with our theories of affect-driven motivated reasoning and biased attitude formation. --- Why People “Don’t Trust the Evidence”: Motivated Reasoning and Scientific Beliefs, Patrick W. Kraft, Milton Lodge, Charles S. Taber,[1] The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2015

Here, the concept of motivated reasoning is seen as central to ideologue thinking when empirical evidence is rejected. Ideologues tend to treat their political and economic beliefs as as both sacred in a religious sense and correct and thus not open to question. Religious ideology, of course, is usually seen by the believer's mind as sacred and infallible.

Footnote: 

1. Lodge and Taber wrote the 2013 book, The Rationalizing Voter. A non-technical book review is here and a technical review is here. Lodge and Taber focused a lot on affect or feelings and how they influence perceptions of reality and thinking. This aspect of the how the human mind operates seems to be central to politics.

A 2009 research paper, Affect as a Psychological Primitive, described emotion and feelings like this:

Historically, “affect” referred to a simple feeling—to be affected is to feel something. In modern psychological usage, “affect” refers to the mental counterpart of internal bodily representations associated with emotions, actions that involve some degree of motivation, intensity, and force, or even personality dispositions. In the science of emotion, “affect” is a general term that has come to mean anything emotional. A cautious term, it allows reference to something’s effect or someone’s internal state without specifying exactly what kind of an effect or state it is. It allows researchers to talk about emotion in a theory-neutral way.

The phrase, 'internal bodily representations associated with emotions' reflects a belief that some or all of the human body can contribute to feelings in the mind. Some researchers occasionally refer to this as speaking directly to the gut, not the mind. The point is that there is evidence to believe human emotions and feelings are powerful influencers of perceptions of reality and thinking about whatever reality individuals think they see, including when the reality is false. Strong ideological beliefs tends to make it easier to deny, distort and/or downplay inconvenient facts, truths and sound reasoning. 

Pragmatic rationalism: Another forlorn attempt to explain it

Germaine's predicament -- cognitive rocks are super heavy

This blog post is another of my proverbial lost causes. But I'm a modern day Sisyphus. In my opinion, my past attempts to explain my political anti-ideology ideology, pragmatic rationalism, have been unsatisfactory.

Nonetheless, Sisyphus is persistent. He keeps pushing that rock up the hill, hoping the spouse doesn't, uh, interfere?

Hey tweety pie, could you please let that thing go and get some groceries?? 

You can play with your rock later. I'll make sure it 

stays at the bottom of the hill. 

Aw, crud, do I have to?

Yesterday, I tried to explain why I now believe that the Republican Party and its rank and file supporters are fairly included in the label of FRP (fascist Republican Party). I got entangled in this quite useful politics back and forth, also known among experts as "to and fro."  

The following is from yesterday's discussion here about the fascism or lack thereof among Republican rank and file voters.

Opening volley: I don't think your description of the Republican party is either helpful or entirely fair. You basically are saying that there are 3 types of Republicans: Christian nationalists, Nazis, and the people deluded by Fox News. There isn't enough daylight between these groups to call them separate.

Most of the people who actually care about fiscal conservatism (read: tax cuts) are a separate group. The second group are the actual elites, and they don't care much about the first group (we'll call them the base). The elites don't have the same social priorities of the base, but they're happy to use them and let them have their way if it means feeding their interests. Likewise, the base is willing to parrot the points of the elites, but they don't really care about the priorities of the elites. Both are fine with authoritarianism, but for different reasons. The elites are fine with it because it solidifies their power. The base is fine with it because it lets them impose their will on others.

Sisyphus response 1: 

The second group are the actual elites, and they don't care much about the first group (we'll call them the base). The elites don't have the same social priorities of the base, but they're happy to use them and let them have their way if it means feeding their interests. .... Both are fine with authoritarianism, but for different reasons.

That is a really nice, clear way to describe the situation. Well done.

That is how I see it. The elites are happy to, and expert at, using the base to serve their own interests.

But I do not understand the unfairness you see in how I characterize and label the FRP. I'm missing something in your reasoning. Is fascism the wrong label, and if so, why? What is a better label, or is it better to assign labels to the different groups to be more accurate?

For example:
elites = three groups (i) anti-democratic laissez faire capitalists, (ii) anti-democratic radical Christian nationalists, and (iii) anti-democratic racists, fascists and/or White supremacists
R&F = ? (some of all of the above?)

Volley 2: The label of fascist is fine for the party as an organization. What's unfair is saying that there are only 3 types of Republicans: Christian nationalists, Nazis, and the people deluded by Fox News.

You stated that there are 2 groups. The elites, radical ideologues whose main goals include Christian nationalism, and the rank and file, 50% of whom are Nazis, and 50% of whom are deluded by Fox News. By your reasoning, all Republicans fall into one of those 3 groups. That's what isn't fair.

There are plenty of Republicans who joined the party because they are anti-tax and/or anti-regulation. They don't care about Christian nationalists, Nazis, or Fox News, both in the sense that they don't necessarily share that ideology but also in that they feel no need to oppose it. Saying there's no difference between that group of Republicans and those who fall into your 3 groups is unfair and inaccurate.

Response 2: I understand your point. Not all Republicans are strictly in one or more of those three major groups. That is true.

But here is my problem. Reference to the FRP includes in people who aren't in one of the three groups, but they are in the genus group called Republicans, which includes all groups, not just the big three. If these outliers vote for Republican candidates who advocate for anti-democratic policies and rely heavily on anti-democratic rhetoric and dark free speech, what are those people? They support the fascism of the FRP with their votes. Maybe there are enough Republicans outside the big three groups that they are a necessary block of votes to win state and/or federal elections for anti-democratic or fascist Republicans.

In their minds they are not fascists. But in practice, what does their meaningful behavior amount to?

Volley 3: If you're just going to paint them all with the same brush based on how they're voting, you don't need to go through the charade of separating them into categories that you're just going to ignore. If you're actually trying to understand them, though, you have to consider where they're coming from. The question, then, it what you're trying to do. Are you trying to justify screaming about them? Or are you trying to make a fair description of them?

Response 3: 

... you don't need to go through the charade of separating them into categories that you're just going to ignore.

It's not a charade on my part. It is an attempt to explain why the categories can collapse into the single FRP label. Some people accuse me of unreasonably lumping disparate groups into one genus and to be transparent, explaining the subgroups helps people understand my reasoning, which they are free to partly or completely accept or reject. At least when others decide, it will be on the basis of a reasonable understanding of why I lumped groups as I now do. I don't ignore the small groups but conclude that, by their actions or behaviors, they defensibly or rationally can be included in a larger generic group.

Are you trying to justify screaming about them? Or are you trying to make a fair description of them?

I am trying to make a fair description of them. I try not to engage in irrational screaming. Not all criticism amounts to irrational screaming. But unless I explain myself and my reasoning, people have no objective basis to decide if I am unjustifiably screaming or fairly describing something that is complicated and open to dispute.

Without an empirical basis to understand my beliefs, people default to politics as usual, i.e., people who agree will see my opinions as true, and ones who disagree will see them as false or flawed. I don't want to do politics as usual. IMO, politics as usual is inherently toxic and anti-democratic. I want to do pragmatic rationalist politics and that requires enough explanation to afford people a better basis to decide for themselves than mere uncritical agreement or disagreement with an opinion not supported by any facts, truths and/or reasoning.

Volley 4: You really don't seem like you're trying to make a fair description. Your three categories look more like of a collection of insults than any kind of serious effort to understand them, and your dismissal of anyone who doesn't fit one of those three as being a small minority not worth considering only compounds that impression. The entire post makes me think it's unlikely you have any friends or family that are conservatives.

Response 4: Fair enough. At least we understand each other and that is a good thing.

To recapitulate, nothing I have said to try to explain myself in this blog post and my comments to you is sufficient for you to believe that my assertion of facts, truths and reasoning is nothing more than mere insults with no respect or serious effort to understand the people my comments discuss. 

Just curious, exactly what do I not understand about the people you believe I unfairly and/or irrationally smear, slander and/or falsely lump together or characterize? Since you offer almost no details of your facts, truth or reasoning, I assume you completely reject everything I assert as false or worse, with little or no probative weight in fact, truth or reason.

 

I am not trying to be obtuse or disrespectful to you. I am trying to explain myself. So far, my explanation is completely unpersuasive in your mind. I accept that, but don't understand why.

FWIW, some of my family is deeply conservative, but not my immediate family. Some of my friends are conservative, but not hard core T**** supporters -- they are uncomfortable with the modern GOP. Would a different family and friends situation for me necessarily make a major difference in my analysis and beliefs? How many liberal friends and family do T**** supporters have and would a difference in

Volley 5: to be determined if there is a return volley

The point I want to make

The core point I want to make here is in the comments highlighted above. Whether one agrees or disagrees with my assessment of rank and file Republicans as fascists is beside the point here. 

My point is this: One cannot do rational pragmatism without at least some explanation of asserted facts, truths and/or reasoning. Absent that, there is no rational basis to evaluate most political opinions in dispute, ~98% in my opinion. In those cases, politics defaults to politics as usual where people agree with opinions they like and disagree with ones they don't.

Questions: Other than facts, truths and reasoning, what else is there to evaluate the acceptability or lack thereof in disputed political opinions, e.g., personal morals and self-interest? Are morals and self-interest built into truths? Is this blog post too wonky?

Is Morality an Existential Threat to Democracy?

Note: This post is long. However, it discusses one of the most important and enlightening broadcast programs that I recall hearing in the last 30 years or so.

The program: A broadcast on NPR entitled Moral Combat produced by the Hidden Brain program discusses what happens when morality is injected into a political issue or tends to be inherent in it. The effects are almost completely socially corrosive and anti-democratic. In essence, most issues can be politically weaponized by moralizing them. Playing on conflicting moral beliefs is an effective way to divide, distract and polarize a population. That affords demagogues and dictators the most common pathway to authoritarian political power.  The 55-minute podcast is here. Several key points of the research the program discusses are summarized below.

Moral certainty neuters facts, truths and reason: Major moralized issues in the US include immigration, same-sex marriage, abortion, gun control, police violence, religious dogmas, euthanasia laws, trade policy and even political ideologies, e.g., evil socialism, liberal tyranny, etc. For many people, moralized issues are not generally debatable because the moral issue is clear in their minds. People see their moral belief as obviously correct and therefore not subject to debate or contrary facts, truths or reasoning. People who try to convey moral inconvenience or threat are generally rejected as not trustworthy because they are perceived to be talking obvious nonsense.

The more self-righteous, the more anti-democratic: People who have moderate to limited moral feelings about an issue such as a euthanasia law, tend to accept court decisions about the law without experiencing much positive or negative reaction toward the court. By contrast, when a court decides against people with strong moral convictions, they tend to see the court as less trustworthy, less procedurally fair and less legitimate. A court decision that morally weaponized people agree with tends to foster a perception of trust, legitimacy and fairness. Thus by morally weaponizing an issue and publicizing court decisions on it, both the courts and political opposition can be delegitimized and made to appear untrustworthy and/or illegitimate.

Researchers find similar moral reactions in court cases that decide on cases of vigilante justice. People who strongly morally believe that a person is guilty or immoral tend to be more sympathetic to the vigilantes and less trusting of the court that punishes vigilantes. The lesson is that probably most people with moral convictions about an issue generally do not care a lot how the moral conviction is defended or vindicated, e.g., by legal or illegal means. Moral self-righteousness tends to override concerns that get in the way, including the rule of law. Another cited example of moral self-righteousness justifying the means is Mitch McConnell's refusal to consider Obama's Supreme Court pick in 2016 saying "of course, of course" the people should have a say, but in 2020, simply denying that people do not need to have any say. Lying, cheating and hypocrisy tend to justify self-righteous moral ends over other concerns.

Most people's reaction to institutions that make decisions they strongly morally disagree with is to question the institution, not their own strong moral convictions. Thus by morally weaponizing as many issues as possible, a political group can delegitimize an entire government for reasons that are not objectively reasonable.

The decline in trust, science and experts: Poll data from the last 30 years shows that public trust in various institutions and political opposition has significantly declined. Public trust is one of the glues that holds a democracy together. Public trust is a bulwark against demagogues, tyrants, crooks, liars, lawbreakers and kleptocrats. When distrust is based on moral grounds, evidence is usually not needed to justify what people feel, and thus know, is true. That leads to distrust of (i) science that contradicts moral beliefs, and (ii) the experts who try to convey the inconvenient truth. Feeling or emotion usually overrides facts, truths and sound reasoning when strong moral convictions are at play.

False belief in moral objectivity and its truth = closed minds: People with strong moral convictions tend to believe that their belief is objectively true, like 2+2 = 4 is objectively true. Again, personal moral knowledge is usually certain. But in fact, moral beliefs are usually more subjective than objective. Moral convictions feel objectively true and thus are not open to debate or contrary facts, truths or reasoning. Based on such feelings, people or institutions, e.g., courts, who hold contrary moral beliefs must be objectively wrong. Those feelings are usually objectively wrong because personal moral truths are falsely but sincerely believed to be universal moral beliefs that should apply to everyone, everywhere, always or almost always. 

The problem with this false belief in objective moral truth is that when a person engages with or hears another who has a different moral belief, that person usually concludes that since they believe in something that is immoral or evil, that person must also be immoral or evil. Then, trust usually bites the dust, especially when the "immoral" person tries to explain their belief and its basis. 

Moral conviction and confirmation bias: Another corrosive effect on truth and trust that strong moral conviction tends to have is that it limits or blocks efforts to look for contrary evidence or reasoning that contradicts the moral conviction. Confirmation bias tends to shut down open-mindedness and strong moral conviction tends to create confirmation bias. This is another example of how strong moral and other beliefs tend to shut down open-mindedness and the psychological discomfort that contradictory evidence and/or reasoning can lead to.

The researcher that was interviewed for this program, Linda Skitka, commented that a person simply looking for reasons or contrary evidence about a genuinely felt moral certainty can lead to social pressure to not even inquire because the moral belief is obviously true and universal. Why question what is sincerely believed to be true and universal? It raises questions about the morality of the person doing an inquiry that could lead to finding contradictory evidence or reasoning. In other words, strong moral convictions can lead to social siloing, along with distrust. 

In addition to potential social ostracism or motive questioning, doing research into an morally-charged issue has a tendency to reduce the intensity of the moral conviction when contrary evidence or reasoning is encountered. That is a socially beneficial impact of having enough moral courage to overcome both confirmation bias and social pressure that tends to keep minds closed and thus usually misinformed. 

Inquiry into a matter of moral certainty also runs the risk of it leading to moral relativism, making everything up for grabs and personal while nothing is universally true. That invites the question of whether there is such a thing as a universal moral truth. 

Disregarding the rules: Experiments have shown that people with a moral conviction tend to break rules more when they have been exposed to court decisions they morally disagree with. There is something about moral disagreement that loosens other glues that holds democracy together, namely respect for the rule of law and simple respect for other citizens. Strong moral convictions can simply destroy those glues and weaken democracy.

In the case of the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown CT at the Sandy Hook elementary school, some gun rights activists claimed online that the parents of children who were murdered were not real and that the mass shooting was a faked conspiracy to foment gun more regulations. Some believed that the parents were paid to stage the gun attack. Some of the parents of murdered children were harassed in real life, not just online. That kind of blind, deranged hate and hideously false belief was grounded in strong moral convictions that guns were good and thus could not possibly have been used to murder 26 innocent people including children in an elementary school. 

Killed compromise: People in disagreement without a moral basis for the disagreement can usually find common ground and compromise far more easily than when strong moral convictions are clashing. In the moral conflict scenario, people have a hard time simply coming to agreement on how to simply talk about the issue. 

Personal observations

This research on the effects of moral belief on politics and political issues makes a lot of sense. It helps explain one of the key bases for how and why the radical right has relentlessly moralized issues in politics and used moral disagreements to polarize and divide American society. This moralization process has been a conscious, sustained effort by the radical right to gain influence and power at least since the mid-1950s. And, since colonial times in the US, various extremist groups also appear to have recognized the power of moral weaponizing to build in-group cohesion, typically by vilifying various convenient out-groups. The in-group extremists are morally good and the out-groups are at least immoral, if not evil.

The decades-long radical right effort to paint reasonable compromise as ideological or tribe betrayal or treason has been successful. The GOP has had RINO hunts for years and the party is now mostly ideologically cleansed. The GOP has become anti-democratic and pro-authoritarian in breaking norms that used to be frameworks for compromise. The party now looks for obedience based on intolerant moral condemnation, not diversity of ideas and moral tolerance. Morally weaponizing politics and political issues has been a major tool that helped sink the GOP into this moral morass that it has become. 

Pragmatic rationalism

The research findings discussed in the Moral Combat program are satisfyingly and fully compatible with pragmatic rationalism (PR) on moral grounds. PR is built on four core moral values: (i) fidelity to trying seeing fact and true truths with less partisan bias, (ii) fidelity to applying less biased or partisan conscious reason to the facts and truths, (iii) service to the public interest based on factors including the facts, truths and sound reason, and (iv) willingness to reasonably compromise according to political, economic and environmental circumstances suggest are reasonable. Inherent in those morals are a strong bias toward democracy, the rule of law, and social trust and tolerance and against authoritarianism, law at the whim of those in power and social divisiveness and distrust.

One of the concerns built into the four moral values is the matter of their universality, not the moral issues that now divide and poison American society and the federal government. As far as I can tell, most Americans would claim that they adhere to all four of those values, especially the first two. Unfortunately, respect for all of those moral values, especially compromise have been under decades of relentless radical right attack propaganda (dark free speech). Those core values are slowly eroding in America. I have argued that this semi-consensus on the acceptance of facts, true truths, sound reasoning (~logic), service to the public interest and compromise constitute a basis to claim high moral authority for them. I believe those values transcend the other moral values (abortion, gun control, etc.) that demagogues, tyrants, special interests and kleptocrats are now using to disinform, distract and tear American society apart.  

PR is not silent about morals related to dark free speech (lies, deceit, irrational emotional manipulation and bogus partisan reasoning), all of which are targeted as detrimental. 

PR is silent about toxic morals such as abortion, gun control or same-sex marriage.  Instead, it depends heavily on respect for facts, truths and sound reasoning. That is focused on the always disputed concept of service to public interest, and to a less extent compromise. Thus, PR inherently is anti-strong moral conviction by virtue of be inherently anti-confirmation bias and anti-motivated reasoning. As the Moral Combat program points out, simply looking for contrary evidence tends to weaken the intensity of moral convictions. Exposure to inconvenient but sound reasoning will have the same beneficial effect. 

A key goal of PR is to open minds to look for all the relevant evidence and apply sound reasoning to it from one or more points of view, liberal, conservative, centrist, capitalist, socialist, cost-benefit, etc.  PR is not a means to get rid of moral convictions, but instead it defines a mindset that should at least partially rationalize their intensity and irrational emotion-generating effects. The goal is to make moral convictions somewhat more compatible with democracy, facts, truths and sound reasoning, without unduly limiting people's ability to act on their personal moral beliefs within the limits of laws. 

Questions:

Can the four core moral values PR is built on be considered transcendent over other moral values, or are all moral values equal?

Is there such a thing as a universal moral value?

Is it a mistake to consider the intellectual framework of PR a moral one, and if so, what should the mental constraints that PR attempts to impose be considered purely secular with no moral component?

(keeping in mind Sisella Bok's view of the immorality of lying in politics)  

Is democracy more inherently moral than authoritarianism?

(that's a core assumption that PR is based on - if authoritarianism is just as good, then why be concerned about facts, truths, sound reasoning, etc., and just accept what the leaders say and tell people to do?)

Chapter Review: Arguments and Logical Fallacies

This is a review of Chapter 10, Arguments and Logical Fallacies, of Steven Novella's 2018 book, The Skeptic’s Guide the the Universe: How to Know What’s Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake. In this chapter, Novella marches through basic logic and the kinds of logical fallacies that people tend to rely to support their beliefs. The flaws are usually asserted unconsciously. The content of this chapter seems timely in view of the completely contradictory facts and arguments the two sides in the impeachment inquiry are hurling at each other. Novella points out that, in situations like this, one or both sides can be mostly wrong, but both cannot be mostly right.

The point of chapter 10 is to try to lay out the skills needed for critical thinking, something that humans are usually not good at unless they try to be good at it. Novella asserts: “Arguing is something that everyone does but few understand. Yet arguing is an essential skill of critical thinking.” Fortunately, the understanding needed is easy to grasp. Unfortunately, it takes time and sustained effort to learn to apply it.

Basic terminology

Logical fallacy: A logical fallacy is reasoning mistake or error that makes an argument invalid. All logical fallacies are non-sequiturs, which are arguments where the conclusion doesn't follow logically from what preceded it. Novella describes it like this: “A logical fallacy is an invalid connection between a premise and a conclusion, where the conclusion does not necessarily flow from the premise(s) but is argued as if it does.” The human mind did not evolve to do precise logic and people make various kinds of mistakes unless they are aware of the errors and consciously try to avoid them. Instead of using formal logic, humans usually rely on informal logic

Argument: An argument is what connects premises (facts) with conclusions (beliefs). Although people see arguments as something to be won and beliefs to be defended, that isn't how Novella sees it. Instead, an argument is an effort to find reasoned truth, not win points. To help people engaged in argument find truth, they would best try to find as much common ground as possible and then carefully proceed to engage with belief differences.

Assertion: An assertion is a stated or argued premise or conclusion without supporting evidence.

Premise: A premise is an asserted fact(s) that an argument is based on. These days, many, arguably most, political disagreements among people are pointless because they do not agree on the facts. There needs to be a logical connection showing the premises necessarily lead to the conclusion. If there are sufficient premises that are true and the logic is valid (and thus the argument is “sound”), then the conclusion must be true. For completeness, a conclusion based on an unsound argument can be true or false, e.g., all spheres are pretty, therefore the sun is a sphere.

Novella makes an important point: “There is no way to objectively resolve to resolve a difference of opinion regarding aesthetics, for example.” Thus to avoid bickering endlessly over inherently unresolvable, people can simply agree that the disagreement is unresolvable as a matter of aesthetics, moral choice and so forth. Inherent irresolvability appears to apply to many (most?) political disagreements where moral judgments are involved, e.g., what constitutes an impeachable act by a sitting president.[1]

Checking premises

The first thing to do when beginning to engage in argument, people would do well to check their premises or facts. Four problems can occur, (1) the asserted facts or premises are simply wrong, (2) the asserted facts or premises are possibly wrong and not verified enough, (3) a premise is hidden, e.g., evolution is false because there are not ‘enough’ transitional fossils, but the definition of transitional is different from the standard science definition, which makes the disagreement unresolvable, and (4) a premise(s) is based on a subjective judgment, e.g., an information source is ‘reliable’ without an independent assessment or a person asserting a premise that ‘feels’ correct.

Logical fallacies

1. Non-sequitur: All logical fallacies are non-sequiturs. The conclusion doesn't necessarily follow the premises. In giving his version of economic conditions in the US a few weeks ago, the president Tweeted: “Nobody has ever heard of numbers like that, so people want to find out: Why was it so corrupt during that election? And I want to find out more than anybody else.”  Here, the non-sequitur was a false connection between the economy in October of 2019 and the 2016 election.

2. Argument from authority: Appeal to authority can be probative, but it needs to be used carefully. Some non-experts in climate science, like me, tend to point to expert consensus about global warming, the human role in it and options to reduce it. Consensus expert opinion does carry some legitimate weight, but sometimes consensus is wrong. Sometimes, the appealed to authority really isn't an expert. Sometimes the appealed to expert is expert on one field but not the one at issue. Both undermines the persuasive power of the appeal.

3. Post hoc fallacy: This is among the most common fallacies. The fallacy goes like this: Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X. This argument is common in defenses of alternative medicines: “I took the pills and then felt better, therefore the pills worked.” The erroneous assumption is that because of their different positions on a timeline, the first event caused the second event.

The president used a post hoc fallacy when he asserted: “Since my election, Ford, Fiat Chrysler, General Motors, Sprint, SoftBank, Lockheed, Intel, Walmart and many others have announced that they will invest billions of dollars in the United States and will create tens of thousands of new American jobs.” Fact checkers found that those business decisions were make before the president was elected and not due to his role as president.

4. Whataboutism (tu quoque): This fallacy argues that since someone or some group did something in the past, doing it now is justified. The president and his supporters sometimes justify actions the president takes as justified because democrats did it. From my point of view, the whataboutism tactic appears to lead to a spiral down in civility and social norms. For example, the president asserted: “I will release my tax returns — against my lawyer’s wishes — when [Hillary Clinton] releases her 33,000 emails that have been deleted.”

5. Ad hominem fallacy: This is an argument that attacks the opponent or their motivations instead of their arguments or conclusions. Asserting that an opponent is closed-minded is a common form of this attack. Novella asserts that people accusing their opponent of being closed-minded tend to be “closed to the possibility that they are wrong.” In other words, there are times when a person one is engaged with is in fact closed-minded.

6. Appeal to ignorance (proving a negative, ad ignorantiam): This is a fairly common fallacy based on a belief that something is true because it has not been shown to be false. Proving a negative can be difficult to deal with and thus this fallacy can be difficult to deal with. For example, the president asserted the following to CNN about his election in 2016: “What PROOF do you have Donald Trump did not suffer from millions of FRAUD votes? Journalists? Do your job!” and “Pathetic – you have no sufficient evidence that Donald Trump did not suffer from voter fraud, shame! Bad reporter.”

7. False analogy: A comparison between two things are similar in one way are falsely claimed to be similar in a different way. An example is the president's complaint about how he sees his treatment by democrats: “All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here — a lynching. But we will WIN!” The president is being investigated and criticized, but that is simply not the same as being lynched. The president's claim ignores the difference.

8. Slippery slope: This fallacy assumes that one action or policy will necessarily lead to other, worse outcomes. The mistake here is the belief that one action, e.g., a law that requires universal background checks for gun purchases, will lead inevitably to an extreme ultimate position, e.g., all guns in private hands will be taken away by force.

9. Straw man fallacy: Here, a person uses a weak version or caricature of an opponent's argument and then attacks that. The opponent may not even hold the asserted straw man position. Novella argues that critical thinking demands that the strongest version of an opponent’s argument should be assumed and addressed. Examples include assertions by the president that (1) Democrats “don’t mind executing babies AFTER birth” and (2) Democrats “have become the party of crime. [They] want to open our borders to a flood of deadly drugs and ruthless gangs [and] turn America into a giant sanctuary for criminal aliens and MS-13 thugs.”

The red herring fallacy is similar to the straw man, but it asserts a fact or premise that looks true but is either false or irrelevant. An example is the president’s Tweet two days after Attorney General Sessions recused himself from Justice Department investigations of Russian attacks on the 2016 election: “Terrible. Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory.”

10. Tautology (begging the question): This fallacy relies on circular reasoning where the premise assumes the conclusion. Thus the argument is that since A = B, therefore A = B. The two sets of A = B tend to be worded differently, making them sometimes had to spot. One example is the president’s argument that the impeachment inquiry is illegitimate because he did nothing wrong. Another example is expressed in a legal memo the president relies on in his own defense: “The President’s actions here, by virtue of his position as the chief law enforcement officer, could neither constitutionally nor legally constitute obstruction because that would amount to him obstructing himself.” That falsely argues the president cannot obstruct justice because the justice department works for him. Since the President tells the DOJ what to do, the memo argues, and any action he takes is leading justice, not obstructing it.

There are other fallacies, but these account for most of the common ones.

Footnote:

1. Pragmatic rationalism compared to arguments & logical fallacies: For people familiar with the pragmatic rationalism anti-ideology ideology argued here from time to time, its moral basis will probably jump right out as being in full accord with logic and what critical thinking requires. Specifically, the first two moral values are (i) conscious effort to try to see facts with less bias or distortion, and (ii) conscious effort to try to apply less biased conscious reason (arguments) to the facts that people think they see. The broad scope of disagreements that are not logically or objectively resolvable accords with the idea asserted here many times is that the best that people in civil, rational political disagreement can do is try to reach stasis, the point at which each understands why they disagree. Based on disagreements in my experience, about 85% of disagreements arise because of disagreements over facts. 

Authoritarianism: Heritable or Inheritable? Does it matter?

Personality traits: Stable over time, maybe due more to 

genes (inheritance) than nurture (non-genetic effects)

Heritability vs. inheritability of traits

Heredity refers to the likelihood or probability of traits running in families or groups. A trait can arise from genetics (nature), environment (nurture), or usually some combination of both. Environmental or nurturing influences include habits, behaviors, and various physical, emotional and psychological experiences. Families often demonstrate similar habits and behavior because they tend to share at least some experiences. Heritable traits are not necessarily genetic.

On the other hand, inherited traits are due only to genes. Eye and hair color and blood type are inherited as a gene(s) from each parent. Body shape is both inherited (genetic) and heritable (nurture influenced), but probably mostly influenced by inheritance (genes). Body shape can be affected to some extent by exercise and eating habits, which can arise from heredity, e.g., family habits. In the case of eye and hair color and blood type, nurture effects do not influence those traits. Being a good cook can run in families and that trait might be significantly or nearly all a heritable (nurture) trait with little or no known inheritance (genes) effects.

In a 2016 research paper, The Heritability Fallacy, two researchers wrote about the confusion that commonly plagues the concept of heritability vs. inheritability:

Contrary to popular belief, the measurable heritability of a trait does not tell us how ‘genetically inheritable’ that trait is. Further, it does not inform us about what causes a trait, the relative influence of genes in the development of a trait, or the relative influence of the environment in the development of a trait. Because we already know that genetic factors have significant influence on the development of all human traits, measures of heritability are of little value, except in very rare cases. (emphasis added)

My read of the data is that most human behavior traits arise from a variable combination of nature and nurture and are thus both inherited and heritable. One expert estimated that in terms of political beliefs and behaviors, the average person's politics is is about 35% nature or genes and about 65% nurture. Another estimated it was about 50:50. Clearly, this is not a precise science.

Authoritarianism 

Authoritarianism: a form of government characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of a strong central power to preserve a political or social status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting; authoritarian regimes may be either autocratic or oligarchic in nature and may be based on the rule of a party or the military, limited plurality, political legitimacy based on appeals to emotion and characterization of the regime as necessary to combat threats, which are often ill-defined, suppression of political opposition, etc.  

Declining respect for democracy

Some portion of all populations appear to include people with an authoritarian mindset or susceptible to authoritarian appeals (which seem to be usually heavily grounded in dark free speech). In the 1950s and until recently, authoritarianism was generally considered to be a personality trait. recent research suggested that authoritarianism is not stable enough to be a personality trait and instead is a personal adaptation or a trait that is variable.

A 2013 paper, Authoritarianism as a personality trait: Evidence from a longitudinal behavior genetic study, generated data indicating that the source of authoritarianism is mostly genetic and stable enough to be considered an actual personality trait, i.e., it's a genetic problem.[1] The authors wrote:

Authoritarianism has long been conceived of as a highly stable personality trait (Adorno et al., 1950; Altemeyer, 1981), though recent accounts have argued that authoritarianism is too malleable to justify this conception. We provided a test of the trait conception of authoritarianism by measuring its stability in a community sample of twins over a 15 year period, and by identifying the source of any stability with biometric modeling. Our results showed that authoritarianism exhibited a high degree of rank-order stability (r = .74). Biometric analyses indicated that this stability derived primarily from genetic influences, with changes in authoritarianism due to the unique experiences of the individual. In both of these respects, our results were highly comparable to those reported for other personality traits in previous work, indicating support for the trait conception of authoritarianism. .... Our results were consistent with the conception of authoritarianism as a highly stable personality trait. .... This stability was particularly pronounced among the more educated segment of the sample. Among those with 14 or more years of education (N = 285), the correlation between Time 1 and Time 2 scores was .78, significantly higher than the correlation of .64 among those with 13 or fewer years of education (N = 240; p < .001). (emphasis added)

By now it seems clear that the ex-president, most of the GOP leadership and most rank and file republicans are significantly or dominantly authoritarian and that will probably be very hard to change without significant social violence in America, unless more effective non-violent means to address the problem are applied, e.g., maybe pragmatic rationalism, social trust building efforts, etc. If the 2013 data is fundamentally sound, it is reasonable to believe that the authoritarianism the now fascist  GOP and ex-president have unleashed cannot easily be tamped down. 

Decades of radical right lies and polarizing anti-democratic rhetoric (Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc.)  plowed and fertilized the ground for the rise of fascism in modern America. The ex-president was the toxic seed that thrived in that ground and acted as a force for authoritarian minds to coalesce around. It took American involvement in World War II to tamp American fascism down. Unfortunately, the radical right has finally succeeded in resurrecting it and bringing it into mainstream political acceptance by the political right,

The data in the 2013 paper is consistent with data analyzing the 2016 election indicating that the single most important factor in driving support for the ex-president was (probably still is) unease over social and demographic changes. Economic complaints and fears were the other co-mingled primary influencer. In view of all the data, one can begin to clearly see how a demagogic authoritarian could have and did overwhelm the old order in the GOP. That old order was replaced with the anti-democratic fascism that now arguably dominates the GOP. It was a smaller step than I thought from authoritarian GOP radical right authoritarianism to full-blown fascist cult authoritarianism.

Maybe it really does matter if authoritarianism and fascism are inherited.

Footnote: 

1. Although authoritarianism is likely to be a significantly or mostly genetic problem, that does not mean the only solution is ethnic cleansing or violence. IMO, social means and institutions, e.g., building social trust, critical thinking and defenses against propaganda, worked in the past to keep it in check and that is what will probably be needed in the future to restore a stable status quo. My brand of politics always looks for non-violent, minimally oppressive-discriminatory means to achieve good political, economic, social and environmental outcomes. 

To make this completely clear: I am not explicitly or implicitly advocating ethnic, ideological or social cleansing by force, coercion or any other non-democratic mean. That is how authoritarians and fascists operate. Pragmatic rationalists like me advocate non-violent, respectful social means to address social problems, including the rise of GOP authoritarianism and fascism. 

Research is into personality and authoritarianism is ongoing and seems to be in a fairly early state of knowledge. A 2020 paper commented: 

Philosophers have long speculated that authoritarianism and belief in determinism are functionally related. .... Authoritarianism and allied variables manifested moderate to large positive correlations with both fatalistic and genetic determinism beliefs. .... openness was negatively related to fatalistic determinism beliefs and agreeableness was negatively related to genetic determinism beliefs. Taken together, our findings clarify the nature of relations between authoritarianism and general personality, on the one hand, and free will/determinism beliefs, on the other, and suggest intriguing intersections between worldviews and personality traits. .... Scholarly recognition of potential links between deterministic beliefs and authoritarian attitudes can be traced to the origins of modern social science. Fromm (1941), a pioneering scholar of the psychology of totalitarianism, posited that individuals seek to “escape from freedom” via authoritarianism in times of uncertainty and threat. Similarly, Adorno and colleagues’ The Authoritarian Personality (1950) highlighted belief in fate, a variant of determinism, as one of 9 personality facets underlying susceptibility to fascist ideology. .... few authors have examined the more basic hypothesis that authoritarianism is related to belief in determinism writ large, the notion that “all events in this world are fixed, or unalterable, or predetermined.” (emphasis added)

Fromm may have arrived at a critically important insight in 1941, years before the full savagery and misery of German and Russian authoritarianism had been fully unleashed on the world. What Fromm seems to have intuited is that authoritarians can't handle changing reality and in their moral cowardice, they regress into force to protect their weak egos.