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Sunday, November 29, 2020

Fix Democracy by Changing the Framework - LONG version

This post started here with the SHORT version. You really should read that first. This is the longer one with research notes and more discussion.  And, as always, this is a Work In Process. Weigh in, think, help me out there.

The Problem - Our Democracy is Failing
Our current form of democracy is based on the full participation of our citizens. If they FEEL that they are represented, then they support the common decisions we make. The problem is that our form of government was constructed by and for old, educated, white, male, landowners of British cultural heritage. It barely worked at the start. It has had some major threats, and it currently feels like it is falling apart. People no longer FEEL that they are heard, that they are represented. They are no longer civil about the means we need to gain common purpose and commitment. This essay is a purely theoretical exercise in why that might be happening, and a prayer of how we might change that. 

How I Came To This - Background
Frankly, this is a really strange way of thinking about people. This was literally forced upon me by an experience I had with a friend. As I researched it, I became convinced that there is something to this. Bear with me for the story. I have known this individual for most of my life. I value him, and I do not want to injure him, or make him feel bad about this in any way. IF he reads this, I want him to remain a friend.

A Good Friend
I met this gentleman when I started college - 1956. He is from the urban portion of a large eastern city. His background is pretty much lower middle class, same as mine. He earned two college degrees - BA and BD - Bachelor of Divinity. At which point he was ordained a Catholic priest. He is a very religious person. He identified with the poor, and wanted to work for and with them. He stopped practicing as a priest when he realized that he would never be exposed to the danger of being poor himself. He opted out, got married, had children - became part of this chosen class. 
So, he is well educated, has many good values from my perspective, is an activist, engaged. Fine man. BUT he supports the current fearless leader of our land without any question. I was stunned when I learned this. I have communicated with him enough to recognize that he is a "true believer". He is very selective about what he reads, and is "cherry picking", or everything is seen from just one perspective. At one point he sent me a list of the accomplishments of our fearless leader that was making the rounds in a our social media world. I researched it, and every one of those accomplishments was true. But every one was the exception to the rule, or a short sighted conclusion. Many stopped far short of where they might go. Some of them were actually disasters - like the economic trade war. That is only an accomplishment in the opinion of about 1% of our economists. Some were true, but barely. For example - our fearless leader said - "Let them wash the masks", when surgical masks were in short supply. When he said that, that method was impossible - would not work. The inventor of the mask did eventually come up with a way to sterilize the masks without destroying them - after many weeks of experiments, and much later. So our fearless leader takes credit for it. The list goes on like that. I'll bet a buck you can find the list on social media. I will not help with that!

Possible Explanations
Prior to this exchange, when I considered the current political landscape, I guessed there were three types of people supporting our beloved and deranged leader. I know of no credible evidence about the percentages or numbers of these or any of the other categories. 
  1. Agree. Some percentage of his supporters are clearly bigoted racists and nationalists. They are always among us, in all parts of the world. It is a kind of protective mechanism. It is not rational.
  2. Unaware. Some seem to be not well informed. This can be readily ascertained with any street interview with an attendee at a presidential rally. Jonathan Klepper on the Daily Show does it well. These people are not aware of the details, and do not want to know them. Easy enough. There are folks of this ilk on the right and the left. I think this is fairly normal. People go with the flow, with their tribe, without a lot of reflection or research. That does not mean that they should be ignored or maltreated - but we may want to "help" them with important decisions.
  3. Tolerant. Some are aware but support this program to accomplish some other goal. They are putting up with idiocy in order to get the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade, to reduce the effectiveness of government, especially regulation and things holding back the “wealth engine” that is unregulated capitalism. I would put virtually ALL of our Republican elected officials in this category. I assume they know well that our fearless leader is a dangerous autocrat, but they are putting up with him to remain in office, and to achieve some part of their party’s former goals, at some considerable cost to our democracy. I say former goals, because they have literally destroyed them. Free Trade? Fiscal Responsibility? And what happened with those former Republican goals?
  4. Persuadable? This is personal theory with little evidence. It describes someone who is clearly aware, is not a racist bigot or other pejorative category, and who honestly believes that this man is sound and capable. How does one explain that? Thinking of my friend, I think that he is "persuadable", moved to join a tribe, a movement, a group, an idea, because he finds it so attractive that he cannot say no to it. He has a deeply held faith or commitment, and this person seems to support that.
    This seems totally crazy, but it is the only solution I can come up with. I like this friend. I value his friendship. he does not appear to be crazy. It must be that his brain operates in a model different than mine.
  5. And if that is true, if there is one different type here, there may be others.
This Characterization is Personally Helpful.
I am happy to have come up with this cocamamey idea because it lets me treat this friend, and the others I encounter, with a measure of care and respect. They are not in the camp of bigoted racists, or uninformed idiots, or "deplorables". They are quite normal people, who have a particular bent to be persuaded about some value or other, in a manner similar to being hypnotized. They have no blame in this - and I should stop trying to persuade them about anything. It is a total waste of time. When you think about it, this can explain a lot of other things. 
It also alerts me to the fact that this type of thing happens on both sides of the aisle. There are plenty of "progressives" that pursue their dream in the face of craziness. 
In our larger human history, why did so many people support Hitler and Mussolini and the like. (I have just stepped in Godwin's law!) Not to mention the Cultural Revolution in China when they did their best to destroy all of the educated and scientific "elite".  And the Communist Revolution in Russia literally doomed millions to death and poverty. And how do religions that premise an all powerful deity remain so popular, with absolutely no evidence. These things are based on a deep need for meaning and purpose, and that persuades most people easily, it seems. Some historians indicate that going with the flow is the norm - the people who step out of it are the exception. See this little piece on an East German leader who finally defected.
  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/trumps-collaborators/612250/

More Details on Our "Personality Types"
Each of the following sections are based on the "rules" or shorthand expressions of the ideas stated in the prior brief summary. 

1. Humans are rarely rational.
Following the Behavioral Economics folks (Kahneman / Thaler) and the evolutionary psychology folk (Haidt), and the like, science has pretty much come to the considered conclusion that most humans are NOT rational most of the time. 

In the book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman describes his work with his friend and colleague Amos Tversky. They conducted experiments where people make choices that are simply not rational. He is persuaded that we have two types of "thinking" - a FAST brain and a SLOW brain. The fast brain is the product of our adaptive evolution that enables us to survive. When we see an enemy or a large animal in the path, we are moving before we even recognize what we saw. The slow brain can make better decisions after some study and thought, but it takes us a long time, and we burn a lot of energy doing it, so we tire easily. Thinking slow is a lot of work, and difficult to actually do.  I highly recommend the book. Here are some brief descriptions of the findings, just to further entice you.
  • Facial Reading. People can identify the winner of an election by looking at the pictures of the candidates with 70% accuracy.
  • Our body knows before our brain. People asked to turn cards from three piles will "know" which pile is the bad one long before their conscious brain tells them. Their pulse and other physical attributes are aware before they are.
  • Illusion of understanding or expertise. If I know a lot about a topic, I am persuaded that I make good decisions in that realm. Facts will not persuade me otherwise. In the investment world, it becomes the “illusion of stock picking skill”. In fact, based on mountains of statistical evidence, everyone is absolutely wretched about identifying good investments, or predicting any future event, because our rational thinking is so clouded by this illusion. 
    Kahneman describes his own experience as an officer in the Israeli army. His team was charged with determining the best candidates for officer training. They devised an exercise where the team had to get a large log and themselves over a wall without touching the wall. It can be done, but the point was to observe their behavior. One day they did some research to see how well their chosen subjects were doing. They discovered that only half of their candidates succeeded. They could have literally flipped a coin. But for the very next workshop, they were absolutely certain that they were able to identify the right candidates, even though their brain had clear information that this was not correct.
  • Cognitive Ease.  If we have heard something before, even if we knew it was a lie or wrong at that time, we are much more predisposed to believe it the next time we hear it. I think our political candidates understand this one all too well. Lie well and lie often.
  • Anchoring. If you are negotiating a price, and someone mentions an outlandish number - your brain is now anchored. You cannot avoid being influenced by hearing that number. Your best option is to leave and come back some other time.
There are many, many more in the book. It changed my mind on a lot of things.

For our political system of democracy, this "flaw" in human thinking is critical. We regularly make irrational choices that affect major parts of our lives and the future of the planet as a whole. What can be done about this? A nice study by Joseph Heath, Enlightenment 2.0, makes the problem quite clear and has a hint of a solution. I highly recommend the book. Heath gave me some new insights into the problem, and a potential solution - but he did not carry it far enough. I am hopeful that we can pursue that a bit.

In the book Heath describes the problem beautifully. He is aware of most of the neuroscience and evolutionary psychological research. He is also a philosopher and well aware of how we have thought about this problem over the history of civilization. That perspective is very helpful. I will not attempt to summarize the whole book - just those ideas that were relatively new to me. 

2. Humans are mostly emotional and automatic.
Most of the "decisions" we make are automatic responses. They come from our values and emotions - not our brains.We go with the flow, with the tribe, family, religion, team, moral value, with what "feels right". This is not a problem - it is just the way things are. There does not appear to be a way to "fix" this - we are what we are. Jonathan Haidt has some fine work on this in his book: The Righteous Mind. 

As he simplifies the human state, he sees fundamental values as driving most human activity. These are basic values which color our view of the world. ll of this comes from experiments with people around the world. I am NOT making this up, and neither is the author. Here are the key ideas:

  • We are right! They are wrong. We are by nature self-righteous bigots. And that’s NOT a problem – it’s normal! We are always absolutely certain that we are right.

  • We go with our gut. Evolution has given us this gift of rapid decision making. If we weren’t so primed to jump to rapid conclusions, we would never make any decisions.

  • Thinking comes after the fact. We marshal other ideas only to support our gut call. Rational arguments on the other side just confirm our belief. You can’t make the dog happy by wagging its tail.

  • We tend to be a bit more conservative than not. It’s what worked! The guy who first tried that strange mushroom didn’t leave any kids.

  • We work off 5 basic moral imperatives that are in our genes. They pretty much govern how we work. The flavor of the imperatives changes a bit given our “world view” or social culture, but they are key to our rapid decisions.

  • Progressives / Conservatives are different. Progressives tend to use just two of our moral rules, while most Conservatives seem to use them all.

  • We are Tribal. Team or tribal membership is a big part of us. And then our tribe blinds us to the real world. We take our values from the tribe, the culture we live in, the group we identify with.

 

The five foundations of morality:

  1. Harm / Care.

  2. Fairness / Reciprocity.

  3. In Group Loyalty.

  4. Authority / Respect.

  5. Purity / Sanctity. Sex on the right, food on the left.


The “liberals” or “progressives” work more from the values of harm / care and fairness / reciprocity. Conservatives tend to use all 5 more equally. The big insight for me was to understand the fear that “order tends to decay”. I am usually on the progressive side – we need to move forward, to change, adopt new technology and ideas. I tend to ignore the risks this carries. The basic conservative position tends to be that civilization is pretty fragile, and we could lose it all if we are not careful. They see order as precious, and anything that goes counter to the present structure is dangerous. It was also interesting to me that punishment seems to be a key part of our moral motivation – including religion and the threat of hell. There is good evidence that the hell part is much more persuasive than the heaven one.

3. We respond to others similar to the way we respond to music.
We need a way to "feel" how this works.The best analogy I have found is music. When you hear music, it moves you. It does something to your insides, it makes you feel and sense something. You cannot actually DO anything about that. You can't stop it, make it get better, make it go away. All you can do is turn off the music. Dance is very similar. When you dance, you become something different. You feel different, your brain goes somewhere else. I have not found much research on this as yet, but I am sure it is there. 

4. Different humans respond to different music.
Again, by way of analogy, we each respond to music differently. People who have amusia - cannot distinguish musical tones - respond very differently to music. I had the good fortune to have a freshman highschool teacher who set me on the path to love classical music. I do not respond well to modern atonal music. Nothing positive happens inside of me. That music actually upsets me. There does not appear to be anything I can do to change that. There seems to be a biological propensity in our genes for different responses.

5. Our cultural background shapes our larger society.
We think we are in charge of our world, but we are members of a nation, members of a culture that has been shaped over thousands of years. Individuals within the culture make individual decisions - but the culture, the social network as a whole, tends to follow a pattern. The historical study, The WEIRDest People in the World  by Joseph Henrich, indicates that the western world's values have been shaped by historical events, so that the general mind, the general view of human relationships is quite different from the rest of the world. Because our sense of family ties, of the larger family has been diminished, we are much more open to trusting strangers, we are more open to constructing a social structure that is much larger than the ones tolerated in parts of the world not so impacted. He does not reach this conclusion, but it strikes me that the roots of democracy came from this new perspective, and that fertile background does not exist in most of the cultures of the world.
Given that fact or theory, the broad culture of the United States has also had a lot of forces at work in recent decades in ways we do not understand. It will take the perspective of history before we can understand how we got to this point, but it is not within our conscious control as yet.

6. Humans have very different personality types.
We are not all the same! Duh! As a type of one - me - I have absolutely NO IDEA how you respond to things. "Personality type" is probably not the best term, and we need a better word. What I mean is that each one of us responds to others, to ideas, to the world, in a somewhat different way, depending on our inborn or acquired tastes. If you recall the music analogy from the shorter version of this - our body responds to music, to rhythm, to dance, without little conscious control on our part. We can step in, and with some practice, we can affect our response, but most of the time, we just "go with the flow" of the music. Some of us have a mix of flavors or preferences, but many of us have one dominant type. Based on scarce scientific analysis and my personal observation, I think the "types" might be the following:
  • Psychopath. This is not a sociopath. This type simply does not easily make empathic connections with others as a norm. They tend to be risk takers - fearless. When a problem or person is presented to this "type" they respond with a sense of critical analysis, but with little empathy. I put this one first, because I think it may be the only one empirically proven. See Dr. James Fallon on this one. We can detect this type with an MRI or an questionnaire. Some guess that they may represent about 5% of the population. Normal population studies only focus on sociopaths, so the estimates may not be useful. For an "empathic" understanding of this, here is Dr. Fallon explaining how he discovered this:   https://youtu.be/vii60GUGTQU
  • Narcissist. This person focuses almost exclusively on themselves. Many political leaders seem to fall into this camp. You might have one in mind. Some research indicates that this type can be empirically identified by physical traits. 
  • Persuadable. This person is highly influenced by friends, family, team, tribe, whatever relationships they have. This is based on my personal observation. I know of no empirical research as yet. We all have a tribal "gene", but these individuals seem more affected than most.
  • Rational. This person tends to be sceptical of everything, requiring evidence based on research or observable fact. I think this is me, but I am not aware of a lot of research into this.
  • Empathic. This type reads every person and every situation in terms of the emotional engagement called empathy. They FEEL for others. They are continuously analyzing how others feel, how they are related, how they respond to things. This is also my personal observation - not empirically verified. 
  • Sacred. This person is so committed to a belief or set of values that they cannot brook any threat. It is difficult for them to even consider a different set of facts. The flat earth society is a good example of how this works. Many religious believers fall into this category with respect to their own religious sect or group. Most of the planet adheres to one of the four major religions. I would be willing to bet that you do as well.
  • Organized. Otherwise known as OCD. This person must have things structured and ordered. Disorder or change is considered inherently dangerous. Any risk to tradition, any change is to be feared.
  • Others. I am sure there are others.
7. All of these "types" are NORMAL.
These are not illnesses to be cured, these are not disorders. There is a normal distribution of these people in our world. and they function fairly well. They are not ill, they cannot be held at fault because they have this automatic behavioral response. Think of the Myers Briggs personality definitions. That taxonomy is basically flawed, but still a useful analogy. 

8. It is helpful to know which type a person is.
If you are "differently abled", it is very helpful for you and for everyone else to be aware of this. If you have a "super" power in one area, and a "disability" in another, both you and your teachers, friends and family will find it very helpful to know just how you operate. A person who is color blind needs to be aware of that before they learn to drive. A person with dyslexia should be alerted that they learn differently. A psychopath tends to do things with higher risk. A narcissist always tends to choose what is best for themselves. And so on.

9. Our personality types are self selecting into opposing tribes.
We used to feel engaged as members of the same nation, the same tribe. Given modern media and communications, we now "feel" that we are members of different tribes or subgroups based somewhat on our personality types - not on our rational choices. And our tribes are at war. The "other" side is fundamentally flawed and is owed no respect. They are "crazy". Part of the problem is that our sense of self, our self identity, used to be based on multiple types of relationships. We would normally encounter friends, family, members of other organizations, that were somewhat different from us. As members of multiple groups or tribes, our sense of self, our identity was not at risk if someone attacked one of our beliefs or memberships. With the recent history of "identity politics", people are more and more identified with their membership or belief system, so that a different view is seen as an attack on our identity. 

10. Our political infrastructure was built for a small subset of personality types.
Our forefathers did not have neuroscience research at their command when they formulated our democracy. They had a long history of philosophical thought, but it was primarily geared to well educated male landowners with a British cultural background. The form of government they built was risky, but it struggled along for a few hundred years. We have modified our government many times to enlarge democratic participation, and it has finally proven to be inadequate. Democracy is built on the premise that we all participate, so that as a result we all support decisions to further the common good. But we no longer "feel" that sense of commonality and support. Responding to the demands of the "tribes" our representatives rarely make decisions for the "common good". We have become a cauldron of civil unrest and tribal warfare.

11. We need a new political "framework" to support our understanding of how humans operate.
Majority selection of leaders by geographical district no longer makes us feel represented in a participatory democracy. We need another method to select leaders or make decisions that engages our different "personalities", or tribes, and can gain our common commitment. I think this is absolutely true - but I have no idea how we might accomplish it. We have created self selecting "tribes" called political parties on the national level, and that does not augur well. We have "irrational" people on both sides. We need some external structure or mechanism to "nudge" us all in the direction of the common good. We also need a formal statement of exactly what that common good is. "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" just doesn't cut it any more. Hint: it is not "white power". That ship has sailed.  

Current Research

Other Solutions Are Not Effective

Adopt Conservative Values - speak to the elephant.
Reading Jonathan Haidt you come to the conclusion that the solution if for progressives to broaden their base to include more conservative values. They also need to "speak to the elephant" - talk to people's values and emotions. That is fine in a one to one discussion, but it does not play well on the national news or for a large group.

Nudge People in the Right Direction.
Thaler has some good insight where "nudges" can resolve individual issues. He was quite successful in getting the British Government to set up a form of support for some of their interactions with citizens. I would encourage more of that, but it has a very limited scope.

Reframe Everything All the Time.
George Thaler thinks that we should fight fire with fire, and reframe everything so that the conservatives among us can buy in. If people make gut decisions, then put the GOOD things into slogans and the like to persuade them. Heath thinks that this is NOT a very good approach. It may work on some short term issues - a single picture of a refugee child - but it is not effective for the larger picture and the long haul. And it abandons the whole idea that we can actually be rational and reasonable for the long view. The original Enlightenment made its major advance by persuading some of us that reason should prevail. We should not abandon that.

Think Harder
Others recommend that we teach people how to THINK harder, learn how to meditate, how to understand and overcome their gut biases. These things do work, but getting the general public to meditate for 30 minutes daily is not realistic.

Fix the Education System
Another approach is to improve our education curriculum. If only we could teach people basic economics about trade and markets, and give them a basic understanding of the rules of government and courts - then we would be fine. That is a good idea, and a major undertaking. A few generations from now, we might prevail a bit - as long as we steer clear of the Texas education board and evolution.

Slow Politics
Heath's final answer is something he terms the "Slow Politics Manifesto", drawn from the idea of "Slow Food". He thinks that by slowing everything down in some fashion, our slow brain will allow us to make better decisions. There is no evidence that this might work, and he has no idea how to move it forward. The book was published in 2014 and sold well, but to this date there is no record of the "Slow Politics Manifesto" making any noticeable dent. There is one Dutch language website with this name and focus: http://www.slowpolitics.com/

None of this looks very promising at the moment.

External Frameworks
So, what is the answer? How do we move this mindless mass of humanity forward?  Heath had one excellent insight - that we can and do construct external frameworks or "kludges" to support our lack of rational thinking. He cites many examples. but he does not carry the idea forward. That is the point of this memo - why frameworks work, and what we might be about to build some new ones move things forward. So . . . read on.

The Power of Cultural Psychology
Now we have a great new study The WEIRDest People in the World  by Joseph Henrich. I had quite a bit to say about that in this blog entry. Based on his research and many others, human culture is not a common affair, but changes over centuries according to the needs of the times, or the changes that are forced on us. We were small groups of hunter / gatherers forever, and then we managed to move to somewhat larger groupings to support agriculture. But human groups tend to destabilize at about 80 members, unless there is something else at work to make them more cohesive. 
Agriculture brought about larger groupings, but the primary focus on personal psychological values remained at the primary family structure - that group of individuals who FEEL personally related and have commitments. That type of social structure is quite insular, tends to support for the family, as opposed to the larger society - something we might call "corruption" or "nepotism" in our part of the world. The Catholic Church was a major part of the change by means of their rigid enforcement of their laws of marriage and family. Where they dominated, the close knit family structure no longer dominated. People were much freer to join other types of associations. People were mor trusting of strangers, they traded more, and were more independent in their thinking. All of this led to The Enlightenment. 

The Enlightenment - The Age of Reason
Sometimes call the age of reason. Thanks to Darwin and Newton many others, we managed to gain the understanding that the world did not operate at the behest of hidden powers, but rather by means of rules and forces which we could understand. It might take a while for the common person to grasp that the earth is a rotating sphere in space, in orbit around a star - but once that is grasped, it is hard to deny it - at least for most people.

You might still believe that a deity is visiting you with death and illness, but looking at germs with a microscope and seeing them die when exposed to penicillin is a pretty convincing argument. Some few religions still deny it, but they are not funding the NIH, thank you very much.

Democracy Founded on Reason
It seems that the whole idea of independently elected societies, and elected leaders was not really a possible choice prior to the cultural psychological changed brought about by the above revolution. Democracy came from philosophers who were primed to be able to think about forming multiple, voluntary associations, as opposed to the family based, hierarchical driven ones of our long history. 

Our founding fathers, Washington and Jefferson and company, were highly educated, very capable adults. They knew the history of the formation of the English government, they had read about Greece and Rome, and they were philosophers extraordinaire. They built a government full of checks and balances, of frameworks which support rational discussion and argument - not blind bias and gut instinct. They did not understand modern evolutionary psychology, but they were wise enough to recognize the worst tendencies in themselves, and build a mechanism to hold some of that in check. The result has been spectacular to this point. Democracy is a kludge at best, but it does work better than everything else - at least to this point. See Winston Churchill on that one.

Kludge
Heath introduces the idea that these external frameworks are like "kludges" - an interesting word. It means "an ill-assorted collection of parts assembled to fulfill a particular purpose."! It is not elegant, but it works. A social kludge is a framework of sorts that enables us to hold on to a value or principle that we have finally achieved, and keep it intact and in front of us despite our worst biases and irrational tendencies. It be enshrined in a law, a code of ethics, a principle, a guide of some kind.

Evolution Did Not Make Us Rational
I love this a marvelous insight that Heath explains. There is no automatic mechanism in our genetics for rational thought. When survival consists of avoiding predators and finding food and waging war - what would be the point of developing a hugely rational brain? We developed what was needed to survive: fast responses, quick gut calls, the ability to form supportive groups under a strong leader. Evolutionary psychology has pretty well defined the parameters of our "fast brain". Through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, we are:
  • Fast pattern readers - we identify friend or foe in an instant - before our conscious brain recognizes what happened.
  • Quick to judge - we form a judgment in sub second time - this skill is called our instinctual biases: we favor our own kind, we are wary of new and strange, we are conservative, we would rather not give up what we have in hand no matter the potential reward, etc. We form an opinion first, and then seek to rationalize it. 
  • Tribal - we will give up our life for the tribe which is a fairly small group that we identify with. We share this trait with the ants and termites, and it has awesome power. We will hold on to that membership in the face of any threat, physical or psychological. This comes from Jonathan Haidt and E.O. Wilson and others. 
  • Selfish and Xenophobic - it's because of the tribal instinct.
  • Prefer strong leaders - we will follow a strong leader anywhere - ANYWHERE. That has worked to this point, why not continue?
  • Prefer conservative values - they worked to get us to this point, so we should not lightly abandon them. Group loyalty, sacred, authority, tradition all dominate when faced with freedom and fairness and the like. They got us to this point, and if we try to redo them all the time we will not make much progress.
  • Simple minded - we are black and white thinkers - good and bad, friend or foe. The complex things in the middle are not really useful. We can hold two contrary beliefs with no problem whatsoever. 
This list could go on - but you get the point. None of these tendencies are rational and they do not help us much with rational decision making.

Language Gave Rise to Thinking
Given this history of evolutionary selection, how did we ever become "rational"? The answer is that we developed a highly sophisticated means of communication. The ability to communicate rapidly and clearly is a survival mechanism for the tribe, the battle, the hunt. Language clearly enhanced our ability to survive our competition, and our environment. If you can organize a war party or a hunting party, you will prevail. Our brains do language effortlessly - from a very young age. 

But we do not THINK effortlessly. Our brain is not tuned for rational thought - just instant response. This takes some rational thought to understand - so bear with me, you may have to stop and think about this a bit!

Heath recounts an anecdote to make this point. I am paraphrasing it, and you can find the original about page 67. You are captured by a highly intelligent, advanced species. You are bound hand and foot to an examining table. When they are done with you, they decide to simply dispose of you. You cry out - "Wait, stop" The alien responds, "Why should we stop?" You reply, "Because it is wrong to torture an intelligent species." He responds, "What intelligent species? Surely you are not referring to yourself." You say, "Yes I am. I am really smart." The alien: "No you're not. You can't even do mathematics." You say, "Yes I can." He says, "OK, what is 78 times 43." Your response, "No problem. Untie me and give me a pencil and paper." 

The story goes on, but you get the point. We have a very limited innate ability to do mathematics, a very limited memory capacity, a very strange information retrieval mechanism. Our biological brain is not very smart. We cannot hold more than about 7 things in our working memory. Most of us cannot do any math without an external mechanism to assist - a short term memory aid. Those of us who show better skills at this are generally using a "kludge" - a mental trick to bypass our short term limits. For myself, I have a number deficiency. I cannot hold a number in my memory for longer than a few minutes without it being degraded. When I started college, I struggled with history - how on earth does anyone remember years? I found a book which taught me to do a mnemonic - a mental trick - which turns numbers into words and images, which I can remember long enough to take a history test. Some people have amazing mental tricks for memory and math - but the innate human brain can rarely do these things unassisted.

To generate a thread of rational thought, the brain uses a bunch of parts and skills that are designed for other purposes, and which can be pulled together with some education and training to form enable us to THINK. 

The evidence is pretty clear on this - our brain was not built for rational thought. It can form ideas, it can communicate, and it can create external or internal mechanisms that help us to think - but it is NOT a rational thinking engine in any way. We cannot do simple math without an external support, like paper and pencil or an abacus or calculator. We cannot do plans without a way to write things down - a skill which we only developed recently. Mathematics were only invented after we discovered writing. And after the Arabic numeric system replaced the Roman one. How does one add xviii and xxix? And multiplication? 

Things the brain is good at: (These lists  are from Heath's book, page 156.)
  • Pattern recognition
  • Tracking movement
  • Mind reading
  • Remembering things
  • Building associations
  • Seeing the big picture
Things the brain cannot do:
  • Count past three
  • Follow an argument with more than two steps
  • Consider hypothetical states of affairs
  • Think strategically
  • Manage uncertainty
  • Carry out a long term plan
  • Solve large scale collective action problems
Civilization Is Not Automatic
Given the innate abilities of our brain, it is clear that civilization did not arise automatically as an expression of our built in tendencies. It was gradually created and invented by us. And it remains a work in progress. The converse of that is also true - we could undo the entire thing with very little effort.

These External Supports are Essential
Another good insight from Heath. Paper and pencil, an abacus, a calculator, are external frameworks or supports that enable our rational thinking. We have created these things to enable progress. Human progress really took off when we developed writing. We could communicate beyond the immediate group. We could make note of good ideas and better ways, and communicate them through distance and time. Prior to writing, ideas were preserved primarily in song and verse - witness the Old Testament and Homer. 

Writing gave us the ability to preserve values and rules that we found useful - the Code of Hammurabi, the Ten Commandments. The simple idea that human behavior could advance beyond the selfish and the tribal was a huge step forward. We could create abstract ideas, which would last longer than the minute or so we could hold them in memory. We committed them to writing, to stories, to song, to anthems - they took on a life of their own.

Government is a Complex Kludge
Cultural evolution is the external support that enables us to create civilization and government. Just imagine a primitive society sitting down to create the form of government we call democracy. How many moving parts does it have? How do they work together? What are the cultural values underpinning those that have been developed over hundreds of years. It would be like the Wright Brothers starting out to create a 747. It simply could not happen. A simple test of this would be to see how well the new democracies created in the Middle East are faring - and this after over 300 years of tuning the thing. They are lacking the basic psychological values which support independent associations of trusting individuals. 

To get beyond our basic instincts, our gut, we have adopted and enforced external frameworks to enable us to progress as a society. The ideas of a rule of law, of a nation, of a market, of trade and commerce, of courts and legislatures have been developed and written down over long periods. The simple idea of "human rights" had tremendous power. The indoctrination of these ideas and their enforcement has enabled us to move beyond our primal instincts.These are essential supports that enable our brains to deal with problems that would normally overwhelm us.

Heath says that the primary reason we embodied supports in government is the understanding that cooperation has enormous benefits. We need a mechanism to trade goods, a system for resolving conflicts, a way to provide protection, a means to convey skills and values to the next generation. All of those things require an external construct for their support. For example, we use our cultural bias to protect the tribe by formally expanding the idea of the 'tribe' to the city, the state, the nation - and maybe, eventually, to humankind. 

Things Have Gone Awry
Or perhaps not. Things have changed. We have communications technology that has increased the speed and volume of exchanges enormously. But we have not adapted our decision frameworks (politics) to support this. Rapid and broad communications puts us at risk that our innate tendencies and biases will dominate all discourse and decision making. Why? Consider these points:
  1. Simple ideas can be communicated easily to our guts.
    Our conservative leaders are very adept at stating simple slogans that call to our basic instincts of tribal loyalty, strong leader, selfishness, aggression. There is no need for the slogans to be true, or to be consistent - they only need to be repeated and repeated. Our gut responds to them quickly and forcefully.
  2. Conservative Criticism is generally a simple idea.
    Simple ideas are easy to communicate to gut instincts. It need only be a single pejorative term - not a reasoned argument. Calling someone a name might be enough to prevail.
  3. Complex ideas are not easily communicated.
    For one example, from the world of economics, free trade is a universal good. A gentleman by the name of David Ricardo spelled it out very clearly in 1817. It's called the law of comparative advantage. Look it up. The Wikipedia introduction is a fine brief explanation. But the basic idea and its effect on the work force or national wealth is not something that can be easily reduced to a slogan or set of bullet points. The GOP used to be the party that supported free trade - and today they cannot find a way to explain it to themselves. So now we have a global trade war of tariffs started by a government that thinks that something called a balance of payments is a measure for success in winning an international conflict. Free trade is almost an unalloyed good, provided we can buffer the short term changes needed in the work force. 
  4. Fighting fire with fire is NOT a good idea.
    There have been some attempts to recast progressive ideas, the ideas that promote the best outcomes for the longest term, into a simple framework that can be arrayed against conservative craziness. That may work on occasion, or for a specific issue. But it is not a lasting framework for the long term. It can be easily overturned by a fresh meme from the opposition.
  5. Current political reality is undercutting many of our supportive frameworks.
    Instant, universal communication gives the advantage to the simple slogans of the gut callers. It is very little help for the explanation and propagation of rational ideas. One can criticize an elected official as being a liberal socialist, and a corrupt supporter of the wealth of wall street in the same breath, with no apparent problem. Nutso conspiracy theories can be created in an instant and spread more rapidly than any fact based narrative.
New Structures Are Needed
We need some new kludges in our societal structures to support our best instincts and interests.
That seems very clear at this point. But what are those new ideas? Actual research along these lines is just beginning. For good or ill, the initial forays here are all along the lines of marketing and advertising - which is to be expected. I am hopeful that this field of NeuroPolitical Research will grow rapidly.

Some initial ideas
This is the whole point of this little essay - what kind of infrastructure kludges might benefit our political world? The ones below are bare statements. These are just a few ideas that I have gleaned to this point. Keep in mind, none of these are a magic bullet. The way government works, there is no magic bullet - it is a highly complex pile of interacting entities that we can tune and meddle with - not something we can replace whole scale. We probably need an abundance of these things to move us forward.
  1. Neuro-Politics Research.
    Public funding for neuroscience research on democratic institutions would help. This is a new and promising field of research. The downside of this is that the initial thrust of most of this is toward how governments can use this understanding to control and manage opinion - not to promote the best ideas. As I started to research this, I turned up "neuropolitics" - a field that focuses on how human brains work with respect to political issues. That sounds promising, but it turns out that it is more a branch of advertising. Researchers are trying to determine how politicians can best influence voters. The Russians are doing it. The left is doing it, the right is doing it. They have recognized that we are not rational beings, and they are trying to influence our choices by bombarding us with memes and ideas to get us to think THEIR way.
  2. Redistricting by independent state demographer. 
    Representation is sorely tested by gerrymandered districts. This approach should reduce that, and remove the need for judicial review. Missouri has a proposed constitutional amendment to do this in 2021. A constitutional amendment is beneficial, because it imposes an additional structure restraint on "rapid" changes - think "slow politics". Twenty one states have a redistricting commission, but it is not clear how many are truly nonpartisan. 
  3. Parliamentary Form.
    This seems more supportive of rational than the strong presidential. The British model seems more resilient. It is certainly easier to change the supreme leader, and elections are much more efficient. 
  4. Indirect elections.
    This also might be better. I wrote an extensive piece on why this is a good idea, but I doubt it will prevail in any near term. We might consider implementing it bit by bit.
  5. Rank Choice Voting.
    This would be a great start for minority parties. The two party system is murderous, and anything that might support minority parties cannot hurt. Interestingly, the IGM forum had a vote on this. They think it would be better - I assume cheaper and more wealth enhancing, since this is a forum of economists!
  6. Political lying should be a crime.
    We support this for advertising - let's expand it a bit. Yes, it would be complicated, but we do enforce the civil offense of calumny when it bears economic results - we could do this. Even thinking about it formally would be a step forward. We have recently had an instance where the manufacturer of voting machines has threatened legal action for the falsehoods some news organizations have communicated.
  7. Fact Filled Sources.
    We need a kind of reference point for determining what is a "political lie". Think of the Office of Management and Budget of the U.S. Congress. It is a readily available resource of the best information that our society can produce. One good example is USAFacts. The former CEO of Microsoft spent considerable time and funds to create this resource.
  8. Expert Panels,
    These could be used more broadly, supported by some social incentives. The best one I am aware of is the IGM Economics Forum. This is a group of PhD economists, vetted for this forum. When a question is posed to them, they vote and discuss the issue to determine the prevailing opinion. If a government leader wants to pose a serious question, this is a serious forum that will give the prevailing wisdom. The formation of the forum is relatively easy - but how to provide incentives for our fearless leaders to ask the forum, yet alone to follow its wisdom. See the Wikipedia entry here. This group tends to avoid issues still in dispute among economists, but that is not a bad thing. Look at the discussions with respect to the economic impact of immigration.  free trade, trade deficits, minimum wage. What if the office of management and budget were to run issues by this panel? What if  . . .
  9. Civility in Political Discourse.
    Construct a formal framework to support civility in discourse. Think of this as rules for Parliament or Congress, with teeth and penalties. Include supportive mechanisms such as elected representatives must spend one week each year on retreat as a body to discuss NON political things, like family and faith. They must have lunch together, sit near each other, address each other cordially. M. Scott Peck said in his book The Different Drum, that if he could get people to share their values, they could negotiate anything.
  10. A social value scorecard.
    You may need an enlightened authoritarian regime to make this work, but the Chinese government has created a social credit score for every citizen. It is something like a financial credit score, but it is based on how much individuals contribute to the social well being of the society. A higher score has real consequences. A crime lowers one's scale. This is clearly open to incredible abuse, but it's a very interesting idea. It focuses on four areas: "honesty in government affairs", "commercial integrity", "societal integrity", and "judicial credibility". The Chinese government's plans include credit assessment of businesses operating in China. The goal is to restore general trust between citizens and businesses. I know this seems far out, but our existing "credit score" includes some of these same factors, and it serves as a tremendous "kludge" for economic activity. Who has time to check with all of the other merchants in town about your credit reputation?
  11. College curriculum in basic infrastructure
    We clearly need to educate our young people on how this stuff really works. Civics classes should be the foundation of how our world works - not an elective. Here are some economists are trying to  create a whole new discipline: https://qz.com/1486238/the-unlikely-reeducation-of-econ-101/
  12. Mandatory Citizenship Training
    Require everyone to complete some form of training in order to vote - and update it regularly, and check on their ability with a small test. We require that for driving a car - why not for voting! And, let's face it, the ability to drive does degrade with age - at least for some of us! Our normal curriculum includes citizenship - make a certain grade in that mandatory. And yes, I know some of us may not be able to do the reading and writing required. While that does seem to be the minimum requirement for citizen participation, I am open to some creative ways to measure this ability.
    Some possible training examples:
    • How Government Works. Try asking someone what the term is for a US Senator. Then to name their State Senator. See what you get. For that matter, what is the term for a member of the US House? An even easier one - how many US Senators are there? 
    • Felt Experiences Training. We could start with the "Blue Eyed Brown Eyed" lady, to get a running start. People could have these experiences in their normal curriculum, or they could sign up for training. Poverty and homelessness as a felt experience would be good ones.
  13. Other Bright Ideas.
    If you have a few ideas along these lines, send me a note.

MORE IDEAS for a later time.

Incentives for better decisions.
Simply providing information on the best ideas of the best of us is not going to be enough. We need to structure some incentives for our fearless leaders to adopt the best of the best - not simply ignore it and go with the crowd.

I would like to see neuroscience research on how democracy works, and what we could do to "nudge" the voting population to make the "right" decisions - decisions supported by the best research - not their in group, not their gut, not their bias. A little research on how politicians work would also be helpful. They seem to just follow the prevailing wind, wherever that is going. We need a structural change in our political system that corresponds to what we have learned about how our brains actually work. The current system only worked somewhat when the landed and educated gentry had all of the power. We broadened the participation to increase engagement and support, but we did not understand the full downside of all of that.  It is unlikely we are going to be able to import Scandinavian cultural values - what else can we do with this monster?

AND if we think it does not work well here, the rest of the planet is generally in an even worse position to use this political system. Even the Scandinavians seem stressed these days, and developing nations are barely surviving. Nations with no history of democracy that have our model imposed on them are even less likely to succeed. 

NeuroPolitics
That is a new word for me - and a new branch of NeuroScience for human kind! You can get your own copy of an overview right here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/why-our-brains-aren-t-built-for-democracy-1.2784220

This might be really useful.

"The turn to neuroscience is significant, as it gives rise to new ways of understanding political problems and how they can be solved. Furthermore, as we shall discuss throughout the text, the turn to neuroscience is far from neutral and objective, but affects how we think about and understand social reality."

But the authors of this survey piece do not go where I would go. They see this approach to studying politics as problematic.

"We will argue that neuropolitics gives rise to a pathologization of politics, by which we mean a tendency to locate what is perceived as problematic political behaviour in the brains of individuals."

They compare this analysis of politics to the old eugenics research, that would have found the cause of poverty in great parts of humankind to be genetically based. I do not think that is or should be the goal of neuropolitics. E. O. Wilson was accused of the same thing when he first proposed sociobiology. And all he was saying is that evolution gifted us with certain propensities for action - like tribalism and respect for authority, etc. We need to understand how the normal human brain acts, to allow us to construct models and assists so that we can ALL make better decisions.

Human Mental Capacity Not Adequate for Democracy
One approach to this problem is to continually point out the failings of our brain when it comes to the decisions demanded by a democratic society. One such example:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/why-our-brains-aren-t-built-for-democracy-1.2784220

HPV Vaccine vs HBV Vaccine
For another example, you are no doubt aware of the debate about the vaccine for HPV. This disease is almost endemic in our society, and it causes cervical cancer, throat cancer and esophageal cancer. We have at hand a vaccine that could wipe out this disease. No rational person would resist using that vaccine, right? It would be like resisting the vaccine for Hepatitis B  (HBV), which can be fatal, or the use of the new vaccine for shingles - Shingrix. But there is a major controversy over the HPV vaccine. And the controversy could have easily been avoided, IF we had understood how the mass of humankind would have responded to the way it was introduced. The drug company wanted a mandate - that everyone must get it, instead of introducing it through the medical profession. It quickly became a liberal prot to encourage sex among teenagers.

Look at the "You are not so smart" blog entry on this.
https://youarenotsosmart.com/2018/02/26/yanss-122-how-our-unchecked-tribal-psychology-pollutes-politics-science-and-just-about-everything-else/#more-5803e

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/09/how-politics-breaks-our-brains-and-how-we-can-put-them-back-together/453315/

Looking at some of the studies they cite, I have a bit more hope.

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Vocabulary
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Kludge - A Better Term?
I use the spelling "kludge" to avoid those surnames that sound the same. Try searching for "kluge" and you will see what I mean. Normally the term is a pejorative description of a temporary fix that is overly complex. Heath uses it as a positive, external construct that supports our feeble mental powers.

Nudge - Not Kludge - and Simpler is Better
This is a wonderful piece on the argument for "simple" regulations and less "kludges".
Making Government Simple is Complicated. The author writes a regular blog on these things - and is worth following. In this little piece he argues for 'simple' rules or changes that push folks to do the "right" things, as opposed to "kludgy" regulations. I tend to agree with him. A kludge is definitely not an easy thing to explain and hold together. It came from computer programming, and in my experience, when you have a programming kludge, you are much better off going back and redoing the thing to get it right. 

We need "nudges", simple things like wording and laws for defaults, but I also think we need "frameworks". These are cultural, legal, social supports that keep us civilized and moving forward. It would be nice to coin a new word just for that kind of social and political support. Anyone that creative? So  . . . I am not going to use the word kludge for this any longer. Sorry Joseph Heath.

External Mental Framework
That term generally applies to a highly structured, rational argument or way of proceeding. We are looking for something that is much simpler, and much easier to use. A rule of thumb, a heuristic, a ruler, a formula. Something that people will immediately see as a very helpful adjunct to their mental processes.

Tools - That term generally refers to a physical object, which a human can deploy to enhance an existing skill. A hammer, a calculator. It is not adequate to describe a cultural and social "framework" that simplifies human decision making.

Cultural Values - These are ways of thinking or implicit rules that govern our actions, but they are generally not supportive of enhanced thinking skills - rather the opposite. See the WEIRDest research cited here.

References

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