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Monday, January 18, 2021

The Future of U.S. Politics - what went wrong and how to fix it

I just read two remarkable books (Andersen, Heinrich), from very different disciplines, and the convergence gives me some hope. But that will only be true if our "fearless leaders" understand how this works. The argument is stated very briefly below. Normally I also create a longer version - who has time to read that stuff these days? Let me know what you think.

For a jump start on this, listen to this PodCast. Trust me on this! It's a great start on a scientific analysis of the Jan.6, 2021 insurrection. One key finding was that people who practice "cognitive reflection" are much more likely to have more accurate beliefs. See the study itself here: https://psyarxiv.com/szdgb/
The author is psychologist Gordon Pennycook. See the reference at the bottom for more details on his research.

Background

  1. Evolutionary psychology and neuroscience have recently taught us a great deal about how humans operate as individuals and in groups.
  2. Historical and cultural research has given us a much better understanding of how large groups of people operate over time.
  3. The combination of these and other disciplines gives us an insight into how we got to this point, and how we might better manage it into the future.
  4. We are at a critical juncture where focused actions can make a huge difference in the future of our nation and our species.

Rules of Thumb for political discourse

  1. Humans are not rational.
    You have to let go of that pervasive belief. And it is a belief, as much as faith in God or eternal life is a belief. Most of your ideas are based on beliefs, and you need to examine them a bit in the light of reason. But that is hard work, and most people just avoid it. (Kahneman
  2. Decisions are 90% automatic.
    Trust me on this - or look at the research. We operate from our gut, our fast brain, our instinct, for 90% of what we do. It works. It is evolution's protective mechanism. We decide friend or foe before we are even aware of the decision. (Barge)
  3. Most people (80%) are "lazy" thinkers.
    We are not stupid, we are not emotionally persuaded - we are just literally NOT thinking about our thinking. We need training in "cognitive reflection". (Pennycook)
  4. Modern technology (Facebook) overwhelms our normal filters.
    We have so much information coming at us (Facebook), that it takes an enormous amount of mental energy to filter it to determine what is true. Most of us spend no energy on that most of the time. We just go with what "feels" right to us. (Pennycook)
  5. Humans are easily persuadable in groups or tribes.
    We have a kind of social identity and interdependence in our genetics. It was built into us by evolution to protect the species, and it works brilliantly. But it is not amenable to rational control. Music, dance, powerful speakers, dominant personalices, act on us and generate an almost automatic response. They can persuade us to act against our individual best interests. We can be persuaded to give our life for our tribe. Or be persuaded to uncritically believe utter falsehoods that are on "our side". I am not making this up - it is well documented. (HaidtWilson)
  6. Our world view or "culture" guides how our larger society operates.
    We think we are in charge of our personal lives, but it is clear to all of us that the larger society does not follow our wishes. The larger social group has its own rules of "culture" or worldview.  This is well documented. (Heinrich)
  7. Cultures around the world are very different.
    We think that other humans operate from the same framework as we do. That is definitely not true. Humans are not all like those in the west. And the differences are quite amazing. East Africans think that life just happens to them. Westerners think they are in charge of life. Nordics think the king is no big deal. Most other societies put our leaders on tall pedestals. Asian societies hold relationships more important than individual achievement or honesty. (Hofstede)
  8. The culture that dominates our social world is formed over long periods of time.
    It does not change easily. But it does change. In the past, it seemed to require a hundred years or more for a society to adopt major changes in its world view. That seems to be accelerating. (Harari)
  9. Key actions influence the direction that culture takes.
    This is good news. It means that we can be in charge of our future - but it also means we have to become aware of and overcome the historical beliefs or cultural mindsets that control our society. (Heinrich)
  10. The Roman Catholic Church marriage rules laid the cultural foundations for democracy and capitalism.
    Sounds crazy, right? But it is well documented, clear as day when you look at the history as Joseph Heinrich explains in his book The Weirdest People in the World. The Church unwittingly fostered more trust of strangers, more risk taking, more skepticism, and made larger human societies possible. (Heinrich)
  11. Culture or worldview is the "invisible hand" that guides our society.
    Western culture laid the foundation for the invention of modern democracy, and economic development. Countries or cultures without that cultural base have a very difficult time supporting democracy and economic development. It can be done - but it is very uncommon. Witness most of Latin America and Africa. 
  12. The U.S. culture was intentionally persuaded over the last 40 years to be:
    1. Less trusting of government.
    2. Less supportive of the social investment that is taxation.
    3. More tolerant of massive national debt that defers the pain to future generations.
    4. More supportive of large business and large profits.
    5. Less supportive of organized labor.
    6. Less supportive of free trade.
    7. Less concerned about income disparity.
    8. Less trusting of science.
      (AndersenEvil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History)
      This is not another "conspiracy" theory - it is documented fact.
      Our rich  elite class has schemed to make this so - and it was not done in secret. You and I watched it happen in real time. It is only in hindsight that we can see how effective it was. 
  13. If Conservatives can move the culture, then Progressives can as well.
    This is good news. If "they" did it to "us", we can change it. We may need an inflection point, a major disruption to energize us, but we can do it. And we may have the crisis at hand  - the joint disaster of Covid-19 and the complete collapse of the Republican Right could be the tipping point. If we are fortunate, the "insurrection" of dedicated Republicans that happened on 1/6/2021 will move enough sentiment to initiate real change. (Andersen)
  14. The Nordic or Scandinavian culture provides a good model for society for the near term.
    These countries, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, are not socialist economies - they are managed capitalism - taking all the best parts, and controlling the greed and corruption which the U.S. culture has been persuaded to ignore. They are also not without flaws - and the genius of the U.S. culture might advance us even further, if we can ever manage to catch up to them.
    Most of western Europe and Canada are ahead of us here. (Andersen, Harari
  15. We have to move our culture - not just copy their laws.
    We cannot simply enact laws that replicate what the Nordic governments have done. Without the supporting cultural mindset, that will cause more division and frustration. But how do we intentionally move the U.S. culture? I have no idea - YET. But I am persuaded that this must be our ultimate goal.
  16. We are at a critical juncture.
    This is certainly debatable, but that is how it appears to many people. If not now, then when? The near term future holds even more risk. (Harari, Helmore)
  17. How to proceed?
    The authors cited have a few hopeful todo's. Here is my short summary:
    1. Get money out of politics. Reverse Citizens United. Corporations and PACS are not "persons" - they are legal fictions. House Bill #1 of the current and prior congress. (HB1)
    2. Improve every aspect of our election system. House Bill #1 as noted. Security, uniformity, fairness, gerrymandering, discrimination, etc. Expand participation instead of restricting it. Make that the rallying cry. (HB1)
    3. Education. Understanding how limited our rationality is would be a huge step. If we could get this to the level that Freud's theory of the unconscious has achieved, we might have a shot at this.
    4. Mindfulness. Or Reflective Cognition. Many see this as a basic requirement. It should be part of our preschool, grade school and higher education curricula. Unless we can STOP and THINK, we will forever respond solely with our gut. Congressman Tim Ryan raised this flag in 2012. (Ryan, Pennycook)
    5. Income inequality. We must address this or we will have no civil society. Clearly cutting taxes for the rich and corporations is not the way to raise the income of the masses. Items: minimum wage, basic income, a social protection net for income, education, health care as a right, higher education as the social norm. When the COVID crisis hit, most of Europe did not need to enact emergency support measures for workers - their normal safeguards kicked in automatically. The US is borrowing heavily from our future to try to stay alive. (Harari, Stiglitz)
    6. Labor movement. This appears to be the only weapon available to the non elitist among us. Change the laws to reinvigorate this engine, and help move it toward a win / win approach with research like the Harvard Negotiation Project. The few labor organizers I have met are not even aware of this research. 
    7. Health Care. Fix it. Get rid of the health insurance companies, adopt Medicare for all. Manage the cost of the care, not how it is provided. Bring anti-trust to bear on the large non-profits that restrict competition. Restrain large pharma's profitability from old drugs.
    8. Create a Sovereign Wealth Fund. Like Alaska, Norway, UAE. China, etc. Use the power of the market to fund our long term future. Look it up!
    9. Universal Basic Income - work toward this. Long term, this wealth sharing is the ultimate answer. My guess is that it is this or anarchy. 
    10. Lower National Borders. Raise the dream of freedom of movement for economic and other reasons. Europe almost succeeded at this after 50 years of persuasion. Make this the long term solution for our southern border. What would Mexico have to become for us to simply lower our border? We could do it with Canada tomorrow. 
  18. Infrastructure Changes
    Government itself is an "infrastructure" that supports us in what we are trying to accomplish. It can be assisted by some additional tools. THIS piece is a longer essay on the same topic. Here are some of the ideas mentioned there, with more detail. These are "kludges" that can assist society. 
    1. Teach our children Cognitive Reflection or Mindfulness.
      There is good research on this. See: https://psyarxiv.com/szdgb/
    2. Redistricting done by a truly independent state demographer. 
    3. Rank Choice Voting. Allow more independent, non party members to compete.
    4. Make political lying a crime, or at least an actionable offense with damages.
    5. Create a new forum of Civility in Political Discourse.
    6. Adopt a social value scorecard for candidates, with an independent non profit to monitor it, like the the expert economics panel, IGM Forum. Give candidates a score. Think "credit score", reflecting their integrity, honesty, sound reasoning, etc. If economics professors can do this, political science can't be too difficult. 

  19. We can do this!
    The more I learn about this, the more I despair. But I remain persuaded that the long arc of history is indeed bending toward justice and fairness. We have been through this as a society many times. We managed to bounce back each time - the plague, the spanish flu, the great war, the great depression all engendered a new thrust toward the progress of humankind. I am fearful that if we do not understand this, and we do not act now, we will become the largest failed state to this point in history - a wreck like Venezuela. Read this stuff, call and write your legislator. Join a group. Read the books. Donate to the cause. We are all in this together - do your part. I'm counting on you.
References
  • HB1 - 2019 and 2021 Congress.
    https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1
    If this link disappears, send me a note and I will send you a copy of the analysis. This first bill of the 2019 Congress is a complete revision of our electoral system. It covers finance, security, registration, gerrymandering, etc. Read the summary. Tell your congressional representatives to reenact it in both houses. It never even got a hearing in the Senate in 2019-2020.

  • Anderson, Kurt, Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History 
    You really have to read this - the foreword is a decent summary which you can read at Amazon, and the wikipedia entry is also pretty good.
    The author is primarily a journalist, and he has also written fiction and non-fiction. This book is a collection of notes and research on how the GOP and big business intentionally worked to alter the mindset of the U.S. public with regard to how business and government operate. And they were enormously successful. The "reign" of Donald Trump has become their nadir of success - and, hopefully, of failure. I found the book very depressing to read. I was aware of every one of these despicable individuals and acts as they occurred - yet I did not see the big picture - the way it moved our whole public culture to be "conservative" rather than progressive. I say "conservative" in quotes, because what they created is a far cry from real conservatism. It is a contrived doctrine that supports the view of the wealth and big business. 

  • Banerjee, Abhijit V., and Esther Duflo, Good Economics for Hard Times
    This nobel prize winning couple has applied this understanding of human psychology and culture to research into how we make economic decisions. This is tangential to our topic here, but it is illuminating in that it is possible to determine how to help a large segment of society by studying carefully just how they respond to problems and opportunities. They do not make the "rational" decisions that we might predict. They make decisions that are beneficial from their perspective. And the common wisdom about economics is almost always wrong. For a simple example, there is virtually no evidence that immigration reduces opportunities for the host country. Immigrants generally enhance the local economy, and provide additional opportunities and wealth creation. 

  • Bargh, John, Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do
    An analysis of the evidence that most of what we do occurs without our conscious participation.  From the Amazon review: "Dr Bargh presents an engaging and enlightening tour of the influential psychological forces that are at work as we go about our daily lives - checking a dating app, holding a cup of hot coffee, or getting a flu shot. Dr Bargh takes you into his labs at New York University and Yale where his ingenious experiments have shown how the unconscious guides our behaviour, goals and motivations in areas like race relations, parenting, business, consumer behaviour and addiction. He reveals the pervasive influence of the unconscious mind in who we choose to date or vote for, what we buy, where we live, how we perform on tests and in job interviews, and much more".
    And from the book: "Back in the lab, we set to work to test this idea, designing a research program with the premise that there was, in addition to relatively slow conscious thought processes, a faster, automatic, and not-conscious way in which people dealt with their social worlds. This was a radical premise, because at this time much of psychology continued to assume that everything we decided and did was the result of intentional, conscious thought."

  • HaidtJonathan, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,  
    This book describes more research to help understand how humans make decisions, primarily with their gut instinct. I have written about this book in a couple of entries in this blog. The author has premised a kind of "hive" gene, or an "ultrasocial" attribute that makes us respond to our tribe before logic or reasoning. The key thing to realize is that we are all self righteous hypocrites. We are not rational beings in any way. Our gut instinct makes our moral decisions, and our thinking self spends all of its energy working to justify those. It is what kept us safe in evolutionary history. This is not a problem – it is what we are. He uses the analogy of the elephant and the rider. Our gut is the elephant, and the rider is just there to help the elephant. When the elephant leans one way, the rider sets about preparing the way, finding reasons for going that way, and helping the elephant move on to where it is going anyway. 

  • Harari, Juval Noah, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
    Harari is a remarkable historian and fully aware of the potential and dangers of our most modern technology. He managed to get ALL of human history in a few hundred pages in his book, Homo Sapiens, and then pushed the trends into the future in Homo Deus. This one, the 21 lessons, points to the potentially disastrous future of our economy and social order, if we do not take some focused actions to change direction. He predicts that our future will have frew elitists with most of the wealth and power, and then the rest of us. When THEY no longer need US, what leverage will we hold? In many ways, this is the scariest book I have ever read, and the most hopeful. What humans are about has more potential for lasting harm or good than at any point in history. He brings this perspective from studying thousands of years of history and different cultures. He manages to surprise me in every chapter. The potential downside of the advancing technology we have unleashed is enormous. The potential upside, and the fact that we are where we are is similarly amazing.

  • Heinrich, Joseph The Weirdest People in the World
    This is a remarkable collection of research on how cultures or "world views" change and affect human society on the grand scale. The author began this odyssey by teaching a history course based on the book Guns, Germs and Steel, by Diamond. The basic insight is that the mindset of an entire population are shaped or modified by things like geography, the availability of types of crops, and weather. It can also be altered by large institutions, like the Catholic Church, which gives its members an implicit view of how the world works. We can be grateful to Luther for breaking enough of the mold to give us the Enlightenment. And the church's marriage laws broke down the familial infrastructure enough to generate a trust that supported economic development and technological innovation. I know that sounds fantastical, but Heinrich has clearly shown this. To quote a review: Roughly, we weirdos are individualistic, think analytically, believe in free will, take personal responsibility, feel guilt when we misbehave and think nepotism is to be vigorously discouraged, if not outlawed.
    The rest of the world does NOT really work that way! Honest, they do not!
    See this review in the N Y Times.

  • Helmore, Edward, "We're on the verge of breakdown: a data scientist's take on Trump and Biden", 2021.01.17,
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/17/were-on-the-verge-of-breakdown-a-data-scientists-take-on-trump-and-biden 
    A summary of Peter Turchin's theory about social collapse. In his view, we are on the verge of becoming a failed state - much like Venezuela. This deterministic, mathematical approach is scary, and it has not gotten a lot of traction among most commentators.

  • Kahneman, Daniel, Thinking Fast and Slow
    This was the gateway book for me into this world of irrational humanity. Kahneman's experiments showed that the ideal homo economicus of economics was a fallacy, and led to the development of Behavioral Economics. He was awarded the Noble Prize for Economics for his work. Which led to Thaler's work. If you still think that humans are rational and the stock market makes any sense, you really need to read this book. 

  • Hofstede, Geert, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind,
    This book helped me understand that very different cultural views exist in our various societies. Cultural mindsets are invisible, pervasive, and very difficult to change. They are the air we breathe, the assumptions we make about how everything works. And they are not REAL - they are social constructs that vary greatly by nation, by language, by culture. One is the perceived height of the society, from the top to the bottom. The King of Sweden drives his own car, takes his children to school, does not have a protective entourage. Swedes would not go next door if he were there. Their sense of the "height" of their society is very small - while ours is quite large. That does not change easily. They think they are in charge of their world - not the government, not their leaders. In another measure, I found that people in East Africa have no sense that they are in charge of life - life is something that happens to them. We westerners think we are in charge of our lives. And we are all wrong! 

  • Pennycook,  Gordon, & David G. Rand, Examining false beliefs about voter fraud in the wake of the 2020 Presidential Election, 01.21.2021, Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-51 
    This is a pre-published research article on the false beliefs that were common among Republican supporters after the 2020 presidential election. The amazing thing is how many people this impacted - millions of people were deceived by multiple conspiracy theories.
    “Despite a lack of any meaningful evidence of systemic election fraud, a majority of Trump voters believed that fraud is common in U.S. elections (>77%), and that Trump won the 2020 election (>65%).”
    Relevant to our topic, one of the findings is that more reflective voters were less likely to be persuaded by the groundless claims. They tested for this attribute with the standard “reflective cognition” test.
    “Thus, political knowledge and engagement were associated with increased political polarization, rather than accuracy. In contrast, cognitive reflection – a measures of one’s ability and disposition to think analytically (Frederick, 2005; Toplak et al., 2011) – was associated with a reduced belief that Trump won among Trump and Biden voters (these correlations are more robust among Trump when the analysis is restricted to individuals who passed the attention check questions; see supplement).”
    “Across two studies with 3446 participants, we found consistent evidence that analytic thinking plays a role in how people judge the accuracy of fake news. Specifically, individuals who are more willing to think analytically when given a set of reasoning problems (i.e., two versions of the Cognitive Reflection Test) are less likely to erroneously think that fake news is accurate.”
    “Thus, our evidence indicates that analytic thinking helps to accurately discern the truth in the context of news headlines. More analytic individuals were also better able to discern real from fake news regardless of their political ideology, and of whether the headline was Pro-Democrat, Pro-Republican, or politically neutral; and this relationship was robust to controlling for age, gender, and education.”
    “Contrary to the popular Motivated System 2 Reasoning account of political cognition, our evidence indicates that people fall for fake news because they fail to think; not because they think in a motivated or identity-protective way. This suggests that interventions that are directed at making the public more thoughtful consumers of news media may have promise.”
    There is hope! If you are interested in more on this topic, the bibliography here is excellent.
    https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/research-note-examining-false-beliefs-about-voter-fraud-in-the-wake-of-the-2020-presidential-election/ 

  • Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2019b). Lazy, not biased: Susceptibility to partisan fake news is better explained by lack of reasoning than by motivated reasoning. Cognition, 188, 39–50.
    This is an extensive collection of research on this topic - how we actually DECIDE what we know. The problem is not that people are stupid, or uneducated - the problem is that our normal behavior is simply lazy. As Kahneman indicated, our fast brain, our gut reaction is automatic. Our slow brain, our reflective cognition takes a lot of energy and time - and we are not prone to do it.
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.06.011 

  • Ryan, Tim, A Mindful Nation: How a Simple Practice Can Help Us Reduce Stress, Improve Performance, and Recapture the American Spirit 
    From the Amazon review: "In one of the most optimistic books to come out of Washington during these trying times, Congressman Tim Ryan presents us with an inspiring and hopeful view of our country’s future—and a roadmap for how to get there. Across America, people are feeling squeezed, exhausted, and running faster and faster while falling farther behind. The economy continues to struggle, wars rage on, and every week brings news of another environmental disaster. Everything seems broken and people feel helpless to make a difference. Despite this bleak outlook, there are strands of quiet hope and confidence. People are beginning to take action in a new way: they are slowing down, paying attention, and gaining an awareness of the inner resources at their disposal."

  • Stiglitz, Joseph, The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future
    Fine work by the Nobel Prize winning economist. The current trend will destroy our economy for all parties - even the 1%.

  • Thaler, Richard, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics,
    This is a bit off the current discussion, but it is illuminating as it brings this understanding of human psychology to bear on our economics world. The theoretical rational man used in economic theory does not exist. Instead we have these tribal, emotionally charged individuals making weird choices all the time. Thaler's other work, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, is a concrete example of how the broader society can be moved to healthier, long term better decisions, by applying the right framework or "persuasion". 

  • Wilson, Edward O., The Meaning of Human Existence 
    Brilliant work, by a brilliant man. This is just one part of his remarkable trilogy about human life and the planet we call home. For our current discussion they key thing is Wilson's understanding that the human species is fundamentally tribal. Ants, termites, bees and humans share this trait. We value our social contacts, our membership in our tribe, beyond anything that is rational. This trait enabled us to conquer all of those other humanoids and to displace them. This trait enabled us to build communities. It is also our most dangerous trait since it lets us be persuaded by our tribe, by our sense of identity with our social world, so that we blindly commit to beliefs that are ultimately deadly for us and our society. It worked well in the savannah - but it is poor protection in a competitive capitalistic economy.

  • Wood, Graham, "The Next Decade Could Be Even Worse", Atlantic 11/12/2020.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-history-predict-future/616993/ 
    An interview with and analysis of the work and theories of Peter Turchin. This piece gives a nice summary of his ideas, and some valuable critique.