Reflective Cognition - Metacognition - and Conspiracy Theories

Are We All Crazy?

If you are anything like me, the political world of the past 4 years has been unbelievable. How is it possible that 72 million people support an obvious narcissistic idiot? How can they believe outlandish conspiracy theories spawned by and for him? I have spent a lot of time reading the research literature to make some sense of this. I recently got a major insight into this. This entry is a brief summary. It will be updated as I learn more. You can also contribute - note the comment section at the end.  Thanks for that. 

We are all in this together and I am counting on you.

I want to keep this short and simple, so the main body is bullet points. There are more details in the annotated references. If you are really interested in this, take a look at those. OR, if you are the typical LAZY thinker - never mind. There is nothing here for you. Just move on. 

We are Normally Fast Thinkers

People fall into these illusions for one primary reason - they are NORMAL, and normal people are FAST thinkers. (The research literature actually refers to "lazy thinkers", but that seems derogatory to me.) There are many studies that show that there are other influences at work to meddle with our decision making, but this one seems to be primary. The others have influence, but I think that a lack of reflective cognition is the top one, and we should focus on that one. Just discovering that terminology opened a whole new set of research for me. A short list of some of the theories: 

• Fast thinking
  A more technical description is a lack of "reflective cognition", or "metacognition". It's from the Greek. It means thinking about thinking. People who pay attention to how their brain and / or gut works, are much more likely to avoid the instant, intuitive responses that most of us are prone to, most of the time. This was evolution's gift. We decide rapidly, and for safety. We recognize a face without any thought process. It is the same for friend or enemy. Fast thinking is our normal mode of operation. Slow thinking, reflective thinking is slow, and takes a lot of energy.
• Motivated reasoning.
  This is where we leap to accept quick answers that fit out needs for belonging, for being correct, to maintain our self esteem. 
• Confirmation bias. 
  A very similar approach - we tend to believe what is consistent with what we already believe. We have a resistance to ideas which attack our existing beliefs. This tendency is so strong that data which is offered that appears to be contrary to our existing belief system, actually serves to shore that up as a defensive mechanism. 
• Identity protective cognition
  This is confirmation bias to the extreme. When our self identity is wrapped up in a group, our sense of purpose and meaning, any attack on that must be resisted strongly. 
• Heuristics -
  "Rules of thumb" such as Availability, Representativeness, Anchoring, Affect. These are some of the shorthand intuitions we use. For more see Dwyer. Given that we are primarily intuitive or "lazy" thinkers, understanding these shorthand leaps can be helpful to persuade an audience.
• Satisficing. 
  This is a heuristics or rule of thumb identified by Simon to explain how we make irrational economic decisions. We tire easily, and we settle for "good enough". Just imagine trying to make a truly rational choice in the cereal aisle at the grocery store. Nutrition, cost, flavor, size, texture, etc. You just go with one that feels right at the moment. TP is another good example - imagine shopping for TP by the price per sheet.
• Tribal identity. 
  We are fundamentally social animals. We need to belong, to be part of, to be held close. As our society fragments more and more, our sense of self is tied to less groups and smaller ones. If that small group moves one way, we do not have other social ties to fall back on, so we must go along. See the research by Lilliana Mason. 

How the Brain Works

I have written about this elsewhere, but here's the shorthand. Our brain or gut (they are the same) is a non stop stream of events. It's like James Joyce's Ulysses on steroids. We have a sense of self because we follow just one of these never ending chains. The challenge is to recognize that there are many, many options going by, and we can choose which one to follow. We are not blindly driven to just go with the flow. We can opt to control it. See Bargh on this. But this takes considerable time and energy.

Information from Current Technology is Overwhelming 

Facebook and the like present us with so much information that our normal filtering mechanism for what can be trusted cannot keep up. Our brain is already taxed with the normal stuff of life - family, friends, work, getting food, shelter, friendship. Taking the time and energy to engage in thinking about our thinking is not an intuitive practice. For things like elections, the actual return on our effort is miniscule - our vote barely counts - so the energy expended is usually commensurate.

Training in MetaCognition and Reflective Cognition Might Help

The jury is out on this, but one possibility seems most likely to my lazy brain. Some research indicates that people who are prone to reflective cognition are better able to discern what is objectively true, and can temper their rapid intuitional response. It seems that some small percentage of us (Pareto) do this fairly consistently, and that a larger percentage might be able to be educated in this practice (mindfulness). The normal curve would say that another small percentage are never going to be able to do this. That does not mean that they are evil or stupid. They are just lacking this skill, like someone with dyslexia. For them, we have to come up with other infrastructure assists. For the bulk of us, hopefully some program of education might suffice.

How to Educate All of Us

If this is true, and it is just the beginning of a theory for a solution, how in the world do we alert the broad swath of humankind about this? Just being open to looking at our thinking process would de facto require that we are already well versed in Reflective Cognition. Piling another bit of information on top of the already overwhelming load is simply not going to work. There is not much available in the literature on this. We could try:

• Mindfulness education from pre-school to graduate school. We used to do something called mental hygiene, which introduced us to the world of psychological research. Something similar might help get this into common parlance and thinking.
• Infrastructure "nudges" to move the general populace in the way most beneficial to a positive outcome. Make the most desirable outcome the first one, the default one. Rank choice voting - open up the visible choices. 
• ?   Can you identify a few more? 

A Universal Meme to the Rescue

One more thought. There are two research studies by Pennycook that hit me between the eyes with ideas on this. The Podcast, You are Not So Smart, highlighted the most recent one. What if this became a THING, a MEME? What if we had a MEME expressing this, a symbol, an acronym that succinctly put it all together? What if that meme was the topic of the evening news. of the Saturday Night Live cold open? What if it was mentioned in every TV sitcom, movie and mystery? Harvard School of Public Health did just that to get the idea of a designated driver in front of the general public. And I am persuaded, my fast thinking part, that this is exactly how gay marriage so quickly became an accepted cultural shift.

You Can Help

My problem is that I have zero artistic and cultural sense about what meme might work. And I have less than zero ability to get it in front of anyone. Can you help? Stop and Think about it. Be Aware of your brain. Look It UP first. Your Gut is Wrong - Check it out. My Brain Feeds on Facts, does yours? No FAST Thinking Zone. Slow down. Etc.

Technology to the Rescue

I have hope that we will eventually understand how we think and communicate well enough that we can build some infrastructure to help. We need software and tools that enable us to communicate and negotiate, and to come to a consensus on what is true, what is real, and how to best move humakind forward. The internet and social networks got us into this mess by accident. Bring that technology to bear on the problem. We need some fancy "software" that will help us communicate, and negotiate creative alternatives that we can all support. If you want to read a purely fictional account of how this might work, look at the reference for (Finn), and the book Hieroglyph. It's a great story from Canada, and it gave me a lot of hope that this is doable. The story is about an indigenous tribe negotiating with a political leader about their role in Canada. They use all kinds of tools and methods to clearly understand his position, and to explain their position in the best framework that he will most likely understand. 

Of course, it is set in Canada, and you know that they are really different. They seem to be much more community oriented. And if you figure out how they got that way - let me know. It may be just the colder climate - think of all the Nordic countries. BUT  . . . then we also have Russia and the like. 

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WAIT - This may be a waste of time and energy

This post had only been up a few hours, and I learned something that makes me think this is a total waste of time. This interview with Frank Luntz on PBS's Frontline is really telling. He conducts polls and focus groups to find out what people want, what they fear, what they respond to. Then he proposes a way to present an idea to people in a frame of reference that they will buy. He is talking about the Trump and Republicans and the riot that invaded the Capital on 1/6/2021. He seems to be without personal scruples, a gun for hire. But he seems to know how to get a read on his intended audience, and how to reach them.   https://youtu.be/xT3hPuY8w5M 

I know "reframing" works - there is a lot of research on that.

Luntz learns enough about groups of people to determine the terminology that will reach them where they are. He does not give a damn how they think, or how they get their ideas. He just wants to persuade them to go his way, or your way - if you are paying him. E.G. - don't call it a "wall", call it a "barrier". Do NOT call it an "insurrection". "Riot", maybe.

He gets it, and my guess is most politicians do as well. There is simply no way to have people really think and respond to rational arguments. The thing to do is to figure out where the wind is blowing and get in front of it. With some tuning and talking points, you can hopefully steer the craft a bit with the wind. In this realm, there is no known way to sail upwind. No one has yet come up with a keel deep enough.

This from the Wikipedia entry: 

Luntz frequently tests word and phrase choices using focus groups and interviews. His stated purpose in this is the goal of causing audiences to react based on emotion. "80 percent of our life is emotion, and only 20 percent is intellect. I am much more interested in how you feel than how you think. ... If I respond to you quietly, the viewer at home is going to have a different reaction than if I respond to you with emotion and with passion and I wave my arms around. Somebody like this is an intellectual; somebody like this is a freak."[4]

Luntz's description of his job revolves around exploiting the emotional content of language. "It's all emotion. But there's nothing wrong with emotion. When we are in love, we are not rational; we are emotional. ... my job is to look for the words that trigger the emotion. ... We know that words and emotion together are the most powerful force known to mankind."[4]

I have been, as they say, barking up the wrong tree. Forget about understanding how this works. Use what we know about how people work, and just persuade them to YOUR story. The crazies seem to be in charge right now. Use the same tools and move them the other way. But that does not feel like it is progress. It is just more manipulation and skulduggery. The one with the bigger club or more money wins. Rats. 

BOTTOM LINE

Give up on changing the audience, or the electorate.

• LISTEN to the audience, to the electorate.
  Find out what their primary concern is. Focus groups, language, ideas. 
• EMPATHIZE with that view.
  You don't need to agree with it, but listen and empathize. Hold on to them, wish them well. 
• RESPOND to that - not to what you think is a good idea, or even what science tells you is the right thing to do. Steer the ship a bit - don't fight it. 

REFRAMING

I added some book references on the reframing model, a la Luntz. I apologize for this - I have to go read them and figure out how much of this to just toss.  Again - my apologies - assuming there is anyone who really cares about this. Thanks.

References

• Bargh, John, Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do.
  This is a collection of the author’s research on how humans actually operate. Most of what we do is an unconscious response to a need, an urge. It is Kahneman’s fast brain, but it operates in all parts of our body. From the introduction:
  “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. Before You Know It is full of surprising and entertaining revelations as well as tricks to help you remember to-do items, shop smarter and sleep better. Before You Know It will profoundly change the way you understand yourself by introducing you to a fascinating world only recently discovered, the world that exists below the surface of your awareness and yet is the key to unlocking new ways of thinking, feeling and behaving.”
  
• Bandler, Richard, & John Grinder,  Reframing: Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the Transformation of Meaning 
  I have only read the introduction to this book, and I am impressed. This is a scientific analysis of how to use language to persuade people. Not persuade them rationally - but how to speak to their emotions. How have I missed this? I feel like I went down the rabbit hole of rational thinking. My apologies. When exactly does this stop? 
  
  
• Carter, Lee Hartley, Persuasion: Convincing Others When Facts Don't Seem to Matter, Paperback – September 1, 2020, Post Trump election analysis that is telling. I have not read it as yet - the foreword seems focused on one on one persuasion - seek first to understand, etc. I will have to wait until I read more. Donald Trump as the Master Persuader. Scott Adams would understand this well.
• Cohen, Jeffrey L, Party Over Policy: The Dominating Impact of Group Influence on Political Beliefs
  This study describes 4 experiments in which the subjects were persuaded that their political party supported policies which were, in fact, antithetical to their party, and they said they agreed with them. When asked if they were simply following the party line,  they were insistent that their beliefs were not based on their party allegiance. They composed essays describing in detail how they arrived at these values. The bottom line is that we are almost automatically driven to hold to beliefs that identify us with our group. It is very hard for individuals to step outside of that influence.  You can download a PDF of the study here:
  https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Party-over-policy%3A-The-dominating-impact-of-group-Cohen/5cad54ca73fb0f4d38a8c5795139bac7069f44c8
• Dwyer, Christopher, 4 Outcomes of Lazy Thinking, Using heuristics to understand why people fall prey to fake news. 02/22/2019, Psychology Today.
  This is basically a commentary on an article in the New York Times about the research of Pennycook and Rand which is cited here. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/opinion/sunday/fake-news.html for the original article. He has a decent bibliography attached. His contribution is that he relates this research to some of the original scientific insights by Kahneman, on confirmation bias, and Simon on satisficing, and the heuristics or rules of thumb which they describe. Given that we are intuitive thinkers, if you want to persuade people of that ilk, understanding these tendencies would be important https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/thoughts-thinking/201902/4-outcomes-lazy-thinking
  
  
• Farias, Miguel, Are the Brains of Atheists Different to Those of Religious People?, 01/30/2021,
  And the answer is, it appears so. The interesting thing about this piece is that it is from a group funded by the John Templeton Foundation, who are adamantly opposed to any disparagement of religion by science and scientists. Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist, seems to be resistant to mystical experience, and his brain waves indicate why. “With Dawkins, though, the experiment failed. As it turned out, Persinger explained, Dawkins’ temporal lobe sensitivity was “much, much lower” than is common in most people.” There also appears to be a cultural dimension to all of this. “ The results confirmed that a cognitive analytical style was only linked to atheism in three countries: Australia, Singapore and the USA.” https://neurosciencenews.com/atheist-brains-17640/
• Finn, Ed; Cramer, Kathryn, Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, This is a remarkable little book of short stories about the potential near term future. The first one is by Neal Stephenson, who always makes me think. The book is the result of a project at the University of Phoenix to put scientists in touch with creative authors, to try to project what their research might actually accomplish. It kind of raises the bar for the medium and the researchers. One story is particularly relevant here, Degrees of Freedom. It is about a political dispute in Canada between indigenous peoples and a politician. The genius of it is that it uses many things we understand about how humans communicate, how we make decisions, how we influence each other, and brings them all to bear to help this politician and the tribe communicate, and find a common ground. I found it absolutely brilliant. AND . . . it does give me hope that we might actually be able to understand how we work, and how we might assist our communications enough to be able to effectively negotiate results that will benefit all of us. You can read a bit of the discussion here: https://hieroglyph.asu.edu/2014/08/response-to-degrees-of-freedom/ "What I found most interesting was the attempt by Karl Schroeder to really think about how the future of new media technologies can have an explicit impact on the way we do politics – specifically deliberative and democratic politics. There’s a lot of science fiction that relates to how technologies might encourage authoritarian politics, but not a lot about how they might bring about more positive ways that democratic deliberation might occur."
• Greenway, Tyler S., & Barrett, Justin L., Intuitive and Reflective Cognition,
  "Cognitive science has distinguished between two types of thinking: intuitive and reflective. Intuitive cognition is fast and automatic, whereas reflective cognition is slow and deliberate. These two types of cognitive systems mutually influence each other. Together, intuitive and reflective cognition may determine how cognitively natural or unnatural certain thoughts may be, thereby influencing the likelihood that particular ideas and practices may become shared enough to be recognized as cultural. The distinction between intuitive and reflective cognition also has theoretical and methodological implications for the study of human thought and behavior, including cultural expression." https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1906 or https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1906
  
  
• Lakoff, George, Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, 2014, I had read this a few years ago, and I thought the author had some real insight into how to use language to persuade people. But it did not occur to me at the time, that persuading people rationally was a waste of time and energy. The key is to figure out what they are tuned to want and like, and then reframe your ideas along those lines. Forget about facts and focus on emotions.
• Luntz, Frank, Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear, 2008, I would never read this book, based on its title. But understanding where the author is coming from, it is a very important book. More later after I read it! To get a good feel for this guy and what he can do, watch this interview on PBS Frontline: https://youtu.be/xT3hPuY8w5M This is an older interview, but it explains the difference this guy found between Obama and Trump - and his sense of when it started: https://youtu.be/ii9DCfTUiUw BUT - he describes it, he does not offer any wisdom on what the bleep we can do about it.
• Mason, Lilliana, Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, 2018, This author's research indicates that our sense of tribal identity is more at risk today because we have become so polarized. In the past, people had many different social contexts that gave meaning and purpose to life. With our great divide, many people now have only one or two significant groups that give them that sense of self. If data is offered that seems to threaten that sense of belonging, they are much more prone to reject it out of hand. I found the book helpful, but not 100% persuasive.
• Mcraney, David, Podcast: YANSS 198 – The psychological mechanisms that led to the the storming of the Capitol, an event that sprang from a widespread belief in a conspiracy theory that, even weeks later, still persists among millions  January 29, 2021
  This is an interview with Lovecraft about his most recent research, and the finding that cognitive reflection may actually help with “fake news” and conspiracy theories.
  https://youarenotsosmart.com/2021/01/29/yanss-198-the-psychological-mechanisms-that-led-to-the-the-storming-of-the-capitol-an-event-that-sprang-from-a-widespread-belief-in-a-conspiracy-theory-that-even-weeks-later-still-persists-among-2/
• 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 spread 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

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. (Haidt, Wilson)
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.
   (Andersen: Evil 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."
  
  
• Haidt, Jonathan, 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. 
   

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.  

The WEIRDest People in the World - book "report" and some ideas

I just finished The WEIRDest People in the World  by Joseph Henrich.

I HIGHLY recommend this book, and it made me think - a LOT.

It is a great lesson in how our cultural psychology evolved in the Western World - and how different we are from the rest of humankind. It was the Catholic Church that brought it about - totally unbeknownst to the originators. Bottom Line - we have precious little understanding of the cultural psychology of nations, groups, or individuals. It's a great lesson for that - but gives precious little insight in what the heck we can do about it.

That is the major learning here. It might help to give a bit of a background on my personal journey to this point. If this is boring, go get the book - you will learn a lot and our world will be somewhat better for it.

Cultural Psychology

There is a whole new scientific field of cultural psychology. I first became aware of it when I visited Africa in 2000 with my son. We were stunned by how differently everyone seemed to operate. Their world model was completely different from our normal view of things. People did things that we simply could not understand.

Guns Germs and Steel

To help us a bit, some of the Europeans we met there recommended a book: Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. It was an eye opener. His thesis is that the European mastery of the planet came about more because of the accidents of climate, the available beasts of burden, and types of crops than any "superiority" of the humans that happened to inhabit the middle East and Europe. That gives really short shrift to an amazing book, so please read it. It will move your brain just a bit.

Cultures and Organizations

As I puzzled about that some more, I stumbled on another book that helped me understand it a bit better: Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, by Geert Hofstede. This one literally changed my view of human kind - what we are and how we operate. Across cultures or countries we are VERY different people in how we look at life and the planet. East Africans operate in an entirely different world model, and Asians do as well, and Norwegians are particularly "weird". I have written about this quite a bit in this blog - you can find references here. There are some great stories in there that you might enjoy.

World Views Differ

Bottom line, Hofstede discovered that we all have a very different mental model about how things operate. Most "westerners" seem to think they are in charge of life, and they can fix or repair anything. Most "East Africans" see life as something that happens TO them. They are not in charge. I happened to visit Nicaragua several times, and parts of Asia. I spent quite a few years reading about economic development and "culture" - how different thinking "patterns" would affect our level of civilization, use of technology, economic development, etc. I wrote quite a bit about this in the blog as well, and thought I was making some headway. Or NOT.

Poor Economics

Along the way, I got a set of readings in economics from a local econ professor. I went through the various "schools" of economics - more like religions than science - and finally found behavioral economics. They figured it out. Then I thought what we really need to do is apply the learnings from Kahneman and Thaler about behavioral economics to this problem of poverty and development. There are a couple of Nobel prize winning authors that did just that, Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo. Their latest book is: Good Economics for Hard Times. I thought so highly of this insight into economics that I offered to buy the book for any of our local elected officials that would commit to read it. I wrote a bit about it here.

Behavioral Economics

If you are not familiar with "behavioral economics", it is the latest scientific branch of the dismal science that has discovered that humans do NOT make rational decisions very well. We can, but it is a lot of work, and we generally do not. We have a whole world of cultural models in our heads that have grown over thousands of years. Some of them seem to be innate in our genetics, but most of them seem acquired from our social world. They profoundly change how people function, how they think, the groups they form, etc.  Aha, I thought, here's the answer. Now if we could just persuade our fearless leaders that this is the way to encourage development, we could eliminate world poverty. The head of the World Bank bet on that too - and put a lot of time and energy into making it happen. India's economic leaders have also opted for that path. I have written about it in this blog as well. Result - not much so far.

Political Divides

Of late, I have noticed that people often take sides of an argument for what appear to be totally irrational reasons. There is quite a bit of research on that phenomena. I think the best summary I have seen is The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt. I wrote a couple of blog entries on that one. Basically, Haidt theorizes that we have 5 basic moral foundations, which may be partially inheritable: Harm / Care; Fairness / Reciprocity; In Group Loyalty; Authority / Respect; Purity / Sanctity. The latter 3 of these incline us to be conservative, and the first 2 are generally more progressive. People are tuned to think one way or the other. And then we have all of these "irrational" "fast judgments" described by Kahneman's research. It is amazing that we can get anything done. Heuristics indeed!

Republican Politics

A whole lot more went on in my reading and brain in the interim, but then the election of 2016 happened. I and about half of the U.S. population said, what the hell just happened? About one third voted for the more progressive candidate, and one third did not vote. But about one third of the country elected a narcissistic man child as the leader of the free world. How is that even possible? A great deal more reading and some posts in my blog. What in the world is going on? Hillbilly Elegy, Identity Politics, Irrational Politics, etc. Lots of words, some research, but barely a glimmer of what gave rise to this, or how we can change it. I got some insight from the documentary film, Behind the Curve about the Flat Earth Society. It's on Netflix - you might enjoy it. These people are NOT crazy - they are committed, faith filled, and they MUST hold to this belief. Trust me, you are doing the same thing with a few of your beliefs. Where did the idea that human life is valuable ever come from? Why do you think that freedom is important? For that matter, why are grandchildren so priceless?

Cultural Psychology

Along comes professor Henrich with his remarkable 20 years of research on our western cultural psychology. You have to read the book - at a minimum, read some good reviews. There are lots of them. Here is a brief excerpt from the one posted at Amazon:

Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves―their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations―over their relationships and social roles.

That is his primary insight, and the understanding that this came about over centuries because of the way the Catholic Church viewed marriage and kinship. We moved from small, close knit family groups, to larger, voluntary associations. To see the change today, you have only to look at the difference between northern Italy and Sicily. The mafia is not called "the family" for nothing. The church had a much smaller impact on southern Italy because of all of the other powers controlling things there. And the church had no clue what it was about. The church's preoccupation with sexual morality and marriage led it down this "weird" path, and the result was that Europe broke down the whole idea of kinship and family groupings. It made people much more individualist, more open to strangers, more trusting of a larger circle, more analytical, with less nepotism, more long range thinkers. It opened the doors to the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. This is why Europe dominated the world at that time.

AND  . . . the rest of the planet is very, very different from the West. Our cultural psychology is so different that we cannot make rational sense out of how others make fundamental decisions about life and groups and government and economics. 

Bottom Line

This is already way too long. Read the book. My fundamental takeaways:

• We are barely rational.
  People operate with a fundamental worldview that colors our entire psychology and thinking patterns. It is very difficult for any individual to get out of their model. That model guides the decisions we make to marry, to seek work, to study, to invest, to think about how life and the planet works.
• Culture develops very slowly.
  These psychological patterns are formed over hundreds and thousands of years, by small changes and events, that gradually alter the way people think. 
• Europe / the West is Unique - WEIRD.
  It is true that every culture is unique, but Europe's psychological change led to the industrial revolution and amazing economic advances. It also enhanced our individualism, weakened oru sense of collective belonging. Where this history is absent, economic development seems to be extremely difficult. It can be done, but it is uphill all the way. Development depends on group adherence, trust, and interest rates, and cooperation, and analytical thinking, and other implicit values that are not automatic in human kind, to say nothing of hard work, and ethical values. The latter apparently being gifts of the Reformation in one guise or other. Solving world poverty is going to take a while, unless we come up with some genius ideas.
• Democracy is rare.
  The whole idea of human rights and cooperative government came from this shift in world view. Where the history of a people lacks this foundation, there is precious little hope that democracy will be a success. Kings and dictators are better than failed states. My suggestions: stop trying to meddle from outside with what people are about.
• Cultural Psychology is not well understood.
  We have barely grasped how we got to where we are - barely. The book has 800 pages of research, and hundreds of studies noted - but we are just beginning to understand this. We have absolutely no idea how to move this whole assemblage forward. Hell, most people in the fields of psychology and economics and sociology and anthropology have not even heard of this yet. 
• There has to be a path forward. We can do this. Somehow, someway we need to study the past, and do the research on how human groups operate, to try and persuade our fearless leaders that we need a revolution in thinking, in education, in our institutions, so that we can better shape our cultural psychology to further advance human kind - rather than having us descend into wars and squabbles about wearing masks - for God's sake! This is way beyond "Nudge" - this is shape "human psychology".

HELP

If you run into anyone, anything that seems to understand this and sees a way forward, please let me know. Post a note here - I will eventually see it.  Thanks. 

Stay Safe.