Political Delusions - Do we just rationalize our emotional decisions?

I've long maintained that humanity's greatest gift and greatest curse are one and the same - our prodigious talent for delusion.  For believing things - passionately - that are belied by both logic and evidence. This is the wellspring of great art. Indeed, as a novelist* I cater to the desire of my own customers to - temporarily and knowingly - believe they are experiencing other realities and the thoughts of credible characters, engaged in barely plausible adventures.

This gift is what we study at UCSD's Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination.

Alas, the same gift has brought us endless pain. Across time nearly every human culture was dominated by narrow castes of men who ruled according to fiercely-protected delusional systems, crushing voices that might speak up with criticism, or alternatives, or inconvenient truths. Those mostly-feudal societies were very badly governed. All of them combined never accomplished the tiniest fraction of what we have, in just a few generations. We who finally found a (tentative and contingent) way out of the Delusional Trap. 

Gradually, we developed enlightenment methods to reduce the severity of delusion, not by changing human nature but through the simple but daring method of competition. You may not be able to see through your own beloved errors, but your rivals often will! Indeed, they'll willingly (if irksomely) point those errors out to you. And you'll return the favor! This is the magic of our five competitive "arenas": markets, democracy, science, courts and sports. 

Alas, cheaters will always try to ruin these arenas and take us back to olden ways. And so I present to you some of the modern hallucinations that are shared by our fellow citizens.  

Make no mistake, your deluded neighbors are not your foes! The real enemy that threatens your nation, world, species and children is the all-too human drive to clutch (desperately) to reassuring mirages.

Delusion #1 – that authoritarians are your friends.

One of the top cognitive scientists in the world, George Lakoff, scrutinizes the appeal of Donald Trump, showing how finely tuned his positions are, to the “strict father” foundations of American conservatism.  

Consistent with Lakoff's assertion is this other research suggesting that the #1 predictive trait deciding whether you or your neighbor support Donald Trump is Americans’ inclination to authoritarianism.  People who score high on the authoritarian scale value conformity and order, protect social norms, and are wary of outsiders. When authoritarians feel threatened, they support aggressive leaders and policies. Authoritarianism and a hybrid variable that links authoritarianism with a personal fear of terrorism were the only two variables that predicted, with statistical significance, support for Trump.  

(How ironic that "red" Americans in the volcanically re-ignited Confederacy) proclaim quivering fear of terrorists, when a majority live in rural or suburban zones that are utterly-utterly safe.  While "blue" Americans (the Union) largely dwell in cities that are great big terror-targets. Yet, New Yorkers famously stood atop the 9/11 rubble, faced east and shouted: "Iz dat all you got?")

Sure, this much seems obvious. Though I find it hard to believe that Cruz and Rubio supporters are one scintilla less authoritarian than Trump-lovers. And mind you, in my experience, yearning for authority also separates the generally non-authoritarian liberals in America vs. the much smaller but significant clade of actual leftists. The latter share with the right more traits than...

But that’s a separate discussion. For after we deal with the immediate crisis at-hand.

== The Trillies (Alas!) Aren’t Smart ==

Delusion #2: Because you are rich, you think that means you're smart.

Yes, even if your wealth was inherited, that just tempts you to insist that IQ is genetic! This is the rationalization embraced by all feudal oligarchies, across time. So, so convenient and self-serving... and human. And so, so disproved by the blatant historical record of 6000 years, across which insipidly stupid governance was the norm. Indeed only when those flat-fair competitive arenas finally were set up, did that dismal record start to shift, and human civilization really begin to take off.

So, is it that simple?  Oligarchy = dumb and enlightenment arenas = smart?  Well, first, those arenas (markets, democracy, science etc) take real effort to maintain. Left unattended, they'll soon get warped by cheaters... as is happening right now.  It is our job to do another fine-tuning... the kind of gentle, moderate "revolution" last achieved by our parents in the Greatest Generation, led by their beloved hero, the living human they adored above all others, Franklin Roosevelt.

But what if we fail? The way those brief, enlightenment experiments of Periclean Athens and Republican Florence were snuffed out? If we are doomed to go back to oligarchy, is it too much to ask that our new lords at least try to find ways to govern better? To rule with less self-serving delusion?

In Existence I portray an event taking place in the year 2040, high in the Alps – a meeting of the “trillionaire clans,” at which the top planetary aristocrats (and their hired boffins) ask: can we do feudalism better, this time?

It’s a vital question that I never have seen asked, by the forces which are now striving so hard to re-establish the normal human pattern – oligarchy. The facts are blatant, and yet I have to repeat-reiterate them here, for utter clarity.

 The fundamental truths about feudalism are:

(1) that it dominated 99% of human societies and thus seems inherently hard to avoid.

(2) Almost all of those owner-oligarchies governed very badly, bringing progress, science, justice, creativity and adaptability to a near standstill.

(3) The last 200 years offered up an alternative – open/competitive/cooperative/flat-fair enlightenment systems e.g. science, markets, democracy – that has achieved many orders of magnitude more than all feudal societies, combined.

(4) If the Enlightenment Experiment is doomed (as the oligarchy’s boffins keep telling us), then shouldn’t the New Lords be earnestly exploring how to do feudalism much better than before? Is there any hope of getting Medicis and Tangs and Plantagenets - who at least tried - instead of the more typical, stunningly delusional Bourbons, Hapsburgs, Murdochs, Kochs, Hohenzollerns and Romanovs?

Alas, that doesn’t seem likely. There are no such meetings. (I'd have ways of knowing.) Only unsapient reflex-gatherings to scheme short term power grabs and rent-seeking. And those gatherings must seem desperate, right now, as the steed they had been riding -- confederate culture warriors -- has broken loose from their control.  Like the dismayed Junkers lords of Germany in 1933, they are blinking in dull surprise that the beast they cynically whipped into hydrophobic froth has been skillfully yanked away from them by a savanarola-hypnotist.

I could have told them. I tried to. Others have tried. For example, former Treasury Secretary Robert Reich makes this clear in his most cogent missive yet, suggesting to the GOP-owner caste that they have made a series of devastatingly short-sighted and foolish mistakes.  

What Reich leaves out is mention of one portion of the billionaire clade... maybe a quarter of them - who actually got rich by developing great new products and services. In other words the real entrepreneurial capitalists. Almost all of whom are now... democrats. (With a few libertarians.) They already know what Reich wrote here. Given the stunning disparity in outcomes across democratic vs republican administrations, no sapient person who actually believes in competitive enterprise and Adam Smith would touch the GOP with a ten parsec light saber. (Oh, Reich has endorsed Bernie Sanders. Interesting "establishment" figure.)

As Machiavelli wrote, when he surrendered the dream of the Florentine Republic to work for the Medicis…. If we must be ruled by domineering lords, may they at least be smart ones?

Apparently, there’s not much chance of that..

= Are truthy-truisms subject to fact? “Taxes make a state unfriendly to business" =

More delusions?  Got a million of em. 

For example, here's central right wing Catechism 101: “taxing the rich or increasing workers' wages kills jobs and makes businesses leave the state.” 

Ahem? California disproves this year after year, decade after decade.

In sharp contrast, Kansas doubled down on Supply Side voodoo, slashing taxes on the wealthy and giving monopolists everything they asked. The result? State’s finances and services plummeted below the level called “hellish” and businesses are fleeing Kansas in droves.

Now look at Minnesota. “When he took office in January of 2011, Minnesota governor Mark Dayton inherited a $6.2 billion budget deficit and a 7 percent unemployment rate from his predecessor, Tim Pawlenty, the soon-forgotten Republican candidate for the presidency who called himself Minnesota's first true fiscally-conservative governor in modern history. Pawlenty prided himself on never raising state taxes .... as head of Minnesota's state government, he managed to add only 6,200 more jobs.  

Then Minnesotans wised up. “During his first four years in office, Gov. Dayton and his legislature raised the state income tax from 7.85 to 9.85 percent on individuals earning over $150,000 (raising) $2.1 billion. They also raised the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2018. Republicans like state rep. Mark Uglem warned "The job creators, the big corporations, the small corporations, they will leave. It's all dollars and sense to them."

Except… Minnesota now has the fifth lowest unemployment rate in the country at 3.6 percent. According to 2012-2013 U.S. census figures, Minnesotans had a median income that was $10,000 larger than the U.S. average.

Compare your favorite incantations to actual outcomes.  

It's not that all conservative nostrums are always wrong. I am a fan of Adam Smith. Barry Goldwater had some interesting conservative-libertarian suggestions to try and there are others. Heck I have some libertarian-ishproposals! 

But start with this pure fact: every single metric of U.S. national health does better across the spans of democratic vs republican administrations. Every single one. If you are clinging to GOP loyalty, what does that make you?

Probably someone who recites mantras and incantations.  And clings to delusions.

== Political Notes ==

And finally... let's bid fond farewell. His calm-toned demeanor notwithstanding, Ben Carson had a disturbing fixation with knives. He started losing ground in the GOP race after describing attempted stabbing murders in his youth. Now, leading a new Christian Voter drive, he gives as his motive preventing democrats from appointing judges who will "knife our children in the heart."

Yipe! That some obsession.

Why pick on Carson now? Hey, it's not all about the raging lunatics who are still in the GOP nomination race. (And that describes all of them.) Or the raging lunatics who are sniping at Trump from the sidelines - or endorsing him - after spending a generation veering US conservatism down cliffs of anti-science, hate-drenched, corrupt and lazy insanity. No, no. Pay heed to the whole panoply of political rabies.

Arizona is tapping 17.3% of its electrical power from the spinning in Barry Goldwater's grave.

======
* Note we are in the final week to pre-order my new story collection INSISTENCE OF VISION, at steep discount.  Official pub date is next week and your first-week order is appreciated... as well as those Amazon reviews! ;-)  Show the world there are Good Delusions!

Conspiracies and Wishful Thinking

To what extent is the world filled with conniving villains and dastardly plots... and how much of it erupts from our fertile imaginations?  It may not surprise you much that I take both sides on this matter.

On the one hand, history is rife with schemers and secretive meddlers.  You don't need cryptic societies and Illuminati, just your run-of-the-mill feudal aristocracy that ruled almost every society that ever lifted itself to the level of agriculture.  The mythology of inherited lordship - assisted and promoted by priests and bards - was the great scam that got pulled off on every continent, in every age.

On the other hand, we often see conspiracies where they are not.  The psychological drivers are many and powerful. A need to explain one's own poverty and failure. The allure of enticing pattern recognition, even when the patterns aren't really there. And, above all, the warm feeling we get from being in the know. From being part of the elect group that can see what's going on!  While our foolish neighbors go about their business, bleating like ignorant sheep.

There are no richer, more voluptuous mental drug-highs than self-righteous indignation, resentment, and contempt for fools. 

IS THERE A SYSTEM FOR RECOGNIZING THE DIFFERENCE? 

In the latest issue of Scientific American, Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, has an excellent article, “The Conspiracy Theory Detector", in which he categorizes the characteristics of conspiracy theories. I’ll summarize a few of his points:  

   1. -- The conspiracy only emerges by “connecting the dots,” linking events that are unrelated except through the allegation of conspiracists.

   2.--The agents behind such a conspiracy would “need nearly superhuman power to pull it off.”

   3.--The conspiracy presumes that a large number of people have maintained total secrecy, often for a substantial period of time.

   4. --The conspiracy involves a grand struggle for control of a nation or economy, or even world domination (the larger the issue, the more likely it's a conspiracy).

   5.--The conspiracy “ratchets up from small events that might be true to much larger, much less probable events.”

   6. –The theory assigns evil, sinister motives to events.

   7. --The theorist mixes facts and speculations, probable and improbable events, is consistently suspicious of all government agencies, and refuses to consider alternative explanations, typically rejecting any evidence that fails to confirm such theories. 

I must add that just because a notion has all these warning signs, that doesn't mean the conspiracy theory is wrong!  In fact, would not the conspiring geniuses fake some of these very traits, in order to discredit the idea and divert smart people away from it?

Still, Shermer's article offers some tools, for you to use as a free mind. 

JUST REMEMBER... YOU ARE THE EASIEST ONE TO FOOL...

Richard Feynman said that. And I'm the one who said that self-delusion is the greatest of all human talents. 

See my videos: Ten Super Secret Rules of Conspiracy Theories and Part 2 as well.

Indeed, recent science shows how good we all are at psychologically ignoring all evidence against our tightly clutched beliefs. Even when those beliefs are simply wrong. ”New research suggests that misinformed people rarely change their minds when presented with the facts — and often become even more attached to their beliefs. The finding raises questions about a key principle of a strong democracy: that a well-informed electorate is best.”

       

While we’re on the subject, here is a systematic taxonomy of logical fallacies. No one should graduate high school without knowing these. Seriously, you are ignorant if you aren't at least glancingly familiar with them. 

  

(Hang on a month or so, and I will supply you with an even more important tool: the paraphrase challenge!  Impatient scholars can dive into it here.

    

Dang, how has the species even survived to get this far?  Obstinate, delusional... and desperately clinging to our delusions. 

 

If this sort of thing is common among intelligent species, across the galaxy, then ah, the Fermi Paradox is no paradox.

THIS GOES WAY BACK, OF COURSE, EVEN IN SCIENCE

Controversies and public battles over science are nothing new, particularly when politics enters the fray. An article in New Scientist, “Einstein’s skeptics: Who were the relativity deniers?” begins, “When people don't like what science tells them, they resort to conspiracy theories, mud-slinging and plausible pseudoscience.” Einstein’s battles to defend relativity were reminiscent of today’s climate deniers and creationists. 

See my article carefully making this distinction between deniers and skeptics.

In 1920, five years after he published his general theory of relativity, Albert Einstein wrote, "This world is a strange madhouse, Every coachman and every waiter is debating whether relativity theory is correct. Belief in this matter depends on political affiliation." 

Einstein’s publication provoked opponents across Europe and the U.S. who set out to prove that relativity was wrong. Objections were raised not just in scholarly journals, but in letters, newspapers, pamphlets and public lectures.  Some groups promoted anti-semitic conspiracy theories; others raised theological arguments. Their tactics had much in common with those used by creationists and climate-change deniers today. The Academy of Nations, an international network of Einstein’s opponents, published polemics against relativity, which they believed symbolized the incomprehensibility of modern science, and its break from classical physics. The New York Times declared in 1919, that relativity was a theory that could be understood by “only twelve wise men.” 

Arguments continue to this day. The website Conservapedia lists 32 reasons why the relativity theory is wrong, and allows users to document counterexamples to relativity theory. 

===

See also: An Open Letter to Researchers of Addiction, Brain Chemistry and Social Psychology

Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competitiveness for Society's Benefit

Paranoia has many roots and levels