I spent this past weekend in the Indiana woods, camping with a few hundred others in the cause of contradance. Near the end of the weekend I was conversing with a gent with a tale of how a pet psychic helped him solve a relationship issue by remotely reading his parrot, and he came up with a gem of a digression.

His answer to, “Do you accept Jesus as your personal savior?”
is “I wouldn’t wish to accept personal gain as a result of an act of human sacrifice”.

(The pet psychic intro is relevant as an illustration that nuggets of reason can come from anywhere.)

In his article in The Atlantic, Jonathan Rauch really hit the nail on the head with his description of introversion :

Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice? If so, do you tell this person he is “too serious,” or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?

If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an introvert on your hands—and that you aren’t caring for him properly.

It’s embarrassing to be one of the last to know.  I’m 51 and I’ve always prided myself at taking the time to learn about the inner workings of human cognition.   My own way of processing information should not have so easily slipped under my own radar. Further, over the years, hundreds of people have plainly told me that my way of thinking is “different”   Without really understanding why, I’ve developed dozens of ready-to-roll reasons for declining social gatherings, especially where I suspect that chit-chat (gossip, television & movies, sports) will prevail.   When I can’t get out of such gatherings, I commonly feel the anxiety building.   I’ve never tolerated gatherings of people (especially large gatherings) as well as most others.  I do need people, though, and I seek them out, but only in measured doses. 

I’ve known and used the term “introvert” for many years, but I’m only now beginning to understand the full consequences of being an introvert.   Until recently, I merely understood that I am not as comfortable spending time with people.  I didn’t realize (as Rauch details in his article), that introverts can pay a huge price, psychologically and physiologically, if they socialize beyond their limit.  The effects of their introversion also go far beyond socializing.  

Recently, I’ve taken a few tests to see whether I’m introverted (see below).  It turns out that I’m off-the-charts introverted.  Hence, my compelling interest in this topic.

I’ve recently read some other materials on “Introversion.”  It’s been incredible to learn that experts on introversion, people who have never met me, understand me so well.   It feels like decades of my frustration have been explained.   Then again, “explanation” is a loaded word.   Despite my recent foray into some serious literature on introversion, I don’t really know why I’m an introvert.  Instead, I’ve merely come to realize that many other people (apparently 25% of the population) respond to gatherings of people much like I do.  Though I don’t really know why I am the way I am, I know that this “thing” is a commonly-encountered constellation of traits, emotions and impulses.  (more…)

Is it beautiful to see spores sneak into an ant’s trachea, then creep into the ant’s brain where they take over, driving the ant to insanity, causing the ant to crawl to the top of a blade of grass, where the fungi destroys the remainder of the ant’s brain, then sprouts fruiting bodies right out through what remains of the ant’s head?

I don’t remember ever hearing that any sentimental songs were ever written about this entirely natural dance of life featuring fungi motherhood.  

I first heard of this process a few years ago when I watched one of David Attenborough’s incredible documentaries.  You’ll find an excerpt of a relevant Attenborough video here at Neurophilosophy, along with a brief written explanation of the fungus’ cycle of life.

This insect exploitation is a good example to keep ready for the next time someone irks you with the claim that everything in nature is “beautiful” in a Bambi eats strawberries sort of way.  

I do think nature is beautiful, but that beauty is better captured in the way that nature is exquisitely calibrated in a fine-grained sometimes warlike hard-to-watch type of equilibrium.  

“Imprecatory prayer”?  I’d never heard of it until today, thanks to Ebonmuse at Daylight Atheism.

The political season is getting into high gear, so it’s a good idea to have a list of types of fallacious arguments handy. I recently found this collection, titled “The Nizkor Project.”  All of your favorite fallacies are here, including these:

Ad Hominem
Ad Hominem Tu Quoque
Appeal to Authority
Appeal to Belief
Appeal to Common Practice
Appeal to Consequences of a Belief
Appeal to Emotion
Appeal to Fear
Appeal to Flattery
Appeal to Novelty
Appeal to Pity
Appeal to Popularity
Appeal to Ridicule
Appeal to Spite
Appeal to Tradition
Bandwagon
Begging the Question
Biased Sample
Burden of Proof
Circumstantial Ad Hominem
Composition
Confusing Cause and Effect
Division
False Dilemma
Gambler’s Fallacy
Genetic Fallacy
Guilt By Association
Hasty Generalization
Ignoring A Common Cause
Middle Ground
Misleading Vividness
Personal Attack
Poisoning the Well
Post Hoc
Questionable Cause
Red Herring
Relativist Fallacy
Slippery Slope
Special Pleading
Spotlight
Straw Man
Two Wrongs Make A Right

What is a “fallacy”?  Here is the Nizkor Project’s description:

A fallacy is, very generally, an error in reasoning. This differs from a factual error, which is simply being wrong about the facts. To be more specific, a fallacy is an “argument” in which the premises given for the conclusion do not provide the needed degree of support. A deductive fallacy is a deductive argument that is invalid (it is such that it could have all true premises and still have a false conclusion). An inductive fallacy is less formal than a deductive fallacy. They are simply “arguments” which appear to be inductive arguments, but the premises do not provided enough support for the conclusion. In such cases, even if the premises were true, the conclusion would not be more likely to be true.

I found this topic to be of special interest after looking through the list, reading the descriptions and noticing how incredibly often these sorts of fallacious arguments are made by pubic figures and public officials. 

Maybe my project of calling officials on their fallacious reasons is naive, however.   Maybe we no longer care whether our logic is intact, whether we are consistent or whether there needs to be any rhyme or reason for our assertions.  Perhaps we’re living in the age of the ascent of “Personal attacks,” “Special Pleading,” “Straw Men” and “Appeal to Ridicule.”

In this startling video, Cheney concludes that getting Saddam Hussein wouldn’t have been worth many American lives.

He is speaking fluidly and confidently, like an unpatriotic liberal, throughout the video.

In an article from the Washington Post we learn that the United States has slipped in the ranking for life expectancy in the world to number 42. Douglas Adams aside, this is not a good thing.

The article lists a good many factors contributing to this fact, which seems paradoxical since, as stated, we spend more on health care than any other nation. I’m not surprised. Americas in general live as though built like Abrams tanks. We work hard, we party hard, and we loaf hard. We eat badly, pay no attention to our personal health, assuming that if anything really goes wrong “the doctor can fix it.” We believe, innately, that we’re indestructible and can do anything. This leads to careless habits. One factor cited is that 45 million of us lack health insurance. Which brings me to the peeve of this post.

There is a talk show mouth named Mark Christopher.  His show is out of Nashville, but you can hear him (in St. Louis) on KTRS 550. This guy is a Rush Limbaugh wannabe. And one of his horses to ride hobbyistically is an ongoing rant against national health care. He’s phobic about this. Every other day he has some little tidbit about how bad health care is in other countries that have a state health care system. He commented yesterday on this report in the Washington Post. Now, aside from the fact that he cherry picked the article, which cited factors he then went on to name as if the Washington Post had not, he displayed a profound case of Innumeracy.

He said (I paraphrase) that in a country of 300 million, 45 million people is a “drop in the bucket.” Meaning that we ought not overturn our wonderful private health care system (which is going to bankrupt us eventually) for so few who just fall out of the system. 45 million out of 300 million is 15%. That is hardly a drop in the bucket. To put that in perspective, that would be one and half out of ten, or three out of twenty. Fifteen of every hundred people. Which means that on an average city block (which I determined by standing on my street and counting) of roughly 35 houses with an average of four people per house, there are around 21 people with no reliable health care. On one block.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that among those 21 we have 2 or 3 cases of tuberculosis (which is a rising problem in this country). Tuberculosis is highly infectious. How fast might that spread among the various blocks around us? Another way to look at it. The worst battlefield casualties the United States ever experienced were in the Civil War, which sometimes reached 30%. They averaged between 12 and 18%. A modern army–-ours—regards 5% heavy and anything approaching 10% unacceptable. And fighting a war is by far more expensive than average health care costs. The unbelievable inability—or, more likely, carelessness—of someone with a national talk show to understand the most basic arithmetic in this way verges on criminal.

If 15% of our population dropped dead tomorrow, I assure you we would notice. It would not be “a drop in the bucket.” We are nationally anxious about 6 coal miners in Utah who may be dead and if they are, we will demand an investigation. We can’t 6 people dying in a mining accident. But in the sphere of health care, 45 million people become a drop in the bucket. The phobia that has taken root over this issue has become one of those insurmountable arguments that has run headlong into panic.

We Americans—I think all of us, it just depends on what aspect of our lives is under discussion—our suspicious of government. If it’s not national health care, then it’s Big Brother. Liberals, conservatives, and combination thereof, Americans can find something we don’t want the government to run. We have always been like this, it’s nothing new. And we are often stupid about it. But the world is shrinking and in so doing making it less and less possible for us to escape the consequences of ill-considered, knee-jerk prejudice. I don’t care how this issue gets resolved. Even if we do end up with some kind of federalized health care system, we will abuse it, it will cost too much, and it will still be bent to the service of a nation of people who act like they can do anything they want—play, eat, party, work, or loaf—too much and think nothing bad will come of it.

Which means that the most cost-effective health care system—prophylaxis—will not be the one that gets the priority. Insurance companies must be made to offer things like well baby care and prenatal coverage now. Taking care of a problem before it becomes something that lands us in the emergency room costs far less, but we don’t, for the most part, do that now. And we have a absurd and irrational devotion to extending Life far past any possibility of meaningful living, which is still where the bulk of our expense here falls (though obesity related health issues are rapidly catching up).

Whatever we do, the basic tenets of good health care will probably still be ignored by a people who think they don’t have to pay attention personally to their own health care. Which is reflected in the Washington Post article as well. But I am profoundly tired of the misinformation spread by both sides of the debate, and the incredible lack of grasp people who ought to know better have on the most basic aspects of problem-solving.

End of rant. You may now return to your regularly scheduled panic.

Despite the rhyming title, this is a serious topic.   But not always a controversial topic . . .

Sociobiology is an un-controversial field of study as long as we stick to studying animals other than human animals.  Here’s how John Alcock describes sociobiology in The Triumph of Sociobiology (2001): “Genetic differences help explain why people develop differences in at least some aspects of their behavior.” (Page 53).  Here’s another way to put it: “Sociobiologists want to know the evolved function or purpose of whatever aspect of social behavior they are studying.”

Alcock is a prolific and highly respected biologist who teaches at the Arizona State University.  His textbook, Animal Behavior, is currently on its eighth edition.  I used his textbook when I took a class on animal behavior a few years ago. It is a terrific resource, highly organized and thoroughly researched.

On the first day of that course (also entitled Animal Behavior), the instructor, a biologist who worked at the St. Louis zoo, bemoaned the fact that so many people get upset when scientists dare to study human animals as animals.  Certainly, no one questions that the biological makeup of the most animals affects their behavior. Think about dogs, for instance.  We are all “racists” when it comes to dogs.  When a golden retriever seems to enjoy swimming, we summon up by saying “That’s how golden retrievers are.”  That’s why hunting dogs hunt and why herding dogs herd, we say, without anyone taking offense.  No one gets upset when we suggest that the behaviors of any animals other than human animals are systematically linked to their biology.

When it comes to human animals, however, we get nervous when anyone suggests that human behavior has anything at all to do with human biology.  Those who study human behavior from the basis of biology constantly hear accusations that they are like Nazis and other vicious racists.  But then again, why wouldn’t you study human behavior from the basis of human biology? Wouldn’t it be an extraordinarily strange thing to suggest that human behavior had nothing to do with human biology?

In The Triumph of Sociobiology, John Alcock argues that the war against sociobiology is over and that sociobiology (Alcock sees no need to use euphemisms such as “evolutionary psychology”) has overcome the ignorant attempts to slander it.  “The discipline employs a basic research approach that deserves our interests, respect, and even admiration as a potential source of improved understanding about ourselves and all other social species, from ants to antelopes.”  (Page 4).  Further, there is no need to apologize for sociobiology that conducted responsibly: “Social biology does not in any way provide an ideological foundation for accepting racism, sexism, genocide, rape, social dominance of the poor by the rich, or any other of the many unpleasant features of human behavior.”  (Page 20).

In fact, Alcock’s entire book is a response to numerous misunderstandings surrounding sociobiology.  In particular, Alcock argues that it is simply incorrect to assert any of the following:

Sociobiology is a novel and idiosyncratic theory of E. O. Wilson.

Sociobiology is primarily concerned with human behavior.

Sociobiology deals with the evolution of traits that benefit the species.

Sociobiology is a reductionist discipline based on the proposition that some behavioral traits are genetically determined. (more…)

This short video is from an antiwar protest covered by the Jackson Hole Planet online.

Once in a while, I tune into KJSL, a St. Louis Christian talk radio station.  I do this as part of a conscious effort to make myself listen to people with views that are dramatically different from my own.  Perhaps I will understand those views better if I take the time to listen more.

While I was driving last week, the station featured a show called “News and Views,” hosted by a man named “Dr. Larry Bates.”  The host repeatedly painted the future of the US as bleak, thanks to irresponsible financial policies by the federal government.  Because I have some sympathy with that general conclusion, I continued to listen.  It turned out that Bates was predicting the imminent financial collapse of the United States.  Although I doubted that conclusion, I continued to listen.

Bates then indicated that he is also a big proponent of religious “End Times.”  In short, he believes that Jesus will soon be returning to Earth in order to sort things out.  I have no sympathy for this religious view.  In fact, I find End Times beliefs to be irresponsible and destructive for the numerous reasons.  For example, I do not hold the Bible to be inerrant. Based on my study of the Bible, although it offers some good stories and some reasonable moral instruction, it is also rife with bad advice, contradictions and senseless violence.

“Dr. Larry Bates” wears many hats.  He claims to be an economist, publisher, editor, former member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, former bank CEO and a “nationally recognized expert on political systems and the Federal Reserve.”  Bates is also the President of First American Monetary Consultants, Inc. (FAMC), an organization that allegedly does “economic and market forecasting, in addition to offering a wide variety of other End Times services.  “News and Views” is a syndicated radio show, available dozens of radio stations across the U.S.  Larry Bates is thus well known in some circles.

After listening to Bates for only a few minutes, I learned that the United States needs to immediately and mercilessly bomb Iran because of what “those people” have done to “support terrorism.”  I also learned that we need to support Israel without question, based upon what the Bible says.  I persevered to the end of the show, saddened by and frustrated with the flimsy manner in which Bates attempted to support his conclusions. 

At the end of the show, it was announced that Bates was going to be featured at a half-day conference in St. Louis, I took the bait.  I thought it would be interesting to better understand the basis for the views of End Times (both economic End Times and religious End Times) proponents. The conference was called “Perilous Times: Significant End Time Events.”  I paid $20 and showed up at the Crystal Ballroom of the Renaissance St. Louis Grand and Suites Hotel in downtown St. Louis.  Here’s my ticket:

                              
At the registration desk, I received a folder full of information.   One of the pamphlets advised me that legalized gay marriage is a major obstacle to democracy:

When the US Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas last year that sodomy is a constitutional ‘right,’ the director of the lambda legal fund-a radical homosexual-agenda of pressure group-gleefully explained that this marks the beginning of the end to traditional marriage.

Another pamphlet advised that the United States is officially a Judeo-Christian nation.  It quoted William Penn: “Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.”  This pamphlet, printed by FAMC, “proves” that the United States is a Christian nation based upon the fact that the Constitutions of many of the states mention “God,” or “the Creator.”  As though non-Christian religions don’t believe in a “God” or a “Creator.”

There were numerous products displayed and advertised at the conference.  These products are the sorts of things you’ll need to have if you are going to be prepared for the economic and religious End Times.  If you want to prevent cancer, you need to load up on Glutathione.  The pamphlet says “your life depends on Glutathione.”  To buy it, contact FAMC, according to the pamphlet. 

What if you just want to make sure that you have access to “the most universal antibiotic” known to man, colloidal silver?  It’s a “tasteless, odorless, non-toxic, purer, natural substance consisting of submicroscopic clusters of silver particles suspended by a tiny electric charge placed on each particle.” According to the pamphlet, you drink it.  It kills all those pesky pathogens and protects all your good cells.  According to the pamphlet, it is useful for treating allergies, boils, herpes, stomach flu, lime disease, gonorrhea, bladder irritations and chickenpox.  The list goes on and on.   Colloidal silver can be used vaginally, anally or dropped into the eyes.”  You can even make your own colloidal silver out of silver wire, using the $189 generator you can buy from FAMC. 

Another pamphlet advised me of my right to participate in jury nullification whenever anyone is being prosecuted for a gun crime. That is because “corrupted, anti-gun prosecutors and judges are common.”  This information is distributed by the Fully Informed Jury Association.

After the economic collapse, you’ll need to make better use of all that expensive gasoline that all of us are going to need.  Therefore, make sure you buy the “Power Plus Mpg” additive.  Using this Power Plus, you can save 25 to $.50 per gallon.  During his talk (which I’ll discuss in detail further down), Larry Bates bragged that his 5 mpg SUV improved its mileage 50% (to 7.5 mpg) after he started using this Power Plus.  Those attending the conference were even invited to sign up as Power Plus distributors. 

Additional Pamphlets were available advising how to support efforts to find those “30,000 POWs [who] were known to be behind alive after WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf and War on Terror.”  There was also a table full of conservative-message bumper stickers.    

The nice old fellow minding that table offered me a chance to take any one of those bumper stickers for free.  (more…)

Pakistani pop stars say no to terrorism in this video:

The great thing about America is that anyone can step up and run for high office.  This is technically true, at least.  

The horrible thing about America is that most sane people wouldn’t dare run for any high office.

I’ve been watching a bit of the ongoing campaign for President.  I’ve been disappointed and saddened, for the most part.  I think the system ruins those people with good intentions.  Further, I think that we’re not seeing the most capable people standing up to run for office.

I know some extremely intelligent and good-hearted people who would make excellent political leaders.  Really, I know at least a dozen such people.  They wouldn’t dare run for high office, however, and I can’t blame them.   In fact, almost all intelligent people are discouraged from running by the system itself.   The fact that our political system discourages the best and brightest (at least 99% of them) from running for high political office is arguably the biggest threat to our democracy.   

The evidence?  Almost everyone in Congress sits on his/her hands, while we attack Iraq.  Here’s another:  Our congress eternally is afraid to deal with two of the biggest issues facing us:  media reform and campaign finance reform.  Not to mention health care, social security, meaningful energy policy and dozens of other major issues.

Here is how the system filters out the people it most desperately needs.  To be a politician, you need to be willing to do the following:

• You’ll constantly need hit people up for big money, i.e., you’ll need to engage in rampant bribery on an unimaginable scale. 
• You’ll need to pretend that you’re not selling out your electorate when you spend all of time taking in all of that campaign money.
• You’ll need to successfully squeeze people and businesses for big money—lots and lots of money.  You’ll spend at least have your time in office raising money.  If you don’t do that corrupt work well, you’ll soon be out of office.
• You’ll need to be willing to almost always say what you don’t mean.
• By being an politician, you’ll invite vicious attacks on yourself, your spouse, your children and your friends (the kinds of attacks that turn war heroes into villains & people who go AWOL into war heroes).
• You’ll need to give up much of your privacy and you’ll be hounded and attacked whenever you are in public.
• You’ll probably need to live away from your permanent home for extended periods.
• You’ll need to pretend that you are without flaws or a flawed history.
• You’ll need to commit yourself to a frenetic schedule, giving up much of what you enjoy doing.
• Because you probably don’t have professional-honed presentation skills (you aren’t proficient in front of a camera), you will be ridiculed for that reason.
• You’ll clamor for media attention like you were a heroin addict and the media outlets were pushers.
• You’ll need to be willing to publicly reveal your personal religious beliefs (or lack thereof), sexual orientation, good motives and lack of evil motives for everything you do and say.  All of these will be pried open for endless doses of accusation and ridicule. 

What kind of person is still willing to run for high office, even after considering these hurdles?  For the most part, the kind of person who is so dysfunctionally driven that they will never have enough power and notoriety.   Sure, sprinkle in a few true-blue heroes, a few people who are honorable, humble, intelligent and not duplicitous, but don’t expect them to step up and serve. Or if they do serve, expect the system to destroy their integrity within a couple of years.

Campaign finance reform is the most important, but not the only, solution to this horrible situation.  It might take a second American Revolution to clean up this mess. 

Here’s Chris Kelly on Baby Bush Einstein, putting Pepsi in your baby’s bottle and running someone with Hillary’s high negatives for president.

World-renowned primatologist Frans de Waal is tired of reading the nonsense written by conservatives who are working hard to do the same thing to bonobos that they have been doing to climate change: change the facts to fit the politics.

Why are conservatives embarrassed by the bonobo?  Is it, perhaps, because the bonobo is ”known for its ‘gay’ relations, female supremacy, and pacific life-style”?   That’s the topic of de Waal’s NYT article. 

Are you sure you want to be “free”?  Freedom is such a strange concept. I’ve never understood it in the context of personal decision-making. 

Americans claim to love “freedom,” but how much freedom can you stand?  Freedom implies occurrences that are unhinged from naturalistic laws.  Freedom implies a mechanism that is not hooked into the laws of physics, chemistry or biology. Freedom implies a capricious mechanism that guides one’s most important decisions.  To have a truly free mind, then, is to have a lawless mind, a random mind.  How would you possibly make any sort of rational decision if your mind operated in a lawless fashion?  Is that really what anyone wants? 

Many thinkers have spent their careers trying to figure out how to justify freedom in the happy sense (I freely chose to marry my spouse) without having freedom in the three-of-natural-law-sense.  There are lots of ingenious approaches to this attempted maneuver, many of them invoking spiritual beings or quantum physics. None of them persuade me in the least. I am convinced by the evidence.  I prefer to let the chips fall.

Also, I am happy being a law-abiding animal with law-abiding cognition.  It doesn’t concern me that my mind is really shorthand for the effects of a law-abiding brain.  It is my guess that someday (perhaps not in my lifetime) we will be able to fully account for all that we perceive to be beautiful or boring or logically compelling.  In my mind, a mind/brain that “obeys” the laws of physics can generate the full gamut of human emotions.  I am in the minority on this point, though.  Most people fear the thought that their minds could be subject to natural laws.  They flee from this thought with such energy that they run straight into the arms of random (and therefore unpredictable) cognition, a worldview that is allegedly controlled by ghosts and particle-waves.

I thought of the quirky concept of “freedom” while reading an article called “Mating Intelligence in Personal Ads,” by Charlotte De Backer, Johan Braeckman and Lili Farinpour.  This article is found in a brand-new book: Mating Intelligence: Sex, Relationships, and the Minds of Reproductive System (2008) edited by Glenn Geher and Geoffrey Miller. 

This personal ads article is a comprehensive review of research that’s been done on the types of mates people seek in their personal ads.  According to this article, there are numerous predictions one can make based upon the authors’ survey of a survey of ads placed by heterosexual people seeking opposite sex companions in newspaper ads.

A predictable and long litany of sex differences shows up, regardless of time or culture.  Most women want longer-lasting sexual relationships than men.  Men seek much more short-term mating.  Men seek multiple sex partners.  Men seek younger females and females seek older men.  Men seek physical traits associated with youth and fertility, while women seek out men who display queues of wealth and status, such as nice houses, cars and luxuries.  Women also seek men who are willing to share that wealth with others, such as these women themselves and their future children. Women want tall men; no women seek short men.  Women rarely specify weight restrictions in their ads.  Men often seek out slim partners. 

Very few of these conclusions are new, though it is striking to see them all in one place.  Actually, I’m currently seeing these conclusions in at least two places, because almost all of these conclusions are even more thoroughly documented in another brand-new book, this one by David Buss, entitled Evolutionary Psychology: the New Science of the Mind (Third Edition) (2008).

Based upon their survey of the personal ads, De Backer, Braeckman and Farinpour drafted an ideal ad for a man:

I am a wealthy, reliable, mature man, with an intelligent mind in a pretty good body.

They also drafted an ideal ad for a female:

I am a young, attractive, slim woman, who is reliable and financially secure.

What do these personal ads have to do with freedom?  Human beings have an almost unstoppable desire to believe that they are “free.”  It is such an intense desire that, if asked, the people running these ads would confidently claim that they “chose” each of the characteristics that appeared in their ads.  Yet it is highly unlikely that such an enormous number of males and females, respectively, would independently write such a similar ads “freely.” It makes much more sense to assume that human cognition is subject to stable natural laws.   And one need not limit oneself to the laws of physics.  Evolution predicts that these choices in the way people write personal ads result from such things as the need for paternity certainty and the predictable differences relating to the parental investment theory of George Trivers.

Despite this onslaught of predictability in the way males and females draft their personal ads, very few writers of these ads would even want to consider that they wrote those ads in accordance with predictable scientific laws. I say this because I’ve discussed this issue of freedom with quite a few people over the years, and it’s a rare bird that dares to question the focus of physics version of the term “freedom.”  In fact, it is not unusual to find people disgusted by the idea that cognition is subject to natural laws.  Several people have gone so far as to question my sanity and I raise this topic.  They think that I’m trying to argue that people are “robots.”

In my mind, evolutionary theory gives much greater explanatory bang for the buck than the oxymoronic term “freedom.” Most people are willing to timidly blame their decisions on emotions.  They are unwilling to go that additional important step, the step described by Robert Wright (in The Moral Animal) when he wrote that emotions are “evolution’s executioners.”

Nietzsche was one of those thinkers who dared to carefully consider the term “freedom.”  He pessimistically wrote about it in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “It is by invisible hands that we are bent and tortured worst.”  

As I mention above, though, I don’t consider a naturalistic version of cognition to be a sad thing or a happy thing.  It is simply the way it is. 

If you are intrigued by the Incredible Sameness of Human Beings, also consider reading this article.  Be careful, or you might have a bad dream that we are largely interchangeable, a direct challenge to the treasured platitude that each individual is unique. 

E.g., Don’t hold your breath that the Democrats will save us.  Or that anyone will.  It might take something far more dramatic.  Perhaps something revolutionary.  But it’s going to require far more than sitting around watching our TV’s to make it happen.

Marty Kaplan is a really smart media-reform and political-reform guy who tells it like it is.  In this recent piece in Huffpo, titled “Our Years of Magical Thinking,” Kaplan worries that too many of us have the attitude that good things will simply happen.  It is a pervasive and dangerous attitude.  I agree with him.  For the most part, good things take planning, sacrifice and hard work.  Bad things often just happen.   It takes a lot of effort to build something.  On the other hand, mere decay and neglect can bring it down.

Politically, we now face many huge struggles but there is no indication that the key players (all of us are key players some of the time) are willing to do what it takes to effect real change for the better:

Today, magical thinking is the belief that a Democratic White House and a filibuster-proof Congress is all that stands between the country and meaningful political reform. Is it really credible that elected officials who got to Washington without making campaign finance reform and media reform their signature issues will risk their incumbencies to force the only kind of change that can rescue democracy from the dangers the Founders warned us about, no matter who’s in charge?

Why is “magical thinking” dangerous?   It’s because people who believe in magic are lazy and naïve.  They are all too willing to trust the next seller of political snake oil.  As Kaplan writes:  “What haunts me is the possibility that Americans will one day decide that there is something so inherently dysfunctional about our political system that rolling the dice on non-democratic change is the only hope to rescue it.”

I also agree with Kaplan that media reform and campaign reform are huge issues that urgently need help.  In fact, without first addressing these two festering problems, it will be one hundred times harder to have the necessary national conversation to fix any other complex national issue (there are dozens–take you pick).  Sorry to end this on this depressing note.  Perhaps I’ve just been reading too much about what the candidates aren’t discussing . . .

“What an odd question?” was my first thought when I read this column.

Blogging, as a profession, has grown from geeky obscurity into a direct challenge to the journalism industry, even with bloggers’ reputation for being unruly, unvetted, grammatically and syntactically insufficient, and above all, a disorganized mess.

He discusses the fight over standards, and the question of with whom such a union would negotiate, and for what? The author cites another on the issue:

“The idea of a blogger labor union seems to make as much sense as having a union for people who sing in the shower,” says Mike Pechar of the Jawa Report. “Typically, a labor union has some leverage by threatening to strike against management. Bloggers threatening to strike would probably be greeted with a ho-hum or maybe even applause.”

At its heart, it is another effort to apply old bureaucracy to a new paradigm. It reminds me a bit of the many attempts (starting before my own 26 years in programming) to encourage/require programmers to be licensed like engineers.

Poet Sharon Olds has declined to attend the National Book Festival in Washington D.C. who won a National Book Critics Circle Award and who is professor of creative writing at New York University, was invited along with a number of other writers by First Lady Laura Bush.

Here’s her letter of explanation to Mrs. Bush, published by The Nation.

I find it ironic that so many conservatives who deplore extended dependence on government welfare (because it destroys the soul) embrace non-ending handouts “from heaven.”  

In his 2005 article in The National Review, “Welfare Reform Part II,” Stephen Moore wrote that it was time to start chopping welfare programs again.  Moore was not content with the cuts made as part of the 1996 Welfare Reform.  It was time to make deeper cuts.  In Moore’s opinion, there are deep psychological reasons for kicking people off welfare.  These have to do with the alleged fact that extended receipt of welfare assistance destroys human capacity for self initiative. Here are Moore’s own words:

Welfare Reform Part II, if properly implemented, will save money and for those in need restore the dignity of a purposeful life. It will also be consistent with the original intention of aid to the poor, which was to be a temporary safety net for those out of work and out of luck.

Back in 1935 the founder of the modern welfare state warned: “Continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.” The speaker was Franklin Roosevelt. What a tragedy that seven decades later Uncle Sam is still undermining the human spirit with this destructive narcotic.

Moore’s article reminded me of the relationship that many Christians claim to have with their God.  You can constantly hear it in their prayers.  They ask for new cars, houses, spouses and better jobs.  They don’t stop at material things.  They ask for their God to give them courage, patience, wisdom and fortitude.  See here and here, for example. The prayers often take the following tone (warning: this is my own semi-cynical paraphrasing):

Oh God, I am nothing.  Please take pity on me and give me A, B and C. And tomorrow, please give me D, E and F.  I want you to do my thinking for me.  Please keep telling me what to do so that I don’t have to do any of that work.  Give me strength, mercy, wisdom, patience.  Give me give me give me.  Someday. please let me into heaven and let me sit on your lap and let me be forever dependent on the things that you will give to me up there. 

In short, for many people, God has assumed the role of the Welfare State.  It’s a one-way street, where those who pray repeatedly ask their God to satisfy their own needs and wants.  

To the extent that Stephen Moore is correct in his analysis of welfare dependence, conservative Christians should be wary of the effect of their own conceptualization of God. 

How about this as an alternative, a healthier approach to God?  Assume that you were given a great gift by being allowed to be born.  This initial gift gave you “dignity of a purposeful life.”  Assume that God’s gift of life to you was a “temporary safety net,” but it is now time for you to stop asking for help.  It is time for you to pick yourself up and fend for yourself materially, intellectually and emotionally.  It is time for you to wean yourself of God-The-Welfare-Administrator. 

To do otherwise is to become dependent upon your God as “a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.”

Unless you learn to let go of your materialist cravings things, that is.  

On Sunday, The New York Times published an article called “The Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich.”  in this article, you will meet lots of millionaires from Silicon Valley.  They have net worth measuring in the millions of dollars, sometimes tens of millions of dollars.  As I write this, I am certain that I would retire if I had $2 million.  After all, even if invested at 5%, $2 million would produce $100,000 per year of interest.  Tell me who couldn’t survive on $100,000 per year?  This article from The New York Times suggests that I should not be so sure of what I would do under such circumstances.

The problem seems to be that many of these multimillionaires feel compelled to buy expensive houses and cars.  They feel compelled to send their children to the best schools and to take exotic vacations.  All of these things cost considerable money. What do you do to keep the money flowing?  You keep working.  Take for instance, Mr. Hal Steger, featured in the article:

Each day Mr. Steger continues to toil in what a colleague calls “the Silicon Valley salt mines,” working as a marketing executive for a technology startup company, still striving for his big strike.  Most mornings, he can be found at his desk by seven.  He typically works 12 hours a day and logs an extra 10 hours over the weekend.

Steger and many other Silicon Valley millionairs have “made it,” you see.  70 hours of high stress work.  Don’t forget to subtract out the commuting time, chores around the house and, of course, sleep.   If you commute for an hour per day, do an hour of chores (laundry, shopping, cleaning up, maintaining your car, fixing up, paying bills) and 8 hours per day sleeping, that leaves you a grand total of 23 hours per week for leisure. 

A big reason that many of the multimillionaires are not satisfied with the money they already have is that they notice others who have much more. According to Gary Kreman, the founder of match.com (a popular Internet dating service), “everyone around here looks at the people above them.”  The article quotes from numerous financially unsatisfied residents of Silicon Valley, including numerous people having net worth between $2 million and $5 million.

This article reignites my interest in why people so deeply crave having things that they don’t need.  So many of us, including all of us non-millionaires, feel that we need things that we merely want.  Such cravings make us slaves to our possessions.  They own us.  I’ve written about this deep craving to display expensive things from the viewpoint of evolutionary psychology here and here and here.

Check out this Opus cartoon on Salon.com, then come on back.

I’ve long thought it self-important to think that a God would pay attention to anyone in particular, given that there are so many other people on Earth.  But this Earthbound sense of self-importance is just the tip of the iceberg.  There are many other planets to consider.  

Carl Sagan offered his own spin on this same general point.  This undeniable point that we are each such a tiny speck in a tiny corner of the universe convinces me that most organized religions are absoutely wrong when they confidently tout that their version of “God” cares.  To think that God (if there even is a sentient God) has nothing better to do than to fret about whether YOU:

1. went to church last week to grovel before Him,

2. had sex with someone to whom you weren’t officially married, or

3. cursed, or got drunk or whatever . . .

. . . is the height of parochial arrogance and ignorance.   Believers who are truly humble must consider that if there is a God, that God might not have any interest or capacity to care for you.  Ignoring this possibilty is not the humility so many believers claim to have.   God (if He/She exists) might find humans to be boring just like most of us get bored with ants after looking at them for a few seconds.

Most bureacratic religions claim that each of us is important enough to merit personalized attention from the alleged Creater of the Universe.  To the extent that religions hold this belief, they are holding it without a shred of justification.  My point is simply this:  it is sheer arrogance to think that the Creator of the Universe notices anything you do.

Whether or not a God exists, then we are alone. Maybe we are truly alone or maybe we’re alone for all intents and purposes.  But we are on our own.  We need to work together, respecting each other as real sentient beings if we are to find any meaning in our lives. 

In recent news, another highway bridge collapsed. Every 20 years or so, a major bridge fails unexpectedly. The nature of civil engineering is to understand how things fail, and design the next generation to avoid that failure. Each failure leads to better designs. Each of the major bridges that collapsed had been certified as less-than-acceptable, but no imminent danger. As are a significant fraction of bridges built decades ago. So why do they fail?

The compromise part of the equation is that a perfectly safe bridge can be built, for about the cost of a few days of our occupation of Iraq. This is a huge number, compared to the cost of a normal bridge with a known, small statistical chance of failure.

The current cost estimate to bring all of America’s thousands of sub-standard bridges up to spec is still less than a month of our expensive venture over there. Prohibitive. But this recent collapse has people in power considering the option.

The basic cause of bridge failures is a combination of simply wearing out and changing conditions, like the riverbed, the weather, and increased demands on it. Failures happen.
A more complex underlying cause is politics. How can a bridge get built, and who will pay how much for it? How can congress allocate so much public money to benefit apparently a small area? How much safety can builders put in and still win a bid? How much money can be allocated to upkeep? This last, critical and unglamorous, number is where bridges fail. If every bridge had a full time engineer and maintenance crew with an uncapped budget, then no bridge would ever fail. But how can so much money be spent, be justified, if the end result is…nothing?

Bridges have to fail occasionally to remind people that maintenance must be paid for. How often is optimum? Well, history shows that about once a generation is about right.

This time, fewer lives were lost in the collapse than can be expected to be saved by having the corridor closed. (Multiply fatalities per interstate mile in urban areas by the number of interstate miles that will be closed for how many months while the bridge is replaced). Had it been winter, the death toll would have been higher.

The shocking part is that it could have been any of us on the bridge at the time. I’ve driven across it, myself. But I was more impressed by the 1983 rural Connecticut bridge that failed in the middle of the night, and travelers kept sailing into the abyss until someone managed to stop in time and report it.

Salon’s Michael Grieve reports on Michael Copp’s address to the YearlyKos Convention. Copps, an FCC commissioner, addressed the YearlyKos Convention in Chicago:

a three-day gathering of about 1,500 bloggers and liberal activists. But his address was less a lecture than a call to action. “The country needs you, it needs a free press, it needs the Netroots community, it needs everyone you can bring along and fight like your future depends on it,” he said.

Copps focused on the biggest two issues facing media reformers: consolidation of media ownership and attempts by the telecoms to violate net neutrality

Neither issue gets much attention, but Copps, a balding former assistant secretary of commerce, has a way of turning incredibly complex bureaucratic rule makings into morality plays. “The way you win, the only way you win, is to take this story not just to Capitol Hill but all across America,” he said. “Talk about it, write about it, blog about it. If you can sing, sing about it.” The ballroom crowd of roughly 200 offered its applause.

The topic of usury laws and payday loans arises frequently these days. Payday lenders commonly charge interest rates of 300%, 400% or more on their loans to desperate consumers. Why do I suggest these consumers are desperate? It’s because they are writing postdated checks to payday lenders, agreeing to give up a large chunks of their next paychecks, and paying exorbitant interest rates in the process. How many people who are not financially desperate would be willing to sign away the proceeds of a future paycheck and pay 450% interest for this “privilege”? With repeated real-life scenario as the backdrop, the question often arises: do usury laws exist anymore? This topic has been addressed by Christopher Peterson in a comprehensive law review article entitled “Usury Law, Payday Loans, and Statutory Sleight-Of-Hand: an Empirical Analysis of American Credit Pricing Limits.”

It’s not hard to determine what motivates Peterson’s work. He writes that the American consumer is now dealing with “a new, largely unregulated credit marketplace.” The center of the storm is the payday lending industry which, “despite spending millions on lobbying and public relations, is at the center of an inferno of rage and public controversy.” Peterson takes time to discuss the history of usury laws throughout the history of the American republic. Usury laws, according to Peterson, have “historically been the foremost bulwark shielding consumers from harsh credit practices.” At the time our country declared its independence, no state had an interest of greater than 8%. Benjamin Franklin warned of the social and moral dangers of indebtedness:

The borrower is a slave to the lender, and the debtor to the creditor, disdained the chain, preserve your freedom; and maintain your independency: be industrious and free; be frugal and free.

Peterson writes of a “second phase” of the Republic, starting in the late 1800s, when groups of high-cost lenders known as “loan sharks” charged triple digit interest rates exceeding 500%. The did this through “salary-assignment” schemes that were so devastating to borrowers that the FTC eventually cracked down on them (see CFR 444.2(a)(3)). Another approach to social reform was to “raise the old traditional usury limits to a point where more mainstream financial institutions could profitably land of small amounts to working-class borrowers.” States follow the strategy, typically kept interest rates at between 24 and 42% per annum.

Competition among lenders and aggressive law enforcement worked reasonably well. Things changed again in 1978 with the Supreme Court decision of Marquette National Bank Versus First of Omaha Service Corp., 439 US 299 (1978). In Marquette, the Supreme Court ruled that a national bank lending money across state lines must apply the usury laws of the bank’s home state, rather than the usury laws of the borrower’s state. This decision was based upon the National Bank Act of 1864. The Marquette decision was an invitation for national banks to make a lot of money by relocating to South Dakota or Delaware, states that did not have meaningful usury laws. The result, according to Peterson was “a frenzied race to the bottom and American usury law.” State-chartered banks quickly pressured state legislatures to grant them the same power held by nationally chartered banks in the form of “parity laws.” When the dust settled, what remained was

a grand illusion. Every state in the union, save two, had a relatively aggressive usury law on the books. And yet, even though no legislature had ever passed a law saying as much, the new synthesized usury rule became: any bank can charge any interest rate it wants anywhere it wants. (more…)

A survey conducted by the University of Texas found 237 reasons. According to this article in the NYT, “They even found a few people who claimed to have been motivated by the desire to have a child.”

The number one reason was “I was attracted to the person.”  On the other hand, defensive sex is also popular:

[B]oth sexes seem to practice a strategy that he calls mate-guarding, as illustrated in one of the reasons given by survey respondents: “I was afraid my partner would have an affair if I didn’t.”  That fear seems especially reasonable after you finish reading Dr. Buss’s paper and realize just how many reasons there are for infidelity.