Apathy as enabler

The status quo of the United States depends on mass apathy, as argued by Steven Weber:

So sated with high-tech addictions, so soldered to their screens, so disconnected from the tactile reality of the world their bodies inhabit but their minds avoid, the American people give lip service to that Rosie the Riveter "We Can Do It!" spirit but have none of the actual desire to drive a rivet, let alone participate in their democracy. And the folks who have pulled strings, made gas prices fluctuate, tell you of the boogie men with beards and turbans; the folks who make policy, who steer the herd----they are regularly gauging the responses of the American public to further hone their future schemes, schemes which depend on mass apathy.
Weber's post ends on a pessimistic note. That's my mood all too often. But I suspect that this mess is going to continue damaging the finances and freedoms of Americans, and we are going to stand up in ever greater numbers and demand the readily available fixes to problems created by people (e.g., real and meaningful conservation will greatly lessen our energy crisis). On the other hand, I can't help but think that we will not see any meaningful fix to any major problem we face until we directly address campaign finance reform and media reform. Again, these are big but fixable problems.

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Not a spider

I spotted this "daddy longlegs" this weekend, and switched my camera to its macro setting for this photo (click the photo for a much expanded and detailed version): img_28361 I looked it up today on Wikipedia and found out, to my surprise, that this animal is not technically a spider (even though it is an arachnid). Rather than a "spider" daddy longlegs are "harvestmen," belonging to the order Opiliones (spiders belong to the order "aranea."

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Obama-the-not-progressive

We have enough of a track record now, I believe. Barack Obama is not a progressive. I believe that he is most strongly motivated by what it takes (in his opinion) to maintain power to win the next presidential election. We're not going to see any bold moves out of this President. We've seen him support enormously complicated health care and Wall Street "reform" bills that fail to address the original impetus for reform. They are bills that fail to fix the problems they purport to address. Now, Barack Obama is failing to use the Gulf oil spill to hit the need for conservation strongly. This is a president of missed opportunities, especially the opportunity to say no to ineffective legislation. Thus, I agree with Robert Kuttner, who wrote a post titled "My Private Obama":

I reluctantly conclude that whatever progressives might desire in our private visions of who Obama could yet be, he is who he is. It is like watching a needless accident in slow motion. Without a drastic and abrupt course correction, the missed opportunities will continue to accumulate this summer and fall. The whole country, not just the progressive movement, will pay dearly.

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Lecture to myself

Over the past few weeks, I’ve experienced a string of financial and personal set-backs. These setbacks include various major car repair bills, some aches and pains, a minor auto accident (no injuries), and just when I was resigning myself to simply pay the bills and deal with the aches and pains, my iPhone fell out of its holster at the grocery store tonight. I made a call while in the store, then noticed that I didn’t have my phone when I got into my car. I scoured the parking lot with a flashlight, then retraced all of my steps within the store. No phone could be found. The store employees helped out, and then didn’t find anything either. The off-duty cop said to consider it stolen—the crooks remove the sim cards and sell the phones. I was angry tonight, because I was obsessed on the obvious point that some bastard stole my phone instead of turning it in. That is also a rather narrow view of justice, I’ll admit. Who knows what kind of torment the iPhone thief experienced. Maybe he (I’ll assume it was a he) was born into an extremely shitty family and never recovered from that. Not that some people don’t show extraordinary resilience, but these relatively rare exceptions don’t mean that we should expect extraordinary accomplishments from most ordinary people. But I digress. [more . . . ]

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Comprehensive list of cognitive biases

The next time someone mentions that humans are "rational" you might want to refer them to Wikipedia's list of dozens of cognitive biases. How handy to have all of these biases listed in one place. The list includes each of the following biases, each of them liked to specific Wikipedia articles. Decision-making and behavioral biases Bandwagon effect Base rate fallacy Bias blind spot Choice-supportive bias Confirmation bias Congruence bias Contrast effect Denomination effect Distinction bias Endowment effect Experimenter's or Expectation bias Extraordinarity bias Focusing effect Framing Hyperbolic discounting Illusion of control Impact bias Information bias Interloper effect Irrational escalation Just-world phenomenon Loss aversion Mere exposure effect Money illusion Moral credential effect Need for Closure Negativity bias Neglect of probability Normalcy bias Omission bias Outcome bias Planning fallacy Pseudocertainty effect Reactance Restraint bias Selective perception Semmelweis reflex Status quo bias Von Restorff effect Wishful thinking Zero-risk bias Biases in probability and belief Ambiguity effect Anchoring effect Attentional bias Authority bias [More . . . ]

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