Rethinking the War on Drugs in the Age of Opioid Addicted Europeans

I don't see racism everywhere I look. In my view, most issues are far too complex for "race" to serve as a dominant explanatory factor.

That said, it's rather stunning to see the recent tsunami of news articles (like this one recent news piece from NPR) taking the position that as people of European descent become an ever bigger percentage of drug addicts, throwing their asses in jail is no longer trendy as a first-choice paradigm for addressing the problem. Almost overnight, in this age of opioid addiction, compassionate treatment has become "common sense."

Continue ReadingRethinking the War on Drugs in the Age of Opioid Addicted Europeans

Stinky Farts, Stinky Thoughts

The impeachment hearings offer daily fodder to those who struggle to understand how the human mind works. Many people keep expressing frustration about the lies being told by the politicians. That raises the question: Did the brain evolve as a truth-seeking organ? What if the brain's main function is survival, not truth? What if the brain's main function centers on the "Four F's": Feeding, Fleeing, Fighting and Reproduction?  What if Truth is only a fragile, occasional, happenstance by-product of the brain's main evolved function?

That brought this Scientific American article front and center: "Did Humans Evolve to See Things as They Really Are? Do we perceive reality as it is?" Here's an excerpt:

One of the deepest problems in epistemology is how we know the nature of reality. Over the millennia philosophers have offered many theories, from solipsism (only one's mind is known to exist) to the theory that natural selection shaped our senses to give us an accurate, or verdical, model of the world. Now a new theory . . . is garnering attention . . . Grounded in evolutionary psychology, it is called the interface theory of perception (ITP) and argues that percepts act as a species-specific user interface that directs behavior toward survival and reproduction, not truth.

Lindsey Graham is now taking the position that the Impeachment is improper because not actual crimes were committed. The Democrats then carted out Graham's 1999 video where he said the opposite.  Every human being watching this drama unfold knows all of the following with a certainty:

  1. Graham meant what he said in 1999.
  2. Graham means the opposite today.
  3. Graham won't have much trouble doing some mental gymnastics to justify both positions.
  4. If a Democrat is impeached in the near future, Graham will revert to his 1999 position.

How is it possible for Graham to justify these diametrically opposite positions? The function of the human brain is well beyond my understanding, of course.  At this time, I would simply point out that one's own farts smell OK, whereas the farts of others are unpleasant. There's actually some science on why our own farts smell OK. I would simply extrapolate: Both our farts and our own dysfunctional thoughts get free passes.  Why?  Because they are our farts and our thoughts, not those of others.  And where our entire tribe farts, that's OK too, because it's our tribe and not some other tribe. Our crappy thoughts constitute our theories, meaning that the confirmation bias kicks in like a powerful optical illusion to help us ignore conflicting evidence.

Hypocrisy is an ancient problem, of course.  It goes back at least to biblical times:

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; ... You hypocrite! First, remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother's eye.

This hypocrisy continues to modern times:

Morality is difficult. As [psychologist Johnathan] Haidt writes on his website, "It binds people together into teams that seek victory, not truth. It closes hearts and minds to opponents even as it makes cooperation and decency possible within groups. . . . Morality binds and blinds. The metaphor [Haidt] uses to describe this idea is that we are 90 percent chimp 10 percent bee. That is to say, though we are inherently selfish, human nature is also about being what he terms "groupish."

The hypocrisy we are witnessing might be a little less distressing to the extent that we can accept the fact that the brain did not evolve for truth, but rather for assimilating resources to assist survival, utilizing the power of one's tribe whenever useful. If we can wrap our heads around this scary fact that the brain is much more geared for social power than truth, the impeachment hearings are nothing extraordinary. These hearings are merely more episodes of watching people gathered in tribes fighting for evolutionary fitness.

That said, this is an enormous and distressing price to pay in exchange for understanding.  But maybe it's . . . . true.   Maybe those moments where human minds transcend daily survival pressures to seek consistent principled truth are extraordinarily precious moments that need to be noted and celebrated.  Maybe we will never have a society based on truthful principles unless we work hard together.

Nietzsche pointed that being able to see truthfully is a moral issue. He wrote that one is truthful only to the degree that one is courageous. Maybe those fragility of those moments where people work hard and self-critically to embrace truth should remind us to appreciate what we have when politicians show the moral courage to act on principle.

Continue ReadingStinky Farts, Stinky Thoughts

The Catastrophic Story-Telling Failure of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

When they stop celebrating “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” I’ll pause my efforts to reframe this story as having one of the worst endings in the history of story-telling.

Just when the Whos of the Who Village almost learned an extremely important lesson, just when they were having an epiphany that all of that Christmas kitsch and all those baubles actually corrupted the holiday and distracted from the meaning of the celebration, that’s when the Grinch got three times more evil that day.

A proper way to end the story would be for the Grinch to confidently dump all of that glittery tinselly crap into the abyss high above the village. He would then triumphantly ride down into the Who Village to be welcomed as a hero. They would sing odes praising the Grinch for conducting his dramatic intervention. They would deeply embrace the idea that Christmas would proceed in a more pristine and sincere form because the materialistic cravings--those jingtinglers, whohoopers and glumbloopas--had been exorcised from the process. The Whos might even celebrate that the Grinch was channeling the Jesus who drove the money-changers out of the temple. Instead of singing the “Twelve Days or Christmas,” the Whos would compose a new carol called “O Little Town Where Less is More.”

The actual story ending is a sad one, however. Because the Grinch allowed schmaltzy emotion to prevail over principle, he decided that Christmas should NOT become like traditional Thanksgiving (before the concept of Black Friday). He decided that the celebration needed thousands of materialistic distractions after all. The Whos, glitch-addicts that they were, put up no resistance. The story ending consisted of a lesson almost learned. No denouement here—that metaphorical sleigh just couldn’t quite get over the crest of the hill. This kind of almost-story could inspire a remake of “A Christmas Story” where Scrooge almost learned his lesson. In that revised ending, post-nightmare Scrooge would march back to the Cratchit house and spray paint anti-Cratchit graffiti on the walls.

Damn. The story of the Grinch was almost such a great story. See you next year for more of the same.

Continue ReadingThe Catastrophic Story-Telling Failure of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

The Big Things that Aren’t Obvious, Until They Are

Rather than staring at the things in front of you, it’s sometimes better to step back and ask yourself what is missing in order to understand what happened. Sometimes, the things that you can directly see and hear simply don’t add up.

My favorite illustration of this process involves one of Charles Darwin’s epiphanies:

On this tour I had a striking instance of how easy it is to overlook phenomena, however conspicuous, before they have been observed by any one. We spent many hours in Cwm Idwal, examining all the rocks with extreme care, as Sedgwick was anxious to find fossils in them; but neither of us saw a trace of the wonderful glacial phenomena all around us; we did not notice the plainly scored rocks, the perched boulders, the lateral and terminal moraines. Yet these phenomena are so conspicuous that, as I declared in a paper published many years afterwards in the 'Philosophical Magazine' ('Philosophical Magazine,' 1842.), a house burnt down by fire did not tell its story more plainly than did this valley. If it had still been filled by a glacier, the phenomena would have been less distinct than they now are.


Sometimes it takes the first person to recognize a two-step process and only then does it become always obvious for everyone who follows. Sometimes the person who first "gets it" is you. You might have tried to figure something out for a month or more before you finally saw it for what it was. And then, of course, it's obvious for you and for everyone else you mention it to, whether it be a puzzle solution, how to make your software do a task or figuring out a person's secret motivation.

"The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply." Khalil Gibran

Because I work as a trial lawyer, this also reminds me that many people assume that circumstantial evidence is "second rate" evidence; that it is not as persuasive as the things and events that people observe directly. There is no basis for believing this. Some circumstantial evidence is sometimes much more persuasive than some direct evidence. A well-known example of powerful circumstantial evidence is a “smoking gun.” Circumstantial evidence is often sufficient to convict a criminal defendant even when the burden of proof for guilt is "beyond a reasonable doubt." A multi-step puzzle involving circumstantial evidence can evoke such an "A-ha!" moment that it can even leave you no doubt at all.

If you want a great example of how something can suddenly become obvious, go to Andy Clark's Edge video on Predictive Processing, Minute 11:30, and listen to the sine wave speech pattern examples. It will hit you like a ton of bricks. The entire lecture is phenomenal, but the examples will only take a couple minutes and it's worth your while.

The (obvious) take-away: Don't give up, even where the solution is not obvious.

Continue ReadingThe Big Things that Aren’t Obvious, Until They Are

A few highlights from the Lambert Airport Outreach Meeting by FLY314 Privatization Working Group

Tonight (October 29, 2019), I traveled to the Carpenter Branch Library in South St. Louis to attend an event known as the “Airport Outreach Meeting by Fly314 Privatization Consultants.” I prefer to think of this group as the “Acolytes of Ayn Rand," people who think that private for-profit is always superior to government. I spoke up several times tonight. Some of my comments can be heard on the attached video and other comments will be on KWMU Radio tomorrow. My overriding fear is that when the "Working Group" actually comes up with a detailed proposal, its allies in the Board of Aldermen will declare an emergency session and force a vote before anyone has a chance to read and absorb the legislation. This is standard operating procedure in many publicly unpopular cases like this, where the citizens have nothing to gain. Hence, my cross-examination of the consultants, which you can hear on the attached two-minute recording, along with the non-answers. When I pressed them for assurances that the Board Members would have ample time to discuss the ultimate detailed piece of legislation with their constituents before any vote, one presenter stated that my question was “unfair.” On this recording (which I made on my iPhone) you’ll first hear the claim that the group has been “transparent.” We heard that claim a lot tonight. Next, you’ll hear another presenter telling the citizens that they should RIGHT NOW be speaking to their representative on the Board of Aldermen about the airport deal. Never mind that there isn’t yet any deal and never mind that members of the Board of Aldermen do not have any meaningful information to discuss with their constituents.

Continue ReadingA few highlights from the Lambert Airport Outreach Meeting by FLY314 Privatization Working Group