Intelligent, Clever, or Stupid

Everyone misspeaks in public from time to time. It really is unfair to pick on politicians for the occasional gaffe. But it is fair to ask at what point such gaffes are valid signs of a fundamental problem. I think Dan Quayle simply needed to stick to the prepared statements—he did not “wing it” very well, but he kept trying, and slipped repeatedly on his inherent inability to compose cogent remarks on the fly. But Romney is beginning to show some serious problems. Never mind his 47% statement, he was arguably playing to his crowd. But his recent remarks about being unable to open the windows in an airliner are very troubling.

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Onion: Elder offers terrible advice

The Onion "reports" on this grandfather's terrible advice. This resonated with me. How often do you hear someone claiming that, "Of course I know what I'm doing. I've been doing it for 45 years." Really? You should be deemed proficient because you've been hacking away at it for a long time? It's certainly true that a lot of people who are excellent at an activity have been doing it for a long time. This is not the same thing as claiming that one is excellent because they've been doing it for a long time. This sort of claim violates basic rules of logic. Just because this is true: "If it rains on me, I'll get wet", it does not follow that "If I'm getting wet, it is raining on me." You could be in the shower or at a swimming pool.

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The real risk of an American dying in a terrorist attack

Comedy Central’s Indecision presents some rather unsurprising statistics that need to be read by every member of Congress. What is an American’s likelihood of dying from a terrorist attack?

According to government statistics, roughly as many Americans are killed annually by unstable furniture and falling televisions as are killed in terrorist attacks.
What else is more dangerous than a terrorist attack? 16 oz. sodas, inconvenience of going through TSA security at an airport (which discourages many people from flying, causing them to die on the highways), use of your bathroom, texting, autoerotic asphyxia, alcohol and tobacco, weather, suicide, hospital infections and doctor errors and stress. One more thing: What is the risk of an American dying in a terrorist attack? Ronald Bailey of Reason suggests a very liberal estimate (an estimate assuming death to be more likely) would be 1 in 1.7 million, and he offers these additional statistics:
Taking these figures into account, a rough calculation suggests that in the last five years, your chances of being killed by a terrorist are about one in 20 million. This compares annual risk of dying in a car accident of 1 in 19,000; drowning in a bathtub at 1 in 800,000; dying in a building fire at 1 in 99,000; or being struck by lightning at 1 in 5,500,000. In other words, in the last five years you were four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist.
This same article indicates that the U.S. spends $400 million dollars per life saved in antiterrorism security measures (cost$1 Trillion since 2001), but this number doesn’t include military expenses by the United States. It's also important to keep in mind that the U.S. spends more on maintaining a military than the rest of the world combined. Perhaps if Americans weren't so afflicted with innumeracy, we could accept the true (miniscule) risk of dying from a terrorist act, and focus on preventing much more likely forms of death. Perhaps we could spend a significant chunk of that "anti-terrorism" money to combat innumeracy.

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But do they even know what evolution is?

15 Miss USA contestants demonstrate that they don't know enough to know that they don't know enough. In other words, these beautiful contestants are beautifully demonstrating the Dunning-Kruger cognitive effect: The proper answer from each of these contestants should have been "I can't answer that question, because I don't understand the scientific theory of evolution. Maybe I should go read a few good books, on evolution. Then I'll let you know whether I am competent to answer that question." To answer like this, though, is not the American way. When you are prepared with make-up and the cameras come on, you tend to wing it in such a way to please the majority of your audience. This is what beauty contestants and politicians have in common.

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The science of how to get along

Civilpolitics.org has a mission to use rigorous science to help others, including politicians, to get along. The mission is "to help you find academic scholarship that illuminates the causes and consequences of political civility and incivility." And here's more, from the "Moral Psychology" page:

At CivilPolitics, most (but not all) of us believe that direct appeals to people to behave civilly will have very limited effects. We take a more social-psychological approach to the problem of intergroup conflict. We are more interested in legal, systemic, and policy changes that will, for example, change the ways that the "teams" are drawn up (e.g., in elections), and supported (e.g., financially). We want to change the playing field and the rules of the game, in the hopes that players in the future (citizens as well as politicians) will be less likely to demonize each other, mischaracterize each others' motives, and refuse (on moral grounds) to engage in negotiations, interactions, and cooperative enterprises that would serve the nation's interests.
Check out the "Social Psychology" page, which contains this advice (with lots of explanatory links).

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