August 8, 2017--The Believing Brain

Some of us the other morning were talking about the speech Donald Trump gave last week at a campaign-style rally in West Virginia.

He trotted out his best red-meat one-liners, including how everything going wrong in America is Hillary Clinton's fault. He also took undeserved credit for the run-up of the stock market. Then, he didn't fail to mention that he won the election by "the biggest" margin in American history. This in spite of the fact that Hillary received about 3.0 million more popular votes than he. And he didn't stifle the "lock-her-up" chants. It was like September 2016 all over again.

Ed wondered, "How can he get 20, 30 thousand people to turn out for this silliness?"

"And," Rona said, "to be able to get away with the lie that he won in a landslide?"

I said, and by doing so stirred the pot, "In the spirit of fairness, how does Bernie Sanders still attract tens of thousands to his rallies where his very-educated followers let him get away with proposing policies like free colleges tuition even though anyone having taken Economics 101 knows his numbers don't add up?"

"I'm not fond of the comparison," Ed said, "But I get your point." He is politically progressive but not an ideologue.

"I am coming to conclude," I said, "that it's all about belief. How people are substantially hardwired to believe. To believe myths and religious teaching, ideologies, the supernatural, the paranormal, conspiracy theories, fake news, and even flying saucers."

Ed said, "I've heard you opine about that late night radio talkshow you listen to, Coast to Coast, which is amazingly on more than 600 stations, where guest frequently talk about being abducted by space aliens."

"Again," I pushed, "it's not just the less well educated who have strong beliefs not based on facts or evidence. That's why it's interesting to read about how cognitive scientists, including neurologists, are coming to conclude that all humans have a built-in propensity to believe things that are not verifiable."

Rona said, "You're not talking about those who think there are anatomical differences in the brains of liberals and conservatives?"

"Not this time," I said, "I had done some reading about that last year but, though it was in its own way engaging, especially to liberals because it made us seem by nature smarter than conservatives, ultimately it wasn't persuasive. But I recently read Michael Shermer's The Believing Brain, and that marshaled a lot of credible evidence that is both biological and cultural."

"Sounds interesting," Ed said, "I should take a look at it."

"You can borrow my copy," I said, "But in the meantime, when I get home I'll send you a blurb about it and then you can decide if you want to read it."

When I got home I sent Ed the following from Shermer--

We form our beliefs for a variety of subjective, personal, and psychological reasons in the context of environments created by family, friends, colleagues, culture, and society at large; after forming our beliefs we then defend, justify, and rationalize them with a host of intellectual reasons, cogent arguments, and rational explanations. Beliefs come first, explanations follow. [My italics]  

Then from a review--

Dr. Shermer also provides the neuroscience behind our beliefs. The brain is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through our senses the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. The first process Dr. Shermer calls patternicity: the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless data. The second process he calls agenticity: the tendency to infuse patterns with meaning, intention, and agency. 

We can't help believing. Our brains evolved to connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen. These meaningful patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which adds an emotional boost of further confidence in the beliefs and thereby accelerates the process of reinforcing them. Round and round the process goes in a positive feedback loop of belief confirmation. Dr. Shermer outlines the various cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths and to insure that we are always right. [Italics added]

The next time I saw Ed he asked if he could borrow the book.

January 25, 2016--Governor Who?

Governor Chris Christie has virtually moved to New Hampshire.

It's all-in for him up there. Unless he comes in third in the February 9th primary, he'll be forced to return to New Jersey, tail between his legs, where, it is alleged, he is still the governor.

Actually, he got a preview of life in NJ this past weekend when winter storm Jonas was set to pummel the Jersey Shore. In a deja-vu hallucination that Jonas might pack the wallop of Hurricane Sandy, though he didn't want to leave the cozy town-hallers he was getting nachas from in the Granite State, he had no choice but to return kicking and screaming to Jersey and pretend he cared about his anxious constituents.

His one caveat--no replays of his former post-Sandy bromance with Barack Obama. That was the beginning of the end for him. Closing the GW Bridge also didn't help. But some New Hampshireites were actually beginning to like him--though he is still showing up in NH polls in low single-digits--and for Christie, whose approval rating in the Garden State is almost as low as his standing in the presidential race, he had no choice. Put in an appearance in Jersey--no matter how reluctantly--and live with it.

Though maybe, just maybe, he was hoping, he would get politically lucky and the storm would reach Sandy proportions (fortunately it didn't) and he could get a lot of snow-swept, flooded-out face-time on TV, stomping around as a pretend commander in chief.

And show up in NJ he did. For just 24 hours before racing back to the comforts of New Hampshire, leaving thousands still stranded along the flooded Jersey coast.

On Saturday, the New York Times ran a story about how frequently he's been out of the state the past year--during 2015, Crispy spent 191 days in anyplace but New Jersey, most of it downing free snacks and campaigning.

But, the Times decided not to ask why, if he's at best a part-time governor, he still pulls down a full-time $175,000-a-year salary.

Actually, they could have raised the same question about many of the other candidates.

Just as the Florida Sun Sentinel called for no-show Marco Rubio to resign from the Senate. In addition to being personally underwritten by a fanatical Israel-supporter, South Florida car-dealer billionaire Norman Braham, Rubio, who has the worst attendance record in Congress, shamelessly continues to pocket the $174,000-a-year salary.

Only politicians can get away with this kind of stuff. Though maybe soon they'll be inhibited from doing so as the public continues to sour on their performance and are turning to Bernie Sanders and Donald TRUMP types in the hope that they will be able to do something to fix our festering problems, very much changing the way parasitical public "servants" behave.

I know, dream on.

Christie and Rubio among the contenders are not the only ones feeding at the government trough.

Ted Cruz, who is making quite a living as a federal employee though also not showing up for work, spends his days trashing the very system of which he and his Goldman-Sachs-employed wife are comfortable fixtures.

Then there is Rand Paul who not only ignores his day job but also finagled the Kentucky legislature to pass a special bill to allow him to double-dip--to run in November for both the Senate and the presidency. Though he won't need to worry about the latter since by March he'll no longer be at even the children's debate table but will have to slink back to KY to try to convince folks there that they should send him back to the Senate. He'll need to get on this case post haste as his reelection bid is currently imperiled.

Not to worry--one way or the other, I expect to see son-of-Ron with his own show on Fox News or back to operating on cataracts.

And while I'm at it, among the candidates who are running while on the federal payroll, the candidate who has been chowing down at public expense for the most years, for 34 to be precise, is Bernie the socialist.

I suppose his form of taxpayer-financed socialism doesn't take his decades-long ineffectiveness as a senator into consideration when the Treasury Department sends along to him each year a cool $174K.

And talk about part-time jobs, Rona wondered out loud that Hillary Clinton must be an amazing public speaker to justify her $225,000-a-pop speeches at Goldman Sachs. Too bad they were never broadcast on C-SPAN.

But here's my question--where do I sign up for one of these jobs?

October 16, 2015--Hillary

Unless there is something that the FBI will uncover in Hillary Clinton's emails that is indictable, after Tuesday's Democratic debate, not only will she waltz to the nomination but a year from November she will be elected president.

Bernie Sanders might have been an old fashioned gentleman when he said "enough about these damn emails," but politically, for all intents and purposes, that ended this line of questioning.

He is not privy to what the FBI is rooting about in, and there is more than a small chance that they will uncover a smoking gun. That would change everything. But as things stand, I stick by my prediction.

Clinton was so impressive that Joe Biden now will decide to stay out of the race. Maybe he even feels relieved. He had little chance of upsetting her. And he knows now that she is capable of roughing him up as she did to Sanders in regard to his record about guns and his naivety with world affairs ("With all due respect, senator, the United States is not Denmark"). Does Joe need to go through any of this in a losing cause?

He'd go from being the potential savior to spoiler. As of now there is nothing to save.

But above all here is why I am feeling so certain that the nomination and president is hers to lose--

Women.

Pretty much all the women I know have been planning to vote for Hillary. I mean even before the debate. To some it was a hold-you-nose thing. Yes, she's flawed. Deeply. But she is no worse than any of the others and . . . she's a woman.

Being female was the decider.

After Tuesday, checking in with a number of politically active women, I found they are now enthusiastic supporters. They are feeling that she excelled (admittedly the other four candidates were quite weak--I am trying to be kind) but she stood more than a little above them.

It was easy to imagine her back in the White House. This time as the president she always wanted to be.

So, they will not only vote for her, they now plan to contribute money and become active supporters. They will do  everything they can to encourage others to vote for her as well as become volunteers in her campaign.

And if this morning's rumors are true that she will select Julian Castro to be her running mate, it's all over. He is the former mayor of San Antonio and currently secretary of Housing and Urban Development. And, of course, is Mexican-American.

He they are together--