WASHINGTON
(AP) -- America's working mothers are now the primary breadwinners in a
record 40 percent of households with children - a milestone in the
changing face of modern families, up from just 11 percent in 1960.
The
findings by the Pew Research Center, released Wednesday, highlight the
growing influence of "breadwinner moms" who keep their families afloat
financially. While most are headed by single mothers, a growing number
are families with married mothers who bring in more income than their
husbands.
Demographers say the change is all
but irreversible and is likely to bring added attention to child-care
policies as well as government safety nets for vulnerable families.
Still, the general public is not at all sure that having more working
mothers is a good thing. ...
Am I correct in reading this map to say that South Carolina and half of North Carolina are Steelers fans? What's up with that? Do you see any other oddities?
Jerry Muller is one of my favorite economic historians. I think this piece offers an insightful analysis of inequality in advanced market economies. As I read this piece I kept thinking back to Robert Fogel's (another favorite economic historian) The Fourth Great Awkening and the Future of Egalitarianism, where he makes the case that the economic challenge of this century is going to be focused on human capital. I don't think the ideologies of the left or right have come to grips with this yet. Muller begins:
Inequality is increasing almost everywhere in the post-industrial
capitalist world. Despite what many think, this is not the result of
politics, nor is politics likely to reverse it. The problem is more
deeply rooted and intractable than generally recognized.
Inequality is an inevitable product of capitalist activity, and
expanding equality of opportunity only increases it -- because some
individuals, families, and communities are simply better able than
others to exploit the opportunities for development and advancement that
today's capitalism affords. Some of the very successes of western
capitalist societies in expanding access and opportunity, combined with
recent changes in technology and economics, have contributed to
increasing inequality. And at the nexus of economics and society is the
family, the changing shape and role of which is an often overlooked
factor in the rise of inequality.
Though capitalism has opened up ever more opportunities for the
development of human potential, not everyone has been able to take full
advantage of those opportunities or to progress very far once they have
done so.
Formal or informal barriers to equality of opportunity, for example,
have historically blocked various sectors of the population -- such as
women, minorities, and poor people -- from benefiting fully from all
capitalism offers. But over time, in the advanced capitalist world,
those barriers have gradually been lowered or removed, so that now
opportunity is more equally available than ever before. The inequality
that exists today arguably derives less from the unequal availability of opportunity than it does from the unequal ability to exploit opportunity.
And that unequal ability, in turn, stems from differences in the
inherent human potential that individuals begin with and in the ways
that families and communities enable and encourage that human potential
to flourish. ...
The bolded sentence is my doing. Read the whole thing. Thoughtful stuff.
On our national poll this week we took the opportunity to
poll 20 widespread and/or infamous conspiracy theories. Many of these theories are well known to the
public, others perhaps to just the darker corners of the internet. Here’s what we found:
-
37% of voters believe global warming is a hoax,
51% do not. Republicans say global warming is a hoax by a 58-25 margin, Democrats
disagree 11-77, and Independents are more split at 41-51. 61% of Romney voters believe global
warming is a hoax
-
6% of voters believe Osama bin Laden is still
alive
-
21% of voters say a UFO crashed in Roswell, NM
in 1947 and the US government covered it up. More Romney voters (27%) than
Obama voters (16%) believe in a UFO coverup
-
28% of voters believe secretive power elite with
a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an
authoritarian world government, or New World Order. A plurality of Romney voters (38%) believe in
the New World Order compared to 35% who don’t ...
... Different languages have different ways of talking about the future.
Some languages, such as English, Korean, and Russian, require their
speakers to refer to the future explicitly. Every time English-speakers
talk about the future, they have to use future markers such as “will” or
“going to.” In other languages, such as Mandarin, Japanese, and German,
future markers are not obligatory. The future is often talked about
similar to the way present is talked about and the meaning is understood
from the context. A Mandarin speaker who is going to go to a seminar
might say “Wo qu ting jiangzuo,” which translates to “I go listen
seminar.” Languages such as English constantly remind their speakers
that future events are distant. For speakers of languages such as
Mandarin future feels closer. As a consequence, resisting immediate
impulses and investing for the future is easier for Mandarin speakers. ...
“Capitalism has a purpose beyond just making money. I think the critics of capitalism have got it in this very small box. That it’s all about money. It’s based in being greedy, selfish and exploitative. And yet, I haven’t found it to be that way. Most of the hundreds of entrepreneurs I know and have met did not start their business primarily out of a desire to make money. Not that there’s anything wrong with making money. My body cannot function unless it produces red-blood cells. No red-blood cells and I’m a dead man. But that’s not the purpose of my life.
Similarly, a business cannot exist unless it produces a profit . . . but that’s not the only reason it exists.”
When I was writing a review of Dwight Lee's and Richard McKenzie's excellent book, Getting Rich in America: 8 Simple Rules for Building a Fortune and a Satisfying Life,
I called Dwight to ask a question and we got talking about Rule #5: Get
Married and Stay Married. Dwight pointed out that if you follow the
other 7 rules but don't get married or stay married, you have a
substantial probability of building a fortune and a satisfying life.
But, he said, if you don't get married and stay married, you tend not to
follow at least some of the other 7 rules.
While the upscale college-educated crowd continues to marry at very high rates, marriage rates are plummeting among those further down on the socioeconomic ladder.
... A useful debate about the morality of capitalism must get beyond libertarian nostrums that greed is good, what’s mine is mine and whatever the market produces is fair. It should also acknowledge that there is no moral imperative to redistribute income and opportunity until everyone has secured a berth in a middle class free from economic worries. If our moral obligation is to provide everyone with a reasonable shot at economic success within a market system that, by its nature, thrives on unequal outcomes, then we ought to ask not just whether government is doing too much or too little, but whether it is doing the right things.
Instead, Dr. Butzer argues that Sargon's conquest itself caused
the collapse of trade by destroying cities and disrupting what had
till then been "an inter-networked world-economy, once extending
from the Aegean to the Indus Valley." In other words, as with the
end of the Roman empire, the collapse of trade caused the collapse
of civilization more than the other way around.
A new find suggests farmers in Bible lands built channels for irrigation long before historians thought they did, allowing for cultivated vineyards, olives, wheat and barley.
... “Educational systems could be improved by acknowledging that, in general, boys and girls are different,” said University of Missouri biologist David Geary in their statement. “For example, in trying to close the sex gap in math scores, the reading gap was left behind. Now, our study has found that the difference between girls’ and boys’ reading scores was three times larger than the sex difference in math scores. Girls’ higher scores in reading could lead to advantages in admissions to certain university programs, such as marketing, journalism or literature, and subsequently careers in those fields. Boys lower reading scores could correlate to problems in any career, since reading is essential in most jobs.”
Generally, when conditions are good, the math gap increases and the reading gap decreases and when conditions are bad the math gap decreases and the reading gap increases. This pattern remained consistent within nations as well as among them, according to the work by Geary and Gijsbert Stoet of the University of Leeds that included testing performance data from 1.5 million 15-year-olds in 75 nations. ...
... Two rival reform movements arose to restore the integrity of
Catholicism. Those in the first movement, the Donatists, believed the
church needed to purify itself and return to its core identity. ...
... In the fourth century, another revival movement arose, embraced by
Augustine, who was Bishop of Hippo. The problem with the Donatists,
Augustine argued, is that they are too static. They try to seal off an
ark to ride out the storm, but they end up sealing themselves in. They
cut themselves off from new circumstances and growth.
Augustine, as his magisterial biographer Peter Brown puts it, “was
deeply preoccupied by the idea of the basic unity of the human race.” He
reacted against any effort to divide people between those within the
church and those permanently outside. ....
16. A great piece by someone who considers them unaffiliated with any religion. Every Christian and congregation needs to reflect on the insignificance of the church in this writers life. His tribe is growing: The significant insignificance of religion
... One of the most surprising, and perhaps confounding, facts of charity
in America is that the people who can least afford to give are the ones
who donate the greatest percentage of their income. In 2011, the
wealthiest Americans—those with earnings in the top
20 percent—contributed on average 1.3 percent of their income to
charity. By comparison, Americans at the base of the income
pyramid—those in the bottom 20 percent—donated 3.2 percent of their
income. The relative generosity of lower-income Americans is accentuated
by the fact that, unlike middle-class and wealthy donors, most of them
cannot take advantage of the charitable tax deduction, because they do
not itemize deductions on their income-tax returns.
But why? Lower-income Americans are presumably no more intrinsically
generous (or “prosocial,” as the sociologists say) than anyone else.
However, some experts have speculated that the wealthy may
be less generous—that the personal drive to accumulate wealth may be
inconsistent with the idea of communal support. Last year, Paul Piff, a
psychologist at UC Berkeley, published research that correlated wealth
with an increase in unethical behavior: “While having money doesn’t
necessarily make anybody anything,” Piff later told New York magazine,
“the rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests
above the interests of other people.” They are, he continued, “more
likely to exhibit characteristics that we would stereotypically
associate with, say, assholes.” Colorful statements aside, Piff’s
research on the giving habits of different social classes—while not
directly refuting the asshole theory—suggests that other, more complex
factors are at work. In a series of controlled experiments, lower-income
people and people who identified themselves as being on a relatively
low social rung were consistently more generous with limited goods than
upper-class participants were. Notably, though, when both groups were
exposed to a sympathy-eliciting video on child poverty, the compassion
of the wealthier group began to rise, and the groups’ willingness to
help others became almost identical.
If Piff’s research suggests that exposure to need drives generous
behavior, could it be that the isolation of wealthy Americans from those
in need is a cause of their relative stinginess? ...
... Wealth affects not only how much money is given but to whom it is given.
The poor tend to give to religious organizations and social-service
charities, while the wealthy prefer to support colleges and
universities, arts organizations, and museums....
While you're filling out your expertly analyzed bracket, you might want to take a look at how March Madness fandom is spread across the country with this map from Facebook (via Gizmodo).
Michael Bailey of Facebook's Data Science team analyzed the way "likes"
are spread through teams and conferences, across the country—in similar
fashion to this Super Bowl map.
Here, for instance, Facebook looks at the conference divide. Bailey
points out in his analysis how the ACC fan base is spread across the
country, despite pockets of dominance for other conferences....
1. The Economisthas an interesting graph showing the captialism has led to greater happiness in member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (former Soviet Union countries excluding the three baltic countries.)
There are two ways to define economic mobility: 1) absolute mobility, whether each generation is financially better off than the one before; and 2) relative mobility,
whether you can change your income rank vs. your parents. Most
Americans probably think both measures important. We want to be more
prosperous than mom and dad, but also be able to change our
circumstances and make our dreams come true. ...
... A San Francisco Fed study –
using data tracking families since 1968 — looks at both versions of the
American Dream, finding one healthier than the other. Looking
at absolute mobility, researchers Leila Bengali and Mary Daly find the
United States “highly mobile.” Over the sample period, 67% of US adults
had higher family incomes than their parents, including 83% of those in
the lowest birth quintile, or bottom 20% (versus 54% for children born
into the top quintile, or top 20%.) ...
... It’s true that conservatives’
standard proposals for privatizing Social Security and
voucherizing Medicare would shift risk onto beneficiaries -- but
this plainly isn’t a necessary consequence of the basic
principle. I agree with Konczal that adequate insurance against
economic risk, underwritten by the government, is essential. I
also agree that most conservatives aren’t interested in
providing that guarantee. That’s exactly why liberals ought to
take up the ownership society themselves.
Ownership entails risk, it’s true, but insurance can
minimize it. Ownership also provides control, independence and
self-respect -- things it wouldn’t hurt liberals to be more
interested in. And when it comes to inequality and stagnating
middle incomes, ownership can give wage slaves a stake in the
nation’s economic capital.
Done right, an equity component in government-backed saving
for retirement could be the best idea liberals have had since
the earned-income tax credit (oh, sorry, that started out as a
conservative idea as well). ...
FMRI scans of volunteers' media prefrontal cortexes revealed unique brain activity patterns associated with individual characters or personalities as subjects thought about them.
Researchers already knew humans, animals and plants have evolved in
response to Earth's gravity and they are able to sense it. What we are
still discovering is how the processes occurring within the cells of the
human and plant bodies are affected by the more intense gravity, or
hypergravity, that would be found on a large planet, or the microgravity
that resembles the conditions on a space craft.
According to estimations, engineers expect the the store to generate
around 265,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. Store operation will only
require 200,000 kWh, so perhaps that extra wattage could be pumped back
into the grid or used to power nearby utilities.
When people can browse potential dates online like items in a catalog, geo-locate hook-ups on an exercise bike just seven feet away, arrange a spontaneous group date with the app Grouper or arrange a bevy of blind dates in succession with Crazy Blind Date, it makes me wonder if all this newfound technological convenience has, in fact, made romance that much more elusive. Now, we may be more concerned with what someone isn't rather than what they are. And as that twenty-something entrepreneur reminded me over coffee, services like OkCupid, and even Facebook, sap a lot of the mystique out of those first few dates. So, sure, it may be easier than ever to score a date, but what kind of date will it really be?
Many of us have read the Bible as if it were merely a mosaic of little
bits – theological bits, moral bits, historical-critical bits, sermon
bits, devotional bits. But when we read the Bible in such a fragmented
way, we ignore it’s divine author’s intention to shape our lives through
its story. All humanity communities live out some story that provides a
context for understanding the meaning of history and gives shape and
direction to their lives. If we allow the Bible to become fragmented, it
is in danger of being absorbed into whatever other story is
shaping our culture, and it will thus cease to shape our lives as it
should. Idolatry has twisted the dominant cultural story of the secular
Western world. If as believers we allow this story (rather than the
Bible) to become the foundation of our thought and action, then our
lives will manifest not the truths of Scripture, but the lies of an
idolatrous culture. Hence the unity of Scripture is no minor matter: a
fragmented Bible may actually produce theologically orthodox, morally
upright, warmly pious idol worshippers! (p. 12).
I wish someone had taught me basic leadership skills.
“I was well grounded in theology and Bible exegesis, but seminary did
not prepare me for the real world of real people. It would have been
great to have someone walk alongside me before my first church.”
I needed to know a lot more about personal financial issues.
“No one ever told me about minister’s housing, social security,
automobile reimbursement, and the difference between a package and a
salary. I got burned in my first church.”
I wish I had been given advice on how to deal with power groups and power people in the church.
“I got it all wrong in my first two churches. I was fired outright from
the first one and pressured out in the second one. Someone finally and
courageously pointed out how I was messing things up almost from the
moment I began in a new church. I am so thankful that I am in the ninth
year of a happy pastorate in my third church.” ...
Defense mechanisms against emotional ambivalence incline us to fully embrace one side and fully reject the other -- which makes compromise nearly impossible.
... Such rhetoric reflects a black-and-white, us-versus-them approach that
views each debate over taxation, social policy and the role of
government not as a problem in need of a solution but a
battle within an ongoing war. During warfare, our aim is of course to
vanquish the enemy and emerge
victorious; to reach out to your enemy makes you a villainous collaborator,
a traitor to your cause. On the right, anyone with the temerity to
suggest that Obama and the Democrats have some redeeming qualities
is likely to be attacked from within the party. Just ask Chris Christie.
Propaganda during wartime typically dehumanizes the enemy. Our
current political rhetoric likewise relies on two-dimensional
caricatures to de-legitimize
the opposition, encouraging us to hate "them." The process is more
blatantly vocal on the political right, with the radio voices of
conservatism inciting
hatred for cartoon versions of President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, members of
the liberal press, etc. Rush Limbaugh has gone so far as to compare Obama to Adolf Hitler,
the epitome of unalloyed
evil. While less obvious, the left has its own set of
two-dimensional villains to hate: greedy and heartless bankers, evil
corporations, gun-toting
religious freaks.
For both sides, the Other often lacks true dimension. In propaganda,
the enemy never has a legitimate point of view that needs to be taken
seriously and
balanced against our own views. Hating an enemy leaves no room for
complex, ambiguous problems without an obvious solution. It eliminates
the uncomfortable
tension that arises from doubt and uncertainty amidst difficult
choices. ...
I'm not convinced that "... process is more
blatantly vocal on the political right ..." but other than that I think he is on to something.
... As the neurologist Robert Burton has noted
, ambiguity or confusion is so difficult for many of us to bear that we instead retreat from it into a feeling of certainty,
believing we know
something without any doubts, even when we actually don't and often
can't know. Those of us who have trouble with such discomfort often
resort to
black-and-white thinking instead. Rather than feeling uncertain or
ambivalent, struggling with areas of gray, we reduce that complexity to
either/or.
We may define one idea or point of view as bad (black) and reject it, aligning ourselves with the good
(white) perspective. Feelings of
anger and self-righteousness often accompany this process,
bolstering our conviction that we are in the right and the other side in
the wrong. Hatred for
the rejected point of view keeps ambiguity and uncomfortable
complexity from re-entering the field.
Black-and-white thinking reflects the psychological process known as splitting. When we feel unable to tolerate the tension aroused by complexity,
we "resolve" that complexity by splitting it into two
simplified and opposing parts, usually aligning ourselves with one of
them and rejecting the
other. As a result, we may feel a sort of comfort in believing we
know something with absolute certainty; at the same time, we've
over-simplified a complex
issue.
On the emotional front, splitting comes into play when we feel
hostile toward the people we love. Holding onto feelings of love in the
presence of anger
and even hatred is a difficult thing for most of us to do. Sometimes
hatred proves so powerful that it overwhelms and eclipses love,
bringing the
relationship to an end. More often we repress awareness of our
hostile feelings; or we might split them off and direct them elsewhere, away from
the people we care about.
In other words, splitting as a psychological defense mechanism
resolves emotional ambivalence -- love and hatred toward the same person
-- by splitting off
one half of those feelings and directing them elsewhere, away from
the loved one. ...
And when you consider that a great many of the challenges we confront are polarities to be managed, not problems to be solved, our battles to be won, all sorts of dysfunction emerges from splitting. By analogy, try splitting inhaling from exhaling and see what happens. I think the same is true for many problems we face in social institutions and in society at large.
Poor nations have the highest proportion of people who identify as religious
The world's poorest nations are also some of its most religious – but does that mean religion can't flourish in a prosperous society?
Gregory Paul doesn't think it can. After constructing a "Successful Societies Scale" that compared 25 socioeconomic indicators against statistics on religious belief and practice in 17 developed nations, the Baltimore-based paleontologist concluded in a 2009 study that "religion is most able to thrive in seriously dysfunctional societies."
Gregory, who is a freelance researcher not affiliated with any institution, compiled data on everything from homicide rates and income inequality to infant mortality and teenage pregnancies and found that the societies that scored the best on socioeconomic indicators were also the most secular.
"The correlation between religiosity and successful societies is somewhere around 0.7. Zero is no correlation and one is a perfect correlation, so it's a really good correlation, and it's not just an accident," he told CBC News. ...
... Sociologists have argued that the social benefits of religion take on
greater importance, the fewer resources and the less control people
have over their own lives.
"Religion becomes less central as people's lives become less
vulnerable to the constant threat of death, disease and misfortune,"
Norris and Inglehart write in their 2004 book, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide.
"As lives gradually become more comfortable and secure, people in more
affluent societies usually grow increasingly indifferent to religious
values, more skeptical of supernatural beliefs and less willing to
become actively engaged in religious institutions." ...
... "The United States is one of the wealthier societies, and yet, it's
still quite religious," said Phil Zuckerman, a sociology professor at
Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., who has studied secularization in
Scandinavian countries and wrote a book about it called Society Without God.
"I think it's when you have what we might call 'existential security'
— so, wealth and prosperity are part of that, but by that we [also]
mean the bulk of people in society have access to housing, health care,
jobs. They live in a relatively stable, democratic society without much
in the way of existential threats to their lives or their culture." ...
... "Europe and the United States seem to be going in very different directions," said Marcus Noland,
a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics
in Washington, D.C., who has written about religion and economic growth.
"One of the arguments is that the United States has a much livelier
and open market for religion than do, say, countries in Scandinavia,
where you have established churches." [Notably Rodney Stark]
But Zuckerman and other sociologists attribute the U.S.'s outlier status to socioeconomic inequality. ...
A lot has been written recently about the rise of the "Nones," people expressing no religious affiliation. Sociologist Brad Wright offers a fascinating insight by looking at the percentage of people at various stages of life report affliation. Young adults are not suprisingly the group with the highest percentage but Wright offers this chart.
Wright makes this observation:
Once again, the percentage of being unaffiliated increased in each
group, but relatively speaking, it’s increased most among the
middle-aged and the elderly. In both the percentage of the unaffiliated
more than tripled, compared to the 2.5x increase in the young. There is
some lagged effect, as the elderly are catching up the middle-aged in
the past decade, but overall, the rise of the religious nones is
something that spans all age groups. Thus it’s a societal-wide change
more than just an age or generational change.
This data doesn't tell us why there is the rise but I have a theory: Church offers little for discerning significance in life.
A few random thoughts (mostly intuitive perceptions.) For
many older adults who grew up in the church, there is disillusionment with
church life. Young adults have who are interested in the church are out
starting up independent congregations that are narrowly targeted to their
particular age demographic. Older Christians feel rejected. As a traditional
congregation tries to become more appealing to the younger demographic,
long-time congregants experience a loss of rhythms and routines that were
meaningful for them. With those gone, worship no longer seems meaningful. Some
look for other congregations but I sense many see the work of integrating into
a new community faith community as too much work. As the number of
congregations with familiar patterns dwindle and close, they slip out the door
into the ether.
Dr. Eileen Lindner, Deputy General Secretary for Research
and Planning of the National Council of Churches USA, gave a presentation a saw
a couple of years ago. She points out the fifty years ago congregations and
denominations were engaged in a whole range of work that ministered to the
world. Beginning the 1960s and 1970s, para-church organizations began to emerge
to do the things congregations once did ... like Young Life and Habitat for
Humanity. Many of the things churches once did have been replaced by nonprofit organizations
that may not have an explicit faith connection. In one sense, the church is
victim of its own success, having encultured values of service into the broader
culture. But the downside is that it frequently feels like all we are left with
is squabbles about internal politics. Congregations and denominations are
struggling for an identity and purpose in relating to the world.
As I’ve written several times, conservative congregations
typically respond by offering programming directed toward therapeutic healing,
personal piety, or political action to stop the “barbarians at the gates.”
Liberal congregations also offer therapeutic healing and personal piety, but
also frequently include political action they discern is directed toward “social
justice.” To me, much of it appears to a be a “me too” response to broader
movements in the culture, hoping to leach off of the meaning people find in
these movements rather than the church itself generating the meaning for
congregants. Religion (right and left) becomes so captive to the categories and
contours of cultural politics that theological understanding is lost. And if
you want to do political action, there are far more dynamic venues than the
church.
And that brings me back to my overarching theory: Church
offers little for discerning significance in life. Too much of church is about
a narrow personal piety (a niche market) while trying to make ourselves relevant
to the culture with “me too” strategies from the periphery of culture. Until people
see how daily life connects with God’s unending mission, I think the Nones
tribe will continue to grow and prosper.
... The subject-area expert, the substantive specialist, will lose some
of his or her luster compared with the statistician and data analyst,
who are unfettered by the old ways of doing things and let the data
speak. This new cadre will rely on correlations without prejudgments and
prejudice. To be sure, subject-area experts won’t die out, but their
supremacy will ebb. From now on, they must share the podium with the
big-data geeks, just as princely causation must share the limelight with
humble correlation.
This transforms the way we value knowledge, because we tend to think
that people with deep specialization are worth more than generalists —
that fortune favors depth.
Yet expertise is like exactitude: appropriate for a small-data world
where one never has enough information, or the right information, and
thus has to rely on intuition and experience to guide one’s way. In such
a world, experience plays a critical role, since it is the long
accumulation of latent knowledge — knowledge that one can’t transmit
easily or learn from a book, or perhaps even be consciously aware of —
that enables one to make smarter decisions.
But when you are stuffed silly with data, you can tap that instead,
and to greater effect. Thus those who can analyze big data may see past
the superstitions and conventional thinking not because they’re smarter,
but because they have the data. (And being outsiders, they are
impartial about squabbles within the field that may narrow an expert’s
vision to whichever side of a squabble she’s on.) This suggests that
what it takes for an employee to be valuable to a company changes. What
you need to know changes, whom you need to know changes, and so does
what you need to study to prepare for professional life.
Harnessing data is no guarantee of business success but shows what is possible.
The shift to data-driven decisions is profound. Most people base
their decisions on a combination of facts and reflection, plus a heavy
dose of guesswork. “A riot of subjective visions — feelings in the solar
plexus,” in the poet W. H. Auden’s memorable words. Thomas Davenport, a
business professor at Babson College in Massachusetts and the author of
numerous books on analytics, calls it “the golden gut.” Executives are
just sure of themselves from gut instinct, so they go with that. But
this is starting to change as managerial decisions are made or at least
confirmed by predictive modeling and big-data analysis.
As big data transforms our lives — optimizing, improving, making more
efficient, and capturing benefits — what role is left for intuition,
faith, uncertainty, and originality? ...
... Big data is not an ice-cold world of algorithms and automatons. What is
greatest about human beings is precisely what the algorithms and silicon
chips don’t reveal, what they can’t reveal because it can’t be captured
in data. It is not the “what is,” but the “what is not”: the empty
space, the cracks in the sidewalk, the unspoken and the
not-yet-thought. There is an essential role for people, with all our
foibles, misperceptions and mistakes, since these traits walk hand in
hand with human creativity, instinct, and genius. ...
1. Conventional wisdom says wearing the red shirt in Star Trek will get you killed. Not so fast. Statistical analysis in Significance Magazine disagrees. (Keep your redshirt on: a Bayesian exploration)
"... In spite of wearing a redshirt, there is
only an 8.6% chance of a member of the operations or engineering
departments becoming a casualty. These personnel should ensure that
their life insurance plans are based on their departments and not their
uniform color.
Although Enterprise crew members in
redshirts suffer many more casualties than crew members in other
uniforms, they suffer fewer casualties than crew members in gold
uniforms when the entire population size is considered. Only 10% of the
entire redshirt population was lost during the three year run of Star Trek.
This is less than the 13.4% of goldshirts, but more than the 5.1% of
blueshirts. What is truly hazardous is not wearing a redshirt, but being
a member of the security department. The red-shirted members of
security were only 20.9% of the entire crew, but there is a 61.9% chance
that the next casualty is in a redshirt and 64.5% chance this
red-shirted victim is a member of the security department. The remaining
redshirts, operations and engineering make up the largest single
population, but only have an 8.6% chance of being a casualty.
Red uniform shirts are safe, as long as the wearer is not in the security department."
2. Interesting piece on automation in the Economist: Robocolleague
Robots are getting more powerful. That need not be bad news for workers. ...
... Historically, technological advances have been relatively benign for
workers. Labour-market trends through the 19th and 20th centuries show
surprising continuity, according to Lawrence Katz of Harvard University
and Robert Margo of Boston University. In recent decades, for example,
computerisation and automation have displaced “middle-skilled” workers
at the same time as employment among high- and low-skilled workers has
increased. This “hollowing out” is not new, Messrs Katz and Margo note.
Early industrialisation had similar effects. Middle-skilled artisans,
like trained weavers, were put out of work by industrial textile
production, but the fortunes of less-skilled factory workers and
white-collar factory managers steadily improved. Mechanisation’s
insatiable appetite for routine work of all types has yet to create mass
unemployment. Quite the opposite.
The worry is that technology now has its sights set on non-routine
tasks as well as mundane ones. Yet Mr Autor notes that just because a
skilled job can be automated does not mean it will be. The number of
workers used to build Nissan vehicles varies a lot between Japan, where
labour is expensive, and India, where it is abundant and cheap. The
relative cost of different types of workers matters for firms as they
choose how to deploy new technologies. ...
Indie Capitalism has three foundational principles:
• Creativity generates economic value.
Creativity is the source of profit. Yes, efficiency can squeeze more
out of what exists, but creativity gives us originality, which
translates into a market advantage and big margins.
• Creativity drives capitalism.
These past few years we have been victimized by the disastrous results
of “creativity” applied to the financial sector (mortgage-backed
securities, for starters). What we lost sight of is that the scaling of
creativity to actually make things of value sold in the marketplace is
the true heart of our economic system. It is the true generator of net
new jobs, wealth, and tax revenue.
• Creative destruction is crucial to economic growth.
Crony capitalism, which relies on monopoly and political power, is
antithetical to entrepreneurial capitalism. A faster cycle of birth,
growth, and death of companies boosts creativity, economic value, and
growth.
The bottom line: For the first time in decades, several key economic drivers have created a competitive advantage for the U.S. that will encourage corporate strategic decisions on capital allocation and acquisitions for generations to come.
Here's why:
1. Cheap and abundant natural gas. ...
2. Innovation. Despite talk of a brain drain, the U.S. remains the global innovation leader, maintaining a position enjoyed for 50 years. ...
3. Rule of law. Without the means to protect intellectual property, it cannot be exploited for competitive advantage. ...
4. Human capital. The wage gap between the U.S. and China has been shrinking. ...
5. De-complexity. Western multinationals continue to struggle with management of operations in developing countries. ...
6. Public policy and abundance. The federal government appears to be seizing the opportunity to promote job growth at home.
7. Credit, currency and the coming wave of mergers and acquisitions.
"Picture an assembly line not that isn’t made up of robotic arms spewing sparks to weld heavy steel, but a warehouse of plastic-spraying printers producing light, cheap and highly efficient automobiles.
If Jim Kor’s dream is realized, that’s exactly how the next generation of urban runabouts will be produced. His creation is called the Urbee 2 and it could revolutionize parts manufacturing while creating a cottage industry of small-batch automakers intent on challenging the status quo. ..."
Throughout history, war and innovation have gone hand in hand,
whether it’s breakthroughs out of heavily funded R&D programs
or makeshift contraptions thrown together with spare parts. Soldiers are
trained to use the technology on hand to get the job done, one way or
the other.
But how would military operations change if soldiers on the
battlefield could have the best of both worlds: access to expert
engineers able to fabricate custom-designed fixes right on-the-spot and
in very little time? ...
"It may sound strange and far out, but it’s actually quite simple. 4D
printing is being billed as a process where synthetic objects can change
and adapt themselves to the environment. In a recent TED interview, Tibbits compared the process of 4D printing to the process of natural adaptation:
Natural systems obviously have this built in — the
ability to have a desire. Plants, for example, generally have the desire
to grow towards light and they generate energy from the translation of
photosynthesis, carbon dioxide to oxygen, and so on. This is extremely
difficult to build into synthetic systems — the ability to “want” or
need something and know how to change itself in order to acquire it, or
the ability to generate its own energy source. If we combine the
processes that natural systems offer intrinsically (genetic
instructions, energy production, error correction) with those artificial
or synthetic (programmability for design and scaffold, structure,
mechanisms) we can potentially have extremely large-scale
quasi-biological and quasi-synthetic architectural organisms."
The music industry, the first media business to be consumed by the
digital revolution, said on Tuesday that its global sales rose last year
for the first time since 1999, raising hopes that a long-sought
recovery might have begun.
The increase, of 0.3 percent, was tiny, and the total revenue, $16.5
billion, was a far cry from the $38 billion that the industry took in at
its peak more than a decade ago. Still, even if it is not time for the
record companies to party like it’s 1999, the figures, reported Tuesday
by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, provide
significant encouragement.
8. Teleworking: The myth of working from home from the BBC. "Yahoo has banned its staff from "remote" working. After years of many predicting working from home as the future for everybody, why is it not the norm?"
"Reasons for high unemployment among the young include ineffective education systems (the share of early school dropouts is 20% in Italy and 30% in Spain) and dual labour markets with highly protected jobs for older employees. The good performance of Germany is not least a result of the German apprenticeship system, which facilitates labour market access for school leavers by lowering the company’s costs for employing them. The OECD’s latest “Going for Growth” report recommends reforms to strengthen the vocational training systems as one of the most effective ways to fight structural youth unemployment. This would also be a reasonable starting point for the EU’s youth employment programme."
"What’s most revealing about this study is that, like earlier research,
it suggests that students’ preference for printed textbooks is reflects
the real pedagogical advantages they experience in using the format:
fewer distractions, deeper engagement, better comprehension and
retention, and greater flexibility to accommodating idiosyncratic study
habits. Electronic textbooks will certainly get better, and will
certainly have advantages of their own, but they won’t replicate the
particular advantages inherent to the tangible form of the printed book."
The Catholic Church has struggled to bring in young members in the
United States. Less than half of U.S. Hispanics between 18 and 29
identify as Catholic, compared with the 60+ percent of Hispanics older
than 50.
The narrative of decline in the mainline church underestimates the continuing influence of its members, says a religion researcher.
16.Some interesting observations by NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He says we tend to process our social world through three lenses: Social distance, hierarchy, and disgust. Conservatives tend to have a lower threshold of revulsion while liberals, and praticularly libertarians, have a higher threshold.
The juvenile incarceration in the US rate has fallen 41 percent in the past 15 years, reaching the lowest level since 1975, a new study finds. What is behind the rapid decline?
Fewer young people are behind bars than at any point since 1975, due in
part to lower rates of juvenile crime and a shift away from
interventions focused on long-term incarceration.
The number of young people in a correction facility on a single day
dropped from a high of 107,637 in 1995 to 70,792 in 2010, according to a
new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation that used data from the US Census Bureau. The incarceration rate – the number of young people confined per 100,000 youths – dropped by 41 percent in the same period.
The
trend might be stronger than the data show, says Bart Lubow, director
of the foundation’s Juvenile Justice Strategy Group. Some of the biggest
decreases in youth incarceration in some states have occurred in the
past two years, and those numbers are not included in the report. ...
The main reasons behind the declining numbers:
A shift in thinking about the best ways to handle kids who break the law.
A sustained period of decreasing juvenile crime.
Fiscal pressures on state governments that have many people – including conservatives who in the past espoused tough-on-crime policies – clamoring for less-expensive alternatives to mass incarceration. ...
... “Even with the drops we’re describing in this report, the US, compared to similarly governed countries like those in Western Europe, has a much, much higher [youth] incarceration rate than any of those places,” he says.
America’s incarceration rate for juveniles is 18 times greater than that of France, and more than seven times greater than that of Great Britain. It’s hard to even compare it with the juvenile incarceration rates in places like Finland or Sweden, where young offenders are seldom locked up. ...
... Data struggles with the social. Your brain is pretty bad at
math (quick, what’s the square root of 437), but it’s excellent at
social cognition. People are really good at mirroring each other’s
emotional states, at detecting uncooperative behavior and at assigning
value to things through emotion. ...
... Data struggles with context. Human decisions are not discrete
events. They are embedded in sequences and contexts. The human brain has
evolved to account for this reality. People are really good at telling
stories that weave together multiple causes and multiple contexts. Data
analysis is pretty bad at narrative and emergent thinking, and it cannot
match the explanatory suppleness of even a mediocre novel.
Data creates bigger haystacks. This is a point Nassim Taleb,
the author of “Antifragile,” has made. As we acquire more data, we have
the ability to find many, many more statistically significant
correlations. Most of these correlations are spurious and deceive us
when we’re trying to understand a situation. Falsity grows exponentially
the more data we collect. The haystack gets bigger, but the needle we
are looking for is still buried deep inside. ...
... Big data has trouble with big problems. If you are trying to
figure out which e-mail produces the most campaign contributions, you
can do a randomized control experiment. But let’s say you are trying to
stimulate an economy in a recession. You don’t have an alternate society
to use as a control group. For example, we’ve had huge debates over the
best economic stimulus, with mountains of data, and as far as I know
not a single major player in this debate has been persuaded by data to
switch sides.
Data favors memes over masterpieces. Data analysis can detect
when large numbers of people take an instant liking to some cultural
product. But many important (and profitable) products are hated
initially because they are unfamiliar.
Data obscures values. I recently saw an academic book with the
excellent title, “ ‘Raw Data’ Is an Oxymoron.” One of the points was
that data is never raw; it’s always structured according to somebody’s
predispositions and values. The end result looks disinterested, but, in
reality, there are value choices all the way through, from construction
to interpretation.
This is not to argue that big data isn’t a great tool. It’s just that,
like any tool, it’s good at some things and not at others. As the Yale
professor Edward Tufte has said, “The world is much more interesting
than any one discipline.”
Issue 104 examines the impact of automation on Europe and America and the varying responses of the church to the problems that developed. Topics examined are mission work, the rise of the Social Gospel, the impact of papal pronouncements, the Methodist phenomenon, Christian capitalists, attempts at communal living and much more.
"Despite the tough economy, many of the nation’s largest churches are
thriving, with increased offerings and plans to hire more staff, a new
survey shows.
Just 3 percent of churches with 2,000 or more attendance
surveyed by Leadership Network, a Dallas-based church think tank, said
they were affected “very negatively” by the economy in recent years.
Close to half — 47 percent — said they were affected “somewhat
negatively,” but one-third said they were not affected at all. ..."
... It's not surprising that younger entrepreneurial firms are considered more innovative. After all, they are born from a new idea, and survive by finding creative ways to make that idea commercially viable. Larger, well-rooted companies however have just as much motivation to be innovative — and, as Scott Anthony has argued, they have even more resources to invest in new ventures. So why doesn't innovation thrive in mature organizations? ...
... First, he says, the focus of an established firm is to execute an existing business model — to make sure it operates efficiently and satisfies customers. In contrast, the main job of a start-up is to search for a workable business model, to find the right match between customer needs and what the company can profitably offer. In other words in a start-up, innovation is not just about implementing a creative idea, but rather the search for a way to turn some aspect of that idea into something that customers are willing to pay for. ...
... discovering a new business model is inherently risky, and is far more likely to fail than to succeed ...
... Finally, Blank notes that the people who are best suited to search for new business models and conduct iterative experiments usually are not the same managers who succeed at running existing business units. ...
5. A fascinating, if sobering, look at the conflict over islands off the coast of East Asia. Trouble at sea
"President Barack Obama's proposed tilt of U.S. priorities toward the Pacific – and away from the historical link to Europe – represents one of the most encouraging aspects of his foreign policy. Although welcome, we should recognize that this shift comes about three decades too late and that it may miss the rising geopolitical centrality of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The emergence of these longtime historically impoverished backwaters has been largely missed as American policy-makers and businesses are now obsessed with the challenges and opportunities posed by the emergence of China and, to a lesser extent, India. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, over the past decade has produced six of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies. Through 2011-15, according to the International Monetary Fund, seven of the fastest-growing countries will be African, and Africa as a whole will surpass the slowing growth rates in Asia, particularly China.
This growth has caused the region's poverty rates, still unacceptably high, to fall from 56.5 percent in 1990 to 47 percent today. Further growth will likely push poverty levels down further."
8. New Geography also asks, Is the Family Finished? Some interesting thoughts about the impact of declining birthrates in the U.S.
Pew Research Center has compiled key findings from a new analysis of the
nation’s foreign-born population, based on U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011
American Community Survey.
With more than half the population of many U.S. cities who are
multicultural and Hispanics comprising more and more of the
U.S. population, when does it become meaningless and redundant to
execute marketing strategy that is directed to a general market and a
Latino market perceived to be homogenous?
11. Committee on Economic Development has an interesting piece looking at both the ideological and economic aspects underlying the debate about the minimum wage. Raising the Minimum Wage: “Which Side Are You On?”
"It is an easy call if you are either (a) a strict libertarian or (b) an
enthusiastic advocate of the less fortunate with limited concern about
the scarcity of resources. (If you belong to both of those groups,
there is little advice that I can offer.) However, in between those
poles of opinion, things become rather murky, rather quickly."
... Comparing the Democrat and Republican participants turned up differences in two brain regions: the right amygdala and the left posterior insula. Republicans showed more activity than Democrats in the right amygdala when making a risky decision. This brain region is important for processing fear, risk and reward.
Meanwhile, Democrats showed more activity in the left posterior insula, a portion of the brain responsible for processing emotions, particularly visceral emotional cues from the body. The particular region of the insula that showed the heightened activity has also been linked with "theory of mind," or the ability to understand what others might be thinking. ...
... The functional differences did mesh well with political beliefs,
however. The researchers were able to predict a person's political
party by looking at their brain function 82.9 percent of the time. In
comparison, knowing the structure of these regions predicts party
correctly 71 percent of the time, and knowing someone's parents'
political affiliation can tell you theirs 69.5 percent of the time, the
researchers wrote. ...
STERLING, Va. - Perched by a computer monitor wedged between shelves of cough drops and the pharmacy in a bustling Walmart, Mohamed Khader taps out answers to questions such as how often he eats vegetables, whether anyone in his family has diabetes and his age.
He tests his eyesight, weighs himself and checks his blood pressure as a middle-aged couple watches at the blue-and-white SoloHealth station advertising "free health screenings." ...
... As Americans gain coverage under the federal health law, putting increased demand on primary care doctors and spurring interest in cheaper, more convenient care, unmanned kiosks like these may be part of what their manufacturer bills as a "self-service healthcare revolution." ...
Recent developments in the field of nanotechnology might give new
meaning to the phrase “nothing gold can stay.” Atoms and bonds developed
not by Mother Nature, but by scientists, are gaining momentum as the
building blocks for cutting-edge materials.
Using nanoparticles as “atoms” and DNA as “bonds,” Chad Mirkin, the
director of Northwestern University’s International Institute for
Nanotechnology, is constructing his very own periodic table. So far Mirkin has built more than 200 distinct crystal structures with 17 different particle arrangements. ...
"The Easterlin paradox suggest that in terms of human happiness -- a
squishy concept to be sure -- there is a limit to economic growth beyond
which there really is just no point in attaining more wealth. Further, a
decoupling between income and happiness at some threshold would imply
that GDP would not be a good measure of welfare, we would need some
other metric.
A recent paper (PDF) by Daniel Sacks, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers argues that the Easterlin paradox is also wrong. ..."
"Why isn't there more outrage about the president's unilateral targeted assassination program on the left?"
5. Arnold Kling with an interesting piece on the role of Jews in the rise of the modern urbanized economic order. The Unintended Consequences of God
"In those days, most people were farmers, for whom literacy’s costs
generally outweighed its benefits. However, in an urbanized society
with skilled occupations, literacy pays off. As urbanization gradually
increased in the late Middle Ages, Jews came to fill high-skilled
occupations. Botticini and Eckstein argue that literacy, rather than
persecution, is what led Jews into these occupations."
"But while progressives would clearly mock this policy [trickle-down economics], modern day
urbanism often resembles nothing so much as trickle-down economics,
though this time mostly advocated by those who would self-identify as
being from the left. The idea is that through investments catering to
the fickle and mobile educated elite and the high end businesses that
employ and entertain them, cities can be rejuvenated in a way that
somehow magically benefits everybody and is socially fair."
8. Mark Perry excerpts a quote from green libertarian John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market.
“Capitalism is the greatest creation humanity has done for social cooperation. It has lifted humanity out of the dirt. In statistics we discovered when we were researching the book, about 200 years ago when capitalism was created, 85% of the people alive lived on $1 a day. Today, that number is 16%. Still too high, but capitalism is wiping out poverty across the world. 200 years ago illiteracy rates were 90%. Today, they are down to about 14%. 200 years ago the average lifespan was 30. Today it is 68 across the world, 78 in the States, and almost 82 in Japan. This is due to business. This is due to capitalism. And it doesn’t get credit for it. Most of the time, business is portrayed by its enemies as selfish and greedy and exploitative, yet it’s the greatest value creator in the world.”
9. Economist Gavin Kennedy with some interesting thoughts on the relationship between the state and the economy in developing nations:
The problem is to achieve the right balance between a competitive market economy and an effective state: markets where possible; the state where necessary.
11. Great piece about yet another way family life is changing. Yes, I’m a Homemaker
I’m a guy. My wife works. We’ve got no kids. I’m a stay-at-home dude.
"... What a sweet picture this conjures: the stay-at-home dad nurturing his
children, looking after the house and helping support his wife in her
budding career and shelving his own big ambitions for later. Now it gets
a little awkward. There is no adorable kid, nor plans to have one. No
starter home that needs knocking into shape. I'm not just doing this
temporarily until I find something meaningful to do. I’m
actually a full-time homemaker ... not stay-at-home dad but stay-at-home
dude. A conversational pause. Where do you mentally file this guy?
Usually I just change the subject. ..."
A new study shows that high-earning women are more likely to let their houses be messy than to hire a housekeeper or get their husbands and kids to pitch in. ...
... "You can purchase substitutes for your own time, you can get your husband to do more, or you can all just do less," Killewald says. "Whether women outsource housework in particular has less to do with resources, but whether or not paid labor is viewed as an appropriate strategy for undertaking domestic work.
Doing less housework seems to be a popular option. ...
Psychiatrists have
concluded that males take longer to assess facial expressions as their
brains have to work twice as hard to work out whether another person
looks friendly or intelligent.
In particular, researchers found that 40% of people say they would avoid someone who unfriended them on Facebook, while 50% say they would not avoid a person who unfriended them. Women were more likely than men to avoid someone who unfriended them, the researchers found.
... Libraries are responding to the decline of print in a variety of creative ways, trying to remain relevant – especially to younger people – by embracing the new technology. Many, such as New York’s Queens Public Library, are reinventing themselves as centers for classes, job training, and simply hanging out. In one radical example, a new $1.5 million library scheduled to open in San Antonio, Texas, this fall will be completely book-free, with its collection housed exclusively on tablets, laptops, and e-readers. “Think of an Apple store,” the Bexar County judge who is leading the effort told NPR. It’s a flashy and seductive package.
But libraries are about more than just e-readers or any other media, as important as those things are. They are about more than just buildings such as the grand edifices erected by Carnegie money, or the sleek and controversial new design for the New York Public Library’s central branch. They are also about human beings and their relationships, specifically, the relationship between librarians and patrons. And that is the relationship that the foundation created by Microsoft co-founder’s Paul G. Allen is seeking to build in a recent round of grants to libraries in the Pacific Northwest. ...
3-D printers can produce gun parts, aircraft wings, food and a lot more,
but this new 3-D printed product may be the craziest thing yet: human
embryonic stem cells. Using stem cells as the "ink" in a 3-D printer,
researchers in Scotland hope to eventually build 3-D printed organs and
tissues. A team at Heriot-Watt University used a specially designed
valve-based technique to deposit whole, live cells onto a surface in a
specific pattern.
The latest update of the Pew Research Center’s regular News IQ quiz uses
a set of 13 pictures, maps, graphs and symbols to test knowledge of
current affairs. (To take the quiz yourself before reading this report, click here.)
At the high end, nearly nine-in-ten Americans (87%) are able to select
the Star of David as the symbol of Judaism from a group of pictures of
religious symbols. And when shown a picture of Twitter’s corporate logo,
79% correctly associate the logo with that company.
At the low end, just 43% are able to identify a picture of Elizabeth
Warren’s from a group of four photographs of female politicians, among
them Nancy Pelosi, Tammy Baldwin and Deb Fischer. And when presented
with a map of the Middle East in which Syria is highlighted, only half
are able to identify the nation correctly.
Overall, majorities correctly answer 11 of 13 questions in the new
quiz, which was conducted online January 18-24, 2013, among a random
sample of 1,041 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People &
the Press.
The quiz includes several items about leading political figures. When
shown a picture of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, 73% identified
Christie from a list that included Newt Gingrich, Scott Walker and Rush
Limbaugh. An identical percentage identified John Boehner in a question
with a similar format. To see how each question was presented, see the attached survey topline.
Seven of the 13 items were answered correctly by two-thirds or more
of the survey’s respondents. These included identifying the Star of
David as the symbol for Judaism (87%), the corporate logo for Twitter
(79%), the map of states won in 2012 by President Obama (75%), the
photos of Christie and Boehner (73% each), a graph of the unemployment
rate (70%) and the symbol for the Euro (69%).
About six-in-ten (62%) could identify the new secretary of state,
John Kerry, from a photo lineup of four people. When shown a list of
four state maps, and asked which of the states had approved the
legalization of same-sex marriage last year, 60% correctly chose the
state of Washington. But just 50% were able to identify Syria as country
highlighted on a map of the Middle East.
On average, quiz takers correctly answered 8.5 of the 13 questions, a score of 65% correct when graded like a classroom test. ...
Several interesting tables presented in this article. Take a look.
Sociologist Peter Berger concludes this article with this observation:
... But I do want to make a general observation: In all these cases the
authorities accused of violating the plaintiffs’ rights operate with a
definition of religion as a private matter to be kept out of public
space. There is here a general issue of government overreach, as clearly
illustrated by the (still unresolved) attempt by the Obama
administration to force Catholic institutions to provide contraception
coverage in their employees’ health plans. Beyond that, though, there is
a very ideological view of the place of religion in society. In other
words, religion is to be an activity engaged in by consenting adults in
private. The attorney for the Judeo-Christian side in the aforementioned
American case had it quite right when he compared the treatment of his
client’s religion with measures of disease control. This is not an
attitude one would expect to find in a Western democracy. It is
curiously reminiscent of policies toward religion in Communist countries
and toward non-Muslims under Islamic rule.
An aggressive secularism seems to be on the march in all these cases.
It seems more at home in Europe, which is far more secularized than
America. Even in the United Kingdom, it seems, the drums of the French
Revolution still reverberate. But how is one to explain this sort of
secularism in the United States? The “nones”—that is, those who say
“none” when asked for their religious affiliation by pollsters—are a
very mixed lot. One theme that comes through is disappointment with
organized religion. There is an anti-Christian edge to this, since
Christian churches continue to be the major religious institutions in
this country. Disappointment then, or disillusion—but why the aggressive
hostility? There is yet another theme that comes through in the survey
data: An identification of churches (and that means mainly Christian
ones) with intolerance and repression. I think that this is significant.
Let me venture a sociological hypothesis here: The new American
secularism is in defense of the sexual revolution. Since the 1960s there
has indeed been a sexual revolution in America. It has been very
successful in changing the mores and the law. It should not be
surprising that many people, especially younger ones, enjoy the new
libidinous benefits of this revolution. Whether one approves or deplores
the new sexual culture, it seems unlikely to be reversed. Yet Christian
churches (notably the Catholic and Evangelical ones) are in the
forefront of those who do want to reverse the libertine victory. Its
beneficiaries are haunted by the nightmare of being forced into chastity
belts by an all too holy alliance of clerics and conservative
politicians. No wonder they are hostile!
"... University of Missouri MarketingProfessor Marsha Richins looks at this phenomenon in a new paper in the Journal of Consumer Research,
"When Wanting Is Better Than Having," where she compares high- and
low-materialist shoppers. "High-materialist" consumers have much higher
expectations of what a product will do for their overall happiness,
which is why positive emotions peak and then fall again after a
purchase.
According to research, materialists are "more likely to
believe that acquisition will change the kind of person they are,
improve their relationships with others, enable them to have more
pleasure in their lives, and enhance the effectiveness with which they
carry out daily tasks." They also experience "more negative emotions, such as anxiety, fear, and envy." ...
Our species can’t seem to escape big data. We have more data inputs, storage, and computing resources than ever, so Homo sapiens naturally does what it has always done when given new tools: It goes even bigger, higher, and bolder.
We did it in buildings and now we’re doing it in data. Sure, big data is a powerful lens — some would even argue a liberating one — for looking at our world. Despite its limitations and requirements, crunching big numbers can help us learn a lot about ourselves.
But no matter how big that data is or what insights we glean from it,
it is still just a snapshot: a moment in time. That’s why I think we
need to stop getting stuck only on big data and start thinking about long data.
By “long” data, I mean datasets that have massive historical sweep —
taking you from the dawn of civilization to the present day. The kinds
of datasets you see in Michael Kremer’s “Population growth and technological change: one million BC to 1990,” which provides an economic model tied to the world’s population data for a million years; or in Tertius Chandler’s Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth,
which contains an exhaustive dataset of city populations over
millennia. These datasets can humble us and inspire wonder, but they
also hold tremendous potential for learning about ourselves.
Because as beautiful as a snapshot is, how much richer is a moving
picture, one that allows us to see how processes and interactions unfold
over time? ...
... Why does the time dimension matter if we’re only interested in
current or future phenomena? Because many of the things that affect us
today and will affect us tomorrow have changed slowly over time: sometimes over the course of a single lifetime, and sometimes over generations or even eons.
Datasets of long timescales not only help us understand how the world
is changing, but how we, as humans, are changing it — without this
awareness, we fall victim to shifting baseline
syndrome. This is the tendency to shift our “baseline,” or what is
considered “normal” — blinding us to shifts that occur across
generations (since the generation we are born into is taken to be the
norm). ...
I strongly resonate with this article. Trends and trajectories over extended
periods of time are often far more useful than details of the latest twist or
turn in societal development. It is so easy to get lost in the challenges of
the moment. When you stand back and look at our moment in time from the
standpoint of centuries and millennia, we are living in the most astounding age
of human flourishing in the history of the planet. We are never without
challenges but there is good reason to expect that flourishing will improve in
coming generations.
The two groups I find the most insufferable are youth who believe their latest
insights are the magic solution that brings utopia and grumpy old curmudgeons
who mope about, complaining the world is going to hell in a hand basket.
Neither has a sense of the longue durée. We
need to spend less time with journalists and more time with historians.
Back in 1974, Richard Easterlin published a paper called "Does Economic
Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence" (available here and here,
for example). Easterlin raised the possibility that what really matters
to most people is not their absolute level of income, but their income
level relative to others in society. If relative income is what matters,
then an overall rise in incomes doesn't make me any better off relative
to others, and so my happiness does not increase. Income becomes a sort
of arms race: even as we all race to get more, it doesn't actually make
us any happier. ...
He concludes with:
... For my own part, I confess that I find happiness surveys both intriguing
and dubious. It seems to me that higher levels of income are typically
correlated with more health, education, travel, consumption, and a
higher quality of recreation, so it's not a surprise to me it seems to
me that happiness rises iwth income. On the other side, it does seem to
me that survey questions about life satisfaction are answered in the
context of a particular place and time. If a person says that their life
satisfaction was a 7 in 1960 on a scale of 0-10, and another person
says that their life satisfaction is a 7 in 2013, are those two people
really equally satisfied? To put it another way, if the person from 2013
was transported by a time machine back to live in 1960, with all their
memories and knowledge of the technologies, medicines, foods, education,
and travel available in 2013, would that time traveller really be
equally happy in either time period? I suspect that when most people are
asked to rank happiness on a scale of 0-10, they don't say to
themselves: "Well, people living 100 years from now might have
extraordinarily high levels of income and technology, so compared with
them, I'm really no more than a 2." At best, survey questions on a scale
of 0-10 seem like an extremely rough-and-ready way of measuring life
satisfaction across very different countries or across substantial
periods of time.
David Brooks captures the essence of my perspective once again.
"... I am not a liberal like Obama, so I was struck by what he left out in
his tour through American history. I, too, would celebrate Seneca Falls,
Selma and Stonewall, but I’d also mention Wall Street, State Street,
Menlo Park and Silicon Valley. I’d emphasize that America has prospered
because we have a decentralizing genius.
When Europeans nationalized their religions, we decentralized and
produced a great flowering of entrepreneurial denominations. When Europe
organized state universities, our diverse communities organized private
universities. When Europeans invested in national welfare states,
American localities invested in human capital.
America’s greatest innovations and commercial blessings were unforeseen
by those at the national headquarters. They emerged, bottom up, from
tinkerers and business outsiders who could never have attracted the
attention of a president or some public-private investment commission.
I would have been more respectful of this decentralizing genius than
Obama was, more nervous about dismissing it for the sake of collective
action, more concerned that centralization will lead to stultification,
as it has in every other historic instance.
I also think Obama misunderstands this moment. The Progressive Era, New
Deal and Great Society laws were enacted when America was still a young
and growing nation. They were enacted in a nation that was vibrant, raw,
underinstitutionalized and needed taming.
We are no longer that nation. We are now a mature nation with an aging
population. Far from being underinstitutionalized, we are bogged down
with a bloated political system, a tangled tax code, a byzantine legal
code and a crushing debt.
The task of reinvigorating a mature nation is fundamentally different
than the task of civilizing a young and boisterous one. It does require
some collective action: investing in human capital. But, in other areas,
it also involves stripping away — streamlining the special interest
sinecures that have built up over the years and liberating private
daring. ..."
The last sentence of this paragraph is the key.
"... Obama made his case beautifully. He came across as a prudent,
nonpopulist progressive. But I’m not sure he rescrambled the debate. We
still have one party that talks the language of government and one that
talks the language of the market. We have no party that is comfortable
with civil society, no party that understands the ways government and
the market can both crush and nurture community, no party with new ideas
about how these things might blend together.
But at least the debate is started. Maybe that new wind will come."
A new paper reviews how psychology, biology, and neurology are
ganging up on economics to prove that, when it comes to making
decisions, people are anything but rational.
Daniel McFadden is an economist. But his new paper, "The New Science of Pleasure,"
shows the many ways economics fails to explain how we make decisions --
and what it can learn from psychology, anthropology, biology, and
neurology.
The old economic theory of consumers says that "people should relish
choice." And we do. Shopping can be fun, democracy is better than its
alternatives, and a diverse and fully stocked grocery store ice cream
freezer is quite nearly the closest thing to heaven on earth. But other
fields of science tell a more complicated story. First, making a choice
is physically exhausting, literally, so that somebody forced to make a
number of decisions in a row is likely to get lazy and dumb. (That's one
reason why stores place candy near the check-out aisle: They suspect
your brain is too zonked to resist.) Second, having too many choices can
make us less likely to come to a conclusion. In a famous study of the
so-called "paradox of choice", psychologists Mark Lepper and Sheena
Iyengar found that customers presented with six jam varieties were more
likely to buy one than customers offered a choice of 24.
If you've read the work of Dan Ariely or Daniel Kahneman,
you know exactly how far from perfectly rational we are when faced with
a decision. Many of our mistakes stem from a central "availability
bias." Our brains are computers, and we like to access recently opened
files, even though many decisions require a deep body of information
that might require some searching. Cheap example: We remember the first,
last, and peak moments of certain experiences. So when we make a choice
about how to spend a certain amount of time -- say, by going to Six
Flags -- we forget that most of the time at an amusement park is spent
waiting around doing nothing. Instead, we remember the thrill of the
roller coaster. (This has been previously used to explain why people
sometimes go back to disappointing old romantic partners, but that might
be for another article.)
The third check against the theory of the rational consumer is the
fact that we're social animals. We let our friends and family and tribes
do our thinking for us. In a fascinating example, McFadden presents a
study that shows Korean peasant women within the same village tend to
use the same contraception -- even though there is "substantial,
persistent diversity across villages." This pattern could not be
explained by income, education, or price. Word-of-mouth explained
practically all the difference.
In another corner of the ivory tower (or, more likely, across campus
in a glassy lab), neurologists are finding that many of the biases
behavioral economists perceive in decision-making start in our brains.
"Brain studies indicate that organisms seem to be on a hedonic
treadmill, quickly habituating to homeostasis," McFadden writes. In
other words, perhaps our preference for the status quo isn't just
figuratively our heads, but also literally sculpted by the hand of
evolution inside of our brains.
A final example to show how
other fields of science are ganging up on classical economics: The
popular psychological theory of "hyperbolic discounting" says people
don't properly evaluate rewards over time. The theory seeks to explain
why many groups -- nappers, procrastinators, Congress -- take rewards
now and pain later, over and over again. But neurology suggests that it
hardly makes sense to speak of "the brain," in the singular, because
it's two very different parts of the brain that process choices for now
and later. The choice to delay gratification is mostly processed in the
frontal system. But studies show that the choice to do something
immediately gratifying is processed in a different system, the limbic
system, which is more viscerally connected to our behavior, our "reward
pathways," and our feelings of pain and pleasure.
And there's much more. To explain it, here's Daniel McFadden himself.
The following transcript of our email conversation has been very
lightly edited for clarity. ...
Many readers will remember the book The Big Sort
by Bill Bishop. It argues that Americans are increasingly clustered in
like-minded political communities. If one categorizes a county by how
its residents voted in presidential elections, as of 2004 nearly half
(48%) of Americans lived in “landslide” countries where one presidential
candidate got at least 60% of the vote. In 1976, that number was 27%.
A new article (currently and graciously ungated) by political scientists Samuel Abrams and Morris Fiorina
challenges this account, however. Abrams and Fiorina argue that
presidential voting is not a reliable indicator of partisanship, as
voting may depend on idiosyncratic features of candidates. Better, they
argue, is party registration, which more reliably measures people’s
underlying partisan preference (if any).
When landslide counties are identified using party registration and this same 60/40 threshold, the trend is the complete opposite
of a Big Sort. The fraction living in such counties was 50% in 1976;
in 2008, it was 15%. This same conclusion emerges using thresholds
lower than 60/40.
Abrams and Fiorina conclude: ...
I think Bishop's thesis is right. Still, it is interesting to hear some skeptical analysis.
If you look behind the often dire headlines and examine the long-term trends, you'll see that crime is falling, lifespans are increasing, and poverty is ebbing. In other words, there's solid evidence for hope.
There's much more good news than bad news. But bad news travels fast and
commands attention. Good news is like water carving a valley or a tree
gradually extending its branches. Good news is a child learning a little
more each day or a business quietly prospering. We hardly notice it.
Examine the data over time, and you'l find irrefutable evidence of
progress: the decline of war and violent crime, the increase in life
spans; the spread of literacy, democracy, and equal rights; the waning
of privilege based on race, gender, heredity, beliefs (Jina Moore and a
team of Monitor writers say this much more specifically in our cover
story: "Progress Watch 2012").
Every so often there are vivid scenes of good news -- Neil Armstrong bouncing onto the moon, revelers atop the Berlin Wall, Nelson Mandela walking out of Robben Island prison. But most of the time good news is incremental, which causes it to be taken for granted.
Not
bad news. When we hear it, we sit up and ask, "What just happened?"...
... And
when there's a shortage of bad news in the present, we can always turn
to the future. Welcome to worry, dread, and pessimism. Sure, things seem
OK now, but just over the horizon a disaster is brewing. Don't be a
sap. Bad things are on the way.
They probably are. And they'll
shock us and again make us wonder if life is out of control. But in this
last issue of our news magazine for 2012, we're looking in the rearview
mirror to see how things are going, and we're finding plenty of reason
for hope. ...
I know. You own a slim titanium ultrabook computer, an eye popping
LCD 3D HD television, an iPhone with a custom-designed carbon fiber
cover, and a sports car with 360 horsepower under the hood. You don’t
have anything in common with the Amish.
It’s possible. But there are a lot of us who are beginning to adopt
some practices that are pretty close to the Amish. No, I’m not talking
about the Amish belief in adult baptism or the importance of farming in
daily life. I’m talking about the decisions the Amish make about
technology. More and more of us have begun to think about the impact
that technology has on our relationships with others and we’ve begun to
alter our practices.
Contrary to many stereotypes, the Amish actually use a lot of
technology. I’ve seen Amish ride in cars, use power tools, and fire up a
600 horsepower Rolls-Royce generator. But the Amish won’t use just any
technology that is developed. And they don’t allow technologies to be
used by anybody whenever they want. They have developed a complex set of
unwritten rules that guide their daily decisions.
The Atlantic Cities has a piece about ten interesting maps from 2012. Year in Review: 2012's Year in Maps The map below is just one of them.
"Mayor Bloomberg's insistent support for the NYPD's Stop and Frisk
policy has been the single most contentious policy of his tenure, and
WNYC's illustration of where the stops occur makes clear why. For one
thing, it gives a geographic base to the racially biased search data. As
I wrote in August, the mix of those subjected to the humiliating
procedure sometimes varies from population data by a factor of nine:
"last year, black and Hispanic men between the ages of 14 and 24
accounted for 41.6 percent of stops, though they make up only 4.7
percent of the city's population." According to the same ACLU report from which that data comes,
"the number of stops of young black men exceeded the entire city
population of young black men (168,126 as compared to 158,406)."
Most importantly, though, the map shows that blocks with large numbers
of searches don't yield more guns than blocks with fewer searches."
"... The chart [below] shows how much more time women spend than men on
unpaid work (light blue bars); how much less time women spend than men
on paid work (medium blue bars); and how much time over all women spend
compared to men on paid and unpaid work combined (dark blue diamonds).
As
you can see, across the member countries of the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development, women spend 21 minutes more time,
on average, in total work per day than men do. ..."
The
horrific massacre in Newton, Connecticut, is to sparking debate about
guns and violence, as well it should. As the discussion gets underway, I
think it is helpful to get a sense of where we stand in the flow of history as
it relates to violence in the United States. Here are a few
things to consider.
Below is data
from the most recent FBI Uniform Crime Report (UCR). The annual report compiles
reported crimes. It strength is the use of hard data. Its biggest weakness is the
absence of unreported crime. The willingness of people to report crime varies
by type of crime and their willingness to report may change over time. Also, law enforcement’s diligence with
different types of crime may change over time. Tougher enforcement can lead to fewer
incidents of actual crime, even as incidents
of reported crime rise. Nevertheless,
the UCR is an important measure.
Crimes
are grouped in two categories:
Violent - murder and non-negligent manslaughter,
forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
Property - burglary,
larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson.
Violent
crime is at a forty year low.
A second
measure is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Twice a year, surveys ask members of households if they have been victims of particular crimes, reported or
not. The strength of the survey is that it captures unreported crime. A
weakness may be that some crimes, like domestic violence, are underreported.
The NCVS
is also broken into two categories:
Violent - rape, robbery, and assault.
Property
- burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft.
(A
different methodology was used in 2006 that makes it incomparable with other
years. Also, 2011 data has been published and shows an uptick in crime.
However, the 2002 and 2010 data in the recent report, used as comparison points, do
not match earlier publications and I have yet to determine why. I chose not to
include it here until I have a better understanding.)
An
interesting question: Was there truly less crime fifty years ago or were people
simply less likely to report crimes? I doubt there is a definitive answer. Murder
is sometimes used as a proxy for overall violence in society. Here is the United States murder
rate per 100,000 population:
Additionally,
there is this estimation of the murder rate over the last 300 years. (Source: The Public
Intellectual)
The
lowest murder rate ever was 4.6 in 1963. It was 4.7 in 2011.
It can conclusively
be said that that violence in American society is not spiraling out of control.
We are living in one of the least violent eras in
American history. But this is not the
whole story.
(Go to
the source linked above for info about individual countries.)
The 4.7
homicide rate for the United States is a near record low but it is still two or
three times the rate of other Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development nations. Guns are a big part of this difference. The good news is
the precipitous decline in aggravated deaths. The bad news is how much more violence there is in
the United States compared to other nations, even at all-time lows.
… And
yet those who study mass shootings say they are not becoming more common.
"There
is no pattern, there is no increase," says criminologist James Allen Fox
of Boston's Northeastern University, who has been studying the subject since
the 1980s, spurred by a rash of mass shootings in post offices.
The
random mass shootings that get the most media attention are the rarest, Fox
says. Most people who die of bullet wounds knew the identity of their killer. …
… Grant
Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has
written a history of mass murders in America, said that while mass shootings
rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, they actually dropped in the 2000s. And
mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929, according to his data. He
estimates that there were 32 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s and 26 in the first
decade of the century.
Chances
of being killed in a mass shooting, he says, are probably no greater than being
struck by lightning.
Still,
he understands the public perception - and extensive media coverage - when mass
shootings occur in places like malls and schools. "There is this feeling
that could have been me. It makes it so much more frightening." …
(I realize
that does not seem to square with the statement about mass shootings peaking in 1929. I suspect a typo and "1999" was what was intended.)
This
data was reported in March of 2010. According to a recent Los Angeles Times
article, Deadliest
U.S. mass shootings, there have been nine mass shootings in the United
States in the first three years of this decade. That projects out to thirty for this decade. But there have been five mass shootings in the last five months.
There clearly has been an uptick in mass shootings over the past year.
On
a final note, the Sandy Hook massacre involved young children at school. Over
the past twenty years, the number of children 5-18 years old murdered at school
has ranged from a low of 14 (school years ending in 2000 and in 2001) and a
high of 34 (schools years ending 1993 and in 1998.) (Source: Indicators of School Safety: 2011) According to an article in the Guardian, Mass
shootings at schools and universities in the US – timeline, over the last fifty years there have been
six school mass shootings (including Sandy Hook) that have taken the lives of
children 5-18. Three of the mass shootings were at primary schools (Stockton, CA,
in 1989; Nickel Mines, PA, 2006; and now Sandy Hook.)
So
here are a few observations and comments:
The United States has an excessively violent culture.
Violence has lessened significantly in recent years. We are not spiraling into
chaos.
Guns are an important factor in the excessive homicide rates. I don't know why citizens need to own semi-automatic weapons. But there is more
than access to these guns that needs to be addressed here.
While a case can be made that mass murders have been declining in the long run,
the sudden frequency of them in recent months is alarming (five in five months).
Nothing that is said above should take away from our outrage at the senseless
death of innocent children and their teachers. But Friday’s shooting should not
send us into despair that things are spiraling out of control. Friday’s
shooting should motivate us to ask anew how we can accelerate our march toward
becoming a less violent society.
All-natural domesticity has adherents on both sides of the political spectrum.
The current cultural mania for DIY domesticity—backyard chickens,
urban knitting circles, the rise of homeschooling, the sudden ubiquity
of homemade jam—shows no sign of abating. Across the country,
progressives are embracing home and hearth with new vigor under the
guise of environmental sustainability, anti-consumerism, and better
health.
The movement has made for some very odd attitudes, especially when it
comes to gender. The terms "liberal" and "conservative" barely seem to
apply. The new progressive morality about food sometimes feels as retro
and conservative as anything dreamed up during the 1950s. In many
well-educated, well-heeled quarters, what you cook determines your worth
as a mother (Is it organic? Local? BPA-free?), laziness in the kitchen
is understood to doom your children to lives of obesity and menial
labor, and the very idea of convenience is slatternly and shameful. In this culture, we have Berkeley heroes like Michael Pollan writing scoldingly about how feminism killed home cooking. Michelle Obama, every Democrat's favorite organic gardener, has been criticized for saying she doesn't like to cook. And not by Fox News, but by food writer and noted latte-apologist Amanda Hesser in the New York Times....
... It's hard to know what to make of all this. Crunchy progressives are
arguing that quitting your job to become a homemaker is a radical
feminist act, far-right evangelicals are talking about "women's
empowerment" via Etsy, lefty liberal writers are excoriating the First
Lady for hating to cook, and dyed-in-the-wool conservatives are giving
birth in their bathtubs with midwives and self-hypnosis tapes.
Both sides of the political spectrum turn to domesticity for many of
the same reasons: distrust in government and institutions from the EPA
to the public schools to hospital maternity wards, worries about the
safety of the food supply, disappointment with the working world, the
desire to connect with a simpler, less consumerist way of life.
The fact that domesticity is so appealing speaks to the failure of
these systems. Until these things are fixed, I predict we'll see an
increasing number of people from all parts of the political spectrum
deciding to go the DIY route with their food, their homes, their
children. And yes, this will mean more progressive people opting for
lifestyles that seem uncomfortably retro. But maybe too we'll see Rush
Limbaugh at the farmer's market.
"... Drawing on data from the [Harvard] university's library collections, the animation
below maps the number and location of printed works by year. Watch it
full screen in HD to see cities light up as the years scroll by in the
lower left corner. ..."
4. There is a U-shaped happiness curve, consistent across cultures, that shows happiness declines from childhood until about our mid-forties and then begins to improve as me grow old. It appears it may hold true in primates as well. Our ability to discount bad news, even when we shouldn't, follows the same U-shaped curve. Our brains and experience are optimal for discerning bad news in middle-age. Turns out that ignorance (or maybe denial) truly is bliss. Viewpoint: How happiness changes with age. On a related note, it appears that Elderly Brains Have Trouble Recognizing Untrustworthy Faces.
5. The holiday season is in full swing and many people falsely believe this a time of elevated suicide rates. Actually, spring and summer have the highest rates and Nov - Jan have the lowest. In 2010, July was highest and December was lowest. Holiday suicide myth persists, research says
"Michael" was in the top 3 names for boys from 1953-2010. It dropped to sixth last year. Want to know how your name ranks for each year since 1880? Go to the Social Security Online's Popular Baby Names. The Baby Name Wizard is also pretty cool.
"For the first time in Barbie’s more than 50-year history, Mattel
is introducing a Barbie construction set that underscores a huge shift
in the marketplace. Fathers are doing more of the family shopping just
as girls are being encouraged more than ever by hypervigilant parents to
play with toys (as boys already do) that develop math and science
skills early on.
It’s a combination that not only has Barbie building luxury mansions —
they are pink, of course — but Lego promoting a line of pastel
construction toys called Friends that is an early Christmas season hit.
The Mega Bloks Barbie Build ’n Style line, available next week, has both
girls — and their fathers — in mind.
“Once it’s in the home, dads would very much be able to join in this
play that otherwise they might feel is not their territory,” said Dr.
Maureen O’Brien, a psychologist who consulted on the new Barbie set...."
And this reminds me of last year, or the year before, when cooking sets were becoming big with boys. They've been watching Emeril Lagasse on the Food Network. "Bam!" New merchandising angle.
11. Love them or hate them, the Koch brothers are intriguing. Many political junkies know of them but few others seem to know about them. Forbes has an interesting feature article in the most recent issue on the Koch empire and its influence: Inside The Koch Empire: How The Brothers Plan To Reshape America
14. "Data-driven healthcare won't replace physicians entirely, but it will help those receptive to technology perform their jobs better." Technology will replace 80% of what doctors do
"Scientists have designed an energy-efficient light of plastic packed with nanomaterials that glow. The shatterproof FIPEL technology can be molded into almost any shape, but still needs to prove it's commercially viable."
"... Last month, at the first ever conference of the Sustainable
Nanotechnology Organization in Washington DC, Michail Roco of the
National Science Foundation, and architect of the U.S. National
Nanotechnology Initiative provided a response. He said, “every
industrial sector is unsustainable…and nanotechnology holds the promise
of making every one of them sustainable.”
It’s my belief that that is true: nanotechnology, or the ability to
manipulate matter at a scale of one billionth of a meter, has
far-reaching implications for the improvement of sustainable technology,
industry and society.
Already, it is being used widely to enable more sustainable
practices. Safer manufacturing, less waste generation, reusable
materials, more efficient energy technologies, better water
purification, lower toxicity and environmental impacts from chemotherapy
agents to marine paints are all current applications of nanotechnology.
There is no reason for this technology to develop in an unsustainable
manner.
In the past, a lack of foresight has resulted in costs to society – people, businesses, and governments, and—
that could have been avoided by proactive efforts to manage risks.
Today, the tools to develop safer technologies and less harmful products
exist. Let us not miss this opportunity. ..."
"It used be that news of death spread through phone calls, and before
that, letters and house calls. The departed were publicly remembered via
memorials on street corners, newspaper obituaries and flowers at grave
sites. To some degree, this is still the case. But increasingly, the
announcements and subsequent mourning occur on social media. Facebook,
with 1 billion detailed, self-submitted user profiles, was created to
connect the living. But it has become the world's largest site of
memorials for the dead."
20. From the "That's just not right!" file. Harvard Economics Department does their version of "Call me maybe."
I write about this every now and then, because human fertility is
falling faster then most demographers expect. Using the CIA Factbook for
data, the present total fertility rate for the world is 2.47 births per
woman that survives childbearing. Last year it was 2.50,
and in 2006 it was 2.90. 2.10 is replacement rate. At the current
trend, the world will be at replacement rate in 2022. That’s a lot
earlier than most expect, and it makes me suggest that global population
will top out at 8.5 Billion in 2030, lower and earlier than most
expect. ...
Educating females makes many of them want to have fewer kids,
whether the reason is pain, effort, wanting to work outside the home,
etc.
Contraception is more widely available.
The marriage rate is declining globally. Willingness to have children is positively correlated with marriage.
Governments provide an illusion of support, commonly believed,
that the government can support people in their old age, so people don’t
have kids for old age support.
The rapidly slowing rate of childbearing will have global population
peak in the early 2030s at a level in the lower 8 billions, unless there
is some further change to attitudes on children that makes people have
more or even fewer kids.
Some of those changes may come from:
governments looking to stem a shrinking population that is causing a
future problem with their social welfare programs. (Note: in general,
whatever governments offer, people don’t have materially more kids. Once
women are convinced that kids are more of a burden than an advantage,
they do not easily shift from that view, even if that view is wrong.)
Various religious leaders realizing that the women are not with the
program of growing their ranks, where contraception has become quietly
common. I am speaking mostly of Catholics and Muslims here.
Abortion, especially for sex selection reasons becomes more or less
common. Growth in future population depends heavily on the level of
fertile women, and if they are being killed or not at birth in places
like China, India, the satellite countries of the former Soviet Union,
etc… fewer women means a lower growth rate, and unhappier societies 20+
years out. ...
Amazing graphs on what happens to spending on everything from underwear to airlines as we grow up
It's that time of year again when Americans spend like crazy for their loved ones and themselves.
But everyone's needs and wants evolve dramatically with age.
HS Dent, an economic forecasting firm, compiled Census data on spending behavior and presented them as a series of demand curves (see right). The curves measure average annual expenditure for a given product over the age of the consumer.
The charts couldn't be more plain. But with a tiny bit of imagination, the curves offer a vivid look at how spending patterns change over time.
What are some things we learned? Well, men spend less on underwear as they get old, but spending on robes spike near the end of life. As we get older we use a lot less plastic cutlery. And alcohol consumption stays pretty steady from the day we turn 21 until we turn around 70.
Imagine you live in rural Montana. One hot August afternoon
you decide to barbecue some meat on a grill. Your nearest neighbor, two miles
away, decides to do the same. In fact, all your neighbors in a several square
mile area … all two or three dozen of them … decide to barbecue that afternoon.
There is no problem created by your individual actions.
Now move this though experiment to Manhattan, New York. Thousands
of people living on each city block in a neighborhood all decide to barbecue
some meat. Now you have a problem.
There is nothing inherently wrong with barbecuing and any
one individual who chooses to do so doesn’t pose a problem for anyone else. But
when this freedom is practiced in densely populated areas by many people it can
cause a problem.
It seems to me that increased population density creates
both challenges, like the barbecue example, and opportunities, like the
creation of mass transit. These realities require a degree and type of cooperation
that is not necessary in less densely populated areas; it’s not right or wrong,
but different. Yet country folks view city dwellers as controlling, while city
folks view country folks as anti-government and uncooperative.
Since the days of Barry Goldwater in the 1960s, the
Republican Party has been deeply influenced by leaders from contexts of Western
wide-open spaces. But the country is now heavily tilted toward a population
that lives in densely populated areas.
I’ve seen other articles recently that suggest that what we
have is less a red vs. blue state problem and more of a city vs. non-city
problem. Look at this chart from The Atlantic Cities taken from The Real Republican Adversary? Population Density:
I wonder if it is possible that a key component of the party
divide is this demographic shift. Cause and effect are always murky. Maybe
people with particular leanings move to contexts that mirror their values, but
I suspect a bigger influence is that our demographic context shapes our
socio-political outlook. I’m not suggesting this is the determining issue in
our divide but I think it may play a bigger role than we realize.
Poor people often do things that are against their long-term
interests such as playing the lottery, borrowing too much and saving too
little. Shah, Mullainathan and Sahfir have a new theory
to explain some of these puzzles. SMS argue that immediate problems
draw people’s attention and as people use cognitive resources to solve
these problems they have fewer resources left over to solve or even
notice other problems. In essence, it’s easier for the rich than the
poor to follow the Eisenhower
rule–”Don’t let the urgent overcome the important”–because the poor
face many more urgent tasks. My car needed a brake job the other day –
despite this being a relatively large expense I was able to cover it
without a second’s thought. Compared to a poorer person I benefited from
my wealth twice, once by being able to cover the expense and again by
not having to devote cognitive resources to solving the problem.
SMS test the theory with small experiments in which people are asked
to play simple games. Poverty is simulated by giving some players fewer
game resources. Players in the “poverty” conditions are then shown to
devote more attention to the current round and less attention to future
rounds, including borrowing more from future rounds. ...
One of my favorite blogs is Adam Smith's Lost Legacy, written by economic historian Gavin Kennedy. He frequently finds mentions of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" from around the web and then goes to work debunking the abuse of Smith's views. The metaphor, mentioned only twice in passing in The Wealth of Nations, was appropriated by economists over the last half century in support of modern notions of free markets. He wrote an intriguing article on this topic Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand: From Metaphor to Myth.
But Kennedy also helps interpret other aspects of Smith's work. Some economists apply economic principles to the formation of religious organizations and Smith is indentified as having supported a competitive religious marketplace over state run monopolies, as a way to promote religion. Kennedy writes the following in Adam Smith's Authentic Views On Church and State.
... Laurence Iannaccone’s selective
inference, upon which Tim Harford draws, that amount to saying that Smith’s
asserted that “more competitive religious marketplaces lead to
more dynamic churches”, deserves closer examination.
The key emphasis of Smith’s suggestion that a
multiplicity of local religious sects which “allowed everyman to chuse his own
priest and his own religion as he thought proper” was aimed at breaking to
relationship between authorised established state religious churches and the
state. ...
Kennedy gives a lengthy quote by Smith and then writes:
... I think these long quotations encapsulate what Smith
was about in arguing for a multiplicity of sects, namely that the very
competition of each would act as a balm on the otherwise violent, or at least
the disturbing clamour of their zealots at the expense of public
tranquility. It was not aimed at
causing larger congregations so much, perhaps, as allowing room for the tolerance of a
third-sect of potentially non-religious citizenry, living amidst a large number of
religious sects at peace with each other. ...
Understanding Smith's comments in context adds a lot. Interesting stuff!
A political scientist explains the disconnect between our moderate policy views and our intense hatred for the other side.
As another bitterly fought, closely contested presidential campaign
comes to an end, the American electorate appears hopelessly conflicted.
Even as we plead for compromise and bipartisanship in Washington, we
increasingly split into two mutually antagonistic camps.
This apparent contradiction has led puzzled academics to different conclusions: Some insist the public is becoming strongly polarized, while others believe the phenomenon is largely limited to the political and media elite. Political scientist Lilliana Mason’s analysis is more subtle, and more disturbing.
Her research
suggests that, in terms of our attitudes towards issues, we are no more
polarized than we were decades ago. But our emotions, and the behaviors
they drive, have largely uncoupled from our actual analysis of the
issues.
Essentially, the Stony Brook University scholar argues, our
identities have become increasingly intertwined with our political
affiliation. As a result, we feel ever more certain that our party is
right and the other is wrong—even in cases where their positions aren’t
far apart.
Our attitude towards the opposing party has become, basically, tribal: We detest them simply because they’re the other side.
“The American public can hold remarkably moderate and constant issue
positions, while nonetheless becoming progressively more biased, active
and angry when it comes to politics,” she argues. “Even as we agree on
most issues, we are becoming increasingly uncivil in our approach to
politics.” ...
... Mason discovered that what she calls “behavioral polarization”—anger at
the other side, activism for one’s own side, and a tendency to look at
political arguments through a biased lens—is driven much more strongly
by that sense of team spirit, as opposed to one’s views on public
policy.
“Ideological identity doesn’t necessarily reflect your position on the issues,” she said. “It means you feel like a liberal or a conservative. ...
... And the notion of defending “your people” is an emotional impulse that can be traced back to our distant evolutionary past. ...
She is not optimistic about the future.
... At least potentially, such people [non-aligned voters] are “more clear-minded in their
assessment of what the parties are doing, and less blinded by the bias
that partisans have,” she said. But on the other hand, they also tend to
be less informed about the issues, and most are disengaged from the
political process.
That leaves the rest of us: People who feel kinship with our own
side, distrust toward the other side, and wariness regarding compromise.
Mason sees no obvious way out of this distressing dynamic.
If her analysis is accurate, the only way to reduce the anger and
bias would be “to reduce the strength or alignment of political
identities.” In other words, a hugely impactful issue would have to come
along—something that forces us to question our emotional connection to
our respective parties. ...
I found this article both fascinating and depressing. What makes it deeply troubling to me is how different faith communities have aligned themselves according to political affiliation. As a consquence the church in our culture has severly compromised its ability to speak meaningfully to the issues that confront us. Near term, I share the author's lake of optimism.
How happy are you and why? This is a question I spend a fair amount of
time thinking about, not only as it applies to my own levels of
happiness, but also as it applies to my family, friends, and the people
who I work with. Since graduating with my master’s degree in positive psychology,
I’ve worked with and observed thousands of people in a wide variety of
settings, and happy people just flow with the groove of life in a unique
way. Here is what they do differently:
Here are her ten. Go to the article get more detail:
1) They build a strong social fabric.
2) They engage in activities that fit their strengths, values and lifestyle.
3) They practice gratitude.
4) They have an optimistic thinking style.
5) They know it’s good to do good.
6) They know that material wealth is only a very small part of the equation.
7) They develop healthy coping strategies.
8) They focus on health.
9) They cultivate spiritual emotions.
10) They have direction.
I particularly liked her George Burns quote at the beginning of the post:
"Happiness is having a large, caring, close-knit family in another city."
What do you think of the list? Anything you would add? Does this list make you unhappy? ;-)
“How did he get on this committee?” she asked. Several years
ago I was sitting with a friend as we looked over the names of people who had
been assigned to committees of an upcoming Presbyterian General Assembly.
Committee members were assigned (and I believe still are) randomly by a
computer program. As we scanned the names of the committee members that would be
dealing with an especially controversial topic, we discovered the name of a person
who was widely known to be a vocal advocate for one side of the controversy, the
opposite side from my friend. “How did he get on this committee? It’s so
obvious they stacked the deck against us.”
Then, not three minutes later, we were looking at the names for another committee that was also had been assigned controversial business. On
the list was man who my friend knew well and she knew he as was a strong voice for the
position she supported. She remarked, “Truly it was God’s hand that put him
on that committee.”
... Confirmation
bias is a member of the family of cognitive biases that inhabit our
brains. Cognitive biases are instances of evolved mental behavior. They
resemble mental shortcuts that have evolved in our brains over time. Our
collective confirmation biases impact how we think and how we process
information. They impact how we make decisions. Sometimes they can lead
us astray.
Confirmation
bias creates in people a tendency to favor information that confirms
their beliefs or hypotheses. It causes us to selectively seek out and
interpret information that supports our own conclusions and beliefs.
In
other words, if you are a Republican, you will inherently gravitate to
candidates, literature and programming that support your position.
Democrats do the same thing. Of concern to me lately, though, is that
the bias in our news media seems to be exploiting our confirmation
biases. This, in turn, contributes to the polarization of American
politics. ...
...In my view, our news media and
television in particular have learned to make money by preying on our
confirmation biases. Hardcore Republicans watch Fox News. Hardcore
Democrats watch MSNBC. Driven by confirmation biases, viewers lock into
the news programming that most reflects their own conclusions and
judgments. Conservatives may view Fox as their only alternative to the
otherwise biased liberal media, but nonetheless, they are still watching
Fox. Many I know watch it all the time.
The networks seem to have decided that
if our confirmation biases attract us to news that supports our beliefs,
they might as well give it to us. If our perspective is supported all
the time, we will stay tuned. All they need to do is pick a side and
stick with the story. That equates to loyal viewers, which increases
advertising revenue for the network. It also may equate to lousy,
borderline anti-social “news” broadcasts. But given the financial
realities of the world in which we live, it should come as no surprise
that this is occurring. ...
...One would think this would contribute
to the polarization of our society, and in fact, it does. One of the
effects of confirmation bias is “attitude” or “belief” polarization. As
we unknowingly pursue and interpret information in a manner consistent
with our beliefs, our positions become more polarized. The de-evolution
of the news media from responsible journalism to biased reporting has no
doubt contributed to the polarized, uncompromising nature of our
electorate.
Our cognitive biases are exploited by
the Internet, too. If you are a politically active person with strong
opinions on politics, ask yourself whether your inbox contains any
messages from individuals whose perspectives differ from your own. All
of the mass-forwarded emails that assault our computers every day take a
toll on our perspective. They contribute to belief polarization....
This paragraph is important.
... None of us, of course, is immune from confirmation bias. We all have it.
The best we can do is be aware of it and try to combat it. We need to
demand more from our news sources. We need to actively seek out
information that supports views different than our own, and seriously
consider it. We need to change the channel more often. ...
I've heard that the deeper into confirmation bias we
go, the more a physiological change begins to happen. Supposedly, as we find
confirmation for our views about controversial issues, endorphins are released.
Incessant searching for confirmation can become a type of addiction.
Supposedly, when we encounter information that counters our view, cortisol gets
dumped into the system, motivating us to avoid such encounters (or to have such
encounters in anticipation of an endorphin generated high coming from
vanquishing an enemy).
Whether
or not the physiological consequences are all that strong, it is clear to me
that confirmation bias is a powerful influence. We all do it. (If you think you
don't, then you aren't being fully honest with yourself.) It is a natural and
useful process enabling us to cope with a world that is vastly more complex
than our limited human faculties are capable of processing. And that suggests a
few things to me.
First,
when it comes to seeing confirmation bias evidenced in others, especially in
opponents, I need to chill out. If ever Jesus's instruction to take the log out
of my own eye before getting a speck out of our brother's eye applied, it is
here. Compounding the confirmation bias evidenced in my sister or brother is my
own smug confidence that I never err in this way. Maybe each time I begin to
engage others when I see ugly forms of confirmation bias evidenced, I should
see this as a spiritual discipline, prompting me to examine and repent of my
own biases before I engage.
Second, I
probably need to embrace the fact that, to a degree, confirmation bias is a
natural and necessary part of being human. But I also need to be on my guard
from seeking out confirmation simply to make me more secure or to reinforce my
disdain for others. I need to be aware of those who have something to profit
(political power? self-affirmation? TV ratings?) by helping me confirm my bias.
Finally,
confirmation bias can also be a way of developing community, reinforcing
community with those who share my bias over and against those who do not. Yet
somebody once suggested, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate
you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you." Love isn't
about having warm fuzzies. It's about seeking the good of the other, especially
people I don't like. I suspect one of the biggest remedies to excessive
confirmation bias is to resolutely stay in community with those how don't share
my bias, and ponder what good I can do for them.
Laughter may be the best medicine. But how do you administer it?
Scientists
have long recognized the wide-ranging health benefits of humour, from
reducing stress and improving morale to even decreasing the risk of
cardiovascular disease. Yet pinpointing what actually makes things funny
has been elusive thus far.
At the University of Colorado, Boulder, marketing and psychology
professor Peter McGraw has been mulling over this puzzle since 2008 and
at last, he and his fellow researchers have put a finger on an answer:
Humour equals tragedy plus time. ...
... In the study, McGraw and his team discovered that severe violations
are funniest when they are temporally, socially or spatially distant,
whereas mild violations are funniest when they are psychologically
close. For example, a joke about a relatively severe violation such as
the photos of the Duchess of Cambridge’s bare breasts would be far
better received by those who don’t personally know her than by members
of the Royal Family. Yet the Duchess herself may eventually laugh about
it when enough time has passed.
On the other hand, a minor mishap
like slipping on a banana peel is only funny immediately – and it is
likely to elicit maximum chuckles if it happens to you or to someone you
know. Over time, such mishaps lose their humour. ...
This piece is the introduction to a new report on
post-familialism from Civil Service College in Singapore, Chapman
University, and Fieldstead and Company and authored by Joel Kotkin.
For most of human history, the family — defined by parents, children
and extended kin — has stood as the central unit of society. In
Europe, Asia, Africa and, later, the Americas and Oceania, people
lived, and frequently worked, as family units.
Today, in the high-income world, and even in some developing
countries, we are witnessing a shift to a new social model.
Increasingly, family no longer serves as the central organizing feature
of society. An unprecedented number of individuals — approaching
upwards of 30% in some Asian countries — are choosing to eschew child
bearing altogether and, often, marriage as well.
The post-familial phenomena has been most evident in the high income
world, notably in Europe, North America and, most particularly,
wealthier parts of East Asia. Yet it has bloomed as well in many key
emerging countries, including Brazil, Iran and a host of other Islamic
countries.
The reasons for this shift are complex, and vary significantly in
different countries and cultures. In some countries, particularly in
East Asia, the nature of modern competitive capitalism often forces
individuals to choose between career advancement and family formation.
As a result, these economies are unwittingly setting into motion forces
destructive to their future workforce, consumer base and long-term
prosperity.
The widespread movement away from traditional values — Hindu,
Muslim, Judeo-Christian, Buddhist or Confucian — has also undermined
familialism. Traditional values have almost without exception been
rooted in kinship relations. The new emerging social ethos endorses
more secular values that prioritise individual personal socioeconomic
success as well as the personal quest for greater fulfilment. ...
... A society that is increasingly single and childless is likely to be
more concerned with serving current needs than addressing the future
oriented requirements of children. Since older people vote more than
younger ones, and children have no say at all, political power could
shift towards nonchildbearing people, at least in the short and medium
term. We could tilt more into a ‘now’ society, geared towards consuming
or recreating today, as opposed to nurturing and sacrificing for
tomorrow.
The most obvious impact from post-familialism lies with demographic
decline. It is already having a profound impact on fiscal stability in,
for example, Japan and across southern Europe. With fewer workers
contributing to cover pension costs,4 even successful places like
Singapore will face this same crisis in the coming decade.5
A diminished labour force — and consumer base — also suggest slow
economic growth and limit opportunities for business expansion. For one
thing, younger people tend to drive technological change, and their
absence from the workforce will slow innovation. And for many people,
the basic motivation for hard work is underpinned by the need to
support and nurture a family. Without a family to support, the very
basis for the work ethos will have changed, perhaps irrevocably. ...
As I read this article, I kept thinking about the frequent question that is at the core of so many discussions I hear about the future of congregations: "How can we get more families?" As I recall, something like half of American adults do not live in a traditional family and the percentage is slowly rising.
Melissa and I have been married for twenty-five years (I think she feels like its been more) and we ended up without kids. What has been clear to us is how much, in our society, relationships for adults in the first half of adulthood emerge from interacting with the parents of your children's schoolmates and playmates. This is especially true within most congregations I've seen. It takes effort to stay included in such communities. The challenge is radically more profound if you are single without children. Single parents with children have a different struggle.
I think some of the strain we see on the institutions of the church is, at one level, parents in traditional families feeling agnst as they become the minority of households. They are looking for resources and support networks that were once ubiquitious. The church tries meet that need. At the same time, people in less traditional households are slipping out the back door of the church into an "unaffliated" status as the church, with it's family obsession, seems to have nothing meaningful to say to their life cirucmstances.
My take is that if the church is to have a meaningful witness in our time that theraputic Pietism and/or recruiting people into justice advocacy are not the answer. Somehow the church has to help people understand how the mission of God connects with the routines of their daily lives, regardless of what tradtional or nontraditional form those routines may take. Then, and only then, will legitimate expressions of pietism and pursing justice emerge.
... In recently published paper, Ravi Iyer from the
University of Southern California, together with Dr. Haidt and
other researchers at the data-collection platform YourMorals.org, dissect the personalities of
those who describe themselves as libertarian. ...
... The study collated the results of 16 personality surveys and
experiments completed by nearly 12,000 self-identified libertarians
who visited YourMorals.org. The researchers compared the
libertarians to tens of thousands of self-identified liberals and
conservatives. It was hardly surprising that the team found that
libertarians strongly value liberty, especially the "negative
liberty" of freedom from interference by others. Given the
philosophy of their heroes, from John Locke and John Stuart Mill to
Ayn Rand and Ron Paul, it also comes as no surprise that
libertarians are also individualistic, stressing the right and the
need for people to stand on their own two feet, rather than the
duty of others, or government, to care for people.
Perhaps more intriguingly, when libertarians reacted to moral
dilemmas and in other tests, they displayed less emotion, less
empathy and less disgust than either conservatives or liberals.
They appeared to use "cold" calculation to reach utilitarian
conclusions about whether (for instance) to save lives by
sacrificing fewer lives. They reached correct, rather than
intuitive, answers to math and logic problems, and they enjoyed
"effortful and thoughtful cognitive tasks" more than others do.
The researchers found that libertarians had the most "masculine"
psychological profile, while liberals had the most feminine, and
these results held up even when they examined each gender
separately, which "may explain why libertarianism appeals to men
more than women."
All Americans value liberty, but libertarians seem to value it
more. For social conservatives, liberty is often a means to the end
of rolling back the welfare state, with its lax morals and
redistributive taxation, so liberty can be infringed in the
bedroom. For liberals, liberty is a way to extend rights to groups
perceived to be oppressed, so liberty can be infringed in the
boardroom. But for libertarians, liberty is an end in itself,
trumping all other moral values. ...
I think one of the biggest blind spots of libertarians is an assumption of hyper-rationality in how people make decisions. Libertarians are frequently perplexed at how "stupid" or irrational people are, yet they expect freedom to result in a society where everyone rationally pursues what is in their best interests. In that sense, I think liberals and libertarians have, as Jonathan Haidt suggests (The Righteous Mind), a narrower sense of morality than conservatives, focused on justice and freedom respectively. Haidt discovered that conservatives were much better at acurately percieving the motives and rationale of liberals than liberals were of conservatives. I suspect something similar is true for conservatives and libertarians.
I don't think people can be neatly divided into these groups and it is inaccurate to talk in monolithic terms. Still, I think there are proclivities and tendencies in evidence. What do you think?
I received a news alert from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life where they ran a slide show
of religious affiliations and political party, and given that they ran
one of the few Asian American surveys ever, I thought surely they would
add in the Asian Americans this time. Alas no. So I found the numbers
from both the July report
and from the recent slideshow to put together a few figures that help
us put race and religion in a more comprehensive picture of where a lot
of religiously-identified voters stand:
There is a lot of interesting info in this post. I'll just highlight one chart:
I'm looking at the White Mainline numbers. I think our routine denominational suvey's would show that significantly more Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., folks identify as politically conservative, but pastors are substantially more liberal.
Researcher Jonathan Haidt delves into the psychology of red state/blue state, and offers hope for reconciliation.
Jonathan Haidt is concerned, like many Americans, with the way our
country has become divided and increasingly unable to work together to
solve looming threats. Yet, unlike most Americans, he is a psychologist
and specialist on the origins of morality. A few years ago, he began to
wonder what he might do, and the result is a book,
“The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and
Religion.” In it, Haidt examines the roots of our morality, and how they
play out on the stage of history. What he offers is not a solution to
the red-state-blue-state problem but a different way to think about it —
and a modicum of hope. Haidt answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook. ...
... Cook: I am interested to know what you made of the two political conventions, from the perspective of the book?
Haidt: I was mostly struck by how much the culture war
has shifted to economic issues. These days it’s fought out over the
three moral foundations that everyone values: Care/harm,
Fairness/cheating, and Liberty/oppression. The Democrats say that
government must care for people, and that government programs are
necessary to make America fair – to level the playing field, and give
people the basic necessities that they need to enjoy liberty, especially
education and health care. George W. Bush once called himself a
"compassionate conservative," but Republicans in the Tea Party era don't
talk much about compassion. For them, government is the cause of
massive unfairness – taking money from taxpayers (the "makers" and "job
creators") and giving it to slackers and freeloaders (Romney's "47
percent"). Government is seen as the principle threat to liberty. The
private sector is much more trusted.
This is a huge shift from the period between 1992 and 2004, when the
culture war was fought out mostly between social conservatives,
particularly the religious right, and the secular left. It was fought
out primarily over the three moral foundations that we call the
"binding" foundations, because they bind people together into tight
moral communities: Loyalty/betrayal (for example, issues of patriotism
and flag protection), Authority/subversion (for example, respect for
parents, and whether parents and teachers can spank children), and
Sanctity/degradation (which includes most bioethical issues pitting the
sanctity of life against a more harm-based or utilitarian ethos). This
older culture war re-emerged briefly with Rick Santorum's turn in the
spotlight, but then it faded away. The Republican Party in particular
has changed, and the moral arguments made in this Republican convention
were very different. ...
... Cook: We live in a deeply divided time. I wonder what in your book you think offers the most hope for getting past that?
Haidt: Ultimately, the solutions to our polarization
and political dysfunction will be legal and institutional changes which
reduce the power of extremists in both parties, and which force the
parties back to their traditional strategy of competing for the middle,
rather than the strategy, used since 2004, of pleasing one’s own base.
We need more states to adopt open primaries and non-partisan
redistricting, we need to reduce the role of the Senate filibuster,
reduce the role of money in elections… a variety of things like that,
which my colleagues and I discuss at www.CivilPolitics.org.
But before there will ever be bipartisan public support for such
measures, we have to get over the demonizing – the idea that my side is
completely right and the other side is evil. We can compromise with
opponents, but not with enemies that we think are evil. My highest hope
for the book is that people who read it will see that the other side is
just as much motivated by moral concerns, and they'll see that those
concerns are not necessarily crazy. Each side cares about different
threats to our nation which the other side largely fails to see. So far,
emails I get from readers tell me that this is working: People don't
move to the center after reading the book, but they seem to get less
angry at the brother-in-law whose politics they once found repugnant. ...
... Cook: And, if I may quote one of your chapter titles, "Why can't we disagree more constructively?"
Haidt: We humans are really good at forming groups to
compete, and then dissolving the groups and reforming them along
different lines to compete in a different way. Two people might be
teammates at work, but competitors on Saturdays in an intramural soccer
league, but sing in the same church choir on Sunday. Such shifting teams
are normal and healthy. American political parties used to be shifting
coalitions of interest groups.
But what's happened in the last 30 years, ever since the Southern
conservatives left the Democratic Party and joined the Republicans, is
that we now have a perfect sort along a single omni-present axis:
liberal versus conservative. The Congress is no longer a check on the
executive, as the founders had intended. Rather, a bright line runs
through the middle of congress, and through the Supreme Court. The
members of each party in all three branches of government are one team,
united to fight the other. And the same bright line runs through so many
of our institutions, and even neighborhoods.
When the two teams are stable, and when the people on each team really
are different from each other, in personality and in values, the lines
harden and it’s hard to avoid demonizing the other side. Their beliefs
are a threat to everything our side holds dear, so we can't compromise
with them. Why even bother listening to them? All they do is lie, to
cover up their true motives. This is why my goal in the book is not to
get people to agree, it's to get people to stop the demonizing. My hope
is that readers will find it easier to disagree more constructively, and
therefore easier to negotiate, compromise, and coexist.
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