A Scientific Understanding of Human Nature and a Revolution in Political Thought

In Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 analysis of the history of scientific progress, he describes a Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by which science does not progress linearly but is segmented by abrupt upheavals, or what he calls “paradigm shifts”. In the field of scientific psychology, the shift to an increasingly neurocognitive foundation has been described as just such a ‘revolution’. In other words, the study of how we perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems is increasingly focused on the brain itself. Empowered with a variety of sophisticated instruments, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomography (PET), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), cognitive psychologists have managed to discover how these activities arise mechanistically from physical structures within the brain.

These activities--perceiving, remembering, thinking, speaking, and solving problems--are all central to politics. Accordingly, interest in their neurocognitive bases is growing within some circles of political science. Yet as a whole, the field remains reticent toward, or even dismissive, of materialist perspectives on the mind. Skepticism at new, “revolutionary” ideas is a healthy scientific practice. However, this idea is not new in the slightest. In 1754, the Enlightenment-era luminary Jean-Jacques Rousseau observed, “Every animal has ideas, since it has senses; it even combines those ideas in a certain degree; and it is only in degree that man differs, in this respect, from the brute....[P]hysics may explain, in some measure, the mechanism of the senses and the formation of ideas; ...”. Unfortunately, this insight was lost from the canon of modern political philosophy, which has clung more tightly to the caveat that followed. Rousseau continued, “...but in the power of willing or rather of choosing, and in the feeling of this power, nothing [in the mind] is to be found but acts which are purely spiritual and wholly inexplicable by the laws of mechanism.”

In his private notes, the great naturalist Charles Darwin asserted, “Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.” For a variety of reasons--cultural, historical, and religious--Western culture has shirked conclusions which compromise a deeply held faith in the dualist separation of mind from body. This distinction defines who we are, as divine, spiritual beings only temporarily inhabiting a physical form. Genesis chapter 2 verse 7 asserts, “[T]he Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life’ and man became a living soul.” Whether the motivation was to preserve the sanctity of an idea which stands at the foundation of the Christian faith, or just plain pride, Western culture--political scientists included--has remained stubborn in the face of virtually any evidence to the contrary.

An exhaustive, exegetic study of origins and tenacity of dualism in Western culture is beyond the scope of this essay. However, I felt it necessary to provide some contextual background to a belief that, to this day, has real and practical implications for both politics and the study of politics. As a practical matter, ideas about human nature are a fundamental prerequisite to any further thinking on governance. Insofar as government is the systematic organization of human potential for a common purpose, governmental systems must rely on some assumptions of the characteristics of human beings. Just as an engineer could not build an engine without ideas about how gases, liquids, and metals behave, theorists of government must rely on comparable knowledge of what makes humans tick--how humans perceive the world, their motivations, how they reach judgements, and how their motivations can be manipulated to influence their judgment to behave like good citizens. Thus, the forms of government that we create are a function of our beliefs about human nature. If you share Hobbes’ view that the pains of privation, jealously and fear ensnare human beings in a desperate, frenzied quest for wealth and power, then your cold realism will find reason the doctrines of conservatism. Alternatively, if you believe like Rousseau that humans are inherently good--that they are noble in their innocence, and learn corruption only reluctantly to survive under the oppressive inequality of an unjust civilization--then you may find hope in the liberal creed that when societies are re-engineered to maximize justice, perpetual peace will follow.

The modern governments of today are the product of Enlightenment ideas about human nature. Constitutional democracy and capitalism, as the hallmarks of political modernity, are built upon the assumption that individuals are endlessly motivated by insatiable material desires. Like wise engineers, Enlightenment luminaries recognized the energy potential of greed as a fuel to drive the engines of society. In the 1987 film Wall Street, the ruthless corporate raider cum anti-hero Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) gave a stirring appeal to this principle. Before the indignant board of directors of his latest acquisition, Gekko stridently observed the righteousness of his hostile take-over, “

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

The remarkable expansion of human civilization since the dawn of the Enlightenment era is a testament to the brilliance of its luminaries' insight into human nature. It may then be all too easy treat these men as prophets, not men—albeit great ones—of their times. However brilliant, these insights were reached in times still ignorant of the innumerable scientific discoveries the political systems they designed would help to bring about. Among these discoveries, are a preponderance of data showing that the mind is exclusively the emergent property of an immensely complex physical organ, the human brain, a biological machine custom-crafted for specialized adaptive functions over eons by the forces of natural selection. Today, cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists are uncovering and deciphering its blueprints. In some cases, scientists are harnessing these blueprints to build artificial minds.

Yet as these new fields continue to produce new insights into human nature, political thought, particularly in the arenas of public policy and institutional theory, have not advanced. This, I argue, is a dangerous situation. Akin to the challenge of global warming, we will not be afforded the luxury of ignoring the inconvenient truths that rub against our fragile, cultural sensibilities. This knowledge exists, and knowledge is power—perhaps never so literally as in this case. If political systems do not rely on the best knowledge of human nature to generate positive social utility, individuals may rely on that knowledge to exploit the system, generating socially negative, privately positive utility.

This is already happening. Amidst the cacophonous raucous of modern telecommunications, savvy political and economic actors are engaged in an all out war for the mind of voters and consumers. In their arsenals are powerful, multi-media tools capable of manipulating psycho-emotional systems adapted by evolution in order to cope with very different threats. For example, political campaign advertisements exploit the associative, stimulus-respondent nature of memory with the presentation of symbols that “prime” viewers in ways to render viewers more supple to their persuasion and resistant to that of their competitors. Through repetition, it is possible to create associations between juxtaposed objects that will permanently bias thinking and reasoning processes, confounding them together with instinctual behavioral mechanisms. For example, in an advertisement targeting evangelical Christians, the subtle presentation of a crucifix between the lines of a bookcase behind the candidate may serve to affix the sense of a shared group identity. Alternatively, the presentation of a competitor juxtaposed with symbols of threats to that group identity (e.g., images of Osama bin Ladin and a collapsing World Trade Center) may affix an association of the competitor with a hostile outgroup. Direct physiological measurements of stress can confirm that in former case remain calm, relaxed, indicating a sense of security, while in the latter case viewers may exhibit symptoms of stress, such as accelerated heart rate, sweaty palms, and stress hormone levels. These measurements suggest the activation of instinctual fight-or-flight mechanisms, which in laboratory settings can be shown to induce psychotropic effects making subjects that impair faculties for critical reasoning and judgment.

What does all this portend for political science? First, the above reasoning draws into sharp relief the imperative for political psychologists to more proactively engage in the normative discourse. The nature of our subject matter does not afford us the luxury of scientific dispassion. Our findings have real implications for the lives of people and society. If we do not lead the way to more enlightened forms of government, then all we are doing is showing electioneers how to “hack” the political system by exploiting neurocognitive vulnerabilities in human beings. Secondly, the new science of human nature must be incorporated into the field of political science at foundational level; i.e., as a prerequisite to upper division coursework in an undergraduate political science major.

It is not uncommon to hear a young student in the zoological sciences grumble over having to take organic chemistry, lamenting what an excruciating exercise in futility it is to learn skills they are unlikely ever to use. Yet organic chemistry is the basis of life, and thus defines the basis of the life sciences at all levels of analysis. Indeed, zoologists may not do o-chem as part of their daily routine, but as they advance in their careers they frequently come to appreciate its importance, and show gratitude to the professors who forced them to learn it by forcing their students to do the same. Like organic chemistry in the context of a biology degree, I emphasize that a modern, scientific understanding of human nature must come early on in a political science student's career, before he is compelled to choose one of the fields myriad sub-fields. Just as organic chemistry is the basis of life, neurocognitive psychology is the basis of behavior, of which politics is a subset.

While such knowledge is unlikely to become part of the daily lexicon of pubic policy practitioners and the policy makers, familiarity with the neurocognitive basis of politics will be increasingly necessary to understand large scale movements in the electorate, as savvier entities reshape it in accordance to their own designs. The political polarization we observe today may be just such an effect. Further, it is crucial that the scientific revolution in human nature reach the realm of political theory. As the age the Enlightenment gave birth to nears its final days, we will all be relying upon a new generation of theorists to design the political systems that will carry us through to the next. To the degree that we fear such a project would compromise our scientific integrity, failing to make this effort would violate our integrity as educators.

The Consolation for Cosmic Indifference

"In the long-run, none of this will matter anyway."

-December 11, 2010

Why it's important to read the cables.

Today the Anons announced "Operation: Leakspin". The ostensible goal of Leakspin is to build an anonymous, international army of citizen journalists doing whatever it takes to blast information in front of people's faces, especially those who wouldn't ordinarily look for it. Hence, the suggestion to use misleading taglines like "Justin Bieber", etc.

When the flyer (linked above) came to me I thought to share it with a friend who might have interest. She responded expressing the same puzzlement I was experiencing: "What's the point?" I mean, don't the big news media outlets have like entire staffs of people up to their ears in these cables, pouring through them to find the most startling revelations? She asserted what we need is a "movement", suggesting Leakspin might be a waste of time. I thought about it for a moment and concluded the following:

There can be no movement unless people start moving. Look, we have become far to reliant on the major media outlets. At the moment, we're primarily relying on Der Speigel and the UK Guardian to make sense of the cables, while the American media is too busy playing up the whole "International mystery man vs. terrorist" debate. Even this, of course, will drop from the headlines as soon as the notoriously short American attention span begins to attenuate.

Not this time. We have to be involved, people. Read the cables yourself. Make a personal investment and you might find that your interest in this street fight is longer-lived than than than the next "Breaking News". The people behind Wikileaks have risked more than any of us could ever imagine in order to give us the materials we need to be citizen journalists. Perhaps for the moment we may be unlikely to find some revelations that the big news outlets are apt to miss, but sooner or later the they're going to move on. Then we're on our own.

You don't have to read all of them, just give it a try. In the very least, you may learn something about the day-to-day workings of international diplomacy, not all of which are scandelous. In fact, sometimes it looks like government is even doing the right thing--a detail which even the Guardian and Der Spiegal can omit.

http://www.wikileaks.ch/cablegate.html

What if liberals and conservatives were the same people?

I can think of few situations where I am inclined to feel so at odds with someone than amidst a contentious political or theological debate. By 'at odds', I don't mean merely with regard to the specific policy or question at hand, but fundamental opposition spiritually, intellectually, culturally, and morally. Well, I should qualify this in that I don't always feel this way in the face of disagreement, but the closer the argument hits home to my core beliefs and attitudes the more apt I am to do so. Indeed, there are a small few topics for which I hold my opinions so tightly that I cannot believe someone holding a contrary opinion could even be the same species as I. Wouldn't be ironic if it turned out my adversaries were really two a kind—and by 'kind' I mean phenotype.

In a recent paper, behavioral social social scientists Smirnov, Dawes, Fowler, Johnson, and McElreath discovered evidence that may be the case. The conventional view of political partisanship is equated with political party identification, which is presumed to emerge from a “general consistency” in one's attitudes, ideals, and expectations about the world (Smirnov et al, 2010). The more consistent an individual's views are with those typical of his party's platform, the greater partisan he is. Using computational simulation and laboratory experimentation, Smirnov and his co-authors challenged this view, showing evidence that one's penchant for partisanship, independent of their attitudes, constitutes a unique dimension on which people vary. Specifically, they suggest that partisanship is a manifestation of an underlying disposition toward strong reciprocity. Reciprocity in general refers to one's tendency to 'reciprocate' gestures of good will, e.g., “I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine”, or the way you might expect a neighbor to lend you a hedge clipper after you lent him a mower. Strong reciprocity, more specifically, refers to one's tendency to engage in these cooperative behaviors even when there is no expectation of reciprocation; it is more altruistic in the sense that they are “taking one for the team”.

Numerous studies find that altruism can evolve by natural selection in the presence of intergroup competition (Boyd, Gintis, Bowles and Richardson, 2003; Sober and Wilson, 1998). Amidst fierce intergroup competition, collective cohesion to standards of cooperation can make the difference between survival and death for the group. In practice, ideals and beliefs act like glue to hold communities together, homogenizing a population with respect to norms, and thereby delineating the boundaries of the group against the world of others (Boyd, also see Kurzban and Sidanius, 2003). In other words, an individual's ideals function to inform him with whom he should cooperate, as well as who stands as a threat to his group's by holding contrary beliefs, or holding the right beliefs but without adequate enthusiasm.

Individuals are ever tempted to defect from norms as they deem fit to ensure their private interests. For any group, maintaining the commitment of its members to norms in the face of individual self-interest is a basic challenge for survival. The capacity to enforce norms, therefore, can be considered a public good. In the behavioral economics literature, experiments have repeatedly found that participants are willing to incur substantial costs to themselves in order to punish defectors (Fehr and Gachter, 2002). This behavior is observed not only experimentally, but empirically. Citing several studies, Smirnov and his co-authors point out that “various forms of costly self-enforcement of cooperative behavior are customary in communities around the world and it is common to punish those who free ride on others' personally costly efforts to use natural resources like fisheries, water, grazing lands, forests, and wildlife (also see Ostrom, 1990, Henrich et al., 2006, and Smirnov, 2007). This punishment, in turn, promotes cooperation ultimately yielding benefits for everyone in the group. Individuals who act selflessly to maintain public goods thus engage in a form of strong reciprocity.

When we decry the intransigence of blind “partisans” in a political debate, aren't we then rebelling against their honest, selfless attempt to look out for group cohesion? In Smirnov et al's study, they find that the individuals most likely to punish non-cooperators in a public goods game were also the most likely to be strong political partisans. Interestingly, this behavior did not significantly predict party identification, and by extension cannot predict the content of beliefs. Thus, for these strongly reciprocating punishers, the content of political thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes are arbitrary and irrelevant—so long as they are held strongly and uniformly across the community, they are doing their job, which is to be the mortar that cements together a united front in the struggle for intergroup dominance.

So what if it turned out that my interlocutor in a heated debate, this person that so repulses that I scarcely can allow myself to believe we are of the same species, is actually my evolutionary brother, who fate determined for its own inexplicable reasons to place on the opposite side? Our beliefs are arbitrary, but we are alike driven by an innate intolerance for challenges to accepted norms, and a willingness to sacrifice our own interests for what we believe to be good for society. If we can for a moment subdue the blind righteousness with which we hold our respective views, perhaps we can see a way to respect each other's tenacity, determination, and selflessness. Much like two opposing samurai on a battlefield, we might look past the fate's arbitrary choice that we should find ourselves in the service of warring lords, and admire each other for the honor, loyalty, and courage with which we serve.

________________

Smirnov, Dawes, Fowler, Johnson and McElreath. (2010). The Behavioral Logic of Collective Action: Partisans Cooperate and Punish More Than Non-Partisans. Political Psychology. Vol 31. No. 4.

Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (2002). Social capital and community governance. Economic Journal, 112

Boyd, R., Gintis, H., Bowles, S., & Richerson, P. J. (2003). The evolution of altruistic punishment. PNAS.

Fehr, E., & Gächter, S. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature.

Henrich, J., McElreath, R., Barr, A., Ensimger, J., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A., Cardenas, J. C., Gurven, M., Gwako, E., Henrich, N., Lesorogol, C., Marlowe, F., Tracer, D., & Ziker, J. (2006) Costly punishment across human societies. Science.

Thoughts on consciousness

Why don’t we give children and adolescents the vote, i.e., allow them to make decisions about sex, alcohol, and war? The simple answer is because we accept the premise that they are as yet too young to grasp the full consequences of their action. If they can have no conception of the consequences of their actions, then how can they attain genuine awareness of what it is they’re doing? If our working description of consciousness is as the state of awareness concerning what it is we’re doing and, crucially, why we’re doing it, we may therefore be imply the conclusion that adolescents lack it, or at least that its yet incomplete.

I find it interesting that when we recall events from the past (even fairly recent past) it still seems as if they took place at a time before we gained the property of awareness we currently posses. Perhaps we might shrug off this uncomfortable feeling: bah... I was so x back then! where x is some accessible description of one’s own character or demeanor. In other words, I was at that time not yet come to my wits... unduly influenced by a deformation of awareness. Back then, we “didn’t know” about things that we do now. How naive we were. Surely, if you would have asked us at the time we thought we were aware, then we would have affirmed it to you as confidently as we would today. But if we know today that in the past we would have, in fact, been wrong, how can we be sure that we won’t be saying the same thing about right now some days or years in the future?

A week or so ago my professor of cognition asked us the question ‘what is consciousness’. It occurred to me that, whatever it is, it must have something to do with what I call the absolute presence of now. For lack of a better term, I’m talking about the cerebral rush of colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures, that collect together to form a pool of self-hood. Mirror! Mirror! On the water, who is the most x of them all? Compared with the absolute presence of now, memories from even a moment ago are pale shadows of their former glory. As the present slides inexorably forward on a line of time, what was the present becomes a memory and its characteristic intensity of the present will be ripped from it and rushed into what is coming.

Let’s restate what’s been suggested: consciousness is inseparable from the present, and it also appears to be the mechanism that confers intensity to impressions. If these two premises are true, then it would explain why memories are so pale: since consciousness is bound to the present, it cannot be applied to impressions from the past, for if it was we would be experiencing all over again the past with the absolute presence of now. Additionally, it seems these premises may also explain our apparent inability to ascribe consciousness to some minds from the past, as well as children and adolescents. Specifically, the mechanism of consciousness may play a role in how we generate theories of other minds (i.e., are able to perceive other people and animals as having minds). Without the personal experience of consciousness, we may be unable to incorporate the property of consciousness into a theory of other minds. Since we cannot experience consciousness within impressions from the past, we are unable to believe that minds in the past had consciousnesses either. In memories, everybody is sleepwalking, going about the world, interacting with people and things, but lacking awareness.

Putting this together: ‘Consciousness’ is a sensational result following an impulse whose function is to trap our attention around colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures happening now. If it didn’t carry out this function, we might wind up making decisions upon what was true in the past (but no longer). Obviously, this could be dangerous and may have been subject to evolutionary pressure. In sum, consciousness is only another cognitive bias on a long list of others. This consciousness bias causes us impressions from the present to stand out among impressions from the past, or memories, and thus exert greater influence on decisions to be made now. Impressions from the past may still be influential, but only in a preconscious, online process in which all impressions from the past are combined into a single feeling about is happening: a sense of goodness, comfort, stress, or danger, and reoccur as a new impression and considered along side the rest occurring now. Consciousness also seems to play a role in generating theories of mind, perhaps by establishing bounds around the impressions that influencing the decisions of others. Interestingly, we don’t treat all minds equally. Children made forgivable mistakes because they didn’t know any better, but criminals had intent. Genuine internal states seem more likely to be granted to people we distrust or are threatened by, but not those whom consider benign; i.e. children, adolescents, ourselves, and perhaps a close circle of kin who we can as well imagine being more like naive pawns of external conditions during the moment of any past actions, achieving at best only a deformed awareness that cannot be culpable for the consequences of its actions.

A question for another day: If consciousness is only a side-effect of a mechanism to bias evaluations of the newest impressions, can free will exist? It would there is very little left for a will to do. Rather, the hardware of the mind is estimating a utility function, or a fitness function, and discharging a behavior most likely to maximize the function.

Random thought on neuroscience and economics

As neuroimaging technologies become cheaper and more readily available to experimental game theorists at capable, yet modestly funded public universities, I expect increasingly close ties between behavioral economics and neuroscience, such that one day we may no longer distinguish between the two at all.

The convergence of behavioral economics and cognitive neuroscience is a natural partnership. In recent decades, economists have had to face the facts that human behavior consistently deviates from the expectations of their rational actor models. Evolutionary psychologists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides helped to make this disparity intelligible, reframing the problem in a Darwinian, adaptationist logic: The basis of behavioral economics should not be rationality in action, but “rationality in design”.

To accept this principle was for behavioral economists an acknowledgment of a biological basis of human behavior. However difficult a pill this was to swallow, an evolutionary biological perspective offered something potentially invaluable to behavioral economists. The workhorse unit of measurement in microeconomics, utility, has only existed thus far as an abstraction. For the biologist, there is a physical record of utility in the form of genetic code and by extension physical and behavioral traits. This utility was truly experienced and had contributed to the successful life and reproduction of an organism; its genetic signature selected for preservation by natural selection.

The genetic signatures of behavioral traits are manifest as physical structures in the brain. The study of how cognition emerges from these structures is called neuroscience. Though neuroscientists study nervous systems generally and make use of opportunities to study all kinds of them, from simple manifestations like that of the nematode worm to the more complex variety of vertebrates, there is no mistake that the grand prize is the human brain. The human brain is a special brain in numerous regards, but perhaps none more so than in its capacity for socially interactive decision-making. Accordingly, for neuroscientists interested in the human brain, the study of social decision-making offers singular leverage on “the hard problem.” Quite serendipitously, social decision-making is the fundamental province of behavioral economics.

The similarities do not stop there. Like behavioral economics, neuroscience also makes regular use of laboratory controlled experiments using both human and non-human primates. Experiments frequently involve eliciting specific behaviors or activities on the part of the participant, whilst employing various invasive and non-invasive technologies to record physical processes taking place in the brain. Incorporation of the techniques of experimental economics, i.e. social exchange games, was primarily limited by the know-how required to conduct and interpret them. Their reward is a new window on the human brain, and in return for their cooperation economists acquire a physical quantity representing their holy grail of metrics, utility.

On religion and the last liberals.

Note: This is a short paper I wrote last year. Parts of it may be wrong, but I thought it would still serve as a conversation starter. I hope you will find it provocative. I must repeat my standard disclaimer: Just because I wrote it, or said it, doesn't necessarily mean that I believe it.

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe…”
– H.G. Wells, Outline of History: The Whole Story of Man

Introduction

Using methodological techniques and data forms from the field of behavioral genetics, Alford, Funk, and Hibbing showed compelling evidence that genetics plays an important part in shaping political attitudes and ideologies (Alford et al 2005). Specifically, by comparing the differential correlations of the attitudes of monozygotic twins and dizygotic twins, the authors were able to mathematically estimate the shaping influence of genetic versus environmental factors. Of their many interesting findings, I will consider the following in greater detail: 1) Genetic transmission frequently affects clusters, or “packages”, of political attitudes, and 2) Genetics accounts for approximately half (53%) the variance in the “index of political Conservatism”. Motivated to understand the potential consequences of these startling conclusions, I will first explore the concept of group selection as revealed in the Sidanius and Kurzban chapter. Following on, I will consider aspects of political conservatism that suggest a possible role for group selection. In the third section, I will discuss the research of Satoshi Kanazawa, which viewed in the light of Alford et al’s findings may point at some group selective pressures affecting liberals. Finally, I will make some concluding remarks, including a short bit of commentary.
Understanding Group Selection

Sidanius and Kurzban define a “group” is “any set of individuals that have a fitness impact on one another” (p.151). Importantly, a degree of relatedness is not part of this definition. In my mind, the clearest evidence of group selection in nature is symbiotic relationships between species. Group selection within a single species, however, is trickier. Two theories of group selection establish a basis for group selection in humans: multilevel group selection and cultural group selection. According to multilevel group selection theory, nature can be said to select for an entire group if, despite some relative advantage/disadvantages between internal phenotypes, members of all phenotypes are on the whole more successful in passing on their genes than individuals belonging to other groups. As the authors explained, this is not “an alternative to the genic view of ... selection,” but rather is “simply another way of … keeping track of genes’ success by looking at their relative replication rates within and between groups” (p. 152). Regardless how the score is kept, the critical factor is the proportion of genes of one phenotype relative to genes of alternative phenotypes in the total population of the next generation.
Alternatively, group selection can proceed according to the processes of cultural group selection (p.162-3). Boyd and Richardson elegantly articulated three conditions for cultural group selection to occur: 1) groups adopt cultural norms and everyone in the group follows them; 2) by chance, some groups have adopted norms that are on the whole beneficial to the group, whereas other groups have adopted norms that are on the whole detrimental to the group; and 3) there is some conforming process by which individuals in groups are compelled to adopt the norms the group has previously found successful. I say these conditions are elegantly articulated because they each correspond to and preserve the logico-deductive relationship between the three fundamental premises of evolution generally: i.e., variation (1), differential fitness (2), and heritable traits (3). As any logician would insist, if you hold all three of these premises to be true, you must infer evolution. In the cultural case, the first two conditions are clearly acceptable. Regarding the third item, they assert that a “conformist tendency” evolved to carry out this function (p. 163). While I find the arguments and evidence supporting this hypothesis compelling (and will here accept it as true), it is reasonable that others might remain unconvinced. I do not wish to digress too far, but it seems worthwhile to point out that if the existence of genetic basis for such a tendency was conclusively demonstrated, cultural group selection must be inferred and summarily added to the canon of evolutionary theory.
Group Selective and Conservatives

So if there exists a “package” of genes involved in political conservatism, it will be an interesting exercise to consider its characteristics as they pertain to group selection. I shall discuss three specific points that suggest the “group” of individuals possessing the package may enjoy greater reproductive success than groups possessing alternative packages.
Focus on the Family

Political conservatism (excluding libertarianism) has over time demonstrated intense concern over matters related to reproduction. As a group, conservatives tend to be fiercely opposed to policies that introduce individual, arbitrary discretion into reproductive matters. This includes opposition to sex education, which is statistically the most effective means of reducing the number of “unwanted” pregnancies, as well as opposition to birth control, distribution of contraceptives, and abortion. In general, political conservatism is at odds with the women’s liberation movement, and promotes more traditional roles for women as homemakers instead of breadwinners. Religion plays a strong part in maintaining and promoting these norms. In a recent empirical study published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, Weeden et al concluded that the central function of religious attendance in the United States is to support a high-fertility, monogamous mating strategy (Weeden et al (2008). Specifically, they argue that Christian churches in the U.S. facilitate reproduction by promoting social norms that resolve the differential reproductive challenges faced by males and females. For males, who are by design more preoccupied with paternal assurance, the church produces females who forgo all mating opportunities except those with her husband, to whom she is to give unrestricted sexual access. For females, the church produces men who value their role as a breadwinner and will agree to remain monogamous. In so doing, the high level of paternal assurance makes monogamy a more successful reproductive strategy for males, while the high level of resource security works out well for females.
Flags, fish, and 4x4s: Reinforcing extended kinship

Another common feature of political conservatism with group selective implications is an affinity for symbols of group identity. According to Sidanius and Kurzban, “cultural badges such as social customs, traditions, …styles of dress, haircuts, language, and dialect” may play a role in achieving social conformity (p.163). In so doing, they reinforce notions of “socially defined kinship” and establish a stronger basis for large-scale cooperation. According to Weissner (1998), socially defined kinship was “a critical adaptation of homo sapiens. It permitted the construction of broad social security networks for risk reduction by granting access to human and natural resources lying outside the group. Losses due to fluctuations in natural resources, inability to find mates, conflict, and so on, could then be absorbed by a broader population (p. 163).
Enforcing conformity

As the Alford data suggested, political and social attitudes are only partially inherited. And further, group members may not find themselves drawn to the right set of cultural badges and symbols. For such situations, there appears to be a set of adaptations designed to enforce conformity. Specifically, I refer to punishment mechanisms that achieve the effect of altering the decision calculus of individuals, such that they will chose to conform if nature failed to compel them. For example, in an experimental setting Shinada et al show that punishment behavior is likely to be directed at group members who are found to be noncooperators in a system of social and economic exchanges. Further they show that punishment is more severe for in-group members than out-group members (Shinada et al 2004). This finding compels reflection on the everyday observation, corroborated extensively by academic research, that conservatives tend to favor more severe punishments for violators of social norms. This may take the form of disproportionate support for stricter criminal sentences (i.e., death penalty, mandatory minimums, etc), or in a purely social context increased frequency of “hate” based discrimination and violence (Green 1999, Altemeyer 1988, Feldman 2003). In other research, Kurzban emphasizes the profoundly social nature of punishment, especially in response to perceived violation of social norms, such as morals. In an experimental setting, he showed that people are likely to hand down more severe punishments when there is an audience. This may be interpreted as either a “demonstration of the consequences”, so as to dissuade others from behaving thusly in the future, or because the punisher is afraid his punishment will be insufficiently severe to appease the indignant group (Kurzban 2006). Or it may be both. In either case, these findings illuminate the circumstances of an American church where conformity is frequently achieved through the subtle, socially administered punishments for incorrect behavior, especially via gossip and attacks on individual’s reputation in the community (Weeden et al).
Reluctantly reproducing liberals

The above arguments identify factors which could potentially give a conservative package of genes a competitive advantage vis-à-vis alternative packages. In this section, I will consider some factors affecting a “liberal package”, if indeed there is one.
At the 2009 Northeast Evolutionary Psychology Society annual conference, Satoshi Kanazawa presented his research on the evolution of general intelligence (also published in the Psychological Review, 2004). His research relied on an unusual dataset containing individual level information on a wide-variety of life-style habits and attitudes—along side IQ scores administered when the respondents were children. According to his data, individuals with high IQs were more likely to partake in an astonishingly bizarre variety of activities and attitudes. High IQ individuals were more likely to be smoke, stay up late, commit suicide, or do drugs. Especially important in the context of this paper, high IQ individuals were more likely to be homosexuals, have abortions, forgo opportunities to have children, be celibate, get PhDs, take birth control, choose education and careers over homemaking. Things that high IQ people did less frequently included participating in competitive sports, engage in sexual activity, hunt, socialize, and so on. Based upon his findings, Kazawawa advanced the theory that general intelligence evolved as an adaptation to help individuals resolve “evolutionarily-novel” problems; i.e., general intelligence as domain-specific adaptation for the “limited sphere of evolutionary novelty in the ancestral environment.” This theory was supported in his data. High IQ individuals were more likely to participate in every activity that could not reasonably be related to an adaptive challenge an early human ancestor might have faced. Further, the relationship was monotonic: the higher someone’s IQ, the more likely they were to do something they were not evolved to do. In many cases, obviously, this included things that were detrimental to their chances of reproductive success.
Kanazawa’s result comports with Alford et al’s piece on political genetics, and illuminates potential implications on the notion of “need-for-cognition”. In Alford et al, the authors muse “It has long been known that certain political issues seem ‘hard’ to people and others seem ‘easy,’ … because some issues trigger ‘gut responses’ while others do not” (p. 164). In light of their findings, they suggest that the “easy ‘gut’ issues tend to be those that are more heritable” (p. 164). In other words, they are easy because it is not necessary to deliberate, or it is preempted by impulse. Looking at his data, I would like to extend his analysis on this observation. In a very haphazard mini-experiment, I went down the list of items in (table 1 in Alford), marking with red ink the items that—on my best guess—we likely related to an adaptive problem faced by our primordial ancestors. Alternatively, I marked with green ink items that appeared to only make sense in the modern context, or are evolutionarily novel. As expected, there is a lot more red ink at the top of the list (most inheritable) than at the bottom (least inheritable). The relative intensity of color toward the top comports with Tesser’s finding that attitudes higher in heritability are manifested more quickly and are more resistant to change (Tesser 1993), leading to lower variance. Visually, it looks like a color-gradient that is a deep red at the top and slowly fades to a ruddy green.
In hind sight, I should have used a blue pen for the latter. With the exception of abortion, the list is surprisingly well-ordered (from the bottom to the top) along a left-right ideological dimension. The top of the list is a tight cluster of highly salient, conservative issues beginning with school prayer and property taxes, followed by ‘moral majority’, capitalism, and astrology (mysticism, or religion). From the bottom (left) moving up, we have federal housing, modern art, abortion, divorce, democrats, nuclear power, busing, segregation. Gay rights, as an issue that the left has always been ambivalent about (“don’t ask don’t tell”) is according to this scale a left of center issue, which seems valid.
What this suggests, in sum, is that conservative genes are on average more heritable than liberal ones, if indeed there are any. More likely, liberals are simply the ones who, by chance or because their parents lack them, are not inheriting the genes. This view suggests that the disproportionate “need-for-cognition” observed among liberals may be because they simply lack the “gut” instincts conservatives possess. In other words, they have to think things through because nature gives them no cues. That is not to say they will arrive at better decisions, but the arbitrary nature of the process will inevitably result in higher variance in attitudes among liberals than conservatives.
As measured IQ tends to be higher among liberals than conservatives, these conclusions are consistent with Kanazawa’s theory that general intelligence evolved to allow individuals to resolve evolutionarily novel challenges—and perhaps there may be a relationship. This question, however, will have to wait until another day.
Conclusions

From this analysis, I conclude that the “political conservatism package” of genes likely enjoys a significant adaptive advantage over alternative packages. Not only are conservative traits more heritable than alternatives, they appear to be doing a better job driving the reproductive success of their hosts. With modern birth control and pregnancy-termination methods, liberals are imperiled with a need-to-cogitate over evolutionarily novel problems that are bound to result in maladaptive decisions. Indeed, the outlook for homo literaticus looks grim.
Yet there is cause for hope. Evolution is a very slow process, and other dynamics may be in play elsewhere in the world. For example, this is all likely irrelevant in China which has for more than a generation instituted a 1-child policy. But furthermore, Alford et al’s findings estimate that the conservative package of genes is only 53% heritable. That gives us 47% to work with.
To make the most of this, we should begin to think in terms of public policy goals. Goals should include making sex education mandatory and outside the control of local school districts that may oppose it. Education in general should place greater emphasis on critical reasoning skills that properly equip young people to deal with fallacious arguments. In terms of social policy, we should enact policies ameliorate the circumstances that force women to choose between careers and maternity. For example, providing high-quality, publically funded childcare for as long as needed.
But why should we act? As a result of some statistical fluke, a small piece of the universe woke up from eternal slumber to briefly ponder its own existence. This is us. Beingness is something evolution can’t have accounted for. Once we discovered it, we compromised the system—like a test subject who amidst an experiment realizes what is going on. For a brief moment, our destiny is our own. We have existential freedom. As far as we know, we are the only beings in the universe to have ever done this. Let this not be a blink of an eye and a return to non-beingness, but the start of something greater.


Works Cited

Alford, John R., Carolyn L. Funk., and John R. Hibbing. 2005. Are political orientations genetically transmitted? American Political Science Review 99: 153-67.
Handbook, Chapter 5. Sidanius and Kurzban.
Shinada Mizuho, Toshio Yamagishi, and Yu Ohmura. “False friends are worse than bitter enemies: “Altruistic” punishment of in-group members”. May 2005.
Kanazawa, Satoshi (2004) General intelligence as a domain-specific adaptation. Psychological review, 111 (2). pp. 512-523.
Kurzban, Robert, Peter DeScioli, Erin O’Brien. “Audience effects on moralistic punishment”. Evolution and Human Behavior. March 2007
Feldman, Stanley. 2003. Enforcing social conformity: A theory of authoritarianism. Political Psychology 24: 41-74.
Altemeyer, Bob. 1988. Chapters 1-3. Enemies of Freedom: Understanding Right-Wing Authoritarianism. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Weedon, Jason, Adam B. Cohen, and Douglas T. Kenrick. “Religious attendance as reproductive support” in Evolution & Human Behavior, September (2008) Vol. 29, No. 5, Pp 327-334

Should political scientists care what happens in 39 milliseconds?

In a word, ‘Yes’. I believe this is a bit like asking if physicists should care what happens at the picometer scale (atoms range from approximately 30-500 picometers in diameter). Just as it would be impossible to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the physical world without a model of the atom, it is impossible to build a robust understanding of human behavior without a model of cognition, which takes place at the scale of milliseconds.

Argument:
There is increasing evidence from cognitive psychology and neuroscience that some of our decisions are prepared preconsciously in the brain some time before we are consciously aware of the decision. For example, split-brain patients (who have had the bridge between the hemispheres of the brain surgically severed) can be queued to initiate actions in such a way that the message avoids parts of the brain commonly associated with consciousness. Not only will they carry out those actions, but they will remain unconscious of their reason for doing so. Interestingly, the disconnected areas of the brain associated with consciousness may spontaneously invent justifications for doing so, i.e., a patient may (honestly) believe he got up to get a coke, rather than having responded to a queue. This phenomenon may or may not take place at speeds of 39 milliseconds, but what it demonstrates is that humans can say and do things for true reasons they may be totally unaware of.

According the psychologists, these sorts of unconscious decisions and judgments may constitute a vast domain of behavior. Moreover, these decisions and judgments can be manipulated externally and studied empirically. For example, it can be shown that affective judgments (those pertaining to feelings) are not only determined preconsciously, and may be manipulated through subconscious priming, i.e., by the presentation of stimuli for ultra-fast durations, such that the object is perceived but remains “unseen” by the conscious mind. These “affective reactions” are made not only without any apparent conscious effort, they are made more readily and with greater confidence. Political scientists should take note because these effects don’t stop at gate before the realm of political decisionmaking. For example, Lodge and Taber show compelling experimental evidence that subconscious priming can significantly alter subjects’ judgments over political figures and issues. In another study, Payne found that racial primes enhanced people’s sensitivity to threat related objects, such as weapons, in images. The implications of this finding are disconcerting, considering that every year a number of unarmed civilians are mistakenly shot and killed by police officers.

Best alternative argument:
Here I will consider what might be the best alternative position. Political science need not be concerned with what happens in 39 milliseconds because the primal unit of politics is a behavior, which does not take place at that scale. Only behaviors, not internal physiological events or hypothetical constructs such as the mind, can be directly observed. Thus, behaviors themselves should be the basis of scientific descriptions of politics. Moreover, the phenomena political scientists are ultimately interested in are macro-phenomena, i.e., we are not concerned merely with the behavior of individuals, but rather we are interested in high-level interactions between individuals (in aggregate) with society. The specific determinants of individual behavior aren’t of interest to us, rather we are only interested in the measurable, categorical correlates that predict political outcomes.

Response:
While the ability to probabilistically predict political outcomes based upon categorical statistics may frequently prove useful, this should not be confused with actually understanding politics. Rather, these may only be considered as heuristics. I assert that the goal of science is not heuristics, it is understanding. Long ago people who studied politics decided that they wanted to be ‘scientists’. Perhaps they were envious of advancements made in the physical sciences, and were impressed with the elegance and parsimony of their mathematics. While mathematics is frequently necessary for the practice of science, it is not sufficient. In other words, simply adopting the language of mathematics alone is not sufficient to establish a science of politics. I propose below three premises concerning a science of politics.

(Rule 1) Within the realm of science, there are no domains of questions that exist on their own. All “sciences” are connected to one another.
(Rule 2) Politics is a domain of behavior, therefore it is can only be understood within the context of behavior generally.
(Rule 3) Behavior is a domain of biology, and therefore it can only be understood in the context of biology generally.

Questions in science are vertically (and perhaps horizontally) integrated, where one level of questions may be explained in terms of another, ultimately reducible to the same ‘theory of everything’. For example, history may be reducible to politics, politics may be reducible to economics, economics to biology, biology to chemistry, chemistry to physics, and physics to mathematics. Therefore, a robust understanding of one domain at any level is ultimately nested within a network of knowledge-domains.

One proof of these three rules is the observation that human beings are not the only species that does politics. *In fact, one might postulate a 4th rule: A science of politics is necessary species general, i.e., not arbitrarily bounded around the study of a single species, however unusual or special they believe themselves to be. Politics is something that exists in nature and appears to be a consequence of interaction. Because outcomes of interactions can be either positive or negative, we may infer that interaction establishes selection pressures on behavioral adaptations to achieve the greatest balance of positive to negative outcomes. The most likely location of these adaptations will be at the brain, and the most likely relevance of these adaptations for the study of politics is at the heart.

Conclusion:
Scientists are the legacy of the philosophers, who began a quest with a simply stated (though achieved only with great effort) goal: to understand. In 2500 years since Greek philosophers first began to ponder which was the primary element of the world, philosophers and their decedents have continually sought to probe deeper, following threads as far as they will take them. In physics, this has lead to models of phenomena so large and so tiny that the physical (and temporal) spaces in which they occur can only be grasped loosely in the forms of metaphors and symbols. Similarly, I argue that a true science of politics necessarily delves to depths of neurons, or even genes if that’s where the connections lead. This is the logical destiny of science applied to politics. If this unacceptable to political science, they should revisit their decision to become a science. In sum, I have argued that the extent to which political scientists care what happens at 39 milliseconds is, perhaps the same question as ‘the extent to which political scientists are actually scientists.’

Approaches to human nature

The matter of cooperation is a key subject of interest in virtually every social and behavioral science, as well various biological and animal sciences. To this grand question of human nature, each discipline applies its own unique approach rooted in that department’s favored methods, perspectives, and discourses. In this short discussion, I’d like to draw upon two such approaches; specifically, I will contrast the political-economic model, and another model which I will loosely call sociological.

Taking Ostrom, Hardin, or Orbell as examples of political-economists, this approach is highly theoretical, beginning from a “bottom-up” extrapolation of the nature of cooperation beginning with first principles. The logical progression from these first principles are often then explored with mathematical modeling, laboratory experiments (on human or other live subjects) or with computational simulation. Though political-economics have advanced considerably since the reign of absolutist rational actor theories, this approach is still deeply rooted in the idea that human beings are agents, utilizing some cognitive aptitude to assess the pros and cons of various behavioral strategies and identify an optimal course of action. For potential courses enabled only via some form of cooperation (i.e., a social dilemma), humans will employ their trademark ingenuity and devise a social-technology (i.e., norms, promises, altruistic punishment of defection, agreements, laws, etc.) capable of corralling a herd of independent-minded agents who are naturally reluctant to cooperate .

This “bottom-up” approach contrasts with what may be described as a “top-down” approach common to sociology and other animal behavioral sciences. Unlike political-economists who have inherited the traditional modus operandi of the economists, i.e., to begin from first principles, sociologists tend to start with direct observation of the animal itself, in its natural habitat. In some ways, what they observe is a quite different picture of humanity than what the political-economists present. Far from being reluctant cooperators, the sociologists see cooperation as an essential characteristic of the species. In their view, cooperation comes as natural to human beings as swimming to a fish, or burying acorns to a squirrel. We do it, quite simply, because its our nature to do so--it’s “in our genes,” and not simply in a manner of speech. From early-childhood, we are perpetually, actively seeking out others with whom to cooperate. Figuratively speaking, there is an invisible force of social-gravity that draws individuals toward on another. Perhaps the major difference is cooperation isn’t something that is achieved via a social-technology, it is the default presumption; cooperation is the default stance we humans take against the various ecological, interpersonal, and intergroup challenges we face. We are not individuals in nature, we are a lattice structure--an array of beings that survives in numbers. For our ancestors, if you were not part of a group, you were dead (and thus not one of our ancestors).

To facilitate and deepen cooperation, we invent value systems and entire cosmologies that we can all share. These intellectual constructions may accentuate similarities or common challenges, while exacerbating differences with respect to out-groups. We have rich verbal and physical means of communication that allow trust to grow from an initial seed (a smile), to a sappling (small talk, trivial banter), to robust cooperation (secrets, valuable knowledge, loyalty). Importantly, all of this is done unconsciously; we do it without even thinking about it. The slightest knowledge of group membership (like estimations of numbers of dots on a screen) can significantly alter behavior. Next time you are in a coffee shop listening to two individuals smile and banter back and forth about absolutely nothing of consequence, be assured that that despite appearances something very important is going on: they are trust-building, watering the seed of cooperation.

In sum, political-economists insist--and show compelling justification and evidence--that the temptation to defect is real. At the same time sociologists have collected vast data showing that the drive to cooperate is real. Logically, these views do not seem to be mutually exclusive. While it is in our nature to cooperate, we are not immune from the temptation to become “the first among equals”, get ourselves and our progeny a bigger, better piece of the pie. I’m reminded of John Godfrey Saxe’s re-telling of the Indian parable of the elephant. Six blind, wisemen from a distant province encountered an elephant for the first time. One man felt at the trunk, and said that this beast must be like a snake. Another felt its leg and figured it must be like a tree. Another felt the tusk and imagined it like a spear, and so forth. For me, this discussion reinforces the importance of an interdisciplinary (or perhaps non-disciplinary) approach to the grand question. Like the six wisemen, we may each have an important piece of the puzzle. If we are ever to them together and finally produce the rich understanding of human nature that has arguably been our greatest, most noble ambition, then we must take a lesson from our ancestors and eschew the temptation for each of us to go it alone. Rather, we are all of us bound together by a higher purpose, to delve the mysteries of nature and extract from it true knowledge of who we are, where we came from, and why we are here.

Explaining Glenn Beck to an exceptional 14 year old.

Today an exceptionally bright 14 year old came to me and asked, "Who's Glenn Beck, and why did he have a rally?" As I considered how I would reply, it occurred to me that a quick response wouldn't do and that understanding who he is would require some knowledge of the context in which the phenomenon known as Glenn Beck is taking place. Here is my response, which I thought I would share with you. *Note: her name is substituted.

This is a very good question, Molly. I know you're a precocious and inquisitive person, so I'll presume that you have already looked up him up on Wikipedia and, like me, found that the most straightforward answer isn't very satisfying.

The most straightforward answer, of course, is that he is an influential conservative radio and television personality with close ties to the Tea Party movement. He is very popular these days and communicates with a lot of people on his radio and television programs. In general, he says that government should be very “small”. In other words, the government should collect very little taxes and not try to do a lot of things such as make rules for companies to follow, provide healthcare, and give people some money when they lose their jobs. His argument is that if people don't have to pay taxes, they can afford to do all these things themselves without the government's help and they can do it better and cheaper. The problem is these issues are 1) very complicated and difficult to understand, and 2) tend to arouse strong racial feelings. You see, most of these polices are designed to “help the poor by taxing the rich” (kind of like Robin Hood). A lot of white people that may have only a limited understanding of the issues think that the government is “taking their money” and giving it to poor people who don't deserve it. It's racial because in their view who “deserves it” frequently depends on what color their skin is. For example, they often believe the stereotypes that African-Americans are poor because they are lazy and don't work hard, and that illegal immigrants come here for free education, healthcare, and to steal our jobs.

Molly, one thing about people is that they tend to prefer to listen to people they agree with and ignore information that contradicts their view. The problem is the more people hear information that agrees with their view, the more and more they believe it. Glenn Beck says things that confirm in white peoples' minds that their problems in life are the fault of brown people. For example, when Barack Obama was elected president, a lot of white people were afraid that he would try to take all their money away and give it to black people, so Glenn Beck told everyone on television that Barack Obama “hates white people, and the white culture”, suggesting the he has some secret agenda to hurt them. Sometimes he even says things that make people think Obama is connected with “terrorists” who want to attack and destroy America. The more they listen to Glenn Beck, the more they feel the whole world--Blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, and even Europeans, are attacking America from the inside. Consequently, a lot of white people got really paranoid and started organizing clubs for white Christians so they could feel safe.

Though most white people don't think like this, when you count all of them that do all across the whole country this still adds up to a lot of people. With the help of companies who don't want the government to make rules that they have to follow, these groups have used the Internet to find each other and organize into even larger groups. When you have “groups of groups” coming together, sometimes this is called a “movement”. In this case, we call it the Tea Party movement. For a lot of Tea Partiers, Glenn Beck is like a rock star. So when they wanted to have a big rally in Washington, putting Glenn Beck as the main event causes lots of excitement and draws many people to come see him and participate. This is why “he” had a rally in Washington.

Still, I don't know if anything I have said rally “answers” the question you asked me: who is Glenn Beck? I have talked about the things he does as best as I can, but I don't think we can understand 'who' someone is until we understand both what they do and importantly 'why they do it'. The thing is when Glenn Beck talks, everybody listens. People who agree with him love him, people who disagree with him hate him. Either way, they listen. Before Beck started talking about politics, he was a radio “shock jock.” A shock jock is someone who says very shocking things that people just can't stop listening to—usually because they just can't wait to hear if the next thing he says is even more shocking. A long time ago he would do things like call up a woman on the phone and laugh at her for having a miscarriage or make fun of an unarmed Black man who was shot by a police officer.

In my opinion, Glenn Beck is and always has been a man who will do or say anything for money. Recently, he has been discovered for having extraordinary talent as a propagandist. This is someone who deliberately talks about the news in a way to shape people's opinions about politics. This is a very, very valuable talent, and some very powerful and rich people support have hired him to shape peoples minds about many issues, from tax policy to rules that companies have to follow. He is now very rich and famous. I believe this was his only objective. Things just happen to work out that he is also a very prominent person in America and may have a big impact on our future.

I hope my explanation helps, though I hope you will consider what I've said to be just an "introduction". You will continue to hear and read about him for quite some time, and this may help you understand what you're witnessing. Ultimately, you will need to formulate your own opinions about him, based upon your total experience and unique way of thinking.

Good luck!

Liberal hypocrites.

Two criticisms conservatives frequently levy against liberals and progressives are that we 1) make them feel stupid, and 2) we are hypocrites. I'm not going to comment on the first point, save only to recall Isaac Asimov's musing on the subject:

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"

Conservative stupidity, however, isn't the purpose of my writing. Rather, the focus of my remarks will be on the second point: that we are hypocrites. I concur in this judgement. We are, in fact, total hypocrites. Let's just imagine, for a moment, what it must be like to listen to us drone endlessly on about malevolent corporations hijacking the government, oil wars and failure to launch any meaningful effort to mitigate climate change? We call them stupid for not listening to us, and they rightly call us out for the beneficiaries of these same injustices we decry. How many "liberals" in Washington, DC one way or another get their salary from the Defense Department budget? We're hypocrites because we know the wars are about oil, and we still go to work everyday doing our little part in the "War on Terrorism". We criticize corporations like Verizon and Google trying to destroy Net Neutrality, but we own Google and Verizon. That is to say, we own their shares. Which oil companies are you invested in via your mutual funds? And won't you throw a hissy fit when their CEO comes out and must inform you that their companies failed to turn a profit this quarter.

The median income in the US as of 2008 is roughly 31K. How many of you make more than that (or at least expect to make more than that when you graduate. If you're reading this blog, you are/will most likely (be) making two or three times at your fancy professional jobs--actuaries at insurance companies, stock managers at CitiGroup, researchers and sales-reps at GlaxoSmithKline, ratings analysts at Viacom, or engineers at Northrup Grumman. It's no wonder that we're not out protesting in the streets when we're the beneficiaries of an unjust system.

Here's a tip that might help you identify whether you are part of the problem you decry: Would you be fired if you were found out to have attended a protest at a G8 summit? If your boss saw you standing on the side of the street raising a sign that said, "no more blood for oil" would you be getting a talkin' to? No, we're not out in the streets, we're 35 floors up in an air-conditioned offices, and have no mind to rock the foundations of our fortune. What is perhaps more hypocritical still, is the expectation that as we look down on them through one-way glass panes, they should be able to tell the difference between us and the billionaires who we say are responsible for their houses getting foreclosed on, their job getting sent-away overseas, and their lack of adequate healthcare. This is a tall request for someone we have the nerve to call stupid.

Loyola Marymount study finds that Second Life relationships can be more satisfying that real world ones

From Virtual World News

Second Life Relationships More Satisfying Than Real Ones

Participants in the 3D virtual world Second Life are more satisfied with the romantic relationships they form in the virtual world than the ones in their real life, according to two studies conducted by Loyola Marymount Universityresearchers. Even more remarkably, Second Life users who participated in the study reported that their level of sexual satisfaction with virtual world relationships was roughly equal to what they experienced in their real world relationships. Read more...

Full article: http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2010/08/second-life-relationships-more-satisfying-than-real-ones.html
__________________________________________________

More evidence that people can have real and satisfying emotional experiences within virtual worlds. I don't mean to imply that I think virtual lives are in anyway superior to "real" lives. Rather, that virtual worlds constitute a new living space for the mind, unaccompanied by the body. With our feet still firmly planted in the real world amidst real lives, our consciousness may extend into a second, perpendicular plane of existence simultaneously. Such an existence may seem an awkward stretch for many of us older birds, but for our children who will have been introduced to virtual worlds when their brains are still spongy, may find themselves perfectly at home with their consciousnesses striped across numerous realms.

-Nick

Competing ecosystems.

Apple is typically the company that comes to mind when one talks about a software 'ecosystem'; i.e., an effort to put all software and hardware together in a single, coherent package affording users all the capabilities they could ever need. Within a software ecosystem, individual applications pass data to each other seamlessly from the user's point of view. Perhaps even more importantly all applications share a common user-interface experience making it possible for users to competently use a variety of diverse software with a single common skill set; if you can use one, you can pretty much use them all.

It occurred to me today as I perused my daily RSS feeds via Google Reader on my Google Android phone, I'm utterly immersed in Google's software ecosystem. Why does this feel somehow ironic? Perhaps it is because Google is supposed to be the anti-Apple. Where Apple tries to micromanage the user's experience within the confines a "walled garden" ecosystem, Google (supposedly) works by connecting you with the world. But does it really? More and more I find that all the programs I use are Google. This is a Google-owned blogging site, and I chose it primarily for its simple integration with my Gmail account. While, I find the provided creation tools sufficient for my purposes, I might have composed my thoughts using the now revamped and impressive GoogleDocs suite. Apple doesn't even have one of those!

I realize that I'm glossing over the undoubtedly real and consequential distinctions between these two companies. Google actually does earn the large part of its revenue from connecting people with new things, whereas Apple makes its money by selling people computers. Yet my point of all this is simply that the term 'ecosystem' ought to be attached to Google as well. Ordinarily, this would hardly seem worth writing about, but given that heretofore Apple has pretty much owned the term, and further that Google is in some contexts characterized as the anti-Apple, it may help us to construct a better model of what is actually going on between these two giants. Both are ecosystems, and they're competing for your inhabitation. Underlying both of their business models is that they can each provide you with everything you could ever need or want. Consequently, you will never have to stray far from Google's ads or Apple's hardware.

Now if you will excuse me, I have several Google Voice messages waiting.

Response to those who say democracy is needed for economic growth

I don’t see that democracy is a necessary part of this equation: It is really about the combination of ‘security’ and ‘property rights’. Democracy is a useful means to an end, though not the only possible means. It’s merely convenient that democracy may impose some restraints on the government that enhance the security of property rights from the government---though this can happen without democracy, which I think is the story of East Asia during the second half of the 20th century. In small groups, humans WILL cooperate. It may be said that this is to a large part out of their control—it’s our biological nature to cooperate. Even under extreme circumstances, we will cooperate with kin. Security enables cooperation on larger scales, both in geographic terms and in terms of extended, non-kin social networks. Property rights, however, may be necessary to motivate cooperation at these scales. In kin relationships, or small groups, basic human sociality has mechanisms for incentivizing cooperation and disincentivizing freeriding. On a large scale, however, these mechanisms break down and profit takes over as the motivator of cooperation.

Thought of the day

Consumer choice is freedom, and we are the freest people in the world.

If we couldn't get fresh grapes in January, we'd be no better than the Soviets.

Recently I have wondered about the purpose of ‘political science’. Presuming that it is in reality a ‘science’, as it proclaims to be, it should then share the purpose of science generally. While there is obviously no authoritative body to declare the official purpose of science, many scientists and philosophers have written on that subject, who have in some construction or another, nearly uniformly concluded that science about the acquisition of knowledge that improves the human condition or state of being, in either a material or spiritual sense. Albert Einstein wrote, “All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.... All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.” I further hold that no civilization within which there is injustice has maximally achieved these objectives. Therefore, as political scientists it seems to me that our job is to discover the principles of and create social structures that make society a better place for the poor and the oppressed, rather than defending a system that favors the rich.