Just Laws are Rooted in Eternal/Natural Laws

“To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.”

- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

Science Follows Politics

“Science isn’t some objective reasonable force outside of politics. Scientists spend most of their careers chasing government grant funding, and fighting for appointments and promotions in government-funded university systems. Science follows politics, and nobody knows this as much as the disingenuous politicians who claim that their policies are subordinate to scientific findings.”

- Eugyppius

Guarded Reading

"When I read the [the New York] Times and similar websites, I read with suspicion, constantly alert for narrative spin and rhetorical trickery."

- Kenneth Pike, Quillette

In scuba diving, there is a technique known as “guarded breathing” — putting your tongue up when at the surface to avoid accidentally inhaling seawater. Pike describes something metaphorically similar: Call it “guarded reading.”

Sadly, this is what we must do now when consuming mainstream media. An unguarded mind is susceptible to manipulation, and manipulation seems to be the most common aim of today's journalism. Keep your guard up.

Williams on Capitalism

“Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man.”

- Walter Williams

“Inheritance and marriage were also big,” adds Paul Graham.

Who Benefits from Division?

"In every industry and institution there exists a metagame: hidden yet fundamental strategies that confer success and strategic dominance. Those who win the metagame capitalize on knowledge of structural mechanisms and system-level quirks. They know how 'the game' should be played.

"To win the metagame one must ask the right questions. Those who aren’t playing the metagame ask the wrong questions.

"When it comes to our divisive politics, those who aren’t playing the metagame ask: 'why are we divided?' or 'to what extent are we divided?' In contrast, persons cognizant of the metagame ask: 'who benefits from this division?' The ones who foment political polarization are the ones who benefit from it."

- "How Availability Cascades are Shaping our Politics"

The authors go on to explain the mainstream media are the ones benefitting because the news is a failing business model. They write: "It is no coincidence that the media’s descent into negativity began in the late 1990s. The period marked the rise of the Web and birth of the online competitors that traditional media struggles against today."

I have often reflected on this and the many ways it is true. I watched it happen and saw how click-bait sites such as Gawker and Buzzfeed not only thrived but actually changed the business model of the mainstream news outlets.

The question isn't why it happened in the superficial sense. "Sensational news captures the public’s attention and attracts far more readers and viewers than a dispassionate summary of statistics and a presentation of accurate information," as the authors put it. The question is why traditional news media such as CNN would decide to sacrifice their reputations for the attention. The authors explain it's because the choice seems to be "sensationalize or perish."

They share a humorous  but telling statistic: "According to Forbes, CNN’s total primetime audience was well under a million viewers (767,000) in 2019. For context, there are more sex workers in the United States than there are people who watch CNN primetime."

Exploit Explained: MySide Bias

{This post is part of the Archive of Human Exploits}

"[M]any commentators have ascribed some part of the [political] divide to what they term our 'post-truth' society, but this is not an apt description of the particular defect that has played a central role in our divided society. The cause of our division is not that people deny the existence of truth. It is that people are selective in displaying their post-truth tendencies.

"What our society is really suffering from is myside bias: People evaluate evidence, generate evidence, and test hypotheses in a manner biased toward their own prior beliefs, opinions, and attitudes ...

"It turns out that myside bias is not predictable from standard measures of cognitive and behavioral functioning. The degree of myside bias that people show is not correlated with their intelligence or level of actively open-minded thinking; nor is it correlated with their educational level. It is not correlated with how much they display other biases...myside bias in one domain is not a predictor of the myside bias shown in another domain. It is simply one of the most unpredictable of the biases ...

"In short, just as we are gorging on fat-laden food that is not good for us because our bodies were built by genes with a selfish replicator survival logic, so we are gorging on memes that fit our resident beliefs because cultural replicators have a similar survival logic. And just as our overconsumption of fat-laden fast foods has led to an obesity epidemic, so our overconsumption of congenial memes has made us memetically obese as well. One set of replicators has led us to a medical crisis. The other set has led us to a crisis of the public communication commons whereby we cannot converge on the truth because we have too many convictions that drive myside bias."

- Prof. Keith E. Stanovich, "The Bias that Divides Us"

The Bad Science of Estimating Hurricane Deaths

How many residents of Puerto Rico died because of Hurricane Maria?

It seems like a simple question, right? Not in the world of the Opposition Media vs. President Trump, "fake news" and alternative facts. In that world, you get to pick from a range of 6 dead to … 8,498.

Below is a list of estimates I gathered from various news sources (in descending order):

8,498-793 according to the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)
4,465 according to activists using the NEJM mid-point estimate
3,290-2,658 according to George Washington University
2,975 according to the Governor of Puerto Rico
1,427 according to a December 2017 report to Congress
1,272-1,006 according to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
1,085 according to a December 2017 analysis by two scientists for Vox
1,052 according to a December 2017 analysis by The New York Times
499 according to a November 2017 CNN investigation
81 according to an October 2017 Vox investigation
64 according to the original official death toll
57 based on the number of names that have been released
18-6 when President Trump visited the island

I gathered these figures because of a September 14 CNN article headlined: "Trump falsely claims nearly 3,000 Americans in Puerto Rico 'did not die.'" Since the anniversary of 9/11 had just passed, I needed to understand how Hurricane Maria could possibly be as big of a tragedy. I read the article and immediately noticed a few issues. For instance, the "nearly 3,000" figure was said to account for "Puerto Ricans who succumbed to the stifling heat and other after effects of the storm and had not been previously counted in official figures."

As I did my research and found the other estimates, I noticed similar caveats. For instance, the NEJM report disclaims:

"In the United States, death certificates are the primary source of mortality statistics, and in most jurisdictions, death can be attributed to disasters only by medical examiners. Survey-based studies can therefore provide important complementary population-level metrics in the wake of natural disasters, despite inherent limitations associated with the nature of participant-reported data, recall bias, nonresponse bias, and survivor bias."

That's a lot of biases. More important, the source of mortality statistics turns out to be the real key to understanding why these wildly varying death-toll estimates exist.

Around the same time as the CNN article came out, The New York Times updated a June 2, 2018 article titled, "Puerto Rico: How Do We Know 3,000 People Died as a Result of Hurricane Maria?" In trying to defend all of the varying estimates the paper had published and convince readers it wasn't "bad science," the newspaper ended up demonstrating how little hurricane mortality estimates have to do with anything like science. The article offers a fascinating look at how numbers can change without context and be manipulated to fit narratives.

Some highlights:

"George Washington researchers said they found that doctors in Puerto Rico at the time of the storm were not aware of new guidelines from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released the month after the hurricane, which recommend that doctors also consider a natural disaster’s indirect impacts in assessing how to tally deaths."

A month before Hurricane Maria, the CDC apparently changed the standard for measuring hurricane deaths. The standard went from counting death certificates certified by medical examiners (see above) to also counting “indirect impacts.” How does one define and measure such a vague phrase? Here's how the Times did it:

"To obtain our figure of 1,052, we compared the number of deaths for each day in 2017 with the average of the number of deaths for the same days in 2015 and 2016. The figures came from the Puerto Rican government, which provided us with tables showing the number of deaths per day and deaths broken down by cause. The 2017 numbers were preliminary, so we limited our analysis to September and October." 

"In September and October of 2017, 197 people died of sepsis — a complication of severe infection. That was a 55 percent increase from the average for the same months in 2015 and 2016. Those changes could be explained by delayed medical treatment or poor conditions in homes and hospitals.

"The number of diabetes deaths in September and October 2017, at 666, was 46 percent higher than the average for the same period in the two previous years. Many people with diabetes had difficulty keeping insulin refrigerated, and some had trouble maintaining special diets.

"Deaths from chronic respiratory diseases and Alzheimer’s also appeared to be increased. As for suicide deaths, 49 people took their lives in September and October of 2017, whereas in the same months of 2015 and 2016, an average of 33 people died by suicide."

At first, I was tempted to dismiss this as a typical abuse of statistics by journalists. But the NEJM method sounds even worse:

"Researchers visited more than 3,000 residences across the island and interviewed their occupants, asking whether anyone in their households had died, and whether the storm and its aftermath might have contributed. Residents reported that 38 people living in their households had died between Sept. 20, 2017, when Hurricane Maria struck, and the end of that year.

"That toll, converted into a mortality rate, was extrapolated to the larger population and compared with official statistics from the same period in 2016. Researchers arrived at an estimate of roughly 4,600."

You read that right: To get their estimate of 4,600 Puerto Ricans killed by Hurricane Maria (a number that incidentally became a blaring headline and activist rallying cry), researches used a sample size of 38 that they then “converted” “extrapolated” and “compared” to the previous year.

"Was it bad science?" the Times asks, and then it answers: "Experts who study the health impacts of natural disasters say no." These are probably the same journalists who wonder why the public has lost faith in science and no longer listens to experts.

The Ten Cannots

By William Boetcker (1873-1962)

1. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

2. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

3. You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.

4. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

5. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

6. You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.

7. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.

8. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.

9. You cannot build character and courage by destroying men's initiative and independence.

10. And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

- found in "Why 'A'' Students Work for 'C' Students" by Robert Kiyosaki

The New Equation for Power

"The new equation for [political] power in 2018 is:

(Attention) x (Persuasion Talent)."

- Scott Adams on Twitter

Net Neutrality or Internet Freedom?

The five members of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just voted on how the agency will regulate the Internet. Two commissioners voted in favor of "Net Neutrality." The other three, including Chairman Ajit Pai, voted in favor of “Internet Freedom.”

If you’re confused because those phrases sound like the same thing, that's intentional. There are competing persuaders at work. This is politics, after all. That doesn't mean either phrase is a lie, though.

"Net Neutrality" is actually anti-freedom in the sense that it forces Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to treat all Web traffic as equal. ISPs cannot charge more for faster access under the order. To be more precise: They can't slow service down (throttle) to those not paying higher fees. The public thinks of this as pro-freedom because many proponents of Net Neutrality have convinced them the issue is about keeping the Internet accessible to everyone. The name itself was designed to reinforce this idea. The persuaders who created it wisely did not call it "Net Socialism." They chose "neutrality," which suggests anyone opposed wants the opposite: partiality, bias, preferences.

Two can play at that game. Those against FCC control of the Internet named their proposal “Restoring Internet Freedom.” On December 14, the FCC voted in favor with the aforementioned 3-2 split.

Unfortunately for the "Internet Freedom" folks, it’s probably too late to change public perception about this issue. That's because "Net Neutrality" has become the common name for the topic, and most in the media are referring to what happened last Thursday as "ending Net Neutrality." It’s never good when your position is defined as a negative opposite.

This is no doubt one reason why a Mozilla/Ipsos poll found 76% of the public supports Net Neutrality, including even 73% of Republicans (folks who are typically anti-regulation). Such is the power of political branding.

Expanding the Reality Distortion Field (RDF)

What if most of the things we think are real are actually distorted by manipulators?

My experiences in the infomercial industry first made me think about this. Once I learned the psychological tricks used in direct selling, I realized they weren't restricted to the peddlers of TV products. I began seeing the techniques everywhere. Later, I read books such as Influence and Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini and found proof I wasn't crazy. Professor Cialdini has studied and cataloged these "weapons of influence," which he shows are widely used by "compliance practitioners" of all types.

"The historic focus in moral and political philosophy has been on coercive influence — specifically, if, when, and why it is permissible. Far less attention, however, has been paid to a subtler but perhaps more pervasive type of influence, namely manipulation," write Christian Coons and Michael Weber in Manipulation: Theory and Practice. "Manipulation manifests itself in many aspects of life: in advertising, politics, and in both professional and intimate relations."

In private conversations, I call this my "everything is a scam" theory. I sometimes excoriate my friends and family for becoming "marketing victims." Like Jabba losing it over his lieutenant being Jedi mind-tricked by Luke Skywalker, I want to yell: "You weak-minded fool!" Which leads me to my first point: What's more interesting than the ubiquity of attempts to manipulate is how often and thoroughly those attempts succeed.

People don't just fall victim to short-term mind tricks. They often end up completely mind-controlled to the point where their perception of reality is altered. An example would be anyone who identifies strongly as a member of a political party. Once someone (not in politics) starts talking about 'Republicans this' or 'Democrats that,' it becomes plain their mind is no longer their own. Of course, most of us are victims at some level when it comes to politics. More on this in a moment ...

Recently, I was reminded of a concept that, if expanded, could be used to identify and warn people about this human exploit. There aren't enough hard-core Star Wars geeks for "Jedi mind trick" to catch on, and people probably wouldn't take it seriously, anyway. But as it happens, sci-if has given us another term that is already in the mainstream: the "Reality Distortion Field" (RDF).

According to Wikipedia, the concept was borrowed from an episode of the original Star Trek series (The Menagerie), coined by a guy named Bud Tribble (coincidence?) and expanded by his colleague Andy Hertzfeld. The two executives worked under Steve Jobs at Apple and used the term to describe their leader's uncanny ability to get people "to believe almost anything with a mix of charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement and persistence."

Hertzfeld used the RDF term in a mostly positive way to laud Jobs' ability to "distort an audience's sense of proportion and scales of difficulties and made them believe that the task at hand was possible." However, internally, the term was sometimes used as a lament. "In his presence, reality is malleable," Tribble once told a co-worker. "He can convince anyone of practically anything. It wears off when he's not around, but it makes it hard to have realistic schedules."

The co-worker added: "The reality distortion field was a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, an indomitable will, and an eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand. If one line of argument failed to persuade, he would deftly switch to another. Sometimes, he would throw you off balance by suddenly adopting your position as his own, without acknowledging that he ever thought differently."

Outside critics and chroniclers have been even harsher. "One way to look at Jobs’ life is that he was a liar and a con man with a gift for design," Dilbert creator Scott Adams wrote in a blog post about the RDF. "According to [Walter] Isaacson’s reporting, Jobs had no love for truth ... [He] learned how to lie, cajole, manipulate, and charm until people believed whatever he wanted them to believe."

Adams is on to something. While positive emotions (liking/love, passion, confidence, compassion) are certainly potent field generators, negative emotions (hate, anger, fear, greed) seem likely to generate even more powerful fields.

Over time, the RDF has come to be associated with other charismatic figures in business (Elon Musk) and politics (Bill Clinton, Donald Trump). Writing for Tim Ferris's blog, Michael Ellsberg claims "Clinton is known for an RDF even stronger than Jobs ... Perhaps the strongest in the world."

It seems, then, that the RDF concept is specific to personalities. But I'd like to argue for an expanded definition. Going beyond individuals, it seems to me that groups generate RDFs as well. Just like larger objects in space generate stronger gravitational fields, it would follow that larger groups would tend to generate especially strong distortion fields due to peer pressure, groupthink, echo-chamber effects and other consequences of putting people with shared biases together in a bubble. As Adams has suggested elsewhere, these powerful fields would effectively warp reality around the group, creating shared hallucinations.

Returning to politics, this seems like a good way to explain the current state of affairs. There is reality, and then there is the distorted reality being generated around the groups that are in opposition to each other. The labels "Republican" and "Democrat" don't even begin to identify the many groups and RDFs involved. The fields overlap and also run into each other, creating further distortion in their wake. Most people are firmly caught within these fields and mind-controlled to the point where they can no longer perceive undistorted reality. What's even more frightening is the realization none of us can be entirely sure we're not caught in an RDF when thinking about politics.

A case in point: There once was a group of people who believed that President Barack Obama was not born in the US and that this secret, once exposed, would remove him from office. Although this distorted reality had the clear hallmarks of a hallucination — such deus ex machina plot devices only exist in fiction — many people were captivated by it (including the current president).

To my earlier point, when we consider all of the negative emotions around election losses this should not be surprising. When humans strongly wish something would happen to undo what has been done, we are primed for that wish to be "fulfilled" by manipulators. It doesn't take much, either. A lot of the work is done by our tendency toward confirmation bias and post-rationalization.

The RDF around this particular conspiracy group (so-called "birthers") was dispelled when President Obama proved he was born in Hawaii. Although that case should have taught us something, it hasn't. An even larger and stronger RDF has formed around a new conspiracy group that believes a deus ex machina, in the form of evidence of collusion with Russia, will remove President Donald Trump from office. The motivation of the mind manipulators is even clearer in this case, and yet the RDF persists.

Incontrovertible proof seems to be the only way to dispel an RDF — although time can weaken it. My perception is that fewer and fewer people believed the "birther" conspiracy as time went on because hard evidence did not emerge and counter-manipulators successfully branded it a racist/extremist belief. Then came the coup de grâce of hard counter-evidence. Something similar will no doubt happen with the Russia conspiracy as solid supporting evidence does not materialize and counter-manipulators make the idea sound more and more fringe.

Yet I wonder if increasing awareness of RDFs (i.e. my expanded definition of them) might also help, here and elsewhere. After all, telling someone "you may be caught in an RDF" sounds a lot better than: "You weak-minded fool!"

'Short Attention Span' Does Not Equal 'Incompetence'

"Generally speaking, if you see a person who is a failure in life ignoring advice and eschewing knowledge, the best explanation for that situation is you are dealing with an incompetent person.

"But if you hear allegations of a short attention span in someone with a multi-decade history of successfully navigating complicated industries, be open to the possibility that the messenger is pushing useless information on an executive who is good at knowing what matters and what does not."

- Scott Adams, "The Short Attention Span President"

Do Regulations Make Americans Poorer?

From Reason.com:

Is America's accumulating pile of regulations slowing down economic growth? According to a new study from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the answer is yes: Thanks to regulatory drag, the U.S. economy is $4 trillion smaller than it otherwise would have been ...

The Mercatus Center's new study refines the earlier work of two economists, John Dawson of Appalachian State University and John Seater of North Carolina State. In a 2013 Journal of Economic Growth article, Dawson and Seater constructed a regulatory burden index by tracking the growth in the number of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations since 1949. That number, they note, increased sixfold from 19,335 to 134,261 in 2005. (As of 2014, it had risen to 175,268.) The authors devised a pretty standard endogenous growth theory model and then inserted their regulatory burden index to calculate how federal regulations have affected economic growth.

Their astonishing conclusion: Annual output in 2005 was '28 percent of what it would have been had regulation remained at its 1949 level.' If not for the growth in the regulatory burden, gross domestic product would have been $53.9 trillion in 2011 instead of $15.1 trillion—a 2 percent annual reduction in economic growth cumulated over 56 years. Americans are significantly poorer due to federal regulations, without which 2011 U.S. per capita income would have been almost four times higher, at $168,000 instead of $48,000.

I have no idea if these numbers are accurate or if the study's conclusions are correct. Indeed, I see some potential flaws in the methodology I would want to investigate. However, this sort of thing needs to be calculated and considered.

It's easy to say regulations are necessary because without them, there would be much harm to citizens by greedy capitalists. (I agree.) But it's much harder to understand that regulations aren't cost-free. At some point -- who knows exactly where or when -- we are getting too much bad for too little good.

This is what we Libertarians call "the seen vs. the unseen." It's easy to see the smokestack that was made to stop smoking. It's not easy to see the town slowly descending into poverty.

Thaler's Mental Accounting Error

Behavioral-economics pioneer and University of Chicago Professor Richard Thaler recently retweeted a January 2015 op-ed he wrote for The New York Times titled, "It’s Time to Rethink the Charity Deduction."

Here's an excerpt:

Admittedly, the current tax treatment of charitable donations is not phrased as a subsidy, but that is just semantics. If someone in the 36 percent tax bracket gives $1,000 to charity and deducts it from his income tax, the donation costs him only $640. The government picks up the rest. That’s a subsidy. 

It would be reasonable to ask why the government should subsidize charitable contributions at all.

I'm generally a Thaler fan, but his statement strikes me as exactly wrong. The government doesn't actually 'pick up' anything.

As I understand it, a "subsidy" is the government giving money to an individual or business. A "deduction" is the government not taking money from an individual or business. If someone in the 36% tax bracket gives $1,000 to charity, his contribution costs him $1,000 -- even if he deducts it from his taxable income on his tax forms. If he were unable to deduct it, he would also have to give the government $360. That is, his contribution would cost him $1,360.

It seems even a great professor who pioneered an entire field can fall victim to the false premise that wealth derives from the state and is kept by individuals only at its discretion.

"Tax deductions, like tax exemptions and credits, allow people to keep more of their money in their pockets and out of the pockets of our greedy, profligate Uncle Sam," writes Libertarian author Lew Rockwell. "Only a statist who thinks the government is entitled to a percentage of every American’s income and that tax deductions deprive the government of its claim to that percentage could object to Americans holding on to more of their own money."

To be perfectly honest, though, I fall into this trap. I often find myself talking about business spending as being "subsidized" by the government. When I spend $100, I imagine I am only spending $65. But no, I actually spent the $100. Not having to pay the government an additional $35 on the income I used for expenses is not the same as the government splitting the bill with me -- even though the inevitably of paying taxes may make it seem that way.

What's fascinating to me is that this is exactly the sort of odd human misjudgment Professor Thaler helped bring to the world's attention. It's of a piece with what he describes as flawed "mental accounting." A being of pure reason -- Thaler's "Econ" -- would not make the mistake of thinking his charitable giving or business spending involved contributions from the government. But a Human mentally puts a rough percentage of his own income into the government's account and then rejoices when he gets to take some money out of that account. He experiences the joy of a gain even though what has actually happened is that he has not lost.

In other words, Humans accept government confiscation as the natural order of things. Perhaps someone needs to re-introduce them to a third category of being: the Freeman.

------

Update: Thanks to a June 12, 2017 Twitter exchange with Professor Russ Roberts, I learned that a "subsidy to an economist means 'something that makes something else cheaper or easier to buy.'" He adds: "It's not usually a philosophical point," and argues "tax deductibility of charity is a subsidy to charity." Perhaps I misunderstood Prof. Thaler's point, then. He is a founder of behavioral economics, after all.

Through further research, I learned that tax breaks are considered an "indirect" subsidy. But in the same Wikipedia entry I read: "Tax breaks are often considered to be a subsidy. This requires the assumption that a person's or an entity's money belongs to the government." So it seems we are right back at the same point -- albeit a philosophical not economic one -- that inspired the above post.

Cialdini Explains Why Trump Won

In a recent interview for the Financial Times' Alphachat, social psychologist Robert Cialdini explains, from a persuasion perspective, why Donald Trump won the election of 2016.

Below is the key section. I've underlined the things that jumped out at me.

Alphachat: Okay, we’re in the final segment of our conversation. I want to talk a little bit more about something you brought up a second ago, which is the role of persuasion in politics, this is obviously a topic of such interest right now. Not just in your two books, where you do mention in a few cases ways in which persuasion can work in politics, but also in the past I think you’ve been reported to have advised certain candidates, and you’ve usually demurred from talking about your specific role in these elections, so I won’t press you too much on that.  

Let me just ask you in general: What you have learned about persuasion from your participation in, and your study of, the political process?

Cialdini: What I’ve learned is that, like the business community, the political establishment is now embracing behavioral science in making their choices about how to present their candidates, how the candidate should make their cases, and so on.  

I just spoke about Trump, and so I can describe a strategy that President Obama used in both of his campaigns, which was to be sure that when there were reports of how much money they had received in donations (they are required to do that every month, every quarter), that campaign didn’t just describe the amount of money that they received, they also described the number of contributors, the number of people who donated to the campaign.

The message was, look at all of the people who have decided that this guy is a legitimate candidate. Obama started this, he started doing this. Trump doubled down on it when, at his events, he would instruct the television cameras to turn around and look at the size of the crowd. The multitude was the message. The fact that many people were there – or many people were contributing, in the case of the Obama campaign – that was legitimizing for someone who was not a familiar face.  

For Obama, he was coming from a background that had never been part of presidential politics before, and Trump was coming from outside of politics, so they needed to legitimize themselves. And the way to do that was to use what we call social proof, evidence that if a lot of other people are doing this, or believing this, it’s probably valid.  

Alphachat: Was that your idea, by the way? Was that something you advised?  

Cialdini: No, I observed it though. 

Alphachat: There is something else connecting the political landscape with Pre-suasion, which is the role of the media. There is a famous quote that you include in the book, that the media tells people what to think about though not necessarily what to think (I'm paraphrasing the quote). And that connects directly to your thinking on what it means to capture somebody’s attention. Which means that now, because the media’s hold on attention is also competing with the ability of candidates to directly appeal to people through social media and other things, the landscape has become a little bit more complicated.  

But it also means that candidates can more directly elevate the importance of topics that maybe in the past would not have gotten through the media filter. Do you largely agree with that?  

Cialdini: I do, and I think that competition now is causing media representatives to see as acceptable forms of information that they wouldn't have seen as acceptable to present before. Information that is sensationalizing, for example, but not yet determined to be accurate.  

Because it’s not an information war, it’s an attention war. But the consequence of getting people to pay attention is this is one we talked about earlier – they then get to see that particular focal concept, or that idea, as more important than before. That’s troubling. 

Alphachat: Can you share with us some of the other points you made in your recent speaking on Trump?  

Cialdini: Well, I think one of the things that helps explain his election to the presidency is it was a change election. That is, in the last 100 years, every time a given political party has held the White House for two terms, they are 80% more likely to lose the next election. So it was a change election. And Donald Trump was a change candidate, whereas Hillary Clinton was a continuity candidate. So she had a lot going against her just structurally in the type of election that it was, the psychology of that election.  

The other thing that the media was complicit in, though, was to rise to the bait every time that Donald Trump did something outrageous, or scandalous, or unheard of. And that caused Donald Trump to get attention.  

He was a master of being able to bring attention to himself, which led to the perception of his importance. If we’re paying attention to something, it becomes more important in our minds than it was previously, and what he needed to do was to have this perception of his importance (as a candidate) rise to prominence.  

The other thing that paying attention does is to cause us to presume that if we’re paying attention to something, [then] it has causal properties. That is, typically we pay attention to the causes in our environment, those things that produce change. It makes sense, environmentally, that we would want to spend our time focusing primarily on the things that are causal, that create change.  

Well, if he can get attention brought to him by the media, he becomes seen as a causal agent to a greater extent. And in a change election, that’s exactly who’s going to win.  

Alphachat: Yes, one of my questions is, though, doesn’t that reflect a certain amount of instinctive talent on his part that he was able to get that kind of complicity from the media, or from other people who were projecting his message to the base of voters that he was seeking?  

Cialdini: Right. It was that people were much too focused on the content of what he was saying compared to the fact that attention was being brought to him by this outrageous content, and the side effect of that attention was to make him seem important, and to make him seem a causal agent, which is exactly what a candidate wants, if there’s doubt about his or her role in the election.  

Alphachat: One last question on Trump. And this might take a bit of a wind up, so I’ll ask the question then I’ll give you a lot of room to answer it.  

One of your biggest admirers, the writer and cartoonist Scott Adams, spotted early on that Trump used a combination of persuasion tactics that were very impressive and that a lot of the other candidates just didn’t seem able to deploy.  

Here’s a few examples. One is that he speaks in very visual terms, so when he labelled some of the other candidates, his competitors, things like Crooked Hillary or Liddle Marco or Low Energy Jeb, these were all things that you could sort of imagine in visual, physical terms. And they tended to stick, they were what Adams called “linguistic kill shots."  

Another tactic was that he’s very repetitive, and in a previous podcast episode the journalist Joe Weisenthal brought up one of Trump’s speeches where he kept repeating that he was a leader, and things like “I like to lead,” “leading is what I do,” “people are led by me”… in such a way that a lot of pundits would read a transcript of the speech and think, this just looks ridiculous. But in fact most people who were listening to the speeches don’t process them that way. For them, that kind of repetition might work. Again, it just kind of sticks. They hear it a few times and then they keep the association [of Trump and leadership] in their minds.  

Another thing Trump did was what Adams calls pacing and leading, where he takes a very extreme position – for instance on immigration, as when he said he’s going to deport all undocumented people – so that later on he has credibility with his base of voters when he takes a more moderate position.  

And a final one – there’s dozens of these – but a final one is the idea of getting people to think past the sale. So when he says that he’s going to get Mexico to pay for the wall, and then his opponents say, “well that’s ridiculous, they’ll never pay for the wall,” essentially what’s happened is that they’ve granted one of the premises of what he said, which is that there’s going to be a wall in the first place. It’s a way of getting them there. There’s a lot more examples, but I guess my question is, both in general and specific terms, do you agree with this idea that Trump is a “master persuader,” as Scott Adams likes to say, that he has a unique skill set when it comes to persuading people, at least in the political context?  

Cialdini: I do, and I think it comes from a long history as a dealmaker, as a business person who has been successful, but also as an entertainer. And an entertainer on television, not somebody who writes or somebody who is a speaker or an orator or something like that. No, this guy is very visual.  

So in visual presentations it is the imagery, and in television especially those images are constantly sweeping past us. We don’t really get time to stop the frame and think about what was said there. We’re onto the next set of images, the next frame, and that stream of imagery is the sort of thing that allows people to make presentations based on appearances as opposed to the content of what they’re saying. And he was always very self assured, very confident, always dressed in the classic business person attire and so on, a lot of certainty associated with what he was saying. And so those impressions, I think, were the kinds of things that he had mastered, and that proved to be very effective in this particular kind of campaign – again, when people were looking for change, and wanted to be assured that this was somebody who was going to steer them in a good direction if that change was going to be afoot.  

Alphachat: We’re just about out of time, but I’ve got one last question. In one of his final interviews, on a podcast with David Axelrod before he left office, President Obama said this – I'm just going to read the quote and then ask for your reaction to it – the quote is: “We’ve got to figure out, how do we show people and communicate in a way that is visceral and makes an emotional connection as opposed to just the facts, because the facts are all in dispute these days.”  

Cialdini: So my comment on that would be the way to do it – if you believe that, and I see there is some validity to it – you do it with images.  

People don’t counter-argue stories. They don’t counter-argue imagery. They counter-argue statements, they counter-argue contentions or assertions or arguments. So if you want to be successful in a post-fact world, you do it by presenting accounts, narratives, stories and images and metaphors. Now, if you’re going to be ethical in that regard, you make sure that those accounts, stories, metaphors and so on reflect the facts. You still have to know the facts, but the idea that the facts are going to carry the day is naïve.  

Alphachat: This is a quick follow-on question – I said the last one was my last question, but this is, I promise, my last question, because I know we’ve got to go. What is an example of a potent metaphor that is ethical and fits the facts and that you believe could be persuasive [in the political context]?  

Cialdini: What I always prefer is to try to go to some example that has evidence to support it.  

There was a study done at Stanford University in which people were exposed to a news account of a rash of crime in their community. And half of them had the crime wave described as a “rampaging beast” that needed to be stopped. The other half had it described as a “rampaging virus” that needed to be stopped.  

Those people who saw the account described as a beast then came politically to support capture-and-cage approaches to crime – that is, increased police presence and prosecution and jailing of criminals, because that’s what you do for a beast.  

Those who saw the crime described as a virus came to support education programs and neighborhood enhancements and jobs programs, because what you do with a virus is you remove the conditions that produce it in the first place.  

So that’s the kind of way in which it’s possible – if indeed there is evidence that the way to reduce crime is by reducing the conditions that make it grow, then that’s the metaphor we should use – rather than that it is a rampaging beast, it’s virus-like, and that allows the story to be told in a way that comports with the facts.

Rationality & Political Disagreements

"[O]ne should not have an excessive confidence in the power of 'rational debate' to solve political disagreements. There is, after all, no reasoning with some people. They are beyond argument, and thinking that you can reason with them is delusional ...

"Politics is not a university debating society, in which each side offers its premises and conclusions and the team with the tightest logic wins."

- Nathan Robinson in Current Affairs

The Shadow Unemployment Rate

"By mid-2015, only 62.6 percent of adult workers were employed or actively looking for a job, the lowest in nearly four decades. The so-called shadow unemployment rate is estimated to be as high as 23 percent."

Source: Danielle DiMartino Booth, former advisor to Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

[See also: "The Employment Rate"]

Five Problems with "Muslim Ban" Outrage

The top story this past week was President Trump's Executive Order 13769. The opposition and media are calling it a "Muslim ban." There are protests and demonstrations, and many sob stories about those inconvenienced by the order. One of our senators even cried about it on TV.

I don't normally pay much attention to politics, but it has been impossible to ignore since the election season. I keep finding myself thinking about whatever issue is driving the latest media hype or hysteria -- and if I am thinking, then I am thinking things through.

With regard to the "Muslim ban," I see five problems with all the outrage:

1. It's not a Muslim ban. "The ban includes seven majority Muslim countries, but by no means are these states the most populous Muslim countries, nor are they among the top sources of Muslim immigration to the U.S.," according to The Atlantic.

2. President Trump didn't choose the countries on the list. It should go without saying that the countries included in the ban were selected by national security experts within the Trump administration. The order repeatedly defers to the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence. These officials no doubt based their decision on a list of countries that had been identified as high risk by the previous administration. "In December 2015, President Obama signed into law a measure placing limited restrictions on certain travelers who had visited Iran, Iraq, Sudan, or Syria on or after March 1, 2011," according to CNN. "Two months later, the Obama administration added Libya, Somalia, and Yemen to the list, in what it called an effort to address 'the growing threat from foreign terrorist fighters.'"

3. It's temporary, and for logical reasons. The order suspends entry of immigrants and nonimmigrants from the seven countries in question for 90 days. The purpose of the suspension (or "ban") for that length of time is to "temporarily reduce investigative burdens on relevant agencies during the review period ... to ensure the proper review and maximum utilization of available resources for the screening of foreign nationals, and to ensure that adequate standards are established to prevent infiltration by foreign terrorists or criminals," according to the text of the order. A side issue is a "realignment of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP)," which includes a suspension of that program for 120 days.

4. The countries are homes to terrorism (at present). Most acts of terrorism on US soil have been perpetrated by Americans. Very few incidents, or averted incidents, of terrorism were perpetrated by nationals from the seven countries in the ban. For example, the September 11 attacks were executed by Saudis, and yet Saudi Arabia is not on the list of banned countries. In this regard, I think Scott Adams put it best: "On Twitter, I am seeing lots of well-meaning liberals tweet charts showing that no one from the banned countries has ever been a terrorist in the United States," he blogged on January 29. "But Trump isn’t trying to solve the PAST. He’s trying to reduce risks in the future. And the future has risks that are unlike the past." More to the point: A thinking person should look at each country on the list and recall what is happening in those countries. Three of the countries on the list are home bases for the Islamic State (Iraq, Syria and Libya). Yemen and Somalia are well known for Islamist bases and training camps. The U.S. has bombed six of the seven countries on the list on multiple occasions and cyber-attacked the other (Iran), which is trying to make nukes. Since no one has posited a credible alternate hypothesis for why these seven countries were selected, we have to assume it has something to do with these facts.

5. Six of the seven countries we banned also ban visitors based on nationality. While what other countries do shouldn't determine what we do, a rational and fair-minded person would notice that "Israeli citizens are currently banned from entering 16 [Muslim-majority] states," according to The Independent. Among them are six of the seven countries in question. "Syria, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Yemen and Libya all forbid Israeli passport holders from entering their countries, along with 10 other nations," according to The Telegraph (citing the International Air Transport Association). Some of those other nations even have Muslim majorities, making the restriction a "Muslim ban" by the opposition's definition. Those nations include Algeria, Brunei, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The Employment Rate

The latest media reports say former President Obama left the country with a 4.7 percent unemployment rate. That level is historically low and close to what economists call "full employment."

At the same time, President Trump is said to have won the election because of widespread joblessness in many states. If that was indeed a big factor, these facts do not line up. Both claims can't be true.

I have heard the argument that the unemployment rate doesn't count people who stopped looking for work during the Obama years, but I've never heard any counter-stats or seen an analysis that explains or adjusts for this. So I decided to do the research and math myself. The above is the result of that research.

As the chart makes clear, there is merit to the claim that the unemployment rate is BS -- or, at least, a poor measure of the jobs situation in America. In fact, I realized it makes much more sense to look at employment rate ("ER" above) rather than unemployment rate ("UR" above) since there are less issues with that number.

As reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the employment number includes anyone 16+ who has a job and is not in prison or the military. Divide that by all people meeting those same requirements, with or without a job, and you get the employment rate.

Here's how that percentage looks for the last seven terms and four presidents:

Obama (2015): 59.3% (2016 data was not yet available)
Obama (2012): 58.6%
Bush (2008): 62.2%
Bush (2004): 62.3%
Clinton (2000): 64.4%
Clinton (1996): 63.2%
Bush Sr (1992): 61.5%

That's Obama's true legacy on jobs in comparison with those who came before him.

You can really see the truth of the issue when you take the inverse of the above percentages, which represents everyone not working for whatever reason, and compare it to the average unemployment rate for the same year:

2008: 37.8% not working, 5.8% average unemployment rate
2012: 41.4% not working, 8.1% average unemployment rate
2015: 40.7% not working, 5.3% average unemployment rate

Notice that 2015's unemployment rate was supposedly 0.5 percentage points better than 2008, and yet those not working was almost 3 percentage points worse! That lends support to the theory that job-seekers had just stopped trying.

This is not meant to hate on Obama or Democrats. Obama served during the second biggest downturn in modern history, and we have no idea if alternate approaches would have made things better or worse. Meanwhile, the Clinton years were legitimately the best years in recent history for employment.

I'll be curious to see how Trump does -- for real -- using this methodology. Will his America surpass the Clinton high of 64.4% employment? Or will it remain around, or sink even lower than, the Obama low of 58.6%?

UPDATE

Today is March 26, 2021, and here is what the updated BLS data shows:

So it seems Trump did not exceed the Clinton highs (or even the W highs), but he beat Obama in every year except 2020. Of course: Covid-19 threw a major monkey wrench into this analysis. It's hard to assess any year after 2019 fairly because the pandemic shut down the economy. 

Sitting here in 2022, Biden is taking a lot of political heat for his economic policies. But for this analysis, it also isn't fair to compare yet because of the pandemic.

Lee on Entitlements

"We have arranged help, but in such a way that only those who have no other choice will seek it. This is the opposite of attitudes in the West, where liberals actively encourage people to demand entitlements with no sense of shame, causing an explosion of welfare costs."

 - Lee Kuan Yew, the sage of Singapore