Red Gray & Blue

Does Global Warming Exist?

2012-01-15T22:01:52Z

Iceless Age

The next ice age could be deferred for tens of thousands of years thanks to heat being stored in the atmosphere by greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study.

Based on long-term changes in Earth’s orbit around the sun, as well as the tilt and wobble of the planet on its axis, we should be slowly moving toward an end of our modern warm age within 1,500 years.

Those influences that cause the transition back and forth from ice ages to periods when the glaciers retreat were discovered nearly 100 years ago by Serbian scientist Milutin Milankovic.

But a group of scientists from London, Florida and Norway have now calculated that carbon dioxide levels would have to drop by about a third before a shift toward a new ice age could begin.

Other researchers have calculated that even if all man-made sources of greenhouse gases were suddenly shut down, greenhouse gas levels would remain elevated for at least 1,000 years.

http://earthweek.com/

O.C. SCIENCE

As planet warms, Greenland darkens

The ice sheet covering Greenland is growing darker in response to global warming, new satellite data show, an effect that reaches into the interior and has altered virtually the entire surface of the island.

The darkening also feeds on itself: The less reflective the ice sheet becomes, the more warmth it absorbs, and the more melting accelerates.

The ice sheet now reflects as much as 20 percent less sunlight during summer than it did from 2000 to 2006.

“The signal is not just localized on the coast,” said Eric Rignot, a research scientist at UC Irvine and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who specializes in polar ice but was not involved in the study. “You can see the impact of warming over the whole ice sheet,” Rignot said. “That was a surprising result to me.”

The finding appears as part of the 2011 Arctic Report Card from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The study relies on data from NASA satellites and was led by Jason Box of Ohio State University.

Along the edges of Greenland, bare ground is exposed and pools of water form. Meanwhile, snow melts, exposing the less reflective ice beneath, which can be further darkened by windblown dust. But the darkening has another cause in Greenland’s interior. There, the ice sheet rises in a dome nearly two miles above sea level, and melting is not a factor. Instead, ice crystals change shape as temperatures increase. They lose their sharp, reflective edges and begin to clump; both changes result in lower reflectiveness. “So the snow absorbs more energy from the sun, and gets warmer,” said Rignot, whose own research has shown that ice-sheet melting appears to be accelerating at both poles.

Follow the O.C. Science blog at ocregister.com .

CONTACT THE WRITER:

7 1 4-796-7865 or pbrennan@ocregister.com .

Red, Gray & Blue Perspectives on "Does Global Warming Exist?'

Both of the above articles appeared in my local OCRegister—a mostly conservative/libertarian newspaper. Since there is a great deal of debate about global warming, think about these articles and then pick which of the following is your conclusion:

( ) Global warming exists, it’s been accelerated by fossil fuel consumption, and we can slow it’s acceleration by aggressive environmental interventions to reduce carbon emissions.

( ) Global warming was made up by Al Gore to get rich and Al Gore is a liar.

( ) Global warming exists, it’s been accelerated by fossil fuel consumption, but there’s probably little we can do to change it.

( ) Global warming is a liberal plot by looney environmentalists to make us all “live green.”

( ) Global warming probably exists, fossil fuel consumption probably has contributed to it, and even if we can’t stop global warming, we should reduce fossil fuel consumption for our health and the health of the planet.

( ) Global warming doesn’t exist and the scientists who said it did fabricated the evidence.

( ) Global warming exists, but it’s a natural process and fossil fuel consumption has little, ifanything,to do with it.

( ) The science regarding global warming is inconclusive.

( ) The earth’s environment is in God’s hands, not man’s.

( ) Other

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due vs Negative Spin

2010-08-08T22:04:00Z

Comments on the News--Judith Lewis

The problem with the news media today--although not a new phenomenon--is that many of the news media have become political ideology mouthpieces--and that even for the more non-partisan news sources, it's still focused on "negativity." If it bleeds, it leads.

The notion that this was true was reinforced for me by a Conservative friend saying, "well what's Obama done for the nation--nothing, that's what." So I started reading articles to see--what has his administration done? In a very short search I found two accomplishments.

What I found as examples were two stories where something had been done, but the credit for it had been buried in the article, or made to sound more like something the administration was forced to do rather than an affirmative action on their part.

The headline for the first article below was actually Medicare's private eyes let fraud cases get cold and the second article's headline was Minerals Service Had a Mandate to Produce Results. While both articles were factual, their headlines and arrangement of the facts had "spin." That is, they didn't focus on giving credit, but more on emphasizing problems or the negatives. You can check the original articles on the links included below.

WASHINGTON (AP)

Aug 8, 9:07 AM (ET)

Obama administration battling medicare fraud

President Barack Obama has set a high priority on battling health care fraud and waste, hoping for savings to help pay for the new law covering millions now uninsured.

Out of $835 million in questionable Medicare payments identified by private contractors in 2007, the government was only able to recover some $55 million, or about 7 percent, the report found.

A recent inspector general report also raised questions about the contractors, who play an important role in Medicare's overall effort to combat fraud.

The Obama administration says it's aware of the problem and is close to completing a reorganization of the contractors, to consolidate their work, define their jurisdictions more clearly, and help them coordinate better with claims processors and law enforcement.

Obama abolishes corrupt Minerals Management Agency
...The Obama administration announced plans in May 2010 to reorganize the federal agency to improve its regulatory role by separating safety oversight from the division that collects royalties from oil and gas companies.

The proposal would end a decades-old relationship between industry and government that has proved highly profitable - and some say too cozy - for both. The minerals agency, which was created in 1982, brings in an average of $13 billion a year.

Numerous Congressional and internal investigations have called the oversight agency badly mismanaged and at times corrupt. It has been rocked by regular scandals, including disclosures in 2008 that agency officials took bribes and engaged in drug use and sex with oil industry officials. And its own scientists have said that senior agency officials in recent years revised staff reports to eliminate environmental concerns that might have complicated oil-company drilling applications for offshore sites in waters near Alaska.

The minerals service short-circuited the process when it granted hundreds of recent drilling permits, according to documents and current and former government officials. The BP well that blew in the gulf in April was granted an exemption from the assessment process because company officials assured regulators that it carried little hazard. Officials went along with the company and granted the permit.

Spin: Your Brain on Politics—How Political Strategists Manipulate and Frame the Political Message (Part 2)

2010-05-12T02:29:09Z

Part 2 of Speech "Spin: Your Brain on Politics"--Judith Lewis
(Judith Lewis is available as a public speaker on this topic for community groups; contact her at judithlewis@redgrayandblueblog.com)

In our first section, we looked at how our brain is constructed and works--or malfunctions. Now we continue with some of the theories about our mind that have been published by research psychologists, cognitive scientists and linguistics experts.

Our thinking is greatly oversimplified—we operate as if our labels of good, evil, efficient or inefficient can be applied wholesale to things as complex as government or corporations or the economy.

We have very faulty memories—we misremember things as true even though we have seen contradicting evidence, especially if the faulty memory tracks with our ideology and belief.

In her book, Blind Spots, Madeleine L. Van Hecke, PhD talks about why smart people do dumb things. What you don’t know can hurt you. However, even worse, there is what we know, what we don’t know, and what we don’t know that we don’t know. And all those things we think we know. We start with a very spotted slate rather than a clean one—which makes it increasingly difficult to be open to new learning.

Dr. Hecke sees the “My Side Bias” as one of our biggest blind spots. We evolved as tribal beings which was necessary for our early survival. The long term effect of that, however, is that we tend to be ethnocentric. The result is that we believe our nation, culture, religion, political party, class, race, gender or species is superior to all others. Our ethnocentric mind makes it difficult to see issues from the point of view of those very different from us—except, of course, to conclude that they must be a little crazy to believe or act as they do. Patriotism, for example, sometimes takes the form of “we’re always right.” Either you’re with us or you’re against us. Love it or leave it.

In the matter of “truth” we are conditioned to rely on others to tell us what to believe—our parents, our church, schools, political party, friends or the media. Furthermore, we don’t attempt to pursue the truth because we most often think we “already know.” We seldom ask ourselves the question, “How do I know what I think I know.” Pursuit of truth is not easy. There’s the biblical saying, you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. There’s also an updated version: You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free, but first it may make you pissed off and angry.

Social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson in their book, Mistakes Were Made, but not by me, ask the question, “Why do we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts.” “Why do we see hypocrisy in others, but not in ourselves?”

Their answer is a characteristic of our thinking called Cognitive Dissonance. It’s what your brain does to “make you right—and others wrong” or as they call it “the engine of self-justification.” Let’s say a person holds two ideas, beliefs or opinions that are psychologically inconsistent. Like, for instance, I know smoking is bad for my health, but I want to smoke. Such cognitive dissonance produces mental discomfort, ranging from minor pangs to deep anguish. Extreme dissonance can lead to things like PTSD.

What our minds will do for us to overcome this discomfort is find a way to resolve the dissonance—and make us right. So for the smoker, the mind may say, well I know that they say it’s bad, but my uncle smoked and lived well into his 90’s. Or, I’ll gain weight if I smoke. Or, I’ll smoke for now because I’m under a lot of stress—and I’ll quit next month, or next year, or…

Dissonance theory also posits that faced with new information, if it is consonant with our existing beliefs, we will automatically think it is well founded and useful. On the other hand, our reflexive reaction to dissonant information is to consider it biased or foolish. This reaction is automatic—unless we stop to think and question.

Another concept about how we think is called Confirmation Bias. That concept says we will find a way to criticize, distort, or dismiss dissonant information which goes contrary to our opinions. We will find minor flaws and magnify them into major reasons why it is wrong.

In the Mistakes book they identify what they call the “Pyramid of Choice.” It arises out of cognitive dissonance. Say a person does something bad or hurtful. This goes contrary to their self-image of being a “good person.” So the mind will find a justification for the hurtful act. This pyramid of choice can start a cycle of self-justification.

For all of the dissonance theories, I am sure you “thought of someone” who does that. The difficult part to accept is that “we all do it.” It’s just much harder to recognize in ourselves, because our mind is a co-conspirator in hiding it from us.

We can see prejudice in others, but not in ourselves. Yet, we all “prejudge” simply because that’s the way our mind works. Our mind processes information in “categories.” Unfortunately those categories, being mental shortcuts, also lead to stereotypes.

However, I know that I am a good person and only bad people are prejudiced or racist. Therefore, my dislikes or negative opinions about a group or an individual are rational and well-founded. Or, I simply deny to others—and to myself—that I have such negative opinions. Then, I’m shocked and so might others be, when in a moment of high emotion or under the influence, I blurt out an obviously biased, prejudiced or racist statement. Again, there are degrees of bias—but if a person totally denies they have any, they are probably deluding themselves.

A neurologist, Dr. Robert Burton, examines the notion of being certain you are right. In his book, On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not, he tells us that “knowing” is a mental or an emotional sensation, not a product of reason. Based on neuroscience, certainty derives from the emotional parts of our brain, not the reasoning part. The feeling of certainty stems from primitive areas of the brain independent of conscious reflection. He says the feeling of certainty overpowers and outsmarts the intellect.

Dr. Burton goes further saying that based on brain scans, most decisions are made for us by our unconscious and only after the decision has been made does the conscious make up rational sounding reasons for these decisions. From recent research, cognitive scientists question just how much “free will” we actually have.

In our mistaken certainty, we also forget that the vast majority of what we take in as sensory data then go through our filters and gets “interpreted.” We generalize about huge abstractions like government, the economy, political parties and ideologies, nations, war and so on. Then we take those and make judgments and create “meanings” for things that have no inherent “meaning.”

Closer to home example: My husband didn’t remember my birthday, so that means—he doesn’t love me, he’s a jerk, or he’s very busy at work, or…. We make these interpretations or meanings more real for ourselves by then seeking out “agreement” of others. But, inherently, the act has no meaning. It is not a concrete reality or a fact that can be proven.

Politicians create huge and lasting “meanings” which we often accept and internalize. For example, government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.

Remember, we started this discussion with the question of spin—how is it done and why is it so effective? And the answers that we are finding, one by one, is that it works because of the characteristics of our mind and our thinking.

Advertising and politics have both taken advantage of these characteristics. Dan Ariely says we are Predictably Irrational, also the title of his book. One trait that he says is hardwired in humans—and even in apes—is something called reciprocal altruism. It works this way—you do a favor for me—then I am much more inclined to do a favor for you. Returning a favor is so engrained in us, we often don’t notice. Why do you think all those requests for your donations include little gifts—name labels, calendars. It isn’t the money amount that matters, just the fact that once we accept a gift we are more likely to feel obligated to return the favor. If you’ve ever attended a fundraiser by the wealthy, you would know that one of the big attractions are the monogrammed bags or jackets given in drawings or as gifts for attendance—things of minimal monetary value compared to what the rich can purchase for themselves, but essential to holding a high dollar charity event and getting attendees to open their wallets.

However, reciprocal altruism goes even further. If I first do a favor for you, I am more inclined to do more favors for you. Here is where cognitive dissonance plays a role. Let’s say I did a favor for someone who really didn’t deserve it. My mind will reassure me that I was “right” to do such a favor—thus establishing a justification for additional favors. This reciprocal altruism plays heavily in the game of politics—campaign contributions and those even seemingly insignificant favors do influence behavior even if the politician themselves are unaware of it. For judges and politicians to claim that such relationships of friendship and money don’t bias their opinions—is self delusional.

Cognitive psychologist and linguist George Lakoff says that if you believe in the rational voter, you will give people facts and figures and you will point out where their interests lie. You think they will reach the right conclusions and vote consistent with their self interests—and you will be dead wrong.

The answer, he says, is in the way we use language—in the study of linguistics. For his classes he performs a little experiment. Let’s try it now. Don’t think of an elephant.

Were you successful in not thinking of an elephant? Of course not. Words are powerful. Words automatically activate metaphors and frames that are pre-existing in our brains. I say elephant—and your mind comes up with whatever you know about elephants—what they look like, stories you’ve heard about them—or maybe you thought of an elephant in the frame known as Republican?

Frames are an important concept in linguistics. How a word or an issue or a person is framed will determine your opinions about them and your actions toward them.

Let’s explore some framing of words. An example, the word moral. The word describes an abstract concept. Yet in our use of language it has a vertical orientation. Moral is up—immoral is down. It also has sensory connections—moral is pure; immoral is disgusting—we associate both purity and disgust with taste and smell.

How you frame things determines your relationship to them. For example, take the word taxes. For some, taxes are something that you’ve earned that is taken away from you. But, an equally valid frame would be that taxes are something you contribute for the benefits you have been given and for the common good. Which frame you give them determines your opinions on a great many political issues.

We understand ourselves and other people inside of cultural linguistic narratives. Campaign strategists use frames—positive ones for their candidate; negative ones for the opponent. It works because we automatically--without conscious control--see people in terms of our own narratives—or within those created for us by their campaign and the press.

Think about recent presidential candidates. What frames were created for them? Interestingly enough, we will likely remember the negative frames more readily than the positive frames.

For example, what are some possible frames for Hillary Clinton? For some, she is the long-suffering wife of Bill Clinton. Another frame is she’s the model of the competent, deserving woman. And for those who most strongly oppose her, she’s a calculating bitch.

Lakoff has a theory that the major difference between Republicans and Democrats. He says that both use family as a metaphor for government. But the family metaphors differ. Conservatives adhere to a strict father family model with concern for crime and punishment, tough love, strict rules for society and strong military for defense. Liberals, he says, prefer the nuturant parent model. That model values social justice, rehabilitation and tolerance. There are overlaps between the two, but Lakoff theorizes that it explains what often seem to be inexplicable differing points of view.

Another new concept helpful to understanding spin and how our minds work is laid out in a book called Virus of the Mind by Richard Brodie. The virus he refers to is called a Meme which is defined as a cultural idea or item transmitted by repetition from mind to mind in a manner like the biological transmission of genes. The term was first coined by British biologist Richard Dawkins. He defines a meme as meaning “to imitate or to copy.”

I found the notion useful as a way to understand how certain ideas get spread around and replicated. For example, when I started working in government over a half century ago, it was considered an honorable profession and respected. During the last three decades, however, that image has gradually eroded until there is a negative imagery of government—and the civil servants who work there. Witness the recent spate of negative articles about public pensions.

These memes get distributed by numerous sources—the media: newspapers, radio, television the Internet and person-to-person. You could call these all “Meme Machines.” Some researchers recently—who must have too much time on their hands—actually counted memes in what they call a meme tracker. They looked at the most cited phrases about the economy over a several month period, who originally said them and how many times they were repeated. For example, the phrase “we will rebuild, we will recover—“ first stated by President Obama—was repeated 4,679 times within a several month period. No wonder our brains get saturated with certain ideas.

We’ve explored how our brains work and some of its shortcomings. Now we turn to the people who study those quirks—and use them for the purpose of manipulation.

First came the advertisers. They’ve been in the business of puffery and spin for several centuries. Back in the 1940’s they started to really get serious about determining what works. They learned first of all that we buy based on feelings or emotions. Remember, that’s the most active part of our brain.

Think about it. How much research did you do in deciding what toothpaste to buy? Do you buy it because you know it has the formula most likely to prevent teeth decay or gum disease? Or because it tastes good? Or, just because it’s the one you’ve used for years and it’s now a totally automatic decision? If it’s the latter, you have fallen into the category of “brand affinity.” Being creatures of habit and wanting to save brain energy, most of our decisions are automatic. And if advertisers can brand your mind with their label, you’re a done deal.

Puffery and spin have been there forever. Remember the old snake oil salesman with the remedy that cured everything? Or, how about—“it takes a lickin’ and keeps on ticking?” Timex commercials of old still bounce around in my head. Because of repetition—repetition works. Think of all the jingles you still remember.

Let’s try out a few: Double your pleasure, double your fun…Doublemint Gum

See the USA in your…….Chevrolet 1978

A little dab’ll do ya…..Brylcreem, mid 1950’s

So easy a caveman can do it……Geico

Have it your way—Burger King

We’re used to spin—we’ve been spun all our lifetimes.

So, especially with the arrival of television campaigns, the political consultants adopted advertising research and methods. Think about it—campaigns use emotion, branding, puffery and repetition.

They also used some new tricks. They told their clients to go negative. Why? Because people like a good fight—and negative ads work. Instead of focusing on facts and issues, they peddled spin—their emphasis on character instead of policy. And they did all that because it worked. You may not watch Jerry Springer, but thousands of Americans do. During my browsing and “intellectual” research on the Internet, I find myself sucked into reading gossip and conflict pieces. We are all fascinated by other people’s foibles and flaws. Think Tiger Woods—and the media feed it.

Alpha Dogs by James Harding talks about the Americans who turned political spin into a global business. Normally, the names of those Americans are not well known, except perhaps for George W. Bush’s strategist, Karl Rove. But there are others who are famous in the industry. They publish handbooks and strategy for campaigns featuring words that work. Frank I. Luntz is one of those. He says, “it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear.

You may not have heard of Luntz, but you’ve heard the words that work for which he is responsible. He specializes in message creation, branding and framing. In his playbook, the estate or inheritance tax became the “death tax.” We now “explore for energy” instead of drilling for oil. Tax cuts? No more, now there is “tax relief.” And, global warming became “climate change.”

If you think about it, much of the political dialogue of today is framed in such terms. We’re not for or against abortion—we’re pro-life or pro-choice. Republicans stand for Family Values while they refer with disdain to the tax and spend liberals and the liberal press. We didn’t declare war on a nation; we’re engaged in a war on terror. Liberals tout the merits of renewable energy and sustainable communities. We see the economic crisis in terms of Wall Street vs. Main Street. All of these terms were “framed” by strategists to fit their political aims.

We said earlier that spin isn’t necessarily bad, but today’s politicians have gone further astray. Both sides now put out information that is patently false.

For example—on partisan ads and in the Michael Moore movie we were told that Bush permitted the bin Laden family to fly out after 9/11 while the airspace was still closed. No—they didn’t fly out until a week to 10 days later; some were questioned. We believed it because we knew the Bush family had Saudi oil connections.

In the 2004 election conservatives ran an ad that seemed to say John Kerry voted to cut intelligence after 9/11. The ad featured wolves and sheep and said: “Even after the first terrorist attack on America—John Kerry and the liberals in Congress voted to slash America’s intelligence operations. By six billion dollars—cuts so deep they would have weakened America’s defenses.

The first attack they were referring to was actually the first World Trade Center bombing—in 1993. And it wasn’t six billion – it was one billion over five years, representing only 3.7% of intelligence budget. That same year Bush’s CIA Director had recommend 20% cuts. Kerry had supported increases for several years prior to 9/11 and after.

Why would they use falsehoods that can be disproven? Wouldn’t that turn people against them? Apparently not. They use them because—they work. First of all, they use them because we tend to believe negative information—or we may want to believe it of someone we don’t like.

Second, this negative information creates an emotional memory in your reptilian brain with the limbic system and the amygdale. Those lower brain etchings are the ones that stick with us the longest. Especially if we only listen to radio or television that reflects our political biases, we may never hear the truth. And, even if we do—our memory is often faulty and we are more likely to remember the emotional memory over the rational one.

Spin: Your Brain on Politics—How Political Strategists Manipulate and Frame the Political Message (Part 1)

2010-03-01T18:36:00Z

Part I of Speech "Spin: Your Brain on Politics"--Judith Lewis
(Judith Lewis is available as a public speaker on this topic for community groups; contact her at judithlewis@redgrayandblueblog.com)

Today, our topic is spin—and your brain. We have a notion of what “Spin” is—and we do a bit of spinning. Bill Press in his book Spin This says: “Spin is a way of fudging the truth without trampling on it. Politicians are most often associated with spin, but they're not the only ones. Everybody spins: teachers, preachers, salespeople, CEOs, … We even spin ourselves.”

Let me give you an example of spin. The Russians being a proud culture believed their automotive technology to be superior to all others. So they challenged the United States to race their best car against Russia’s best car. The American car won the race. However, the Russian newspaper reported it this way: "In a recent motor race, the Russian car finished in second place, while the best the Americans could do with their inferior product was finish next to last.”

Spin, when recognized, may be harmless. However, spin all too often does trample on the truth—and worse yet, we believe the spin, and it distorts our opinions, our decisions, and the way we vote.

But to understand why spin in its various guises works, you first need to understand how your brain works—as opposed to how you might assume it works.

I’ll be drawing on information I have acquired from readings in the fields of Cognitive Research, Linguistics, and Psychological Research and adding my personal observations and opinions. I would like you to take the things I say—not as truths—but as possible explanations for how you—and other people think—and why you—and they--make certain decisions, especially in public policy and voting.

I am not a scientist, so I may oversimplify some of the scientific data. My purpose is to provide provocative ideas to help us be better at understanding human and political behavior and more effective in framing political discourse. I’ll not be going into the specifics of the underlying research, but I will cover some theories and concepts. I’ll also provide a bibliography of my sources.

We like to believe that we are rational and logical people. It’s just those other folks who don’t have it together. Who are a few cards short of a full deck. Who aren’t the sharpest pencils in the drawer. However, cognitive scientists conclude that we are not as rational as we think we are.

To begin with, our brains are prewired for physical survival and dominance. The four basic survival instincts they say are

Fighting

Fleeing

Feeding

Reproduction

These four basic emotions rule because they determine our survival. When the cave dweller saw the predator approaching, he needed to act quickly to survive. He didn’t have time to stop and analyze the situation.

When I visited Alaska, Park Rangers pointed out there were different kinds of bears. There were grizzly bears who had a hump on their back. Then there were other bears—who could be black or brown—and who were usually smaller than the grizzlies. They warned us about bear encounters. They described the different tactics we should use depending on whether it was a grizzly or a brown bear—or if it was a mama bear. I remember thinking there was no way I would stop to figure out what species of bear I was facing. Let me see now—does he have a hump? Or is he—a she? No, I’d likely react by either running for my life or stand frozen like a deer in the headlights.

Anyone who has a weight problem can attest to how strong the feeding instinct is—and how hard to break. And, we’ve all heard the expression, sex sells. Despite all kinds of societal constraints humans keep on fighting—and reproducing.

So let’s do a quick and dirty overview of your complicated brain to understand how we’re wired.

Your Brain: Structure

Deep in your brain is a tiny section called the amygdala. According to cognitive scientists the amygdala controls our emotions and mediates our fears, anxieties and anger. Humans retain what some call the reptilian brain or reptilian complex which encompasses the amygdala and the limbic system. This part of the brain is our emotional or instinctual brain. We all have this mechanism and it is the oldest part of our evolutionary brain.

Now for the guys, I know some of you believe only women have emotions—but you need to recognize that anger—and manly posturing—are emotions.

This emotional brain has a direct connection with our senses. The sensual input is generated constantly and the instinctual brain creates a physiological response and an emotional reaction. All this happens below the conscious level. Those emotions instinctually either push us away from danger or toward reward. Only after having gone through this system do the prefrontal lobes of your conscious brain get the chance to interpret what is going on.

Your Brain: Input

So our brains are constantly bombarded with sensory information. However, only a fraction of that information ever reaches our consciousness. Our mind is not like a camera or a tape recorder imprinting everything we sense. The input to our brain and memory is heavily censored and then altered by brain processes. One of those censors is in the brainstem—known as the reticular activating system. Most of our moment-to-moment experiences pass rapidly into oblivion. We don’t see what we think we see because our input is heavily censored and altered before it reaches consciousness. That’s one explanation for why eyewitness testimony of the same event differs so much. It also suggests that the expression should be changed to “Believing is Seeing” rather than the other way round.

Some folks’ brains do less censoring than others—for example people with eidetic memories. And, it may be that autism results from a dysfunction of this censoring task.

Your Brain: Storage

Very few moments get encoded as memories. And even those memories get overwritten by new data. Our recollections are not accurate records but reconstructions of the past. Our instinctual brain, prewired for survival, registers highly emotional experiences the most strongly. Prolonged experiences also tend to stick with us. However, our recall of past events and data is selective and unreliable.

If you doubt that and have adult children, try this experiment. Have them tell you about their childhood. I’ve done it—and there’s no way that my children ever lived in the same house or experienced the same events as I did. Their recollection and my recollection are not even close.

Your Brain: Thinking

Some cognitive scientists estimate that 98 percent of thought is not conscious. They say most thought is reflexive, not reflective. That it’s beyond your conscious control. Your brain makes decisions for you that you are not consciously aware of. Those opinions you have, especially the ones you “feel” strongly about—come from the emotional brain.

Dr. Linda Elder of the Foundation for Critical Thinking says “…much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed or downright prejudiced.”

In the book “The Political Brain—Why we make up our minds without using our heads” Drew Westen says: “In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins.” This is because feelings are millions of years older than the conscious thought processes we call “reason,” and they have been guiding behavior for far longer.

And to those of you listening to, or reading this, I want to remind you that this is as true of you—as it is of people in that “other political party.”

Thomas Kida in the book “Don’t Believe Everything You Think,” says that we humans prefer stories, anecdotal information, to statistics or facts. Given the history of humankind that makes sense—long before we had written language or the internet, we told our history and preserved our tribal cultures in the form of stories and myths.

Think about some “stories” used in politics. In the last election there was “Joe the Plumber.” Now Joe turned out to be someone other than we first thought, but it was a story with a moral about government taxation that Senator McCain latched onto. President Ronald Reagan told a story that framed how some people perceive the welfare rolls when he described a black welfare mother driving a Cadillac. Stories don’t have to be accurate to resonate with us—we instinctively grasp the underlying values and moral lessons inherent in such stories.

Kida also asserts that we are cause-seeking beings who see associations where none exist. We discount chance and coincidence.

The theory of global warming involves complex computer models tracking climate over a long period of time and reams of scientific data. Yet, we hear news pundits and our friends and neighbors saying about global warming, “what a crock, look at all that snow and ice out there. Does that look like global warming to you?”

Or, we take a complicated economic phenomenon like the recession--and we know—or think we know—exactly who the guilty party is who caused it. Of course, who gets the role of the villain depends on what political party you’re partial to.

(To be continued)

Reflecting on assumptions--and homelessness

2010-02-16T23:02:00Z

Thinking about Issues--Judith Lewis

I've been thinking about how fortunate I am to have friends whose ideologies differ from mine, but who are still willing to engage in dialog with me. Although I have to confess that being human, I most often think I'm right and they're wrong (and I'm sure they think the same thing in reverse).

The gift these friends give me, however, is that in attempting to refute their opinions or conclusions, it pushes me to think about what I believe--and furthermore to do some research and fact checking to see what is really true--or as close to the truth as I can get.

For example, recently someone sent a joke about a homeless man supposedly illustrating the difference between Republicans and Liberals--where the obvious assumption is that the only reason he's homeless is because he doesn't want to work. The gist of the joke is that Liberals want to give him money for doing nothing instead of putting him to work.

I was motivated to do some research to see what the latest evidence about homelessness says about who is homeless and why. Recent studies indicate about 25% of the homeless are individuals with untreated mental illness, 40% of homeless men have served in the armed forces, as compared to 34% of the general adult male population. A very recent trend is that families are the largest and fastest growing segment of the homeless population, one in five people in a soup kitchen line is a child. 44 percent of the homeless did some work for pay in the month before being surveyed, although only 13 percent held a regular job.

Problems with alcohol, drugs, and mental health among homeless people are well documented and often occur together. Among adults using homeless services, 31 percent reported a combination of mental health and substance abuse problems (alcohol and/or drugs) within the past year. An additional 17 percent reported problems with drugs and/or alcohol problems, but no mental health problems. Further, 12 percent reported only problems with alcohol, and 15 percent reported only mental health problems.

So, yes, a goodly number meet the stereotype of the down and out homeless drunk that cops find on the street. However, I have come to question the assumption that they are there solely of their own doing, that they're too lazy to work, or that they're homeless because of their lack of moral character.

Recent research has shown that a large percentage of substance abusers are, in fact, mentally ill, and are self-medicating. Further, research has shown that both alcoholism and addiction as well as many mental illnesses are biological in nature and tend to run in families. So, including those facts into my assumptions, I have to rethink the stereotype of just who is homeless and why.

My current assessment is that we should look at the issues of substance abuse and mental illness from a medical/biological viewpoint, just as we look at cancer, heart problems or related medical issues such as obesity. Yes, there is a free will issue in making choices about how someone deals with an illness--whether we follow doctor's orders, whether we eat right and exercise. I'd say just as a guess that it's about 70/30: meaning 70% of the condition is outside the individual's control with 30% being the degree of free will and control they have over their own circumstances. Or perhaps even less control, since the disease itself affects the thinking process. A statistic that I recently came across said that of people who diet and lost weight, only 5% actually keep it off permanently. That gives some indication of just how difficult it is for human beings to use their "free will" to overcome addictive behavior like over-eating.

But, the underlying illness of addiction or mental illness is not a "choice" for which one should be morally blamed anymore than one should judge and chastise women who get breast cancer or men who get prostate cancer. Unfortunately, that is not the case and the stereotype of the homeless and drug abusers and the mentally ill all carry a stigma of being "bad and lazy and immoral people." Same goes for poor people in general. We need to understand "why" they're poor, before we make judgments that they're just too lazy to work and get ahead.

Now if I hadn't gotten that email, I wouldn't have given the issue much thought. So, again, thank you to my friends who think I'm crazy and misguided, but who are still willing to have political and social issues discussions with me. And thank you too, to those who occasionally give me feedback that I might not be so crazy after all.

I've been reading a wonderful little book that I recommend to friends to understand how much of what we believe nowadays is disinformation. The book is un-Spun: finding facts in a world of disinformation by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. They are also the founders of the Website "factcheck.org" which I frequently pass on to my friends when there is some question of truthfulness in what is being printed, broadcast, or passed around on the Internet. I've included some excerpts from that book below.

Un-spun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation
fackcheck.org HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHY OTHER PEOPLE ARE SO UNREASONABLE and hard to convince? Why is it that they disregard hard facts that prove you're right and they're wrong? The fact is, we humans aren't wired to think very rationally. That's been confirmed recently by brain scans, but our irrational reaction to hard evidence has been the subject of scholarly study for some time.

...the discomfort at being confronted with evidence of error is a universal human emotion. It's just no fun to admit we've been wrong. So we strive to avoid that unpleasant feeling of psychological conflict-what Festinger calls cognitive dissonance-that occurs when deeply held beliefs are challenged by conflicting evidence.

You base your belief, not on evidence, logic or reason, but simply because you want to believe so badly, the thought of it being wrong invalidates your very existence and that makes your head hurt."

In the past half century, the science of psychology has taught us a lot about how and why we get things wrong. As we'll see, our minds betray us not only when it comes to politics, but in all sorts of matters, from how we see a sporting event, or even a war, to the way we process a sales pitch.

Humans are not by nature the fact-driven, rational beings we like to think we are. We get the facts wrong more often than we think we do. And we do so in predictable ways: we engage in wishful thinking. We embrace information that supports our beliefs and reject evidence that challenges them. Our minds tend to take shortcuts, which require some effort to avoid. Only a few of us go to moonbat extremes, but more often than most of us would imagine, the human mind operates in ways that defy logic.

Psychological experiments have shown, for one thing, that humans tend to seek out even weak evidence to support their existing beliefs, and to ignore evidence that undercuts those beliefs. In the process, we apply stringent tests to evidence we don't want to hear, while letting slide uncritically into our minds any information that suits our needs. Psychology also tells us that we rarely work through reasons and evidence in a systematic way, weighing information carefully and suspending the impulse to draw conclusions. Instead, much of the time we use mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that save us mental effort. These habits often work reasonably well, but they also can lead us to conclusions we might dismiss if we applied more thought.

People "Not Like Us"

2009-11-11T20:31:00Z

Thinking About Issues--Judith Lewis

No one wants to think that they are racist, prejudiced or sexist.* But numerous research studies have demonstrated that these kinds of distinctions and pre-judgments are wired into our brain processing. We subconsciously prefer people "like us." Most of us are unconsciously prejudiced--and, unfortunately, we make decisions and judgments based on those unconscious biases. It doesn't make us bad people, just human. Unconscious bias is more insidious and difficult to deal with than overt racism or prejudice. So we need to be careful and more thoughtful in our generalizations about individuals or groups "not like us."

For example, some political pundits daily make offhand offensive and even over-the-top statements about race, ethnicity and gender. Then they deny that they are prejudiced--and claim anyone who thinks they are is obviously over-sensitive. "I didn't say that, I didn't mean that, I'm not a racist--or a sexist." People want to believe that we are "past that." That there is no need for affirmative action or monitoring to see if equal opportunity is a reality--or a myth.

The backlash against diversity and sensitivity training has come to be called "political correctness" because of the erroneous notion that it's silly, unnecessary and that discrimination in employment, housing and opportunities and prejudice and bias against certain groups in the United States is part of our past, but not in our present.

A recent example is the furor over the tragic murders committed at Ford Hood by Nisal Hasan, a Muslim. People have asserted that he's a terrorist and the reason he wasn't investigated was because of "political correctness." By definition a terrorist "is a person, usually a member of a group, who uses or advocates terrorism." It's possible that what he committed was a premeditated act of terrorism and he may have been associated with a group of radicalized Muslims. However, we don't yet have all the facts, so we shouldn't make that presumption "just because" his religion was Muslim.

It is a prejudgment, "prejudice" to automatically associate Muslim and terrorist. It's true some percentage of Muslims are terrorists, however, the label should not automatically apply to every member of the Muslim religion. If we do, then we should equally apply the label "terrorist" to the radicalized Christians who kill abortion doctors, and then by extension apply it to "all Christians."

*Someone just sent me an article entitled 'Don't call people bigots just because you disagree with them'

One of the problems in this whole arena of tolerance is a failure to distinguish between the various terms. People use them interchangeably but they mean different things.

From dictionary definitions:

A "bigot" is a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion.

A "racist" believes that there are inherent differences among the various human races that determine or limit cultural or individual achievement and usually has the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule and dominate others.

A person with a "prejudice" has a usually unfavorable preconceived opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without specific knowledge, thought, or reason.

Most of us fall in the last category of being "prejudiced" because we make generalizations about individuals in groups "not like us" without specific knowledge. And most of us do it unconsciously because it is prewired in our brains.

Some folks fall into the bigot or racist category--but that is a much smaller group and we shouldn't throw those words around carelessly. The correct title to the article below should have been “How Prejudiced are You,” having a prejudice or a preference for your own race does not necessarily make you a racist.

We all have biases whether we are willing to admit it or not. The goal in life, however, should be to recognize our biases when making decisions and vanquish them accordingly.

The below article addresses one research project that examines the issue. I've shared this with some of you before. Take the test(s). You may be surprised by the results. Hopefully you may even become enlightened and more thoughtful in your snap judgments about people "not like you."

How Racist Are You?

Posted by Jeff Mays on Oct 28th 2009 9:20AM
Filed under: News, Race and Civil Rights

Are you racially biased? Harvard University has been trying to find out with its racism test, Project Implicit. The less than 10-minute test throws different races at you and has you identify the images as "bad" or "good" as quickly as you can. The idea is that your first reaction is usually the most honest.

You can try the test out for yourself. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

Simply click on the "Demonstration" button and then click the "Race IAT" button.

Project Implicit, started 11 years ago by Harvard, the University of Washington and the University of Virginia, is a joint investigation into our subconscious biases. Most people would say that they are not biased against those with darker skin, obese people or women, but researchers say that we often harbor biases that we are unaware of.

Ask the average person whether he or she has a bias toward male executives over female executives and the answer might be no.

That's what I said when Anthony Greenwald of Project Implicit asked whether I thought of men and women differently when it came to leadership in business, math and science. He quickly informed me that I was probably like a majority of Americans who incorrectly think they don't have a bias toward male leadership.

"Eighty percent of Americans, black and white and Asian, have associations that associate women less than men with leadership in business, science and math. You may be aware of some biases you have but less aware of others," Greenwald, a principal investigator for Project Implicit and professor of psychology at the University of Washington, told Black Voices in an interview.

According to the Project Implicit Web site:

Psychologists understand that people may not say what's on their minds either because they are unwilling or because they are unable to do so. For example, if asked "How much do you smoke?" a smoker who smokes four packs a day may purposely report smoking only two packs a day, because they are embarrassed to admit the correct number. Or the smoker may simply not answer the question, regarding it as a private matter. ... But it is also possible that a smoker who smokes four packs a day may report smoking only two packs because they honestly believe they only smoke about two packs a day. (Unknowingly giving an incorrect answer is sometimes called self-deception; this illustrates being unable to give the desired answer). The unwilling-unable distinction is like the difference between purposely hiding something from others and unconsciously hiding something from yourself. The Implicit Association Test makes it possible to penetrate both of these types of hiding. The IAT measures implicit attitudes and beliefs that people are either unwilling or unable to report.

You can take several tests at the Project Implicit site to examine your biases against things such as age, gender and weight.

"The main value of the test is that it allows people to see an inventory of things in our heads that are out of sight," said Greenwald. "A lot of people are aware of some biases and quite comfy with them--anti-Semitic, anti-black and overweight--but some of the greatest interest is [in] ones they are not aware of."

Americans love having scientific proof for stuff we already know. Topics such as whether eating too much junk food can cause you to gain weight, how driving 65 mph on the freeway while texting isn't safe and why global warning threatens our future have all been the subject of intense study.

After hundreds of years of racial and gender discrimination, people are unable to admit that those biases still exist. We live in a media-saturated environment, where we are constantly bombarded with images that enforce and even prop up our biases. When we look at issues such as why African Americans are more likely to receive the death sentence for similar crimes as whites, the disparity between sentences for crack and cocaine, and even health disparities when it comes to cancer or HIV deaths, how can we not say that our biases have some part to play in those situations?

Some think the implicit biases research field has too many issues to form the conclusions that it draws.

I wouldn't use the test in a court of law, but it might awaken some people to their biases. Let's judge people by their actions. If you say that you value diversity, then what is the makeup of your company?

It would be great if we didn't need these tests to help people face their biases. No one likes to think he or she is a bad person, but common sense should prevail. I don't need a test to show me that there are biases against women when it comes to leadership in business, math and science. All I have to do is look at a list of Fortune 500 CEOs.

But maybe the test can help some.

"It's the first step in deciding you may need to do something on your own to change," said Greenwald. "People might think they are part of solution and not the problem, but we are all part of the problem."

Welcome

2009-11-06T20:01:49Z

Red, Gray & Blue Perspectives

Bias, according to a recent Times Magazine article, is the norm for blog sites. While it's probably humanly impossible not to have biases, most issues have more than the polarized red (conservative) and blue (liberal) stereotypical perspectives. The intention for this site is to explore some of today's issues and tease out the red, the blue and the gray.