The Thinker

I hereby submit the following hypothesis for consideration: Obama is the candidate of those who have fallen victim to the cognitive bias of wishful thinking.

This hypothesis occurred to me upon reading this article in the Wall Street Journal, which states (emphasis mine):

Democrats are nominating a freshman Senator barely three years out of the Illinois legislature whom most of America still hardly knows. The polls say he is the odds-on favorite to become our next President.

Think about this in historical context. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were relatively unknown, but both had at least been prominent Governors. John Kerry, Walter Mondale, Al Gore and even George McGovern were all long-time Washington figures. Republican nominees tend to be even more familiar, for better or worse. In Mr. Obama, Democrats are taking a leap of faith that is daring even by their risky standards.

No doubt this is part of his enormous appeal. Amid public anger over politics as usual, the Illinois Senator is unhaunted by Beltway experience. His personal story – of mixed race, and up from nowhere through Harvard – resonates in an America where the two most popular cultural icons are Tiger Woods and Oprah. His political gifts are formidable, especially his ability to connect with audiences from the platform.

Above all, Mr. Obama has fashioned a message that fits the political moment and the public’s desire for “change.”

So we have a relative unknown, far less experienced than his Democrat opponents were, without much of a track record to examine in order to see what he really stands for. During the campaign thus far, he has been long on rhetoric and bumper sticker slogans — he stands for “change you can believe in” and a “spirit of change and hope” — but short on detail. My hypothesis is that this is intentional; he is playing on the natural cognitive biases of voters, hoping they will all mentally fill in the missing details in a positive way based on wishful thinking. Just by saying “change” he is playing upon the country’s dissatisfaction with the Bush administration, without offering up much detail on just what that “change” would be.

Of course I have no way of knowing if this is truly an intentional scheme, since I cannot read minds and have no insight into the real motivations of Obama and his campaign staff. That’s why I offer it up only as a hypothesis. But it is consistent with the way I have modeled politicians’ behavior (see this post).

Tags: Politics, Critical Thinking // 1 Comment »

John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel, recently had this to say on the subject of global warming.

Of particular note:

Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares. That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where’s the global warming?

The cooling trend is so strong that recently the head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to acknowledge it. He speculated that nature has temporarily overwhelmed mankind’s warming and it may be ten years or so before the warming returns. Oh, really. We are supposed to be in a panic about man-made global warming and the whole thing takes a ten year break because of the lack of Sun spots. If this weren’t so serious, it would be laughable.

…

I suspect you haven’t heard it because the mass media did not report it, but I am not alone on the no man-made warming side of this issue. On May 20th, a list of the names of over thirty-one thousand scientists who refute global warming was released. Thirty-one thousand of which 9,000 are Ph.D’s. Think about that. Thirty-one thousand. That dwarfs the supposed 2,500 scientists on the UN panel. In the past year, five hundred of scientists have issued public statements challenging global warming. A few more join the chorus every week. There are about 100 defectors from the UN IPCC.

…

The battle against fossil fuels has controlled policy in this country for decades. It was the environmentalist’s prime force in blocking any drilling for oil in this country and the blocking the building of any new refineries, as well. So now the shortage they created has sent gasoline prices soaring. And, it has lead to the folly of ethanol, which is also partly behind the fuel price increases; that and our restricted oil policy. The ethanol folly is also creating a food crisis throughout the world – it is behind the food price rises for all the grains, for cereals, bread, everything that relies on corn or soy or wheat, including animals that are fed corn, most processed foods that use corn oil or soybean oil or corn syrup. Food shortages or high costs have led to food riots in some third world countries and made the cost of eating out or at home budget busting for many.

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Global warming: the greatest hoax ever? See this editorial by Eric Creed, Features Editor of CityView Magazine.

Of particular note:

Many leading scientists firmly believe that more CO2 in the atmosphere is actually good for the planet. David Archibald, PhD, at the Biology Department of San Diego State University, is one of those leading scientists. In a lecture given at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, Dr. Archibald said that more CO2 in the atmosphere will give us a lusher environment and actually increase plant growth rates in addition to increasing the sustainability of crops in arid regions.

…

The U.S. alone spends over $4 billion per year on climate change research. That seems like a lot of money to spend on something that is so well settled and agreed upon by all but a few “flat-earthers.” Gore has started giving a disclaimer during his lectures. Gore, and Global Investment Management, LLP (GIM), the London-based private equity firm of which Gore is the founder and Chairman, stand to benefit in untold riches if we invest in the companies he recommends in his lectures.

…

Joseph D’Alea, the first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and former chief of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecast, says that “carbon dioxide (CO2) is 0.000383 of our atmosphere by volume. . . Only 0.0275 of atmospheric CO2 is [man-made] in origin. . . We are responsible for 0.00001 of this atmosphere. If the atmosphere were a 100-story building, our [man-made] CO2 contribution today would be equivalent to the linoleum on the first floor.” Do we really want to spend a trillion dollars on linoleum?

“We’ve been warming up about a degree per century since the Little Ice Age (LIA) in about 1600. We’ve been warming for 400 years, long before human-generated CO2 could have anything to do with the climate,” says Dr. Don Easterbrook, Professor Emeritus Geology, Western Washington University. Dr. Easterbrook is not alone in his opinion. Reid Bryson, founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Wisconsin, opines “[O]f course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the LIA, not because we are putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”

…

On March 4, at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, more than 500 scientists closed the conference with what is referred to as the Manhattan Declaration. In short, they declared that “global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life. . . There is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change. . . Now, therefore, we recommend that world leaders reject the view expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided, works such as An Inconvenient Truth.” How many of you heard or read about these declarations in the mainstream media? Is this the consensus that Saint Gore and his co-conspirators in the media speak of?

Tags: Politics, Global Warming, Critical Thinking // Add Comment »

Brian Dunning, of Skeptoid fame (a weekly podcast that critically analyzes pseudoscientific/pop culture claims), not to mention of Skeptologist fame, has created a wonderful new movie titled “Here Be Dragons: An Introduction To Critical Thinking.” The movie provides a good primer on critical thinking from a “skeptic” viewpoint, i.e., it’s more concerned with how not to be taken in by pseudoscientific claims than on other aspects of critical thinking such as I’ve discussed here.

You can watch the movie online (it’s about 40 minutes long), and you can also (with conditions) download the movie in multiple formats.

The movie’s website is here.

Tags: Critical Thinking // Add Comment »

A cognitive bias is a common error or limitation in human perception, memory, or thinking, that leads to faulty judgments and/or distorted views of reality. If you want to be a critical thinker, it is imperative for you to know and understand these various cognitive biases, and for you to be able to recognize when you are succumbing to them by introspectively examining your own thought processes.

This week’s cognitive bias is the bias blind spot, the tendency for people to be unaware of and not compensate for their own cognitive biases. As demonstrated by studies conducted by Pronin, Ross, and Lin, people rate themselves as less subject to biases than others.

Via this post in Overcoming Bias, Science Magazine has called this “meta bias” (a bias about our biases) our worst bias. Specifically:

Because people often do not recognize when personal biases and idiosyncratic interpretations have shaped their judgments and preferences, they often take for granted that others will share those judgments and preferences. When others do not, people’s faith in their own objectivity often prompts them to view those others as biased. Indeed, people show a broad and pervasive tendency to see (and even exaggerate) the impact of bias on others’ judgments while denying its influence on their own.

For example, people think that others’ policy opinions are biased by self-interest, that others’ social judgments are biased by an inclination to rely on dispositional (rather than situational) explanations for behavior, and that others’ perceptions of interpersonal conflicts are biased by their personal allegiances. At the same time, people are blind to each of these biases in their own judgments.

Such divergent perceptions of bias are bolstered by the fact that people evaluate their own bias by introspecting about thoughts and motives but evaluate others’ bias by considering external behavior (e.g., “My motive was to be fair; his actions only helped himself.”). People place less emphasis on others’ introspections even when those others proffer them - a finding that is perhaps unsurprising in light of people’s skepticism about the accuracy of others’ perceptions.

In the face of disagreement, beliefs in one’s own objectivity and the other side’s bias can produce and exacerbate conflict. For example, American students favor bombing terrorists after being led to view them as biased and irrational, whereas they favor negotiating with terrorists after being led to view them as objective and rational.

People also behave more conflictually toward those whom they suspect will be biased by self-interest. Participants in one study were instructed to consider the perspective of their adversaries in a conflict over limited resources. That instruction had the ironic effect of leading them to expect that their adversaries would be biased by self-interest, which, in turn, led the participants themselves to act more competitively and selfishly. Acts of competitiveness and aggression are likely to engender a vicious cycle, as the recipients of those acts are likely to view them as unwarranted by the objective situation and, therefore, as signaling their perpetrators’ bias.

Tags: Critical Thinking // Add Comment »

(Cross-posted from The Stinker.)

Have you heard about the children’s book called Why Mommy Is A Democrat, and its companion book, Why Daddy Is A Democrat? The author, Jeremy Zilber, claims on his web site that the books “bring to life the core values of the Democratic party in ways that young children will easily understand and thoroughly enjoy. Using plain and non-judgmental language, along with warm and whimsical illustrations, these colorful 28-page paperbacks depict the Democratic principles of fairness, tolerance, peace, equality, and concern for the well-being of others.”

Um. Yeah, right.

From the sample pages of Why Mommy Is A Democrat:

Democrats make sure we all share our toys, just like Mommy does.

Note the poor homeless bum on the park bench in the background, with the evil rich people passing by uncaringly. (We know they’re evil rich because the lady is carrying a poodle and the man has the morning’s WSJ tucked under his arm. At least I think it’s the WSJ. And he’s smoking a cigar, just like Rush Limbaugh.) So we really know the author isn’t talking about “sharing toys,” he’s talking about redistributing income. He’s contrasting Democrats who want everyone to “share their toys” (i.e., money) to Republicans who are implicitly uncaring and greedy. The author may be using “non-judgmental language” and “warm and whimsical illustrations” but the net result is about as non-judgmental as Pat Robertson smacking a queer upside the head with the Book of Deuteronomy.

It’s telling that the author equates our citizens to children who require adult supervision (i.e., government intervention) in order to “share their toys.” But it’s a pretty retarded analogy. Why? I’d like to see a child provide for his family using his hard-earned toys. Oops, see what I mean? Toys are given to children gratis, whereas income is earned through hard work and wise decisions. And sharing a toy is temporary (the child will get a turn to play with it again later) whereas I doubt some entitlement recipient is going to pay me back my IRS-confiscated and government-laundered handout.

I also resent the implication that non-Democrats are uncaring (he is probably targeting Republicans here, but I’ll lump myself in as a Libertarian too) . It’s not that we don’t want social problems to be fixed; it’s just that we think our government can’t fix things, and will likely only make things even worse (*cough*40-year war on poverty*cough*). A bunch of politicians who are primarily concerned with the next election cycle will be motivated to use redistribution of income schemes to buy votes rather than to provide real solutions to social inequities. (See here for more on this topic.) So the social problems will remain unsolved, while the entrepreneurs whose investments and risk taking provide most of the new jobs in our country will be unfairly taxed for no reason other than to buy votes. In any case, I think that individuals themselves, working through charities and non-profit organizations targeted at a more local level, can produce far better solutions to social problems than an inept, inefficient, and politically-motivated bunch of Washington politicians.

Next:

Democrats make sure we are safe, just like Mommy does.

Real subtle symbology here, using an elephant to represent danger. And how do Democrats make us safe? By appeasement, by being weak on defense, and by eroding our second amendment rights. Let’s all just give peace a chance! Group hug, everybody! Ugh, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

And this one:

Democrats make sure children can go to school, just like Mommy does.

Oh 4 fuxsake. Only Democrats care if kids go to school? And the poorly structured sentence is particularly hilarious; is the author saying children can go to school just like Mommy does? Why is Mommy still in school? Teenage pregnancy, no doubt. Note the “Admission: $160,000″ sign hanging on the school in the background, implying that only rich people can afford to go to school if not for actions taken by Democrats. And is that the homeless bum, staring up wistfully at the school, perhaps dreaming of what could have been for him? And yes, there are the two evil rich people from page 1, standing next to their presumed graduating child. Does the “Y” stand for “Yale?” That would be going too far. And what happened to the poodle? Maybe the evil rich people ate it to piss off PETA.

Next, from the Why Daddy Is A Democrat sample pages:

Democrats make sure schools have great teachers.

I could point out an interesting (albeit politically incorrect) fact here for you: teachers are not particularly bright, as a group. Don’t believe me? Look up the average GRE (graduate record examination) scores by intended graduate major (e.g., here, or here or here) and you will find education majors towards the bottom of the pack. (GRE score is strongly correlated to intelligence as measured by IQ tests.) But let’s not blame that on Democrats. Let’s blame the power wielded by the teacher’s union on Democrats, and let’s also highlight the Democrats’ opposition to putting school choice in the hands of parents, e.g., via voucher programs. The end result of their opposition has been a disparity in school quality, segregated pretty much along lines of income, with poorer families being stuck with the worst performing public schools. So much for “sharing the toys.”

Feh, there’s a couple more samples left, but I can’t stomach going through them any more. To offer further rebuttal of this nonsense, and with tongue planted firmly in cheek, I give you my own children’s book (minus the illustrations, because I’m lazy and not particularly talented).

== WHY DADDY IS A LIBERTARIAN ==

Libertarians want to keep bullies from stealing your lunch money.

And by “bullies” I mean the government. And by “lunch money” I mean your income and your property.

Libertarians want to make sure everybody plays fairly and by the rules.

And by “the rules” I mean the Constitution of the United States. As intended by its authors, not as re-interpreted (if not outright ignored) with a nod and a wink by our modern-day politicians, who have grown the size and scope of government far beyond what is wise and what is legal.

Libertarians want to let you stay up late.

Meaning that you, citizens, should be trusted to act responsibly and make responsible decisions on your own without needing a large nanny state to take care of you and make your decisions for you.

Libertarians would love to see you run a lemonade stand or get a paper route.

Meaning that both free enterprise and personal responsibility are good things. And you should be able to engage in free enterprise with an absence (or at least a minimum) of government interference, to include subsidies, over-regulation and red tape, and oppressive taxation.

Libertarians want you to move out of the house when you grow up.

Meaning that you should become a responsible member of society and provide for yourself and your dependents. You should not expect to live your adult life on the largesse of others.

= = = = = = = = = =

In closing, please pardon me for waxing somewhat political in today’s post, but I just couldn’t pass this up. And I’m seriously conflicted about which of my blogs to post this to — The Thinker, or The Stinker. A little too ranting for the first, but a bit too political (and not particularly funny) for the latter. So I’ll compromise and just cross-post it to both. If you want the really funny stuff, you should have gone here instead.

Tags: Humor, Politics, Education // 8 Comments »

When politicians impose a tax on the “windfall profits” of oil and natural gas companies, as they invariably will, who is it that really pays?

You do.

A study by Robert J.Shapiro, who was Bill Clinton’s undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs, reveals the following facts regarding ownership of oil and natural gas companies:

• Only 1.5% of total shares of publicly traded oil/natural gas companies are owned by the executives of those companies.
• 42.7% of the shares are owned by mutual fund and asset management companies. These companies manage accounts for 55 million U.S. households, with a median income of $68,700. Even among those households with incomes of $25,000 or less, 16% own mutual funds.
• 27% of the shares are owned by other institutional investors including private and public pension funds, which are managed directly or indirectly on behalf of 129 million pension-fund participants, with an average account value of $62,280. Public pension accounts represent the major retirement security for soldiers, teachers, police and fire personnel, social workers, and government office workers.
• 14% of the shares are held in retirement accounts (IRA’s, etc.) with an average value of $22,465, owned by 45 million Americans.

Summary: The oil and natural gas companies are owned by millions of middle-class Americans, through their pensions, IRA’s, and mutual funds. You may own stock in oil and natural gas companies through your 401K or pension plan and not even be aware of it.

And regarding the recent demagoguery on the subject of gas prices: the cost of oil is not rising due to the greed of the oil companies; it is rising due to “a sharp and sustained rise in worldwide demand led by China, India, and the United States.”

Tags: Economics, Politics, Critical Thinking // 2 Comments »

Today I want to share my analysis of this video which presents “10 Questions Intelligent Christians Must Answer.” The video is from a group called “Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?“, who claim that God is imaginary and that those who believe in Him must be deluding themselves. I have always been fascinated by skeptics’ scorn for people of religion, because I am both a skeptic (where by “skeptic” I mean a critical thinker who tends to be very skeptical of woo such as the paranormal, conspiracy theories, and pseudo-scientific stuff such as alternative medicine and the like) and a Christian. So I was very interested in what the video would have to say, and what my own answers might be.

The video begins by:

… assuming that you [the viewer] are an educated Christian. You have a college degree and have been trained to think logically and rationally about the world we live in… You are a smart person. You know how the world works. You know how to think critically.

The video then challenges the viewer to “apply your critical thinking skills as we discuss 10 simple questions about your religion.”

Leading into the first question, the video says:

As a Christian, you believe in the power of prayer. According to a recent poll, 3 out of 4 doctors believe that God is performing medical miracles on Earth right now. Most Christians believe that God is curing cancers, healing diseases, reversing the effects of poisons, and so on.

Then comes question #1:

Why won’t God heal amputees? We all know that amputated legs do not regenerate in response to prayer. Amputees get no miracles from God.

If you’re an intelligent person, you have to admit that it’s an interesting question… On the one hand, you believe that God answers prayers and performs miracles. On the other hand, you know that God completely ignores amputees when they pray for miracles.

How do you deal with this discrepancy? As an intelligent person, you have to deal with it, because it makes no sense. In order to handle it, notice that you have to create some kind of rationalization. You have to invent an excuse on God’s behalf to explain this strange fact of life.

You might say: “Well, God must have some kind of special plan for amputees.” So you invent your excuse, whatever it is, and then you stop thinking about it because it’s uncomfortable.

Okay, so here’s my answer to #1: The question is predicated on the assumption that I believe God grants prayer requests for medical miracles. The video imputes a belief on me that I never expressed myself, based on the video’s stereotyped perception of Christians. (Hence the video itself makes a critical thinking faux pas, as stereotypes are a form of cognitive bias.) Personally, I doubt that God fulfills prayer requests for medical miracles — or, for that matter, for getting a raise, or for winning the lottery, or whatever. To the extent that He does fulfill these prayer requests, it’s a vanishingly rare occurrence. Why do I believe this? Because the empirical evidence overwhelmingly indicates that this is the case. Consequently I have to make no rationalizations whatsoever regarding amputees. My conclusion, from a critical thinking standpoint, is that assuming God exists, His answers to prayers must be in accordance with His plans, and not in accordance with our own desires. That raises some interesting questions regarding the motivations of God, but it puts to rest the question of why God won’t heal amputees.

In general, I think the type of prayer requests that God fulfills are those having to do with receiving the comfort and strength to cope with the situations we’d rather not find ourselves in (cancer, amputated limb, etc.), rather than prayers for us not to be in that situation to begin with. So I’ve learned to pray differently: I don’t ask for X, I ask for strength to cope with not-X. Example: I don’t pray, “Please God, make this extremely extroverted person who keeps yammering incessantly at me drop dead of an aneurysm and leave me in peace.” Instead, I pray, “Please God, grant me the strength to refrain from ripping this person’s head off and finger-painting SHUT UP all over the walls with his blood.” More often than not, God fulfills these types of prayer requests, and in other cases I have carefully buried the bodies.

Holy cow, this post is getting long already, and there are 9 more questions to go. Plus I have a couple of dead extremoverts to go bury (my prayers got a busy signal today). I guess I’ll have to turn this into a whole series of posts. More to follow…

Tags: Religion, Critical Thinking // 7 Comments »

In yesterday’s post I presented some information suggesting that liberals are not as honest as conservatives. It has since occurred to me that by doing so, I may have unintentionally implied that modern liberalism itself is therefore flawed.

So, just to set the record straight, let me state explicitly that I am NOT of the opinion that the inherent dishonesty of liberals (if such is actually the case) is proof of or evidence that modern liberalism is flawed. Oh, I believe liberalism is flawed, make no mistake; but not because of the dishonesty of liberals. To believe that an opinion is wrong because the person who holds it has an undesirable characteristic is to commit the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem.

I believe modern liberalism is flawed because it puts far more faith in government’s ability to solve social and economic problems than is warranted. The degree of faith liberals have in government is unjustified for two reasons: (1) it is intellectually arrogant to believe that a gaggle of smart politicians, however well intentioned, can solve complex social and economic problems without causing damaging unintended secondary consequences; and (2) it is foolish to believe that politicians are well intentioned in the first place.

Regarding the first point, i.e., unintended secondary consequences: look no further than the failed 40-year “war on poverty” as I’ve posted about before. Although started with the best of intentions, this effort caused massive dependency, bitterness, resentment, and class friction, arguably making things worse — at a cost of trillions of dollars to American taxpayers — than if nothing had been done at all. There are countless other examples as well. I shudder to think what the unintended consequences of a government run nationalized health care program might be.

Regarding the second point, i.e., the intentions of politicians: I refer you to my post on politicians and critical thinking. In a nutshell, the motivation of a politician is to get (re-)elected. Really, the ability to get (re-)elected is the ONLY ability required of a professional politician. Consequently the successful politician will be the one who is adept at posturing and demagoguing to voters. There is no reason to suspect that these same skills are the ones needed to solve complex real-world problems, once elected. And there is no reason to suspect that a politician, once elected, will be more interested in actually addressing these complex problems than in fabricating the appearance (for purposes of their next election cycle) of having addressed these problems (which, for someone gifted in demagoguery and propaganda, is far easier to do than actually solving the problems).

Now, if we had a nation of strong critical thinkers, this second point might go away. A critical thinker is somewhat resistant to propaganda and demagoguery, and could be expected to: (a) see through the election year bullshit and require candidates to express solid, viable ideas for addressing social and economic problems; and (b) hold elected politicians accountable for actually solving the problems rather than just politicking about them. But then, a critical thinker would hopefully not be intellectually arrogant enough to believe that all the damaging unintended secondary consequences could be avoided in the process of addressing social/economic ills in the first place.

Tags: Ethics, Politics, Critical Thinking // 5 Comments »

Check out this article from The Examiner, wherein Peter Schweizer examines various surveys and studies on the topic of whether conservatives or liberals are more honest.

He summarizes the findings of the World Values Survey, a Pew Research Center survey, and the Culture and Media Institute’s National Cultural Values Survey:

• 57% of those who describe themselves as “very liberal” responded yes to the question “Is it okay to cheat on your taxes?” compared to only 20% of those describing themselves as “very conservative.”
• “Is it morally wrong to cheat Uncle Sam?” 86% of conservatives said yes; 68% of liberals said yes.
• “You lose your job. Your friend’s company is looking for someone to do temporary work. They are willing to pay the person in cash to avoid taxes and allow the person to still collect unemployment. What would you do?” 49% of liberals would go along with the scheme, compared to 21% of conservatives.
• Similarly, more liberals than conservatives said that it’s okay to buy goods that are stolen, to drink a can of soda in the store without buying it, and to avoid the truth while negotiating the price of a car.
• Liberals were much more likely to say it’s okay to receive welfare benefits you didn’t deserve.
• Liberals were two and a half times more likely to say it’s okay to illegally download or trade music.

He also cites a study published in the American Tax Association’s Journal of Legal Tax Research, which finds:

• Conservative students took issues of tax evasion and scandal more seriously than their liberal counterparts.
• Liberals were more accepting of cheating in school.

He also cites a study in the Journal of Business Ethics, which found that “stronger beliefs toward conservatism translated into higher levels of ethical values.” And a different study in the same journal concludes that “liberals were more willing to ‘let others take the blame’ for their own ethical lapses, ‘copy a published article’ and pass it off as their own, and were more accepting of ‘cheating on an exam.’”

He also cites a study in the Journal of Psychology which concludes there is a link between “political liberalism” and “lying in your own self-interest.”

Schweizer’s opinion on the explanation for these findings:

Modern liberalism is infused with idea that truth is relative. Surveys consistently show this. And if truth is relative, it also must follow that honesty is subjective.

Now, for a couple of caveats.

First, I must disclose that I have only made a cursory effort to verify Schweizer’s citations to make sure he is quoting the information correctly. Although I searched only briefly, I could not find the World Values Survey from which he is citing. (But I did find the National Cultural Values Survey and discovered that Schweizer could have cited even more damning information from it, had he cared to.) Neither have I fully investigated to determine whether he is cherry-picking findings to support his point. I have not deeply examined the pedigree of the sources he cites, although I perceive both the World Values Survey and Pew Research Center to be a highly regarded (and highly quoted) sources, and the Journal of Business Ethics and Journal of Psychology are both fairly prestigious peer-reviewed academic journals. The Cultural Media Institute (who conducted the National Cultural Values Survey), however, is an overtly conservative organization (you can read their “About Us” statement here).

Regarding Schweizer himself: he is the author of a book titled “Makers and Takers: Why Conservatives Work Harder, Feel Happier, Have Closer Families, Take Fewer Drugs, Give More Generously, Value Honesty More, Are Less Materialistic and Envious, Whine Less … And Even Hug Their Children More Than Liberals” (Longest. Book. Title. Ever.) So we can safely assume he had an opinion on the honesty of conservatives versus liberals before he put together his commentary piece.

And regarding the findings themselves: they are merely statistics. Even if these findings are entirely accurate, it doesn’t mean that all liberals are dishonest, or that all conservatives are honest. It’s only a general trend.

Having said all of that, and assuming that Schweizer hasn’t unfairly quoted anything out of context or twisted the findings that he’s reported, there’s some pretty damning information here. The same liberals who would like to raise taxes (particularly on the rich) in order to fund programs aimed at correcting various social injustices are, as a group, much more likely to cheat on their own taxes. What kind of cognitive dissonance does this set up? And how intellectually dishonest and self-deceptive must a person be in order to cope with this cognitive dissonance?

Tags: Ethics, Politics // 2 Comments »

Here is a townhall.com article by Charles Krauthammer. This single article reflects my own opinion on global warming, and expresses it better, than anything else I’ve come across (including my own posts, dammit!).

Says Krauthammer:

I’m not a global warming believer. I’m not a global warming denier. I’m a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can’t be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere, but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.

Yep, I could have written this. That’s my opinion exactly.

K-man continues:

Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems — from ocean currents to cloud formation — that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.

I pretty much said the same thing, in this post and numerous others.

You should read the rest of the article, wherein Krauthammer goes on to discuss (better than I did here) the political agenda underlying the global warming movement.

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Also in recent global warming news is the acknowledgment that we are now in a slight cooling period, and in fact have been for several years now. In this article, Lorne Gunter (National Post) talks about the recent cooling-off and its implications for the global warming debate.

Key points:

• There will be no more warming until 2015 or perhaps a bit later. This is based on re-running the global warming models with updated information about the ocean current cycles that are driving the present cooling spell.
• Alarmists were quick to point out they knew all along there would be brief cooling periods.
• Last year’s IPCC report predicted an 0.3 degree C increase in the coming decade.
• Global temperatures have already been falling for a decade.

This suggests a bit of disingenuousness on the part of the IPCC and its climate scientists. They knew there would be brief cooling periods, they knew we were in the middle of one, and yet they predicted further increases in temperature? Seems to me like they missed this and were called on it.

Many global warming “deniers” have been using this current cooling spell as evidence that global warming may be over, and/or that the alarmists were wrong after all. This is equally disingenuous. Global warming periods have historically lasted for hundreds and even thousands of years, so any remission or even slight cooling lasting only a decade or two is but a minor fluctuation. And the mechanism for the current cooling is understood to result from natural cyclic variations in ocean temperatures, i.e., it is known to be temporary.

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This story is from Fox News:

A senior bishop in the Church of England has compared people who ignore climate change to Josef Fritzl, the Austrian who kept his daughter locked in a cellar for 24 years, repeatedly raping her and fathering seven of her children.

Specifically, the Bishop of Stafford, Rev. Gordon Mursell, said that these people are “as guilty as” Fritzl and “destroying the future of our children,” as reported by the Times of London.

I can only assume that (a) he buys into the alarmists’ claims about catastrophic climate change; and (b) he believes the evidence is strong enough that everyone else should be of the same opinion; and (c) he believes he is so “right” that it is proper and correct for him to level wicked and hateful accusations at those who might disagree with him. Now, point (a) merely represents an opinion, albeit one I believe to be incorrect. And point (b) merely reflects human nature; it is natural for us to expect that most people would arrive at the same conclusions we’ve arrived at ourselves. Both of these points are critical thinking errors, but forgivable ones — ones that merely flow out of normal cognitive biases. But point (c) is something far, far worse. To believe you are so “right” that you can accuse those who disagree with you of being incestuous rapists is nothing but pure intellectual arrogance. Whenever somebody makes these kind of statements — that if you don’t believe X, you’re a Y — you can pretty much ignore anything else they have to say; they have established that they are too lacking in critical thinking skills to be taken seriously.

Tags: Politics, Global Warming, Critical Thinking // 1 Comment »