by tonynetone

‘Epistemic Closure?’ Those Are Fighting Words for Conservatives 
[Via – NYTimes.com ]

It is hard to believe that a phrase as dry as “epistemic closure” could get anyone excited, but the term has sparked a heated argument among conservatives in recent weeks about their movement’s intellectual health.

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Epistemic closure is a human problem. As Feynman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself–and you are the easiest person to fool.” Forty years ago it was the liberals who suffered most from epistemic closure. 

Just one example. Ted Kennedy wanted to have a single payer healthcare system using taxes to pay for it. Essentially Medicare for everyone. NIxon actually proposed a different solution – a market-based insurance plan requiring employers to buy health insurance for all their employees and provide subsidies for those who needed it. (Sound familiar? Obama actually hired NIxon’s health advisor to help him craft his plan).

Kennedy walked away from Nixon’s deal, living in a Cargo Cult World sure that he could get a better one after the next election. The same one that allowed him to think he could primary a sitting President. He was brutally wrong, watching for almost 40 years and dying before Nixon’s own ideas became a reality.

Conservatives have been discussing epistemic closure for two years  along with its impact on the GOP. Some were worried about the hermetically-sealed bubble that was forming around the Republican party. 

That bubble resulted in their canddidate for President being ‘shellshocked” that he lost. His own numbers guys were feeding him the information everyone wanted to see, not the information that matched reality. They listened to each other’s anecdotes rather than gathering accurate data. They developed software that they were so sure would be wonderful that they never actually stress-tested it until election day, when it failed spectacularly. He had supporters wo wrote that the data ‘nerds’ were wrong because lots of people had Romney yard signs. 

They had completely fooled themselves.

Efforts from two years ago to prevent such a bubble failed. This is not surprising. One of the hallmarks of epistemic closure is an almost impenetrable barrier  with true believers held inside and any apostates thrown outside. It becomes filled with all those who refuse all efforts to pierce the bubble.

It happens all the time with human beings and their social communities. People feel more comfortable around others who think like they do. Without positive support for alternative views, almost any community eventually becomes filled with monotonic views, supporting a Cargo Cult World which repels any conflicting information.

Since these Cargo Cult Worlds are only distorted reflections of reality, eventually they come crashing down, like some sort of funhouse mirror.

As I wrote around the same time this article came out, when the narrative is more important than facts, we get a Cargo Cult World.

The initial response of the liberals to the failure of  their ideas in the 70s was to retreat further into their own Cargo Cult Worlds. They failed to recognize the changing circumstances around them until the election of Reagan  hit them between the eyes like a two-by-four.,rendering their world view mostly irrelevant for over a generation, reducing them to a minority party. Even though Clinton was elected to two terms, in neither of them did he get a majority of Americans to vote for him.

Most of America did not like or endorse the ‘reality’ the Democrats inhabited.

It took a long time for most of the liberals to break out of the Cargo Cult Worlds they had created, to alter their views and listen more closely to the views of others. It was not perfect. Nothing human ever is. But something very unusual has just happened.

We all know that the Democrats – the original party of the Dixiecrats and Southern Segregation – put up an African-American as their candidate and that the US elected him twice.

Amazingly only 2 of the last 10 Presidents of either party have been elected to a second term after receiving the majority of the popular votes both times. One was Reagan and the other is Obama. The other 8 either failed to get re-elected or failed to win over 50% of the popular vote twice. This suggests something important has happened with the ability of the Democrats to connect with most Americans.

They finally accomplished something quite rare for them – getting most of America to vote for their Presidential candidate.

But even more amazing is that Obama becomes only the second Democrat since Andrew Jackson – the first President from the Democratic party – to get the majority of the votes in two elections. FDR was the other one.

Only two times in 180 years have Democrats succeeded in getting a majority of America to support their Presidential candidate twice. It is usually Republicans who accomplish this. 

For the first time in almost anybody’s memory, the Democrats have gotten most of America to elect their President candidate twice. That is, in my opinion, actually more amazing than the fact he is a minority. It suggests that for the first time iin a very long time they have moved outside their Cargo Cult Worlds  enough to embrace most of America, to actually listen to others.

To actually take the health insurance plan first proposed by a Republican, modify it with other ideas from other conservatives, and get it passed. Forty years after their Cargo Cult Worlds prevented them from doing it the first time.

Epistemic closure is a failing of the recent GOP and, just as the liberals did 40 years ago, they have two choices. Retreat further into their Cargo Cult Worlds, pulling epistemic closure tighter around them or create new paths that break up the lure of epistemic closure, reconnecting again with a majority of America.

I’m really hoping it does not take 40 years, that they break through the walls surrounding them. Because we have too many really hard problems to solve and we need their best ideas right now. It will take all our efforts, not just the ones represented by one party.

And because, it they retreat more, it simply allows the liberals to start creating new Cargo Cult Worlds – it is what humans do – allowing them to eventually ignore facts, one that will eventually fail to connect with reality and we begin the cycle again.

by NZ Defence Force

Can “cliodynamics” help historians predict future unrest? [Social Science]
[Via io9]

Unlike physicists and chemists, historians have been unable to formulate grand equations or immutable laws. The trends of history, it would seem, are outside the scope of reproducible science.

But a new discipline called “cliodynamics” is looking to change all that. After studying and mapping key indicators of history, University of Connecticut’s Peter Turchin believes that he’s detected consistent cycles in human history — cycles that he argues could actually help us predict the future.

Turchin, a professor of population dynamics, named the new discipline after Clio, the ancient Greek muse of history. He, along with other colleagues, are working to apply scientific methods to history by analyzing broad social forces that impact and shape all human societies.

Writing in Nature, Laura Spinney describes how Turchin’s analysis relies on four main variables: population numbers, social structure, state strength, and political instability. She elaborates:[

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While I’d like to know more about the metrics here –how are violent episodes tracked, for example, it fits in quite well with one of my favorite books, The Fourth Turning. That book delineated a four generation cycle of 80-100 years that was needed to fully work our societal problems.

But it had as one of its principles that there were conflicts at each half generation. These conflicts often served to make the final conflict inevitable.

According to the Fourth Turning, written in the late 90s, we are in the middle of the final conflict for the latest cycle, the one that started after WW2 and saw its Second Turning conflict in the 60s.

We are seeing a large number of new conflicts today that are replaying the fights of the 60s – abortion, contraception, etc. I hope we make it through sometime in the next decade. That is about what these cycles would predict.

by o palsson

Willfull Ignorance about Statistics in Government
[Via Good Math, Bad Math]

Quick but important one here.

I’ve repeatedly ranted here about ignorant twits. Ignorance is a plague on society, and it’s at its worst when it’s willful ignorance – that is, when you have a person who knows nothing about a subject, and who refuses to be bothered with something as trivial and useless about learning about it before they open their stupid mouths.

We’ve got an amazing, truly amazing, example of this in the US congress right now.
There’s a “debate” going on about something called the American Community Survey, or the
ACS for short. The ACS is a regular survey performed by the Census administration, which
measures a wide range of statistics related to economics.

A group of Republicans are trying to eliminate the ACS. Why? well, let’s put that question aside. And let’s also leave aside, for the moment, whether the survey is important or not. You can, honestly, put together an argument that the ACS isn’t worth doing, that it doesn’t measure the right things, that the value of the information gathered doesn’t measure up to the cost, that it’s intrusive, that it violates the privacy of the survey targets. But let’s not even bother with any of that.

Members of congress are arguing that the survey should be eliminated, and they’re claiming that the reason why is because the survey is unscientific. According to Daniel Webster, a representative from the state of Florida:

We’re spending $70 per person to fill this out. That’s just not cost effective, especially since in the end this is not a scientific survey. It’s a random survey.

Note well the emphasized point there. That’s the important bit.

[More]

No concept of statistics nor of science. As the post states:

Scientific sampling is always random.

So Mr. Webster’s statement could be rephrased more correctly as the following contradiction: “This is not a scientific survey, because this is a scientific survey”. But Mr. Webster doesn’t know that what he said is a stupid contradiction. Because he doesn’t care.

There can be points about cost although I think $70 is quite cost effective for the amount of information gained.

But the method of the survey is nothing to argue about. Statistics demonstrate that a random and scientific go together.

As this post discusses, most people do no make decisions based on rational thought. They use all sorts of easy rules of thumb – one being what others in their group think.

If you are a Republican, you follow what other Republicans state, especially the leaders.

President Obama comes out for gay marriage and the numbers of African-Americans who feel similar skyrockets.

Intuition and other non-rational approaches can work well but may break down in complex sittings.

People use System 1 to make quick decisions while they use System 2 to examine and reason.

System 2 is the one who believes that it’s making the decisions. But in reality, most of the time, System 1 is acting on its own, without your being aware of it. It’s System 1 that decides whether you like a person, which thoughts or associations come to mind, and what you feel about something. All of this happens automatically. You can’t help it, and yet you often base your decisions on it.

System 1 is always on. System 2 is hardly used because it requires effort and energy.

Most times System 1 works fine. Just as saying today’s weather will be just like yesterday’s.

But sometimes that hurricane comes along and all bets are off for System 1.

One of the hallmarks of willful ignorance is the purposeful effort to refuse to use System 2 approaches. Rational thought is not as important as simply going with the gut feelings.

System 1 allows Cargo Cult Worlds to be created and sustained.

Too many people simply refuse to allow System 2 approaches to enter into their thinking. And it gets worse the more complex the thinking needed, when System 2 thinking is most needed.

Will we ever have a period where System 2 thinking is used by our leaders in a meaningful and effective way?

If we hope to survive, there need to be some really good System 2 thinking applied. Rules of thumb too often lead to useless but willful ignorance.