What gets done rides on rhetoric not logic

From "Public Sentiment Is Everything": Lincoln's View of Political Persuasionby David Zarefsky via Althouse.

Abraham Lincoln

In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.

Lincoln appears to me to be making the practical observation that an argument built on logic and data is well and good but what gets done rides on rhetoric not logic.

The distant unknown is distrusted

From U.S. Distrust in Media Hits New High by Lymari Morales reporting the results of a recent Gallup poll.

So, from the 1970's to today trust in the media has fallen from a high of 72% to 40% and distrust has risen from 28% to 60%. If the media were a single company with a brand, these numbers would be disastrous. Actually they are disastrous any way you look at it.

A well functioning, productive society is associated with high levels of trust. For trust in the fourth estate to have fallen so sharply and steadily is not a good sign, particularly as it parallels a similar collapse in trust in politicians and institutions.

Of course the fun thing about a fact devoid of context is to juggle it around and speculate. In this instance, speculate about why there might be such a collapse.

My speculation is that the collapse of trust might be driven by three factors: 1) An increasing geographic, physical, and societal separation between media practitioners and the public, 2) A homogenization of media weltanschauung that is at odds with that of the public, and 3) Poor quality control.

Separation - As the media industry has consolidated, there are fewer and fewer employees and they are concentrated in ever fewer locations. Whereas a few decades ago 70-90% of the content of your local paper might have been generated locally by local news reporters, today 70-90% of the content is generated remotely by a news service. We tend to trust people we deal with or see are part of our community to a greater extent than we trust faceless people elsewhere.

Homogenization - America is an extraordinarily heterogeneous country with diversity of religion, ethnicity, orientation, class, income, party affiliation, ideology, education attainment, geography, etc. The media industry is dominated by a certain caricature which is grounded in reality: college level or greater education, income at or well above national average, major metropolitan location, white, secular, Democratic Party affiliated, liberal oriented, etc. The fact that the media industry is both relatively homogeneous and that that homogeneity is quite different than the rest of the country is likely a source of distrust.

Quality control - The discrepancies between what people experience and what they see reported become more transparent as the technological infrastructure enables every person to be a reporter all the time, anywhere. It is not that the media always gets it wrong, only that they are more often wrong than they wish to acknowledge and that error rate is becoming more obvious to the broader public.

There is probably more going on and each of these elements warrant a discussion but at least it is a stab at framing the conversation.

Duck or Rabbit

I have never seen this duck-rabbit illusion before. Neat. I saw the duck first and took a while to get to the rabbit. As with most of these illusions though, once you see it, its obvious.

There’s a moral imperative not to do something that’s likely to make matters worse

From So What Are We Going to Do About It? by Eugene Volokh.

But let me offer a concrete analogy (recognizing that, as with all analogies, it’s analogous and not identical). Every day, about 30 to 35 people are killed in the U.S. in gun homicides or gun accidents (not counting gun suicides or self-inflicted accidental shootings). And every day, likely about 30 to 35 people are killed in homicides where the killer was under the influence of alcohol, or in alcohol-related drunk driving accidents, again not including those who died in accidents caused by their own alcohol consumption. If you added in gun suicides on one side and those people whose alcohol consumption killed themselves on the other, the deaths would tilt much more on the side of alcohol use, but I generally like to segregate deaths of the user from deaths of others.

So what are we going to do about it? When are we going to ban alcohol? When are we going to institute more common-sense alcohol control measures?

Well, we tried, and the conventional wisdom is that the cure was worse than the disease — which is why we went back to a system where alcohol is pretty freely available, despite the harm it causes (of which the deaths are only part). We now prohibit various kinds of reckless behavior while using alcohol. But we try to minimize the burden on responsible alcohol users, by generally allowing alcohol purchase and possession, subject to fairly light regulations.

[snip]

But on balance the answer to “what are we going to do about alcohol-related deaths?” is “not much, other than trying to catch and punish alcohol abuse.” And if someone says, “you’re obviously not serious about preventing drunk driving and alcohol-related homicide, because you’re not proposing any new alcohol bans or alcohol sales restrictions,” our answer is generally, (1) “just because there’s a problem out there doesn’t mean that we should impose new regulations that are likely ineffective and possibly counterproductive,” and (2) “punish misuse of alcohol, rather than burdening law-abiding users.”

[snip]

We should certainly consider proposals that aim to ameliorate the problem, and weigh their costs and benefits. But we should not presume that there’s somehow a moral imperative to Do Something. In fact, there’s a moral imperative not to do something that’s likely to make matters worse.

Its opponents eventually die

Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers by Max Planck translated by F. Gaynor (New York, 1949), pp.33-34

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

What is Cupid's credit score?

From Perfect 10? Never Mind That. Ask Her for Her Credit Score by Jessica Silver-Greenberg.

The credit score, once a little-known metric derived from a complex formula that incorporates outstanding debt and payment histories, has become an increasingly important number used to bestow credit, determine housing and even distinguish between job candidates.

It’s so widely used that it has also become a bigger factor in dating decisions, sometimes eclipsing more traditional priorities like a good job, shared interests and physical chemistry. That’s according to interviews with more than 50 daters across the country, all under the age of 40.

“Credit scores are like the dating equivalent of a sexually transmitted disease test,” said Manisha Thakor, the founder and chief executive of MoneyZen Wealth Management, a financial advisory firm. “It’s a shorthand way to get a sense of someone’s financial past the same way an S.T.D. test gives some information about a person’s sexual past.”

It’s difficult to quantify how many daters factor credit scores into their romantic calculations, but financial planners, marriage counselors and dating site executives all said that they were hearing far more concerns about credit than in the past. “I’m getting twice as many questions about credit scores as I did prerecession,” Ms. Thakor said.

For all their biases, I love the amount of content that the New York Times generates. That said, they do have a tendency to try and spot emerging trends before they are real. This might be one of those instances.

However, it does pose an interesting conundrum. I am keen that in general, we need to pay close attention to how we represent reality through our measures and believe that measurements are a critical element to good decision-making. That said, I am left somewhat wary of the implications of heavily relying upon credit scores in the affairs of the heart. Assortative mating based on education, income levels, religion, etc. is already prevalent. Adding credit scores into the mix makes practical sense from a logical perspective but still. . .

Silver white winters that melt into spring

From the New Yorker's The Hundred Best Lists of All Time compiled by Gary Belsky

Number 82 on the list is Maria Kutchera’s “My Favorite Things” (“The Sound Of Music”). Indeed, what a great list.

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things!

Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things!

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eye lashes
Silver white winters that melt into spring
These are a few of my favorite things!

When the dog bites, when the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad,
I simply remember
my favorite things
and then I don't feel so bad!

Pat solutions always trump complex root causes

From Reynolds’ Law by philo.

Reynold's Law:

The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.

It is the classic confusion between correlation and cause. It is also a special form of the logical fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc, confusing "They have homes and education because they are middle class" with "They are middle class because they have homes and education."

Good intentions are never a substitute for logical, empirical decision-making and often obscure the decision that actually needs to be made. Everyone who has had a career in management or strategic consulting knows just how prevalent it is for very well intentioned and very intelligent people to become confused about the difference between the problem and the solution. As a simplistic example, highways are a solution to a particular problem - usually the speed or cost of transporting goods and/or people. What we are really trying to solve is the cost or speed problem. Highways are just one among many possible solutions. But people will latch on to a conceptually easy solution without addressing the real problem. Building highways becomes an end in itself rather than a means to an end (cheaper, faster transportation).

Likewise with government policies and people. What so often happens is that we try, with the best of intentions, to increase the welfare of people rather than trying to create the circumstances which allow them to be more productive. We ought to be encouraging the attributes that allow people to be productive (self-discipline, self-awareness, focus, future orientation, empathy, risk moderated decision-making, work ethic, saving, etc.) rather than encouraging the consumption that is made possible by that productivity.

Reynold's Law suggests that for a variety of reasons, governments tend to become blindly wedded to enabling consumption without focusing on production. Regrettably, and as repeatedly demonstrated, if everyone consumes and no one produces, in short order there is nothing to consume.

Why the aversion to defining the real problems (and their root causes)? Perhaps Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men has the answer - "You can't handle the truth!" The truth is that for most major issues, the problems are hard to define, measure and quantify; there are multiple roots to the problem; the nature of the root causes makes them unamenable to effective action; and, not to be discounted, the actual root causes betray some of our cherished assumptions.

The sociological research strongly supports the historically common sense observation that certain attributes (self-control, self-discipline, focus, effort, commitment, tolerance, etc.), easily identified as middle-class virtues, on average lead to very positive outcomes in terms of productivity. In other words, middle class virtues lead to prosperity.

We have several decades of academia and pundits who have attempted to make the case that deviations from the well trodden path of middle-class virtues are not incompatible with prosperity. And at a theoretical level that is true. There are some individuals who can indulge in serial liaisons, alcohol and drug abuse, criminal actions, etc. and still be productive. That ignores that those individuals are rare. On average, people who do these things and forgo the attributes of the middle-class, usually end up with terrible life outcomes and low productivity. What is theoretically feasible is not practically achievable. In pursuit of theoretical ideals, the pundits condemn too many to terrible outcomes.

In our schools, which is more common? That we teach everyone that the sky is the limit, anyone can do anything, that there are no norms that cannot be successfully breached? Or do we teach that customary virtues such as diligence, hard work, saving, honesty, focus, responsibility, etc. are the reliable pathways to success?

Of course both messages are conveyed but I would wager that the latter message (the only one that can be counted on to deliver) is the poor cousin.

A shorter work could not possibly have done justice

From Moral Sense and Social Science by John J. DiIulio, Jr., a disquisition on James Q. Wilson and his works. On the role and relevance of books.

Wilson's body of work—the books and the rest—is beautifully written but simply too vast to be easily summarized. So let me confine my attention to The Moral Sense and several of Wilson's other books. He would applaud that focus, for he held an old-fashioned idea about the importance of books, namely, that almost no academic article, popular essay, op-ed, or (heaven forbid) blog posting, however trenchant or timely, can do the sustained intellectual heavy-lifting, refine the writer's understanding, and illuminate the reader's mind, the way a good book can. As a collegiate debating champion, Wilson knew the difference between winning an argument, on the one hand, and understanding something for oneself or teaching it to others in a way that, as he often said, is "general, meaningful, and true." Good books on complex empirical subjects leave the reader convinced that a shorter work could not possibly have done justice to the subject.

Disparity of power

David S. Landes in Wealth and Poverty of Nations, page 63-4, identifies three conditions or factors that cannot coexist.

1) Disparity of power
2) Private access to power
3) Equality of groups or nations

This is like the old manufacturing adage; "Faster, cheaper, better - Pick two"