Putting the Patient before the Politics

 Imagine you have a loved one who has been diagnosed with cancer. The doctor's prognosis gives a 50/50 chance of survival from treatment. The thought of losing this person to cancer is most troubling. The doctor devises a treatment plan, and your loved one starts treatment. This is an uncertain time, so you provide as much support as you can.

Then you discover that the doctor has politics you vehemently disagree with. Unfortunately, you are too far along with the treatment plan to change doctors. Still, their politics! How can someone so smart be so dumb about politics? How can they have these opinions? Of course, the doctor doesn't share his politics during medical visits.

But the thought of this person succeeding drives you crazy. Wouldn't this just embolden them in their stupid political beliefs? You find yourself secretly hoping they will fail—that will teach them!

You take advantage of every misstep or setback during treatment. "You're not so smart after all, are you, Doctor?" you say with a snarky tone. Your dying loved one looks at you incredulously. "He needs to realize that he's not perfect! You know, he's not as smart as he thinks."   

Of course, this scenario is as ridiculous as this comedy sketch from College Humor.

If the video doesn't work for you, the scene shows scientists explaining to a general about an asteroid coming towards Earth for an extinction-level event. They are proposing launching missiles to stop it, when the general says, "Just Let The World Die."

But there is a sick patient. The United States.

Government Accountability Office reports $200 to $500 billion in fraud annually. That's from criminals in Russia, China, and elsewhere stealing from the U.S.

There's an ongoing obesity epidemic in the U.S.

The people in charge have only recently brought these problems, or "cancers," to our national attention and are trying to do something about them. But it seems the response is political. If we care about these problems, we should all rally together to address them.

The Missing Middle: Our Political Blind Spot

 I try to keep an open mind and critically examine information. When I hear arguments from the Right or Left, I find elements of truth in both. But reconciling the contradictions between them can be difficult. Then I was analyzing some data at work (unrelated) and came up with a way to piece both sides together. I call it "The Missing Middle."

In my experience, data can be overwhelming for many people, so to make this post accessible to more people, I'm going to keep it as simple and relevant as possible.

We are all familiar with the Bell Curve, which helps teachers assign grades in class. The problem with using it in education is that it identifies one side as good and the other side as bad. The general "Normal Distribution" curve used in science and medicine recognizes the middle as "normal" or acceptable, and the "tails" on either side as unacceptable. For example, blood pressure that's too high or too low is cause for concern.

I purposely created this example with "red" and "blue" to represent the Right and Left viewpoints, where I think most political discussions occur today. Just like blood pressure, it makes sense to raise alarms when either party drifts too far from the middle.

The problem is when either side treats every action of the opposing side as alarming. If a person is criticized for everything they do, they will stop listening to criticism.

The following are some current examples.

Immigration

Recently, the Right has made immigration an issue with threats to deport millions of immigrants. They criticize the previous administration for allowing millions to cross our borders and overwhelm our country. Over 260 alleged gang members were deported. Among those was a man who was mistakenly identified as a gang member. Critics argued that these deportees deserved "due process" - a fair hearing before removal. 

The Missing Middle

Of the 260 people, about 10-20 were convicted violent criminals (e.g. rape, murder). The government had been attempting to deport these people, but the cases were caught up in court. What's missing is a working immigration policy and more efficiency in providing "due process."

Government Excess

The Right has been attempting to rein in government excess, while the left points to critical programs that may be cut. I've heard the argument against D.O.G.E. that many government agencies already exist to do this work (Government Accountability Office (GAO), Office of Inspector General (OIG), Congressional Budget Office (CBO), etc.). 

The Missing Middle

While the current government auditing arms have already identified many areas for improvement, they aren't empowered to take action, and those empowered aren't required to listen to their counsel. It would be better if both sides figured out a way to leverage this missing middle.

Climate Change

The Left has been sounding the alarms for the consequences of climate change and trying to enact policies to reverse the increase in greenhouse gases. The Right mostly denies this and prioritizes human prosperity over planet health.

The Missing Middle

While humans have caused an increase in greenhouse gases, which has heated the planet, the planet has been warming up since the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850 AD). So even if we could revert to conditions before the Industrial Age, the glaciers would still melt, and the seas would still rise. While some habitats are stressed by the changes, others thrive from increased CO2 and warmer temperatures.

More than 200 million people rely on the fresh water from the Indus River, which is glacier runoff. Scientists project a significant decrease in water by 2050. Without anthropogenic climate change, this devastation would only have been delayed.

The Right needs to acknowledge the coming changes and Left could be less alarmist. We should all work together to adapt to any unavoidable changes to our world and do our best to prevent what we can.

Conclusion

Focusing on the extremes of the normal distribution leads to polarization and unproductive discourse. It also distracts from much of the good that exists in the middle. We need to keep pointing out when either side strays too far, but we need to do it in the spirit of working together for the general good of the country. 

Intellectual Vision: Four Truths and Eightfold Path

I’m trying to develop an idea like Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths and The Eightfold Path, which applies to human understanding of reality. 

The Four Truths

1) There is an absolute, objective reality 

2) Humans (as individuals or collectively) are incapable of knowing reality completely 

3) Humans need to understand reality as much as possible for our well-being and survival

4) Humans can best do this by following an Eightfold Path

An Eightfold Path

1. Intellectual Humility – Recognize the limits of your understanding and be open to new insights, even if you consider yourself an expert. Recognize your own biases. Embrace the mysteries of the past and uncertainties of the future.
2. Intellectual Curiosity – Cultivate a deep desire to seek knowledge and explore reality.
3. Intellectual Honesty – Pursue and accept truth with honesty and integrity, even when it may be disadvantageous to yourself, your group, or your cause.
4. Intellectual Access - Make collective understanding available to all people. Share critical knowledge openly and ensure access for everyone. Practice transparency.
5. Intellectual Prudence - 
1. Avoid sensationalism or oversimplification. 
2. Critically evaluate information, verifying facts before accepting them or spreading them.
3. Avoid jumping to conclusions or being swayed by misinformation. 
4. Thoughtfully apply knowledge and consider how it affects others or society. 
5. Practice responsible environmental stewardship by reducing waste, conserving resources, and supporting sustainable practices.
6. Intellectual Tolerance - Accept diversity and differences, understanding that everyone has a unique life experience and perspective.
7. Avoid Persuasion, Seek Understanding – Engage in dialogue to understand and establish a shared pool of understanding rather than to persuade, manipulate, or win an argument.
8. Promote Empathy and Compassion - we are all human and make mistakes. We should not treat others harshly. It takes enormous energy to be informed on many subjects, and some truths are difficult to accept. “I’m striving to follow the eightfold path to truth. If I stray from the path, I appreciate earnest reminders from others. I recognize that not everyone shares my same conviction.

Example: Raising the minimum wage 

The Left and Right will make claims about what will happen if the minimum wage is raised. The Left claims it will give money to the people. The Right claims it will put companies out of business and may make it harder for teenagers or others to enter the job market, among many other unintended consequences. But no one knows the consequences for sure.  Let's look at this more openly.

If the minimum wage is raised, some businesses will comply, and others will not. Those who don’t comply may get away with it or face consequences.

Those that comply with it will pay for it out of profits or by raising prices. If they raise prices, they may gain or lose some of a particular customer's business.

If business decreases, the owners can cut costs by reducing their employees' hours, reducing the number of employees, or replacing employees with robots or other sources of automation. They could also find other cost-cutting measures like using cheaper materials, reducing energy use, or finding cheaper suppliers.

If employees leave (forced or voluntarily), they may find a better opportunity, the same, or worse. Some employees may stay enticed by the higher wages and miss out on other opportunities.

When replacing employees who leave, the employer may have an easier or more challenging time finding new employees. The employer may be more or less picky in their selection of future employees. If they are more picky, this could result in someone less qualified not getting the opportunity to get work experience.

If the minimum wage only affects a portion of businesses, it may be more or less challenging for other companies to find qualified workers (after the $20/hour minimum wage for fast food restaurants, my neighbor's company lost employees and ended up moving their manufacturing over the border).

Lower profits from any cause could end an ailing business, resulting in loss of employment for the people generously granted a higher wage. Some of these businesses may have ended regardless of the increased minimum wage, and there is no way of knowing at this point.

How each of the owners, employees, and customers responds is individual and based on that person's life experience and circumstances, and it can greatly differ by location (city, state, country).

The truth isn't necessarily black and white.

Resources

This post was inspired by Thomas Sowell's book Knowledge and Decisions. Specifically, the idea behind using the phrase "Intellectual vision" is from the book.

Intellectual Vision - a central set of premises from which particular positions can be deduced as corollaries . What makes them a coherent vision is the high degree of correlation among the particular conclusions reached among highly disparate subjects. An ideological vision is more than a belief in a principle. It is the belief that that that principle is crucial or overriding, so that other principles or even empirical facts must give way when in conflict with it.

You might call this post an "Intellectual Vision" to improve how ideas and beliefs can be formulated.

Ethical Thinking

 In "The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking", by Richard Paul and Linda Elder, the idea of ethical thinking was presented. I like to create models to help me understand the ideas, so here's my model.

Imagine groups of people with common thinking patterns, beliefs, biases, etc. You find yourself in one of the groups, most likely due to your upbringing, where you grew up and who you associated with. 

As you've developed critical thinking skills, you managed to make some sense of the complicated world we live in. You learn that these skills apply as much to yourself as others, even when inconvenient. You have developed...

Intellectual Integrity or, consistent standards for thinking that you apply to yourself and others.

Soon you start finding problems with the way your group thinks.  You feel an obligation to be true to your new understandings and not shy away, in spite of any negative consequences.  What you need is...

Intellectual Courage or, the ability to face difficult ideas that go against your previously held ideas.

Next you find that the framework for thinking of your group is not working anymore. Also, members of your group keep pushing back on your courageous thinking. What you need is...

Intellectual Autonomy or, having control of your own beliefs and values. But it feels lonely going it alone. What you need is... 

Intellectual Perseverance or, the ability to endure hardships and stick to your principles. Even then, you still need to live in this world and interact with others that don't use critical thinking. What you need is...

Intellectual Empathy or, an understanding of the forces and conditions that have lead to others thinking and believing how they do. It also helps us remember when we ourselves had similar ways of thinking. This often leads to...

Intellectual Humility or, an awareness of the limitations in our own understanding, biases and egocentrism.  You realize that you don't know as much as you think you know.

Scarcity of Thought: Transitioning from Tribalism to Community

In the book "Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much", by Sendhi Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, there's the example of two people packing for a trip. One has a tiny suitcase and the other has a large suitcase. The person with the tiny suitcase needs to spend more time optimizing their decisions on what to bring, not bring and how to pack.  The person with the large suitcase can quickly pack. This person thinks to themselves "I might want to go running", so they throw in their running shoes without further thought.

What if we apply this principle to thought: ideas, beliefs, opinions? Maybe your tiny "suitcase", or scarcity, is due to your religion, political party, education, or cultural upbringing. As a result, when you get new information, you struggle to fit it into existing narratives. This is why we have political attacks. This is where apologetics comes from. This is the root cause of cognitive biases. For example, confirmation bias, where we tend to find and remember information that confirms our perceptions (and ignoring information that doesn't fit). Our suitcases are just too small for anything else.

It can be very liberating upgrading your tiny cognitive suitcase for a larger mental space. This can happen through a sudden or gradual awakening.  This happened for me politically during the Bush/Gore election. When something benign like dangling chads became a divisive political issue, I realized that the political parties were more concerned about obtaining and keeping power than they were about truth and justice.  I become an independent.

I grew up in a time when it seemed that the villains in many movies where from Russia (or the former Soviet Union).  When my group hired 2 Russians, I had to check my reactions. I was able to learn their stories and turned suspicion into respect.

I have a coworker from Iran. The media tells me that they are one of our new enemies. He ended up inviting me to his wedding. It was one of the most beautiful, inclusive experiences I have ever had. The Persian culture is rich and I would be proud if I was Persian.

I got to know another coworker from Iraq. I've heard insensitive people say while we were at war with Iraq that we should just drop a nuclear bomb on them and be done with it. My coworker told his story. He lived in a village where all of the names were biblical. The towns, hills, mountains all had names from the bible. He lived near where they thought Noah's Ark landed. How he came to America was that he was a Christian refuge fleeing earlier wars. The government sent a notice "We are going to be bombing your city. Either leave or be bombed" 

Still "my" group was morally superior, right? As I got to truly know people outside of "my" group, I was surprised to find that they had qualities that I valued. Often, their qualities were more polished, refined and authentic than found in my group

Tribalism vs Community

In this post, Alan Weiss writes

Tribes are homogenous, communities are heterogeneous.

Tribes are exclusionary. They recognize their own members’ similarities and common background...tribes tend to be insecure, mistrustful of non-tribal relationships, and highly threatened by perceived attacks on their beliefs and behaviors.

Communities are much more elastic, since it’s almost impossible to insult everyone at once due to the eclectic nature of the community. They will embrace outsiders and interact with other communities readily.

Communities are inclusionary. They are characterized by common attitudes, interests, and goals. Religion, beliefs, kinship, and opinions can differ starkly in communities and, in fact, give them vibrancy and dynamism, allowing for continued experimentation and growth. They do not hold long-term animosities against other communities, and those within them shift in opinion and allegiance as time goes by and learning occurs.

I love this!

Scarcity found in tribes is not necessary. It's possible to make space for a larger community. As I travel through life, I'm grateful for a "larger suitcase" that allows me to make room for an expanded understanding of the world while on my journey through life. 

Change: Deciding Who is Right

"Somethings gotta change!"

This seems to be the cry of anyone who wants to be in charge.  The cry has gotten louder as we are in the season of preparing to change our President.  The fact of "change" is that it always has costs and benefits.  The goal is to try and influence change where the benefits are greater than the costs.  Let's look at a couple of politically influenced changes.  I'm picking issues from both sides of the political debate.

The War on Terror

"Somebody has to pay for 9/11!".  

Benefits:

The World knows we mean business.  A lot of terrorists that were doing horrible things (bombing, killing, beheading innocent people) can no longer do those things.

Costs:

• Over $1,000,000,000,000 (I think a trillion means more when it is written as zeros).  Expected to reach $5 trillion.
• Our warriors personal sacrifice (losing their lives, separation from family, etc.)
• An estimated 1/3 of our soldiers suffering from some form of mental disease or trauma as a result of the war, including suicide
• More terrorists.

Welfare

"I'd rather have a thousand lazy bums live off my tax dollars than let one poverty-stricken family go without food or shelter" (I found this on Facebook).  

Benefits:

• Reducing human suffering, especially for innocent children.
• Giving people a chance so that they can become productive members of society (I'm mostly thinking about educational or training opportunities)

Costs:

If you take wealth from wealth producers and give to the "poor", the immediate result is a reduction in wealth.  If the recipients of welfare don't become wealth producers, the long term result is a further decrease in the reduction of wealth, which can result in an increase in poverty.

Immigration

"Build a fence" or "Path to citizenship for illegal immigrants".  I don't like these solutions so I will propose my own.   First, I'm not calling the people illegal, I'm calling their immigration illegal.  Many of the illegal immigrants are simply looking for opportunities to improve their economic or social situation.  They are willing to come here and work for lower wages, live at or below the poverty level and live at risk from our justice system BECAUSE here they find higher wages, higher standards of living and a fair justice system.  WE hire them as housekeepers, gardeners, laborers BECAUSE it improves our standard of living (we pay them less and have more money for other things). 

My solution: institute a worker permit program.  Let their employer(s) sponsor them for citizenship if that's the path they want. 

Benefits:

• The illegal immigrants can have the dignity of living within the law.
• Hopefully a reduction of people who prey on illegal immigrants ("coyotes")  
• Our nation is strengthened as we can start enforcing immigration laws instead of turning a blind eye.

Costs:

• More government bureaucracy as we try to enforce the law.
• Some of these legal resident workers (a possibly small percentage) won't value our laws, customs or culture with possible negative side effects.
• Once foreign workers become legal, if they are entitled to benefits provided by taxes, then one could argue that they should be taxed, which raises the costs of their wages, which promotes illegal citizenship.  

Writing about everything else

I could go on and on with healthcare, gun control, free trade, civil rights, abortion, drugs, affirmative action, balanced budget, smaller government.

Benefits:

To provide a more thorough comparison (I have thoughts on many issues.  It would be nice to put them in writing)

Costs:

My time writing this, your time reading it (if you got this far).

"A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention"

Mother Teresa: Terrorist?

Of course I believe that Mother Teresa was a true model of charity, but the following shows how one can edit anything to look bad.

Her organization was a cult[1].  Her works of charity were just a front for recruiting people to her ideology. [2]  And what was her ideology?  She refused funding offers from U.S. President Ronald Reagan [3] yet she accepted funding from criminals [4].  These funds were assuredly stolen money.  

She was a very dark soul.  In her own words:

"...Even deep down ... there is nothing but emptiness and darkness ... If there be God—please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul ... How painful is this unknown pain—I have no Faith. Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal, ... What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true." [5]

Did I convince you that Mother Teresa could have been a terrorist?  Maybe?  Just a tiny bit?

Of course I'm neglecting quotes like this (and about 1,000 others like them):

• Peace begins with a smile. 
• If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
• The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread
• If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
• If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

My point is, first "see the good".  If all you hear, read or learn about something is negative, yet is still has an abundance of supporters, it deserves a fair investigation.  Politics and religion come to mind.  So do neighbors, coworkers, family members, and anyone not like us.

I'd Rather Live in America

I've been following a story that has made the recent tragedy of a shooting spree in Arizona seem tolerable.  I would like to compare these two stories side-by-side

	Gabrielle Giffords	Salman Taseer
Position	A member of the U.S. House of Representatives.	The governor of province of Punjab in Pakistan.
Politics	A moderate/left-leaning politician	A left-leaning politician
Controversy	None, really. She supported Obamacare but she is actually quite moderate: supports gun rights and stronger immigration laws.	Defended a poor Christian woman, Asia Bibi, who was condemned to death for blasphemy.  He also was outspoken against the anti-blasphemy law
Attack	Was shot by Jared Loughner, a mentally disturbed young man	Was shot and killed by Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, who was part of Salman's security detail
Reason	No reason was given, but apparently Jared was unhappy with a letter Gabby wrote to him in 2007 regarding questions he had asked her at a public meeting	Malik was more forthcoming with his reason: he didn't like Salman's opposition to the blasphemy law in Pakistan
Response	Jared was immediately arrested and is being prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.  Additionally, his civil rights are being respected by being assigned a high profile defense attorney, Judy Clarke	Malik was arrested but his supporters blocked the attempts by the police to bring him before a judge.  They also threw rose petals on him [1].  He has been called a hero by religious groups [2].
Why I'd rather live in America	Even though there was some unwarranted finger pointing of blame for the attack, there was still universal condemnation of the attack.	There was wide spread acceptance of the attack on Mr. Taseer.  The blasphemy laws are so oppressive that even questioning them is blasphemy.  There is little legal recourse since hearsay is sufficient to convict since the stated blasphemy cannot be presented in the charges or in court since doing so would be blasphemous.

References
"Staring into the abyss: Pakistan's increasing radicalisation", The Economist, January 8th-14th, 2011
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabrielle_Giffords