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Thinking Fast and Slow

7/30/2021

Ten years ago, Daniel Kahneman published Thinking Fast and Slow, certainly one of the most interesting and useful books I have ever read. It explodes, in a very rational and scientific way, the myth of the rational person that underlays not only much of how we understand our day-to-day interactions with others, but also how the social sciences (including History) purport to understand human behavior.

At one level, we all know that other people are crazy/make-no-sense/full-of-idiosyncrasies. At another level we expect them to be reasonable/sensible. Kahneman lays out, in a pretty accessible set of stories, the ways in which we are unreasonable. The book draws on years of research on how people make decisions, which led to his Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002. He’s also co-written a new book, Noise (which I haven’t read).

Just to take few examples, he shows how we:
* we are more averse to risk of loss than logically makes sense.,
* our decision making depends on what we did or read just previously (i.e., what’s ‘in mind’),
* construct stories that seem to make sense, even without evidence or contrary to the evidence we have, and
* project rosier outcomes than are likely because we would all like to live in a best-case-scenario world.

The issue of story construction is of particular concern to historians since we are all about constructing stories. We (as a species) are generally pretty desperate to live in a sensible world and coherent stories help us do that. Kahneman points out that this drive causes us to ignore facts that don’t fit the pattern, or create stories and then find the “facts” that make the story neat-and-tidy.

It’s sort of like looking at constellations in the night sky. We can find Orion’s belt or the “Big Dipper” easily enough, but extrapolating from a few points of light into a warrior with a sword or the Big Bear (aka “Ursa Major”) is an act of human projection, based on a particular culture and astrophysical location. One historical analogue (to which I have previously referred) cites Western/European/American “progress”/power over the past 200 years as the baseline of a story of moral superiority (rather than an anomaly in a broader global pattern). At a more personal level, historians also construct stories in which historical actors make sensible decisions when, in fact (like us) they often act based on subconscious prejudices (cultural or genetic).

How many war plans were implemented because of over-optimistic assessments? Ask Kaiser Wilhelm or Robert McNamara! Historical analysis that starts with the (usual and implicit) assumption of rational behavior is pretty likely to be off the mark. This model of rational intentionality is also popular because it facilitates the “blame game.” Even though at some level we know that almost all bad stuff is caused by error rather than malevolence, finding a villain is much more satisfying (and a convenient distraction from looking at our own comparable shortcomings.

This kind of decision-making (Kahneman calls it “fast thinking”) is so common in our everyday lives that we have to consciously try to pay attention to it. This is, of course, much easier to do with other people’s behaviors (spouses are especially useful in this regard). Do we avoid a particular driving route because—once—there was a big back up? Do we avoid foods that—once—caused a stomach upset or headache? Without knowing whether the traffic was the result of a particular accident or construction issue or whether our gut might have reacted to another food/germ/external tension, we can’t make much sense out of a single data point. And few of us have the concentration to study such situations to really understand systemic commuting patterns or gastric dynamics.

In fact, it’s pretty easy to see other people’s non-sensical thinking in all sorts of ways. But the more important lesson from Kahneman’s book is that I do it, too. My unique combination of predilections, biota, and culture are no more exempt from the common human brain-wiring patterns than anyone else’s. By their very unconscious nature, they are hard to see, but my own mishegas (to use a technical term) is no less risible.

An important reminder of humility, to be sure.

At a social level, even without the overlay of all the current political angst, these ordinary human mental patterns help to explain why vaccination rates are lower than one might hope/expect, why people focus on closed-network/self-reinforcing media circuses, and the difficulty of shifting epistemologies, among a host of other phenomena. Fear and inertia play a much larger role in people’s thinking than we like to acknowledge. (Oh, and my own, too!!) (as I have to repeatedly remind myself). The problem of over-optimistic projections leads to our apparent surprise (for the thousandth time) at budget overruns or delays when it comes to construction projects (whether a new kitchen or a multi-tier bridge).

Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for the work that he and Amos Tversky did to help economists begin to shift from their founding/core assumption of economic decisions by rational people. His book is worth reading, even if parts of it are a bit abstruse. Don’t feel you need to read it cover-to-cover. Find the stories (often of experiments they ran) that highlight how people actually think/act/decide in particular situations. You’ll likely find yourself in some of these situations and, if you can remember that, then it will be time well spent.

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Accounting for the Future

7/23/2021

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The recent and dramatic pile of rubble from the condominium tower in Miami provides gruesome evidence of the short-term mentality that haunts modern society. It is of a piece with the 2007 collapse of the I-35 highway bridge in Minneapolis, the decades of national engineering surveys showing underinvestment in maintenance and repair of our national physical infrastructure, and numerous other examples from both the public and private sectors. Even the proposed federal “infrastructure” legislation, currently being over-politicized in Washington, will only make a modest reduction in the backlog of work to be done.

The Champlain Towers Condo association (and thousands of similar groups around the country) failed charge high-enough monthly dues to prevent large “special assessments” to fund major repair/construction projects in the face of resistance from resident/owners. This is entirely comparable to the issues facing state and local governments and school districts, and the country as a whole. Private owners such as condo associations will now be forced by their insurance companies to attend to their finances to a much greater degree than previously. Unfortunately, public entities have consistently eschewed the basic principles of depreciation accounting for capital assets for decades (even if they have the ability (usually) to fund such projects with long-term bonds).

If a company builds a factory for $10M and the factory is expected to last for 40 years, then accountants will require the company to recognize that they are effectively spending $250k/year on the factory. A prudent company will store up enough cash so that when the building’s useful life is over, it will have the resources to replace it. This is called depreciation.

Depreciation as a concept actually didn’t exist until the late 19C. The surge in large-scale investments driven by the “industrial revolution” and the lengthening horizons of businesses (due to perpetual corporations and longer-lived individuals) both fed a need for financial managers to think differently about “capital” expenditures as compared with on-going operating expenses. Depreciation has long been required in tax accounting and for the audits of public companies.

However, governments don’t like to think about it. Elected officials typically have a time horizon somewhere between the length of their current term in office and the length of time they might “serve” in total. The longer the time horizon, the mistier things become and the rationalizations for “kicking the can down the road” flow more freely. The result is “deferred maintenance;” which is a nice bureaucratic term meaning “we only fix potholes when they’re large enough to swallow a bus, even if it costs us five times as much.”

This refusal to deal with the long-term costs of physical infrastructure is but one scandal of public finance; but it is matched by elected officials’ refusal to deal with accrued pension liabilities. Here, too, short-term electability means placating public sector unions with fat pension schemes, and then not worrying about how those pay-outs will be supported in a few decades. Again, governmental agencies aren’t held to the same basic accounting principles as the private sector.

The mid-20C US boom—in population, buildings, the Interstate Highway System, and economy in general—would have been the ideal time to bake in sensible policies requiring reserves for such things (i.e., depreciation accounts, fully-funding pensions and health care costs). As it is, a lot of stuff got built and now, in the 21C, those buildings are reaching the end of their useful lives and the expanding body of governmental employees is retiring.

Just as with the Champlain condo owners, the real responsibility lies not with the governing board, but with the electors. Invisible expenditures are less popular than a shiny new cultural center and we would need to expect a different breed of political candidates to bravely promise to pay for the full (life-time) costs of such investments or to propose the taxes to pay for them.

Several states have “balanced budget” constitutional requirements and a similar sort of approach would work here as well. Let’s prohibit public capital expenditures unless they’re funded for their full lifetimes. If we make such requirements part of the baseline of government operations and therefore politically invisible, we would not end up with collapsing bridges or buildings or bankrupt municipalities when the inevitable bills come due.

This is hardly a new phenomenon. There is probably a good social history research project in compiling all the adages across time and cultures which are variations of “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

The burden, as so much of the results of the anomalous era of Western “progress,” will fall on those now under 40. It’s a similar story with our environmental blindness. As a broad culture, we have taken deeply-embedded human traits (e.g., greed, gluttony) and leveraged them on the economic growth and technological wonders of the past 200 years. Typical adolescent behavior: “we’re gonna live forever,” or “we can do it, therefore we will do it” (but here by an entire set of societies).

Those born in the last 40 years—Gen X’ers, Millenials, Gen Z’ers, Gen Alphas (in the lingo)—will reap the whirlwind. They’ll be paying the bills for road repairs, Social Security, and storm/fire damage. They’ll have to figure out what to do when Phoenix runs out of water or the State of Illinois goes bankrupt. It will be interesting to see the political trade-offs they will make between the programs and services which we are used to receiving and covering the costs of disaster recovery (especially since insurance companies will either charge way too much for premiums or will have gone bankrupt themselves).

The same vernacular that came up with cute names for each “generation” will need to undergo some revision. Our group—Boomers—followed the WWII-era “Greatest Generation”, but we (i.e., Western society for the past 200 years) have all been marching down this path. I don’t think we’ll be so fondly remembered.

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Limiting the Leviathan

7/16/2021

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Among the many Orwellian aspects of the rise of Trump and his take-over of the GOP, one of the most striking is his appropriation of the critical epithet “RINO” (Republican in name only). Heretofore reserved for those whose migration towards the political center cast doubt on their adherence to traditional Republican/Conservative values, it was a charge leveled William Cohen, Chuck Hegel, Richard Riordan, Lowell Weicker, Wayne Morse, and George Norris, to name a few over the 100 year history of the phrase.

Now, the meaning has been inverted by the MAGA-nates to attack those who claim the Republican mantle without sufficient adherence to whatever passes for Trumpian coherence in political outlook. In our “Alice-in-Wonderland” politics, not only are moderate conservatives (e.g. Susan Collins, Jeb Bush) outed, but those of a more rock-ribbed stance (e.g. Bill Kristol, Susan Cheney) have earned the title as well. Donald Trump’s combination of populism, opportunism, and cult of personality should make him the real RINO. Mitch McConnell looks positively principled by comparison.

The implosion of the GOP has left our politics without a clear champion for an essential stance in our democracy. I realized this when reviewing my policy stances on a range of major issues. In terms of environment, inequality, data security/privacy, and education (just to name a few areas) there is a clear problem with the adequacy of market forces and a commensurate need for government intervention.

However, as I have studied the history of the “state” over the past several centuries I have been struck with the incremental, semi-conscious, and seemingly inexorable growth of government. This has usually been driven by the incremental, semi-conscious, and seemingly inexorable growth in population and social complexity.

If a society needs to act, the “state” has been its active embodiment and has swept all others to the side. Organized religion has fallen by the wayside, and a federalistic vertical distribution of powers has become tenuous (especially outside the US or Germany). Even our Montesquieuian separation of powers has become creaky.

Whether you are concerned about over-policing, the national security state, gratuitous bureaucracy, or a dozen other excesses, our politics demands some staunch defender of limited government. But more, it demands some creativity in devising means of addressing those major substantive policy concerns with a structure that limits the Leviathan. It will be interesting to see if the newly-hatched Conservative Climate Caucus in the House (any RINOs there?) can develop any ideas that are effective without relying on too much on traditional regulatory models. It’s quite a conundrum since, I suspect, a considerable part of the GOP climate-denial stance over the past decade or so has been driven by their inability to conceive of novel, small government solutions to these challenges. Subsidies for alternative power, cap-and-trade and other carbon regulatory regimes, targeted taxation—all run head-long into traditional GOP concerns.

Part of this set of concerns (well-embedded since the New Deal era burst of regulatory/interventionist policies) has to do with the sacredness of the private sector/free markets; part has to do with the growing cost of government (i.e., tax burden); part has to do with the distrust of “pointy-headed bureaucrats” (in the felicitous phrasing of the late Spiro Agnew). At the same time, there are plenty of folks on the “left” who are deeply concerned with the ever-expanding national security state (e.g. ,the NSA listening to everyone’s Alexa), the military-industrial complex, Presidential war powers, and other forms of government expansion and intrusion. And the situation gets more problematic when global problems arise and global solutions seem appropriate.

So, while it’s easy to be counter-reactive to the opposition to government solutions, there is nothing simple about designing solutions. Whether we’re talking big ticket issues like climate, health security, or public infrastructure, or more routine regulatory matters such as consumer protection, police oversight, or financial systems, we need to see if there is an alternative to a single big institutionalization of power. Such structures need to be imbued with some degree of ‘publicness,’ some scope of responsibility for and to the society as a whole. At the same time, they need to be out from under the general control of the existing state/government.

Some centuries ago, before the development of the modern state, alternate and independent power centers existed (e.g., the Church, free cities, and feudal nobles) whose submission to higher authority was carefully circumscribed. Some of this approach remains visible in the federalism embedded in the US (and a few other countries’) formal political structure. These federal models are, however, territorially defined, and so they seem plausible for only a subset of problems. Climate and commerce can only be addressed on a broad scale.

Another idea is the “trust,” a legally separable entity whose control by the trustor (i.e., the traditional governmental structure) is limited. Theoretically, this was the premise for the funding of Social Security and for highway construction/maintenance. However, the safeguards against interference and invasion, being only statutory, eventually succumbed to the political demands of Congress; to the point where they are now only budgetary conventions. A more rigorous structure, constitutionally-embedded, seems like a direction worth exploring.

There are a host of implemental issues to be worked out, but the essential point is that there really is something meaningful in the fear of Leviathan. It has animated political thinkers since Hobbes and Burke. It’s too bad that the previous champions of this stance have flushed their principles in their eagerness to MAGA. Thoughtful conservatives are an endangered species and we all need them to come back: to provide real debate, to protect against the ease of power accumulation, and to see if there really is something coherent in a 21C Republicanism (not “in name only”).

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Changing the Past

7/9/2021

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The refusal of many to get vaccinated against COVID, despite minimal risks, clear health benefits, and substantial social pressure confirms that dire threats are insufficient to overcome fear and inertia. There’s a word for this: “nescience.” It means the willful disregarding of knowledge. It is caused by fear, uncertainty, and inertia. When it comes to threats, many humans are not so good at dealing with reality.

One variant of this phenomenon, exacerbated by our former President, rejects the outcome of the election and, more fundamentally, the profound changes in US and global society wrought by technology, mobility, and economic growth. The overlap with the first group is unsurprising.

Our ability to tolerate change, particularly adverse change, is limited. As with death and other modes of trauma, the most common first reaction is denial, followed shortly by anger. Denial manifests in the construction of an alternate past in the hope that the future will build off of that mythos, rather than stay on its current trajectory. Thus, the spate of recent legislative proposals to politically constrain what is taught in schools and colleges. Thus, the Arizona electoral “audit.” Thus the other “conspiracy theories” ranging from malevolent Chinese virus-mongers to Q-Anon’s on-going rant about Liberal child-molesters (who, as the latest incarnation of the Illuminati) control the world.

All of this brings to mind one of my favorite lyrics from my youth, in Jackson Browne’s “Fountain of Sorrow” (1974):

And while the future's there for anyone to change, still you know it seems
It would be easier sometimes to change the past.

Now, it’s not so clear that our current political tensions can be attributed to Browne. Indeed, I’d be surprised if many “(fill-in-the-blank) deniers” were even aware of his song. But they do seem to be animated by the same desperate angst.

Fear of change will do that. Alas for those of us who live in the “modern” era (the past few hundred years when, as Karl Marx said: “all that is solid, melts into air.”) Indeed, modern change, at an apparently ever-accelerating pace, is likely the major cause of stress and mental illness in the 20/21C. Whether in terms of globalization, technology, employment, or social mores (including gender and race), it’s a lot; and a lot of people are overwhelmed (afraid, angry).

While I share concerns that these type of changes could overstress our society as a whole, I am most concerned with the looming environmental catastrophe (both climate change and ecosystem disruption) in light of many folks inability to cope.

Let’s be clear: We, as a species, are facing an unprecedented emergency whose impacts in the medium term (i.e. 20-50 years) will likely dwarf wars and all the other disasters we have faced over the past 5,000 years—combined! I need not rehearse the litany of short-term manifestations, but I suspect that twenty years from now we will look back wistfully and say: “ Remember when we thought 2021 was tough.”

The extent to which we will have to change is mind-boggling. Ever since the Bible portrayed man as dominating the Earth, a species-centrism, hyped up the Western Scientific Revolution/Enlightenment’s enshrinement of material/technological “progress,” has made man the measure of all things. But, just as Copernicus and Galileo showed that the Earth was not the center of the Universe, and Darwin showed that humans were but one branch of the tree of creation, we have been struggling with our loss of status. One need not go all the way towards a “Gaia hypothesis” to realize that a human attitude that “It’s all about us,” as if we were some preening/pouting adolescent, won’t cut it anymore.

The epistemological change required is profound and, in an important way, existential. It is understandable that many of those who feel overwhelmed by social change feel that their existence, at least in the sense of their understanding of themselves and the world, is at risk from those changes. Indeed, one could argue that their “burn-the-bridges” mentality is a sensible (necessary?) response to that type of threat.

Even without these social changes, the environmentally-mandated epistemological change is daunting and disorienting and would, in the absence of catastrophe, likely take a few hundred years to permeate. Climate denial is thus an unsurprising response; and is of a piece with vaccine-rejectors and “stop-the-steal”-ers who marched in Washington on January 6. While we might hope that normal social evolution would, in the course of a few generations, leave them in the rear-view mirror along with the defenders of hereditary power, slavery, and misogyny.

Unfortunately, we don’t have time.

An interesting piece in the NYT last month raised the question of whether US democracy was up to handling the climate crisis. It wasn’t optimistic. Neither am I. And it is no comfort that the shortcomings are neither unique to the US, nor to democratic governance. Nor is the problem the competitiveness and insularity of nation-states. Those things complicate the situation, but the root-cause remains at a personal, pre-political level. Changes in behavior are necessary, to be sure; but they ride on changes in attitude. Leadership on the political, moral, and educational (beyond scientists) fronts would help, but as demonstrated by vaccination/mask-wearing levels, they would have limited effectiveness.

Some people will change individual behaviors. Solar and wind farms will sprout. Disasters and famines will, eventually, scare enough people that policies will change. Noble values and freedoms will, at some point, be prioritized at a lower level than fundamental social preservation. In the meantime, we need to shift our framework from prevention to mitigation.

We might also spare a thought for reconstruction. We can’t go back to “normal” and some extensive rethinking of society, economics, and ethics will be necessary. These will be the challenges of the late 21/early 22C. They won’t be easy. Perhaps they, too, will think that it is easier to change the past.

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Gettysburg

7/2/2021

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One hundred and fifty-eight years ago this week, one of the major battles of the Civil War was fought just outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. A few months later (11/19/63), Abraham Lincoln delivered some brief remarks at the dedication of the National Cemetery at the site of that terrible event. In just 271 words (about 1/4 the length of this post), he crystalized the war, its purpose, and the sacrifices it demanded. Virtually every sentence contains a memorable phrase.

The concluding line, captured the national purpose better than any other statement since (at least) the Constitution and Declaration:

…that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people
shall not perish from this earth.

I frequently use this quote in my classes as a prompt for a short response paper, asking students to choose to live under either a government “by” the people or one “for” the people, and to justify their choice. I get both answers, of course. Some prioritize governmental results and purpose (i.e. “for” the people). Some prioritize the process by which government is defined and constituted (“by” the people). However, the real purpose of the assignment is to see the quality of their thinking and ability to marshal arguments for a particular position. More importantly, it’s also to get them to think about trade-offs: “If you can’t have your ideal (both “of” and “for”), so what’s you second choice?”

There’s a lot packed into those three prepositions—of, by, and for. They say a lot about our country (or, at least, our aspirations). They need to be unpacked and examined with care. FN1

That’s why I was troubled by the title of one of this year’s big-ticket legislative items: H.R. 1, the “For the People Act.” Don’t get me wrong, I support the bill and its provisions. We need to reduce the influence of money in politics, we need to prevent gerrymandering, we need to make it easier to vote. Still, I’m troubled by the title for two reasons.

First, it reverses the famous rhetorical question from John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” At a time when the coherence of our national community is fraying, perhaps we can focus more on pulling together as a society than on getting things. At one level, this is a minor point, especially in the context of the broader Democratic Party agenda of (re-) building an interest in government as a source of benefits for the entire population. Yet, more fundamentally, there is real value in understanding that the essential nature of the relationship between a people and their (democratic) government is as the author/shareholder/owner of that government not the subject or beneficiary of its actions.

Second, I think “for” is the wrong preposition in the title of the bill; it should be “by.” What I mean is that, since the purpose of the legislation is to improve a wide range of election integrity issues, it’s real goal is to enhance our ability to ensure that we have a government (in Lincoln’s words) “by the people.” Depending on which of my students you might talk to, that is at least as important as “for” the people.

As a (recovering) lawyer, I have a well-honed affinity for process; a belief that a well-designed set of rules and procedures will significantly increase the chances of a beneficial outcome. In this context, that means that elections by the community as a whole, with full, informed, and well-considered participation, will produce the closest approximation of what the country wants as is humanly possible. This is what democracy is supposed to be. As a matter of practice in this country, we’re a long way away from that ideal; not to mention the constitutional short-comings about which I have commented over the past months.

From a historical perspective, however, as Lincoln’s formulation demonstrates, process was never sufficient as a goal. The great shift from the ancien régime of monarchies and empires which dominated the world in the 18C towards political structures reflecting the power and the will of national populations still occupies us well into the 21C. The American, French, Haitian, and dozens of subsequent revolutions all strove to shift the nominal target of government from benefiting the few to benefiting everyone. In the 17C, Louis XIV famously said (allegedly): “L’etat, c’est moi!” (“I am the state”). A century later, this attitude cost his great-great-great-grandson, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette (and countless others) their heads, since this shift had begun. Two years earlier, the US Constitution began: “We the People.…”

“By” and “for” are not the same thing. In theory, you could have a government “by” the people that was “for” some subset of the people (most populist democracies). In theory, you could have government by one or a few that was sincerely and effective “for” all the people (Plato’s Council of Guardians). Power being what it is, neither has worked out so well; one form of corruption or another has wormed its way into the mechanisms. As a result, political thinkers from the 17C on have nudged us towards a version in which process and purpose go together and reinforce each other as fundamental political goals; even if the implementation (especially the part about figuring out what kind of policy outcomes are really “for” the people) has been a bit messier.

So much for “by” and “for.” You may recall that Lincoln also spoke of government “of” the people. He often used a three-part cadence, and this phrase may be nothing more than a rhetorical semi-redundancy in which “of” and “by” are pretty much the same thing. I suspect however, that there is more to it than this. But that story is pretty involved, stretching from the Reformation to the 20C French philosopher Foucault; so, we will leave that to another day.

In any event, this weekend, as we mark the 158th anniversary of Gettysburg, the 234th anniversary of the Constitution, and the 245th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to consider how to balance the “by” and the “for.” Even if Nancy Pelosi doesn’t change the title of the legislation.

1 For those interested, Gary Wills’ Lincoln at Gettysburg (1992) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning recounting. A more intensive examination of the speech, including Lincoln’s sources and rhetorical approach is A.E. Elmore, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (2009), esp. Ch. 6.

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Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.

I don't actually agree with Santayana's famous quote, but this is my contribution to my version of it: "Anyone who hears Santayana's quote is condemned to repeat it."

Thinking Fast and Slow

Accounting for the Future

Limiting the Leviathan

Changing the Past

Gettysburg

Condemned to Repeat It --Musings on history, society, and the world.

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Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.