Old Habits Die Hard

The Red Sox are up 2-0 in their series against the Angels. That makes me nervous.

In all seriousness, that shows the power of narrative over facts, and tells us something about the tenacity of people's opinions in the face of conflicting data. I can remember something about several of the playoff games in 2004 and 2007, but mostly, it runs together and somehow we won. But I remember the 8th inning of the ALCS in 2003 against the Yankees vividly, including stats. Pedro Martinez had an ERA of 2.09 when he threw 100 pitches or less, and 6.43 once he went over 100 pitches. He had thrown 106 pitches and they left him in. Double, single, double, double, game tied.

Throughout 2005-2007 I had a running joke that people believed the Red Sox had won a championship in 2004, but that was obviously an urban legend. Last year's championship may have dented that mentality a little. Maybe.

So now you see why politicians try to hammer home a narrative, why preachers (good and bad) try to install those schema in you, why personal coaches and motivational speakers reduce much of their advice into one phrase and then try to cram everything that happens into it. My father-in-law believes that the Democrats are for the little guy. My uncle believes that corporations are not to be trusted. They are smart people, and so see and remember a lot of confirming data - that's what confirmation bias is - but everything goes back into those boxes eventually.

I complained to an AA friend years ago that those little oversimplified slogans of their irritated me. First Things First. She laughed "You don't want to make things too complicated for drunks." Over the years I have concluded that we're all pretty much like drunks in that way. We crave those simplicities. It's not always a bad thing. Installed phrases can steel the nerves in a crisis, giving us something to hang onto to do the right thing even when we are forgetting why.

But it's also why Democrats in the 90's could just keep saying "it's just the Republican attack machine that hates Clinton" even as his untruths mounted. When even they couldn't deny it anymore, the narrative switched only slightly. "Everyone knows that Clinton lies, but only about small things to save his sorry ass. MoveOn." Except just a year earlier they were denying that he had lied at all. There was no proof. The narrative was preserved, rather than the facts.

We wonder how conspiracy theories can persist in the face of all debunking. But we all do pretty much the same thing ourselves, though at a less extreme level.

Places to see AVI

I am going to be in Indian Orchard, MA (near Springfield) on Sunday 10/5 to attend a lecture about CS Lewis at Orchard Covenant Church.

I am the lay preacher at Concord Covenant on 10/12. I will be preaching on sacrifice. I'm going to try to keep it to ten minutes.

All preachers should keep it to ten minutes, BTW. It's a different style for a different culture.

Annoying Sports Analogy

The current debate is shaping up as follows:

A: Palin isn't qualified to be president.
B: Why not?
A: Reasons x, y, & z.
B: Well, x might be a good reason, by y is pretty weak, and z is a ridiculous reason.
A: No it's not, it's a perfectly obvious good reason!
And so on.

This is all going to lead to actual deep things for me eventually, because I really am relooking at the questions of what a president does, how important each aspect is, and how much we can measure in advance. Good stuff. But I've just started and my head already hurst, so I'm going to make a sports analogy that seems quite illuminating to me, but probably has little actual value.

The presidency is one of those jobs that a lot of people have watched being performed and have strong opinions about, but few people have done it or anything much like it. I decided that NFL quarterback is a good equivalent. Commentators and fans all talk about what quarterbacks are good and why, and seem to know a lot about what play-calling and leadership skills the QB should be showing, but the number of people who have actually done it well is small. And many of those can't describe what they do all that well. Terry Bradshaw, for example, is entertaining but not enlightening on the subject.

John McCain and Joe Biden are both career backup quarterbacks. McCain has actually come in for an injured George Bush in the Iraq playoffs and done well, but neither has actually ever had much playing time.

Sarah Palin is a college QB from a mid-major who racked up some big numbers and brought her team to a surprise bowl win, but people worry about the level of competition she faced and whether she can adjust to the next level.

Barack Obama is a second year player from a big Division I school that had a mediocre record his senior year. He has never played in a big game. He had some great numbers against weak opponents at times, and looked pretty good in others. He's had a year to learn the system.

You're the coach. Who're you planning on starting this year? Ignore for the moment that Biden and Palin are both actually being considered for a backup position.

I think three of the four choices are defensible, but all four could plausibly be a disaster.

You can also have fun deciding which type of QB each of them is: scrambler, game-manager, high-touchdown/high-interception, plucky leader.

A.A. Milne

This rant is about 3 decades too late, I think.

I grew up on Milne, even more than my own sons did. As some fundamentalists view the KJV as textus receptus, so do I regard the original Pooh texts. I never watched any of the Disney Pooh movies because I knew they would just irritate me.

At a church-sponsored outdoor movie night at someone's home we saw The Rookie. Which was fine. I see so few movies that I tend to like them all.

But prior to the main feature there was a Pooh movie by Disney. Something about a baby Heffalump named "Lumpy," with a Roo that laughed after every damn line he said. No, that can't be true, because there were too many moments of forced poignancy with sad tones of voice from baby animals missing their mothers. The songs were by Carly Simon - or Carly Simon on Quaaludes, perhaps. Not only was there no edge to any of the lyrics - which I guess should be expected from Disney - there was no form to put an edge onto. Universal smudge. Umpty-umpty name roo something. Something heffalump friend friend umpty. Revolting.

This should not be. Censorship is good. I have the evidence.

Onomastics

Sarah has not been in the top ten girl's names the last two years. I wonder if a late surge will bring it in this year. We likely won't get a really good handle on how popular it is in evangelical circles until six years from now, when they enter Christian schools and homeschooling groups, but church nursery workers should get a good early reading on it.

Of course, Sarah was a pretty common name in evangelical (and Jewish) circles already. Bristol will likely take a dive in the standings - evangelical moms may like her but not want to push their luck. We'll see how Willow and Piper do. I don't imagine Track and Trig are going to crack the top 100 boy's names, though.

There might be an upsurge in Baracks among African-Americans and complete lefties, but I also doubt that John and Joe are going to do any better than usual.

Vice President

Did Joe Biden just say that Dick Cheney doesn't understand that Article 1 of the Constitution defines the office of the VP? I'm going to guess Cheney's read the Constitution.

A few thoughts

1. Geez, has the term "blowhard" ever had a better poster boy than Biden?
2. Biden pronounces "George Bush's" as "George Bushis" with an up inflection at the end. It sounds really odd.
3. It's really annoying how Biden keeps saying "Let me tell you." and pointing at the camera. It feels like I'm being lectured by a vice-principal or gym coach.

QOTD

A commenter over at Wheat Among Tares

I've noticed that there are times when God seems to know how much we have in our savings accounts.
I'm gonna have to find somewhere else to hide it.

The Decline of Grand Theories

Gene Expression has a fascinating post on the decline in academic references of recent grand theory ideas, such as Marxism, Social Construction, and Deconstruction. He graphs their ebbing influence in the academy and provides some interesting discussion. In particular, he points out that these grand ideas all started to decline in a very narrow time frame - marxism a bit earlier, postcolonialism a bit later, but everything else between 1993-1998. He has some cynical explanations for the decline that touch on side topics of some of my A&H discussions.

Also, as you sense all of the big theories are dying, you must realize that you have no future: you'll be increasingly unable to publish articles -- or have others cite you -- and even if you became a professor, you wouldn't be able to recruit grad students into your pyramid scheme, or enroll students in your classes, since their interest would be even lower than among current students. Someone who knows more about intellectual history should compare arts and humanities grad students today to the priestly caste that was becoming obsolete as Europe became more rational and secular. I'm sure they rationalized their angst as a spiritual or intellectual crisis, just like today's grad students might say that they had an epiphany -- but in reality, they're just recognizing how bleak their economic prospects are and are opting for greener pastures.

HT: Bird Dog at Maggie's Farm.

Sununu Was On This Years Ago

In all this bailout debacle, it pays to remember that you can count on one hand the people in Washington who tried to fix it. John Sununu is one of those few. Because NH is turning blue, Jeanne Shaheen, a pleasant mediocrity, leads him in the polls. If you have friends or relatives in NH, send them this ad.

Problem Solving

Instapundit links to some very interesting numbers about media double-standards from Michael Silence. Even after corrected in the comments, they are still pretty revealing. And people add in some evidence of their own. In the same post, Reynolds points out that Biden's son and brother are being sued for fraud by a former business partner. Do you know that? Huh.

All standard stuff. We could multiply examples for hours - and over here on the right blogosphere we do, actually. It is insane that Rezko is on trial and that's not a front page story every day. I don't mean always the banner headline, but some sort of progress report below the fold every day, with talking heads opining on how Barack can distance himself from this, or whether it hurts him, and whether others close to him will be implicated. If such a thing were taking place in another country - if during the elections in France a close relative or associate of Sarkozy, or Chirac, or de Villepin, or Le Pen were on trial, and the newspapers weren't covering 24/7 it we would be appalled at how much they were in the tank, and that the French people put up with such things.

So it's crazy. The world is always crazy. I would like to look at this a different way.

There is a problem-solving technique I was taught years ago called 10x/.1x. Take any problem you are having difficulty with and imagine that it is 10 times worse. If you have a $50,000 mortgage and business is bad, imagine what the problem would look like if you had a $500,000 mortgage and no job at all. This is not just to feel better about your current problem, but to open up ideas of what your real choices are. Problems that are ten times worse often require solutions that are qualitatively different. You can't just try a little harder or move some seat cushions around.

After you have really thought through (and timed how long it took you) the 10x problem - after you have decided what you would do if your wife was not merely inattentive but actively hated you, or if your back pain was not just annoying but disabling - you move on to the other half of the exercise. What if your problem were only one-tenth as bad?

The second half of the exercise is just as important and the first, sometimes more so. One's initial temptation is to just stop the exercise and say "I'd just shrug it off. No big deal." If a problem has just now risen to the level or requiring some creative thought, after all, it's a pretty good indication that it was quite endurable until yesterday. But the lesson requires that you actually attack the second question, and spend as much time as you did on the first one. It is quite difficult at first, because the temptation to simply ignore the one-tenth problem keeps re-emerging.

So, let's play the media bias problem-solving game. What if it really were ten times worse - if Daily Kos owned the New York Times, not just in terms of owning the building and presses, but commanding that prestige in our society? What if ABC really was like Pravda, not just in our hyperbolic accusations, but in reality? What would libertarians and conservatives do? In one sense, we are already doing it, creating an alternative media on the radio and the internet. But play it out farther in your mind over the next twenty-four hours. What would we do?

Do not start the second exercise yet. Let's discuss the first part.

Introductory Question For Later Discussion

A free society needs to have a place to protect ideas, where controversy of all sorts is tolerated. Traditionally, that has been the academy. Is that necessary?

That model is left over from the many earlier eras where only the few were literate. In an age of more universal literacy, should we put society's protected space of controversy somewhere else? How well is this model serving society now?

It is too easy for critics of the academy to just say they will object to giving up such a spot because it is their ox being gored. Well, that would be true of any of us, but that doesn't mean there aren't actual good reasons for keeping the academy in the role of "place where people can question anything and have controversial ideas."

I have no secret alternative solution. I'm just asking.

QOTD

So Sarah took off the armor of Saul and chose five smooth stones.

L'Shanah Tovah

Happy New Year. Sorry I was asleep at the switch yesterday!

Quick Hitters

Last political comments for awhile. I am forcing myself to go think about other topics. I used to be a fascinating person.

#1. I went to a discussion at the library about the book The True Patriot, which I reviewed a few months ago. The discussion was led by St. Anselm's professors Dale Kuehne and Meg Cronin, both much more liberal than I but not unreasonable people or unwilling to listen. Also in attendance were the very liberal, but also reasonable Tess Marts, who I knew years ago; a friend from church who is quite conservative; a fairly moderate Republican whose name I didn't commit to memory; and one of the librarians (with a "Banned Books" pin and so presumably liberal). Good discussion, actually. I spoke too much, and there were a very few testy exchanges, but mostly it was the ideas, not the people, which were provocative. The way life should be, perhaps.


#2. Lying. The people who do voice-stress analysis believe they can tell when people are lying. I am suspicious. They include a Bill Clinton clip that shows him lying at exactly where the technology said he was, which looks impressive, but you wonder whether that was chosen for PR purposes. The clips of Obama and Palin show them scoring as "lying" in bizarre places as well as a few where the content might be dubious. I'm not convinced, but perhaps it is a technology in its infancy.

I'll tell you something about lying from having to deal with it so much all day (not just my patients, but their agencies and families as well). When someone refuses to take any responsibility, blaming everything on someone else, they are usually lying. If they thought they were only 10 or 20% at fault they would pony up, lay out the facts, and trust that most observers would get it right. If they are 50-70% at fault they would admit to some responsibility and try to spin the impression on the rest. Only when people are well over 70% at fault do they have to take a reverse strategy and avoid the facts and try to construct a simple narrative of blame that they hope catches on with people. When people make categorical statements of blame, it's like Honest John's Used Cars.

A word of caution. Some politicians have perfected statements of appearing to take responsibility in their introductory comments but quickly moving on to zero blame for them.

#3. Tess, in the discussion mentioned in #1, above, was horrified by my contention that America does better than all other nations on racial issues. I would say that more clearly by grading America at a D+, which is unfortunately the highest grade in the class. We simply play at a much higher level than most nations. Most nations have fairly homogenous populations and so look more placid. But a very little scratching beneath the surface reveals how poorly they do. Scandinavia, which has a reputation for tolerance, is not doing so well with their Muslim and even Eastern European immigrants. For other European countries, you could reiterate the above, and also google their name with the word "gypsies" and get an eyeful. The mixed racial Latin American countries show strong prejudice the darker you are, and are quite horrible to their rural indigenous tribes. Most countries cannot achieve harmony among groups that are ethnically and religiously similar, for Pete's sake. America has large African American and Hispanic minorities, medium-sized Asian and Oceanic minorities, and a host of indigenous peoples as well as mixed populations and Other. We are simply playing at a much higher level than most countries, attempting harmony on a scale unknown in history.

Canada does pretty well, and likely grades out about where we do. Some better, some worse. Not being able to comfortably integrate populations descended from adjoining European countries has to count against them, though. India has a very different type of ethnic mix but is also quite diverse. Most countries are simply not even attempting ethnic cooperation on anything like our scale, and not doing that great even with lesser problems.

And Then It Hit Me

This Modern World, by Tom Tomorrow



Is the Liberal Equivalent of Chick Tracts

Palin-Rose

For those interested in seeing Sarah Palin interviewed by someone who is asking her questions rather than trying to trap her (not that there's anything wrong with that), we have her in Charlie Rose's Green Room.

I have gone back and looked at the Couric video. I see what the fuss was about, because she was clearly flustered and lost - not very inspiring. On the other hand, what is happening in the interview is that she is being asked to support her claim of a particular good thing that McCain is known for. She can't come up with one, and she does not BS her way out of it as a good politician should. When you look at it, she is being asked about the specifics of McCain's legislative record. I'm not sure that should be the first priority of a governor-turned-VP nominee in getting up to speed.

For comparison #1, look at the questions Couric asked Obama. All are easier to answer. There's nothing of the nature of "What were the anti-corruption measures sponsored by Joe Biden that caused you to choose him for your VP?"

For comparison #2, Hillary Clinton did not finally face the media on a consistent, non-managed basis until this last year, 16 years after she has come into the national spotlight. When she had been interviewed in the past by tenacious people - the Tim Russert interview, her Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, and all her "I'm sorry I don't recall" deposition - she was repeatedly a disaster. She's not anymore, but she was sheltered from hard questioning for decades.

I have got to stop writing about politics. I'm making myself crazy.

Senator Dodd Back In The Saddle

Jim Lindgren at Volokh has read the bailout bill provisions, and notices that Chris Dodd is inserting a loophole, potentially redirecting tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars away from the taxpayers. On this 700 billion, whatever can be sold after it is stabilised the taxpayers are supposed to get back. But Dodd apparently can't let a pile of money float near him without wanting to change its course.

I weep for my country. This is Boss Tweed come back to life. They never quit. They never sleep. They are always campaigning and always scheming to reward those who vote for them.

Group Blog

I always wanted a group blog (sniffle, sniffle) and now my oldest son has posted several times on the debates (moist eyes). Thanks Jon-o.

Campaign Staff, VPs, and Olbermann vs. Damon

McCain wins on campaign staff interviews, based on interviews with Greta Van Susteren. McCain's chatted about the travel and how hectic things are, with a few mentions of how McCain was working for taxpayers. Obama's stuck with press release bullet points by continually answering friendly personal questions with "message" answers. Good idea in theory, but is actually quite annoying to watch.

Obama wins on VP interviews, since Palin was nowhere. They need to let that girl free. But on the topic of Biden, has he had a facelift or something? He looked scary tonight.

Keith Olbermann vs. Johnny Damon- who makes me angrier just looking at him? It's a toss-up.