The stated objective of the U.S. Department of Education is “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness.” In regards to higher education,
“America’s institutions of higher education have long been engines of innovation, helping the nation to achieve a level of economic prosperity experienced by few other countries throughout history. The dynamics of rapid technological change over time have required greater levels of education to sustain the global competitiveness of the American economy. As a result, an increasing proportion of Americans have enrolled in and completed a program of postsecondary education in order to secure high-quality employment in competitive industries.”
Put simply, the purpose of the education system is for economic growth. Through government incentives, standardized testing, grants, subsidies, alumni fees, and enrollment, the result of our national educational goal is that universities are increasingly focused on degree programs that generate economic growth.
Degrees that promote economic growth tend to be applied rather than theoretical. Applied science and economics such as engineering and business tend not to prioritize philosophical, humanitarian, outside-of-the-market thinking. In other words, they do not promote intellectualism.
More people than ever before are university educated. This is made possible by readily available student loans. These loans enable relatively poor people to afford an advanced education with future earnings potential. A competitive economy forces students to be keenly aware of the financial return of their choice of degree program. There is a distinct and necessary choice between monetary and intellectual degrees. It is very expensive to get a degree – too much so, for most, to play around with intellectual degrees. The economics of education push students into business and engineering and away from arts and humanities. Most students go to institutions of higher education to make more money, and with tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debts, they can afford to do nothing else.
Fortunately for them, a university degree generally does result in higher earning. So, there are millions of educated workers out there with applied degrees, high earnings, high debts, and low exposure to any of the great philosophical or humanitarian thinkers.
How is this different from times before student loans programs? Wouldn’t these people be even less educated and open to philosophical thought without their university educations? Possibly… but two things are for certain: liberal arts colleges across the nation are shrinking, and the programs that do continue to exist are becoming highly packaged, superficial survey courses that do more to bore the students than to inspire them.
Why are liberal arts colleges shrinking? Because their funding decreases as their relative importance decreases. Staff and programs are cut back to fit smaller budgets, and courses are made to cover more topics in less of time with larger class sizes. The courses become superficial reviews of well-know, easy-to-teach topics. They are boring to the students and less interesting to teach. A feedback cycle ensues that further weakens the programs.
Our education policies are aimed at economic growth. Unfortunately intellectualism is an opportunity cost of economic growth. Our policies promote applied degrees which push out intellectual degrees. Not only are relatively fewer graduates intellectually trained, but the quality of their training is being watered down. Economic incentives designed to encourage students to obtain higher education turn education into an economic vehicle. As education becomes more economically focused, non-economic aspects of education fall out of focus.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Dismal science
Aside from the rise in meat consumption and agricultural competition between food and biofuel cash-crops causing grain prices to rise far beyond what billions of people across the world can afford, I have other dismal thoughts...
I believe there is a fundamental conflict between economic reality and economic idealism. Assume the ideal is to have a progressively growing world economy with lower and lower rates of poverty. My apoptosis idea here is that poverty is a necessary result of economic growth.
Simply put, absolute wealth grows but relative wealth, for a select few, grows faster than absolute wealth. A relative increase in the wealth of one region necessitates a relative decrease in wealth in other regions.
What is the difference between absolute and relative wealth? Absolute wealth comes from increases in productivity or technology which creates more or better quality goods and services. Relative wealth is the difference, or disparity, in absolute wealth between regions or individuals.
Increases in absolute wealth require improvements in productivity or technology. These improvements do not occur simultaneously all across the world. They occur regionally. The result is that the regions with the improvements get richer and all the rest get poorer.
According to standard economic theories this is not so bad – it creates impetus for the poorer regions to make improvements or to move to other sectors of the economy. But the problem is, as relative wealth increases for one region, the relative advantage of that region to create more wealth also increases. This sets up an unstable condition in which the first region to get a step ahead runs away with the lions share of the worlds wealth. This process continues on smaller and smaller scales, concentrating the worlds wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer people. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is, I believe, a natural result of economic reality.
Allow me to illustrate.
Assume a starting point in which all regions of the earth are perfectly equal in wealth and resources.
Assume there is an equal, yet random probability of increasing productivity in some sector of the economy for each region.
Assume an increase in wealth increases the probability of increased productivity. (This is a key point. Wealth allows for capital investment, for better tools, for better resources, more insurance, better training, etc.)
If region X randomly increases its productivity of something such as corn, the price of corn in region X would typically go down, assuming demand stays the same. If there is some degree of free trade, other regions will buy from X and the global price of corn will also go down. Corn producers in region Y must now sell their corn for less and/or have a lower market share. Region Y will become poorer.
The increased wealth of region X allows an increase in the probability of greater increases in productivity. Every gain in region X results in region Y becoming even poorer. If region Y cannot increase productivity, it must give up corn production because it will eventually cost more to produce than they can sell it for.
With the comparative advantage theory, region Y would switch from corn to some other market sector in which they are less disadvantaged. Unfortunately region Y may not have this flexibility.
Compound this with the following facts:
wealth creates demand (our economy requires expansion – supply and demand must be more or less equal, increased productivity increases supply, so demand must also increase)
Supply-Demand increases causes inflation – makes poor poorer
Wealth requires specialization, education, time, etc – leads to lower birth rates
Higher birth rates in poor countries from reduced infant mortality due to better medicine -> more people -> lower productivity (units output per person)
Real-world economics leads naturally to situations where regions fall so far behind the rest of the world that they can not catch up through normal economic means.
I believe there is a fundamental conflict between economic reality and economic idealism. Assume the ideal is to have a progressively growing world economy with lower and lower rates of poverty. My apoptosis idea here is that poverty is a necessary result of economic growth.
Simply put, absolute wealth grows but relative wealth, for a select few, grows faster than absolute wealth. A relative increase in the wealth of one region necessitates a relative decrease in wealth in other regions.
What is the difference between absolute and relative wealth? Absolute wealth comes from increases in productivity or technology which creates more or better quality goods and services. Relative wealth is the difference, or disparity, in absolute wealth between regions or individuals.
Increases in absolute wealth require improvements in productivity or technology. These improvements do not occur simultaneously all across the world. They occur regionally. The result is that the regions with the improvements get richer and all the rest get poorer.
According to standard economic theories this is not so bad – it creates impetus for the poorer regions to make improvements or to move to other sectors of the economy. But the problem is, as relative wealth increases for one region, the relative advantage of that region to create more wealth also increases. This sets up an unstable condition in which the first region to get a step ahead runs away with the lions share of the worlds wealth. This process continues on smaller and smaller scales, concentrating the worlds wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer people. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is, I believe, a natural result of economic reality.
Allow me to illustrate.
Assume a starting point in which all regions of the earth are perfectly equal in wealth and resources.
Assume there is an equal, yet random probability of increasing productivity in some sector of the economy for each region.
Assume an increase in wealth increases the probability of increased productivity. (This is a key point. Wealth allows for capital investment, for better tools, for better resources, more insurance, better training, etc.)
If region X randomly increases its productivity of something such as corn, the price of corn in region X would typically go down, assuming demand stays the same. If there is some degree of free trade, other regions will buy from X and the global price of corn will also go down. Corn producers in region Y must now sell their corn for less and/or have a lower market share. Region Y will become poorer.
The increased wealth of region X allows an increase in the probability of greater increases in productivity. Every gain in region X results in region Y becoming even poorer. If region Y cannot increase productivity, it must give up corn production because it will eventually cost more to produce than they can sell it for.
With the comparative advantage theory, region Y would switch from corn to some other market sector in which they are less disadvantaged. Unfortunately region Y may not have this flexibility.
Compound this with the following facts:
wealth creates demand (our economy requires expansion – supply and demand must be more or less equal, increased productivity increases supply, so demand must also increase)
Supply-Demand increases causes inflation – makes poor poorer
Wealth requires specialization, education, time, etc – leads to lower birth rates
Higher birth rates in poor countries from reduced infant mortality due to better medicine -> more people -> lower productivity (units output per person)
Real-world economics leads naturally to situations where regions fall so far behind the rest of the world that they can not catch up through normal economic means.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Straws and frogs
In my last post, I just pasted some data on the federal budget. My point was that the numbers speak for themselves – mostly the 54% part. To say that the priorities of the US government are out of whack would be to oversimplify the situation. I don’t think any one person is to blame. I think the problem is systemic. It is part of the economic and political structure of our representative democracy.
If you think of dollars as votes and what people really care about, then we are getting what we want. Our representatives are doing their best to get money into the districts of their voters. If you want better education, then you ask them for more money. If you want better health care, then you ask them for more money. If you want more jobs and a larger corporate tax base, then you ask them for more money. Each district is sucking hard through the straw of their representative for more money. With all this sucking the biggest straws get the most juice.
What are the biggest straws? The ones that seem most reasonable, responsible, and sensible – jobs. Everywhere across America, cities are vying with one another for big businesses to set up shop in their tax regions. Our congressional representatives are doing the same – trying to get money for industries in their home towns. They are especially keen for companies and industries that are going to provide a lot of jobs.
Unfortunately, it seems that the more a straw is used, the easier the flow becomes. From another perspective, this is the same as saying that the rich get richer. The rich do get richer. That is a fact. People who have money have the power to make more money. And the way they make more money is to invest it in people and companies and industries that are going to make them more money. They set up an infrastructure for make more money, and they make their straws bigger.
The fundamental, common interest of the people of America is money. It is a nation ruled by money. It is ruled by money in the same way that the rest of the world is ruled by money. The sad consequence of this fact is that if you do not have money, then you have no rule. You have no vote. No representation. Taxation without representation is a natural consequence of the capitalistic economic system.
Since long before I was born, people complained about the futility of voting. One vote is insignificant when the total number of votes are in the millions. The truth is: it is insignificant. Especially when you are simply voting for a representative that is simply a pawn for a system of governance and economics which is systemically flawed. If you want a voice, then you must do so with money.
I am not saying anything new here. I am simply pointing out the obvious. Everyone knows, or should know, about this problem. But sometimes we blind ourselves to realities when those realities are incongruent with what we are comfortable with.
If you put a frog in boiling water, it will hop out. If you put a frog in cool water and then slowly turn up the temperature, then the frog will remain there until it boils to death. This is universally analogous to almost all problems we face in which we have no perceived control. Not because we are unable to detect the threat, but because we refuse to detect it.
What is the point? What can we do? Why get angry and learn about the issues when our opinions have zero impact? Why get angry about the weather, or poverty, or a war on the other side of the world?
In the case of the over use of our tax dollars on military spending, what can I do? Assuming I have a clear understanding of the real consequences or negative effects of this use of money, and I feel strongly that something should be done, then I should donate to lobbying groups such as http://www.sensiblepriorities.org/, http://www.fpif.org/, or http://www.ips-dc.org/ .
But what about other issues? Who can afford to donate significant amounts to several groups? People with money can, and people with money do, donate to multiply lobbying groups. We are back to where we started.
At this point, I can choose between two or three conclusions:
1) We are trapped in a system in which we have no control
2) This analysis is somehow flawed
3) The problem, like the temperature of the frogs’ bath, is not really that bad
If you think of dollars as votes and what people really care about, then we are getting what we want. Our representatives are doing their best to get money into the districts of their voters. If you want better education, then you ask them for more money. If you want better health care, then you ask them for more money. If you want more jobs and a larger corporate tax base, then you ask them for more money. Each district is sucking hard through the straw of their representative for more money. With all this sucking the biggest straws get the most juice.
What are the biggest straws? The ones that seem most reasonable, responsible, and sensible – jobs. Everywhere across America, cities are vying with one another for big businesses to set up shop in their tax regions. Our congressional representatives are doing the same – trying to get money for industries in their home towns. They are especially keen for companies and industries that are going to provide a lot of jobs.
Unfortunately, it seems that the more a straw is used, the easier the flow becomes. From another perspective, this is the same as saying that the rich get richer. The rich do get richer. That is a fact. People who have money have the power to make more money. And the way they make more money is to invest it in people and companies and industries that are going to make them more money. They set up an infrastructure for make more money, and they make their straws bigger.
The fundamental, common interest of the people of America is money. It is a nation ruled by money. It is ruled by money in the same way that the rest of the world is ruled by money. The sad consequence of this fact is that if you do not have money, then you have no rule. You have no vote. No representation. Taxation without representation is a natural consequence of the capitalistic economic system.
Since long before I was born, people complained about the futility of voting. One vote is insignificant when the total number of votes are in the millions. The truth is: it is insignificant. Especially when you are simply voting for a representative that is simply a pawn for a system of governance and economics which is systemically flawed. If you want a voice, then you must do so with money.
I am not saying anything new here. I am simply pointing out the obvious. Everyone knows, or should know, about this problem. But sometimes we blind ourselves to realities when those realities are incongruent with what we are comfortable with.
If you put a frog in boiling water, it will hop out. If you put a frog in cool water and then slowly turn up the temperature, then the frog will remain there until it boils to death. This is universally analogous to almost all problems we face in which we have no perceived control. Not because we are unable to detect the threat, but because we refuse to detect it.
What is the point? What can we do? Why get angry and learn about the issues when our opinions have zero impact? Why get angry about the weather, or poverty, or a war on the other side of the world?
In the case of the over use of our tax dollars on military spending, what can I do? Assuming I have a clear understanding of the real consequences or negative effects of this use of money, and I feel strongly that something should be done, then I should donate to lobbying groups such as http://www.sensiblepriorities.org/, http://www.fpif.org/, or http://www.ips-dc.org/ .
But what about other issues? Who can afford to donate significant amounts to several groups? People with money can, and people with money do, donate to multiply lobbying groups. We are back to where we started.
At this point, I can choose between two or three conclusions:
1) We are trapped in a system in which we have no control
2) This analysis is somehow flawed
3) The problem, like the temperature of the frogs’ bath, is not really that bad
Friday, April 18, 2008
Budget of the United States
(image from http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2009/overview.html)
Budget of the United States Government Fiscal Year 2009
Total Outlays (Federal Funds): $2,650 billion
MILITARY: 54% and $1,449 billion
NON-MILITARY: 46% and $1,210 billion
Current Military
$965 billion:
• Military Personnel $129 billion
• Operation & Maint. $241 billion
• Procurement $143 billion
• Research & Dev. $79 billion
• Construction $15 billion
• Family Housing $3 billion
• DoD misc. $4 billion
• Retired Pay $70 billion
• DoE nuclear weapons $17 billion
• NASA (50%) $9 billion
• International Security $9 billion
• Homeland Secur. (military) $35 billion
• State Dept. (partial) $6 billion
• other military (non-DoD) $5 billion
• "Global War on Terror" $200 billion [We added $162 billion to the last item to supplement the Budget's grossly underestimated $38 billion in "allowances" to be spent in 2009 for the "War on Terror," which includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan]
Past Military,
$484 billion:
• Veterans' Benefits $94 billion
• Interest on national debt (80%) created by military spending, $390 billion
Human Resources
$789 billion:
• Health/Human Services
• Soc. Sec. Administration
• Education Dept.
• Food/Nutrition programs
• Housing & Urban Dev.
• Labor Dept.
• other human resources.
General Government
$304 billion:
• Interest on debt (20%)
• Treasury
• Government personnel
• Justice Dept.
• State Dept.
• Homeland Security (15%)
• International Affairs
• NASA (50%)
• Judicial
• Legislative
• other general govt.
Physical Resources
$117 billion:
• Agriculture
• Interior
• Transportation
• Homeland Security (15%)
• HUD
• Commerce
• Energy (non-military)
• Environmental Protection
• Nat. Science Fdtn.
• Army Corps Engineers
• Fed. Comm. Commission
• other physical resources
Friday, April 11, 2008
Children and Ethics
I had been working on the idea that morality is somehow a product of runaway sexual selection. I no long think that it is, directly...
1. Morality is not distinctly human.
2. Very little of the cerebral cortex is used for morality, planning, or judgement.
The linguistic expression of morality or ethics is distinctly human. Talking about what people should or should not do, or social rules, or gossip about the status and reputation of various people is probably one of the original uses of language.
To a large extent, our language, and the memes in our language, determine our morals and ethics. Ethics are social constructs, like language, conveyed by other people in our social environment. Particular versions of morality, like language, vary from culture to culture. There are common elements, or universal ethics, which are analogous to universal grammar.
I think, though, that human morality is not only more fully articulated that other species, but that it is more developed. There are two main reasons for this, I think:
1. Articulation highlighted deficits in morality which made them more of a romantic liability.
2. The extremely long and difficult childhood of humans highlighted the necessity of parental morality for child survival.
One theory, which I agree with, is that runaway sexual selection was the main driver for our species' explosion of language abilities.
The idea of plasticity, taking the same basic genetic material but expressing the genes differently, coupled with the influence of sexual selection could explain the extremely rapid development of language abilities.
Our linguistic abilities, however, causes a long an difficult childhood for humans. The size and capacity of the human brain is due in large part to its postnatal development. The newborn brain of all other species develops almost entirely within the womb. A new born chimp has a brain averaging 350 cc. That of an adult chimp averages 450 cc. A newborn human brain also averages 350 cc. But an adult human brain averages 1400 cc, a postnatal increase of 300%.
The challenges of raising children are well-known. It is difficult, exhausting, exasperating work, but it is generally thought of as one of the greatest joys and rewards of life.
Not only are children challenging to raise, but our ethics are also deeply affected by in-group/out-group classification. By the rules of universal ethics, killing other humans is wrong, except when the other human is your enemy. Death of 10 people is worse than the death of one person (assuming the correct scenario), except if that one person is your child.
An additional, related speculation, is that cognitive dissonance played a strong role in our image of God.
1. Men woe women through language
2. Women evaluate men through their language
3. Language is tied up with Morals
4. Morals are tied up with child-rearing
5. Men like to think of themselves as in-control
6. Men realize, deep down, that women have a great deal of control over the moral expression of men
7. Men need to reconcile this emotional conflict
8. Men attribute the Moral Law to God, a man, rather than women.
1. Morality is not distinctly human.
2. Very little of the cerebral cortex is used for morality, planning, or judgement.
The linguistic expression of morality or ethics is distinctly human. Talking about what people should or should not do, or social rules, or gossip about the status and reputation of various people is probably one of the original uses of language.
To a large extent, our language, and the memes in our language, determine our morals and ethics. Ethics are social constructs, like language, conveyed by other people in our social environment. Particular versions of morality, like language, vary from culture to culture. There are common elements, or universal ethics, which are analogous to universal grammar.
I think, though, that human morality is not only more fully articulated that other species, but that it is more developed. There are two main reasons for this, I think:
1. Articulation highlighted deficits in morality which made them more of a romantic liability.
2. The extremely long and difficult childhood of humans highlighted the necessity of parental morality for child survival.
One theory, which I agree with, is that runaway sexual selection was the main driver for our species' explosion of language abilities.
The idea of plasticity, taking the same basic genetic material but expressing the genes differently, coupled with the influence of sexual selection could explain the extremely rapid development of language abilities.
Our linguistic abilities, however, causes a long an difficult childhood for humans. The size and capacity of the human brain is due in large part to its postnatal development. The newborn brain of all other species develops almost entirely within the womb. A new born chimp has a brain averaging 350 cc. That of an adult chimp averages 450 cc. A newborn human brain also averages 350 cc. But an adult human brain averages 1400 cc, a postnatal increase of 300%.
The challenges of raising children are well-known. It is difficult, exhausting, exasperating work, but it is generally thought of as one of the greatest joys and rewards of life.
Not only are children challenging to raise, but our ethics are also deeply affected by in-group/out-group classification. By the rules of universal ethics, killing other humans is wrong, except when the other human is your enemy. Death of 10 people is worse than the death of one person (assuming the correct scenario), except if that one person is your child.
An additional, related speculation, is that cognitive dissonance played a strong role in our image of God.
1. Men woe women through language
2. Women evaluate men through their language
3. Language is tied up with Morals
4. Morals are tied up with child-rearing
5. Men like to think of themselves as in-control
6. Men realize, deep down, that women have a great deal of control over the moral expression of men
7. Men need to reconcile this emotional conflict
8. Men attribute the Moral Law to God, a man, rather than women.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Born stubborn
People don't like to admit when they are wrong. People don't like to acknowledge things that conflict with what they feel or what feels comfortable. If thinking about something makes us uncomfortable, we'd rather not think about it. I don't like to be told I need to do something even when I know I need to do it. It grates me; makes me annoyed. I'm not doing it. I know I should be doing it. I'd rather not think about it.
Would you call this stubbornness or procrastination, or something in between?
If you consider our pride in our self-control, in not being controlled, in being intelligent, in being someone others respect, then it is easy to see the conflict that arises when we do something stupid or when someone tells us what to do. It is easier and more comfortable to maintain our self-image than to accept the truth.
So, people do stupid things and refuse to admit that they are wrong because they are stubborn. Who cares?
What does being wrong mean? Instead of talking about factual rights and wrongs, consider gradients in more nebulous things that are not clearly right and wrong, but better and worse, or preferable and more difficult… Things like cultural values, religions, driving skills, etc.
If you find yourself in a particular state of race, culture, religion, you will probably have a hard time believing that everyone else is equal, even though they are different. Most people find reason to justify why their particular state is preferable. Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance, and have collected evidence to support this theory…
Example 1
One is the reaction of a religious group whose prophecy fails to come true. Research (ibid., at p. 22 ff.) has shown that if a group predicts, say, the end of the world, and at the appointed time the world does not end, the group responds to this failure of the prophecy by suggesting that their activity warded off the anticipated apocalypse, and begins to proselytize on the grounds that theirs is the effective belief system for warding off such disaster. One might have thought that failure of the prophecy would suggest that the group could not predict. But such an interpretation would produce dissonance with the group's strongest beliefs. On the other hand, the interpretation that they had successfully warded off the disaster does not produce such dissonance with their belief system.
Example 2
Research has shown that people exhibit greater liking of an organization that subjects them to severe initiation than to one that subjects them only to a mild initiation. This result can be explained by cognitive dissonance theory. There is conflict between the negative affect that the person experiences in response to the initiation, since the person has chosen to go through the initiation to gain entrance to the organization. This conflict produces discomfort and tension. The person can resolve this tension by justifying the initiation as "worth it" because of the positive things he or she will gain from the benefits of membership. The more effort put into the justification process, the more attachment the person has to the organization. The more difficult the initiation; the greater the need for justification; and thus the stronger the commitment to the organization.
Interesting, eh?
So, science is showing that people are stubborn and become more stubborn the more you back them into a corner.
Hmm… Why? Why are we stubborn?
I refuse to stop at “just because.”
My hypotheses are:
A) Self-preservation – we’re biased in favor of ourselves and take better care of ourselves rather than wasting our energies and resources on people better or more deserving than us.
B) Necessary energy – things which are challenging take more energy and need more commitment. Raising a kid, for example, requires a heavily biased commitment, or “deactivation energy”.
C) Invested energy – changing your mind all the time does not help to get anything done. If you’ve already committed time and energy to something, then it usually is better to stick with it than to give up.
D) Social cohesion and loyalty – being loyal to a group is usually better and safer than changing groups or taking off on your own…
Would you call this stubbornness or procrastination, or something in between?
If you consider our pride in our self-control, in not being controlled, in being intelligent, in being someone others respect, then it is easy to see the conflict that arises when we do something stupid or when someone tells us what to do. It is easier and more comfortable to maintain our self-image than to accept the truth.
So, people do stupid things and refuse to admit that they are wrong because they are stubborn. Who cares?
What does being wrong mean? Instead of talking about factual rights and wrongs, consider gradients in more nebulous things that are not clearly right and wrong, but better and worse, or preferable and more difficult… Things like cultural values, religions, driving skills, etc.
If you find yourself in a particular state of race, culture, religion, you will probably have a hard time believing that everyone else is equal, even though they are different. Most people find reason to justify why their particular state is preferable. Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance, and have collected evidence to support this theory…
Example 1
One is the reaction of a religious group whose prophecy fails to come true. Research (ibid., at p. 22 ff.) has shown that if a group predicts, say, the end of the world, and at the appointed time the world does not end, the group responds to this failure of the prophecy by suggesting that their activity warded off the anticipated apocalypse, and begins to proselytize on the grounds that theirs is the effective belief system for warding off such disaster. One might have thought that failure of the prophecy would suggest that the group could not predict. But such an interpretation would produce dissonance with the group's strongest beliefs. On the other hand, the interpretation that they had successfully warded off the disaster does not produce such dissonance with their belief system.
Example 2
Research has shown that people exhibit greater liking of an organization that subjects them to severe initiation than to one that subjects them only to a mild initiation. This result can be explained by cognitive dissonance theory. There is conflict between the negative affect that the person experiences in response to the initiation, since the person has chosen to go through the initiation to gain entrance to the organization. This conflict produces discomfort and tension. The person can resolve this tension by justifying the initiation as "worth it" because of the positive things he or she will gain from the benefits of membership. The more effort put into the justification process, the more attachment the person has to the organization. The more difficult the initiation; the greater the need for justification; and thus the stronger the commitment to the organization.
Interesting, eh?
So, science is showing that people are stubborn and become more stubborn the more you back them into a corner.
Hmm… Why? Why are we stubborn?
I refuse to stop at “just because.”
My hypotheses are:
A) Self-preservation – we’re biased in favor of ourselves and take better care of ourselves rather than wasting our energies and resources on people better or more deserving than us.
B) Necessary energy – things which are challenging take more energy and need more commitment. Raising a kid, for example, requires a heavily biased commitment, or “deactivation energy”.
C) Invested energy – changing your mind all the time does not help to get anything done. If you’ve already committed time and energy to something, then it usually is better to stick with it than to give up.
D) Social cohesion and loyalty – being loyal to a group is usually better and safer than changing groups or taking off on your own…
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Dark and wet
Not to be sensationalistic, but there are many dark truths within the very structure of our economic system.
For one, the economy requires constant expansion and continual increases in consumption. Consumption requires a market. The market is people, with 24 hours a day to consume. This may sound like a lot, but how many toys can you play with? How many services can you use? We have many more things now than ever before, but even now it has reached a saturation point. Competition for our wants and needs is fierce. Those who succeed do so usually through extreme marketing and luck. We can spend more on certain things, but there is a limit on how many different things we can consume.
Two, marketing is to our sense of contentment as nicotine is to our health. Marketing plays on our primal senses, on our self esteem, on our competitive natures, on our identities, on whatever emotional lever they can dream up to make it seem that we need or want something. This is not healthy. I think an interesting parallel can be made between consumers of self-help books, watching tv, and general consumption. The people most likely to buy a self help book are the ones who have done so in the last six weeks; people who watch tv watch a lot of it: more than 22 hours per week on average; the average unsecured consumer debt in the US is around $25,000. Should I throw in obesity as another parallel? The point is, we already consume to an unhealthy degree and an increase consumption is essential to our economy. We must consume more, or the economy will fail.
What alternatives do we have?
What does a failed economy mean?
What is the worst that could happen?
Why does the economy need to expand? Recession, interest rates, consumer
What does expansion really mean? New markets niches, more consumption
But really, there is no real evidence, right? No reason to care – after all, what can we do? If we don't consume, we'll feel like we are missing out on all the latest toys and gadgets. And if enough of us don't consume (this is less likely than everyone going vegetarian) there will be an recession and we'll all lose our jobs.
Besides, global warming will cause a rise in the sea levels which will have a much more dramatic effect on our economies as coastal cities like New York, San Francisco, Bejing, Shaghai, etc, are majorly affected by flooding.
The best thing to do is have a good time while I can and gradually reorient my career toward dike and levy building, because the western economy will soon be as saturated as its coastlines and there ain't anything I can do about it.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Short Wind
The issue before me this morning is what difference does it make that reality is a product of consciousness? Rather than get into a long winded explanation of why this is so, I'd like to focus on the implications.
First, if reality has a property which is analogous to density, does there need to be an ultimate density? Phrased in this way, the obvious answer is no. There are variations in density, but although black holes theoretically do exist, there is not an obvious requirement for them to exist. It follows that there does not need to be an ultimate reality or, consequent to this, an ultimate consciousness.
Second, assuming that reality increases as consciousness increases, does this create an obligation to increase our consciousness? Or to decrease it, for that matter? To be obliged is to be indebted because of some favor or service. Is reality a favor or service? I don't see any reason to think so.
First, if reality has a property which is analogous to density, does there need to be an ultimate density? Phrased in this way, the obvious answer is no. There are variations in density, but although black holes theoretically do exist, there is not an obvious requirement for them to exist. It follows that there does not need to be an ultimate reality or, consequent to this, an ultimate consciousness.
Second, assuming that reality increases as consciousness increases, does this create an obligation to increase our consciousness? Or to decrease it, for that matter? To be obliged is to be indebted because of some favor or service. Is reality a favor or service? I don't see any reason to think so.
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