Certain Doubt

Cognitive Dissonance

Thursday, July 7th, 2011

I love Wikipedia.

Time was when a University Professor with a string of letters came on the radio spewing forth obfuscating psychobabble I had nothing to fight back with. Now, through the miracle of the internet – specifically that grand field leveler known as “Wikipedia” – with a few clicks of a mouse and five minutes of scanning, I can tell in an instant whether the aforementioned academic egg-head has anything worth saying or is as full of hot air as the Montgolfier brothers’ famous balloon.

Occasionally, my Wikipedia habit produces insights that surprise even me.

This morning’s exercise began with an NPR radio spot where the host interviewed a University professor who had concluded a study on attitudes toward drinking among college students.

The academic raised the interesting statistic that most of the students who took part in the study played down the negative aspects to their alcohol consumption, even when those negatives were readily apparent. (Some examples of negatives the Professor cited were: throwing up, passing out, and urinating on oneself.)

Everything was clear in the interview until the Professor trotted out the term “cognitive dissonance” to describe what he was talking about. Cognitive dissonance? Give me a break.

As I said, before the internet, I would have no choice but to bang my head against the wall and admit that as a poor uneducated slob who slept through psychology 101 I couldn’t begin to pretend I knew what he was talking about. Now, however, through the wonders of Wikipedia, a quick Google search turned up the following:

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying, blaming, and denying.

Okay, instant comprehension. Eighteen-year olds downplay their negative experiences with alcohol because they’re in denial. No surprise there. Don’t need a college degree or a psychology study to see that one coming. The next paragraph, however, produced a rather startling “aha” moment.

People are biased to think of their choices as correct, despite any contrary evidence. This fact sheds light on otherwise puzzling irrational and destructive behavior.

The college drinkers deny that their behaviors have negative consequences because as humans they are hardwired to think that whatever choices they make – be it their choice in friends, the car they purchase or how much they drink – are the correct ones. If evidence to the contrary emerges – such as the irrefutable negatives associated with puking in the gutter or pissing one’s pants – cognitive dissonance theory predicts people are likely to reduce the uncomfortable feeling, not by changing their behavior, but by denying that the evidence exists.

Spread across the spectrum of human endeavor, Cognitive Dissonance indeed sheds light on some rather strange behavior.

In the stock market, it is a well known fact that people often stay invested in a stock long after it is obvious that it is toast. Like squirrels hanging onto a broken branch all the way to the ground, we follow the stock all the way to the cellar, Cognitive Dissonance tells us, because we are hard-wired not to admit we’ve made a mistake.

A woman who stays with an abusive husband is easily explained by the notion that the wife simply can’t bring herself to ease her discomfort over the evidence her mate is lower than pond slime because that would require her to admit she’d made a bad choice.

In politics, the theory of cognitive dissonance seems particularly appropriate. As voters, we tend to support the candidate we voted for long after it is obvious he or she is in no way living up to our expectations. We may feel bad, uncomfortable, even cheated, but we can’t accept the facts surrounding our disappointment because to do so would force us to admit that our voting decision had been a bad one.

Even when we do change our minds, CD theory indicates we often seek to make excuses or put the blame outside ourselves. Thus, “I lost money because I got bad investment advice,” or “Obama’s not doing what I’d hoped because of republicans in the House,” become mantras designed to avoid facing the reality that we simply voted in the wrong individual.

Okay, soapbox time:

I believe very strongly that success in life hinges at least in part on being honest with oneself. If you want to become great at anything, you simply can’t do it by lying to yourself, or coddling yourself, or refusing to admit when you have made an error. Thus, Cognitive Dissonance is something that everyone should be aware of in themselves. It is also something you should be aware of in those around you. Next time you see an investor blame his stockbroker for his failure to make money, or if you hear someone in an abusive relationship say, “he/she can’t help it,” or “I asked for it,” next time you hear someone express disappointment in an elected official, recognize that what they are really trying to do is ease their cognitive dissonance without recognizing that at least part of the cause of their discomfort lies within themselves.

As a voter, I’m horribly disappointed with Barrack Obama. In a surprising number of areas, from the economy, to war, to erosion of civil rights, and now his incipient caving on Social security and Medicare, I feel the President has not come close to fulfilling his inspiring promise of “change.” But if I am to be honest, I have to force myself to remember, no one put a gun to my head and said you have to vote for this man. In the next election, no one will be putting a gun to my head either. If I am disappointed in Barrack Obama, if I feel cognitive dissonance between my expectations for what I thought he would do and what he has actually done, I must remember that at least part of that unease over his presidency has to be attributed to the fact that my voting decision was, in fact, a bad one. It doesn’t matter that the alternative (McCain/Palin) was a horror show. I voted for Barack Obama. Lots of us did. If we are disappointed in his policies we have to remember we put him where he is.

The first step towards change is recognizing that the decisions we make are not always good ones. The first step towards correcting a mistake is admitting one’s role in that mistake.

Tags: binge drinking, certaindoubt, change, cognitive, Cognitive Dissonance, denial, dissonance, mistake, Obama, Politics, psychology, Thomas Vincent, Vincent, voting, wikipedia
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Turning the Corner

Sunday, June 26th, 2011

Turning the Corner

If ever there was an overused cliche, it has to be: “turning the corner.” Along with “the light at the end of the tunnel,” and “beginning a new chapter,” these stale chestnuts should be banned from any self respecting political speechwriter’s cupboard. And yet every day we are subjected to speeches in which we have “turned the corner” on fundraising, or winning an election, or even the economy and job creation.

Now, in a stunning display of mediocre speech writing, President Barack Obama has once again trotted out this tired, expired rhetorical horse and proceeded to flog it mercilessly, telling a group of soldiers at Fort Drum that America has indeed “turned the corner,” in Afghanistan.

That a Commander-in-Chief should grasp at straws when trying to boost the morale of troops – especially troops who are fighting a war that has been going on for ten years – is no surprise. However, the fact that Mr. Obama used the phrase almost in the same sentence as the one in which he informs those same troops they’ll have to keep fighting and killing, and dying – virtually forever – borders on the obscene. Telling soldiers we have turned the corner and then declaring only five thousand troops are coming home is like the pilot who tries to temper the bad news that the fourth engine has caught fire by saying: “but we’re making really great time.”

The war in Afghanistan is nowhere near over. We are nowhere near withdrawing our troops from the Middle East. Declaring the pitiful “drawdown” from Afghanistan as some kind of watershed moment in our invasion and occupation of that country is specious. It is an insult, both to the intelligence of the American people and the honor of those that serve in the armed forces.

Of course one can see how the visual of turning the corner would appeal to a politician who ran his last campaign on the promise of “change.” There are many kinds of corners, however. One wonders, just what sort of corner the president is referring to? Is it the sort of definitive absolute decision implied by taking the “exit only” ramp on the highway? Or is it more of a gradual turn that might morph into a chicane or “ess” curve, the kind that bends back around so we might actually wind up at the end of the day going in the same direction as we were when the whole debacle started.

Are we in a car? On foot? Or perhaps we’re on a train. This railroad image is particularly disturbing because of the implications of inevitability. For many trains, coming around the bend tends to be a more or less constant condition:

And of course as any engineer can tell you, it doesn’t matter how many corners you turn; if the bridge is out, you’re still headed for disaster.

By signaling that he plans to withdraw only 10,000 troops this year and maybe 20,000 more by 2014, the President hardly seems to be implying the kind of sharp turn that so many American’s – and presumably the soldiers as well – were hoping for. Ultimately, what may be needed in Afghanistan is not to turn the corner, but to turn completely around and head back in the other direction. That was what many of us thought Candidate Obama was referring to with his rhetorical eloquence calling for change and hope.

Apparently with regard to war at least, the change Mr. Obama visualized had less to do with reversing direction even significantly altering our course. The only corner president Obama seems intent on turning is the one in his imagination. For the rest of us it’s full steam ahead and damn the missing trestle.

Tags: afghanistan, certaindoubt, cliche, Drawdown, Obama, Politics, railroads, Thomas Vincent, turning the corner, Vincent, war
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It Always Comes Down to Money.

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

In the end it always comes down to money.

The recent article in the New York Times by David Sanger and Elisabeth Bumiller entitled “Pentagon to Consider Cyberattacks Acts of War,” presents a chilling scenario:

“The Pentagon, trying to create a formal strategy to deter cyberattacks on the United States, plans to issue a new strategy soon declaring that a computer attack from a foreign nation can be considered an act of war that may result in a military response.

The new military strategy… makes explicit that a cyberattack could be considered equivalent to a more traditional act of war.” NYT

Just what constitutes a “cyberattack” is not made clear except to say that “any computer attack that threatens widespread civilian casualties — for example, by cutting off power supplies or bringing down hospitals and emergency-responder networks — could be treated as an act of aggression.”

That the Pentagon should employ such a broad reaching definition for cyberattack should give us pause. But it is the proposed response to such an attack that is really mind blowing. In a Wall Street Journal article Pentagon officials outlined the rationale behind the policy:

One idea gaining momentum at the Pentagon is the notion of “equivalence.” If a cyber attack produces the death, damage, destruction or high-level disruption that a traditional military attack would cause, then it would be a candidate for a “use of force” consideration, which could merit retaliation.
WSJ

Given the increasing alacrity with which the United States has been exercising its military muscle around the world, the conclusions about the effects of this policy are inescapable. As one military official is quoted as saying:

“If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks.”

The putative logic presented by the Pentagon is that by laying out a clear and forceful policy for dealing with threats such as malicious cyber attacks, the Pentagon will – at least in theory – provide a deterrent. The model quoted in the article is that of the deterrent posed by an American policy of absolute retaliation in the event of a nuclear attack.

“A parallel, outside experts say, is the George W. Bush administration’s policy of holding foreign governments accountable for harboring terrorist organizations, a policy that led to the U.S. military campaign to oust the Taliban from power in Afghanistan.” WSJ

The main problem with the Pentagon proposal is that it is a stunning display of overkill. Not only is it hard to imagine which foreign country would be lurking out there with the capability or desire to inflict lethal cyber-damage on the United States, but it defies belief that any bit of cyber chicanery that such a country could come up with could possibly produce the kind of devastation that a single nuclear warhead could wreak. Thus, the kind of “mutually assured cyber-destruction that the Pentagon is implying is not only unnecessary, it is incredibly assymetrical and in no way “equivalent.” It’s sort of like responding to a bee sting by hitting the hive with a 2,000 lb. bunker buster.

Another problem with the Pentagon’s policy is that most of the cyberattacks that the United States has acknowledged have come not from foreign nations at all but from independent hackers and loose-nit organizations such as “Annonymous.” Given the broad definition the Pentagon puts forth it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to label any malicious cyber activity as an attack that would merit a military response. One can even envision a group of strategists in the Pentagon basement thinking up strategies for dropping a smart bomb down Julian Assange’s chimney.

Even when cyber attacks represent legitimate threats, it is often difficult to pin down where the attack originates from. As the NYT article notes:

“During the cold war, deterrence worked because there was little doubt the Pentagon could quickly determine where an attack was coming from — and could counterattack a specific missile site or city. In the case of a cyberattack, the origin of the attack is almost always unclear, as it was in 2010 when a sophisticated attack was made on Google and its computer servers. Eventually Google concluded that the attack came from China. But American officials never publicly identified the country where it originated, much less whether it was state sanctioned or the action of a group of hackers.”

“One of the questions we have to ask is, How do we know we’re at war?” one former Pentagon official said.

Another variable not explored in either the Wall Street Journal or The New York Times is the sometimes tenuous dividing line between the U.S. government and the defense contractors it employs. For example, Lockheed Martin recently claimed it’s information systems were the target of a “cyber attack”

Given the fact that Lockheed Martin’s products include the Trident missile, P-3 Orion spy plane, F-16 and F-22 Raptor fighter jets and C-130 Hercules military cargo planes among many other major weapons systems, could this attack on a private corporation be considered an attack on the United States and thus one that would merit a military response by the U.S. military? With all the various contractors and sub-contractors now employed by the Pentagon would a cyber attack on any of them be considered an act of war?

If the danger is not clear and present, if the culprits are hard, if not impossible to identify, and if the list of targets is endless, why on earth would the Pentagon be proposing military action, i.e. war, as a response?

Not surprisingly, like so much that comes out of the Pentagon , the answer comes down to money.

“The Pentagon strategy is coming out at a moment when billions of dollars are up for grabs among federal agencies working on cyber-related issues, including the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. Each has been told by the White House to come up with approaches that fit the international cyberstrategy that the White House published in May. “

Thus, once again, the Pentagon’s strategy for dealing with a perceived attack has little or nothing to do with protecting the homeland.

Surprise, surprise. Once again, it’s all about the Benjamins baby!

Tags: Benjamins, Certain Doubt, cyber attacks, cyberattacks, defense, ethical, government, money, Pentagon, reddit, retaliation, spectacle, Thomas Vincent, Vincent, war
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Legacy of the Rich.

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

Over the past several years I have read and listened to pundits who decrying the demise of the daily newspaper, the weekly magazine, even hard backed novels. Most of the conversation has focused on economics. Declining ad revenues and rising costs have put the squeeze on the fourth estate forcing them to cut back staff and even shutter their doors for good. Moreover, many have claimed that the advent of instantaneous electronic news sources have rendered the traditional daily paper obsolete.

There is some element of truth to all these explanations. However, as tempting as it may be to blame the demise of print media on obsolescence and economic viability, I think there is a deeper systemic problem that is not being addressed.

I’m talking about content.

While newspapers may be under stress from cheaper and faster ways of people getting their news, I feel the daily paper is putting itself out of business, at least in part, for the simple reason that less and less of what finds its way into print these days is worth reading. Not only is much of the reporting two dimensional, the commentary vapid and trite, but increasingly I find it harder and harder to identify just who the newspapers think is their target audience.

Take the following article from the New York Times:

“Wealthy Hesitate to take a Break on Estate Taxes.”
Paul Sullivan
May 13, 2011.
“President Obama and the Republican Congress gave the wealthiest Americans an enormous gift at the end of 2010. They increased the exemption on a series of estate-related taxes and lowered the tax rate on any amount over those limits…. But five months into the tax break, the people able to fully exploit it are more tentative than wealth advisers had expected.”

Who is this article written for? The super rich? If so, the target audience is an awful small slice of the Times readership. To his credit Sullivan tries to make his revelation relevant:

“So why are the richest Americans hesitating to take advantage of this tax break? It comes down to two fears that bedevil everyone: They don’t want to put too much aside now in case they need it later, and they don’t want to take away their children’s incentive to work.”

The first part of this statement is actually grotesque. There are plenty of people in this country with nothing: no home, no savings, no IRA. The thought that there are people out there who actually have 10 million dollars to leave to their progeny is positively repulsive.

Actually, in a way, the first part of this statement is something of a test of a person’s wealth. That is to say, if you worry about how much money you’ll have left after gifting $10 million to your kids, I hate to tell you, but you simply aren’t that rich. The estate tax break for “the wealthiest Americans” is not written for those with ten million or twenty million. It really only applies to people whose net worth vastly exceeds the ten million dollar limit. Ironically, the “savings” realized by eliminating the estate tax on the first ten million is really chump change for the super, super wealthy. For the rest of us, it doesn’t apply at all.

The second part of the rationale presented for why people haven’t made use of the estate tax exemption makes even less sense. Most of my friends have zero savings. Many are living paycheck to paycheck with mortgages, car payments and student loans to pay off. Some are recently unemployed. None of them are worried one whit about how giving ten million to their kids will ruin their work ethic. Most are simply worried about being a burden to their kids in their old age.

Even if you have some assets, the idea of holding out on your kids so they’ll work harder, it is a questionable strategy. While it may appeal to Calvinist “bootstrap” Republicans, the reality is the economic times in which we live markedly different than when baby boomers and their parents came of age, with fewer job prospects and fewer opportunities to “make something of themselves.” In another stunning display of irony, of the few people I know who actually do have ten million dollars in the bank most got their boodle, not by working for it but by… wait for it… receiving an inheritance! The idea that anyone who has received an inheritance should hold out on their children in order to – as one person quoted in Sullivan’s article – “incentivize them” to do well is grotesque in the extreme.

The real issue I have with this article is not Sullivan’s assertion that people are not taking advantage of the estate tax loophole is because they’re worried about what giving too much money will do to their offspring. The real bone I have to pick is that Sullivan completely ignores the possibility why not many people are taking advantage of the loophole is that there simply aren’t that many people who truly fall into the category of the “wealthiest Americans.” According to a paper by by G. William Domhoff of the University of California,:

According to a study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, only 1.6% of Americans receive $100,000 or more in inheritance. Another 1.1% receive $50,000 to $100,000. On the other hand, 91.9% receive nothing (Kotlikoff & Gokhale, 2000).

Thus it is conceivably possible that the reason not many wealthy people are taking advantage of the loophole is that there simply aren’t that many super wealthy people in America these days.

For many reasons, lousy scholarship and research, lazy quoting and pathetically bad writing the Sullivan article is bad reporting. But what makes it worse is that the number of people who benefit at all from the tax loophole the author is writing about is so vanishingly small that the article’s usefulness to the readers whom the New York Times is marketing the paper is questionable at best.

If papers like the New York Times truly wanted to stay relevant and economically viable, perhaps they should stop writing articles aimed at phantom “wealthy Americans” who no longer exist. If Paul Sullivan is truly concerned with what his legacy will do to his kids, perhaps he should concentrate on writing articles about carbon emissions, climate change, and pollution.

That’s the real legacy of the rich.

Tags: cetraindoubt, content, economics, estate tax, legacy, loopholes, media, news, newspapers, print, rich, taxes, Thomas Vincent, Vincent, wealthy
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