Thoughts as Doors, Opening and Closing

A thought is not an inert object. A thought is a living thing: it is both propelled and goal-directed. Thoughts bring into being the unanticipated. Thoughts activate neural connections and open up worlds. Reducing thoughts to objects takes the life out of them – stops them in their tracks, unable to continue on their path, unable to lead us to the unforeseeable.

Through thought, the implicit becomes explicit. Through thought, the explicit generates a new implicit.

To behold a thought, it has to hold still for a while.  It has to become a thing. Behold too long and it becomes a dead thing.

Sometimes we want thoughts to stop – but that is a matter of the particular case, not a general rule.

Masters of Mindfulness and Heroes of Science

One way the mindfulness movement reflects a religious sensibility is in the reverence shown towards sacred texts: the sayings of individuals thought to have achieved enlightenment. Such reverence towards specific individuals isn’t really compatible with a scientific mindset.   Scientists may admire Darwin as an exemplar of scientific virtue but that is different than revering him as a master. When an evolutionary biologist struggles with some scientific conundrum, he doesn’t look up Darwin for guidance or “answers”.

I suspect that scientists who meditate switch back and forth between perspectives:  mindful watching and empirical sleuthing. You can’t really inhabit both ways of being and seeing at the same time.

 

 

Mindfulness as a Toolkit

Parts of mindfulness practice may be useful, but does that mean you have to embrace the entire belief system associated with mindfulness practice – that is, an ideology with religious overtones? In his book Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn seems to say so:

…meditation practice is, more than anything, a way of being. It is not a set of techniques for healing. 3707 (Kindle pagination)

This is odd, because in discussing various Buddhist groups, Kabat-Zinn says it is fine to “take what appeals to you and leave the rest” (9736).

He does not allow such a discriminating approach to mindfulness:

…we are asking even more of our patients and of ourselves than just a time for formal meditation practice. For it is only by making the practice a “way of being” that its power can be put into practical use. The real mindfulness practice is how we live our lives from moment to moment, whatever we are doing, whatever our circumstances. 1376-1383

So, according to Kabat-Zinn,  it’s not kosher to consider mindfulness a toolkit, to use at certain times, when needed. No, mindfulness is a “way of being” that requires a lifelong commitment to “living a life of awareness” (8581).

Some mindfulness advocates will say that “awareness” and “way of being” are not religious or ideological concepts. However, these concepts are based on a whole set of assumptions and beliefs about wider, nonhypothetical truths, which are religious in their “aura of utter actuality” and ideological in their systematized interrelationships.

References:

Kabat-Zinn, Jon (2013) Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, Kindle Version, Revised Edition; Bantam Books, New York

Geertz, Clifford (1993) The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, pp.87-125. Fontana Press, London.

Status Aspirations

Concern with status is part of our animal heritage.

The regard of others is a scarce resource; therefore, we compete for it.

Appealing and available mates are scarce: therefore, we compete for them.

To compete, we have to distinguish ourselves.

“Status” is the name we give to that quality that distinguishes us in a way that gives us social and sexual advantage.

The regard of others is not a scarce resource if we don’t care about it and/or any ol’ other will do…but good luck with that!

 

Rewilding: The Time Has Come

Protecting biological communities in specific locales is a worthy goal. Saving endangered species and creating robust habitats for them to thrive is another worthy goal. These goals are not always in perfect harmony. Sometimes species have to migrate to survive and thrive. Unfortunately, between farmland, roadways, towns, cities, and other anthropogenic barriers to movement, species just don’t get around like they used to. They need help.

That’s where rewilding comes in. Rewilding is the process of reintroducing species to ecosystems they no longer inhabit (usually extirpated by humans in the Pleistocene).  Obviously rewilding would need to be done very carefully.   Rewilding efforts would have to proceed incrementally, much like the progression of clinical trials: start with small lab studies and go on from there. For example, Donlan et al suggested the following steps:

  1. Small programs to monitor species interactions and potential effects on biodiversity and ecosystem health.
  2. Experimental maintenance on private property of small numbers of cheetahs, lions, elephants and other contemporary proxies for reintroduced species, with experts studying effects on the local ecology and biology of the species.
  3. Much larger nature reserves for more reintroduced species and their proxies.

Secure fencing and 24/7 staff would keep reintroduced species within the boundaries of these projects and mitigate potential conflict with humans. Of course, there will be some escapes – just as there are with zoos.

Here’s the thing about risk, though. Everything is risky: doing something…doing nothing…being bold…being timid. You have to take a case-by-case approach and look at the types of risks, probability of risk, alternatives, trade-offs, and how well risks can be managed.

Reference:

Josh Donlan et al Pleistocene Rewilding: An Optimistic Agenda for Twenty-First Century Conservation vol. 168, no. 5 The American Naturalist November 2006, 660-681.

 

What Would Make You (Me) Wrong?

You think you have high standards for discerning the truth of the matter? Then you must be able to imagine counterevidence to your theories of how the world works. At the very least.

In the face of heartfelt conviction, I ask: what type of evidence would disconfirm your belief? (That applies to me as well – easier said than done, but I keep trying and sometimes succeed).

Falsify This!

In a variation on the “Wason selection task”, students in a research study were asked to test the rule “if a card has D on one side, it has a 3 on the other”. They were then shown four cards, which had either a letter (D or F) or a number (3 or 7) on them, and were asked which cards they would turn over to validate the rule.  The correct answer was the D and 7 cards. If a D card had anything other than a 3 on the other side, the rule was disconfirmed; ditto if a 7 had a D on the other side.

Most students got it wrong – they said they would look at the F and 3 cards*.  Their error was in seeking to confirm the rule, rather than disconfirm it. But a rule is only a rule if it applies across the board; therefore, all you have to do is find one instance where it doesn’t apply and the rule is invalidated.

The hopeful thing about this study is that if students were asked what cards they had to turn over to falsify the rule, they usually got it right. Moral of the story: it’s not all that hard to overcome our biases. There’s hope for humanity yet.

* Neither the F nor 3 card had any bearing on the question because nothing on the other side could disconfirm the rule.

Reference:

Feist, Gregory J. (2006) The Psychology of Science and the Origins of the Scientific Mind. New Haven: The University Press

The Perils of Profiling Trump Supporters, Part III

Trump supporters are often portrayed as economically stressed victims of globalization and the decline of US manufacturing, worried about job security and stagnating incomes. But as the last post documented, they do not appear to be plagued by trouble finding work. By and large, Trump Country has low unemployment rates.

Perhaps the issue is finding decent jobs – secure jobs with advancement potential.  Since Trump support varied across states, state rankings of work environments might shed some light on the quality of jobs in areas with the strongest Trump support – that is, where the Trump won the vote.

WalletHub, personal finance website, provided just such a ranking earlier this year, in an analysis of the 50 states and District of Columbia along three key dimensions related to happiness. Sources of data were the  U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Council for Community and Economic Research, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Feeding America, Corporation for National and Community Service, Gallup-Healthways, TripAdvisor, Hedonometer.org, Social Science Research Council, Regents of the University of Minnesota and WalletHub’s own research group. One of the ranked dimensions was Work Environment, which included:

  • Commute Time
  • Income Level (personal earnings adjusted by cost of living
  • Number of Work Hours
  • Current Unemployment Rate
  • Long-Term Unemployment Rate
  • Job Security (measures probability of unemployment)
  • Income-Growth Rate

The top ten states with the best “Work Environments” were Utah, North Dakota, Idaho, Montana, Iowa, South Dakota, Delaware, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Oklahoma. Note that eight of these states went to Trump in the presidential election.

Of course, the WalletHub findings are from just one research study. But these findings are in line with data from other sources. For instance, the Census Bureau’s numbers on inequality show that states that voted for Trump tended to be the least unequal. And in a recent analysis of Gallup survey data for 125,000 American adults, the authors found that Trump supporters “earn relatively high household incomes and are no less likely to be unemployed or exposed to competition through trade or immigration.”

The point in these posts isn’t to create a new profile of the typical Trump supporter but to undermine a simplistic narrative about what make Trump supporters tick.

Next:  the other side of the ledger/evidence of economic distress motivating Trump support.

Reference:

Rothwell, Jonathan T. and Diego-Rosell, Pablo, Explaining Nationalist Political Views: The Case of Donald Trump (November 2, 2016). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2822059 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2822059

The Perils of Profiling Trump Supporters, Part II

Trump supporters have been portrayed as victims of globalization and the decline of US manufacturing, stuck in low-paid jobs offering little in the way of job security or earning potential.  Angry and desperate, the story goes, they flocked to that champion of the scorned and neglected, Donald J. Trump, who would kick out the corrupt elites, restore  hope, heal  pride, and make America great again.

This narrative rests on the assumption that economic woes go a long way to explaining Trump’s support. Let’s test that assumption.

Compare this map:

2015_Unemployment Rate by US County

…with this map:

2016 Presidential Election Results by County

It looks to me that much of Trump Country – the dark red areas – has been enjoying low unemployment rates in the recent past.  Thus, whatever the economic woes afflicting Trump supporters, trouble finding work doesn’t appear to have been a significant factor in their decision to vote for the man.

Next: job security, work satisfaction, and inequality in Trump Country.

The Perils of Profiling Trump Supporters, Part I

The narrative goes something like this: Trump supporters are a bunch of profoundly unhappy bigots, ill-educated country bumpkins left behind by the forces of globalization, plagued by job insecurity, battered down by inequality, worried sick about their future, consumed by resentment of the liberal elites and racist to the core. Or something like that.

I’m sure there’s some truth to this narrative – but “some’ is one of those elastic words whose meaning stretches from more than nothing to less than a lot.  In other words, vague to the point of meaningless.  More important to me is whether this portrait of Trump supporters is substantially true. Is the evidence is consistent and robust?

First, let’s look at 2016 election map:2016 Presidential Election Results by County

One thing that strikes me is the margin of victory in the counties that went for Trump – at least 20% for the vast majority. In other words, Trump dominated in the counties he won. So if Trump supporters are economically stressed, it’s reasonable to expect unfavorable economic indicators in the areas where they dominate.

Next: Employment, Job Security and Work Satisfaction in Trump Country

Election Map accessed on 11/17/16 from: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/11/daily-chart-7