Is it education? Income? Obesity? Nope–trick question: it’s a religion map, so it’s all three in one.

[ States of the States | gallup.com ]

Posted via web from danielmiessler.com | posterous

Posted via web from danielmiessler.com | posterous

Posted via web from danielmiessler.com | posterous

Jews are a famously accomplished group. They make up 0.2 percent of the world population, but 54 percent of the world chess champions, 27 percent of the Nobel physics laureates and 31 percent of the medicine laureates.

Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but 21 percent of the Ivy League student bodies, 26 percent of the Kennedy Center honorees, 37 percent of the Academy Award-winning directors, 38 percent of those on a recent Business Week list of leading philanthropists, 51 percent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction.

It seems to me that the decision, both as an individual and as a society, to either punish or rehabilitate criminals hinges on the degree to which the former believes in in free will vs. determinism. In short, if you believe in free will, you believe that one can have all the disadvantages in the world heaped upon him or her, but that when it comes time to make a moral decision, this person will be expected–due to an innate and distinct free will–to make the right decision.

You can draw a line directly from this belief to that of belief in punishment. And for good reason: if inputs into a decision, such as being severely beaten as a child, being raised by foster homes, having no education, etc. have no ultimate effect, i.e. if the individual still has complete control over their actions due to free will, then it makes sense to punish people who do bad things.

Let’s take an example. Let’s say Chris is a bad guy. He runs with the wrong crowd, gets in fights, carries a knife in case he has to stab someone, etc. He’s hanging out with his buddies at his favorite pool hall one night, and he’s with a girl he’s trying to get with. All his buddies are thugs, basically, and honor and respect are the primary currency within the group.

Well, one guy in another group playing pool nearby decides to insult the girl he’s trying to impress. His whole crew sees it, and they start hooting and hollering to apply pressure. Basically, he needs to react aggressively or he will lose both the respect of his group and of the girl he’s trying to get with. While he’s trying to decide what to do, the other guy pushes him straight in the chest and spits in his face. As he glances from side to side he sees one look on everyone’s face: “Are you going to take that?”

He is overwhelmed by the urge to attack him, and before he knows it he is drawing back his pool cue (still in his hand from his last shot) to strike.

Stop time.

What are the inputs here? Let’s say he’s genetically prone to violence. He had no loving parents when he was a child. He was beaten constantly by his father before he was abandoned by him. He has a 6th grade education. And he’s into drugs and alcohol. Add that to the dynamic of needing to maintain status within his only peer group–all of which are staring at him and waiting for him to act.

These are all truths. They are realities that make up the variables leading to a decision of whether or not he will hit this other man with a pool cue, and ultimately go to jail.

The question I have for the free will group is, “what is the strength of his free will in this situation, and how much does it matter?” Does he have the same free will as a Harvard grad in the same scenario? In other words, if a Harvard grad is in the same situation, and he immediately grabs his girl and leaves while calling the cops, was he actually more moral or did he just not have the same pressures to commit the negative action?

Remember, the Harvard grad has options. His girl will still stay with him if he doesn’t get in the fight, and his friends will tell him he did the right thing. Plus, he knows all the implications of his actions. He has much to lose if he gets something put on his police record. None of these things apply to Chris. In fact, they apply in the opposite direction. Everything leans toward him attacking being the right thing to do–given his situation.

In other words, how much free will is needed to make a correct decision seems highly dependent on the pressures that exist already–most of which are products of variables outside the control of the decision-maker.

The Harvard grad didn’t make a difficult decision because he had so many options. Chris, on the other hand, didn’t have any options. From his genetics to his upbringing to his immediate surroundings–he basically had no option but to attack the guy.

To look at it another way, how much free will does a human exert when deciding not to eat? A lot. How much free will does a human exert when deciding not to fly like a duck? None. Why? Because there is no natural pressure to fly like a duck. Along those same lines, how tempting would it be for a man to sleep with the hot blonde he just met if he had been castrated? Not at all.

The point is that will is tied directly to deterministic pressure to act. And the more of that pressure you are facing, the less, your “will” is a factor in your decisions.

That is, unless you’re highly religious. Religion solves this science and nature problem by saying that all people have the same option to make the right choice, regardless of whether the cards are stacked against them or not. That would explain why the religious enjoy seeing criminals suffer so much–because they believe they had THE OPTION to do the right thing.

And it really goes all the way back. Let’s take the Garden of Eden narrative. Here you have God, controlling the entire environment. The laws of physics, the desires of Adam and Eve, the desirability of the tree, the presence of the snake, etc. So he creates a piece of fruit on a tree that’s so dangerous it will kill him (and everyone in the whole world after him).

Not only does he create the fruit, but he gives Adam both the eyes to see it with, as well as the desire to eat it. Then, next to him, he creates two other beings–both of which try and convince him to eat it. Keep in mind that Adam could have been created without ears, so he couldn’t hear Eve and the snake, but that would be too easy.

So, when Adam is about to take a bite of the apple, what is the balance of natural pressure vs. free will at that moment? I’d argue it’s much the same as the balance of pressure on Chris when he’s about to swing the pool cue. In both cases the deck is completely stacked. In Adam’s case, the creator of the Universe just put a tasty fruit right next to him, along with two companions to convince him to eat it. For Chris, he’s facing a world of loneliness and rejection if he doesn’t swing.

Anyway, enough analogies. The idea of punishing criminals because “they had a choice” is, as the Hacker’s quote goes, “Universally stupid.” And the alternative narrative is simple: you do what the variables say you’ll do. That’s why most rich people come from a world of advantage, while most poor and criminal types come from a world of disadvantage. If you need more evidence, look at the data on common characteristics of serial killers’ lives (hint:abuse).

And some people get this. The Scandinavian countries tend to rehabilitate rather than punish. Why? Because they understand that negative inputs lead to negative outcomes, and that the concept of free will is little more than a practical necessity at this point in our development–and certainly not something to base a criminal justice system on.

So let’s sum up with some oversimplifications:

• Religion –> a belief in supernatural Free Will
• Free Will –> the belief that criminals deserve suffering
• Secular –> Less/No Religion
• Less/No Religion –> Less/No belief in supernatural Free Will
• Less/No belief in Free Will –> more belief in determinism
• Belief in determinism –> belief that the prosperous are lucky instead of virtuous, and that the poor and criminal are unlucky instead of evil or lazy
• This leads to a desire to elevate the variables for everyone, so that the better inputs will lead to better outputs

…which is progressivism/liberalism/socialism.

…which is why the Scandinavian countries are less into the idea of criminals being “bad”, and more into re-education and rehabilitation. So, once again, the U.S. is being hamstrung by religious culture. It is the belief in free will over determinism that leads to the entire concept of “deserving” something, e.g. riches or suffering. And it has to end if we want to make any real progress. ::

Happy families are all alike, but unhappy families are unhappy in different ways. –Tolstoy

My Summary / Notes

• People in the top 50% of income vote differently based on the state they’re in, e.g. they vote Republican in Texas and Democrat in Connecticut.
• Overall, rich people tend to vote Republican
• Democrats win rich states, Republicans win rich voters.
• Lower-middle class people vote similarly in both red and blue states, but richer people in these same states vote differently.
• The lower income you are, the less difference religion makes in your voting. In other words, among richer voters church attenders are far more republican than secularists, but among poor people not so much. This gives support to the idea of post-materialism, where rich people have the luxury of thinking about higher-order issues than poor people.
• Some confusion from the media comes from the fact that most writers come from parts of the country that don’t have major differences between the parties.
• The largest differences between red and blue states are occurring within the upper-middle class.

The rich vote true interests, while the poor vote god, guns, and gays. (paraphrase from multiple sources)

My favorite quote, made during the question period, was on the topic of the range of differences between left and right in other developed countries vs. in the U.S. A questioner asked if he’d looked at any other countries, like in Europe, that have much wider divides between left and right.

Dr. Gelman responded by saying that in fact the U.S. has a much larger gap between the two sides than most any other country. He went on to add that in this context, California and the Northeast are like Europe, and the south is like Mexico.

Anyway, really cool stuff. The data succeeded in changing my model, which made it highly valuable. Did it surprise you guys in any areas? ::

First, the article. Check it out before you continue.

–

To begin, it’s worth nothing that it was a government-run healthcare program that accomplished this. It was smart people looking out for the greater-good of the people, which is what government is supposed to be.

I am not a healthcare expert, but I’d say the reason this is not happening in the United States is because “greater-good” sits not in the back seat of our government, but in a trailer being pulled behind the vehicle. On the back bumper of the trailer. Basically, it’s the greed/ignorance problem all over again. Physicians in this country would face immediate repercussions if they were to tell a patient, “You’ve got a cold: take a Tylenol and suck it up.”

As I just mentioned, there are two components to this failure: greed, and stupidity. The stupidity is championed by the patient, where he/she becomes indignant at being denied powerful medicine (antibiotics) for a runny nose or body aches. This spirals into accusations of racism, classism, ism-ism, etc. First the business suffers due to word-of-mouth, then the lawsuits come.

And that’s where the greed comes in. Lawyers and drug companies have a vested interest in seeing the maximum possible drugs being prescribed. And the lawyers really like to hear about people getting sick when Doctor’s supposedly didn’t do enough to help them–especially if they’re poor or have a minority status. That’s lawyer lifeblood.

So, naturally, doctors choose to prescribe antibiotics for runny noses. They throw everything at a problem to make it seem to the idiot that they are doing everything the can, and to keep their lawyers from having anything to stand on. And the public suffers.

It’s a battle we’re losing. On one side is stupidity and greed, and on the other is logic and practicality. Norway no-doubt had similar pressures from some patients while family members were suffering from the flu, or a severe cold. I’m sure some of them accused their doctors of callousness or of withholding treatment. But those accusations never gained kinetic force because the general education of their peers was high enough to quell it. Basically, they went to their friends and said, “This damn doctor didn’t give me my antibiotics for my cold. He’s a bad doctor.” And their friends said, “Dude, you’re an idiot. If he gives you that many people might die from resistant bacteria.”

In the U.S. that doesn’t work because the complainer’s friends are much more likely to say, “We can probably get some free money if we sue him for discrimination.” Not necessarily even out of malice–so few people willing to make this lawsuit are educated enough to know that a doctor would be right to deny antibiotics. According to their view (which is wrong), they’d be justified.

And that’s the problem. The ratio of intelligent to stupid, educated to ignorant, and greedy to altruistic is crucial. This is the balance that is accelerating in the wrong direction for the U.S. And it’s this that scares me most. It’s the reason our politics are going sideways, it’s the reason our education system is in shambles, and it’s the reason our economy is on the edge of ruin.

Happy new year. ::

To have “class” means different things to different people. Some think it means having money. Others think it means being able to identify and procure expensive, hard to attain things. Another lot think it means appreciating obscure types of art or music.

The key to the word’s meaning, however, always hinges on the concept of refinement or advancement. It means you lack it (class) until you mature into a certain understanding of the world. And with that in focus I’ve come upon my own definition of class.

The true sign of class is caring personally about the suffering of the poor, uneducated, and misfortunate.

Many people know a lot about wine, cars, or maybe have an extensive art collection about which they could speak for hours. But if a man is able to turn his head in apathetic disregard–or even disgust–when looking upon a starving person on the street, he has revealed his true and ugly nature.

For me it’s that simple to group people: those who care about the suffering of others, and those who do not. There are many definitions of class, but this one is the only one that matters. ::

I’ve noticed an ailment that a few of my male friends from the South have. This isn’t to say it’s a uniquely Southern thing, but I have yet to notice it in any of my friends from California. It’s so unspeakable that I’ve been putting off writing about it for years, but alas, I feel like it should be named so that it may be conquered.

The ailment I speak of is not being passionately interested in anything in a consistent, identity-defining way.

Here are a few symptoms these people all seem to share:

• claiming to have many interests, but constantly complaining of boredom
• moving constantly between new obsessions, and burning out on them within days/weeks
• being somewhat negative towards others and/or anti-social
• constantly telling others about how many interesting projects they’re working on

These symptoms (a highly unscientific list, to be sure) illustrate the main problem: internal unhappiness, not innate maliciousness. The reason this type of person likes to talk about his projects in a somewhat condescending way is not to make you feel worse, but to convince you (and therefore themselves) that he has something going on.

And that’s the sad part; the real desperation of this state of being is the perpetual–almost manic–search for something to be interested in. All these projects, all the accomplishments (degrees, promotions, home projects, etc.)–they’re all hollow experiments designed to hopefully light a spark of identity.

But nothing happens.

They move from project to project hoping to find something that they’re passionate about, but in the end they just end up bored and more depressed/angry/ashamed that nothing interests them.

They’re often accomplished and talented–even more than those who they try to show off for–but they yearn for something more basic–to simply have something pulling them towards action, based on passion.

The Cause

As I mentioned, I think the cause is somehow linked to the South (or at least correlated with it somehow), and I have a theory on the variable. I think it has something to do with limited exposure to creative, intellectual, and/or artistic stimuli growing up.

I think the more exposed one was to reading, science, language, art, and other creative outlets as a child, the more likely he is to grow up seeking to fulfill those interests for his entire life. But if those fires were never started, then you can bring as much wood as you can find later in life and nothing will burn.

That’s why I think it seems to have happened less with my friends from California; I think there’s such a thriving geek culture out there (in the main cities anyway) that the environment ingrains passions and interests in creative pursuits early on, and this simply continues throughout life. In other words, the creative/passionate fires are started early, and they never go out.

The Solution

So I am asking for help from those who may know people like this, or may even be someone who’s grappled with this in the past and conquered it.

My initial thoughts are that the way to fix it is to mimic the exploration of youth in a culture like that of the Bay Area in California. In other words, make the required changes in one’s life that would allow you him to read many books, play many games (role-playing especially), and hang out with people who are similarly driven.

The idea being that we simply try and light the fires now rather than assuming they can never be lit–or, even worse, continually bringing wood to a place that isn’t warm.

Anyway, I would really like to hear thoughts on the topic. I desperately want to help those who are grappling with this. ::

** The reason I only talk about guys in this post is because I think there are other, more powerful dynamics affecting the mental health (and identity definition) of women–both in the South and elsewhere–and I think it’s a subject for another post.

Fashion can be described with a couple of main concepts:

1. The goal of fashion is to elevate one’s status (duh)
2. The rich try to not look like the poor, and the poor try to look like the rich–so it’s a chase. Case in point: the rich start wearing a certain brand of clothing, and then the poor start doing it. This results in nobody rich will ever wearing that brand again because it’s associated with copying the rich rather than being rich.
3. Like the peacock, the rich often switch this up by wearing clothes that are associated with the lower classes.

Number 3 is the interesting one; just as the peacock is basically saying, “I can have this big bright thing on me, and here I am dancing for you and nobody’s messing with me…because I’m a badass.”

The rich are saying something similar by wearing low-class clothing. They’re saying:

I’m so rich I can dress like this and get bitches.

…or, more simply:

I’m so confident in myself that I don’t even have to show how powerful I am.

Of course, it gets really tricky when the poor start copying that.

Anyway, interesting topic, but I’ve got to find some food. Now if I can just find my cargo shorts and leather sandals. ::

(author unknown)

Sometime within the last couple months I’ve realized that CNN and Fox (and most cable news channels) have become news entertainment.

The reason for this is the increasing lack of education, and general sophistication, of the American TV-viewing population. Most Americans don’t want to think or be challenged; they want to be dazzled. And this translates to ratings being higher for content that provides that.

So when a cable news show has a story about Britney’s boobs, and the ratings go crazy, the people at the cable network take notice. Perhaps there’s a slight sting among the real journalists who work there as they make the move to more soft-core porn and other sensationalist content, but it’s the business people that make the decisions.

Common Components

I see a theme here, and it’s the same with the sub-prime mortgage crisis, or the lottery, or with exorbitant credit card fees for those with poor credit. There are two primary ingredients for all of these things:

1. Greed
2. Stupidity

As a society if you fail in both of these areas you quickly move toward becoming a third-world country. If you have greed but no stupidity the greedy will be called out, ostracized, and will die off. If you have stupidity with no greed, you get a paternal hand to guide you back on your feed.

But when you have both the greed feeds off the stupidity. The more stupidity you have, the more the greedy at the top take advantage of it for profit. There are few things with more money-making potential than a mass of millions of people who’ll believe anything you tell them.

And that’s why Fox news anchor women look like porn stars. We as a nation are too stupid to reject the lack of content being presented by news today, and we consume the garbage that’s being fed to us. So we’ll still see “politics” in the headers of cable news, but the stories will have headlines like:

Sex Secrets of a Congressman’s Mistress!

…and people will watch.

Real News

Real news won’t go away, it’ll just be hidden on the Internet and away from TV viewers who would just get confused by it–and probably a bit threatened. I say “hidden” on the Internet, but what I really mean is hidden from the mainstream–kind of like books in the library. ::

Links

[ Fox News Porn | foxnewsporn.com ]

Really cool stuff.

At the bottom it says, “Do you see any patterns that should be explored further?” My first inclination is:

Um, how about the fact that 90% of both the perpetrators and the victims are non-white and non-asian?

I mean, seriously. 90%? I find it amazing that the NYT can publish such staggering stats and then put out op-ed columns about how the NYPD unfairly targets black and hispanic people.

This is a textbook example of the moralistic fallacy, which is the most common intellectual offense committed by liberals. This fallacy puts forth the idea that things are, in reality, the way they should be. In other words, that the police should scrutinize a young asian kid in a suspicious situation the same way as a young black kid–because there shouldn’t be any reason to evaluate one more than the other.

But reality clearly says otherwise, and I applaud any effort to shed light on the truth–regardless of how unpleasant it may be. It’s much harder to argue with data when you see it displayed in this way.

Now if we can just get some gun control vs. concealed carry data. I really want to make some progress on my opinion on that matter. ::

Links

[ NYC Homicide Visualizations | nytimes.com ]

• Divorce
• Teen Births
• Porn Use

…are Republican (red) states.

I think the center column is particularly telling; the almost solid block of red at the top is a clear indication that “abstinence” and “sex is dirty” is a bad way to raise sexually responsible children.

Image from The New York Times

This is pretty convincing evidence that the conservative doctrine of repressing natural human desires is counter-productive to producing positive outcomes. ::

Ok, a couple of thoughts:

1. If you could stand still long enough, those trees would grow right through your body and brain–consuming you, your kids, and your entire civilization in the geological blink of an eye. They don’t care about you. You are not in kinship with them. To them you are an obstacle.
2. You have to be pretty damn privileged and misguided to think that the main atrocity in this world is deforestation. Don’t get me wrong; it’s bad, and I want people to care about it. But if you want to cry and throw your life into something–go to Africa or India and build a school.

(thanks to Jason P. for the link)

::

The General Social Survey (GSS) conducts basic scientific research on the structure and development of American society with a data-collection program designed to both monitor social change within the United States and to compare the United States to other nations.

Basically, this is the largest and highest quality dataset we have on how Americans feel about things, combined with other information about those answering the questions. What this provides us is the ability to learn from correlations that exist between various data points.

So, for the question at hand–whether you think there should be a law against interracial marriage between blacks and whites–a few things jump out immediately. Here’s the chart for age of the interviewee.

Old people are stuck in the past, basically, and I look forward to their viewpoints losing hold of public discourse.

Then we have education:

It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

Next we look at the breakdown by belief in the Bible:

Startling. No, just kidding.

Here’s another education/intelligence correlation: this time based on number of correct vocabulary words:

And then here’s by region, with this being the breakdown:

Again, not surprising. The south leads the pack, followed by the midwest and northeast. So basically, all the stereotypes are correct: people who oppose white/black marriage tend to be old, religious, uneducated/unintelligent, and from the south.

What I’d really like to see is this same survey asking the question: “Can a black man do as good of a job as president as a white man?” I predict that this would yield almost identical results to the current question, and I think this explains the 2008 election more than any data we’ve seen previously.

Anyway…extremely interesting stuff. I found this story, and the images, over at Gene Expression. If you’re not following that blog, you really should be. ::

Links

[ Gene Expression | http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/ ] [ General Social Survey | wikipedia.org ]

When an 19-year-old says:

I went to the coffee shop with my girl today; it was fun.

…it implies that there were many girls he could have gone to the coffee shop with, but that this is the one he is totally into, so he went with her.

But if a 43-year-old says:

I went to the coffee shop with my wife today: it was fun.

…this is most likely to mean they were just both there at the same time. Perhaps I’m jaded from seeing so many shallow and unhappy relationships.

/shrugs

Anyway, when I refer to my woman I want it to always be with the context of active choice to be with her, and not some responsibility like kids or the unpleasantness of divorce that prevents me from being with someone else. ::

Recent analysis of online porn subscriptions has revealed that the most conservative states are the biggest porn consumers, and the more liberal states are less so.

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year’s presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama

8 out of 10. That’s awesome.

And there’s a simple reason for this: conservatism is often linked to strong religion, and religion suppresses, and therefore maligns, natural human desires. To put it simply, much of the porn content out there is custom-made to fill the holes that religion created in human sexuality.

If you view sex as normal and healthy (like most liberals) then a lot of the porn out there simply doesn’t resonate with you. It’s downright uninteresting (or lame). But if you think it’s all filthy and evil then you end up with a set of perversions that require an outlet. This also explains why priests and pastors have so much trouble with sexual misconduct. ::

This needs to happen more often.

“Attacker dies because he was killed by his would-be victim.” That’s what we need. We need society to lash out at violence–to say it’s unacceptable–rather than sit back like sheep and wait for the government to swoop in and save us.

This brightened my day. Maybe it will make that area one iota safer. Probably not, but maybe. As long as violent crime works and the people are discouraged from protecting themselves, this will continue. Add to the insult the fact that this guy would have been out of jail in no time if he lived.

It’s sickening.

It’s highly eroding to a society for citizens to fear for their physical safety. We’re becoming a third-world country, and this guy who died was part of the problem. Good riddance.

And to the father who wants “someone” to pay for this? That’s you. ::

Evidently I’m not the only one who’s seeing what’s happening. I’ve been writing for years about how we’re approaching a volatile social situation due to the tension between those with and those without. My essay called “A Future Divided” loosely handles a number of scenarios along these lines, and a recent report from the U.N. just comes out and states it.

High levels of inequality can lead to negative social, economic and political consequences that have a destabilising effect on societies,” said the report. “[They] create social and political fractures that can develop into social unrest and insecurity.

The report goes on to talk about how race is a major factor in the inequality in U.S. cities, giving the example of New York as the 9th most unequal city in the world:

In western New York state nearly 40% of the black, Hispanic and mixed-race households earned less than $15,000 compared with 15% of white households. The life expectancy of African-Americans in the US is about the same as that of people living in China and some states of India, despite the fact that the US is far richer than the other two countries.

I find it very odd that the Upper West Side in NYC is full of some of the richest people in the world, and yet it’s surrounded by what equate to third world nations. Walking around in Queens you can feel it. The place is completely run down, people don’t trust each other, and it seems most are struggling just to survive. People are not happy, and the fact that the super-rich are a “stone’s throw” away is catastrophe with a lot of potential energy.

To continue to ignore this is completely asinine. The only solution is to lift everyone and eliminate the massive levels of inequality. We have to take all steps necessary to stop creating more pain in the world; it only magnifies at an exponential rate. In short, the strategy of the elite to isolate themselves from the poor is not a strategy–just ask the French. ::

I heard recently on NPR that public school teachers all over the country are being discouraged from using social networking sites like Facebook. Many are actually prohibited from doing so with punishments being as severe as immediate termination.

I find this very strange.

Social networking isn’t some sort of fringe behavior that you can prohibit teachers from engaging in. I get the fact that students are supposed to see their teachers as authority figures, and not as “regular people”, and I also get that teachers often have lives outside of work that might not be something to set an example by. But these things are tiny in importance compared to the freedom of the teachers.

You can’t limit teachers from expressing themselves via a medium that’s going to be as normal as the mobile phone in a few years. There are other solutions. For one, it’s possible to maintain granular control over who you share various types of content with on these types of networks. So teachers could, in all fairness, be required to limit their more sensitive content to friends only (and hence, not students).

This is a fair compromise.

At that point schools could scan their teachers’ profiles and make sure there’s no images of naked drinking binges available to the public that that teachers’ students could see. But to fire a teacher for just having a Facebook account at all is demonstrative of how clueless people still are regarding the impact that social networking is going to have on society.

These types of networks aren’t going away, and everyone is going to be on them. We need to be figuring out ways to manage this fact rather than run around trying to take the pee out of the pool. ::