The neurobiology of the true believer

Recent work in neurobiology suggests the possibility that people who become “true believers” may in fact be mentally wired to believe things absolutely, or at least to be predisposed to believe things absolutely. I suspect they are predisposed to be uncomfortable with ambiguity, and so are easily converted to whatever political, social or religious dogma that happens by that offers them a sense of certainty and fits moderately well with their cultural upbringing. Which one of the many competing dogmas they latch on to is of course a matter of chance, of what culture they were born into and what people they chanced to meet and which dogmas they happened to be exposed to.

And I would guess that the majority of the human population is so wired, because the majority of the population seems to be predisposed to see things in black and white, to want simple answers, and to want to be “right” and even enjoy thinking they have the truth without looking for evidence, and that everyone else is wrong.

This conclusion, if correct, suggests to me two things:

1. If this tendency to be a “true believer” is really a built-in neurobiological characteristic of a great many people, there is little prospect of ever having the majority of the population behave rationally, and anyone who tries to build a workable political system needs to account for this.

2. If this tendency to be a “true believer” is really a built-in neurobiological characteristic of a great many people, the only thing that stands a chance of displacing irrational beliefs and dogmas is a competing dogma based on a more rational foundation, but still a dogma. I know that a “rational dogma” sounds like an oxymoron, but I don’t know how else to express the concept. What would such a dogma look like, I wonder?

It’s an interesting conjecture.

The critic’s role

I had a project manager once who taught all of us on his staff never to bring him a problem without also proposing to him one or more viable solutions to that problem. I recall him dressing down a manager once (not me, thank goodness) for bringing just the problem. As he said, we were paid to think of solutions – if we were going to leave that to him then why was he paying us?

I think of this often as I listen to critics of the administration’s Iraq policy. There certainly is a problem here. Whatever we are doing doesn’t seem to be working, as the critics remind us daily. But where are the viable alternatives these critics should be proposing? I don’t see any.

Just packing up, declaring victory and pulling our troops out isn’t a viable alternative, popular as it may be with voters. It would just leave Iraq mired in sectarian bloodshed, a new safe haven for terrorist organizations, and a tempting target for Iran to expand its anti-American influence in the Middle East. A viable alternative has to account for these possibilities, and many others.

So I’m waiting for all these vocal critics to propose one or more viable alternative strategies. If they can’t propose viable alternatives, their criticism isn’t really worth much.

Political rhetoric

As we move into the political campaign season, with all its political rhetoric, it’s worth remembering some basic truths:

1. Politicians get elected by telling voters what they want to hear, not what is true.

2. Politicians get elected by reinforcing the myths and prejudices voters already believe in, not by showing them that their myths and prejudices are false -- indeed, they may well share those myths and prejudices.

3. Politicians get elected by addressing the issues voters happen to care about at the moment, not the issues that will affect voters most in the long run.

4. Politicians get elected by promising decisive action to fix problems, not by admitting that no one really knows how to fix those problems.

5. Politicians get elected by simplifying complex issues down to catchy tag lines, not by explaining the real complexity of issues (and most important issues are very complex indeed).

6. Politicians get elected by emphasizing what they are going to give voters, not what it will cost the voters.

7. Politicians get elected by looking competent, not by being competent – image is everything.

8. Politicians get elected by appealing to voter’s emotions, not to their rationality.

9. Politicians know that more people vote against a candidate than for their opponent. That’s why attack ads and negative campaigns work so well.

10. Successful politicians are good at getting elected, which is an entirely different skill set than that required to run a government effectively.

If you think that I am overly cynical. I can only suggest you watch the upcoming campaign with an open mind and judge for yourself.

The importance of oil

A good many Americans are aware by now that we use too much of the world’s oil to fuel our oversized SUVs and cars, and produce too much CO₂ as a byproduct. But few understand how completely dependent our entire way of life is on cheap petroleum.

Without cheap oil most of us wouldn’t have enough to eat. Oil is the source of the pesticides and fertilizers and machinery that make our farms about 10 times more productive than they were in pre-oil days. Vast amounts of oil are needed to make and fuel the farm machinery that allows less than 2% of the population to grow enough food for the rest of us, and yet more oil is used to transport that food throughout the country, and yet more oil is required to keep much of that food fresh with refrigerators. The average American corn field produces about 130-150 bushels per acre today. Before oil-based fertilizers and pesticides and modern farm machinery the average yield was around 14-16 bushels to the acre. (1) One acre of corn production in the U.S. requires approximately 140 gallons of oil (2) in the form of fuel, fertilizer and pesticides. To process 1 pound of coffee requires the equivalent energy found in nearly a quart of crude oil by the time it is grown, shipped, processes and packaged (3).

The pre-oil world supported about a billion people. We now support almost 7 billion people. Let’s be optimistic and assume that technology (genetic engineering and the like) might double our potential non-oil food production capacity, so that in a post-oil world we could feed 2 billion people. That means the lives of at least 5 billion people hang on the balance as we run out of oil. And some of those people will be in our own nation.

Without cheap oil most of us wouldn’t have electricity, and without electricity most of our economy won’t run. Although coal is the fuel that drives the majority (about 60%) of our generating plants, cheap oil is what makes it economically possible to manufacture and run the equipment used to mine and transport the coal, to build and maintain the generating machinery and electric transmission infrastructure, and to build all the electric devices we depend on, from furnaces and air conditioners and refrigerators to Ipods and computers and electric light bulbs.

Without cheap oil many products will disappear or become prohibitively expensive, since oil is the feedstock for many chemical processes, including most plastics.

Directly or indirectly cheap oil makes possible most of our industrial capability, most of our technological advances, most of our imports, most of our food, most of our environmental control (heating and cooling) most of our medical services, most of our sources of entertainment and recreation, most of our information infrastructure, and almost all of our transportation.

The current evidence is that we will run out of cheap oil over the next few decades as we are forced to recover oil from more remote regions and in more inaccessible forms (such as tar sands) – that ought to worry us and be a source of wide public and political discussion. That fact that it isn’t widely discussed, certainly not in the political arena, doesn’t bode well for the world’s future.

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1. Walter Youngquist, “The Post-Petroleum Paradigm -- and Population”, Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Volume 20, Number 4, March 1999
   

2. David Pimentel, Encyclopedia of Physical Sciences and Technology, September 2001
   

3. Chad Heeter, “The oil in your oatmeal - A lot of fossil fuel goes into producing, packaging and shipping our breakfast”, 25 Mar 2006, The San Francisco Chronicle

The only three questions

Investor Ken Fisher has written a book entitled “The Only Three Questions That Count: Investing By Knowing What Others Don’t”. In it he makes the point that the market is pretty efficient at pricing in “common knowledge” and common expectations. If everyone thinks stocks will go down next month, that prediction will already be priced into the market. If everyone thinks they will go up, that premium will already be priced into the market. And the market is to a large extent driven by the herd psychology of investors, who all tend to believe much the same things, whether they be truths or myths.

Fisher’s point is that the way to make money in investing is to know something that isn’t commonly known, and hence isn’t already priced into the market. Of course insider traders already know this, and even though the practice is illegal no doubt some are clever enough to get away with it anyway. However Fisher argues that much of what investors believe is mythology unsupported by the data, and ordinary investors who can see through that mythology have the same kind of advantage as insider traders, but legally.

Fisher’s three key questions are:

1. What do I believe that is actually false?
2. What can I fathom that others find unfathomable?
3. What the heck is my brain doing to mislead and misguide me now?

In the course of the book, he explores a number of beliefs that are common in our country, such as that high price to earning ratios mean a given stock or the market as a whole is overpriced and due to fall, or that debt is bad and we have too much of it, and he makes a good case for their being false. He also explores some of the human psychology that makes it hard for us to think rationally about investing. For investors it’s a book well worth reading, though it will take some work because he delves into the data pretty deeply to disprove some of the common investor myths.

But the reason I mention this book is because his three investment questions apply just as well to life as a whole. We all believe all sorts of things that are false, and that we could tell were false if we simply looked at the data with an open mind. We are all subverted in our daily lives by some of the quirks of the human mind (it’s hard to have a truly open mind). And for all of us there are concepts that we think are unfathomable (to us, at least), but that we could master to our advantage if we only put our minds to it. And, as in investing, seeing through the myths most others believe gives us a substantial advantage in life.

Recommended: We Are Not Losing The War Against Radical Islam

I recommend Fareed Zakaria's July 2, 2007 article "We Are Not Losing The War Against Radical Islam" in Newsweek. It offers an alternate perspective to the political fear mongering that permeates some of the current campaign rhetoric.

The myths of liberals and conservatives

The nation is sharply split between the liberals and the conservatives, the red and blue states. Yet the fundamental mythology of both sides is faulty.

Put simply, the liberal belief in the effectiveness of government to solve all ills is unrealistic. And the conservative belief in “natural selection” and “free markets” to produce the most efficient allocation of resources is equally unrealistic.

The liberal mythology first: liberals believe that government policy and programs are the way to solve major social ills. Historically liberals have relied on government, and especially the courts, to try to impose their liberal views on the nation. And on occasion it has worked, as in the Civil Rights laws. But the executive branch, Congress, and the many government agencies respond primarily to their own agendas – to survive, to acquire and maintain power and budgets, and (for elected officials) to get re-elected. They are at best a blunt one-size-fits-all instrument, and a very expensive one at that, for tasks that really require a myriad of different approaches for different parts of the population. And all too often, despite the best of liberal intentions, liberal programs simply become one more vehicle for channeling public money to this or that special interest group or corporate sponsor, and one more means for some government agency to expand its charter and budget.

The conservative mythology is just as flawed. It might be (though it is yet to be demonstrated) that a truly free market would allocate resources optimally. It might be (though it is yet to be demonstrated) that unbiased natural selection would really let the best and the brightest rise to the top. But in fact we don’t have the free markets or unbiased natural selection that conservatives postulate. Money talks – those with money and the influence money buys skew the system, quite naturally, to favor themselves and their own offspring. Corporations arrange, through their campaign contributions and in other ways, for “friendly” legislation to give them an advantage over competitors in the market. Wealthier people arrange for their offspring to have better educations and better job contacts than less wealthy people. People with “contacts” among the ruling elite do better than the rest of us. So the conservative mythology really just supports the status quo.

Having said all of that, these mythologies will no doubt persist. People are remarkably resistant to changing their views, whatever the evidence.

Who has the “true” church?

Pope Benedict’s recent approval of a document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith “correcting” what he says are erroneous interpretations of the Second Vatican Council and asserting that all other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches has caused a great deal of concerned, even outraged, discussion. But in fact this has been the historic position of the Catholic Church through the centuries, so it really is nothing new. The Catholic Church bases its claim on the words of Jesus in Matthew 16:18 “…you are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church…”. There are alternate interpretations of this passage in which the rock referred to is Peter’s confession of faith, not Peter himself, with a play on words since rock in Aramaic is petros, and in Greek is petra. And it is not clear how this passage sorts with Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:18 "For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled." That would seem to imply that Jesus thought the true religion was Judaism.

But Catholics are not the only ones to hold the view that theirs is the only true religion. That is certainly at the core of orthodox Islamic beliefs, though Muslim teachings do accord Christians and Jews some status as “People of the Book”, believers in earlier but incomplete or defective revelations from God. Mormons are pretty sure that the “latter day” revelations to Joseph Smith make theirs the true religion. And a good many Protestant religions, especially on the fringes, are just as certain that the rest of us will spend an uncomfortable afterlife for not adhering strictly to their views.

This sort of intolerant certainty seems to go with monotheistic believers, because I don’t get the impression that the polytheistic and non-theistic religions of the East carry this sort of absolute certainty and condemnation of non-believers. In fact, among many Eastern religions there seem to be a comfortable “live and let live” approach, with Hindus and Buddhists even sharing temples in some places, just as some temple precincts in Japan are shared by Buddhists and Shintos.

In any case, all these raucous claims to absolute religious certainty put me in mind of the words of the King of Siam in Rodger’s and Hammerstein’s 1951 hit musical “The King and I” :

And it puzzle me to learn
That tho' a man may be in doubt of what he know,
Very quickly he will fight...
He'll fight to prove that what he does not know is so!