About the only people who still see people as rational are (some) economists.
Akerlof's and Shiller's "Animal Spirits" deals with irrationality in the market
economy. I could only read about half of it after concluding, many times, that
they were telling us things that most of us already knew.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Arthur Cordell
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2009 9:44 PM
Subject: FW: [Ottawadissenters] Why we cannot be reasonable(Kristof)
From: Arthur Cordell [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2009 9:44 PM
To: '[email protected]'; 'undisclosed-recipients:'
Subject: RE: [Ottawadissenters] Why we cannot be reasonable(Kristof)
And there is the illusion that people are rational. Not. We rationalize our
irrational decisions and call ourselves rational.
Hmmm.
Arthur
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Harry Pollard
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2009 8:03 PM
To: [email protected]; 'undisclosed-recipients:'
Subject: RE: [Ottawadissenters] Why we cannot be reasonable(Kristof)
Perhaps people think that Anthropogenic Global Warming is a scam and not to
be trusted.
Harry
******************************
Henry George School of Los Angeles
Box 655 Tujunga CA 91043
Tel: 818 352-4141
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From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steve Kurtz
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2009 1:21 PM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: [Ottawadissenters] Why we cannot be reasonable(Kristof)
Thanks to Nicole M.
July 2, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
When Our Brains Short-Circuit
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Our political system sometimes produces such skewed results that it’s
difficult not to blame bloviating politicians. But maybe the deeper problem
lies in our brains.
Evidence is accumulating that the human brain systematically misjudges
certain kinds of risks. In effect, evolution has programmed us to be alert for
snakes and enemies with clubs, but we aren’t well prepared to respond to
dangers that require forethought.
If you come across a garter snake, nearly all of your brain will light
up with activity as you process the “threat.” Yet if somebody tells you that
carbon emissions will eventually destroy Earth as we know it, only the small
part of the brain that focuses on the future — a portion of the prefrontal
cortex — will glimmer.
“We humans do strange things, perhaps because vestiges of our ancient
brain still guide us in the modern world,” notes Paul Slovic, a psychology
professor at the University of Oregon and author of a book on how our minds
assess risks.
Consider America’s political response to these two recent challenges:
1. President Obama proposes moving some inmates from Guantánamo Bay,
Cuba, to supermax prisons from which no one has ever escaped. This is the
“enemy with club” threat that we have evolved to be alert to, so Democrats and
Republicans alike erupt in outrage and kill the plan.
2. The climate warms, ice sheets melt and seas rise. The House
scrounges a narrow majority to pass a feeble cap-and-trade system, but Senate
passage is uncertain. The issue is complex, full of trade-offs and more
cerebral than visceral — and so it doesn’t activate our warning systems.
“What’s important is the threats that were dominant in our evolutionary
history,” notes Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard
University. In contrast, he says, the kinds of dangers that are most serious
today — such as climate change — sneak in under the brain’s radar.
Professor Gilbert argues that the threats that get our attention tend
to have four features. First, they are personalized and intentional. The human
brain is highly evolved for social behavior (“that’s why we see faces in
clouds, not clouds in faces,” says Mr. Gilbert), and, like gazelles, we are
instinctively and obsessively on the lookout for predators and enemies.
Second, we respond to threats that we deem disgusting or immoral —
characteristics more associated with sex, betrayal or spoiled food than with
atmospheric chemistry.
“That’s why people are incensed about flag burning, or about what kind
of sex people have in private, even though that doesn’t really affect the rest
of us,” Professor Gilbert said. “Yet where we have a real threat to our
well-being, like global warming, it doesn’t ring alarm bells.”
Third, threats get our attention when they are imminent, while our
brain circuitry is often cavalier about the future. That’s why we are so bad at
saving for retirement. Economists tear their hair out at a puzzlingly
irrational behavior called hyperbolic discounting: people’s preference for
money now rather than much larger payments later.
For example, in studies, most Americans prefer $50 now to $100 in six
months, even though that represents a 100 percent return.
Fourth, we’re far more sensitive to changes that are instantaneous than
those that are gradual. We yawn at a slow melting of the glaciers, while if
they shrank overnight we might take to the streets.
In short, we’re brilliantly programmed to act on the risks that
confronted us in the Pleistocene Age. We’re less adept with 21st-century
challenges.
At the University of Virginia, Professor Jonathan Haidt shows his
Psychology 101 students how evolution has prepared us to fear some things: He
asks how many students would be afraid to stand within 10 feet of a friend
carrying a pet boa constrictor. Many hands go up, although almost none of the
students have been bitten by a snake.
“The objects of our phobias, and the things that are actually dangerous
to us, are almost unrelated in the modern world, but they were related in our
ancient environment,” Mr. Haidt said. “We have no ‘preparedness’ to fear a
gradual rise in the Earth’s temperature.”
This short-circuitry in our brains explains many of our policy
priorities. We Americans spend nearly $700 billion a year on the military and
less than $3 billion on the F.D.A., even though food-poisoning kills more
Americans than foreign armies and terrorists. We’re just lucky we don’t have a
cabinet-level Department of Snake Extermination.
Still, all is not lost, particularly if we understand and acknowledge
our neurological shortcomings — and try to compensate with rational analysis.
When we work at it, we are indeed capable of foresight: If we can floss today
to prevent tooth decay in later years, then perhaps we can also drive less to
save the planet.
•
I invite you to visit my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on
Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
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