Since none of you seem to be interested in writing an article about our method of L/C analysis, I'm doing the job myself. Here's a draft of the introduction. In writing this I realized that there is an analogy that I have difficulty working out. I would appreciate contributions.Introduction
The logic behind the L/C method of analysis is based upon the following principles.
1. Fallibility is common.
2. Roughly half the population have L-minds. Roughly half have C-minds.
3. Each half thinks that the other is irrational with respect to the issues that divide them.
4. Both halves are wrong about the other's rationality.
5. Analysis of the situation requires the participation of both C-minds and L-minds and must be non-partisan and non-confrontational.
6. Any consensus concerning the nature of L-minds and C-minds requires symmetrical dichotomy and neutral language.
Fallibility
As a thinking machine, the human brain leaves a lot to be desired. Living is about making decisions, most of them evolved from binary choices or can be converted to binary choices. Do I go left or right? Do I eat this plant or not? Do I release my arrow now or do I wait for a better shot? We seem to have evolved special mechanisms for making this type of survival related decision. Those mechanisms often get in the way of more complex thinking. In fact, I propose to you that what we call thinking is only an artifact of our primitive decision making skills, thereby creating the illusion that we can reason accurately. Our ability is so faulty that large fractions of the population, given the same facts about a situation will still come to quite different conclusions as to what to decide. That's why in almost every public policy issue which ultimately comes down to voting yea or nay, the population will split very roughly in half, and each half will think the other is mad. The train of decision making starts with faulty perception, proceeds to erroneous communication, a distorted problem statement not to mention bad modeling, optimization and implementation.
L-Minds and C-Minds
Not only does the population split roughly evenly on almost all issues requiring thought, the same people will group together resulting in the establishment of political parties and ideologies. For the most part, we will assume that the L-Minds and C-Minds are hard wired that way. This is not to say that sufficient propaganda, self-interest and concerted effort cannot cause C-minds to behave like L-Minds and vice-versa. Modern L-minds and C-minds can be discerned through the use of a series of questions concerning public policy and personal responsibility issues.
If you grant the above, then our task is to determine a truth using two instruments both of which have a distorted output. In science, the usual way to accomplish this is calibration against a standard for which the ground truth is known. However, in this case the truth is unknown, so what do we do?
An analogy is in the use of thermometers. Temperature is odd in that it isn't a quantity but rather a ranking. It's like the pecking order ranking in a yard full of chickens. We can observe that a chicken is "higher" than another by the fact that it can peck the other chicken on the head, but how much higher is not possible to tell. Physical measurements on a single isolated chicken will not tell us it's rank in the pecking order. We might keep a barnyard full of chickens and see where a new arbitrary bird fits in the pecking order. Similarly, temperature is a rank measurement. To determine an arbitrary body's rank we must bring it in contact with another body in order to see whether or not heat flows to one or the other. Then we can say that one body has a higher "temper" than the other. When no heat flow occurs the two are said to have the same temper. A thermometer is a device we can use for such testing. In the most fundamental sense, we should have a storage place where we keep a large number of standard bodies (or thermometers) maintained at different tempers. Every time we wish to measure the temperature of an arbitrary body, we should take the thermometers out of storage and test which one of them fails to transfer heat to or from the body under investigation. They are then at equilibrium and can be said to have the same temper. The standard thermometers can be assigned any symbol you like so that we can compare temperatures of a body under investigation. Fortunately, in the real world we can save on storage facilities by the use of a single thermometer and secondary measurable properties like expansion, voltage, resistance, etc.) However that doesn't change the arbitrary nature of a temperature scale.
Now let's connect the temperature analogy to L-Minds and C-Minds. Two popular arbitrary temperature scales are the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales. When examining the temperature of something each yields a different number. Suppose there are two people who have grown up using these scales. On a balmy spring day one might say that it's 20 degrees while the other says it's 72 degrees. They disagree about the numerical value of the temper, although they're both correct. However, we aren't concerned with the number as such. Rather we are concerned with the subtile influence the numbers may have on their opinions about the weather or room conditions. For instance, the celsius scale has coarser degrees. A child brought up using celsius might have a coarser perception of temperature than a child brought up using Fahrenheit. In other words, the children senses are calibrated against two different scales and learn to express two different verbal reactions to temperature change. The Fahrenheit calibrated child might say the temperature has changed a lot, while the Celsius child says the temperature has changed very little. (In fact, psychologists find this kind of difference occurs when preparing survey questions about estimates of distances.) Each is sure they are right and believes there must be something wrong with the other's perception.
I'm not at all satisfied with this analogy. Can anyone help?
With respect -Joel
Thanks Joel for starting a new Topic on L/C-Minds. I hope others join the cross-discussion.
ReplyDeleteYour analogy of celsius vs fahrenheit is an example of how equally rational people can differently interpret a weather report. The fahrenheit-minds will interpret "40 degrees" as unusually cold while the celsius-minds will say it is unusually hot.
However, if, as we assume, both are rational, both will agree when it is getting warmer or colder. A quick explanation of the two scales, and a translation table, will easily resolve the issue.
It is not so easy with L- and C-Minds. For example: "It is better that X guilty men go free than one innocent be convicted."
What is the value of X? 1 million, 1 thousand, one hundred, ten, five, ... what? An L-Mind sets fairness above effectiveness and would tend to pick a higher number while a C-Mind would do the opposite.
[Readers: Please pick a number before going further.]
Why? The L-Mind puts him- or herself in the position of the accused. If the accused is, in fact, innocent, they imagine themselves unjustly locked up for years with no recourse. If the accused is, in fact, guilty, the L-Mind imagines a childhood of abuse and poverty - it is not really the criminal's fault. It is not fair!
The C-Mind takes the view of the greater society. If X guilty persons are released, some percentage, P, of them will commit more crimes, and they are likely to be crimes against innocent persons. If P is, say, 10%, then releasing 1000 guilty persons will result in around 100 innocents victimized. A C-Mind imagines him- or herself as an innocent victim of a guilty person set free. It is an even trade to release 10 guilty persons to spare one innocent, but more than ten would not be effective!
A similar dichotomy exists with respect to the death penalty.
Even if the murderer is guilty without doubt (say a video exists of the crime along with absolute proof of planning and preparation), many (not all) L-Minds would argue against the death penalty. Yet, many (not all) L-Minds would allow a mother to choose to abort her baby in the last month, even if both she and the baby are healthy.
Many (not all) C-Minds would argue the opposite. (Some go so far as to deny abortion even if the mother is likely to die, a position with which I disagree.)
I do not think rational discussion can resolve these dichotomies. Even with the rational folks who are members of this Blog and whom I respect for their knowledge and judgement and rationality.
Ira Glickstein
I agree that the great majority of L and C minds differ on an entirely emotional or values-based level and that no rational discourse will alter these feelings. Even if one chooses to make a rational decision contrary to one’s feelings, neither the C- or L-mind’s feelings would change (for example, removing life-support from a terminally ill loved one). Perhaps the cautious C-mind would wait a little longer than the L-mind; or would the empathetic L-mind wait longer? Let’s take a vote. Who would pull the plug first?
ReplyDeleteI have to say that Joel’s question still leaves me at a loss for a satisfying explanation. Perhaps the fact that in the U.S. each side has about equal numbers is just a result of the political two-party game in which there is only a winner and a loser. This is self- adjusting, because the big losers will modify their policies to attract enough voters to get back in the game. In countries where there are more than two parties the game is more complex and equal numbers are rare. Coalitions become crucial.
Why the polarization? Perhaps this is also the result of the winner or loser two-party rules of the game. Think of sports fans. They are always fanatically polarized for their particular team for which there is certainly no rational basis.
Also, equal numbers only holds as a national average. There is no doubt that within certain groups the numbers of C- and L-minds are nowhere near equal. My mother’s father emigrated from Switzerland in 1914 and started citrus farming in Orange Co. CA. He raised a large family, all conservative Christians and Republicans, “even unto the third generation.” My mother was the exception. She was the youngest, and the only child who was reluctantly allowed to go to college where she met my liberal agnostic father. Most of grandpa Schroeder’s families’ orchards are now Disneyland. They are all still Republicans, and very wealthy; and Orange Co. is now a well-known hotbed of millions of religious conservatives. Could this be an example of Groupthink?
On the other hand, I have lived all my life in colleges and universities where the “liberal arts” used to refer to a conservative “classical” curriculum. I went to Stanford University kindergarten run by their School of Education where my father was a grad student, and I have been in universities ever since.
The culture of universities has traditionally tried to maintain isolation from current politics and the conflicts of the marketplace in order to allow more objectivity and freedom to explore new ideas. This openness creates, almost by definition, what conservatives call a liberal bias. The fact is that, contrary to Groupthink, academics almost never agree with each other.
Up until WWII a liberal undergraduate education and graduate professional schools at an elite institution were available only for the children of well-to-do, often conservative families, with only a few scholarships for the best students. Conservatives at that time were not like today’s anti-intellectuals that complain about “liberal elitist secular” professors.
I've been trying to come up with an analogy as clear as Joel's fahrenheit vs celsius temperature that captures the L/C-Mind dichotomy.
ReplyDeleteThe best analogy I can come up with is the conflict my wife and I have over the temperature in our car. Quite often, she sets it at a level I find too cool. She is "too hot" and I am "too cool".
We seem to have different "set-points" which may be due to differences in physiology, and are therefore beyond the scope of reason. I do not think any rational analysis can resolve the issue to mutual satisfaction, any more than we can agree on the current Presidential candidates.
A second analogy also has to do with temperature in our home. Some years ago I invested $100 and installed an automatic, programmable thermostat that sets upper and lower limits for six time periods per day. Perhaps, because of the time and effort I invested in it, and my ecological committments, I am willing to put up with considerably higher temperatures in our home in the summer, and lower in the winter than she is. I am also willing to live with more economical settings at night and mid-day when we are either sleeping or away from the house. It is easy to manually over-ride the program, but it reverts back at the next time period. I never over-ride it but she does so quite often. I just shed or add clothes to cope with the temperature.
We seem to have different levels of "discomfort tolerance". This is, I believe, due to our upbringing. I was taught that "the more bitter the medicine the more effective it will be", and that "life is tough" and conditions are not always optimal. I am more oriented towards conservation and recycling and composting and so on. Although these differences are not physiological, I do not think they can be resolved by rational discussion.
Ira Glickstein
Howard describes his life in the academic world, from kindergarden on. His mother, the youngest child in a Conservative Republican and well-to-do family, and first to go to college, and his liberal agnostic academic father, raised Howard in what I would call an "ivory tower".
ReplyDeleteAs he points out, prior to WWII, college students were mostly from well-to-do families with a few ultra-bright scholarship types, some of whom were from less well-to-do families. Catering to such families, universities and professors supported Classical Liberal views. (Classical Liberals are, IMHO, more like William F. Buckley Conservatives than today's "liberals".)
After WWII, with an explosion of public colleges (like my City College of NY alma mater), the GI Bill, public financing, and then "affirmative action" admission policies, the universities had to cater to a wider audience and suck up to political advocates.
Howard claims "The culture of universities has traditionally tried to maintain isolation from current politics" and "academics almost never agree with each other."
Well, that is no longer the case. Universities are hotbeds of leftist politics, hiring professors such as William Ayers, an unrepentant domestic bomber, with tenure committees hounding conservatives out of the profession. Academics do differ with each other in their specialized fields where they contest miniscule details, but, when it comes to politics, around 90% of them will vote for the same Presidential candidate next week.
Ira Glickstein
Ira quotes only a part of my statement and omits my point that liberal thinkers are more common in higher education for obvious reasons.
ReplyDeleteMy statement was:
“The culture of universities has traditionally tried to maintain isolation from current politics and the conflicts of the marketplace in order to allow more objectivity and freedom to explore new ideas. This openness creates, almost by definition, what conservatives call a liberal bias.”
My point is that conservatives will always complain that freedom to criticize traditional authority and explore new ideas is just a result of liberal bias. Conservatives have never liked the concept of the academy precisely because the role of academies is to explore new ideas, and question the establishment, not to conserve it. Fortunately, liberals in academies today who question authority are not executed, like Socrates, Jesus and a whole list of liberal historical reformers.
Ira says, “Well, that is no longer the case. Universities are hotbeds of leftist politics, hiring professors such as William Ayers, an unrepentant domestic bomber, with tenure committees hounding conservatives out of the profession. Academics do differ with each other in their specialized fields where they contest miniscule details, but, when it comes to politics, around 90% of them will vote for the same Presidential candidate next week.”
I recognize Ira’s derogatory caricature of tenure committees and faculty as just a typical conservative anti-intellectual speech habit. It is unsupported by any evidence I know, and contrary to my 60 years of university experience.
The modern university evolved out of the monastic tradition of isolation from the politics and economics of ordinary life. Of course, like seeking truth, this is an unattainable ideal, but it is an essential ideal nevertheless. The fact is, however, that almost all religious reformers came out of monasteries, not from the conservative power structure. This is largely the case with universities today. It is, by definition, not the conservative’s role to question authority or promote change.
What would Ira expect a conservative faculty to teach in the traditional liberal arts and sciences departments ― basket weaving and Ptolemaic cosmology? Seriously, what is the role of the conservative in an institution whose primary function is to explore all ideas, whether popular or unpopular, or without trying to maintain an established viewpoint?
There are thousands of universities that have diverse faculties and types of administration. Liberal arts schools of universities serve a different function than the professional schools. In law, medicine and business schools,it is the conservative faculties that often dominate.
Ira’s claim that faculties in the arts and sciences and professional schools differ only in “miniscule details” is not true. The greatest conflicts about fundamental ethical, scientific and social questions, many of which have ultimately shaped our culture, are often carried on within universities.
Finally, Ira’s gratuitous use of Ayers case is a bad example to try to indict all university faculties. It is a unique case with a long, interesting, and controversial history. To give a little perspective, Ayers, along with many others, was protesting the Viet Nam war and our saturation bombing that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. The Weathermen’s bombs, by intentional planning, killed no one and injured no one. I’m not condoning their bombing, but I’m not about to claim my moral superiority either. In any case, Ayers is now older and wiser, and has proved himself to be a valuable teacher and educational reformer.
Howard, I wonder how the mainstream press would treat any college that hired an unrepentant former abortion clinic bomber. In their view, hundreds of thousands of innocent babies have been killed. What if he or she, by design, never killed anybody but only destroyed clinics? (OK, like the Weather Underground a couple of co-conspirators died when one of their bombs went off by accident.)
ReplyDeleteI know that Ayers has the academic qualifications and has made academic contribution recognized by his peers. But, as recently as 2001 he was unrepentant.
Imagine, if you can, a former abortion clinic bomber who was also academically qualified. Any chance he or she, even if repentant, would be hired by any major university?
As for the liberal bias in universities, some academics have told me privately that they keep their conservative political views to themselves to improve their chances for advancement. I have never been on the tenure track of academics, but I have heard from many that the inside politics was fierce - worse than at any corporation. However, I defer to Howard's longer and more personal experience.
Based on that experience, do you deny that 90% of academics will vote for the same Presidential candidate this time? (It might be a bit less in the engineering schools, perhaps 70 or 80% :^)
Ira Glickstein
Ira, you ask me: “do you deny that 90% of academics will vote for the same Presidential candidate this time?”
ReplyDeleteI can’t deny the possibility, though it sounds too high; but so what? Suppose your guess is close. What is your point?
If the voting of professors at a university does not split close to 50-50, is that bad? Does that mean their decision could not possibly be based on a careful evaluation of the candidates? Or, do you mean to imply that professors should be hired according to how they vote, rather than their academic qualifications?
I agree with you that universities have more liberals than conservatives on their faculty. This is well-known. Also, all the polls show that, on average, liberal views increase with the number of years of education, but that correlation does not establish cause.
You, along with many conservatives, blame a biased liberal faculty for brainwashing their students. All the ex-students I know believe it is because they have learned to think more independently.
If you want to find where faculty are really brainwashing their student, Google “conservative colleges”.
How can we figure out if there's an L/C-Mind gene? How do we know if L-mindedness or C-mindedness is transmitted in families? How can we disentangle the chicken-egg aspect. Does Howard gravitate toward the university because he's a L-mind or is it the other way around. Did Howard's affluent, highly educated background make him an L-mind or did his innate L-mindedness drive him to certain pursuits? Why are so many practicing engineers such as Ira of the C-mind persuasion?
ReplyDeleteI think religion is also an unreliable indicator of C-mindedness despite the media's use of the term "religious right." I know protestant churches that are very pacifist and the Quakers are very active in left wing causes. Trying to filter what belief systems are favored by L-minds or C-minds would in itself be a daunting task. with respect -Joel
Joel asks: "How can we figure out if there's an L/C-Mind gene? How do we know if L-mindedness or C-mindedness is transmitted in families? How can we disentangle the chicken-egg aspect. ..."
ReplyDeleteIt is pretty straightforward to statistically disentangle genetics (nature) from memetics (nurture). I don't know of any specific studies of L/C-Minds, but there have been studies of personality, interests, and attitudes that show it is about 60/40 (nature/nurture).
The generally accepted methodology makes use of fraternal and identical twins who have been raised together or separately. Wikipedia outlines the studies, using some 8000+ twin pairs born 1936-55 and 1961-1964.
Fraternal twins share some genes and differ in others while identical twins have identical genes. Twins reared together are exposed to the same memes while those separated early in life are exposed to some different memes.
If nurture trumps nature, we'd expect their personalities, interests, and attitudes to rank as follows:
identical/together -{most similar
fraternal/together -{similar
identical/separate -{different
fraternal/separate -{most different
On the other hand, if nature trumps nurture, we'd expect:
identical/together -{most similar
identical/separate -{similar
fraternal/together -{different
fraternal/separate -{most different
Well, it turns out that personalities, interests, and attitudes are affected by both genes and memes, but somewhat more by genes! Both have an effect, but, quite clearly, nature trumps nurture.
Ira Glickstein
The most extensive study I know is Frank Sullaway’s Born to Rebel. He correlates conservative and liberal with birth order. First borns tend to be conservative. Later borns tend to be liberal. He has a vast amount of historical data supporting this.
ReplyDeleteHis proposed reason is that the first born child gets the most attention and has no problem until the second child arrives. His first social reaction then is highly competitive. His foremost interest is “conserving” his number-one status. This is clearly observable in all normal families with children born close together.
The second and later children are born into a family with siblings that cannot be displaced or dominated. Therefore they first learn to be more tolerant and cooperative rather than competitive. At this early age, their brains are essentially “imprinted” with these conservative and liberal behaviors, which explains why they are so difficult to change.
Remember, this is a large statistical analysis. Individual counterexamples do not invalidate his data. His reasoning may be questioned, but then you need to come up with a more plausible alternative theory
Joel wonders how much of my academic life was genetic and how much nurture. I believe it was nurture, because that appears to be the simplest explanation. I don’t see how genes could determine such specific interests.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I was born into it. My father was an academic administrator, I always lived on a campus, and most of my friends were faculty children. At about 10 my father provided me with a good chemistry set and the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. It was great fun doing flashy experiments from the book, but I never could understand what was really going on. I think that is why I never liked chemistry.
I went to a school where the headmaster was a physicist who taught with Socratic questions and simple demonstrations. Unlike chemistry, physics made sense! Clearly this was because of the way he taught it.
My interest in evolution also began with a great teacher, and famous paleontologist, Raymond Alf. Not only were his classes inspiring, but he took his students on fascinating field trips (I never got to the Gobi desert). With this kind of teacher, who could not be curious about evolution?
It seems to me that a sufficient cause for my liberal view is that my parents, my teachers, and most of my colleagues have all tended to be inquisitive, open-minded, tolerant of novel ideas, and resistant to established authority. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my many conservative relatives were just the opposite. Why would I want to be like them?
Howard's post indicates that statistical studies show second-borns are more liberal than first-borns. I'm the oldest and my younger brother is quite a bit more liberal than I am so I accept that birth order is a factor.
ReplyDeleteHowever it does not take away from the statistics of the twin studies that indicate that nature, on average, trumps nurture by about 60:40.
Also, I am not conservative when it comes to technological advances - in fact I am something of a radical in that area. Not only do I have patents with my name on them and had a reputation in the system conceptual design work I did at work and in my PhD studies for creative thinking. I have projected these concepts forward in my novel to predict some drastic changes in life, liberty and technology in the second half of this century.
My brother is also very creative, having tried stand-up comedy and is currently self-employed teaching effective public speaking in "Speaking Circles".
Ira Glickstein
Howard said: It seems to me that a sufficient cause for my liberal view is that my parents, my teachers, and most of my colleagues have all tended to be inquisitive, open-minded, tolerant of novel ideas, and resistant to established authority. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my many conservative relatives were just the opposite. Why would I want to be like them?
ReplyDeleteJoel responds: I'm not sure about this reasoning. The trouble is that I too can say that my parents, my teachers, and most of my colleagues have all tended to be inquisitive, open-minded, tolerant of novel ideas, and resistant to established authority. As a consequence I'm a conservative. The problem is that both you and I are judging these important people in our lives with our defective C-minds and L-Minds. My C-mind sees those who are politically liberal as doctrinaire, closed-minded, intolerant of novel ideas and authoritarian. This defect in our ability to see the situation without our own biases getting in the way, is what demands that we take a cooperative approach which will compensate for our personal distortions.
With respect -Joel