Ever try to reason with someone who is a political extremist? Does it ever seem as though they are not listening? Take a look at the results of this study done at Emory. They took extreme liberals and extreme conservatives and stuck them into a brain imaging machine while they pondered some conflicting statements made by John Kerry and George W Bush. When asked to explain the conflict, they would inevitably come up with some irrational support of their favorite candidate, even in the presence of additional information which revealed the facts (and therefore resolves the conflict).

“We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning,” said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. “What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts.”

“None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged,” Westen said. “Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones.”

They get emotionally rewarded when they come to their biased conclusions because rather than using reasoning, they are using some kind of emotional conflict-resolution system instead. I find this amazingly revealing and amazingly frustrating because it means that there truly is no way to reason with these people!!!

I have a “quote of the day” on my google homepage, and one by Bertrand Russel caught my eye today. Here is another interesting one to think about:

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.
-Bertrand Russel

As interesting as I’d like to think I can be, I don’t think I quite measure up (yet )to the great minds whom John Brockman has assembled in his Edge Foundation. As far as I understand it, Edge is a group of people who may be the world’s most cutting-edge thinkers… and every so often they publish an amazing group of short essays on the web site.

This has been linked to from lots of places already, but in case you haven’t seen it… I give you Edge.org’s Dangerous Ideas: a collection of what these brilliant people think are the most dangerous thing facing our world today. Some highlights: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Diane Halpern, Eric Kandel.

This hilariously silly story lives up to the hype! 4/5 stars!

Today’s “Quote of the Day” on Google was this:

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.

- Horace Walpole

It reminded me of this quote from The Fountainhead, which I am reading now:

We are poisoned by the superstition of the ego. We cannot know what will be right or wrong in a selfless society, nor what we’ll feel, nor in what manner. We must destroy the ego first. That is why the mind is so unreliable. We must not think. We must believe.

For those who’ve criticized me for being too “unemotional” (that means you, Ira)… just know that I identify with the first quote: I see the world as a comedy. On the other hand, I feel that the second quote is completely backwards. The mind is a powerful machine, but it is bent on self-justification. If you believe in something without thinking about it, you are far more likely to fall victim to the corruption of your own mind (or the whim of other minds) than if you think things through. Self-doubt is harmful in large doses, but it’s a must for anyone who wishes to see reality as clearly as possible.

The New York Times had an article about Go recently! I hope this exposure encourages more people to play it in this country. As the subject of the article says, America “is the desert of this game”. Nothing proves it more than when I went to the Times Square Toys R Us and asked an employee if they had a Go set. “Sorry, never heard of it,” she said. I tried the other names for it: WeiQi? Baduk? She’d never heard of those names either. I looked near the chess sets, but there was nothing Go-related for sale.

It would be slightly hypocritical of me not to offer some resources for learning the game. Check out the bottom of my links page for some web sites that will get you started.

I love Dave Chapelle. He is a brilliant comedian and his show on Comedy Central boldly spotlights and lampoons many aspects of black culture which are generally negative, but funny when viewed through the Chapelle lens. I think it’s accurate to say that Chapelle is loved by people of all races.

Now the question: Is Chapelle’s Show good or bad for black culture? People arguing for the former might say that it is healthy to satirize the negative aspects of a culture so that people of that culture might improve in those areas. People arguing for the latter might say that people who embrace black culture may actually become more like the satire itself, which only makes things worse. Of course “good and bad” is completely subjective, but there are some objective issues involved in a discussion about what is good for people.

I have a mixed stance… I think usually it is helpful to point out where people might improve (if they are open to hearing it), but in this case I think the danger of people embracing the stereotype is too real. As long as people are striving to tightly embrace their race - especially if it means behaving in ways which do not foster a healthy or successful lifestyle - those people will adopt the stereotypical traits which are being pointed out to them, even if they are negative traits. With Chapelle being black himself, this is a likely outcome. If a white show were to lampoon blacks like Chapelle does, the ACLU and every black activist group in the country would be roaring in dissent.

The country is politically polarized right now to such an extent that it made me think: could somebody manage to create a new centrist party and win the presidency? I know a lot of republicans are reluctantly voting for Bush, even though they don’t like him… and most democrats just want to elect “anyone but Bush”… could someone like John McCain manage to run under a new centrist party? It could have a moderately republican economic stance and a moderately democratic social stance, and that would probably satisfy a lot of people.

The problem with starting a new party is that people won’t be confident in voting for it, out of fear that most people will vote for one of the big two. That’s why I think we need a popular, moderate candidate (e.g. McCain) and we need the media to make it sound like it has a legitimate chance of winning so that people won’t be afraid to vote for them. The media is immensely powerful in that respect… if they portray the party as “the little party that could” or “the new guy” or any kind of subtly backhanded belittling manner, people might be too afraid to vote for them. On the other hand, if the media portray them as “the phoenix rising from the ashes” or “the great uniters” then maybe people will look at them favorably.

Update: My friend Dennis sent me a link to this short political quiz which determines where on the political grid you fall. I think it’s important to point out that there are two very distinct aspects of politics: social and economic. The political spectrum is 2-dimensional, not simply “left to right” (1 dimensional).

I recently finished my latest and greatest painting. This one is extremely detailed and I absolutely love it. Please take a look!

An amazing 7-year documentary of The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols: two bands who began as good friends and drifted separate ways due to mental illness, drug abuse, and misbehavior.

A shining example of indie film, Richard Linklater’s groundbreaking 1990 work had essentially no plot, but featured a broad ensemble cast of slackers and non-contributors.

This New Year’s Eve, Dick Clark was, for the first time ever, showing signs of age! I think we should get him into the studio and tape him pretending to ring in the new year for as many of the upcoming years as he can tolerate, so then we can broadcast him each year and pretend he’s still alive!

Wes Anderson’s first feature-length film was cool and worth a watch, but you’re much better off watching everything he’s done since.

This surprisingly original midlife-crisis buddy movie was well-done and enjoyable.

An interesting and provocative demonstration of how statistical analysis can tell us about reality and reveal the flaws in common wisdom and morality.