TAKE EDUCATION, for example...

The Technology Revolution is trying to teach us some things that must not be ignored.  I have chosen today to talk about Education as a prime example, but this post goes beyond basics to talk about biases, new models (paradigms) and politics (of course).  Reference to the work of Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler, titled Abundance: the future is better than you think continues throughout.

Emphasizing politics right from the beginning, let me say very clearly that the Charter School Movement does no better than public schools in rejecting old patterns and models, and embarking on new ones that fit with today’s technological revolution and the global reach of data and communications.  Charter schools simply privatize the same outmoded models perpetuated by public schools, intended solely for the profit-making of pseudo-educational organizations funded by elitist millionaires and billionaires.  Charters have proven to be useless in terms of catching up to where we need to be in this 21^st century.

PUBLIC EDUCATION is NOT Dealing with the new reality

We are today educating people in the same way we did in the 19^th century, or even earlier.  Symbols of the past abound:  isolated and ordered classrooms, teacher up front and pupils seated at all-in-a-row desks, using accessories like pens, pencils and notebook paper. The most antiquated symbol:  that blackboard with chalk for writing.  Every class is devoted to learning about paradigms (models) of living that are at least 60 decades old if not older. 

Abundance: “Our current education system was forged in the heat of the Industrial Revolution, a fact that not only influenced what subjects were taught but also how they were taught.  Standardization was the rule, conformity the desired outcome.  Schools were organized like factories: the day broken into evenly marked periods, bells signaling the beginning and end of each period.  Even teaching, as Sir Ken Robinson put it in his excellent book Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, was subject to the division of labor: “Like an assembly line, students progressed from room to room to be taught by different teachers specializing in different disciplines.”

Following are some more of the premises and assumptions perpetuated by the current public school paradigm:

Ø  Learning is still seen in terms of committing facts (and fiction) to human memory.  Certain subjects are required that do not reflect student needs or society’s demands. 

Abundance: “We’re teaching the wrong stuff, but just as alarming is the fact that the stuff we’re teaching isn’t sticking.  Two-fifths of all high school students need remedial courses upon entering college.  Knowledge of algebra is required to pass state tests and is a near universal requirement for college admissions.  But why is that?  Graduates of MIT were recently surveyed regarding math.  The assumption was that if any adults use higher-level math, it would be them.  And while a few did, the overwhelming majority reported using nothing more than arithmetic, statistics, and probability.”

Ø  Students are grouped together by age or by functionality reinforcing the false concept that one curriculum fits all

Ø  Classes are all the same length – often inadequate for the subject matter sometimes making homework a necessity, when it isn’t just given as “busy work” unrelated to a specific purpose

Ø  Tests of some sort are part of the belief that regurgitation of facts and figures is the essence of evaluating what has been learned; today it is also tied to measuring which nations have the most competitive students.

Ø  Poorly written and flawed textbooks are still used in many classes, even though some are written under contracts influenced by special interests who dictate a political or social bias, presented as factual.

Education is more than learning by rote, teaching a one-size-fits-all curriculum, testing for ability to reclaim rote-learned facts and figures.  Learning is more than sitting in a classroom listening to a teacher, absorbing facts and figures, being told what has to be learned; being confined to a building/classroom/teacher or being de-individualized, isolated, and segregated by age or ability.

Abundance has several conceptual examples to offer on the process of teaching and learning.

A)      Self-organized Learning Environments (SOLES) – the authors tell the story of Indian Physicist Sugata Mitra and his incredible development of SOLES.  Through ever-expanding actual experiments in the slums of India and throughout the world, Mitra learned that kids can learn on their own.  In small, unsupervised groups, without any formal training, they can learn to use computers very quickly and with a great degree of proficiency.  As a professor of education technology at England’s University of Newcastle, Mitra developed a new model of primary school education called “minimally invasive education,” now in countries around the world. 

 

“These SOLES are really just computer workstations with benches in front of them.  The benches seat four.  Because SOLES are installed in places where good teachers are not able to be found, these machines are hooked up to what Mitra calls the “granny Cloud” --literally groups of (foster) grandmothers who agree to donate an hour a week to mentor these children via Skype.  On average, he’s discovered, the ‘granny cloud’ can increase learning scores by 25 percent.  Scores also increased where major questions are presented for resolution, and four students work together on one computer.  These children not only learn at a high rate but they have what one could call “an unprecedented retention of information.” Reporting on this, the Wall Street Journal said: “one child in front of a computer learns a little; four discussing and debating learn a lot.”

Abundance concludes: “Taken together, this work reverses a bevy of educational practices.  Instead of top-down instruction, SOLES are bottom-up.  Instead of making students learn on their own, this work is collaborative.  Instead of a formal in-school setting for instruction, (this) method relies on a playground-like environment.  Most importantly, minimally invasive education doesn’t require teachers.”  With a global shortage of qualified teachers, such new solutions may save a whole generation of kids from being written off and left behind. 

B)     One Tablet Per Child (OTPC):  School of the Future

Learning is best done not through instruction but through doing, especially when the doing involves a computer.  On that basis, OTPC has delivered laptops to three million children around the world, and undoubtedly many more by now.  “Because the initiative is based on a learning-by-doing education model, rote-memorization-based tests and other traditional measures of success do not apply.  Nicholas Negraponte, one of the cofounders said, ‘The most compelling piece of evidence…that this program is working is that everywhere we go, truancy drops to zero. And we go to some places where it was as high as thirty percent…’”

C)      James Gee Meets Pajama Sam: are interactive games educational?

In 2007, Dr. Gee, a linguist at Arizona State University, after using a video game called Pajama Sam to teach problem-solving skills to his then 6-year-old son, realized that the problems presented were a lot harder to solve than he expected.  It sparked an interest in adult video games as educational tools.  Turns out many are quite complex.  He realized that young people were paying lots of money to engage in activities that are time-consuming, energy intensive and require a lot of concentration.  Isn’t that what schools face every day – trying to get students to pay attention, work hard and concentrate on the subject at hand?  As an educator he realized that this whole area of interactive games had profound implications for education.

“Studies have shown that games outperform textbooks in enabling students to learn fact-based subjects such as geography, history, physics and anatomy, while also improving visual coordination, cognitive speed and manual dexterity.”  Such games are also helpful in teaching reading of words, especially for younger children.  Interactive games also teach collaborative skills and customizable games can do the same for creativity and innovation.  Considering all this and more, experts have come to an obvious conclusion: “we need to find ways to make learning a lot more like video games and a lot less like school.”  And what’s more, “The twenty-first century is a media-rich environment.  Between the internet, video games, and those five hundred channels of cable, the competition for our children’s attention has become ruthless.  In fact, wildly entertaining might not be enough.  If we really want to prepare our children for the future, then learning needs to become addictive.” (“Abundance”)

And some have already begun:

·         Like the Cincinnati County Day School where students are asked to compare battle depictions in Rome: Total War against historical evidence. 

·         A professor at Carnegie-Mellon who says that traditional grading systems are “demotivating”  uses in his classes a more game-like system: students start a semester at level zero avatar (an F) and strive toward a level 12 (an A).  This means that anything done in class moves one forward and students always know where they stand – two factors that serve to motivate. 

·         The New School for Design Q21, a NY City public school, uses a curriculum based on game design and digital culture, where one project was to create a graphic novel based on the Babylonian poem ‘Gilgamesh’ and then record understandings of that culture through anthropology journals. 

·         Khan Academy became an underground internet sensation with over 2,200 videos on topics ranging from molecular biology to American history.  Their vision is a “free virtual school…(with) enough content up that anyone in the world can start at one plus one equals two and go all the way through quantum mechanics.”

·         And, don’t forget Jeopardy winner, IBM’s WATSON!  With increasing development of artificial intelligence (like cars that park themselves and automatically avoid accidents or actually drive themselves, plus Bots that clean and protect your house), an always-available, always-on A1 tutor will be in the offing.  Experts call this a life-long learning companion: an agent that tracks and enables learning over a lifetime.

NEW PARADIGMS for the 21^st Century

If education is to meet the demands of this modern technologically-based age, we cannot ignore technology and science but must embrace what they can offer for the advancement of public education.   It is perhaps important to stress that technology is a tool, not a panacea for education and learning.  While new tools are essential to our construction of a relevant public education system, we cannot and should not simply abandon old tools that still make a meaningful contribution to the construction of the system.  Based on the technological revolution now taking place and the global reach of information and data, here are some of the new paradigms (patterns) for consideration:

1. Use technology to train the primary trainers – the parents of children – for home-schooling their children beginning at birth to at least 3-4 years of age; emphasize reading
2. Re-think and re-design (or abandon) school buildings; develop new paradigm of school as people learning together but not always separately from the world; take students out into the world; hold classes (gatherings or groupings) in community structures like businesses, factories, libraries, town or city halls.  Where appropriate, make use of existing community buildings that can be adapted. Where school buildings are a burden and a blockage to learning perhaps it is time to establish “school” in community places of work, business or leisure, and let community experts do most of the teaching.

The point is, of course, that buildings are tools or resources for teaching and learning, and they should be designed, renovated, re-structured or adapted to reflect the how, what and why of public education.

3. This extends to the role of teachers – we are all teachers; so let us make use of all of our resources: parents, teachers, student peers, community leaders and community workers; plus mentors to relate education to real lives and real life circumstances.  Yes, a lead teacher might be a facilitator of learning and a personal coach of students, rather than an imparter of canned material in a curriculum.  As a Team, the facilitator and other ‘teachers’ could be planners of teaching events and opportunities.  The lead teacher does not have to be the fountain of wisdom from which all education supposedly emanates.

Abundance: “We should not assume that these developments mean an end to teachers.  Study after study shows that students perform better when coached by someone who cares about their progress.” This includes mentors and peer-to-peer tutors. “Newer models of education turn teachers into coaches.  We’ll need to expand our research into ways to make these coaches more effective.  Indeed, there is a great need for new data about how to make the best use of the one-to-one attention that now becomes possible.”

4. Unless isolation is necessary to the subject at hand, it should be reduced to a minimum, based on what is best suited for a message of inclusion and involvement in community.  Do we need desks or would other furniture like ottomans and comfortable chairs be more appropriate tools for learning?  Perhaps we should replace outmoded learning instruments and accessories with a portable laptop or tablet for every student and the use of computer labs when necessary (in a community setting, not a school building necessarily).
5. Every student should have an Individual Education Plan (IEP).  Some students will need on-going help developing such and mentors must be used for many such activities; volunteer mentors are needed (and need to be seen) as teachers/coaches/facilitators.
6. Group activities and school spirit are still important; so sports and clubs must be coordinated into each IEP as warranted and desired, for they are also resources (tools) for learning.
7. All the arts – music, dance, drama, painting, sculpture, playing an instrument, making almost anything, and video games – are crucial to creativity and using brain power, senses and emotions to see the world from another perspective.  The arts are not peripheral; they are essential tools for learning and can be taught in appropriate places like museums and theaters; art studios and sculpture barns. 
8. The IEPs should probably influence “curriculum” and courses as much or more than school boards and administrators, although some subjects offered will probably have to be required simply because an education is not entirely ‘bottom up’ learning.  A broader purpose of teaching citizenship and community responsibility cannot be abandoned.  Perhaps a choice of large classes taught by expert ‘teachers,’ or smaller groups taught by action and bottom-up learning would be a winning combination!
9. The IEP is what a student should be evaluated against, not a set of criteria developed by some expert.  Thus, an evaluation process based on individual progress, success and learning (like those used in work settings or by video games) might be a suitable replacement for grading based on conformity to imposed norms and on competition with other students.

“Abundance” takes evaluation or “measuring progress” to another level: 

’We can’t get deeper learning until we change the tests,’ says Dr. James Lee. ‘A video game is just an assessment,’ says Gee.  ‘All you do is get assessed, every moment, as you try to solve problems.  And if you don’t solve a problem, the game says you failed, try again.  And you do.  Why? Because games take testing, the more ludicrous, painful part of school, and make it fun.’ “Even better is the data-capturing ability of video games…As this technology develops, games will be able to record massive amounts of data about every aspect of each student’s development – a far superior metric for progress than the one-size-fits-all testing method we currently favor.” 

We have allowed the biases created by our brains to take over this most important societal function: that of educating children and youth to take on the responsibilities and benefits of being citizens of a democracy and ambassadors to the world.  Our present definitions of ‘education’, ‘learning’, ‘school’ and ‘success’ are infused with presumptions and assumptions that are simply outmoded and inadequate for facing the 21^st century and beyond.  Because we can’t let go of (or meaningfully adapt) the patterns and models of the past, we can’t proceed into the future.  We are stuck in time; mired in cognitive mud; unable to dig out of a hole that is of our own making. 

And apparently, not one Republican in Congress has any idea whatsoever as to a Plan that might show us a vision of what should or could be in our future.  The Republican Party, now led by Donald Trump, is the purveyor of regressive muddy concepts and hole-digging mythologies that they tout as “ideology” and “basic principles.”  They not only produce their own myths and biases, they also play upon the biases, prejudices and attitudes of a citizen base that has been engrained with rigidity, conformity, risk aversion (‘don’t take chances’) and the stultifying of anything that looks ‘sissy-fied’ (the arts and creativity). Most important, the followers of Donald Trump are mired in cognitive biases (shortcuts) that don’t allow for informed, tested, and constantly evaluated planning.  They would rather adhere to cognitive biases, such as:

Confirmation bias – pushing people to believe their own prejudices and opinions as reality and to reject any data that goes against those beliefs

Anchor bias that is a ‘first impression’ bias – once an initial picture is formed of a situation, other possibilities are overlooked or rejected

Fundamental attribution bias or error – is a tendency to blame others when things go wrong, instead of looking objectively at the situation

Bandwagon bias or effect – places great emphasis on decisions likely to conform to current trends or that please certain individuals within an existing group

What is perhaps most unnerving is that the Trump minions have no intention whatsoever of using their minds in any other way.  They intend to live with the cognitive biases they have developed because this is comfortable for them.  They are not attuned to training their minds, clearing their minds, educating their minds or practicing techniques for enabling greater brain power. They will not change because they hate change. 

And that is one more reason why Donald Trump is a menace: he will continue to encourage such mindlessness because he knows he then has basic control over his followers, and can manipulate and use them for whatever purposes he has in his mind (so similar to Mussolini and Hitler!).  One of those purposes, you can be sure, is that of self-aggrandizement.   Donald Trump has the opportunity of a lifetime -- to make a profit off the enterprise of running for President.   You can bet that every one of his followers instead believes that he is in this race to make this country great again and to obtain something meaningful for them at the same time!  Take Education, for example...

NOT A CHANCE!

 

DISCONNECTs: Blame the Brain?

In our last posting, we raised the specter of DISCONNECTs defined briefly as “inability to recognize or even allow oneself to see connections that exist between ideas (concepts) and concrete realities.”  We also emphasized that there is a strong element of denial involved in any such disconnect.  In addition to the “authoritarianism” that pervades the followers of Donald Trump, disconnection is a major ingredient in their make-up.

In our first posting on this topic on May 1^st, we made a point of the failure of right-wing office-seekers and office-holders and their followers to understand the connection between many of their policies and beliefs and the devastating loss of human potential that grows from their denials of reality.  Their restrictive and regressive policies that are supposedly meant to curtail government spending actually end up driving us in a direction that is curtailing too many opportunities for investment in human potential and creativity.  The debits, the losses, the exploitation that results from their policies, their words, their beliefs and their actions (and lack of same) are even now evident in the losses we are suffering as a nation and a People:

·         underfunded and inadequate public schools,

·         a workforce still unprepared for technological advances,

·         wages still inadequate for millions who work more than one job,

·         a minimum wage that keeps people in poverty,

·         research slowing and diseases rising (malaria, mumps, new and old viruses),

·         people of color incarcerated beyond all standards of fairness,

·         minorities kept in segregated enclaves,

·         rights of all kinds (including the right to vote) abrogated by a corrupt justice system,

·         1 in 5 children born into poverty,

·         college graduates unable to deal with huge loans they owe, and

·         private companies exploiting the situation making profit from charter schools and prisons and military contracts. 

We could go on for a long time here, but time and space do not permit.  Let us instead conclude, as we did in Part 1 of this series, by saying that “WE CANNOT BUILD ON DISCONNECTS”.  We cannot develop human potential based on false premises, inadequate policies and distorted ideologies.  We cannot stem our losses by regressing to a society that demonizes government, praises violence and bullying, and substitutes bravado and braggadocio for leadership.  “WE ARE IN A BATTLE right now with the extremist forces of the right-wing who see no connection between their policies and the gaps, the losses and the exploitation we are experiencing.  We must take steps to prevent further disconnects and resulting losses to environment, human rights and human potential; and instead build an abundance of opportunity and equal justice.  

BUT, (as I concluded last time):” what if our brains are captive to something that prevents us from accepting new realities, global truths and concepts?  What if we are captive to certain biases that prevent us from seeing a way forward?  What if we suffer from a tendency (to believe "that reality is equivalent to our own beliefs?”  And so, we arrive at today’s post:  is our brain to blame?

I am grateful to Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler, authors of “Abundance: the future is better than you think” for explaining some of the scientific study that is extent on this matter, and for their opinions, ideas and conclusions regarding the future.  Although I don’t always agree with their conclusions or premises, I am grateful for the stimulus of their thoughts.  So, let us dive a bit deeper into the causes of disconnection.

Let’s begin with a quote from Abundance that sets the tone for the book and for this posting. 

“These are turbulent times.  A quick glance at the headlines is enough to set anybody on edge – with the endless media stream that has lately become our lives – it’s hard to get away from those headlines.  Worse, evolution shaped the human brain to be acutely aware of all the potential dangers and thus our news media and politicians focus on the grim to capture your mindshare…this dire combination has a profound impact on human perception: It literally shuts off our ability to take in good news.” (emphasis is mine).

That ‘shut-off” mechanism is what we shall be exploring here, but what the book is exploring is the real possibility of reaching a goal that many have long desired:  to "significantly raise the basic standards of living for every man, woman and child on the planet.” The authors believe that technology has the potential to do that within a generation – to actually “provide goods and services once reserved for the wealthy few, to any and all who need them or desire them.  Abundance for all is actually within our grasp.”  Then they assert (and document) that elements of this transformation are already underway.

BUT, so are elements of cynicism, pessimism and fear.  These reactions may be the biggest stumbling blocks on the road toward abundance.  Our brains are designed and have evolved to deal with stimuli in certain ways.  Unfortunately, this organ may not have caught up with global pace or even with the global nature and extent of information and technology.  And so, let us look more closely at our cognitive center for clues to prevalent disconnects:

1)      Beware the amygdala! 

This is NOT a new ferocious animal, but an almond-shaped sliver of the brain’s temporal lobe that is responsible for primal emotions like rage, hate and fear.  Its job is to be on high alert for danger and threats – for anything in our environments that could threaten our survival.  And since nothing is more critical to the brain than survival, the amygdala is like an early warning system, always on alert.  In fact, it is alert and anxious under normal circumstances, but when stimulated, becomes hypervigilant.  This is because our early warning system was designed and evolved in an era of immediacy when threats were of the 'tiger-crouched-in-the-bush' variety. What’s worse, once stimulated by threatening information or circumstances, it is almost impossible to shut-off, and in our modern, information-saturated world, that is something of a problem.

Every second, an avalanche of data pours through our senses. We are saturated with information and a high proportion of it in major media (perhaps 90%) is negative or pessimistic.  Imagine the poor amygdala -- the first stop for all this incoming information is this small organ primed to look for danger and just looking for something to fear!  It’s like feeding a monster!  

This internal confrontation has a combustible effect on our perception.  One, it limits our attention because once the focus is on one thing, it misses the next in line. Two, once the amygdala is focused on bad news or threatening news, it stays focused on hunting bad news which it then finds in abundance.  Hence, more fearfulness.  Add to this, the tendency of the media to scare us on a continuing basis, and you end up with brains convinced they are living in a state of siege.  Dr. Mark Siegel summarizes this from his book False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear.”

“Statistically, the industrialized world has never been safer.  Nevertheless, we live in worst-case fear scenarios.  The natural dangers are no longer there, but the response mechanisms are still in place and now they are turned on much of the time.  We implode, turning our adaptive fear mechanism into a maladaptive panicked response.” 

Think now of Trump and his followers: 

§  illegal border-crossing Mexicans described as mostly rapists and thieves – we’ll build a wall to keep them out (or is it to allay our fear);

§  Syrian refugees as monsters who must not be allowed into our country,

§  Muslims to be deported or detained if already here;

§  ISIS – that horde of Islamic terrorists (50,000 at the very most) - who want to destroy America and who must be destroyed even if we have to use atomic weapons on them;

§   mothers who undergo abortions – we have to punish them in case they influence others; and then there are

§  those snarky liberal protestors who foment violence and disorder – let’s beat them up and kick them out. 

 A desire to better the world is predicated on empathy and compassion.  These prosocial attitudes and behaviors are hardwired into the brain, but in an area that is slower moving and only recently evolved: the prefrontal cortex.  In dangerous situations, the amygdala directs information around the prefrontal cortex.  As a result, once the primal survival instincts take over, the newer, prosocial instincts stay sidelined.

“Compassion, empathy, altruism – even indignation – become nonfactors.  Once the media has us on high alert, for example, the chasm between rich and poor looks too big to bridge because the very emotions that would make us want to close that gap are currently locked out of the system.”  

So beware the amygdala and the blocking of compassion, altruism and empathy.  We have to train ourselves to awaken to more possibilities of human development and the universal need for compassion and empathy - standing with and for others, not against them.

2)      Beware of the blind spot.

Today’s world is very different from the one for which our brains were designed and in which they evolved.  The cave, the clan, the tribe, the manor, the village, my ‘country’ (home area).  Our brains evolved over many eras when reality was essentially local and lived-out in a linear defined area.  Most everything that happened in our ancestor’s lives was within a day’s walk from ‘home.’  In such an environment, change was very slow; the pace of life was also slow.  Life from one generation to another was essentially the same.  Change was gradual taking generations to come to fruition.  

Today, a week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than the average 17^th century citizen encountered in a lifetime.  Today change is exponential not linear.  It means we don’t measure change or time by 1+1+1+1, we measure it by 1,2 4,8,16,32 and so on.  Google Chairman, Eric Schmidt explains it this way:

“From the beginning of time until the year 2003, humankind created five exabytes of digital information.  An exabyte is one billion gigabytes (or a 1 with eighteen zeros after it).  Right now, in the year 2010, the human race is generating five exabytes of information every two days.  By the year 2013, the number will be five exabytes produced every ten minutes.” 

 The problem comes down to this: we are trying to interpret a global world with a brain that was built for local scenes and scenarios.  We are trying to understand something we’ve never seen before – exponential change on a global scale.  We are attempting to adjust and adapt to rapid transformation that simply outpaces our anticipation of what is needed.  Our localized, linear brains are simply blind to the possibilities, the opportunities and the speed with which change can and will take place.  This puts us in a hole from which there appears to be no escape.  Many of us suddenly find government, its structures, regulations and policies unsympathetic, unable to solve our perceived problems and unwilling to even try.  Instead of dealing with possibilities and opportunities, we hunker down, and governing becomes dysfunctional.  We literally have a blind spot for the possibilities that underlie the vision of world abundance and of a “Brave New World.”

 

3)      Beware the cognitive biases

Lest we forget, the brain really is a wonderful construct.  In fact, it is amazingly complex and complicated in terms of the processes and functions it undertakes.  In a perfectly rational world, we would make better use of our brains and their processes.  When given a choice or opportunity, we would carefully assess the probabilities for success and failure, examine the possible outcomes, possibly test some of the premises and tentative choices, and then combine these processes to make the most logical choice.  But we don’t live in either a perfectly rational or perfectly stable and certain world.   

We live not only in an incredibly uncertain world, but we live in the midst of so much information and input that we simply don’t have the time (or the energy perhaps) to consider all the “angles.”  We can’t even know all of the possible outcomes, and even if we did, “we have neither the temporal flexibility nor the neurological capacity to analyze all the data.’  Rather our decisions are most often made based on “limited often unreliable, information, and further hampered by internal limits (the brain’s processing power) and external limits (the time constraints under which we have to make our decisions.” 

So what do we mortal beings do?  We have devised certain cognitive shortcuts: time-saving, energy-saving rules of thumb that allow us to simplify the decision-making process.  In the field of social psychology, this is known by the term “Heuristics”, but let’s just refer to cognitive shortcuts and avoid formal terminology.  Point is, these shortcuts have a history of helping us to make – on average – better decisions.

BUT, (did you see that one coming?) there are certain situations in which these shortcuts lead to rather severe systemic errors and misleading outcomes known as “cognitive biases” that are defined as “patterns of deviation in judgment that occur in particular situations,” or, “tendencies to think in certain ways that can lead to systematic deviations from a standard of rationality or good judgment.” 

Wouldn’t you just know that researchers have collected a very long list of these biases, and many of them have a direct impact on our ability to make rational and effective decisions?    For instance, ‘confirmation bias’ is a “tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions – but it often limits our ability to take in new data and thereby change old opinions.” 

Guess what the author uses as his “great example?” Sarah Palin’s fully invented “death panels” related to Obamacare!  In the 2008-2009 debates over the administration’s proposed health care reform legislation, she claimed that the healthcare proposals would “create government-sponsored ‘death panels’ to decide which patients were worthy of living.”  This came out of “nowhere” but ‘nowhere’ was really the confirmation bias.  Far right Republicans already distrusted (and hated) Obama so reliable denials of any such panels simply fell on deaf ears, and the false claims persisted. 

Another example: the ‘birther movement’ revved up to fever pitch by Donald Trump.  Remember his claim that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and that there was no birth certificate to prove otherwise?  When the birth certificate from Hawaii was produced for all to see, Trump’s preconceptions had helped build one big misconception, and many have still not changed their minds even though documentation tells them the opposite of their preconceptions! 

The list of cognitive biases gets a bit long for our purposes, but here are a dozen more cognitive shortcuts in brief, for your consideration (with help from Wikipedia):

1)      Negativity bias – the tendency to give more weight to negative information and experiences than positive ones

2)      Anchoring or ‘focalism” – the predilection for relying too heavily on one piece of information when making decisions.; people with this kind of bias often cannot discern or imagine any other solutions. 

3)      Bandwagon effect – the tendency to do or believe things because others do; related to group-think and herd behavior

4)      Availability cascade - A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or "repeat something long enough and it will become true"). Remember the “BIG LIE” maxim?

5)      Conservatism (belief revision) - The tendency to revise one's belief insufficiently when presented with new evidence.

6)      Declinism - The belief that a society or institution is tending towards decline. Particularly, it is the predisposition to view the past favorably and future negatively.

7)      Illusion of control - The tendency to overestimate one's degree of influence over other external events.

8)      Stereotyping -  Expecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual - related to:

9)      Group attribution error -  The biased belief that the characteristics of an individual group member are reflective of the group as a whole; or, the tendency to assume that group decision outcomes reflect the preferences of group members, even when information is available that clearly suggests otherwise

10)   Illusory superiority - Overestimating one's desirable qualities, and underestimating undesirable qualities, relative to other people. (Also known as "Lake Wobegon effect", "better-than-average effect", or "superiority bias".)

11)   Self-serving bias - The tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests

12)   Spotlight effect - The tendency to overestimate the amount that other people notice your appearance or behavior.

Ø  If you see a rather suggestive resemblance to Donald Trump in what was just listed, you are absolutely correct in your assumption.  Not that all of us don’t, to some extent, possess similar biases at times, but “the Donald” seems to overdo on biases, and make some very poor judgments and decisions as a result.  Here is someone on his way to being the Republican Party nominee for President of this nation and the presumptive “leader of the Free World” who exhibits some of the worst cognitive biases in relation to decision-making that we have ever seen in our lifetimes.

o   He takes pride in obliterating his rivals by distorting their characteristics and their status;

o   He over-estimates his ability to solve global problems, and what’s more sees those problems in terms of making deals by which he will either get something for America or obliterate his rivals;

o   He believes in military power as the ultimate weapon to use to make others conform to our (his) wishes, our ways of thinking, and our control;

o   He has no real policies or programs to offer, but relies solely on his personal attributes, which is the epitome of a fascist or ‘authoritarian’ dictator;

o   He demeans women, immigrants, Muslims, and anyone who gets in his way, (including mothers who have abortions and groups like Syrians and Mexicans who seek a better life, plus the numerous other candidates for the Republican nomination!)

o   He wants to build a wall to keep people out of this country and in so doing, isolate us further from our southern neighbors; (can we remember another wall that eventually not only kept West Germans out of East Germany but kept East Germans isolated from their neighbors and relatives and indeed isolated them from the rest of the world.    Walls always have two sides to them and one targets outsiders, but the other isolates insiders.

Trump wants America to be respected and admired, but intends to use the concepts of awesome power, military might, restrictions, intimidation and coercion as his methods for achieving such status.  Negotiation becomes manipulation and coercion when tied to winning and losing instead of fairness and justice.  His approach is wrong, his concepts are distorted and his intended outcomes are short-sighted. 

Donald Trump epitomizes the cognitive biases that lead to poor judgments and limited if not downright poor outcomes.  The Donald depends far too much on his personality [cult of The Fuhrer (Leader)], and far too much on stereotypical interpretations of the world at large.  Mr. Trump is dangerous, not just because he is biased, but because his vision for this country is based on a brain infused with local prejudices un-informed by the vastness and complexity of our modern world.   

What is probably more frightening is the fact that many of his followers are relying heavily on their cognitive biases as intentional shortcuts to their decisions about Mr. Trump.  ln fact, based on the scientific research described above, one could venture to say that many of his followers do not have the capacity, nor the inclination, to weigh the vast amounts of information that indicate how wrong Mr. Trump is for the Presidency of these United States.  They have instead come to believe that reality is equivalent to their own biases and beliefs, and that Donald Trump represents that reality.  How else can we explain why working people would believe that Donald Trump will act on their behalf and to their benefit?

Next time, we’ll take a look at how we might overcome some of our cognitive biases and begin to look for truths and tools for making sounder judgments in order to open up abundant opportunities and outcomes for more people on a global scale.

 

DISCONNECTED FOLLOWERS

We have to start talking about DISCONNECTs.  Most everyone who reads that will probably ask: what disconnects?   What is he talking about?  The answer should be obvious.  I'm talking about the disconnection from reality exhibited by the followers of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

Let’s begin our explanation with definitions that may help our basic understanding, although we must be careful to find a fairly modern definition because DISCONNECTION now means more than simple separation or severing of two entities.  And, it is more than disjointedness or incoherence.  It’s more like an inability to see connections between entities that coincide in their structure and their meanings or their consequences and their results.  It’s almost like a disassociation – an inability to recognize or even allow oneself to see connections that exist between ideas and concrete realities.  There is a strong element of denial involved in such disconnect from reality. 

One of the most obvious denials of reality that exists today in modern politics is the denial of climate change -- the denial of evidence, of examples, of scientific research, and of the effects of chemicals upon our own bodies extrapolated to the basic elements of this earth like oxygen, food, water and the dirt itself.  The disconnect for most people who are deniers of climate change is their acceptance of certain disastrous effects of chemicals on themselves, but a denial that those effects can also harm the earth, animals and the rest of our environment.   So let me list a few of those disconnects for you.

 

·        Smoking tobacco is now considered to be one of the worst things one can do to one’s body.  Every doctor asks that question of his or her patients: have you ever smoked?  Why? Because we now know more clearly than ever that nicotine and other chemicals in 'smokes' are harmful to the body.  We have simply come to the point where scientific experiments and research and testing have all shown the connections between smoking and poor results for human health.  Yet there are still those who -- in spite of all the horrific ads against smoking and the results thereof, in spite of all the evidence of what it does to shorten life and to bring dire consequences like cancer – take up smoking, go back to smoking or just plain can’t stop smoking.  That’s called a disconnect of denial. (it's also called "addiction.")

• But there is a greater disconnect, and that is the one that cannot extrapolate the truth about smoking harming the human body to the larger truth that toxic chemical emissions from factories, and coal-burning plants, along with contaminated sludge and sewage dumped into human water sources has the same harmful effects upon the earth and its flora and fauna as smoking tobacco has upon our bodies.  The acceptance of smoking as harmful to lungs, heart, liver, skin and other aspects of bodily function, while denying that even more lethal forms of smoke and other chemical emissions negatively affect water, sky, rain, earth and other parts of our environment, is a DISCONNECT of the first order.  Perhaps we need greater contact with religions and cultures that teach the oneness and unity of all life in order to overcome the denials by conservative radicals who tend to use that kind of disconnect to their advantage and profit.  With much hype and duplicity,  many climate change deniers (like the Koch brothers) continue to destroy the environment while convincing many consumers to buy their products made with materials such as chemicals, gases and hormones that threaten our very existence.

·        Another disconnect suggested by that last paragraph is the DISCONNECT between our knowing that some products of certain industries are bad for humans and our environment and yet we continue to purchase those harmful substances and never think that we are thereby contributing to the obliteration of our planet and the unhealthiness of our families and of ourselves, let alone of others around us.  It may be a matter of convenience, or perhaps of laziness, or obsessive attraction to the product itself.  Who knows?  For instance, how many of us are seemingly quite content buying toys from China that are covered with lead-based paint?  Or how many of us continue to purchase and use chemical compounds for our lawns even though they contain hazardous chemicals that mix with the soil, but rarely lose their potency?  Remember Love Canal near Niagara Falls?  People had so disconnected from the reality of the chemicals spilled there and their toxic effects, that many continued to live in that 'killing field' environment until it was no longer allowed. 

How many of us still purchase beverages with enormous amounts of sugar (and sodium) added in to satisfy our taste buds but to also hook us on sugary drinks forever and ever.  The lethal effects of added sugar (and salt) on the average human being are not healthy, and more and more scientific study is indicating the dire consequences that await us in terms of strokes, heart disease, and even nerve damage.  Yet, we are all guilty of allowing disconnects to threaten our health and our environment by buying in to the brainwashing techniques of modern advertising and modern denial of facts.

·         But there are additional equally devastating disconnects running amok.  One that rankles is a general disconnect between the evils of bigoted discrimination, bias, prejudice, animosity; unequal treatment, and unequal justice that result in the separation and denigration of certain individuals and groups of people who are seen as “different" - inept, lazy or just not up-to-par for one reason or another.  Because of misguided definitions of what constitutes "normal” or “able” or “acceptable”, we end up with a hatred of certain groups who are profiled (defined) by certain individual characteristics imposed upon the whole group in a kind of profile that is used to brand the whole group as somehow inferior to the dominant majority.   Because we generally have difficulty seeing or believing in outside forces and institutions (like schools, police forces, unions and businesses, laws and customs) possessing certain built-in discriminatory practices, myths and tenets, a strong disconnect occurs between the reality of discrimination and denigration and the part each of us plays in that pattern. As a result, we fail to attack the roots of the problems found in our history, our systems of governing and in our everyday institutions that we so cherish.

·       There’s one more disconnect that I would like to mention, and it may be the most devastating of all, but then again, as we move ahead on this topic in later Blogs, we may find others of equal import.  I am speaking of the disconnect we are experiencing every day because we fail to understand the consequences of another kind of pollution and that is the devastating effects upon heart, mind and body for the victims of poverty, discrimination, separation, isolation, profiling and inequality.  That disconnect is made ever so vast by the refusal of politicians to act in a way that might help solve some of those practices and problems.  

 

The major disconnect is this:  every time Congress delays, obstructs, obfuscates or makes draconian cuts on necessities or critical needs, the people, the nation, our families – adults, children and seniors – suffer loss.  Every time Congress delays action on repairing roads, bridges, water systems, schools and other necessary infrastructure, our country suffers losses.  Every time Congress cuts programs like Head Start or various items of research, or fails to fund such common-sense and proven positives like universal pre-school and more effective day care, the country suffers losses.  When the Republicans, many in state legislatures - pass laws that deny voting privileges for certain groups or deny fundamental rights like right to effective legal representation, or right to be free from invasion of one’s home or the right not to be stopped and harassed for no reason other than skin color (and when police are not held accountable for unjust and lethal actions), we all suffer a great loss.    

It is a disconnect that radical RIGHT-WING conservatives have always chosen to ignore because they don’t believe that persons who are poor, or who have a disability, or who are people of color or have a foreign accent, or who look different in some way – they don’t believe that they deserve the same justice, opportunity or boost that the rest of us have come to expect as a matter of course.   They simply cannot see, perceive or fathom the losses that such attitudes bring upon our society.  They just don’t get it, and all of the Republican candidates for President have shown they don’t get it throughout this crazy few months of debates (?) and primary elections. 

And now, we have to face the fact that the followers of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz (and all the others) don’t get it either.   They simply are unable to connect the dots.  They cannot discern the devastating losses we are taking as we fight battles on all the wrong fronts and for all the wrong reasons (voter 'fraud', Planned Parenthood, the IRS, etc.).  When the Vietnam War became unbearable in terms of loss of life for no good reason, the People finally got it – they demanded an end to the carnage and they got it (especially after people were scrambling to leave the embassy in South Vietnam by helicopters as the enemy was closing in).  Is that what it will take to connect the people once again with reality?  Will it take catastrophes of several kinds to once again help us recognize the connections between policies and practices; between words and actions; between rights and stability and fairness; between equal justice and good citizenship; between top-notch infrastructure and the prosperity of the middle and poorer classes? 

Will it take more natural disasters – blizzards, tornados, floods, hailstorms, beach erosion, earthquakes; more people dying of diseases caused by our own neglect; more citizens being forcibly pushed into poverty; more children dying from gun violence - to finally realize the connections between all of that and the losses we suffer because of the ideology and obfuscation of hyper-conservative Representatives? [If you haven’t already heard, let me bring to you the latest from the Congress: they are refusing to act on an epidemic that could very well be headed our way, and that is the disease carried by certain mosquitos that could ignite world-wide loss of functioning in affected children and adults as well.  One elderly American has already died of the disease caused by the Zika virus, and as summer approaches it could get much worse.  The Radical Republican Congress has chosen to delay extra funds needed to combat this threat even though the Zika virus was declared a global public health emergency and it has been confirmed that the Zika virus does cause a rare birth defect called microcephaly – a neurological disorder that results in babies being born with abnormally small heads and developmental issues].

We are losing millions of good people through prejudice, neglect, discrimination, and an unjust justice system, as well as environmental pollution, and we are losing millions of young people through neglect of our public school system. For every negative and stupid concept-- like deporting millions of undocumented immigrants or incarcerating millions of persons many for minor non-violent transgressions like possession of marijuana -- we lose human potential.  Some of those victims might have produced a cure for a disease, or founded a new company that produced affordable energy with alternative fuels; or perhaps attained more mundane but worthwhile achievements like graduating from college, paying taxes, contributing to a community, raising a good family, and helping others achieve because they cared enough to do so.  Our losses are small, medium and large, but they are accumulating and the sum total of those losses of people and rights and jobs and community service are driving us in a direction from which we may not recover. 

We the People cannot go on believing in demagogues or bought politicians.  We cannot go on allowing disconnects to lead us toward oblivion.  We have to come back to the progressive realities of a Hillary Clinton and revolutionary fervor of leaders such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.  We cannot build upon disconnects.  We have to see the consequences of what we are allowing to happen and allowing NOT to happen.

We cannot live disconnected from reality and from the consequences of our actions, our attitudes and our built-in institutional flaws and prejudices.  Every time we allow a disconnect to occur, we risk the loss to our society of lives full of potential.  If we were involved in a war – like the one in Iraq – and we saw that it was producing nothing but loss and devastation, we would as a People, want out (just as we have done).  We ARE IN A BATTLE right now against the extremist forces of the right-wing who see no connections between their policies and the losses we are experiencing.  In fact, they are more prone to the exploitation of those losses than to the reversal of them through investment in lives and people rather than in businesses, tax breaks and profit for themselves.

It is past time to take the steps necessary to prevent further loss of our planet, our children and our people and society as a whole.  We must connect the dots once again so that we can invest in every citizen rather than turn our backs to them and lose them to a lesser purpose.  We can begin by pledging to vote for progressive candidates for office who will invest in people once again.   

BUT, what if our brains are captive to something that prevents us from accepting new realities, global truths and concepts?  What if we are captive to certain biases that prevent us from seeing a way forward?  What if we suffer from a tendency that reality is equivalent to our own beliefs?   In our next post, we’ll take a deeper look at some of the causes of DISCONNECTS.