Why Think by Numbers?

Why Our Brains Don’t Work Rite

So, we’ve got this top of the line neocortex which is perfectly capable of rational thought.  Why then, do we behave so irrationally as a species?  The problem is that the rational neocortex is enslaved by the lower brains.  It is not free to examine all available information in the attainment of objective truth.  Instead, it frequently becomes a kind of a slimy neuro-lawyer serving the emotional limbic system. Break it down:

1. You are exposed to a piece of information.
2. The information is transmitted to the limbic system.
3. The limbic system decides if this information is agreeable (true) or disagreeable (false).
4. The limbic system attaches positive emotions to agreeable information or negative emotions to disagreeable information.
5. That feeling gives that thought a sense of conviction or truth. 
6. This information/emotion combination is what we call a belief.
7. At that point, the neocortex is employed to protect and defend this belief.
8. The neocortex puts forth all available evidence which supports this belief.
9. The neocortex figures out ways to discount any contradictory information.

The limbic system, this primitive brain that can neither read nor write, provides us with the feeling of what is real, true, and important using its own often irrational and illogical criteria. It therefore poses significant danger to us.

Why No One is Reading this Sentence

Many of the hostile commenters on my site have expressed their own theories as to why this is.  However, I feel that the reason for this can be explained by something called “The Caveman Principle”.  This principle states that our brains have generally evolved very little since the time of the caveman. The human brain has been around for about 200,000 years.  The Stone Age only ended about 6,000 years ago.  So, ninety-nine percent of our ancestors lived in environments characterized by starvation and a general scarcity of resources. Evolution crawls at a snail’s pace, so we still have these caveman brains optimized for an environment millennia away from our own. The evidence is lacking that our brains have changed much since then. So our wants, dreams, personalities, and desires have probably not changed much in 200,000 years. It is likely that we still think as our caveman ancestors did.

So, like, what were cavemen into?  Surviving long enough to successfully replicate one’s genes in an unstable environment requires brains with very specific interests.  Hence, the type of brain that survived typically paid a great deal of attention to these questions:

• Can I eat it?
• Will it eat me?
• Can I mate with it?
• Will it mate with me?

Note these items, which are suspiciously absent from this list:

• Statistics
• Economics
• Formal Cost-Benefit-Analysis Calculations

An interest in these topics was pretty much worthless to primitive humans struggling to survive in ancient Africa.  This is especially true since math and written language didn’t even exist.  Evolutionary theory states that traits that offer no survival or reproductive advantage will not persist. Hence, these subjects are as boring to us as is Al Gore describing his experience watching paint dry.

Evolution has made these subjects brutally boring. So that, my non-existent reader, is why you are not reading this sentence, and are instead viewing one of the many fine pornographic websites that the prestigious internet has to offer.

Let’s Get Ignorant!

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data, fool.”  - Mr. T

A general disinterest in economics and statistics wouldn’t be a big deal if we lived in a dictatorship.  But in our political system, government action is a product of public opinion.  Thomas Jefferson once said, “An informed citizenry is the bulwark of a democracy.”  Based on this quote, I think it’s safe to say that our democracy is currently bulwark-free.  The fact that I don’t know what a bulwark is further proves that we do not have an informed citizenry.

The only way to understand the important details of complex and large-scale societal issues is through the use of statistics and economics. Additionally, formal cost-benefit analysis is the only way to make optimal decisions on complicated issues.  However, most Americans don’t even know what a cost-benefit analysis is, let alone have a grasp of the statistical data needed to perform such an analysis.

Here’s a list of what the average voter doesn’t know:

• How much their government spends on:
  • foreign aid
  • wars
  • education
  • Medicare
  • interest on the debt
• How many troops have been killed in our various and sundry wars
• How many civilians have been killed in our various and sundry wars
• How much they pay in taxes
• What the rate of inflation is
• What the unemployment rate is
• How much profit corporations make
• What the Dow Jones Average is
• Who was involved in perpetrating the 9/11 attacks
• How wealth is distributed among classes
• How many branches there are in the federal government
• That the president cannot legally suspend the Constitution

Without factual data for our neocortices to use in doing a cost-benefit comparison of the candidates, our stupid brain stems and emotional limbic systems get to choose our candidate.

The US government is the most powerful man-made entity in the history of the world. Allowing an uninformed public control of this colossus is like giving a baby a nuclear bomb.  The goal of this website is to upgrade our democracy to the equivalent of a toddler with a nuclear bomb.

Keep In the Vote!

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” — Pee Wee Herman

Elections are won and lost not primarily on “the issues” but on the values and emotions of the electorate, including the “gut feelings” that summarize much of what voters think and feel about a candidate or party.

The goal in selecting any candidate is to choose the one that will maximize the overall well-being of the citizenry. If the neocortex were in charge, politicians would be selected solely based on:

• INTELLIGENCE - The intelligence necessary to effectively identify and execute policies that maximize the general welfare of the populace.  The best way to measure intelligence would be for the candidates to take psychometric tests and make their scores public.
• KNOWLEDGE - An immense level of knowledge over a wide range of issues (economics, history, science, etc.) is necessary to identify and properly execute optimal public policies.  This could be evaluated through standardized testing of the candidates.
• RECORD - The candidate’s record proves whether or not they actually support policies that better the general welfare of the citizenry.  It also indicates whether or not the candidate possesses the integrity necessary to resist the influence of special interests.   These are small but powerful groups who would impose their own selfish policies at the expense of the greater society.

Unfortunately, we have an informational vacuum between our ears with reguard to this stuff. Hence, our neocortices are unable to perform a rational calculation. This leaves the decision up to our stupid brain stems and emotional limbic systems. Portions of our brains that know nothing about government or current events. They can’t follow arguments of any complexity. They stuff themselves with slogans and advertisements. They eschew fact for myth. They operate from biases and stereotypes, and they privilege feeling over thinking. The result is a political system of daunting irrationality,  Some of the factors influencing their electoral decisions include:

• LOOKS - 70% of elections are won by the candidate with the prettiest face. Another study illustrates voter preference for candidates with similar facial features to themselves.
• LOVELIFE - Although infidelity may say something about a politician’s character, it has no direct impact of the lives of the voters.  My theory is that throughout evolutionary history, man tended to live in small groups.  Hence, the chosen leader was likely to come into direct contact with the voter’s spouse.  Individuals with power elicit a greater ability to seduce spouses.  Therefore, prehistoric voters who chose faithful leaders were less likely to have their spouse impregnated by this leader.  This would leave their spouse’s womb available for their own progeny.  Ultimately, their characteristic appreciation of fidelity would be passed to their offspring.  This is how common personality traits are evolved.
• ELECTABILITY - Many people choose not to vote for a third party or independent candidate that they prefer because they’re unlikely to win. Their reasoning is that they would be throwing away their chance to help elect the lesser of two evils. A survey of college students shows that 79 percent of the students “felt that their vote makes a difference.” In reality, there is only a one in 60 million chance of a randomly selected voter affecting the presidential election.  It much more likely that that voter will die in a car accident (1 in 1 million) driving to the polls.  Hence, it’s irrational to believe that your vote is any more than a one data point in an opinion poll.
• TRIBAL LOYALTY - Blind loyalty to political parties often distorts decision-making.  Many would claim that their loyalty to a party’s candidate is a result of their agreement with that candidate’s policies. However, for a lot of partisans, the causality is reversed.   Often individuals will modify their support for policies to achieve agreement with their candidate of the party to which they are loyal. For instance, upon the election of Barack Obama, a lot of republicans suddenly started complaining about the nation’s budget deficit. The odd thing is that, when George W. Bush was president, these same republicans were generally silent on the issue, despite the fact that Mr. Bush ran up $4 trillion in debt. At the same time, many democrats suddenly stopped complaining about the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan upon Obama’s election.  Similarly, when Bush was in charge, these same democrats friends couldn’t stop complaining about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Coincidence?
• VOTER’S MOOD - An experiment indicates that being in a bad mood while voting makes you more likely to vote out incumbents.
• FLAGS - The appearance of the American flag makes voters more likely to vote Republican.

We’re damn lucky that CEO’s aren’t elected by popular vote.  If the public got to decide who ran Microsoft, I would be typing this sentence on a typewriter.

How to Beat Out Your Brains

Utopia, a world without disease, starvation, violence, and suffering, is the ultimate goal and destination of society. The thinking, rational mind has the power to make utopia a reality through innovation.  We’ve had a few hundred thousand years to get there, yet it remains a distant dream. Irrational or uniformed decisions are the primary reason why humanity fails to reach its true potential.

In a democracy and a free enterprise economy, voters and consumers are the deciders. Our prehistoric brains decide to waste society’s resources on wars and short-term gratification through erroneous decision-making. They are a drain on the economy, public welfare, the environment, and national security. Resources are misallocated, good ideas are rejected, and bad ideas are accepted. Money is wasted. Life and health are put in jeopardy. Irrational beliefs are sand in the gears of the entire economy.  It’s virtually certain that your life will be shorter and less happy as a result of emotion-based decisions.

The only way to break the shackles put on our neocortices by its evil stepsisters is through the use of numbers.  When our rational mind has cold, hard statistics to support its arguments, it’s much more likely to overcome the emotion-based arguments of the primitive brains.  Providing your neocortex with this ammunition is the purpose of this site.  Using numbers we can overthrow this idiocracy and ignite a revolution of reason.  Suffering can be eliminated and utopia can be realized.