The New Four Freedoms (Republican Style)

Remember the Bill of Rights. Remember Roosevelt’s four freedoms. No one talks about the four new (non family-friendly) freedoms that we have these days. (Note: Freedom to get health care is not one of them):

1. Freedom to think ignorant stuff. You wanna be dumb, just do it. We don’t really care if you get educated. Just repeat everything on talk radio. Teaching you to read books woulda cost us plenty.

2. Freedom to do stupid stuff. Run away, take drugs and booze, hang out with weird people. Lie around homeless. Go psychotic. Whatever. Just don’t bug us or try to get anything we’ve got. You aren’t family. We don’t need to help you.

3. Freedom to get sick. Just lie there. By the freeway entrance. In the park. It's ok with us. We use hand cleaner. Its cheaper than medicine for everyone.

4. And biggest of all: Freedom to Die. Anytime you want, anyway you want. But don’t expect us to bury you. Not in our plots, whatda you think, you’re family?

Nudge-it's another book review chock full of ideas.

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler

I have trouble with Nudge.

Not with its first premise: people make bad decisions. Nudge backs up my current understanding of our lower lizard brain (as opposed to our higher (literally) thinking brain--the good-at-reasoning and math and statistics, real-smart-monkey brain) that I talked about earlier when reviewing the book Kludge—a sibling monosyllabic title that also explicates the two-brain theory of humans, but starting from evolution. (I understand that Blink does something similar but celebrates the lizard in us all).

Nudge avoids evolution and draws from research. Rather than dwelling on the non-evolving lizardness of your brain-bottom, it demonstrates lower functioning with examples from personal finance, health and school choice, and extended warranties. Homer Simpson personifies the lizard-brain man and pops up often. His inability to delay any gratification, start anything worthwhile or plan more than two seconds out from the present demonstrates our brain at work.

Then the book presents its second big idea. In crazed optimism the authors expect the government to exploit these tendencies of non-thought for the good of us all. Not by prohibitions or enforced actions, but by a nudge--a method that exploits our weakness to guide us to be our best selves. An example is to make the default option in any choice the best option, taking advantage of our inertia against making change (for example, 401Ks should be opt out rather than opt in).

The authors seem to forget how things are done here in the USA. We aim folks on the path to hell for an extra buck. We advertise exploiting sex (part of the lizard brain appeal) to sell toothpaste and floorclearner. But most of all, we don’t buy our congressfolks to make life better for everyone; we buy them to make life better for me, right now. That’s the American way. We have a marketplace and the market decides. He who pays most, gets most--and that means controlling those default choices, hiding outcomes, and downright lying.

Nudge technology, like atom bombs, can lead us to good choices or to very bad choices (well maybe there are no good choices with atom bombs, come to think of it). That most likely path is not discussed.

Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind by Gary Marcus

Now, if you don’t want to blame your momma anymore, this is the book for you. All those problems -- making those questionable food and partner choices, believing in the devil and not in NASA’s moon trip, making dumb math mistakes, forgetting just about anything sometime—These problems are not your mama’s fault; they are not your fault. Those proto-monkeys and lizards did it. They spawned and recreated, bequeathing you a bottom brain that smolders and cooks up schemes for living in the jungle, not the city. Your brain stays always alert for that big, furry, pointy-toothed thing you have nightmares about, while always ready to grub for smelly roots, tasty rabbit parts and potential breeding partners. We have a lizard brain that is worse than our parents’. Gary Marcus explains our thinking tools as a big kludge—just a pile up of lizard, mammal, and, finally, faulty reasoning circuits that do not play well together.

The worst is--we default to the lizard brain when life gets tough.

Most people know how evolution failed us by standing up four-legged hoofers to a life of backaches and, eventually, metal knees. But the million year old brain is just as bad—we react; we don’t plan. We were evolved to eat, not to do math. According to Mr. Marcus, it’s a wonder we can even post well-reasoned stuff like this. He wrote a slim little offering, but it is a nice intro for the layperson. Note: I prefer Amos Twersky talking about wacky thinking or Eleanor Rosch explaining how we make categories in our heads.

Choice

There are lots of types of choices. We’ve gotten used to choosing between ice cream or pie. That’s easy. Pick one today; pick another tomorrow. Or maybe both today. That’s the choice I like.

But there are really hard choices, like when you choose one thing and it eliminates the other. Marriage is like that. Pick Miss Mary today and say goodbye forever to old Suzy Q. Maybe that’s not a great example with divorce and messing around going on, but you get the idea.

The experts are telling us that we have a big choice coming up that is really, really hard. Either global warming crashes the planet or global slowdown crashes the economy. Either we quit making stuff in order to cut down on carbon or we quit worrying and watch the water rise and the polar bears attack. That’s what they say. A hard choice is just ahead.

But I want an ice cream and pie choice here. I want my globe to chill, but I need my stuff, too. I know it takes a couple trees and a barrel of oil for every 10 minutes I’m alive, but I don’t want to change. I get bored without my stuff. And you don’t want me bored because then I get nasty and make lots of noise.

So you smart-guy scientists need to figure out how to make fun stuff that doesn’t have any carbon in it, doesn’t take any carbon to make, and doen’t use any carbon to carry it to my front door. That´s what we need. Then the choice is easy. Stuff for me and polar bears for everyone, too. So get to work.

I know you scientists are already working on carbon-free stuff. Your fancy video games point the way. A new game uses up about ten days of my life and only uses two cupfuls of oil to make electricity for my computer. A windmill in a light breeze spinning for an hour could power me for a week.

My carbon footprint shrinks to mouse-sized for a month when I have a game that’s interesting. It could stay shrunk forever if great, new games came out every week and (this is important) I didn’t have to go to work and commute burning all that oil in my pickup. So I say it’s work that makes us burn up too much carbon. Because working takes me away from my games and gives me lots of money that I use to go buy useless stuff. Like lava lamps and food processers. I don’t even cook. I just eat. And how much carbon is there in a couple cheeseburgers anyway?

If everyone just stayed home and played video games and partied a lot on weekends or maybe even every other day then who needs to drive big cars. Who needs fancy houses and trucks of designer furniture that comes here in big boats from China. Who needs all that stuff. I just need my chair, my computer and my fridge.

Now, that wasn’t too hard, was it? Maybe I should start working on other things, like world peace and babies that understand bathrooms before they are born. OK, scientists you heard it. Let’s go.