Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Confirmation Bias, and Empathy Deficit: How we shape our world, distort our reality, and isolate our selves

If you want to believe something about someone, first you will convince yourself it is true, then you will act in ways that will make it true. How that person really is, of course, is always more complicated than your limited view of them, but that won't matter to you, and it won't stop you from doing this to them.

We acknowledge complexity in ourselves, but we do not want to acknowledge it in others. We always—and so coincidentally, too!—manage to stumble upon the right point of view ourselves, so anything someone else believes that is different—again, how fortunate for us!—must be wrong.

This inability to accept others as being equally as complex as ourselves, this tendency to consider everything we do and believe to be the right way and all other perspectives to be wrong, keeps us from seeing reality, keeps us from understanding each other as fully as we might, and leaves us stagnant in the world, with no need to learn anything new and, as far as we know, nothing left to learn.

How sad. How dull. How dumb.

Olympia City Council candidates: supported by your neighbors or supported by empty land?

There are two kinds of candidates in the Olympia City Council race. The kind whose signs are firmly and forthrightly planted in your neighbors' yards, clearly demonstrating real support from real people, and those whose signs are firmly but stealthily planted on every vacant lot and property line, demonstrating a lack of real support from real people and a desire to win and govern even without true popular support.

As you drive around town, take the time to notice which candidates rely on the support of your neighbors and which ones have most of their signs sticking out of the bushes and weeds of roadsides, property lines, and vacant lots. Consider whether you want to be governed by someone who has gone door-to-door, talked to your neighbors, and won their support, or whether you want to continue to be governed by candidates who think their only obligation to the public is to "listen" to the majority opinion and then do whatever they were going to do anyway.

No more mistakes by the lake. No more council members who do not really listen, and then do the opposite of what the people want.

Make sure your vote counts. Vote early. Buxbaum, Hyer, Rogers and Roe for Olympia City Council.


I submitted this letter for publication by the local paper on the morning of Tuesday, October 13. The candidates supported by the paper are Veldheer and the pro-isthmus-high-rise-development and anti-doing-what-the-vast-majority-of-residents-want candidates Kingsbury, Machlis, and Sermonti, who take the "listen and lead" approach: "listening" to the majority opinion (reluctantly, and while e-mailing and facebooking derogatory comments about "idiots") and then leading by going ahead and doing what they were going to do, anyway. They claim that votes against them are by "single-issue" voters, interested only in the isthmus issue. They are half right. The single issue here is whether city council members truly listen to, and act in, the interests of city residents, or whether they are listening to and acting in the interests of someone else.

The problem with race-based scientific studies

My comments on a U.S. News and World Report article about a prostate-cancer study in the "Multiethnic Cohort" (http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2009/09/01/adult-weight-gain-tied-to-prostate-cancer-risk.html):

This is a common problem in so many studies that try to find the effect of "race" on anything. Doing studies and reporting results in terms of race is a great way to look for data that will justify racist attitudes (which is what gives "race" any meaning it has, after all), but it is a horrible way to study anything scientifically. Genes, lifestyle, education level, socioeconomic status, proximity to a pollution source, etc., all lend themselves to scientific studies that will show "clear-cut" cause-and-effect relationships, when they exist. Race-based studies are used, in too many cases, to mask socioeconomic-based problems (which could be solved) as being race-based problems (which cannot). For example, a study of which races save most for retirement will likely show Asians saving more than whites, whites more than blacks, blacks more than Hispanics, and Hispanics more than Native Americans. The headlines will talk about a study showing that minorities are not saving enough for retirement. The proposed solution will be some kind of public-service announcement aimed at minorities to save more. If the same study were redone but, instead of reporting results by race, it reported them by households earning $0 to $9,999 per year, $10,000 to $19,999 per year, ..., $90,000 to $99,999 per year, $100,000 to ... etc., then you would see a "clear-cut" relationship between household income and retirement savings! It is not that "those Hispanics" are poor savers (and what can any of us do about their being Hispanic??), but that poor people are poor savers. As you see study after study that is reported by race, it becomes more and more clear that the results of those studies do little to advance science and do much to preserve the status quo.

Genes, environment, and lifestyle are legitimate subjects of scientific study in the search for knowledge about human diseases; race is not. Race is not a by-product of genes; it is a concept created by racism. Race is real only because racism is real, and race continues to exist only because racism does. Let's stop pretending that it has a scientific basis. That is so 19th century and this is the 21st.

My plea to the Obama campaign

Obama is in danger
of losing the election
if he cannot learn
to speak in ways voters can hear.

Frank Luntz subtitled a book:
"It's not what you say,
it's what people hear."

Please hire someone soon
who can help Obama learn
how to do this.

Please!

Thank you!

If elected, I will:
1. Lower your taxes.
2. Fight the terrorists where they are.
3. Make life better for your family.

If McCain is elected, he will:
1. Give more of your money to the rich.
2. Fight the terrorists where they are not.
3. Continue the Bush policies that have hurt your family.

i.e., sound bites, not dissertations

A Strong America

Does it really make the U.S. stronger to have a leader who stretches our military thin while draining the money out of our economy? Haven't we seen the results of that, and learned our lessons from it, already?

Will it all be made better when we cut taxes even more (fewer $$ coming in), stay in Iraq indefinitely (more $$ going out), and proceed to "Bomb, bomb, bomb,...bomb, bomb Iran" (the military stretched ever thinner)?

If ever there was a recipe for bankrupting the nation, destroying our defenses, and ruining our economy, this would be it.

Besides, when I think of clean, safe, alternative forms of energy, building 45 to 100 nuclear power plants is not the first thing that comes to mind. Though, just maybe, with enough molasses or vegetable oil it will finally be a snap to clean up toxic subterranean plumes of nuclear waste before they reach our major rivers and turn us all into the water-supply-poisoning victims defended by Erin Brockovich.

We are all a little bit different; we are all a lot the same.

Roma (gypsy) plea for humane treatment

Click on the drawing at: http://www.everyonegroup.com/EveryOne/MainPage/Entries/2008/5/24_Dear_Europe._By_Rebecca_Covaciu.html
to see one girl's plea against the mistreatment of gypsies that is becoming more common in Europe, especially in Italy.