Avoiding the Internet Cocoon

#1 on my wishlist:
Although mainstream views are much more palatable therefore less likely to be suppressed, and while it takes one hundred times the effort to find attention or acceptance for out of the mainstream views, it's very important not to cocoon yourself with the like-minded.

I find that people with mainstream views, finding acceptance more readily, therefore more confident to espouse their beliefs, may even search out "radical" points of view to disparage, bolstering their belief system at the same time.

However, when you limit yourself to a single source, or a cocoon of thought, you prevent yourself from getting to the truth of the matter. If you get your information from a group or configuration of varying ideas and sources, and cross-check all the information that you get, taking the time to engage in back-and-forth discourse, you not only strengthen your ability to back up your own set of beliefs, or debunk them, you open yourself up to a wealth of knowledge to draw from enabling the creation of new ideas.

I repeatedly mentioned the people who "matter" yesterday while blogging the Antichrist out of my system; here is an example of what I meant by referring to those that matter. The other side of the equation... equally important to the path to the truth. I'm fairly certain they would disagree completely that they are the only ones who matter, and may argue that the ones who get all the special treatment are the ones who really "matter". I'll address that later, but they do have a point.

Keep in mind, I am an anonymous blogger and there is a certain luxury of being able to hide your identity, and if you choose to do that, as I have, it's even more important that you do not abuse the privilege by engaging in bashing others who do identify themselves. I am not putting these people down by singling them out. Not at all. Both the left and the right skew the statistics to support their "agenda" or point of view.

However, just because a person inserts a picture and a name does not mean it's that person. It's very easy to take on the identity of someone else on the Internet. Unless you see that person on TV, or hear them on the radio or they are affiliated with a major company, like Andrew Sullivan, for example, there is no way of knowing whether that person is who he or she says they are.

How high is the U.S. poverty rate?

Here is some wisdom, from the non-libertarian, non-right-wing, never-asked-to-contribute-to-the-WSJ-Op-Ed-page Lane Kenworthy:

Poverty comparisons across affluent nations typically use a “relative” measure of poverty. For each country the poverty line — the amount of income below which a household is defined as poor — is set at 50% (sometimes 60%) of that country’s median income. In a country with a high median, such as the United States, the poverty line thus will be comparatively high, making a high poverty rate more likely...

Using a relative measure, the U.S. poverty rate is higher than Romania’s and only slightly lower than Mexico’s (see here). Similarly, Mississippi’s relative poverty rate is the same as Connecticut’s.

So when you hear that the U.S. poverty rate is about 20 percent, keep this in mind. Here is more, including links to research. Here is a response from Paul Krugman. Note that Krugman's initial Op-Ed stresses how the measured rate has not fallen over (some periods of) time, but his response simply cites a ranking of the U.S. among other wealthy nations, based on an absolute poverty rate. Have the time series comparisons been jettisoned or should we stand by them?

Here is more useful information. It's also worth noting that poverty rate numbers do not take into account food stamps, housing subsidies, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and Medicaid, among other benefits. Not to mention black market income and underreported income (often for EITC reasons); yes it is worth referring back to consumption data which show that the poor do quite a bit better than income data alone would indicate. That said, a very good case can be made that we overinvest in fighting the poverty of the elderly and underinvest in fighting the poverty of children.

The bottom line: Be very suspicious when you hear talk about the poverty rate. The real question, as stressed by James Heckman, is what rate of return we can hope to achieve from feasible interventions in favor of poor, young children. That's a much harder question to argue. Heckman of course finds a high rate of return, so I suspect the key question centers around what is "feasible" given the imperfections of politics. It's worth noting that many federal anti-poverty programs have in fact failed, or so changed that we don't even call them anti-poverty programs any more. At the end of the day that calls for "better action" rather than inaction, but softening people up with overly pessimistic and uncritically presented numbers will probably make a good program less rather than more likely.

So, at the end of the day, or more like the beginning in my case, I've found two more interesting blogs. Lane Kenworthy's blog, who I believe could easily fit into my cocoon of thought, and Marginal Revolution, who presents the other side. I do grow tired of reading and listening to things that agree too much with my own point of view, sometimes. I have to remind myself that reading a variety of viewpoints and keeping an open mind is so important to the creative process.

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Hook Line and Sinker

Forty years ago, Robert F. Kennedy, off the cuff, delivered the sad news to a large crowd of African Americans in Indianapolis who had gathered for a campaign event that Martin Luther King had been shot and killed. In an effort to offer comfort, he chose the following words of his favorite poet, Aeschylus,

Even in our sleep pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom, through the awful grace of God. - Aeschylus

Susan Jacoby, author of the new book, The Age of American Unreason, believes Robert F. Kennedy's eloquent speech that day would not take place in today's political and cultural climate. Kennedy's assumption that the audience would connect with a Greek poet from 500 BC, she says”, speaks volumes about the elevation of public expression and regard for intellectualism in that period not so long ago."

Today, Ms. Jacoby says, fear of being branded an elitist in conjunction with a fear of complexity, nuance, and sophisticated knowledge due to America's reluctance to embrace intellectualism, preferring instead to passively absorb our current media culture of 24/7 infotainment, has "dumbed down" the level of public discourse in American society. She says, "We are content to live in this "dumbed down" culture feeding on and fed by an ignorant popular culture with no room for reflection, reason, or rationality."

The Bush Administration is a result and a reflection of our content-to-be-ignorant culture and society. We, the people, wanted a president we could have a beer with at the local tap room; rather than one who might know a thing or two, or even more importantly, care to know about a thing or two.

President Bush is not one of us; rather his image was transformed so that he appears to be one of us. The American people, knowing George W. Bush was born in New Haven Connecticut, was head cheerleader at Andover Prep School, attended Yale and Harvard, and used his family connections to avoid Vietnam, swallowed the image of the "macho cowboy" hook, line and sinker. The old "wolf in sheep's clothing" trick, worked like a charm. President Bush was able to carry out his agenda of not only empowering the current elite; in addition, he was able to create an entire new class of elite, simultaneously sending our young men and women off to war under false pretense. He was able to do this by condemning those who really do want to preserve democracy and who take the time think for themselves as elitist.

One presidential candidate was a hockey player; the other was a cheerleader. One is a combat veteran from a war he tried to stop; the other avoided combat in that same war while being a vigorous cheerleader for it. Yet it is the cheerleader who is seen by many as the “real man.” A remarkably similar gender change was performed on Marlboro cigarettes a half century ago; the same marketing techniques have fooled millions of Americans about their president. - Robert S. McElvaine

It's not a question of intelligence, American people are every bit as intelligent as they were in previous generations, it's more a matter of intellectual laziness. Human beings are wired to take the easy way out if possible - I know I am anyway - and it's much easier to plug ourselves in and be entertained than it is to educate ourselves about what is going on in the world around us.

Unfortunately, absence of critical thinking has severe consequences as history has proven repeatedly. The combination of our apathy, magical thinking, distraction, and choosing not to remember the past, we have become blinded to the danger signs flashing all around us.

This is the information age...it's never been easier to get information, yet it seems people are more ignorant than ever, however; this is changing and hopefully will continue to change because we are beginning to personally experience the repercussions of our own values and apathetic attitude.

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