RESEARCH ON WHETHER POWER CORRUPTS. I posted here on Lord Acton’s observation that: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men….” Jonah Lehrer had an article in the Wall Street Journal (August 14-15) and here at his blog, The Frontal Cortex, on psychological research which seems to support Lord Acton. He cites studies which show that entering college freshmen with the highest scores on agreeableness and extroversion wind up at the top of their social hierarchy and says that studies of the military, corporations and politics give similar results. Then Lehrer cites Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at Berkeley on what happens after power has been achieved: “Mr. Keltner compares the feeling of power to brain damage, noting that people with lots of authority tend to behave like neurological patients with a damaged orbito-frontal lobe, a brain area that’s crucial for empathy and decision-making.” It may be that one reason for the lack of empathy may be what is shown by Chekhov: servants are not seen. Lehrer says that people in positions of authority “spend much less time making eye contact, at least when a person without power is talking.”
Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
RESEARCH ON WHETHER POWER CORRUPTS.
Saturday, August 28th, 2010MARKETS AND THE LIMITATION OF POWER.
Saturday, August 14th, 2010MARKETS AND THE LIMITATION OF POWER. Kids, in the John Kay article that I linked to yesterday, he identifies three elements in the success of markets as compared to centralized systems: (1) allocation of resources through prices; (2) innovation; and (3) diffusing economic and political power. Kay says that points (2) and (3) are relatively neglected. I touched on (2) yesterday. With respect to (3), Kay says that market economies are better at disposing of failed ideas, pointing out that “Honest feedback is not welcome in large bureaucracies.” I will add three related points.First, two (or more) private bureaucracies give a choice. Imagine if you could go to a competing Department of Motor Vehicles (to use the standard example). Second, sometimes inefficient bureaucracies go out of business. Third, a private bureaucracy can be sued for damages.
CROWDSOURCING.
Thursday, August 12th, 2010CROWDSOURCING. The wikipedia article on Foldit says that it is a variant of “Crowdsourcing”, which is discussed in this wikipedia article. I posted here about James Suroweicki’s book THE WISDOM OF CROWDS, which is about another form of throwing a problem out to a large group of people. Surowiecki discusses how groups can under certain circumstances make better decisions than could any individual expert. Foldit is a little different because it seeks to collects ideas of individuals no matter what their backgrounds. What they have in common is the desire to obtain the benefits of the thinking of more people.
NONSCIENTISTS DOING BIOCHEMISTRY—THE VIDEO GAME.
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010NONSCIENTISTS DOING BIOCHEMISTRY—THE VIDEO GAME. This Economist article describes a videogame, with 57,000 registered users, in which players score points by finding chemically stable configurations for chains of protein molecules. The game is called “Foldit.” The science behind the game is described here. Some excerpts: “Every protein consists of a long chain of joined-together amino acids….. Every kind of protein folds up into a very specific shape….[The shape] specifies the function of the protein.” The game was designed by scientists to further research into proteins, and it has done so. People can do in some respects as well as the best best current algorithm. They are especially good at what the Economist characterizes as “problems requiring extensive remodeling.” The game has resulted in new strategies for future use. If you would like to play Foldit and possibly do valuable scientific research, the website is here.
SHAKESPEARE’S INVENTED WORDS.
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010SHAKESPEARE’S INVENTED WORDS. The discussion of Sarah Palin’s use of the new word “refudiate” led to this informative article by Professor Matthew Biberman about Shakespeare’s neoligisms. (link via realclearpolitics). (My position on the controversy is that I am in favor of new words). Professor Biberman makes the valuable statistical point that Shakespeare gets credit for coining a lot of new words simply because the creators of the Oxford English Dictionary, in creating its history of word usage, relied on Shakespeare’s works as an archive.
JOHN DICKINSON—A DISSENTING PATRIOT.
Sunday, July 4th, 2010JOHN DICKINSON—A DISSENTING PATRIOT. The musical 1776 achieves great drama while staying very close to the facts of the declaration of independence. John Dickinson is portrayed as the chief opponent of declaring independence. I have always been moved by the Dickinson character’s statement, after the declaration of independence is approved, that he will join the militia. I saw in the last couple days in the coverage of the impending holiday that Dickinson had done some of his service in the Revolutionary War as a private. This wikipedia article confirms this and also confirms that Dickinson opposed independence because he believed it was premature—a foreign alliance and articles of confederation should come first. Accepting and supporting a decision after being outvoted can be an important part of republican government (not always, of course), and Dickinson’s moment at the end of 1776 is an important one.
REORGANIZATON AS INACTION.
Saturday, July 3rd, 2010REORGANIZATION AS INACTION. Kids, I am not posting this article by Judge Posner because of his analysis of the financial reform bill. The bill is too long to understand. I am posting because of Judge Posner’s comments on administrative reorganizations: “Reorganization is a favorite response to a governmental failure because it is visible, easily explainable, and can be done without ruffling too many feathers among interest groups and bureaucrats. It also buys time, since no one expects such reshuffling to be effective immediately.” Judge Posner says that the reorganization of our intelligence agencies after 9/11, which gave rise to the Department of Homeland Security, was a similar political response, one that is now generally considered a failure.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WORLD CUP.
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WORLD CUP. The World Cup reminds me that I had never thought that apartheid would end in my lifetime. And it was done peacefully and wound up with a democratic government. I welcome the opportunity to join the celebration.
IN PRAISE OF VUVUZELAS.
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010IN PRAISE OF VUVUZELAS. As this New York Times article indicates, vuvuzelas are controversial. Vuvuzelas are plastic trumpets, some almost three feet long, that seem to be played by everybody in the stands at the World Cup in South Africa. They are very loud. Dick Weisfelder writes me to point out that he published an article in 2004 entitled: “Vuvuzela: Where Sport, Politics, and Development Intersect in South Africa.” In it he predicted that people should be prepared for the blast of vuvuzela horns in 2010, and that these horns would be celebrating democracy and freedom in South Africa.
SIMPLIFYING LEGISLATION.
Thursday, May 20th, 2010SIMPLIFYING LEGISLATION. Gillian Tett had an essay in the Financial Times on April 30 arguing against the 1300 page financial reform bill, which has over 300 pages dealing with derivatives. She made two arguments. First, the complexity means that “it is going to take most investors and bankers a very long time to work out exactly what has been turned into law.” The second argument was that “it will end up playing into the hands of the banks” because they have the resources to find and exploit loopholes in any bill that is passed. I would add a third argument, which applies to bills before they have become law. The more issues are addressed by proposed legislation, the more opportunities for banks and lobbyists to insert loopholes because there are more opportunities to make trade offs. And, of course, legislators and the public would have a better chance to think about and understand a series of short bills. (The health care bill provisions were interrelated because of Congressional fiscal rules. Although growing out of a common crisis, it seems to me that the financial reform issues can be considered separately.) Forty or so years ago, when I was in graduate school, we thought that “log-rolling” and complexity were useful in getting legislation passed. I’ve changed my mind.
