Episode 18 - Making Progress Better

Jeff and Darron continue to discuss ideas related to and inspired by last month’s Book Club episode, in which they discussed The Reality Bubble by Ziya Tong. Jeff presents his idea for a long term Beautiful Illusions book project, and they begin exploring the nature of progress. What is it? What’s wrong with the way we talk about it, and how might we improve our conversations about progress? They discuss the difficulties associated with notions such as defining a minimum level of comfort for 7+ billion humans, and the seemingly impossible task of presenting information in a way that speaks to people from varied and diverse backgrounds, beliefs, and cultures without shutting down necessary dialogue.

Notes:

• 2:12 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 17 - BI Book Club 1: The Reality Bubble from July 2021, where we discuss Ziya Tong’s 2019 book The Reality Bubble

• 4:07 - Published in 1739, book 3 of philosopher David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, “Of Morals”, articulates what has come to be known as the “is-ought problem” which arises when someone makes claims about what ought to be that are based solely on statements about what is. Hume found that there seems to be a significant difference between positive statements (about what is) and prescriptive normative statements (about what ought to be), and that it is not obvious how one can coherently move from descriptive statements to prescriptive ones. While Hume was dealing with moral philosophy, a related epistemological concept derived from Hume’s thought is the fact-value distinction, in which statements of fact based upon reason and physical observation, and which are examined via the empirical method, are separate from statements of value, which encompass ethics and aesthetics. This barrier between 'fact' and 'value' implies it is impossible to derive ethical claims from factual arguments, or to defend the former using the latter. 

• 5:44 - James Madison lays out his views on a large diverse republic in Federalist No. 10, see the Wikipedia entry as well

• 10:33 - See the great “Cognitive bias cheat sheet” and “What Can We Do About Our Bias?” by Buster Benson writing for Better Humans

• 12:49 - Listen to Season 2, Episode 18 of Conversations With Coleman: The Myth of Climate Apocalypse with Michael Shellenberger (YouTube), more on Coleman Hughes and Michael Shellenberger

• 13:27 - From the Season 2, Episode 22 show notes of Conversations With Coleman (YouTube): My second announcement today is about my interview with Michael Shellenberger from a few weeks back. It seems that Michael made some very misleading or outright false claims about the connection between climate change and extreme weather events. Specifically, he said that climate change did not contribute to the intensity of wildfires in California and Australia. It was a surprising claim to me at the time, but I didn't push back in the moment. Although in retrospect, I should have because it turns out this is not the consensus of the climate science community. Some of his other claims, including that we're not in a sixth mass extinction are at the very least far more controversial than he indicated. So to rectify this, I'm going to get a mainstream climate scientist on the show very soon, and cover all of these topics in detail.

• 13:34 - Factfulness by Hans Rosling

• 19:31 - See the social reality Wikipedia entry and “Why Chimpanzees Don’t Hold Elections: The Power of Social Reality” (Undark, 2021) excerpted from Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett

• 22:04 - In his 2018 book Stubborn Attachments economist Tyler Cowen argues that “[t]he lives of humans born decades from now might be difficult for us to imagine, or to treat as of equal worth to our own. But our own lives were once similarly distant from those taking their turn on Earth; the future, when it comes, will feel as real to those living in it as the present does to us. Economists should treat threats to future lives as just as morally reprehensible as present threats to our own.”

• 23:11 - See “The Brain Isn’t Supposed to Change This Much” (The Atlantic, 2021)

• 25:25 - Watch “Louis CK Everything Is Amazing And Nobody Is Happy” (YouTube)

• 27:53 - See “How much plastic actually gets recycled?” (Live Science, 2020), “Your Recycling Gets Recycled, Right? Maybe, or Maybe Not” (New York Times, 2018),and “Is This The End of Recycling?” (The Atlantic, 2019)

• 28:12 - See “Biden’s fake burger ban and the rising culture war over meat” (Vox, 2021), and “Eating meat has ‘dire’ consequences for the planet, says report” (National Geographic, 2019)

• 29:24 - In Factfulness, author Hans Rosling lays out 10 “dramatic instincts” that often lead us astray, the first three of which he refers to as “mega misconceptions.” The first of these is what he calls “The Gap Instinct” or the mega misconception that the world is divided into two, to paraphrase Rosling he says we have a tendency to “divide all kinds of things into two distinct and often conflicting groups with an imagined gap...in between...the gap instinct makes us imagine a division where there is just a smooth range, difference where there is convergence, and conflict where there is agreement...in most cases there is no clear separation of two groups...the majority is to be found in the middle, and it tells a very different story.” To combat this instinct Rosling suggests recognizing when a story is about a gap and realizing that reality is often not polarized at all, and furthermore to beware of extremes, that although the difference between extremes is dramatic, the majority is usually in the middle where the gap is supposed to be.” For more useful information on the gap instinct and the other 9 dramatic instincts, see Factfulness at Gapminder

• 31:02 - Straw man

• 31:50 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 06 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics from November 2020, and see Difficult Conversations by by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen

• 31:57 - Cognitive dissonance

• 32:04 - See “This Article Won’t Change Your Mind” (The Atlantic, 2017) - “People see evidence that disagrees with them as weaker, because ultimately, they’re asking themselves fundamentally different questions when evaluating that evidence, depending on whether they want to believe what it suggests or not, according to psychologist Tom Gilovich. “For desired conclusions,” he writes, “it is as if we ask ourselves ‘Can I believe this?’, but for unpalatable conclusions we ask, ‘Must I believe this?’” People come to some information seeking permission to believe, and to other information looking for escape routes.”

• 32:24 - In Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, Lisa Feldman Barrett states this explicitly with the half lesson that opens the book titled “Your Brain is Not For Thinking” which lays the foundation for the subsequent 7 lessons, - In a New York Times op-ed piece of the same title published in November 2020, after drawing a brief sketch of the evolution of the animal brain, she writes “This story of how brains evolved, while admittedly just a sketch, draws attention to a key insight about human beings that is too often overlooked. Your brain’s most important job isn’t thinking; it’s running the systems of your body to keep you alive and well. According to recent findings in neuroscience, even when your brain does produce conscious thoughts and feelings, they are more in service to the needs of managing your body than you realize...Your brain runs your body using something like a budget...This view of the brain has many implications for understanding human beings. So often, for example, we conceive of ourselves in mental terms, separate from the physical...In body-budgeting terms, however, this distinction between mental and physical is not meaningful...Your brain is not for thinking. Everything that it conjures, from thoughts to emotions to dreams, is in the service of body budgeting.”

• 34:18 - See Super Duper Food Trucks Catering, the spin off of Super Duper Weenie

• 42:28 - The Road by Cormac McCarthy

• 44:38 - As well meaning as we might be, it goes without saying that Jeff and I are hardly the first humans to engage in this kind of exercise, in fact, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948, as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It was drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, and was it set out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected, and is widely recognized as having inspired, and paved the way for, the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties applied today on a permanent basis at global and regional levels. The Declaration comprises 30 individual articles, the first of which states “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” and the 25th of which states “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” For the other 28 Articles see the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (United Nations)

• 46:20 - Farm Aid

• 46:22 - Live Aid

• 46:31 - Watch the benefit song “U.S.A. For Africa - We Are the World (Official Video)” (YouTube) and read the Wikipedia entry, Bob Dylan appears at 3:46

• 46:38 - See “We Already Grow Enough Food For 10 Billion People -- and Still Can't End Hunger” (Journal of Sustainable Agriculture, 2012) and “Can we feed the world and ensure no one goes hungry?” (United Nations, 2019)

• 50:28 - See “Building New Renewables Is Cheaper Than Burning Fossil Fuels” (Bloomberg Green, 2021), “Majority of New Renewables Undercut Cheapest Fossil Fuel on Cost” (International Renewable Energy Agency, 2021), and “Solar power got cheap. So why aren’t we using it more?” (Popular Science, 2021)

• 52:14 - See Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, “Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago” (Scientific American, 2015) and “How the oil industry made us doubt climate change” (BBC, 2020) 

• 53:30 - Former Vice President Al Gore released his climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth in 2006

• 55:22 - See “Why you think you’re right, even when you’re wrong” (TED Ideas, 2017)

• 58:18 - The Progress Network

• 1:00:24 - In his 1971 book Theory of Justice, philosopher John Rawls presents the thought experiment of the Veil of Ignorance, which allows us to test ideas for fairness when thinking about setting up a just society. For more see “The Fairness Principle: How the Veil of Ignorance Helps Test Fairness” (Farnam Street Blog) 

• 1:00:43 - See “The Ship Breakers” (The Atlantic, 2014), “Inside the Shady, Dangerous Business of Shipbreaking” (Atlas Obscura, 2016), watch “Where Ships Go to Die, Workers Risk Everything” (National Geographic YouTube Channel), and see the Wikipedia entry on ship breaking

• 1:02:35 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 12 - A New Enlightenment: The Age of Cognitivism from March 2021