The News, Ethics and Politics: Our Futures And Their Power

Eliminate politics. It is a bad venture. It has been for thousands of years, and it will be for thousands of years to come---if we don't cure it like the disease that it is. Lets face it even the brightest of us don't understand everything, and no one truly knows even a good portion of economics, social science and world diplomacy. Each of those requires extensive, almost infinite, information about equations, human nature in groups and as individuals and about thousands of cultures. There is literally no way to know it. However, in our modern political scene, we pretend like we do. We act certain. We feel certain. We are deceiving ourselves.

Since when have you opened up an advanced text book to realize you know everything in it---even when you've been in that field for years? Any professional knows that there is literally more information in an given, single, professional field than any one hundred trained professional's can assimilate, let alone one person.  And, there our thousands of professional fields and specialities that are required to run the government for even a day. And each of those have hundreds or thousands of people diving up the understanding and responsibility of those areas. 

Yet, when we vote, we think we can decide whether or not someone had done the right or wrong thing in there field. We pretend that we know what philosophy is best for running our  nation's finances, whether it is better to lighten taxes or increase them, whether to drill or not to drill, whether to attack or not to attack. We are wrong. These are not simple problems that can be solved with a civilian's mind, or even a brilliant professional's mind. Each of those problem requires infinitely complex mathematical,  behavioral, economic and cultural calculations that requires thousands of brilliant minds to understand and act upon.

However, this is what politics tells us: "You understand it all, and you know you can trust me, so vote me because you know I am right". Meanwhile, they're spoon feeding your only information. And, you take it up eagerly because believing is far better than feeling lost in the chaos of information you can't understand. Believing that Joe the Plumber or Sarah Palin can run a nation makes you feel more equipped to handle the world.

In reality, you are busy surviving, feeding your children and working your job, and you are just one person. You can't understand. the best that you can hope for is that you play a significant piece in the puzzle. The best way to play a piece in the puzzle is to vote people in who are qualified to make those decisions. In this world of constant psychological manipulation that is an impossible choice. There is no way to make the right decision. 

And, that is how we need to exercise our power in this democracy: we need to find a way so when we make a decision we can have a real, trustworthy reason to believe that it is correct, and not just deceptive certainty. 

We need to break it down. What do we want for our nation? We want to live healthy, happy and free. We want our nation's power to protect and promote these. We want crush corruption, and optimize our government so that it serves our desire for a health and happiness in the long and short term. We can do that by effective watch-dogs, and the best candidates. 

We must fix our watch-dog and find a way to choose our candidates that eliminates political manipulation, whether wielded through a news agency or a  politician. The way to do this is to make the News a different kind of profession, held to the same standards as a doctor or lawyer. A profession that is not for entertainment value, but that genuinely seeks to uncover corruption and bring truth to the public. News agencies need to become a new legal category, where the size and influence of the agency is limited by strict rules, and where the news agencies are held accountable by other news agencies and the public. Every story that is meant to report news on politics or world happenings should have reliable and valid resources,  recorded and verifiable.  If they don't there should be serious consequences, consequences that are independent of the government, but no less binding.

The other side of this is politicians themselves can manipulate, and subtle differences between the candidates can warp the vote in wrong way. For instance, you can predict elections based on how tall the candidate is. This preference for taller people could cause us to choose the wrong person. And there are many more ways that are both intentional or not intentional that we can be influenced to vote in the wrong direction. 

In order to snip our own self-defeating mental heuristics out of the process, we need to limit the kind of information that we receive. We should do this by law. The law must say that we never see our candidates.  The only criteria that can be known---and posted and easily accessible to the public must be: IQ, Education, Grades, Languages spoken, Experience, Financials and Other criteria set by a committees of the best professionals who deem these to be important in decision making and background experience.  Political affiliations of the candidates should never be mentioned.  Specially designed tests for candidates need to be taken and posted, as well, that gage leadership skills, charisma, and cultural and economic understanding.

The only way to fix a broken system is to redesign it. Our system is broken because we don't have the kind of understanding and control we think we do. We aren't actually making choices---we're being unconsciously told what to do. We're leashed. We're leashed to other's information, other's opinions and other's persuasive charisma. Beef up the watch-dogs and eliminate the political scene by eliminating the manipulation. Eliminate politics. 

Certainty and Sensation: Glenn Beck, Fox News and MSNBC.

Be sure. Read your books, e-mails and web pages; watch your Fox News, MSNBC and be sure. This is the subtle but brutally persuasive and destructive culture that we live in. We think we know. We are taught to grab onto something and be sure about it. I was watching Glenn Beck the other day, in a family members home, and I was struck by his smug face and general demeanor of certainty. But, not just his certainty: the entire audience looked and acted certain. Then it struck me that the words aren't the indoctrination. It's the certainty.

Most people have heard of classical and operant conditioning (If not, read the links below). Most people know that they can associate two things in their mind. However, what most people don't know is the profound and unconscious power that these principles play in their life. A clever person can use these to associate a behavioral disposition and feelings with a certain stimuli---say  colors, shapes or persons---and then cause that behavioral disposition and feeling almsot whenever they want.

Fox News, MSNBC and their ilk are do this very well. They stimulate dopamine with bright colors and high emotion to stimulate a feeling of certainty. There is a human principle called the availability heuristic. And, it is a mistake of the human brain, which sacrifices speed for accuracy, where what most quickly comes to the forefront of the mind is considered most certain. Emotion, bright colors and other things that stimulate salience---something that causes a person to notice it or feel it more keenly---places it into the human memory more firmly than other less vivid and visceral stimuli and therefore causes it to come into conscious awareness faster and brighter. It creates the feeling of certainty.

Fox News and MSNBC have created and associated this feeling with grammar, certain key words, certain color combinations,  certain intonations and anything else they please. They stimulate, grow and exacerbate the feeling of certainty to epic proportions and then associate it with their choice of political ideas, books, products and political candidates. They do all this without the audience ever know it's being done.

People like what Fox News and MSNBC want them to like; people get angry at what they want them to get angry at; and people do what they want them to do. All the while, the audience is sure that they are correct, when they are being led along like a well trained dog---believing whatever their master wants.

People like Glenn Beck and stations like Fox News and MSNBC are the master of these people. And, the behavioral principles are so powerful that they have reached inside the audiences very soul. And from there, they are shaping our nation by their clever marketing (brain washing). People are voting on spoon fed opinions and on carefully selected facts and taught to be sure about only one source---FOX or MSNBC.

Stop them. They are shaping our nation according to commercial and political interest. Not the interest of gullible nation that voted them in. They are making a sham of democracy by brilliantly wielding psychology. Stations like Fox News and MSNBC change the way voting is done and even the entire culture. We shouldn't limit free press, but we need to stop kind of wholesale manipulation of the people. Right now we have less choice than a person in China. Our restriction is just less obvious.

Politics isn't a normal institution. It wields the greatest nations. It shouldn't be treated like a normal institution or group. So, in order to stop the manipulation, we need to limit the amount of information candidates are allowed to announce. They shouldn't announce that they are running. There should be third party, highly watched, watchdog sites and sources that list the qualifications of the candidates, and keep their names private---like education, grades, experience (filtered), finances, Ratings of general charisma (for diplomatic reason), net worth (within a range), IQ and other cognitive test and any other useful and on point category 

We should eliminate dichotomous labels like democrat and republican and make it about actual qualifications and not cookie cutter categories. By doing this, we have eliminated the power of someone like Glenn beck or stations like Fox News and MSNBC. People are not voting on labels they are voting on actual qualifications without the colors and emotion.