Why Do We Vote? Making Choices
When we go into the voting booth, what are we doing? We are making a choice, usually between what we consider the lesser of two evils. Or perhaps we are enthusiastic about our choice. But how do we make that choice, how do we make decisions? The usual understanding is that we weigh the options, we consider the evidence and then we choose what we consider to be the best choice. Obviously, the "weight" each individual gives to certain evidence is very subjective. Some will give a lot of weight to character, other to speaking ability, others to empty promises. Opponents will attack a candidate on any one of these fronts in an effort to tilt the decision making process in their favor.
This view of decision making has pervaded our society, including science. Consider the debate over global warming. The evidence and even the data keep changing; e-mails that demonstrate fraud, sensors in the wrong places, and we add to that our subjective experience-do we think its getting colder or warmer-and we have a difficult time deciding which option is best. In fact, our subjective experience, if we let it have sway, would lead us astray more often than not. After all, our experience says that it is the sun that moves, not us, and from our perspective, the earth looks rather flat. As a civilization, we have developed better explanations for the movement of the sun and the geometry of the earth and while they fly in the face of our immediate experience, they work.
The fact is that our choices are the end of the decision making process, not its totality. When we choose an option, we are choosing an explanation. In a sense, we are not weighing evidence but are trying to explain it. Yes, it looks like the sun moves around the earth but that is not the best explanation for its movement. We may think the cookie monster takes larger and larger chunks out of the moon but that is not the best explanation for the phases of the moon. We could try to justify our cookie monster theory buy we would be trying to justify our evidence, not explain it through the process of conjecture and criticism. Good explanations, like a great musical composition or mathematical formula, are very difficult to vary without destroying their viability.
Once a good explanation has been discovered, it cannot be watered down or compromised with bad ones. It would make no sense to say the cookie monster is responsible for the waning of the moon but not its waxing. One cannot construct a building with reinforced concrete holding up the second floor and relying on fairies to hold up the first. This is just as true in politics as it is in science. Everyone talks about the need for compromise which is merely mixing in bad explanations with good ones. Or of continuing bad explanations and their associated policies because we can’t simply stop the bad and embrace the good. This makes no sense, it is irrational. Why would one continue to drink poison knowing it is poison and knowing that it will kill you? Yet we do it every day in our government. We know that our fiscal policy leads to destruction, it is no different than Europe’s. Yet while we see the results before our very eyes we continue to raise the debt ceiling and spend and print more money. It is irrational to think our end will be any different if we follow the same path.
But our politicians are rather deft at convincing us the irrational is rational. Rationality, backed up by our experience, informs us that we cannot continually spend more than we take in yet the politicians convince us we can. Rationality, backed by human nature and experience tells us that if you remove the incentive for being productive by taking their money and flushing it down the toilet of the government bureaucracy, the productive will become less so. Rationality tells us that the more of something there is, the less valuable it will be yet the Federal Reserve continues to print billions and billions of fiat dollars.
How can this continue? It continues because after several generations of Americans having gone through government school systems, many have lost the ability to think logically. Explanations are no longer based on logic and arrived at through conjecture and criticism. Today, many of our most important explanations are based on politics. Explanations are arrived at through government funding, selective data and sometimes, outright lies. Global warming is just one example. The assumption that is is necessary and moral to steal from one individual to give housing, food or health care to someone else is another. They have elevated irrational notions of fairness and equality of outcome above justice and equality under the law. They lie about our economic condition. Its the equivalent of the politicians telling us that the waning moon is caused by the cookie monster. Yet too many Americans fall for it.
We have allowed our politicians to convince us that the options they give us are all there is and they exist independently of facts, evidence and explanations. That is why our choices in the ballot box appear so drab. They both operate under the same assumption, that government exists to rule over you. Once a government program exists, even if it is an abject failure, it will never go away. There will be attempts to "fix" it but it never occurs to the politicians and bureaucrats that the government solution itself is a bad explanation, something government should not be involved in. That is because the more areas government is involved in, the more power they accumulate and once power is co-opted, it is never relinquished. That is why whether the Democrats or Republicans are in power, government grows more, spends more and takes more. The politicians of both parties will tell you anything, lying is endemic, but things will never change. The Republicans are supposed to be the party of small government and have stated they would eliminate, for example, the Department of Education, since the Reagan years. Yet the Department of Education grew even when Republicans had complete control in the Bush years. The Democrats say they are for the working guy but every anti business policy they enact shrinks the middle class and grows the ranks of the poor. All the while money and power flow to them to be distributed among themselves and their friends.
So what will you do with your vote? Will you continue to play the irrational game the politicians of the two parties have set up, limiting yourself to the irrational options they give you? Will you breathe a deep sigh of frustration as you check the boxes knowing that by selecting either a Democrat or a Republican you will have chosen to continue on the current path, resigning yourself to the continued loss of your money and freedom? Will you choose to add ever heavier chains to your growing bondage? Or will you break free of the lie of false choices thrust upon you by the powers that be and cast your vote for liberty, for reasserting your God-given rights, for breaking the cycle of theft and destruction? Such a vote is never wasted, every one is a cry for freedom and no such exclamation is ever for naught. Every stand against tyranny, every movement toward freedom, began with one man or one woman standing against the tide, against seemingly insurmountable odds, against entrenched powers, inspiring others to do the same, showing that anything is possible. So who are you?
This view of decision making has pervaded our society, including science. Consider the debate over global warming. The evidence and even the data keep changing; e-mails that demonstrate fraud, sensors in the wrong places, and we add to that our subjective experience-do we think its getting colder or warmer-and we have a difficult time deciding which option is best. In fact, our subjective experience, if we let it have sway, would lead us astray more often than not. After all, our experience says that it is the sun that moves, not us, and from our perspective, the earth looks rather flat. As a civilization, we have developed better explanations for the movement of the sun and the geometry of the earth and while they fly in the face of our immediate experience, they work.
The fact is that our choices are the end of the decision making process, not its totality. When we choose an option, we are choosing an explanation. In a sense, we are not weighing evidence but are trying to explain it. Yes, it looks like the sun moves around the earth but that is not the best explanation for its movement. We may think the cookie monster takes larger and larger chunks out of the moon but that is not the best explanation for the phases of the moon. We could try to justify our cookie monster theory buy we would be trying to justify our evidence, not explain it through the process of conjecture and criticism. Good explanations, like a great musical composition or mathematical formula, are very difficult to vary without destroying their viability.
Once a good explanation has been discovered, it cannot be watered down or compromised with bad ones. It would make no sense to say the cookie monster is responsible for the waning of the moon but not its waxing. One cannot construct a building with reinforced concrete holding up the second floor and relying on fairies to hold up the first. This is just as true in politics as it is in science. Everyone talks about the need for compromise which is merely mixing in bad explanations with good ones. Or of continuing bad explanations and their associated policies because we can’t simply stop the bad and embrace the good. This makes no sense, it is irrational. Why would one continue to drink poison knowing it is poison and knowing that it will kill you? Yet we do it every day in our government. We know that our fiscal policy leads to destruction, it is no different than Europe’s. Yet while we see the results before our very eyes we continue to raise the debt ceiling and spend and print more money. It is irrational to think our end will be any different if we follow the same path.
But our politicians are rather deft at convincing us the irrational is rational. Rationality, backed up by our experience, informs us that we cannot continually spend more than we take in yet the politicians convince us we can. Rationality, backed by human nature and experience tells us that if you remove the incentive for being productive by taking their money and flushing it down the toilet of the government bureaucracy, the productive will become less so. Rationality tells us that the more of something there is, the less valuable it will be yet the Federal Reserve continues to print billions and billions of fiat dollars.
How can this continue? It continues because after several generations of Americans having gone through government school systems, many have lost the ability to think logically. Explanations are no longer based on logic and arrived at through conjecture and criticism. Today, many of our most important explanations are based on politics. Explanations are arrived at through government funding, selective data and sometimes, outright lies. Global warming is just one example. The assumption that is is necessary and moral to steal from one individual to give housing, food or health care to someone else is another. They have elevated irrational notions of fairness and equality of outcome above justice and equality under the law. They lie about our economic condition. Its the equivalent of the politicians telling us that the waning moon is caused by the cookie monster. Yet too many Americans fall for it.
We have allowed our politicians to convince us that the options they give us are all there is and they exist independently of facts, evidence and explanations. That is why our choices in the ballot box appear so drab. They both operate under the same assumption, that government exists to rule over you. Once a government program exists, even if it is an abject failure, it will never go away. There will be attempts to "fix" it but it never occurs to the politicians and bureaucrats that the government solution itself is a bad explanation, something government should not be involved in. That is because the more areas government is involved in, the more power they accumulate and once power is co-opted, it is never relinquished. That is why whether the Democrats or Republicans are in power, government grows more, spends more and takes more. The politicians of both parties will tell you anything, lying is endemic, but things will never change. The Republicans are supposed to be the party of small government and have stated they would eliminate, for example, the Department of Education, since the Reagan years. Yet the Department of Education grew even when Republicans had complete control in the Bush years. The Democrats say they are for the working guy but every anti business policy they enact shrinks the middle class and grows the ranks of the poor. All the while money and power flow to them to be distributed among themselves and their friends.
So what will you do with your vote? Will you continue to play the irrational game the politicians of the two parties have set up, limiting yourself to the irrational options they give you? Will you breathe a deep sigh of frustration as you check the boxes knowing that by selecting either a Democrat or a Republican you will have chosen to continue on the current path, resigning yourself to the continued loss of your money and freedom? Will you choose to add ever heavier chains to your growing bondage? Or will you break free of the lie of false choices thrust upon you by the powers that be and cast your vote for liberty, for reasserting your God-given rights, for breaking the cycle of theft and destruction? Such a vote is never wasted, every one is a cry for freedom and no such exclamation is ever for naught. Every stand against tyranny, every movement toward freedom, began with one man or one woman standing against the tide, against seemingly insurmountable odds, against entrenched powers, inspiring others to do the same, showing that anything is possible. So who are you?
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