Hardly Rational

One would assume that individuals would endeavor to be rational and logical when making decisions, especially when the lives and fates of others lie in the balance. However, surprise surprise, this is not the case. Now you might be saying, "obviously Komma, this is nothing new, emotion tinges our decision making process!" and you would be right -- but there is more.

I am in the process of reading this article by Dan Simon and I just had to post. The idea is this: when making a decision humans do not (necessarily) follow the unidirectional flow of logical processes, from premises to conclusions etc; instead the process is *bidirectional* "premises and facts both determine conclusions and are affected by them in return".

Lets look at an example. In one experiment individuals were presented with 12 vignettes and a statement or two that could be inferred with the vignette. After reading the vignettes, the participants were asked to rate how well they agree with the 12 inferences.

Next, the participants were asked to play the role of a judge in a court case. They were then presented with 12 arguments, 6 from the prosecution and 6 from the defense -- the rub is, the vignettes and the arguments were _virtually_ identical. The facts of the case are complex, and strong arguments could be made for both the prosecution and the defense. After deciding a verdict, the participants were asked to rate how well they agreed with the arguments from each side.

Now logically, you would expect that the individuals would rate the arguments the same way they rated the vignettes -- however they didn't! There was a statistically significant difference in how a participant rated the same vignette/story from before/after the decision making process! For instance, if a participant judged for the prosecution, then the arguments for the prosecution would be rated higher than arguments for the defense, even though both vignettes would be rated about the same before hand.

Even more fun -- when participants were asked to recall their original ratings they incorrectly recalled ratings that matched their post-decision ratings. In all cases, deciding for the prosecution or the defense, the participants were highly confident of their decisions.

To make a long story short, Simon argues that for decision to be made "effectively and comfortably", individual must possess a "coherent" mental model -- one which there is strong support for the decision and weak support for the opposite decision. And when this isn't in the case, us humans go about and make it so :).

Now this paper is focused on legal decision making, but its clear to me that these types of effects seem to appear in all areas of society. I've always wondered why nearly every issue quickly becomes polarized (democrats vs. republicans, pro vs. anti abortion, pro vs. anti war; etc) and perhaps a coherence based theory of decision making can account for some of this tendency. As we make decisions, we start reducing our belief in the opposite's arguments, naturally leading us to a polarized state.

I don't know how to stop this, although Simon claims to have some ideas in mind for rectifying this situation in the context of juries, and perhaps we can't. Maybe we will just have to survive with a polarized society.

Check out this extremely interesting article on religion and it's impact on the economy:

Satan, the great motivator

Here is a tidbit that should interest everyone:

"... Their results show a strong correlation between economic growth and certain shifts in beliefs, though only in developing countries. Most strikingly, if belief in hell jumps up sharply while actual church attendance stays flat, it correlates with economic growth. Belief in heaven also has a similar effect, though less pronounced. Mere belief in God has no effect one way or the other. Meanwhile, if church attendance actually rises, it slows growth in developing economies."

If that doesn't motivate you to read the entire article, i don't know what will!

Mental vs. Physical pain.

I often hear the idealogy (and I am paraphrasing) : “People should be free to do whatever they want, as long as it doesn’t hurt an innocent third party” .

I really like this idealogy, and I feel it is the correct ideaology to have -- deep down this rings true in my soul. However, as a practical man, and a man who thinks about how to implement this in a government, I sometimes ask very pressing, even annoying questions about what this means. We cannot build a government on what we “feel” is right, but rather must have a logical and rational basis for our beliefs.

To this end, I’d like to discuss the concept of “hurt”. What does it actually mean? “To hurt” is defined as “1) cause physical pain or injury to; 2) cause mental pain or distress to; 2) feel mental pain or distress; 4) be detrimental to” accodeing to the dictionary on my Macbook.
We can see two key things in the definition of hurt, physical and mental pain or distress. Let’s focus on these two.

In physical pain or injury, there is some impediment that causes an inability to act in a manner that one sees fit. If someone breaks my leg, it means that I cannot walk or run, even if I want to. for instance. To a large extent we are very familiar with what physical pain and injury means.

However, the same is not true for mental pain or distress. Suppose I tell someone that they are ugly, we can kind of intuit that this causes mental pain or distress. However it is much more complicated because we don’t actually see the effect on the person directly, but must see it through their actions and behaviors.

Now, whenever I discuss the idealogy above, I am always flummoxed by why physical pain is almost always the only definition of hurt that is considered. Oftentimes, mental pain is said to be something that can be “just gotten over”. But I think if we take a deeper look things are not as clear.

First, who says that mental pain can be just gotten over? If so, the area of psychology would not exist, and people would be able to get over experiences from their childhood easily -- but clearly not. Painful incidences and memories permeate the present and influence behavior -- and some, people, if not all, cannot control how these past incidents influence and bias their current decision making.

Secondly, if we look at the biology of the brain, aren’t memories stored in neurons? Thus memories change the physical nature of the brain by causing certain neurons to fire etc. Now if someone sets your neurons in a particular way which causes you to not be able to do what you want, then isn’t that a physical hurt akin to a breaking of the leg? Perhaps we cannot set the neurons to certain values, but we can say stuff to the person and that could set the neurons.

As I said, I really like the idealogy stated above and I want this idealogy to become more prominent in the government. However to do so, we will have to ask the hard questions and not rely on just our intuition to tell us what is “hurt” and what isn’t -- as always, we should let rationality and logic be our light. And by we, I mean all those who believe in this idealogy and want to see it shine forth, of which I count myself one.

Interpreting the Second Amendment

My first post will be on an interesting linguistic interpretation issue that is having national reprecussions here in the U.S. This post will be summarizing issues with the second amendment that were brought up by Prof. Baron et. al. See the references below for more information.

The second amendment to the U.S. Constitution states:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

A modern English user will find the phrasing of this amendment quite clunky; in particular it seems like the phrase before the second comma (“A well regulated .... State,”) and after the comma (“, the right of the people... “) are two independent phrases that are just jammed together. For ease of discussion, let L1 refer to the first part and L2 refer to the second part.

Clearly the framers of the constitution were not English neophytes, thus this is not merely an “error” -- so what does it mean? We can view this at the grammatical and semantic level. From the grammatical point of view, L1 and L2 are grammatical independent. The question that mainly concerns us is whether the two phrases are semantically interdependent -- does the meaning of L1 affect the meaning of L2? There are two cases:

1) Semantically independent: L1 has no bearing on L2, it is merely “constitutional throat clearing” [Baron]. From this interpretation, we find that the 2nd amendment says that everyone should have the right to own a gun.
2) Semantically dependent: L1 impacts L2 in a if-then or cause-effect relationship. From this interpretation, it can be argued that the 2nd amendment only meant for state militia to have arms, and not everyone to have arms.

Clearly this grammatical difference has great import on national law! How do we decide which of these interpretations is correct? One way to do this is to try to understand the English of the founders. Prof. Baron does a great job of this in this article (from which most of this material is drawn).

To summarize some of his argument, English textbooks at the time discussed what is called the “absolute construction”, in which two phrases are grammatically independent and placed in a sentence. In particular he says:

“ In addition, grammarians from the 18th century down to the present affirm that the absolute construction invariable establishes a semantic dependence in a sentence.” [Baron]

I refer the reader to the post by Prof. Baron for more in depth examples.

The opposing argument, from an amicus brief filed by the opposing side, argues that L1 is merely providing context, but is not the *only* reason for protecting gun ownership. A great example from the brief is a passage in Article 3 of the Northwest Ordinance (written about the same time as the amendments):

“Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.“

Does this mean that schools should only be used for teaching religion, morality and knowledge?

Clearly, resolving this problem is not something that can be done easily. In this particular case, the Supreme Court viewed L1 as basically “constitutional throat clearing” [Baron] which does not affect the “meat” of the amendment.


It seems clear that the unambiguous interpretation of laws is, if not impossible, highly improbable. Readers add their own interpretations and biases, and we must recognize that and provide a means for the continual reinterpretation of historical documents.

As a side note, I think this case argues for the political need for research in liberal arts and sciences. When we interpret legal documents it is not just the words we must understand, but rather the context in which they were written. Language is a powerful tool, yet it is inherently a convention -- meaning of words and phrases are agreed upon by the users of language; and thus language can, and does, change as society changes. In order to understand a legal document, one must also understand the writers and the society they lived in.

And finally, take a look at the post by Prof. Baron for a much more in depth look at this issue: The Web of Language