Transcript for:
Critical Thinking in Political Analysis

All right, so let's get started here. So this first lecture in... book or class material.

Your book has a section on thinking rigorously. And I sort of title it, you know, bias and logical inconsistency in policy analysis. So we really don't think rigorously at all about politics.

So we're going to talk at length about this. Um, I, you know, your book has has a section on this, I've expounded on this, and I'm going to give you examples in this first lecture. We're going to go for about an hour and 15 minutes. But I want to go through some examples of really, I really want to point out why you think like a child in politics. And, you know, to be fair, if it's not your field, we all do.

Anyone who is not in the field of politics as an expert. The average person who is a writer or a doctor or a fireman or whatever they are in life, if you're not an expert in economics or in political science, you will probably demonstrate your incredible ignorance on issues. And I'm sorry to say this.

People's ignorance rather astonishes me when it comes to politics. but first we have to get some housekeeping out of the way. This, by the way, there are like 99 slides in this lecture. It'll take at least two, maybe three lectures to get through all of this material.

So because I've attached the founding in the U.S. and a quick overview of the U.S. Constitution also to this lecture. I should probably break this up into two lectures.

So please do not think... that every PowerPoint presentation is like this. This is the longest by far. The other lectures will go much quicker, but this lecture might take two or three videos.

Okay, so first some housekeeping out of the way. The word politics itself, it comes to us from Aristotle and Greek antiquity. It comes from the ancient Greek... Greek word polis. So polis was the highest political unit.

It was the city-state. So in Greek antiquity, we don't think of, colloquially, the word countries as they exist today. They did not exist in Greek antiquity. Really, the largest political units were the polis, right? So So, studying the polis, right, which is really studying of the highest political unit, which today is what we call the state.

I have to talk about how the United States has corrupted the word state. We'll get to that in a second. But the word polis means city-state.

And so, initially, it was the study of the city-state. Politics was the study of the affairs of the city-state, right? So, of course, today it means much more than that. And by the way, we see this word polis all the time, in other words.

What's the capital of Maryland? Annapolis, right? It's named after Queen Anne.

Annapolis means the polis of Anne. Annapolis, right? We see it in the word metropolis.

The Greek prefix meter means mother, polis means city. So a metropolis is a mother city. So we see this word a lot.

Acropolis, right? Acra means high. Polis means city. So an acropolis is a city usually fortified on a mountain. So we see this word polis all the time.

And scholars disagree on exactly what does politics mean. And I have here David Easton's rather broad definition of what politics is. Politics is the study of power.

and the authoritative allocation of values for a society. So you should understand this. Every word that you read means something.

Whenever you're studying a study, every word means something. So it's the study of power and the authoritative allocation of values. So in politics, we're allocating.

And for that matter, in economics we're allocating, right? Where, you know, one person gets this, another does not, right? We tax one person at one rate, another does not pay taxes at all, right?

And there's a value that as a society we've agreed upon and we allocate those values, right? So politics is about allocating. And I think this next slide sort of...

You know, sums it up. Just a disclaimer here, I do not own the copyright to this. In fact, if you can read who that is, they own the rights to this. So if you look at this cartoon, this famous political cartoon, a politician is talking to two men.

He says, I'd like your vote. And one of the men says, well, what do you have to offer? And the politician says. The power to take his money and give it to you. And the person is now thinking to himself, sold.

I'm for that, right? And as we'll see, this really exemplifies some of the problems of our democracy. We are taking from one and giving to another. Now, sometimes that's justified. Oftentimes it's not.

And therein lies a lot of the debates in politics over the allocation of these values. Okay, so I want to make a distinction here. It's really important to distinguish between political philosophy and political science. They are not the same thing.

So what makes a question philosophical? is when there's no clear answer, right? That's what philosophy is, right?

Because if there was a clear answer, that would be the realm of science, right? There would be empirical evidence to demonstrate that this is the right way to do something, right? So a philosophical question is different than science.

So philosophy and science are not the same thing. They sort of have a similar intuition, broadly speaking, that they're searching for the truth. But as we'll see, even scientists are not interested in finding the truth. Does that shock you? It should.

Because you've heard, oh science is searching for the truth. I promise you, many scientists are not searching for the truth. They're searching for funding. I'm sorry to say that much of science is actually based on what will get you funding and keep you employed. So if I do my job well in this course, I'll turn you all into a bunch of cynics.

But there's hope! There's hope! So we'll talk further on these matters. Okay.

But first in this lecture I'm going to be more of a cynic. So to separate political philosophy from political science, you have to know that political philosophy is essentially asking a question, and that question is, what is the greatest good? And then you try to come up with a political system that achieves that greatest good, right?

So to some, individual liberty is the greatest good. And so you come up with a political system very much like the one we're going to examine in this course to achieve that greatest good. To others... Fairness, so-called fairness, is the greatest good.

Those societies that have tried to put into practice a system of so-called fairness, such as socialism, have ended up with very repressive and authoritarian political regimes. They've not worked very well. And by the way, while we're on that topic, let me just say this.

I am not going... I don't want you to think like a child. I am very dead serious about this.

I don't want you thinking like a child. I want you to think with some sophistication. I am not going to pretend to you. that socialism is a viable alternative to market capitalism. I'm just not.

If Deng Xiaoping can figure that out, one of my heroes, if Vladimir Lenin in 1922 can figure out that Marxist ideas don't work, so too should American political observers. Let's just say, and I'm being kind there. So Bernie Sanders says he's a socialist. We'll get to him in a second. We'll get to him a little later actually.

But Bernie Sanders says he is a socialist. He is not a socialist. He's not even close. In order to be a socialist, you have to advocate for a certain idea, which is the foundation of socialism. Right?

And can you think of what that is? Right? I'll give you a minute here.

If you want to pause the video, think about what is the... What do you have to advocate in order to be a socialist? And there are no socialists in America, no true socialists, certainly not in politics or policymaking. Well, you have to advocate for government ownership of industry.

In order to be a socialist, you have to advocate that, with the idea that you're dispersing those profits that would otherwise have gone to the owners of that corporation to the people. Right? Nobody thinks that's a good idea. No, but Bernie Sanders is not a socialist. He is a left-leaning Democrat who believes that we should have large welfare spending and safety net programs to help the poor and things like that.

But that's not socialism. In order to be a socialist, you have to advocate that the government owns industry. Nobody thinks this is a good idea these days. There are true socialists in Europe, but there are no true socialists in the United States.

Because those ideas are deader than Judas Iscariot. If you know who Judas Iscariot is, just Google him if you don't know who that is. He's pretty dead.

So I just want to get that out there, that we throw this word socialism around. Republicans claim that Democrats are socialists. And that's just ridiculous. It's ridiculous. There are no socialists.

Bernie Sanders uses the word socialism to try to get you to like him, to try to get your vote, playing on your ignorance as to what exactly socialism is. So, and getting back to our point here, some who consider what the greatest good to be as being fairness, well, fairness is not an objective concept. What's fair to you might not be fair to me. We'll talk more about this. Individual liberty is more of an objective concept, right?

But of course there are gradations of that as well. So in some societies, Islam is the greatest good, right? So if you think that Islam is the greatest good, you might develop a governing system very similar to the Iranian.

Islamic Republic, right? Which is a fascistic theocracy, but with elements of meaningful democracy. Iran is a very interesting country to study.

So what is the greatest good is what we ask in political philosophy, and then we seek a political apparatus to achieve that greatest good. Now political science turns this on its head. It almost reverses the process.

Because in political science, we study the apparatus that exists, we research it, we examine it, scrutinize it empirically, and then draw conclusions about that apparatus. And what we're saying here is, look, in philosophy, you may say that you have one value, and then you try to have a political apparatus to achieve that good, but if it doesn't achieve that good, what then do you really value? And so in political science, we replace the philosophy with methodology and logic, and we examine the existing apparatus, the existing institutions, and then draw conclusions about what we actually do value.

Very interesting. So there's a big difference between political science and political philosophy. Philosophy is more normative, meaning you think about how the world should be. Political science... is studying the world how it is.

And both are extremely valuable, of course. Okay, so political science has several broad subfields. And, of course, this course is an introduction to American politics.

It's the most famous and most studied political science. science subfield in America, obviously. So that is POL 102, the course that you're in right now. There's also comparative politics, and comparative politics is confused. often with international relations.

Comparative politics is not international relations. Comparative politics is studying the domestic politics of foreign nations. And that is a truly fascinating subject. It's a lot of fun.

It is my favorite course to teach. POL 103, if you have an elective, you should take that course and take it with me because I teach it the traditional way. A lot of teachers today teach it a little different than the traditional way.

And I think that's, well, I don't think that that's the right way. Let's just put it that way. And then, of course, there's international relations. This is my expertise. Inter means what?

Between. Nations, right? Relations between nations.

So international relations is the study of the relations between nations. And let me just sort of go off on a tangent here, which I tend to do from time to time. If you look up the word nation in like Merriam-Webster's dictionary, by the way, if you're studying political science, you should not be using Merriam-Webster as a...

as a source, by the way. The Oxford Dictionary of Politics is much better because it's... Webster's uses nation and state as interchangeable, and this is not correct.

A nation is a cultural group, right? A nation is defined as those with a common history, language, religion, culture. That's a nation.

The Arabs are a nation. nation, right? Yankees fans, if you're a New York Yankees fan, you are part of Yankees nation, right? Because you have that cultural commonality of being a fan of the New York Yankees.

I know that sounds like a stretch here, but those of a common language or common history, common ancestry, those are people who are of a nation. The Arabs are not a state. They are a nation.

They are a nation. They are a nation. They are a nation.

They are multi-state nation, meaning that their group, just like the Kurds, are spread across many states. Now, what do we mean by states? Well, the United States has corrupted this word. If you are born in the United States, you think of immediately that a state is a sub-national level of politics, or sub-national.

level of government. This is not the case. A state means what you probably mean as what we call a country.

Now, a country is not exactly a state or a nation either. A country is actually a geographic term. Montana is a country.

I'm starting to confuse you all now, I'm sure. But a nation is a cultural group. A state is a physical legal entity.

The United States is a state. The United Kingdom is a state. is a state, right? The Republic of France is a state.

Oregon is not a state, right? Even though we call it a state, because in the United States, the United States started off as 13 separate countries, and we're going to talk about that history. And they united under one Constitution, and that's very much what this course is about. Okay, but you should know when we say the word state, it does not mean subnational. In international relations, it does not mean a subnational level of government, right?

Because in China, it's cantons, and that's the subnational unit. In France, they're provinces, right? So in Russia, they're called federal subjects.

So in the United States, we think of a state as a subnational unit. But the actual definition of the term state in international politics is that it is a physical legal actor with sovereignty, a population, territory. and sovereignty is really the big one.

It has its own power. It has all of its all the power within its own borders, right? So international relations is it's not called interstate relations. It's international relations. There are many groups at the international level, not just states, right?

There are many peoples at the international level that are not states. So when we talk about international relations, we're talking about the relations between nations, many different peoples. Now, a subfield of international relations is international security, and this is where all the money is in international relations. If you go on to study international relations, or even international studies, which is sort of the professional version of international relations, there's a lot of money in international security, in particular intelligence.

And there are many, many universities that have master's programs. You'll need at least your master's degree to go into international security, at least. But you'll make a lot of money right away out of your master's program, guaranteed.

Okay, there's also political economy. Oh, this is a fascinating field. So it's the study of...

Of... economic relations and how they affect politics, but it's also the study of political relations and how they affect economics, right? So how does politics affect economics and how does economics affect the political realm?

Excuse me. So that is a fascinating topic and in fact we're going to talk a bit about this topic throughout the course. In a little bit we're going to talk about certain economic policies that probably are not what you think they are.

In fact, we advocate policies that are specifically bad for the economy. You might say, well why would we advocate policies that are actually bad for the economy? Well, it goes back to Plato's problem with democracy.

And we'll talk more about this. So, you know, so political economy is a fascinating topic. We're going to actually talk a lot about how economics affects politics and how politics affects economics as we go through the course. And then there's political psychology.

Wow! This is such a great field. It's basically explaining political behavior. Not through economic models or studying history or anything like that.

It's explaining political behavior through the study of psychology. Explaining political behavior by explaining people's psychology. And we are actually going to talk about political psychology today. Several of the psychological mechanisms that make you think a certain way.

And you need to be aware of them so that you don't fall into the pitfalls. that these psychological mechanisms have when you're trying to analyze a problem. Now, Stony Brook University is the number one school on the planet for political psychology.

In fact, the Journal of Political Psychology is run out of our department. So it's a fascinating subject. You know, international security right now and American politics, that's where all the money is right now. Okay, so... let's move on.

So I sometimes see students have a little too much respect for their professors. And what do I mean by this? So I want you to know something. that you'll come to realize as you get older, but you might not realize it now.

You are right now just as intelligent as anyone with a PhD. You're just as intelligent as anyone. Don't have too much respect for your professors, for me, for anyone. And someone who's published a book, right? Don't have any respect for them.

And you might say, hey mom, guess what I learned in school today? Not to have any respect for anyone. Well, why am I telling you this? It's because when we read a certain author or we hear a speech from a politician, we tend to like what they say.

Right? And we seem to be convinced of their arguments, and we go along, and after a while, we begin to hero worship people. No one is worthy of your hero worship. Believe me. You want to worship someone?

Worship yourself. Because you are just as intelligent as any idiot with a PhD. There are, believe me, there are people who are so astonishingly dumb. who have PhDs. You know what?

I'm going to prove this to you. So, I guess, probably about four years ago now, I was at the NYU LSC, so it's New York University, London School of Economics. They have a joint conference, and let me tell you what we professors do at these conferences.

Well, at the conferences we present papers, and in the audience there's not, like, the average public. It's all professors in the audience, right? So how this works is scholars go up, they present their research, and they present their findings of their research, and then the other professors question them, right?

So someone from the University of Chicago went up at the NYU LSE conference and presented his research. And this person has a PhD from the University of Chicago. Which if you don't know is the equivalent of Harvard.

Okay, maybe even more respected than Harvard in many ways. So this guy has his PhD from from one of the best, if not the best, university in the country or the planet. Right, University of Chicago.

He presents his research and you know everybody's trying to do something new. So he presents his research and he shows these satellite maps. And on the maps, he makes the argument that the areas that are green on the maps are indicative of agriculture production, and the areas that are not green on the satellite maps are where agriculture production is not taking place. So he's using satellite maps and the amount of greenness within a country Uh, uh, as, as, he's using that as a measure of agriculture production. Now, just let that sink in.

Okay, can anyone tell me why this is so effing stupid? Think for a second. Yeah, okay. So, you're probably saying to yourself right now, well, uh, grass is green. Is that agriculture?

The tops of trees, tree tops are green. Is that agriculture production? A parking lot that's been overgrown with weeds, that's green.

Is that agriculture production? Right. So now, I'm saying to myself, he must know this, right?

Because he's got a PhD. So I raise my hand and I ask him the question. And I say, well, you know, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency uses spectrometry, which is the measure of the greenness, the sort of temperature of the greenness, and they use the spectra of the light reflected from that greenness to tell actually what each thing that is green is. In fact, if you ever watch any of those drug dealer movies, you know, when the cops are chasing after the drug dealers and... South America, they have camouflage over their pot plants.

Well, why do they do that? It's because the satellites can tell what's pot and what's tomato plants, right? So I'm saying to myself, this scholar with a PhD from the University of Chicago, he must know this, right? And I ask him, did you go to the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and get the data for the spectrometry?

in these particular regions that you're discussing in your paper? Because a lot of that stuff is classified, and I don't know how you would get it. And he gave me an answer that I still don't understand.

Like, I'm still trying to figure out what he said. In other words, he effed up. It was ridiculous. How this paper even got through the committee to be in the conference is astonishing to me. And— And you know what happened?

Because he's a respected scholar, I won't say who it is, but he's a respected scholar, and they didn't even bother to read his paper, and they just let it through. And he made an ass of himself. Unbelievable!

So if any of you said to yourself, well that's just, you know, using satellite photos to measure the greenness as agriculture production, if you were able to figure that out, you are way smarter than a person with a PhD. It's ridiculous. So, I don't want you to have respect for anyone.

No one on the news don't have respect for any politician. I promise you, politicians are trying to sell you. Their job is to make you like them.

And so you should be highly skeptical of anyone who you are starting to like as a politician. Their job is to make you like them. And we're going to talk much more about this. Alright, so I want you to be a critic.

I want you to trust in your own intelligence. Watch for mistakes in others. And watch for bias.

I call bias religion. Right? So it's easy to see bias in the views of someone who disagrees with you, right?

But it's very hard to see bias in someone who does agree with you. And that's the mark of an educated mind. The ability to criticize someone you agree with.

The ability to criticize someone you maybe admire. If you don't criticize them when they deserve that criticism, then you have what's called religion. You're willing to accept anything from that person, and have it not based on evidence.

Right? So watching out for bias, and again, what I call religion, in others and yourself, it is enormously difficult to do. Right? So I want you to be aware of this.

And we're going to go into logical inconsistency in a second, so you have to be aware of that too. There's so much to be aware of when you're analyzing politics. All right.

So enough said. Trust your own intelligence. Don't hero worship anyone.

Um, what's my next slide here? So, so, uh, okay. You know what? I'm just going to quickly go to, okay.

Just hang in there one second. All right, what am I looking for here? There you go. That's not what I'm looking for.

I am looking for... Is it this? Nope. Give me a second. Give me a second.

Here we go. Okay, this is what I'm looking for. All right, so... I take college Republicans to, I take them to what's, it's called CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Committee, the Conservative Political Action Conference. I've done this a number of years.

So you Republicans in the class, just bear with me, okay? So I take Republicans, we go down to D.C., and we see all the top conservatives in the country. They come together.

Democrats don't have anything like this, by the way, and they should. We'll talk about how Democrats are just incompetent, which is why they lose elections all the time. But we'll talk about them later.

But the point I'm getting to here is... I... It's bizarre how people come to worship leaders.

So Ronald Reagan is a good example. I promise you, you ask any of your parents, Mom, Dad, was Ronald Reagan a great president? they will say he was a great president.

And by the way, he was. He was a great man in many, many ways. We're going to talk about Ronald Reagan at great length when we talk about the president. the presidency and Congress's powers over there and checks against the presidency. So I came across this, and there are polls that ask who is the greatest president.

And Ronald Reagan tops these polls very, very often, right? Even above George Washington, even above Abraham. Man, if you think Ronald Reagan is a greater president than Abraham Lincoln, you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

right? But Ronald Reagan had a way with, he was able to convince people of things. He was, they called him the great communicator.

He really was an amazing president in many ways. By most metrics, he was a great president, especially in foreign policy. Amazing, right?

But Bill Clinton, by every metric, was a better president. Well, well, cigars and interns aside, right? Let's just leave cigars and interns aside.

interns separate from this conversation. We're just talking about policy, right? Because under Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton balanced the federal budget. Right? Reagan never did.

In fact, under Ronald Reagan, the United States went from a creditor nation to a debtor nation. Right? So, and when we talk about Ronald Reagan, right, he committed the worst abuse of executive power in our country's history. But he gets a free pass, right? Well...

Because he was kind of like this handsome, old, kindly gentleman who looks like he's going to give you milk and cookies and tuck you into bed, right? You know, so he was like this sweet old man that you look at as your grandpa. And he got away. He really should have been impeached because of his abuse of power.

And we're going to discuss this later. But the point that I'm getting at is people hero-worship him. People, there's nothing he did wrong. There's nothing he could do wrong. This is not policy analysis, right?

This is just accepting as religion, well, if Ronald Reagan did it, it must be good. Why? Because he was a great man.

This is a silly and childish way to analyze anything in politics, right? So, let's look at this demagogue, right? Oh, now you really aren't happy with me, right?

Because now you, you know, I called Bernie. Bernie Sanders needs to take at least one undergraduate course in economics. And then he might have something going. But either way, this guy is the worst demagogue next to this guy.

And I want you to understand this. Oh, well, you can't stand this guy, right? But this guy's no better.

I promise you. they are exactly the same. And I'm going to point this out later. What is a demagogue, right?

I pulled it up on Merriam-Webster. A demagogue is someone who appeals to your ignorance, to your bias, right? To your emotion, not to your logic, right? They don't make rational arguments. They appeal to your emotion.

They talk about morality. I promise you the intentions of a policy and the outcomes of those policies are very different, right? Even if they are actually the right intentions, which I have doubts about, okay? So this person, this person, and this person, right? They were the last three large candidates, three big candidates running for president.

Now, people beat up on Hillary so much. and especially when the WikiLeaks came out, right? So the WikiLeaks exposed some of her emails, and in her emails, she said that she is going to have a public policy face, but in private, she's going to govern very differently.

Why? Because she did not like the extremists within her own party. And so everyone hated Hillary when these emails came out.

Because they said, oh, she's two-faced, right? She has a public persona, but she's not going to, but she's going to be basically lying to the public, right? And she's going to talk one thing and do another.

And it said this in her emails. And here's the thing. If you understand politics, that would make you fall in love with Hillary Clinton.

It would make you, listen, I'm not, I have no dog in this fight, right? You know, they all suck and they're all good in some ways, okay? But Hillary Clinton understands you give red meat rhetoric to your political base, the extremists in your party. You just give them rhetoric. You give them lip service.

But then you govern like a moderate. And that's how you do it. But, you know, that's impure, right? So, you know, Hillary Clinton understood this very, very well. And so...

So we tend to demonize Hillary Clinton for this, right? But we should actually appreciate her for it. And she was demonized not by Republicans, but by Democrats for that. So I don't want you to be so devoted to any one politician because they don't deserve it. None of them deserve it, okay?

Be devoted to your own intelligence. I cannot stress this enough. And so...

I want you to look at this quote because I'm going to demonstrate this fact even further. John Stessinger is one of the great war scholars. I use his book in my POL 313 course, which I'm also giving online soon. And in his book, he wrote a great war studies book.

It's like an intro to war studies. It has a great number of case studies. His book is called Why Nations Go to War.

And John Stessinger was an aide and a policy advisor to JFK, to President Kennedy. He is one of the great scholars. in war studies in our country, right?

And he writes this in his famous book, Why Nations Go to War. It says, the Sunni majority in Iraq. Now he didn't mean, in case you think I'm taking this out of context, he did not mean the majority of Sunnis.

He was stating that the Sunnis are the majority in Iraq. Can anyone tell me what's wrong with this? Think for a second. I'll give you a moment.

It's factually incorrect. The Shia are the majority in Iraq. So if this great scholar, John Stessinger, can't get it right, what hope do you have?

What hope do I have? Right? And it's just a mistake.

And guess what? We're all human. We all make mistakes.

In fact, there's something wrong with you if you've not made a mistake. You should not be afraid of failure. Okay, so it's just a mistake. You have to watch for mistakes in everyone.

If you have too much respect for John Stessinger, you're sitting there reading his book, and you're saying, oh my gosh, the Sunni majority, the Sunni are the majority in Iraq? I always thought it was the Shia. He goes, oh, I must be wrong.

No, you're not wrong. John Stessinger is wrong. John Stessinger is wrong.

So, by the way, I wrote to the publisher several times, and they finally fixed this in the last edition. It's just a mistake. People make mistakes. So, everyone makes mistakes. Please don't hero-worship any scholar or philosopher.

They all make mistakes. You're just as intelligent. Use your own intellect to scrutinize and criticize.

Be a critic. Watch for mistakes. So, I want to introduce and talk about some of the psychological processes that really make you a bit of an idiot when it comes to policy analysis. analysis and politics. So if you've studied psychology before, you've heard of this phrase, cognitive dissonance.

So the mind does a number of things. automatically, right? Without us thinking about it, where it's completely unconscious.

It's not subconscious, it's unconscious, right? Subconscious means that you just don't remember it, like part of your subconscious is your, you know, remembering a phone number. This is part of your unconscious. You're not even aware that you do it, okay? It's called cognitive dissonance.

And the mind is, as I said, always looking to do certain things. It's constantly... seeking patterns, right? Your mind is always looking for patterns and sometimes finds them when they're not even there, right? But the mind also is constantly trying to resolve conflict.

So your mind is always trying to resolve conflict. What I mean by this is when you have two conflicting beliefs or two conflicting pieces. pieces of information. The mind wants to resolve the conflict between the two.

Just our definition of cognitive dissonance, it refers to the mind's desire to resolve the discord between two conflicting beliefs. And generally speaking, the mind resolves this conflict on the side of a belief that you have already had. So it resolves the conflict on the side of something you already believe.

Your mind is very unwill... willing to change its mind. When it comes to politics, we shouldn't be making up our minds at 13 years old and then spend the rest of our lives defending that decision.

That's not what a good liberal does. You should be open to new ideas. But we are automatically not open to new ideas.

We are automatically closed-minded. We like to resolve the discord between two conflicting beliefs on the side of our pre-existing beliefs. And this works very powerfully to perpetuate the bias that you already have.

It actually makes it more powerful. It exacerbates it. So Aesop's Fables, famous fables.

Aesop was a philosopher and a writer in the fourth century. And he has this famous story that's used to illustrate how the mind is always trying to resolve discord. So it's the story of the fox and the grapes.

And it's where the famous term sour grapes comes from. So there's this fox. And the fox is... walking through the forest and he stumbles upon these beautiful hanging grapes. He sees these grapes hanging from a tree and just picture like a Welch's commercial.

The sunlight is shimmering on them. It's covered with dew. They look delicious. It looks like something out of a dream.

And the fox looks up at them and he starts licking his lips. He's like, wow, those grapes look so good. But then the fox looks around. And he realizes. He has no way of getting up to where those grapes are because they're so high up.

And now there's a discord. There's a conflict now in the mind. And the mind wants to resolve it.

And what does the fox say as he walks away? He says, ah, you know what, those grapes are sour anyway. There is no evidence to indicate in any way that those grapes are sour.

In fact, it's the opposite. They look beautiful. But what's the mind doing?

The mind is saying, there, there, you'll be okay. Don't worry, you don't need those stupid grapes, right? The mind is always trying to comfort you.

Don't worry, you were right the whole time, right? And it dismisses any evidence to the contrary that you're not right. So, you know, I have another probably better example of this, and this is like religion. So, there are parts of the American political spectrum that... believe that if you are a Democrat, you're a socialist.

I have up here neo-socialists, because we really don't have any socialists in the United States at all. I'll explain more about this later. But there's a belief among some... in our political spectrum that Democrats, they're big spending socialists, right?

They run up big deficits, tax and spend, tax and spend. You know, they don't know how to manage the economy. They're a bunch of idiots when it comes to that. You know, Democrats suck, essentially. But then you're faced with a fact.

President Clinton, a Democrat, I probably should put a big D after President Clinton there. President Clinton, a Democrat, balanced the federal budget. In fact, he did it four times.

So, if you have a belief, oh, well, Democrats suck. They don't do anything good. Oh!

President Clinton, you have a fact that you're presented with. President Clinton, a Democrat, did something good. President Clinton balanced the federal budget. He's the last president to do it. So your mind now has a conflict, and you need to resolve that conflict.

And as I said, you usually resolve it on the side of your pre-existing beliefs. So what do you say? You say, the mind reconciles this by saying, well, the numbers are off. Anyone can lie with statistics.

You know what? It wasn't even President Clinton. It was the Republican Congress, right? Any excuse to not give credit to President Clinton. Because if you're a right-wing Republican and you think Democrats suck, you have to believe that.

Otherwise, your pre-existing beliefs now are challenged. But when you allow yourself to be challenged, you start to grow intellectually. This is enormously important. You have to be aware of your own cognitive dissonance. You have to be aware of your own bias.

President Clinton by almost every metric was a great president. The last to balance the federal budget. Can you give him a little bit of credit?

A little? Nope! Nope! Democrats suck!

You know these people. You have conversations. with people all the time. Many people won't give President Clinton a fair shake, not because he wasn't a good president, but because he's a Democrat.

And by the way, I'm not being partisan here. President Trump is treated awful. You know, I mean, he acts like a bit of a jackass and he, you know, deserves a lot of it. But a lot of it he does not deserve. He is, you know, I'm not being partisan here.

President Clinton was a great president by most metrics, cigars and interns aside. Right. And you can't find a Republican in politics to give him any credit.

And I'll I'll I'll you will find some presidents. I'm sorry, you will find some Republicans who do give him credit, but they are policy analysts. They're not in politics. So there's a difference between policy and politics.

Politics is Yankees'Red Sox. The other side can't do anything right. Screw them. They're the worst.

Policy is when you are empirically studying how to solve the problems. right? So if you're a policy analyst for Republicans, right, and you see that President Clinton balanced the federal budget, well, if you're working in a think tank, say like the think tank, like the Council on Foreign Relations, if you're a Republican and a conservative, you look at President Clinton and you say, oh, wow, what a good job President Clinton did. In other words, a Republican, when it comes to policy analysis in think tanks, they'll give credit, a researcher will give credit to President Clinton, who's a Republican. And by the way, I've seen many Democrats praise Ronald Reagan as a great president.

But those are policy analysts. We're talking about politics here. You're not a policy analyst. I want you to be. I want you to analyze politics more.

I want you to analyze policy. I don't want you to be a political hack and if you're a Republican all Democrats suck, or if you're a Democrat all Republicans suck. That's a child.

That's not policy analysis, right? Okay, so I want you to think a little more rigorously about this stuff. Now, related to cognitive dissonance, it's actually a component of cognitive dissonance, is something called cognitive disequilibrium. So this refers to the mind's desire. So So, this is where your conspiracy theories come from.

Why do you believe conspiracy theories? Right? Some of you out there do.

A lot. Right? There are people who think that professional wrestling is real and the moon landing is fake.

And they're usually the same people. Right? How can people think this way? Well, there's a component of our psychology that drives us to believe in conspiracy theories. In fact, so cognitive disequilibrium is actually, this part of your psychology is exploited by our own 16 intelligence agencies to recruit agents for their intelligence agencies to get information.

Cognitive disequilibrium is a very dangerous component of your psychology. Okay, so what happens is you see an event. and it's a very impactful event. And then you're told the cause of that event.

And in your head, the cause does not seem to rise to the level of the effect, of the event, right? So we'll just read our definition here. Cognitive disequilibrium refers to the mind's desire to resolve the seeming incongruity between a cause and an effect.

And just a perfect example of this is 9-11, right? I want you to think about 9-11. 9-11, more impactful in many ways than even the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In fact, 9-11 killed more people, right? So 9-11, this hugely destabilizing, impactful event in world history, affects the lives of...

billions, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia are burning down now because of this event, right? We're at war with multiple groups. The lives of billions have been disrupted. Syria, Yemen, Libya, all falling apart. Egypt almost fell apart.

All of these catastrophes around the world affecting the lives of billions. All of that caused by what? Nine idiots with box cutters.

Right? Nine morons who never accomplished anything else in their life and were watching porn the night before. Good Muslims. Right? True story.

Well, it couldn't have been those nine idiots with box cutters. It had to have been, hmm, yeah, I'll bet the Jews were in on it. Yeah, that's what happened.

And you know what? I'll bet that the Jews tried to get the Bush administration and Halliburton to try to wage war against Islam so that they could steal all the oil from the Middle East for themselves. Right?

And you're an idiot. You're a complete idiot. In fact... Rosie O'Donnell, if any of you know who that is, was actually saying on her show on ABC, a show called The View, that it would be the first time in history that metal was melted by fire. Just let that marinate for a second.

Because how do you think I-beams are made? It's just unbelievable, right? People are willing to believe anything when they have this seeming incongruity between a cause and an effect. They want to elevate it to conspiracy of the Jews to get the US government to...

And you're crazy! You're a crazy person! right?

Think about JFK. Who shot JFK? Lee Harvey Oswald. No, it wasn't. It couldn't have been Lee Harvey Oswald.

It was probably the mob. Yeah, that's who it was. And it was Castro and the Russians. Yeah.

And they were trying to, the mob was worried about Marilyn Monroe's affair with JFK and they had to have him killed. And it was probably the Jews and Halliburton and Dick Cheney too. And again, you're just, you're out of your mind. So, so our conspiracy theories, you know...

I have up here on this slide the Hindu teaching of the mosquito, right? So it's a famous story in Hinduism. I'm going to change it a little bit.

So this story is about a king, and I'm going to tell you the story only, instead of a king, I'm going to say the president of the United States, okay? So I want you to think about the power. of the President of the United States.

He literally can kill us all right now. He holds the nuclear codes. He is the head of the strongest military on the planet by far. No one else comes close.

But even his economic decisions affect the lives of billions around the world. Think about the power. I have some students who say, well, you know, the Pope is almost as powerful.

Yeah, where's the Pope's army? So the Pope doesn't come close. Damn. The American president has enormous power and influence over the lives of billions every day.

Think about that power. And now I want you to think of the power of a mosquito. Well, what's the power of the power of a mosquito? A mosquito has no power. Well, mosquitoes carry malaria, and if the president is in South America and is bitten by a mosquito, the mosquito, who seemingly has no power, can kill the most powerful man in the world.

So the Hindu teaching goes, even the mosquito has some power. Even the mosquito has some power. And if you can't imagine, or you... have this conflict in understanding the incongruity between a cause and an effect, it's because you don't understand the cause.

It wasn't really nine idiots with box cutters, was it? No. And there was was a whole network of terrorists who were well financed by Osama bin Laden who made a calculation that the Americans wouldn't go to the other side of the earth to go kill him. And of course we did.

And so he hired these Saudis to go and carry out 9-11 and had them trained. So it was more than just those nine idiots with box cutters. It was those nine idiots with box cutters.

But understanding the... the power that one motivated person has is enormously important to understanding international politics and American politics. Alright. Okay so this is great.

I want you to... This next slide, I don't know if any of you have seen this before, but it is actually part of the research of Solomon Asch, who is a psychologist. And some of the greatest works on how people really don't think rigorously are research done on conformity pressure. So I want to talk about conformity pressure for a second.

So some of the best studies are by Solomon Asch, and it's rep... and the best one I think is represented by this slide. So I want you to imagine that you're participating, you're at Stony Brook University and you're participating in a research study. So, and this is common for universities to do research studies. So you're participating and you see that guy in the left-hand corner, let's just, with the glasses, let's just say that that's you.

So you walk into the research lab, you see that there's eight other students with. with you. So you're one of nine students participating in this research, right? And the researcher right there, the bald guy at the front of the room, that's Solomon Ash himself, he invites you all into this room and you all sit down and the researcher puts a large board up in front of the table and you all are facing this large board and your task is this, right?

You look at this slide and your task is to answer the following question. Which of the lines A, B, or C in panel 2, which of the lines in panel 2 match the length of the line in panel 1? So which of the lines in panel 2, A, B, or C, match the length of the line in panel 1?

And I want you to just look at that and think about that for a second, and sort of think about your answer. I'll give you a second. Okay, you're looking at this, and you're all saying C, right?

You're all saying C. This is so mind-numbingly boring that one wonders how anyone could possibly get this wrong. But in this study, the way Solomon Asch arranged it, these other eight people...

You think that they're students, but they're not. They're paid research assistants who are paid specifically to pretend to be students, or they're students that are hired to be research assistants. They're in on it.

They're what's called Confederates. And you there with the glasses in the left-hand corner, you think that you're one of nine students, but you're not. You're the only subject.

And Solomon Ash asks, not you first, but the guy at the other end of the table. He says, participant one, which of the lines in panel two match the length of the line in panel one? And he looks at it. And he very seriously says, A.

Participant 2, which of the lines in panel 2 match the length of the line in panel 1? And participant 2 says, A. And then participant 3 says, A. And then 4, A.

And then 5, A. And then A. And then A. And when it comes time for you to answer the question, what do you say?

You say A! Why? Conformity pressure. We feel a deep need to conform to the vast majority opinion.

Solomon Asch was astonished by this, that people are sheep. Bah! Bah!

We're all sheep! We follow the crowd! We don't think independently! Right?

Solomon Asch couldn't believe it! He interviewed these people after the... After you do a research study, usually the researcher explains what the purpose of the study was.

And they would ask, Solomon Asch would say, why did you pick A? It's clearly C. You know it's C. Why did you say A? And of course, what was the common answer?

Well everybody else said A. Did I not understand the question? I thought I didn't know. I thought I didn't understand something.

It's because they thought that everybody else knew. They had too much respect for everybody else's opinion and not enough respect for their own intellect perhaps. Which is why you should not be a follower, be a leader.

Because the rest of the world is all sheep. The research on conformity pressure is fairly astonishing. There's multiple, you know, you can Google... this on YouTube.

There are multiple, multiple studies done on how we just conform to what everyone else is thinking. And what makes this very dangerous for politics, right? I want you to think about this.

The lead up to this, the lead up to this, the lead up to war in Iraq in 2002, all of the polls said that about 90% of the American public, or close to it, said that the American public supported the war. Now, if you hear that on the news, right, and you go, oh my God, 90% of the public support the war. I guess I should too.

And that's how, perhaps it was 80, and then it bumps up to 90, because now you're part of that crowd, right? When people with phone, why was everyone so shocked that Donald Trump won the election? Right? Well, you know, Helmut Norpoth, the great genius in our own political science department, he was the only political scientist to predict that Donald Trump would win. And one of the reasons for that is this, conformity pressure.

Right? Solomon Asch asked each person, did your opinion really change? Did you really think it was A? And so part of this research essentially concludes that the people who conformed did not necessarily internalize that opinion, but they stated that opinion. And we could think that the people want something when they actually do not.

Why were all the polls wrong about Donald Trump? It's because when someone is phoned, when the pollsters call someone on the phone, right? They feel like they're being judged by the pollster.

And they know all the polls on TV say the vast majority want Hillary Clinton and not Trump. So how do even the Trump supporters answer the phone? I support Hillary. Yeah.

And then they hang up the phone and when voting day comes around and the person is alone and there's no one to judge them in that voting booth, they pull the trigger for Trump. And that's why Trump wins. That's one of the...

powerful thing when you go into the voting booth and no one is judging you, right? That's why the polls were wrong. We don't appreciate conformity pressure.

It is one of the most powerful psychological forces that either make you truly think like an idiot or at least make you conform to what everyone else is believing and it is not necessarily the right policy choice that you're conforming to or perhaps even the good leader that you're conforming to. Okay, so let's talk a bit about logical inconsistency. This is really easy to see, right?

A is greater than B, B is greater than C. C is greater than A? What the hell? It makes no sense. So I should tell you, you should take several courses to make yourself smarter.

You should take statistics. You should take an economics course for sure. Oh my god, you really need to take an economics course.

I find it's the thing that students are the most ignorant about. But you should take a logic course. So you should go to the philosophy department. And there are philosophy courses online too.

There's no reason. I mean, on YouTube, you can learn anything. You can learn to tile your kitchen, right?

There's a video for everything. So there are also many, many free lectures and free courses online in statistics. University of Michigan, Barbara Gunderson.

Just Google Stats 250 if you're not good at stats. That's a free course on YouTube. Unbelievable.

So you really should take a stats course, but you need to take a logic course. Because you are often completely persuaded by someone who is being logically inconsistent. Now, you can see this clearly, right? Because it's in an equation. A is greater than B.

Well, if A is greater than B and B is greater than C, well, then A is greater than C. But now we're saying that C is greater than A. And a lot of times it helps to plug in numbers that make the statement true.

So you've got 5 is greater than 4, 4 is greater than 3, 3 is greater than 5? We just said that 5 is greater than 4 and 3. So this is easy to see when it's mapped out like this. But when it's hidden in language, when it is hidden in writing, it is very difficult to see.

It's very difficult to see the logical pattern. And it's very difficult, and people might be making emotional... arguments rather than logical arguments.

Right? That's the tool of the demagogue. C is greater than orange. What the hell?

Orange isn't even a letter. Right? They're not even comparable variables.

What are they even talking about? about well this is actually believe it or not this is the most common form of logical inconsistency you see this constantly when yeah please don't give anyone too much credit when they make a convincing argument you need to deconstruct it you see this all the time this is colloquially referred to as apples and oranges right comparing comparing variables that are not comparable so So I want you to read this. So this is a quote from a very famous book from about 10 years ago.

Fareed Zakaria, he is an international relations scholar. And this is from his famous book of, oh gosh, what's the name of it? Oh, The Post-American World, right? And so in his book, so several years ago, immediately following the Iraq War, there was a lot of scholarship on how American legitimacy and power was declining.

So Fareed Zakaria is one of these great scholars. He writes this book called The Post-American World, and he does a military comparison. Military comparative analysis is really a fascinating subject. If you're interested in that, you can go to globalfirepower.com or.org.

Global Firepower. Powered. .org or.com, I can't remember. And it just aggregates the State Department and the Defense Department and the CIA's fact book into all the military analysis. It's all open source intelligence, by the way.

So he writes this in his book, right? He's comparing, his basic theme in the book is that America will not be declining. America, as his famous phrase says, America will survive the rise of the rest, right?

So he does a comparative military analysis and he says, China has 20 nuclear missiles that could reach U.S. shores. The United States, by comparison, has around 9,000 nuclear warheads and around 5,000 strategic warheads. I'll read this again because I want you to analyze this. China has 20 nuclear missiles that could reach U.S. shores. The United States, by comparison, has around 9,000 nuclear warheads and around 5,000 strategic warheads.

What is wrong with this analysis? C is greater than orange. If you want to pause it and read it a few times, go ahead. Okay, I'm gonna show you what's wrong with this.

He's comparing missiles to warheads. This, guys, this is crap. This is crap analysis, right?

So what he's saying is, oh my god, it's 20 to 14,000. We have nothing to worry about. Well, why is this crap analysis?

Because you're comparing the delivery systems, the missiles, to the actual weapons themselves, right? So, what this is saying is China has 20 guns. By comparison, the U.S. has 40,000 bullets. Well, what the hell? That comparison makes no sense.

Right? How many guns does the United States have relative to China? Right?

And, you know, if you're looking at this and you're reading this, it goes right over your head. Right? You don't realize that what you are reading, and this is one of the great respected scholars in the world, And it's crap! It's garbage! Right?

You know, you look at this and you say, Oh my God, it's 20 to 14,000. Guess we've got nothing to worry about. Meanwhile, you have no understanding about what you're reading. You know, listen, I do the same.

Look, what I'm reading, right? This is why I even post these lectures, right? Because I understand when you're doing your reading, your mind wanders.

I think about Chicken Lo Mein probably more often than I should. And I do think about it when I'm in fact, I'm thinking about it now. I'm going to get Chicken Lo Mein.

immediately following this lecture. So when I'm reading, my mind wanders to food and to other things, right? So does yours. And we're not careful when we're reading, especially when we're reading something we are not interested in. So it turns out, when you take into account our land-based ICBMs and our Trident submarines, it's about 800 to 20, right?

And, you know, he's... It's the same point, right? Why compare missiles to warheads?

Why? Because you're an idiot. Because you're not paying attention to what you're even writing. And by the way, I have the dot, dot, dot after where it says China has 20 nuclear missiles that could reach U.S. shores because there's a lot of material between that. And that further confuses you.

So this is crap analysis. You know, a research assistant needs to be... fired for letting this go through.

In fact, when I talked to Fareed Zakaria, I let him know, listen, page 75 or 76, whatever it was, is crap analysis. What the hell's wrong with you? You know, he didn't take it too well. So I met him at an Asia Society meeting. So you have to understand, have no respect for these great scholars.

You're just as intelligent as any of them. That piece of matter, that piece of meat that's inside of your skull is the most advanced, sophisticated machine in the universe. Have respect for it.

Have respect. Worship your own brain, not anybody else's. Learn, absorb, but critique and watch for mistakes in others. Very important. And then you become a...

very powerful person when you're doing that kind of analysis. So we're all susceptible to this, right? We're all susceptible to our own bias, our own inconsistent logic. We're not perfect beings, we're not machines here, right?

And it's easy to look at the facts and select, you know, cherry-pick what facts support what we already believe and ignore the ones that challenge our beliefs, right? So, I'm gonna give you, um, oh, I still have, oh, I forgot I still had this. Alright, so here's a great example.

Um, we're gonna go over in time. In fact, we might hit two hours. So, so it means that you have less to watch tomorrow. So, um, so, so, uh, first of all, don't believe any meme on Facebook that you see. Okay, Jefferson never said that.

Okay? So, you know, any meme, don't trust it. I got this.

This is a screenshot from the Occupy Wall Street website. And looking at this... it would outrage you, right? Because I researched this, because when I looked at it, it didn't make any sense to me. And when I did the research on it, it took me 15 minutes to figure it out.

Everything on this slide is true. Now, don't pay any attention to Bank of America or GE. Just pay attention to ExxonMobil, right? So it says ExxonMobil, in 2009, they made $37.3 billion in profits. And how much taxes did they pay?

Come on, say it out loud. Look at it. They made $37.3 billion. How much did they pay in taxes? Zero.

Well, what's the corporate tax rate? Look in the upper left hand corner. It says, what, 35% myth.

Tax cheater, hall of shame. Those bastards made 37.3 billion dollars and they paid zero in taxes. Those evil bastards.

And you're outraged, right? When you see this, you are outraged. Everything on that slide is true.

but it's incredibly misleading. And I want you to take a minute to think about why it's misleading. Even pause the video right now.

Just look at this slide for a second and think about what could possibly be misleading about this. Go ahead, I'll wait. Okay.

You have to be, you are a certain kind of ignorant if you can't figure this out, okay? I promise you, the more outrageous something seems to be, I promise you that you're ignorant about the facts. And everything up here is true. Our corporate tax rate is 35%, right? It's actually going down, we'll talk about that in a second.

It's 35%. Exxon Mobil makes 37.3 billion and they pay no taxes? Well, what's the key here? They paid no U.S. taxes. If the U.S. corporate tax rate is 35%, what's the corporate tax rate in Sweden?

Do you know? It's 22%. What's the corporate tax rate in Ireland?

I think it's 19%. Right? So it turns out ExxonMobil made $37.3 billion in profits.

They paid about $10 billion more in that, in taxes, only they didn't pay it to the American government. When you have a large corporation, right, a large company is not made up of one corporation. It's made up of several, right?

There's BMW North America, there's BMW Central America, there's BMW South America. And if you have a profitable corporation, are you going to base that corporation in the country that has high taxes or low taxes? You're going to base it where it has low taxes. You're not going to base your company in the United States as 35% taxes.

And if you're making a lot of profits, that's the last place you want to headquarter your money. Right? So corporations then will go to where?

Sweden. And it turns out ExxonMobil paid about $47 billion in taxes to other governments and not the United States government. So when Bernie Sanders, that idiot, talks about increasing corporate taxes, do you think that's going to make ExxonMobil pay any more taxes?

You're an idiot if you think so. So when Republicans advocate for lowering corporate taxes from 35% to something that is at least competitive with Europe, it's not because they love rich people and hate poor people. You're a moron if you think that. You're a child.

They're doing it because they know that if we have lower taxes, we will get that $47 billion instead of Sweden. And if we lower those corporate tax rates, instead of getting zero taxes, we will at least get that $47 billion. And we can use that $47 billion for all the good things, for funding the programs for the poor, and all the good things that the government does.

It is so astonishing to me that Republicans are accused of giving tax breaks for the rich, meaning corporations. And guys like Bernie Sanders, they say, well, this is immoral, right? Those terrible corporations. Listen, corporations do terrible things around the world, right? I have a one-man protest against British Petroleum.

Their original name was the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. They overthrew the Iranian democracy, the only true democracy Iran ever had. They have polluted the Gulf Coast, unlike any other company in the world.

Miserable. ExxonMobil is one of the biggest polluters on the planet. So they do these awful things. And so for moral reasons, we should increase their taxes, says Bernie Sanders.

Right? So I'm going to ask you a question. What's the outcome of that policy?

The outcome of that policy means that they don't pay any taxes because they're paying the lower corporate tax rate to other countries. This is not rocket science, right? Well, it's economics, right?

So... If you advocate a policy for moral reasons, but the outcome of that policy works at cross-purposes to the morality you claim to advocate, is it therefore moral? That's a rhetorical question. Don't answer.

Okay? So if you think that we should be, if you think that Donald Trump is an idiot, an evil for lowering corporate taxes, well, he's probably not the idiot in the room. Jackass that he is. Okay?

So you really need to understand tax policy better. In fact, you know, I know we're really over now. But since we're over, I'm just going to show you another thing, another principle when it comes to tax policy, by the way.

So let really quick. And so I see this all the time where people just don't understand tax policy. And they think it's good versus evil, right? Just like Bernie says, oh, it's the good people, you, against the evil corporations. So we need to increase their taxes.

But what's the outcome of that policy? It means that we get less money into the government, which hurts everybody. Hurts everyone.

Hurts you, right? So you often hear that. that Republicans talk about cutting taxes, right?

And they say cutting taxes is something that we have to do. And Democrats say, well, no, if we cut taxes, we're not going to have enough money to pay our bills. Well, we already don't have enough money to pay our bills, right? So there's a principle I want you to sort of grasp here, right? So we have an X and Y axis here.

And on the X axis, we have the tax rate. And on the Y axis... we have government revenue.

So I'm going to ask you a question. If the government charges people 0% in taxes, how much revenue will the government make? This is not a trick question, right? If the government charges 0% in taxes, how much government revenue will the government make?

Zero! Right? If the government charges a hundred percent in taxes, how much revenue will the government make?

Think about it. I want you to think about it. If the government charges 0% in tax rate, the government makes 0%.

If the government charges 100% tax rate, how much revenue will the government make? Zero! Because if 10 out of every $10 you make is taken by the government, are you ever going to work?

I'm not! Screw that! I'll sit back and collect a check.

So this is a principle you need to understand, because you always hear about Democrats saying we should increase taxes and increase spending. Republicans at least give lip service. They don't actually govern this way, but they say, look, we need to lower taxes and lower spending, of course, except defense spending. So this is a bell curve.

And you'll see on this, as you increase taxes, as you increase the tax rate, government revenue will increase, but only to a certain point, because when taxes reach a certain level, it's the optimal level, when they start going too high, it creates disincentive. It makes people start hiding their money. It makes people start oversharing their money, right?

And so what happens is, Like, for example, if you have that, if your exterminator who comes into your kitchen, right? If you usually write him a check, what will he say if the taxes go up? He'll say, hey, could you pay me in cash? Is that okay?

Because he has no intention of reporting it. And now what's happening? The government is losing revenue. So we see as tax rates increase past a certain point, you now start losing government revenue. And as you approach 100, it goes down to zero.

If you don't get all this, don't worry. If you get one-eighth of everything I'm saying, you're doing fine. But I just want to give you the idea here that these things are a lot more complicated than you give them credit for, that you might be giving them credit for.

If you're an economics major, you know about all this stuff. But if you're an engineering major, you know nothing about this stuff. Okay, so Republicans always say, hey, we're on this side of the curve, right?

It's called the Laffer Curve. By the way, this was actually an Islamic principle dreamed up by Ibn Khaldun in the 4th century. And he was a very famous Islamic philosopher. He was one of the great geniuses in Islamic philosophy.

And he actually was the one who figured this out. And the modern economist Arthur Laffer sort of picked back up on it again. Now, this optimal level... So Republicans say, hey, we need to back up taxes, right? We need to reduce taxes to increase government revenue.

And Democrats always argue, no, we're on this side of the Laffer curve. We're not at the optimal level and we need to increase tax rates to increase tax revenue. But you see the principle here. I always see in the news media that when Republicans want to lower taxes, they automatically presume that there's going to be a decrease in government revenue. And that is not necessarily the case.

And by the way, depending on economic conditions, The peak of that, you know, if things are really, really bad, the peak of that curve is going to be much lower than when economic conditions are very good and everyone's making a lot of money, they're willing to tolerate high taxes. All right, so that's something you should know about tax policy. It's very, very interesting and very important.

All right, so this is not intuitively obvious. When you see something like this, it is not intuitively obvious. And if it seems so outrageous, right? You probably are, there's something missing in this equation. This is meant to manipulate you.

This is meant to make you hate Republicans, essentially, at the end of the day, right? So it's not a moral policy if you lose American tax dollars by advocating for increasing corporate tax rates and that loses money for all the good programs that help people, that help poor people. Madness.

Madness. Okay. I hope, I hope you guys get this, at least. Alright, so I want to talk to you about statistics. So I'm going to teach you statistics.

I'm going to teach you the biggest way people manipulate you are with statistics, right? So this is a statistic and a lot was left out, wasn't it? Well, it gets a lot worse than this.

So you might be wondering why am I using the example of steroid abuse in baseball? Well, the reason I am is that... Several years ago, this was actually very funny, but you know, it's like an old issue now, and no one even knows who A-Rod is anymore.

So, but there was a player on the New York Yankees who was well known for taking steroids, right? And so, these statistics I'm going through right now, these were actually valid statistics at the time. It was actually about two, two and a half years ago.

So, you're given a statistic, right? And it says the The odds that someone will test positive for steroids are 90% if they actually use steroids. Right?

The odds that someone will test positive for steroids are 90% if they've actually used steroids. Okay? It's hard to think, like it already sounds confusing, right?

I want you to really try and study this here. And I've written these slides in almost a conversational way. I've written these in a conversational way so you really sort of get the argument and you can go back and reread these slides and really get it. Because we're going to go through a little bit of math and you might not get it.

By the way, I have to say, none of the material I'm going over right now I'm going to test you on. That should make you happy, right? but I'm sort of getting to the point here that we need to analyze things much more rigorously than we do. Okay, so you're given this statistic. The odds that someone will test positive for steroids are 90% if they've actually used steroids.

Okay, so how likely then is it that someone used steroids if they've tested positive? Right, so think about this. The statistic that you were given is the odds that someone will test positive for steroids.

are 90% if they're actually using steroids. So the given is you're starting with this pile of people who are using steroids and then you're correlating them testing positive. And 90% of those people who are using steroids will test positive.

But I want you to think about the inverted statistic. How likely is it that someone used steroids if they've tested positive? Here, you're taking a pile of people who have tested positive and asking how many people are using steroids.

In this statistic, you're asking, hey, this pile... of people who are using steroids, how many of them are testing positive? I know this is hard to grasp, so bear with me.

If you don't get it, don't worry. We're going to go through several examples of this, each one increasingly easier to understand. All right. So, so the odds that someone will test positive for steroids are 90% if they're actually using steroids.

So how likely is it that someone used steroids if they've tested positive? And if you listen to journalists, you listen to sports... What do they say?

They say it's very likely, right? So it's not enough to know this pile of people who are using steroids, right? We need we can know if someone tested positive positive, but we need to determine a better way of how the person cheated.

It's basically inverting the statistic. It's not enough to know how likely they are to test positive from this pile of case studies of people who use steroids. What we need to know is we need to analyze these probabilities much better.

We need to know how many of those people who are testing positive are using steroids, not how many of those people are using steroids. those people who are using steroids are testing positive so oftentimes when you're you're given a statistic I want you to invert it I want you to to invert the statistic right so the odds that someone will test positive for steroids are 90% if they've actually used steroids but we need more information so if you have a hundred I'm trying to keep the math like easy here you have a hundred players and ten of those players are using steroids, right? And the statistic that we've already been given, we know that 90% of those who are using steroids will test positive.

And we know that there are 10%, 10 out of 100, who are using steroids, right? So 9 out of those 10 will test positive. And that's the statistic that we were already given.

So in order to determine the guilt or innocence, we need to know how many people who test positive Positive are not using and that's the key here So let's say the test is 90% accurate for those who use and it's 10% Inaccurate for those who don't I know you're probably completely lost now. Do not worry Do not worry. You can always rewind this but if you don't get this the first time don't worry. You're fine but We're talking about those who don't cheat. Those who do not use steroids, 10% of them still test positive.

They're getting false positives. Ah, we have some more information now, don't we? Well, even with that...

information that we're given, right, that there'll be 10% false positives, you say to yourself, well, hardly anyone gets a false positive, right? Only 10%. And almost every guilty player gets a true positive. 90% of the guilty players get a true positive. guilty, right?

So knowing whether a person tested positive must make us confident of their guilt, right? No effing way. No way.

Here's how the math shakes out. This is tough to analyze, right? If you have 100 players, 90% of those using steroids will test positive, right?

That's the statistic that we were initially given. So 10% are using steroids. And And 90% of those who are using steroids, 90% of those 10 will test positive. And that gives you out of 100 players, 9 testing positive. Okay, so how many of the honest players are testing positive?

Well, that's the new information, right? We know now 10% of the honest players are testing positive. Right? But there's 90 of them who are not using. So you see what we have here.

90% of steroid users, but there's only 10 of them out of 100. And we have 10% of the players who are not using steroids, but there's 90 of them. So we have 90% of 10 and 10%. of 90. So the number of honest players testing positive is also 9. So the total players out of 100 testing 9 are 18. So 9 out of the 10 who are using steroids will test positive. But 9 out of the 90 innocent players will also test positive. So the likelihood of someone using steroids if they've tested positive, the inverted statistic of the statistic you were initially given, is 9 out of 18 or 50 percent, not 90 percent.

I just blew your mind, didn't I? For those of you who got it, I just totally blew your mind. Probably the rest of you are looking at me like, what the hell are you talking about? Go through this again. That's the beauty of...

a video, I went through this really fast, but we're going to go through other examples. This is called Bayes'theorem. And in statistics, it's probably, oh gosh, after linear regression, multivariate regression, standard deviation.

variance, you know, it's probably around the fifth most important statistical concept, right? And, you know, you're looking at that formula at the top, right? That vertical line means given. So the probability of A given B equals the probability of B given A times the probability of A divided by the probability of B.

And that's the math that we just went through, by the way. So translate that into the second equation at the bottom. Again, I'm not going to test you on any of this. But I'm just showing you how rigorously you need to think about these things. The probability of someone using steroids, given that they've tested positive, that's the relevant statistic, right?

The probability that someone is using steroids, given that they've tested positive, is equal to the probability of someone testing positive, given that they're using steroids, times the probability of using steroids, divided by the probability of testing positive, right? So, ah! Oh, darn it. Okay. So that 90% that you see there, that was the statistic that you were initially given.

The probability that someone will test positive given that they're using steroids. But that's not the relevant statistic. The relevant statistic is not the probability that someone will test positive given that they're using steroids.

The relevant statistic is the probability that someone is using steroids given that they're testing positive, and that's 50%. So it's... It's mind blowing if you get it, because you realize now that when you're given a statistic, you're, when you're given a statistic, you're presuming something that is not exactly so. Now, if you didn't get this, don't worry. We're gonna go through another example of Bayes'theorem.

So I want you to raise your hand, right? We're gonna pretend we're in a classroom here. Raise your hand. How many of you have heard that arms races cause wars? Come on, put up your hand.

Right? You've all heard this. You've all heard this.

Right? In fact, in international relations, it's actually gospel. So the Federation of American Scientists, they send out letters to you asking for donations so that they can help to make people aware of the dangers of the arms race, right?

And they're asking you for money. Be very suspicious of anyone asking you for money and that they're doing something good and you should be giving them money to help them do this thing that's good. I really want you to be a cynic in that regard, right?

All right, so do arms races cause wars? Well... The standard account of this, there's no logical connection from the presumptions of that argument to the conclusion.

So if you can figure it out, you'll win a Nobel Prize, let me tell you. Because whenever you see anyone making this argument, nobody actually makes the connection. So let's talk about this for a second. So if you have country A, and it builds up its arms for whatever reason, maybe its navy is falling apart and they have to...

to build a new navy, right? Country A starts building up its arms, right? Well, what happens?

Country A's rival, country B, starts building up their arms. And then what happens? Country A sees country B building up their arms. Country B has responded to country A thinking that, hey, country A is a threat.

So I had better start building up my arms, says country B. But country A looks at country B and why are they building up their arms? We're just replacing our navy. That's like normal for a country to do.

Right? But they must be planning something. They're probably trying to threaten us.

So we had better increase our arms. And so what happens is, when a political rival sees another country increasing their arms, they respond to that increase as a threat, and they start building up their own arms, right? And each country sees their own build-up as defensive, but they see their political rivals as offensive. They think they're getting ready to attack. Now, in international relations, I'm sorry I'm talking so fast.

I tend to do this. I'm also way over on the... time, so we're going to go over by like an hour, so maybe.

So I'm sorry about that. So tomorrow you can watch less. So this is called the security dilemma in international relations, right?

Eventually, as the level of arms grows vastly disproportional to the threat, things spiral out of control and war starts. That's the argument. Things spiral out of control and war starts. Well, by what mechanism do, why do things spiral out of control, right? The mechanism is never explained.

If you could explain that mechanism, you would win a Nobel Prize. But I want you to think about this for a second. The logic of this argument is claiming, if two countries build up their arms, does that make the costs of war higher or less? In other words, does war become more dangerous and more costly if you increase your arms, or does it become less costly when you increase your arms? It becomes more costly, right?

So think about what the logic of this argument is claiming. That when the costs of war increase substantially, war becomes more likely? When the cost of war increases, we should desire it more?

Well... Common sense and basic economics says that when the cost of anything goes up, we should generally desire it less. Meaning we're going to buy it less, not more.

Why should war be any different? And so... you're given a statistic, and this is an accurate statistic. It's true that most wars have been preceded by an arms race, about 85%. I say about 85% because there's definitions of war that...

fall into or out of the category. So it's about 85%. It is true that most wars have been preceded by arms races, right?

But it's just like the steroid observation. You're starting with the outcome first. Instead of starting with the pile of arms races, you're starting with the pile of wars. You're starting to analyze. You're starting with the analysis of all the wars that have happened, and you're not starting with the analysis of all the arms races that happened.

Right? So it's just like the steroid observation. The evidence is used to justify the conclusion.

So is this the relevant observation, that most wars have been preceded by arms races? No. It's how many arms races have led to wars.

and that's about 20%. Now, that's still a lot, by the way, just so you know. But what I'm getting at is that you're given a statistic because that organization that promotes this statistic wants your money, not because they're right on the issue. And by the way, I'm sorry to say, they know that they're not right on it.

You know, if all of the advocacy groups that advocate for peace, if they actually achieve their goals, they put themselves out of business. So be very wary, again, of people asking you for money, right? So you look at this and you say, well, think about what you're talking about here.

The 85% is saying this. This pile that we're examining, this batch of case studies of wars, they're starting with wars. They're saying this batch of wars was preceded by arms races, right?

But that's not how you should be analyzing it. What you need to look at is the much larger, vastly larger amount of arms races that led to wars, right? There's a lot more arms races than there are wars. But you say all of the wars had arms races preceding them. But how many arms races led to wars?

Only 20%, much less. So looking at this evidence, it confuses cause and effect. And it ignores the instances where if you actually...

that pile of arms races, you'll realize that arms races sometimes deterred fighting exactly because the cost of war is increased. In 1998, Pakistan and India had a skirmish. It was called the Cargill War.

And it did not escalate. It was less than a thousand people killed. It was a large fire fight in many ways. It doesn't even qualify as a definition of war.

Why did not the Cargill War escalate? Why? Because both sides had nuclear weapons. So the conclusion is arms races are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for war.

get any of this, you're fine. Don't worry. So I just want to make the point here.

When policymakers say that they're turning to arms controls to decrease the number of arms, they're making war less costly. And they think they're... they're promoting peace, but they might be taking a lot bigger risks than you or anyone else seem to realize, especially them.

Because we fail to think about the reverse causation here. So we can actually engage in very bad policy thinking we are doing the right thing. Okay, so here's my last example of Bayes'theorem, right?

And what's going on in this picture? Take a look at it. I've actually been in several of the... actually.

So this is a bar fight. This is a bar fight. I'm a short guy, so I have to fight dirty. I've been in several of these. I used to bar back at a place called Shenanigans in Deer Park.

I probably shouldn't advertise that, but it was in my past life. So I'm going to give you a statistic. I've done no research on this, but I suspect the statistic is true. Okay. The statistic is this 99.987% of all the people involved in bar fights have two arms so This is stupid, right?

Does having two arms cause bar fights? Think about what that analysis, that statistic I just said, does. It takes all the case studies of bar fights and said, hey, look it, in all of these cases of bar fights, everyone had two arms.

So having two arms must cause bar fights, right? And you're saying, and you just look at that, that's just intuitively stupid, right? Because having two arms, you know, in order to get into a fight, it might be a necessary condition to have a fight, right?

But it's not a sufficient condition to cause the bar fight. the bar fight? You spilt the drink on my girlfriend.

That's what caused the bar fight, right? So you see how silly our analysis is, right? So you know intuitively that this cause, having two arms, has nothing to do with...

with getting involved in bar fights, right? Because the explanatory variable is not relevant. But the problem comes when an explanatory variable like having arms, that is related to war and you can confuse it very easily.

So we don't think rigorously about these things, right? We really, really don't. You know, we draw very bad conclusions, right?

85% of wars are pre- preceded by arms races. Yeah, but how many arms races led to wars? 20%, right? 90% of steroid users test positive. Yeah, but how many people who test positive are using steroids?

That's only 50%. 99.8% of bar fights involve people with two arms. Yeah, but how many people with two arms are involved in bar fights?

Very, very few. You see how important inverting the statistic is? This is what Bayes'theorem is all about.

And look, if you're interested in this kind of analysis, go back and reread these slides. Go back and listen to this again. I know I talk fast. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry about that.

But we are pressured for time. again so which is normal for me so you know really understanding this you're starting with the outcome you're starting with the pile of bar fights you're starting with the with the pile of case studies of wars you're starting with the the pile of case studies of people who are using steroids. You're starting with the outcome that you're trying to explain and not the explanatory variable as the given.

And this is called sample bias. It's basically selecting the outcome you wish to prove. So we're very susceptible to being fooled. We're very susceptible to this. Even people who are aware of this analysis can be fooled quite easily.

So, just think about if you don't know about these things, and we've touched, this is the tip of the iceberg, guys. So, analyzing things very rigorously is enormously difficult to do, I promise. So, I'm going to wrap this up by saying, I love Apple's motto, right? Think different.

I want you to think different. Don't conform to what others say. Be aware of cognitive dissonance and cognitive disequilibrium. Be aware of these processes that make you think like an idiot. Be aware of it.

Think different. Don't just go with the, bah, bah. Don't be a sheep, right? I want you to question everything. Question authority.

Question your professors. Question the authors of your books. They make mistakes.

They do crap analysis. This is very hard. Question authority. You've been told that many times.

Question authority, yes. But then question those who question authority. And then question them.

And where does it end? Welcome to political science. Now, I want to make this one last statement.

Reasonable people can disagree. This has been a problem for Democrats, right? Because what do Democrats... Why didn't people in the last election vote Democrat? Well, Hillary Clinton called anyone who supported Donald Trump a deplorable.

If you disagreed in 2016, in November, if you disagreed with a Democrat, you were a bigot, a racist, an idiot. How do you think people are going to vote when you talk to them like that? So, I just want to get across to you, reasonable people can disagree. Reasonable people can disagree.

You know, Jon Stewart said in an interview, he said, look, I have friends who I know and love who are very intelligent, and they voted for Donald Trump, and they don't hate black people, they don't hate brown people. Know what they hate? Their high insurance premiums. So, and believe it or not, Democrats attacked him for that.

Joe Biden, one of the great Democrats in our country, he told Mitt Romney, the former Republican candidate for president who ran against Barack Obama, he said, Joe Biden said, Mitt Romney, you're a good man. You should run for Senate. You're a good man.

We may not agree on things, but you're a good man. You have good intentions. You'll be a great asset to our country.

And Democrats attacked him for saying it. What the hell? And of course, if you say anything nice about Hillary Clinton, Well, you like the devil, right?

And that's the position of... Reasonable people can disagree. If you just can't get into your head how people can disagree with you, then you don't understand your own arguments. I promise.

And I'm going to end this lecture with a story. So sit back, relax. I'm going to tell you a story.

It's the story of the Zen master and the little boy. So there's this village, and in the village there's the Zen master, he's the wisest man in the village, and everyone, of course, goes to him for counsel. Again, he's the wisest man, the Zen master of the village.

Now, in this same village, there's a couple who have a boy, and they buy their boy a horse, right? And so... Everyone in the village says, Oh, isn't this wonderful? Right?

And they go to the Zen master and they ask the Zen master what he thinks about this little boy getting this horse. And the Zen master says, We'll see. A short time after this, the boy is on his horse and he's riding it through the countryside and he falls off and he breaks his leg in several places and he's crippled for the rest of his life.

And everyone in the village says, Oh, isn't this terrible? And the Zen master says, We'll see. A short time after this, a war breaks out. And all the young boys go off and fight in this war. Almost all of them die.

But our little boy with the horse doesn't go because he's crippled and he is actually spared. And everyone in the village says, Oh, isn't that wonderful? And the Zen master says, We'll see.

What's the moral of this story? We'll see. All right. So. We're going to end the lecture here.

We will pick up talking more about American government. We're going to start going into more solid stuff of the book material. And listen, I really want you to be thinking rigorously.

That was the purpose of this lecture. I want you to think rigorously. I want you to think more.

It is not good versus evil. Anyone who tells you that these decisions are good versus evil and they're the good person, they're probably not the good person, generally speaking. And with that, I will see you guys next lecture.