The psychology of the debate

I've always been curious about a phenomenon prevalent in sports fans: the way their passionate rooting interest changes their perception and processing of visual stimuli. For example, two fans can watch a replay of a controversial play, looking to determine if action x occurred -- let's say, whether a player stepped out of bounds or whether the ball hit the ground -- and sometimes each can come away believing with 100% certainty that the result that most benefits their team is what actually happened. If you watch enough sports with enough people, you see this all the time.

And it's the same phenomenon that colors people's perceptions of the president's actions and proposals. I'm thinking about it this morning because of this Q&A with psychologist Johnathan Haidt, who explains how moral roots shape our perception and reasoning, particularly in the health care debate. Among the many interesting passages:

While it is useful to rebut charges and get your arguments out in circulation, you have to understand that arguments and evidence have little impact on people as long as their feelings tilt them against you. You've got to create trust and liking first, and then people will be willing to listen. People can believe pretty much whatever they want to believe about moral and political issues, as long as some other people near them believe it, so you have to focus on indirect methods to change what people want to believe. You have to get them to the point where they ask themselves "can I believe it?" about your claims, rather than about your opponents' claims. The time to establish that trust and liking was months ago, and perhaps some of it was burned up in the giant bailouts and coziness with Wall Street. I'm not a political scientist; I can't say why his poll numbers went down. But as a moral psychologist I can say that there's now little that can be done to win over or calm down the town-hall protesters. They've formed a new gang, a new heroic moral identity of resistance.

As a post script, I'll note that the major difference between sports-debates and politics-debates is that sports fans are more than willing to admit that their team sucks. I can, and often without invitation will, tell you every little reason why the Seahawks and Mariners are miserable. But I'll be a little more resistent to admitting the flaws in my politics and politicians. And that makes sense, because the crappiness of my sports teams says very little about me personally, while admitting flaws in politics might actually force me to change.

As a second post script, Haidt's lecture -- though a little off-topic -- is also interesting, and he mentions this quote from Buddhist philosopher Sent-ts'an: "If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between 'for' and 'against' is the mind's worst disease." So there.

Termination

It's officially the first day of autumn, but we've been autumnal up here for a few weeks now. Leaves started falling off the birch trees in the front yard in mid-August, and now the lawn is covered in yellow and gold.

Unfortunately our falls are always too short, as already termination dust has coated the tops of Chugach mountains east of town. Snow is on its way, and we'll probably have a layer in town in a couple weeks. By November it will be full-on winter, dark and cold.

Anchorage, Alaska... where in September we're already wondering where our skis are.

Coolest thing

This is the coolest thing I'll see today.

Old Old Old!

My cousin Jordan arrived at Stanford as a freshman yesterday, which brought back a flood of nostalgia about my first day on the Farm. I still remember that day vividly, me in my zebra tie and jeans shorts.

It then occurred to me that, on that day 15 years ago, Jordan was 3 years old. Holy crap.

The wager, updated

So far so good, as far as my wager against Frank the Florida fan goes. Florida rolls along at 2-0, but the upstart Michigan Wolverines are now 2-0 as well after their dramatic late win against the hated Notre Dame. Stanford would have joined them if they hadn't laid an egg in the second half against Wake Forest.

So where we sit: Stanford + Michigan: 3, Florida 2.

Another debate with Foley

With the recent release of the Beatles Rock Band video game, Foley and I enter the fray to debate Rock Band: good or bad? It started with a heads up about a compelling NY Times Magazine article about the game, and went from there (reprinted here without permission, hopefully he doesn't mind...).

To Dave
From Foley

Yeah, you know I saw that last night and it was a pretty interesting read. Those NY Times magazine pieces are usually worthwhile.

And you know (not surprisingly?), I've probably been one of those snobby typesthe article identifies as "real musicians who find themselves offended by rock band." I've been a broadband hater, though, what with my extreme dislike of karaoke for similar reasons.

Still, McCartney made what may have been the most insightful point when he talked about so many things start out as simplistic nonsense, and then get turned in to important art forms with more substance later.

I admit it would be interesting to hear that game just for the remixes. I haven't heard the music from the "Love" show, but remember reading the NYT article on that back when that was coming out, and that does sound like it would be a pretty cool thing to check out on a surround sound system.

Addendum:

This is the only karaoke/lip synching thing I can get behind. We all have exceptions? But not everybody can be as awesome as this guy. Him and Ferris Bueller. The only two that can pull it off.

To Foley
From Dave

That's the most horrible thing I've seen in a while. He kinda has your facial expressions at the beginning. Like he's hearing the bells of an approaching meat trolley, and the rest is pure glee once he knows there's brisket.

As you could guess I'm a Rock Band fan. This part felt right:

“Everyone comes into the world with this innate desire to make music,” Rigopulos said, “and almost everyone tries to learn an instrument at some point. And the overwhelming majority of these people quit after a few months or a few years because it is just too damn difficult. They spend the rest of their lives loving music, and listening to music, and playing a lot of air guitar, but not having any outlet for that innate urge they feel.”

To Dave
From Foley

Yeah. I mean there's a more interesting digression to go in to from that Rigopulos quote, and it's one that the article didn't take.

It would kind of be it's own long article, but the basic gist of it would have to do with the idea that for most of human history (and pre-history), music has been something that everybody participated in. Literally everybody. One of my former profs Dan Levitin tells an anecdote in his book "This Is Your Brain On Music" about western anthropologists who will visit some remote tribe, and the people are shocked when the anthropologist says he "can't play music." Even in this country, music was for a good long time something that people did in their living rooms and was a community activity. We're certainly biologically wired to do it-- it may have developed earlier than or hand-in-hand with language. Enough studies show that spending time doing it is really all it takes to be a good musician, not any special genius. I guess because I grew up playing a lot of that traditional American folk music, I can tell you it's not all that hard to play. Plenty of other music, including a lot of rock and pop is pretty simple, too. If all else fails you've got punk rock, which you could be a drooling idiot and play. The hours a lot of people spend playing Rock Band might make someone a half decent musician.

The problem isn't that music is difficult, so I guess I disagree. The bigger picture is that, in western culture anyway, there's been a shift towards the notion that it's something to watch experts or rock stars do while "untalented" people watch and admire. This was always there a bit with classical music being differentiated from "regular people's music", ie the kind that the majority of people played. But when in the 20th century when music became something to be consumed, that shift went through a massive acceleration. Stop playing, start paying? There's nothing wrong with watching great musicians play. But there is something a little sad about an entire culture being that it's only worth doing yourself if you play air guitar. The superficial strutting is promoted, but it's all shine and no substance.

Now, as it related to Rock Band, the interesting discussion might be if instead of being something to look down upon, it actually fosters the idea that music is something fun that everybody can participate in. It puts it back in the living room. Even if the music is "music", in some odd simulacrum. Maybe?

But with Rock Band, the implicit value system is that people should go through the motions of imitating, but not creating. It's like with improv; so many people are convinced that "oh, I'm not creative." But little do they know, everyone can learn to improvise. Yes, I know it's just a game ... and that part of the NYT article made some semi-persuasive points along the lines of "chill out, people are just having fun." But even so, does it only fuel the cultural idea that music is for rockstars, and the best you can ever do is fake it. Even if the game itself is just game, it still promotes that trend.

Huzzah!

Clearly I need something better to do.

To Foley
From Dave

First, let me note that the Mercer Island, WA little league team just put the smackdown on the Salem, OR little league team to advance to the Little League World Series. Suck it, Salem!

Okay then. I understand where you're coming from but I don't think Rock Band will have any negative impact on creativity or the number of people who choose to be musicians. I would wager that it's the other way around, actually, that people are reinvigorated by the accessibility of Rock Band and become more interested in music. Not saying everyone will, but I'm wagering it'll be a net positive. For me, it's not like I was going to start playing guitar in my free time anyway, and now that I have Rock Band I'm scratching that idea and starting a fake band called Wild Simulacrum. If anything, the game has piqued my interest in learning some guitar chords so someday I can wander around downtown playing Peter Paul & Mary songs and singing in falsetto. I'm dreaming the dream.

It's way too early to know what effect Rock Band will have on music creation, but I think pretending to be a rock star makes people think they can actually be musicians, instead of thinking that there's a gap between rock stars and regular people that will never be bridged.

Finally, apropos of nothing, thought you might like a quick video of me taken shortly after a bee stung me on my face.

My roommate is a newsworthy troublemaker

Out there saving the walrus.

The great cabbage

This year's Alaska State Fair brings you a world record cabbage: 125.9 pounds. Shattering the previous record by 2 pounds. Alaska owns you again, Wales (United Kingdom).

The main attraction is always the pumpkins. Check these suckers out. The winner: 594 pounds.

Still fishless, continued

The summer is nearly over, and I'm still fishless. But guess who isn't, after spending a whopping 60 minutes in the river (this was a few weeks ago... I'm just late in posting it).

That's my friend Dave, on the right, delighting in the fact that she did so easily what I have utterly failed to do. But joke's on him, the guy trying to "teach" me to fish this summer. He's obviously a very talented instructor.

There's a problem at Michigan, but it's not permanent

Although some friends are having a good time heckling me about Michigan's problems with potential NCAA violations -- current and former players are alleging that the team has forced the players to practice more than the maximum 20 hours per week -- most everyone concedes that the alleged violations themselves are not a big problem. While yes, breaking rules is bad and no team should do it, in the spectrum of rulebreaking this is more like jaywalking than murder. The fact that every other Division 1 football team breaks the same rule -- including Ohio State -- is not a defense, but it does minimize the outrage.

The real problem here is that there are apparently quite a few players who detest Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez. Anyone willing to allege NCAA violations against his own coach must truly hate him. So I'm going to guess that these are Lloyd Carr's recruits who are spilling the beans, and as these players graduate the team will become a harmonious family again. BUT, it's a failure on Rodriguez's part that he has been so unable to get Lloyd's players to buy into his system. That's part of the job, as a new coach, and clearly Rodriguez hasn't done it.

This is what happens when a team goes 3-9. An 8-4 season this year will go a long way toward making grumpy players happy. So practice hard, kids! Put in those extra hours!