Deconstructing Harper

What should be clear, then, is that Harper's seemingly bizarre vendetta against sociology is actually an ideological attempt to prevent Canadian society from being able to identify, and tackle, its structural injustices.

Yep!  It's nice to see people catching up.

The important thing to realize in this, though, is that Harper isn't trying to prevent the identification and management of structural injustices, per se - that paints him in the light of a moutstache-twirling villain.  As convenient as this dehumanized frame is for those who don't like his politics (or are in the business of attacking partisan foes), it fails to understand the man and shed light on better ways to engage with and persuade him.

Stephen Harper isn't trying to be the bad guy.  He does what he does because he genuniely believes his world-view is the right one.  

It isn't - but neither are those with polar opposite views to his.  Think on that for a second - how on earth can you define yourself as the anti-Harper because you commit to shades of grey whereas he doesn't?

Harper thinks that too much government is bad, because government sucks at managing complexity.  He's not wrong on that.

He also thinks that too many social services impede the growth and success of individuals.  It's like teaching a kid to ride a bike - eventually, you need to take off the training wheels and let go, right?  You can't be telling them to brush their teeth and do their homework for the whole of their lives.  

Is carrying debt a good thing?  Are debt payments an allocation of financial resources that could go to other things, like tax cuts to reduce the amount of money being taken away from people and impeding their ability to succeed independently?

This doesn't mean that Stephen Harper isn't disdainful of the general public.  It's not to say he's a deep admirer of the general public, either.  He has his frame and in it, reality is determined by action and actions are committed by go-getters.  He wants more people taking care of their own business and less things that get in the way of that.

Like data, for instance.  He knows, rightly, that data can be skewed one way or another.  Lies, damned lies and statistics, all of that.  The data he disagrees with is clearly wrong or misguided or poorly represented, because it doesn't jive with his world view.

If it was right, wouldn't he feel better about it?  Conversely - the positions taken by his partisan opponents seem so bizarre and even dangerous to him, he can't help but lash out at them and go to whatever lengths he can, having power, to quash both opponent and alternative position.

It's what his opponents would do in his place, isn't it?  It was the other guys who introduced the War Room to Canadian politics, after all.

To crib from Obi-wan Kenobi, everything Harper says and believes makes sense, from a certain point of view.  However, it isn't the whole perspective, which matters.

The man that Stephen Harper is stems from multiple elements including biology, experience, even diet.  His frame doesn't much allow him to accept this, because it implies he's not the super-in-control rational actor he thinks he is.

What's more, considering that others don't share the same basic drives that he does is frightening, because it implies an inability on his part to communicate with a wide swath of his peers, which is an incredibly isolating and humbling thought to have.  In some cases, even debilitative.

Far easier and safer to stick with "we are smart and they are dumb" as a frame, isn't it?  Easier - but not smarter.

Stephen Harper is not the bad guy.  In fact, he ultimately wants the same thing his opponents do - empowered, collaborative individuals that support a healthy society.  The only difference is he sees it as a healthy system that frees individuals to engage in transactional self-interest, reinforcing the stability of the whole.

Harper doesn't want to be confused by an interest-group fed data smog, nor does he want that for everyone else.  He's afraid we're all getting bogged down with too much information and conversation, like a kid with autism, and missing the really important stuff. 

Anything that challenges his point of view, his black-and-white outlook on the world makes him uncomfortable, is wrong and therefore needs to be stopped.  Any moves he takes to make that happen are correct, because 1) he's doing them, and he's a rational actor and 2) it's the way things work, right? Survival of the fittest.

The cognitive dissonance he comes across with this frame is that the competitive people he brings in to help him get ahead - folk like Mike Duffy or Bruce Carson - are bordering (and sometimes crossing the line) into criminality with what they're doing to promote their interests through supporting his brand.

Can he readily admit that the political culture that helped him win or the environment he's nurtured as leader are part of why government fails and big issues remain pervasively unaddressed?  What would that do to his self-narrative and legitimacy?

This is all a lot of complex, unnerving stuff to think about - stuff that, most importantly, makes him feel uncomfortable in that sociology, hugging kind of way.  The fact that it feels so much like an allergen surely implies how harmful it would be to consider that kind of thing.

Like how, say, Rob Ford is unwilling to engaged with Pride activities because of how uncomfortable being around gay people makes him feel.  It's not that he's a bigot, right?  Things that make you feel that uncomfortable must be unnatural - the only alternative is that it's you, not the source of your discomfort, that's got something out of whack.  

The problem is that Harper's cognitive frame shuts out much of what he needs to know in order to do his job effectively.  The irony, of course, is that by undermining government, he is winning by empowering his foes.

Think about it for a second - all the Premiers are coming together and could very well start planning around him.  Once that happens in any significant manner, how much of federal government becomes irrelevant (though, more accurately, replaced with new social infrastructure)?  

The same holds true for Corporate Social Responsibility taking on roles previously served by government - isn't that kind of what Harper was going for?  He may have missed the fact that non-government actors would start acting progressively and commit sociology, but he is showing us that the government he dislikes isn't as important as we thought.

Neither, frankly, is the role he has and loves so dearly.

And that's just Harper.  You could equally take any individual politician, or political staffer, or activist and deconstruct them down to their natural and nurtured parts.  Like an archaeological artifact, though, you can't understand what it means without context.

A dead canary is a dead canary, right? It died is what mattered.  You can know all you need to know about the thing because of what it was without confusing or straining yourself with murky context.

Let's say, though, that the canary corpse comes from a coal mine you're working in.  You might want to know what the death of that canary means for you.  If you don't work in the mine, though, do you care? Well, you might if you find dead animals around the entrance to the mine, too.  

The further away you are from a problem the less likely you are to consider it seriously, a fact that isn't necessarily reflective of the impact that problem may have on you.  It's why people with disabilities or of minority status make the best advocates of their peers (and why democracy is all about representation).

As a better example, let's look at Pompeii, or better still, Easter Island.  If you want to go macro, look at the fall of the Roman Empire, or any civilization and consider what the causal factors were and what they mean to you and your circumstances.

It's not simply "the way things are", like natural selection, that individuals fall and societies fail.  There are contextual details, always a combination of internal and internal, that paint the scene.  If you commit sociology, put yourself in the headspace of Others and make efforts to understand what happened, you can avoid similar pitfalls yourself down the road.  

Which is, essentially, what learning is all about.

We know that climate change, for instance, presents some significant risks.  We know that climate change destroyed civilizations, even entire species in the past.  There's no way to be individually resistant to the immediate and after math implications of a massive earth quake or flood, for instance.  You can take out insurance and whatnot, but if the bank gets destroyed?  If the impact is worse than you imagined?  If you suffer the loss of loved ones, a limb and physical resources all at the same time?  It's happened to others - why couldn't it happen here?

The ability to commit sociology allows us to learn from the past and shape the future - not willpower, not toughness.  

Selection of the fittest favours those best able to adapt.  In a social context, adaptation is about learning from the lessons, both positive and negative, of others so as not to have to experience them oneself.

This is all rubbish nonsense spouted by a clear lefty nutjob, ergo the kind of thinking that Stephen Harper (and not a few other human beings) doesn't have time for.  Which is probably why he remains obstinately, willfully oblivious to the corner he's painting himself into.  

Maybe he plans to leave before the going gets bad - he's backed away from problems before, so that's something we could expect from him.  Perhaps he's slowly feeling that sense of being painted into a corner and his obstinance is a fight defense - the kind that led him to prorogue, or attempt a coalition with the Bloc, or to bribe a dying man.

All I'm saying is that the PM's personal interests would probably be better served if he looked around a bit more, empathized with others and started to see the context of his world.

He wouldn't even need to call it sociology.

They didn't invent the term behavioural economics for nothing.

Political Morale and the Value of a Pivot

We work in complex problems and sometimes find ourselves as the ones who have to say, "hold on... what are we actually trying to achieve here?"

The other night I got to listen in on a fascinating conversation between the Globe and Mail's Adam Radwanski and Alison Loat, founder of Samara.  As part of the chat, Radwanski talked about how reporters/columnists get their information from politicians and staff (yes, it goes well beyond the scum).  

Some reporters read much into body language and mine the depth of every pause and every word unsaid as well.  Others are all about the phone call.  Adam said that his preferred method was actual conversations instead of just inquiries; as we're social creatures, that often means a coffee or a lunch together.

Radwanski shared a bit about his relationship with staff in former Premier Dalton McGuinty's office and how it changed over time.  At the onset, he had a more open conversations with them - not that they would leak exclusives or reveal inappropriate details, but that he could suss their mind out a bit on what they were trying to accomplish with a particular message campaign or piece of legislation.

For obvious reasons, Radwanski found this valuable - he could really get a sense of the intent and goals behind government activity that might not always turn out as intended.  This intel would inform his stories, allowing him to do a political reporter's #2 job (after making money for their outlet) - facilitate the public's awareness of why and how their tax dollars are being spent and their society being supported.

There was a shift though, Radwanski said, between McGuinty's first class of staff and the one that followed.  The second bunch, he said, were less open, less willing to have conversations and began instead to use tricks to get stories they wanted - leaking to one outlet, putting them in competition with others, supposedly making them more likely to print favourable stories so as to get the inside scoop.

What resulted was a more confrontational relationship between press and press secretaries, more like what we see at the federal level where the press are clearly considered the enemy by political staff.  Stories became less favourable and intent was read as more cynical; without some background on the thought process, there really wasn't much else for reporters to go on.

I spent a bit of time within Liberal ranks over this period.  Some of the happiest days of my career were during the end of the first term when there was a real sense of being part of something special and other staff were almost more like family than colleagues.  I attribute this sense of team primarily to two men - my former boss Jim Brownell who may have been just a backbencher but for many of us was the heart and soul of the QP Liberal family and the Premier himself, Dalton McGuinty.

As part of Team Brownell, I spent a lot of time connecting with other staff, figuring out what they were working on, what we might be able to help them with and of course, seeing how all of this tied in to the projects Jim wanted to deliver for his riding (he had a very long list over two terms and delivered every single project, save one).  It was networking, team building, capacity building, but also humanizing.  I wanted to be human to these people I might otherwise only connect with via email or phone and I wanted to understand them as people as well.

More than a couple times when I was making rounds, I would run in to the Premier himself, just popping by offices to see how people were doing.  There are worse people to have your thunder taken away from than the Premier, but most importantly to me was how obvious it was that McGuinty actually understood the importance of connectivity.  

McGuinty did more than just the odd staff visit, which was huge - he also showed personal interest in the projects and accomplishments of staff in their lives beyond Queen's Park.  I got nice, hand-written letters from him when I won a short story award from the Toronto Star and at the birth of my first son. 

The Premier made time to invite my whole family into his office on a day when I'd arranged for my grandfather, a World War II vet and Holocaust survivor, to be recognized in the Legislature.  And that was just me, staffer to a backbencher.  

I know he did similiar things for other staff.  There's a great picture of him at the wedding of two of his own staff; he's reaching into the aisle to congratulate them as they leave the church and they, so in love and focused on each other, don't even realize they're ignoring their boss/Ontario's Premier.

While I was at Queen's Park, there were directions and decisions taking that I disagreed with (and was never afraid to share my thoughts on internally).  At the same time, I felt I knew the people making those choices and respected them enough to figure out why they'd made the choices they did and maybe how better iterations could be arrived at down the road.

When I left Queen's Park, I became like anyone else - an outsider looking in, albeit with more connections and understanding of how the place operated.  Regardless, I began to feel like some humanity was slipping away from the relationships I had there.  This was in no small part due to what I'd left Queen's Park for - a job in the private sector as a Government Relations Consultant, but I didn't want that to become a barrier.  

Perhaps naively, I thought (and still think) that people from different sectors don't need to be competitive and cagey - it's much more effective when we're open, pull together and focus on shared solutions for everyone.

As partisanship has gotten worse, though at both the provincial and federal level and from what I hear, communication with the press are much more based on messaging than relationship, I can't help feel as though it's not just me.  There's been a significant culture change, a calcifying of government that has maybe been exacerbated by toughening economic times.

From the inside, I hear (and this from staff in all Parties) two main trends: 

- staff who are functionally fixed on reciting the Party lines, and not in the cheeky, fun way we used to, but either out of fear of straying, a Koolaid-drinking belief in The Word or perhaps most sadly, a lack of trust in outsiders.  It's fascinating how closely this mirrors some the approaches I find among community residents when I work in priority neighbourhoods here in Toronto.

- the second trend is that they're lost.  They don't know who's really calling the shots in their Party, can't figure out how or why the plans (if there are bigger plans) are put together and really have no clue what role they're supposed to play.

Funny enough, this is the same culture of stagnation and confusion that has been identified as a major impediment to efficiency and adaptability within the Public Sector.  We can get mad at bureaucrats who make decent wages but don't seem to produce enough work as being lazy and go on a cutting spree, but that ignores the fundamental problem with the system - 

People within the bureaucracy often don't know how decisions are made, don't know how their work fits into the big picture and get no idea what or how their work gets used, if it gets used at all.

In the military, they recognize the importance of morale - it's #2, right after the mission.  In far too many other sectors and egregiously in politics, morale isn't even considered part of the question.  It's My Party Right or Wrong, right?

This is something we have lost as we focus increasingly on numbers - funds raised, program dollars spent, votes cast, etc.  Our entire system isn't designed to support Political Parties who aren't even mentioned in our constitution, nor an invisible, insatiable beast called The Economy.

Government is meant to support the people.  The Economy is meant to be the food that sustains society, which is a support system connecting and ideally empowering people.  

We've gotten this all backwards; partisanship has taken supremacy away from Parliament and The Economy is being trumped as more important than people.  Is it any wonder so many programs are missing their target or so many people are falling through the cracks?

A big part of why we've gotten things all screwy is that we've decided that relationships - committing sociology, as it were - is a bad thing.  We've been going the transaction, laissez-faire route; as a result, we have poor communication, increased hostility and competition and vitally, less sustainable results.

We think we know where we're going, but we're not sure.  But we no longer seem to care.

We've lost our way and our tracking back in circles.  Which is why now, more than any time in at least my life time, we need leaders with vision who understand the value of people.  

Not as props, not as clients or audiences to be messaged, but as as real people.

I believe we need to pivot our perspective.  I also believe that Open Government/Open Data is the frame that will allow us to do this.  

But I also know that as it becomes harder and harder for a select, siloed few to know what to do next, we're going to see the opacity of politics get worse before it gets better.  But it will get better, one way or another - the historical turn of the wheel teaches us that much.

The Peaceable Revolution is at hand.

Toronto Police thinking outside The Box

Giving an unusual twist to their latest enforcement camapgin, traffic services officers are driving around in a black hearse, complete with Toronto Police Service logos and flashing lights, to raise public awareness about the dangers of distracted driving and to catch people who are driving with a cellphone, MP3 player or another electronic device in their hand.

Full marks for Chief Blair and his team for thinking outside the box.  People don't usually associate police with brainstorming, but it's actually quite common - initiatives like Positive Ticketing come out of police efforts to be more successful at their work.

If you look at it from their point of view, there's really no option but to get creative - they have seen every combination of increased surveillance, tougher penalties and new restrictions, but people are still doing the same, stupid things (like driving impaired or cheating on their expense claims) that cause problems for themselves and everyone else.

Some people may take offense to being pulled over by a hearse; I have no problem with that.  People will take offense to being pulled over by a cop in general - nobody likes to be caught misbehaving.  The question is, will this campaign have a lasting impact, or is it simply designed to get some media traction and spread the word a bit further?

Personally, I can't see how this can have any more than a short-term impact.  Like a faith-healer or a motivational speaker, at best we can hope for a short-term change in behaviour before people revert to their norms.

Why?

The job of the police is to serve and protect - primarily by stopping bad things from happening and catching people breaking the law.  What's not part of their mandate is an in-depth understanding of why these behaviours happen in the first place.  Unless you are targeting the why, you can't get anything other than superficial success.

It's as true for motivating positive behaviour as it is for remedying bad behaviour.

So brass tacks - why do people opt to drive impaired, be it by drugs, fatigue or smartphones?  Why do they drive too fast, make erratic lane changes or ignore signage around them?

There's no one easy answer.  Different people will behave in the same way for different reasons, and within one individual the behaviour might be motivated by different causes at different times.

But here are a few examples:

- Hyper-confidence:  Like the WWII bomber pilot, they know nothing bad will happen to them - it only happens to others.

- Selfish ideation: this one is two-fold.  

One, a self-absorbed driver may not recognize on a cognitive level that they share the road with other drivers; they won't look before they change lanes because it doesn't occur to them that someone else may be in this space.  It's like the squirrel crossing the road - they act until nudged by a shock into freezing or darting instinctively in another direction.  Or a different example - if you are an able-bodied, single male with a good job, how many strollers, wheelchairs or homeless people do you see in the course of a day?  It's not that they aren't there - they simply don't register on your personal radar, because they aren't relevant to you.

Two, you may not recognize the people around you as people; if you're in a selfish frame of mind (focused on getting yourself ahead, bitter about wrongs done to you or anxious to get where you're going or not miss a call), the people around you may register as impediments, not people, that just need to get out of your way.  It's the same thing as pushing on to a subway, even past an elderly man or a pregnant woman (that you might not have seen in the first place).

This leads into our next example:

Extrinsic Motivation: your wife is going to be mad if you're late.  Your boss is in a bad mood and you don't want to be caught away from your desk.  Your kid is becoming withdrawn at home and at school and you're worried about them.  All these chronic pushes and pulls encourage you to focus on a context other than the one you are in at that moment, leading to distraction.

Addiction: which, surprise surprise, is often a mechanism for creating a buffer between people and the stressors in their life, often stemming from those extrinsic factors.  

Addiction is commonly understood as dependence on a substance, such as drugs or even video games; instead, addiction is often about dependence on an internal substance, dopamine, that is stimulated by those substances.  People like dopamine; it feels good.  Particularly when much of your day (or driving experience) is frustrating, those little hits of happy make a difference.

If you've ever felt an overwhelming need to check your blackberry, just in case something important is happened, that's addiction.  If the buzzer goes off and you jump to see what message you got, even if you're driving on a crowded highway, that's addiction.

An interesting thing that's emerging about addiction - in many cases, it's contextual.  People are looking for quick, dopamanic fixes because they are experiencing their day-to-day reality as unpleasant.  If you have a spouse who downloads their workstress at home and a micro-managing boss who insists that home life shouldn't impact work - and inbetween these hostile environments is a dreaded commute - then yeah, you're going to look for quick hits of happy to get through your day.

Which is why I doubt a couple of days of police driving a hearse is going to have any sustainable impact on driving behaviours.  It's applying a band-aid to what's really a contextual, societal virus.

We are constantly told to be aggressive (in getting a job), selfish (in buying what makes us happy) and angry (at politics and interest groups ranging from the very poor to the super-rich) to get ahead.  But we're also being told that society is a sham, government regulations are oppressive and individuals should be entirely self-reliant if they are to have personal value.

There are solutions to this sort of structural problem, largely rooted in sustained education (especially social-emotional learning and self-regulation), but stemming from that changes to the work-life structural balance.

But you will never land on these solutions if you're focused on reaction and economics; it takes a through understanding of neurochemistry and behavioural economics to encourage mindful, pro-social behaviour.

Do we have legislators and leaders willing to commit the sociology necessary to catalyze these solutions?

Not yet.  But soon - maybe.

The Sun Sucks at Economics

 

Clearly "society" did not push him to extremism.

 

Right now we need to use every tool at our disposal.

 

The Sun clearly sucks at economics. Behavioural Economics, that is.

There's no small irony in this; the folks on the political right are hopping mad at young folk who clearly don't know how the world works.  You get out of school, you start at the bottom wage rung and slowly work your way up.   It's a waste of time teaching kids art and group therapy - they need to focus on math and the practical skills our society needs - you know, like woodworking.

And all these people with radical faiths and unusual names committing acts of terror/crime? They need to get over themselves, too - or get out.

Take this Ali Mohamed Dirie, for instance.  We don't need to know a thing about how his little personality and motivations were formed - did his parents vent frustrations with him, did he experience stigmatization at school, how he was treated in our sterling correctional system.

Dude got woodworking, for Chrissakes - what more does he want?  By acting irresponsibly overseas he embarrassed our well-respected country.

That's a bit like telling someone suffering from repetitive stress injury "we changed your workspace for a day - now get over it."

There's a clear profile that leads to this kind of thinking.   It's a great one to have in certain specific contexts - just not ours.

By putting "the country" and "the economy" first, the authors of this editorial are getting mad at lead poisoning without looking upstream for the problem.  We can try to apply yesterday's social/economic model to today's reality, but that's a bit like fighting a modern war with horses and bayonets.

Fewer Baby Boomers got post-secondary education than Millennials do today.  At the time, the social contract looked like this - if you get a job at, say, a manufacturing plant right after school, you'd expect to start at basic wage and work your 8.5 hours a day.  The harder you worked and the more value you added, the greater your chance at slowly working your way up the ladder until The Peter Principle kicked in.  On the otherhand, if you spent the coin and time on post-secondary education, that would pay off with better-paying jobs and more meaningful work.  The hours would probably be longer, but the work would be satisfying so that'd be okay.

Now we're telling kids they have to work as hard as and spend more than the Baby Boomers in getting post-secondary education and even harder through volunteering, internships and sales skills - but expect to start at the same place as a high school dropout would have back in the day.

Is it any wonder why youth are disillusioned?

Back to those sales skills - what are employers looking for? How do you figure that out?  Hell, how are they figuring that out?  How do you demonstrate your ability to play well with others and add value for a company?  Name the math course that teaches those skills (certainly not Algebra - that's a product of radical Islam, after all).

 The fact is, it's the anthropology courses, the Social-Emotional Learning and the value-add and design insight you get though art that instills in kids the skills that will help them land satisfying jobs in the Knowledge Economy.  They aren't trying to live out their parents' fading memories of the Manufactured Economy - they're planning for the world they see emerging now.

Which brings us back to math.  Math is about structure, about understanding how concepts fit together.   Math is engineering, math financial planning, is navigation, problem solving.  Just ask Jacob Barnett - he knows a thing or two about math, despite his failure to play by the rules.

But we don't sell it as such.  Instead, we sell it as tough medicine, something you need to do for your own good whether you see it or not - like eating veggies, or voting, or wearing seatbelts or not talking on the cell phone while driving.  Life isn't supposed to be enjoyable - you're supposed to suffer through for the good of the economy, which will in turn provide wealth (not satisfaction) for everyone.

There are just oodles of great role models at the top tier of society who demonstrate this in practice, aren't there?

Back to what math is - playing pool, Angry Birds and Bad Piggies.  Math is making things work - like building a bridge out of paper, or determining the angles required to make a flat drawing look three-dimensional.

See the connection, here?  Let's take it even further.

If I take two trains and have them leave opposing stations at different speeds, where and when would they intersect?

If I take the child of disenfranchised, under-employed parents who suffer from discrimination in forms both subtle and gross, expressing these frustrations at home; if that child expresses the same discrimination at school, sees the same marginalization and stigmatization of people like him across society, what are the odds that this kid will see the existing social order as a problem he needs to solve with the tools available to him?

Root numbers = root causes.
Committing sociology = problem identification

The Sun's right on one thing - we do need to start using every tool at our disposal, and to their maximum potential.  We need to develop new tools, too.

Just like you use calculus to solve different problems than you would with algebra, there are only so many social problems you can successfully address with a hammer.

 

PostScript - I wrote this on the subway, couresty of smartphone tech.  Wireless allowed me to add the hyperlinks, post to the blog and upload to the world.  The other tools I used were all cognitive.  :o)

All Along the Firewall: Bullying Monkeys and Attack Ads

Maybe I could look into this and tell you whether the story is a metaphor or reality-based, but that would be a bit like committing sociology.  I'd be better off spending that time creating attack ads - after all, that's how things are done around here.

A group of scientists placed 5 monkeys in a cage and in the middle, a ladder with bananas on the top.

Every time a monkey went up the ladder, the scientists soaked the rest of the monkeys with cold water.

After a while, every time a monkey went up the ladder, the others beat up the one on the ladder.

After some time, no monkey dare[d] to go up the ladder regardless of the temptation.

Scientists then decided to substitute one of the monkeys. The 1^st thing this new monkey did was to go up the ladder. Immediately the other monkeys beat him up.

• After several beatings, the new member learned not to climb the ladder even though he never knew why.

A 2^nd monkey was substituted and the same occurred. The 1^st monkey participated on [sic] the beating for [sic] the 2^nd monkey. A 3^rd monkey was changed and the same was repeated (beating). The 4^th was substituted and the beating was repeated and finally the 5^th monkey was replaced.

What was left was a group of 5 monkeys that even though never received a cold shower, continued to beat up any monkey who attempted to climb the ladder.

If it was possible to ask the monkeys why they would beat up all those who attempted to go up the ladder ... I bet you the answer would be ... "I don't know — that's how things are done around here" Does it sound familiar?

Don't miss the opportunity to share this with others as they might be asking themselves why we continue to do what we are doing if there is a different way out there.

This seems like an experiment, but now I'm wondering... Was this experiment ever conducted? If not, was any similar experiment conducted that shows the same effect?

"There must be some kind of way out of here,"
"Said the joker to the thief..."

But we won't find it by walking in circles.

 

No wonder the polls have been wrong: The polling industry is in a crisis (Brian Singh)

 

Fortunately for the delusionally confident, none of this matters.  After all, they make up the rules as they go, so trivial things like the tearing of yesterday's tools and models at the seams is no biggie.

 

While they hibernate in their cave, though, the world is changing. 

 

Much like polling, there's a pattern emerging that anyone can twig to - they just need to expand their data net and be willing to connect some unconventional dots to see it.

 

 

No wonder the polls have been wrong: The polling industry is in a crisis

 

What is going wrong with the polls?

 

Last week, after trailing in the polls right up to election day, the British Columbia Liberals won another mandate – a provincial election that the media and public are calling a “surprising” result. Now, we are amidst a host of pollster mea culpas and claims by some firms that they got it “less wrong than the others.” Herein lays a new problem for the media, politicians and the public: our faith in the accuracy of political polling.

 

First, let me disclose that I conduct public opinion research as part of my business, and have done political polling in the past. Personally, I have long regarded this collapse of faith as a looming problem, one that has become very serious over the last two years.

 

Political polling is traditionally a test of the accuracy of a public-opinion research firm. It is considered a loss leader (typically offered below cost), with the expectation that an accurate poll result will build a firm’s reputation and attract new and more profitable business.

 

Over the last decade this premise has changed dramatically. With the rise of the software-based polling methods – notably online polling using Internet panels of self-selected respondents, as well as interactive voice response systems (typically referred to as “robodials” by the public) – the cost of entry for new methods and firms has never been cheaper. Gone are the days of excellent response rates to telephone (landline) polls. And gone are the days of predictably engaging the public to garner its political inclinations.

 

We are in a new world – low voter turnouts, multiple communication technologies, social-media platforms, and the use by parties of geo-demographic targeting and sophisticated voter identification methods to find supporters. These have dramatically affected the political polling business, and pollsters have been slow to adjust or have failed to evolve their skills.

 

There is that old saying – “Fast, cheap and good. Pick two” – which is truly applicable here. While corporations typically choose a combination of fast or cheap with good, media outlets in recent years have always opted for fast and cheap. The business model of polls and the media has evolved. Media are currently either cash-strapped or losing money, and thus, in most cases, either do not pay for political polling or pay for access to polls already conducted.

 

There is the additional dimension of politicos and the media’s obsession with the “horse race.” Many column inches are taken up with the analysis of poll results and insights from pollsters (some of you may include this article in that category as well). While these stories do capture the pulse of an election, they do not take into account the overall election ecosystem and the body politic.

 

Let’s delve deeper.

 

After the 2012 U.S. national election, Nate Sliver, most likely the most famous political statistician at this moment, published an eye-opening analysis of all the polling data-collection methodologies and pollster accuracy rates. The findings were revealing – fast and cheap methods had larger respondent biases (by supporters of specific political parties) and were less accurate. Surprisingly, the best-performing poll was the Columbus Dispatch’s old-school mail survey. Over all, live telephone-operator and Internet-panel polls performed significantly better than robodials. These methods were better at establishing a more population-representative sample that captured the diversity of opinion and voting behaviour. However, they are also significantly more expensive than the cheap-to-operate, large-sample, conducted-overnight robodials. Clearly there is a tradeoff here.

 

This leads to three dimensions of polling itself:

 

1. The media and the parties are asking different questions.

Polling, in its cheapest form, focuses on the horse race. But elections are more than that. They are tests of political parties’ brands, the public’s confidence in the economy and their governments’ stewardship, and societal trust. Quality polling captures these elements, and how they wax and wane during the writ period. Quality polling also entails more in-depth, statistical analysis that addresses aspects such as tests of correlation and voter segmentation – aspects that Nate Silver and his more methodical contemporaries embrace.

 

2. Political war rooms use a variety of tools the media don’t.

There is an inherent misalignment between pollsters and party war rooms. Pollsters have polls. War rooms have polls, plus social-media monitoring platforms, feedback from their ground network, content analysis of media coverage, text analysis of editorials and public comments, as well as voter-identification systems. Pollsters mostly ignore this latter element, but parties are investing heavily in it. The Conservative Party of Canada uses CIMS, while others are using Obama’s platform of choice, NationBuilder. These platforms are meant to address a question rarely considered in the media: What is a party’s secure and confirmed vote? Polls are not designed to capture this data, but voter identification is playing a larger role in election outcomes. Some parties are clearly better at getting their vote mobilized and to the polls on Election Day. The Conservative Party of Canada’s 2012 federal majority is a testament to this.

 

Further, data triangulation – finding the best insights across multiple sources - has always been a skill amongst the best war room teams. It is no surprise that data scientists – those with triangulation, interpretation and communication skills – are much sought after by political parties. Their talents are becoming more useful than those of the traditional party pollster.

 

3. There is a consistent misalignment of voter intentions and voter turnout.

In most cases, answering a poll is not akin to actually voting. Polling exposes social desirability bias – I say I vote because it is the right thing to say, even if I don’t actually vote. Saying you want change and voting for change are independent events. This was evident in all of these “surprise” results. In my opinion, the real metrics that matter relate to the committed or intending voter. These are poll respondents who have a history of voting (themselves and in their family tradition) and intend to vote on election day. Based on my analysis, while it may result in a small respondent base with a higher margin of error, this group has been a better predictor of voter turnout. Observing this metric within the context of the recent BC and Alberta elections, there were warning signs that things turned for the eventual winner earlier than what most pollsters believed.

 

The current business model of the media overrides any quick resolution of the “fast and cheap” polling problem. It does, however, exacerbate the biggest problem for pollsters – one facing political parties and democracy itself: low voter turnout. B.C. is flirting with the 50 per cent floor, and Alberta saw turnout drop to 41 per cent in 2008. There is much research into this, but no matter what, the ranks of non-voters are growing, and no amount of suspect polling is going to answer these questions.

 

Brian Singh, the president of Zinc Research, is a political consultant based in Calgary.

The Root Cause of Terrorism, Paedophilia, Ass-Grabbing and Politics

We're not as in control as we confidently tell ourselves, which is the great irony.  It is possible for the alpha-dogs to understand this concept and do something proactive about it, but that's like trying to teach a kid to read - they feel they have better things to do with their time.  He who has the gold makes the rules, etc; it's a limbic thing.

 

Getting frisky: We’d rather not admit that we’re ‘clever apes’, but we are

 

Caught last month with his hand down the back of a colleauge’s trousers, Andrew Marr, lanky journalist and political commentator, has illustrated himself as “a clever ape in a spot of bother”. This alcohol fuelled ass-grabbing seems to be a timely misdemeanor amid a series of surfacing BBC groping allegations. Is Marr’s reasoning that “we are homo sapiens” enough to excuse him from his adulterous actions? Does it justify the on-air gropings that Sandi Toksvig and DJ Liz Kershaw brought to light last week? What, to push this to its natural conclusion, about the late Jimmy Saville and the recent accusations of paedophilia?

 

Like it or not, the truth is that humans are ‘clever apes’. Humans are clever; we discovered how to use tools to our advantagen and make fire, we developed money and commerce, discovered chemistry, industralised our world, invented the atomic bomb and computers. As Andrew Marr says, indtroducing his new BBC documentary, Andrew Marr’s History of the World, “we have been brilliantly clever at reshaping the world around us, almost as clever as we think we are, though not perhaps as wise.”

 

Even if our world is unrecognizable from 70,000 years ago, humanity’s animal instincts (primarily our sexual ones) have remained firmly embedded within our nature. The fact that we are evolved from apes by no means justifies the legality or morality of Jimmy Saville’s pedophilia or of other celebrities unwanted gropings, but it sure does explain their cause.

 

A recent response to Andrew Marr’s southerly stretching arm on the Daily Mail unwittingly reaffirms Marr’s ‘we’re only human’ defence: “‘The BBC’s standards are slipping……Wasn’t Janet Ellis thrown off Blue Peter because she was an unmarried mother !! Yet this MARRIED man has been caught playing away, yet still holds a prime time slot on a Sunday morning……How times are a changing.”

 

Times are changing; exactly. Coming to terms with our human nature has been a battle with the British stiff upper lip since the fall of the Roman Empire and Christianity became the accepted religion. Sex was suddenly for procreation – what a way to suck the fun out of it. The liberal ‘no strings attached’ Roman attitude dissolved until the cultural revolution in the 1960s. The Daily Mail commenter illuminates how, in the 21st century, a cheeky, drunk ass-grabbing does not undermine personal achievements. For the BBC even to bother commenting on Marr’s actions would highlight an outdated attitude to sexual liberation, and being as PC as they come, the BBC are unlikely to be dubbed as sexually backward if they were to condemn Marr’s mistake.

 

When celebrities like Marr slip up, the media has a field day. Everyone goes around on their moral high-horse asking ‘Why oh why would they do such a thing?’ What we fail to admit is that everyone knows why these people make mistakes; our ape like nature takes over our modern way of thinking and our wisdom fails us in favour of instinct. It’s easier to berate public icons and put them beneath the public’s morality, than admit they are our mistake-making equals. Marr’s ‘clever ape’ statement is intelligent and insightful. It is exactly what the media and public do not want to hear; they want an apology and acknowledgment of his irresponsible and terrible behaviour in order to denounce him as a pathetic adulterer. Instead his excuse is ultimately savvy and witty.

 

One up to Andrew Marr.

 

Main photo: Fashionbyhe

Marr photo: Πρωθυπουργός της Ελλάδας

Team Harper Taking their Home Game Abroad

 

In response, Mr. Baird read comments made by Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi in 2010, when he referred to the “occupiers of Palestine” as the “descendants of apes and pigs.” Mr. Baird called the slur unhelpful to Mideast peace. Mr. Aboul-Magd replied that Mr. Morsi was praised by Western governments for brokering a 2012 ceasefire in Gaza between Hamas and Israel.

 

Diplomacy is not their strong suit.  Unfortunately for Canada, diplomacy is the only way to establish relations and get deals done on the international stage.

 

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't force them to commit sociology.

 

Committing Sociology vs Social Pruning: Liberal Vs Conservative Governments

“I don’t understand why you would allow yourself to lose the public and media relations battle when you’ve actually done quite a bit of it,” he said in an interview.

 

“I don’t think they’re doing that bad a job, but everybody else seems to think they’re doing a really bad job, and I’m not sure that’s true.”

 That's a professional economist who has actually made a living as an economist speaking.

Then, there's this from the federal level:

 

The federal government cannot account for billions of dollars that were devoted to combating terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks, Canada’s Auditor-General says in a new report.

 

Stephen Harper, the Economist Prime Minister, can't account for 3 billion dollars of taxpayer funds.  If I hire an economist to help me sort out my finances, I would kind of expect them to look backwards, forwards, under every rock and around every corner to make sure we have a good understanding of where we're at so we can figure out where we can go.

 

The Harper government hasn't done that.  What they have done, conversely, is spend huge sums on Canada's Economic Action Plan ads, muzzled dissenting opinion and attacked opponents.

 

Which is exactly what Mike Harris did when he was Premier.  They threatened and bullied opponents and spent heavily on advertising to promote the message they wanted people to hear.

 

Oddly enough, whenever Liberal governments start to focus on message over substance, that's when they start to go astray on program management, too.  Conversely, when they focus on policy implementation instead of dedicating oodles of their time to brand-building, they get whacked for it.  The more they get whacked, the more energy they need to divert from accomplishment to branding.

 

The reason why this happens is simple, but not sound-bite simple, which is probably why no one pays attention to it.

 

People rationally understand we need complex, collaborative solutions to our complex, collaborative social problems but emotionally, we respond more strongly to symbolism; messaging, branding, chest-thumping.

 

That's because we're reactive animals first, logical humans second. 

 

Aggressive, hard "C" Conservative governments function like lions on the savanna - they spend as little energy as possible on doing anything other than looking magnificent and smacking down opponents.  They aren't interested in making a system work or supporting the nation - their sole focus is on dominance.  Be it Stephen Harper or Rob Ford, the style of governance creeps ever further towards feudalism, with the King providing both judgement and direction in the absence of research, evidence or a cross-section of public opinion.

So, Harper's Canada has stifled debate, issues personal attacks on opponent after opponent, tried to threaten foreign scientists over data release and walked away from any international conversation they don't feel they can be top dog at.  Control is increasingly isolated at the top and starved of exposure to the realities of the people being governed.

 

Cynical Harper operatives pat themselves on the back for cleverly "starving the beast" by cutting off StatsCan, CIDA, national healthcare planning, etc. at the knees, thinking they've pulled a fast one on the Socialists and Separatists and irrevocably made Canada more conservative.  The actual result is that our national brand is diminishing and public confidence that government knows what it's doing is decreasing.

The solution to this, of course, is more dehumanization of opponents and more pumping of self, extending the peacock's tail a little further.  This increased focus on appearance and marketing will come at the expense of more government programming, which will result in more embarrassing slip-ups.  The Tories are painting themselves in to a corner and hastening the demise of their emperor's cloak of a Canadian conservative movement.

The pendulum will swing back and a more liberal government will take the reigns, start re-opening conversations and start rebuilding the infrastructure necessary for a complex system like a country to function.  If it doesn't happen through the electoral process, there are groups like Anonymous who will eventually make sure it happens regardless.  Post defeat, it won't take long for the Political Right to start their process all over again, focusing on self-promotion and oppositional attacks, egging progressives to respond in kind.  If and when the progressives do, they'll become more partisan, less focused on the system and start emulating the same damned mistakes that do in every Party.

 

Competition is the natural state of play - it's as true for human beings as it is for any other animal.  Competition is resource-intensive and isolationist; you work against, not with.  Progress, however, comes through collaborative efforts, planning and dialogue.  Humans are a progressive species, which is why we're not running from lions on the Savannah plain any more. 

 

Society is the result of progress, not competition.  Competition is more about branding and appearance than it is about substance.  If you doubt that, explain to me why fashion remains such a lucrative industry and why the more money people have, the more gets spent on image.  At its extremes us-vs-them competition chips away at society; wars destroy infrastructure and kill children.  We do these harmful, wasteful things because when we're reacting, we're not thinking. 

 

Progress trains children to innovate and build infrastructure.  You simply can't think ahead if you're always focused on fight or flight.

 

In a social context, the value that Hard Right Conservatives provide is again, a natural one - they act like brushfire, clearing away outdated and tangled infrastructure to make way for new growth.  Or you can call it synaptic pruning - it amounts to the same thing.

 

We're in the "clear space for new connections" part of the social cycle now, though there's a growing trend towards committing sociology.  If we took the time to understand why we react the way we do, we could accomplish this transition without the associated pain and frustration - but that takes a level of foresight we simply don't have at the moment.

 

But we're getting there.

The Sin of Committing Sociology

Like them, we embrace the “sin” of employing data in aid of a proactive public policy that fosters a sustainable and equitable planet. We urge all Canadians to do the same.

 

 

I think they hit the nail on the head by comparing proactive public policy (often considered "social engineering" by the political right as though windshield wipers, organized waste collection/removal and inoculations were bad things) as sinful.

 

Original Sin, after all, was biting into the apple of knowledge.  That sin led to the expulsion from paradise.  What better metaphor could there be for the development of theory of mind and a sense of isolation from the world we live in?

 

Reactive vs Proactive.  Understanding and dealing with root causes vs whacking whatever mole is in front of you.  Fear vs hope.

 

There's a reason I keep telling people mental health is about more than just illness.

Stephen Harper's Terrorists

 

Just hours after the PM advised against "committing sociology' by considering the root causes of terrorism, Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre's came up with an even more bumpersticker-ready position, telling his co-panelists on tonight's edition of Power and Politics that 'the root cause of terrorism is terrorists.'

 

The Conservative Party of Canada is all for direct call-and-answer.  Terrorism is caused by terrorists, pure and simple.  There can be no equivocating on this point.

 

With that in mind, let's do a little exercise, just for fun.

 

Here's the definition of terrorism: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion

 

And here's a definition of terror, just so we have full clarity:

 

                  1: a state of intense fear

                  2a: one that inspires fear

                    b: a frightening aspect (terror of invasion)

                    c: a cause of anxiety

                    d: an appalling person or thing

 

It's simple; a terrorist is one who causes/inspires fear.  People who engage in fear-mongering are terrorists.

 

Stephen Harper has warned us about seas of troubles lapping at our shores.  He's warned us that Socialists and Separatists seek to destroy our country.  Liberal leaders, environmentalists, people who use the Internet have all been branded as threats to our safety and economic security that only The Harper's Canada Government can save us from.

 

In short, Stephen Harper has consistently used fear as a coercive tool to get Canadians to vote his way or ignore CPC behaviours (like lying to the public, coercing bureaucrats to lie or not speak to the public, so on and so forth); in his world, the CPC ends justify the means of keeping Harper's perceived threats at bay.

 

By this linear, straight-forward logic, it's no wonder the Harper Conservatives are so clear about what constitutes terrorism.

 

Talk about the pot calling the kettle tar baby.

 

But it gets better - see, our Prime Minister has a cut-and-dry response to terrorism:

 

The right way to respond Harper said is to “condemn it categorically, and to the extent you can deal with the perpetrators you deal with them as harshly as possible. And that's what this government would do if ever faced with such actions."

 

There's no time to commit sociology.  You're either on the right side of a clearly defined line or your not.  By Harper's logic, by his actions and by his words, he's clearly on the wrong side of history.

 

Canada - it looks like we have a job to do.