The dynamic between President Obama’s State of the Union(ish) and Governor Jindal’s response on Tuesday called to mind an exchange in the debate episode from the fourth season of The West Wing. By way of explanation, the election in the fourth season pits the unabashedly academic Nobel Laureate economist and incumbent President Josiah Bartlett against [...]
Archive for February, 2009
What Are The Next Ten Words, Governor Jindal?
Posted in Cognitive Biases, Psychology of Political Ideology, tagged Big Government, Bobby Jindal, Complexity Aversion, Conservative Simplicity, Life Imitates Art, Presdient Obama, Tax Policy, The West Wing on February 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Science Times Editors Appear Not to Understand Basic Principles of Neuroscience
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Dualism, New York Times, Science Journalism on February 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I hadn’t seen this before writing the last Thursday Research Blogging post, but the Science study on envy and schadenfreude had been featured in last week’s Science Times. I have no complaints about the article itself, which I think is well-written and engaging. There is, however, a rather glaring problem with the headline:
In Pain and [...]
A Party Without Ideas is a Stubborn Party Indeed
Posted in Psychology of Political Ideology, tagged Attitude Research, Bipartisanship, Framing Effects, George Bizer, Legislative Psychology, Republican Obstructionism, Richard Petty on February 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
As many have noted before, the Republican party is largely bereft of ideas or a coherent positive vision for the country. Although there were some interesting(ly impractical) stimulus proposals from right-of-center thinkers, the most seriously presented Republican alternative in the Senate was Senator Jim DeMint’s unbelievably stupid $3.1 Trillion tax cut. The House Republicans’ contributions [...]
On the Depressing Rationality of Congressional Republicans
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Ezra Klein, HR1, Partisanship, Political Reality, Rationality, Situationism, Stimulus Package on February 14, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I cannot figure out exactly why the fact that no House Republicans voted for the final version of the stimulus package made its way into seemingly every headline I saw about the vote yesterday. It’s news, I suppose, but should it surprise anyone? Ezra Klein yesterday had an insightful post on, to borrow a mode [...]
Thursday Research Blogging: A Distinct Cortical Response to Ambiguous Information
Posted in Thursday Research Blogging, tagged Ambiguity, Financial Crisis, fMRI, Neuroeconomics, Risk, Subprime Mortgages, Uncertainty on February 12, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Our financial system is founded on uncertainty: when we invest in risky assets, we cannot be sure whether we will, in the end, earn a profit or suffer a loss. Despite the recent troubles, this dynamic has served as one of the main driving forces behind our explosive rate of economic growth. Far from being [...]
Conservatism May Be Dead, but Ideology Is Not Holding a Smoking Gun
Posted in Psychology of Political Ideology, tagged Conservatism, Edmund Burke, John Jost, New Right, Sam Tananhaus on February 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Although the conservative soul-searching the followed last year’s election has somewhat slowed with the distractions of President Obama’s inauguration and the debate about his enormous stimulus package, Sam Tanenhaus’ much-discussed eulogy for movement conservatism in the recent issue of The New Republic is not to be missed. Tanenhaus painstakingly documents how the post-war conservative movement, [...]
