Coakley/Brown: A larger problem than simply politics

[Teaser]

Specifically, this race (and the entire teabagging movement) is representative of a problem in which humans revert to tribalism and sloganeering as proxies for the use of reason in the making of decisions.

I am concerned that our brains are not up to solving the complexity of problems we faced. We were evolutionarily optimized as hunter gatherers. Our brains show the hallmarks of this: how we respond to authority, how we problem solve, all represent bootstrapping of very basic processes into new and perhaps unfriendly realms of information processing.

More and more I'm siding with the transhumanists and singularitarians that we need to boost human cognitive capacity somehow.

So how?

[villager]

1. boost cognitive capacity? Or empathy?

n/t

[Teaser]

4. I am not a very empathetic individual

I am on the autism spectrum, and it is, at times, hard to empathize with others. Or at least to manifest responses that others would recognize as empathy. There are exceptions for me: children, animals, etc...But oftentimes its more irritation at injustice than empathy...

But I am still a quite loyal and liberal Democrat. I think it's rational to be so. I see the fortunes of myself and my family as tied to a stable, functioning, and just political system, and I believe it is the Democratic party that is most likely to create such a society.

As such, I am not certain whether we need more empathy. But I am sure we need more rationality. Maybe they come down to the same thing, properly applied.

[timeforpeace]

2. This is no social crisis. Just another tricky day for us.

[Teaser]

5. not a social crisis, certainly

indicative of a very human impairment, I believe it is.

[anonymous171]

3. I just want moral leadership. Is that too much to ask?

[Bucky]

6. It's not humans; it's democracy. It's a lumbersome process that punishes impatience.

As Alexander Hamilton once said, "Even a thousand Socrates would still be a mob." We're on the road to moderate reforms... that's what we'll get regardless of the Massachusetts election and what we would have gotten regardless of whether Obama stuck up for the single payer option or any other liberal reform that got "thrown out the window" along this painful road.

Obama was wrong to ever say he could be the "last president" to deal with healthcare reform. We'll be tweaking it over and over for the next 50 years. It sucks, but it sucks less than any other form of government.