convincible.org

Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman contributed an opinion piece to the November 29th Wall Street Journal titled “Our Troops Must Stay”. I’ve always liked Senator Lieberman and would have voted for him in the last elections if he had made it past the primaries. I highly recommend checking his piece out here: “Our Troops Must Stay”.

I read the article and wonder if Senator Lieberman really wrote it, or perhaps his staff helps him? Regardless, it is excellent. The article is essentially an update of the status of the war in Iraq and his position on what we must do to succeed there. The whole article made me wish our President would give us clear updates like this.

Apparently, the Senator just completed his 4th trip to Iraq in the last 17 months. He outlines what progress has been made in solid terms everyone can understand. He provides anecdotes of the Iraqis having far more cell phones and access to the modern media with satellite dishes. And he also delivers hard data from surveys of the population and voting results. He talks of the vigorous campaigns of the candidates for the upcoming elections. And he talks of the war in Iraq as being between 27 million Iraqis and 10,000 terrorists. He makes it clear that relatively few are attempting to obstruct the democracy while the vast majority are supporting it.

Senator Lieberman also reminds us of our clear current plan in Iraq, and that the plan has not remained unchanged. He talks of the current plan’s summary line, “clear, hold and build” and then discusses the details. And of course he pats our hardworking military on the back for their courageous effort.

And one of the things I liked best in the Senator’s opinion was how he chastised both parties. He is disappointed by Democrats who are more concerned with how the President took us into the war three years ago. And he is just as disappointed with Republicans who are worried about how the war will disrupt their political moves in the next elections. He fears these weak politicians will make a “colossal mistake” and push us “to seize defeat from the jaws of victory”.

The Senator cites a survey saying 82% of Iraqis are confident their lives will be better in a year. We should strive to make our government work in a way that makes us just as confident. Can we find senators, representative and presidents who can present their opinion as well as Joe Lieberman? And can we push our current President to give us reports like this one?

Carl

I’ve been watching the results of the California Special Election carefully. Besides my personal opinions on the propositions, I have been very interested in the voting patterns. I have always greatly disliked the idea of Red States and Blue states as it presents the state as “all of one color”. This is how the electoral process works for presidential elections, but it does not necessary well represent the population. I also dislike the term as being strangely reversed from historic precedent as traditionally more socialist positions were considered red. In fact, until recent elections, the democratic voting states were often shown as red! (See Red state vs. blue state divide for more info on state colors.) Whatever, the color doesn’t matter, the point is that the term represents the state as a whole and the results don’t look that way.

Everyone now knows all the propositions were rejected. The California Secretary of State publishes the results here: vote2005.ss.ca.gov. Today’s San Jose Mercury News had some really good graphics showing how many of the counties voted. Unfortunately these graphics don’t appear on the website. Most of the media reports heavily on the winners and losers, but not much reporting is done on the voting patterns. These charts in the Mercury news were a welcome exception.

The largest spread was on Proposition 80 (Utilities regulation) where 65.7% voted no, and 34.3% voted yes. That sounds like a pretty resounding result to me. Interestingly, it appears only the liberal hot bed of San Francisco voted for the utilities regulation with 52.8% voting yes. Looking at the chart, every other county appeared to have a majority voting against the proposition! The media should be reporting how resoundingly this state voted this proposition down. Many would consider the state’s overall vote against regulation a conservative or “red state” position; but that might be going too far.

The smallest spread was on Proposition 73 (Abortion parental notification) where 52.6% noted no and 47.4% voted yes. Interestingly a large part of inland California voted for this proposition, certainly the ‘geographic majority’ although definitely not the majority of votes. This one is definitely close with only a 5.2% spread deciding the issue. I think most would agree that voting yes on this proposition was a conservative position. With only a small spread defeating it, this doesn’t appear to make the state very blue.

When you consider what percentage of California actually votes, the mix of opinion in the state becomes even foggier. It appears the turnout was low, just less than 43% of registered voters. Approximately 6.7 million people voted at the polls, plus the absentee ballots. Although data for the absentee ballots isn’t available yet, they issued 4.6 million. If all of the absentee ballots get voted that would be a total of 11.3 million voters. There are approximately 26 million people over the age of 18 in California according to the US Census Bureau. So that would mean less than 43% of the adult population voted. Actually, that seems high as it’s the same percentage as the turnout of registered voters; which implies almost every eligible adult is registered! That seems like it must be wrong. The best data I have found about the percentage of the population that is registered to vote is here: www.calvoter.org. This document claims 22 million Californians are eligible to vote and 16.5 million were registered for the November 2004 election. This would be 75% of the eligible population being registered and sounds more reasonable to me. If the 43% turnout being reported in the media is true and 16.5 million voters remain registered, this would be 7 million voters that turned out for the special election. Hmm… it looks to me like the media aren’t counting many of the absentee ballots in the turnout numbers! Well, regardless of the discrepancies in the data, something less than 43% of the eligible population voted. Probably much less, but I haven’t been able to really determine a better number so I will stick with the 43%.

When we mix the most resounding no vote, the one with 65.7% against the utilities regulation with the 43% of the eligible population voting, we see that less than 28.3% of the eligible population voted no. Hmm… this doesn’t sound like a resounding majority of Californians cared about even the most definitively decided issue.

Where I live in near San Francisco, most of the people I meet consider California a completely blue state. And looking at the Mercury News charts, San Francisco voters did consistently have a more one sided opinion on the propositions and previous elections. But the voting record of San Francisco and the simplistic media coverage doesn’t make California really a solid blue state. Check out the actual data yourself.

Carl

I believe in having my own opinion. I believe facts exist. I believe not everyone is right. I believe I can be wrong. And I believe that if I want to have a respectable opinion, I should be prepared to research the information behind the opinion and that I should be prepared to change my opinion if the information contradicts it.

I know a person who I often have friendly arguments with. Once, late in the evening after a long argument, I mentioned having voted in a different political party a couple years back. He was shocked. And he exclaimed, “How can I know who you are?!” He expected that my core viewpoint should stay constant. Is my political party always supposed to stay the same? Is it selected at birth and immutable? Must I agree with and vote along party lines? Wouldn’t that mean that I was inconvincible?

Obviously, some people must be wrong about something sometime. I would opine that everyone is wrong about something much of the time! And if you are inconvincible, you will be wrong about something forever. Ouch!

Our schools K-12 classes are organized to teach us what is correct: the right way to use language, accurate science, and true history. The teachers and often parents grade us on whether our answers are right or wrong. But in complicated issues it is often harder to determine what is right or wrong. Unfortunately, few of us have schooling that teaches us how to investigate an issue and change our opinion based on that research. And our schools mostly focus on teaching students things that they have decided are right and correcting the students when they are wrong.

As we grow up, many of us are confronted with situations where we are forced to learn how to analyze an issue or a question and make a decision. And some of us get to see the outcome of those choices and learn whether we were right or wrong. I’ve worked as a hardware design engineer and if you want to be a good designer, that work forces you to become convincible. You design something, and then you go before a reviewing group. The idea is that the design is too expensive to build and then find out it doesn’t work. The group grills you on the details of your design making you prove it will work properly. Often, it is a fairly aggressive interrogation. And the group has power, along with your manager, to force you to change your design. Afterwards, your design gets built and often undiscovered flaws still surface. And the designer has to go back and fix them. Good designers learn they can be wrong and become efficient at discovering and fixing their mistakes. Designers who cannot admit and fix their errors don’t last very long. I’m not saying they like being wrong, or admit it easily. But they understand it and can change their designs to fix the errors. Good hardware designers are convincible people.

I have also been involved in racing various motor vehicles. Perhaps some racers are gifted with the fast gene. But in the amateur ranks many of us have to learn how to go faster. The track is a fixed path, and your lap time around the track is a harsh reality. For a novice racer, the vehicle is usually capable of far more performance that the racer. So the racer is confronted with their lap time, and the way they go faster is by changing their way around the track and seeing how that affects the lap time. Brake later here, accelerate faster there and try to be smoother over those bumps. And the stopwatch tells the differences the changes make. Often going faster through one corner might require going slower through the previous one. Racers look at their own performance and analyze the track and make changes in their driving. Sometimes they watch how a faster guy drives and copy that style. Good racers are convincible people.

I believe that some people cannot be convinced of anything. Maybe they have never learned how to be convincible. Or perhaps their ego requires that they be right. It could be their desire to fit in with their team/party/social group overpowers their ability to reason objectively. Or maybe they just dislike their opponent and cannot agree with them for fear it make them more like him.

The media often helps support the inconvincible. News outlets of all types often focus their coverage to attract viewers, listeners and readers. And making the coverage attractive often means making it agreeable. Another way is to just report what happened without any objective discussion of why it happened. And of course, all too often “the why it happened” is slanted to make it agreeable to the viewers. Worse, some media outlets go further and adopt “unsportsmanlike” conduct. They promote negative views toward those who disagree with them or sometimes even fall to mere name calling. Has a media outlet ever indicated a person is immoral or stupid?

What I call the “team factor” is also a problem. Being unsportsmanlike is one thing. But having an opinion only because it is the opinion of your team may have you promoting opinions you would not agree with if you thought them through. Obviously, joining a “team” has its good purposes. A group cannot agree on everything and you want to join forces with organizations that help promote the bulk of things you believe. But this requires you form your own opinion about some things and then align yourself with the team. And then, while it may good to support your team with votes or donations or time it still doesn’t make any sense to agree with their positions just because they are your team.

Stratfor was recommended to me by a close friend. Apparently it is a private firm that provides analysis and consultation on global issues and events. You can subscribe to their free intelligence reports which tend to be fairly lengthy and dry but are often very good. The reports come out every couple days.
I haven’t subscribed to their service, but I like their free email reports.
http://www.stratfor.com/

BugMeNot.com is a website I found about a year ago. It is an interesting repository of shared usernames and passwords. Ever click on a link to an article, and cannot reach it because the site requires registration first? Bugmenot.com is a simple solution. Interesting, isn’t it?
BugMeNot.com