Trump: the Anti-Trust

I am creating a series of memes that portray Trump as the Anti-Trust.

Taking such an overtly political stand outside of education might seem like a departure from my usual modus operandi, so I shall explain.

The core of my work in education is about making the case that trust is central to learning and teaching. 

Specifically, trust arises out of the satisfaction of needs.

Another way to say it is that trust is a by-product of experiencing equity. 

There are four practical steps for producing experiences of equity:

1. Define needs scientifically
2. Distribute resources fairly to satisfy needs
3. Remove structural barriers to the satisfaction of needs
4. Satisfy needs with parity across groups 

(Numbers 2, 3, and 4 are slightly modified versions of consensus definition of equity presented by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.)

Understand that this equity recipe is universal to all human. 

That understanding gives you the key to my inspiration for creating the “Trump: the Anti-Trust” memes.

Nearly everything I have heard about how the Trump administration is managing the federal bureaucracy leads me to believe that they are consistently undermining equity and destroying trust in the federal government.

They are distributing resources unfairly.

They are destroying institutions that are supposed to remove structural barriers to the satisfaction of needs.

They are erecting structural barriers to need satisfaction.

And it all stems from Trump.

This description of Trump by Michael Lewis in his interview with Stephen Colbert inspired me.

He said, "He likes chaos.  

"If I’m trying to predict what Donald Trump is going to do and where he’s going to go, one rule is look for where there is trust in the world and he will try to destroy it. 

"He’s really uncomfortable with trust. 

"And I think there is a logic to it. 

"The logic to it is, he himself is untrustworthy.

"And I don’t mean that as an insult.

"It’s just true, right? 

"He lies all the time, and when he says something true it’s kind of an accident.

"He stiffs people on deals, all that.

"That’s the way he thinks you move through the world. 

"If we’re in a world in which we trust each other, he’s at a disadvantage, he doesn’t belong. 

"But if he eliminates trust between people, he’s leveled the playing field. 

"He gets the world into a place where he’s good at it."

This is the most sensible explanation of Trump I’ve ever heard. 

I have been against Trump-ism all along, but this description of his attitude to the world crystalized the distinction between Trump-ism and conservatism. 

Conservatism seeks to conserve something valuable in our society. 

Conservatives rely on trust, not the opposite. 

I respect conservatism.

I see myself as this kind of conservative.

In my books I have clearly stated that I am anti-bureaucracy.

This commitment might seem to imply that I might be in favor of the DOGE program, but that is not true.

DOGE is not anti-bureaucratic, DOGE is unprincipled wanton destruction of valuable institutions that exist for the purpose of removing structural barriers to need satisfaction. 

DOGE is led by and is only serving the interests of Trump and his cronies.

It is the essence of Trump-ism.

Trump-ism is neither progressive nor conservative, it is not even anti-bureaucratic, it is crony-ism. 

I want government to progress away from bureaucracy. 

I want to conserve the equity and trust building institutions of the federal government.

I am against crony-ism, regardless of which party it might be aligned with. 

Trump-ism is a brand of crony-ism, so I am against it. 

For a deep dive into the foundations of my politics read my post entitled First Principles for Political Realism

First Principles for Political Realism: Rights, Needs, & Equity

Recent events in my home country of the United States of America have prompted me to extend my perspective on equity in education beyond the schoolhouse. I have been striving to rethink education from first principles for over two decades. Evidence that I’ve made some progress is that The Independent Press Association gave my book Schooling for Holistic Equity awards in both Psychology and Education. Now, the political situation in my nation has taken such a tragic and foreboding turn that I cannot help but apply what I’ve discovered more broadly.

My perspective is primarily grounded in the science of Self-Determination Theory, the most widely respected and productive model of human psychological needs, motivation, and engagement in the world today. The principles I am sharing today go beyond that scientific grounding into the realm of politics. Given my presence on a few social media platforms my biases are easily discoverable. For eight years I was the co-founder and primary administrator for Portland Clean Air which fights industrial air pollution in Oregon. That suggests that I tend to favor the left side of the political spectrum in the USA, though I think there are valid and important criticisms of both major parties. I may have once or twice been registered as a Democrat decades ago but have not been affiliated with either of the two major parties since. The point being that I have aspired to a degree of independence from the ideological commitments of the major political parties; this is also consistent with my educational perspective. I have criticisms of both progressive and conservative sides in the education arena, too. My aspiration is to ground my critiques as solidly as possible in science, though going beyond that limited realm is necessary.  

I believe that the first principles that I have posited for education have relevance to our current political situation, both nationally and globally. My principles below start off with a bold statement about what makes the United States Bill of Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child meaningful. The current events here in the USA show that the current executive branch has abandoned almost all meaningful pretense that the constitution, and the Bill of Rights specifically, are relevant to their policies. What makes my perspective unique is that mainstream schools, public, private, and charter have never even put up a pretense that the UNCRC was relevant to their policies here in the USA. We are the only nation in the world that has not ratified that particular convention. The fight against institutional reluctance to honor the rights of children must now be extended to a fight against institutional reluctance to honor the rights of the entire population of the USA. 

I. The United States Bill of Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child are meaningless unless they are used to achieve pervasive need satisfaction (a.k.a. liberty and justice) FOR ALL

I.A. Human rights are legal fictions that are useful for dealing with reality, they are neither real nor fantastical

I.A.1. Griffins, nifflers, and unicorns are fantastical beasts that are not real

I.A.1.a. They are only useful to those who profit from talking about them and those who are entertained by that kind of talk

I.A.2. Center of gravity, zero, and mind are useful fictions but they are not fantastical

I.A.2.a. They are broadly useful for understanding unseen features of reality

I.A.3. Rights are useful fictions for systematically creating a societal pattern of pervasive need satisfaction (see item II.) 

I.B. Proper enforcement of human rights will create equity, except for the legal ownership aspect

I.B.1. Equity is: 

I.B.1.a. parity among groups in regards to getting their needs satisfied 

I.B.1.b. distributing resources fairly to satisfy needs

I.B.1.c. removing barriers to need satisfaction

I.B.1.d. a felt sense of and/or legal ownership in a collective

I.B.2. Those subjected to enforcement actions should have their human rights respected through fair decision making and participation in conflict resolution (a.k.a. due process), in spite of being accused, and in some some cases being guilty, of violating the rights of others 

I.B.3. If ignoring or undermining human rights leads to the neglect or thwarting of needs, the result will be members of a collective that are alienated from it

I.B.3.a. Being alienated from a collective to which you belong by the actions of people, individually or through the operation of institutions, is oppressive 

I.B.3.b. Being alienated from a collective to which you belong by circumstances that are not caused by people is not oppression, though it is unfortunate

II. Needs are real 

II.A. Needs are the causal sources of well-being 

II.A.1. Equity, except the legal aspect, is an inherent outcome of systematic need satisfaction by a collective

II.B. A scientific understanding of needs recognizes primary, secondary, particular, and derivative needs 

II.B.1. Persistently thwarting the universal primary physiological needs for air, water, food, and shelter causes death

II.B.2. Persistently thwarting the universal primary psychological needs for sleep, relatedness, autonomy, and competence causes increases in anxiety, depression, and other forms of psychological distress (death can be an indirect result) 

II.B.3. Persistently thwarting secondary needs does not affect well-being, even though supporting secondary needs boosts well-being (e.g. beneficence, a.k.a. benevolence)

II.B.4. Particular needs are causes of well-being for an individual (e.g. being put on life support systems in a hospital after a car accident), in a specific situation (depending on a space capsule as an astronaut in orbit), or in a cultural milieu (knowing what to eat versus starving to death when lost for an extended period of time in a specific ecosystem)

II.B.5. Derivative needs are terms that consist of combinations of other types of needs (e.g. meaningfulness, a.k.a. purpose) 

II.C. A person’s true identity consists of the unique combination of need satisfiers that ensures individual well-being which is also aligned with achieving the well-being of the collectives in which the individual is embedded 

II.D. False identities arise from:

II.D.1. A collective pursuing collective desires and/or need satisfaction without regard to individual consequences (e.g. conscripted soldiers as cannon fodder, corporate wage slavery, national or international test scores)

II.D.2. A collective exerting control over an individual’s behavior by pitting that individual’s needs against each other and/or distorting the individual’s understanding of their situation (e.g. abusive interpersonal relationships, “cult” mind control, ideological purity movements in politics and religion)

II.D.3. An individual deactivating or distorting one or more of their needs in response to delusions about themselves, the world, and/or the relationship between the two, which they know as their situation (e.g. mental disorders)

III. Political advocacy in favor of universal need satisfaction through the enforcement of human rights will be optimally effective when voters and other decision makers can perceive the connections among 1) the issues they face, 2) the policies that are proposed to address those issues, and 3) how the satisfaction of their needs can be aligned with collective well-being 

III.A. Everyone always has and always will vote according to some version of their identity 

III.A.1. Despite folks sometimes misunderstanding it, identity politics (in the psychological sense stated in items II. C. & D.) is the only kind of politics

III.B. A realistic political party:

III.B.1. Clearly articulates their values (an emotion-laden form of discourse) in a manner that is strategically aligned with their constituents’ issues and is supported by specific policies

III.B.2. Refines their platform through internal debate among allies

III.B.2.a. Allies should discuss the issue of how to level criticisms of each other’s strategies and tactics in way that will minimize undermining the broader movement in the public eye

III.B.3. Supports built-in accountability structures (check and balances) that avoid the worst hazards of both bureaucracy (a long-standing wide-spread grievance) and political infighting (dominant pattern of the current regime)

III.B.4. Governs best in the face of principled, effective opponents who share a commitment to universal human needs satisfaction and human rights

III.B.5. Will disagree with other parties on how the State should enforce human rights, what issues are currently faced by their constituents, and/or what policies would be the best for enforcing rights, addressing issues, and expressing shared values

III.C. Ideological purity is an extreme form of collective delusion

III.C.1. Ideological purity movements in politics and religion are fundamentally based on mass generation of false identities (as identified in item II. D.) 

III.C.2. Ideological purity is reinforced by political advocacy that relies on strong emotions elicited in association with ideological framing of issues without regard to policies and their effects (e.g. Trump-ism) 

III.C.3. Ideological purity is politically effective in the absence of a proper opposition

III.D. In the absence of both a proper opposition and ideological purists, effective political advocacy occurs when issues and policies are ideologically aligned, which means those policies might not align with the realities of individual and collective human need satisfaction (e.g. mainstream party politics, pre-Trump)

III.E. Proper structuring of institutions can achieve the alignment of diverse individual need satisfactions while maintaining collective well-being, though it is difficult and can sometimes become fragile (like now) 

III.E.1. Both state and corporate governance should be seen in this light because any benefit that might be gained through tyranny is always fragile (while properly structured governance is usually stable with fragility arising only occasionally)

III.E.2. The civil society sector should be considered a necessary third element in a system of checks and balances for anti-fragile national/global societal structures 

III.E.2.a. Complex systems are more stable with an odd number of elements (e.g. having more than two political parties, a media/scientific ecosystem dominated by civil society entities balancing out a societal system that would otherwise be dominated by for-profit corporate entities and state-controlled entities)

How Psychology Nullifies Pascal’s Wager

Pascal’s wager was a clever argument for its time. Since we now have more reliable means of understanding the roles that belief and professing beliefs play in psychological health, we can reject the wager as a failure at both persuasion and helping people to flourish. The wager is unpersuasive because it fails to tap into the depth of emotions that could enable a non-believer to honestly change their mind and because it would enact the psychological cost of lying about your true beliefs in the present for merely speculative payoffs. 

The idea of Pascal’s wager is that you can compare the benefits of belief or non-belief in God against the predicted pay-off depending on whether or not God actually exists. Presumably, Pascal had intended the argument to enable others to have better access to flourishing in his world by enabling them to convert to his preferred beliefs. The argument arose long before the field of psychology, so it could not possibly account for what has been found out about how human minds actually work. A proper accounting for psychological costs significantly diminishes the power of the argument. On the whole, the argument is actually a complete failure when it is properly considered.

The four cell matrix of the wager gives us yes/no options for belief arrayed against yes/no options for God’s existence; thus
- belief in a God that does not exist pays off with wasted faith
- non-belief in a God that does not exist pays off with being right
- belief in a God that does exist pays off with eternal salvation
- non-belief in a God that does exist pays off with eternal damnation
There are four problems: 

1) the ambiguity of the term “belief,” 

2) the lack of sufficient emotion to inspire a sincere belief, 

3) the psychological costs of professing insincere beliefs, and 

4) the inadequacy of the payoffs given future discounting.

Does the term “belief” refer to genuine heartfelt cognition and emotion, so called “true belief,” or to merely professing something as a “belief” to others? If it refers to something genuine, in the true belief sense, then there is a fatal flaw in even using argument to affect it. True belief does not arise out of argumentation. There is a vast literature on how difficult it is to convince anyone of anything in education and politics. Given the fact that the miraculous arising of true belief is not a plausible outcome of applying the logic of a payoff matrix we must conclude that this argument is doomed to fail as a persuasive device, therefore we must assume that the wager is reduced to mere statements about belief. 

Since we must necessarily be discussing the profession of belief, there is the problem of the cost of inauthenticity. We now know that there is a cost to professing belief that is inconsistent with our true sentiments. The payoff of professing belief when it is inconsistent with your emotional commitments and thought processes is some form of psychological anguish in the present. The wager only posits speculations that are dependent on, not only the existence of God, but the existence of a God that traffics in condemnation and salvation for eternity. The costs of psychological anguish would be incurred immediately, which makes them far more salient and meaningful to us. The fact that humans are wired (by God) to discount the value of things that are distant in time relative to things that are immediate, the argument is effectively rendered moot. Those who already believe in God should feel free to profess their heartfelt beliefs, but so should the non-believers. Those who are interested in converting those who are on the opposite side of the belief dichotomy need to be realistic about their prospects for success and look to something other than logical argumentation to initiate change. Harnessing powerful emotions is a far more likely strategy. In any case, diminishing your well-being now for speculative rewards or punishments in the distant future is not a good idea. 

Another strategy that believers should consider is stating their beliefs in more psychologically realistic ways. God created us in a way that enabled us to develop science as a means of discerning the causal structures, processes, and patterns that God kept hidden away prior to those developments. God created us in a way that makes us vulnerable to believing in stuff that is untrue. 

In fact, God created us in a way that makes everything we believe into a delusion, if you look at it hard enough. Is the sky blue, the grass green, or a rose red? Scientists have looked hard at color vision and what we mean when we make statements like, “the grass is green.” What we mean by that statement, according to the cognitive linguists, is that there is something inherent in the fact that it is grass that makes it green. The greenness is an inherent property of the things we refer to as 'grass.' But, what the color scientists found is that there is not anything about the objects we refer to as grass that have any such thing. The color scientists can create conditions in which the very grass that we would label as green can become other colors or no colors which proves that the greenness is absent from the grass, but instead arises out of some combination of the light, the grass, our eyes, and how our brains interpret the signals that our eyes sent to it. 

I believe in God. I believe in God in the same way that I believe in zero. Zero was a concept that was only invented after mathematics had been around for thousands of years. It took awhile for us to realize that representing the absence of value could be extremely useful. I believe that God is the representation of the knowledge that is currently absent from us, both individually and collectively. God is a useful concept because it allows us to represent that absence.

The challenging thing about the concept of God is when people assign human traits to it. There are folks who believe in a human-like god. That human-like god is said to manipulate other people. This narrative about a-God-with-human-traits makes the humanness more real (in the sense of salience in a human mind) than the absence in our knowledge that the term “God” actually represents. This "God" requires representatives (like a human ruler who is represented by diplomats or armies) to have power over other people in order to carry out God’s will. Having a will is also a human characteristic. Religion that takes its assignment of human traits to "God" too seriously, and too literally, is prone to taking their belief in God to extremes that can cause harms that would have been completely avoidable if "God" was assigned different traits, or was recognized as the absence of knowledge that it truly is. 

From my perspective, the best forms of access we could possibly have to the “will of God" is science, journalism, jurisprudence, and academically respectable history.  Those are the institutions that can successfully marshal the better angels of our natures in order to discern the truth. This is the case because of the fact that God hid the truth from us and has implicitly challenged us to figure it out in the face of great temptations. Those institutions do not succeed all the time, but they are our only hope for long-term success.