Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2007.

Tavris and Aronson explore how and why we “justify ourselves and avoid taking responsibility for any actions that turn out to be harmful, immoral, or stupid.” [p. 2] They demonstrate the role confirmation bias plays in how we suss out what is and is not true. They point out that we each have “blind spots”–prejudices, for example–in the way we view the world. They examine the way that we construct our own memories, so that what we “remember” is not necessarily what happened, but what is consistent with certain narratives we adopt to explain ourselves. They look at the strategies we use to deny our own role in our mistakes. In the last chapter they look at ways to go beyond the self-serving self-justification.

When I Google this book, the reviews praise it to the nines. One partial exception, a review at Metapsychology Online, praises it only to the eights, listing a few of what the review’s author sees as its ultimately inconsequential weaknesses I agree that this book is overall good and should be read.

The book doesn’t deserve that much praise. I found its authors’ approach frustrating and at times misleading. Tavris and Aronson don’t acknowledge the paradoxes of their argument, and they oversimplify what strike me as complicated processes. None of that invalidates the points they make. But if they had shown a little more introspection and more willingness to acknowledge counterarguments, their book would have been richer.

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One of the things I didn’t realize I did was blame virtually every health ailment on my smoking. Snoring? It’s probably the smoking. Shortness of breath? It’s probably the smoking. Cold? Smoking, probably. Sore throat? Smoking, probably. Coughing? Puh-leeze.

Granted, if you had ever asked me I wouldn’t have said “But for smoking, I would be the picture of good health!” but for any individual problem, I’d attribute to the smoking.

Smoking was responsible for quite a bit of it. Especially, as you can imagine, the lung stuff. I learned this when I switched from smoking to vaping. It took longer than expected, but eventually a lot of the problems I’d had did start getting better. But not all of it. Which is consistent with using a product that has some of the dangers of smoking but not most of them.

Now I don’t vape anymore. And some of the remaining problems went away. I don’t know how much of it is attributable to quitting the ecigs and how much of it was attributable to other lifestyle changes that occurred at the same time. I quit vaping and started eating healthier at about the same time. This wasn’t a coincidence – I wanted to make sure I didn’t start putting on weight I couldn’t afford to put on. So I’ve lost more than 20 pounds and am rarely gorged out. The combination of the two has given me new levels of energy. I feel a lot healthier.

Right now, though, it hurts to swallow. Eating isn’t especially pleasant. My uvula is swollen something fierce. It’s the exact sort of thing that used to happen not-infrequently when I was smoking. The solution has always been “cut back on the cigarettes.” I would and it would get better.

But I can’t cut back from zero. My fallback problem and solution is gone and I don’t know what to do but… I don’t know. Wait I guess? So weird.

I am also reminded of all those times I cut back on smoking when it may have had nothing to do with smoking at all because the swollen uvula happens anyway.

Why would you head straight for the tree? pic.twitter.com/IT77lMIjLs

— Darwin Award 🔞 (@AwardsDarwin) August 19, 2017

Don't show off. pic.twitter.com/50aRItancG

— Darwin Award 🔞 (@AwardsDarwin) August 18, 2017

A sinkhole appears on a Chinese street – moments later a moped rider distracted by his mobile phone falls in. pic.twitter.com/Hp4RBrdf6i

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) August 20, 2017

In the overall, Hank was a nice guy. He was also a bit of a “nice guy.” That is, he is a guy who would hover around too-attractive-for-him ladies, befriending them and hoping it would turn into something more. He wasn’t terrible about it, but it was obvious he was doing. It seemed like 75% of his friends were female, and he was playing an odds game hoping just one of them would pan out. Being the nice guy that he was, he knew that if he ever got a hold of any of these girls, he would be able to hold on to them.

Then he hit the jackpot. Susie was a step or two ahead of Hank in the attractiveness department but closer to him than most of his female friends in that regard. If you saw them on the street, you wouldn’t necessarily say “What’s up with that?” Susie found out her boyfriend had been cheating on her. Again. Susie had a history of relationships with not-great guys. They were typically guys a step or two ahead of her in the attractiveness department that she managed to get by being very available for them.

In that sense, Hank and Susie were actually well matched.

Now, I probably give you more information on Hank and Susie’s background, which is not especially important for the political metaphor.

The strangest thing happened after they got together. Hank had been the happiest guy alive and then… well, he flirted with another girl. This one was a step or two up from Susie. He didn’t make a move or anything, and it’s unclear that he would have. But multiple observers said it was inappropriate. Especially the part where he very conspicuously did not tell this girl that he had a girlfriend.

Susie found out and she dumped his ass.

He, for his part, never argued that he had not done anything wrong. he admitted that he had. He had apologized for it. He had promised that it would never ever happen again. Between you and me, I think he meant it. But after he was dumped and it became apparent that he would get no second changes, Hank was mighty pissed off. I mean really, really pissed off. At Susie.

What made him angry was that Susie had given her previous boyfriend Roger like eight chances and she kept taking him back. And Roger didn’t just flirt. Oh no, he did more. Roger did objectively worse at least half of those times. Then, before Roger was Derique. And Derique wouldn’t even agree to exclusivity. So technically he never cheated on her, but it was the same difference when he was making out with several girls while she was at his beck and call. So why the hell does he get dumped after one stupid flirtation? What the holy hell? That was when she decided that he wasn’t dumped for anything he did. He was dumped because she was superficial and really kind of hypocritical when you think about. Roger and Derique were cooler. And that was terribly unfair.

Susie’s point of view, however, was different. Susie may be more attracted to the Roger’s and Derique’s of the world but that’s her right. After much cajoling, she gave Hank a chance with one thing in mind: Reliability. Roger had the car. Derique was on varsity basketball. Everybody had their selling point. Hank’s selling point was that she would never have to worry about him being a dick and going out and flirting with other women. Without that advantage, Hank really didn’t have that much to offer.

Hank strongly disagreed. He could point to all sorts of things like success with video games and his ability to draw. He was smarter than Roger or Derique, too. He had a lot of traits that should matter to Susie.

Whatever, replied Susie, you had your chance and you knew it.

Hank reiterated the unfairness of it all and how he was being held to a higher standard.

If you can figure out the political metaphor, good for you. There’s one that I have in mind, but it actually works in many contexts. If you can’t, that’s okay. If you get bogged down in the details and say that you totally aren’t Hank (or Susie) here, I won’t be able to convince you otherwise. And the world will keep on spinning. Personally, I think the story of Hank and Susie is interesting and kind of important in its own right.

National Park Service ends policy encouraging parks to ban plastic water bottle sales (The Hill)

The National Park Service has ended a policy encouraging national parks to end the sale of plastic disposable water bottles that was aimed at reducing pollution and plastic waste.

In a statement, the NPS said they were lifting the policy to “expand hydration options for recreationalists, hikers, and other visitors to national parks.”

“While we will continue to encourage the use of free water bottle filling stations as appropriate, ultimately it should be up to our visitors to decide how best to keep themselves and their families hydrated during a visit to a national park, particularly during hot summer visitation periods,” acting National Park Service director Michael T. Reynolds said in the statement.

I find the arguments against bottled water to be pretty compelling in general, but I think Trump is in the right on this one. Symbolic legislation has its place, but this is the government making bottled water less accessible where it’s most useful. Most bottled water is consumed around the house, where people can really come up with alternate arrangements (such as tap and filter) easily enough. Even those used outside the home are in places where there is a degree of flexibility waiting for the next water fountain. On the other hand, national parks tend to be places where you’re most likely to be concerned with hydration. You don’t want to stand in the way of people and their water because they forgot their bottle.

The policy formulation strikes me as “Bottled water is bad” and “We have control over the national parks” therefore “We should ban bottled water there.” Which is true, true, and false.

I had a dream last night – bear with me, this is not just a post about my “weird dream” – that I was out somewhere and there were these cute baby goats. I kept trying to take a picture of the baby goats with my phone but the camera on my phone just wouldn’t work. I never got a picture of the goats and, in fact, even said to myself “There are no goats. This is a dream.” right before I woke up.

But the goats aren’t the important part. The camera is. As it happens, I’ve been having some difficulty with my camera phone lately. So the problems in the dream were not usual or off-the-wall. But I’ve had this dream before. This is the first time it has involved goats, but my inability to take a picture has become a recurring thing.

I wonder if anyone else has had that happen in a dream. Or more than one. And if so, what that might be tapping into.

Collective dreams are not that uncommon. A lot of people have dreams of losing their teeth, showing up naked, or that class that you’ve never studied for and there is a test. That last one is of particular interest because it is the most situation or society specific. Losing teeth is one of the oldest problems in the history of problems. Being naked goes back to whenever we first started wearing clothes. But school? As a universal thing? In the greater scheme of things, that’s pretty recent. Yet our collective subconscious has adapted it into an exemplar of unpreparadness.

These social dreams are interesting because they don’t appear to be something we get from one another. It’s not that we hear about someone having a dream about X and our subconscious says “Ohhhh, that’s a good way to rag myself over lack of preparedness.” A lot of us have these dreams for really long times before realizing that other people are dreaming them.

Do any of you have dreams involving cameras or other modern inventions malfunctioning?

So far good. In fact, a pretty good looking guy for his age.

So far, still good. In fact, that’s a nice head of hair.

Something went horribly wrong here.

It’s a very helpful site shopping for used cars, but I would not recommend it at all for new cars. It sets itself up like a sort of Lending Tree for cars where it suggests filling out the thing will have dealerships give you offers, but instead it basically results in dealerships falling all over themselves to contact you without actually giving you any prices.

Once again, I have a somewhat sqishy view of the whole thing. But one that will put me mostly outside of my class’s mainstream. This doesn’t include all of my thoughts on the whole thing, but includes a lot of them.

Pro: First, I don’t really blame Google for firing him. When he sent that out on company channels, they became responsible for it. They’re also dealing with some liability and failing to take action on this hurts them.

Anti: The above and Walter Olson make a fair case that this was partially the result of public policy rather than a strictly silent decision. Not unlike how the Obama administration basically pushed private universities across the country to some rather questionable due process policies for sexual misconduct charges. The federal government’s hands are clean, but they’re not, both at the same time.

Pro: All of this would be an issue if the memo weren’t as troublesome as it is. If it had been presented with more delicacy. If it had been some unearthed private blog instead of through company channels.

Anti: It was through company channels but was apparently not, as initially reported, a memo sent out of the blue or something emailed to everybody. Rather, it was in an internal forum dedicated to discussion of precisely these sorts of issues. Google said they wanted a free discussion. This wasn’t some memo sent out of the blue, it was part of a discussion.

Pro: Okay, but what are we, five? On what basis should he have had any faith that this was ever a free and open discussion? On what basis should he have felt free to speak his mind knowing that there were some really controversial views in there? Knowing that it would be disruptive to the workplace? Knowing that women would likely respond in a way that would make his continued empoloyment there difficult? If he didn’t know these things, he should have. Even if we ignore the fact that the left almost never wants the free and open discussion that it says it does, how did he think this would end? Did he think they would look at his statistics and say “Woah, he’s totally right. Women aren’t getting these great jobs because they don’t want them and they’re not capable.”

Anti: That’s not an accurate summary.

Pro: No, but it’s an obvious one. It’s an oversimplified response to a more nuanced argument… and if something can be summaried that way, it probably will be by someone. And if nobody wants to put nuance back in there, that’s going to be the official interpretation. Then you run into a situation where people can sit back and say “It doesn’t matter how accurate your words are. It doesn’t matter if your argument was too nuanced. People won’t work with you. You’ve got to go. QED.” And they’ll say this and they won’t be wrong.

Anti: That’s really not fair, though. It sets up a “discussion” wherein the first person says it’s all about discrimination and anybopdy responding to that is walking through a minefield. It is almost impossible to imagine a 10-page memo claiming that it’s 100% discrimination and harassment getting this kind of response.

Pro: Yes. This is a common tactic in these discussions – to win arguments by default by declaring illegitimate counterarguments (sexist, racist, etc) and counterarguers (whatever your marker of privilege is removes you from the discussion). And in this case, it works. And it works in large part because the other side blew it by actually being sexist and saying sexist things. Enough connections can be drawn between this memo and things written by people that have said some truly awful things that you’re stuck.

Anti: That’s not fair.

Pro: Maybe, but life seldom is. But it’s also not fair to tell female employees that they have to work with and under the guy and that they’re comfortable with his attitude. If they’re not, that’s a problem for them and that’s a problem for the company. A lot of people are mad at the women that no-showed, but getting employees to band together is difficult and that probably indicates existing problems.

Anti: How responsible is Memo Guy for these problems Why should be pay for Google’s sins?

Pro: He made himself a target when he introduced himself into the discussion.

Anti: The free discussion Google said it wanted.

Pro: He shouldn’t have believed that the discussion needed to include deeply unpopular points of view. His bad. He put himself in front of the Mack Truck.

Anti: But look, what he had to say hasn’t been discredited and the science is on his side.

Pro: At least some of it is. There seem to be some feedback loops going on that we have some control over above and beyond the things pointed out in the memo. Computer science has become more male over time rather than less. Their genes didn’t change, and it’s unlikely their priorities have. So culture has an effect.

Anti: Okay, even if it does, it’s not clear they’re accepting anything other than sexism as an explanation. We are, as Jesse Singal says, making Blank Slate-ism a litmus test.

Pro: Which is unfortunate. But we’d have a better way to gauge where everybody is coming from if the original piece hadn’t been as sweeping in the other direction.

Anti: What if the solution are those things you condemn, like stripping computer science of its cultural markers (Star Trek posters in the workplace, etc) and taking the freak flag down?

Pro: Well, screw that. But just because some people are too cavalier about what we can do doesn’t mean we can’t do anything.

Anti: That seems kind of weak.

Pro: Yeah, it kind of is, but no less weak than “This is just the way there is and there’s nothing we can do.”

Anti: So we’re okay with him being fired?

Pro: Yeah, I think so. He doesn’t belong on any blacklists and the list of people who should also be fired should have zero or few names on it, but it’s hard to see any other conclusion, even if it reveals some unflatting things about the conversation we’re supposed to be having.