McCain the Alpha Dog

(Written in the night, in insomnia state, after the first McCain-Obama debate.)

(Update: early poll results show independent and uncommitted voters favoring Obama over McCain on most features of the debate. I could not be more delighted at being wrong!)

I was disappointed in Obama last night, and think McCain scored a clear win in one of the two debates that were held simultaneously—specifically, the nonverbal debate of body language and tone of voice.

When he was speaking and the camera was on him, McCain's head and torso filled the space above his podium. His posture was solid, nearly motionless, and comfortable.

In the same camera frame, Obama's body did not dominate; the podium looked bigger than he, and his upper torso and neck moved restlessly. He did not project the air of a man solidly at ease with his surroundings as McCain did.

McCain, speaking, almost always glared straight into the camera, never engaging with moderator Lehrer nor Obama. He was quite consciously making the event a "second-person" event, one-on-one with the TV viewer. No doubt people in the room thought he looked stiff, but the TV viewer felt a direct contact.

Obama often looked aside at McCain or angled his face toward Lehrer. People in the room may well have thought he was more engaging, but for the TV viewer, Obama's posture made him a "third-person" object, someone you watch from the side, not someone you engage with.

I was surprised when, near the end, Lehrer mentioned that the two men had "equal time" to that point. I would have guessed McCain had spoken much more. When speaking, he was loud, repetitive, insistent; and he refused to be interrupted. On several occasions Obama tried to interrupt to correct a point, and McCain bulldozed right over his voice. In the world of one-on-one relationships, refusing to be interrupted is a very important indicator of status. If you can ignore an interruption and get away with it, you have higher status, you are the alpha dog. McCain in this way subtly conveyed to the viewer that he had higher status than Obama.

McCain, cleverly, never attempted to interrupt Obama, and thus never exposed himself to the same wordless put-down.

In short, McCain used nonverbal tactics in order to establish himself—on a plane entirely unrelated to issues or the men's actual words—as the alpha male in that two-man pack, and Obama had no counter. This will have a non-verbal effect on voters, and I predict that in coming days, the poll numbers that had swung in Obama's favor, will swing back to a tie.

I could be wrong for two reasons. The first reason is that the above is a white male's analysis. A woman, or a person of color, might will have perceived McCain's demeanor and voice as "overbearing," "domineering," even "bullying," and felt preference and sympathy for Obama instead. I hope so.

The second reason is, of course, that there are issues, and the men did answer questions. Many of McCain's answers, for me, were hollow to the point of inanity. I'll give just one example.

Several times, McCain presented "cutting government costs" as his key (indeed only) method for financing the bail-out or a tax cut. Could he possibly be serious?

Give me a break! I cannot begin to count the times I have heard politicians promise—confidently, vigorously, loudly—that they will cut government costs. And they never, ever have done so. I lived through sixteen years of Ronald Reagan as governor and president, and I'm sure that in every one of them, he promised to cut costs. And every single year, the cost and scope of his government grew. (And Reagan never seemed to notice that his promises were hollow, never retracted them, and never stopped making them.)

Governers Dukmejian and Schwartzenegger campaigned on corralling the California budget and both oversaw massive growth in it. Worst of all, Bush Junior has overseen the largest growth in government costs, in budget shortfall, and in the intrusion of government into private life in history.

Indeed the only president I know who successfully reduced a part of the Federal budget was Bill Clinton, who supervised a big reduction in the Federal entitlement programs. Of course, he did it not by reducing government, but by pushing the obligation off onto the state budgets as mandates, and then failing to fund the mandates, so the state governments had to do the dirty work for him. But it was a reduction.

McCain's been around through all of this. If he really thinks he can cut $700Bn from the federal budget—without, mind you, touching Defense, which he promised not to change—or even $300Bn to pay for his tax cuts, he is simply delusional. And if he isn't delusional, he's a liar.

So his words are hollow. But he plays the alpha dog to perfection, and dammit, people will vote for the alpha dog.

In/Compatibilism

There's a tension in the philosophical quest for the truth of free will versus determinism—which is explained (suspiciously) at both Wikipedia and the Internet encyclopedia of Philosophy in identical words, namely

the thesis that the course of the future is entirely determined by the conjunction of the past and the laws of nature.

The problem is just this: suppose I hospitably offer you tea or coffee.

After an instant's consideration you select one.

Under the presumption of causal determinism, you couldn't have made the other choice; the operations of your mind are completely the outcome of the chemistry of your brain operating on the structures created by your entire history of living.

You have, we suppose, some sense that you could have chosen the other, but you didn't. That sense, it would seem, is an illusion. You couldn't have.

About this there are three broad positions. Somehow the word "Incompatibilism" has been attached to the view that free will causal determinism is correct and that therefore the sensation of free will is an illusion.

The word "Compatibilism" labels the view that even though causal determinism is probably true, there's some sense in which free will exists. Mainly Compatibilists say the issue is not whether your choice between tea and coffee was determined by your brain or not. What matters is that it was determined by you—that is, it was not compelled by external forces, e.g. by my saying, I'd really rather you chose the tea.

Me, I'm with the Incompatibilists in so far as agreeing that your choice (my choices, anyone's choices) are determined by history and the operation of natural law. But I also say, it doesn't matter.

That's because of an aspect of determinism that is so often forgotten or neglected especially in casual arguments. To quote the IEP,

A system's being determined is different from its being predictable. It is possible for determinism to be true and for no one to be able to predict the future.

This is especially true given the unimpeachable arguments of Chaos Theory showing that simple mathematical functions which are implicit in many natural phenomena are "extraordinarily sensitive to initial conditions," such that their output is fundamentally unpredictable. The IEP blithely says

If determinism were true, then a being with a complete knowledge of P and L and with sufficient intellective capacities should be able to infallibly predict the way that the future will turn out.

but Chaos Theory says it is not possible even in principle for such a perfect observer to exist.

My point (and I'm sure you're glad to reach it) is just this: when the outcome of a deterministic process cannot be predicted, it is functionally identical to the same outcome arising from a nondeterministic process.

The process by which you reach a non-coerced choice between coffee and tea may be (I think probably is) fully deterministic—but absolutely unpredictable by any observer, even including you. Until you announce the choice, I or anyone who cares about the result has no choice but to wait to see what it will be. Was it fully determined by history? Doesn't matter! If you can't predict it, its deterministic nature has no functional or practical meaning.

Do you or I have free will? Probably not; but there is absolutely no choice but for all of us to continue acting as if we did.

If we could really communicate with the dead...

Just a quick thought to keep my 0.0 readers from thinking this blog has died.

If it were really possible to communicate with the dead,

...there would be a lot fewer unsolved murders...

...and contested wills.

Think about that—if you are ever tempted to believe in mediums.

Axis C: the Bubble Boy

You, nor I, nor anyone can never really know the true thoughts of another. I can guess that when you see green, or feel lonely, it feels pretty much the way I feel when I see green or feel lonely. The nearly-identical structure of our nervous and glandular systems makes this likely; and the fact that we can all respect the same traffic signals and enjoy the same kinds of stories also makes it a very good bet; both points make solipsism untenable. Just the same, all experience is inescapably private; however much I might want to really understand you (or merge with a lover, or dissolve into the world) I can't breach the self-boundary. This leads to important consequences.

The Moral Onus

An important consequence is that all our decisions are necessarily our decisions. If we can't think other people's thoughts, nor they ours, then we can't make their decisions nor they ours. Whatever may cause me to act (free will is a whole 'nother discussion), my act is inescapably mine and nobody else's: my response to circumstances in the light of my desires. Issues of free will aside, this is the basis of moral responsibility.

In the event of a bad outcome, I can claim that I acted based on a mistake—a misinterpretation of circumstances—or was deceived; or was ignorant; or was compelled, e.g. by an addiction or mental illness. But I can't deny that the act was mine.

The Lone Cowboy

Another outcome: if nobody else can be responsible for my acts, equally I can't control anyone else's. I can try; and we all spend our lives trying to influence other people's actions; but in the end their decisions remain theirs. We can only hope they will do what will be good for us, much as farmers can only hope for good weather.

The result is a motive for acting as if we were solipsists, even if we aren't. The only decisions we can control are our own. The only partner we can really depend on is ourselves.

Obviously people do combine and work together, but we can benefit only if we can somehow persuade (or coerce) other people into acting the way we want. Success at this calls for high development of many subtle skills of communication, empathy, and native insight.

In adolescence, when these skills are raw and undeveloped and the complicated rules of societal interaction are still strange, influencing others seems just impossibly difficult. We find ourselves being manipulated and are just bright enough to detect it but unable to manipulate others in turn. It's deeply confusing and frustrating.

The confusion and frustration drive many to take refuge in a comforting fantasy: that we can be self-sufficient Lone Cowboys, riding alone the range of the world, free to go and come, owing nothing to anyone and disdaining to take any offered help.

The stance of the Lone Cowboy has its highest and most complete statement in Objectivism,

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

Ayn Rand

There is great comfort and release in the Objectivist stance, or in the less-sophisticated, but basically identical, notion that forms in the mind of just about every adolescent at some time: it is impossible to handle all the claims and obligations the world places on me, impossible to really be understood by others, impossible to be successful through manipulating or enlisting others' help. So I will chuck it all, reject it all, focus on my own needs and be self-sufficient.

Political Cowboys

There's a political dimension to this as well. Libertarianism is the extreme political expression of the Lone Cowboy stance: it flatly denies all involuntary claims on the individual. The only debts or obligations the individual Libertarian can acknowledge are ones that yo has voluntarily incurred.

As with Objectivism, there is great comfort, ease, simplification and clarification to be found in the Libertarian stance. To adopt it is to slash away in one stroke a whole tangle of confusing and contradictory claims on one's time, one's attention, one's wealth. Are there complex global problems whose solutions, if any exist, would be complex and would impact many people? Not the Libertarian's issue unless yo chooses to participate. Are other people sick, needy, starving, oppressed? Not the Libertarian's problem—nor the Objectivist's: there are no sick, no elderly in Rand's novels, and the only poor are presented as whining beggars with shifty eyes, clearly moral defectives and thus responsible for their own condition.

To become a Lone Cowboy, a self-suffient monadic unit gliding freely through the world with minimal attachments and obligations, lets one shed a vast load of ill-defined obligations and guilt-trips, pare the complexities of human interaction down to the simplest and clearest channels, focus on one's real abilities and ignore the things one is bad at. It's a great role.

The Bubble Boy

There's no denying the attraction of being a Lone Cowboy. And that stance has some justification in the brute fact that each of us is a Bubble Boy, permanently sealed into a transparent sphere out of which our real thoughts and feelings can never leak, and into which the real thoughts and feelings of others can never enter.