Unskeptical

Some of my readers, especially those of the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy bent (BTW, note for my controller - I'm still waiting for my check) may remember the case of Margaret Mary Vojtko. She's the 83-year-old adjunct professor at Duquesne University who died in poverty. Well, as this article points out, more than a little of her problems were self-inflicted. When I initially heard of the case, I was somewhat suspicious, since we do have Social Security and Medicare.

Today, I read in Gin and Tacos about a lot of people seem willing to believe anything they read on the Internet. Ed, the author, wonders why his students and others are so unskeptical.

The answer is confirmation bias. People who circulated Vojtko's story wanted to believe that adjunct professors were treated badly. (They actually are, but not as badly as presented.) People who buy the anti-vaccine nonsense want to believe there is a "big pharma" conspiracy. Many George Zimmerman supporters see themselves as protecting society from the Bad Guys (tm) and see Zimmerman as One Of Us.

We all fall victim to confirmation bias from time to time. The only thing I can say is if you want to believe in something, be careful what you accept as evidence for it.

Nuking the Filibuster

No fan of the filibuster am I, and today comes news that it has been significantly weakened via a simple majority vote. Three thoughts:

Thought #1

Japan started a war by bombing a US military base. We ended that war by nuking two of their cities. This sometimes happens in wars, and is a good reason to be circumspect about starting and fighting wars.

Thought #2

To use a sports analogy, the filibuster is / was a play. If you keep calling the same play, it eventually becomes ineffective. In this case, the Democrats may come to regret not having this play, but overuse has the seeds of its own demise.

Thought #3

The US Constitution as written was based on the concept of "government by elites." Basically, various wealthy white men were supposed to congregate in the proverbial smoke-filled rooms and hash out our governance. This works well, if the elites are perceived to have the same general interests as the common masses. When that perception falters, you get a move to majority rule, be it popular election of Senators or other changes.

This trend is not directly linear, and is not always good. The dirty little secret of Jim Crow was that a majority of whites, north and south, were okay with blacks as second-class citizens. At any rate, it is part of a trend.