Adalai Stevenson, Ben Carson and the Reality Quotient

It's tough to imagine two more different people than Adalai Stevenson and Ben Carson, But when talking to my reader Tom Brown, about his concern about what we'll call the Reality Quotient in American life, I think of something Stevenson once said. Stevenson was a smart guy and you don't get more reality based than him.

But a woman once said to him Senator, you have the support of every thinking person. He replied Yes madam, but I need a majority. 

http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/every_thinking_person_will_vote_for_you_but_i_need_a_majority

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adlai_Stevenson_II

It's often been suggested that he was too big an egghead to be President. Maybe-though it might just be that he drew an unlucky hand in having to run against Ike twice in a row.

Speaking of Ben Carson there is a crucial distinction made in a New Republic piece about the difference between being highly intelligent and being what you'd call 'reality based.'

I've made this point to Tom. He worries about Creationists, etc, but in truth what you think about evolution isn't relevant to being an engineer like him; interestingly, another big reader of mine, Greg, is also an engineer I believe.

You can be very intelligent and be totally out of touch with reality. We have the classic case of Daivd Koresh-another proud alumni of the Seventh Day Adventist church along with me and Ben Carson.

I say alumni-I haven't been in the church in my adult life.

Ben Carson is not a dummy. He is highly intelligent and one of the greatest surgeons ever. Yet he also believes that the Pyramids were built by the Biblical Joseph to store grain.

He is more or less a pathological liar who makes up lots of stories mostly it seems to me, to sell books. You can argue that his campaign is really just one long extended book tour.

As Tom said himself last night, a big difference between Carson and Trump is that Carson probably really believes the things he says-the charlatan for him is his campaign manager Armstrong Williams who is sort of his own personal Colonel Parker.

http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/exposed-unstable-ben-carson-is-a-mere-puppet-of-his-business-manager-armstrong-williams/22955/

Ok, let's look at the New Republic piece:

"The mystery of Ben Carson is that he’s a startlingly intelligent man with an inspiring life story who repeatedly makes unhinged assertions that are divorced from reality—and who, as we now know, unnecessarily embellishes his life story. About Carson’s braininess there can be no doubt: He’s not just a doctor, nor is he just a brain surgeon, he’s also performed astonishing medical breakthroughs. In 1987, he was the first surgeon to successfully separate twins conjoined at the head, not a feat that you can do unless you are extraordinarily talented. Yet Carson’s impressive medical accomplishments are puzzling in light of the many absurd things he’s said, notably that Charles Darwin was inspired by Satan and that the pyramids were created by the Hebrew slave Joseph to store grain (as against what Carson thinks is the belief of many "scientists” that they were created by space aliens)."

"There’s no gainsaying the undisputed facts of Carson’s life, which are genuinely elevating. He really did go from a ghetto childhood to Yale to medical school to being a world-class surgeon. Why then has Carson felt the need to gild the lily with apparently tall tales of being a a violence-prone kid who nearly murdered a friend, and beings offered a scholarship to West Point. Reporting by CNN and Politico has made it clear that these central claims in his autobiographical account of himself are almost surely false."

"To solve the mystery of Ben Carson, it’s important to realize two facts: First, great intelligence doesn’t immunize a person from indulging in magical thinking or pseudo-science. Second, even very smart and accomplished people can be fantasists."
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123394/truth-about-ben-carson-smart-people-can-believe-crazy-things

I think this really underscores my point about how engineers, doctors, all kinds of specialists in science fields can be wholly clueless about stuff like evolution.

Practitioners often don't need to be reality-based-they just have to know their own field.

I've been trying to really amplify this point of mine, and it turns out there is an actual clinical term for this: Carson has very high 'domain specific intelligence.' There are many like this. I think there is a great tendency for this in all kinds of highly specialized fields.

But someone like Dr. Ben because of his high social status comes to think he knows more about other things he knows nothing about-politics, history, evolution, etc.

"A key text for understanding the Carson phenomenon is science journalist Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Times (originally published in 1997 and revised in 2002). In a chapter titled “Why Smart People Believe Weird Things,” Shermer notes that “intelligence is ... orthogonal to the variables that go into shaping beliefs.” What this means is that the factors that make someone believe unusual and non-scientific or pseudo-scientific ideas—everything ranging from ESP to myths about Atlantis to oddball Shakespearean authorship theories to outright holocaust denial—are independent of intelligence. These are beliefs that very smart people as well as the far less intellectually gifted are prone to.

“Another problem is that smart people might be smart in only one field,” Shermer notes. “We say that their intelligence is domain specific." Carson clearly has a "domain-specific" intelligence—which he freely applies to fields outside his ken (not just Egyptian Archaeology but also American politics, foreign policy, economics, evolutionary biology, and many others).

Tom is something of a militant atheist. I'm an atheist too though I don't know if I'm as militant. I think religious belief is just part of the deal of humanity and if you're waiting for it to be over you're going to have a long wait.

But to me society has problems that need to be fixed now so I can't wait for that. I don't know that too many can follow the path I took for weaning off of belief-I read Nietzsche. LOL.

Here's more pessimism for militant atheism:

"About two-thirds of scientists believe in God, according to a new survey that uncovered stark differences based on the type of research they do."

"The study, along with another one released in June, would appear to debunk the oft-held notion that science is incompatible with religion."

"Those in the social sciences are more likely to believe in God and attend religious services than researchers in the natural sciences, the study found."

"Nearly 38 percent of natural scientists -- people in disciplines like physics, chemistry and biology -- said they do not believe in God. Only 31 percent of the social scientists do not believe."

http://www.livescience.com/379-scientists-belief-god-varies-starkly-discipline.html

So 62% of biologists believe in God. Biology is the one field, of course, where most believe in evolution. Of course, Darwin himself believed in God and claimed that evolution showed God's power.

P.S. What I defined as 'militant atheism' here is basically proselytizing. Tom would like to see people weaned off religion pretty quickly. To me that's a deep and ambitious project that will take time I don't think we have right now.

As the economists tell us, it's all about opportunity cost. For me, my proselytizing is to get Hillary Clinton elected and gain a Democratic governing majority.