Useful Delusions by Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler (review)

This is inspired by a book review in the WSJ 2021-03-03 by Matthew Hutson. I found it through my public library.

In a single sentence tucked away in the foreword
to Richard Dawkins's 1976 book "The Selfish Gene,"
the evolutionary theorist Robert Trivers offered a
powerful idea: We've evolved to fool ourselves the
better to keep "the subtle signs of self
knowledge" from undermining our tall tales with
tells.

Our willingness to participate in fictions makes
storytelling a particularly powerful force.
Messrs. Vedantam and Mesler suggest novels require
a bit of belief to keep us enthralled, and
advertising turns on our buying into brand
narratives. Golfers performed better when told
they had Nike clubs. More important, group
cohesion flows from investment in origin stories,
a belief that something unseen ties us together.
Ceremonies and other rituals can make these tales
visceral, and groups from college fraternities to
nations – motley populations otherwise defined
by little more than lines on a map – rely on
fake-it-till-you-make-it solidarity to do things
like land on the moon. Religions trade in the
power of stories too: Evidence suggests fear of
angry gods bootstrapped altruism toward strangers
until we could put the modern state in place. Such
suspensions of skepticism, the authors write, "are
responsible for creating some of the crowning
glories of human civilization."


And what about love? What Messrs. Vedantam and
Mesler mean when they talk about love is, you
guessed it, self-deception. Don't blame science
writers for this romantic dose of realism; word is
long out. Take it from Fleetwood Mac: "Tell me
lies, tell me sweet little lies." (Or George
Bernard Shaw, with a quote the authors would
appreciate: "Love is a gross exaggeration of the
difference between one person and everybody
else.") One study found that the more participants
valued a given trait, the more they overestimated
its quantity in their partners – and in turn
the happier they were.

Inside a Battle Over Race, Class and Power at Smith College

What I gather from this NY Times article:

• Oumou Kanoute, a Black student at Smith College, was eating lunch in a dorm lounge when a janitor and a campus police officer walked over and asked her what she was doing there.
• Ms Kanoute apparently thought that the officer “could have been carrying a ‘lethal weapon’” even though college officers were unarmed.
• Jackie Blair, a veteran cafeteria employee, told Ms. Kanoute that she was in a cafeteria which was reserved for a summer camp program for young children.
• Because of the presence of young children, the janitor has been instructed to call security in such cases. He did. He did not mention Ms. Kanoute’s race or gender.
• Because the janitor, who has poor eyesight, was not sure if he was looking at a man or woman, Ms Kanoute would later accuse him of “misgendering” her.
• Ms. Kanoute wrote on Facebook, saying that Ms. Blair, the cafeteria worker, “… is the racist person.”
• Ms. Blair has lupus, a disease of the immune system that is triggered by stress.
• Within days of being accused by Ms. Kanoute, Ms Blair found notes in her mailbox and taped to her car window. “RACIST” read one. People called her at home. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” a caller said. “You don’t deserve to live,” said another.
• Rahsaan Hall, racial justice director for the A.C.L.U. of Massachusetts and Ms. Kanoute’s lawyer, “… [was not] particularly sympathetic to the accused workers.” “It’s troubling that people are more offended by being called racist than by the actual racism in our society,” he said. “Allegations of being racist, even getting direct mailers in their mailbox, is not on par with the consequences of actual racism.”
• Kanoute and ACLU are demanding a separate dorm for students of color.
• All university employees involved were white.

Of course, I don’t know what “really” happened.

I am troubled, however, by the words of the ACLU attorney, if quoted correctly. Having people call you at home, leave messages on your mailbox and online, etc. may not be “on a par with the consequences of actual racism,” but it can be highly traumatic. Saying that Ms Blair was “offended” surely trivializes her reactions. His insensitivity towards Ms Blair offends me, a long-time member of the ACLU.

Should models look at the camera?

An article appeared in the 2021-02-23 edition of our WSJ with the title, Should Models in Ads Look Directly at The Camera? Research Has an Answer: A new study says that it depends on the intended message.

Narrative Transportation Theory

The WSJ article talks about

...social psychology's narrative transportation
theory, which suggests that when people get lost
in a visual narrative, that story can shape their
attitudes. Marketing researchers have established
that when observers feel transported while viewing
ads, they tend to respond to those ads favorably.
Until now, according to Dr. Patrick, no research
had been conducted to determine what affect an ad
model's gaze has on whether viewers feel transported.

Abstract of the original article

The WSJ article draws on an article in the Journal of Consumer Research entitled How the Eyes Connect to the Heart: The Influence of Eye Gaze Direction on Advertising Effectiveness by Rita Ngoc To and Vanessa M Patrick. (Journal of Consumer Research, ucaa063, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucaa063). Published 22 February 2021.

This article finds evidence that a subject looking directly at the camera will be more persuasive than an averted gaze when trying to inform the viewer of something.

OTOH, the averted gaze is more effective in drawing the viewer into narrative.

A model’s eyes are a powerful and ubiquitous
visual feature in virtually any advertisement
depicting a person. But does where the ad model’s
eyes look matter? Integrating insights from social
psychology and performance and visual art theory,
we demonstrate that when the ad model’s gaze is
averted (looking away from the viewer), the viewer
is more readily transported into the ad narrative
and responds more favorably to the ad than when
the ad model’s gaze is direct (looking directly at
the viewer). Five multi-method experiments (field
and lab studies) illustrate that averted gaze
(direct gaze) enhances narrative transportation
(spokesperson credibility) to boost the
effectiveness of emotional (informative) ads.
Study 1 is a Facebook field study that
demonstrates the effect of averted (vs. direct)
gaze direction on advertising effectiveness using
a real brand. Studies 2a and 2b implicate enhanced
narrative transportation as the underlying process
mechanism by measuring (study 2a) and manipulating
(study 2b) narrative transportation. Studies 3a
and 3b examine ad contexts in which direct gaze
can enhance ad effectiveness: when the ad has
informational (vs. emotional) appeal (study 3a),
and when the viewer prefers not to identify with
the negative emotional content of the ad (study 3b).

keywords: eye gaze, advertising effectiveness, emotional (informative) ad appeals, narrative transportation

The article itself is paywalled.

Ps brush doesn’t paint to edge of its outline

I make a hard, round brush with 100% flow, etc., but when I press the mouse button to use the brush, the color circle is inside the thin circle, so that I can’t tell where I’m going to paint. I used a cellphone to capture a screenshot of the problem:

My problem

The eraser tool has the same problem.

This appears to be a Macintosh problem

I finally found the solution here. It requires you to open Settings > Accessibility > Display > Cursor and adjust the Cursor Size setting:

Existing (default?) setting

Change the above to this:

This fixes my Ps brush problem

President Trump wasn’t that bad

I received this from my Canadian Cousin, Harry, who got it from his “friend Marty Cutler in Toronto (who gets more letters published in the Globe than anyone except J.D.M. Stewart, none of them over six lines)”:

I’ve been critical of the Trump presidency these last four years, and am still exhausted from the experience. But to be fair, President Trump wasn’t that bad, other than when he

• incited an insurrection against the government,
• mismanaged a pandemic that killed nearly half a million Americans,
• separated children from their families,
• lost those children in the bureaucracy,
• tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church,
• tried to block all Muslims from entering the country,
• got impeached,
• got impeached again,
• had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history,
• pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden,
• fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia,
• bragged about firing the FBI director on TV,
• took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community,
• diverted military funding to build his wall,
• caused the longest government shutdown in US history,
• called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,” lied nearly 30,000 times,
• banned transgender people from serving in the military,
• ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions,
• vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers,
• refused to release his tax returns,
• increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion,
• had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history,
• called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers,
• coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist,
• refused to concede the 2020 election,
• hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House,
• walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl,
• called neo-Nazis “very fine people,” suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID,
• abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey,
• pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans,
• incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic,
• withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords,
• withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal,
• withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances,
• insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter,
• pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op,
• failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies,
• called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries,
• called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation,”
• claimed that he single handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere,
• forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader,
• believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,
• berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe,
• suggested the US should buy Greenland,
• colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges,
• repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people,”
• claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases,
• violated the emoluments clause,
• thought that Nambia was a country,
• told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public,
• called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p—y” for following the Constitution,
• nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet,
• nominated a corrupt head of the EPA,
• nominated a corrupt head of HHS,
• nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department,
• nominated a corrupt head of the USDA,
• praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies,
• refused to allow the presidential transition to begin,
• insulted war hero John McCain — even after his death,
• spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president,
• falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote,
• called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser,”
• falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year,
• considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions,
• mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID,
• locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones,
• used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus,”
• hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser,
• pardoned several of his shady associates,
• gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressman who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories,
• got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!),
• had a Secretary of State who called him a moron,
• forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history,
• botched the COVID vaccine rollout,
• tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him,
• charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties,
• constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate,
• claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear,
• called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas,”
• used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise,
• opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling,
• got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers,
• claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US,
• ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings,
• blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining,
• redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle,
• got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters,”
• threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution,
• botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico,
• threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them,
• pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes,
• thought that the Virgin islands had a President,
• drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane,
• allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing,
• rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos,
• pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID,
• rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers,
• held blatant campaign rallies at the White House,
• tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man,
• refused to attend his successors’ inauguration,
• nominated the worst Education Secretary in history,
• threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted,
• attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci,
• promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t),
• allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues,
• struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble,
• called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ,”
• threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders,
• went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic,
• claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,”
• seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution,
• demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director,
• praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles,
• completely gutted the Voice of America,
• placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service,
• claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower,
• suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country,
• suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public,
• overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported,
• reduced the number of refugees the US accepts,
• insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames,
• gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address,
• named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties,
• eliminated the White House office of pandemic response,
• used soldiers as campaign props,
• fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him,
• demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade,
• hired a shit ton of white nationalists,
• politicized the civil service,
• did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government,
• falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts,
• claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won,
• insulted reporters of color,
• insulted women reporters,
• insulted women reporters of color,
• suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs,
• attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him,
• summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election,
• spent countless hours every day watching Fox News,
• refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas,
• hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer,
• tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him,
• acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney,
• attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a women who accused him of sexual assault,
• held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present,
• didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media,
• stopped holding press briefings for months at a time,
• “ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power,
• led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform,
• claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers,
• tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course,
• suggested that the government nuke hurricanes,
• suggested that wind turbines cause cancer,
• said that he had a special aptitude for science,
• fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure,
• blurted out classified information to Russian officials,
• tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida,
• fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban,
• hired Stephen Miller,
• openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them,
• interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel,
• abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war,
• tried to get Russia back into the G7,
• held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden,
• seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive,
• lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated,
• falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t,
• shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies,
• never came up with a healthcare plan,
• never came up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure Weeks,”
• forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID,
• told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,”
• fucked up the Census,
• withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic,
• did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,”
• allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act,
• seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican,
• stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win,
• constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president which presumably includes four that were assassinated and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump,
• claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened,
• said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake,
• claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him,
• claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President,
• created a commission to whitewash American history,
• retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain,
• claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there,
• hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims,
• had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others,
• bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties,
• apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House,
• stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians,
• falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police,
• said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about,
• tried to rescind protection from DREAMers,
• gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic,
• tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax,
• said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states,
• deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented,
• claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln,
• touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile or may not exist at all,
• retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile,
• forced through security clearances for his family,
• suggested that police officers should rough up suspects,
• suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs,
• tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender,
• suggested the US not accept COVID patients from a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher,
• nominated a climate change sceptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy,
• retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden had played a song called “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event,
• hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags,
• accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address,
• claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were “spending too much time” on Russia,
• mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault,
• obsessed over low-flow toilets,
• ordered the rerelease of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release,
• called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek),
• hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech,
• took advice from the MyPillow guy,
• claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists,
• said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure,
• never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign,
• falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent,
• announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest,
• insulted the leader of Canada,
• insulted the leader of France,
• insulted the leader of Britain,
• insulted the leader of Germany,
• insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!),
• falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues,
• blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually,
• continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders,
• said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked,
• left a NATO summit early in a huff,
• stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of 5 knows not to do that,
• called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary,
• refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise,
• and a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember at the moment.

But other than that. . .”

I’d been thinking recently …

…about this story.

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter
Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph
Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had
made more money in a single day than Heller had
earned from his wildly popular novel 'Catch-22'
over its whole history.

Heller responds, Yes, but I have something that
he will never have ... enough.

I don’t remember why I was thinking about it, but it had come up several times and I wondered if I could find the quotation somewhere.

I looked at my desktop telephone

Behind it, about two feet from my head as I stand at my computer desk, there it was:

Two Men With an Answer

I think this is very wise indeed.

(BTW, if you don’t now who John Bogle was, you should.)

(Joseph Heller may have been quoting JS Bach’s (Ich habe genug](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_habe_genug,_BWV_82). I tend to hear that phrase to mean what we mean when we say “I’ve had enough”, “J’en ai ras le bol”, etc. I think Heller’s meaning - I have sufficiency - is closer to Bach’s.)