Electoral politics and the public mind

The election keeps bouncing back and forth. First Clinton is up. Then Trump ascending, then Clinton back on top, now Trump surging once more.What's going on?I have a theory.There's a public mind, just as there are individual human minds. The public mind thinks, just as human minds think. Mostly the public mind's thoughts are automatic. Sometimes there is some reflective thought. Rarely is there introspective.This essay is one part of the public mind's effort to look into that mind and see what, how and why it's thinking.The public mind, like our individual minds, is flawed. We suffer collectively from cognitive biases. I think that the current electoral situation, with Trump a possible winner, is the result of our collective cognitive defects.1.The public mind is the union of the responses of individual human minds, just as an individual human mind is the union of the responses of individual neurons and cortical substructures.We can measure the beliefs of a human mind by asking questions and measuring the behavior of a human person. With the public mind, we can measure far less accurately, through polling. It's the best tool that we've got and is often predictive and explanatory.We can ask a human mind the reasons for its belief. When we do we sometimes get more than one answer from the same mind at roughly the same time. Some of the answers are inconsistent with others. And we can show---under suitable experimental conditions--that sometimes the explanations are demonstrably untrue.Still, we can make inferences based on our data, and attempt to understand a given mind. Sometimes we do a pretty good job of explaining and predicting behavior.Can we do the same with the public mind?Maybe. What I can tell you what this particular bit of the public mind thinks as the election rolls on. Some minds are made up and that's it. New information can only confirm a set belief. The needle moves in only one direction.My mind is not fixed on one answer, although it does have its preconceptions and biases. It changes as information comes in, and the way that my mind changes from time to time is, I think consistent with changes in the public mind as a whole.I'm not special, except in this sense--most of the public mind does not introspect. It thinks--but does not think about its thinking. I do.2.I started out disliking Clinton and, after introspection, I decided that my mind was leading me to dislike her more than she deserved. I wrote an essay about it. I disliked Trump even more, for reasons that I didn't think needed explaining. Still, I wrote an essay explaining why he was an interesting, and maybe even a good candidate.I don't want to believe that Trump is as bad as some of the media portray him. And I don't want to believe the Clinton is as bad--or as good--as the media portray her.My bias knobs are set, though. It was pretty likely from the start that I was going to vote for the Democrat. But they were not so hard set that I couldn't change my perceptions. So from time to time I look into my mind to understand where my mind is leading me.When nothing special is going on, and especially when Trump is moving up in the polls, my mind leads me to think: "Well, maybe it wouldn't be horrible if Trump won." Because, you know, that has always been a possibility. I parse through the anti-Trump arguments and find flaws. I read and listen to stuff by smart people who argue for Trump. I can construct a case for Trump in my mind. It's a weak case. But it is a case.Then I see Clinton and Trump them both together. Not through the media, but through their own words and actions. Unfiltered. The RNC/DNC back-to-back followed by Trump's public fight with the parents of a dead American soldier was the start of that.And then the debates. There's as clear a side-by-side comparison as you could want. Unfiltered. On one side Hillary. On the other, Donald. Pretty much the same questions. No home field advantage.And my reaction to the first debate was:: "Holy shit! Is this real? Is he really the candidate of the Republican party? How do I explain those incoherent sentences coming out of his mouth?" Read the transcript of Debate 1, Debate 2, or Debate 3. Judge for yourself.I mean really. Read what he says.How has Trump managed to get where he's gotten to?3.I have a theory.If you watch a video of Trump at any of his unscripted campaign stops, he's terrific. He doesn't give a speech, he has a conversation with the audience. He connects with people.Here's how it works. He says things. He listens to how people respond. If the people respond positively, he does more of that. If they don't respond well, he does less.Simple algorithm. Very effective.But not based on thought. It's based on channeling the reactions of the crowd. It's simple reinforcement training. The crowd is teaching Trump what to say.Yes, but Trump has got policy positions. And some of them make good sense.That's true. I've read them, and agree with some. In some cases, I prefer some of his positions to Clinton's.But whose policy positions are they? If they were actually Trump's, if they were the result of deliberative thought on his part, then I'd expect him to make reasoned arguments for them in the debates.But he didn't. Didn't seem able to.4.The debates. Read the transcripts. Most often he answers a question or responds to Clinton by stating a relevant proposition, and then saying the same thing three or four different ways. This works on the campaign trail. You say something, they cheer. You say it again, they cheer again. You keep saying it until they quiet down, and then you move on.But in the debate, we expect--well, debate. We expect reasoned argument. We expect persuasion.I didn't see that from Trump. Instead, I saw behavior that supported the theory of his opponents: what pops into his head, spouts out of his mouth.I've read transcripts of the debates several times and I can find very little that supports a theory that says he's got the sort of mind I'd want to see at the head of this country.And a lot that supports the opposite.And to my surprise, when I first listened to Clinton and read her answers, and I thought: "Holy shit, she's really on the ball. She's prepared. She's articulate. I'd be happy to have her as the face of my country." I liked her in spite of myself.I'm not talking about Clinton's prepared speeches. Or Trump's prepared speeches. I grant his brilliance in front of a crowd. I grant her ability to speak the words that a speech-writer has written, possibly under her influence. Those things don't change my mind. That's the candidate through a filter.I'm talking about the unfiltered Clinton and the unfiltered Trump.Based on the unfiltered data, the most negative thing I can say about her is: "She does a very good imitation of someone who knows their stuff."But by that same yardstick, I say: "He can't even do a good imitation of someone who knows their stuff."Sad!5.Now we're in the period after the third debate. Things have quieted down. I don't see anything that he's doing other than his standard stump speech. She's not doing anything newsworthy.And my mind goes back to "Maybe he's not so bad." I have some friends who say: "He's the ugly face of the ugly Republican Party." I don't buy that. I think better of the party than I think of him. So maybe he's not so bad?But when I see him, unfiltered, I think he's a terrible candidate.When he's not doing things that actively remind me how horrible I think he is, my mind goes to conditioned thinking. The thinking goes something like this: "Well, if he's the candidate of one of our two major parties, there must be something redeeming about him that I'm just unable to see."So I read and listen to things that intelligent surrogates say about him. The things that they say make some sense. Not enough to convince me to support him, but enough to convince me he might not that bad. Because my mind desperately wants to believe that.God! If we're actually a country that would nominate someone that bad, what does it say? No. My mind does not want to go there. Maybe he's not that bad.And then I go back to Trump--unfiltered by the media and unfiltered by his surrogates--and I'm horrified all over again.That's the thing. If I look at him through any filter, I tend to see him through that filter, modulated by my trust in the filter. I'm more inclined to trust a criticism of Trump in the Wall Street Journal than in the New York Times. And I don't believe a thing I've read in Breitbart.If I hear an argument for him through the filter of Scott Adams (before I flipped the bit on him) or the filter of Stephen Hsu, or Peter Theil, I can find some merit in their arguments. (I find flaws as well, just as I find flaws in every argument for Clinton).So if there's no direct way to get information--I think I do what I think independent-minded people do--we try to get data indirectly and to try to understand what we don't understand.6.So right now, even while I'm writing this, a part of my mind is saying things like "Maybe he wouldn't be so bad." And "Maybe I don't get it." And "Yes, there are a bunch of yahoos for him, but there are a bunch of smart people who favor him for what seem like good reasons." And "Maybe I'm just not smart enough to see it."And then I go back to "raw Trump." Not Trump as filtered through Theil or Hsu, or Adams. Not Trump as filtered through the people who write the policy positions on his website. But Trump the man. Trump on his own terms. Trump engaged in an unscripted articulation of his beliefs, And especially Trump, alongside Hillary, doing the same thing.Trump raw and Clinton raw.And I'm utterly gobsmacked.When Trump, the man, speaks, unfiltered, I agree with Sam Harris analysis (Podcast YouTube, my transcript).

7.I don't get to decide who wins. I'm just a subcomponent of the public mind, and the mind as a whole will decide.I'm like most of the other parts of the public mind. Some of us are purely stimulus-response creatures. Data goes in, the answer comes out. Some of us are more reflective. Data comes in, gets compared to a bunch of other data hypothesis are formed, compared to data; gaps are discovered and filled by reading. Then the answer comes out.If there's anything that distinguishes my mind from parts of the public mind it's that most there's anything to distinguish my mind and--and others like mine--from most it's that we introspect. We not only think, we examine our thinking process.Based on my own introspection, here's what I think is happening. Republicans who are horrified by unfiltered Trump decide--when there's no unfiltered Trump around--that he's not so bad. He can't be as bad as he seemed (in distant memory when he was unfiltered). And so, they say, I'll vote with my party.Democrats who have questions about Clinton, and who were horrified by unfiltered Trump when exposed to him will settle into thinking: "He's not so horrible, I'll vote for Jill. Or Gary. Or not make the effort." The race will tighten, as it's tightening.And if Trump wins, I think it will be because the public mind has the same defects as my mind. My mind rejects that idea that he's as bad as he seemed during the debate, He can't be that bad. The Republican Party, for all its flaws, could not have nominated someone that bad. Smart surrogates could not argue in favor of someone that bad.And then I drag my mind back to the evidence of the senses. I go back and read what he said. And I conclude again--yes, they've nominated someone that bad.Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is all a genius plan on his part,I might get to find out.I'm a person who would almost always rather know the answer than not know.This is an exception.In this case, I'd really rather not find out.