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with the development of non-invasive brain imaging techniques, we have gathered evidence that suggests our brains are hard-wired to be unrealistically optimistic. When we learn what the future may hold, our neurons efficiently encode unexpectedly good information, but fail to incorporate information that is unexpectedly bad.

Underestimating risk makes us less likely to practice safe sex, save for retirement, buy insurance or undergo medical screenings.

Take the financial crisis of 2008. Each investor, homeowner, banker or economic regulator expected slightly better profits than were realistically warranted. On its own, each bias would not have created huge losses. Yet when combined in one market they produced a giant financial bubble that did just that.

The optimal solution then? Believe you will live a long healthy life, but go for frequent medical screenings. Aspire to write the next “Harry Potter” series, but have a safety net in place too.

Transport flying is now so safe that the long time standard of 10 to the minus 

9th may not satisfy the public

In numerous polls over the past decade, Denmark has ranked as the "happiest" country in the worl

. (The U.S. is number 17.) The country also has the second highest consumption of antidepressants. Are these two statistics connected?

They also have among the highest levels of alcohol consumption, eat the most candy in the world, and have among the highest consumption of pork product

The New York Times called Denmark the best place to be laid off. Why does anyone bother to work?

supported people from cradle to grave. If you get sick or lose your job or just fall by the wayside in some way, it's there to pick you up. As a result, there is a disincentive for people to take menial, low-pay jobs.

Danes also work fewer hours than anybody else

Norway now has, not just per capita but in absolute terms, the biggest pot of gold in the world. It's called the sovereign wealth fund, but it's nicknamed the oil fund, and it's up at something like $600 billion to $700 billion.

Empowered by their own sources of information and their own interpretations of research, doubters have declared war on the consensus of experts.

Our lives are permeated by science and technology as never before. For many of us this new world is wondrous, comfortable, and rich in rewards—but also more complicated and sometimes unnerving. We now face risks we can’t easily analyze.

The world crackles with real and imaginary hazards, and distinguishing the former from the latter isn’t easy.

In this bewildering world we have to decide what to believe and how to act on that. In principle that’s what science is for.

“Science is not a body of facts,” says geophysicist Marcia McNutt,

“Science is a method for deciding whether what we choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not.”

The scientific method leads us to truths that are less than self-evident, often mind-blowing, and sometimes hard to swallow.

We don’t believe you.

Galileo was put on trial and forced to recant. Two centuries later Charles Darwin escaped that fate. But his idea that all life on Earth evolved from a primordial ancestor and that we humans are distant cousins of apes, whales, and even deep-sea mollusks is still a big ask for a lot of people. So is another 19th-century notion: that carbon dioxide, an invisible gas that we all exhale all the time and that makes up less than a tenth of one percent of the atmosphere, could be affecting Earth’s climate.

we intellectually accept these precepts of science, we subconsciously cling to our intuitions

Shtulman’s research indicates that as we become scientifically literate, we repress our naive beliefs but never eliminate them entirely. They lurk in our brains, chirping at us as we try to make sense of the world.

Most of us do that by relying on personal experience and anecdotes, on stories rather than statistics.

We have trouble digesting randomness; our brains crave pattern and meaning.

we can deceive ourselves.

Even for scientists, the scientific method is a hard discipline. Like the rest of us, they’re vulnerable to what they call confirmation bias—the tendency to look for and see only evidence that confirms what they already believe. But unlike the rest of us, they submit their ideas to formal peer review before publishing them

other scientists will try to reproduce them

Scientific results are always provisional, susceptible to being overturned by some future experiment or observation. Scientists rarely proclaim an absolute truth or absolute certainty. Uncertainty is inevitable at the frontiers of knowledge.

Many people in the United States—a far greater percentage than in other countries—retain doubts about that consensus or believe that climate activists are using the threat of global warming to attack the free market and industrial society generally.

news media give abundant attention to such mavericks, naysayers, professional controversialists, and table thumpers. The media would also have you believe that science is full of shocking discoveries made by lone geniuses

science tells us the truth rather than what we’d like the truth to be. Scientists can be as dogmatic as anyone else—but their dogma is always wilting in the hot glare of new research.

But industry PR, however misleading, isn’t enough to explain why only 40 percent of Americans, according to the most recent poll from the Pew Research Center, accept that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming.

“science communication problem,”

yielded abundant new research into how people decide what to believe—and why they so often don’t accept the scientific consensus.

higher literacy was associated with stronger views—at both ends of the spectrum. Science literacy promoted polarization on climate, not consensus. According to Kahan, that’s because people tend to use scientific knowledge to reinforce beliefs that have already been shaped by their worldview.

“egalitarian” and “communitarian” mind-set are generally suspicious of industry and apt to think it’s up to something dangerous that calls for government regulation; they’re likely to see the risks of climate change.

“hierarchical” and “individualistic” mind-set respect leaders of industry and don’t like government interfering in their affairs; they’re apt to reject warnings about climate change, because they know what accepting them could lead to—some kind of tax or regulation to limit emissions.

For a hierarchical individualist, Kahan says, it’s not irrational to reject established climate science: Accepting it wouldn’t change the world, but it might get him thrown out of his tribe.

Science appeals to our rational brain, but our beliefs are motivated largely by emotion, and the biggest motivation is remaining tight with our peers.

organizations funded in part by the fossil fuel industry have deliberately tried to undermine the public’s understanding of the scientific consensus by promoting a few skeptics.

Internet makes it easier than ever for climate skeptics and doubters of all kinds to find their own information and experts

Internet has democratized information, which is a good thing. But along with cable TV, it has made it possible to live in a “filter bubble” that lets in only the information with which you already agree.

How to convert climate skeptics? Throwing more facts at them doesn’t help.

people need to hear from believers they can trust, who share their fundamental values.

We believe in scientific ideas not because we have truly evaluated all the evidence but because we feel an affinity for the scientific community.

“Believing in evolution is just a description about you. It’s not an account of how you reason.”

evolution actually happened. Biology is incomprehensible without it. There aren’t really two sides to all these issues. Climate change is happening. Vaccines really do save lives. Being right does matter—and the science tribe has a long track record of getting things right in the end. Modern society is built on things it got right.

Doubting science also has consequences.

In the climate debate the consequences of doubt are likely global and enduring. In the U.S., climate change skeptics have achieved their fundamental goal of halting legislative action to combat global warming.

“That line between science communication and advocacy is very hard to step back from,”

It’s their very detachment, what you might call the cold-bloodedness of science, that makes science the killer app.

that need to fit in is so strong that local values and local opinions are always trumping science.

not a sin to change your mind when the evidence demands it.

for the best scientists, the truth is more important than the tribe.

Students come away thinking of science as a collection of facts, not a method.

Shtulman’s research has shown that even many college students don’t really understand what evidence is.

“Everybody should be questioning,” says McNutt. “That’s a hallmark of a scientist. But then they should use the scientific method, or trust people using the scientific method, to decide which way they fall on those questions.”

science has made us the dominant organisms,

incredibly rapid change, and it’s scary sometimes. It’s not all progress.

Despite his injuries, Turner began giving first aid and pulled other soldiers to safety. As he worked, he was shot twice — one bullet breaking a bone in his arm. Yet Turner would say later that he felt almost no pain.

"Soldiers in the heat of the moment don't recognize the pain that's happening," Linden says. But once that moment is over, those same soldiers may feel a lot of pain from something minor, like a hypodermic needle, he says.

CIA interrogators used both tactics after Sept. 11, according to a Senate report released late last year.

One system determines the pain's location, intensity and characteristics: stabbing, aching, burning, etc.

there is a completely separate system for the emotional aspect of pain

positive emotions — like feeling calm and safe and connected to others — can minimize pain. But negative emotions tend to have the opposite effect. Torturers have exploited that aspect for centuries.

they want to accentuate pain during torture they can do this with humiliation [or] with an unpredictable schedule of delivering pain

Those things will make the emotional component of the pain experience stronger."

brain also determines the emotion we attach to each painful experience, Linden says. That's possible, he explains, because the brain uses two different systems to process pain information coming from our nerve endings.

One thing scientists are still trying to understand is precisely how the brain regulates the perception of pain

The team studied low-frequency brain waves in a part of the brain that responds to sensations in the hand,

Earlier research had shown that these rhythms increase when the brain is blocking sensory information from the hand.

reseasrchers monitored the brain waves of a dozen people who were asked to pay attention only to their hand or only to their foot. During the experiment the scientists delivered a light tap to each person's finger or toe.

ocused on their feet, low-frequency rhythms increased in the brain area that responds to hand sensations — because participants were asking their brains to ignore sensory input from the hand, and it's these low-frequency rhythms that do the blocking of such information.

low-frequency rhythms also increased in a different brain area — the region that ignores distractions, the team discovered.

The two areas became synchronized

"There's coordination between the front part of the brain, which is the executive control region of the brain, and the sensory part of the brain, which is filtering information from the environment," she says.

suggests that at least some people can teach their brains how to filter out things like chronic pain, perhaps through meditation

It found that people who practiced mindfulness meditation for eight weeks greatly improved their control of the brain rhythms that block out pain.

there’s no profit in leaving things as they are.Show me a body part, I’ll show you someone who’s making money by telling women that theirs looks wrong and they need to fix it. Tone it, work it out, tan it, bleach it, tattoo it, lipo it, remove all the hair, lose every bit of jiggle.

As a graphic designer and Photoshop teacher, I also have to note that Photoshop is used HEAVILY in these kinds of publications. Even on women with incredibly beautiful (by pop culture standards) bodies. It's quite sad because the imagery we're expected to live up to (or approximate) by cultural standards, is illustration. It's not even real. My boyfriend and I had a big laugh over a Playboy cover a few months ago where the Photoshopping was so extreme (thigh gap and butt cheek) it was anatomically impossible and looked ridiculous. I work in the industry.. I know what the Liquify filter and the Spot Healing Brush can do!

We may harp on gender inequality while pursuing stupid fetishes. Well into our middle age, we still try to forcefully wriggle into size 2 pair of jeans. We foolishly spend tonnes of money on fake ( these guys should be sued for false advertising )age -defying, anti-wrinkle creams. Why do we have to have our fuzz and bush diappear while the men have forests on their chests,abdomens,butts, arms and legs? For that we have only ourselves to blame. We just cannot get out of this mindset of being objectified. And we pass on these foolishness to our daughters and grand-daughters. They get trapped, never satisfied with what they see in the mirror. Don't expect the men to change anytime soon. They will always maintain the status quo. It is for us, women to get out of this rut. We have to 'snatch' gender-equality. It will never be handed to us. PERIOD

I spent years dieting and exercising to look good--or really to not look bad. I knew the calories (and probably still do) in thousands of foods. How I regret the time I spent on that and the boyfriends who cared about that. And how much more I had to give to the world. With unprecedented economic injustice, ecosystems collapsing, war breaking out everywhere, nations going under water, people starving in refugee camps, the keys to life, behavior, and disease being unlocked in the biological sciences . . . this is what we think women should spend their time worrying about? Talk about a poverty of ambition. No more. Won't even look at these demeaning magazines when I get my hair cut. If that's what a woman cares about, I try to tell her to stop wasting her time. If that's what a man cares about, he is a waste of my time. What a depressing way to distract women from achieving more in this world. Really wish I'd know this at 12.

we believe we're all competing against one another to procreate and participate in evolution. So women (and men) compete ferociously, and body image is a subset of all that. Then there's LeMarckian evolutionary theory and epigenetics...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EpigeneticsBottom line is that we can't stop this train any more easily than we can stop the anthropocene's Climate Change. Human beings are tempted. Sometimes we win the battle, other times we give in to vanity, hedonism, and ego. This is all a subset of much larger forces at play. Men and women make choices and act within that environment. Deal with it.

Democratic supporters of safety net programs can use Jencks’s finding that poverty has dropped below 5 percent as evidence that the war on poverty has been successful.

At the same time liberals are wary of positive news because, as Jencks notes:It is easier to rally support for such an agenda by saying that the problem in question is getting worse

The plus side for conservatives of Jencks’s low estimate of the poverty rate is the implication that severe poverty has largely abated, which then provides justification for allowing enemies of government entitlement programs to further cut social spending.

At the same time, however, Jencks’s data undermines Republican claims that the war on poverty has been a failure – a claim exemplified by Ronald Reagan’s famous 1987 quip: “In the sixties we waged a war on poverty, and poverty won.”

Jencks’s conclusion: “The absolute poverty rate has declined dramatically since President Johnson launched his war on poverty in 1964.” At 4.8 percent, Jencks’s calculation is the lowest poverty estimate by a credible expert in the field.

his conclusion — that instead of the official count of 45.3 million people living in poverty, the number of poor people in America is just under 15 million — understates the scope of hardship in this country.

Jencks argues that the actual poverty rate has dropped over the past five decades – far below the official government level — if poverty estimates are adjusted for food and housing benefits, refundable tax credits and a better method of determining inflation rates. In Jencks’s view, the war on poverty worked.

using a relative measure shows that the United States lags well behind other developed countries:If you use the O.E.C.D. standard of 50 percent of median income as a poverty line, the United States looks pretty bad in cross-national relief. We have a relative poverty rate exceeded only by Chile, Turkey, Mexico and Israel (which has seen a big increase in inequality in recent years). And that rate in 2010 was essentially where it was in 1995

While the United States “has achieved real progress in reducing absolute poverty over the past 50 years,” according to Burtless, “the country may have made no progress at all in reducing the relative economic deprivation of folks at the bottom.”

the heart of the dispute: How severe is the problem of poverty?

Kathryn Edin, a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins, and Luke Schaefer, a professor of social work at the University of Michigan, contend that the poverty debate overlooks crucial changes that have taken place within the population of the poor.

welfare reform, signed into law by President Clinton in 1996 (the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act), which limited eligibility for welfare benefits to five years. The limitation has forced many of the poor off welfare: over the past 19 years, the percentage of families falling under the official poverty line who receive welfare benefits has fallen from to 26 percent from 68 percent. Currently, three-quarters of those in poverty, under the official definition, receive no welfare payments.

he enactment of expanded benefits for the working poor through the earned-income tax credit and the child tax credit.According to Edin and Schaefer, the consequence of these changes, taken together, has been to divide the poor who no longer receive welfare into two groups. The first group is made up of those who have gone to work and have qualified for tax credits. Expanded tax credits lifted about 3.2 million children out of poverty in 2013

he second group, though, has really suffered. These are the very poor who are without work, part of a population that is struggling desperately. Edin and Schaefer write that among the losers are an estimated 3.4 million “children who over the course of a year live for at least three months under a $2 per person per day threshold.”

ocusing on these findings, Mishel argues, diverts attention from the more serious problem of “the failure of the labor market to adequately reward low-wage workers.”To support his case, Mishel points out that hourly pay for those in the bottom fifth grew only 7.7 percent from 1979 to 2007, while productivity grew by 64 percent, and education levels among workers in this quintile substantially improved.

At the same time, the rise in protective committees and procedures (like trigger warnings) ensure that students will not be confronted with course materials that might upset them (even classics like Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”).

universities like Yale have given in to the implicit notion that they should provide the equivalent of the home environment.

But college is a different kind of community than a family, and its primary job is education of the student and adaptation to independent community living.

To prepare for increased autonomy and responsibility, college needs to be a time of exploration and experimentation. This process entails “trying on” new ways of thinking about oneself both intellectually and personally, which is possible only if a certain degree of freedom is allowed.

While we should provide “safe spaces” within colleges for marginalized groups, we must also make it safe for all community members to express opinions and challenge majority views. Intellectual growth and flexibility are fostered by rigorous debate and questioning.

It is not surprising that young people are prone to lash out, particularly when there are sociologic reasons to do so. Our generation rallied around clear issues: the war in Vietnam and governmentally sanctioned discrimination based on race and gender. ISIS, Newtown, a changing economy with fewer good jobs and stable career paths create anxiety without generating a unifying moral vision

The encroachment of behavioral guidelines into the social and even intellectual spheres comes at a cost. Every college discussion about community values, social climate and behavior should also include recognition of the developmental importance of student autonomy and self-regulation, of the necessary tension between safety and self-discovery.

The technique holds the power to repair or enhance any human gene. “It raises the most fundamental of issues about how we are going to view our humanity in the future and whether we are going to take the dramatic step of modifying our own germline and in a sense take control of our genetic destiny, which raises enormous peril for humanity,”

The paper’s authors, however, are concerned about countries that have less regulation in science. They urge that “scientists should avoid even attempting, in lax jurisdictions, germline genome modification for clinical application in humans” until the full implications “are discussed among scientific and governmental organizations.”

Though such a moratorium would not be legally enforceable and might seem unlikely to exert global influence, there is a precedent. In 1975, scientists worldwide were asked to refrain from using a method for manipulating genes, the recombinant DNA technique, until rules had been established.

Though highly efficient, the technique occasionally cuts the genome at unintended sites. The issue of how much mistargeting could be tolerated in a clinical setting is one that Dr. Doudna’s group wants to see thoroughly explored before any human genome is edited.

“We worry about people making changes without the knowledge of what those changes mean in terms of the overall genome,” Dr. Baltimore said. “I personally think we are just not smart enough — and won’t be for a very long time — to feel comfortable about the consequences of changing heredity, even in a single individual.”

Many ethicists have accepted the idea of gene therapy, changes that die with the patient, but draw a clear line at altering the germline, since these will extend to future generations. The British Parliament in February approved the transfer of mitochondria, small DNA-containing organelles, to human eggs whose own mitochondria are defective. But that technique is less far-reaching because no genes are edited.

There are two broad schools of thought on modifying the human germline, said R. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin and a member of the Doudna group. One is pragmatic and seeks to balance benefit and risk. The other “sets up inherent limits on how much humankind should alter nature,” she said. Some Christian doctrines oppose the idea of playing God, whereas in Judaism and Islam there is the notion “that humankind is supposed to improve the world.” She described herself as more of a pragmatist, saying, “I would try to regulate such things rather than shut a new technology down at its beginning.

The Doudna group calls for public discussion, but is also working to develop some more formal process, such as an international meeting convened by the National Academy of Sciences, to establish guidelines for human use of the genome-editing technique.“We need some principled agreement that we want to enhance humans in this way or we don’t,” Dr. Jaenisch said. “You have to have this discussion because people are gearing up to do this.”

The second model is Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs. In this conception, we start out trying to satisfy our physical needs, like hunger or thirst. Once those are satisfied we move up to safety needs, economic and physical security. Once those are satisfied we can move up to belonging and love. Then when those are satisfied we can move up to self-esteem. And when that is satisfied we can move up to the pinnacle of development, self-actualization, which is experiencing autonomy and living in a way that expresses our authentic self.

Most religions and moral systems have aimed for self-quieting and, figuring that the great human problem is selfishness. But around the middle of the 20th century, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and others aimed to liberate and enlarge the self. They brought us the self-esteem movement, humanistic psychology, and their thinking is still very influential today.

In the Four Happiness frame, by contrast, marriage can be a school in joy. You might go into marriage in a fit of passion, but, if all works out, pretty soon you’re chopping vegetables side by side in the kitchen

None of us lives up to our ideals in marriage or anything else. But at least we can aim high. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs too easily devolves into self-absorption. It’s time to put it away.

It helps greatly in the avoidance of work to be in the company of others who are also waiting for the golden moment. The best place to write is by yourself, because writing becomes an escape from the terrible boredom of your own personality. It's the reason that for years I've favored Switzerland, where I look at the telephone and yearn to hear it ring.

There may be inspired writers for whom the first draft is just right. But anyone who is not certifiably a Milton had better assume that the first draft is a very primitive thing. The reason is simple: Writing is difficult work. Ralph Paine, who managed Fortune in my time, used to say that anyone who said writing was easy was either a bad writer or an unregenerate liar

Thinking, as Voltaire avowed, is also a very tedious thing which men—or women—will do anything to avoid. So all first drafts are deeply flawed by the need to combine composition with thought. Each later draft is less demanding in this regard. Hence the writing can be better

There does come a time when revision is for the sake of change—when one has become so bored with the words that anything that is different looks better. But even then it may be better.

the lesson of Harry Luce. No one who worked for him ever again escaped the feeling that he was there looking over one's shoulder. In his hand was a pencil; down on each page one could expect, any moment, a long swishing wiggle accompanied by the comment: "This can go." Invariably it could. It was written to please the author and not the reader. Or to fill in the space. The gains from brevity are obvious; in most efforts to achieve brevity, it is the worst and dullest that goes. It is the worst and dullest that spoils the rest.

Economics is an example, and within the field of economics the subject of money, with the history of which I have been much concerned, is an especially good case. Any specialist who ventures to write on money with a view to making himself intelligible works under a grave moral hazard. He will be accused of oversimplification. The charge will be made by his fellow professionals, however obtuse or incompetent

Reluctantly, but from a long and terrible experience, I would urge my young writers to avoid all attempts at humor

Only a very foolish man will use a form of language that is wholly uncertain in its effect. That is the nature of humor

Finally, I would come to a matter of much personal interest, intensely self-serving. It concerns the peculiar pitfalls of the writer who is dealing with presumptively difficult or technical matters

as he grew older, he became less and less interested in theory, more and more interested in information.

In the case of economics there are no important propositions that cannot be stated in plain language

Additionally, and especially in the social sciences, much unclear writing is based on unclear or incomplete thought

It is possible with safety to be technically obscure about something you haven't thought out. It is impossible to be wholly clear on something you do not understand. Clarity thus exposes flaws in the thought

Put simply, incompetent people think they know more than they really do, and they tend to be more boastful about it.

To test Darwin’s theory, the researchers quizzed people on several topics, such as grammar, logical reasoning and humor. After each test, they asked the participants how they thought they did. Specifically, participants were asked how many of the other quiz-takers they beat.

Time after time, no matter the subject, the people who did poorly on the tests ranked their competence much higher

On average, test takers who scored as low as the 10th percentile ranked themselves near the 70th percentile. Those least likely to know what they were talking about believed they knew as much as the experts.

Dunning and Kruger’s results have been replicated in at least a dozen different domains: math skills, wine tasting, chess, medical knowledge among surgeons and firearm safety among hunters.

Even though President Trump’s statements are rife with errors, falsehoods or inaccuracies, he expresses great confidence in his aptitude. He says he does not read extensively because he solves problems “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had.” He has said in interviews he doesn’t read lengthy reports because “I already know exactly what it is.”

He has “the best words” and cites his “high levels of intelligence” in rejecting the scientific consensus on climate change. Decades ago, he said he could end the Cold War: “It would take an hour and a half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles,” Trump told The Washington Post’s Lois Romano over dinner in 1984. “I think I know most of it anyway.”

Whether people want to understand “the other side” or they’re just looking for an epithet, the Dunning-Kruger effect works as both, Dunning said, which he believes explains the rise of interest.

Dunning says the effect is particularly dangerous when someone with influence or the means to do harm doesn’t have anyone who can speak honestly about their mistakes.

Not surprisingly (though no less concerning), Dunning’s follow-up research shows the poorest performers are also the least likely to accept criticism or show interest in self improvement.

The agency also relies on industry data to develop rules on chemical safety that is often kept confidential for business reasons.

So why would he want to prohibit his own agency from using these studies? It’s not a mystery. Time and again the Trump administration has put the profits of regulated industries over the health of the American people. Fundamental research on the effects of air pollution on public health has long been a target of those who oppose the E.P.A.’s air quality regulations, like the rule that requires power plants to reduce their mercury emissions.

Ferguson replied that their role in subprime mortgages was not very significant, and that in any case their behavior was not much different from that of other capitalist enterprises.

We get no inkling that Rajan's views on what made the world riskier, as set forth in his book, veer quite radically from those of Inside Job. They include, as he has written, "the political push for easy housing credit in the United States and the lax monetary policy [by the Federal Reserve] in the years 2003-2005."

Rajan, author of Fault Lines, a recent book on the debacle, speaks with special authority to fans of Inside Job. Not only is he in the movie—one of the talking heads speaking wisdom about what occurred—he is accurately presented as having anticipated the meltdown in a 2005 paper called "Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier?" But the things he is quoted as saying in the film are restricted to serving its themes.

Yet it's impossible to understand what happened without grasping the proactive role played by government. "The banking sector did not decide out of the goodness of its heart to extend mortgages to poor people," commented University of Chicago Booth School of Business Finance Professor Raghuram Rajan in a telephone interview last week. "Politicians did that, and they would have taken great umbrage if the regulator stood in the way of more housing credit."

THE STORY RECOUNTED in Inside Job is that principles like safety and soundness were flouted by greedy Wall Street capitalists who brought down the economy with the help of certain politicians, political appointees and corrupt academicians. Despite the attempts and desires of some, including Barney Frank, to regulate the mania, the juggernaut prevails to this day, under the presidency of Barack Obama.

This version of the story contains some elements of truth.

Text Size Regular Medium Large "A MASTERPIECE OF INVESTIGATIVE nonfiction moviemaking," wrote the film critic of the Boston Globe. "Rests its outrage on reason, research and careful argument," opined the New York Times. The "masterpiece" referred to was the recently released Inside Job, a documentary film that focuses on the causes of the 2008 financial crisis.

You see the same thing on climate change. Global warming is a myth — a hoax concocted by a vast conspiracy of scientists around the world. O.K., the climate is changing, but it’s a natural phenomenon that has nothing to do with human activity. O.K., man-made climate change is real, but we can’t do anything about it without destroying the economy.

What the right’s positioning on inequality, climate and now Russian election interference have in common is that in each case the people pretending to be making a serious argument are actually apparatchiks operating in bad faith.

in each case those making denialist arguments, while they may invoke evidence, don’t actually care what the evidence says; at a fundamental level, they aren’t interested in the truth. Their goal, instead, is to serve a predetermined agenda.

eporting about these debates typically frames them as disputes about the facts and what they mean, when the reality is that one side isn’t interested in the facts.

the pressures that often lead to false equivalence. Calling out dishonesty and bad faith can seem like partisan bias when, to put it bluntly, one side of the political spectrum lies all the time, while the other side doesn’t.

pretending that good faith exists when it doesn’t is unfair to readers. The public deserves to know that the big debates in modern U.S. politics aren’t a conventional clash of rival ideas.

I want to advance a technology-driven hypothesis: This mix of youthful safety and adult immaturity may be a feature of life in a society increasingly shaped by the internet’s virtual realities.

It is easy to see how online culture would make adolescent life less dangerous. Pornography to take the edge off teenage sexual appetite. Video games instead of fisticuffs or contact sports as an outlet for hormonal aggression. (Once it was feared that porn and violent media would encourage real-world aggression; instead they seem to be replacing it.) Sexting and selfie-enabled masturbation as a safer alternative to hooking up. Online hangouts instead of keggers in the field. More texting and driving, but less driving — one of the most dangerous teen activities — overall.

The question is whether this substitution is habit-forming and soul-shaping, and whether it extends beyond dangerous teen behavior to include things essential to long-term human flourishing — marriage, work, family, all that old-fashioned “meatspace” stuff.

It wasn’t so long ago that people worried about a digital divide, in which online access would be a luxury good that left the bottom half behind. But if anything, the virtual world looks more like an opiate for the masses

trends in the marketplace — ever-more-customized pornography, virtual realities that feel more and more immersive, devices and apps customized for addictive behavior — seem likely to overwhelm most attempts to enjoy the virtual only within limits.

Patricia Snow (yes, even columnists have mothers), in an essay for First Things earlier this year, suggested that any effective resistance to virtual reality’s encroachments would need to be moral and religious, not just pragmatic and managerial

Trade would revert to the rules of the World Trade Organization, making Britain’s exports to Europe vulnerable to tariffs and other barriers to commerce, including health and safety rules.

Brexit supporters called the outcome a template for how a pragmatic British government would prevent businesses from abandoning its shores — with tax cuts, friendly regulation and deal making.

But consumer spending has been increasingly paid for by debt. The British pound has surrendered 17 percent of its value against the dollar since the referendum, raising the cost of imported goods.

During the campaign, Brexit supporters argued that Europe would ultimately make it happen because its most powerful member, Germany, now sends a parade of BMWs, Audis and Volkswagens to Britain.

Even if European leaders seek middle ground, any one of the member nations could hijack the proceedings with their demands while the clock ticks away.

Britain really is departing the largest consumer market on earth.

Quite apart from the “unbalanced power” of the financial sector, and the tendency of a super-sized financial sector to cause increasingly bad global financial crashes, excessive financialization leads to resources being misallocated. “In many of the financial sector’s segments that have grown fastest since deregulation—like investment banks—the transactions are primarily zero-sum.”

However in times of rapid technological transformation like today, the role of the economic priesthood in protecting its own interests can become a massively destabilizing.

Thus we know from the history of the last couple of hundred years that in times of rapid technological transformation, the financial sector tends to become disconnected from the real economy

This has occurred a number of times in the last few hundred years, including the Canal Mania (England—1790s), the Rail Mania (England—1840s), the Gilded Age (US: 1880s—early 1900s) the Roaring Twenties (US—1920s) and the Big Banks of today.

Getting to safety is not made any easier by the fact the modern economic priesthood—the managers of large firms and the banks—has, like their ancient Egyptian forbears, found ways to participate in the casino economy and benefit from “making money out of money”, even as the economy as a whole suffers.  As Upton Sinclair wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Just as the ancient Egyptian economic priesthood clung to power as the economy stagnated, so today the economic priesthood shows no signs of relinquishing their gains or their power. The appetite and expectation of extraordinary returns is still there.

“Corporate chieftains rationally choose financial engineering—debt-financed share buybacks, for example—over capital investment in property, plants and equipment. Financial markets reward shareholder activism. Institutional investors extend their risk parameters to beat their benchmarks… But real economic growth—averaging just a bit above 2 percent for the fifth year in a row—remains sorely lacking.”

As a result, the economy remains in the “Great Stagnation”(Tyler Cowen), also known as “the Secular Stagnation (Larry Summers). It is running on continuing life support from the Federal Reserve. Large enterprises still appear to be profitable. The appearance, though not the reality, of economic well-being has been sufficient to make the stock market soa

Just as no change was possible in ancient Egyptian society so long as the economic priesthood colluded to preserve the status quo, so the excesses and prevarications of the Financial Sector will continue so long as the regulators remain its cheerleaders.

Just listen to the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mary Jo White at Stanford University Rock Center for Corporate Governance speaking to directors. In her speech, she makes no secret of her view that the overall corporate arrangements are sound. The job of the SEC, as outlined in the speech, is to find the odd individual who might be doing something wrong. The idea that the large-scale activities of the major banks might be socially corrosive is not even alluded.

Thus in times of transformational technology, there is a huge expansion of investment, driven by the financial sector. Wealthy investors begin to expect outsized returns and so there is over-investment. The resulting bubbles in due course burst

Just as in ancient Egypt, no progress was possible so long as the myths and rituals of the economic priesthood and their offerings to the gods were widely accepted as real indicators of what was going on, so today no progress is possible so long as the myths and rituals of the modern economic priesthood still has a pervasive hold of people’s minds

In the modern economy, the myths and rituals of the economic priesthood are built on the notion that the purpose of a firm is to maximize shareholder value and the notion that if the share price is increasing, things are going well. These ideas are the intellectual underpinnings of the zero-sum activities of the financial sector for “making money out of money”, by whatever means possible

Like the myths and rituals of the priests of ancient Egypt, shareholder value theory is espoused with religious overtones. Shareholder value, which even Jack Welch has called “the dumbest idea in the world,” remains pervasive in business, even though it is responsible for massive offshoring of manufacturing, thereby destroying major segments of the US economy, undermining US capacity to compete in international markets and killing the economic recovery.

If instead society decides that the financial sector should concentrate on its socially important function of financing the real economy and providing financial security for an ever wider circle of citizens and enterprises, we could enjoy an era of growth and lasting prosperity.