Hodak Value

A friend of ours who knows Alan Alda recently recounted that many years after the end of M*A*S*H, the actor continued to get requests from individuals to be their doctor. Hearing this reminded me of Congressional hearings in 1985 into the "plight of the farmer" where they invited actresses Sissy Spacek, Jessica Lange, and Jane Fonda to testify...on the strength of having played farmers wives in film.

Congress arguably invites stars to hearings for their star power. But the fact that ordinary voters seriously identify actors with the skills, insights, or backgrounds of the characters they play is a serious concern for me. We share a vote with people unable to distinguish play from reality. At least some actors, like Alda, don't confuse their acted abilities with their actor abilities.

This gem comes from Henry Stern, New York City's living institutional memory:

When James Wechsler was editor and Dorothy Schiff was the owner of the New York Post, there was a dispute over whose articles were more popular, Wechsler's editorials or the paper's regular columns. At the time the Post had two magnificent columnists, Murray Kempton on public affairs and Jimmy Cannon on sports. These men were great writers and if you can find any of their books in print or articles about them on the web, you should read them.

At any rate, Ms. Schiff was persuaded (which was not easy) to spend some of her money on a survey to find out the most popular column in the Post. The study discovered that it was the daily horoscope that most people read. That is understandable, the rest of the paper tells you what is happening in the present, or what took place in the past. Only the horoscope will tell you the future.

A little town in Romania voted to re-elect their dead mayor. One often hears of democracy as a process that fools voters into believing that they can get whatever they want. This election was the ultimate test for these voters. "I know he died, but I don't want change," said a supporter of the former mayor. Presumably, keeping the old mayor would prevent any change, if one overlooked the inconvenient difference between life and death.

Talk about the advantage of incumbency!

There may be some rational arguments for not lowering the drinking age below 21, but Mayor Richard Daley goes off on the proposal with none of them. His most coherent argument:

I'm sorry, you have enough time to drink the rest of your life. I believe in that.

You pay an awful lot of money. You look at the salaries that people get at universities. You pay a lot of money. I’m sorry, they have a legal and moral responsibility when your child goes to [get] an education, what type of environment is set on that university...

I think that’s a bad message. I think they better really look at that. Because what, are they going to drop it down to 18 or 17 or 16? I mean, think of that.

We should not be so whimsical that universities can think they drop the drinking age. You think the president of the university is going to open a beer hall in his house?

I don't have much to say about the Republican convention other than Palin appeared to be the clear highlight. My basic problem with them all is that they propose to protect us from threats of all sorts, and to send me the bill for their protection. I have to count on them spending my money wisely. History shows little promise of that.

I don't know how to put the graphs up here, but consider that the likelihood of the average American dying from heart disease is about 34%. You have about a 30% chance of dying from cancer. You have an almost 30% chance of dying from any other kind of disease, and about a 6 percent chance of dying in an accident. If the U.S. suffered the equivalent of a World Trade Center attack every single year, you would have a 0.2% chance of ever dying from terrorist activity.

Then consider that our government spends about 15 times as much money fighting terrorism as it does on all other threats to our health and safety put together.

Availability bias is the human tendency to ascribe a higher probability to events that come readily to mind. Over the last 8 years, many of us may have heard about or even witnessed the death of someone from disease or accident. But every one of us have seen or heard, with incessant repetition, about 9/11. The vivid sight of the plane crashing into the Twin Towers is burned into our national consciousness. 9/11 is a highly 'available' data point.

Our politicians have used that consciousness to organize a Dept. of Homeland Security and invade Iraq, the costs of which are approaching $500 billion. How many lives have been saved from all that fighting, over-the-top airport security, encroachment on our civil liberties, loss of respect among our allies, etc.?

The obverse of availability is peace of mind. We've paid dearly for it. But what would we have gotten by channeling a half a trillion dollars to medical research instead? Personally, I would much rather live with a greatly reduced fear of cancer than whatever solace I now get from having people check in at the security desk when entering my building--one of tens of thousands in Manhattan that have never been attacked.

I don't blame our politicians. They're doing what they do--grab money and power based on people's fears. The media creates the fear, which is regrettable, but they too are doing what they do to sell stories.

Ultimately I blame our schools. Our system turns out analytical morons. We are all much poorer for it.