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Explorations Outside
First we've got to get a handle on what the US actually spends on healthcare. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (National Health Expenditures 2016 Highlights - CMS.gov), US healthcare spending reached $3.3 trillion in 2016, or $10,348 per person. That represents 17.9% of the gross domestic product (GDP). For comparison, the “Comparable Rich Country” average for healthcare spending was $5169 per person in 2016 (10-12% of GDP, depending on the specific country).
Problems are problems because they conflict with desired outcomes. Exploring a problem space may start with the desired outcome (universal but affordable health care!) or with a "problem-alert": the sense that something is wrong. Part of exploring a problem space is refining, clarifying, or figuring out what the desired outcome is. Part of that process is refining, clarifying, or figuring out what the actual problem is.
There are things I care about… I want the biosphere to survive, relatively intact. I want every human to have a home… The list goes on. There's no way to justify the list. No first principles that can withstand scrutiny.
...ideologues tend to exaggerate societal problems, the better to justify their Big Solution. Big Solutions need to be justified when they require painful sacrifice (the darkness before the dawn), as they often do. That pain had better be worth it. Hence: Big Solutions need Big Problems.
Even when we think we're doing the right thing as an "end-in-itself", there is an implicit assumption that the world will turn out better (at least in the "long term") if we simply focused on the action itself, consequences be damned. Basically, it's a heuristic that resolves a lot of ethical dilemmas. We need heuristics because life is complicated; we can't think through everything.
On second thought, all research is desire-driven. Because behavior is necessarily goal-driven and you don't have goals without wanting something to happen and wanting is desire and doing science is a behavior. But some desires are more conducive to scientific progress than others. Like the desire for reality not to make fools of us.
Suppression of alternative points of view is immoral, because it prevents movement towards a better understanding of the truth. Species evolve through competing variations within changing environments. Nothing works for long (except for crocodiles).
A moral emotion wants something to happen. What if the things it wants to happen are in a zero-sum relationship with each other? More of this means less of that and both this and that are Moral Goods. But you can’t have the optimal amount of both. You gotta choose! (And keep choosing, because time doesn't stop and stuff keeps happening).
...you insist on seeing things as binaries rather than continua. Either this or that, e.g., save the environment or help business; serve the rich or help the poor.
...feminism helped some women advance to positions supervising men, which in the bad ol' days was rarely tolerated, whether at fast food restaurants or accounting firms.
Moderates are often considered weak versions of the Real Thing - people who lack strong convictions, who don't want to rock the boat.
...they’re better at constructing elaborate ideologies around their dumb ideas and more likely to achieve positions of power, allowing them to impose these dumb ideas on others. See, for instance...
Unfortunately, in this era of media fragmentation we see the exact opposite with groups collecting themselves into silos while simultaneously insulting anyone who doesn’t hew to their exact world-view. A Chemist in Langley Posted on April 29, 2017
We should plan to have mini-mastery experiences every day: something a bit challenging but still doable to gets us closer to our goal. Doesn't mean to avoid the hard stuff, but it's nice to sprinkle the hard with the pretty easy to keep us motivated.
The possibility of failure beckons and is transformed into something exhilarating.
Beliefs serve decision-making under conditions of uncertainty. Without uncertainty, we just act. I don't "believe" the ground will stop my foot when I walk....That's just the neural prediction and reward-seeking machinery running smoothly. It's when the machinery gets stuck that the brain shifts into belief mode to help break the logjam.
Jumping the groove from dopamine to self-efficacy: here we go!
If these additional heuristics were put into words, they may sound like "when in doubt, go with tough love" or "when in doubt, provide relief". Note how uncertainty ("when in doubt") calls for heuristic assistance. Help! I need a heuristic! Thinking hard is aversive!
In other words, substantial majorities of all political groups feel they've achieved the American Dream or are at least getting there. Yet we hear all the time that "the American dream is dead". Take this Chicago Tribune commentary, "The American Dream is dead, and voters are angry". To quote...
The “world does not end, the blue bird does not return, love does not reveal itself in all of its profound tenderness and charity, and death and mourning and crying and pain do not disappear.” Yuri Slezkine.