Category Archives: Thinking

Mormons Are Not The Borg

Posted on February 6, 2012 | 2 comments

“Mormons are not The Borg.” That’s what Matthew Bowman answered (author of the new book The Mormon People) when I asked him a couple of weeks ago what was the most common misperception about Mormons. I was at a talk/signing for his new book at the plucky independent bookstore in Arlington/Falls Church: One More Page Books. (This book store in only one year has become the hub of all events literary in Northern Virginia in part because of the decline and fall of almost all the other bookstores in the region but also on account of the great attitude and hard work of the staff.)

I’ve been hesitant to write about my impressions of the book signing lest I come across as mean-spirited, snarky and/or somehow offend my Mormon friends and colleagues. But I keep thinking about the experience, largely because I do not understand the Mormon phenomena in America. (I think a lot about what I do not understand. Are there people who only think a lot about what they do understand?) Last night I was watching this excellent (but more than an hour-long) interview of Brian Dawson, an ex-Mormon who is star and producer of the Mr. Deity video podcast series. (If you haven’t seen these they are a real treat: funny and yet sophisticated inquiry into what the God stories really mean. It tackles all the questions you’ve always wanted to ask. I promise.)

Back to the greatest misperception about Mormons. (Now I consider this my favorite trick question–the one you ask when you really, really want to know the truth. So for example, if I’m interviewing someone for a job, I often use it when I want to really find out someone’s greatest weakness. If you ask someone that question in an interview, they’ll undoubtedly answer with a weakness that is invariably a strength: I work too hard is popular. But if you ask someone what the most common misperception is about them, they’ll often say something like: Well, that I’m not really a people person. BINGO!) Generally speaking, there is no such thing as a misperception.

So when I asked Dr. Bowman to volunteer the greatest misperception about Mormons first he said he didn’t know what to say because there were so many. But then he quickly offered that the Mormons were seen as The Borg. Which wasn’t at all the case.

The Borg

At that moment I looked around the rather small space of One More Page Books, which was filled with, by their count, 85 people–the largest turnout they’d ever had for a book talk/signing. I had arrived early that evening because Author Whisperer @TNebeker had told me they were expecting a large turnout. Nevertheless at about ten minutes till seven, there were maybe 4 people waiting for the talk, including the author. In the next 8 minutes, the other 81 appeared almost instantaneously, like…well…The Borg. The crowd represented all age groups, from teenagers to the author’s uncle but as best as I could tell I was the only non-Mormon in the room.

What struck me right away about the group, what has always struck me when I’m around Mormons, is how positive they are. I’m one of the I believe growing legion of non-practicing Catholics, and I can tell you from experience that when  Catholics are together in a large group they cannot exactly be described as positive and cheerful. (Bowman by the way thought the Mormon and Catholic religions had many similarities, more so than Mormons and Protestants.) But the Mormons were uniformly pleased one of their own had written this important book that was being seriously reviewed. Their questions reflected their pride in their religion and culture, and gentle in-jokes. Afterwards several of the Mormon missionaries (I could tell because they were wearing badges) approached me to ask if I wanted more information about the Mormon church or to further elaborate on answers to my other questions. (Q: Why do Mormons appear to be so prosperous? A: If that’s true, it’s because, unlike members of other religions Mormons become more religious as they become wealthier!!!) But when I told them that I wasn’t interested and wasn’t really a believer, they couldn’t have been kinder or more generous. (Unlike many other Christian evangelicals I’ve experienced who react to a demurral much like the Toro reacts to the Red Cape.)

So I left the event more puzzled than when I entered.  Many of the questions from Bowman’s Mormon audience reflected what appeared to be real inner spiritual experiences. (Did you feel the hand of the Divinity while you were writing?) I left the event with the same respect for the Mormons I’ve always had. Considerable.

And yet when I listened to the interview with Brian Dawson, the former Mormon now Atheist who speaks quite eloquently about his spiritual journey, I’m again confronted with what I consider to be the profound mysteries of the Mormon Church. The Book of Mormon ‘s purported historical accounts of the pre-Columbian civilizations and conditions of North America have now, to the satisfaction of many, been disproven. (Most recently, DNA tests show no trace of semitic-linked genes in indigenous North American populations.) The theology, which is complex and still developing, posits a pre-life and after-life that are significantly different from that of most other monotheistic religions. (In my admittedly brief scan of Mormon apologetics prior to writing this, I was struck by their argument that critics must remember Mormonism is still a young religion, less than 200 years old. After all, Islam certainly did not have its act together in the 8th century. The comparison was valid…and surprising.)

By the way, the Brian Dawson interview I’ve linked to is part of the Mormon Stories podcasts. These interviews feature prominent Mormons talking about their faith. From what I could tell all the others interviewed were true believers. I can’t imagine any other denomination that would allow a non-believer more than an hour of quality air-time to express his opinions. Mormons strike me always as very secure in what they believe.

My puzzlement over the Mormon religion also affects my views about Mitt Romney. (Bowman had heard that John Huntsman is actually a non-practicing Mormon,) Romney famously describes himself as a man of data. And yet he says he is proud of his Mormon faith, which implies he accepts the founding documents of the Church, which appear to me to be data-free. What can I conclude from this? Either he is not really the empiricist that he claims to be (i.e. he really believes) or he is in fact somewhat of a religious hypocrite.

Well, I’ve rambled enough. I’ve been thinking about the Mormon religion for almost 40 years now. (I went to high school in West Texas where we were always fending off their ministries.)

I’m afraid I have yet to achieve clarity.

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Posted in linkedin, Multiculturalism, Religion, Thinking

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Thinking Ain’t What It Used To be

Posted on January 2, 2012 | 2 comments

I’ve been reading a great book the last couple of weeks, Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kanehan. (I read books like I watch TV, I dip in and out, watching (or reading) several things at one time.) I recommend Kanehan’s book to everyone; it is not as hard to read as you might think–in fact the prose style is very pleasant, although the illustrative mental puzzles do take a bit of effort sometimes. I think most people will react like I have, reflecting on the implications of Kanehan’s findings for how I lead my life, how we make decisions. His major message so far is that all of us need to be aware of the shortcuts (fast thinking) we use and the likelihood that these shortcuts will lead us astray.

Thinking about thinking has ended up being a huge part of my life’s work. That’s a lot of what I did for CIA. It is no reassuring task to write or edit reports intended for policymakers, even for the President, and then pause to ask yourself whether the prose before you actually provides anything useful or insightful to the intended reader. Because the real truth is that facts (outside of science, and even there you gotta wonder!) rarely speak for themselves.  (And it hardly matters at all if they are secret facts.) In those rare instances when they do speak for themselves, then you don’t need an analyst or interpreter to make sense of them. Do you? Most facts require context, invite assumptions, have a back story, and probably also have a future. That’s what the analyst, the real thinker needs to bring to the conveyance of the fact. But it is all too rarely accomplished.

I can’t help but think we have a humongous thinking deficit in today’s world. (We also have significant values confusion and volatility, but that would be another blog.) I don’t watch any of the political debates because I can’t stand to watch people embarrass themselves. But I sort of follow them on Twitter sometimes so I know the various candidates drop Fact Bombs; Speaker Gingrich engages in carpet bombing and Rick Perry often misses the target. It doesn’t matter whether I support the candidate or not: they all misuse facts and encourage the sloppy thinking habits that haunt us today.

Some of our thinking errors have been monumental. For example you would think that when the US and other Western nations began investing in large social welfare programs in the 1950s and 1960s they might have actually done some actuarial planning, plotting out demographic, social, and economic trends to develop projections for how long the economy could sustain such benefits. Now my bet is that in some governments someone actually did something like this, but that inconvenient scenarios were dismissed as worst case scenarios and thus relegated to the low probability trash can. 

This is one of the most common thinking errors I encountered professionally: the association of worst case scenarios with low probabilities. Think about it. I bet most of you do it all the time. You hear worst case, you think “unlikely to happen”. The two values–probability, severity–move independently of each other, of course. There is a variation to this thinking pathology: that’s when worst case is is equated with high probability or even only possibility. In the past ten years, this has manifested itself in obsessive hoarding of gold.

Another area where a little long-range thinking and contextual analysis might cast some interesting light is the immigration debate. Some of us know that immigrants are an increasingly important part of US economic growth and that economic growth is a good way to ameliorate deficits. But these points aren’t often made. If the point can’t be conveyed in a soundbite or factbomb, then it isn’t conveyed at all.

What follows are examples of sloppy–even meaningless–analysis I see all the time even in the most serious publications.

The negotiations will be difficult. Now I’m betting that if the situation was easy to resolve, you wouldn’t need negotiations in the first place. Negotiations are supposed to be difficult. Also lengthy, bitter, hard-fought. This is one of my faves, because you SEE IT ALL THE TIME. (Also see below for discussion on use of adjectives and adverbs.)

It is too soon to tell and its cousin Only time will tell. No elucidation necessary.

The transition will be difficult or The transition will be smooth. I distrust just about all adjectives and adverbs in analysis. These slippery little modifiers disguise many errors in thinking. What smooth means to the writer may not be what smooth means to me. I would rather have the elements of the transition discussed so that in addition to considering the analyst’s judgment, I can develop my own.

The elections are too close to call. Basically, I don’t understand why we spend so much analytic and journalistic energy trying to forecast elections in the first place. An election is actually a specific event in the near future. Its timing is known to all. When it ends, we will know the outcome. If the election is rigged, then our forecast doesn’t matter. I’m gobsmacked at how American journalists in particular have convinced so many people to hang on their every word about events concerning which they have little insight and over which they have little control.

X dynamic is not a problem in Society Y because it only has the support of 10% of the population. Another classic mistake that you see ALL THE TIME and which, at this point, is absolutely criminal. When you hear about a particular revolution not being anticipated, you can bet that this type of analytic statement was at the heart of the faulty thinking. This analytic statement is flawed because it tries to capture extremely complicated societal dynamics in a criminally simple mathematical statement. Before making  such a statement, the analyst needs to examine his theory for social change. Is social change simply an arithmetic progression? Or do movements often gain support suddenly and/or exponentially?

Anyway I think I’ll stop now. Really I’ve just been venting on many of the thinking errors that get under my skin. For a much better discussion, do read Thinking, Fast and Slow.

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Posted in Intelligence, Knowledge Work, linkedin, Thinking