Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

Dr. Mark Goulston on why Democrats keep losing: They’re afraid of their own anger – Salon

In a series of recent decisions that have taken away women's reproductive rights and freedoms, given guns more protection than human lives, neutered the federal government's power to protect the environment in a moment of global climate disaster and further dissolved the separation of church and state, the radical right-wing justices on the Supreme Court are attempting to force American society back to the Gilded Age if not before.

As a practical matter, the new-old America that the Supreme Court is serving as a wicked midwife for will be a society where women, Black and brown people, gays and lesbians, and other marginalized groups will have their basic civil and human rights greatly reduced, if not stripped away altogether.

This is a judicial coup by a nakedly partisan institution that is publicly collaborating with the Republican-fascist movement to end America's multiracial, pluralist democracy. To this point, the response of Democratic leaders, including President Biden, has been pathetically, pitiably, embarrassingly weak.

RELATED:The Joe Biden reality show: Most stage-managed presidency in history keeps undermining itself

Shortly after the Supreme Court issued its rulingin the Dobbs case that reversed the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, House Democrats responded by singing "God Bless America" on the Capitol steps.

Two weeks later, the Biden administration finally responded to the court's evisceration of reproductive rights and freedoms by issuing an executive order that enhances some protections for women seeking reproductive health services as well as their medical providers. The executive order is intended to "protect access to medication abortion," emergency medical care for pregnant people and contraception. It mandates both the Department of Justice and Health and Human Services to defend the rights of women who need to travel across state lines to access reproductive health care and to ensure that those who experience pregnancy-related medical emergencies can access the care they need, no matter where they are in the country.

It had been clear for at least two months how the Supreme Court would rule in the Dobbs case; nothing about this decision came as a surprise. Yet for some reason, the Biden administration took two weeks to respond. When it finally did so, as Claire Lampen writes at the Cut, Biden's response was wholly insufficient to the challenge. Republicans are openly pursuing "new laws that penalize not just providers but also patients, opening them up to surveillance by their neighbors ... and by data brokers," Lampen notes, as in Missouri's attempt "to incentivize private citizens to report people they suspect of crossing state lines" to terminate a pregnancy. Some legislators have already "proposed criminally charging patients directly," and sincerely intend to "pass a federal abortion ban, reconsider gay marriage, scrap the right to birth control."

Joe Biden continues to oppose expanding the Supreme Court in order to neutralize its radical right-wing justices, and has declined to explore allowing access to abortion and other reproductive health services on federal land, including military bases. He now says he supports a Senate filibuster "carve-out" on the issue of reproductive rights, but has done nothing to make that happen.In a statement to the Washington Post on Saturday, the Biden administration even suggested that those who want a more robust defense of women's reproductive rights and freedoms are "out of step" with "the mainstream of the Democratic Party."

Have today's Democrats forgotten how to fight? Or are they refusing to do so because too many of them are beholden to the same moneyed interests that also back the Republican-fascists and the "conservative" movement? Whatever the explanation, at a moment when America desperately needs spirited defenders of democracy, the Democratic Party's leaders are acting demoralized, with little fighting spirit.

In a recent essay at Medium, Dr. Mark Goulston, a leading psychiatrist, former FBI hostage negotiation trainer and the author of the bestsellers "Just Listen" and "Talking to 'Crazy,'" offers a provocative explanation for the Democratic Party's weakness. He argues that Democrats are "highly conflict avoidant" and that such a temperament has made them "mincemeat to the vast majority of the GOP who is allegiant to Donald Trump."

In my recent conversation with Goulston, he expanded on this analysis, arguing that Democrats keep losing to the Republicans because they refuse to speak passionately, clearly and in declarative terms to the American people. He warns that Republicans, especially Trump loyalists, are bullies who embrace and welcome conflict, and that Democrats do not fight back effectively because they refuse to acknowledge the reality that bullies must be confronted and cannot be negotiated with or defeated with rational arguments. Goulston further explains that Trump's followers remain loyal to him precisely because of his antisocial and anti-human behavior, not despite it.

Goulston also explains that many members of America's political class and the news media are naive or in denial about the nature of human evil, and therefore continue to express shock and surprise at each new revelation about the obvious crimes of the Trump regime.At the end of this conversation Goulston shares the advice he would give to Biden and other Democratic leaders about how to break their pattern of self-defeating behavior and formulate a winning plan to defeat the Republicans and preserve American democracy.

American society is experiencing multiple crises at once. Democracy is in crisis, and fascism is in the ascendancy. The pandemic has killed more than a million people in this country. There is extreme social inequality. There are mass shootings. The country is in a state of perennial grief and mourning but with no real catharsis or reckoning. It feels like America is on the verge of self-destruction, a form of societal and political suicide. How are you making sense of all this?

What you are describing is not just one moment of "suicidality." There are actually several moments or a prolonged period of time where people who feel suicidal form psychological adhesions to death as a way to take away their pain. It's not a psychological attachment, because a person can reason through that. A psychological adhesion is different: A person tucks that in their back pocket, so to speak. When you get slightly past the impulse, you reassure everybody: "I'm fine." But in your back pocket is this option, this exit strategy, this permanent solution to a temporary problem that you can always exercise if things get really bad. People don't talk about it because they don't want to scare others.

People who are depressed and suicidal feelhelpless, powerless, useless, worthless, meaningless and purposeless. It appears pointless to go on. We are seeing this on a societal level.

People who are really depressed and suicidal feel despair at the end. If you break down the word despair, it means "unpaired." Unpaired with the future, hopeless. Unpaired with the ability to get out of the challenging situation. You feel helpless, powerless, useless, worthless, meaningless and purposeless. When those feelings are all lined up like some dark one-armed slot machine, it appears pointless to go on. Death is viewed as a way to take the pain away. We are seeing this on a societal level.

America is also in the midst of a moral crisis. Fascism is a form of evil. What Trumpism has wrought and encouraged is fundamentally evil, yet the country's leaders and the larger political and news media class appear terrified of using the appropriate moral language.

It is important to identify evil at the earliest opportunity and then to stop it. You have to confront and stop evil in order to protect the people that you care about. You also need to identify evil in order to escape it. Most people we encounter are not evil. We are lucky in that way. But evil people do in fact exist. Denial of that fact is not healthy.

As a clinician, when you look at Donald Trump and his followers, what do you see?

The people that have trouble with conflict are not bullies. Bullies like to stir up conflict. Such people can get the best of us not only through their bullying behavior but also through their whining and excuse-making behavior. They can outrage us with their behavior. But if we are the type of person who is uncomfortable becoming enraged, then we will do everything we can to suppress our desire to confront that bully, to fight back, to stand up to them in a strong way.

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As soon as the bully sees that we are restraining ourselves, then they push us harder from being outraged to turning that anger inward through a dynamic I call "in-rage." Most people are so uncomfortable with their anger and rage they use almost all their energy to keep a lid on their feelings. Many Democrats, and other rational-minded people more generally, believe in respectful discourse. Those feelings of rage, and how the bully behaves, neuters and neutralizes them.

Here is how to confront a bully. Step one, identify those bullies in your life. Step two, never expect them to act differently when you talk with them. Never expect them to be decent because that's not who they are. Step three, always hold a bit of yourself back so that you're not off balance if the bully tries to provoke you. Finally, when the bully tries to provoke you, look clearly in their eyes. Stare at them firmly.

Don't try to intimidate them, but hold their gaze. By doing that you are communicating to the bully: "You know and I know what you just did and it didn't work." When you communicate that in a measured way, the bully is going to get more agitated. You can then try to engage the bully in a reasonable way or decide to disengage. Tell the bully, "If what you have to say is important, you need to talk to me instead of at me." You just hold your ground from there.

Why are so many members of America's political class and the mainstream media repeatedly "shocked" and "stunned" by Donald Trump's antisocial and anti-human behavior? This is a common reaction to the "revelations" about Jan. 6 and the violence at the Capitol, including Trump wishing death on Mike Pence. Trump has behaved this way for most if not all of his public life. If a person keeps being shocked by obvious behavior, what does that reveal about their personality defects? Are they really shocked, or are they just pretending?

The reason they're shocked is because a person cannot be partially sociopathic or narcissistic. It's a slippery road when you allow sociopaths or narcissists to ride over you unchecked. The denial, and giving such people the benefit of the doubt, just encourages them.

People on the left are afraid to acknowledge the dark parts of their personalities, such as anger and rage. Therefore, they deny to themselves that Donald Trump and other sociopaths and narcissists are dangerous.

People on the left, the Democrats especially, are also afraid to acknowledge the dark parts of their personalities, such as anger and rage. Such feelings fill them with shame. Therefore, they deny to themselves that Donald Trump and other such sociopaths and narcissists are so dangerous. Leading Democrats such as Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi need to learn to talk to the public in a very authoritative way. They smile and talk so rationally. They need to show some emotion and passion.

One of the reasons I believe Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton is that Donald Trump was declarative, and Hillary was explanatory. Hillary Clinton was showing the American people that she was really prepared for the responsibilities of being president of the United States. In an effort to be convincing, she wasn't compelling. Donald Trump was declarative, which meant you knew where he stood. You might not have agreed with him. But Trump was able to hook his base precisely because of how declarative he was, and is, in his speech.

Trump was also being a type of role model for his followers. He showed them that you don't have to sit on your anger and suppress it. You can act on it. Why keep in all that built-up frustration? Trump told his followers, "Let's go get even with whoever's bothering us! Join me, because we could all shoot someone in Times Square and still get elected! Hey, it's fun!"

Ultimately, Trump appeared on the stage and let the genie out of the bottle as a role model for unsuppressed and unrepressed thoughts and feelings. Many Americans of a certain background and political orientation who have a buildup of frustration and anger psychologically adhered themselves to Donald Trump. This is not a mere attachment. It is a psychological adhesion, which explains why they remain so loyal to him.

When the Supreme Court announced that it was taking away women's reproductive rights and freedoms, leading Democrats went outside on the Capitol steps and started singing. Nancy Pelosi read a poem. It was one of the most pathetic things I've ever seen.How do the Democratic Party's leaders see the world? Why would they default to that kind of pitiful behavior and think that's how you fight back against a bully?

Maybe they were singing to keep themselves from forcefully responding to the Republicans. They were trying to suppress their rage. It may also be that those Democrats were singing hymns to calm themselves down because they were being triggered, and they realized that it is dangerous to escalate with a sociopath or narcissist.

The latter are much more comfortable going off the cliff than most people are. They're going to push you to the limits of what you can tolerate emotionally. A sociopath or narcissist is not afraid of being outrageous. If it is your nature to be uncomfortable with becoming enraged, you're going to want to steer away from those feelings.

By comparison, the Republicans and Trump's other followers love becoming outraged. They use a vocabulary full of rageful words. They love that Trump is disrespectful to others, that he calls his enemies and people he dislikes names. Trump is getting his feelings off of his chest. His followers love that. Meanwhile, the Democrats just repress and suppress their dark feelings.

What do the Republicans and the larger right-wing movement understand about emotion that the Democrats do not?

Many Republicans, especially the likes of a Ted Cruz or Mitch McConnell, don't care about contradicting themselves. To them, it doesn't matter what they say. They're aligning themselves with who they perceive to be the person in power in this case, Donald Trump because they don't want to trigger his ire and they don't want to lose their own followers.

I'm guessing that a lot of the Republicans were raised by decent parents, and at least when they were children they were taught that certain values and ethics and morality were important. But being a politician became more important than those values. "Politician" became the core identity that supersedes other things.

In your recent article at Medium, you described the Democrats as being "highly conflict avoidant," and said that they deal with conflict in an unhealthy way, which helps explain why the Republicans and Trumpists are rolling over them. How does this unhealthy behavior manifest itself on a day-to-day basis?

They are hiding their legitimate outrage and other feelings under a mask of civility. They appear neutered in the eyes of the public because they are not expressing healthy, aggressive feelings. When someone who is neutered goes up against someone who is outrageous in their behavior, the neutered person loses.

If you had the opportunity to speak with President Biden in private what would you say to him?

I would ask him, "What is really going on?" I would keep pushing him on this question to get at the real answer. At some point Biden would say, "I'm a decent person but I am really angry at Trump and want him to get his comeuppance." Biden could never say that in public because it would be taken out of context.

Today's Democrats appear to be obsessed with compromise and finding an acceptable middle ground with the Republicans. But the Republicans only care about winning and power and are now openly willing to embrace fascism, political violence, white supremacy and other anti-democratic and anti-human values. In essence, this is an abusive relationship on a national scale and the Democrats are content to keep being abused. How can they break this cycle?

If I was consulting for the Democratic Party's leadership, I would ask them, "What is your desired outcome?" They might say, "Well, the desired outcome is that we find a way to get the Republicans and Trump to listen to reason and that would in turn break their cult."

I would continue by asking them, "What's the specific approach that you're taking that you believe will get Trump's followers away from his cult?" I would continue pushing them by asking, "Do you actually believe that what you just said would work?"

I would get the Democrats to agree that their current approach is flawed and doomed to failure. Perhaps that would help them open up and admit that they don't know what else to do.

I would get the Democrats to agree that their current approach is flawed and doomed to failure. Perhaps that would help them open up and admit that they don't know what else to do. I would continue pressing them by asking, "What has been your success rate these last four or so years?" In that moment, perhaps the Democratic Party's leadership could have some type of realization or epiphany and come up with a better plan.

You can't convince another person of their flawed approach to decision-making or life more generally. You have to get them to a point of self-discovery. Brainstorming with them is helpful too. "Good, now you're being open. Let's be open and see what might work. What do we know about these other kinds of personalities? What do we know about bullies?"

The Democratic Party's leaders need to have a moment where they realize: "We have to find a way to sound really angry, pissed off and insulted by Donald Trump and his followers. We have to do it a way so that whoever watches us knows that we're pissed off in no uncertain terms. We can't act like we are trying to sugarcoat our anger." That is how the Democrats can start to win.

Read more on Donald Trump and America's mental health:

Originally posted here:
Dr. Mark Goulston on why Democrats keep losing: They're afraid of their own anger - Salon

Human Behavior

‘Where The Crawdads Sing’ Explores Individual Liberty As A Survival Tool – The Federalist

In another time, Where the Crawdads Sing, written by Delia Owens, would be a coming of age, murder-mystery, romance drama with a raw and magnetic appeal. But in a time when all is politically scrutinized, reviewers ask whether Crawdads is green enough, and if Kya Clark is a pink hat-aligned woman.

However, what America finds in both the bestselling novel and the Reese Witherspoon-Taylor Swift-Daisy Edgar-Jones movie coming to theaters this week, is that Kya Clark governs herself in liberty and discipline, keeps to her family values, and is hard not to see as an all-American inspiration.

Editors note: Minor spoilers ahead.

Kyas story begins near the age of birth suffering violent child abuse. Her father physically and emotionally destroys the family that would have raised her. Crawdads pulls no punches on Pas brutality, yet also describes the way his prior choices in the face of economic depression and war corrupted his habits and decayed his mental health. Owens, a wildlife biologist with nonfiction science publications to her name, paints nature as a struggle for survival, and from the novels start rises an undercurrent that society is like an ecosystem in which all are susceptible to pitfalls, yet responsible for their steps and missteps.

Fully abandoned by age six, Kya comes into tension with truancy officers. The district pursues her, but throughout the hunt, Crawdads' tone favors an independent life in the marsh that suits the young girl. The feeling evoked is remarkably real for a child in an almost unbelievable situation. We grip onto the girl who increasingly thrives in nature, who would lose the nesting birds who provide her comforting songs and feathers if child protection were able to pluck her out. Her victory over their chase affirms that seemingly ruinous events in life may need to compost, as detritus in the marsh, enabling regeneration without intervention.

Along the way to maturity in the wild, Kya discovers that affordable gasoline lets her motor through the marsh and beyond the Intracoastal waterway. She can make private transactions of collected mussels for lifes basic necessities with the local merchants. Storekeepers Jumpin and Mabel take to her as would family.

Her mind and body developing, Kya and a boy, Tate, meet for private instruction on subjects beyond schoolbook reading alone. Sharing lessons on how awareness of nature all around them can quicken their verbal faculties, Kya and Tates schooling arrangement is far from standardized public education. Tate teaches Kya without union job security because he sincerely wants to. Their educational and social relationship is fruitful, pure, and passionate, illustrating both academic and social benefits of school choice.

Kyas worst fortunes gradually turn promising. At the pubescent onset of bleeding, Kya privately confides and asks Mabel for guidance. Mabel reassures Kya that startin life is special, and only women can do it. A shared life with someone in marriage becomes Kyas intimate yearning.

Kya breaks into financial independence as a wetlands biology author. Her fastidious illustrations earn the trust of her publisher and readers. Previously a total unknown, her uncensored solo discoveries are not only her economic lifeline but a boon to scholars. Despite town gossip about her swamp filth and mobs attacking her shack, Kya is undistracted from her patient observations.

Even Kyas ancestors, in their absence, endanger her independent life on the land through neglect of the property taxes. Her free way of life, though, is ultimately preserved when, to Kyas relief, she is able to cover the low back taxes by herself.

To all this wild growth, Chase Andrews is a foil, a life subsumed by the same public administrations whose officers would have hunted Kya down. Popular and victorious on the ball field, Chase is made into a hero in a school district so out of touch that it looks down its collective nose at Kya. Chase is lionized within the district despite prevalent beliefs that he tramples on the hearts and bodies of women and wildlife.

When Chases body is discovered, the novels suspense surges to a head. An intricate trial ensues til almost the finale. Most of the town hardly entertains critiques of Chase, nor itself, for the treatment of the types like Kya who live in the marsh. Their miseducations would never let them.

Unlike the pretenders who warp reality by evading true contact with it, as does Chase, the traditional working men are in-touch, reliable, strong, and sensible, including Scupper, Tate, Jumpin, Tom, and Jodie (Kyas brother). With woman and man connecting in nature, Crawdads envisions the sexes in harmony.

Owens says her idea for Crawdads came while face to face with lions and elephants, as she realized how much our behavior is similar to the animals. A spellbinding theme to todays readers, the idea of the animal in human nature also emerged in framing the U.S. Constitution. The founders realized our moral state was animal-like in its capability for both sublimity and tyranny. This inspired the Constitutions enumerated limits, checks, and balances on power, as well as the complimentary idea that moral cultivation is essential to civil society.

Inalienable rights let us, like Kya Clark, chart our own course. Conservative undertones are woven into Crawdads' earthy narrative in a way that seems more than coincidental. Owens muses on survival and territorial advantage in nature and human behavior. If the author were probed about consent of the governed, liberty, and family values in relation to the theme of the wild-like human condition, it would be interesting to hear her thoughts.

Crawdads is a cultural achievement; it does not need to be a culture warrior. It speaks to the soul not of environmentalist America or feminist America, but, refreshingly, the soul of America.

If true to the book, the movie directed by Olivia Newman (Chicago Fire, FBI) and starring Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People) as Kya, will showcase indefatigable red-blooded boys and girls, free men and women living unbridled and steadfast.

Michael Bedar works in media and design, enjoys building and managing small construction, wrote a novel, "Sweet Healing," about freedom and wellbeing, and is married and raising children. He learned boating in and around marshes.

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'Where The Crawdads Sing' Explores Individual Liberty As A Survival Tool - The Federalist

Human Behavior

How to be less judgmental on social media and in real life – Vox.com

Casting judgment on others has never been so easy. Social media gives onlookers the opportunity to scoff at a persons every choice, from how they dress to what they feed their children. How people have behaved during the pandemic has inspired plenty of judgment in its own right: At the height of restrictions, adherence or lack thereof to masking and social distancing measures practically became barometers of peoples characters, indicating a lack of personal responsibility and empathy or an abundance of hysteria and over-caution, depending on your views.

While it gets a bad rap, in pre-modern times, judgment helped keep people safe. Judgments were alarm bells allowing humans to distinguish between toxic and harmless food, trustworthy and untrustworthy tribe members, and hardworking and lazy kinspeople, explains psychologist Carla Marie Manly, author of Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend.

Judgment is also a signal that someones behavior is unusual or out of context to your particular in-group, says Adam Moore, lecturer of psychology at the University of Edinburgh, who studies judgment and decision making. The role that automatic judgment plays, Moore says, is social signaling, social norm reinforcing.

But in todays mobile, digitally facilitated world, judgment can take on new, toxic forms, Moore says. When you silently cast judgment on someone from afar based on an Instagram story, you dont get feedback from other people or even the subject of your judgment and you dont learn how to make comments or critiques in a constructive way. Normally in a social situation, you judge somebodys behavior, and their response to you helps to calibrate your interaction with them, and also the responses of other people around you, Moore says. Because so much of our lives are disconnected from each other we dont perceive that body language and we dont perceive that social feedback anymore.

Digital platforms also incite and prioritize outrage and conflict, making it easy to look down on others from your moral high horse. When people are constantly sneering at others on public platforms, the perception of what normal social judgments should look like is skewed. In normal communities and in normal, functional families, passing judgment on other peoples behavior, it functions very well, Moore says. Families rarely break up because somebody says, Hey, youre acting like a jerk at a Fourth of July party.

While judgments help signal social norms and allow us to identify our people, mean-spirited critiques are unproductive. Discernment, on the other hand, can help you identify unhealthy and toxic behaviors, Manly says. In todays polarized world, its important to detect when someones attitudes and beliefs pose a threat to others rights and well-being. Unless someones behavior is actively harming themselves or others (in which case, you should name the behavior, tell the other person how youre feeling, and set boundaries on how youd like them to act moving forward), learning to curb petty moral righteousness is possible, but requires slowing down your thoughts and having some empathy.

If youre motivated to stop hurtful critiques, you have to evaluate their source. When you feel a twang of annoyance when a friend impulsively books a vacation despite constantly complaining about money, ask yourself why youre upset by this behavior or what purpose your anger or annoyance serves in this instance. Anger is often a signal that another person isnt taking your well-being into consideration or theres a conflict, Moore explains. Does your friends last-minute trip conflict with upcoming plans the two of you have or is it simply something you wouldnt personally do?

Do I have any reason to demand that other people in this situation care more about me than whatever signal theyre trying to send? Moore says. Even if the answer to that question is yes, having to stop and think about it often turns the volume down on things.

In order to reframe judgmental thoughts, you need to catch them in the act. We have to pull back and go, Im being judgy, I dont really want to do that, Manly says. If you find yourself whispering a snide remark to your friend about a strangers shoes, try to reframe the judgment by complimenting the persons confidence, for instance. Just as being judgmental is a practiced habit, so is stopping thought patterns that lead to hurtful observations and assumptions. If we come to notice were doing something that is unhealthy and pause and stop it, then we are far less likely to go down that path, Manly says. Thats why I like compensating because if I do catch myself doing something thats comparative, rather than just noticing, I give myself other positive hits [like] look at their beautiful smile.

Manly also suggests looking back on previous moments of judgment and thinking about what you could do better next time. Recall a moment you made a judgmental remark. What was the response? Would the statement make someone feel better about themselves if they heard it? Do you feel better about yourself having remembered it? If not, allow these reflections to guide you so the next time you see someone talking on speaker phone on the subway, for example, you can instead internally marvel at their interesting phone case instead of scoffing at having to hear their entire conversation.

When people buck social conventions, those casting judgments are often quick to be offended before considering a reason why someone else is engaging in that behavior. Say your colleague is quitting their job before landing a new one and youre outraged at their irresponsibility. Instead of jumping to conclusions, get curious and ask them about their reasons for resigning or what they hope to accomplish during their time off. Curiosity is the antidote for judgment, Manly says. Manly suggests meeting those youre unjustly judging with compassion: hoping theyre happy and doing well.

When it comes to differences of opinion, it can be easy to assume that someone who doesnt share your beliefs is evil or stupid, Moore says. Instead of reacting aggressively in an attempt to change their mind, Moore suggests thinking of a good-faith reason why someone would think this way as a means to slow down the judgment process. What does the person youre judging know about their behavior or beliefs that you dont know?

For example, when it comes to relatives with differing political opinions, Moore suggests thinking about how the loved one ended up believing what they believe: the media they consume, the people they surround themselves with. I find that helps me to not make toxic judgments about other peoples motivations, he says. Its really, really easy and very, very tempting to assume that people who disagree with you about something that you believe in very strongly or have very strong beliefs about are evil or stupid.

Of course, you should never compromise on important moral and social issues, Moore says. Relationships with people whose views are antithetical to your own will have to be renegotiated and youll need to decide how to move forward if you want to maintain contact. But you can control your initial assumptions of them based on their beliefs. What function is expressing those judgments serving right now? Moore says. Am I trying to build consensus about an issue or am I just trying to wave my flag and say Im of the red tribe or the blue tribe or the green tribe?

There are very few things you can do to convince people your way of thinking and living is ideal. Save for the occasions where someones behavior is dangerous and harmful, Manly says to focus only on what you can control. We can only control our behaviors, our thoughts, and our actions.

Many human behaviors are actions signaling to others what kind of person you are or what groups you belong to, Moore says. Instead of criticizing your aunt for constantly sharing bizarre Minion memes on Facebook, consider shes just vocalizing her membership in the coalition of Minion-lovers. Understanding actions underlying meanings can help you avoid pointless arguments trying to sway someone to your side of an issue.

Instead of judging and attacking and hoping others see your way, sympathize with others reasoning for their actions, dont feed into toxic thoughts, and lead by example.

You cant make somebody value the things that you value, Moore says. All you can do is try to gently demonstrate that valuing the things that you value makes the world around you better and people will want to move there in some intellectual or moral sense.

Even Better is here to offer deeply sourced, actionable advice for helping you live a better life. Do you have a question on money and work; friends, family, and community; or personal growth and health? Send us your question by filling out this form. We might turn it into a story.

Original post:
How to be less judgmental on social media and in real life - Vox.com

Human Behavior

Scientists unravel the neuronal metabolism in learning and memory – News-Medical.Net

Exploring the predictive properties of neuronal metabolism can contribute to our understanding of how humans learn and remember. This key finding from a consideration of molecular mechanisms of learning and memory conducted by scientists from Russia and the U.S. has been published in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

The emerging trend in neuroscience is to consider the work of neurons as anticipatory and future-oriented, although this approach is not yet mainstream and features in just a few publications. In a paper entitled 'Neuronal metabolism in learning and memory: The anticipatory activity perspective,' Yuri I. Alexandrov, HSE Professor and Head of the V.B. Shvyrkov Laboratory of Psychophysiology at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Psychology, and Mikhail V. Pletnikov, Professor of the Department of Physiology at the State University of New York, University at Buffalo, argue that neurons behave proactively because they strive to survive-; just as all living organisms. Neurons use microenvironmental metabolites as 'food', and neuronal impulse activity is aimed at obtaining these metabolites. Rather than responding to an incoming signal, neurons proactively trigger an influx of needed substances to the cell, such as neurotransmitters.

When a specialized set of our neurons fire together, we act to obtain a behavioral outcome, while the neurons also obtain their own micro-outcome in the form of needed metabolites. This process can be described as metabolic cooperation of cells, involving not only neurons but also glial, somatic, glandular, muscle and other cells throughout the body. This principle of how cells work is central to learning, which essentially means creating systemwide groups of metabolically cooperating cells that drive human behavior."

Yuri Alexandrov, Professor at HSE School of Psychology

The researchers note that for a long time, the 'stimulus-response' paradigm was dominant in the study of molecular mechanisms of learning and memory; it was assumed that just as the entire human body responds to environmental stimuli, neurons respond to incoming impulses which cause excitation of certain parts of the neuron's membrane. The neuron either fires or does not fire, depending on whether or not the excitation reaches a certain threshold.

Back in 1930s1970s, the Russian physiologist Peter Anokhin developed his theory of functional systems, including the concept of 'integrative activity of neurons', according to which a neuron's excitation causes intraneuronal chemical processes-; rather than a summation of local excitations on the membrane. These chemical processes lead to a neuronal spike.

Building on Anokhin's theory, his student Vyacheslav Shvyrkov and colleagues developed a systems-oriented approach to the study of neurons. However, Anokhin's understanding of the sequence of events was traditional: excitation of a neuron comes first, followed by a response.

'An important recent step in understanding how neurons work has been the idea that a neuron's anticipatory activity, rather than an external impulse, is what comes first. The neuron does not respond to incoming excitation but proactively triggers an influx of activity,' Alexandrov explains.

The authors argue that exploring systemwide intercellular metabolic cooperation as a learning mechanism could be a promising area of focus for further experimental research.

This approach, they believe, could lead to breakthroughs in studying the behavior of malignant cells and in developing new cancer treatments.

'Malignancies consist of cells that metabolically cooperate not only with their immediate environment but also with other cells in the body. We plan to conduct experimental studies to explore tumor cell responses to diametrically opposed individual behaviors, such as striving towards a desirable event or avoiding an undesirable or dangerous one. This can give us insight into how various systemwide cellular integrations impact tumor cells' survival. As a result, we hope to propose an effective approach to influencing tumor cells through human behavior, Alexandrov concludes.

Source:

Journal reference:

Alexandrov, Y.I., et al. (2022) Neuronal metabolism in learning and memory: The anticipatory activity perspective. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104664.

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Scientists unravel the neuronal metabolism in learning and memory - News-Medical.Net

Human Behavior

Pet of the Week: Smoot | Pet of the Week | thedaonline.com – The Daily Athenaeum – thedaonline

Meet Smoot! Smoot is a cute bearded dragon lizard who does a great rock impersonation. He loves to sit on his log under his heat lamp and observe his domain (the house and/or off the balcony). Nothing phases him... he is super chill and a great buddy for long car rides. Smoot is more judgmental of human behavior than any cat, always with his nose in the air. When he is feeling particularly energetic, all he wants to do is bolt around the house and/or outside while on his leash. Each time he does a spurt of running around somewhere, Smoot looks back at me to see if I'm still there. He loves to eat live bugs and the choicest fruits, but hates eating his vegetables. Smoot doesn't do any tricks, but he is (mostly) potty-trained, and everyone loves to watch him eat because he looks like a dinosaur. His favorite treat is bananas- he goes bananas for bananas. He also likes eating clover flowers and the bees that pollinate them.

Submitted by Catherine Smith.

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Human Behavior

Algorithm claims to predict crime in U.S. cities before it happens – SecurityInfoWatch

A new computer algorithm can now forecast crime in a big city near you apparently.

The algorithm, which was formulated by social scientists at the University of Chicago and touts 90% accuracy, divides cities into 1,000-square-foot tiles, according to a study published in Nature Human Behavior. Researchers used historical data on violent crimes and property crimes from Chicago to test the model, which detects patterns over time in these tiled areas and tries to predict future events. It performed just as well using data from other big cities, including Atlanta, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, the study showed.

The new tool contrasts with previous models for prediction, which depict crime as emerging from hotspots that spread to surrounding areas. Such an approach tends to miss the complex social environment of cities, as well as the nuanced relationship between crime and the effects of police enforcement, thus leaving room for bias, according to the report.

It is hard to argue that bias isnt there when people sit down and determine which patterns they will look at to predict crime because these patterns, by themselves, dont mean anything, said Ishanu Chattopadhyay, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago and senior author of the study. But now, you can ask the algorithm complex questions like: What happens to the rate of violent crime if property crimes go up?

But Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the University of Washington, said in a series of tweets that the focus should be on targeting underlying inequities rather than on predictive policing, while also noting that the research appears to ignore securities fraud or environmental crimes.

And other crime prediction models previously used by law enforcers have been found to erroneously target certain people based on a narrower set of factors. In 2012, the Chicago Police Department along with academic researchers implemented the Crime and Victimization Risk Model that produced a list of so-called strategic subjects, or potential victims and perpetrators of shooting incidents determined by factors such as age and arrest history.

The model assigned a score that determined how urgently people on the list needed to be monitored, and a higher score meant they were more likely to be perceived as either a potential victim or perpetrator of a gun crime.

But after a lengthy legal battle, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation revealed in 2017 that nearly half of the people identified by the model as potential perpetrators had never been charged with illegal gun possession, while 13% had never been charged with a serious offense. In contrast, the tool designed by Chattopadhyay and his colleagues uses hundreds of thousands of sociological patterns to figure out the risk of crime at a particular time and space.

The study, Event-level Prediction of Urban Crime Reveals Signature of Enforcement Bias in U.S. Cities, was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society.

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2022 Bloomberg L.P. Visitbloomberg.com.Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Human Behavior

UST Strengthens Presence in the Health Tech Sector with Strategic Investment in Israeli SaaS Start-up Well-Beat – PR Newswire

Innovative new digital patient engagement solution allows for dynamic personalization and improved outcomes

TEL AVIV, Israel and ALISO VIEJO, Calif., July 6, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --UST,a leading digital transformation solutions company has announced that it will strengthen its presence in the healthcare technology market with a strategic investment inWell-Beat, a pioneering Israeli start-up that adds a human touch to healthcare through patient-centered behavioral AI. The investment in Well-Beat is the latest example of UST accelerating the adoption of emerging tech solutions in healthcare and transforming lives through the power of technology.

By investing in Well-Beat, UST is helping to bring one of the success stories of the innovative Israel start-up tech ecosystem to a wider global market. Combining the size and scale of UST with the agility of Well-Beat, this strategic investment will put digital transformation to work for patients at a time when healthcare delivery systems are strained and intelligent patient engagement is increasingly critical.

"At UST, we work with academia, innovators and entrepreneurs from across the global start-up community to bring the very best transformational solutions to market. However, we only directly invest in less than one percent of our partnerships those that represent the best of the best in emerging health tech. Well-Beat has earned its reputation as a successful innovator in the rapidly evolving HealthTech space, and we're thrilled to offer a platform which empowers them to continue their groundbreaking work," said Sunil Kanchi, Chief Information Officer & Chief Investment Officer, UST.

UST, together with Well-Beat, created a first-of-its-kind digital patient engagement Software as a Service (SaaS) solution that dynamically adapts to each individual patient over time, delivers personalized conversational guidelines to the clinician at the point of care, offers customized prompts that are shaped by the profile of each individual patient and helps deliver direct and indirect behaviorally guided motivational nudges to patients based on over 1,400 unique factors.

Utilizing information gathered through medical records, connected devices and short patient surveys, Well-Beat's technology dynamically adapts patient communication to provide intelligent interventions and highly customized experiences. Furthermore, this latest patient engagement solution designed in collaboration with UST is able to seamlessly operate within the existing health tech ecosystem of any healthcare delivery organization. This includes working with electronic health record (EHR) systems, public cloud providers, patient registries and existing wellness or care management applications.

Capable of operating without mandating changes to existing workflows or onboarding to a new platform, this dynamically personalized digital patient engagement solution is designed to help healthcare organizations achieve greater returns on their existing IT investments as well as achieve higher response rates and better engagement through their existing communication channels.

"As healthcare transitions outside the four walls of the hospital, the behavioral AI powered patient engagement solution that UST has built with Well-Beat enables healthcare organizations to effectively engage high-risk patients - resulting in improved care outcomes," saidRaj Gorla, Chief Executive Officer, UST ContineoHealth.

"Well-Beat is excited about strengthening our relationship with UST. The increased collaboration and ability to leverage UST's vast experience and resources will help us continue to deliver personalized patient outreach," saidRavit Ram Bar-Dea, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Well-Beat. "We feel that UST's leadership and expertise across the entire healthcare technology ecosystem and continuum is tailor-made to complement our strengths as we look to bring new products to market."

About UST:

For more than 22 years, UST has worked side by side with the world's best companies to make a real impact through transformation. Powered by technology, inspired by people, and led by our purpose, we partner with our clients from design to operation. Through our nimble approach, we identify their core challenges, and craft disruptive solutions that bring their vision to life. With deep domain expertise and a future-proof philosophy, we embed innovation and agility into our clients' organizationsdelivering measurable value and lasting change across industries, and around the world. Together, with over 30,000 employees in 30+ countries, we build for boundless impacttouching billions of lives in the process. Visit us atwww.UST.com

About Well-Beat:

Well-Beat providesa next-generation patient behavioral change solution, based on human behavior, expert understanding and proprietary data-driven technology. At its core, the solution empowers healthcare providers and organizations to dramatically increase patient engagement and treatment regime adherence.

The company's mission is to bring humanity to healthcare through raising the level of engagement and personal responsibility of patients to their health and wellness regime. By incorporating Well-Beat insights into their daily practices, healthcare providers can generate more effective face-to-face meetings with patients, along with digital intelligent interventions, to ultimately provide the most suitable wellness program and approach for each patient. Through adjustment of personalized interactions to every patient, Well-Beat enables healthcare organizations to boost their operational efficiency, increase revenues and reduce long-term healthcare costs, while maintaining the level of treatment. Learn more athttps://www.well-beat.com/

Media Contacts, UST:

Tinu Cherian Abraham+1 (949) 415-9857

Merrick Laravea+1 (949) 416-6212

Neha Misri+91-9972631264[emailprotected]

Media Contacts, U.S.:

S&C PR+1-646.941.9139[emailprotected]

Media Contacts, Australia:

Team Lewis[emailprotected]

Media Contacts, U.K.:

FTI Consulting[emailprotected]

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1422658/UST_Logo.jpg

SOURCE UST

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Human Behavior

Top Virus Expert Warns Boosted People to Do This "As Soon as" They Can – Best Life

If you've felt like COVID's stronghold on the U.S. has loosened over the last few months, you're hardly alone. In fact, most Americans now say that their lives are looking more and more like they did pre-pandemic. According to a poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the SCAN Foundation, 54 percent of adults feel their lives are somewhat the same as before and 12 percent feel that their lives are exactly the same today as they were before the pandemic hit. COVID cases are falling at the moment, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reporting a more than 5 percent decrease in new daily infections this week compared to last.

READ THIS NEXT: Dr. Fauci Just Said Virus Experts Are "Very Concerned" About This.

But the coronavirus is far from eradicated. Many virus experts have warned about a potential surge later this year, as the fall and winter seasons have already proved to be the most dangerous times for COVID's spread. Thomas Campbell, MD, an internal medicine physician who ran clinical trials for COVID vaccines, told UCHealth in Aurora, Colorado, that it's "important to plan for another wave in the fall and winter because there's a good probability that it will happen," as COVID will likely continue to spread due to a variety of factors.

"Both vaccine-induced immunity and immunity from natural infection wane over time. We have a virus that's still here along with waning immunity. And human behavior changes in the fall," Campbell explained. "Kids will go back to school. The weather will be colder. The daylight hours will be shorter, so people will be indoors more and having more contact with other people. Then, we'll have Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's, and travel associated with the holidays We have all the ingredients necessary to create a new wave."

The continued emergence of new Omicron subvariants is also likely to aid a future COVID surge, which is why vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer and Moderna have started to "create new, tailored versions of their booster shots that will better combat Omicron variants," according to UCHealth. On June 30, an advisory committee for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended approval for these new Omicron-specific booster vaccine formulas.

"The original vaccines and boosters did not specifically fight these Omicron variants because they hadn't developed yet," UCHealth further explained. "The vaccine makers have pledged to deliver the new doses by fall."

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But the likelihood of new booster shots has some people questioning when they should be getting their additional doses. Everyone over the age of 5 is eligible for a singular booster shot at least five months after their primary vaccine series, according to the CDC.A second booster is also available to adults who are 50 and older, as well as those 12 and older who are moderately or severely immunocompromised, once it has been at least four months since they received their first boost.

The CDC reports that nearly half of those fully vaccinated have gotten their first booster shot so far, but vaccination rates for the second booster are much lower. This may be partly because some people are unsure if they should be waiting for this additional dose, whether to better time it with the expected fall COVID surge or to get the new Omicron-specific booster formula. If you're holding out for one of these reasons, virus experts have a clear warning: Don't wait to get the second booster.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb

"There is a high level of community transmission right now, so it's better to get it as soon as you are eligible to allow time to build up antibodies," Hannah Newman, MPH, the director of infection prevention at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, told WebMD. According toAmesh Adalja, MD, an assistant professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, it takes "probably seven days or so until you reach the peak protection for the immune system to have reacted."

Campbell also advised against waiting for a second booster, urging boosted individuals to get it as soon as possible as new variants continue to spread and vaccine-based immunity wanes further. "With the Omicron variant, after the first booster dose, the protection starts to really drop off by about six months," he said.

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Human Behavior

The Hidden Governance in AI – The Regulatory Review

Measurement modeling could further the governments understanding of AI policymaking tools.

Governments are increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI) systems to support policymaking, deliver public services, and manage internal people and processes. AI systems in public-facing services range from predictive machine-learning systems used in fraud and benefit determinations to chatbots used to communicate with the public about their rights and obligations across a range of settings.

The integration of AI into agency decision-making processes that affect the publics rights poses unique challenges for agencies.

System design decisions about training data, model design, thresholds, and interface design can set policythereby affecting the publics rights. Yet today many agencies acquire AI systems through a procurement process that lacks opportunities for public input on system design choices that embed policy, limits agencies access to information necessary for meaningful assessment, and lacks validation and other processes for rooting out biases that may unfairly, and at times illegally, affect the public.

Even where agencies develop AI systems in house, it is unclear given the lack of publicly available documentation whether the policy relevant design choices are identified and subject to rigorous internal scrutiny, and there are only a few examples of such policy relevant design choices being subject to public vetting.

AI systems can be opaque, making it difficult to fully understand the logic and processes underlying an output, therefore making it difficult to meet obligations that attach to individual decisions. Furthermore, automation bias and the interfaces and policies that shape agency use of AI tools can turn systems intended as decision support into decision displacement.

Some governments have begun to grapple with the use of AI systems in public service delivery, providing guidance to agencies about how to approach the embedded policy choices within AI.

Canada, for example, adopted new regulations to ensure agency use of AI in service delivery is compatible with core administrative law principles including transparency, rationality, accountability, and procedural fairness. In April 2021, the European Commission unveiled a proposed Artificial Intelligence Act which is currently wending its way through the complex EU trilogue process. If adopted, the European law will, among other things, set standards and impose an assessment process on AI systems used by governments to allocate public benefits or affect fundamental rights.

These efforts are important. Nevertheless, building the capacity of administrative agencies to identify technical choices that are policyand therefore ought to be subject to the technocratic and democratic requirements of administrative law regardless of whether AI systems are built or boughtrequires tools and guidance to assist with assessments of data suitability, model design choices, validation and monitoring techniques, and additional agency expertise.

There is a growing set of tools and methods for AI system documentation. Used at appropriate times in the development or procurement of an AI system, these tools can support collaborative interrogation of AI systems by domain experts and system designers.

One such method is measurement modeling. Part of routine practice in the quantitative social sciences, measurement modeling is the process of developing a statistical model that links unobservable theoretical constructs (what we would like to model) to data about the world (what we are left with). We have argued elsewhere that measurement modeling provides a useful framework for understanding theoretical constructs such as fairness in computational systems, including AI systems.

Here, we explain how measurement modeling, which requires clarifying the theoretical constructs to be measured and their operationalization, can assist agencies to understand the implications of AI systems, design models that reflect domain specific knowledge, and identify discrete design choices that should be subject to public scrutiny.

The measurement modeling process makes the assumptions that are baked into models explicit. Too often, the assumptions behind models are not clearly stated, making it difficult to identify how and why systems do not work as intended.

But these assumptions describe what is being measured by the systemwhat the domain-specific understanding of the system is, versus what is actually being implemented. This approach provides a key opportunity for domain experts to inform technical experts about the reasonableness of assumptionsboth assumptions about which intended domain specific understanding of a concept should be used, and assumptions about how that concept is being implemented.

Careful attention to the operationalization of the selected concept offers an additional opportunity to surface mismatches between technical and domain experts assumptions about the meaning of observable attributes used by the model.

The specific tools used to test measurement modeling assumptions are reliability and construct validity. Broadly, this entails asking questions such as: What does an assumption mean? Does the assumption make sense? Does it work and in the way we expect?

An easily overlooked yet crucial aspect of validity is consequential validity, which captures the understanding that defining a measure changes its meaning. This phenomenon includes Goodharts Law, which holds that once a measure is a target, it ceases to be a good measure. In other words, does putting forward a measurement change how we understand the system?

As Ken Alder has written, measures are more than a creation of society, they create society. This means that any evaluation of a measurement model cannot occur in isolation. As with policymaking more broadly, effectiveness must be considered in the context of how a model will then be used.

AI systems used to allocate benefits and services assign scores for purposes such as predicting a teachers or schools quality, ranking the best nursing homes for clinical care, and determining eligibility for social support programs. Those assigned scores can be used as inputs into a broader decision-making process, such as to allocate resources or decide which teachers to fire.

Consider SASs Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS), a standardized tool that claims to measure teacher quality and school district quality. Measurement modeling can help break down what EVAAS is doingthat is, what policies are being enforced, what values are being encoded, and what harms may come to pass as a result.

The EVAAS tool operationalizes the construct of teacher quality from a range of abstract ideals into a specific idea, a latent force that can be measured from differences in student test scores across years. To ensure that a measurement model is capturing what is intended, the designers of specific EVAAS tools need to consider the validity of the design choices involved.

For instance, does the operationalization of teacher quality fully capture the ideal (content validity) or match other agreed upon measures (convergent validity)? Cathy ONeil described examples where EVAAS scores were misaligned with teachers receiving teaching awards and support from the community.

We can further ask: Are the EVAAS teacher scores reliable across years? Again, ONeil has pointed to examples where a teacher could go from scoring six out of 100 to 96 out of 100 within one year. Teacher scores can further penalize students near the lower thresholds. Under-resourced school districts systematically result in lower teacher quality scores, which are much more likely a reflection of other social phenomena affecting the scores than teachers themselves (discriminant validity).

In addition, EVAAS tools literally encourage teaching to the testthat is, pedagogy that emphasizes test performanceat the expense of other educational priorities.

But even AI tools used for discovery are implicitly assigning scores, which are used to allocate agency attentionyet another decision.

Consider a federal government-wide comment analysis tool that surfaces relevant regulatory comments, identifies novel information and suppresses duplicate comments. What are those tools doing? Sorting comments by relevancebut that requires finding an implicit ranking, based on some understanding and measurement of what relevance means.

A measurement of relevance depends on defining or operationalizing relevance. So any system that sorts by relevance depends on this measurements. And these measurements are used to guide users action about what comments should be followed up on, or safely ignored, with what urgency, and so on.

All this means that the definition and operationalization of relevanceor any other conceptis governance. Even though one persons understanding of what is relevant might differ from another persons, there is now one understanding of relevance embedded in the AI modelout of sight and upstream. Human decisions that once informed policy are now tasks defined through design in upstream processes, possibly by third-party vendors rather than expert agency staff.

Previously visible and contestable decisions are now masked, and administrators have given this decision-making away. Unless of course, they have tools that help them retain it. That is where measurement modeling comes in.

Although even skilled experts cannot fully understand complex AI systems through code review, measurement modeling provides a way to clarify design goals, concepts to be measured, and their operationalization. Measurement models can facilitate the collaboration between technical and domain experts necessary for AI systems that reflect agency knowledge and policy.

The rigor imposed by measurement modeling is essential given that important social and political values that must guide agency action, such as fairness, are often ambiguous and contested and therefore exceedingly complex to operationalize. Moreover, the data that systems train and run on is imbued with historical biases, which makes choices about mappings between concepts and observable facts about the world fraught with possibilities for entrenching undesirable aspects of the past.

When the measurement modeling process surfaces the need to formalize concepts that are under-specified in law, it alerts agencies to latent policy choices that must be subject not only to appropriate expert judgment but to the political visibility that is necessary for the legitimate adoption of algorithmic systems.

Whether an agency is developing the AI system or procuring it, there are a range of methods for bringing the knowledge of outside experts and the general public into the deliberation about system design. These include notice-and-comment processes, more consultative processes, staged processes of expert review and public feedback, and co-design exercises. Measurement modeling can be used within them all.

Issues warranting public participation can include decisions about the specific definition of a concept to be modeled as well as its operationalization. For example, fairness has multiple context-dependent, and sometimes even conflicting, theoretical definitions and each definition is capable of different operationalizations.

Existing jurisprudence on the setting of formulas and numerical cutoffs, and the choices underlying methodologies, provides useful guidance for identifying aspects of AI systems that warrant public input. Agency decisions that translate ambiguous concepts such as what is classified as appropriate into a fixed number or establish preferences for false negatives or positives are clear candidates.

The introduction of AI systems into processes that affect the rights of members of the public demands urgent attention. Agencies need new ways to ensure that policy choices embedded in AI systems are developed through processes that satisfy administrative laws technocratic demands that policy decisions be the product of reasoned justifications informed by expertise.

Agencies also need guidance about how to adhere to transparency, reason giving, and nondiscrimination requirements when individual determinations are informed by AI-driven systems. Agencies also need new experts and new tools to validate and monitor AI systems to protect against poor or even illegal outcomes produced by forces ranging from automation bias, model drift, and strategic human behavior.

Without new approaches, the introduction of AI systems will inappropriately deny and award benefits and services to the public, diminish confidence in governments ability to use technical tools appropriately, and ultimately undermine the legitimacy of agencies and the market for AI tools more broadly.

Measurement modeling offers agencies and the public an opportunity to collectively shape AI tools before they shape society. It can help agencies clarify and justify the assumptions behind models they choose, expose and vet them with the public, and ensure that they are appropriately validated.

Abigail Z. Jacobs is an assistant professor of information and of complex systems at the University of Michigan.

This essay is part of a nine-part series entitledArtificial Intelligence and Procurement.

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The Hidden Governance in AI - The Regulatory Review

Human Behavior

Public awareness campaigns appear to lessen human-caused fires in Utah – The Daily Universe – Universe.byu.edu

A human-caused wildfire burns on the mountains in Centerville on July 4. State officials hope to limit human-caused fires through public awareness campaigns. (Centerville Police Department via Facebook)

Utahns, it appears, are on fire in the sense theyre doing a great job making sure their state isnt.

Despite extreme drought, state fire officials are optimistic about how Utahs wildfire season is shaping up this summer and it may be thanks to public awareness campaigns.

After a record-breaking year of wildfires in 2020, the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands launched Fire Sense to combat human-caused fires, which accounted for most of the fires in 2020. In 2021 Utah had 922 fewer human-caused fires.

Karl Hunt from Forestry, Fire and State Lands said the organization has seen a 50% decrease in human-caused fires this year. Hunt credits Fire Sense, a public awareness campaign focused on preventing human-caused fires. Thanks to that public awareness, Hunt said this years wildfire numbers are still trending downward. Fire experts and professionals have a positive outlook to support these numbers.

It seems to me that its been working, said battalion chief at Provo fire station 21 Crag Olson about public awareness campaigns like Fire Sense. Ive seen less in the last year or two than in previous years, I think people are being more cautious.

State Fire Marshal Ted Black agreed. I think all in all the citizens of Utah have stepped up and are trying to be safe, he said.

This year to date, Hunt said Utah has had 384 wildfires which have burned 6,000 acres. Around 250 of those fires are human-caused. Thats a number that is always up there for the cause of wildfires, he said.

Campaigns such as Hot Rod, Hot Sparks, Happy Campers Douse Fires and Ready, Aim No Fire promote awareness for common culprits of wildfires: cars, campers and even guns.

Olson said the Fourth of July weekend proved public behavior is changing for the better. I was pleasantly surprised at how few fire calls we had, he said. People did a lot better job.

The state often uses fire as a land management tool but it can quickly become a problem when unplanned and unnatural fires start popping up.

We can use fire to increase the health of the forest, Black said. But if all of our resources are out on fires we cant do that.

Thanks to a significant reduction in the amount of human-caused fires, Black said the Forest Service and other divisions of the Department of Natural Resources are able to put resources toward fighting more natural fires this year.

The resource drain from fighting human-caused fires is a potential issue with most of Utah in an extreme drought. Black said so far, the drought has primarily affected how fast and how far fires burn but could become a bigger issue if water reserves start to run out.

Weve had plenty of water to fight fire, but if we start having lakes go dry then thats going to be an issue, he said.

In the weeks before July 24th, another holiday which usually involves fireworks, Olson said dry weather could make celebrations dangerous if people arent careful.

If we dont get any more rain between now and then well be a little worse off, he said.

As the summer continues to get hotter and drier, the responsibility for reducing human-caused fires falls to every Utahn camping, lighting fireworks and even driving.

We can make a significant difference in the health of our forest, in reducing loss, unnecessary loss due to fire, if we just be careful,Olson said.

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Public awareness campaigns appear to lessen human-caused fires in Utah - The Daily Universe - Universe.byu.edu