It has been about a year since I started this site. I had hoped it would stimulate dialogue. It looks like there are return visitors, but almost all the replies so far have been spam. If there is something here that resonates with you, I would love to hear from you, either as a reply to the site or a direct email to me at DichotomousThink@aol.com.

This is still an idea in evolution. With time, I become more and more convinced that there is something fundamental here. Unfortunately my training is in science. I have no formal training in philosophy, political science, sociology or journalism. I am open to help and feedback (positive or negative) from anyone. Thanks.

Paul Ryan recently criticized president Obama for deferring our foreign policy leadership to the UN security council. “Why should we give Russia and China a veto?” There is no doubt that by blocking action in Syria, Russia and China have blood on their hands. Of course what many people do not realized is that their reason for blocking action is the betrayal they felt after going along with resolutions regarding Libya. To them, NATO used this as a green light to get involved on behalf of one side against the other.

It appears that the president is using his community organizing skills on a global scale. Brining together diverse groups with differing values and agendas is an inherently difficult task. It requires overcoming a great deal of entropy (the natural tendency of the universe to become more disordered). It is much more difficult, from an intellectual point of view, than simply dictating what will be and making it happen with overwhelming military action.

It is unfortunate that this approach is costing lives in Syria and no one likes to be perceived as weak. I support this approach, however, because it goes beyond the simple weakness vs. strength dichotomy. It treats the world’s problems as problems. It is path to long term development of mutual trust among nations. It may be slower, but any progress that is made is more likely to be sustainable. At this point, any trust that may have developed will be gone if the U.S. were to go back to the days of “cowboy diplomacy”  and throwing our weight around.

It seems that you can not watch an interview these days without the journalist asking the guest “Who is to blame?” The answers tend to range from the equally small-minded “Blame the people I don’t like” to the obvious “What good does blame do?” or “There is enough blame to go around.”

Instead of blaming ‘people’ how about we blame ‘processes’? Why can’t congress get anything done? Dichotomous thinking. Why can’t there be peace in the middle east? Dichotomous thinking. We can shovel facts around supporting the argument that this group is bad or that group is good, but at the end of the day, the barrier to progress is always in the thought process.  Dichotomous thinking replacing goal-directed problem-based thinking.

I was involved for several months with various OWS working groups. I started with Education and later moved to Demands. Given my near obsession with the importance of goal-directed thinking, I finally gravitated to the Vision and Goals group. I met a wonderful and diverse group of individuals. There was a real dedication to the goal of drafting a document that would represent the entire OWS movement. Unfortunately this never happened during the time I was part of the group. It was hard enough for us, as a working group, to come up with something and whenever we did present to the General Assembly, there were always enough detractors to prevent anything from be ratified.

It is wrong to say that OWS has failed or fizzled, and it certainly has had an effect on the debate in the US. That said, it never blossomed into the American Spring and it is clearly not where we all hoped it would be 1 year later. Was OWS a victim of dichotomous thinking? In part. There was a certain amount of “me, me, me” replacing “us, us, us” along the way.  The real problem was entropy, that natural tendency for things to become more disordered. People did not appreciate the amount of work it takes to create order among such a diverse group. Inclusivity is great, and I am glad OWS was never co-opted by lager interests like the Tea Party was. It is an unfortunate example of how important goals are to human activity.

OWS needs to go beyond the simple dichotomous “Wall Street is bad.”  Until there is a clear Vision and well formed set of Goals, I am afraid that OWS will remain largely ineffective in the future.

A film is made apparently with sole intention of criticizing,
insulting and upsetting the Muslim world. In response, a mob murders a group of innocent individuals. The goal of the mob is presumably to discourage such films. “They insulted our prophet, we have to respond.” Now the American
right-wing (as expressed on Fox News) is upset that there is not a greater “outrage” on the part of the Obama administration, claiming all they have done is apologize to the Muslims. Reporting by Al Jazeera English suggests that all the
administration has done is to condemn the killings without condemning the film.

While condemnation of both an inflammatory and hurtful film
as well as the murder of innocent people may each be appropriate, what does condemnation really accomplish? What is the goal for which condemnation is a solution? The real problem is the small-mindedness. Will such a film bring
about any positive changes among Muslims? Of course not, it will only encourage small-minded Muslims and make it harder for others to move their community forward. Will the murder of the US ambassador, in anyway, discourage the making of subsequent anti-Muslim films? Of course not. The notoriety will only increase backing by other small-minded individuals. Will strong anti-Muslim rhetoric called for by the US right-wing discourage further violence? No, it will just lend more support to
the wrong people.

In all aspects of this situation, there is a disconnect
between the presumed goal and the dichotomous actions taken or called for. Ultimately, these events clearly demonstrate how dichotomous thinking leads to more dichotomous thinking. The first step must be to shift the focus from dichotomous thinking to problem-solving. The fist question should always be “What is the goal?”

Asking “What is the problem and how do we solve it?” should
never be characterized as an apology or appeasement or weakness. It is this way of thinking that is the greatest barrier to our moving forward as a species. Clearly this is not going to happen over night, but it is still worth working for.

To Westerners, the protests and killings in response to the “inadvertent” burning of multiple copies of the Holy Korans in Bagram Air Base is a tremendous over-reaction. Equally disturbing to me is the criticism of President Obama over his apology for this action. “The Afghans should apologize for the death of our servicemen.” In both cases dichotomous thinking is at the heart of the problem. To devout Muslims, promoting Allah’s Will on earth is their principal goal. Demonstrating to non-Muslims how sacred the Koran is to them is certainly consistent with this goal. That said, is it really Allah’s Will that people die over this? You burned the Koran. You are bad. We must kill you.

The NATO goal in Afghanistan is to promote the modernization. Clearly the burning of the Korans does not help this goal. Whether it was an inadvertent mistake, an example of poor judgment or a blatant act of desecration, it was done under military jurisdiction and so the military is responsible. Most of us consider it reasonable to apologize for a mistake that harms others and as commander and chief of the US military it is totally appropriate for the president to apologize. Yes it is true that, to us killing is worse than desecration, but the idea that we should not apologize for what we did because what they did is worse is small-minded. This type of thinking distracts us from our ultimate goal of modernization.

Ask anyone if they like negative campaign adds and they will surely say no. So why are negative campaign adds so effective? Why do people still respond to them? It is just another result of the overuse of DT. In a world where DT is automatically suspect, negative campaign adds would carry much less weight. The goal of understanding who a candidate is, what he/she stands for and what he/she will do if elected will not as easily be usurped by the dichotomous question “Do I like this person?”  or “Would I want this person as my friend?”  There is a move towards undoing the devastating effect of the Citizens United decision on our democracy. The inappropriate influence of money on our political system is also an important issue to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Unfortunately, this is only part of the problem. The real enemy is simple mindedness. As long as simple mindedness dominates the general population, it will dominate our political system.

The goal of the scientist is to understand the nature of the universe. The fruits of their labor can most benefit the rest of society when the information they generate is transformed from the dichotomous true vs. false framework into a goal-oriented utility framework. In other words, “This is how things work, but what good does that do me?” “How can the discoveries of the scientist help me achieve my goals?”

The laws of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy were first laid out at the end of the 19th century. The original motivation was to explain some very important aspects of our universe. In fact everything that occurs in our world, does so within the confines of the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Everything from chemical reactions to life to weather patterns are driven by the continued increase in entropy (randomness) of our universe.  Over the last century these laws have been used to generate better engines, make better chemicals and of course bigger and better weapons. But if they are so universal, are they important to the common individual as well?

Without getting too detailed, the first law of thermodynamics is essentially “There is no free lunch.”  (Matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only converted from one form to another).  The second law is essentially Murphy’s law, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Put another way, the entropy (randomness) of the universe can only increase, so the only way to bring about order in one place is to do some form of work (releasing heat and creating more entropy in the rest of the universe.)  Our highly ordered bodies can only exist because we are constantly feeding them energy to maintain that order.

The main barrier to any form of political activism is overcoming the entropic tendencies in the form of differing ideas among individuals. Getting people with differing ideas “on board” is often an uphill battle because it involves overcoming the entropy of diverse ideas. Often times no volume of dichotomous “true fact” is adequate to change minds. It is often the case that common goals are the catalyst to overcoming entropy.  Chemical catalysts overcome entropy by brining chemicals closer together so they can react more easily. Similarly, focusing on common goals and avoiding dichotomous separations can add to consensus building and make political progress more likely.

I started visiting the Occupy Wall Street site at Zuccotti park in late September. I was curious what the goals of the movement were and the degree to which dichotomous thinking might be interfering. I was also curious if there were a lot of individuals whose goals did not go beyond “I am very upset and I am here to stamp my feet and make a lot of noise.”  What I found there was quite remarkable.

Almost everyone I spoke to could state, in a reasonably coherent manner, what their personal goals were. It was not the simple “Wall street and corporations are bad!!”. It was really “Here are the problems as I see them.”  As for the proposed solutions,
I would say they ranged from liberal progressives who want to see significant
change in our current system to Marxist/anachists who were convinced the entire
system needs to be torn down and rebuilt. There are very deep concerns over the
movement being usurped by larger forces. This is why there is such a commitment
to a horizontal leaderless organization of the movement.

What is most amazing about the OWS movement (and what does
not get any coverage in the corporate media) is the direct democracy process
that is being used (in lieu of leaders) to make decisions and commit to
specific actions. It has its problems at times and it may not always succeed,
but the goal is to come to consensus on issues in a way that allows all voices
to be heard with no one being marginalized. Any one individual can block a
proposal (although it is supposed to be for serious reasons like safety, ethics
or a perceived threat to the movement) and the block can only be over-ruled by
a 90% majority. As a result, it forces the group to search for the proposal
that best reflects the values and opinions of the most members. The assumption
is that simple majority rule can result in 49% being dissatisfied.

What fascinates me about the process is the degree to which it can be derailed by dichotomous thinking and how it forces the individuals to constantly return to the larger goal the group is striving for.  Among the goals of many individuals is to bring this form of consensus building to other aspects of society. I am very excited about this because I see it as a potential step towards a world where dichotomous thinking is identified and rejected when it interferes with achieving desirable goals.

BTW if you think the movement has “fizzled out” just because the encampment has been disbanded, go to the official website (http://www.nycga.net), click on “Groups” and take a look at what the 124 (as of this posting) working groups are up to.

Beyond the obvious tragedy of loosing a father of three who was also an extremely talented contributor to the beauty of our world, there is the added tragedy that Michael Jackson’s death did not spark the debate over what really killed him.  There is a growing trend in the medical profession towards favoring patient satisfaction over appropriate medical care. Whether it is antibiotics for colds, or useless cough medicines, or narcotics for simple injuries, the business end of medicine can often leave physicians feeling trapped. This is a particularly big problem in large for-profit hospitals where the bean counters chanting Press Ganey (a patient satisfaction scoring system) almost out number the actual health care workers. The details of the case are of interest and it is hard to defend the use of propofol in a private setting, but how much good will actually come from punishing Conrad Murray? Will the next private doctor of a superstar be sure to have the proper equipment available?

Yankel Rosenberg (mid 80s VIP patient, Brooklyn, NY) was probably happy to be spared the indignantly of being completely undressed while in the ER, especially when the mayor came to visit him. We can only assume that he remained satisfied right up until the point that he died of the stab wound no one saw.  Like Michael Jackson, it was the special treatment that killed him. To a lesser degree, the same thing is happening throughout the country.

Whenever a systemic problem comes to a head in such an attention grabbing way as this, it would be good if our media outlets could take advantage of this and open the debate. Unfortunately this is not a simple good-guy bad-guy issue. Given the growing costs of health care, it seems only natural that the customer walk away “satisfied.”  The goal of the medical community is to decrease (not increase) the probability of bad outcome. There are times when this conflicts with patient satisfaction. In the case of people with substance abuse problems, dissatisfaction is actually the treatment. As always, I do not blame the corporate media. Their goal is to make money for the parent company by giving the public what it wants. Unfortunately no one wants to be told that medical care is anything other than a way to make the customer happy.  More complex issues are no fun. As long as the public values the entertainment aspects over substance, opportunities such as the one created by this tragedy will continue to be missed.