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Subsurface Habitats on the Moon and Mars Could Be Grown Using Mushrooms and Inflatable Robots

One of the first verified predictions of general relativity is the gravitational deflection of starlight. The effect was [first observed in 1919 during a total solar eclipse.](https://briankoberlein.com/post/einstein-and-eddington/) Since stars appear as points of light, the effect is seen as an apparent shift in the position of stars near the eclipse. But the effect happens more generally. If a distant galaxy is obscured by a closer one, some of the distant light is gravitationally lensed around the closer galaxy, giving us a warped and distorted view of the faraway stars. This effect can also magnify the distant galaxy, making its light appear brighter, and we have used this effect to observe some of the most distant stars in the Universe.

In-situ resource utilization will likely play a major role in any future long-term settlement of the Moon. However, designing such a system in advance with our current level of knowledge will prove difficult, mainly because there's so much uncertainty around both the availability of those resources and the efficacy of the processes used to extract them. Luckily, researchers have tools that can try to deal with both of those uncertainties - statistical modeling. A team from Imperial College London, the University of Munich, and the Luxembourg Institue of Science and Technology recently released a pre-print paper on arXiv that uses a well-known statistical modeling method known as Monte Carlo simulation to try to assess what type of ISRU plan would be best for use on the Moon.

Cave-dwelling orb spiders have adapted their webs so they act as tripwires for prey that crawl on the walls of the caves

Even though Jupiter's moon Io is considered the most volcanically active world in the Solar System, Venus actually has more volcanoes and volcanic features on its surface. For a long time, scientists thought that most of these features and volcanoes were ancient remnants of the planet's geological past. However, newer research shows that Venus is still volcanically active.

Someone sent me this tweet a few days ago, and I was unsure about whether this was any kind of violation of University policy.  As far as I gather, this was posted on the inside of a chemistry professor’s office, facing outwards.

University of Chicago – Outside a chemistry professor’s classroom, a sign filled with propaganda reads, “DEPORT ISRAELIS.”

This is blatant antisemitism and xenophobia which is completely unacceptable, @UChicago. An investigation is needed. pic.twitter.com/wGer8vjX9f

— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) March 28, 2025

 

Here’s a photo from that tweet, but all I can make out in it is “Israel murdered 18,000 children” (Hamas’s figures, and probably grossly untrue) as well as “Israel must pay for the murders and destruction” and “DEPORT ISRAELIS.” If you can read more of it, please decipher in the comments. 

Anyway, I sent the tweet around to our local free speech group and asked if this was a violation of University rules.  This morning someone said that this kind of thing is indeed allowed, though you’re not allowed to display flags in your office (some wonky rule). A watermelon, though, does nicely as a substitute for the Palestinian flag. At any rate. I saw the tweet below this morning, indicating that the University of Chicago itself had apologized for the sign, which was “voluntarily” taken down, and said that it is being investigated as a possible violation of the “University’s non-discrimination policy.”

We sent a letter to the President of the University of Chicago. We’re working closely with students on the ground. This is the statement the University released today.

Let’s be clear: pressure works. Community matters. And transparency is everything.

We appreciate that the… pic.twitter.com/cGXW6iUqE4

— ChicagoJewishAlliance (@ChiJewishAllies) March 30, 2025

 

The statement:

If this is indeed allowed behavior, then putting a sign like this inside your office, facing out, is not a violation of free speech, which is part of the Chicago Principles. On the other hand, one could argue that such a sign creates a climate of harassment towards Jewish students, which is a Title VI violation. Now that Trump is threatening to withhold money from universities for condoning anti-semitic behavior, I can see where this kind of publicity could scare our university.

I don’t know if I’ll learn any more about this, but if I do I’ll impart it below.  All I can say is that IF displaying this kind of sign is permitted by University regulations, then it’s not kosher to investigate the person who posted it (that’s chilling of speech) or to make a public statement about it. All of this hangs on the “time, place, and manner” restrictions of speech at the University here, and people aren’t sure what the policy is.

Anyway, weigh in below with your opinion.

 

Bioelectronic devices, neural interfaces, biosensors and AI hardware are now easier to make thanks to a streamlined method for fabricating a key material.

Bioelectronic devices, neural interfaces, biosensors and AI hardware are now easier to make thanks to a streamlined method for fabricating a key material.

Researchers have developed new AI models that can vastly improve accuracy and discovery within protein science. Potentially, the models will assist the medical sciences in overcoming present challenges within, e.g. personalised medicine, drug discovery, and diagnostics.

Inhaling dust particles from the Red Planet over long periods of time could put humans at risk of developing respiratory issues, thyroid disease and other health problems.

By studying the brains of autistic girls, we now know the condition presents differently in them than in boys, suggesting that huge numbers of women have gone undiagnosed

UPDATE: Although I swore I wouldn’t read the comments on my piece, I couldn’t resist. In fact, I’m having a high old time reading them, and even answering some of them. Some are good, but there are tons of them that grossly misunderstand or mischaracterize religion. As of 11:30 a.m. today, there were 436 comments.

If you’ve read here in the last few months, you’ll know about my kerfuffle with the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), which you can find described in various posts on this website. In short, Kat Grant, at the time a fellow at the FFRF, wrote an essay on the Freethought Now! website explaining their problems with defining sex (the author uses they/them pronouns). Grant finally came up with this unsatisfactory psychological definition: “A woman is whoever she says she is.”

I wanted to respond, and wrote FFRF co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor for permission to publish a short response (I was on the Honorary Board of Directors). She said “okay,” and after a few back-and-forths involving editing, it was published as a short piece called “Biology is not bigotry” (it’s now archived here and has been reprinted in other places).  The point of the title was, of course, that the biological definition of the sexes, based on the gamete type potentially produced (sperm or eggs), says almost nothing about how gender-nonconforming people should be treated or whether their rights should be curtailed (answer: almost never, though sports participation is one of the few exceptions).

The day after my piece went up, the FFRF took it down (Kat Grant’s piece is still online but is also archived here). Why? My best guess is that the young people at the FFRF raised a ruckus, but the FFRF also explained that my views were harmful and didn’t reflect the FFRF’s views (that was the point of the criticism, of course). Publishing my piece was, they said, “a mistake.”  No, it was censorship, pure and simple.

All this is explained in an op-ed I wrote that was published last night in the Wall Street Journal. If you click on the screenshot below, it should take you to a free version, or you can find it archived here.

I have to say that I didn’t choose the title (for I have not lost my atheism!), and the article was heavily edited. Yes, I do know that Gnosticism was not part of Catholicism, but I also know that Gnosticism also was a form of religion and superstition.

At any rate, I asked the WSJ to add the links to two assertions I made in the text, but they didn’t add those links. I’ve put them in the two paragraphs below taken from the WSJ piece, just so you can check up on how I quoted others:

The FFRF’s road to quasireligious views was a long one, paved by secular philosophers and the movements they spawned. It includes, for one thing, the Gnostic view that one’s true identity goes well beyond the physical body. As a Catholic website comparing Gnosticism with transgenderism notes, “The underlying concept is the same, that who we ‘really’ are is not our bodies, but rather some sort of interior ‘ego,’ or ‘I’ that constitutes our true self. It is incumbent that the body must conform to that true self.”

Some forms of feminism have made their contribution, with constructivists like Judith Butler arguing that sex is a social construct, not “a bodily given on which the construct of gender is artificially imposed, but . . . a cultural norm which governs the materialization of bodies.” This is a denial of evolution.

That’s pretty much all I have to say except to once again exculpate myself from transphobia. The purpose of “Biology is not bigotry” was to show that adhering to the gametic definition of “biological sex” used by many biologists does not make you someone who hates or wishes to erase trans people.  I do think that there are a few instances in which their “rights” clash with the “rights” of other groups (women athletes or women prisoners, for instance), but that doesn’t mean you’re a hater—only someone trying to adjudicate for yourself an important difference of opinion.

The only remaining question is this: why is Honorary Board of FFRF still up on the Internet when Religion News Service Reporter Yonat Shimron told me (and published) that Annie Laurie Gaylor assured Shimron that that Board had been dissolved?

Trofim Lysenko was a Soviet scientist whose dogmatic science denialism led to mass famine when his ideas were applied to agriculture. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a lot like Lysenko in his science denial. Will his results be as disastrous?

The post “Make America Healthy Again”: The new Lysenkoism first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

As I’ve recounted before, reader Robert Lang‘s home and studio burned down in the Los Angeles-area wildfires earlier this year. Not only that, but he and his wife Diane had a new home under construction a block or so away in Altadena, and that burned down, too (the older house hadn’t yet been sold).  The New Yorker did an article on the disaster (Robert lost nearly every item in his personal origami collection), which you can read here if you subscribe. Robert and Diane are now living in a rented house nearby, and I have to say that, having had dinner with them when I was in L.A., they have a remarkably sanguine attitude towards it, which I much admire. They will of course rebuild the home and studio as soon as the city permits.

Robert sent in some photos of the damage, along with a narrative, that I’ll put below. His words are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

RWP: Death and Life in Altadena

As readers of this website may know, on January 7–8, the Los Angeles area town of Altadena was destroyed by the Eaton Fire, which was driven by 60–100 mph Santa Ana winds. (It was one of several fires that day—another big one, the Palisades Fire, laid similar waste to the town of Pacific Palisades). The Eaton Fire began near the boundary of suburb and wildland, but the winds drove it both miles into Altadena and miles across the front range of the San Gabriel mountains. Across the mountains, it turned the dense but dry chapparal-covered ridges and canyons into bare dirt and rock studded with tiny blackened stumps of the formerly lush vegetation.

The San Gabriels (and, for that matter, most areas of Southern California) are lands of extremes; just a month later, on February 13, an atmospheric river barreled into town, dropping in some places 12 inches of rain in 24 hours (one of those places being the rain gauge of my neighbor, one of the lucky few who survived the fire). The downpour sent black torrents of water and debris flows roaring down the now denuded canyons and carved channels through fans of debris that poured down the mountainsides (*), damaging—and in many places, completely erasing—the network of hiking trails that were used by tens of thousands of hikers each week, including myself. My (now former) studio backed up to the Angeles National Forest and I had gone hiking almost every day; photos from my hikes and from my trail cams at and near my studio have been occasional RWP entries in recent years.

The Forest Service has closed a large portion of the Angeles National Forest, the burned area and then some. Alas, we’re not allowed to see, or even go repair, any of the damage in the ANF for at least a year. However, one of the organizations that I volunteer with, the Arroyo Foothills Conservancy, has their own inholding in the ANF, and our trail maintenance team recently did a reconnaissance of their property and trails. There was devastation; but there was also new life, welcome signs of both resilience and recovery.

The start of the trail—if you can call it that. This hillside had been covered with a dense thicket of laurel sumac (Malosma laurina), California buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum), black sage (Salvia mellifera), California sagebrush (Artemisia californica), and much else. Not much left. Once the vegetation is gone, there is nothing to stop the downpours from cutting deeply into the dirt that is left. That gully to the left used to be a road that the trail ran along:

Last year, an Eagle Scout project posted old-fashioned metal signs at all the trail junctions. The metal is still there. The trail is visible here and goes to the left of the burned tree where debris has restored the original slope. But there’s a dusting of greenery; after the rains, the plants immediately start to come back:

A Whipple yucca (Hesperoyucca whipplei ), resprouting. All of the leaves had been burned off, so the green you see is all new growth:

Looking up the hillside. There’s a trail weaving back and forth under all that deeply gullied loose gravel:

We were the first people to try to follow the trail since the fire and rain, but someone, or rather, something, had been there ahead of us; these are hoofprints of the California mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus californicus). The deer were already hard at work recreating their own trails. Of course, many of the original hiking trails had followed trails made by the indigenous Tongva—who had, in turn, initially followed animal trails long ago.

California sagebrush (Artemisia californica), coming back:

The denuded hills. You can see some of the surviving trails as light lines on the hills:

There are several species of live oak in California (I don’t know which one this is). They evolved with fire and even with their leaves and small branches toasted, they resprout almost immediately. A large oak in the San Gabriels has likely been through many fires. Sadly, the one way that fire can kill even a large oak is when it’s coming from a house next to the tree; many of the hundred-year-old oaks in the neighborhoods of Altadena will be lost because of the hot and long-burning torches of the houses that were next to them:

Another “oak”—which is not at all an oak—is Poison oak (Toxicodendron diversilobum), a shrub, vine, or bush that is highly variable in form, widespread in the San Gabriels, and the bane of hikers due to the incredibly itchy rash it induces in most people who have the misfortune to brush against it. Its leaves turn bright red in the fall, but the new shoots are also brilliant, as seen here. Yes, it’s an irritant (at least to primates), but the deer love to eat it, and it’s an important source of browse for them:

New lush grass is springing up all over this hillside. Unfortunately, it’s a noxious invasive. Fountain grass (Cenchrus setaceum), an escapee from landscaping, outcompetes the local natives and is also fire-adapted; sadly, once established, it is close to impossible to eradicate. It will quickly dominate this hillside:

I like how the branching of the gullies mirrors the branching of the dead bushes, probably laurel sumac (Malosma laurina). Laurel sumac is incredibly resilient; I had several in the meadow behind my studio. I cut them down to the ground every spring for fire abatement, and by the next spring they’re four feet tall again. They’re just now burned off, but they, like the ones you see here, will be dense bushes again within a year:

Many animals died in the fires, but many survived; the herbivores are dining on the fresh young shoots, and the carnivores are dining on the herbivores. Our neighborhood trail cams have picked up coyote, bobcat, and even a mountain lion since the fire. We saw plenty of deer sign on our reconnaissance, and at the end, saw the source of some of the prints. This was shot with an iPhone at a distance, so it’s not particularly high resolution, but it is a nice reminder that Nature recovers and provides some inspiration for the rest of us Altadenans to go and do likewise:

(*) For an excellent overview of the cycle of fire and flood in L.A., see John McPhee’s New Yorker article “Los Angeles Against the Mountains,” collected in his 1989 book, The Control of Nature.

Now finally, we come to the heart of the matter of quantum interference, as seen from the perspective of in 1920’s quantum physics. (We’ll deal with quantum field theory later this year.)

Last time I looked at some cases of two particle states in which the particles’ behavior is independent — uncorrelated. In the jargon, the particles are said to be “unentangled”. In this situation, and only in this situation, the wave function of the two particles can be written as a product of two wave functions, one per particle. As a result, any quantum interference can be ascribed to one particle or the other, and is visible in measurements of either one particle or the other. (More precisely, it is observable in repeated experiments, in which we do the same measurement over and over.)

In this situation, because each particle’s position can be studied independent of the other’s, we can be led to think any interference associated with particle 1 happens near where particle 1 is located, and similarly for interference involving the second particle.

But this line of reasoning only works when the two particles are uncorrelated. Once this isn’t true — once the particles are entangled — it can easily break down. We saw indications of this in an example that appeared at the ends of my last two posts (here and here), which I’m about to review. The question for today is: what happens to interference in such a case?

Correlation: When “Where” Breaks Down

Let me now review the example of my recent posts. The pre-quantum system looks like this

Figure 1: An example of a superposition, in a pre-quantum view, where the two particles are correlated and where interference will occur that involves both particles together.

Notice the particles are correlated; either both particles are moving to the left OR both particles are moving to the right. (The two particles are said to be “entangled”, because the behavior of one depends upon the behavior of the other.) As a result, the wave function cannot be factored (in contrast to most examples in my last post) and we cannot understand the behavior of particle 1 without simultaneously considering the behavior of particle 2. Compare this to Fig. 2, an example from my last post in which the particles are independent; the behavior of particle 2 is the same in both parts of the superposition, independent of what particle 1 is doing.

Figure 2: Unlike Fig. 1, here the two particles are uncorrelated; the behavior of particle 2 is the same whether particle 1 is moving left OR right. As a result, interference can occur for particle 1 separately from any behavior of particle 2, as shown in this post.

Let’s return now to Fig. 1. The wave function for the corresponding quantum system, shown as a graph of its absolute value squared on the space of possibilities, behaves as in Fig. 3.

Figure 3: The absolute-value-squared of the wave function for the system in Fig, 1, showing interference as the peaks cross. Note the interference fringes are diagonal relative to the x1 and x2 axes.

But as shown last time in Fig. 19, at the moment where the interference in Fig. 3 is at its largest, if we measure particle 1 we see no interference effect. More precisely, if we do the experiment many times and measure particle 1 each time, as depicted in Fig. 4, we see no interference pattern.

Figure 4: The result of repeated experiments in which we measure particle 1, at the moment of maximal interference, in the system of Fig. 3. Each new experiment is shown as an orange dot; results of past experiments are shown in blue. No interference effect is seen.

We see something analogous if we measure particle 2.

Yet the interference is plain as day in Fig. 3. It’s obvious when we look at the full two-dimensional space of possibilities, even though it is invisible in Fig. 4 for particle 1 and in the analogous experiment for particle 2. So what measurements, if any, can we make that can reveal it?

The clue comes from the fact that the interference fringes lie at a 45 degree angle, perpendicular neither to the x1 axis nor to the x2 axis but instead to the axis for the variable 1/2(x1 + x2), the average of the positions of particle 1 and 2. It’s that average position that we need to measure if we are to observe the interference.

But doing so requires we that we measure both particles’ positions. We have to measure them both every time we repeat the experiment. Only then can we start making a plot of the average of their positions.

When we do this, we will find what is shown in Fig 5.

• The top row shows measurements of particle 1.
• The bottom row shows measurements of particle 2.
• And the middle row shows a quantity that we infer from these measurements: their average.

For each measurement, I’ve drawn a straight orange line between the measurement of x1 and the measurement of x2; the center of this line lies at the average position 1/2(x1+x2). The actual averages are then recorded in a different color, to remind you that we don’t measure them directly; we infer them from the actual measurements of the two particles’ positions.

Figure 5: As in Fig. 4, the result of repeated experiments in which we measure both particles’ positions at the moment of maximal interference in Fig. 3. Top and bottom rows show the position measurements of particles 1 and 2; the middle row shows their average. Each new experiment is shown as two orange dots, they are connected by an orange line, at whose midpoint a new yellow dot is placed. Results of past experiments are shown in blue. No interference effect is seen in the individual particle positions, yet one appears in their average.

In short, the interference is not associated with either particle separately — none is seen in either the top or bottom rows. Instead, it is found within the correlation between the two particles’ positions. This is something that neither particle can tell us on its own.

And where is the interference? It certainly lies near 1/2(x1+x2)=0. But this should worry you. Is that really a point in physical space?

You could imagine a more extreme example of this experiment in which Fig. 5 shows particle 1 located in Boston and particle 2 located in New York City. This would put their average position within appropriately-named Middletown, Connecticut. (I kid you not; check for yourself.) Would we really want to say that the interference itself is located in Middletown, even though it’s a quiet bystander, unaware of the existence of two correlated particles that lie in opposite directions 90 miles (150 km) away?

After all, the interference appears in the relationship between the particles’ positions in physical space, not in the positions themselves. Its location in the space of possibilities (Fig. 3) is clear. Its location in physical space (Fig. 5) is anything but.

Still, I can imagine you pondering whether it might somehow make sense to assign the interference to poor, unsuspecting Middletown. For that reason, I’m going to make things even worse, and take Middletown out of the middle.

A Second System with No Where

Here’s another system with interference, whose pre-quantum version is shown in Figs. 6a and 6b:

Figure 6a: Another system in a superposition with entangled particles, shown in its pre-quantum version in physical space. In part A of the superposition both particles are stationary, while in part B they move oppositely. Figure 6b: The same system as in Fig. 6a, depicted in the space of possibilities with its two initial possibilities labeled as stars. Possibility A remains where it is, while possibility B moves toward and intersects with possibility A, leading us to expect interference in the quantum wave function.

The corresponding wave function is shown in Fig. 7. Now the interference fringes are oriented diagonally the other way compared to Fig. 3. How are we to measure them this time?

Figure 7: The absolute-value-squared of the wave function for the system shown in Fig. 6. The interference fringes lie on the opposite diagonal from those of Fig. 3.

The average position 1/2(x1+x2) won’t do; we’ll see nothing interesting there. Instead the fringes are near (x1-x2)=4 — that is, they occur when the particles, no matter where they are in physical space, are at a distance of four units. We therefore expect interference near 1/2(x1-x2)=2. Is it there?

In Fig. 8 I’ve shown the analogue of Figs. 4 and 5, depicting

• the measurements of the two particle positions x1 and x2, along with
• their average 1/2(x1+x2) plotted between them (in yellow)
• (half) their difference 1/2(x1-x2) plotted below them (in green).

That quantity 1/2(x1-x2) is half the horizontal length of the orange line. Hidden in its behavior over many measurements is an interference pattern, seen in the bottom row, where the 1/2(x1-x2) measurements are plotted. [Note also that there is no interference pattern in the measurements of 1/2(x1+x2), in contrast to Fig. 4.]

Figure 8: For the system of Figs. 6-7, repeated experiments in which the measurement of the position of particle 1 is plotted in the top row (upper blue points), that of particle 2 is plotted in the third row (lower blue points), their average is plotted between (yellow points), and half their difference is plotted below them (green points.) Each new set of measurements is shown as orange points connected by an orange line, as in Fig. 5. An interference pattern is seen only in the difference.

Now the question of the hour: where is the interference in this case? It is found near 1/2(x1-x2)=2 — but that certainly is not to be identified with a legitimate position in physical space, such as the point x=2.

First of all, making such an identification in Fig. 8 would be like saying that one particle is in New York and the other is in Boston, while the interference is 150 kilometers offshore in the ocean. But second and much worse, I could change Fig. 8 by moving both particles 10 units to the left and repeating the experiment. This would cause x1, x2, and 1/2(x1-x2) in Fig. 8 to all shift left by 10 units, moving them off your computer screen, while leaving 1/2(x1-x2) unchanged at 2. In short, all the orange and blue and yellow points would move out of your view, while the green points would remain exactly where they are. The difference of positions — a distance — is not a position.

If 10 units isn’t enough to convince you, let’s move the two particles to the other side of the Sun, or to the other side of the galaxy. The interference pattern stubbornly remains at 1/2(x1-x2)=2. The interference pattern is in a difference of positions, so it doesn’t care whether the two particles are in France, Antarctica, or Mars.

We can move the particles anywhere in the universe, as long as we take them together with their average distance remaining the same, and the interference pattern remains exactly the same. So there’s no way we can identify the interference as being located at a particular value of x, the coordinate of physical space. Trying to do so creates nonsense.

This is totally unlike interference in water waves and sound waves. That kind of interference happens in a someplace; we can say where the waves are, how big they are at a particular location, and where their peaks and valleys are in physical space. Quantum interference is not at all like this. It’s something more general, more subtle, and more troubling to our intuition.

[By the way, there’s nothing special about the two combinations 1/2(x1+x2) and 1/2(x1-x2), the average or the difference. It’s easy to find systems where the intereference arises in the combination x1+2x2, or 3x1-x2, or any other one you like. In none of these is there a natural way to say “where” the interference is located.]

The Profound Lesson

From these examples, we can begin to learn a central lesson of modern physics, one that a century of experimental and theoretical physics have been teaching us repeatedly, with ever greater subtlety. Imagining reality as many of us are inclined to do, as made of localized objects positioned in and moving through physical space — the one-dimensional x-axis in my simple examples, and the three-dimensional physical space that we take for granted when we specify our latitude, longitude and altitude — is simply not going to work in a quantum universe. The correlations among objects have observable consequences, and those correlations cannot simply be ascribed locations in physical space. To make sense of them, it seems we need to expand our conception of reality.

In the process of recognizing this challenge, we have had to confront the giant, unwieldy space of possibilities, which we can only visualize for a single particle moving in up to three dimensions, or for two or three particles moving in just one dimension. In realistic circumstances, especially those of quantum field theory, the space of possibilities has a huge number of dimensions, rendering it horrendously unimaginable. Whether this gargantuan space should be understood as real — perhaps even more real than physical space — continues to be debated.

Indeed, the lessons of quantum interference are ones that physicists and philosophers have been coping with for a hundred years, and their efforts to make sense of them continue to this day. I hope this series of posts has helped you understand these issues, and to appreciate their depth and difficulty.

Looking ahead, we’ll soon take these lessons, and other lessons from recent posts, back to the double-slit experiment. With fresher, better-informed eyes, we’ll examine its puzzles again.

This is an interesting concept, with an interesting history, and I have heard it quoted many times recently – “we get the politicians (or government) we deserve.” It is often invoked to imply that voters are responsible for the malfeasance or general failings of their elected officials. First let’s explore if this is true or not, and then what we can do to get better representatives.

The quote itself originated with Joseph de Maistre who said, “Every nation gets the government it deserves.” (Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite.) Maistre was a counter-revolutionary. He believed in divine monarchy as the best way to instill order, and felt that philosophy, reason, and the enlightenment were counterproductive. Not a great source, in my opinion. But apparently Thomas Jefferson also made a similar statement, “The government you elect is the government you deserve.”

Pithy phrases may capture some essential truth, but reality is often more complicated. I think the sentiment is partly true, but also can be misused. What is true is that in a democracy each citizen has a civic responsibility to cast informed votes. No one is responsible for our vote other than ourselves, and if we vote for bad people (however you wish to define that) then we have some level of responsibility for having bad government. In the US we still have fair elections. The evidence pretty overwhelmingly shows that there is no significant voter fraud or systematic fraud stealing elections.

This does not mean, however, that there aren’t systemic effects that influence voter behavior or limit our representation. This is a huge topic, but just to list a few examples – gerrymandering is a way for political parties to choose their voters, rather than voters choosing their representatives, the electoral college means that for president some votes have more power than others, and primary elections tend to produce more radical options. Further, the power of voters depends on getting accurate information, which means that mass media has a lot of power. Lying and distorting information deprives voters of their ability to use their vote to get what they want and hold government accountable.

So while there is some truth to the notion that we elect the government we deserve, this notion can be “weaponized” to distract and shift blame from legitimate systemic issues, or individual bad behavior among politicians. We still need to examine and improve the system itself. Actual experts could write books about this topic, but again just to list a few of the more obvious fixes – I do think we should, at a federal level, ban gerrymandering. It is fundamentally anti-democratic. In general someone affected directly by the rules should not be able to determine those rules and rig them to favor themselves. We all need to agree ahead of time on rules that are fair for everyone. I also think we should get rid of the electoral college. Elections are determined in a handful of swing states, and voters in small states have disproportionate power (which they already have with two senators). Ranked-choice voting also would be an improvement and would lead to outcomes that better reflect the will of the voters. We need Supreme Court reform, better ethics rules and enforcement, and don’t get me started on mass and social media.

This is all a bit of a catch-22 – how do we get systemic change from within a broken system?  Most representatives from both parties benefit from gerrymandering, for example. I think it would take a massive popular movement, but those require good leadership too, and the topic is a bit wonky for bumper stickers. Still, I would love to see greater public awareness on this issue and support for reform. Meanwhile, we can be more thoughtful about how we use the vote we have. Voting is the ultimate feedback loop in a democracy, and it will lead to outcomes that depend on the feedback loop. Voters reward and punish politicians, and politicians to some extent do listen to voters.

The rest is just a shoot-from-the-hip thought experiment about how we might more thoughtfully consider our politicians. Thinking is generally better than feeling, or going with a vague vibe or just a blind hope. So here are my thoughts about what a voter should think about when deciding whom to vote for. This also can make for some interesting discussion. I like to break things down, so here are some categories of features to consider.

Overall competence: This has to do with the basic ability of the politician. Are they smart and curious enough to understand complex issues? Are they politicly savvy enough to get things done? Are they diligent and generally successful?

Experience: This is related to competence, but I think is distinct. You can have a smart and savvy politician without any experience in office. While obviously we need to give fresh blood a chance, experience also does count. Ideally politicians will gain experience in lower office before seeking higher office. It also shows respect for the office and the complexity of the job.

Morality: This has to do with the overall personality and moral fiber of the person. Do they have the temperament of a good leader and a good civil servant? Will they put the needs of the country first? Are they liars and cheaters? Do they have a basic respect for the truth?

Ideology: What is the politician’s governing philosophy? Are they liberal, conservative, progressive, or libertarian? What are their proposals on specific issues? Are they ideologically flexible, willing and able to make pragmatic compromises, or are they an uncompromising radical?

There is more, but I think most features can fit into one of those four categories. I feel as if most voters most of the time rely too heavily on the fourth feature, ideology, and use political party as a marker for ideology. In fact many voters just vote for their team, leaving a relatively small percentage of “swing voters” to decide elections (in those regions where one party does not have a lock). This is unfortunate. This can short-circuit the voter feedback loop. It also means that many elections are determined during the primary, which tend to produce more radical candidates, especially in winner-take-all elections.

It seems to me, having closely followed politics for decades, that in the past voters would primarily consider ideology, but the other features had a floor. If a politician demonstrated a critical lack of competence, experience, or morality that would be disqualifying. What seems to be the case now (not entirely, but clearly more so) is that the electorate is more “polarized”, which functionally means they vote based on the team (not even really ideology as much), and there is no apparent floor when it comes to the other features. This is a very bad thing for American politics. If politicians do not pay a political price for moral turpitude, stupidity or recklessness, then they will adjust their algorithm of behavior accordingly. If voters reward team players above all else, then that is what we will get.

We need to demand more from the system, and we need to push for reform to make the system work better. But we also have to take responsibility for how we vote and to more fully realize what our voting patterns will produce. The system is not absolved of responsibility, but neither are the voters.

The post The Politicians We Deserve first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

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