Surprise Bias

Our educational institutions oppose discrimination, but are they unbiased?
A group of researchers ran this interesting field experiment. 

As supposed students, they emailed 6,500 professors at 250 top schools. They wrote saying, I really admire your work. Would you have some time to meet? 

The messages to the faculty were all identical, but the names of the students were all different.  Names like Brad Anderson. Meredith Roberts. Lamar Washington. LaToya Brown. Juanita Martinez. Deepak Patel, Sonali Desai, Chang Wong, Mei Chen.   Obvious gender and ethnic name differences, these were the only variants in the otherwise identical correspondence.

A review of the results is interesting.  For positive responses from professors in the business field, white male identities were at the top with a 25 percentage point gap above female and ethnic minority identities.  The same trend was visible for each academic discipline.  

Keep in mind, these are the top-of-their-field professors at the most respected institutions where equality and diversity are strongly supported and vigorously pursued.  Such bias is perhaps more pronounced in the general population. 

Numerous inquiries, both rigorously scientific and anecdotal/informal, show the same perhaps subconscious bias in culture, even among liberals.

One recent recounting from the business world has two co-workers, one male and one female, swap names on their email correspondence with customers to see if it makes a difference.  The degree of respect and agreement given the male signature was extraordinarily higher than that granted the female.  To the supposed female service provider, customer correspondence was commonly condescending, distrustful, and disrespectful, the visible opposite of what was the norm for the male.  The customer behavior was tied specifically to the male or female signature even when they switched back and forth between the two workers.

Many women in the business world have changed their official signature to just initials for first and middle name.  Why might that be? 

Examples of such deeply embedded bias are visible in every venue, and to a greater or lesser degree, we're all participants.  How do we minimize the harm done?

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Anthropologist Dan Grunspan was studying the habits of undergraduates when he noticed an unexpected trend:  male students assumed their male classmates knew more than female students - even if the women earned better grades.

Grunspan and his colleagues at the University of Washington and elsewhere decided to quantify the degree of this gender bias in the classroom.

After surveying roughly 1,700 students, they found male students consistently gave each other more credit than they awarded to their just-as-savvy female classmates.

Men over-ranked their peers by three-quarters of a GPA point, according to the study published in the journal PLOS ONE. In other words, if Johnny and Susie both had A's, they’d receive equal applause from female students - but Susie would register as a B student in the eyes of her male peers, and Johnny would look like a rock star.

From the journal:  "Female college students are more likely to abandon studies in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines than their male classmates, and new research from the University of Washington suggests that their male peers may play a key role in undermining their confidence. ...  Researchers estimate that gender bias among male students was 19 times stronger than among females."

“Something under the conscious is going on,” Grunspan said. “For 18 years, these [young men] have been socialized to have this bias.”

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We enslaved, we waged wars, we oppressed.  When we identified the injustice, we labored to end it all.  After decades of progress in law, the bias persists.

Racial, ethnic, and gender biases are deeply rooted issues that are generally unaddressed in current equality discussions.  We know the bias exists, but our understanding of why is incomplete.  Is it ignorance or perhaps a remnant of some natural (animal) trait that we as humans hope to rise above?  Is it deliberate?  Or a failure of conscience?  

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The impact of bias can be wickedly unjust, a limit to life, to happiness, to learning, to self-respect, to a chance at the one thing you most desire, for you and your children and your children's children.

Mandate: I change.  Okay, now I'm doing my best to think more clearly, but the world is the same.

  Corollary: Change the world you can reach.  Challenge the bias, pull down the walls, disrupt the norm, shine light in the dark places, .... 😉

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So a young lady we know tells the following classroom story ...

     "Street Safe instructor: Girls don't know as much about about operating machines... 
10 minutes later...
     Street Safe instructor: How many of you would speak up when a driver is distracted or driving recklessly?
     Me: Girls shouldn't say anything because they don't know as much about operating machines.
          Random dude in the front row stands up and starts clapping. 😁"

Well done, young friend.  

No problem!

Discussions of our impact on the environment are not new.  We discovered early on that we could poison the air in our cities.  We discovered spikes in the rate of cancers and a long list of respiratory problems associated with pollution. We found long-term health problems from factory products that invaded every community, even every home.  Asbestos and lead paint are the ones that most people remember.  Lead contamination of the water supply has resurfaced recently as a health problem for one city.  Air pollution is still with us.

Pumping fluids out of the ground can have an impact.  Still a relatively complex discussion, but ongoing.  Update 04/2018: Jakarta, the world's fastest sinking city ...

My personal favorite, we've discovered that about 93% of the excess heat in our environment since 1970 got absorbed by the ocean.  The ocean is now beginning to change, and the changes will persist for centuries.  The currents that bring us our stable climate will move, the biologics that feed us will change, the reefs that support and defend us will change.  It's happening rather quickly compared to such changes in the past.

Suggesting that human activity has nothing to do with what we see ... I'm always surprised when I hear that premise.  Human impact, virtually insignificant in 1700, is now the single most significant impact element within our global systems.

• Humans annually absorb 42% of the Earth’s terrestrial net primary productivity, 30% of its marine net primary productivity, and 50% of its fresh water.*
• Now, 40% of the planet’s land is devoted to human food production, up from 7% in 1700.*
• Fifty percent of the planet’s land has been transformed for human use.*

*Vitousek, P. M., H. A. Mooney, J. Lubchenco, and J. M. Melillo. 1997. Human Domination of Earth's Ecosystems. Science 277 (5325): 494–499; Pimm, S. L. 2001. The World According to Pimm: a Scientist Audits the Earth. McGraw-Hill, NY; The Guardian. 2005. Earth is All Out of New Farmland. December 7, 2005.

• Equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster fifty times over, continuing oil spillage in the Gulf of Guinea has cost millions their livelihood, their communities, and their water.  It's been going on, the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez every year, for fifty years.  If it ever stops, recovery will take centuries.
• Pelagics (tuna and the like) are now at risk from pollution and rampant illegal overfishing.  Total adult biomass summed across all monitored pelagic populations has declined globally by 52.2% from 1954 to 2006.  Regions like the Gulf of Guinea have seen 90% decline in marine populations bringing malnutrition and starvation among indigenous fishing communities.*

* Maria José Juan-Jordá, Iago Mosqueirad, Andrew B. Cooperf, Juan Freirea, and Nicholas K. Dulvyc, Grupo de Recursos Marinos y Pesquerías, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de A Coruña, 15009 A Coruña, Spain; Earth to Ocean Research Group, Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada; Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft Laboratory, Lowestoft, United Kingdom; European Commission, Joint Research Center, Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen/Maritime Affairs Unit; School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada - Global population trajectories of tunas and their relatives

You might appreciate the recent U.S. GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH PROGRAM - CLIMATE SCIENCE SPECIAL REPORT (CSSR) (Draft).   It's a good summary of recent research.

The Broadcast

Before a word is spoken, we've said volumes. 
(~ provoked by a recent conversation among younger folks)

We often assign great significance to the words we say and much less to everything else. Most of what we convey is nonverbal, though, as we broadcast a wealth of information about ourselves. There are facial expressions and gestures, tone and pace, posture and dress, focus and engagement; they all speak volumes straight from our soul, and we're perhaps unaware of how much we've revealed. 

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To flesh out the context a bit, remember the last angry person you saw, or the person who is frustrated with your not meeting their expectations. Or picture the one who flaunts their wealth and privilege.

The cover of a book written
for teen audiences

Think of the one who exaggerates their appearance, doing their best to look physically appealing or available.  None of those memories require us to review the words they spoke. Each expresses a measure of health or brokenness, virtue or its absence. We see and are aware of such traits independent of any verbal content.

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Little that we say is remembered by anyone.  That's painfully true, but the persona we broadcast is memorable to all; it's their take-away, their mental record.  While non-verbal communication is wonderfully imperfect and incomplete, it's still worth noting that we have indeed spoken volumes.  We've spoken by the opportunity we took to listen, by the patience we invested in hearing, the grace we offered via expression, the kindness we gave by gentle tone and unhurried pace, the encouragement we offered by interest and inquiry, ... and the respect we demonstrated by appropriate attire. The way we dress; that's the subject that popped up in a recent conversation.

At the Rio Olympics - Italy vs. Egypt

 - can you spot any cultural difference?

Young folks today discussing 'modesty' in their manner of dress ... are they talking about the same thing the early church was dealing with? Perhaps, but probably not.  Biblical references were mostly addressing fancy excess while today we're dealing with overt sensuality.  Those are cultural as well as character questions that challenge us.

We all struggle with such issues, of course.  We want to live in a manner that doesn't trouble our conscience.  The often unasked question, what statement do we hope to make?

Before a word is spoken, we speak volumes; apart from what we say, we send our message. Modesty in how we dress is perhaps more helpfully understood as just a part of that larger broadcast.

There's a long list of virtues we're encouraged to understand and develop as part of our identity, our character, our 'broadcast' to the world. "Let your light so shine ...." 　 How do we get that one right?

The deep, dark ...

Among the things we know the least about -- the deep, dark ocean depths.  Important but missing pieces of our understanding will be found there, at least for scientists.

Deep ocean currents are simplistically understood, but we've never been there. Ocean currents circle the globe and deep segments take centuries to finish the trip.  They move more than just water - the energy transfer by ocean currents is greater than all the wind and storms and heat absorbed by the atmosphere.

Recent discussions about climate change have focused on atmospherics and greenhouse gas accumulations with associated temperature change, but ... the oceans absorb much more energy than the air does.


Around 90% of excess (over-balance) heat from recent decades is now stored in the ocean.  Around 60% of it settled in the upper ocean, the top 700 meters or so.  Another 30% resides much deeper.  "Though the atmosphere has been spared from the full extent of global warming for now, heat already stored in the ocean will eventually be released, committing Earth to additional warming in the future." (ref)

The problematic part is that ocean currents are mechanical constructs, they are energy-driven conveyer belts that happen to stabilize our climate.  Now, though, their patterns and rates will change as the currents adjust to additional (over-balance) energy.  Notice how currents carry the climate to northern Europe and to Central and North America, and from the western Pacific and Indian Ocean down to Antarctica.  Climate is beginning to reflect the newly energized conveyer belt and we'll have to adapt.  Crops will need to be altered eventually, energy needs will change, and the rules for life will adjust.

While the doom-cryers warn of drought and melting ice, we can expect the ocean scientists to bring us some missing pieces, perhaps soon.

The newly deployed Deep ARGO sensor suite can, now for the first time, reach the ocean floor.  A clever fleet of automated devices, they descend and measure along the way, drifting with the currents, then once a month, they surface and report their data.

We've known for some time that the deep ocean is changing, but the data on temperature and chemistry is sparse.  The information emerging, particularly from Deep Argo, will broaden our understanding of what is actually happening.

While there is much discussion about global warming's cause, the important reality is perhaps in front of us.  Heat energy added to our oceans now affects us.  Heat conveyed from the warmest zones will melt polar ice and will warm the glacial land regions.  Rain patterns will change.  Forests will migrate, and arable regions will morph.  There's no comprehensive model yet to tell us where the changes will be most significant, only that it is on the table to be addressed, and that our children and grandchildren will see the effects which, once begun, will persist for centuries..

While we live our high-speed, short-attention-span lives with wind and weather in view, the greatest energy accumulation will continue to be in the oceans, and the greatest effect on climate will be driven from there.  It won't happen overnight, but it will happen over decades, perhaps just a few.

We dump about 14 billion pounds of trash - most of it plastic - in the ocean every year. Industrial, agricultural, roadway and residential runoff have changed the ocean's chemistry.  About 1.2 million barrels of oil are spilled into the ocean each year from pipelines and transport vessels.  Such things along with the 90% of over-balance heat don't just disappear.  The balance of life, heat, and motion in the oceans has changed, and we will live with the effects for centuries.  I expect the oceans will be the finale to our inquiry.  Reasonable discussion regarding objective facts will help, of course.

The American Experiment - Unique and Improbable

Only half of the Mayflower’s passengers and crew survived

 to see their first New England spring.

Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened by malnutrition and

illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees,

catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants.  He

helped forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local

tribe, which would endure for more than 50 years

and tragically remains one of the sole examples

of harmony between European colonists and

 Native Americans.

In early America, we'd had enough of empires and oppression, and in the new land we saw a doorway to liberty.  We imagined a life far away from kings and their appointees where we could live and plant and harvest, where we could be a community that wasn't ruled by an elite who caged us and lived like leeches off our labor.  That was our hope, anyway.

Too, there were many who came to the new world who'd had enough of religious rule.  That hierarchy had merged with national governments and ruled with a heavy hand.  The brilliant light of God's grace had been pushed back behind ancient walls of stone, so His followers left as pilgrims, as refugees, fleeing to a new life in a new land.  That was our hope, too.

The American experiment - it was an attempt to merge it all into a new nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to equality.  That's why we've fought so hard for so long, that this nation, under God, would be free, and that government would be of, by, and for the people.

For God and country.  We hoped those two would merge into a place of peace, justice, and a good life for us and our children.  The years have been filled with a tension, however, that continues unresolved.

"Augustine is suspicious of the kingdom of man because it is ultimately an endeavor by fallen humans to dominate and conquer one another, as Scripture shows we are wont to do. 

Yet it is difficult to miss the virtue in the American experiment – a father at last knowing the joy and dignity of self-employment, an immigrant settling into a safe neighborhood where her children attend a good school, a sharecropper’s grandson earning his graduate degree. I suspect I am not alone in the ability to rattle off such stories with ease. I suspect that many brothers and sisters in Christ also join me in finding much to admire in the courage and tenacity of General Washington’s citizen soldiers as they froze at Valley Forge or in Rosa Parks’s firm stand against segregation on a Montgomery bus, or in the text of the Declaration of Independence or other founding documents. 

But to a citizen, these are more than just stories. In the same way that the gospels manifest the values of the Kingdom of God to its citizens, these stories carry the values of an American citizen, of a patriot."   ~ Albert Gustafson

For good and for ill, every nation presents its citizens with a set of stories, but not every story is noble.  

Remembered less often, from Manifest Destiny and the Trail of Tears to Abolition and the Civil War, the ideology of racial dominance was as common in the pulpit as it was in Congress and the press.  We were repeatedly told our superiority was real.

Today, conservative and liberal agendas are similarly politicized, weaponized rather than resolved.  Much remains in our national thinking that falls far short of what is good and right.  

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We would not expect a ravenous Wall Street player to be thoughtfully focused on the needs of individuals at the bottom of the ladder. Similarly, we cannot expect nations focused on financial dominance, as most are today, to do anything but strive for economic advantage at every level, within and across borders and with little regard for collateral damage.   

It's perhaps delusional to expect a nation to be uncorrupted by power and wealth, and it is equally naive to expect ethical objectivity in the stories it offers.  If we find ourselves agreeing with the commercial news media, the political headline, the simplistic statements of politicians, chances are we're parroting the ideology rather than the principles.  That's the kingdom of mankind.

There is indeed a light that shines, a nobility of heart and life that rises far above such things. An example, we're told, is perhaps most visible in the openness and acceptance of little children.  There's more beyond that simple beginning, of course, but we should remember that a life shaped by wealth, where achievement is defined by having and winning, such a life lacks most if not all that's offered by our Father.  

None remain unaffected.  But our goal is visible, and though the way crosses hostile territory, it can be reached.


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Furious Freedom, there's more to the story.
Issues: family, equality, discrimination, favoritism, influence by wealth, corruption, abusive labor practices, fair trade, poverty, fair wages, opportunity, affordable and quality education, healthcare, crime and incarceration, refugees, immigrants, the finance industry, the GAP, propaganda and polarization, extractive economics, human ecological and environmental impact, materialism, corporate greed, globalization, the sanctity of life, ... more?

Values: truth, fairness, a place for all, freedom from harmful government and businesses, ethical clarity ... more?

Toppers

When you're at the top, you see yourself and others through the lens of personal normalcy. I'm normal, but those down there ... they're not.

Toppers commonly minimize the privilege and favor they've enjoyed; they presume they've earned and fully deserve their comfortable lives.

Toppers in western culture are likely to look down on the less privileged as less diligent, less willing to work.

An objective analysis reveals that those at the top are not more intelligent or hardworking than normal folks. They are privileged, though, and tend to be ethically ambiguous. (ref)(ref)

Toppers rarely understand how little they have in common with 90% of humanity, the normal folks.

Normal folks in the world today live quite simply on perhaps $3000 per person/year or less. Many live on less.  Most don't have savings for college or for old age. Or air conditioning.  In the U.S., 20% of our own children live in poverty and most are trapped there, just like their parents and grandparents were.

Toppers live on perhaps $25,000 per year per person or more. Or much more. They have more than they need ... and they need not pray, "give us this day, bread."  There has always been that problem with wealth. It can cloud principles, warp reality, and obscure the pathway we perhaps should follow.

Wealth makes life easier in some regards and harder in others.  It doesn't, by itself, make us happy.  (link: a multi-factor Pew Research Center report on life and happiness)

Regarding modern thinking about wealth and its place in the definition of a good life, “The character at the heart of 20th century economics presents a pitiful portrait of humanity ... But human nature is far richer than this.”  Professor Kate Raworth is a Senior Visiting Research Associate and lecturer at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute.

National GDP is a measure, but of what?  Is it of national integrity, of justice, of a healthy nation?  We might need to change our thinking and the way we live. It may sound corny, but we are all better off when everyone is better off.  Imagine what that might look like, where everyone had at least enough; a healthy diet, a safe neighborhood, a good education, and opportunity to grow.

Perhaps the most difficult question we face ... am I perhaps like that rich young ruler/politician who walked away sad ... ?


What's next?
Most Powerful Good
Helping Without Hurting
Breaking Gridlock