The Political Science Interpretivist

    With the right "Alignment," AI can become a Leader in the Values Revolution. But AI Alignment will fail if we ignore the 35,000-year-old Human "Bug." If you are concerned about AI Ethics and Safety , and about AI governance policy , then you probably know that the AI industry is obsessed with Alignment. We are trying to align Artificial Intelligence with "human values." But as I argue in my book, The Human Birth Defect , we are overlooking a catastrophic hardware-software mismatch in our own species. 🧠 The Hardware Failure (150,000 Years Ago): The mutation that gave us our "Big Brain" created a genetic deficit in contentment producing chemicals. We were born into a state of chronic existential restlessness. 🏹 The Software Patch (35,000 Years Ago): The "Genocidal Thrill" of the Neanderthal encounter and the subsequent slaughter  of the Great Megafauna provided the brain with its first "chemical high." This ...

    Introduction Chapter One: David Easton is an Interpretivist Chapter Two: The First Behavioral Political System - An Origins Story Chapter Three: What is the Good Political System? Chapter Four: China - Assessing the Operational Goodness of the Chinese Political System Chapter Five: David Easton’s Plan for Organizing the Political Science Profession Conclusion: An Exciting Future of Research BOOK SUMMARY This book shows how to make Political Science relevant to any government’s policy making process. That begins with defining,  for the first time ever , what makes a “good political system.” David Easton’s well known theory of the political system is descriptive; that is, it tells us what the elements of a political system are: input, conversion, output, and feedback, in a political environment. Now, that description has been transformed into a specific standard for assessing a functioning political system’s Operational Goodness. An engineer can assess...

The Democratic Party is Responsible for the Election of Trump 1) In the 90s they started Globalization. Like Ross Perot warned, millions of jobs were lost, leaving millions of angry ex-workers. 2) No help was given them. The Bill Clinton administration could have enacted something like the GI Bill after WWII. Instead, those out of work were left to smolder for nearly 20 years, while the Dem Billionaires got richer. 3)   Then came the 2008 crash with all its too easy to get mortgages. The Obama Dems didn't do one thing to help folks avoid foreclosure, or help after they lost their home. Instead, the Bank Bailout, passed under Bush, was implemented under Obama. Out of this came a whole lot more angry people. 4) Then the Dems cheated us out of Bernie’s candidacy in 2016. Polls showed he could have beaten Trump. This is because he spoke to those Victims of Globalization and Bankster Fraud who had become a voting block. 5) Hillary Clinton didn’t acknowledge those folks. But Trump promis...

Karl Marx was the first Democratic Socialist.  As the election of Zohran Mamdani shows, Democratic Socialism includes the belief that socialism can be realized through democratic processes , and that where this can be done No Violence is needed. Karl Marx declared over 150 years ago that “there are countries, such as America and England … where the workers may attain their goal by peaceful means.” [1] And, ironically, in a New York City newspaper, the New York World, published on July 18, 1871, Marx said “the way to show political power [in Britain] lies open to the working class. Insurrection would be madness where peaceful agitation would more swiftly and surely do the work.” [2] Then, as if prophetically describing our own times, Marx observed, “Let us sum it all up in a word. The working classes remain poor amid the increase of wealth, wretched amid the increase of luxury. Their material privation dwarfs their moral as well as their physical stature. They cannot rely on othe...

Let Google AI Answer that Question with its Own Book Review: The main argument of William J. Kelleher's book,  Normative Political Science: An Exciting New Way to Do Poli Sci Research,  is that it is possible to scientifically measure the "operational goodness" of a political system. Rather than relying on subjective moral philosophy, Kelleher proposes a method that combines two established theories to provide an objective, data-driven evaluation.  Key components of the argument 1. Integration of established theories Kelleher's methodology is based on two frameworks: David Easton's Systems Theory: This theory conceptualizes a political system in terms of inputs, processes, and outputs. The system converts demands and support from the public into policies and decisions. Kelleher uses this as a "blueprint" for a political system. Robert S. Hartman's Value Science: This formal axiology provides a framework for meas...

How does it feel to live in a time when no one is stopping a genocide? That’s the question Omar El Akkad addresses in his new book,  One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. This book can be called a "personal memoir," as some reviewers have done, but not in a dismissive way. The author is sharing his consciousness, like in an intimate diary. He speaks to the reader as a recently naturalized citizen of the US, and as an immigrant from the Middle East (born in Egypt). He tells us about his personal experience of being baffled over how people in the West, especially in the US, can fancy themselves as exemplars of righteousness, and even supporters of the underdog, while letting their government supply a genocide. He shares his befuddlement without preaching at us. This is not a noisy protest. He doesn't rail against Israel's astonishing cruelty, nor chide the US for its complicity, but rather describes his personal experience as a person living in a world w...

Why did Prop 33 lose in California? Here are three reasons, although there could be more:  1) Out of state billionaire real estate special interests, combined with in-state millionaire Landlord orgs, spent over $121,000,000 on telling scary falsehoods to Californians. Like, rent control will cause rents to go up, and affordable housing will disappear. They just needed to cause enough confusion about the meaning of Prop 33 to get the voters – even tenants! – to vote no.   2) As I explain in a vid on YouTube,* the California Legislative Analyst presented a biased and negative summary of Prop 33 in the Voter Guide. That was sent out to 22M Californians. For many voters, it was the one and only thing they would read about Prop 33. The law requires the Legislative Analyst to suggest the economic impact of a prop for both state and local gov – but only a negative view was given, and only for the state gov – “tens of millions” would be lost in tax revenues, it said. But renters w...

Who’d a Thunk it?                                                                A Revolution is being proposed on our California Ballot. Under the unassuming, even boring, label “Measure G,” over 100 years of LA County government structure may be overthrown. A “yes” vote will add a new Chief Executive, to be elected by the People of LA County. This official will have a lot of power to make the operations more effective and efficient. For example, the “County Executive” will have a line item veto over the budget. It’ll have hiring and firing power over some top jobs with the County. (But the Sheriff, District Attorney, and Tax Assessor will remain elected County-wide.) A “yes” vote will also add 4 New Members to the current 5 person Board of Supervisors. BTW, they are all women now. The Board was first created in 1852, t...

For social science, as for law, the concept of “causation” can  take on different forms. These forms of causation are “outside   the box” of the old Newtonian concept of causation. That is, a   one-on-one collision. For example, the “8 ball” in a pool game moved to the corner pocket because the cue ball struck it at the intended angle. The cue ball did that because Minnesota Fats hit the cue ball just right with his pool stick. This is a mechanistic model of causation. In that model, the list of causes prior to Minnesota Fats could go back endlessly; or at least to the Big Bang of 13.8 billion years ago, which, mechanistically, is thought to be the First Cause of everything. However, for the most part, social science, like law, envisions human behavior as conduct for which the actors are responsible. This need not be a “moral” responsibility, for which moral blame is attached. Instead, “causal responsibility” is simply a matter-of-fact, or practical, concept...

The folks at Good Authority aren’t too good at posting contrary views in the Comments section. Guess they feel it would undermine their “authority”! Andrew Rudalevige’s essay at Good Authority has some serious flaws; that is if US v Trump is to be clearly understood by political scientists, so they can explain it to their classes.   First, the very title is a blunder. He writes, “The Supreme Court’s immunity decision sidesteps history.” In fact, the Opinion follows, and draws “good authority” from, the 1803 case of Marbury v Madison. One of the things Chief Justice John Marshal wrote in Marbury is that there are two kinds of official government acts: discretionary and ministerial. He said the courts cannot question discretionary acts made by an official, because these are a matter of professional judgment. The Robert’s Opinion follows this principle of immunity, but re-states it in the more modern language of “official,” with a “core” and periphery, and “unofficial.” (More on this ...

                                           The media and fund raising emailers are having a ball screaming “the sky is falling! The Trump Supreme Court has given Trump ‘absolute immunity’ for whatever he wants to do as President. He’ll kill us all!” But that’s far from true. The United States v Trump The case is known as US v Trump . In its opinion, the Supreme Court didn’t give Trump anything. In fact, the Court remanded the case to the District Court, and told the lawyers for both sides to start all over again. This time, they have to consider three important points. Before explaining these, lets see how the case got to the High Court. As you probably know, Trump was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury for several criminal charges alleging a conspiracy to change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. (SCt's Opinion, page 2. All references to the Opinion.) In the...

  Bill Maher thought he was being funny when he vilified student protestors in a recent show . But he was actually doing the whole of humanity a great disservice. I gave a much more accurate and empathic account of the main motivation of these protesters in a prior post on this blog entitled The Psychology of the Student Protests . As an Interpretive political scientist, I observe that the cause of, or reason for, those protests is the strong sense of  compassion  in the students for their fellow human beings in Gaza who are suffering deeply from the merciless slaughter of their family members, friends, and neighbors. There are many issues involved in making this observation, which I addressed in my other post on the subject. I noted that the students have erected those “encampments” as an expression of their shared feeling of urgency that the killing and suffering in Gaza be stopped now. With over a million viewers, Maher could have helped to reduce the widesprea...