I’ve written about the Myers-Briggs (MBTI) personality test in this blog in the past here, and in two parts here and here. As such, this post assumes you have a basic knowledge of MBTI theory. If you’re not familiar with MBTI tests, that post is a decent place to start.)

I’ve read a large number of books about MBTI personality theory, mostly on the Keirsey variant championed by psychologist David Keirsey. (I’m starting to think I should start my own book club or something.) I’ve read hundreds of emails on the INFJ (a particular MBTI type) mailing list. And I even went as far as to take the MBTI Step II test at my own expense. I’m both interested in and a fan of MBTI testing in general.

But something’s always bothered me about it. In the first paragraph of my first post on MBTI I said, “…most of the [personality] tests seemed like pseudoscience gobbledygook to me…so for years I never paid them any mind.” Ever since then I’ve always had my doubts on how accurate and reliable personality tests were. After much reading and deliberation, I eventually settled on MBTI as being the best, but even then, I only accepted the Keirsey temperament version of the test.

And almost from the get-go, I mostly only spoke about Keirsey’s four main temperaments - “Artisans”, “Guardians”, “Idealists”, and “Rationals” - as opposed to the full 16-type treatment. Four dimensions of 16 personality types, to me, has always seemed way too specific for something as malleable and vague as someone’s personality.

Fortunately, if you read Keirsey’s website (and his books), he seems to feel much the same way I do. On his site, the first thing you’ll probably see is a succinct summary of his four temperaments. And here’s a quote from Keirsey himself in “Please Understand Me II”, the updated version of his seminal book on temperament theory: “I soon found it convenient and useful to partition Myers’s sixteen types into four groups…” I’m more inclined to agree with him and the four types he saw (”Artisans”, “Guardians”, “Idealists”, and “Rationals”) rather than with Myers’s four types (which are somewhat different).

For those who don’t already know, Keirsey’s four types are easily explained by example. Here’s what I wrote on this topic earlier (”People Patterns” being an introductory book on temperament theory):

“The best example in ‘People Patterns’ is from The Wizard of Oz. The Cowardly Lion is the Artisan looking for courage, Dorothy is the Guardian looking to go home, the Tin Man is an Idealist looking for a heart, and the Scarecrow is a Rational looking for a brain. Whichever character you identify with most (if any) is probably your Keirsey temperament.

If you need a more contemporary example, you can use the houses in Harry Potter. Slytherin are Artisans, Hufflepuff are Guardians, Gryffindor are Idealists, and Ravenclaw are Rationals.”

And thus those are the four basic personality temperaments. (Unless you think “The Wizard of Oz” is secretly about William Jennings Bryan or something.) You’ll notice that Keirsey (as well as Myers and Briggs) studiously avoids any perjorative judgments about personality types in most of his writings. They are all usually described in neutral or even optimistic terms. This is because MBTI theory is more of a tool for personal exploration than evaluation. Also, I think having negative claims about certain personality types is both presumptuous and counter-productive. (I think Keirsey would agree.)

However, are personality tests like horoscopes, then? Are MBTI personality types so vague and optimistic that they suffer from the “Forer effect”? (The Forer effect is the semi-well-known phenomenon of people tending to identify with vague generalities if for some reason they believe these generalities apply specifically to them, especially if these things are positive.)

In my experience with MBTI tests this hasn’t been true. I feel pretty strongly about being a “Rational” and reading about the other types just reinforces this in my mind. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

“Skeptics criticize the terminology of the MBTI as being so vague as to allow any kind of behavior to fit any personality type, resulting in the Forer effect, where an individual gives a high rating to a positive description that supposedly applies specifically to them[22][23]. However, the descriptions offered for the 16 psychological types are often quite detailed and specific, unlike the ‘vague and general personality descriptions’[28] that characterize the Forer effect. For example, David Keirsey[29] examined how the four temperaments differ in terms of language use, intellectual orientation, educational and vocational interests, social orientation, self image, personal values, social roles and even characteristic hand gestures. Keirsey went on to describe the hierarchy of intellectual roles played by each of the four types within each temperament, resulting in sixteen unique descriptions which, unlike the Forer effect, rely not on the universal traits that make human beings the same, but on the specific traits that make human beings different from one another.”

What do people who take the test (other than me) have to say about it, then? From the same Wikipedia article:

“When people are asked to compare their preferred type to that assigned by the MBTI, only half of people pick the same profile.[26] Critics also argue that the MBTI lacks falsifiability, which can cause confirmation bias in the interpretation of results.”

That’s not a great statistic. However, that’s for people testing for the same 4-letter type as before (i.e. one of the 16 personality types). My argument, though, is that 16 types is too many. More on that later. As for confirmation bias, that’s a common criticism, and one not easily dismissed.

Confirmation bias is the simple idea that we are much more likely to observe and pick out evidence supporting our views rather than evidence that suggests otherwise. And it’s pervasive. One particularly compelling book about confirmation bias is Nassim Taleb’s “The Black Swan” (and, to a lesser extent, his other book “Fooled by Randomness”). One of the biggest themes of “The Black Swan” is that confirmation bias is harmful and widespread.

It’s obvious I take Taleb seriously since I wrote a post on his book and I include him in my sidebar. My response to him, in the case of personality tests, would be that I, like many others, am often a victim of confirmation bias. But I’m aware of that fact and I try to stay vigilant. The fact that MBTI theory usually never strays into pejorative territory will always make its personality profiles prone to confirmation bias (since you’re always much more likely to identify with neutral and positive statements about yourself). However, as I’ve said, I think the benefits of this approach outweigh the negatives, especially if you’re on watch for confirmation bias. (Is this statement itself a product of confirmation bias? Wait, that’s too skeptical even for me…)

I should also mention that the MBTI test is boolean, or as they call it in the jargon, “modal”. That means each question on MBTI tests has only 2 answers, each of which tests one of the four dimensions of personality. While this approach often feels constricting and forced (it doesn’t allow for shades of gray on particular questions), modal tests should suffer less from the Forer effect, since they force you into clear yes-and-no answers.

There’s something about the MBTI test that concerns me even more than confirmation bias, though. Since this post is getting a bit lengthy, I’ll cover that next time. Stay tuned!

But Wordles are something new: highly customizable tag clouds. Many Eyes already has tag cloud functionality, of course; I was an especially big fan of their tag cloud comparsion tool. But tag clouds don’t have the best reputation. Some people outright hate them. And the people at Many Eyes admit they’re a bit of a “toy”. (A toy for nerds, anyway.) Why bother adding another tag cloud tool, then?

Here’s what Many Eyes has to say about the issue: “People have reported finding value beyond entertainment in creating these word clouds. Teachers have used Wordles in classrooms as conversation catalysts; others have created them to express their identities, and scholars have used them to visualize the output of statistical explorations of texts.” So obviously they’re novel at visualization. Let’s look a little deeper, though.

One thing you can use Wordles for is to analyze texts you’re already familiar with. In fact, I thought you could use them as a sort of “Cliffs Notes” for blog posts. To test this idea, I took four sample posts of mine (1, 2, 3, and 4) and made Wordles of all of them: 1, 2, 3, and 4.

If you want to experiment along with me, feel free to read those posts first, if you haven’t. Then, try looking at each of those visualizations and seeing how well they summarize those posts. Alternately, you could try just looking at my Wordles first and see how they do (especially if you’ve already read them). I’ll give you a short break here, if you need it.

INTERMISSION

Back to our regularly scheduled programming. Personally I found Wordles worked fairly well as an “emotional Cliffs Notes” for a post. I’m not sure you get a lot of analytical content out of these things, but it seems like the major concepts and the overall “feel” of a post are conveyed quite well by a Wordle. If a picture is worth a thousand words, I’d say a Wordle is worth a few hundred. Wordles definitely hit the highlights of jargon-heavy posts like 1. They also did a good job at giving you the gist of new technology posts like 2, which are often highly focused. Lastly, I think Wordles captured the feel of cuter, human-interest style posts like 3 and 4 quite well.

I don’t know if I could tell you exactly what a blog post was about after seeing a Wordle for it, but I could probably tell you the major concepts and how important they were, relatively speaking, and I’d also probably have a rough idea about the post’s topic. Seems like a good thing to look at just before or just after reading a post proper, either to prepare you beforehand or reinforce what you’ve just seen. Wordles are kind of like an artistic way of taking notes, I guess.

Of course, I wrote all those posts, so perhaps my objectivity is lacking. Maybe I already knew those posts too well to give an accurate account of what Wordles can do. To account for this, I decided to make a Wordle for something I knew intimately (but didn’t write) and a Wordle for something I only had a vague idea about to compare.

For something I knew intimately, I used Lady Van Tassel’s ending monologue from the climax of the movie “Sleepy Hollow” (directed by Tim Burton). I don’t quite know why, but I’m semi-obsessed with this movie. Actually, I probably do know. After several years, I figured out the movie involved an almost stereotypical love story between - in MBTI personality theory terms - a Rational (Ichabod Crane) and an Idealist (Katrina Van Tassel). (Also, I love the science/religion dichotomy and Tim Burton in general, too.) If you want some background on MBTI theory, feel free to check out my post about it here.

The main point, though, is that I know “Sleepy Hollow” well. I know it so well that after the third or fourth viewing (I’ve seen the movie over 20 times) I found a plot hole shortly after the monologue in question, which I found out was fixed in the original script, but was later changed for reasons I can’t understand. (The idea that Lady Van Tassel can, without explanation, return to Sleepy Hollow and collect her inheritance after every other heir has died and she herself was presumed dead is totally preposterous. So much for her plan. It’s not obvious the first time you watch it, though.)

As for something I knew less well, I used Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” speech. Lyndon Johnson’s been on my mind ever since I started playing the excellent board game Making the President, which simulates the 1960 presidential election between Kennedy and Nixon. (Johnson, of course, was Kennedy’s vice president.) Knowing roughly what the “Great Society” was, I had the vaguest idea what the speech was about, but it’s nothing I really studied.

I made Wordles for both speeches here and here. Again, feel free to try this experiment along with me. (And leave a comment about your experience, if you’re so inclined.)

INTERMISSION

I must say, Wordles definitely gave me the gist of both posts and really conveyed the emotional content well. All the right words were really popping out, and whether I knew the content beforehand or not, the Wordles seemed to do the job admirably.

For example, you can easily see the most important happenings, names, and events in the Sleepy Hollow monologue. And in Lyndon Johnson’s speech, the biggest concepts and buzzwords really jump out at you. Word frequency, when done well, really does seem to work like an “emotional Cliffs Notes”.

Of course, you can make Wordles that focus more on style, at the expense of content. I purposely used only four distinct colors and horizontal orientations for words so that the words were as clear as possible. If you use different color shadings and orientations, everything gets a little harder to read, but it might look cooler. I also purposely chose a serif font so that the words would be spaced farther apart and be maximally clear. Normally, a sans-serif font is better to read online (as mentioned in that Wikipedia link) due to less on-screen clutter, but in the particular case of Wordles serifs appear to actually reduce the clutter, since words can appear anywhere in relation to each other, often near the serifs. I also chose the calm default colors, since they have a lot of contrast without being “loud”.

The customization is definitely something that can be a problem - you can easily make text that’s downright unreadable if you want. There’s some other issues I had with Wordles as well; I’ll admit that Many Eyes has definitely improved the uploading interface since the last time I used it (uploading is often one of the worst parts of these data-sharing websites), but still, I often found myself going back to the source to read the data I uploaded because it was hard to read on the site, and the interface was a bit clunky. And the uploading process is still not something “your Grandma could do”, in the words of the Data Basin folks. And though it’s a small thing, for some reason Wordle also gives you semi-random settings each time you make a Wordle. I’d much rather have it remember the settings I used last time, or at least have a default option or something.

The worst thing I found, though, was the showstopping Firefox 3 bug in the Wordle application. It will often, without warning, crash Firefox 3 upon loading. That’s bad. Especially since I have almost never had this happen on any other page in any recent release of Firefox. It’s happened to me at least 15-20 times, so I know it’s not a fluke. And it’s apparently happened to other people as well. I don’t know what’s causing this, but hopefully they fix it soon. (Wordle crashed Firefox the last time I made a visualization, actually. It caused me to lose part of this post. OK, deep breath, exhale. Deep breath, exhale… that’s better.)

But I don’t want to be too negative. I think Wordles are actually pretty cool, and if you use my method (I’m sure there are others) or some of the uses mentioned by Many Eyes, maybe they’re more than just “a self-described ‘toy’”. Obviously, the next logical step is tag cloud comparisons for Wordles, right? Well, actually, I’m not sure that’s the best idea.

In the meantime, feel free to check out this Google Tech Talk I came across. (I talked about Google Tech Talks in last week’s post.) It’s a class on Data Mining, taught by a Stanford professor at Google. Since he works there, he figured he’d just repeat the same lectures at Google (!) minus all the tests and such.

Anyway, it seems like a pretty cool class (if you’re into data mining, anyway) that goes over the basics of using R and various data mining concepts. For someone like me that could use some more exposure to this stuff, it seems like a Godsend. I already bought the book for the class and I plan to watch all the lectures and do the exercises when I can. Good times!

At some level, though, I realized the utility in it. I undertook to learn what I could, which was usually just their names along with some other odd fact here and there (”Burma’s main export is jute”, etc.). Some years later, in college, I found out much more about these countries through the wonders of “The Economist” magazine. (Not to be confused with “theeconomist.com”, which is a simple, odd little page dedicated to Alan Greenspan.) Despite its name, “The Economist” is about more than just economics - it’s most often about politics, actually, which is how Nelson Mandela got away with reading about world affairs for years when he was in jail.

Anyway, having some context and history lessons about different countries around the world really did wonders for my geography knowledge. Now I can tell you that Pakistan is to the Northwest of India, as well as having been a part of it in the past, and I can tell you that Lithuania is one of the three Baltic States in Northern Europe. My siblings and I are a quarter Lithuanian, and thus we have a sort of fascination with the country. Our unusual surname (”Younskevicius”) is an Anglicized Lithuanian last name. (It should probably be “Januskevicius” instead.) That means that, given its status as an odd American/Lithuanian hybrid, almost no one can ever say it right, which in turn has led our family to develop a number of unusual coping techniques. (”Younski”, “Y”, “YY”, and even “Young” - especially helpful for pizza delivery.)

However, every once in a long while, someone says our name perfectly. They often follow that with a question like, “Your name’s Lithuanian, right?” (Most people have no clue.) After I finish looking astonished, I usually nod my head. One person even informed me that all last names ending in “-ius” are Lithuanian. You can use that fun fact to surprise the next Lithuanian you might meet.

But enough about names. It’s merely my long-winded way of saying that geography never came easily to me, and that for the geographically-challenged out there reading this post, you have my sympathy.

Even I have my limits. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have always seemed a bit scary and hard to follow to me. I first came across GIS through reading the entire Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH), which was an intense and time-consuming process, to say the least. (I wrote about the experience of reading it here in an earlier post.)

In the OOH (how’s that for a fun acronym?) I read about people whose entire job was to use, analyze, and report using GIS. They’re called Geographic Information Specialists (also GIS, which is also different from this GIS, resulting in a spectacular case of acronym collision). They’re related to surveyors, cartographers, and photogrammetrists. By the way, I use photogrammetrists as my stock anecdote for jobs I read about in the OOH. They have a weird, technical-sounding name, and no one ever seems to know what they do. (Another great trivia question.)

I read up a bit on what you have to study and know to be a GIS and, frankly, it seemed a bit daunting even to my data nerd self. Since then I’ve had the job in the back of my mind, coming up every now and again when I heard snippets about them and the data they use. I’ve seen them at work in cool applications like Google Earth, but that was as far as it went.

Until today, when my long-time buddy Dan sent me this Youtube link. (Dan also helps with the technical aspects of the site, which is invaluable - thanks Dan!) That video is one of Google’s fascinating “tech talks”. (I just found out about them today.)

Anyway, the video is about getting people to share their research data, with a research project they’re developing called “Data Basin”. Data Basin is a site for uploading, sharing, visualizing, and commenting on GIS conservation-related data. You can read more about their goals here. Basically, they want to improve access to these data and make it easier to share and work with.

It’s an amicable goal. Having run this blog for over a year now, I already see how hard it can be to get at the data I want at times, even if it’s publicly available. Us “data vultures” can have it hard. Sometimes you have to pay for the data, sometimes you have to scrape to get it, and sometimes, well, you just can’t get the data at all.

Other sites like “Many Eyes” and “Swivel” have a similar goal to Data Basin and are also about sharing data. (I wrote about Swivel here and Many Eyes here and here.) The difference is that Data Basin is still in an alpha phase and is more highly specialized. That makes it an interesting contrast to the other data-sharing websites that are already live and have a greater diversity of data.

It also means I can’t upload any data to test and play with, as I normally would in situations like this. (”Learning by doing” is one of my mantras, as long-term readers of this blog already know.) The best you can do is take a tour of the site instead. However, in watching that Data Basin tech talk, I learned a number of other interesting things which piqued my interest. Having used other data-sharing websites, I knew what to look for, and a few questions came up in my mind as I watched.

The first thing I wondered is how easy the data would be to upload. I knew from using Many Eyes and Swivel that uploading data and getting it in the format you want can be a pain in the neck (to put it mildly). Sure enough, someone asked about this, and the presenters confirmed that the data upload is the “scariest” part of the site. (They even specifically named Many Eyes and Swivel as models to emulate.)

As they mention, Data Basin’s uploading tools are mostly geared toward their main partners in the Conservation Biology Institute. They mention, however, that they won’t consider themselves a success until the uploading tools are more user-friendly. Just accepting comma-separated value (CSV) files isn’t enough; you have to make it so “your grandma” can cut-and-paste data from Excel into the site and have it work. Anyway, I think it’s interesting hearing the Data Basin people talk about these concerns at such an early stage of development.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one intimidated by GIS data, either. One of the main presenters, a Ph.D-educated woman named Tasha, had the same problems. (I couldn’t find her bio online anywhere so I’m not going to try and spell her last name. Mine gets butchered enough, so I know the feeling.) She said that it took easy-to-use visualization tools like Data Basin for her to make some use out of GIS data, something she’d never done before. Thus, when the site goes live, maybe I’ll be able to use GIS data for something more than cursory curiosity (i.e. Google Earth). We’ll see.

I also learned a little about Data Basin’s developers, Rhiza Labs. Apparently one of their main aims is to implement a database under the Information Commons standard. (Check the second “external link” at the bottom of the page for an extremely thorough description of the idea, in PDF format.) Rhiza Labs, they said, is implementing a peer-to-peer version of this standard by creating a data storage cloud. The idea is that the same bits of data would be shared, redundantly, across many different computers. Thus, you have a data “cloud” that you can easily propagate data through and query as you wish. And the architecture is open-source, or at least will be at some point. Pretty cool.

As an aside, I appreciate Data Basin’s conservation-oriented focus, too. Years ago, I used to volunteer for beach cleanups, and I distributed information about ecological causes from time to time as well. Conservation has always been a topic close to my heart. At work, I have the most plants in my office by far, and most of them are live. (Quick tip: I find the “Lucky Bamboo” plant does the best out of any inside plant. There’s a reason you always see it in cube farms.) Data Basin’s aim to bring reluctant researchers and hot-headed advocates together is a good thing, I think. The researchers crave recognition and the advocates need data, but, as the presenters mention, they don’t often talk to each other. (That’s been my personal experience as well.)

So Data Basin has some new ways of doing things, but they still have some growing pains to work out in their alpha phase. They might manage to get me over my aversion to using GIS data, and maybe they’ll even help the planet in the long run. But the real question is, “Will they help me get to know geography better?” Considering that I often mix up which countries are in Scandinavia, and the Red Sea with the Mediterranean Sea, maybe not. My 6th grade geography teacher would not be impressed. If you’re reading this, Mr. Tuttle, one day I’ll remember Iran is to the right of Iraq, and not the left. One day.

“Writing this book meant opening myself up to the possibility - and indeed, the reality - that much of what I always thought about how to be happier or how to make America a happier place was wrong. I found some of the truths about happiness to be extremely surprising, and even uncomfortable. But I am convinced that what I found is right, whether I like all of it or not. This is not a book of philosophy or conjecture. I leave theories about happiness largely to others. Instead, I go where the data take me when I write about happiness in America and how we can get more of it. On that basis, you will hear a story - sometimes a controversial one - about who is happy, who isn’t, why it matters, and how we as a nation can do better. This story has changed my mind about many things. It just might change yours, too.”

After reading Brooks’ book, I felt much the same way. I also felt my mind had changed. (I am definitely a data-driven creature when I can be.) Allow me then, for the purposes of this post, to assume that the data and conclusions in his book are mostly true. Even if this is not the case, it’s the only way to analyze what he wrote (and hence to write the rest of this post).

The point of his book, more or less, was that conservatives of all stripes (social, economic, religious and otherwise) are happier than their counterparts. The gulf between the two groups in happiness is wide - anywhere from 10 to 40 percent - depending on exactly which dimension(s) they’re more conservative on.

First, let’s see what Brooks’ response to this information is. Here is what he said at the end of his last chapter, again quoted here in its entirety:

“If you asked me how you could be happier and I told you to vote Republican or go to church, you might justifiably tell me to go jump in a lake. But if I told you to give to charity, I would be giving you excellent advice. Everybody can give, and give more, today. Each and every one of us can afford to dig a little deeper - whether into our wallets or into our free time. So give - write a check, volunteer, donate the things you no longer need (or even better, things you still do need). And remember: I’m not trying to lecture you on how to be a better person - just a happier one.”

Sounds like good advice to me. Anyone can give to charity, right? Yet we know from the relevant research that conservatives out-give liberals by an astonishing margin. Is the problem simply that liberals don’t know how happy charity can make them? I doubt it. Probably a bigger problem is that liberals (being more collectivist) expect the government to step in for them and handle these charitable situations through the machinery of the state. This is part of what it means to be liberal. Socialism - perhaps the most extreme version of liberal political doctrine - takes state management and intervention to be an article of faith, not an optional sideline.

So we are faced, then, with a semi-absurd choice: liberalism vs. happiness. Or are we? Perhaps we could suggest, as a commenter did in part one, that happiness is a product of your political affiliation, not a cause. Indeed, this is a compelling criticism, and one not easily dismissed. Do the less happy among us, then, have legitimate grievances that need to be addressed before they can be happier, and therefore more conservative?

It’s easy to see that previous (and in some ways, current) American “outgroups” like women, blacks, and the poor all tilt Democratic and more liberal. Many of them have legitimate grievances too. White men, perhaps the most privileged group in American society, are (for the most part) staunchly conservative. That is, they have the most to gain from the status quo and keeping things that way. Black people, in contrast, are some of the people most likely to be unhappy in America.

But for some reason, the same numbers of blacks are as likely to be “very happy” as whites. Poorer conservatives are a lot happier than you might guess, often much happier than poorer liberals and almost on a par with their richer conservative counterparts. (As they often say, they’re “rich in spirit”.) Strikingly, women are more likely to be happy than men as well. Where are their grievances? If these happy people have them, it sure doesn’t seem to bother them much.

The truth is, some of them are Democratic and liberal for other reasons, at least in part. Women are more likely to be compassionate towards others (and thus liberal), blacks may vote Democratic for historical reasons, and poor people may feel like Democratic reforms will benefit them the most.

We’re back then to the absurd choice. There appears to be not just an association, but a full-on direct correlation between how happy you are and how conservative you are. Furthermore, your level of conservatism appears to be the cause, at least in part, of how happy you are. What to do? Being a socially liberal, single, agnostic myself, these statistics still haunt me.

But should they? Perhaps Aristotle was wrong (along with countless others, including Brooks). Perhaps happiness is not the only goal in life. Looking at the data, this is the only reasonable conclusion I can come up with. Everyone says they want to be happy, but can this be true? Or are they misguided as to what actually makes them happy? Given how accurate self-reports of happiness are, I doubt it.

Perhaps we think liberalism, in all its forms, can serve a greater goal. It’s obviously a force for change and for improving our lives, if not our moods. Obama is perfectly right to emphasize change in times like these. A record number of Americans think our country is on the wrong track, which neatly corresponds with a huge Democratic shift in the electorate. (The same was true in the ’60s, another huge period of social change.) Democrats are pissed off and want to do something about it. It’s great that Obama is pushing a more positive message, but really Democrats are pushing upheaval. The positivity is window dressing.

Thus, there is the choice. But not between liberalism and happiness; it’s between change and happiness. And it’s a fragile balancing act. Too much change and we’re unhappier than we need to be. Too little change will eventually make us unhappy, because we’re not making any progress, and perhaps scourges like recession, inflation, disease, and a lack of flexibility can cause us problems.

The same goes for extremism. Extreme liberalism is socialism or communism. Extreme conservatism is perhaps fundamentalist totalitarianism. In practice, either extreme means an extreme lack of political freedom, and citizens of nations with any of those forms of government are much less happy than the U.S., especially as they tilt further to one extreme or the other (which is shown in “Gross National Happiness”).

Better, then, to have the Democratic/Republican ebb and flow that happens every few years. This gradual back-and-forth shifting helps to provide the best of both worlds, without going too far either way. It also reduces the inevitable government waste, apathy, and inefficiency that goes along with long stints in power. (Epitomized these days by people like Alaskan senator Ted Stevens and his “bridges to nowhere”). This political competition keeps everyone on their toes. New ideas get a chance to be heard.

Therefore the obvious question is, “Where do you fit on the happiness/change spectrum?” This will probably largely determine your political affiliation. And it’s not a static thing, of course. You may very well change your political affiliation as you grow older and your needs and priorities change. (And it will probably be in a more conservative direction, if you look at demographic statistics and the fact that people generally get happier as they age.) Regardless, the happiness research should give you a better window into why you prefer one or the other.

Me, I’m starting to value happiness more and more, so I’m starting to give up some of my preference for change in the process. Being a white male, perhaps it was inevitable. And maybe, if you’re more liberal, you should tell me to “go jump in a lake”. Sheryl Crow once sang “a change will do you good”. I never did like that song…

Happiness is a big deal to me. I’ve read a couple of books on the topic already, and both were quite enlightening. The first, “Stumbling on Happiness” (Daniel Gilbert), was about how bad we were at predicting how happy things will make us. The second, “The How of Happiness” (Sonja Lyubomirsky) was about how much of our happiness is under our control (about 40%) and how we can use that to be happier.

But neither of those books tell us who, in fact, is happier. They’re mainly concerned with the reader. Thus, the obvious question: do happy people have anything in common, and why? That’s the main question answered by another book I just finished reading, “Gross National Happiness” by Arthur C. Brooks. It’s the third book I’ve read on happiness so far, and like the others, it doesn’t disappoint.

Brooks suggests that happy people do actually have a number of things in common, and what they share might surprise you. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. What does Brooks mean by “happiness”? Well, whatever people want it to mean, really. (Try not to roll your eyes.) That is, the studies Brooks cites rely on self-reported levels of happiness. Some studies ask people once; others ask them more than once, or even throughout a day, how happy they are. (Reminds me of the “Can you hear me now?” Verizon ads. “Are you happy now?”) You might wonder, though: are self-reports of happiness accurate? Another study showed that your friends will generally say that you are as happy as you self-report, so it’s likely that self-reports of happiness are in fact correct.

What do the data on happiness say, then? Certainly not what Brooks or I suspected, at the very least. Let me warn you, I’m about to delve into some sensitive and difficult topics here. Like Brooks, I urge you to simply look at what the data say and save the reactions for later on if you can. (I plan to address these concerns more in part two.)

There are four basic points. Conservatives (Republicans) often say they’re much happier than liberals (Democrats). Religious people often say they’re much happier than secular folk. People who like their jobs often say they’re much happier than those who don’t. Married people often say they’re happier than singles (and the divorced/widowed/cohabiters). And those four things are very much found together instead of by themselves, so they often have a multiplier effect one way or the other. If you’re like me and Brooks, these are shocking findings (except for maybe the one about jobs).

I had the same opinion Brooks did. I figured that these socially conservative folk were unhappy in general (or at least moreso than social liberals), and that they simply believed these things because of the status quo, or to keep other people in line. But it turns out that if you’re socially conservative, you’re also much, much more likely to be happy than if you are not. I’m willing to admit I was wrong here. It’s a refreshing viewpoint, actually.

Allow me to give you some background. In case you haven’t figured it out, I am (or was) socially liberal, agnostic, and single. This, as I have come to find out, is a singularly bad recipe for being happy. (I’m actually happy at work, though.) Thanks to the two previous books on happiness, I’ve gone a long way towards increasing my personal happiness. (It takes work, believe it or not.) But “Gross National Happiness” showed me that I’m simply running against the wind. It’s like trying to pedal faster in first gear. Far better to switch gears first. It’ll make your effort much more worthwhile.

I haven’t been very specific, though. Here’s some specific happiness figures:

- 44% of conservative or very conservative people say they’re “very happy” vs. 25% of liberal or very liberal people
- 9% of conservatives say they aren’t too happy vs. 18% of liberals
- 50% of religious conservatives say they are very happy; 5% say they are not too happy
- 22% of secular liberals say they are very happy; 22% say they are not too happy
- Three times as many married conservatives as secular liberals say they are very happy

- A conservative who is in the same circumstances as a liberal (except for political orientation, obviously) is 10% more likely to say they are very happy
- 43% of religious people (the faith in question doesn’t matter) say they are very happy vs. 23% of secular people
- 42% of married Americans say they are very happy vs. 23% of never-married Americans, 20% of widowers, 17% of the divorced, and 11% of those who are separated (but not divorced)
- A married person who is in the same circumstances as someone who is single (except for marital status) is 18% more likely to say they are very happy
- A person who’s satisfied with their job, but is otherwise in the same circumstances as someone who is not satisfied is 28% more likely to say they are very happy

And so on. I think those are some striking and overwhelming facts, some of which may be counterintuitive, at least for some folks. (Guess the phrase “ball and chain” is often more bluster than anything.) Brooks goes on to detail many more statistics as well (too many to cover here). Conservatives give a lot more to charity, and those who give to charity are much more likely to say they’re very happy. People who find “flow” (an uninterrupted state of focused high productivity, also known as “being in the zone”) are much more likely to be satisfied with their work and say they’re very happy. Conservatives are much more likely to have kids than liberals, and they often have more of them. (Kids make you less happy, actually, but this effect is dwarfed by many of the others.) Political extremists (on both sides) are much more likely to say they are very happy than moderates. Finally, money has a small effect on how happy you say you are. “Gross National Happiness” is a font of great data like this. I’ve merely hit the highlights and provided a sample of the other tidbits.

At this point, you might dismiss these findings, especially if you have a strong liberal bent like myself. Again, like Brooks, I ask you to look at the data. You might respond, then, by saying “ignorance is bliss” and these conservatives are ignorant. Brooks doesn’t address this question. He’s not trying to say whether it’s “right” that conservatives are happier. He thinks that’s for the reader to decide. As for me, I’ll wait until part two to address this point more fully.

You might also say that conservatives are deluded in how happy they are, or feel pressure to lie about it. If so, their friends (some of whom may not be conservative at all) must be deluded or feel pressured too, because they often say a person is as happy as the conservatives themselves self-report (as I mentioned before).

Another counter-argument is that while we might be happy, people in other (often more liberal) countries are happier. The data don’t bear that out, though. The U.S., in almost every study, is either the happiest or one of the happiest nations on Earth. Those countries that are more liberal, secular, like their jobs less/work less/take less vacation, and those countries where people marry less say they are much less happy than the U.S., usually in proportion to the difference in their responses from ours. (Cuba and Japan, for example, say they are much less happy than the U.S.)

I first stumbled on this research some months ago, but I’d only scratched the tip of the iceberg. It has haunted me - in a good way - ever since. Now I know why. The data (and my own experiences) seem to back up the claims of conservatives. That leaves me (and maybe you) in a quandary. However, it’s too much to try and deal with this in this post. Thus, I’ll attempt to address this more next week in part two. See you then!

If you’re up on your taxes, student loans, and child support, that is. If not, the IRS will take those amounts out of your check first. That might cause you not to get a check at all. If you or someone you live with doesn’t have a social security number, you won’t be getting a check either, which apparently leaves out some resident aliens and military families.

I guess it’s OK if you’re dead, though. As long as you met the requirements in 2007, you’re getting a check. Well, your next of kin is, anyway. (But you’re probably not reading this post either, unless you’re a comic book character or something.) And if you’re a dead resident alien who made over $100,000 in ‘07, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m just confused. But then again, you probably have bigger problems at this point.

Whatever you do, if you don’t get your check right away, don’t fall for one of the stimulus check scams that have been floating around. And pray the last two digits in your Social Security Number are low (which are the basis for when you’ll get your check).

Me, I’m more concerned about what people are spending their checks on. I can tell you I did my part. I purchased the Xbox 360 game “Rock Band”, a surround sound headphone adapter (I actually got the Japanese version), and a bunch of wacky “Rock Band” accessories like a mic stand, wireless guitar, drum throne, drum pads, and a replacement bass drum pedal. (OK, I love “Rock Band”. So sue me.)

I guess I wasn’t the only one. Apparently quite a few people bought video games with their stimulus checks.

So there’s that. What else did people buy? Well, the same stuff they always buy, it seems, but more of it. I didn’t see any one big summary on the topic, but I found plenty of sites where people talk about what they did. Here’s a short list of what else I found: paying down debt (very common), donating to Obama (and presumably other politicians), buying retail products in general, and of course, pornography. (Different kind of stimulus happening there, I think.)

That’s not including the more unusual expenditures. You can find some of them on the obviously-named site “How I Spent My Stimulus.com”. My favorite was the guy that used his check to pay part of his $7,500 bail. Apparently it was one of the favorites of the guy who runs the site too, as you can read about here. If you read that link, you can also see what I think the real purpose of the site is: the author is writing a book about the user entries. More power to him, I say. Making money off how other people spent theirs has an excellent hint of irony to it. And hopefully his book will give us a better idea of all the different things people used their rebate for.

In the end, I don’t really know what people have spent or will spend their stimulus checks on. The gist of what I read is that people spent their checks on a great variety of things. But they most often seemed to spend checks on stuff they already wanted, and on common expenses like bills, debt, consumer goods (especially electronics), food, gas, medicine, health care, and the like. However, it did seem like the checks were spent most often on luxuries and one-offs like TVs and nice parties. That’s just a guess, though. Last time we had a stimulus package, people certainly used a big chunk of it to pay down debt, but that was in better times (2001) so people might think differently now.

I suppose some people also saved their checks. I read on various sites that people were socking away some or all of the rebate, but somehow I doubt it. And some people even think we’ll save 90% of our checks. It’s not what we did last time, however, and I’m not buying it. (Though to be fair, they may be including paying down debt as saving.) Americans are some of the worst savers in the world, and we’ve had a zero or even negative personal saving rate for quite some time. Though how the government frames the stimulus matters, in a case like this the stimulus seems more like an unexpected bonus, and thus will probably be spent (as mentioned in the previous link). It seems like the best Americans can do is just pay down debt we already have, and even that is questionable. The American consumer seems down, but maybe not out yet.

What if you don’t know what to do with your check? Presumably, some people have saved their check by default and don’t know what to spend it on yet. Well, everyone from Wal-Mart to Dell wants your money, and some of them will go to extreme lengths to get it, from cashing your check for free to crazy sales.

Of course, you might just think a stimulus check is a bad idea and decide to save it in the end. If people can hate free money delivered to their doorstep, I guess they can hate anything. There’s no doubt the money you get will make you better off, unless you decide to burn it for heat. Then there’s not much anyone can do for you, I’m afraid.

But if you’re hungry for plenty of real, down-to-Earth statistics about war (and other related topics), it’s probably up your alley. There’s no real narrative to the book, other than the chapter organization; the entire book is in a simple question-and-answer format. It’s more like reading a FAQ than a book, which seems to give the book just the neutral no-nonsense tone Hedges was looking for. Given its length and how utilitarian most of the language is, the book probably won’t take you longer than a few hours to read anyway. Thus, even if you have a passing interest in the material, it might be worth your while.

Despite its low-key presentation, many eye-popping facts line the book’s pages. This book is not for the faint of heart. Many of the facts in Hedges’ book are about death, injury, psychiatric disorders, and various other difficult topics. If topics like these bother you, you may want to stop here or start skimming ahead if/when things the subject matter starts to get unpleasant for you.

With that out of the way, allow me to give you a little more of my background. First, my late father served in the Navy (he didn’t die in the service, though). He served in the Navy because he viewed it as safer than the other services. That fact was also borne out by Hedges’ book: infantry roles are by far the most dangerous. My dad volunteered so that he wouldn’t be drafted into something worse for far longer, so he was never too into the job. Ironically, after he got out of the service he vowed to never work on weapons systems, an astonishing feat given that he worked for a defense contractor for the rest of his life.

His Navy experience was before I was born, so it wasn’t very “real” to me. The only thing I knew is that my dad could tie a killer knot. (Tying knots is an important naval skill, obviously.) He used to tie a hangman’s knot on our tetherball pole out back. The tetherball rope or even the tetherball itself would always break before the knot came out. Considering the nylon ropes we used were pretty thick and lasted for months, that’s no mean feat.

The closest I ever got to the military was wrestling in high school. We had an ex-military assistant coach, if I remember correctly; I know he used to wear army shirts all the time, anyway. Many of the same tenets you learn on the wrestling mat are the same as in boot camp, and I always had short, high-and-tight haircuts after I left wrestling. Also like boot camp, there’s a real sense of camaraderie that develops on your team as you go through such extreme experiences as cutting weight and running suicides. And since wrestling is a team sport but you’re on your own every match, letting down your teammates is a huge deal (like with a real unit). I’ve even heard that the military gives preferential treatment to wrestlers, but I couldn’t find a source for that.

Thus, though neither I nor my dad were much of military men, I probably at least have a little idea about military culture, values, and training. With that in mind, I’d like to reflect on some of the more striking statistics in “What Every Person Should Know About War”. I’ll cover the highlights in mostly the same order as the book, with an eye towards their extensively-researched data (this is a data blog, after all).

The second question listed in the book is striking enough: “Has the world ever been at peace?” “Of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history,” a pretty striking answer to be sure. The rest of the book follows in the same style, and on topics no less important.

Another interesting statistic is that “between 65 and 85 percent of the American public will support a military action when it begins”, but by the end of the Korean and Vietnam wars, support was closer to 30 percent. That just goes to show that people are always much more gung-ho before a war, when the death and destruction aren’t fresh in people’s minds. Furthermore, those same supporters are extremely bad at estimating how wars will turn out, as otherwise many of them probably never would’ve offered their support in the first place. To be fair, World War II and the Gulf War had at least 77 percent support the entire time. So there may be such a thing as a “just war”, but we should be far more selective about going to war than we’ve been in the past.

Another powerful fact from the book is that many more civilians than soldiers die in wars, and this ratio is getting much worse as wars increasingly move into cities. I wonder how that fact might change people’s support for war, knowing that the bullets they’re paying for have a much greater chance of hitting a non-combatant than in the past.

With gruesome stats like these, why would people enlist to begin with? Surprisingly, the most common reasons given are education funding and job training. (1/3 of people cite each of these as a reason.) Granted, I doubt there’s a box you can check called “I like killing people”, but apparently this is also a reason why a minority of people sign up.

Of course, not everyone wants to enlist. Here’s a list of a few of the crazy things people have commonly done to dodge the draft in Vietnam: inhaling enough dust to give them an asthma attack, chopping off a thumb joint (!), staring at the sun to partially blind themselves, pricking their arms to fake heroin needle scars, and literally shooting themselves in the foot. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather endure the jeers and claim that I was gay or a conscientious objector or anything else before I’d shoot myself in the foot or chop off my thumb joint. Thankfully they’ve never had a draft in my lifetime, so I don’t have to worry about resorting to such extreme measures. If I had to enlist, I figure I’d just do what my dad did and go for a more low-key job, where my technical skills would be more useful to the army anyway.

And hey, some people actually prefer military life. “Black soldiers are twice as likely as whites to perceive racial discrimination in the military, though a majority of black soldiers say race relations are better in the military than in civilian life.” Blacks are also more likely to see the military as a career and much less likely to be jailed than their black civilian counterparts. Who knew the military was so egalitarian?

Then again, maybe there’s still some biases. 97 percent of armies worldwide (and 91 percent of the U.S.) are made up of men. An astonishing “78 percent of women and 38 percent of men reported sexual harassment”. Given that there are so few women in the military, that means there’s probably a bunch of military men out there sexually harassing women and men. The Marines have it the worst. A jaw-dropping 86 percent of female Marines reported sexual harassment and 9 percent reported being raped or attempted rape. (By the way, less than 7 percent of military women report any harassment by civilians.) Sheesh.

Guess it shouldn’t surprise me, then, that 70 percent of men in the Gulf War said that “not having the opposite sex around caused them ‘quite a bit’ of or ‘extreme’ stress”, which was the number one cause of stress cited overall. (Of course this was due in part to the modesty of Saudi women.) How to cope? Well, in Vietnam there were estimates that 35 to 75 percent of our troops smoked marijuana, though this has gone down a lot in recent years due to random drug tests.

Another way soldiers cope is by simply acclimating. Hodges’ book describes one soldier that learned to sleep through the demolition of numerous ammo dumps in Iraq, which he could feel as well as hear. I don’t think earplugs are gonna quite cut it in a situation like that. Reminds me of my friend Gary, who learned to accept constant panic attacks that felt like heart failure. He told me “you can get used to almost anything”. Maybe that’s true.

One thing you can’t get acclimated to, however, is weapons of mass destruction. Hodges’ book calmly describes cluster bombs that can cover 50,000 square meters (bigger than two football fields) and are “the tactical equivalent of short-range nuclear weapons”. No wonder people find unexploded cluster bombs years later, and that many countries have officially banned their use (though not the U.S.).

Even worse than that, though, are nuclear weapons themselves. Hodges’ book describes what should be done with “fatally irradiated soldiers”. Apparently such people can have as many as several weeks to live before their bodies give up. (Maybe that’s what happened in the movie “Crank”?) The recommendation given is to pump them full of as much medicine and painkillers as possible, allowing them to keep fighting as long as they can. I can’t even imagine how I would feel if I absolutely knew I only had weeks to live, totally doped up, sitting in a trench with an M16 in my hand. That sounds like the kind of thing movies are made out of, yet this is official policy. Wow.

Of course, the military has actually used (and continues to use) modified versions of video games like Doom, Battlezone, and Microsoft Flight Simulator to train soldiers. (Ironically, Microsoft Flight Simulator is one of the few non-violent flight simulators out there.) I can’t imagine that Battlezone, a video game made in 1980, ever looked much like a battlefield, but I guess that’s all they had to train with 30 years ago, so they had to make do.

All that training might not be enough, though. Apparently as a soldier you had a greater chance of becoming a “psychiatric casualty” than being killed in every major war of the 20th century. You’re more likely to lose your mind than your body, that is. Some reports have even suggested that more Vietnam vets committed suicide after the war than were killed in action, a proposition I find deeply unsettling.

More unsettling than that, though, is the use of torture in wartime. Apparently the most effective forms of torture are thought to be threatening loved ones, mock executions, and rape and other forms of sexual assault. (Waterboarding isn’t mentioned, though supposedly virtually everyone cracks under the technique in under 30 seconds.) Despite their effectiveness, however, information from torture is supposedly not credible. The idea is that, under duress, people will say anything to get you to stop.

Worst of all, of course, is death. No book on the reality of war would be complete without talking about it, and I would be remiss to leave such talk out of this post, even though the reality can be disturbing to read about. “What Every Person Should Know About War” claims very matter-of-factly that when you die, “…you will feel your consciousness swiftly wind down. It will not flip from on to off, like a light, but rather will gradually disappear, like a match burning out.” (According to those who were clinically dead and brought back to life, that is.) Life, it appears, comes in degrees. Soldiers’ last words are often calling out to their mothers, their wives, or their girlfriends. I have no idea if this is the same for civilians, but I wouldn’t be shocked if it were. (Unless you’re William Randolph Hearst, I guess.)

After the war, if you were raped or lost a spouse/child in the war, Hodges’ claims you will never recover fully from it. While I have never had either of these traumatic events happen to me and I don’t seek to trivialize them in any way, what I know from happiness studies says the opposite. Books like “The How of Happiness” and “Who’s Been Sleeping in Your Head” talk about trauma and how people deal with it. One theme they mention is that people are often much more resilient under stress than they think.

To me it seems like the most important factor in recovery is whether you’re a pessimist or an optimist. Studies often show that optimists frequently recover from such trauma faster, more thoroughly, and with less stress than pessimists. (The same is true for many illnesses as well.) The most I can relate here is from the death of my own father from brain cancer. It was a depressing and heartbreaking experience, but never one that I would say I could never fully recover from. While I haven’t forgotten about him, at some point I moved on and ceased to grieve. Maybe my own optimism helped in this, I don’t know.

I’m reminded of a passage in Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, where a man talks about counseling recently disabled kids. He mentions that many kids are traumatized and sad when they first find out they’re disabled, but that most are back to normal in a few days or weeks and are playing and acting like other kids. Thus, humans are a hardier species than some of us think. (Or is this just my optimistic bias showing through? You be the judge.)

And that’s about it. But despite talking a lot about the horrors of war, I’d like to end this post on an upbeat note. You might sum up the overall point of this post as this: war is hell and should never be entered into lightly, but a lot of us can take the heat if need be. As for me, I’ll stick to playing first person shooters. Doom was one of my favorite games, after all. If we ever have to face imps, revenants, and demons on the battlefield, they know who to call.