Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Professor Sunstein was kind enough to send a staffer to help us with a cognitive infiltration. In the interests of full disclosure, as forward-thinking compensation for posting this I was given an opportunity to purchase a discounted voucher that gives me points towards a genuine DNC logo mousepad... So, without further ado, Dr. Benweigh.

Are you unhappy? You might be a bad person. Ha, ha! Just kidding. You might think you're a bad person. But that's just crippled epistemology. What's needed is a nudge. And access-related program activities. It's all about self-esteem. This is where the science of psychometrics can help. Once you find your place in the social darwinist shakeout nurturing dynamics of liberal capitalist democracy, you will know what you have to work with and institutional guidance professionals will know what they can get away with will know how to help.

Here's a sample question to get going.

When good people are systemically blocked from doing the good things they want to do, and the things they actually do look like bad things, do you:

1) Become an empirical sourpuss and ruin everyone's day
2) Blame the wingnuts
3) Blame the filibuster
4) See the ponies
5) Blame Ralph
6) Recite your affirmations

You can pick more than one, by the way, but if one of the ones you pick is Number 1, then you might have low self-esteem. If you have low self-esteem, there's a chance you're going to shoot everyone at work, school, whatever.

Here's another helpful question.

When you and your peer consumer group vote for a positively progressive person who is less than perfect and the wingnuts eat the pony, do you:

1) Wonder what hell this question came from
2) Blame the wingnuts, who are stupid
3) Blame Joe Lieberman, the human filibuster
4) Mourn the pony and pull up your socks
5) Blame Ralph
6) Buckle down to an honorable effort to take back the country

It's important to remember than in a system based on vindictive irrationality, you only get one answer. Here, you get more than one. You can even pick answer Number 1, you negative nellie you, and people will put up with your low self-esteem. You might get a nudge, but no one is going to hate you or punish you savagely, with pepper spray and tasers when you're hogtied in jail. You can still look for work, too, and when opportunity knocks—it sounds like the clatter of pony hooves—you can get financing for the high quality personal appurtenances you'll need if you want to give the correct impression to potential employers. If, however, you're a self-loathing nudge-resistant epistemological cripple...