An interesting bit of fMRI research reveals that emotion rather than reason determines human response to political information. We knew that but it's nice to see the light show as areas of the brain light up while people "reason" about their interests.

Once partisans had come to completely biased conclusions -- essentially finding ways to ignore information that could not be rationally discounted -- not only did circuits that mediate negative emotions like sadness and disgust turn off, but subjects got a blast of activation in circuits involved in reward -- similar to what addicts receive when they get their fix, Westen explains.

You can lie to yourself more easily than anyone else. And it feels good too.

It isn't just political views that cause this response of course, it's all of our vested interests, anything we seek to promote, sell, convince or persuade others to do or believe. Business, religion and the like are affected as much as politics. It's the nature of the beast.

Since we know this it is useful to have mechanisms for dealing with it, ways to keep ourselves and others intellectually honest. But, few do so or do so often. This post by Tim Haab at Environmental Economics is an example.

I'm always looking for examples I can use to answer the question "What is it you do anyway?"

So, the scene is set, interest is established and reason is in jeopardy. Tim points to the Reuters article.

Costs of safeguarding the world's fast-disappearing coral reefs and mangroves are small compared to the benefits they provide from tourism to fisheries, the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) said on Tuesday. . .

The report, to be issued at a conference in Paris, estimated that intact coral reefs were worth $100,000-$600,000 per sq km (0.3861 sq mile) a year to humankind and a sq km of mangroves $200,000-$900,000 a year.

"Most benefits from coral reefs and mangroves arise from fisheries, timber and fuelwood, tourism and shore protection," it said. . . By contrast, the cost of protecting a sq km of coral reef or mangroves in a marine park was just $775 a year, it reckoned.

Actually, when you look at the numbers, the vast majority of the value comes from one thing: tourism.

Under another survey, coral reefs in the Caribbean were estimated to be worth from $2,000 a year in remote areas to $1.0 million beside a tourist resort where it drew scuba divers.

The talk about fisheries yada, yada is irrelevant. It's all about tourism. Is that an environmentally sound activity? Well, not really. In addition to being a fundamental degradation that cause chemical, organic, visual, auditory and psychic pollution in beautiful places it does the same to all the places between population centers and destinations. The effect on local society is lamented by many, especially those old enough to remember pre-tourist days when folks were "poor but honest". Now the daughters are crack whores and the sons are burger flippers in tourist traps. They dress up in native drag or clean the toilets of rich, rude foreigners.

It doesn't look that awful to tourists, and they at least have jobs etc. etc. There's a bright side as well as a dark side. But the happy talk about the value of reefs and mangroves rests almost completely on tourism so an honest appraisal needs to carefully consider the consequences of "tourist world". Is this what we really want?