Who said this:
We haven’t gone nuts — but the “conversation of democracy” has become so deeply dysfunctional that our ability to make intelligent collective decisions has been seriously impaired. Throughout American history, we relied on the vibrancy of our public square — and the quality of our democratic discourse — to make better decisions than most nations in the history of the world. But we are now routinely making really bad decisions that completely ignore the best available evidence of what is true and what is false. When the distinction between truth and falsehood is systematically attacked without shame or consequence — when a great nation makes crucially important decisions on the basis of completely false information that is no longer adequately filtered through the fact-checking function of a healthy and honest public discussion — the public interest is severely damaged.
Answer on the flip.
Al Gore. Here’s more:
One of the problems that the Congress is encountering as it tries to raise the debt ceiling is that a significant number of Republican and Tea Party Members of Congress apparently hold the view that there actually would not be consequences for global markets or the US economy if we defaulted. This view is, of course, absurd — but it illustrates a larger problem. Dramatic changes in the way we communicate with one another about issues affecting the common good have diminished the role of reason and fact-based analysis, encouraging ideological extremists to construct their own alternative version of reality and defend it against fact-based reasoning.
Gore is focusing on the core of all current problems. Organizational behaviorists long ago (1972) documented the phenomena of “groupthink” in which all members of a group are encourage to think alike and to dismiss any ideas or facts that go against the group’s view of reality. Group members who persist in pushing controversial ideas are expelled, and new members are allowed in only if they demonstrate fealty to the groups’ view of the world.
There are numerous case studies of this happening in corporate and government organizations (the Bay of Pigs debacle is a classic one). All MBAs are taught about groupthink somewhere along the way, often in multiple courses.
Groupthink varies in degrees and depth. In my company there are certain ideas I know not to suggest, even though they worked great at the more successful and progressive company I worked for in the 1980s, because today’s American managers simply won’t consider such radical concepts, regardless of any evidence you introduce. But otherwise my current company isn’t really about groupthink — in some ways we might be better off if we were — at least then we’d be consistent in our decision-making.
But what is happening now in the world, led by the U.S. but certainly existing to a great degree in the rest of the English-speaking world and slowly into other countries, is by far the most humongous case of groupthink in human history. Maybe we should call it Murdochthink.
A few decades ago there were small groups of people, like the John Birch Society, who held extremely radical views and reinforced them with each other. But those people still had to live in the normal world with normal information sources and that tempered their perceptions somewhat. Today, those infected by Murdochthink are in the hundreds of millions and they get all their information from their own sources — just like in the classic case of groupthink.
There is nothing these people won’t believe if it comes from within their own group. I have known people who were scientifically trained begin to doubt evolution because they became Foxheads.
Until an antidote for Murdochthink is found we’ll not be able to solve any of our other problems. Because the Murdochthinkers are too numerous and too well funded.
Oh, and related to that is this great post from Krugman today:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/the-cult-that-is-destroying-america/
The point here is that the problem is not only the right wing cult (the “Murdochthinkers” if you will), but the centrist cult that refuses to acknowledge that one side is crazy and the other reasonable.
It’s the old parable: the centrist walks into a room, hears one person say “2+2=4” and the other say “2+2=6”, denounce them both as extremists and assert that 2+2=5. We have all sorts of sayings to support this thinking: “there are two sides to every story”; “the truth is somewhere in the middle”, etc.
Of course, that thinking is a heuristic – a logical shortcut that usually is right but can be mistaken. If you are dealing with a fight between two toddlers the chance is very good that both are lying a little bit in their stories. But when a biologist and a creationist disagree on a the age of the earth one of them is wildly wrong. You can’t average 5 billion years and 6000 years to get the true age of the earth.
And effective sociopaths learn this early on. When two people are telling different stories and a third party is trying to judge truth without sufficient evidence the manner in which the story is told is often the swaying factor. The sociopath often learns to make a completely erroneous, but reasonably-sounding, claim in order to get an emotional response from the other party. The other party seems emotional, the sociopath calm, so the third party trusts the sociopath.
Similarly, the people who fought the science about the tobacco-cancer link learned from their failures that people use heuristics to decide complicated issues based on how the data are presented. It helps to have a Hannity or Coulter presenting very extreme views not only because it elicits an emotional response from your fact-based opponents, but it also allows your “good cops” (like Gergen or Brooks) to step in and suggest the position you wanted adopted all along – acting as centrists between the two extremes.
And thus the centrist heuristics no longer work, at all. The challenge is not only to make everyone understand that, but also to provide them with replacement heuristics that can’t be similarly Murdoch-ized.
Tell me about it. Let me explain the first time I got very involved in politics; not the first time I was involved, but the start of my “obsession”:
It was freshmen year of college, and my new friend Caitlin wanted to go to a Young Democrats meeting. Keep in mind that I’ve known this girl for almost my entire life — we went to the same elementary, middle and high schools — but we never really talked to one another. Also keep in mind that I grew up in an Evangelical Christian home and my house is on top of a Civil War Battlefield, and everyone around me is a Republican.
Anyway, moving on. It was their first meeting of the semester, and who would be there but Jim Webb, Democratic Senate candidate in the 2006 elections. I wasn’t affiliated with any party, I just went for her as she’s somewhat socially awkward. Anyway, the entire meeting turned into a “Republicans fucking suck!” sockfest, and I was turned off immediately. I was like, “Uh, why should I support this party again?” I didn’t go back to another meeting because I was your average member of the “Golly gee willickers, why can’t these assholes just solve problems instead of attacking each other?” party. But we discussed politics on our way home from the meeting and after learning my views she’s like, “So…you’re a far left Democratic voter.” Me: “No…I will vote for any person if I think they’re fit for office. Stop pigeonholing me.”
The next summer I spent with my Aunt working at her resort, where I would spend every summer for the rest of school (www.rainbowlake.com for those of you visiting North Carolina in the Asheville/Brevard area 😉 ). Every time politics came up with her and her friends, it was “The Republicans are psychos, the Republicans are evil, blah blah blah.” (her friends are mostly retired, but they’re all from the hippie era and were journalists at Mother Earth News in the 1970’s). Truth be told, I got sick of it and could not for the life of me understand just WHY they held such contempt for the party. In the car I asked her, “Have you even taken a look at their debates yet?” And she goes, “No, why would I?”
I didn’t get it. So I watched their debate. Then I understood why they held such contempt for these whackjobs. And the more the campaign dragged on, the more I hated them. I couldn’t understand how any rational person could vote for them. I still don’t get it; I’m sure no one else here does either. But before you sit down and actually listen to them debating shit, and get around the bullshit, all you see are two equal extremes.
I’m quite a bit older than you. When I arrived at college, in 1980, conservatives and liberals could still have rational debates. Of course, a lot of the data we rely on now didn’t exist then so the question of whether the inflection point on the Laffer Curve was below 70% (then the top marginal rate) was debatable — I considered it questionable then, and the evidence we now have puts that inflection point well above 90% — but at the time a rational debate was possible.
And the people I debated with did give and take on issues. In fact, I’ve never had my political positions evolve so rapidly as I did during that first year. I showed up as a (small l) libertarian and ended up a social democrat. Such learning is possible in an environment where everyone is willing to learn.
Today, though, if I have a discussion with a wingnut (sorry, but that is the appropriate term) I will keep it civil and focus on only one or two points. A few key facts (such as tax rates under Obama or global temps since 1998), while trying to keep the mannerism of an independent. Not trying to steamroll – trying to converse. In the last few years — ever since Iraq and probably for a few years before that — I’ve noticed that as the person I’m talking with learns more and more uncomfortable facts they tend to slink away and eventually run off — off to the comfort of their fellow-thinkers and usually never to converse again.
The other thing I’ve noticed is how important it is for wingnuts to know where you stand at the beginning of the conversation. This makes sense if you understand that this is someone who probably doesn’t have most of the facts and needs to know in advance whether you are to be a trusted source of information.
Well my views have evolved since that freshmen year as well, despite being farther to the left than your average Democratic voter.
In fact, Facebook and debating people is what has changed a lot my views. One that I could highlight is the free/fair trade debate. I was probably 75% fair 25% free when I first began that debate, and now it’d be rare for me to support any form of protectionism whatsoever. Of course it’d depend on the specific time and consequence, but I’ve been convinced that free trade is better for all parties involved. Now, if I were to go over to FDL and say that — and I have in the past — they’d gang up on me and call me a troll. Once again, what I love most about BoomanTribune is the thoughtfulness of the commenters.
And then there are other issues where I’ve grown much more left-wing; such as getting rid of food stamps and specific welfare programs, and just giving people cash allowances if they qualify. Oh, I also called myself a Christian. Now I hate religion.
I can be convinced on any number of issues, and I still like going back and forth on issues so I can refine what I believe and what will help society progress. All it takes is evidence. It just doesn’t seem like today’s right-wing (constituents included) is interested in that. Perhaps there’s rationality in that…I hate being wrong about things, and when you’re wrong about 90% of the issues it kind of sucks.
On religion, you might give Vine Deloria’s God is Red a read. Interesting comparison of Native practice and Christianity.
Al Gore.
Adding to the issue is the commanding format of 24/7 news where the all important sound bite rules thus giving rise to the new form of a Talking Point Lie that eats up the sound bite with no counterpoint followup.
Marsha Blackburn is a master at making this format work for her and she can easily whip out 10 lies before any panel member or host can stop her much less counter. And thus a new myth is born.
Yes, this is a big part of the problem. Before cable news most people watched one of the three nightly news programs. Everyone was exposed to the same basic information at least as starting point. Now you can self select the outlet that is geared toward your own views/biases, etc.
Then there is the format of many of these cable news shows. Bringing guests from “both sides” to talk past each other does not bring substance to the “debate”. This format doesn’t exactly model respectful dialog.
Al Gore!!! The environmental crisis is being approached in various ways in various parts of the world and the USA is being so left behind (Japan, Scandinavia), but the size of our economy gives us outsized impact worldwide. Not sure I’d zero in on groupthink per se as the problem in the USA, rather the related phenomenon of the combination of the size of our economy and the vested interest in denial on the part of a few, “wagging the dog” as it were. Groupthink helps maintain that situation, but a large % of our population is aware of the crisis, just not sure what the ordinary citizen can do.
But, to take one example, banning nonbiodegradable plastic bags is being done in other countries (e.g., Ireland, South Africa, India), these bags evidently contributed to disastrous monsoon flooding in Mumbai in 2005 by blockiing drains,
http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-how-india-can-ban-plastic-bags/20110328.htm
I’m intrigued by the question what were the destructive step-by-steps with which the high civilization of Easter Island destroyed their environment and culture (Jared Diamond discusses in Collapse)? But maybe we can claim the GPGP (Great Pacific Garbage Patch) plastic floating island and build a theme park on it (Gilligan’s?) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrAShtolieg
(see algalita:
http://www.algalita.org/index.php )