John Cleese explains why people gravitate to extremism.
Over the years, I have written a number of times about the bizarre nature of the Internet, where stupidity and extremism seem to be king, and where research and fact-finding seem to be treated as an afterthought. In a post written earlier this year, I noted that:
Back when we were kids, it was easier to tell what was true and what was a lie.
Back then, news was fact-checked and veracity was prized. News was a bit slower, and there was not quite as much of it, but by-and-large it was accurate and we could sort it out and make sense of it.
No more.
Now the news is fast and furious, chaotic and full of lies, misinformation, and partial truths wrapped in bias, conjecture and carefully crafted to fit a story board someone is anxious for us to hear.
After doing an autopsy on a post put out by one more fear-monger on the Internet, I went over the rules for at least trying to get it right:
1. Never run on rumor. If people really need a beating, they can be beaten twice as hard tomorrow (when all the facts are in).
2. Google is your friend. In this day and age, there is no excuse for not doing at least a little bit of research. Look for credible sources, and look for more than one source.
3. Remember that not everything on an Internet list-serv or bulletin board is true, and almost nothing sent to you in a forwarded email is true. Blogs are not newspapers.
4. Be especially wary of those on the far end of either political spectrum. Ideologues, paranoids, and hysterics operate by throwing out every fact that does not fit a pre-conceived frame.
5. The absence of credible sources is a silence that roars. Even when sources are given, be sure to actually check those sources. Many of the emails being circulated now have fake sources appended to them. Again, use the Google.
6. Use your brain. All of it. If you hear hoof beats, suspect horses, not zebras. Go with the probable (and boring) rather than the improbable (even if exciting). Is it more likely that a government-funded SPCA is violating the civil rights of someone, or is it more likely that some lady is mentally ill or has fallen down on the job when it comes to taking care of her dogs? One is as common as rain water, the other as rare as hen's teeth.
7. Never embrace conspiracy when good old-fashioned stupidity, negligence and sloth will get you the same results. Stupidity, negligence and sloth are common, but conspiracies of evil are actually quite rare. Except, maybe, in the health care arena.
Now comes a wonderful piece in The New Yorker which attempts to tackle the question of why we are seeing more and more political polarization and extremism in American political discourse.
And who is cited as the leading rational light on this question? None other than Cass Sunstein, who himself has seen quite a lot of invective heaped on his head.
Oddly enough, I have written two previous posts about Sunstein on this blog. The first was entitled "Cass Sunstein is OK With Me", and the second was entitled "Liars, Fear Mongers and Murder".
The New Yorker piece stands on its own, however. Read the whole thing, but since most people will not, here is an excerpt:
One of the country’s most prolific legal scholars - “He seems to write a book about as often as most people run the dishwasher” is how Esquire once put it - Sunstein has long been preoccupied with what might be called “virtual civics.” He has written four books on this topic — “Republic.com” (2001), “Infotopia” (2006), “Republic.com 2.0” (2007), and, now, “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $18) — all, to varying degrees, dystopic.
Sunstein begins with the relatively uncontroversial premise that a vigorous exchange of information is critical to the democratic process. As he acknowledges, the Web makes virtually unlimited amounts of information available; it is now possible to sit in a coffee shop in New York and read not just the newspapers from Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles but also those from Cairo, Beijing, and London, while simultaneously receiving e-mail alerts on the latest movie openings and corporate mergers. From this, it is often argued that the Internet is a boon to democracy—if information is good, then more information must be better. But, in Sunstein’s view, the Web has a feature that is even more salient: at the same time that it makes more news available, it also makes more news avoidable.
“The most striking power provided by emerging technologies,” he has written, is the “growing power of consumers to ‘filter’ what they see.” Many of the most popular Web sites are still those belonging to the major news channels and papers — CNN, the BBC, the New York Times. Increasingly, though, people are getting information from these sites in a customized form, by subscribing to e-mails and RSS feeds on their favorite topics and skipping subjects they find less congenial. Meanwhile, some of the fastest-growing sites are those which explicitly cater to their users’ ideologies. Left-leaning readers know, for example, that if they go to the Huffington Post or to AlterNet they will find stories that support their view of the world. Right-leaning readers know to go to the Drudge Report or to Newsmax to find stories that fit their preconceptions.
And what holds true for the news sites is even more so for the blogosphere, where it’s possible to spend hours surfing without ever entering new waters. Conservative blogs like Power Line almost always direct visitors to other conservative blogs, like No Left Turns, while liberal blogs like Daily Kos guide them to others that are also liberal, like Firedoglake....
.... People’s tendency to become more extreme after speaking with like-minded others has become known as “group polarization,” and it has been documented in dozens of other experiments. In one, feminists who spoke with other feminists became more adamant in their feminism. In a second, opponents of same-sex marriage became even more opposed to the idea, while proponents shifted further in favor. In a third, doves who were grouped with other doves became more dovish still. (Interestingly, in this last experiment hawks, after talking to other hawks, became less hawkish, though they remained more hawkish than the doves.) Even judges have been shown to exhibit “group polarization.” Democratic appointees who sit with other Democrats are, it’s been found, more likely to cast liberal votes than Democratic appointees who sit with Republicans, while Republican appointees on all-Republican panels are more likely to take conservative positions.
Read the whole article, and then ask yourself to what degree are you only reading what is comfortable?
If you pride yourself on being "another right-wing aggregator" or "loony left conspiracy theorist," could it be that you are simply another mindless person who has checked his brain at the door?
Instead of wearing blinders for your cause as if they are a badge of honor, perhaps it's time to accept that blinders are what you put on a horse that is too easily distracted or terrified.
Blinders are a sign of mental defect, not mental acuity.
They are a sign of fear, not of confidence.
They are a sign of sloth, laziness, and boredom, not of genuine interest and discipline.
They are part of what's wrong with America today, not part of what's right.
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