I reviewed Sunstein’s book, Conformity.
It seems to me that Americans are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with viewpoints that diverge from their own. Sunstein’s book shows why such a trend is unhealthy. I wish that we knew more about how to reverse the trend.
Americans have been convinced that the risks from each other are high and benefits of associations with each other are much lower than previously thought. There is a declining assumption of common cause locally; while overall people used to vote the ticket in concurrence and defect on a point almost never, now they will vote the ticket in opposition and defect on a single point readily.
As an example, it might have been ‘Oh, Bob’s alright, despite his problem with…’ or ‘his quirk.’ Now it’s ‘Bob is an evil person because of … ‘
In short, the default is suspicion, doubt, and fear. The community is much more disagreeable and much less trustworthy. Thus, they cannot be comfortable with opinions from outside. You need to fix relationships and relationship norms; open-mindedness and commonplace tolerance is the result.
To fix the relationships – people need less flexibility, mobility, and diversity. Because relationships take time; and only with long periods of time can large differences be bridged.
Increasing discord on what timescale? We fought a Civil War once. Then the McCarthy years as you note. Quite a bit of disagreement on the Vietnam war.
Try one measure, body count. Since 1972 or so, the total body count reduced relative to the previous generation. Remember the greatest generation includes WW2 with about 40 million killed, though the US Army only killed a few million. The boomers, to their credit, kept the post Vietnam body count close to a million.
One problem remains in foreign affairs, we are not all on the same side anymore. But I consider that an advance, we are less likely to cause chaos if we cannot agree on where to cause it.
We cause plenty of chaos. Look at Iraq.
The argument is not that we should agree on everything or even more things. The argument from Kling is that there is an incredible price in devolving to a state of such maladjustment and fear towards beliefs that are not our own. A popular counter argument is that we should not be tolerant of intolerance. The problem there is that once we accept that as an acceptable excuse, then any disagreement begins to look intolerant to those afraid of any disagreement at.
My point was that body count is a good measure of our intolerance to opposing views, and by that mark, the boomers are doing OK.
Of what concern are the conformists to living men?
Stirner says “One is not worthy to have what one, through weakness, lets be taken from him; one is not worthy of it because one is not capable of it.”
In practice, this cute paradox manifests as mere double standard. When my side breaks the rule of tolerance, it’s a valid exception. When your side does it, it’s intolerable intolerance. Whoever gets to decide or influence which exceptions are allowed and which aren’t has effective power.
One hugely important way to reduce this is thru more cases like Google vs James Damore. The guy fired for questioning Google’s practices.
There is a theory that women can code as well as men, but only because of anti-women sexism, they don’t.
The fact that most code is written by men is clear.
The fact that some women can code is also clear.
These two facts do not prove the asserted theory that anti-women sexism is why so few production coders are women.
Yet, Damore was fired. AND, in his suit against Google, the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) ruled that what Damore wrote was harmful, so Google firing him was legal.
https://www.wired.com/story/labor-board-rules-google-firing-james-damore-was-legal/
The gov’t actions are supporting the suppression of Free Speech. This injustice needs to be identified and reversed.
Not so much theory, but actual Damore-like lawsuits against company’s who take away free speech, with the Free Speech side winning.
Getting fired for old Tweets is similar.
The change will only happen when it hurts Democrats, too. This is where “eye-for-eye” is needed. The Dems do it. Reps need to do it, to show them why it’s wrong. When Dems say: two wrongs don’t make a right.
Reps should say — so you admit the Dems were wrong to fire Damore, and others? You admit that it was wrong?
… but Dems won’t yet admit they were wrong.
Few Dems are willing to admit that supporting the lying, cheating, sexually harassing Pres. Bill Clinton was a #MeToo era mistake. Until Dems admit they’ve been wrong on many specific cases, the polarization will get worse.
Via Reason:
Alabama Dean Resigns After Conservative Snowflakes Publicize His Old Tweets
Right-wing cancel culture comes for Jamie Riley, who dared to criticize the American flag.
Perhaps autonomy is an uncommon psychological trait.
Conformity can cut both ways. It can support a good equilibrium or a bad equilibrium. Compare Robin Hanson’s discussion of conformity to community norms in the separate persistences of prosperity and poverty:
“One might plausibly argue that no one ever really makes long term plans. People who seem to be doing so, such as students going to college, are really just executing standard cultural plans, doing ‘what you are supposed to do’. Then the ‘extra’ we’d need to add, to explain why the poor don’t seem to have long term plans to dig them out of poverty, is to say that the cultures of poor people often don’t have standard cultural plans that induce them to so dig.”
Robin Hanson, “The Persistence of Poverty,” Overcoming Bias (May 9, 2019). Available online at the link below:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2019/05/the-persistence-of-poverty.html
It could also be that people go to college because it’s established as an effective long term plan. They’re still planning ahead, only they’re using ready made plans rather than coming up with original ones; and why not do that? If there’s a better long term plan, why hasn’t someone wise come up with it and why hasn’t it become the norm?
The two motives are of course so closely linked it may be impossible to tell which is the real one, but I don’t think one can assume following cultural norms conducive to success is just people being well-behaved cultural automatons. I think it just shows that people don’t bother to customize or optimize their plans. Just like most things, you go into the store and pick the standardized item that suits your purpose, without trying to optimize. You reasonably assume someone else has already done the math, and what’s available on the shelf is probably about as good one can get.
*someone else, not wise, though that actually kind of works too.