Levi Boxell, Matthew Gentzkow, and Jesse M. Shapiro write,

If access to the Internet or social media use is a primary driver of political polarization among the U.S. electorate, we would expect to see greater changes in polarization among young adults (18–39) than among the old (65 and older). The data, however, tell a different story. The change in our index of political polarization in the past 20 years is twice as large for the old as for young adults, despite the older group using social media and obtaining political information online at substantially lower rates.

Interesting. Some possibilities:

1. Their constructed index of polarization may be more sensitive to picking up changes in the elderly than in young people.

2. Cable news may be the most polarizing medium these days, and old people probably watch more cable news.

3. We can look forward to a less polarized politics once the crotchety old people die off. (I don’t believe this.)

Speaking of crotchety, here comes another rant against politics on social media.

I grant that all forms of media can be sensationalist. The term “sensationalist” was first applied to newspapers.

But it seems to me that what we call social media cannot be anything but sensationalist. When it comes to political issues, the sensation that people cannot resist is anger validation. Cable news has provided that for years. I am willing to believe that cable news, rather than social media, is the biggest contributor to our anger validation addiction. (I never see cable news, except at the airport, which is not often.) But other media seem to have degenerated to the Cable News level. Using social media, the ordinary person tries to imitate the worst of the talking-heads smackdowns.

As I have said before, although I am “on” Twitter, I do not use it. The software echoes my blog posts to twitter in some fashion.

And as far as Facebook goes, I am about as thrilled to see politics there as I am at seeing it in pro football. The difference is that I had mostly tuned out pro football years ago, and I have only recently dialed back my time spent on Facebook.

Complex problems are best discussed in slow conversations. In a slow conversation, many people contribute. People think out loud. Contrary viewpoints are expressed, if not by representatives of those viewpoints, then by people making a sincere attempt to play devil’s advocate, not to paint other points of view as stupid or deranged.

Blogging for me is part of a slow conversation, not a rapid-fire reaction to the topic du jour. Most of my posts are riffs on other people’s thoughts.

When blogging first got going, there were “trackbacks” that encouraged thick conversations. That might have been the golden age of blogging. The trackback feature was killed by spammers, who polluted it. There was comment spam, too, but there are effective programs to filter it out. If somebody developed a filter for trackback spam, it was too late to save the trackback feature.

I might suggest that one format that has not been completely corrupted by the contemporary media environment is the book review. I think that people who write book reviews tend to to take their time thinking about what they are going to write. And writing about a book means writing about a topic that has a longer shelf life than what you find on cable news.

Joshua Gans writes,

Consider, for a moment, the notion that human error could be completely eliminated by having autonomous vehicles. Would we need car airbags? Would we need seat belts? Would we need the car to be reinforced to withstand high impact collisions? Would we need crumple zones? I could go on. Would we need road barriers? Would we need steet lights? Now think about the costs of all of those things and you can see how they add up.

Today, we think that human driving is normal and autonomous vehicles are frightening. At some time in the future we will transition rapidly to the opposite point of view. Gans alludes to that in his conclusion.

In a podcast with Russ Roberts, Megan McArdle says,

as you pull those things in, you create this climate of everyone feeling like they have to lie, in public. And, what’s interesting about reading the Soviet, those Soviet era things, is how many people–Orwell talks about this, lots of [?] talks about this. It’s the feeling that making you tell a lie is the point. That, there’s no, like, greater point of what you are saying except that they have undermined your character by forcing you to lie for the regime.

The overall topic of the conversation is the role that the Internet plays in free speech. On the one hand, the Internet enables you to express any point of view. On the other hand, it enables mobs to form to shame you, and to cost you your job. It is this latter capability that seems to have surged to the forefront recently. And ultimately it may make people willing to say things that they do not believe, because of fear of the mob.

from Michael Huemer.

We talk about society because we want to align ourselves with a chosen group, to signal that alignment to others, and to tell a story about who we are. There are AIDS activists because there are people who want to express sympathy for gays, to align themselves against conservatives, and thereby to express “who they are”. There are no nephritis activists, because there’s no salient group you align yourself with (kidney disease sufferers?) by advocating for nephritis research, there’s no group you thereby align yourself *against*, and you don’t tell any story about what kind of person you are.

One of the central problems for human society is attaining cooperation at large scale. It seems that one of the tools for getting a large group to cooperate is to identify and demonize an enemy. This certainly has to be one of the most troubling characteristics of human culture.

Describing our primitive ancestors, Robin Hanson writes,

when the group was stressed and threatened by dominators, outsiders, or famine, the collective view mattered less, and people reverted to more general Machiavellian social strategies. Then it mattered more who had what physical resources and strength, and what personal allies. People leaned toward projecting toughness instead of empathy. And they demanded stronger signals of loyalty, such as conformity, and were more willing to suspect people of disloyalty. Subgroups and non-conformity became more suspect, including subgroups that consistently argued together for unpopular positions.

I suppose that people see charging a high price for something in the wake of a hurricane as disloyal. The situation calls for group solidarity, and instead here is this merchant looking out for himself.

Colin Browne writes,

The end result of this project includes a big win for biking in the region: a paved, grade separated trail from Bethesda to Silver Spring. But the construction phase will include unavoidable disruptions—the entire Georgetown Branch Trail from Bethesda to Stewart Avenue will be completely closed starting September 5. It will remain closed for the duration of construction.

There are a number of workable on-street routes, many low-stress and relatively direct, but things get a bit complicated here because the town of Chevy Chase has so far refused to allow the county to sign a trail detour on its roads.

At present, the official signed detour is on Jones Bridge Road, which is a busy thoroughfare with narrow sidewalks and no bike infrastructure. If you’re a confident bicyclist, it may be fine. If you’re not, it will be a stressful experience.

Note that “duration of construction” is estimated to be five years. This one affects me. A lot. I bike regularly, and about 60 percent of my rides use this route. It would be less than that, but another multi-year construction project, which closes Beach Drive/Rock Creek Parkway, had been forcing me down the now-closed trail.

As for the official detour, Mr. Browne greatly under-states its problems. As you know, I think that the term “city bike lane” is an oxymoron. But the road we are being asked to use not only has no bike lane. It has zero shoulder. No white stripey thing at all. Just the curb. Plus it has curves that are difficult for drivers to see around. And lots of cars, regularly exceeding the 35 MPH speed limit. If you want to engineer a road as a no-go zone for bikes, this is what you would design. Mr. Browne, I may not meet your definition of a confident cyclist, but I am confident of one thing: as a cyclist, I want no part of that road.

So I tried the sidewalk. Not as dilapidated as some of the sidewalks I use, but pretty uneven and quite narrow. With the usual crowd of joggers, strollers, dog-walkers, and so on, it would tempt many cyclists (not me) to try the road.

But to add insult to injury, you end up nowhere near where the bike trail picks up again! Instead, you are left with about a mile of urban traffic to navigate through to get back to the path. Yes, there is a bike lane, but I already told you what I think of those.

Anyway, I called this post “green on green” because it reminded me of what a commenter wrote recently.

I occasionally notice what I think of as “bobo wedge issues,” disputes that divide bo from bo. For example, I live near a regional airport with ambitions to expand. This has set the bourgeois faction’s desire for travel convenience against the bohemian faction’s desire for natural quiet. Which bo you are depends on whether you live in the flight path.

The bike trail is being closed because the Washington DC Metro (our subway system) is building a new line. Of course, Metro, which loses money in spite of generous subsidies and exorbitant fares, is the poster child for “green means unsustainable.” And then, to top it off, Chevy Chase is packed with smug, green progressives, so of course they would NIMBY-veto any signage that would help cyclists deal with the trail closure.

He writes,

I have a theory that much recent tech development and innovation over the last decade or so has an unspoken overarching agenda. It has been about creating the possibility of a world with less human interaction.

He goes on to list examples, such as shopping on line with no salesperson. He points out that with Uber you do not even have to talk to the driver to say where you are going. Online courses reduce interactions with teachers.

You can quibble with some of the examples, but I think he is on to something.