A podcast, with a transcript of Martin Gurri and me discussing the breakdown in social truth. I think it was a good discussion.
A podcast, with a transcript of Martin Gurri and me discussing the breakdown in social truth. I think it was a good discussion.
I very much enjoyed the discussion of competition and accountability. I know this pervades your thinking, Arnold, but these ideas have been completely lost in much of modern day economic thought.
We have been looking for a system that helps us find the truth since the time of Socrates. Neither the the current algorithms of social medial nor the upvoting by the masses on Reddit will take us to the answers anymore than did the casting of lots at Socrates’ trial. The elites are the CPU of the machine that we refer to as society. They a well endowed to digest the the signal from the noise. Arnold, you and Tyler and many others like you are bringing forth reason and you are being heard by that very small group that can most make a difference in our quest to find the truth. We are certainly in another transition state like the one from religious authority to the scientific method and as during all transitions thing seem chaotic. But as always, the truth will emerge from the fog of hysteria.
There are systems – both traditional and novel which – if they don’t exactly solve the problem of “finding truth” – at least deter and suppress a whole lot of lies and BS via serious negative consequences, which is 90% of the battle when it comes to trustworthiness. The reluctance to rely upon or implement such systems as filters on important sources of information usually reveals the desire to preserve the option to lie.
is this available on itunes? there are about 100 podcasts called “the bridge” and they all appear to be trying to save my soul. maybe we’re at a saturation point with podcasts
Try searching Mercatus Center. Adding Conversations on the Bridge will help… I had trouble finding it too.
Martin Gurri: “Now, we live in an era of zero trust.”
Not quite true. Now we live in an era of absolutes in trust. Those we have decided to trust, we trust absolutely. Those we have decided to not trust, we mistrust absolutely. This creates a massive Appeal to Authority Fallacy in our thinking.
If the political party we align with says something, we trust it. If the opposite party says something, we mistrust it. Specifics no longer matter. This is especially sad when science is used as the appeal to authority.
Matt, I think you’re more right than Martin.
This doesn’t quite seem accurate to me. Better to say that trust is sidelined completely.
I don’t think, for example, that most partisans truly trust what Joe Biden or Donald Trump say. Rather, partisans are obedient and loyal to the party, don’t even think much about the specifics.
They’re just following orders, and following the Orwellian truth of the day. We’re at war with Eastasia. We’ve always been at war with Eastasia. Everyone must confine themselves! Everyone must go out and protest!
Everyone understands this, but trust has nothing to do with it.
Huh. I always equated obedience with trust. You’re saying that partisanship is obedience in absence of trust.
Gotta think about that.
One thing you leave out in terms of elites is that part of the reason they’ve lost authority is that the culture is just bathing in this sewer of radicalism. Challenge authority. Etc. Rather than build on tradition, they simultaneously want to claim anything traditional is suspect while claiming power and status from the traditional hierarchies developed in more traditional and authority respecting times. They just want to eat their cake and have it too. The elites pay lip service to this notion that the Western tradition is suspect as is the Constitution, and so-called White Culture while selectively choosing which portions to claim or to draw authority from. This makes their attempts to be socialistic radicals in favor of diversity while holding onto their pulpits and power laughable and hypocritical. People can see that but the media won’t let them be called on it.
One additional important point is that – while they want to have their cake and eat it too – it’s not clear that the cake will run out before they’re satiated! Most elites will be long gone (of natural causes) before the effects of their policies come home to roost. This may be why we see few elites speak out against radicalism, although some of them must surely oppose it on a personal or philosophical level.
One problem with bubble-up, popularity-based “authority” (not the only problem) is that the actual managers of major platforms like Facebook, Google, etc. impose their own personal vetoes. They don’t care if something is popular when it offends their “elite” preferences or undermines their own political goals, so they censor it, popularity be damned.
All the high-profile bickering about censorship and platform immunity (CDA 230 in the USA) is a distraction from the real problem, which is monopoly power having accrued to a few giant private actors.
Old-style hierarchical-power elites who, Arnold and Martin agree, don’t wish to surrender any of their power favor monopolization as the surest way to keep their grip on it.
Strongly agree. We should have an open standard protocol for social media and force everyone to use it. You can then have different social media companies acting as “clients” deciding how social media communications are filtered and displayed. But of course all the social media monopolies lose more than 90% of their market cap if that happens so they will fight it tooth and nail.
Authority rarely existed in reality, except as dominance. There were those that more trouble than it was worth to seek to challenge. A professor or noted expert that was presumed to know what they were talking about as far as the listener cared about the topic. Historically, the “authority” would over-reach and the cost to challenging would fall. With more information available, and more importantly, ease of working “experts” to get their opinions out (ex., in the past they’d get a quote from a chemistry professor and that would be authoritative, but now the working chemist can challenge the professor in a few minutes online after a long day in their lab actually developing the substance under discussion), the “authority” is less “costly” question.
It’s really a return what was taught a century ago:
“P 182 Argumentation – argument from authority
“The opinions of others may be interesting as showing the trend of public sentiment, but they add nothing to proof.
“There is one kind of argument that forms an exception to this rule–the so-called argument from authority. It has very small place in ordinary discussions. The argument from authority is the use of testimony from a witness of such eminence and unquestioned impartiality that his word carries conviction to all. There are few questions commonly argued in which this kind of evidence as to matters of opinion could be needed in the proof: for the point sought to be established would usually be a point admitted in advance, and not among the issues as all. Expert testimony of the ordinary sort offered in the courts is very far from being entitled to claim such authority. For every expert witness on one side another expert can usually be found on the opposite side; and this is true not only of lawsuits and criminal trials, but also of any ordinary question involving technical matters. Expert witnesses are good witnesses so long as they confine themselves to facts–provided they can be shown to be reasonably impartial; but when they begin to state opinions, such testimony proves nothing more than that the people who know the most about the subject disagree–which fact we knew already. Little attention need be given in most arguments to testimony as to opinions without facts on which the opinions are based. the sort of cases in which such evidence is valid is, for example, the opinion of a college president as to the meaning of a college rule; the appeal to scriptures for principles of right and wrong; the constitutional decisions of Chief Justice Marshall. These are not the kind of questions that are likely to be at issue in ordinary discussion. With this one exception, all evidence directed to the establishment of facts, not to the question of opinions. For support of our opinions, we use the facts proved by evidence as interpreted by what is called reasoning.”
–Freshman Rhetoric, John Rothwell Slater, Ph.D. Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Rochester, (1913)
We might consider the thinking of Karl Popper in examining the concept of “Social Truth” (perhaps the concept of truth in general ?) as that part of the information (perceptions and learning acquired and transmitted) in human experience which remains “unfalsified” in human relationships.
Separately there are the matters of what the “Institutions” of social orders are and whether there are any “remnant” elite whose sense of obligation at least marginally exceeds their sense of privileges and immunities. If there is a remnant, how can they be identified?
The following comment was offered on Martin Gurri’s excellent blog, but rejected by the moderator:
Thank you again, Martin Gurri. You have sent me back (at age 95+) to learn more about what has been written of “Authority,” by such scholars as Hannah Arent, Robert Nisbet and others.
The “derivations” of authority from information, (mostly gained from human experience, and however transmitted) the openness of access to the sources of information, the efforts of various groups to constrain that access (to “wage influence”?) do seem to be major factors in the “Revolt” you are portraying.
Another factor of equal, if not greater, though subtle, impact is that the broad, amorphous populous has developed an acute awareness that the postures of authority are used to camouflage arrogations and exercises of constraining powers by those who – would be – but are not “Elites.” They are no more than the people (of individual motivations) holding the exercises of the powers of those social instrumentalities that have become institutions.
The impetus of “Revolt” may not be the destruction of institutions (nihilism) but against the exercises of power to maintain and continue institutions that have come to points of failure in meeting the needs of their societies.
Back in 1961, Carroll Quigley pointed out how societies create “instruments” to meet their basic needs, he wrote:
“These organizations, consisting largely of personal relationships, we shall call ‘instruments’ as long as they achieve the purpose of the level [need] with relative effectiveness. But every such social instrument tends to become an ‘institution.’ This means that it takes on a meaning and life of its own distinct from the purpose of the level [need]; in consequence, the purpose of that level [need] is achieved with decreasing effectiveness. In fact, it can be stated as a rule of history that ‘all social instruments tend to become institutions’ “
He goes on to explain:
“Every instrument consists of people organized in relationships to one another. As the instrument becomes an institution, these relationships become ends in themselves to the detriment of the whole organization.”
– “The Evolution of Civilizations” pp. 101-102
“The Evolution of Civilizations” pp. 101-102
In those institutions (failed and failing) the hierarchies and oligarchies, composed from those relationships, right down to the little bureaucratic “office cliques,” because of their impacts on the instruments and on the needs that gave rise to their purposes, are faced with and give rise to “Revolt.”
ge influence”?) do seem to be major factors in the “Revolt” you are portraying.