Back in the 1950’s, let’s say, I read your views in a book or magazine and wished to argue with them, I might have sent a letter to the editor or written an article of my own — preferably for a publication with high status (The New Criterion, say) or salience (Architectural Review) or visibility.(The Saturday Evening Post). I’d have to be reflective, I’d have to argue logically, I’d have to consider objections to my comments, etc. My piece would have to pass scrutiny by an editor and possibly be revised. And after that I’d have to wait for it to be published and for others to react, This was a slow process.
On the internet, I can react to opinions almost as quickly as I encounter them, with little screening for sense or relevance or accuracy. I can indulge my emotions IMMEDIATELY, which sadly provokes quick responses. And to make matters worse, a major source of satisfaction for internet commentators is getting their comments in particularly quickly, both to be noticed (“I’M FURZT DUDES!”) and to shape the discussion which follows.
I’m not sure if there’s a cure for this. My heart longs for the good old days of Little Magazines and earnest journalists living in garrets and Concerned Readers from the provinces penning their long Letters To the Editor. But that environment rested on exclusivity and economic supports of advertising and subscriptions which aren’t easily duplicated on the internet. It seems irrecoverable.
I would say that the Internet has given us three things, all of which are mixed blessings. I expect that Martin Gurri’s book, which I have just started [UPDATE: well, actually I have finished it, but as you know I work a lot with scheduling posts in advance, in part to discipline myself against reacting instantly], will speak to these.
1. More sources of information.
2. Less centralized filtering of information.
3. The ability to react instantly.
It is possible that all three of these are harmful to our culture. But I think that (1) and (2) can be more of a plus than a minus. (3) is what worries me. We are training people not to reflect, not to be charitable to those who disagree, not to try to open minds but to close minds–especially the minds of people who are inclined to agree with us. We encourage put-downs and “this one chart proves….” and ad hominem arguments.
My e-book The Three Languages of Politics describes the result: a strongly tribalized political culture, in which communication consists of signals that simplify issues so that they fall on each person’s preferred axis.
I’m not sure even 3 is net bad. Take academia (please!). The absence of 1 and 2 make it difficult to speak up when they float things like mandatory vaccines or mandatory health insurance or mandatory Title IX sensitivity training, etc. Just because the elites have reflected on these and packaged them nicely doesn’t mean they have incorporated my interests. And just because I could react reflexively against them on the internet doesn’t mean I haven’t.
When the tables are turned and we are talking about mobs imposing mob interests on others without reflection or analysis (such as overreaction to police brutality making it harder for cops to do their jobs in black neighborhoods which also hurts blacks) then there is definitely a point. But that is also a problem that can be overcome when biased news outlets and opportunistic community organizers are exposed. So it is a mixed bag. We just can’t keep pretending it isn’t anymore.
“The absence of 1 and 2 make it difficult to speak up when they float things like mandatory vaccines.”
Yeah, those terrible, terrible vaccines.
As for “mandatory healthcare”, the people who “react reflexively” against it, still don’t say what “replace” means in “repeal and replace”. Maybe we should leave such “reflexes” to Pavlov’s dogs, to whom they belong.
“such as overreaction to police brutality making it harder for cops to do their jobs in black neighborhoods which also hurts blacks”, i.e. “mobs are people I disagree with.”
Are you in favor of mandating all vaccines?
Allow HSAs. I’m perfectly happy to sit back and watch Obamacare go down in flames.
I am surely not in favor of the populist attacks on vaccines Republicans have sponsored (read LewRockwell, Newsmax, both have a new cure for cancer every week, or listen some Republican hopefuls). As for HSAs–and only them– as health policy, it means saying “Drop Dead” to the poor. Republicans are wisely not openly running on the strength of this idea. Good for them.
Are you in favor of mandating all vaccines?
HSAs help the poor just fine. Unlike the government subsidies that caused the explosion in unaffordability from the moment they were pushed in in the 70s. Look it up.
And it is good to reconfirm that when it comes between democracy and vaccines you will side against democracy because you think it trolls Republicans. But we already knew that about you.
Perhaps (3) could be addressed on blogs by waiting a week to open comments on any given post. A week is very quick in the grand scheme of things, but perhaps enough to take the edge off.
An excellent idea, but a day or even a few hours is likely enough delay for most hot-headedness to subside.
But maybe not a perfect idea. I’ve noticed that people can get incredibly wound up emotionally just by exchanging a few emails. You’d think almost empty screens with a few lines of text would promote cold rationality, but for reason it fails. I can recall being absolutely furious with people on various academic e-lists back in the 1990’s, convinced that my justified rage would last forever … and then regarding the same folks as friends and allies a few days later when some other tempest blew up. And I recall being warned — not entirely facetiously — that people could fall in love over the internet in a couple of hours.
My suspicion is the very lack of interaction with others — our inability to hear their voices and see their expressions — screws up our ability to decipher their written words. Which perhaps explains why informality has become the internet norm. We NEED all those emojis and screwed up punctuation and misspellings to convey the nuances of our conversations. Who knows, we may even need Friday Feline Fotos!
It’s intriguing to wonder how life might have gone if back in the 1960’s the communications industry had pushed video phones rather than email.
The emergence of #3 is our equivalent of an honor culture, an extralegal freedom to react to subjectively assessed injuries with relative impunity. The fact that people see editorial crackdowns on these as censorship (and further injury) makes it even likelier that this is honor-based. How long ago was the last pistol duel?
Maybe introducing the ability to extract Danegeld ( privately assessed compensation) on the Internet would constrain this, but I doubt it. At any rate, it isn’t good.
It’s hard to discuss it abstractly and maybe even harder to discuss it specifically. But, for example, when a news outlet edits the Zimmerman 9/11 tape to push their narrative (and an inflammatory one, and perhaps they methodically push it under much reflection because they know it is inflammatory), is there anything too harsh to call them and how fast could be too fast to do it?
One can still write refereed articles in response to others, it should be noted.
Something that might be even more concerning: the comments to an article can be at least as interesting as the article itself. Not infrequently do I spend more time reading the comments than the article itself. How about that, media moguls?
I disagree strongly — the old ‘high status’ publications were what Murray Gell-Mann was complaining about:
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you
Everything was filtered through journalists who very often had only a weak grasp of the subjects they were discussing (and their employers were not particularly inclined to publish letters-to-the-editor pointing out their foolishness). And that’s before even considering politically motivated control of ‘the narrative’. A few blowhards in comment sections is a small price to pay for getting rid of all that.
I looked at your quote. It’s a comment about poor reporting in newspapers, not exactly the same thing as the magazines with “high status” or “salience.”
Better reporting. please!
Remember Stephen Glass? Wasn’t the New Republic of that era a ‘high status’ publication with ‘salience’?
Actually, no.
Hmm, internet comments are quick and not very “loud”, that is people don’t pay much attention to them. Tweets probably have a wider distribution of loudness, but I don’t know much about them.
My gut instinct is to think public discourse is a bit like a feedback loop. In this case the quick-but-soft combination is a good thing: control systems are more stable if they have short time delays and no more amplification than is needed.
But I except that speed is no help if the feedback has the wrong sign. E.g. tweeters one-upping each other to display outrage would be an example of that kind of positive feedback loop.
“I accept” not “I except”. Though I suppose I am excepting too.
You can wait for higher-value comments if you want. You just no longer *have to*.
The highest-value comments are worthy of blogging, and so tend to be actual blog posts on other blogs.