Polarisation

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Peter Coghill, Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing polarisation. Chris, kick us off with, there's an interesting recent event that's happened, go for it. Yeah, so this is the election

Speaker B: 00:00:30

of Bolsonaro as the Brazilian president and he has, he's effectively a very divisive figure, he's historically expressed some sort of misogynistic, racist, homophobic and extreme. Anti-environmentalist. Yes, anti-environmentalist and quite extreme right-wing sort of views and it feels like, or certainly the prism this has been presented through in the media is, you know, another sort of right-wing demagogue has been elected and there's this sense that, you know, it's representative of an increasing polarisation within our global political society that you have, you know, more and more people coming to power on either the far right or, you know, political movements on the far left and not so much, you know, centralism seems to have been lost. So I guess the discussion is, is that true and is it important and why? Nick? Yeah, I think it is true

Speaker C: 00:01:44

and I think there are several things you can look at. First of all, looking at the US, there's quite a lot of research by Pew Research looking at people's political opinions and more people are now becoming consistently left or right, i.e. holding conformist baskets of opinions. So people are pooling in either side of the political spectrum. Sorry, before you go on, can we just

Speaker A: 00:02:08

talk a little bit more about some of the other potential examples? Well, yes, and I think,

Speaker C: 00:02:12

% in: 1994

Speaker A: 00:04:51

clouds on her eyes. Yeah, that way. Yeah. Okay, so that looks fairly conclusive in terms of has polarization occurred? Looks like yes. I think one of the questions so Chris said, why is that was one of the questions. I can't remember what the next one was. But let's go on

Speaker D: 00:05:08

to that. Yes, I can't posit a the fundamental reason why it's happening. But off sighted things are the plethora of online content, where you used to get four channels, or maybe three channels and a couple of radio stations. So there was not much choice. And it certainly wasn't on demand. So you got exposed to a lot of varied and a broad spectrum of different content across the spectrum, and social media as a that facilitates echo chambers that you never had before. So it's very easy to close yourself off from challenge, and concentrate only on those arguments and narratives that you that you already believe in. But then I don't think these are the causes. These are catalysts, which have caused it to maybe accelerate or to allow it to happen. I think that there's something more fundamental happening, which is causing people to move away from the

Speaker A: 00:06:02

center. I think I mean, just to mean, you were going to come some there, Chris. I mean, I think you're right. I think there are some real, I suspect there are some actual real life causes of this. And there are a whole bunch of things. Yeah. I mean, what about I mean, the first thing that springs to mind is, is growth of income inequality, I'm guessing, in Yeah, but anyway,

Speaker B: 00:06:26

Chris? Well, I mean, polarization is a well studied phenomenon. And we know that groups, you know, when they interact with one another, tend to push sort of opinions towards towards the extremes. So there are, you know, there are all sorts of psychological, you know, theories relating to sort of social comparison theory. And the fact that, you know, if, if you recall, the Monty Python sketch that the four Yorkshireman where they effectively outcompete one another for the for the most, you know, extreme, hard done by hard done by childhood. And, and that is, you know, that is a well observed phenomenon when when, you know, they've studied juries, issuing or having to allocate damages, they found that actually, the the damages that they end up awarding are either more lenient or more punitive than any of the individual assessments prior to to group group discussion. So, you know, this is this is a well understood social dynamic that people kind of, you know, in their interactions, they keep pitching themselves further and further to the left or the right of wherever they think the middle is, in order to curry favour or, you know, win approval within within the group. So that's, so that's well understood. Well understood. The question is, we know groups can have a tendency to polarise. The question is, why does it seem to be happening at this at this moment in time? And just bring it back to what Pete said. Just to pick up

Speaker D: 00:08:10

one of those little points. I read a, I'll find it for the show notes, but a quite interesting article by a slightly conservative, right leaning American journalist bemoaning the way that modern teaching is done. And she was saying, suggesting that this is possibly part of the problem, the way that history and sociology is taught in schools and universities, that the repressed minority is kind of held up as like, the thing everyone wants to be, because it's always centre of attention. It's always sort of the most important thing, because we should all be worrying about it. Yeah, in terms of traditional history, which is more about the inter-power play between large actors and the logic of things. By the way, we'll bring it on to you in a second, Nick.

Speaker A: 00:08:58

Going back to the social media point about it being a catalyst, but from what you were saying with this sort of crowd mentality, it's perhaps, it compounds it rather than being a catalyst. I don't know. But what I want to get on to is that, is yeah, actual events and stuff happening now.

Speaker C: 00:09:16

Well, I think Peter's touched on this issue of what I think most people are thinking of as the culture war, what's called the culture war. And I think it does, possibly slightly blown out of proportion, but I think certainly I've had enough sufficient personal experience with people who've been in some way directly affected. In the UK, we're thinking about Brexit, particularly, but in the UK, it's a bit more widely, the sort of, but basically people are falling increasingly into one of two camps. One of which is, you know, that there's a sort of clash of values that says either that, you know, social justice warriors and the metropolitan elite are ruining the US by promoting relativism and identity politics. Or alternatively, you know, if you're on that side, that the, you know, sort of racism and bigotry is destroying America by increasing division. Those are two worldviews that people seem increasingly to be falling into. And I think that is the, that's sort of summarized as the culture war. And I can see it happening. You know, I think it's something that once you become conscious of, you kind of see it everywhere. You know, Peter's talked about teaching, but, you know, more widely people think about, you know, mainstream media being broadly quite, quite liberal, center left, and the alternative forms of media that you can find on YouTube and, you know, Fox, things like Fox News, being considerably more right wing. So, you know, kind of actually quite a lot of areas of life, we can see being, being, you know, affected. So what kinds of TV programs people watch, what sorts of films people watch, what sorts of music people listen to, and what celebrities they follow, you know, that this does seem to be quite a big thing that doesn't map across traditional party lines.

Speaker A: 00:11:07

And also, maybe, I mean, this taps into other things we've talked about. I think it's a fascinating subject, because, for example, you could argue there's a generational shift where people can't, can't remember it being otherwise as well.

Speaker C: 00:11:19

t for this comparison. But in: 1960

Speaker D: 00:11:56

doesn't rather suggest you're sort of cutting your nose off despite your faith.

Speaker C: 00:11:59

But that there's so there's that, that a lot of people are saying, yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's to do with that generation that the postwar consensus, which has almost in some way comes out of the fact that that society was more divided before is, has been lost and has disappeared. And, you know, this, this is a sort of clash of values of something quite fundamental. It's not a clash about what economic policies we should have. It seems to be a more fundamental clash of values. And so, you know, if you look at something like for 50% of whites 40 to 50% in both parties in the US think that the other party is a threat to the nation's well being, you know, this, so this is a really serious indicator. I mean, when you see people viewing the other side as a threat, that has often presaged disastrous outcomes.

Speaker A: 00:12:49

Okay. So we've looked into the reasons why.

Speaker C: 00:12:52

Well, we haven't. I mean, there's a there's a load of stuff. Yeah. I mean, we haven't discussed the end of the Cold War, but that that was a touchstone issue about ideologies where you could say, you know, well, we've got an economic system. That's what we're talking about. You've got an economic system. The Russians have got one. And ours is better. And the focus was on the economic system. You know, was it going to be centralized? Was it that nobody worried about homophobia, you know, in the Cold War? Really? You know, it was not a big deal. Now it now those sorts of issues, those social issues, those value issues are becoming a big deal. The rise of identity politics is very significant, more so in the US, but probably likely to become more so here. More religious, racial and ethnic diversity. Also sorting, you know, people are more mobile. People have more information. People are able to sort themselves geographically, you know, metropolitan elites versus sort of, you know, traditionalist rural people. And in the US, you know, political donors who are more motivated by ideology than they used to be. And decline of journalistic responsibilities and decline of the culture of sort of journalistic integrity. You know, if you look at who donates to political parties, it's people on the left and right. Centrists don't give money to political parties. So if you're a political party, why would you? Why? Why would you want to appeal to them? Yeah. Okay. So there's a whole bunch of causes. And what I'm saying is, I think it's pretty complicated. And if we think there's anyone who thinks there's going to be a simple way of sorting this out is probably wrong.

Speaker B: 00:14:24

And I think there's a growing call in some quarters. And I think it's a misconception that this is being driven by that social media algorithms are driving this by pushing people towards content that reinforces their behavior. But I don't think that's the case. I mean, there's always been this sense of confirmation bias. And, you know, when they look at studies where people are presented with information that doesn't support their current view, they are more likely to dismiss it as being, you know, less valuable information or less rigorous than stuff that supports their view. And I think all the social media algorithms are doing is really catering to that demand of giving people more of what they want to see, more of the kinds of evidence they want to see, and less of the evidence that they would be dismissing anyway. And you see that playing out in this sort of conflict between people who view the mainstream media as being biased and people who view sort of alt-right kind of online sources of media as being biased and totally dismiss those bits of information. I think where social media has played a role is effectively, it's, you know, whereas before you might have known a group of people and interacted with that group of people, and that group of people might have been quite small. And so the extreme that you might be driving one another towards was going to be limited by that, you know, the size of that group of people. I think social media has made the box much bigger, basically. It's made the group of people, and where the extreme of that group is, is more extreme than it would be in a smaller group. Yeah, and so you're less likely to face

Speaker D: 00:16:16

challenge. Which is why I was quite careful to describe it as a catalyst rather than as a cause, because it's just accelerating and amplifying whatever it is the psychological and sociological drivers that are causing it, rather than creating any new ones. I just wanted to get that out there, because there's so often in these kinds of debates on talk radio stations, there'll be some Facebook basher or Twitter basher who's just blaming it all on the social media, because it looks like an easy target, but it really isn't. I think we would, if we had a different thing that wasn't called social media that allowed us to talk to more people, it would catalyse the polarisation in a similar fashion.

Speaker A: 00:17:01

Yeah, absolutely. Look, so just going back to what we were originally talking about, polarisation doesn't exist. It looks like it does, yes. We've looked into some of the reasons why, but in terms of presuming that polarisation is not a good thing, let's assume that for a moment, and we don't want it to be like that. What can we do about it? What can people do? Who wants to take that up?

Speaker B: 00:17:30

Well, I think there's a way into that question, which is what things cause polarisation, right? When you're making a decision, so most of them are around attitudes, views, what you think should be done at a certain level. But if you're going to do, for example, with your taking out a mortgage, should you go for fixed rate or variable rate or something, that kind of decision doesn't create polarisation. It doesn't create emotional animosity. And obviously, there's something about some types of debates around particular issues that does create division. And I think understanding what things are likely to be causes of division is going to be helpful in trying to

Speaker C: 00:18:31

triage those before they crop up. Yeah, I mean, but the thing is, I'm a bit gloomy about all this, because I think the recommendations are hard to implement. We know what we need to do, we know that we need to stop regarding people who hold different opinions as either stupid or evil, and give them some credence and then discuss evidence. That's what we know we need to do, but that's not going to happen. And I feel like we've kind of all self-sorted into a giant Stanford prison experiment, you know, where we've sort of become, you know, really tribal, and no one really has an incentive to do what Chris is saying we ought to do, because we enjoy it. And I think, you know, you can sort of see a point of view, which is, well, this is the natural state that humans have. We are just inherently tribal. And we had this brief respite after the Second World War, and now we're going back to, you know, tribalism again. And I think, you know,

Speaker B: 00:19:30

this is slightly sort of fascistic of me, but I think there's an argument that conflict creates a societal energy, right? And, you know, in-groups and out-groups exist for a reason, to motivate those on the other side. So I think there's an element where you get problems is where, you know, you might see in something like the US political system, where that conflict cancels each other out. Rather, you know, the space race was great. We'd never have achieved what we did without that competition and without that them and us sort of mentality. But where it actually starts to cancel each other out, and you just instead, it becomes a stalemate and nothing happens. That's where it's problematic. So really, one of the solutions would be better channeling polarisation into something productive, as opposed to something stultifying. Peter?

Speaker D: 00:20:26

Well, I just, yeah, I mean, this, I agree that the conflict is a great motivator for striving and often people often say, oh, well, you know, if it wasn't for the Second World War, we wouldn't have penicillin and we wouldn't have jet engines or computers and all that sort of thing. I just like to think that I still have hope, a little bit of hope that we can mature as a species with this hyper connectivity that we've invented for ourselves and find a new way of better organising our energies to cooperate more. I know it's a bit far-fetched, a bit sci-fi, but I just think that the conflict was a driver in a sort of prehistoric human and now we are the information enabled human, then maybe we can find a new way of doing it.

Speaker C: 00:21:08

Yeah, I mean, that's the, but the problem is, it's like, well, we've got this new technology, which was supposed to expose us to other ways of doing things and cause us to become more consensual. You know, we were supposed to be challenged more because we were, I mean, all that happens is that people have segregated themselves more. It's like we've used this new technology, which looking back, it seems very naive that we would expect human nature to adapt to the technology. And in fact, it's of course, it's the other way around. We've found ways of doing what we love, which is being tribal and hating people. And we've just co-opted this new

Speaker D: 00:21:42

technology to do that more effectively. It's enabled us to build bigger walls and deeper

Speaker C: 00:21:46

we're not, it's not, it's not: 1930

Speaker A: 00:22:41

time flies, and we're actually pretty close to be needing to wrap up. So who wants to bring this to sort of, to really start to, well, who wants to start to bring us towards a conclusion?

Speaker B: 00:22:52

Well, I was going to, I mean, we didn't really get anywhere on what we do about it. And there's the, you know, using technologies and so on. And there's the germ of an idea, which I've seen sort of, there's a company called Sandtable, who do agent-based modeling. And they looked at the Brexit. Why is it called Sandtable? Because it's experimental, I think. What's a Sandtable?

Speaker C: 00:23:20

Sort of thing you can use to change, you can kind of turn it into a little landscape and push model soldiers around. Okay, got it. Okay, yeah. So anyway, yes, so they do,

Speaker B: 00:23:29

they do agent-based modeling, where they look at modeling populations, and they build in sort of behavioral models into them. And they did some work looking at sort of online discussion in Brexit and trying to model what was going on there. And the model they used, which predicted the actual interactions, looked at, basically, if you have a debate with somebody who is close to your viewpoint, you tend to coalesce. If you have a debate with somebody who is a long way from your viewpoint, you tend to repel and entrench your views. And so maybe there, maybe technology could be used in some way to bring people who aren't just shouting past each other and driving one another into their set positions, but starting looking at, you know, coalescing groups of people who are similar-ish, who can move each other to some sort of... Like a sort of debating speed dating

Speaker D: 00:24:31

thing that pairs you up with people who are close enough that can have a meaningful conversation.

Speaker C: 00:24:35

We can somehow drag everyone towards the center, and they'll all love each other. That's right. Yeah. I mean, I would love to see a new political party appear. There are precedents, you know, obviously. I mean, Emmanuel Macron's party was totally made up, wasn't it? And then won. And I think, you know, I think there are a lot of people like us who see both sides in this debate, both extremes, if you like, the kind of identity politics, SJW extreme on one side and the kind of alt-right on the other, as destructive and misguided. And actually, you know, the truth is probably somewhere in between, and approaching this rationally is going to be better for everyone. And I think there are a lot of people out there. It's just centrism really doesn't sell. I mean, you know, centrism gilds no, you know, doorknobs. And there was an interesting survey on YouGov about, you know, what views are most unrepresented. And what you would want to see is, you know, well, I think, you know, policies should be a bit of both. Things are about right. And actually those views, people saying things like, there's about enough benefits at the moment, were way down. The ones at the top are, you know, the justice system isn't harsh enough. And immigration restrictions should be tighter. So, you know, if you're going to look for unrepresented views, you might find that you'd end up with something more extreme than what we've

Speaker D: 00:25:57

got at the moment. Yeah, well, I'd love to set up a sort of extreme centralist rationalist party, that everything is, you know, everything is based on evidence and well thought out argument is well nuanced. But I fear that then that would just appeal, that would be seen as a liberal elite thing. Because you wouldn't, people would say, oh, well, these arguments are too complicated. It must be for the only for the educated people. I don't want anything to do with that. Well, as in a lot

Speaker A: 00:26:24

of things, I think the answer is a benevolent dictatorship, right? That's what we need, a benevolent liberal dictatorship. Classical liberal, I'm happy with. Yeah. So you must have, you know, liberal opinions, but anyone who disagrees with it gets shot. Right? That's what we want. Nick? I

Speaker C: 00:26:43

think what, just a good piece of advice. And it reminds me of, you know, when I was working in defence, and I think I had this kind of very simple heuristic, really, which is that, you know, if you're more than 90% sure or less than 10% sure about something, which you're writing about, because we're interested in it, you're probably wrong, you're probably overconfident. And I think if there are people out there listening who think, you know, SJWs, social justice warriors are just obviously stupid, and are just obviously going to destroy society, moderate your opinion. If you think that people on the right are obviously evil, obviously a bunch of racist bigots, then moderate your view. I just think it's, you know, we all need to recognise if we think that our viewpoint is obviously right, and the other side is either stupid or evil, then we're part of the problem. So, you know, just throw that out there with some vain hope that it might make

Speaker A: 00:27:44

a difference. I like that. But in the interest of having an entertaining podcast, we need to wrap up. But ahead of wrapping up, I want to talk about the people we dislike the most. Okay. So which sort of social group of people do we dislike the most? I want to have a go at Millennials.

Speaker C: 00:28:06

Because no one else is doing that, right? No, but they don't get enough stick. Yeah, but I work with lots of Millennials. Peter is technically a Millennial. Did you know that? No, I'm not. I thought we tested you and discovered you were a Millennial.

Speaker A: 00:28:17

Okay, what else can we talk about? You're right. No, I think you're on to something there.

Speaker C: 00:28:21

I think it would be good to examine our own because we're encouraging other people to do that.

Speaker A: 00:28:28

Okay, put it another way. Who are we most intolerant of? Yeah, the people I'm most intolerant of are the ones, and I think this is where Millennials come into it, are those crowd followers. Okay. So for example, I remember when I did my part-time documentary filmmaking course, as you can imagine, it was all quite lefty in there. And I found myself one day defending the Daily Mail and its journalism, which I never thought I would be in that position. But I just got so fed up with this consensus of... You were driven to an extreme? Yeah.

Speaker C: 00:29:00

Have you heard of the NPC meme? Sorry? The NPC meme. It's a new vaguely right-wing meme on the internet. An NPC is a non-player character in a computer game who spouts dialogue which is scripted and says the same thing over and over again. And it seems to be quite effective, this meme, because of the sense that a lot of people have that the viewpoints espoused by, particularly people on the left, are a bit learnt by rote rather than genuinely felt.

Speaker A: 00:29:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's kind of my little gambit on that. I mean, anyone else? Am I onto something here? Do you want to talk about this? Yeah, no, I think it's a good thing. Peter? Sorry, let's have Chris, then Peter.

Speaker B: 00:29:38

Well, no, I was going to say my... The sort of... The niche that I am most intolerant of within society is cat people. I just... I try really hard not to judge them for their, you know, love of felines. But I can't help it. So I just... But what I don't do is I don't go out there and hector them. I just keep myself to myself.

Speaker A: 00:30:06

On weekends, go out and murder cats and mutilate them.

Speaker B: 00:30:09

That's right. And then put them in the bin.

Speaker A: 00:30:11

Yeah. But why don't you like feline lovers?

Speaker B: 00:30:16

Not even that I hate the cats, particularly. I hate... It's the sort of... Well, I think it's representative of a particular type of person. So maybe that's what it is. Maybe I've sort of judged what kind of person they are, but generally a sort of slightly irrational, emotional person who is able to invest in something that's not really that sentient.

Speaker D: 00:30:45

You've thought a lot about this stereotype, I can tell. I mean, I don't like pet ownership as a thing. I think it's a weird thing that we used to do when we were prehistoric humans, but we don't need to anymore because we used to keep cats to catch mice and dogs to keep wolves away. There aren't really any of those two things that are a problem anymore. Hold on, it feels like we've got the beginning of a political party forming here, but yeah, go on, Peter. So the people I hate aren't a sort of single ideology or group or thing you can point at. I mean, apart from the fact that I don't like flat earthers specifically and vegans specifically and all the kind of nutcase groups of people, but they're more kind of... You'll find these people everywhere in any kind of social group or social party, but they're the people who are unwilling to challenge. Not the people who don't know how to challenge, the people who haven't been taught or worked out how to sort of look at evidence and reconsider their position. The people who know how to do that, but choose not to.

Speaker B: 00:31:39

That's me.

Speaker A: 00:31:40

Who are not morally brave or lazy or... The people who go along, yeah.

Speaker D: 00:31:44

Cognitively lazy, I think. I think it's like the...

Speaker A: 00:31:48

Is there anything else you want to say there?

Speaker D: 00:31:50

Yeah, because those are the people that sort of will... They behave like sheep or in fact spokespeople, ringleaders, but they're doing it either for some sort of personal aim or they're just doing it out of complete apathy.

Speaker C: 00:32:06

Okay. I think, yeah. I mean, boy, are they the problem because you look at the things like... I mean, fascism and communism are enabled by these people. The sort of terrors of extremist governments have been... It's people like Adolf Eichmann, who Hannah Arendt wrote about, Eichmann in Jerusalem, that he was just a boring, unimaginative sort of civil servant, essentially, but who happened to be organizing the Holocaust. And I absolutely share Peter's. They genuinely scare me, people like that. People who just sort of actually, they'd rather have an easy time of it and not think about why they're doing what they're doing and they just go along with it.

Speaker A: 00:32:46

We need to take them outside, line them up against the wall, shoot them all out. It's the only response. Yeah.

Speaker C: 00:32:51

But who would do it, you see, because we need a few of those people to actually organize them.

Speaker D: 00:32:55

Well, I was going to suggest we lobotomize them and send them into the mines.

Speaker C: 00:32:58

Good progressive stuff. I mean, I'd say I'm... I think I've been all over the place politically. I feel like I've settled down as a hardcore centrist, but so in a way, I think it's a bit like ex-smokers. I actually, I find myself very intolerant of people at the extremes in general and I think I went to university, I was sort of the usual North London left-wing kind of relativist and quickly, having thought about that, discovered it was pretty incoherent and not actually very authentic in terms of what I actually really believed. And now when I see people espousing, oh, well, it's the other culture's ways of doing things are just as good as ours and we should respect people's identity and that should be. I just think it's intellectually, it just is not intellectually robust and it irritates the hell out of me because I know that these are people expressing opinions that they haven't really thought about very hard. And of course, I share an equal sort of contempt for people on the right and historically, the right are more dangerous. They're a bit scared. That's a very dodgy thing to say because of, you know, actually, communism caused more deaths. But I mean, in general, you know, right-wingers are more, and you can see this in the profile of terrorist attacks in the US, right-wingers are more likely, it's easier for people on the right to condone the use of violence, let's say. It's less inconsistent with their core beliefs. So yeah, I am.

Speaker A: 00:34:33

Okay. I'm pleased I managed to bring us around to a nice sort of, to polarise us all, to get us to our most extreme positions. Okay, we have to stop there. So look, thank you very much indeed for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Nick Hare and pet haters, Chris Wragg and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights.

Speaker C: 00:34:53

The party should be called pet hate.

Speaker A: 00:34:57

Thank you. Until next time, goodbye.