I've been searching for a way to communicate the importance of free speech to young people, and now I've found it. It's hard to imagine how any school - however woke - could refuse to use this as a teaching tool. Thank you.
1. I have been thinking a lot about the Tablet article by Jacob Siegel (titled A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century—Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation) which elucidates on the merger of interest between the US military industrial complex and big tech, the media and academia. I think it provides a crucial piece of the puzzle for understanding the unprecedented and rapid changes in the zeitgeist, particularly as it pertains to the undermining of ideals such as freedom of speech, objectivity and ideological diversity.
2. If we understand individuals’ opinions on this particular matter as a bell curve, I am interested about the those whose political inclinations fall left of center: how many of them are true believers (i.e., the social constructivists putting their ideas in practice and invested on creating a new illiberal reality )? Of the people that remain, how many are able to now see though the manipulation of the narrative versus those who still believe old political paradigms continue to apply (e.g., those individuals who believe that the ACLU still cares more about civil liberties than about ideological conformity). That is a big question for the best social scientists to tackle, I realize, but one of which answer may be able help us to break pass the pluralistic ignorance.
3. I recently found a comic book titled Action Activists in my 8-year-old’s backpack which was given to her in school (based on the fact that the book has been published by the city’s own DOE). I read through the thing and could not find anything particularly objective or inaccurate other than the fact that historical characters were painted in a binary light. After some deliberation, I took the book away based on my objection to the notion that social studies should be taught as a form of state-approved activism. My daughter did not read the comic. Have I now become the censor?
This formulation centered on free speech appears to a mechanism yielding a conservative end. Let's have gradual change while conserving what the middle values. The current passion to break to a utopian (no place) future only yields to break up.
A brilliant take on what is happening in our culture - and what has happened in many cultures around the world. It happens on a micro scale too, in families, churches, colleges. And for those of us who critique the culture as a whole, are we stifling free speech among our friends and in our family units? Are we better than those we oppose?
I've noticed this phenomenon on social media. When my posts are about my personal life or noncontroversial memes, I typically get a lot of 'likes' and comments. However, on the rare occasion I post something political or controversial, it's crickets. So, either NO ONE agrees with me, or they're too afraid of having their opinions known by their own friends/family.
A terrific, insightful article. Too bad that what Tim says is contradicted by how he says it. He has succumbed to the pc mania for gender-neutral pronouns that violate both grammar and logic, using plural pronouns to refer to singular antecedents. For example:
"Let’s break every human into two parts: their Outer Self and their Inner Self....If we take any given topic, we can depict each of their viewpoints by where they’re standing on an “Idea Spectrum,” and by the color of their head"
A "human" is not a "they." How about simply using an article: "Let's break every human into two parts: the Outer Self and the Inner Self....we can depict each viewpoint by its location on an 'Idea Spectrum' and by the color of the head."
For those desperate to conform to gender neutrality, other choices might be alternating male and female pronouns, or using the plural. Or, those of us who are not threatened or demeaned by any pronoun could simply return to using either the masculine or the feminine throughout a piece of writing without violating either grammar or good sense.
North Korea, Cuba, China, the USSR and Russia, Venezuela are all perfect illustrations on which this model is built. Each American is deciding, whether they know it or not, which kind of world we will live in.
I am a sociologist and I really liked this presentation, which is a brilliant discussion of the cognitive mechanisms behind social change, and a discussion which does not shun or avoid the role the individuals play in it. Its all a question of emergence, and also a question of time, things that technocrats on all sides just do not understand. Thank you for this great post.
Despite the overwhelming secular, liberal, faith-in-Progress bias, the article is great. He's like a long form XKCD.
"The percentage of Americans smoking dropped from 47% in 1953 to 14% in 2017. The 'smoking causes cancer' advocates conquered the Thought Pile by pulling it toward their viewpoint"
This isn't actually correct though. A portion of the people were convinced (maybe 30%). But a larger portion were forced to submit via law, specifically the gradual reduction of places where smoking was permitted. I happen to believe this was an entirely appropriate use of law to alter behavior in support of the common good. I'm a common-good rather than a libertarian conservative, so that doesn't bother me. However, painting the shift in smoking attitudes as a quasi-libertarian contest of ideas is simply false.
The Overton Window is moved by law and policy even more than it moves law and policy. A great example of that is what's going on with gender identity right now.
I think it is a very nice article and I think correctly presents the benefits of free speech. But in my opinion the examples are somewhat misleading. This simply may be because social phenomenon are too complex to be fully captured by models. Although these changes probably would not have occurred without free speech, I think the power of the state had as much to do with changes in people’s views on interracial marriage and homosexuality as anything else. While these were illegal, most people considered them wrong because the state argued these things were wrong and passed laws against them. Once the Supreme Court declared bans on inter-racial marriage unconstitutional, attitudes changed not because of persuasive arguments, but because once something becomes a right in this country, people tend to think it must be right in a different sense. Indeed I would guess that the reason many states passed laws against interracial marriage was because it was occurring in large enough numbers for advocates of racial separation to be concerned. They had the political power,so they passed laws against it. (As Miss Manners once said, there is no need for a law against something that no one would do in the first place.) One implication of the writer’s argument that I like is that it brings out into the open that we don’t really know what people who live under dictatorship think. So we cannot predict what will happen if our government successfully overthrows another government because it is a hostile (to us) dictatorship. The new people who gain power might be worse!
"In the same way that a free economic market has a natural tendency to push bad products to the fringes while elevating the best..." I appreciate this analogy, being a free-market proponent, but I suspect 50% of the population would stop reading here because they believe this evil capitalist paradigm needs to die.
However, I'm not sure that the battle to redefine marriage belongs in the category of good ideas winning out over time in response to the free exchange of ideas.
Consider: it's bedrock social science, proven by studies beyond number, that outcomes for children are best when they grow up 1) under one roof with 2) biological mother and 3) biological father who are 4) married. Remove any one of those four pillars, and outcomes drop. The more of those pillars are removed, the more calamitous the drop. This fact is also so readily observable by even non-specialists that it was once widely accepted across society. This being the case, the open market of free ideas should have, over time, kept this one firmly in the middle of the thought pile -- especially if, over time, good ideas win out.
That's not where we are today.
The idea that you could redefine marriage without consequences to the welfare of children is the invention of adults. But it's children who bear the worst of the costs.
It's not clear that this movement of the thought pile on the redefinition of marriage was necessarily the result of the best ideas besting all others in an open marketplace of ideas. An idea can be popular without being good.
My first exposure to Tim Urban. What a great read -- brilliantly done!
I've been searching for a way to communicate the importance of free speech to young people, and now I've found it. It's hard to imagine how any school - however woke - could refuse to use this as a teaching tool. Thank you.
Just ordered the book, thanks for a great read!
I finally got to read this truly wonderful piece.
3 comments:
1. I have been thinking a lot about the Tablet article by Jacob Siegel (titled A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century—Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation) which elucidates on the merger of interest between the US military industrial complex and big tech, the media and academia. I think it provides a crucial piece of the puzzle for understanding the unprecedented and rapid changes in the zeitgeist, particularly as it pertains to the undermining of ideals such as freedom of speech, objectivity and ideological diversity.
2. If we understand individuals’ opinions on this particular matter as a bell curve, I am interested about the those whose political inclinations fall left of center: how many of them are true believers (i.e., the social constructivists putting their ideas in practice and invested on creating a new illiberal reality )? Of the people that remain, how many are able to now see though the manipulation of the narrative versus those who still believe old political paradigms continue to apply (e.g., those individuals who believe that the ACLU still cares more about civil liberties than about ideological conformity). That is a big question for the best social scientists to tackle, I realize, but one of which answer may be able help us to break pass the pluralistic ignorance.
3. I recently found a comic book titled Action Activists in my 8-year-old’s backpack which was given to her in school (based on the fact that the book has been published by the city’s own DOE). I read through the thing and could not find anything particularly objective or inaccurate other than the fact that historical characters were painted in a binary light. After some deliberation, I took the book away based on my objection to the notion that social studies should be taught as a form of state-approved activism. My daughter did not read the comic. Have I now become the censor?
You are supposed to censor what your kids see. It isn't censorship, its parenting. She can make up her own mind later.
Loved this! Passed it along my ‘reader friends’ food chain. Well done, provides super clarity.
This formulation centered on free speech appears to a mechanism yielding a conservative end. Let's have gradual change while conserving what the middle values. The current passion to break to a utopian (no place) future only yields to break up.
Not all trends are “progressive” as shown.
What about the earlier trend for women’s smoking to become respectable? The trend for eugenics to be adopted by most professionals?
A brilliant take on what is happening in our culture - and what has happened in many cultures around the world. It happens on a micro scale too, in families, churches, colleges. And for those of us who critique the culture as a whole, are we stifling free speech among our friends and in our family units? Are we better than those we oppose?
I've noticed this phenomenon on social media. When my posts are about my personal life or noncontroversial memes, I typically get a lot of 'likes' and comments. However, on the rare occasion I post something political or controversial, it's crickets. So, either NO ONE agrees with me, or they're too afraid of having their opinions known by their own friends/family.
Or the like button has been turned off.......
Like being shadow banned? That didn't even occur to me. I'll have to look into that.
I have been told that happens all the time, but I have no proof.
A terrific, insightful article. Too bad that what Tim says is contradicted by how he says it. He has succumbed to the pc mania for gender-neutral pronouns that violate both grammar and logic, using plural pronouns to refer to singular antecedents. For example:
"Let’s break every human into two parts: their Outer Self and their Inner Self....If we take any given topic, we can depict each of their viewpoints by where they’re standing on an “Idea Spectrum,” and by the color of their head"
A "human" is not a "they." How about simply using an article: "Let's break every human into two parts: the Outer Self and the Inner Self....we can depict each viewpoint by its location on an 'Idea Spectrum' and by the color of the head."
For those desperate to conform to gender neutrality, other choices might be alternating male and female pronouns, or using the plural. Or, those of us who are not threatened or demeaned by any pronoun could simply return to using either the masculine or the feminine throughout a piece of writing without violating either grammar or good sense.
North Korea, Cuba, China, the USSR and Russia, Venezuela are all perfect illustrations on which this model is built. Each American is deciding, whether they know it or not, which kind of world we will live in.
I am a sociologist and I really liked this presentation, which is a brilliant discussion of the cognitive mechanisms behind social change, and a discussion which does not shun or avoid the role the individuals play in it. Its all a question of emergence, and also a question of time, things that technocrats on all sides just do not understand. Thank you for this great post.
Despite the overwhelming secular, liberal, faith-in-Progress bias, the article is great. He's like a long form XKCD.
"The percentage of Americans smoking dropped from 47% in 1953 to 14% in 2017. The 'smoking causes cancer' advocates conquered the Thought Pile by pulling it toward their viewpoint"
This isn't actually correct though. A portion of the people were convinced (maybe 30%). But a larger portion were forced to submit via law, specifically the gradual reduction of places where smoking was permitted. I happen to believe this was an entirely appropriate use of law to alter behavior in support of the common good. I'm a common-good rather than a libertarian conservative, so that doesn't bother me. However, painting the shift in smoking attitudes as a quasi-libertarian contest of ideas is simply false.
The Overton Window is moved by law and policy even more than it moves law and policy. A great example of that is what's going on with gender identity right now.
I think it is a very nice article and I think correctly presents the benefits of free speech. But in my opinion the examples are somewhat misleading. This simply may be because social phenomenon are too complex to be fully captured by models. Although these changes probably would not have occurred without free speech, I think the power of the state had as much to do with changes in people’s views on interracial marriage and homosexuality as anything else. While these were illegal, most people considered them wrong because the state argued these things were wrong and passed laws against them. Once the Supreme Court declared bans on inter-racial marriage unconstitutional, attitudes changed not because of persuasive arguments, but because once something becomes a right in this country, people tend to think it must be right in a different sense. Indeed I would guess that the reason many states passed laws against interracial marriage was because it was occurring in large enough numbers for advocates of racial separation to be concerned. They had the political power,so they passed laws against it. (As Miss Manners once said, there is no need for a law against something that no one would do in the first place.) One implication of the writer’s argument that I like is that it brings out into the open that we don’t really know what people who live under dictatorship think. So we cannot predict what will happen if our government successfully overthrows another government because it is a hostile (to us) dictatorship. The new people who gain power might be worse!
"In the same way that a free economic market has a natural tendency to push bad products to the fringes while elevating the best..." I appreciate this analogy, being a free-market proponent, but I suspect 50% of the population would stop reading here because they believe this evil capitalist paradigm needs to die.
Brilliant stuff, up to a point.
However, I'm not sure that the battle to redefine marriage belongs in the category of good ideas winning out over time in response to the free exchange of ideas.
Consider: it's bedrock social science, proven by studies beyond number, that outcomes for children are best when they grow up 1) under one roof with 2) biological mother and 3) biological father who are 4) married. Remove any one of those four pillars, and outcomes drop. The more of those pillars are removed, the more calamitous the drop. This fact is also so readily observable by even non-specialists that it was once widely accepted across society. This being the case, the open market of free ideas should have, over time, kept this one firmly in the middle of the thought pile -- especially if, over time, good ideas win out.
That's not where we are today.
The idea that you could redefine marriage without consequences to the welfare of children is the invention of adults. But it's children who bear the worst of the costs.
It's not clear that this movement of the thought pile on the redefinition of marriage was necessarily the result of the best ideas besting all others in an open marketplace of ideas. An idea can be popular without being good.
Otherwise, great article, thanks!