Web sites use increasingly sophisticated algorithms to tailor content to the individual user: Netflix and Amazon deliver personalized recommendations, news aggregators filter content, and Google search results depend not just on the search terms themselves but also on whatever personal characteristics or details of one's historical usage are available. I imagine a near future in which I'll get into my driverless car around dinner time and be driven to my favorite Mexican restaurant without even having to say anything. If the car has enough predictive ability and access to enough data, I won't have to specify that I'm in the mood for Mexican, or even that I'm hungry. The car would never be able to get it exactly right every time, but it's easy to imagine it being close enough that the user wouldn't bother quibbling about it.
So, could this possibly be a bad thing? Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble (and presenter of a TED talk), thinks so. His concern is that all this personalization of content has an isolating effect. My starting point is an idealized view of filtering as a way of culling some subset of information from all of the information available. The user can sift through the information the old-fashioned way and decide what to consume--e.g., glance over the headlines and decide what articles to read--or allow the filter to do the sifting. If the filter arrives at the same subset of information that the user would have ultimately consumed anyway, then the filter is unambiguously beneficial insofar as it eliminates the cost to the user of sifting through the information.
The question is then in what way or to what extent the actual scenario diverges from this ideal. I can think of three possibilities:
A follow-up to part one and part two. I see three layers in debates over political or social issues: the bottom layer is some fundamental issue that could be classified as one of Haidt's moral foundations, or one of Kling's three axes; the middle is the rhetoric used to defend the bottom layer; and the top layer is the conclusion about a specific situation.
In a previous post, I lamented the problems arising from the "well-intentioned propagation of misinformation." We would all be better off if everyone could just be less confident.
This is an issue that I was interested in, then excited about, and then less so. My preoccupation with it peaked when I read Larry Lessig's book Republic, Lost. In it, Lessig details the extent to which money influences policy and presents an alternative system of campaign financing. I highly recommend the book, although if you would prefer to watch a video, this YouTube clip (48 minutes) covers much of what is in the book. Lessig more recently published an e-book, Lesterland, which presents the same basic point more briefly, and he gave a TED talk on it in a few months ago.
Lessig seems to be focused on spreading information and generating enthusiasm for changing the system. I'm still totally on board with the kinds of reforms he is suggesting. I have to wonder, though, how much of an improvement it would really be. Even if we create a system that forces politicians to cater to large numbers of voters, we can't expect that all the best policy decisions will be made. Voters don't generally have incentive to become informed, and they tend not to very good at processing what information they do receive. To take just one example, consider how difficult it is to convince the general public of the dangers of global warming. Uncertainties and biases can be exploited, especially by those with abundant resources at their disposal. It may not be as easy to influence voters through informational campaigns as it is to influence politicians through campaign donations; but surely it would happen to some extent. Even if no one actively tries to manipulate voters, how will they arrive at their voting decisions? I would feel fairly confident that our system of governance would improve if we dramatically reformed campaign financing, but I would still be looking out for some nutty policies to emerge.
A previous post sparked another frustrating Facebook debate. Remarkably, the most active participant (other than me) continued to do many of the things that I had criticized in the post, even though these very criticisms initiated the debate, and even though I repeatedly pointed out that he was doing this. He never took issue with the items in the post itself; he just continued to provide examples of unreasonable, non-constructive debating tactics (inadvertently, I presume).
Regarding gun control specifically, these tactics do nothing to foster understanding between opponents, not to mention consensus of any kind. Still, to me, the more interesting and important issue is the nature of the debate itself. It may
be understandable that people argue in nonsensical, counter-productive ways without realizing it, but it’s harder to understand, and to defend, when these things are at the forefront of the
conversation. Limitations on cognitive ability or effort may provide part of the explanation, but not all of it. It is becoming increasingly clear that there is something other than pure reasoning going on: see, for example, Haidt's elephant and rider analogy, Kahneman's system 1 vs. system 2 thinking, Lakoff's metaphors and frameworks, or Kling's three axes model. I am nonetheless surprised to see the aggressive opposition to reason that I have encountered recently, and I wonder how typical it is.
Clearly we don't understand these psychological issues entirely, and if everyone could be aware of the things we do understand, we wouldn't have agreement on every issue that is currently contentious; but it would be clear where the disagreements really lie, and surely some areas of disagreement would be eliminated, if we were all on the same page about how the reasoning is actually happening. So should we strive toward greater enlightenment as a means of resolving (or reducing) conflict over public policy? I'm inclined to think that this is unrealistic. More likely we as a society will have to take these weirdnesses in mental processing as given and do the best we can in the face of them. For example, rules of evidence can be viewed as a means of managing jurors' potential irrationality, rather than trying to break through it (or pretend it isn't there). I have new respect for this approach. What to do in broader contexts, I have no idea. Yet.
I've been thinking about informational issues for several years. Part of the motivation for this arose during the vaccination scare, which was at a fever pitch around the time my son was born.
The debate over gun control frustrates me immensely, and
this has nothing to do with whether or not anyone supports any specific law
that I may or may not support. It's all
about how people defend their own opinion and criticize others' opinions. This debate is a good illustration of
problems that appear in public debate over lots of issues. After the jump is a (probably non-exhaustive)
list of tactics that aren't helping any.
Over dinner with friends last week, I remarked that our government is a camel. This was a reference to an old aphorism, "A camel is a horse designed by committee," nicely illustrated in this episode of Parks and Recreation:
The idea is that a compromise among many different opinions results in something that doesn't come anywhere near accomplishing the original goal. I have often thought that the U.S. government would be immensely improved if it really embraced a single ideology, whether that ideology is liberal, conservative, libertarian, or whatever. Even though I disagree with some libertarian (or liberal, or conservative) policies, I think that we would be much better off if we let the libertarians (or liberals, or conservatives) have their way across the board, rather than these groups working at cross-purposes most of the time.
I am also gaining more of an appreciation for how deep political differences really are. It is much more than differences in values or priorities. In The Political Mind, cognitive scientist George Lakoff describes the metaphors and narratives within which people frame political issues, and how these framing differences inhibit fruitful discussion, not to mention any kind of agreement. I'm still reading the book, but it seems that Lakoff's aim is to improve the political process by creating greater awareness of our mental processes. I'm not so sure that that's a realistic goal for the majority of the population (and I'm working on my own grand theory of how to achieve public consensus, but whether I'll get anywhere with that remains to be seen).
A more pointed objection I have to Lakoff is his insistence on the moral mission of government. He says that health care, for example, is a moral necessity and as such should not be provided by for-profit entities. Again, haven't finished the book yet, but I'm not sure how he is drawing the line between moral and non-moral issues, and more importantly, I don't know why he assumes that the government is a moral entity. I'm always in favor of keeping morals out of the discussion as much as possible, especially when it's straightforward to consider welfare in a non-emotional, non-judgmental way. Certainly the government can, at least some of the time, accomplish things that accord with at least some people's morals, but the real difference between government and firms is that the government is a mechanism for collective action. Anarchists notwithstanding, we agree to give the government certain power over the citizenry, and if we're more or less in agreement about the aims to which that power should be put, the presence of the government makes everyone better off. In any given situation, either government action or private action may be preferable because of the different incentives that exist in different kinds of organizations; but starting from the presumption that the government does what is moral is at best unnecessary and at worst very misleading. The interesting thing here is that Lakoff seems to be subscribing to a narrative of government without being aware of it. There's irony for you.
My hypothesis is that progressives, conservatives, and libertarians view politics along three different axes. For progressives, the main axis has oppressors at one end and the oppressed at the other. For conservatives, the main axis has civilization at one end and barbarism at the other. For libertarians, the main axis has coercion at one end and free choice at the other. So here is what I recommend doing when arguing with each:
When arguing with a progressive, start by saying, “It is sometimes appropriate to view particular classes of people as oppressors and other classes as oppressed.” Slavery is an example. Proceed then to suggest that, on the other hand, there are instances in which this way of looking at things is not so compelling. For example, if you think about it, borrowers who obtained homes with no money down are not necessarily oppressed, and the banks that lent them the money are not necessarily oppressors.
When arguing with a conservative, start by saying, “It is sometimes appropriate to view particular practices as barbaric and to view tradition and authority as protecting civilization.” There are, for example, criminals who commit assault and murder without remorse. Proceed then to suggest that, on the other hand, there are instances in which this way of looking at things is not so compelling. For example, if you think about it, Latin Americans who sneak across the border in order to work in this country are probably more civilized than barbaric.
When arguing with a libertarian, start by saying, “It is sometimes appropriate to view particular policies as coercion.” For example, taking tax revenue to hand out political favors. Proceed then to suggest, that, on the other hand, there are instances in which this way of looking at things is not so compelling. For example, if you think about it, it is plausible that some activities function better as monopolies: water and sewer service; courts; road systems. If competition is unworkable, then provision via elected government should not be considered coercive.
I think that this is a very useful model. Recognizing the presence of all three axes doesn't necessarily lead to agreement, but it helps to put public debate on a reasonable footing.
Update: A few more thoughts on Lakoff, since I was still in the midst of reading when I wrote the post. He presents a very interesting and useful framework for thinking about political opinions and conflict, but there are some problems with his exposition (and possibly with his theory itself) that would make it easy for a reader not to take it seriously:
1. He talks about other models of human behavior and interaction as models, with the necessary disconnect from reality that that implies. He presents an alternative model--that people think within frameworks determined by narratives and metaphors--as if it is not a model, but a literal description of behavior. He spends a considerable amount of time discussing the dangers of taking any one model too seriously, not seeming to realize the potential problems of assuming his model is the right one, period.
2. He steps beyond the bounds of his own expertise. As an economist, I noticed this when he occasionally discussed an economic idea in an uninformed and unsophisticated manner. For example, he claims that insurance is fundamentally "anti-market," in a way that reminded me of what a fairly good undergraduate student might say in class without thinking something through. It's very straightforward to demolish the claim. This made me wonder whether he might be mangling ideas from other fields in ways not noticeable to me.
3. He presents his theory alongside advocacy for progressivism. Not that I would criticize progressivism or advocacy in general; nor would I deny that, in a sense, all research is advocacy research (that's a whole can of worms in itself); but Lakoff takes it to an extreme. He is basically saying that conservatives are doing all these things that are patently bad but are able to do them because they successfully manipulate the elements of his model, and that progressives must understand his theory in order to fight back. This can only limit the appeal of the theory.
