Jonathan Haidt on Why Public Discourse Has Become So Stupid

Yascha Mounk

It'll take those. But I guess I also wonder what extra institutional changes will need. Because my sense is that the basic mechanisms of virality, of the ability to share, those aren't going to go away, right? So whatever small adjustments we might be able to make in the institutional infrastructure, the sense that anybody could throw a dart at any moment, and then there might be 50 more darts Coming, and that's going to be a disaster, that will never entirely go away. So we somehow have to make sure that those darts don't kill. We somehow have to make sure that when people start throwing darts, there's a protection mechanism. You have an armor. And that, I think, has to somehow consist in the realm of collective behavior. Now, perhaps all of this is just not doable, but what would it look like to reflect that change?

Jonathan Haidt

So there are certainly some structural changes needed to social media. But yes, I agree with you. It's not going away. We can tinker at the edges. And there are a few things we can do, I think, that be substantial. Maybe we'll talk about those later.

Yascha Mounk

Well, actually, why don't we start with that? So what do you think of the structural changes that will help? Because that would get us into a better environment. Then we can think about, you know, how much of this can we, you know, two social scientists walk into a bar, what do we discuss? How much of the change we need is structure and how much is agency, right? Yeah, that's not good, good.

Jonathan Haidt

So the structural changes are what can we do to make social media less of a powerful tool for intimidation? So there's some little things like, for example, you know, Twitter actually is, I think, kind of trying. It's been really not well run forever. But now they're doing a few things. One is the ability to downvote comments, because that's what a lot of the nastiness is, is in the comments. And so if you can block them or you can downvote them. So things like that, I think will help. The biggest single thing that I'm

Yascha Mounk

It'll take those. But I guess I also wonder what extra institutional changes will need. Because my sense is that the basic mechanisms of virality, of the ability to share, those aren't going to go away, right? So whatever small adjustments we might be able to make in the institutional infrastructure, the sense that anybody could throw a dart at any moment, and then there might be 50 more darts Coming, and that's going to be a disaster, that will never entirely go away. So we somehow have to make sure that those darts don't kill. We somehow have to make sure that when people start throwing darts, there's a protection mechanism. You have an armor. And that, I think, has to somehow consist in the realm of collective behavior. Now, perhaps all of this is just not doable, but what would it look like to reflect that change?

Jonathan Haidt

So there are certainly some structural changes needed to social media. But yes, I agree with you. It's not going away. We can tinker at the edges. And there are a few things we can do, I think, that be substantial. Maybe we'll talk about those later.

Yascha Mounk

Well, actually, why don't we start with that? So what do you think of the structural changes that will help? Because that would get us into a better environment. Then we can think about, you know, how much of this can we, you know, two social scientists walk into a bar, what do we discuss? How much of the change we need is structure and how much is agency, right? Yeah, that's not good, good.

Jonathan Haidt

So the structural changes are what can we do to make social media less of a powerful tool for intimidation? So there's some little things like, for example, you know, Twitter actually is, I think, kind of trying. It's been really not well run forever. But now they're doing a few things. One is the ability to downvote comments, because that's what a lot of the nastiness is, is in the comments. And so if you can block them or you can downvote them. So things like that, I think will help. The biggest single thing that I'm

Yascha Mounk

Governments to undermine our public discourse, right? So when there's a question of should the Russian state be able to run a bot army to attack people, I have no problem with saying no, you can find ways to counter those bots and so on. But as you're saying, you know, an article as well, it's actually a small number of people with pretty dark personality traits who are just able to radicalize discourse online and to Go and smear all of the more moderate people and sling those arrows at them. And so they're, you know, those are real human beings. They're citizens of the countries in which they engage in the public discourse by and large. They're often perfectly willing to display their real names. Many of them have a picture and the name out there on Twitter, and there's absolutely no reason to assume that they're false. In fact, many of them have a little blue check. So there's been some kind of verification mechanism. So that change, I worry, is going to improve things at the margin, but it's not going to deal with the real underlying mechanism. Well, first, it's not just at the margin.

Jonathan Haidt

I think the change I'm talking about would have a very big effect. You're right that there would still be a lot of people, maybe even a majority,

Yascha Mounk

On Twitter have real names. And, you know, perhaps there's the worst 2% in terms of people just like spewing absolutely vile threats and murder threats and so on. But those aren't dominating this world on Twitter, right? That makes it a toxic place to be and deeply unpleasant. But the widest people are the ones who have names and have platforms and are one level above that and then will just completely smear as pedophile on the right or the right on the left, Anybody who disagrees exactly. And so those are not going to be knocked out by a verification method. That's right.

Jonathan Haidt

All right. So here's another idea, which I bandied about in Silicon Valley, and it's not in my article, it's not fully baked, but something along these lines. What I'm after is a systemic change so that people are rewarded for nuance, and they're punished, or they sort of lose social credit for complete lack of nuance. So the idea that I'd love people to know more about this to develop would be something like this. Suppose that every person, you can even have AI do this, you get rated for two things, nuance and hostility. Nuance means cognitive complexity, or let's call it that, cognitive complexity. That is the ability to have two conflicting ideas in the same tweet. You know, you couldn't do it when it was 120 characters, but 240 characters, you actually can sometimes have some cognitive complexity. Other people, you can see they have zero cognitive complexity in their tweets. And then the other thing is hostility. And so if you use a lot of curse words, A, I could figure out what's really hostile. So suppose you have a zero to five rating for every person on

Yascha Mounk

For deep structural reasons that you've outlined. I think there are deep drivers of it. But one of them is that, you know, there's social credit to be gained from flinging arrows. And I wonder whether there's not going to be a cultural transformation where suddenly people think, you know, we're fed up of all of this polarization, we're fed up with all of this hatred. And, you know, if you're just a shit-stirrer, right, if you're just somebody who's like always shouting that this person is bad and that person is bad, we actually start to look down On you, right? There comes to be a real social penalty. And I feel like, you know, among the very youngest generation of people who've really grown up with these witch hunts as a constant feature of the social environment, right? And I'm not talking here about debates over celebrities. I'm talking about every classroom in every K-12 school in the country having gone through these mini moral panics about something that somebody supposedly said or posted somewhere, Right? These students, I think, do find that deeply terrible. And you can start to see in some polls a kind of mini generational shift where actually the people who are most supportive of aspects of, quote unquote, certain forms of cancel culture, Are just a little bit older. And the very, very youngest cohorts, they actually tend to be a little bit more supportive of free speech and a little bit more hostile to those elements of cancellation and so on. And so, you know, could there be just a saturation point where people say, I'm sick of this, I'm sick of the 2% of people who are actually pushing this on the platforms? And then the vibe shift might in turn incentivize the social media platforms to change their designs and you get into a virtuous cycle.

Jonathan Haidt

Yeah, that is a possible outcome. And I remember Matt Ridley telling me that because he wasn't like the oldest baby boomers. He was, I guess, born in the early 50s or something. I remember him telling me that in the 60s,

Yascha Mounk

For deep structural reasons that you've outlined. I think there are deep drivers of it. But one of them is that, you know, there's social credit to be gained from flinging arrows. And I wonder whether there's not going to be a cultural transformation where suddenly people think, you know, we're fed up of all of this polarization, we're fed up with all of this hatred. And, you know, if you're just a shit-stirrer, right, if you're just somebody who's like always shouting that this person is bad and that person is bad, we actually start to look down On you, right? There comes to be a real social penalty. And I feel like, you know, among the very youngest generation of people who've really grown up with these witch hunts as a constant feature of the social environment, right? And I'm not talking here about debates over celebrities. I'm talking about every classroom in every K-12 school in the country having gone through these mini moral panics about something that somebody supposedly said or posted somewhere, Right? These students, I think, do find that deeply terrible. And you can start to see in some polls a kind of mini generational shift where actually the people who are most supportive of aspects of, quote unquote, certain forms of cancel culture, Are just a little bit older. And the very, very youngest cohorts, they actually tend to be a little bit more supportive of free speech and a little bit more hostile to those elements of cancellation and so on. And so, you know, could there be just a saturation point where people say, I'm sick of this, I'm sick of the 2% of people who are actually pushing this on the platforms? And then the vibe shift might in turn incentivize the social media platforms to change their designs and you get into a virtuous cycle.

Jonathan Haidt

Yeah, that is a possible outcome. And I remember Matt Ridley telling me that because he wasn't like the oldest baby boomers. He was, I guess, born in the early 50s or something. I remember him telling me that in the 60s,

Yascha Mounk

Culture, are just a little bit older. And the very, very youngest cohorts, they actually tend to be a little bit more supportive of free speech and a little bit more hostile to those elements of cancellation and so on. And so, you know, could there be just a saturation point where people say, I'm sick of this, I'm sick of the 2% of people who are actually pushing this on the platforms? And then the vibe shift might in turn incentivize the social media platforms to change their designs and you get into a virtuous cycle.

Jonathan Haidt

Yeah, that is a possible outcome. And I remember Matt Ridley telling me that because he wasn't like the oldest baby boomers. He was, I guess, born in the early 50s or something. I remember him telling me that in the 60s, you know, when all of a sudden everybody went hippie, you know, you see this in high school yearbooks, like 1965, short hair, 1968, boom, everything Is like crazy hair. He said that, you know, a few years after that, people his age, you know, were like seven years behind the oldest or something. People his age thought like this was silly and they kind of moved past it. And the main hippie phase kind of faded. So something like that is possible. My first thought is that what you're doing here is looking at what the average person thinks. And if the average 13-year is different from what the average 16-year thinks, maybe there'll be a change. That could happen. But I think that in the post-Babble world, the average isn't that important. We don't know what the average is. And look, the average person hates all of this stuff. So this isn't about the average. This

Yascha Mounk

And then the vibe shift might in turn incentivize the social media platforms to change their designs and you get into a virtuous cycle.

Jonathan Haidt

Yeah, that is a possible outcome. And I remember Matt Ridley telling me that because he wasn't like the oldest baby boomers. He was, I guess, born in the early 50s or something. I remember him telling me that in the 60s, you know, when all of a sudden everybody went hippie, you know, you see this in high school yearbooks, like 1965, short hair, 1968, boom, everything Is like crazy hair. He said that, you know, a few years after that, people his age, you know, were like seven years behind the oldest or something. People his age thought like this was silly and they kind of moved past it. And the main hippie phase kind of faded. So something like that is possible. My first thought is that what you're doing here is looking at what the average person thinks. And if the average 13-year is different from what the average 16-year thinks, maybe there'll be a change. That could happen. But I think that in the post-Babble world, the average isn't that important. We don't know what the average is. And look, the average person hates all of this stuff. So this isn't about the average. This is about the dynamics. And what I found when I speak about these issues is, right, most people are very reasonable. Most people are sick and tired of this. Most people hate this stuff. I've spoken at many high schools and colleges about the calling of the American mind. And I I talk about the problems of Gen Z,

Jonathan Haidt

People are sick and tired of this. Most people hate this stuff. I've spoken at many high schools and colleges about the calling of the American mind. And I I talk about the problems of Gen Z, and I always ask afterwards, okay, I've said some critical things about your generation. Do you think I got this analogy right or wrong? And, you know, it's either 100% say that I got it right, or if there are those who think I got it wrong, the conformity pressures are such that they won't speak up. I don't know. But basically, what I find is that Gen Z, they know they've got problems. They know that this stuff is damaging. They know they've got terrible anxiety and depression problems. So I think the way to think about this is not, oh, can we hope that the next generation rejects this? It's rather, can we empower the middle 80% everywhere, like kids, young adults? Can we get a democratic system in which the middle 80% actually has like 50% of the voice. Like that would be incredible. Before social media, I presume it's always been the case that the most politically active are the people on the extremes. And so we have a kind of a U-shaped function where participation is lower in the middle and higher at the end. You're going to always have something like that. You're never going to have a flat line where each point on the line, everyone participates equally. And when social media becomes hyperviralized in 2009, I believe what happened is the far left 8%, the far right 8% from the Hidden Tribe study, the far left and far right, they go zooming Up and so do trolls and so do Russian agents and other foreign agents. And look, the CIA might be

Jonathan Haidt

People are sick and tired of this. Most people hate this stuff. I've spoken at many high schools and colleges about the calling of the American mind. And I I talk about the problems of Gen Z, and I always ask afterwards, okay, I've said some critical things about your generation. Do you think I got this analogy right or wrong? And, you know, it's either 100% say that I got it right, or if there are those who think I got it wrong, the conformity pressures are such that they won't speak up. I don't know. But basically, what I find is that Gen Z, they know they've got problems. They know that this stuff is damaging. They know they've got terrible anxiety and depression problems. So I think the way to think about this is not, oh, can we hope that the next generation rejects this? It's rather, can we empower the middle 80% everywhere, like kids, young adults? Can we get a democratic system in which the middle 80% actually has like 50% of the voice. Like that would be incredible. Before social media, I presume it's always been the case that the most politically active are the people on the extremes. And so we have a kind of a U-shaped function where participation is lower in the middle and higher at the end. You're going to always have something like that. You're never going to have a flat line where each point on the line, everyone participates equally. And when social media becomes hyperviralized in 2009, I believe what happened is the far left 8%, the far right 8% from the Hidden Tribe study, the far left and far right, they go zooming Up and so do trolls and so do Russian agents and other foreign agents. And look, the CIA might be

Jonathan Haidt

Is living way above its design constraint. And this is the theme of your book, which is coming out any moment now, I believe. In your wonderful book, I learned that the only democracies that have ever achieved equality and stability tend to be those that don't have diversity. And if you have diversity, it kind of helps to have a king or an emperor so that you don't have democratic processes and one group dominating another. And so the great experiment, as you call it, is can you have a diverse, secular, liberal democracy? And I think the answer is yes, but the margin for error is very small. And we are so far outside that margin of error now. So I think we're running out of time. I'm just beginning to read Barbara Walter's book, How Civil Wars Start. And it is really frightening because she says it's when you have a lot of ideologies based on identity, which is what we have on the far left and the far right. And when you have militias, which is what we have on the far right. So she sees the signs brewing for civil war. Now, don't think about like the U.S. Civil War of the 1860s. Think about more like Colombia or places where there are militias, there are killings, there are bombings, there are assassinations. And of course, we had that in the late 1960s. So we've had that before. So I think that's where we're headed. We're headed towards a Latin American style democracy. And what I mean by that is, imagine trying to have a secular liberal democracy with bad institutions that don't work and nobody trusts. And that's what they've been trying to do in many Latin American countries for 200 years now. And they've had moments of success and moments of catastrophic failure. And I think that's our future, unless we make some big changes.

Yascha Mounk

So you've given us the case for pessimism. You've given us the case for optimism. Finally, the last question is a straightforward and obvious one. What can listeners do to