The challenge for the liberal establishment in the social media era is simple: persuade or perish. If you can’t control the public conversation, you must participate in it.
Absolute tour de force. This one needs to get into the New York Times and should get you an interview on Ezra Klein’s show.
I am a small-L liberal (though also a large-L Liberal Party of Canada voter for most of my life) and find myself guilty of many of the behaviours you list in here, particular in wanting to simply regulate social media into nonexistence to restore the elite gatekeepers. At least in Canada we’re going to get to see if the EU and UK has any success at this before we try.
But if you’re right and that effort is doomed to failure — we have crossed a rubicon and elite gatekeeping is never coming back — then it has big implications for the entire project of social progress. I am more pessimistic than you that if the elites simply engage with the public that things can move forward.
Immigration here in Canada is a good example. Broadly speaking, Canada only had white immigration until the 1960s when, under Trudeau Sr, the modern version of race-blind points-based immigration was invented. The government and elites pushed this, to a large extent, on a more conservative population. If social media had existed it may have never happened in the first place! Except then it turned out to be an amazing success, in my opinion, the most successful multicultural immigration system in the world in terms of high immigration rates (twice as high as the United States!) while having good social integration and maintaining high public support. The elites were right, and the masses were too blind to see that it can work.
Is it “populist” that now for the first time in my life, there are active voices in Canada saying we should go back to all-white immigration? That used to be off-limits, beyond the pale, and in my opinion rightly so. (But they’re not wrong that multicultural immigration only works up to a certain rate — which the Trudeau LPC broke… so it’s more complex)
This comment has ended up somewhat muddled, so I’ll try to just summarize it here. I’m not convinced that we ever would’ve had our modern multicultural immigration system in the 1960s in the first place without elite gatekeepers and if social media had existed then. And I’m *really* worried that the Overton window is now shifting back to some really dark places — somewhat legitimately in backlash to the excesses of the “woke” Trudeau Liberals — but the pendulum swinging back is going to go really far without any kind of brake pedal from elite gatekeepers.
Anyway A+ essay, I’ll be sending this to people. It challenged my thinking.
"Except then it turned out to be an amazing success, in my opinion, the most successful multicultural immigration system in the world in terms of high immigration rates (twice as high as the United States!)"
Was it really, or was that just the messaging from the elites? Perhaps it was always a failure and the only thing changed in 2015 was that people had the ability to talk about it.
Perhaps the "success" of mass immigration and multiculturalism was always a fraud and the truth was just suppressed.
Spicy! Okay, I’ll engage with ideas that were suppressed by elites until recently.
Why do you say it wasn’t a success? Again, not the post-2015 (and really 2021-2023) ridiculous surge of fake students and TFWs. Talking about the Canadian immigration system of 1970-2010 or so. What are you basing this on?
For me, it’s not being told this by elites, it’s my own judgement. It just … worked. Most immigrants were able to easily find jobs (again, points system, with family reunification being the minority) and our sponsorship system for refugees was basically the envy of the world. Numbers were controlled and social integration was high. (As Matt and Jen at The Line have pointed out, there is a climate factor — nothing integrates a new immigrant like a Canadian winter, and draws people together regardless of background or skin colour.)
I just don’t see it that elites were deceiving us that the system was working. I think it really was working.
I spent many years working in collaborative processes where we tried, and sometimes succeeded, in bring divergent viewpoints together. This was mostly before social media amplified the divisions, but there were people and organizations who actively promoted the extremes and sometimes tried to disrupt the process. I do not think, reflecting, that gatekeepers - liberal or otherwise - had anything resembling control of what people brought to the table, but then these were all face-to-face encounters in which lived experience held equal sway with information from "sources."
When it worked it was the kind of inquiry that John Dewey envisioned leading to a continuing community conversation, to a community that informed itself and acted on that. I suppose he believed that the extremes would be moderated, and I have seen that happen. And I think the "liberal (I hate these labels)" aversion to the fray of social media stems from knowing that it can happen and judging that it should. Having also seen the outcomes of sincere dialogue blown away by the will to power of interests who cannot accept the outcome and continue to profit as they would like, I subscribe to that "should."
Which leads me to my usual point: What "controls" is the story or myth people share about what it is we're all doing here. Social media currently exacerbate the American myths of individuality and competition (violent competition if necessary). It is the final(?) tool of imperialism, which must keep on colonizing something and, having subjugated material reality, is now colonizing the minds of those who allow that. If there has been something different to pick out of our culture, social media would, I think, reinforce that. If we don't cultivate a new guiding myth, the collapse of anything resembling democracy is inevitable.
One suggestion for starting the new myth: It must insist on face-to-interaction. Checking on your Aunt's health on Facebook, sure, and sharing pictures from your trip to the islands. Its just the new mail or phone call. But having tried both public engagement and teaching on-line, I am persuaded (with a little help from Neil Postman and others) that we are a long ways down a path we should have known better than to take.
I think the problems with this essay, which is indeed well-done - is that it accepts a false premise that effective persuasion is possible during a continuing free-for-all in which everyone is struggling to preserve their identity. It isn't There have to be widely accepted "ground rules" suggesting that agreement is the desired outcome and that compromising to attain that outcome is a desirable thing. When people work face-to-face with at least some regard for each other, the winner take all nature of American politics can be (usually has been) mitigated. That doesn't happen on-line.
Damn it Dan, another banger. From the natural sciences side, the fear (and it really is fear), is that within this free-for-all we do not have the tools to compete.
Personally, I think this is wrong - the human reaction of "interest" is greatly underestimated. It's effective, because within a subset of the population it's more of an itch that you can never really get rid of... teach someone something interesting, then those few go out in to the world, learn a bit more and teach others ect. And it's happening globally.
I do wonder if we (meaning academics, but potentially other "elites") do just need to focus more on personability and presentation? I mean if we are simply competing with charismatic others telling the hoipoloi what they want to hear then why not lean in to charm? Charisma? Or god forbid humour?? This was a feature of Carl Sagan, and even someone like Attenborough. And it's clearly lacking in many who have tried to follow in their stead...
I believe that in times where most content is generated by AI, we need to bring back the gatekeepers. There is no alternative and it is already happening, for good reasons.
The real question is how to bring back the gatekeepers in a democratic and decentralized manner.
This poses interesting questions, even from a purely software engineering point of view.
Great writing as always, Dan! Succinct, clear, and really deep research into the phenomena of social media driving a change in the way that the public gets/reacts to news!
An interesting essay. I comment as someone who views 21st c. Liberalism as likely well past its half life....populism or no populism. I have never read Spengler’s but the idea that entropy must apply to every civilisation seems axiomatic....why would an exception be made of Western Liberalism? But it is not my intention to rain on the parade of Liberalism’s Goods....they can after all be credited with giving us three centuries of the most amazing human flourishing....the best mankind has ever known.
In terms of the liberalism/populism political struggle implicit in this essay, there are two fundamental ways of thinking about politics. A limited one is about negotiating disagreements and conflicts of interest among the citizenry. But Liberalism gave rise to a more grandiose one....... bringing about ‘Progress’ by political means. We in the West have been schooled into an expectation that there is a political solution to every societal problem. And this expectation can lead people - especially the most politically engaged kind - down some big rabbit holes.
In terms of the liberal establishment’s loss of its gatekeeping power, the internet age has created what Unherd columnist Mary Harrington has elegantly characterised as a “digital-era of decentralised, self-coordinating, swarm governance”.
The invention of the digital search engine has been an absolute marvel for those able to maintain an intellectual balance between curiosity and scepticism. But it has created a different problem for the would-be informed citizen. Digital media has deluged people with an 'information' overload of a scale that even the most informed struggle to intelligently parse and filter. And into this information/disinformation supply-side log jam, along came social media – tailor-made for the uncurious and suggestible. In order to genuinely have a 'belief' about something - impending climate catastrophe or ‘systemic racism’ for example - one would need to have invested a deal of energy in weighing evidence for these things. But how many actually do this as opposed to simply noticing the social signals about what is the most favoured opinion... with benefits?
It is Liberalism that has created all this and will now inevitably mutate as a consequence.
Given that some liberals accept that they need to learn to argue rationally and persuade holders of opposing viewpoints, it seems that we may need to establish places that are widely known where they could go and learn to do that. Sadly, that is not going to happen in college.
Years ago, I was in a public health class and the professor, who had to be in his mid '50's, told us "you cannot ever lie, mislead, or withhold information to the public or you will lose the public's trust and you will deserve it. And it will take years to earn that public trust back." This was when W was president , so most of the students rolled their eyes because we had an idiot for president. He patiently explained that people make decisions for reasons and they're rarely stupid. Often times it's because they have different values, but it could also be due to having different experiences, needs, life situations or information and it was our job to listen to the public and take those factors into account in our responses to things like crises or fights over policy. As far as he was concerned our strongest took was persuasion. The field of public health has changed a lot since then.
I mention this because that worldview seems much rarer amongst people who self-identify as elites. One of the things that I took away from that class was that persuading people meant that you had to actually listen to people and that could lead to you having to reevaluate your own positions. It's risky if you have an emotional attachment to your positions, but if you're going to present yourself as the smart, rational side, you really do have to ensure that your information is accurate and complete and that your reasoning does make sense. You might have to admit that you got something wrong. It's much more comfortable to tell yourself that the public is full of bigots, idiots and rubes who are easily fooled by fake news.
Do you sense that this current direction may require some updating along the vector taken in your part 1 of 'becoming less left wing?'
I won't ask you square any tensions here, but I do sense that the "Darwinian Cynicism" framing, which holds in principle, may not play well with these persuadability arguments in practice. I suspect that this is a productive tension (as is often true of principle v practice), but I think it only fair to recognize the tension as such, insofar as I understand your positions on the two.
Lots of ideas here. Not necessarily things I naturally think about but very good material overall. Dan, you probably know that there are academics who study misinformation from the perspective of Cog Sci. Does that work intersect with your thinking as it relates to this piece? Are there academic establishments going after this problem that are balanced from your perspective and not focused on policy? Thanks.
One of themost consequential role of elite gatekeeping was the suppression of statistics that reflect negatively on minorities. That is still almost entirely missing from the mainstream media (which is lying by omission) but it is prevalent now on social media. That was the big game changer that led to the popularity of new influencers.
A perfect example was how everyone in Minnesota (I live there) knew about the large scale Somalian fraud schemes. But until Trump posted about it, none of the mainstream media institutions would talk about it, even though it was a common topic on social media. Now we finally have a NYT article confirming that facts.
Grooming gangs in the UK would be another key example.
No mention of motivated reasoning or emotional reasoning as reasons why people are often unable to be persuaded by “rational” arguments and “facts”. A combo of baseline intelligence, open mindedness, conspiracy thinking, tribalism and other cognitive/social factors are also reasons why many fail to be persuaded.
Dont most disagreements trace back to disagreements about values? For example, both Peter Thiel and Chris Hedges want to defend the achievements of Western culture. But they radically differ of what counts as an achievement.
There's much to like about this analysis, but it's vital that we acknowledge that blatant lies and lies of omission are quite common in the most elite of elite media (looking at you NYT and NPR). This is the root cause of their loss of credibility for many of us.
Well, as you might expect, I came in to reading this article already on team “Let’s Not Bring Back the Gatekeepers,” even though the way I most need to use it is somewhat different. That is, I live in one of the most left-leaning areas of NYC. I’m left-leaning, too, and the persuasion work I most have to do relates to areas where I think we on the left have gone off track.
That said, the principles, as you outline so well in this piece, are exactly the same, no matter who one is engaging and no matter the topic. We simply can’t opt out of staying in the game and learning how to use persuasion techniques as best as we can.
Your reference to the problems attendant to the “Great Awokening” are very well-observed, and particularly your statement: “Nevertheless, the distinctive feature of wokeism is not really the use of such tactics against perceived heresies, but the heroic attempt to expand the category of heresy to include attitudes held by around 90% of the population, including many liberals within establishment institutions.”
I think this is where we on the left go very, very wrong, and quite often. We too often assume people with points of view with which we disagree are necessarily duped—passive beings absorbing what they are fed by illiberal media and influencers. But what I have come to understand as I age is that all people have agency, and to deny this is the case is patronizing and counter-productive. As you so elegantly state: “In reality, people often hold divergent beliefs about the truth not because they are deeply irrational or acting in bad faith but simply because they have been exposed to very different streams of information and arguments over the course of their lives, which inevitably shape how they interpret the world.”
As one example, I have weekly conversations (we live on opposite coasts) with my very conservative 97-year-old mother. I have learned from her a great deal about why and how her life experiences and those of her huge working class, mostly not college-educated, family have shaped her views. Even though I disagree with her, sometimes quite strongly, on certain things, her views are not even close to crazy. (To my mind, leftie neighbors of mine who think males should be able to self-identify as females for all purposes hold much crazier views.)
This also struck a very strong chord: “They weren’t complaining about anything the scientist had said on these podcasts; they were outraged merely at the fact that the scientist had been on them.” I have seen this time after time. It is absolutely essential to listen to what is being said without filtering it out just because one is not a fan of the outlet.
Your closing discussion of persuasion is music to my ears, particularly this: “None of this means that persuasion is easy. You must meet people where they are, address their questions and objections, and be willing to revise your own beliefs in the process. It’s also often uncomfortable. People don’t like to discover that they’re mistaken about something. This is why there must be significant institutional and cultural changes to incentivise people to do this hard work.”
Absolute tour de force. This one needs to get into the New York Times and should get you an interview on Ezra Klein’s show.
I am a small-L liberal (though also a large-L Liberal Party of Canada voter for most of my life) and find myself guilty of many of the behaviours you list in here, particular in wanting to simply regulate social media into nonexistence to restore the elite gatekeepers. At least in Canada we’re going to get to see if the EU and UK has any success at this before we try.
But if you’re right and that effort is doomed to failure — we have crossed a rubicon and elite gatekeeping is never coming back — then it has big implications for the entire project of social progress. I am more pessimistic than you that if the elites simply engage with the public that things can move forward.
Immigration here in Canada is a good example. Broadly speaking, Canada only had white immigration until the 1960s when, under Trudeau Sr, the modern version of race-blind points-based immigration was invented. The government and elites pushed this, to a large extent, on a more conservative population. If social media had existed it may have never happened in the first place! Except then it turned out to be an amazing success, in my opinion, the most successful multicultural immigration system in the world in terms of high immigration rates (twice as high as the United States!) while having good social integration and maintaining high public support. The elites were right, and the masses were too blind to see that it can work.
Then of course, as we know, post 2015, Trudeau Jr broke everything by spiking immigration rates too high too fast (see https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-how-canada-got-immigration-right-and-then-very-wrong/ ) which is a perfect example of how elites from 2012-2022 lost their minds and lost the trust of the public.
Is it “populist” that now for the first time in my life, there are active voices in Canada saying we should go back to all-white immigration? That used to be off-limits, beyond the pale, and in my opinion rightly so. (But they’re not wrong that multicultural immigration only works up to a certain rate — which the Trudeau LPC broke… so it’s more complex)
This comment has ended up somewhat muddled, so I’ll try to just summarize it here. I’m not convinced that we ever would’ve had our modern multicultural immigration system in the 1960s in the first place without elite gatekeepers and if social media had existed then. And I’m *really* worried that the Overton window is now shifting back to some really dark places — somewhat legitimately in backlash to the excesses of the “woke” Trudeau Liberals — but the pendulum swinging back is going to go really far without any kind of brake pedal from elite gatekeepers.
Anyway A+ essay, I’ll be sending this to people. It challenged my thinking.
"Except then it turned out to be an amazing success, in my opinion, the most successful multicultural immigration system in the world in terms of high immigration rates (twice as high as the United States!)"
Was it really, or was that just the messaging from the elites? Perhaps it was always a failure and the only thing changed in 2015 was that people had the ability to talk about it.
Perhaps the "success" of mass immigration and multiculturalism was always a fraud and the truth was just suppressed.
Spicy! Okay, I’ll engage with ideas that were suppressed by elites until recently.
Why do you say it wasn’t a success? Again, not the post-2015 (and really 2021-2023) ridiculous surge of fake students and TFWs. Talking about the Canadian immigration system of 1970-2010 or so. What are you basing this on?
For me, it’s not being told this by elites, it’s my own judgement. It just … worked. Most immigrants were able to easily find jobs (again, points system, with family reunification being the minority) and our sponsorship system for refugees was basically the envy of the world. Numbers were controlled and social integration was high. (As Matt and Jen at The Line have pointed out, there is a climate factor — nothing integrates a new immigrant like a Canadian winter, and draws people together regardless of background or skin colour.)
I just don’t see it that elites were deceiving us that the system was working. I think it really was working.
Bingo.
I spent many years working in collaborative processes where we tried, and sometimes succeeded, in bring divergent viewpoints together. This was mostly before social media amplified the divisions, but there were people and organizations who actively promoted the extremes and sometimes tried to disrupt the process. I do not think, reflecting, that gatekeepers - liberal or otherwise - had anything resembling control of what people brought to the table, but then these were all face-to-face encounters in which lived experience held equal sway with information from "sources."
When it worked it was the kind of inquiry that John Dewey envisioned leading to a continuing community conversation, to a community that informed itself and acted on that. I suppose he believed that the extremes would be moderated, and I have seen that happen. And I think the "liberal (I hate these labels)" aversion to the fray of social media stems from knowing that it can happen and judging that it should. Having also seen the outcomes of sincere dialogue blown away by the will to power of interests who cannot accept the outcome and continue to profit as they would like, I subscribe to that "should."
Which leads me to my usual point: What "controls" is the story or myth people share about what it is we're all doing here. Social media currently exacerbate the American myths of individuality and competition (violent competition if necessary). It is the final(?) tool of imperialism, which must keep on colonizing something and, having subjugated material reality, is now colonizing the minds of those who allow that. If there has been something different to pick out of our culture, social media would, I think, reinforce that. If we don't cultivate a new guiding myth, the collapse of anything resembling democracy is inevitable.
One suggestion for starting the new myth: It must insist on face-to-interaction. Checking on your Aunt's health on Facebook, sure, and sharing pictures from your trip to the islands. Its just the new mail or phone call. But having tried both public engagement and teaching on-line, I am persuaded (with a little help from Neil Postman and others) that we are a long ways down a path we should have known better than to take.
I think the problems with this essay, which is indeed well-done - is that it accepts a false premise that effective persuasion is possible during a continuing free-for-all in which everyone is struggling to preserve their identity. It isn't There have to be widely accepted "ground rules" suggesting that agreement is the desired outcome and that compromising to attain that outcome is a desirable thing. When people work face-to-face with at least some regard for each other, the winner take all nature of American politics can be (usually has been) mitigated. That doesn't happen on-line.
Your stress on face-to-face communications is important and well-stated. Thank you.
A really important article. Is there any way you could try and get a version of this into The Guardian and New York Times?
Damn it Dan, another banger. From the natural sciences side, the fear (and it really is fear), is that within this free-for-all we do not have the tools to compete.
Personally, I think this is wrong - the human reaction of "interest" is greatly underestimated. It's effective, because within a subset of the population it's more of an itch that you can never really get rid of... teach someone something interesting, then those few go out in to the world, learn a bit more and teach others ect. And it's happening globally.
I do wonder if we (meaning academics, but potentially other "elites") do just need to focus more on personability and presentation? I mean if we are simply competing with charismatic others telling the hoipoloi what they want to hear then why not lean in to charm? Charisma? Or god forbid humour?? This was a feature of Carl Sagan, and even someone like Attenborough. And it's clearly lacking in many who have tried to follow in their stead...
I believe that in times where most content is generated by AI, we need to bring back the gatekeepers. There is no alternative and it is already happening, for good reasons.
The real question is how to bring back the gatekeepers in a democratic and decentralized manner.
This poses interesting questions, even from a purely software engineering point of view.
Great writing as always, Dan! Succinct, clear, and really deep research into the phenomena of social media driving a change in the way that the public gets/reacts to news!
An interesting essay. I comment as someone who views 21st c. Liberalism as likely well past its half life....populism or no populism. I have never read Spengler’s but the idea that entropy must apply to every civilisation seems axiomatic....why would an exception be made of Western Liberalism? But it is not my intention to rain on the parade of Liberalism’s Goods....they can after all be credited with giving us three centuries of the most amazing human flourishing....the best mankind has ever known.
In terms of the liberalism/populism political struggle implicit in this essay, there are two fundamental ways of thinking about politics. A limited one is about negotiating disagreements and conflicts of interest among the citizenry. But Liberalism gave rise to a more grandiose one....... bringing about ‘Progress’ by political means. We in the West have been schooled into an expectation that there is a political solution to every societal problem. And this expectation can lead people - especially the most politically engaged kind - down some big rabbit holes.
In terms of the liberal establishment’s loss of its gatekeeping power, the internet age has created what Unherd columnist Mary Harrington has elegantly characterised as a “digital-era of decentralised, self-coordinating, swarm governance”.
The invention of the digital search engine has been an absolute marvel for those able to maintain an intellectual balance between curiosity and scepticism. But it has created a different problem for the would-be informed citizen. Digital media has deluged people with an 'information' overload of a scale that even the most informed struggle to intelligently parse and filter. And into this information/disinformation supply-side log jam, along came social media – tailor-made for the uncurious and suggestible. In order to genuinely have a 'belief' about something - impending climate catastrophe or ‘systemic racism’ for example - one would need to have invested a deal of energy in weighing evidence for these things. But how many actually do this as opposed to simply noticing the social signals about what is the most favoured opinion... with benefits?
It is Liberalism that has created all this and will now inevitably mutate as a consequence.
The above are excerpts from my own essay: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-madness-of-intelligentsias
Given that some liberals accept that they need to learn to argue rationally and persuade holders of opposing viewpoints, it seems that we may need to establish places that are widely known where they could go and learn to do that. Sadly, that is not going to happen in college.
Years ago, I was in a public health class and the professor, who had to be in his mid '50's, told us "you cannot ever lie, mislead, or withhold information to the public or you will lose the public's trust and you will deserve it. And it will take years to earn that public trust back." This was when W was president , so most of the students rolled their eyes because we had an idiot for president. He patiently explained that people make decisions for reasons and they're rarely stupid. Often times it's because they have different values, but it could also be due to having different experiences, needs, life situations or information and it was our job to listen to the public and take those factors into account in our responses to things like crises or fights over policy. As far as he was concerned our strongest took was persuasion. The field of public health has changed a lot since then.
I mention this because that worldview seems much rarer amongst people who self-identify as elites. One of the things that I took away from that class was that persuading people meant that you had to actually listen to people and that could lead to you having to reevaluate your own positions. It's risky if you have an emotional attachment to your positions, but if you're going to present yourself as the smart, rational side, you really do have to ensure that your information is accurate and complete and that your reasoning does make sense. You might have to admit that you got something wrong. It's much more comfortable to tell yourself that the public is full of bigots, idiots and rubes who are easily fooled by fake news.
Beautifully stated.
Fantastic, Dan.
Do you sense that this current direction may require some updating along the vector taken in your part 1 of 'becoming less left wing?'
I won't ask you square any tensions here, but I do sense that the "Darwinian Cynicism" framing, which holds in principle, may not play well with these persuadability arguments in practice. I suspect that this is a productive tension (as is often true of principle v practice), but I think it only fair to recognize the tension as such, insofar as I understand your positions on the two.
More on this later. Keep the gems comin'.
Lots of ideas here. Not necessarily things I naturally think about but very good material overall. Dan, you probably know that there are academics who study misinformation from the perspective of Cog Sci. Does that work intersect with your thinking as it relates to this piece? Are there academic establishments going after this problem that are balanced from your perspective and not focused on policy? Thanks.
One of themost consequential role of elite gatekeeping was the suppression of statistics that reflect negatively on minorities. That is still almost entirely missing from the mainstream media (which is lying by omission) but it is prevalent now on social media. That was the big game changer that led to the popularity of new influencers.
A perfect example was how everyone in Minnesota (I live there) knew about the large scale Somalian fraud schemes. But until Trump posted about it, none of the mainstream media institutions would talk about it, even though it was a common topic on social media. Now we finally have a NYT article confirming that facts.
Grooming gangs in the UK would be another key example.
Great example.
Here's a slightly different and well-documented take on some of these issues:
https://open.substack.com/pub/lorenzofromoz/p/collapse-of-confidence-destruction?r=8r0a&utm_medium=ios
No mention of motivated reasoning or emotional reasoning as reasons why people are often unable to be persuaded by “rational” arguments and “facts”. A combo of baseline intelligence, open mindedness, conspiracy thinking, tribalism and other cognitive/social factors are also reasons why many fail to be persuaded.
Dont most disagreements trace back to disagreements about values? For example, both Peter Thiel and Chris Hedges want to defend the achievements of Western culture. But they radically differ of what counts as an achievement.
There's much to like about this analysis, but it's vital that we acknowledge that blatant lies and lies of omission are quite common in the most elite of elite media (looking at you NYT and NPR). This is the root cause of their loss of credibility for many of us.
Well, as you might expect, I came in to reading this article already on team “Let’s Not Bring Back the Gatekeepers,” even though the way I most need to use it is somewhat different. That is, I live in one of the most left-leaning areas of NYC. I’m left-leaning, too, and the persuasion work I most have to do relates to areas where I think we on the left have gone off track.
That said, the principles, as you outline so well in this piece, are exactly the same, no matter who one is engaging and no matter the topic. We simply can’t opt out of staying in the game and learning how to use persuasion techniques as best as we can.
Your reference to the problems attendant to the “Great Awokening” are very well-observed, and particularly your statement: “Nevertheless, the distinctive feature of wokeism is not really the use of such tactics against perceived heresies, but the heroic attempt to expand the category of heresy to include attitudes held by around 90% of the population, including many liberals within establishment institutions.”
I think this is where we on the left go very, very wrong, and quite often. We too often assume people with points of view with which we disagree are necessarily duped—passive beings absorbing what they are fed by illiberal media and influencers. But what I have come to understand as I age is that all people have agency, and to deny this is the case is patronizing and counter-productive. As you so elegantly state: “In reality, people often hold divergent beliefs about the truth not because they are deeply irrational or acting in bad faith but simply because they have been exposed to very different streams of information and arguments over the course of their lives, which inevitably shape how they interpret the world.”
As one example, I have weekly conversations (we live on opposite coasts) with my very conservative 97-year-old mother. I have learned from her a great deal about why and how her life experiences and those of her huge working class, mostly not college-educated, family have shaped her views. Even though I disagree with her, sometimes quite strongly, on certain things, her views are not even close to crazy. (To my mind, leftie neighbors of mine who think males should be able to self-identify as females for all purposes hold much crazier views.)
This also struck a very strong chord: “They weren’t complaining about anything the scientist had said on these podcasts; they were outraged merely at the fact that the scientist had been on them.” I have seen this time after time. It is absolutely essential to listen to what is being said without filtering it out just because one is not a fan of the outlet.
Your closing discussion of persuasion is music to my ears, particularly this: “None of this means that persuasion is easy. You must meet people where they are, address their questions and objections, and be willing to revise your own beliefs in the process. It’s also often uncomfortable. People don’t like to discover that they’re mistaken about something. This is why there must be significant institutional and cultural changes to incentivise people to do this hard work.”
And I say amen.
Thank you for this timely—and timeless—essay.