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S2 E29: Our Stone-Age Brains“We have mental mechanisms that have been there since the Stone Age and no longer function in this environment”
Short-term thinking, lazy reasoning and stereotyping, and too much focus on what’s bad (the ‘negativity bias’)… all are throw-backs to our last major evolutionary stage, when humans lived in a world of scarcity, danger and constant tribal fighting.
In today’s more clement environment where resources are plentiful and the likelihood of being murdered minimal, those mental models no longer apply. In fact, over-reliance on those outmoded forms of thinking risk bringing us back to an age of conflict.
“We can either change by design or change by disaster. I prefer the former.”Listen to Maren make the case for embodied thinking, and explain how a new approach to conversation can change the way we engage socially and politically:
The 3 Principles of Dynamic ThinkingHow to redefine groupsSwitching our focus from the individual to the collectiveConstructive JournalismWhy thinking is embodiedWhy rational decision-making is always emotionalThe danger of habitsProf. Maren Urner
Maren Urner is a neuroscientist, professor of media psychology, and the best-selling author of Raus aus der Erwigen Dauerkrise. She is also the founder of Perspective Daily, a German-language online magazine for constructive journalism.
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S2 E28: The Spirituality Movement“A lot of those who’ve left the church tend to be younger people, who nonetheless still consider themselves spiritual. They’ve been turned off by churches, but they haven’t necessarily gone full atheist, materialist…”
Religion is declining around the world. Even in America, the great outlier of the post-Christian West, half the population doesn’t believe in organised religion any more.
But the loss of our traditional beliefs has given rise to a growing number of ‘spiritualist’ alternatives. They range from mainstream ‘Wellness’ culture, through eco-spiritualism, occultism, witch culture on Instagram and astrology on TikTok, through to the darker visions of QAnon and Millenarianism.
What defines Spiritualist thinking? What are its roots? Why is it flowering now? And why does it bleed so easily into Conspiracy?
“In the last two years, spiritual culture has curdled - from positive and optimistic to a much more fearful and paranoid kind of message…”Listen to Jules and Turi discuss:
The history of spiritualism, from the 16th century to todayThe cornerstones of spiritualist thinking: from myths and monsters through to harmony and healthThe ‘Meaning Gap’‘Conspirituality’: why conspiracy theories and spirituality so easily bleed into each other.Intuition (over Reason) as a path to knowledgeWhat Rationalists have lostHow Spiritualists have reacted to CovidJules Evans
Jules Evans is a writer and practical philosopher interested in emotions, well-being, transcendence and flourishing. He is the author of Philosophy for Life: And Other Dangerous Situations, and The Art of Losing Control: A Guide to Ecstatic Experience.
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S2 E27: Generational Politics“If you truly understand what’s different between generations, you have a much better idea of what’s coming up in the future.”
It turns out there are very real differences between the generations. Key external events - a world war, a crippling global financial crash, 9⁄11, or even a pandemic - will mark a generation in a way that differentiates them from previous or later ones.
But there are also slower cultural and technological differences that also make their mark: consider the dwindling role of religion across the West over 4 generations, or the impact of smart phones on the way we all think.
”The concept of the Generation is the most important one… because it is how history moves, changes, wheels and flows” - Ortega y GassetBobby Duffy has written the book on generational differences, and here explains what brings us together and splits us apart - from our attitudes to sex, money and moral values to the way we think of driving or home-ownership.
“Because we’re so deeply connected, looking at things generationally is really important to us because we want each generation after us to do better”Listen to Bobby discuss:
How to go about defining generationsHow we get our stereotypes right and wrongWhy Gen Z are in a ‘sex recession’Why Gen X are so miserableWhether the Baby Boomers really did have it so much easierWhether there is space for the ‘individual’ in a demographic analysis of culture and personalityThe 3 Key drivers of attitudinal changeAnd why we all live 200 years…Read the Full Transcript
Bobby Duffy
Bobby Duffy is Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Policy Institute. He has worked across most public policy areas in his career of nearly 30 years in policy research and evaluation, including being seconded to the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. He is the author of Generations - Does when you’re born shape who you are?
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S2 E26: Political Predisposition“40% of the variance observed in political attitudes can be attributed to genetics”
Twin studies have suggested that one third of our political orientation can be traced to our genes. But does that mean our politics are predisposed?
John Hibbing is one of the greats of Political Psychology in the US. His work spans decades and has broken ground across multiple disciplines - from polling and representation, to the biology of political differences. John believes that knowledge of of this genetic influence can help us better understand each other.
“Predispositions are not destiny, but defaults - defaults that can be and frequently are overridden.”Conservatives and Liberals evolved clear and distinct bedrock values deep in our collective past. Our views of the outsider, our perception of threat, our concern for order may be as innate to us as our sense of taste or our personality traits.
“Politics is universal; it’s human nature that varies”Recognising how our values differ, and the reasons why we have such different perspectives on what makes for a just and good society is fundamental to the democratic project. Because ultimately, we need both Left and Right to survive.
Listen to John discuss:
How taste and politics are linkedThe core values of conservatism and liberalismWhy Left and Right are universal across culture and historywhether there is a ‘Liberal’ GeneWhy Nature vs Nurture is a meaningless questionHow to talk to the other sideRead the Full Transcript
John Hibbing
John Hibbing is an American political scientist and Foundation Regents University Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is known for his research on the biological and psychological correlates of political ideology. He is the author of Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives and the Biology of Political Differences
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S2 E25: On Emotion“The world that we live in today is fuelled by heightened emotion…”
Over the course of these two seasons of On Opinion, we’ve looked at opinions through the lens of philosophy, psychology, social science, anthropology and evolution. But one area we’ve missed is that of feeling.
Omar Kholeif and Jonathan Sklar take very different approaches to understand the world we live in, but both see emotion as something that can affect individuals and collective groups.
Jonathan feels that you can transpose psychoanalysis, which is designed for the individual, to a culture and a moment in history. Omar is convinced not only that ‘ages’ have emotions, dominant leitmotifs of feeling that impact everyone around them, but also that today is a particularly emotional age - that our feelings are closer to the surface.
Listen to Turi speak to Jonathan and Omar about:
How we define ‘ages’The difference between the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter protestsWhether we need to ‘fix’ an age of anxietyThe rise of hatred across the WestHow psychoanalysis can heal emotional wounds of traumaThe importance of mourning“There’s a considerable rise in anxiety and tension and people hating other people, and there’s far less debate going on…”Works cited include:
William Reddy’s Emotional RegimesWill Davies on Nervous StatesRead the Full Transcript
Omar Kholeif
Omar is a writer, curator, and cultural historian, and is Director of Collections and Senior Curator at Sharjah Art Foundation, Government of Sharjah, UAE. Trained as a political scientist, Kholeif’s career began as a journalist and documentary filmmaker before entering into the picture palace of museums. Concerned with the intersections of emerging technologies with post-colonial, and critical race theory, Kholeif’s research has explored histories of performance art; the visual experience of mental illness; the interstices of social justice, as well as the aesthetics of digital culture.
Jonathan Sklar
Jonathan trained in medicine at the Royal Free, University of London in 1973, and then trained in psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the Adult Department, Tavistock Centre for four years with adults, children and adolescents. At the same time he trained at the Institute of Psychoanalysis and has been a psychoanalyst since 1983 and a training analyst since 1996. He is chair of The Independent Psychoanalysis Trust.
On Opinion is a member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
Produced by Emma Penney
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S2 E24: The Journal of Controversial Ideas“You can’t have a good education if you’re not exposed to ideas you don’t agree with”
Twelve years ago, Francesca Minerva published an academic article in the Journal of Medical Ethics giving a moral defence of infanticide. She was overwhelmed by the reaction she received - for an academic article in the early days of Twitter and Facebook, it went ‘viral’. She received death threats from the public, academics refusing to shake her hand, and she found it hard to get tenure. But she says that she was lucky. If the same thing happened today, she’d be a lot worse off than a few disgruntled colleagues.
Francesca is one of the co-founders of the Journal of Controversial Ideas, alongside Peter Singer and Jeff McMahan. Their aim is to promote free inquiry on controversial topics, in the face of what they see as increasing censorship across the academy.
“It has become really common for academics to sign petitions to get somebody they disagree with fired or demoted…”Francesca worries that without the capacity to discuss or challenge widely held views, our search for the truth will fall flat. She worries that the very idea of academic enquiry is changing: that truth is ‘constructed’ rather than ‘discovered’.
“I don’t know if university as we know it is going to survive.”Works cited include:
Jon Haidt and The Coddling of the American MindRonald Dworkin on TruthRead the Full Transcript
Francesca Minerva
Francesca Minerva is a research fellow at the University of Milan. Between 2011 and 2020 she has worked as a post-doc at the University of Melbourne, at the University of Ghent, and at Warwick University. She is the co-founder and co-editor of the Journal of Controversial Ideas. Her research focuses on applied ethics, including lookism, conscientious objection, abortion, academic freedom, and cryonics.
On Opinion is a member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
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S2 E23: The Evolution of Cooperation“Every multicellular being is a collective that operates as a whole - the individual is an ‘invention’ of evolution”
Cooperation is at work up everywhere - from our ‘selfish’ genes working together in the genome, through to the democratic societies that regulate our collaboration.
Cooperation is what distinguishes us most strikingly from our evolutionary cousin, the Chimpanzee. It is what allowed us safely to descend from the tree canopy into the savannah. It is what defended us from tyrants, helped us build agrarian societies, and forms the basis of our sense of justice and morality.
But cooperation has a dark side: we collaborate to better compete. How we regulate that dark force is key to our survival.
“Collaboration is the essential ingredient of and largest threat to our success”Listen to Nichola explain:
The biological evolution of cooperation in humansHow we compare with other great collaborators: bees, ants and birdsThe evolution of society: from egalitarian to feudal to democraticWhy loneliness is physiologically harmfulWhen cooperation becomes murderousWhy evolution gave us the Tragedy of the CommonsHow the invention of Institutions changes the rules of the evolutionary gameWorks cited include:
Christopher Boehm’s Reverse Dominance HierarchyPeter Turchin and his Z-CurveRichard Dawkins’ Selfish GeneRead the Full Transcript
Nichola Raihani
Nichola Raihani is a professor in Evolution and Behaviour at UCL, where she leads the Social Evolution and Behaviour Lab. She is the author of The Social Instinct: how cooperation shaped the world
On Opinion is a member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
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### S2 E22: Psychometrics: measuring ourselves
> _“Psychometrics is one of the most important or influential areas of applied psychology”_
Psychometrics, the study of personality and ability, began with the Chinese Imperial Court exams, which measured intelligence and civility, as well as archery and horse-riding. Via the East India Company, testing - of intelligence as well as psychological traits - spread to the British and French civil service, and then onwards to education. Psychometrics gave us exams.
John Rust, one of the world’s foremost authorities, walks us through the history and politics of psychometrics, from eugenics and the fraught question of race and IQ, through to the four core psychographic theories of personality: Freud’s psychoanalysis, Carl Rogers’ Humanistic Theory of person, the Social Learning approach, to the Genetic (Rust’s own focus). In the process, he tackles the very politics of testing, psychometry’s complicated place in the world of psychology, and the validity of Myers-Briggs and OCEAN tests.
> _“It's a remarkably important area of science. If we can get it right, we can do lots of good. If you get it wrong, there can be a disaster.”_
Listen to John explain:
- The origins of psychometrics
- The problem with Evolutionary Psychology
- The Naturalistic Fallacy
- Myers-Briggs and Big 5 Theories of Personality
- The Flynn Effect
- The ethics of psychometrics in the age of Big Data and ‘Surveillance Capitalism’
Works cited include:
- Sir Francis Galton’s [Lexical Hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_hypothesis)
- Raymond Cattell and his [16 Personality Types](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16PF_Questionnaire)
- James Flynn’s [work on IQ and race](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect)
Read the [**Full Transcript**] (https://www.parlia.com/article/transcript-understanding-psychometry-with-john)
[**John Rust**](https://www.psychometrics.cam.ac.uk/about-us/directory/john-rust)
John Rust is the founder of The Psychometrics Centre and an Associate Fellow of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. He is also a Senior Member of Darwin College.
On Opinion is a member of [The Democracy Group] (https://www.democracygroup.org/), a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
Listen to Out Of Order.
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“Dehumanisation both justifies and motivates acts of extraordinary violence - but it is not in any sense an innate disposition”
Here lies the terrifying quandary: if humans are the most social of all primates and mammals, if our sociality and capacity for collaboration is at the very heart of our success as a species, how are we able to engage in such acts of hideous violence towards each other?
“Dehumanisation is a psychological response to political forces”David Livingstone Smith explains how two key ideas underpin the psychology of Dehumanisation: Psychological Essentialism and Hierarchical Thinking, false heuristics that are nevertheless deeply embedded in all of us.
But he goes further. To understand the depths of cruelty and humiliation, the ritualistic violence, the near-religious ecstasy of moral purpose that often comes with genocide and torture, we need to understand the mind of the Perpetrator.
To the perpetrator, their victim is both human and non-human, vermin and all-powerful. More than any physical danger, the victim represents a metaphysical cognitive threat - and becomes a monster to be exterminated.
“When we say ‘we must put them in their place’, it’s a deep idea: we want to put ‘them’ in their metaphysical place”Listen to David explain:
The metaphysical threat of the ‘other’The Uncanny - and its threat to our sense of purity and orderDehumanisation as psychosisWhy cruelty and humiliation are such intrinsic elements of dehumanisationWhat we can do to fix it.“We are disposed to have difficulty harming one another, and yet…”Works cited include:
Arthur O. Lovejoy’s Great Chain of BeingErnst Jentsch on The Psychology of the UncannyMasahiro Mori’s Uncanny ValleyMary Douglas’ Purity and DangerNoel Carroll and The Philosophy of HorrorRead the Full Transcript
David Livingstone Smith
David Livingstone Smith is professor of philosophy at the University of New England. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of London, Kings College. He is the author of many books, including On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How To Resist It
On Opinion is a member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
Listen to The Science of Politics.
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“Dehumanisation is a psychological process, and every psychological process can be used for good or bad.”
Humanisation (attributing motive and consciousness) and dehumanisation are flip sides of common cognitive processes, what Harris calls “Flexible Social Cognition”, which he has measured via fMRI scans.
“I think of dehumanization much more as an everyday psychological phenomenon”Neurologically, dehumanisation is the ability to regulate one’s own social cognition. We grant more ‘humanity’ to our friends than the bad driver in front of us. And in certain professional contexts, dehumanising is a good thing: to small degrees, doctors do it their patients better to treat them.
But thinking of dehumanisation as a scale provides a new frame through which to look at sexual objectification and the commoditisation of labour, all the way through to the Holocaust and the Slave Trade.
Because while dehumanisation isn’t the cause of atrocities, it is always used to justify them.
“Emotions like anger and fear are much more energising when it comes to committing these human atrocities. What dehumanisation does is it allows you to justify why the behaviour has occurred…”Listen to Lasana explain:
Theory of MindSocial NeuroscienceThe role of Stereotypes in cognitionThe Evolutionary reasons for “Flexible Social Cognition”And how we can fight Dehumanisation - societally, and as individuals.“We need to re-engineer our social systems”Works cited include:
Dignity Takings and Dehumanization: A Social Neuroscience PerspectiveWhy Economic, Health, Legal, and Immigration Policy Should Consider DehumanizationHow social cognition can inform social decision makingRead the Full Transcript
Lasana Harris
Dr Lasana Harris is Senior Lecturer in Social Cognition at UCL. Lasana’s research focuses on social, legal and economic decision making and how thinking about what other people are thinking affects those types of decisions. His work explores dehumanisaton, how people fail to consider other people’s minds, and anthropomorphism, extending minds to things that don’t have them.
On Opinion is a member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
Listen to Democracy Matters
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“We often treat privacy as a quick fix for much deeper social problems - like prejudice and bias”
Our lives are constantly documented. Our Facebook likes, our Tweets and even our credit card statements all reveal information about us. But what about our faces?
Michal Kosinski has demonstrated that off-the-shelf, commercially available AI can analyse facial images and determine sexuality and political preferences with up to 91% accuracy.
If our opinions and preferences are written into our very faces, what does that tell us about the immutability of our values and behaviours?
And what does that mean for privacy?
Listen to Michal explain how we must learn to live in a Post-Privacy world.
“We should just not be making judgements about people based on their faces, regardless of whether those judgments are accurate or not.”
Works cited include:
Facial Recognition and Political OrientationFacial Recognition and Sexual OrientationMichal Kosinski
Michal is an Associate Professor in Organizational Behavior at Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He studies humans in a digital environment using cutting-edge computational methods, AI and Big Data.
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“Our inner and outer crises are two sides of the same coin”
There are many lenses through which to explain polarisation - economic, political, demographic, evolutionary… Alex Evans wants us to consider it from a psychological perspective.
Alex has campaigned around inclusion and social justice for two decades, but researchers in Israel changed his mind about social fracture. Polarisation between Israelis and Palestinians is a mental health issue - driven by ongoing trauma, anxiety, hyper-vigilance and threat perception.
If democracy depends on citizens who can manage their mental and emotional states, feel empathy for each other, and share a sense of common identity and purpose, we need to address our inner worlds as much as the outer one.
“The state of the mind and the state of the world intersect”Larger Us, his campaigning organisation, puts psychology at the very heart of its approach to curing our social divide.
Listen to Alex explain how society - both governments and individuals - can move from fight/flight to self-awareness and empathy, from powerlessness to agency, from disconnection and loneliness to belonging.
Along the way, he also discusses:
The changing role of Religion in societyCollective PsychologyHow ‘spirituality’ gave up on social justiceWhen polarisation is goodAnd how we can move from an Us-vs-Them to a ‘Larger Us’ Society“We really have to come together to tackle these crises but our capacity to do so is being eroded by our emotional responses.”Works cited include:
Johann Hari’s Lost ConnectionsJurgen Habermas on Democratic PolarisationRobert Wright’s Non-ZeroRichard Layard on HappinessDavid Bohm on DialogueAlex Evans
Alex founded the Collective Psychology Project in 2018, which then became Larger Us in 2021. He is the author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren’t Enough?, and is a Senior Fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation.
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“The avoidance of conflict is actually the real problem”
We traditionally view an argument as a symptom of a problematic relationship, but relationship psychologists have found that they actually lead to healthier and happier people. Children who grow up arguing with their parents do better in school, and couples who air their disagreements stay together longer.
What holds true for the family, holds true for all groups of people: conflict is central to Democracy. Humans evolved to reason collectively: we need each other to get to the truth.
“For valuable conflict to occur, you need two things: a shared goal, and agreed rules of engagement.”Listen to Ian and Turi discuss:
Why arguments are good for usWhy most ‘conflict’ on social media isn’t ‘Fight’ so much as ‘Flight’Why emotion is so important in conflictHow we can turn our cognitive flaws to society’s advantageHow human individuals evolved to argue, but society evolved to reason.Democracy as an ‘Infinite Game’How we can have healthy arguments“It doesn’t matter if you are right, it matters that WE, as a society, are right. Arguing is what gets us there.”Works cited include:
Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber’s Enigma of ReasonJames Carse and his Finite and Infinite GamesIan Leslie
Ian Leslie is a writer and author of acclaimed books on human behaviour. He writes about psychology, culture, technology and business for the New Statesman, the Economist, the Guardian and the Financial Times. He is the author of Conflicted.
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“The disadvantaged don’t make the world, they cope with it”
Since Etienne de la Boetie’s Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1577), we have asked ourselves why the weak, the poor and the marginalised accept injustice.
Social scientists talk to economic and political oppression. John Jost’s work shows that the oppressed don’t just suffer the injustice, they commit to it. Across society, people “invest in their own unhappiness”.
Black children prefer white dolls; women feel entitled to lower salaries; victims blame themselves; around the world, people vote against their own economic interests…
Jost presents three underlying reasons - epistemic, existential and relational - for why people become psychologically invested in the status quo even if it harms their objective interests, and walks through some of the research that demonstrates it.
“One of the things that any kind of social movement for change needs to accomplish is a kind of undoing of the kind of indoctrination that all of us experience.”Listen to John Jost explain:
False Consciousness: “ideology as a cognitive illusion” (Marx)Out-Group FavouritismWhy social activism is so taxing - and so many activists suffer burnoutThe role of the Stereotype: it simplifies and justifiesThe role of Evolution in system justificationAnd how to break the cycle“Part of the job of the Social Psychologist is to look at fixing the ills they identify”Works cited include:
Daniel Kahneman’s Prospect TheoryRobert Sapolsky, on the physiology of low-statusHoward ZinnGyorgy LukacsBerger and Luckman’s The Social Construction of RealityKarl MarxAntonio GramsciHenri Tajfel’s Social Identity TheoryCatharine MacKinnon: Towards a Feminist Critique of the StateChris Boehm on the benefits of inequalityJohn Jost
John Jost is Professor of Psychology, Politics, & Data Science and Co-Director of the Center for Social and Political Behavior at New York University. His research addresses stereotyping, prejudice, social justice, intergroup relations, political ideology, and system justification theory. He has published over 200 journal articles and book chapters and five books, including A Theory of System Justification.
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"Populism is a permanent shadow of modern representative democracy, and a constant threat"
The last few decades has seen a democratic drift, as populist leaders emerge all over the world - from Bolsonaro and Trump in the Americas, through Orban, Kaczynski and Erdogan in Europe, to Modi and Duterte in Asia.
Their policies have little in common, but in their approach to politics, in their populism, they share profound, and deeply undemocratic, tendencies.
Jan-Werner Muller conceptualises populism - that “moralistic imagination of politics” - as a triptych: Anti-Elite, Anti-Pluralist, and Identitarian. Populists arrogate the right to define who counts as ‘The People’, and to exclude all those who don’t fit the bill from full participation in civil and political life.
“The ‘People’ is singular - authentic, morally pure”
Listen to Jan-Werner Muller explain:
Why Corruption and Clientelism are structural features of Populism Why Populists love social networks How Populists fetishise the idea of ‘The People’ Populism’s genius: that it can destroy Democracy in the name of democracyand How NOT to fight Populism“Populism is only thinkable within Representative Democracy”
Works cited include:
Ralph DahrendorfNancy L Rosenblum's work on HolismJan-Werner Müller
Jan-Werner Müller is a political philosopher and historian of political ideas working at Princeton University. He is the author of What is Populism.
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“The more we increase the connectivity of people, the more people get stuck in extreme positions and echo chambers on the extreme edges of our belief structures.”
In December 2017, Jens Koed Madsen heard Mark Zuckerberg talking about the power of connectivity. Zuckerberg’s hypothesis was that the more people were connected, the more quickly we would filter out bad ideas - a reworking of John Stuart Mill’s classic theory of the marketplace of ideas.
To test it, Jens built a computer model of a social network - full of rational agents sharing information with each other. What he found is disturbing: the larger the network of agents (or citizens, or Facebook users), the faster it builds echo chambers, and the more radicalised those echo chambers become.
“Nobody ever starts extreme - they’re pushed into it through connectivity”
We have spent years focusing on ‘fake news’, misinformation, gullible readers, on the design ethics of the platforms, on political manipulation and propaganda. But Jens’ research shows that it’s the very architecture of our social networks that polarises us.
Listen to him explain his experiment Large Networks of Rational Agents form Persistent Echo Chambers, as well as a forthcoming paper on the role broadcasters play in the media ecosystem - and attempt to look at how we can fix our infodemic.
“Media is an ecosystem. In the same way that an epidemiologist describes the spread of diseases, we do infodemiology - tracking the spread of misinformation across complex dynamic systems.”
Works cited include:
Sander van der Linden on inoculating against misinformationTristan Harris on the ethics of attention mongeringStephan Lewandowsky’s Debunking HandbookJens Koed Madsen
Jens Koed Madsen is a Cognitive Psychologist at LSE. He is interested in misinformation and complex human environments, and how people change their beliefs and act in social networks.
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Michael Shermer is one of the world’s most prominent skeptics - founder of The Skeptic Society and editor of its magazine Skeptic. Once a fundamentalist Christian, Michael has spent his career uncovering the workings and causes of our 'Believing Brain'.
“Our brains are wired to think more like lawyers than scientists - to win arguments, to bolster what we already believe...”
We evolved to discern patterns in the world around us. When our ancestors ate the wrong mushroom, they very quickly learnt to link it to their upset stomach. Discovering patterns is the way humans learn. But humans are sometimes too good at it: we ‘discern’ patterns where none exist, and we infuse them with agency.
Listen to Michael and Turi discuss the two key evolutionary drivers of belief:
Patternicity - our tendency to find patterns in both meaningful and meaningless data.Agenticity - our tendency to infuse patterns with meaning, intention, and agency.And learn more about:
The evolutionary origins of beliefWhere conspiracy theories come fromDopamine: the belief drugWhat Twin Studies teach us about the Heritability of beliefHow to keep a healthy mindAnd B.F Skinner’s famous pigeon experiment, which shows all animals exist on the belief spectrum.“Belief comes quickly and naturally, skepticism is slow and unnatural, and most people have a low tolerance for ambiguity.”
Michael Shermer
Michael Shermer is a science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and editor-in-chief of its magazine Skeptic. He's also the author of The Believing Brain and most recently, Giving the Devil his Due on the free speech wars raging across the West.
More on this episode
Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.
Meet Turi Munthe: https://www.parlia.com/u/Turi
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Roberto Foa's research on Global Dissatisfaction with Democracy and Youth Dissatisfaction with Democracy uncovered the highest rates of dissatisfaction in decades, particularly amongst young people.
“The majority of Americans today are dissatisfied with Democracy”
2019 represents the highest level of democratic discontent on record. Around the world, the share of individuals who are dissatisfied with democracy has risen to 57.5%.
In the biggest macro-survey on perceptions of democracy yet performed, Roberto's research shows some terrifying key trends with dissatisfaction at its worst in the world's largest and oldest democracies.
If a majority of citizens in the US are dissatisfied, it's 80% in Brazil, and closer to 90% in Mexico.In Europe, it's 80% in Greece and 65% in Italy.In Africa, growing disillusion with the promise of newly democratic countries has pushed dissatisfaction up to 60% in both Nigeria (the world's 5th largest democracy) and South Africa. With the failure of the Arab Spring, democracy in the Middle East remains a dream.The only two exceptions are some northern European countries (Switzerland, Netherlands, the Nordics) and parts of Asia where democracy appears to be delivering.But while dissatisfaction is not quite the same as anti-democratic sentiment, frustrations with its failings are THE fastest route towards populism (that democratic counterfeit).
Listen to Turi and Roberto discuss his findings from around the world, and look at:
why we have lost our faith in democracywhether we’re right to distrust its promiseswhy the young in particular feel democracy has disenfranchised themand how greater ideological polarization might actually be good for democracy in the long term..."Dissatisfaction with Democracy is rational - in countries with institutions that deliver, it isn't there"
Roberto Foa
Roberto Stefan Foa is University Lecturer in politics and public policy, Co-Director of the Cambridge Centre for the Future of Democracy, and Director of the YouGov-Cambridge Centre for Public Opinion Research.
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Meet Turi Munthe: https://www.parlia.com/u/Turi
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“There’s a subtle but crucial difference between ‘Opponent’ and ‘Enemy’”
If Polarization is on the rise around the world, it takes different forms. The “Ideas Landscape” in the US, UK, France and Germany is very different, with the US - unfortunately - most radicalised across its politics. There, political sorting amongst voters and inside Congress has seen a hardening of attitudes towards each side. In Europe, however, there’s more hope.
“What seems to characterize the British political environment right now, more than polarization, is exhaustion…”In the UK, there is very broad consensus around environmental concerns, the benefits of diversity and the value of the NHS, with only a small minority of political activists on the hard left and right. That pattern is echoed in France (with the added divisiveness of Islam) and Germany (more divided over how to deal with its past).
What can Europe do to ensure it avoids US-levels of polarisation? Stephen believes they key is building a shared identity, characterized by 8 key features.
An individual experience of belonging, regardless of background or biology.A common perception of the country, one that is neither self-aggrandizing nor self-loathing, but self-aware.A basic alignment on trusted institutions for expertise and other information.A shared notion of the individual’s responsibility to the country.A common sense of our basic, guaranteed rights from society.A set of shared values to orient moral decision making.Congenial intergroup perceptionsCommon aspirations for the future.“In the US, we’ve lost the common sense of authority that should be provided by academia, science and the media. The umpires and referees aren’t trusted - which means both sides get nervous and they just want to see their side win.”Stephen Hawkins
More in Common was founded to strengthen democratic societies by countering social division and polarization. They work at the very base of the pyramid - doing deep research into the causes and forms of polarisation, as well as testing new initiatives to counter it. Stephen is their Global Director of Research, and has led their work on Hidden Tribes, the Perception Gap and Democracy for President
More on this episode
Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.
Meet Turi Munthe: https://www.parlia.com/u/Turi
Learn more about the Parlia project here: https://www.parlia.com/about
And visit us at: https://www.parlia.com
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“The key division in all political systems is the result of two distinct perceptions of the most dangerous threats”
Western politics have traditionally been divided into Conservatives and Liberals - tradition vs egalitarianism. John Hibbing, who more than anyone has put biology back into our understanding of politics, proposes an entirely new approach.
John divides the world between “Securitarians” and “Unitarians”, and sees the battle between them as the ultimate source of political conflict in the world.
Do you worry more about immigration or authoritarianism?
“The difference in orientation to security in the face of outsiders constitutes the most fundamental divide in political systems around the world, now and always.”Based on a mass of new survey data, John’s revolutionary new book, The Securitarian Personality, proposes a fundamental rethink of the core political divide in our societies - between Securitarians, whose central preoccupation is to protect insiders from outsider threats, and Unitarians, whose core central goal is to outsiders from insider threats. It is also a seminal new assessment of the political instincts behind Donald Trump’s rise to power.
Securitarians fear outsiders: immigrants, foreigners, norm-violators, non-native speakers, and those of different races, religions, sexualities who might be a threat to the identity and existence of the in-group.
Unitarians fear powerful insiders: those with the authority to impose their will arbitrary on the society below them.
These differences are deeply, biologically embedded in who we are, and they have immensely strong evolutionary causes. Securitarians and Unitarians are natural human types, and have been since our hunter-gatherer days.
“Political differences are not just superficial and malleable but rather attached to stable psychological, physiological, and possibly even genetic variations.”Listen to John and Turi discuss this fundamental rethinking of our evolutionary politics:
The biology behind our political preferences The characteristics of Securitarians and Unitarians How Securitarians differ from Conservatives, Authoritarians, and Fascists The ‘Securitarian’ Phenotype The evolutionary history of our different political instincts Who voted for Donald Trump (and Orban, Bolsonaro and others) and why The advantages and hypocrisies of Unitarian thinking What Siberian silver foxes can teach us about political typesJohn Hibbing
John Hibbing is an American political scientist and Foundation Regents University Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is known for his research on the biological and psychological correlates of political ideology. He is the author of The Securitarian Personality.
More on this episode
Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.
Meet Turi Munthe: https://www.parlia.com/u/Turi
Learn more about the Parlia project here: https://www.parlia.com/about
And visit us at: https://www.parlia.com
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