I have recently been informed about the work of Cass Sunstein, who is a political philosopher/sociologist type. By gathering work done on group dynamics, Sunstein points to a tendency toward "group polarization". The idea is pretty simple, and most of us are familiar with it. People who discuss issues only with like minded people are more likely to represent extremes versions of their position. That's somewhat obvious, and might be explained by the fact that they seek only like-minded people. Perhaps such people are more likely to have extreme views. However, what is interesting is the further tendency for the views to become more and more extreme as the group continues in isolation. For example, if a group of Neo-Nazi skinheads were to hang out with just each other, their views would become more and more extreme, and there doesn't seem to be a leveling off. There might, of course, be an end, if it turns out that a view can only get so extreme. However, this would be an issue with the view itself, not the group dynamic.
I thought this was very interesting and the fullness of it had never occurred to me before. the group feeds on itself. And this is not limited to fringe groups. It is true of democrats, republicans, etc. And it does not seem to be affected by education, economics, social standing, etc. So, if a Congressional committee were made up of only right wing Republicans, the bills it produced would become more and more right wing, assuming they only talked to each other (or predominantly so). This is a scary thought in a lot of ways because we don't like to think of ourselves as so easy to predict and so liable to such machinations. But, the process would be very subtle and I guess as a member of the group you would probably think that you were contributing to a certain, well-reasoned, end rather than being pulled along by some group dynamic.
Anyway, Sunstein believes the internet has exacerbated this tendency. All sorts of odd fringe groups recruit almost solely over the net and such sites give very one sided positions. Since people can communicate without really going into society thanks to the net, these extreme groups become more and more common. Sunstein even thinks the government shoudl create laws requiring websites to post links to alternate or opposing positions, to combat this tendency. I'm not convinced that would work. But he does bring up an interesting point about the dangers of the internet. It's sort of a new twist on the problems we have always discussed, and I wonder what people think about it.
BTW, if it starts to get too political, Tom or Mark, feel free to move it to the other forum. But politics is not really my intent here. I left out most of the political implications (which can be just as dangerous, Sunstein thinks).
This very trend is one of the reasons why, in spite of the frequent frustrations, I continue to hang out in the Politics thread. Having your views assaulted and questioned, and being forced to defend them, is the healthiest possible thing for political discourse, I think. Our current society is a study in the dangers of having one idealogical mindset dominate the political landscape.Originally Posted by Robert Sharp
I'm not convinced either. That's fundamentally retarded and has a few toes in the waters of over-simplification. Sunstein's knowledge of the internet and what goes on with it is very questionable if he wants the government to do that, or thinks that they can. Or even that it'd make any difference. I personally can't recall ever running across an extremist, on the internet or elsewhere, that was above twisting an opposing view to hell and back with a selective hearing/reading process.
The thing is, people naturally select for people like them. How do you force people to mix and mingle? Obviously, it's a good idea from a societal standpoint, but from a personal standpoint, most people don't want to subject themselves to the buffeting and challenges that come from open discussion with a varied group. I can't imagine how we would go about fixing this, whatever "fixing" means in this situation.
On a side note, the current theory in Communications is that we're a more splintered society than ever, with each sub-group intentionally filtering its discussion and news... many, many sub-groups within America don't share the same reality. However, they theorize that the opposite end of mixing was achieved in the 50's, when we had a Communal Reality. The Communal Reality was no more healthy than the current situation, since all alternate viewpoints were completely ignored, thus creating an unhealthy degree of conformity and marginalization. (All information in this paragraph curtesy of my girlfriend, who is a Communications grad student.)
Anyways, I bring up the 50's example to show that simply more mixing won't solve the problem that Sunstein described. Some other solution is needed.... but I don't know what.
The term "extremism" implies that a viewpoint is both undesirable and avoidable. I would challenge both interpetations.
Nazis, socialists, liberals, and whoever else have fundamentally different ideals of society. If expressed without the restraint of a single dominant ideology they will naturally appear "extreme", i.e. irreconcilable to each other, simply because they are truly different. But different viewpoints have their adherents, and they won't go away by wishful thinking.
What the Internet does bring about is a relaxation of the societal forces that would usually compel the adherents of a nonconforming world view to at least disguise their opinions in the terminology of the dominant ideology. This means that pre-existing fundamental differences re-emerge that were previously hidden.
Cite?
Sunstein is actually a legal scholar. Although I am not familar with the work you cite, ideas similar to the one you describe have been floating around political legal scholarship for at least the last 10 years (Sunstein's particular "regulatory" solution sounds new, however). In any event, the common Achillies heal of all these arguments is that what they propose to be a dialogue is actually constructed as a monologue. I.e., from what is described above, Sunstein seems interested primarily in forcing extreme groups to link to non-extreme groups. Is he equally interested in forcing NAACP to link to some neo-Nazi website? If not, then it seems likely to me that a one-sided linking (you have to listen to us but we don't have to listen to you) is going to exasterbate the very sense of isolation that gives raise to these groups in the first place.
... and so the mechanics behind flight sim forums are finally explained. ;)
They've been in psychological scholarship for at least 35 years. I'm, uh, mildly related to someone who's done a bit of research in this area; I fired the base question off his way to get his take (since it struck me as an interesting question -- is the 'net making for a more polarized society?).
He has an annoying tendency to respond to these sorts of queries with links to PsycINFO abstracts, though.
What interests me most about this line of research is that it exactly duplicates biology. Genetically isolated small communities quickly deviated from their species' norms until they eventually become species in their own right. Lack of diversity is the key reason--any mutation or selective pressures quickly become the dominant factors determining the next generation.
The end result, speciation, means that organisms that were formerly related can no longer "communicate" (genetically, that is) with one another. If the analogy holds true for society, the implications are obvious.
This should all be obvious to anyone here who used to be one of 7 or 8 tech/gaming geeks in the entire high school, and now has 1213 like-minds (and McCullough, who disagrees with everything just to keep the post count up) here on QT3.
I don't speak haxxor, Denny. What is 1213?
Actually that's a great analogy. Many simmers aren't in tune with other types of games.
There are 1214 registered users on QT3. :)
Well, I totally missed that one, didn't I? :oops:There are 1214 registered users on QT3. :)
Same could be said for anyone who's hardcore in one genre: turn-based wargamers, Counterstrike freaks, etc.Actually that's a great analogy. Many simmers aren't in tune with other types of games.
Interesting. This is cute but you've seen it before.
Code:Newspapers and those who read them Wall Street Journal - people who run the country New York Times - people who think they run the country Washington Post - people who think they ought to run the country USA Today - people who think they ought to run the country but don't understand the Washington Post Los Angeles Times - people who wouldn't mind running the country, if they could spare the time Boston Globe - people whose parents used to run the country New York Daily News - people who aren't too sure who's running the country New York Post - people who don't care who's running the country, as long as they do something scandalous San Francisco Chronicle - people who aren't sure there is a country or that anyone is running it Miami Herald - people who are running another country
Sorry about the cite. I didn't provide it because I couldn't find a good quick net version. Maybe you can though. Here is the article bib info:
Sunstein, Cass. "The Law of Group Polarization." Debating Deliberative Democracy. ed. by James Fishkin and Peter Laslett, London: Blackwell, 2003.
Note that I am getting his views through an article that one of my dissertation advisors wrote, which is not yet published. I haven't had a chance to view the source yet, so I am surely oversimplifying Sunstein's points here. And I agree that the basic idea is not new. What is new is his applications of it toward deliberative democracy (the idea that we should have open debate that combats these tendencies). What I found interesting about his views on polarization, however, was the claim that it kept going. As Dave suggested, this happens in biology as well. I meant to use extremism in a neutral way, but Christoph may be right in suggesting that it can't be neutral. The point is that these groups shift in only one way, rather than being fluid and reversible. They also do so without deliberation, i.e. without reasons. The shift is part of the group dynamic, NOT the result of good arguments produced by/within the group. That's the scary part. This is reason at work at all. It's psychology, or more accurately, sociology.
Curses, my secret is revealed!
Or more accurately, social psychology :)
His reply:
Interesting question in there -- could the loss of non-verbal cues counter (either fully or partially) polarization?Interesting. I quote Sunstein in the forthcoming Social Psych:
Group Polarization on the Internet. E-mail and electronic chat rooms offer a potential new medium for group interaction. By the beginning of the new century, 85 percent of Canadian teens were using the Internet for an average of 9.3 hours weekly (TGM, 2000). Its countless virtual groups enable peacemakers and neo-Nazis, geeks and goths, conspiracy theorists and cancer survivors to isolate themselves with one another and find support for their shared concerns, interests, and suspicions (McKenna & Bargh, 1998, 2000; Sunstein, 2001). Without the nonverbal nuances of face-to-face contact, will such discussions produce group polarization? Will peacemakers become more pacifistic and militia members more terror prone? E-mail, Google, and chat rooms “make it much easier for small groups to rally like-minded people, crystallize diffuse hatreds and mobilize lethal force,” observes Robert Wright (2003). As broadband spreads, Internet-spawned polarization will increase, he speculates. “Ever seen one of Osama bin Laden’s recruiting videos? They’re very effective, and they’ll reach their targeted audience much more efficiently via broadband.”
Now that communication is easier than ever people are communicating with other ideas less?
Interesting conclusion...
because people are always agreeing on forums.
Vocal inflection would help my previous post more clearly express its sarcasm.
Well, I haven't read that article at all nor anything else by that gentleman. However, as presented so far I don't think his theory holds much water.
First, it is true that being on the Internet means you can find like-minded people that you would hardly ever find in person, at least not in such numbers and on a regular basis. And it's much easier to type stuff on the Internet than to publish an article, a newspaper, or a book, let alone get your own TV show or get yourself elected for some office. So it's clear that the number of different viewpoints, including fringe ideas, that are formulated and discussed "in public" will rise.
That conceded, there are some issues with the apparent conclusion that the persons who subscribe to one such viewpoint suffer a kind of psychological lock-in.
1. The Internet makes it easier to meet people who disagree (and read their "publications"), as well people who agree with you. People can toy around and for the sake of debate "try out" many different extreme viewpoints, leaving eternally archived forum posts in their wake and given the appearance of huge extremist communities where none exist.
2. Internet discussion group or jointly maintained websites are easy to join but just as easy to leave. Meanwhile, the web pages and forum posts stay up forever, at very little ongoing cost. People who are not familiar with the Internet might mistake the existence of a website for the existence of a community, but this is much less clear than in the case of physical buildings which incur massive costs and are therefore likely to be abandoned as the community dissolves.
Now I don't know if the study has actually tracked individual contributors; otherwise, I would suggest, given the above points, that it might have mistaken the persistence of ideas, distilled in manifesto format, for the persistence of a group that adheres to the idea. In other words, possibly the author has overlooked that the Internet is a publishing platform, not just a transient meeting room. Anything that's written lasts forever, as long as the server is up; that doesn't mean that there's any substantial number of people who believe in it anymore, especially since the cost of publishing on the Internet, and then maintaining such publications, is close to zero. Even better, the lower the demand, the cheaper the costs -- every backroom philosopher can put up his own website, and every handful of visitors that dumped a post on the feedback forum now constitutes a scary extremist community for all to see, where previously nobody would even have noticed their brief discussion.
That said, there is the other point that I mentioned in my earlier post. Fundamentally different world views necessarily appear "extreme" next to each other when spelled out, and the Internet makes this spelling out public. That does not mean that such viewpoint previously had no or even fewer adherents; it merely means that such adherents, following Noelle-Neumann's Schweigespirale, kept silent among "non-believers", and did not converse with "believers" in public.
Sure, there's a possibility that this publicity enables recruiting, but so far the only effect on visitors appears to have been a passing interest, possibly a broader mental outlook, but very little commitment. For example, if we look at electoral results since the Internet age, we don't see any significant shift. Those newcomers that did succeed were not famous for their Internet presence, and the ever-popular libertarians are as isolated as ever. On the other hand, religious fanatics and totalitarian regimes got by just fine with printed books...
Conclusion: if radicalisation does happen, it may happen only to the published ideas, not the people (who may have moved on, or have been replaced with someone else); and it does not seem to happen to any greater extent than without the Internet, just with greater visibility.
Christoph.... you've got the causation reversed. It's not that the Internet fueled this polarization theory, but rather that this polarization theory was widely accepted.... and then along came the Internet. The theory is based on the easily believed and highly intuitive idea of cultural drift: over time, cultural values and norms drift. Sometimes this drift is (at least partially) due to argumentation and discussion, such as the slave trade, while other times the drift is simply "because", such as our current skin-revealing fashions, which would have been unthinkable 50 years ago.
Cultural drift happens within sub-cultures as well as within general cultures at large. The more contact sub-cultures have with the overall culture, the more likely they are to drift in the same direction. However, when a group reduces contact with "society" they're more likely to just drift off to who-knows-where. The observation that these drifts are usually unidirectional shouldn't be surprising; for them to go back and forth would require a central point as an anchor... a "standard", if you will. When it comes to human behaviour, there is no standard... there are merely changing mores.
In today's culture, sub-cultures aren't forced to have many common experiences: most products, entertainment, and news is targeted towards segments of society, thus increasing sub-culture drift. The Internet only adds to this trend.... it's been shown that people have a strong tendency to gravitate towards their own. These sub-culture drifts are called extremism because sub-cultures drift further and further apart.... and other sub-cultures appear more and more extreme. Similarly, all these drifting sub-cultures appear more and more extreme to the "mainstream"... the main thread of culture. This extremization creates a polarized populace that has little in common, thus making democracy a difficult form of government to pull off: there is little incentive to compromise with those wackos over there... they're nuts!
Thus, this trend is definitely a problem for modern democracies. However, no one has come up with any good ideas on how to correct it.
[edit] Oh, and about the loss of non-verbal cues reducing polarization... the answer is almost definitely "No". As far as we know, polarization isn't caused by subtle non-verbal communication being passed among group members, but rather because of cultural drift, which happens thanks to communication of any sort among like minded individuals. (When such communication isn't countered by additional contact with non-like minded individuals.)
Huh? From Robert Sharp's original post: "Anyway, Sunstein believes the internet has exacerbated this tendency."
I don't particularly care about "widely accepted", all sorts of nonsense have been "widely accepted" by academics.
That's unrelated to the point of this discussion, as I understood it, which is that "the Internet has exacerbated this tendency".The theory is based on the easily believed and highly intuitive idea of cultural drift [...]
True, but I argued that relevant differences were (a) already present but hidden, and (b) given an inflated appearance by the Internet's characteristics.In today's culture, sub-cultures aren't forced to have many common experiences: most products, entertainment, and news is targeted towards segments of society, thus increasing sub-culture drift.
Well, I happen to be of the opinion that the entire populace of a large nation-state having many things "in common" can only be due to indoctrination and oppression, and any form of government that relies on it is inherently criminal. Hence the problem is not the existence of diverse opinions, but the attempt or desire to eliminate it.This extremization creates a polarized populace that has little in common, thus making democracy a difficult form of government to pull off: there is little incentive to compromise with those wackos over there... they're nuts!
Christoph:
As far as it being a "widely accepted" phenomenon, well, I'd suggest you might, y'know, actually read up on some of the research before crying bunkum.
Still, I can sympathize -- as the discussion goes onwards, it's frustrating that those of us suggesting that group polarization is a real effect are clearly unable to see the flaws in our ideas, when you've clearly been pointing out so many reasons why it's a ridiculous.
The more we discuss it, the more clearly it's a load of crap. Why can't the rest of us get that through our thick, thick skulls?
Yessss..... the polarization theory was already out there. Most sociologists already considered it a well established theory. They believed the tendency was already in place... hence the "Sunstein believes the internet has exacerbated this tendency". "Exacerbate" means "to make worse", not "to create"..... so the tendency was already there before the Internet came along.Huh? From Robert Sharp's original post: "Anyway, Sunstein believes the internet has exacerbated this tendency."
Obviously, since theories have been wrong before... they'll always be wrong! Yes, Christoph, well argued.I don't particularly care about "widely accepted", all sorts of nonsense have been "widely accepted" by academics.
That's because you don't understand the rationale underlying this discussion. Which is why I was explaining it to you.That's unrelated to the point of this discussion, as I understood it, which is that "the Internet has exacerbated this tendency".
Then you happen to hold a simplistic opinion of how sociological forces work that is contradicted by mounds of sociological and psychological evidence, as well as quite a bit of philosophical reasoning.Well, I happen to be of the opinion that the entire populace of a large nation-state having many things "in common" can only be due to indoctrination and oppression, and any form of government that relies on it is inherently criminal. Hence the problem is not the existence of diverse opinions, but the attempt or desire to eliminate it.
Let me second everything Anaxagoras has said in his last two posts.
I also want to add that critics (and proponents for that matter) of liberalism have seen the dangers of oppression IN democracy for a long time now. Democracy, unchecked, can be very oppressive and can actually lead to the sort of stale, commonization that you are talking about, Christoph. If democracy means following the majority, there is no reason to think that the majority will not simply oppress all minority views. This is exactly what the founding fathers feared and why they stressed minority priviliges to such a degree. It's also at the heart of the federalism debate and is a large part of the reasoning behind the electoral college.
All of that is an aside. I just wanted to point out that oppression is not always obvious or the result of totalitarian regimes. the group polarization thing, however, is a problem for exactly the reason Anaxagoras has already laid out. The extremism issue is not simply relative, though how we measure it might be. If a group continues along a certain path, and (as long as they are relatively isolated) remain on that path and continue to upgrade their views, eventually they will be considered extreme. Where that point is might be debatable, but it's there somewhere.
Forums, Usenet, etc. - all thrive on arguing. The fact that you're arguing this very subject shows that ease of communication has made arguing about opposing viewpoints even easier. I would even postulate that there's more argument than agreement in online communities. Which threads are the longest? The arguments.
The fact that this is never mentioned points out a possible hole the whole idea.
This is a definitely a good point to make. However, it isn't borne out by the evidence. First off, just because conflict is widespread on forums doesn't indicate that you have different groups mixing. After all, there was plenty of disagreement within Marxists. To make a more generalized point, there can be conflict within a sub-culture, yet that sub-culture can still be drifting away from the mainstream.
Second, sociologists have ways of quantifying what kind of conversations take place. It's a rather tedious, painstaking, and boring method, but trust me, it's fairly accurate. (Or dont' trust me... go read up on it on your own. It makes no difference to me.) In any case, they have found that in general people frequent forums that already mostly agree with them. Hell, even this forum is largely frequented by thinking liberals. With a couple thinking conservatives. Plus your handful of crackpots. But mostly intelligent people. We've already self-selected. And we're much more open-minded than the general populace. Which is why most of us frequent this place. Because we like to hang out with open-minded people.... just like us.
Sociological tendencies are funny. No matter how hard you try to struggle against them, you inevitably fall right back into common patterns.
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