Jonathan Haidt and Jonathan Rauch Discuss “The Constitution of Knowledge”

From Heterodox Academy, a discussion of Jonathan Rauch's excellent new book, The Constitution of Knowledge. Here's the HxA landing page for this video.

The production of knowledge thrives when universities value open inquiry, but recent trends in conformist thinking pose new threats to research, writing, and teaching. How do we combat conformist culture in our classrooms and research, while encouraging inquiry into unorthodox ideas? How can our epistemic institutions continue to seek and know truth? We were joined by HxA co-founder and Board Chair Jonathan Haidt for an in-depth discussion with Jonathan Rauch, author of The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth.

As Rauch states in the teaser, the system doesn't work by magic. It requires all of us to participate in good faith:

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Jonathan Haidt: “We Were Fooled in the 1990s into Thinking that Democracy was Easy.”

What happened to progress in the US? It seemed like we had a plan and a good track record for progress back in the 1990s. A lot of things happened, of course. That is the topic of this discussion involving Jonathan Haidt and John Wood Jr and April Lawson. Here's how Haidt set the table for the longer discussion:

We can go back to some of the ideas in The Righteous Mind, because that's the summary of my own work as a social psychologist who studies morality. What I've always tried to do in my work is look at evolution. What is human nature. How did it evolve. [What is the] interplay of human nature with culture? And of course, everything can change over the course of just a few decades, too. We're very dynamic species.

What I'd like to put on the put on the table here first: let's really lower our expectations for humanity. Okay. Now, this sounds depressing. But let's be serious here. What kind of creatures, are we? We are primates who evolved to live in small groups that dominate territory, in competition with other groups were really, really good at coming together to fight those other groups. Part of our preparation for doing that, I believe, is the psychology of religion, sacredness, tribal rituals. We have all this really complicated stuff we do that binds us to each other. This is a human universal. Every group has rituals. I'm a big fan of the sociologist Emile Durkheim.

And so from that kind of perspective we ought to still be pre-civilization times with very high rates of murder. And somehow we escaped that. Somehow we've had this incredible ascent. This unbelievably rapid ascent, in which we've gotten wealthier, smarter, healthier. We've made extraordinary progress on women's rights, animal rights, gay rights, the concern about the environment. So let's start by appreciating our lowly origins as really violent tribal creatures, and the way that we've rocketed up from

Okay, now, in the last 10 or so, years, 10 to 20 years, we've had a little bit of a come-down. I really want to put this not just in an evolutionary perspective, but in a recent historical perspective, because this, I think, is the key to understanding what is happening to us now. It is that we were fooled in the 1990s into thinking that democracy was easy. The founding fathers were under no such illusion. They knew that democracy is prone to faction. That's what Madison wrote about, especially in Federalist 10. They knew that democracy is generally self-destructed, so they gave us all kinds of safeguards, They tried to create a system that would not be so prone, a system in which these tribal, irrational emotional creatures might actually live together. And it worked. It worked pretty well. And it worked badly at times.

But by the 1990s, we had the the mistaken view, that if we just wait for Iran, and Russia and North Korea to develop market economies, they'll get prosperous, their people will demand rights. And this was true for China too. That people will demand rights. Liberal democracies will break out everywhere. Liberal democracies are the endpoint, the end of history.

And so that's the way those of us who live through--I'm older than you guys--but the late 20th century was an incredibly dangerous and an exciting time in which there was a victor and it was liberal democracy. Okay, but like in a lot of movies where it seems like there's an early denouement and everything's great? Well, we still have a lot of stuff to go and in the 21st century, things have really come down from there. So that's the backstory.

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The United States is Dictating to Facebook What We Can Say to Each Other

The U.S. government is providing a handy new service for us. We no longer need to worry about what to say and think! It is well-established, however, that the First Amendment prohibits the government from forcing private companies to censor.

I would like to think that the ACLU will file suit tomorrow to crush this obvious violation of the First Amendment, but I have no confidence that that will happen. And beware: Censorship is a potent narcotic that is difficult for governments to quit. Republicans are undoubtedly licking their chops now, waiting for their chance.

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It’s Time for You to Speak Up

Because so many people often think as obedient members America's two political teams, those of us who are free-thinkers are commonly ostracized, scorned and censored for asking obvious questions and stating obvious facts. That is, until . . .  once in a while . . . on one-fine-day, the dam breaks and then it is suddenly appropriate to once again talk freely about a topic. I won't give many examples here because this is happening regarding almost every important national issue. Consider COVID masks and lab leaks, for example. This herky-jerky way of talking at each other is massively inefficient and the effect is to severely crimp human flourishing. It's like we are all attending Lord-of-the-Flies High School. I will offer three short points:

1. This has become an era of "truth infrastructures." Social teams, media operations, non-profit entities and bureaucracies on both the right and the left are coordinating together to maintain and defend their official narratives. The narrative much be honored, even if it lacks an evidentiary foundation and even if it contrary to the evidence. We need to push hard these days to get the team players to acknowledge obvious facts. Our public discourse now has the same dynamics that Thomas Kuhn attributed to science:

During the period of normal science, the failure of a result to conform to the paradigm is seen not as refuting the paradigm, but as the mistake of the researcher, contra Popper’s falsifiability criterion. As anomalous results build up, science reaches a crisis, at which point a new paradigm, which subsumes the old results along with the anomalous results into one framework, is accepted. This is termed revolutionary science.

In short, we free-thinkers need to grind away forcing evidentiary pressure build up until official narratives finally pop.  Again, what a terribly inefficient way to communicate as a society.

2. There is no easy solution to this national team sport of talking at each other. We free-thinkers need to have immense amounts of stamina and courage to speak up. We are often the victims of barrages of ad hominem attacks.  We need the courage to persevere in the repeated lack of apparent progress. We also need the courage to point out the mistakes of those who we might feel to be on our "own" team. Courage is the key. Nietzsche often wrote about the relationship between truth and courage. Here are several of his aphorisms on courage:

How much truth can a spirit stand, how much truth does it dare? For me that became more and more the real measure of value. Error (belief in the ideal) is not blindness, error is cowardice.

Every achievement, every step forward in knowledge, comes from courage, from harshness towards yourself, from cleanliness with respect to yourself. ..

[T]he forcefulness with which you approach truth is proportionate to the distance courage dares to advance. Knowledge, saying yes to reality, is just as necessary for the strong as cowardice and fleeing in the face of reality - which is to say the ‘ideal’ - is for the weak, who are inspired by weakness... They are not free to know: decadents need lies, it is one of the conditions for their preservation.

Even the bravest among us only rarely has courage for what he really knows . . .

Where to we get that courage and stamina?  There are brave free-thinkings who go out there every day and they are leading the way.  Some of my favorites include Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, John McWhorter, Sam Harris, Glenn Loury, The three hosts on The Fifth Column podcast, Abigail Shrier, Brett Weinstein, Heather Heying, Ed Snowden, Colin Wright, Claire Lehmann and the rest of the gang at Quillette, Andrew Sullivan, Eric Weinstein, New Discourses, Wilfred Reilly, Jesse Singal, Chloe Valdary, Peter Boghossian, Coleman Hughes, Bill Maher, Christina Sommers, Christopher Rufo, Benjamin Boyce, Aaron Mate, Krystal and Saagar at Breaking Points, Joe Rogan, Bari Weiss and Jodi Shaw. I'm sure that I've forgotten a couple dozen others. Bonus points to Brett Weinstein for his recent heroics. Just be brave like these people, even though you will be ridiculed and gaslit.  If you are a sincere and kind-hearted truth teller, you will often be called names. When that happens, wear those insults like a badge of honor! You need to speak up especially when no one else is speaking up, as Soloman Asch demonstrated in the 1950s.

3. Even when we know we are correct about our facts, we can't simply shout them from the mountaintops.  We also need immense amounts of patience to neutralize the tactics used by the members of America's two Team Thinkers. We free-thinkers can't just be right. We also need to be effective by picking our spots and navigating contorted arguments containing words with upside-down definitions. Why do we need to be patient?  Because our plan should be to prevail in the long run, not take snarky little shots in the short-run. Also consider that those who attack us often think that they are doing the right thing.  They are often as fired up as we are.  They are also convinced that the ends justifies the means, and the means include every logical and evidentiary fallacy in the book, though ad hominem attacks are the bread and butter. Our goals should be to recruit them to our side by showing them the error of their ways.  For the past year, I have been writing dozens of articles at this website in an attempt to patiently collect the lost sheep.

3. I am reminded of Mahatma Gandhi's quote:

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Instead of cordial civil discourse where people follow the Heterodox Academy HxA Way, Our teams push and pull to win rather collaborating as individuals to tease out truths.

In sum, each of us needs the unbridled innocent curiosity of a child, the courage of a lion, and the calm patience of a diplomat. Now get out there, tell carefully articulated truths and get called names.  Over and over.  You will be making progress and when other quiet people see you taking some hits, they will be inspired to speak up too.

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Alternatives to “Likes” on Social Media

Most social media platforms invite users to reply "Like" a Tweet, Post or Photo. It might be fun, for instance, when a dozen people "Liked" a photo of my salad. As argued, in "The Social Dilemma," however, piles of like can serve to steer people into tribes. This can happen when people post conclusions rather than thoughtful discussions.  It can happen when people make ad hominem attacks on their least favorite politicians and simplistic cartoons of complex social issues, such as immigration.

What is social media for?  That's a good question and it might evoke ten different answers from ten people.  Is it for cat videos and photos of one's children or is it appropriately used for discussing critically important social issues?  The suggestion that I'm about to make is for those of us who see social media as an opportunity to engage in serious conversations about important issues of the day with others in our network. Those not interested in serious discussions are invited to continue sharing cat photos.

I would suggest that in addition to the "Like" option, we add a few other options, including the following:

  • Your post merely parrots a talking point of one of the two political parties.
  • You are making an ad hominem attack on a person, not providing me with useful information.
  • You are engaged in a [cognitive bias] [logical fallacy].
  • Your post caused me to think about a topic in a new way.
  • Your post made me less certain of an opinion that I had.
  • Your post made me realize that this topic is more complex than I realized.
  • Your post states the facts fairly, but I still disagree with you.
  • You provided me with new intriguing information that I appreciate.
  • Your post made me angry, but I am glad you read it.
  • Your post irritates me, I disagree with you, but I value you as a friend.

I'm sure there are others that should be considered.  The main question is whether we are satisfied hoot panting for each other to display tribal loyalties or whether we want to be challenged to understand out world better . . .

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