It's great to welcome back to the program today.
Jonathon hight, who is a social psychologist and professor at [inaudible]
New York University Stern School of business.
He's the author of multiple New York Times bestsellers, including the righteous mind.
The newer book coauthored with Greg Luke.
Ian Off the coddling of the American mind is just now available in paperback.
Jonathan, so great to have you back on.
Thanks.
David's great to be back.
So we've been talking a lot on the program about the, um, sort of media cycles related
to kind of modern politics now in particular as the election is starting to ramp up and
how sort of at a core, structural level, the way in which corporate media cover politics
perpetuates a lot of the polarization that you've been writing about for a long time.
Do you see it that way today?
Oh my goodness, yes.
Um, so, you know, I, I think of human beings as this amazing species that that came down
out of, out of the trees and evolved for life in small groups.
Um, you know, groups of 50 to 150 people that are constantly, or not constantly, but often
at war with each other, or at least having violent intergroup conflict.
Um, and we, uh, and we evolve to circle around rocks and trees and other things, make them
sacred and then have small scale religion.
That's human nature.
Now somehow or other, we escaped from that.
We built these gigantic societies, uh, that were feudal originally and very hierarchical.
And then very recently we built these amazing secular it get relatively egalitarian, open,
prosperous democracies.
Uh, really quite amazing what we've done.
But we're still the same tribal religious creatures that we've always been and the modern
media ecosystem beginning with cable TV and then moving onto the Internet and social media
has gotten more and more effective at breaking us up into smaller groups, feeding us with
very different fats.
We live in different worlds, a worlds in which we, we hate the people and the other worlds.
Um, and we increasingly are willing to take action against them.
So yes, it's very frightening.
One of the criticisms that sometimes levied when one starts to make a more general, we
live in different worlds and have different facts sort of analysis, which is not an a
wrong analysis.
But one of the criticisms that sometimes comes up is yes, people live in these self perpetuating,
Algorithmic Echo chamber sort of worlds with different facts, but there is still some truth.
There are things that are true and things that are not true.
And there needs to be more of a maybe reckoning, some would say, which separates the fact that
there is a degree of polarization in which people are just an echo chambers.
And at the same time there are, there is truth and falsity at the same time as they're not.
Oh, well, I certainly agree that there is truth or falsity, but I don't see that as
a, as a critique or criticism of the view that we now live in separate worlds.
Rather, I would say the truth has always been hard to find.
Um, even about medical issues, people didn't notice that if, you know, doctors wash their
hands, their patients don't die.
Uh, and even when that was pointed out to them, they didn't believe it.
So it's very hard to find the truth.
Uh, we have universities, we have an academic system to ferret it out, and we also have
journalists who are supposed to do that.
So we have adaptations to help us find the truth.
But man, has it gotten harder in the last five or 10 years because of social media?
Almost anything that you take as a fact.
Now, uh, there are people on the other side.
If it has a political valence, there are people on the other side who, who are certain and
have evidence that you're wrong.
Um, and because I'm in the center and I write about these things, I get emails from people
on all sides.
So whatever the scandal, whether it's Brett Kavanaugh, whether it's the Amazon rainforest
burning, um, people send me things to show, oh look, the other side's crazy.
You know?
Uh, so, um, so no, I do agree that there's truth.
That's why I'm a researcher and a professor, but I am despairing of our ability as a country
to find truth on important matters ever again.
So what is the, is there a set of a, of a ta, I dunno, this set of steps, so to speak,
for someone who wants to determine that truth because as you say, there's a, there's a significant
difference between supply side.
Economics is a positive or negative influence on our, on our economy for example.
And, uh, here is the reality of what we are doing to the planet because of industrialization
and the burning of fossil fuels.
I see those as as distinctly different sorts of arguments.
Question one is do you agree that those are different types of arguments?
And then the maybe more important part is what is the process you can recommend to people
to arrive at the truth about either or both of those issues?
Well, it's true that there are certain propositions that are more easily testable and so on.
The question is the planet warming.
But there are some people in the right who deny that, but as far as I can tell there
are very few.
So that I think is widely accepted as a fact and has been for a long time, not by all.
Um, next question, are human beings responsible for the warming?
Well then some more people on the right will drop off and say they used to say no, it's
sunspots.
I don't know if they still say that.
Um, so there are certain things that are fact, and I certainly think it's established that
human activity is the major cause of the rise.
Uh, but then the question is, uh, anything else that happens?
So let's just take the, the fires and the Amazon that people are understandably worried
about.
Well, if you're on the lift, you're told that this is, that this, the Amazon is the lungs
of the world, makes 20% of our oxygen.
Uh, but I read from people on the right end in the center, uh, that biologist say that
that's not true.
I know I haven't dug into it.
I don't know.
I'm just saying that, um, and you're a counter point.
Well, it's the, and it's not just that there was a counterpoint.
Uh, it's that we, if you're a partisan, if you're on a team, whatever comes your way,
you don't just say, hmm, is it true?
You say, Oh my God, this confirms the things that I believe most desperately.
This confirms why they're so evil.
And you have lots of people helping you confirm that.
It's called confirmation bias.
That we don't say, well what's the evidence on both sides?
We say, can I, can I take this as evidence that my enemies are evil?
We look for that evidence and we always find it and the internet just Google it, you'll
always, you'll find it online.
So yeah, there are facts, but I think, um, I am again, I am just despairing of our ability
to find them.
You have talked about, um, the sort of, um, evolutionary advantages, some of the dynamics
that we observe in humans, uh, have had at prior times and maybe even still have today.
One of the things I've been studying is this concept of the narcissism of small differences.
And I'm, I'm curious if we imagine a world where imagined that the right convinced the
left to come to their side on global warming, on abortion, on gay men, whatever, right?
Let's say the left said, you know what, you've convinced us.
You're right.
Uh, would there not be a re stratification within the new sort of pillars of discussion
wherein there would be a new outgroup within the right that would be on the left of what
is left.
So to speak.
And you would have the same exact degree of polarization, disagreement and sort of alternate
fact worlds that you describe.
Yes.
In general.
I think that's true.
I mean, we certainly have made a lot of moral progress.
Each side has convinced the other a few things.
The direction of history has been more in the progressive direction in that, um, uh,
you know, should women have the right to vote?
Should women have equal opportunity or equal access to everything?
Uh, there's not any serious debate or doubt over that.
So then we move on where the left says, well, okay, um, now what we need is equal representation.
That women should be 50% of say all the, you know, all the s all the engineers and computer
programmers and the rights says, no, we should have equal opportunity.
Um, I wouldn't exactly call it the narcissism of small differences.
Those are major and important philosophical questions.
What counts as the standard for a fair society?
Um, but yes, I think your general point is that progress, uh, progress, be it material
progress or moral progress will never end.
Are, are furious debates.
We will always find things to argue about something as simple as do we need the, is
the cause of our problems that we've lost touch with the old ways and the wisdom of
our ancestors or is the problem, uh, that we are not advancing fast enough and we need
to tear down what we've inherited and build something new?
That's the fundamental question between progressives and conservatives.
Is the political system that we have a well-suited to adjudicate some of these bigger questions
that you've mentioned today and also that you talk about in the book or is it fundamentally
a system that either by design or by outcome by side effect is not going to possibly resolve
those disagreements?
Yeah, well, I would never say not possibly because the future is very long and we've
been through bad times before.
So, uh, you know, 50 a hundred years from now, I have no idea where we'll be.
My friend Steven Pinker's probably right.
That things will be a lot better.
Certainly on material issues they'll be a lot better.
But are there specifically some design flaws or problems with our system that make us worse
or more gridlocked, more, um, dysfunctional than many other democracies?
I think the answer is yes.
Um, so the worst number of political parties to have in a country is one that's really,
really bad.
Um, but the second worst number is to, uh, because our minds are really finely tuned
to do us versus them.
And there's even research showing that if you break people up into groups into three
or four different groups, you don't get the kind of split.
You don't get the ferocity of the split that you get when you break people up into two
groups.
So two is a, we have two parties.
I wish we didn't, it wasn't the design of the founders, but it emerged even over the
question of whether to ratify the constitution.
There were the federalists and the anti-federalists.
Um, our system is designed to make it easy to block, uh, to block bad ideas, to block
whims and passions of the public.
So our system is designed to be at the top chorusy and then various kinds of political
corruption have amplified that.
Any, any group that is strongly like the NRA, any group that's really wants to stop something
has a lot of ways they can stop it.
Uh, whereas if the majority favor something, it's very hard for them to actually push it
into law.
What are the particular issues that you see as, um, at least in the short to medium term,
not solvable as a result of that structure?
Um, so I think, well, I think almost all of our big issues are gonna be very hard to solve.
So let's just take, uh, climate change for one.
Um, so I think the left has been correct about the nature of the problem.
Um, but the right has been correct that trying to solve it by getting big government agreements
is hopeless.
Uh, we're not going to get China and India, um, to solve things because they agree, you
know, to reduce the air pollution.
Uh, because of a, some agreement that their government signed.
Emmanuel Macron tried to do that and he had riots.
He tried to, uh, have more, uh, environmental minded policies.
He had riots in France.
So countries aren't going to do that.
Um, that way I think his failure lies failure.
I think the right is correct.
And here what I mean is especially the libertarian or free market, right.
Um, that these problems are massive and the only way we're going to decarbonize is if
individual consumers and companies conclude that it's cheaper and better for them to use
carbon free sources.
And so, um, I think if we leave it to AOC and the green new deal, um, which basically
takes let's say tries to approach climate change by importing all the things that the
left most wants.
That approach that we new deal has some, some good things in it, but it guarantees that
people on the right are going to fight it tooth and nail.
I mean we have to have a high minimum wage to fight carbon.
Yeah.
So, okay, but let's, let's go back just one, one half a step maybe.
Um, I, I actually sorta sympathize with the idea that I believe the fact bear out that
in the long term it is actually cheaper, more efficient than therefore more profitable to
get away from fossil fuels.
But I think the, the missing step in the libertarian approaches, unless there is an intermediary
force that pushes before we get to the longterm in the short term, it's much easier not to
do it.
And I think that that's where the libertarian analysis that you made falls a little bit
short.
Oh, totally agree.
So, you know, if I were king or if I could advise or if there was a government capable
of acting on advice, um, I would say that, um, that ultimately the heavy lifting is going
to be done by market forces.
And if we could have massive federal expenditure into getting really cheap solar, wind and
nuclear nuclear, it really has to be part of the problem.
If we're serious about this, um, massive government expenditure to, to get to those points 10
or 20 years earlier than we would without subsidies.
Yes, it's urgent that we do it.
So I'm not a partisan, I'm not a conservative, a progressive or libertarian.
I think all three have, have insights.
To go back to your early question, what should one do if they want to find the truth?
I'll tell you what worked for me.
I was on the left when I started writing the righteous mind.
My goal was to help the Democrats win more elections.
And I committed myself to understanding conservatives and Libertarians.
And what I discovered is that if you look at the best writing, you get lots of great
ideas.
There are lots of really smart, interesting people on all sides.
Um, whereas if you get the worst writing, if you're on Twitter and you just experienced
people, the most extreme versions, you'll think, well, they're stupid and evil.
Um, so I think we do need, we do need as individuals and in a policy process, we do need people
to propose ideas, other people to say, no, that won't work because of X. Here's a better
way.
And you have to have a process by which the best ideas when universities and we're supposed
to do that.
That's sort of the idea of the HIG alien dialectic in a sense.
But the, the concern I have with it is that when some of the ideas being proposed are
outrageous, you're sort of pulling the mean in a direction that is not particularly productive.
I mean, that's my concern with that, that the idea you're proposing,
um, I think I see what you're saying that the John Stuart Mill didn't use the phrase
marketplace of ideas.
Uh, but it's not a bad metaphor.
And so if in a real marketplace, you know, uh, real market places work really well, but
if you had a marketplace which you had a lot of people trying to manipulate the market
and you have, uh, lobby groups and industry groups putting out fake reports, yeah, that's
a market failure.
So, uh, that's why we need quality control.
And that's why universities I think are or should be our best hope for finding the truth.
Now, I have been very concerned that, um, into social sciences, which is what we're
really talking about here.
We really need the social sciences to work right, to, to solve these political and social
problems.
Um, in the social sciences they have always leaned left, which is not a problem as long
as there are a few people, real researchers who are committed to the academy to say, well
wait a second, here's some counter evidence.
We used to have that.
Um, now that we've shifted much further to side and this is happening across society
in a polarization cycle, lots of institutions are purifying.
So my fear is that a social science research is not as reliable as it would be if we had
more viewpoint diversity.
When you have serious professors who are committed to the research process, you don't get crazy
ideas put it that that comes from lobby groups and non non-professionals.
So you're not literally saying every crazy idea should be part of what is considered
the serious discussion, but that we should have a system in place that will sort of a
filter so that the ideas that are being taken seriously have passed some kind of either
explicit or implicit vetting of sorts.
Yes, that's right.
I would never say we need all ideas.
I would never even say we need all perspectives.
What I would say is we have to really look out for orthodoxy.
If we have any group that is responsible for finding the truth, which is subject to orthodoxy,
which means that if someone finds counter truth, they will be shamed or expelled.
Then we cannot rely on the conclusions of this group.
We've been speaking with Jonathan Height.
He is a social psychologist.
The paperback version of the coddling of the American [inaudible]
mine coauthored with Greg with Yanoff is now available a Jonathan, so great to speak to
you.
As always, my pleasure