‘The Curdling of the Internet’: The Open Public Sphere Internet as Threat Amplifier

A weekend retreat to a cabin in the woods provided me with time to finally get around to reading Jia Tolentino’s essay, ‘The I in the Internet.’ In a way, I’ve been thinking about what Tolentino describes as the ‘curdling’ of the internet for the past two years, since our research team started reviewing research on various forms of online hostility. More broadly, I’ve been thinking about the effects of social media on societies for the past decade.

I’m generally opposed to sweeping pronouncements about the negative effects of the internet, smartphones, or social media, mostly because it doesn’t seem to fit the evidence. Social media use, by itself, doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on well-being or depression; that is, if one person spends three hours a day on social media and the other spends one hour, or no hours, the person who uses more social media is no more likely to feel bad about themselves or about life in general. There’s also evidence that the internet exposes users to a wider range of opinions, rather than sorting users into filter bubbles or extreme echo chambers. Bad things may be happening in today’s world, and social media use might have increased at the same time, but that doesn’t mean that one caused the other to occur.

And yet, despite the apparent lack of evidence of a strong, negative effect of social media use on individuals, I can’t help but wonder if we, as researchers, are missing something, and how we might adjust so as to capture those things.

One way Tolentino’s feeling and the lack of individual, direct effects on social media users can both be true is if the internet/smartphones/social media are having a profoundly negative effect on society in general, but it occurs in some kind of indirect way. The most concise way of describing my hunch about this would be the ‘threat amplification’ effect. These technologies amplify certain voices, making certain kinds of people and behavior that were formerly invisible more visible. A sub-set of highly active social media users see the platforms as battlefields on which an ideological war is being fought, and so they post information that furthers their agendas, and/or a subset of especially passionate people simply express how strongly they feel about some issue. These expressions are perceived as threatening by a sub-set of other users, not necessarily because they contain explicit threats of violence, but maybe because they clash with some fundamental belief of theirs, or portend an escalation in the encroachment on their rights (e.g., the right to free speech; the right to exist; the right to defend themselves). These posts stick out to many people, draw attention to themselves in the way that any perceived threat in our environment sticks out to us. If future visibility of posts is determined through the amount of attention paid to them (via algorithms or 'most read' lists, etc.), then we tend to see more and more of these types of posts as time goes on.

Also, well-meaning users (journalists, re-tweeters, etc.) draw further attention to these posts in an effort to make sure that others see the threat because to ignore the threat would be hazardous. They might do so out of a sense of duty and compassion to others (i.e., they see others are in danger from the threat and must warn them) but might also do so out of self-interest, or in-group-interest. By drawing otherwise apathetic individuals’ attention to the threat, they may enlist them to join their fight. In such a way, much of the online discourse comes to resemble either a threat or a response to a threat.  

If we react to this by leaving the internet, by not participating, this may preserve our piece of mind, but it cedes the public forum of the internet to those holding more extreme views. So, perhaps we try to meet the threat with an equal and opposite assertion of our beliefs or values (which may, of course, be viewed by others as extreme and threatening). Or perhaps we just conform to the now-established norm of value-assertion-through-strong-takes in order to be heard (because in order to gain greater visibility in the form of likes, shares, and subscribers, it helps to conform to norms of what is popular), or simply because humans are prone to unconsciously conform to social norms of expression. All of these would lead to an internet that actually is becoming more threatening (again, defining 'threats' not in terms of what was intended, but how they are perceived by someone), and exposure to it would likely lead to increased polarization, depression, abuse, harassment, toxicity, etc. The internet may not have started out that way, but it could be the case that it is becoming that.

And that’s the tricky part. The internet that Robert Kraut analyzed 20 years ago in his landmark study of the effects of internet use had certain kinds of content and certain kinds of experiences and perspectives posted by users, and the internet that the research summed up in Hancock et al. has other content/experiences/perspectives, and today’s/tomorrows internet has/will have other content/experiences/perspectives. And if those three stages of the internet are sufficiently different from one another in terms of their contents, they may have very different effects. Thus, though we haven’t observed strong negative consequences of social media use, it’s impossible to rule out them occurring in the future, or right now, given the publishing lag and, perhaps, that we're looking at the wrong outcome variables.

The negative effects of internet use may not be depression, narcissism, or physical aggression. They may manifest themselves in voting behavior (e.g., voting for increasingly partisan, extreme candidates, so as to counter the perceived threat from the other side), or some other behavior that reflects a distrust in others (e.g., unwillingness to live in certain places or send one’s kids to schools with certain types of people, a kind of self-segregation). Eventually, this kind of mutual distrust may manifest itself in physical violence. Or perhaps we’ll view one another as very, very different and threatening, but ultimately leave one another alone, co-existing peacefully if not without mutual resentment (stranger things have happened).

But here’s an important limitation: everything I’ve called ‘the internet’ up until this point really refers to part of the internet: the open ‘public sphere’ internet: Twitter, Reddit, comments sections on news websites, the part of YouTube in which YouTubers engage in a kind of running commentary about the world; maybe certain users on Facebook and Instagram who use those platforms in this way. Tolentino does note that she's mostly talking about the 'social internet.' This is the part of the internet in which a single individual can post something that reaches many other individuals (one-to-many). But many of Tolentino's observations also seem to apply to news online, which is tightly linked to Twitter (the bubble that journalists live in is the bubble of the open public sphere internet). It’s worth remembering that the internet is a lot more than just this. It is Netflix and other streaming services: ‘top-down’ platforms in which content is created by a small group of professionals and consumed by a large audience. It is small-group communication via messaging apps (one-to-one, or several-to-several). Tolentino’s observations about online hostility probably don’t fit as well to small group communication online (which is 'social' and is online, though maybe it's pedantic to call it part of the 'social internet), and they only apply to Netflix and other mass media insofar as they try to reflect the zeitgeist of the open public sphere internet.   

The Open Public Sphere Internet as Difference Revealer

Now that there are so many people participating in public discourse online, the open public sphere internet has exposed groups to one another that are so unlike one another to begin with, in terms of their values, experiences, and perspectives, that independent of how aggressive or antagonistic they are, this difference is so shocking and threatening that people get freaked out. That is, it isn’t necessary to have people act in a hostile way toward another group, or in a strategic way so as to counter the messaging of others. Merely by expressing themselves, by showing who they are and what they believe, they may set others off.

Human difference was depicted and conceived in a certain way by mass media. It was often visual, concise, and fictional. So yes, traditional/legacy media depicted difference, but in a circumscribed way, made generic through the use of tropes and bracketed as fiction. While we weren’t consuming images of difference via mass media, we spent our time around people who are not terribly different in terms of beliefs, values, and experiences. We spent a lot of time around family, friends, schoolmates, and workmates. If we were out of sync in our beliefs or values, we often avoided those subjects in order to avoid conflict.

The differences that we see online are differences in values being expressed. Those differences always existed (there were always people who believed something that you would have found abhorrent), but we didn’t have to see them every day. We probably were never going to be particularly good at reacting to these differences. Many of us probably always would have perceived them as a threat to our own values. So, it could be argued that the internet is the first technology, the first moment in history, where we really have been confronted with values differences as they have always been. Of course, these online expressions are not pure reflections of any group's beliefs, are manipulated in various ways (though when we’re quickly scanning a feed and clicking on links, we may not recognize this). Nevertheless, despite the fact that they are not representative of the larger group, they are expressions of the beliefs and values of many real people. And maybe we feel this when we go online; we feel how real they are. They are not fictional characters dreamed up by a screenwriter. These are actual people who actually believe the exact opposite of what we believe.

It’s not surprising that people feel threatened by those differences. And so many folks react to the threat with a kind of siege mentality, and then many subsequent cultural expressions and public life become a reflection of that. And the only alternatives seem to be to carve out small clusters within online life via group messaging apps or forsake social media entirely.

What impact does the curdling of the open public sphere internet have on the world?

Why does any of this matter? Is it just a bunch of people bickering in cyberspace or does it have some clear connection to the rest of civic life? If some of us decide ‘to hell with it’ and only use social media for small-group communication and leave Twitter to the trolls, what would it matter?

I do wonder if the relationship between what is said on the open public sphere internet and power (political power, economic power) could change, or is changing. Perhaps when the open public sphere first became widely used in the United States, most people, including journalists and politicians, saw it as a kind of proxy for public opinion, overlooking the fact that only certain types of people expressed themselves. The apparent connection between what went on in the run-up to the 2016 election (expressions of extreme partisanship, particularly an insurgent group of Trump supporters engaging in a kind of online battle on behalf of their chosen candidate) and the outcome of that election (the election of that candidate) supports this view. 

But what if, in the coming months, the same open public sphere internet were to heap praise on Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren while continuing to deride Donald Trump and deriding or ignoring Joe Biden, and Biden or Trump end up winning the election? What if that inconsistency between opinion on the open public sphere internet and a democratic election outcome were to happen a few more times in high-profile elections in different democracies? Many people might come to believe that opinion on, say, Twitter, neither reflects nor causes shifts in larger public opinion. Once this is acknowledged, I do wonder if at least some people, either in the general public or in positions of power (e.g., widely-read journalists), would be less likely to take their cues from opinion expressed on the open public sphere internet.

There’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy aspect to it, I think. When people believe that Twitter is a bellweather, they look to Twitter and are subsequently influenced by opinion on Twitter. The evidence on which they initially base their belief that it is a bellweather might be suspect, but that doesn’t matter: once they believe it, they essentially bring it into being by assuming that it is public opinion writ large, are influenced by it as such, and, through their writing, influence others. That is, opinion leaders see a popular trend on Twitter and write about it as though it were popular more broadly. Others take cues from the opinion leaders and act on that information, turning it into a truly popular opinion. However, if opinion leaders stopped believing this (and again, it wouldn’t matter whether the reason they stopped believing it made much sense or was supported by evidence), they might ignore it and thus Twitter and the like would lose its power to influence public opinion writ large.

Maybe people in a certain social stratum are already leaning this way, avoiding social media (or at least the open public sphere internet) themselves, raising their kids to avoid it as well. These people are often quite powerful: upper class, working in tech, politically active. If they start ignoring opinion as expressed on the open public sphere internet, I can imagine all of it becoming like certain comment sections of certain news websites: it exists, it is ugly, but most readers simply ignore it, and it doesn’t really have much of an impact outside of itself.

In any case, it’s important to not simply assume that the open public sphere internet has a stable relationship with public opinion in general. I think it’s also worth thinking about the popularization of the open public sphere internet as the first moment in human history that we saw how different our views of the world really are, how directly they conflict with one another (there is also much agreement, though the current iteration of the open public sphere internet doesn’t seem suited to highlight that). It’s hard to imagine such a moment going smoothly. But perhaps it’s a matter of getting over the initial collective shock of it. Or perhaps we just need a little time to ourselves.

Thoughts on Post-2016 Election America: Re-examining the "Fringe Fighting" Hypothesis

In my conversations with people (both online and face-to-face conversations) about the post-election media environment, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to maintain my position as a dispassionate optimist. Is this because the world itself is contradicting that position, or is it because I'm being met with more resistance from those around me? That's what I'm still trying to sort out.

Many of the conversations come back to the premise that America is somehow more hostile than it used to be (not just that our leaders are objectionable and/or dangerous, but that the increasing danger resides in our populous). There are also conversations about what particular politicians are doing, will do, or can do, but I want to set those aside for a moment and focus on premises relating to the American population and the extent and intensity of its hostility toward one another. Previously, I've argued that the impression that we're a nation divided is largely an illusion, that the true conflict is mainly at the fringes, but that was before the election. So, I'd like to revisit that argument in light of discussions of public opinion, fake news, and a general sense of threat.

Essentially, my argument was that the strong disagreement we see in our culture is relegated to small groups of individuals on either end of an ideological spectrum that manifests themselves in highly visible ways. Although it can appear as though our entire culture is in a state of unrest (and is getting worse in this respect), this may be an illusion. To paraphrase myself:

This illusion occurs when we mistake uncommon, extreme online behaviors for exemplars. We implicitly or explicitly link hundreds or thousands of people actually stating a belief online (or, in this case, acting hostile toward other Americans online) with the behaviors and beliefs of a larger mainstream group that, while not actually stating the belief, has stated or acted in such ways that makes it clear that they believe in some of the same things as the group that actually states the belief online. In the U.S. right now, the large groups to which we most often extrapolate are "liberals/Democrats" and "conservatives/Republicans." Dissimilarities between ideas held by the small group actually stating the belief (or actually being openly hostile) online and members of the large group who are not stating the belief (and are not actually being openly hostile online) are ignored in favor of whatever they have in common. This is justified on the grounds that what the small group and the large group have in common is thought to represent a shared, coherent ideological framework (see "Arguing with the Fringes" for further details).

In retrospect, I shouldn't have used the word "fringe" to describe these small groups. The word feels dismissive and judgmental, which is not what I intended. Really, I just want to make a statement about the size of the groups that are in strong disagreement with (and are hostile toward) other Americans. Still, the term "fringe fighting" has a certain ring to it, and I can't think of a suitable alternative word for these groups at the moment, so for the purposes of this post, I'll stick with "fringe."

Arguments/evidence for the Fringe Fighting hypothesis

Though there is more talk about social unrest than there was when I wrote "Arguing with the Fringes," this talk fits a "moral panic" narrative in which people become extremely alarmed over novel behavior that is rapidly becoming popular (often involving media use) and extrapolate to a future world in which the novel behavior radically changes our world for the worse. There are, of course, concerns about rapidly spreading novel behaviors that turn out to be justified, and the dismissal of such concerns as hysterical can have dire consequences. But there are also dire consequences to succumbing to overblown fears, namely rapid declines in interpersonal and institutional trust that are essential to functioning societies, in addition to the "boy who cried 'wolf'" problem (if one's concerns are found by others to be overblown, one loses credibility, forfeiting the ability to call others' attention to future threats). Given the similarities between the talk of social unrest and previous instances of moral panics, it at least seems worthwhile to consider the possibility that concern about Americans' hostility toward one another is a moral panic.

It is also important to ask, "What are we using as indicators of how 320 Million or so Americans think of feel?" How Americans voted and what they say on the internet seem to be commonly used indicators. The majority of Americans did not vote in the last election, so it would be difficult to use 2016 voting behavior to assume anything about how "America" feels about anything. For those who did vote, whom they voted for is a pretty weak signal of any particular belief, as these candidates, in effect, bundle together various disparate beliefs, and some votes are not intended as endorsements of anything the candidate stated or believed but instead are merely "protest votes."

What people say on the internet is also a weak signal of overall public opinion. For one thing, comparatively few people post about politics and social issues (roughly one-third of social media users, according to Pew). And many of those are posting information that is visible only to those in their immediate social circles (e.g., posting on Facebook). Such information is highly salient to individuals consciously or unconsciously forming beliefs about what other Americans believe, but it is hardly representative of Americans as a whole.

We may also question assumptions about the impact the hostility we're able to see is having. The extreme voices may have been largely filtered out because most of their friends unfollowed or hid them. The only people who don't filter out the extreme voices are the ones who already would have believed whatever the poster is trying to convince them of. What good is sharing a news story if very few people follow you, and those few people already knew about the news you're sharing? As a side note, it would be nice to have some information about actual audience and the practice of unfollowing to go along with the information about sharing and 'liking' information online.

Better evidence about what America, as a whole, believes can be found in the General Social Survey, which attempts to look at what ALL Americans believe rather than the few that contribute content to the internet. Data from the survey suggests that American public opinion on a variety of social issues is relatively stable over the past few decades; an abrupt shift in that, though not impossible, would seem unlikely.

Finally, there is evidence that the growth of political animosity in the U.S. is a trend that pre-dates social media, so perhaps social media is just making visible what was already there. It should be noted that animosity (and attitude) is not the same thing as hostility (a behavior).

Arguments/evidence against the Fringe Fighting hypothesis

There is some evidence of growing distrust of the media. If you're not getting your information from the media (or whatever you define "mainstream media" as), where are you getting it from? You could either get it directly from alternative news sources or get it via social media, which carries stories from those alternative news sources. Many existing measures of exposure to news have yet to catch up with the way we consume news. It is entirely possible, given the growing distrust in mass/mainstream media and the lack of good indicators about where Americans get their information, that Americans have quickly shifted toward consuming news stories that frame current events chielfy in terms of conflict between groups of Americans.

What does this have to do with hostility? Well, those intra-American-conflict news stories could play to whatever various groups are inclined to believe about various other groups, play to one's fears (climate change on the Left; undesirable social change on the Right; an unfair, "rigged" economy and government on both the Left and Right), decrease trust and empathy, increase fear and cynicism, and sew dissent. Very few people may be initially fighting with one another, but if those people can disseminate information so as to convince disinterested others that the people on the Other Side of the fight are a growing threat to everyone, they can effectively "enlist" those disinterested others in the fight. What starts as a fringe fight could quickly grow into something larger.

So What?

For a moment, let's assume that there is a problem, that a significant number of people in America disagree with one another to a significant degree. Is this necessarily bad? Disagreement isn't bad in and of itself; arguably, it's desirable so as to avoid the pitfalls of "groupthink." But strong disagreement could lead to incivility (which, some would say, is antithetical to empathy and compromise, and compromise seems like a prerequisite to having a functioning democracy and economy) and censorship (which is antithetical to democracy and the progress of science and education). Incivility could lead to violent attacks (though I've heard at least one scholar argue that arguments can be uncivil and not be bad in these senses). In so far as we see evidence of strong disagreement growing and/or leading to incivility, censorship, and violent attacks, then yes, it's bad.

Assuming we have a problem, what do we do about it? It's possible that the traditional channels by which we sought to address social unrest would no longer work within a decentralized, non-hierarchical information system like today's (or tomorrow's) internet. This is the "everyone finds their own facts" problem (a topic for an upcoming blog entry). Even if you engage in a dispassionate analysis of evidence and find support for the fringe fighting hypothesis, or evidence that people are consuming more and more biased information and wandering further from any objective truth, what are you going to do with that information? You might teach it in a class, but if people don't want to hear it, then people might just start distrusting teachers more. You might publish in an academic journal, but what good is that when the journal loses it's sense of authority and credibility? If you publish in that academic journal and your research is covered by The New York Times, what good is that if fewer and fewer people trust The New York Times?

I'm left with a desire (quixotic as it may be) to try to step outside the problem. I know that many are fond of casting Intra-American conflict (online and offline) as a part of global phenomenon, but here again, I think we're making a facile analogy, choosing to see the similarities and ignoring the many differences. Surely, not every country is experiencing precisely the same kind of online conflict problem that Americans are experiencing. I was reminded of this point while attending this year's Association of Internet Researchers annual conference in Berlin, where I was fortunate enough to present on a panel with researchers from Israel, Denmark, and the U.K. I was left with the notion that not all online discussion forums are the same with regard to conflict, that intra-group conflict is not inevitable in the digital era.

We might also step outside of the internet for a moment. Anecdotally, I've observed a few folks taking a break from social media and news media because the emotional pitch of online discourse became so shrill as to be unbearable. I'm reminded of an idea put forth in Joshua Rothman's book review in the New Yorker (as well as the book he was reviewing, I assume) that our face-to-face interactions with individuals and our feelings about the political groups to which those individuals belong are often in conflict. Short version: we love (or at least tolerate) our neighbors but we hate the political groups to which they belong. The basic idea is that it is harder to hate a person in person. It will be important to see how our face-to-face interactions at work, school, family, and in public places progresses along side our perceptions of behavior online.

So, where to go from here? For starters, it seems worthwhile to examine the framing of news about current events: do we really see an uptick in exposure to intra-American conflict framing, or are our filter bubbles fooling us into think this? It's also important to understand more about the contexts in which online hostility occurs (a goal of my current research project examining hostile behavior on Reddit) and when and where this is associated with offline hostility.

The Truth, Online

Reading Jill Lepore's review of Michael Patrick Lynch's new book, The Internet of Us, reminded me to write something on the topic of truth. I haven't read Lynch's book yet, but even the sub-title ("Knowing more and understanding less in the age of big data") gave me that all-too-familiar twinge of jealousy, of feeling as though someone had written about an idea that had been gestating in my mind for years before I had the chance to write about it myself, of being scooped. So, during this brief lacuna between the time at which I learned of this book's existence and the time at which I actually read it, let me tell you what I think it should be about, given that title. That is: how is it possible that the Internet helps us to know more and to understand less? Or, to take Lepore's tack, what is the relationship between the Internet/Big Data and the truth/reality?

At this stage, I have only a semi-organized collection of ideas on the topic. I'll base each idea around a question.

To what extent has truth (or reality) become subjective in the age of the Internet/Big Data? 

I think we vastly overestimate the extent to which the Internet has fragmented our sense of truth and/or reality. And by "we," I mean most people who think about the Internet, not just scholars or experts. My sense is that it is a commonly held belief that the Internet allows people access to many versions of the truth, and also that groups of people subscribe to the versions that fit their worldviews. This assumption is at the core of the "filter bubble" argument and undergirds the assertion that the Internet is driving fragmentation of polarization of societies.

I contend that most people agree on the truth or reality of most things, but that we tend not to notice the things we agree on and instead focus on the things on which we do not agree. Imagine that we designed a quiz about 100 randomly selected facets of reality. We don't cherrypick controversial topics. It could be something as pedestrian as: "what color is they sky?" ; "if I drop an object, will it fall to the ground, fly into the sky, or hover in the air" ; "2 + 2 = ?" I'd imagine that people would provide very similar answers to almost all of these questions, regardless of how much time they spend on the Internet. Even when we do not explicitly state that we agree on something, we act as though we believe a certain thing that other people believe as well. We all behave as if we agree on the solidity of the ground on which we walk, the color of the lines on the roadways and what they mean, and thousands of other aspects of reality in everyday life.

The idea that reality or truth is becoming entirely subjective, fragmented, or polarized is likely the result of us becoming highly focused on the aspects on which we do not agree. That focus, in turn, is likely the result of us learning about the things on which we do not agree (that is, of us being exposed to people who perceive a handful of aspects of reality in a very different way than we perceive them) and of truth/reality relating to these handful of aspects genuinely becoming more fragmented. Certainly, it is alarming to think about what society would look like if we literally could not agree on anything, either explicitly or implicitly; so, there is understandable alarm about the trend toward subjectivity, regardless of how small and overestimated the trend may be.

So, I'm not saying that that truth/reality isn't becoming more fragmented; I'm only saying that part of it is becoming that way, and that we tend to ignore the parts that are not.

It's also worth considering the way in which the Internet has unified people in terms of what they believe truth/reality to be. If we look at societies around the globe, many don't agree on aspects of world history, how things work, etc. Some of those people gained access to the Internet and then began to believe in a reality that many others around the globe believe in: that certain things happened in the past, that certain things work in certain ways. Reality and truth were never unified to begin with. The Internet has likely fragmented some aspects of reality and the truth for some, but it has also likely unified other aspects for others.

Maybe I'm just being pedantic or nit-picky, but I think any conversation about the effects of the Internet on our ability to perceive a shared truth/reality should start with an explicit acknowledgment that when people say that society's notion of truth/reality is fragmented, they actually mean that a small (but important) corner of our notion of truth/reality is fragmented. Aside from considering the net effects of the Internet on reality (has it fragmented more than it unified?), we might also consider this question:

What types of things do we agree on?

Are there any defining characteristics of the aspects of truth/reality on which we don't agree? When I try to think of these things (things like abortion, gun rights, affirmative action, racism, economic philosophy, immigration policy, climate change, evolution, the existence of god), the word "controversial" comes to mind, but identifying this category of things on which we don't agree as "controversial" is tautological: they're controversial because we don't agree on them; the controversy exists because we can't agree.

So how about this rule of thumb: we tend to agree on simple facts more than we agree on complex ones. When I think of the heated political discourse in the United States at this time, I think about passionate disagreements about economic policy (what policy will result in the greatest benefit for all?), immigration (ditto), gun rights (do the benefits of allowing more people to carry guns [e.g., preventing tyrannical government subjugation, preventing other people with guns from killing more people] outweigh the drawbacks (e.g., increased likelihood of accidents; increased suicide rates], and abortion (at what point in the gestational process does human life begin?). These are not simple issues, though many talk about them as if the answers to the questions associated with each issue were self-evident.

I can think of a few reasons why truth/reality around these issues is fragmenting. One is, essentially, the filter bubble problem: the Internet gives us greater access to other people, arguments, facts, and data that can all be used by the motivated individual as evidence that they are on the right side of the truth. In my research methods class, I talk about how the Internet has supplied us with vast amounts of data and anecdotes, and that both are commonly misused to support erroneous claims. One of these days, I'll get around to putting that class lecture online, but the basic gist of it is that unless you approach evidence with skepticism, with the willingness to reach a conclusion that contradicts the one you set out to find, you're doing it wrong. Dan Brooks has a terrific blog post about how Twitter increases our access to "straw men." So, not only does the Internet provide us with access to seemingly objective evidence that we are right; it also provides an infinite supply of straw men with which to argue.

In these aforementioned cases in which we disagree about complex issues, we tend not to disagree about whether or not something actually happened, whether an anecdote is actually true or whether data is or is not fabricated. Most disagreements stem from the omission of relevant true information or the inclusion of irrelevant true information. We don't really attack arguments for these sins; we tend not to even notice them, and instead talk past each other, grasping at more and more anecdotes and data (of which there will be an endless supply) that support our views.

If it is the complex issues on which we cannot agree, then perhaps the trend toward disagreement is a function of the increasing complexity and interdependency of modern societies. Take the economy. Many voters will vote for an elected official based on whether or not they believe that the policies implemented by that official will produce a robust economy. But when you stop and think about how complex the current global economy is, it is baffling how anyone could be certain that his or her policies would result in particular outcomes. Similarly, it is difficult to know what the long-term outcomes of bank regulations might be, or military interventionalism (or lack thereof). Outcomes related to each issue involve the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of billions of people, and while the situations we currently face and those we face in the future resemble situations we've faced in the past (or situations that economists, psychologists, or other "ists" could simulate), they differ in many others that are difficult to predict (that's simply the nature of outcomes that involve billions of people over long periods of time). And yet we act with such certainty when we debate such topics! Why is that? This leads to my last question:

Why can't we arrive at a shared truth about these few-but-important topics?

First, there is the problem of falsifiability. Claims relating to these topics typically involve an outcome that can be deferred endlessly. For example, one might believe that capitalism will result in an inevitable worker revolution. If the revolution hasn't occurred yet, that is not evidence that it will never occur; only evidence that it hasn't occurred yet. There's also the problem of isolating variables. Perhaps you believe that something will come to pass at a certain time and then it doesn't, and you ascribe the fact that it doesn't to a particular cause, but unless you've made some effort to isolate the variable, you can't rule out the possibility that the cause you identified actually had nothing to do with the outcome.

There are falsifiable ways of pursuing answers to questions relating to these topics. And despite all the hand-wringing about the fragmentation of truth/reality on these topics, there are also plenty of folks interested in the honest pursuit of these answers; answers that, despite the growing complexity of the object of study (i.e., human behavior on a mass scale), are getting a bit easier to find with the growing amounts of observations to which we have access via the Internet.

The other problem is the lack of incentive to arrive at the truth. Often times, we get immediate payoff for supporting a claim that isn't true, in the form of positive affect (e.g., righteous anger, in contrast to the feeling of existential doubt that often comes with admitting you're wrong) and staying on good terms with those around you (admitting you're wrong is often inseparable from admitting that your friends, or family, or the vast majority of your race or gender or nationality are wrong). So, there are powerful incentives (affective and social) to arrive at certain conclusions regardless of whether or not these are in line with truth/reality. In contrast, the incentives to be right about such things seem diffuse. We would benefit as a society and a species if we all right about everything, right?

I suppose some would argue that total agreement would be bad, that some diversity of opinions would be better. But we don't tolerate diversity of opinion on whether or not the law of gravity exists, or whether 2+2 = 4. Why would we tolerate it in the context of economic policy? Is it just because of how complex economies are, and that to think you have the right answer is folly? (I suppose that's a whole other blog entry right there, isn't it). But certainly, even if you believe that, you'd agree that some ideas about economies are closer to or further from the truth and reality of economies. So, perhaps what I'm saying is that if we lived in a society where "less right" ideas were jettisoned in favor of "more right" ideas, we would all benefit greatly, but that the benefits would only come if a large number of us acted on a shared notion of the truth and that the benefit would be spread out among many (hence, "diffuse").

But what if there were an immediate incentive to be right about these complex issues, something to counter the immediate affective and social payoffs of being stubborn and "truth agnostic?" I love the idea of prediction markets, which essentially attach a monetary incentive to predictions about, well, anything. You could make a claim about economic policy, immigration policy, terrorism policy, etc., and if you were wrong, you would lose money.

Imagine you're a sports fan who loves a particular team. You have a strong emotional and social incentive to bet on your team. But if your team keeps losing and you keep betting on your favorite team, you're going to keep losing money. If you had to participate in a betting market, you'd learn pretty quickly how to arrive at more accurate predictions. You would learn how to divide your "passionate fan" self from your betting self. And if you compare the aggregate predictions of passionate fans to the aggregate predictions of bettors, I'd imagine that the latter would be far more accurate. I would assume it would work more or less the same way with other kinds of predictions. People would still feel strongly about issues and still be surrounded by people who gave them a strong incentive to believe incomplete truths or distorted realities. But they would have an incentive to cultivate alternate selves who made claims more in tune with a shared reality.

Of course, not all issues lend themselves to being turned into bets (how would one bet on whether or not life begins after the first trimester?), but it still seems like, at least, a step in the right direction, and gives me hope for how we can understand the truth and our relationship to it in the Internet age, perhaps even better than we did before.