Defending Ideological Diversity

Katie Knibbs at The Ringer wrote a scathing critique of "ideological diversity" that everyone should read. Go ahead and read it. I'll wait.

She makes some good points and some bad ones, which I will respond to.

"Zuckerberg’s statement startled me, partly because he was more adept at defending Thiel than he was at addressing Facebook’s failure to hire black employees. (Facebook is about 2 percent black. Its board is 100 percent white.)"

People love to point out the racial diversity of an institution they don't like. I don't know if Knibbs is suggesting a lack of equality or a lack of equity. Is she suggesting Zuckerberg is racist because he's not hiring enough blacks or is he racist because he's not manipulating his hiring process and discriminating against other races in favor of blacks?

How many qualified African-Americans are there to work at one of the most successful companies? According to this, 13.7% of Harvard's student body is African-American. Assuming the alumni demographics are similar, there should be quite a few African-American elites out there for Zuck to choose from. So Knibbs might have a point.

Nutpicking

"The push for “ideological diversity” (SCARE QUOTES!) as a curative confuses the benefit of dialectical learning with the notion that all ideas are worth debating. History is littered with horrible ideas that aren’t worth poking holes into during a question-and-answer session. “The earth is flat,” for instance. “Castrating homosexuals is an acceptable punishment for homosexuality.” “Slavery is good.” “Women’s suffrage is incompatible with democracy.”'

"In contemporary arguments for “ideological diversity,” the ask is more moderate: It’s not that campuses need to purge Marxists as much as they need to let a few more Ayn Rand aficionados and ethno-nationalists onto the tenure track."

One of the things Knibbs does is take the worst representation of her outgroup and use it as an example of what "ideological diversity" might look like. (She also conflates "diverse" ideas with those lacking merit.) She might counter by saying that this is what will happen if we open the floodgates to different thinking, these bad ideas will get through.

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the author becomes transfixed with trying to define "quality." He says it's something that's both objective and subjective at the same time.

For example, I hate country music. But even I can distinguish between high quality country music like you'd hear on the radio and low quality country music performed by some hack who can't stay in key. My point is, I don't think it's as hard as people think to distinguish high and low quality ideas from our outgroup.

For example, Heterodox Academy doesn't call for all loons to come give college lectures. It calls for credentialed professors from different ideologies to be welcomed into the academy so that their biases will cancel each other out.

Even the fringiest of the left wouldn't expect Zuck to hire homeless people of color to write code for him if it meant more racial diversity. Merit still matters.

The Perception Gap study shows that more than 3/4 of Republicans agree that racism is still a problem (Democrats predicted the number to be about 1/2, hence the name "Perception Gap"). Our outgroup isn't dominated by the crazies; we just think they are.

The other thing that helps is to picture ideologies as the emotions that drive them rather than their worst representation. That's why I like Arnold Kling's Three Languages of Politics, it helps me see conservatives as people who fear the decline of civilization rather than people who want a military state to keep minorities down.

Bad faith

"But the “ideological diversity” debate, again, isn’t really about allowing every horrid viewpoint equal standing. It is about creating a schism in which extreme conservatives appear a trampled class."

"When Zuckerberg used the phrase “ideological diversity” on a college campus, he was crouching behind the notion that the real problem is groupthink, not that Facebook did a bad job of hiring people of color to operate his company." 

"I don’t know if Zuckerberg boasted of Facebook’s “ideological diversity” in keeping Thiel on its board to offer a deliberate olive branch to the right wing, or if he has genuinely conflated the value of having people with different perspectives working together with an idea that all perspectives are equally valid and deserving of a platform,"

I hate bad faith arguments. They reduce people to flat, cartoonish characters. In fact, this is a good example of why we need more ideological diversity. The more we stay in our bubbles, the more we assume the worst about our outgroup. The more we communicate with those who do not think like us, the more we see nuance.

In the second quote above, Knibbs does raise an interesting point though. Do I think Zuck touts ideological diversity just so he can use that as an excuse for keeping his board 100% white? No (remember, his own wife is Asian). But is it possible to have ideological and racial diversity? I don't know but I fear that one comes at the cost of the other.

But, in good faith, I'm going to assume that which ever type of diversity you favor is because you think it's best and not because you want to live in a totalitarian state or because you promote the superiority of a certain race.

Simple stories

"Hemmer notes that conservatives eventually adopted the pro-diversity language of the left as an undermining tactic,"

The phrase “ideological diversity” is a Trojan horse designed to help bring disparaged thought onto campuses, to the media, and into vogue. It is code for granting fringe right-wing thought more credence in communities that typically reject it, and nothing more."

These quotes remind me of Tyler Cowen's TED Talk about simple stories. In short: beware of them. Especially if you see words like "pure and simple" or "and nothing more", usually the writer is arguing in bad faith.

A good counter I like to give is to ask the person if it's possible to distinguish good faith from bad faith. Such as, "If conservatives truly believed that the best form of education came from heterodox thinking, how would you be able to distinguish them from conservatives who are only using that language to give a platform to white supremacy and nazis?"

Most people don't have a way of distinguishing, which makes their assumptions rather hollow.

The Power to declare racism

"When students come out against ideas like this, they aren’t succumbing to dumb mob-think. They are taking a reasonable stand against legitimizing hurtful, wrongheaded nonsense."

"Pundits are getting distracted by the dubious tactical approaches of a small minority of protestors instead of focusing on why they’re so upset in the first place — because discredited, offensive, and abhorrent (often right-wing) fringe viewpoints are now getting treated like they’re merely “ideologically diverse” instead of poisonous."

Now we get into the muddy area of what is considered "nonsense", "fringe" and "discredited." Who is given the power to decide that? I would also argue that "hurtful" and "offensive" ideas are not precursors for wrong. Sometimes they are, but sometimes they are the result of not being exposed to different viewpoints.

The path to truth doesn't always feel good.

I guess what upsets me most about columns like this are that they take a topic that obviously is foreign to them, like ideological diversity, and spend the column writing about how the people who push it are evil instead of, I dunno, doing actual reporting. How about figuring out what this idea is and what drives people to feel that way? How about talking to some people outside your inner circle instead of lifting an email from your old boss without asking him?

The worst part is that she writes about the students who attacked Allison Stranger and wonders why pundits didn't focus on why they're upset, without a hint of irony as to why she is not focusing on why someone of a different ideology might think the way they do. (Unless she truly believes it's as simple as blatant racism. If so, try harder, Katie.)

I would be happier if the conclusion were something like: "I can understand the merits of viewpoint diversity, but I still believe that racial and gender diversity is more important and if I have to choose one I am going with the latter."

I really don't want to do this, but ...

"Murray coauthored 1994’s The Bell Curve, a discredited tract that argues for the innate intellectual superiority of white people over black people."

Defending Charles Murray is not a hill I'm willing to die on, I disagree with him on many things and he is certainly to the right of me politically. But I can at least steelman his haters.

I find it inaccurate to say his work has been "discredited." It's been criticized and he has responded to the criticism.

Two chapters of the book talk about race. The rest of the book argues that intelligence is the best predictor of things like earnings, job performance, unwed pregnancy, and crime.

The fact that his thesis is controversial does not make it discredited. You could say lacking in consensus.

As far as I know, the research is solid. The question becomes how much can be extrapolated from the work? "Is IQ the best predictor of success?" is a good question to ask. And, even if true, should we withhold this information if it emboldens white supremacists? (Personally, my favorite take on IQ comes from Eric Weinstein.)

The value I do find in his work is that it pushes back against blank slatism; an idea that I feel has been discredited. However, blank slatism has enough support from credentialed academics that I find value in seeing it debated. Bad ideas don't go away by being pushed underground (that makes them more extreme), they go away by being proven wrong.

If it were up to me, I would determine which ideas are worthy of attention by merit and popularity. If there is a really good idea that no one is talking about, we should shed light on it. If there is a really bad idea that has become ascendant, we should show why it is wrong.

I also take umbrage with the last part of Knibbs' quote. If anything, Murray's work shows the "innate intellectual superiority" of Asians over everyone else.

Taking the low road

So let's engage in some bad faith reasoning. It sounds like fun.

There is a scene in Louie (yes, I'm going there) in which Louis C.K. and Parker Posey are on a date. She convinces him to come to the top of a roof and proceeds to stand on the roof's edge and look down. Louie, out of breath and starting to worry that she might be a little crazy, refuses.

What are you afraid of? she asks. She then infers that a part of Louie is afraid that he wants to jump, and that is why he doesn't want to stand on the edge of the building and look down. Posey declares, "I want to live. That's why I'm not afraid to look down."

Part of me wonders that the reason those in ideological bubbles refuse to listen to other ideas isn't because it legitimizes discredited ideas or will be hurtful to minorities. It's because a small part of them is scared it will change their mind.

Here is my plea: You might think a person is bad because the SLPC declared them a racist. But if you engage with them, you're probably not going be convinced that they are right and run off to join their tribe. However, you might come to believe that they are not actually racist.

So don't be scared. Come to the edge. If you are confident in your beliefs and identity, I guarantee you won't jump off. But you might see the world from a new angle and gain a new appreciation.

Diploma as Ableism

Scott Alexander had a wonderful thought experiment: what if we made it illegal for employers to ask if job candidates had a college degree? What if it was treated like we treat a disability, something employers cannot use to discriminate against potential employees.

First, it would also have to be illegal for candidates to reveal their education. Otherwise employers would just look at resumes and if it didn't list a college, they'd assume they never went.

Second, this would probably cost employers money, as screening would become more rigorous. I don't know that applications for a bank president would be flooded with low skilled, high school dropouts (people will still likely apply for jobs they have a chance at getting) but there will probably be enough to increase the workload for HR.

(They could take a cue from the college admission process and require an application fee. This would at least make people question if it's worth it to apply for the bank manager position.)

The outcome of this screening process is what fascinates me. How will they ask the candidates to show their worth? Does this put more pressure on internships and job experience?

Do employers develop aptitude tests and level the playing field for non graduates? Do they become country clubs and require referrals from current employees, making it more elitist than the current system?

This idea also puts pressure on colleges. Now building human capital becomes more important than ever. Students will expect more out of colleges. "How are you going to make me attractive to employers?"

In class, the emphasis will shift from grades to learning. In fact, grades would be pretty useless.

Graduation rates would plummet. If, by junior year, you feel you have what it takes to get a good job, what is to keep you from staying two more semesters?

I'm not sure if this would be better or worse, but it is a small tweak that would have enormous implications.

Means and Ends

"Equity" has become the term du jour for the academic left. It has usurped equality, a term I imagine most Americans find admirable.

I think the important distinction is that one focuses on ends, the other on means. Equality means everyone is treated the same, regardless of outcome. Equity means we should treat people differently in order to achieve the same outcome.

If you buy into the equity narrative, you can see how claims like "racism and white supremacy are baked into American culture" make sense. White people succeed at higher rates than blacks, so it's "racist" even if no one is making judgements based on race (this claim conveniently ignores the success of Asian Americans).

So when they talk about "structural racism" or ignore the textbook definition of racism, you can understand what they are talking about. To them, this type of racism has nothing to do with treatment and everything to do with outcomes.

If you buy into the equality narrative, you don't understand how someone can be racist unless they treat people differently based on race.

In employment law, these terms exist as disparate treatment and disparate impact. The latter is something a company can get sued for even if they haven't consciously made any attempt to treat people differently based on race, gender, age, or disability.

When we use "treatment" in this context, we're really talking about discrimination. Is discrimination never okay or is it justified in certain situations? Whichever way you lean will determine which philosophy you employ.

If you prefer equity, you employ a utilitarian strategy to create the greatest good.

If you prefer equality, you view discrimination as a sacred categorical imperative in which the ends never justify the means.

If, in the name of equity, discrimination is normalized to create equal outcomes, are we then creating a world in which discrimination qua social good has the potential to be used by evil agents for nefarious purposes?

My fear is that this hypothetical world grants too much power to define something as nebulous as "social good." I'd feel better if the limitations of this power were agreed upon and the definition of the social good that justifies discrimination comes from heterodox thinking.

In Data We Trust

The thing I care most about is trust; more than social capital, more than even happiness. Like both, it is hard to measure but I think it's worth trying. I think a lack of trust is the reason we lead the world in tax avoidance.

The institute Our World in Data has some, well, data.


Unsurprisingly poverty seems to make a difference; not much trust among poor countries. Those Nordic countries continue to beat everyone in the rankings we all care about. But Saudi Arabia (50%) and China (62%) surprised me.

I don't like the question "'most people can be trusted' agree or disagree" as I find it too vague. Someone in rural West Virginia might trust every person in her community, but not trust Mexicans, Muslims, or Silicon Valley liberals. Trust doesn't necessarily scale, so I think the question should be more specific: "Do you trust your neighbors?" vs. "Do you trust most Americans?"

(edit: I looked at the social capital index data, which gave a state by state percentage response of U.S. citizens who trust all or most of their neighbors. The average state's response was almost 60%. Of course that treats each state equally, so I looked the most populous ones, including California, Texas, New York, and Florida. They were all between 45%-49%. Less than the average of 60% but still higher than the Our World in Data figure of 38%. So framing the question matters.)

I am also discouraged by self reported data. I'd be interested to see methods that measure behavior, like how likely a citizen is to return a lost wallet. But this is the data we have, so let's dive in.

It's discouraging that most countries score poorly in trust. Only 9 countries score above 50% , so let's focus on those and look for patterns. In order:

1. Norway 73%
2. Netherlands 66%
3. Sweden 63%
4. China 62%
5. Finland 57%
6. New Zealand 56%
7. Australia 54%
8. Vietnam 51%
9. Saudi Arabia 50%

My hypothesis is that two factors cause trust in developed countries: size and homogeneity. I think trust doesn't scales to the size of bigger countries and when it does, unfortunately, it's because people look and think the same. Pew research shows that rural Americans are more trusting that urban Americans, supporting my "trust doesn't scale" bias.


Here is a chart of ethnic and cultural diversity. The darker the country, the more diverse it is.


I would have expected the U.S. to be one of the most diverse countries. One of the metrics looks at things like languages spoken, so it might more heavily favor different cultures within an existing country—especially if the borders were drawn by English colonists—and not immigration patterns. This map shows net migration by country (where blue is positive, orange is negative, and green is stable), but it doesn't tell us much other than people leave poor countries and come to rich countries.

We know that China, India and the U.S. are the most populous countries. We can now see that India and the U.S. have high(er) diversity and low trust, at least among advanced economies. However, China has low diversity and high trust.

The Nordic countries are small and have low diversity and high trust. Saudi Arabia has similar diversity to the U.S. but much higher trust, so I don't know what to make of that. Canada is not far off from scoring high in both rankings. Indonesia is very diverse and has 41% trust, so that's something.

None of our nine high-trust countries fall into the top two tiers of high diversity, although Saudi Arabia is close. So diversity might discourage trust.

What about the opposite? Here are the countries in the bottom tier of diversity not already mentioned that are developed economies and I can actually read on the map (trust % next to name):

• Poland 22%
• Germany 42%
• Italy 28%
• Japan 35%
• South Korea 29%

So they aren't doing great for trust, but Germany is pretty close to 50% and the other four are still scoring better than most of the world. Ranking by GDP, Japan, Italy, South Korea, Poland and Germany are all in the top 25, so I don't think a poor economy is causing their distrust. 

(For what it's worth, China (2), Australia (14), Netherlands (17), Saudi Arabia (20), Sweden (23), Norway (29), and Finland (42), Vietnam (46), and New Zealand (50) are all top 50 GDP countries.)

Income Inequality

I think wealth matters to a point, after that, if there is more income inequality it will decrease trust. Here is a map of income inequality. The darker the blue, the more equal incomes are. Lighter blue is more unequal.

No developed countries score above 50 for income inequality. In the 40-45 range you see the U.S., Russia, and China, the latter being the only place with high trust.

Starting in the lowest range of income inequality (20-30), you get all the Nordic countries plus some poor areas, like Kazakhstan. Next tier (30-35) you start to see Canada, Australia, South Korea, Vietnam, and most of western Europe.

Unfortunately there is no data for New Zealand, Japan, or Saudi Arabia, but so far this looks like a good predictor for trust. This paper seems to think so. This one, however, finds that "Once we control for general wealth, both types of inequality (real and perceived) do not seem to matter much for trust in Western countries."

U.S. Trust

The social capital index has two measures of trust. There is the Social Support Index, which measures, among other things, the percent of people who trust all or most of their neighbors. There is also the Institutional Health Index, which measures confidence in corporations, media, and public schools, as well as voting rate and census participation.

How do these measures relate to income inequality? Here is a U.S. map, the darker the green the more income inequality.

Let's look at top five and bottom five along with their social support ranking in parentheses, with 1 being the best and 50 being the worst:

Most unequal: DC(44), New York(49), Louisiana(47), Connecticut (30), California (50).
Most equal: Utah(1), Alaska (18), New Hampshire(11), Wyoming(16), Hawaii (37).

So Connecticut isn't as terrible as the other four, but still in the bottom half for social support/trust. And Hawaii is the only outlier among the most equal income states, with the other four all in the top 40% for social support/trust.

I felt compelled to look at all states and found that I could download the social capital data and just look at the "trust in neighbors" questions. So here is a chart comparing each state's trust to their income inequality score (I manually drew the trend line, so it might not be perfect).

There are a few outliers like Delaware, Maryland, Nevada, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, but otherwise a pretty strong relationship. So trust in neighbors seems to have a strong correlation with income inequality in the U.S.

I also isolated the data from the Institutional Health Index about trust in corporations to do the right thing. Here is how that compares with income inequality, or what they call gini coefficient.

I'm no statistician, but that looks pretty solid.

Religion

Our World in Data suggests that religious activity can also cause trust. I wonder if it's simply participation in social infrastructure, meaning routine face-to-face interactions with community members. (It's probably too much to expect secular people to start going to a church so they can be more trusting, but they might participate in a civic community organization if the right incentives are in place.)

The below chart shows that both trust and civic engagement are correlated with "peaceful collective decision making."

I tried to chart data from the social capital index that compared each state's trust in neighbors to religious adherents per 1000 residents, but it didn't show any correlation.

Trust in Government

Pew has some data about trust in our government, which tends to be determined by party and depend on the which party controls the White House; Dems are trusting in the Obama years but not W or Trump years; Repubs the opposite.




I'd love to see them ask about the layers of government. "How much do you trust your mayor? Your state senator? Your U.S. senator? Your Governor?" etc. In other words, how does trust in the government scale and how much does partisanship affect it at each level?

Time: Not on our Side

According to Putnam, the largest determinant of social capital was which generation you were born into. As such, trust has been declining over time.

I wish the above image went back further to the social-capital heights of the 1950s. Either way, you have to wonder if the decline in trust is generational values or sorting, more people moving into like-minded communities that become distrustful of their outgroup. And if they are sorting to like-minded communities, wouldn't that increase their trust of neighbors?

I don't think we will ever have Nordic-style social assistance programs unless we can build our trust. Otherwise the billionaires we rely on to fund those programs will keep finding ways to hide their taxable income or continue to hire lobbyist to kill such legislation. And as a diverse, multicultural society, we have to work even harder to build that trust.

I know this is my bias speaking, but I believe that nothing kills trust faster than coercion.

A Better, Better Angels Credo

I.
Better Angels is not going to do a good job of recruiting activist reds and blues and convincing them to get along. However, it does do a good job of attracting reds and blues who prefer civility over aggressive activism.

There is a selection bias going on with the type of people who become BA members. Its bread and butter is in giving a home to the moderates and politically disengaged who have fallen out of civic life.

The Hidden Tribes report states that two thirds of the country are what it calls "the Exhausted Majority."

"They are fed up with the polarization plaguing American government and society. They are often forgotten in the public discourse, overlooked because their voices are seldom heard. They are flexible in their views, willing to endorse different policies according to the precise situation rather than sticking ideologically to a single set of beliefs. They believe we can find common ground.

"... they have a more diverse range of opinions, seem more concerned about the country’s divisions, and are more committed to compromise.
"... members of the Exhausted Majority are so frustrated with the bitter polarization of our politics that many have checked out completely, ceding the floor to more strident voices.... Members of the Exhausted Majority tend to be open to finding middle ground."

This sounds like a perfect description of the type of people BA is trying to recruit. I would be interested in surveying BA members to see which categories of the tribes they fall into.  My guess is that we see few extremists from the "wings" and most come from the exhausted center.

II.
My second critique of BA has to do with action.

The mission of BA members should not be to recruit more reds and blues and host 8 hour workshops once every few months. It should be to create a community for these like-minded individuals. It should behave very much the same way churches and civic organizations behave: ritualistic face-to-face interaction, a profession of shared ethics, an active role in the community.

Members should gather as congregants, discuss ways to become the best versions of ourselves, and how to best serve our communities and society.

Is Privilege a Sin or a Blessing?

On being asked—during a Privilege Workshop that was mandatory for Evergreen student employees, to share my privilege inventory—I told the presenter I didn’t find it useful to reduce life in that way. She responded: “Well, some people don’t have the choice to ignore privilege.”

— Benjamin Boyce (@BenjaminABoyce) July 16, 2019

I came across the above tweet and the picture it painted sounded vaguely familiar to me, but something was off.

My wife comes from a conservative Catholic family in a different geographic region from where I grew up and currently live. They practice certain traditions, among them: nightly prayer thanking God for our blessings, a Thanksgiving dinner where each member of the extended family at the table shares what they are grateful for, and ritualistic confession of sins with a priest.

But in the Catholic faith, confession isn't just a private thing. There is also the Confiteor, a confessional prayer recited during weekly Mass.

"I confess to almighty God

and to you, my brothers and sisters,

that I have greatly sinned,

in my thoughts and in my words,

in what I have done and in what I have failed to do..."

It's an incredibly trite take to declare social justice a religion, but I think it's helpful to analyze what old traditions get right.

In the Evergreen workshop, privilege isn't treated as gratitude, something to be thankful for, but as a sin. Participants are (perhaps unintentionally) meant to feel shame for being white, male, straight, or whatever else might place them on the top of the intersectionality matrix.

In Catholicism, congregants are thankful for blessings and acknowledge their mistakes, all while working to be a better person.

In the privilege workshop, there is no distinction; the blessings and sins are treated as the same thing: privilege. It makes no room for participants to feel gratitude, only shame.

I wonder what would happen if these workshops asked people to be thankful for their privilege instead? It might come across as less threatening and more constructive.

I guess the better question is what is the goal of these workshops? Is it to drag down the "privileged" or to make us all better people?

I am reminded of a Chloe Valdary criticism that I often think about.

I’ve had several conversations today about how, by and large, the intersectional response to the threat of white nationalism will fail because it lacks a prophetic vision about human beings and political movements with no transcendent vision often eat each other alive.

— Chloé S. Valdary 📚 (@cvaldary) May 14, 2019

What is the prophetic vision of the privilege workshop? I would find it more interesting if they started with the end goal and work backwards from there.

It also bothers me that I have the freedom to opt out of a religion I disagree with (which I have) but those in academia do not have the option to opt out of the critical theory being taught in these workshops.

Reverse engineering Bowling Alone

After reading Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, I'm trying to suss out a few things. First, he attributes changes in demographic values as the main cause of the decline in social capital: the Silent Generation cared more about things like volunteering, voting, and philanthropy; Boomers less so, Gen X even less, Millenials hardly at all.

But why? Also, is there anything else he missed?

In The Big Sort, Bill Bishop has some interesting observations.

"...large partisan majorities had the effect of dampening turnout among citizens in the political minority. Rather than buck the majority and risk social sanction, citizens in the minority simply stayed away from the polls.

In communities with large political majorities, people tend to give up battling over ideas.... A vote becomes more an affirmation of the group than an expression of a civic opinion."

Bishop notices the trend of people moving into like-minded communities, or what he calls sorting. If what he writes is true, groupthink and demographic shifts by community are major causes of the decline in civic engagement that Putnam has studied. So is sorting a cause of the decline in voting and other forms of social capital?

Kahneman and Tversky showed that loss aversion is the primary motivating factor for human behavior. Maybe that is what drives people to vote, write to their political representative, attend town hall meetings, or any of the other things Putnam used to measure civic engagement: they feared losing their way of life.

Maybe they stay home now because, due to sorting, their ingroup dominates their community and is getting their way. They don't feel the need to make their voice heard. Or, as in the quote above, they are a political minority not wanting to risk social isolation.

Of course, Putnam also said that more people are identifying as moderates and the extremists are the ones participating in their communities. If that's true, then extremism and social capital would be correlated. Are they?

I'm the map I'm the map I'm the map

Putnam insists that social capital improves tolerance. (Maybe he was just looking at tolerance for minorities and LGBT+?) However, if you look at the social capital index map of the U.S. and compare it to The Atlantic's map of political prejudice, it doesn't say what you would expect it to.

Massachusetts and Connecticut, which are in the top 60-80% for social capital, are among the least politically tolerant places in the country. New York, which is in the bottom 20% for social capital, is probably the most politically tolerant state.

Florida is disappointing in both regards, which is the most Florida thing ever. And North Dakota seems to score well in both measures.

Amanda Ripley's story declares Jefferson County New York the most politically tolerant county in the U.S. (although the interactive map places it in the 3rd percentile, where lower is better). Meanwhile, the social capital index places Jefferson County in the 34th percentile (where higher is better), scoring particularly poorly in Institutional Health (voting, confidence/trust) and not much better in Community Health (volunteering, church attendance, public meetings, etc.).

(The Atlantic's methodology could be the answer for the disparity. They excluded independents from their data. So a county with a high number of independent voters would only look at Rs and Ds, which might not be an accurate reflection.

Also, they relied on a survey. The social capital index looks at a lot of data, including measures of behavior, which I trust more. I'm more likely to believe a church's records of attendance than asking people to tell me how often they go to church.)

Still, I can't get over how different the results are. Maybe social capital isn't a strong predictor of political tolerance. Maybe it's political equilibrium.

(edit: super interesting study here finds that "when answering questions about the other party, individuals think about elites more than voters, and express more animus when the questions focus on elites. This suggests that increased affective polarization reflects, to some extent, growing animus towards politicians more than ordinary voters..."

"Fully 80% of our sample is “somewhat comfortable” or “extremely comfortable” with being friends or neighbors with those from the other party. While comfort with inter-party marriage is lower, even here, there is less anger than one would expect, with only 5% of the sample being “extremely upset” by this. This underlines that while people might feel negatively about the other party in the abstract, they are still comfortable interacting with them in ordinary situations."

So the politically tolerant counties might just overwhelmingly be politically disengaged people who don't follow national news. And politically intolerant counties answered the survey with U.S. Senators in mind, not their neighbors.)

Competition Breeds Collegiality? 

Let's take a look at two maps. This first one is from The Big Sort showing how counties voted in the 2004 presidential election. White counties are "competitive," meaning the winner captured fewer than 20% of the vote.

Here is FiveThirtyEight's map from the 2016 election. Likewise, white counties are where the winner won by fewer than 20%.

So far, Maine, New Hampshire, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, New York, Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Connecticut, and Washington all seem to have counties with less "sorting" and a more even distribution of Rs and Ds.

Now here is the political tolerance map:

Florida and Nevada seem to be opposites, but New York and North Carolina show a correlation with the 2016 election map. You would expect the white counties to match up better; places with an even number of R and D voters should be more tolerant of one another. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

And here is the Social Capital Index map, where cream and light green counties are the highest (best):

New England and some of the Great Lake states, and maybe Colorado seem to match well with the 538 map of competitive counties, but not much else. Maybe the moderates and politically disengaged are sorting into similar counties and not voting or participating civically, since they are not activists.

So there is some correlation between the three, but not much. Of course, this is just me eyeballing the map. Ideally I'd run a linear regression model. But, ya know, math.

Hierarchy of Needs

In the 1970s Political Scientist Ronald F. Inglehart seemed to predict the decline in social capital, well before Bowling Alone was published in 2000. Putnam was convinced that change in generational values was the largest factor for the decline in social capital, but Inglehart goes into the reasons why.

Sebastian Junger once said, "No food, one problem. Lots of food, many problems."

The Great Depression and WWII made hunger and security a problem. So the Silent Generation generally got along once we got out of that mess. As we became more prosperous in the 60s, people began caring about self actualization (ie "many problems").

So why didn't 911 and the Great Recession mirror the tragedies of the 30s and 40s and lead to bipartisanship? It's hard to tell the years below, but it seems like there was some stability after 9/11, but unfavorable views among the parties increased as we went into the recession.

The recession did seem to make things worse, according to this article.

" But a new study in the October issue of the American Sociological Review found that public support for government efforts to address social problems actually declined in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis.

"We found it surprising that as the Great Recession emerged, the American public moved quickly toward lower levels of support for government policy solutions to social problems," said Clem Brooks...

"The key is partisanship," Brooks said. "We found that it wasn’t the public as a whole that moved away from support for government policy solutions. Self-identified Democrats actually became slightly more supportive of government solutions between 2008 and 2010. But self-identified Independents and especially Republicans experienced a large shift in the opposite direction." 

This would agree with the unfavorable ratings among Rs being worse, according to the Pew chart above. It should surprise no one that Democrats supported the government when they controlled all three branches and Republicans opposed it.

Did I made a huge mistake?

As a localist, the question I'm struggling with is: Is that what I want; people voluntarily moving into ideological bubbles even if it makes them more extreme?

I believe that people should be able to live in a community of like-minded citizens. And I believe it should be easy for people to leave a community where they don't fit in to one where they do. (And I believe that top down, one size fits all solutions make this type of living impossible.)

I worry that this direction will lead to extremism at the local level. But there may be a split where people seek communities that prioritize civil behavior over extremism.

Finally,

Both Bishop and Putnam seem to suggest that extremists are more active politically, and moderates less so. Putnam says the share of self-identified moderates is increasing. I just don't know where this is showing up in the data.

I guess it could be that increasing landslide victories isn't just indicative of sorting, but of moderates staying home and not voting. And those moderates might be politically tolerant people, so the extremists who do vote overwhelmingly for a candidate aren't representative of the entire county.

I still want to know what causes politically tolerant counties? Have they been unaffected by sorting? Are they filled with moderates? Do they have lots of interaction with their outgroup?

This data makes me less hopeful that social capital can decrease polarization, especially if sorting, loss aversion, and a common enemy are what drive social capital.

I think the story is that social capital was highest in the 1950s and political polarization and tolerance was doing well too. Social capital didn't just decline in the 1960s, it became concentrated among extremists who started living near one another, creating a feedback loop of moderate disengagement.

I believe that social capital works best when moderates have a seat at the table. How to encourage that is the question I'm trying to answer.

The New Civic Engagement

I.
This article in The Atlantic about the Wayfair Walkout reminded me of Robert Putnam's work in Bowling Alone. Putnam noted the decline in social capital by looking at civic engagement, including people who write to their political representative or attend a rally.

All of these things have been declining since the 1950s, but maybe he's just looking in the wrong area. Maybe people's distrust of government has only directed their frustration from politics to private business.

From the article:

"This is a lesson that the large tech platforms have learned, in no small part because their employees have begun to hold them accountable. In the last year, workers at Microsoft, Salesforce, Google, and Amazon have all pressured their employers to revisit government contracts they deemed unethical. Now, it seems, less overtly political companies are also learning that every decision has political valence."

II.
It's weird to think that we're living in a society in which consumers are expecting businesses to reflect their values. This reminds me of Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms when they write about New Power models:

"Patagonia, for example, has a traditional old power business model, yet it stands out for its embrace of new power values like transparency. Some of these “cheerleader” organizations, such as The Guardian newspaper, are working to evolve their positions so that they not only espouse new power values but incorporate new power models effectively."

A conservative example would be the people who burned their Nike shoes after the company made Colin Kapernick the face of their new campaign.

III.
I work in higher education. My role is in fundraising. Most of our donors are Baby Boomers. In the coming years, a significant portion of our donors and alumni will be Millenials.

Eventually, our institution is going to be forced to take a side on some controversial scissor statement, something that ferociously divides people along sharp sectarian lines. Maybe we'll be expected to give hiring preferences to veterans. Maybe we'll be expected to lower admission standards for minorities. Maybe we'll be expected to have a carbon neutral footprint.

And those Millenials are going to want to know we are on the "right" side.

I don't think we're prepared for that. I know trying to placate both sides is futile. The question becomes: does choosing a side result in loyalty (donations) that is commensurate with disaffecting the faction we don't side with?