The Disinformation Funnel

Nathan Robinson wrote an interesting piece for Current Affairs arguing that 1. there is a problem of disinformation, and 2. the root of the problem is an asymmetry of access. In other words, it's easy for yahoos to write a blog post about a crazy claim (microchips in the vaccines!) but the ACTUAL SCIENCE debunking these bad claims are behind paywalls. 

I like the idea but I don't think it totally explains the problem. First, the problem isn't just that the ACTUAL SCIENCE is behind a paywall but that it's written in vernacular only a small percentage of people can comprehend, and a larger percentage of people claim to have the ability to both comprehend and interpret. So influencers can read the same study and draw different conclusions, whether they are good-faith idiots or bad-faith manipulators.

Second, I would argue the problem isn't one of information vs. disinformation, or a problem of easy vs. secure access. I think the problem is too much information, or better yet, wicked problems.

In my town's Facebook group, there was a recent argument about whether or not students should have to wear masks. One antimask parent bolstered her argument by linking to a study that purported to show that masks were ineffective. She did everything that liberals accuse conservatives of being ignorant of. She linked to an ACTUAL SCIENCE study, and not some yahoo's blog. The study made it into an academic journal, published by people who went through the rigorous process of defending their dissertations and earning their PhDs. 

They made it through the funnel.

What funnel? I have yet to read Jonathan Rauch's The Constitution of Knowledge, but I assume it is an expansion of his essay of the same name. He uses a funnel as a metaphor for the production of knowledge, things like peer review. 

"To protect the wide end of the funnel, we disallow censorship. We say: Alt-truth is never criminalized. At the same time, to protect the narrow end of the funnel, we regulate influence. We say: Alt-truth is always ignored. You can believe and say whatever you want. But if your beliefs don't check out, or if you don't submit them for checking, you can't expect anyone else to publish, care about, or even notice what you think."

So here is a parent using the information that came out of the narrow end of the funnel to support her antimask beliefs. The next step for the interlocutor is usually looking to discredit the study, which means discrediting the funnel. This puts counterarguments in a bind.

For example, one parent started combing through the study and criticized its small sample size or high p-value. It's like critics of the Sokal Squared hoax who point out the academic journals that published their entries weren't SERIOUS JOURNALS. If this is true, then it's a BIG PROBLEM. Allowing bad institutions to operate within the funnel discredits the whole funnel.

For me, I've been skeptical of mask studies because I know a random controlled trial has never been done. But a lot of Asian countries have been dealing with viral outbreaks for a lot longer than us, and if they use masks I trust that they work. 

But then! What's this? A randomized controlled study out of Bangladesh!

This is arguably the most important single piece of epidemiological research of the entire pandemic.

A MASSIVE randomized trial launched a pro-mask campaign in some Bangladeshi villages, but not others.

The result: masking villages got less COVID. https://t.co/8uKPXAvvnU

— Lyman Stone 石來民 🦬🦬🦬 (@lymanstoneky) September 1, 2021

Did I read the study? Of course not, but I trusted Lyman Stone's analysis because he seems to have earned the respect of ACTUAL SCIENCE people. 

Thank God this is settled ... oh, no. Please no. Ugh, fine, here is long-ass blog post in which the author worries "that because of statistical ambiguity, there’s not much that can be deduced at all," from the Bangladesh study. I tried to read the whole post but it made my brain hurt. I looked up the author, hoping to discredit him. Turns out he's an associate professor at UC Berkeley. Goddamnit.

So what we have is people who pass through the credentialed funnel, interpreting knowledge passed through the scholarship funnel, coming to different conclusions. Then everyday schmoes like me and the parents on my town's Facebook Group can find funnel-approved arguments that support our priors. 

I can't solve this problem on an institutional level. The Constitution of Knowledge needs to tighten its belt or add another layer, something like replication or meta analysis, and ignore things that don't make it all the way to the bottom. I know I'm not smart enough or have the proper training to comb through studies and distinguish the ACTUAL SCIENCE from the ones with poor methodology, small samples, p-hacking, or whatever disqualifiers people can come up with. 

Instead I put my trust in people. 

In a blog post, Richard Hanania wrote "you should always take good intellectual habits over credentials." He has yet to expand on what he means by "good intellectual habits" but I think I know what he means and I hope to one day better define and test what I consider to be good intellectual habits in others. Here are a few things right off the bat:

• Is well-read in numerous areas (more fox than hedgehog)
• Gives his convictions with stoicism rather than "passionate intensity"
• Admits when he is wrong
• Considers tradeoffs
• Praises people in his outgroup when they are right
• Expresses uncertainty
• Can be found saying something like "I don't know enough about that to have an opinion"
• Is cited (positively) by people from opposing ideologies

I also think about the person's incentives. I think Emily Oster checks off many of these boxes. And even though her background is in economics, I trust her more than Anthony Fauci when it comes to COVID-19. I don't think that Fauci is always wrong or completely useless, but his revealed lie about the effectiveness of masks showed that his position is as much political as it is scientific, so I always have to weigh that against whatever his position is in a way that I don't with Oster.

But I don't know if these heuristics are enough. One worry is that the bulleted list is mostly a description of how I view myself and I'm just giving extra weight to people who remind me of me. So I need some way of testing these heuristics objectively and I think the next step might be something like prediction markets or public participation in the Good Judgement Project. I want to see how the people I trust to analyze information that has made it through the funnel fare when asked to use their expertise to make real world forecasts. 

But until then I think science is in a real bind and I don't see a credible way out.

The Dam of Free Speech

Photo credit:  Jekesai Njikizana / AFP / Getty

I was reading a frustrating Twitter thread the other day. Some students had complained that their white professor used the n-word while reciting a speech from Martin Luther King Jr. 

I'm all for free speech, but this isn't a hill I want to die on. But some people will. And on that day, Conor Friedersdorf was that person.

Conor's issue wasn't about whether or not it was okay for the professor to use the n-word but that the college should not investigate any situation involving free speech. He took issue with even having the conversation.

People like Isaac Bailey and Mansa Keita argued that you should never deny due process and this is a topic that we should not avoid. Black students had a right not to hear that word and there should be some process to  deal with this grievance. 

My general feel is that the professor should be afforded free speech but that the college should also have a chat with him about not using that word, like ever. But that doesn't feel like a consistent moral principle, which is what Conor appears to be trying to do.

This conversation really gave me better insight into the emotional perspective of civil libertarians like Conor.  I can see Arnold Kling's languages of politics bubbling up. I usually say traditional conservatives are the ones who view civilization as a thin veneer that could easily fall without its safeguards. But rather than police holding up civilization, people like Conor see the principles of the Enlightenment upholding civilization, freedom of speech chief among them.

I think Conor sees free speech as a mighty dam. It protects the villages below from a flood (authoritarianism) but if you prod at it long enough (challenge a professor's right to free speech), you can poke a hole and some water will pass through. That amount of water might be a benign thought, like "white people are never allowed to use the n-word." But what worries Conor is not how harmless that water is that got through, but that it's passing is going to widen the hole, weaken the dam, and eventually it will give way and destroy the villages downstream.

I can understand how African Americans don't give a shit about upholding civilization because they feel it never did anything for them. And saying "free speech protects us all" in this context just sounds like Southerners using Jim Crow to oppress African Americans or the current GOP using "voter security" to disenfranchise poor black voters.

I can also understand how African Americans see a history of being downstream from the flood. They've slowly built up a small dam with norms like "it's not okay for white people to use the n-word," and now a person in a position of power is using "freedom of speech" to poke a hole in their dam that isn't very strong to begin with. Is the hole harmless or will it lead to the dismantling of the entire dam?

Liberalism solved the religious wars of European nations, but it never solved the issue of slavery. In fact, it probably prolonged slavery in the U.S. and it took Lincoln's stroke of authoritarianism (war) to solve it. This is a problematic fact for me because it was absolutely the right choice and I don't know how to integrate that into my worldview, how to carve out exceptions for authoritarianism. I have to admit that authoritarianism can work if the right person is in charge, but I think we got lucky with Lincoln and things usually don't work out for the best when you use coercion or concentrate power to enact change against the unwilling.

Liberalism is the best idea we have until it isn't. And I think the greatest existential challenge we face today is acknowledging that the flood of authoritarianism held back by the dam of liberalism has externalities that disproportionately impact African Americans. And I do think that tearing down Conor's dam will be worse for everyone but I also think the status quo is not enough. 

It's up to us to build something better and I don't think the Successor Ideology has any good ideas but at least they are trying. 

The challenge for Conor is to convince the antiracists that two liberalism-approved core policies are antiracist: YIMBYism and ending the war on drugs.

Educating for Conformity or Independence?

 Here is a photo of a US student wearing a dunce cap.

According to this article, it was a punishment for acting out and served as a warning for other children. It was used in America as recently as the 1950s. It reminded me of the Maoist-era China cap that poor saps had to wear during their struggle sessions. The Chinese government and the American school system had different ends in mind but they deployed the same psychological principle: using humiliation to encourage conformity.

American schools have banned this practice (and basically replaced it with detention), but I argue they are still designed to promote conformity: School uniforms. Standarized testing. rigid curriculum. Must raise hand to speak. Cannot use the bathroom without permission. Don't even think about microwaving that burrito.

Industrial Conformist Revolution

However, for most of the 20th century, learning conformity was probably a good thing. You get good behavior at the cost of stunting creative development in students. But most jobs were in manufacturing; you want people who can perform a rote task over and over again without thinking about it too much. You don't need creativity on an assembly line; you want people who can follow directions. The structure of public schools was good preparation for most jobs, even if it was terrible for kids who resisted conformity.

The problem with the modern school system is that it is still structured for conformity even though the culture and work environment has shifted. The majority of students who graduated from my high school (class of 2000) do not work in manufacturing; they work in white collar jobs that require more creativity, agency, and problem-solving skills that are never developed in public schools. (I realize that most high school graduates do not go to college, so my experience wasn't typical for the average American but it was probably typical for people who read this blog.)

When I was in school, I was a bit of a daydreamer, which is probably why I hated it. I did not want to learn about things I did not find interesting. 

One summer in college, I worked on a golf course. My job was to mow greens, which you do by making your first pass down the middle, finishing one side, then coming back to the middle to finish the other side. One day my boss stops me after one of the greens. He says, "Come here and look at this," and brings me back to a green I had just finished. I look at it and realize after finishing the first side, I forgot to go back and mow the other half. I can't tell you how often this happened. 

I was terrible at this kind of work because I spent my childhood resisting conformity and it made me really bad at rote tasks. My mind couldn't help but wander and stop paying attention to what was right in front of me. (Thank God I had privileged opportunities that lead me into a career in which my outside-the-box thinking is valued.)

Technological Individualist Revolution

But it isn't just the job landscape that's changed. In Robert Putnam's The Upswing, he traces the rise and fall of what he calls the I/we/I curve. Starting in the early 20th century, we became more and more communitarian and less individualistic. This peaked in the 1960s and then reversed. This upswing in communitarianism coincided with many improvements: less inequality, narrowing of the black/white wage gap, less polarization, etc. But, he writes, there is a dark side too.

“Conformity is the dark tin of community, for communitarianism almost by definition involves social pressure to conform to norms. If the communitarian “we” is defined too narrowly, however, then conformity to social norms punishes dissidents and deviants, whether political or sexual or racial.” 

As we moved into the 1970s we became a more individualistic culture and more permissive of dissidents and deviants. Growing up in the 80s, I remember watching The Neverending Story, a movie about a boy who gets picked on by bullies and hides out in a library reading a book. He gets caught up in a fantasy world in which he is special and valuable, rather than being a loner. I've seen this theme play out over and over again—from Harry Potter to The Matrix—the idea that it's not only okay to be different, it's encouraged. 

In 1997, Apple started their "Think Different" campaign. Movie characters like Tyler Durden in Fight Club and Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites became Gen X cultural icons for thumbing their noses at the sheep who opted in to corporate careers. Ben Stiller wasn't cool, the jobless Ethan Hawke who reads Sartre was cool. Finding your own identity was cool. Why do you think there are 58 genders now? Because no one wants to do the thing that everyone else is doing. 

The Missing Tradeoff of Individualism

In The Upswing, Robert Putnam is transparent in his belief that a communitarian America is preferable to an individualistic America. He acknowledges the tradeoffs of communitarianism (conformity) and he reveals the downsides of individualism (selfishness), but he never touts individualism's benefits.

I love to reference Paul Graham's conventional vs. independent-minded matrix. He's a fairly objective guy, but his writing shows an obvious preference for founders of start-up companies, or independent types. Maybe the tradeoff for individualism that Putnam never explores is that more selfishness leads to better innovation? I tried Googling some reliable data showing patents filed by year. A lot of blogs came up but then I found this at ResearchGate, which has a legit-sounding name:

This is almost too perfect for my thesis. Using patents as a proxy for innovation, we can see that US innovation was flat from 1900 until about 1980. Then it skyrockets. 

If we had continued our communitarian ethos, we might have closed the racial wage gap by now. But we also might not have a 90% effective vaccine for a novel virus. Or affordable Chromebooks and broadband internet that allowed our students to learn remotely.

Individualism is seflesh, yes. But it also means going against the grain and trying novel and unpopular ideas. Sometimes it produces grifters; sometimes it produces geniuses. There has to be some room for both.

Change on the Horizon?

So why don't schools upgrade their model? Probably because there is no incentive. Graduation rates remain high because people still need a diploma to work or enter college, the latter of which is less conformist. You spend 12 proving to admission departments that you know how to follow rules. Then you spend 4-6 years proving to employers that you are unique and a self-starter.

I don't think schools have much of an effect on whether people are conformist vs. independent, I think that's mostly pre-wired by genetics and partially influenced by peer effects. So what does that mean for independents in a conformist culture like public schools? Just that they will be unhappy while they are there. They might be at higher risk of dropping out but the stronger influence will be their biological parents and friends.

I still hope a school choice movement will allow more learning opportunities for different students. But for now I just don't think there is enough urgency to really force a change.

Being a Xennial

I'm a Xennial (est. 1982), which is a microgeneration stuffed between Generation X and Millenials. I know it sounds like frontier Millenials are just trying to put some distance between ourselves and the Millenial generation that we find loathsome, but I think there is legitimacy here. My sister is 10 years younger than me and I feel like we had very different childhoods.

I think Xennials are marked by a transition: from analog to digital and from locally-owned businesses to national chains.

Business

I was too young to realize it at the time, but a revolution occurred during my youth in which the market severely disrupted the community. When I was about 8 or 9, my dad built a treehouse for me and my brother. I went with him to the local hardware store in town and to a local lumber yard a town over to pick up supplies. Both of those places went out of business a few years later and are currently empty.

Now, you can drive 15 minutes in either direction and get everything at Home Depot or Lowe's.

If you wanted a movie, there were three locally owned video rental stores in town. If you wanted to rent a Nintendo game, you had to know which store carried it. Kid Icarus was only at the store on the north side of town, and you had to hope no one else had rented the only copy.

By the time I was in high school, a Blockbuster moved in and all of those stores went out of business. Blockbuster carried multiple copies of everything, you could rent it for longer, it cost less, and you could get a trial version of America Online on CD-ROM. (Of course, Netflix has put Blockbuster out of business but that narrative is Major Chain disrupting Major Chain, rather than Major Chain disrupting Local Business Owner.)

In the center of town, an old Victorian home had been converted into a clothing store. A few miles away a Walmart came in a put an end to that.

The weird thing is, Xennials welcomed the new chainification of America. I had warm feelings toward Home Depot, Blockbuster, and even Walmart. I wasn't alive long enough to have an emotional connection to the Mom and Pop stores that got driven out. This is what makes Xennials unique.

But here is what I do miss: My town is a post-agricultural bedroom community. About 17,000 residents. A farm or two. A liberal arts college campus. A marina along a river. The aforementioned Walmart, Home Depot, and Blockbuster? None of them are in my town. I have to travel to a larger, neighboring town to use their services. All the locally-owned businesses they disrupted were a bike ride away. I miss that convenience.

Technology

Although I don't think I ever used a typewriter for a book report, I did use a PC  with no internet connection, which is a weird thing to think about. It's like the opposite of a Chromebook.

In high school, we didn't have social media but we did have AOL messenger, which was pretty close. But we were limited because in order to use it you had to be on the family desktop and tying up the phone line. So for the most part, if you wanted to talk to peers, you had to call them or meet up somewhere.

I don't think today's youth experience aimless driving like we did. Since we weren't attached to cell phones, we couldn't always be reached. That means we spent a lot of time just driving around, hoping to run into someone out and about.

When I entered college in the fall of 2000, two of my friends had cell phones. By the time I graduated in 2004, everyone had one. Prior to my first cell phone, I kept a paper in my wallet with everyone's phone number. Either that or you had to commit it to memory, and let me tell you: I probably knew 20 phone numbers by heart.

Our Place

Even though I'm closing in on 40, I'm still below the median age in my office. Which means that sometimes I'm the guy who has to explain technology to people. I'm talking people only 15 years older than me sometimes. And it isn't difficult technology, it's things like doing screenshots or using the find function (control+F).

Part of me used to think "This will be me someday. Technology will pass me by and some youngin' will have to help me." But maybe it won't. Maybe swift change and disruption has been a part of my life for so long that it has become the norm. 

I actually get excited about learning new technology. I'm never so comfortable with existing tech that I don't want to learn something new.

Moore's law states that the number of transistors in a circuit doubles every two years. We see similar patterns with population growth. It took 127 years for the world population to double from one billion to two and only 47 years to double from two billion to four. Since 1960, world population has grown by about one billion every 13 years. 

Eamonn Healy, talks about this exponential growth in Waking Life. 

"Two billion years for life, six million years for the hominid, 100,000 years for mankind as we know it ... And then when you get to agricultural, when you get to scientific revolution and industrial revolution, you're looking at 10,000 years, 400 years, 150 years ... What that means is that as we go through the new evolution, it's gonna telescope to the point we should be able to see it manifest itself within our lifetime." (watch the whole scene here.)

Maybe that is already happening. I'm used to paradigm shifts and disruptive changes because they happen within my lifetime. But I'm also sensitive to my elders because I remember the old analog world.

This is what it means to be a Xennial; to have one foot in the past while excitedly finding my footing in an protean future.