Blog Posts

 

By Prithvi Rai, DCI Fellow

When the tech industry was witnessing the dawn of the Information Age, it would have seemed highly unlikely that they would know the extent to which the internet would come to dominate the human experience. The early days of the internet promised a mind-expanding utopia, where we could freely exchange new ideas and contemplate other points of view. However, even in those days of heady optimism, there were already a few academics who worried that this vision pivoted on too high-minded a picture of human nature. In 1996, MIT researchers Marshall Van Alstyne and Erik Brynjolfsson warned of a potential dark side to our newly interconnected world. They believed that when it came to the spread of information over a virtual platform such as the internet, individuals may form echo chambers and insulate themselves from opposing points of view.

Democracy only functions when its members believe that they have a shared stake in the collective wellbeing. The unfortunate reality today is that the democratic process globally has become deeply broken, with many members of society choosing to disengage with those who do not agree with them. Individuals across the socio-political spectrum are waging what feels like a cold war, characterized by a complete misunderstanding of each other’s ideologies and a lack of meaningful deliberation.

A decreasing attention span is an example of the internet’s paradoxical effects on our lives. We are exposed to a large amount of information on a daily basis, which causes us to not get into the depth of the information that we are consuming. Rather than exploring viable new outcomes and perspectives, we tend to seek out those that already align with our views. During my gap year before coming to Davidson, I interned at the Times of India group, South Asia’s largest media conglomerate. My exposure during that time made it clear that media outlets very evidently cater to their target audience to garner revenues. Social media networks work in a somewhat similar fashion – primarily showing us what they predict will keep us happy, sending us into a spiral where we tend to believe that our view is the predominant one.

The human tendency towards confirmation bias is not a new concept, but its acceleration due to social media has been remarkably prominent. The ease of access that social media provides has also enabled a plethora of different echo chambers to exist – one for almost every aspect of life. Whether you are pro-Lewis Hamilton’s claim to a Formula-One podium or oppose arguments against climate change rooted in religion, a social media group or chat probably exists to engage with it. The combined effect of a shrinking attention economy and the ease of accessibility these social media outlets provide allow divisions between echo chambers to run deep, creating communities that reinforce disengaged feedback loops.

The set of negative externalities associated with social media particularly affects its predominant users – Gen-Z and Millennials. According to Pew Research, an estimated 61% of Millennials garner news primarily through social media. But in the process, we tend to dilute the quality of content we consume, triggering algorithms that curate our feeds. These algorithms cherry-pick claims and ideas with which we are likely to agree and jettison information that does not appear to fit our preferences – often at the cost of accuracy and balance.

Critics of the internet believe that the ease of engagement that virtual social media outlets provide is an important factor in the creation of polarized echo chambers. As opposed to traditional forms of engagement that would have possibly required travel and additional in-person efforts, engagement on social media simply requires a few seconds of typing. During the course of one of my deliberations with the DCI, a deliberator mentioned that while they felt strongly about a certain issue, they just did not feel motivated enough to want to engage with another perspective. They credited this to the fact that everywhere they looked on their social media, they found perspectives that agreed with them – and hence assumed they were right. The convenience associated with social media is perhaps one of its greatest assets. Unfortunately, however, it has made us indolent, and averse to engaging with alternative perspectives.

Cancel culture has been a defining element of the rise of social media and the subsequent emergence of echo chambers. Molly Crockett, a leading psychologist at Yale, provides a viable proposition for why this outrage-filled ecosystem on social media has come to exist. She believes that social media creates an outrage feedback loop that becomes addictive, allowing individuals to express their opinions, which are often motivated by anger and criticism, with just the click of a button. Given that our social media profiles are primarily composed of those who agree with us, we’re often rewarded with likes, comments, and shares. It almost appears that non – participation in ‘hyping up’ a friend with a similar stance on an issue is equivalent to having a contradictory opinion. This social feedback loop reinforces our habit of expressing outrage more frequently and more readily.

In this outrage-filled media ecosystem, it’s no surprise that “calling people out” has become commonplace. While calling people out is often used to advance important social causes and promote justice for victims, it is not always as effective as those perpetrating it might believe. Crockett’s research establishes that many feel like they are pioneering change in a person by engaging in cancel culture. However, she finds that shaming them often makes these people even more hostile, resulting in further negative repercussions. Cancel culture as a concept is fundamentally contradictory to deliberation and in some cases is even driven by personal vendettas.

If we assume Crockett’s conclusions to be logical, then a viable alternative to this problem would be to increase productive, consensus-oriented deliberation. By engaging with perspectives of those whom we disagree, we might get a clearer understanding of what motivated their opinion. Even when we may still consider their perspective to be ‘wrong,’ when viewed from the lens of societal and moral standards, a deliberation-based approach, as opposed to one rooted in cancel culture, would be more productive in bringing about positive discourse. Cancel culture is rooted in a complete negation of opinions that we disagree with and barely ever yields a productive outcome. By approaching our interaction with others seeking to engage rather than just converse, we can understand each other’s perspectives better.

The DCI at Davidson College seeks to promote such deliberation with a unique multifaceted approach rooted in acknowledging humane instincts. Unlike traditional forms of engagement on important societal issues that consist of conversations where the participants are primarily concerned with establishing the validity of their argument, the DCI’s deliberative approach focuses on engaging to develop our existing outlooks rather than defeat those we disagree with.

The goal in any discussion, specifically when it concerns issues of socio-political and economic polarization, should be to keep an open mind. By doing so, we do not cloud our judgement, and this helps us gather a more informed perspective rooted in empathy. The DCI provides us with an avenue to do this, which is what makes it such a distinct and powerful initiative, in my opinion.

While the DCI is presently a new and limited initiative at the college level, I believe that the form of deliberation we engage in can set a productive precedent going forward. My aspiration is that the model it is based on is adopted further in matters of public discourse.

By Kevin Chen, DCI Fellow

Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, once said, “Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues,” a sentiment reaffirmed by Saint Augustine, a philosopher and a theologian, who said, “Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.”¹ Often, humility is incorrectly conflated with low self esteem or self denigration. However, in the Deliberation Citizenship Initiative (DCI), humility is one of the deliberative dispositions, a quality of character or state of mind and readiness. The DCI defines humility as the tendency to “appreciate one’s own cognitive and experiential limitations, embrace the possibility one might be wrong, and recognize the intellectual contributions of others.”² Thus, I would like to argue that humility is intrinsic to and inseparable from deliberation. Not only is humility the most important deliberative disposition, but it is also the most difficult to practice.

To demonstrate my point, I would like to begin with an example. In 2018, the short auditory illusion “Yanny or Laurel” became an internet sensation.³ There was a clear division among individuals who heard “Yanny” and those who heard “Laurel.”However, “Yanny or Laurel” is an example of an ambiguous stimulus where both phrases exist and open conclusions could be drawn. Scientists supported this claim through an auditory experiment. When the audio clip was adjusted to make lower frequencies more pronounced, “Laurel” could be heard, and when the audio was adjusted to make higher frequencies more pronounced, “Yanny” could be heard.⁴ While the short auditory illusion is nowhere near comparable in magnitude and life-altering effects of societal issues today, the public response to the short auditory illusion reflects two apparent aspects of the discourse in our society today: first, it reveals our tendency to fall into confirmation bias and all that it entails; second, our inability to look deeply into the root of the differences in perspectives.

Firstly, confirmation bias and the lack of awareness of this bias results in an intent to create and win a zero-sum game in an argument, and this tendency reflects a lack of intellectual humility. Intellectual humility refers to the recognition that one’s beliefs may be fallible or wrong. In the case of “Yanny or Laurel,” people on either side spoke with absolute confidence such that groups formed to confirm individually-held perspectives. However, while the original clip is attempting to speak the word “Laurel,” both sides are wrong and each contains a fragment of the truth. The truth is that the original clip is an ambiguous stimulus with low and high frequencies, which confuses and requires our brains to make the best interpretation of the stimulus.

On a similar note, much of the argument nowadays offers no space for nuanced perspectives. All of us are capable of snap judgments and going on the defensive when challenged or threatened. After all, heuristics and the “fight-or-flight” response are inborn human psychological processes necessary for survival. Furthermore, the deep political and social divide forces us into groups where we are subject to group polarization (the tendency to develop more radical/polarized perspectives than the original individually held perspectives) and groupthink (the tendency to reach a consensus without critical reasoning and evaluation). If we are to think of our survival as a democracy and rectify our polarized culture, we need to especially do so through deliberation — the process by which we engage with and weigh various perspectives well to make a thoughtful and reasoned evaluation or decision.

However, this process of deliberation can only begin when we practice intellectual humility because humility is an internal evaluation and external action. Intellectual humility, as a subset of humility, compels us to be slow to anger and reflect upon our support for our perspectives, and in doing so, develop a curiosity and courage within us to explore other perspectives that also hold some grain of truth. This leads us to the other aspect of our democracy that is in critical danger,  .

My second point, which is revealed in the “Yanny or Laurel” phenomenon, is our inability to look deeply into the root of the differences in perspectives. This results in the dehumanization of the “other” when we resort to an attack on character rather than an analysis of perspective, which is an indication of the lack of humility. To illustrate my point, we can look at the “Yanny or Laurel” case example. Some people were so overconfident in their position on “Yanny or Laurel” that they, often jokingly, accused the other group of being absurd. While these comments may be “jokes” and not substantially impact the individual, our lived world unveils countless examples of where individuals and groups of people are reduced to name-calling during arguments. Thus, in the entire process of argumentation, but especially in deliberation, humility must be cultivated and practiced. Humus, which means earth or ground, is the root word for humility, which is also the root word for humanity.⁵ By that extension, when we practice humility, we enter into a space where we regard each other on equal ground. We share the belief that no one is superior or inferior to the other, and we recognize the dignity and worth of each other. Most importantly, when we are in a space that values humility during deliberation, humility compels us to be compassionate in how we speak and act, to show grace by assuming the best intent in others, to disagree tactfully, and to empathize deeply with the experiences and background that shape an individual’s perspective.

To summarize, it is through humility that we can cultivate patience, curiosity, courage, compassion, charity, and other virtues and deliberative dispositions. Furthermore, no doubt humility is difficult, as humility is a life-long practice of reflection and evaluation of oneself critically and accurately in the context of one’s relationships with other people. I hope that DCI provides a space to practice and cultivate humility for everyone, including myself — a humility that recognizes one’s abilities and worth such that one is confident in presenting their perspectives, and a humility that values and appreciates the abilities and worth of others such that one is curious and motivated to understand more deeply.

 

References

1. https://www.xavier.edu/jesuitresource/online-resources/quote-archive1/humility-quotes
2. https://deliberativecitizenship.org/deliberative-dispositions/
3. https://youtu.be/DdvN4WqJh6g
4. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/16/upshot/audio-clip-yanny-laurel-debate.html
5. https://etymologeek.com/eng/humility

By Kevin Garcia-Galindo, DCI Fellow

British Philosopher Isaiah Berlin once stated that “equality does not need any justification but only inequality does.” I bring this up because it highlights the universality of the idea of egalitarianism as the view of equality being good on its own behalf or virtuous in comparison to the demerits of inequality. This idea is interesting because egalitarianism is rarely something we stress about in public life, let alone our private lives where we often make judgements about other people’s abilities and worth quotidian.

Training to become a DCI deliberation facilitator has taught me many things, including the worth and impact egalitarianism has on deliberation. Learning that egalitarianism is an essential part of deliberation really got me thinking about why exactly is it not used more often in other scenarios like national politics or workplace meetings where a more equal playing field of ideas could aid problem solving and creativity among teams? The simple answer is that egalitarianism is a difficult idea to implement, especially into historically hierarchical systems of work and problem solving.

The truth is that egalitarianism has its place and time, especially in those situations where speed of deliberation is not a priority. It is often disadvantageous in situations where rank, experience, and expertise clearly outrank everything else, e.g., you clearly would never deliberate in an egalitarian fashion with your plumber how to fix the sink if you have never even touched the tubing under your sink.

Egalitarianism is, however, despite its limitations, still considered an essential part of deliberation, mainly because if defined and implemented correctly it can make all the difference in not only coming to an adequate action plan after deliberation, but also making sure that participants feel as though their opinions matter in reaching that conclusion.

Egalitarianism is a complicated term because of the many different conceptions of equality one can have that are tied to justice, wealth, or capabilities, among other things. When I use the term egalitarianism, I use it in its most basic and commonly understood Western European and Anglo-American definition of the word signifying that all human beings are endowed with a specified number of natural rights and, especially in the Christian notion, a natural equal value and worth. One does not need to go this far in depth about the significant weight and meaning of the word egalitarianism, but I only do it as an attempt to dispel the word of any of the connotational deviations that it has gained over the years from being associated with different groups and ideologies.

In the divided deliberative landscape of today, egalitarianism has two distinct connotations, one associated with an extreme aversion to expert opinion and the other characterized by the raising of marginalized voices. This is partly the reason why trying to enforce egalitarianism in our own private and public lives is so hard to do and why most people simply ignore it.

A middle ground needs to be sought between valuing expert opinions and helping raise historically marginalized voices. This is an incredibly difficult task due to the very nature of human communication and interaction. Think of the Dunning-Kruger effect as described in psychology, which outlines the way many of us have distorted views of own capabilities and experiences, especially when we are just beginning to understand a concept. Often, those who know the least will rank themselves the most knowledgeable while those who know the most will underscore their capabilities. In other words, it’s very possible that if you don’t know a lot, you will know even less about all the things you don’t know. The inverse being that if you’re an expert, you will also be an expert at critiquing your own knowledge.

Furthermore, take for example social comparison theory, which suggests that the reason why we are constantly comparing ourselves to others is due to how our egos are always in search of our next boost and how as humans we are simply unable to live outside of hierarchical spaces.

Psychology has a lot to say about how we measure our capabilities and success against our peers, specifically how, under perfect conditions, social comparison can help us know the extent of our own abilities and how in imperfect conditions, it can serve as a vector for low self-esteem.

So, how does this relate to deliberation? It relates because very rarely will there be any discussion worth deliberating upon without the aid of expert thinkers who have studied a particular subject or stakeholders who have been affected by that same subject. Using an egalitarian outlook on deliberation means recognizing the different kinds of expertise that a multitude of people can offer, and maybe also how inexperience within a certain subject can also be a positive.

To set a picture in your mind, consider a deliberation on the future of public education with three main participants: an academic research fellow of a libertarian think tank who has studied public, charter, and private education differences for decades, a father who has recently transferred his son into homeschooling to exercise greater control over what he learns, and you. In this situation, you are most likely the deliberator with the least expertise, but why is that not a problem?

Because expertise in a certain subject is often tied to a certain bias or common expert opinion. These experts have clearly already landed on a side of the debate already and will most likely want to regurgitate many of the common talking points of their position pushing for greater school choice and competition within the educational system. This could be a valuable experience for someone like you, who might not be well versed in these sorts of arguments, but it might also push these experts to be a lot more conscientious about how their views and opinions are appraised by the common person. After all, are you not more representative of the average stakeholder view than anyone else on this board? Is the purpose of deliberation really a space we want dominated by a few elite experts? Is a government ruled by elites, or as Plato described in the Republic, “philosopher kings,” not called an “aristocracy”?

Another common response to this scenario might be to say, “why not have experts of varying opinions work together in deliberation?” My response is that if that were a solution, then simply having two “philosopher kings” could make an aristocracy work. Two experts of different opinions do not produce better discussion most of the time; rather, they simply may produce more discussion, often with less to show for it. Nowhere are fewer concessions given than during a deliberation between two strong willed experts who do not want to give any ground. Experts have more to lose than we normally recognize in these sorts of situations. Would not a more centered and openminded person be more able to offer more creative or distinct opinions than experts who already have their answer set in stone? Furthermore, somewhat counterintuitively, would a less knowledgeable person not be better equipped to be skeptical (as opposed to argumentative) or at least encourage the expert to elaborate on his ideas more precisely?

As I said earlier, under perfect conditions, egalitarianism can breed an aura where everyone feels like they are contributing to the deliberation. Sometimes it is essential to advocate for the importance of those who know less about the issue at hand because it can be so hard to make them feel adequate in such important discussions for the reasons I outlined earlier. Egalitarianism is something that needs to be built upon and refined over time by making sure that neither the experts nor the less knowledgeable deliberators gain too much control of the deliberation. After all, while we want to hear their perspectives, no one wants to be berated by biased experts or overwhelmed by unorganized opinions and ideas by people who don’t know much about the issue.

Part of my mission this year as a DCI Fellow will be to use egalitarianism within the deliberations I facilitate in the same way I have outlined across this paper. Part of that effort will be me emphasizing respect for different perspectives and levels of expertise. But other times it may be preventing the experts from taking too much control of the conversation or affirming those who feel that they have nothing to add that their opinion is valuable and imperative. Pointing out how valuable opinions from all levels of expertise are might just be what defines how people come and leave feeling about the deliberations I lead.

Deliberation should be democratic and egalitarian in nature because if it ever becomes a discussion of only the views of a special few, then it ceases to be a method for producing democratic and intersectional solutions and one simply for self-praise and banter.