David Goodhart is quite interesting on this subject. I don't agree with all he says and many will really dislike him I'm sure. But it's useful perspective I think.
The Tldr version is roughly like this...
We have two groups of people in society: Anywheres (educated, studied at uni, moved away from the town they grew up in, travelled a bit, multiple social circles); and Somewheres (less likely to have gone to uni, stayed in home town, still friends with their school group).
Both groups see the world quite differently. Neither is right or wrong. Just have different perspectives. It impacts their views on lots of issues. The Anywheres encounter educated migrants (through work/study) and often 2nd/3rd generation with similar values to their own, and see positives in culture, workplace diversity etc which migration brings. The Somewheres see competition for jobs, the town they call home becoming less familiar to them, and what they see as an erosion of national culture.
This is an excellent post. There's some cognitive biases and quirks at play here...
I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that a large portion of people simply aren't intelligent enough to have access to the vast amount of information available to them online, and understandably, the dimmest of them coalesce around the simplest arguments.
That vast amount of information actually makes it pretty much impossible to have a full understanding of any topic - our brains just aren't wired to handle it - so through confirmation bias we end up filtering out new information that doesn't support our existing world-view, becoming more entrenched. Then on top of that, even just the new information that supports our world view is still too vast for us to comprehend, so we take a shortcut and start to mentally pigeonhole ourselves as part of a tribe - "I understand that the rest of my in-group feels this way about XYZ, so I will too". We have neither the time nor mental capacity to fully research everything we want to have a stance on. So disaffected young men take the shortcuts offered to them "it's all women's fault", or "it's asylum seekers". The right will keep offering them someone to punch down at because that's how the right moves the needle. The left will keep failing to offer them shortcuts at all because they know that punching up is the right thing to do, but that requires effort. And the centrists, amazingly no longer a pejorative but a self-identified tribe, will just carry on clutching their pearls and tut tutting.
Then of course there's Dunning Kruger, often misrepresented as "stupid people are too stupid to realise they're stupid", but more accurately it can be expressed as "the more you know, the more you realise how much you don't know". Combine access to every single bit of the world's knowledge with Dunning Kruger and actually researching and learning more can start to feel utterly hopeless, so even smart people take the same shortcuts mentioned above.
And then finally, we as a society have given voice to the absolute thickest fuckwits on the planet, often putting them on pedestals as shining exemplars. In a sane society a braincell like Matt LeTissier wouldn't be anywhere near being allowed on telly.
I think there is a lot to that. But across all society there is need to understand complex issues in sound bites. Immigration = bad. Taxing rich = good. Shades of grey and being inquisitive about a topic is fading fast. I am quite shocked sometimes at people that I know who have a complete understanding of a topic based on a single tweet or post. When it is clearly nuts what they have read, but they take it as gospel. I would like to think that America is worse than us but we are not far behind.
Forget about only having limited knowledge of a subject, not knowing anything at all seems common.
I once mentioned to somebody that I thought Liz Truss would be a disaster and then had to explain to her that Liz Truss was the Prime Minister. And a political analyst I follow on X recently expressed dismay that around 20% of the middle class focus groups he was using to predict the election didn't know who Keir Starmer was.
I'm jealous. I'd love not to know anything about politics (or the news in general) but something is stopping me let go.
Your paragraph on the Dunning-Kruger effect is almost verbatim what I was going to write but realised I'd already typed out an essay!
My peers who are genuinely experts in their fields are far far more aware of their lack of knowledge in other fields than people who don't have any area of particularly drop knowledge.
The animosity towards experts is another common & worrying trait throughout extreme right/ left swings in history which we are seeing more of now since Brexit.
Think there's truth in that, particularly in the "somewhere's" which rings fairly accurately for some of my friend groups.
The "anywhere's" is also pretty accurate for me, but not socially, as with the internet, and travel options it's easy to stay close friends from school despite not living locally, particularly when people have moved due to professional work so generally have some money.
I socially have a view into both sides, and some people are definitely blind to the genuine issues the other side have, but one thing that's constant throughout is that it's the dimmest people who take the simplest conclusions and shout the loudest.
It's difficult to argue against saying that at the moment one side of the argument objectively has a much higher percentage of those extremely loud voices shouting misinformation very loudly, and in the age of open-season social media that's very dangerous.
There's been a pretty consistent immigration blame push by mostly right leaning, mostly hypocritical tax dodging newspapers for a long time now, a huge number of scare stories having been proved to be inaccurate or entirely made up by the likes of "journalist" bojo, Farage and his mate Bannon who has quite the set of connections. The rotating door between these "news"papers and the conservative front benches and advisors have made them policy but they aren't particularly popular and has only lead to them ripping themselves apart as they claim they were either betrayed and we haven't gone far enough post Brexit rather than it all being a badly planned mess. Blame the french or basically anyone else.
Actual racist crime is rising and that isn't a coincidence. We shouldn't forget that amongst efforts to make sure everyone feels comforted.
Liz fkn Truss though, how do you come back from that, maybe just sit down and let someone else have a go. At this point the conservatives best hope is that Sunaks replacement can distance himself from at least 4 predecessors whilst poking credible holes in Starmers policy, or lack of policy.
I doubt politicians are more inept than they used to be; they are more scrutinised. They do a vital job under almost impossible conditions and get no thanks for it.
I think there is a decent chance that recent purges and people being ostracized due to loyalties previously sworn to failed policies or politicians have shrunk the pool.
Greater scrutiny amounts to receipts being kept on earlier pledges and that has certainly proved problematic for some.
Scrutiny by amateur sleuths or even Google is a way of life which makes some comments by politicians even more surprising.
A silly one today. Starmer saying that the Tory manifesto is Corbyn-esque. There are lots of fair criticisms and adjectives he could have used. Using that one immediately will remind people he backed Corbyn manifestos twice. Poorly advised ? Lack of self awareness ? Rubbish script writer?
in the year ending March 2023, there were 145,214 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales (excluding Devon and Cornwall), a 5% decrease compared with the previous year
this was the first annual fall since the Home Office began collecting comparable data in the year ending March 2013
Probably all of them. The level of scrutiny is insane but on the flipside, because of the constant stream of information now - nobody will remember what they've said ten minutes later.
Often being "Yes men" for the people at party HQ / donors to ensure that their viewpoint is in the commons.
Too many Oxbridge educated PPE grads with a short period on Tufton Street / Unions / London Banks before being parachuted into safe seats.
Though doesn't help that we live in really really complicated times where the briefs each minister has are the size of a barn door and the advisors filter information that supports their points of view.
Same thing the BBC is doing giving equal airtime to people who say the sky is orange not blue with the scientists who contextualise that it is just a sunset part of a wider orbital system. (Tried not to reference sunny uplands or environmental issues)
Response to world events probably make that unlikely to continue into next year but good to hear if true.
Unfortunately the police are skint so all crimes are now less likely to be reported or investigated and the courts are skint so trials are less likely to happen in good time and fairly execute and the prisons are full so people will be released early regardless. Politicians will go on about raising sentences but more to be done all round if anyone is interested in justice.
Still, people don't like paying taxes so maybe it's not that important.
Sadly, I expect a huge spike in antisemitism to increase the figures for this year.
On taxes, do you know if any surveys have been done on attitudes to taxation? I'm not against taxation at all, although obviously I don't want to see my money squandered.
Yes, it's more difficult for people with ordinary jobs to become politicians because there's a mountain of work to be done even for prospective MPs. Just being a candidate means you will be bombarded by different interest groups wanting support. There are more competing ideologies nowadays and people tend to think that politics should be tailored to suit them - just like their YouTube recommendations.
Yep, it's obviously not possible to perfectly divide everyone into two neat groups. But it's a decent stab at trying to understand why some people think the way they do, which is important if you want to change the minds of those people.
Couldn't agree more about the idiots tending to be the loud, shouty types. Folks who would otherwise have been ranting at the pub to nobody in particular have been given an outlet via social media.
The even bigger problem in my view is that the quiet, thoughtful, analytical types appear to be finding it harder and harder to be heard.
To quote Isaac Asimov: "anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
If I was in charge, everyone going to a polling station would heve to complete a form, listing the 10 most recent Prime Ministers in reverse chronological order, and the party they represented.
Only those scoring 100% would be given a ballot form. That would sort the wheat from the chaff.
@LDF I have a number of friends in Brussels who are happy to pay the €50 fine as they refuse to participate in an activity they see as a farce - their words not mine.
It was unlikely anyway but there was no coming back from the wally without a brolly launch and it's going comically badly since. Think he'll be alright long term somehow.
Comments
David Goodhart is quite interesting on this subject. I don't agree with all he says and many will really dislike him I'm sure. But it's useful perspective I think.
The Tldr version is roughly like this...
We have two groups of people in society: Anywheres (educated, studied at uni, moved away from the town they grew up in, travelled a bit, multiple social circles); and Somewheres (less likely to have gone to uni, stayed in home town, still friends with their school group).
Both groups see the world quite differently. Neither is right or wrong. Just have different perspectives. It impacts their views on lots of issues. The Anywheres encounter educated migrants (through work/study) and often 2nd/3rd generation with similar values to their own, and see positives in culture, workplace diversity etc which migration brings. The Somewheres see competition for jobs, the town they call home becoming less familiar to them, and what they see as an erosion of national culture.
This is an excellent post. There's some cognitive biases and quirks at play here...
I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that a large portion of people simply aren't intelligent enough to have access to the vast amount of information available to them online, and understandably, the dimmest of them coalesce around the simplest arguments.
That vast amount of information actually makes it pretty much impossible to have a full understanding of any topic - our brains just aren't wired to handle it - so through confirmation bias we end up filtering out new information that doesn't support our existing world-view, becoming more entrenched. Then on top of that, even just the new information that supports our world view is still too vast for us to comprehend, so we take a shortcut and start to mentally pigeonhole ourselves as part of a tribe - "I understand that the rest of my in-group feels this way about XYZ, so I will too". We have neither the time nor mental capacity to fully research everything we want to have a stance on. So disaffected young men take the shortcuts offered to them "it's all women's fault", or "it's asylum seekers". The right will keep offering them someone to punch down at because that's how the right moves the needle. The left will keep failing to offer them shortcuts at all because they know that punching up is the right thing to do, but that requires effort. And the centrists, amazingly no longer a pejorative but a self-identified tribe, will just carry on clutching their pearls and tut tutting.
Then of course there's Dunning Kruger, often misrepresented as "stupid people are too stupid to realise they're stupid", but more accurately it can be expressed as "the more you know, the more you realise how much you don't know". Combine access to every single bit of the world's knowledge with Dunning Kruger and actually researching and learning more can start to feel utterly hopeless, so even smart people take the same shortcuts mentioned above.
And then finally, we as a society have given voice to the absolute thickest fuckwits on the planet, often putting them on pedestals as shining exemplars. In a sane society a braincell like Matt LeTissier wouldn't be anywhere near being allowed on telly.
Some good reference material:
The Information by James Gleick
https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html
I think there is a lot to that. But across all society there is need to understand complex issues in sound bites. Immigration = bad. Taxing rich = good. Shades of grey and being inquisitive about a topic is fading fast. I am quite shocked sometimes at people that I know who have a complete understanding of a topic based on a single tweet or post. When it is clearly nuts what they have read, but they take it as gospel. I would like to think that America is worse than us but we are not far behind.
Forget about only having limited knowledge of a subject, not knowing anything at all seems common.
I once mentioned to somebody that I thought Liz Truss would be a disaster and then had to explain to her that Liz Truss was the Prime Minister. And a political analyst I follow on X recently expressed dismay that around 20% of the middle class focus groups he was using to predict the election didn't know who Keir Starmer was.
I'm jealous. I'd love not to know anything about politics (or the news in general) but something is stopping me let go.
Your paragraph on the Dunning-Kruger effect is almost verbatim what I was going to write but realised I'd already typed out an essay!
My peers who are genuinely experts in their fields are far far more aware of their lack of knowledge in other fields than people who don't have any area of particularly drop knowledge.
The animosity towards experts is another common & worrying trait throughout extreme right/ left swings in history which we are seeing more of now since Brexit.
Think there's truth in that, particularly in the "somewhere's" which rings fairly accurately for some of my friend groups.
The "anywhere's" is also pretty accurate for me, but not socially, as with the internet, and travel options it's easy to stay close friends from school despite not living locally, particularly when people have moved due to professional work so generally have some money.
I socially have a view into both sides, and some people are definitely blind to the genuine issues the other side have, but one thing that's constant throughout is that it's the dimmest people who take the simplest conclusions and shout the loudest.
It's difficult to argue against saying that at the moment one side of the argument objectively has a much higher percentage of those extremely loud voices shouting misinformation very loudly, and in the age of open-season social media that's very dangerous.
There's been a pretty consistent immigration blame push by mostly right leaning, mostly hypocritical tax dodging newspapers for a long time now, a huge number of scare stories having been proved to be inaccurate or entirely made up by the likes of "journalist" bojo, Farage and his mate Bannon who has quite the set of connections. The rotating door between these "news"papers and the conservative front benches and advisors have made them policy but they aren't particularly popular and has only lead to them ripping themselves apart as they claim they were either betrayed and we haven't gone far enough post Brexit rather than it all being a badly planned mess. Blame the french or basically anyone else.
Actual racist crime is rising and that isn't a coincidence. We shouldn't forget that amongst efforts to make sure everyone feels comforted.
Liz fkn Truss though, how do you come back from that, maybe just sit down and let someone else have a go. At this point the conservatives best hope is that Sunaks replacement can distance himself from at least 4 predecessors whilst poking credible holes in Starmers policy, or lack of policy.
I doubt politicians are more inept than they used to be; they are more scrutinised. They do a vital job under almost impossible conditions and get no thanks for it.
I think there is a decent chance that recent purges and people being ostracized due to loyalties previously sworn to failed policies or politicians have shrunk the pool.
Greater scrutiny amounts to receipts being kept on earlier pledges and that has certainly proved problematic for some.
Scrutiny by amateur sleuths or even Google is a way of life which makes some comments by politicians even more surprising.
A silly one today. Starmer saying that the Tory manifesto is Corbyn-esque. There are lots of fair criticisms and adjectives he could have used. Using that one immediately will remind people he backed Corbyn manifestos twice. Poorly advised ? Lack of self awareness ? Rubbish script writer?
Post truth, mate.
Here's a four minute Adam Curtis video showing how the Russians started what we are doing now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5ubluwNkqg
Probably all of them. The level of scrutiny is insane but on the flipside, because of the constant stream of information now - nobody will remember what they've said ten minutes later.
No politicians are definitely more inept.
Often being "Yes men" for the people at party HQ / donors to ensure that their viewpoint is in the commons.
Too many Oxbridge educated PPE grads with a short period on Tufton Street / Unions / London Banks before being parachuted into safe seats.
Though doesn't help that we live in really really complicated times where the briefs each minister has are the size of a barn door and the advisors filter information that supports their points of view.
Same thing the BBC is doing giving equal airtime to people who say the sky is orange not blue with the scientists who contextualise that it is just a sunset part of a wider orbital system. (Tried not to reference sunny uplands or environmental issues)
Response to world events probably make that unlikely to continue into next year but good to hear if true.
Unfortunately the police are skint so all crimes are now less likely to be reported or investigated and the courts are skint so trials are less likely to happen in good time and fairly execute and the prisons are full so people will be released early regardless. Politicians will go on about raising sentences but more to be done all round if anyone is interested in justice.
Still, people don't like paying taxes so maybe it's not that important.
Sadly, I expect a huge spike in antisemitism to increase the figures for this year.
On taxes, do you know if any surveys have been done on attitudes to taxation? I'm not against taxation at all, although obviously I don't want to see my money squandered.
Yes, it's more difficult for people with ordinary jobs to become politicians because there's a mountain of work to be done even for prospective MPs. Just being a candidate means you will be bombarded by different interest groups wanting support. There are more competing ideologies nowadays and people tend to think that politics should be tailored to suit them - just like their YouTube recommendations.
Yep, it's obviously not possible to perfectly divide everyone into two neat groups. But it's a decent stab at trying to understand why some people think the way they do, which is important if you want to change the minds of those people.
Couldn't agree more about the idiots tending to be the loud, shouty types. Folks who would otherwise have been ranting at the pub to nobody in particular have been given an outlet via social media.
The even bigger problem in my view is that the quiet, thoughtful, analytical types appear to be finding it harder and harder to be heard.
They get heard at the ballot box.
To quote Isaac Asimov: "anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
In 2019, a colleague who was definitely going to vote asked me if ‘Boris’ was Labour or Conservative.
No-one believes me, but it genuinely happened.
If I was in charge, everyone going to a polling station would heve to complete a form, listing the 10 most recent Prime Ministers in reverse chronological order, and the party they represented.
Only those scoring 100% would be given a ballot form. That would sort the wheat from the chaff.
No matter how ill-informed people are the mark of a democracy is surely that we allow them to vote.
I personally feel people should be fined for not voting (like in Belgium).
I agree with your first sentence but not the second. Abstention is a perfectly reasonable position. I abstained in the referendum.
Sunak has reached the stage where he looked so irritable and tired tonight that I think some people will start to feel sorry for him.
In politics that's an absolutely nailed on signal that you're beat.
It's over. The only debate is how many seats Labour will win.
The USA seems more open. Shev lives there. Maybe he can give us the inside scoop.
@LDF I have a number of friends in Brussels who are happy to pay the €50 fine as they refuse to participate in an activity they see as a farce - their words not mine.
It was unlikely anyway but there was no coming back from the wally without a brolly launch and it's going comically badly since. Think he'll be alright long term somehow.