Friday, March 20, 2009
Echo chamber watch, part deux
Nicholas Kristof's column yesterday was about the echo chambers in which we increasingly conduct our political lives. Having lived in college towns most of my life, I identified particularly with this bit:
One 12-nation study found Americans the least likely to discuss politics with people of different views, and this was particularly true of the well educated. High school dropouts had the most diverse group of discussion-mates, while college graduates managed to shelter themselves from uncomfortable perspectives.
I wonder whether any of this is due to changing academic fashion. Once upon a time, many professors thought it important to teach from a position of apparent neutrality, and to train their students to argue both sides of an issue. For more than a generation now, however, academics have believed that posed objectivity -- which, the arguement goes, is a deceptive fraud -- is more dangerous than teaching from an ideological or result-oriented point of view. The result, though, may be that people never learn to argue the other side, and therefore do not see the value in learning the positions of the other side, which leads inexorably to thinking that the other side is crazy, nefarious, or stupid. My dear departed father speaks from the past on that subject here.
Law school is perhaps the biggest exception to this tendency, because lawyers still pride themselves in the craft of argument and respect people who can go both ways, as it were. As politically enthusiastic and partisan as lawyers can be, having been trained to argue both sides of a position they usually take some interest in the counterarguements, if only to refute them more effectively.
Anyway, there is a long list of good blogs organized by approximate political orientation on the right sidebar, with the lefty blogs toward the bottom. Surf around on the other side with an open mind and you'll read something you did not know before.
8 Comments:
By 
, at
Fri Mar 20, 09:01:00 AM:
I also think that the absence of teaching competing views has lead to an absence of critical thinking.
If you are only taught one side of an argument (and more to the point in academia today only one point is tolerated), you do not learn to evaluate varying arguments on their merits.
We have raised a generation who accept what they are told without question. "You have to belive conventional wisdom on global warming" they are told. "The network news in unbiased about politics" they are told.
This is leading (or has led) to a populace of sheep. They are willing to let the government control their banks - then their car companies - then their lives.
Is Tim Geitner the new Wesley Mouch? Who is John Gualt?
By , at
Fri Mar 20, 09:43:00 AM:
I don't find this to be true. Living in Princeton is certainly living in a town with narrow views, but in the greater world I find people are wide open to discussion. Because I travel a lot it's perhaps true that my contacts are also more diverse, but I have no trouble talking rationally with people of lefty views, and without provoking anger too. Except at Thanksgiving, for some reason. Family dinners are bad forums for politics.
By the way, in between sending public money to all of his campaign supporters, undoing the constitution, mocking the disabled and alienating every foreign leader with whom he comes into contact, the idiot-in-chief sent off a special "Hope and Change" greeting to the Iranian people yesterday. I guess we can stop worrying about the nuclear bomb problem now.
By , at
Fri Mar 20, 09:44:00 AM:
Law school is perhaps the biggest exception to this tendency, because lawyers still pride themselves in the craft of argument and respect people who can go both ways, as it were.
But then again, aren't most of our obstinate, party idealogue politicians - lawyers?
By 
Georg Felis, at
Fri Mar 20, 10:03:00 AM:
I think the tendency of political thought to become polarized in Universities has tracked very closely with the development of “Studies” departments and degrees, most of which get their piece of the funding pie by showing just how badly “Society” has become corrupted by their particular “ism” (Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, etc…) By elevating certain political thoughts to the level of “Good” and introducing them into arguments, you poison the very atmosphere of logical debate.
Example as a University Administrator: If certain universities admittance standards were strictly on the basis of academic performance and test scores, Whites and Orientals would overrepresented, and certain other minorities would be underrepresented. Since you do not have enough minorities, you must be discriminating illegally. So you implement a plan to discriminate against certain university applicants according to skin color, which brings your minority student entrants numbers up, and therefore you are not discriminating (legally). But now your graduation numbers are skewed because more of these students with poor grades are unable to graduate, leaving you looking like you are still discriminating (which you are, but not in the way that can get you sued). Do you discriminate even more to get your proper minority numbers way up, so at least some of them will graduate? Do you possibly offer a “______ Studies” degree so that anybody who can parrot the correct tropes can leave with a degree, even if they can not even use it to get a McDonalds job? Or do you just chuck it all to become Director of the National Economic Council ?
Disclaimer: Georg Felis is not a pen name for Larry Summers. You would not catch me as University President or on a Presidential Cabinet if my life depended on it.
By Elise, at
Fri Mar 20, 03:28:00 PM:
One thing Kristof says in his column is:
research showing that when liberals or conservatives discuss issues such as affirmative action or climate change with like-minded people, their views quickly become more homogeneous and more extreme than before the discussion.
That would seem to be an argument *against* the JornoList you discussed yesterday.
In a tangentially related issue, I could have sworn that sometime in the last 3 or 4 months TH did a post on a left of center blogger who started a new blog during the election because he was concerned about the level of vitriol directed at (if I remember correctly) Hillary Clinton. TH recommended him, I didn't bookmark him, and now I can't find the post. Did I imagine this or can someone point me to TH's post and/or the liberal blog? I would very much like to expand my reading into liberal blogs but I find most of them maddening.
By , at
Fri Mar 20, 07:17:00 PM:
Having spent the last 25 years in or on the edges of academia (4 years as an undergrad., 8 in grad. school, most of the rest working at colleges or universities in one capacity or another), I have no interest in checking out any of the lefty blogs you reference mainly because it's bound to be the same old crap I hear from people I know over and over again all the time (and have for most of the past twenty-some years). I rarely learn anything new from looking at such blogs anymore.
By , at
Sat Mar 21, 12:14:00 AM:
Law school is perhaps the biggest exception to this tendency, because lawyers still pride themselves in the craft of argument and respect people who can go both ways, as it were.
Then why are law schools and law organizations so overwhelmingly liberal?
By Dawnfire82, at
Sun Mar 22, 10:27:00 PM:
There are conservative lawyers, as well. Where do you think conservative judges come from? But they seem to not be as crusading, loud-mouthed, and ideologically aggressive as their liberal kin, and therefore not in as many advocate or leadership positions. After all, it's the liberals who want to perfect the world, and that perfection requires community organizing. (to use a relevant example)
