Jonathan Rauch: A Defense of Truth

become a sustaining member of the commonwealth  club for just ten dollars a month join today hello and good morning from the west coast   welcome to this morning's program  which is uh features jonathan rauch   and his book in defense of truth my name is bruce  kane and i am the spence and cleon elect people's   family director of the bill lane center for  the american west at stanford university   i'm so pleased to be returning to the commonwealth  club this morning with a distinguished writer and   thinker who is the author i think of one of the  more important and timely books of this year   called the constitution of knowledge the defense  of truth jonathan's book examines how the concept   of objective truth is under assault from both  sides of the ideological spectrum left and right   and puts forth ideas about what we all must do to  defend ourselves and our society from this attack   jonathan is currently a senior fellow at  government studies program at the brookings   institute in washington so we welcome you jonathan  to the con to the commonwealth club it's good to   see you again i was a colleague of yours at the  brookings institute for a short period of time   i've been admirer of your work for some time  now today's format is going to consist of an   introductory talk by jonathan followed by question  and answers session that will be led by me   we encourage you to put your questions into the  youtube chat feature and i will try to get as many   of them as i can uh put in front of jonathan  to answer questions as they're um you know   i may have to aggregate some of them into a common  question so if we don't ask it exactly the way you   have phrased it understand that we're trying to  get as many people's queries in as possible okay   so let's jump in jonathan well thank you bruce  thanks to the commonwealth club i'm i'm thrilled   to be here today with this book and bruce uh  i've learned so much from your work on the   politics of politics over the years that i'm  today we're talking about something a little   different which is the politics of truth the  politics of knowledge but in many ways there   were later that's the case i'm about to make i'll  talk for about i don't know 12 15 minutes and   show you show you a few images along the way but i  thought i'd give you a few of the highlights here   and what i think i'm up to motivating questions a  lot of people have said that there's an epistemic   crisis going on right now everyone from former  fbi director james comey to barack obama just this   past november what is that exactly what's it  doing to us what are the effects the causes   and how do we deal with it this is what i think  an epistemic crisis is a breakdown or disruption   of a society's epistemic constitution by which i  mean its social system for settling differences of   belief and building a shared public reality this  is something that's very hard to do historically   through 200 000 years of human history we've  normally settled differences of opinion through   exile ostracism oppression imprisonment out and  out execution societies divide into sects they   go to war they go down epistemic rabbit holes  cling to false beliefs for for far too long we   haven't done that i'm about to explain why but  we are seeing what i think are the symptoms of   an epistemic crisis in america those are things  like polarization the chilling of opinion false   consensus forking realities which can lead  ultimately to ungovernability and even civil war   one symptom of that right now as i think most  people in this event are aware 75 percent of   republicans believe that the election was stolen  from donald trump and that is of course false this   is a new development in american democracy  we've never seen anything quite like that   and this is a poll that came out just yesterday  from morning consul people were asked who is   very or somewhat responsible for the attacks  that led to the january 16th capital attack   on the left here you see all voters and as  you can see 61 percent of them blame trump   as very or somewhat responsible on the right  side you see republican voters very different   picture 30 percent of them blame trump 41 think  that joe biden was responsible and 52 percent   think democrats in congress are responsible  that's what i mean by forking realities and   it's a dangerous situation for a democracy my book  tries to put across three big ideas and i'll move   through them very quickly here but enough i hope  at least to give a sense of things the first is   it's not just a marketplace of ideas it's a  constitutional knowledge it's a whole system   second you're being manipulated  you need to understand how   and the third they're not 10 feet tall we are so  start with the the marketplace of ideas it's a   wonderful concept i love it i use it all the time  but it's inadequate and here's why humans are bad   at sorting out our biases correcting our errors  we believe what makes sense for us to believe in   terms of our identity our social status what gives  us pleasure we even perceive what helps our status   the result of that is if you just leave it to  people in an unmediated market place you get this   hate speech propaganda ignorance and so forth and  this is this is a well-known fact you need more   than just sort of open exchange you need structure  you need this guy of course this is james madison   the leading architect of the us constitution  it turns out that most of the same principles   that make the u.s constitution work to create a  democratic republic that survived what 250 years   and now has 10 times the population sorry 100  times the population madison state you need a   lot of structure you need institutions you need  norms you need incentives for people to behave   in pro-social ways you know stuff like if you lose  the election you're willing to live with that well   the same thing is true in the realm of knowledge  around the same time as madison we set up a regime   to settle our differences of opinion figure out  what's true most of the first half of the book   is all about that this is not just an analogy not  just a metaphor the constitution of knowledge is   not written down like the u.s constitution it has  rules that do a lot of the same things checks and   balances forces compromise distributes authority  uses impersonal rules instead of personal rulers   builds institutions that regulate behavior and  prevent chaos and the result of that's what i   call the reality-based community we're part of  that today during the session bruce kane is part   of that at stanford i'm part of it at brookings  reality based community is a global network of   people and institutions who use impersonal rules  to hunt for error we're talking here big four   are science and research and academia that's  number one number two journalism number three   government that's everything from statistical  agencies to administrative law courts and finally   number four the law itself the concept of a  fact originated in law and jurisprudence is   all about finding facts in adversarial ways  showing work these are the things that keep us as   a society anchored to truth tethered to reality  they keep us out of constant warfare with each   other or going down the route of of jonestown  where we split off into separate realities there are a lot of advantages to the  constitutional knowledge this may be   the one that strikes the closest to home for me  right now that's my husband michael he's getting   vaccinated in covet a couple months ago this  is the knowledge the objective knowledge that   is protecting me from kovid right now objective  knowledge is the result of the constitution of   knowledge it fills our libraries our databases  if all humans died out aliens could come to   this planet reconstitute it all and use all that  knowledge it exists independently of us this is   a transformative technology for humans because  it allows us to make knowledge build on that   knowledge accumulate it bequeath it that's what's  made our our ability to transcend our small tribes point number two so what's going  on today you're being manipulated   you know you hear a lot of people say they talk  about polarization and cynicism and hostility   toward institutions and they say whoa is us where  did we go wrong is it stagnant working-class white   wages is it the decline of religion is it the  decline of unions is it vietnam and watergate and   inflation and the 2008 crash well i want to focus  on something else those are all conversations we   have but i want to focus you on information  warfare that's propaganda and disinformation   that organizes and manipulates the social  and media environment for political advantage   the goals of doing this to dominate divide  disorient and demoralize the target population   the methods are to weaponize cognitive and  social vulnerabilities for example our tendency   to rise to our defense when we're outraged or  insulted or our tendency to find explanations   when things go against us even if they're  wrong our tendency to use social coercion   to silence people we don't like our ability  to get confused if we're swamped with too much   information all of these can be weaponized used  against the constitutional knowledge they all are   being weaponized i'm going to just focus because  i think it's the most important one right now   on a single aspect of this there are many more in  the book and they're all important i'm going to   talk about disinformation and a specific type  of disinformation or class of disinformation   this is stephen bannon he was an advisor to  trump he worked in the administration for   a while his famous quotation here  the real opposition is the media   and the way to deal with them is to flood the zone  with flood the zone well that doesn't sound very   sophisticated but it turns out it's a propaganda  technique that was perfected by the russians it's   called the fire hose of falsehood now time is  precious but it's still worth spending a minute   to listen to a soviet kgb senior defector explain  how this works i think you'll find it chilling   but in reality the main emphasis of the kgb  is not in the area of intelligence at all   according to my opinion and opinion of many  defectors of my caliber only about 15 of time   money and manpower is spent on espionage as  such the other 85 percent is a slow process   which we call either ideological  subversion or active measures actively   language of the kgb or psychological warfare what  it basically means is to change the perception of   reality of every american to such an extent that  despite of the abundance of information no one   is able to come to sensible conclusions in the  interests of defending themselves their families   their community and their country exposure  to true information does not matter anymore   a person who was demoralized is unable to assess  true information the facts tell nothing to him   uh even if i shower him with information with  authentic proof with documents with pictures   it's pretty chilling stuff it's  very psychologically sophisticated   it works this is the russians using it in 2018  when they sent operatives to poison a defector   in the uk they had explanations for that in  fact they had a lot of them britain poisoned him   ukraine poisoned him it was an accident suicide  revenge not an urge age nerve agent russia didn't   produce the nerve agent a different nerve age  these fling up swarms of falsehoods concocted   theories red herrings intended not so much to  persuade people as to bewilder them this creates   cynicism mistrust people don't know what to  believe they become open to demagoguery cynicism   polarization it's good stuff or maybe  bad stuff well who else does that this is 2016 political campaign the numbers  are the same if you go through the end of the   campaign according to politifact 20 26 about a  quarter of what hillary clinton said was mostly   or entirely false that's too high but that meant  most of what she said was true the equivalent   figure for donald trump 71 at least mostly fault  if the man was opening his mouth he was probably   telling you something that was entirely or mostly  false why would he do that some kind of weird   psychopathy some just sort of craziness  no i don't think so this is his presidency   we've never seen anything like this outpouring  of false or misleading claims over 30 000 over   the course of his presidency and look at the  run-up before november of 2021 that's the stop   the steel campaign that's the unleashing of a  misinformed disinformation campaign on a scale   we've never imagined before in the united states  it starts in april of 2020 with the attack on   mail and voting which is irrational from the  point of view of maximizing republican votes   since lots of senior republicans vote by mail but  very rationally if your real goal is post-election   to inflect the media media environment because  you expect to lose this is donald trump's twitter   account i just picked a random day this  is december 10th these are seven tweets   uh sorry uh yeah seven tweets the election is a  fraud doesn't end with donald trump this is my   hometown of arizona the veterans memorial coliseum  where i sat and saw many sons games as a kid that   is a so-called audit of the vote going on it's not  only unnecessary it's being done by an unqualified   firm called cyberninjas which has whose president  has devoured that the election was stolen using   unorthodox methods it's pure propaganda theater  and as you can see from the headline here   the goal here is to spread a conspiracy theory and  use this as theater to do that and it's working   republican officials are making pilgrimage  to figure out how they can replicate this in   their own state this is very sophisticated stuff  right and it's never been deployed in america we   are in an epidemiological sense a naive population  meaning that we don't have any antibodies against   this kind of warfare that's how we get to 75  percent of republicans believing the election   was stolen and notice in this kind of information  where for you don't have to convince everybody   that something that's false is actually  true you're happy if you just confuse them   and it turns out that 40 percent of  independents also are unsure who won the   election they say well we don't really know  because they've heard so much of this stuff   the deliverables of this kind of campaign  are cynicism like the woman who says   there's no real news sources anymore  i don't trust anything demoralization   i guess i would have to say that i'm completely  confused as to who is lying and who is telling the   truth i just feel helpless if you make people feel  helpless if you demoralize them you demobilize   them they cannot work against you you can dominate  them confusion i don't know nor do you nor to any   of us that's a u.s center on whether russia or  the ukraine hacked the dnc servers we do know   it was russia it was not ukraine deception out  and out deception this is a u.s senate candidate   a few months ago we don't know the outcome  of the 2020 election well that is just false there's lots of other areas in the book that  are covered one is cancel campaigns which are   another form of information warfare but used  predominantly these days on the left rather   than the right there's others there's trolling  there's the role of digital media social media   and accelerating all these trends but i want  to leave you just briefly by mentioning a   third conclusion which we'll mostly talk about  i think in the conversation but it's this right   now it feels like we are just overwhelmed with all  this stuff like we don't know how we'll ever get   social media under control we don't know what to  do about disinformation cancelling seems to have   taken universities by storm and increasingly moved  into newsrooms and even corporate hr departments   here's the thing the constitution of knowledge  is different from a marketplace of ideas because   it's not self-maintaining we need to  maintain it we need to understand it   if we shore it up if we strengthen it we're  10 feet tall not they are that's a big if   but i'm hopeful got a long way to go but there  are a lot of measures that we can take i've   listed some of them here i won't try to go through  them all but but and a lot of these are already   beginning to happen and it's important to remember  that only the constitution of knowledge can build   all of that data that's in all of those libraries  all of that information create an entire global   society of knowledge seekers who never ever go  to war in order to settle disagreements this   is a revolution in human affairs and one  other thing to remember is only one system   that can do this so thank you over to  bruce and oh very good jonathan that is   i guess a little bit chilling to think about not  only the foreign manipulation but the internal   manipulation so we get into that but i think  because some of the reviews have focused on   something you didn't talk as much about  to be fair to the viewers and give them   what we suggested which is that you  worry about this problem not just   on the right which is very obvious to a bay  area audience you don't have to convince them   but let's talk a little bit about uh your  chapters on canceling and the same kinds   of problems that you see on the left let's  be fair and and see the whole spectrum of it i'm i'm for it should i should i just dive in  with our quick synopsis dive right in and tell us   i think i think to be fair why don't you just  describe that because they're very interesting   chapters and for those of us who teach on a  regular basis it's something that we have to   think about and grapple with so yeah why don't  you describe that part of the book just briefly   yeah if there's one new idea in this book that  i'd like to leave people with apart from the   idea of the constitution of knowledge that we have  one it's something that we're not used to really   thinking about which is what i just described  russian-style disinformation and propaganda   is very different in terms of its methods  and who's using it and what ideologies   it's attached to at the moment from what we  call cancel culture a term that didn't exist   when i started the book but they are both in fact  forms of information warfare that is they attempt   to organize and manipulate the social and media  environments for political gain so cancel culture   does it differently before that term came along  i called it social coercion or coerced conformity   so here's the idea you can do an experiment you  put eight people in a room you give them a simple   test that says it's just the answer is obvious  you ask them which of three lines on the right   matches the same length as the right on left you  make it blindingly obvious that it's impossible   to get it wrong but eight people in that room but  there's a catch one is the experimental subject   the other seven are actors the right answer is be  and it's obvious and when people are left to their   own devices they always get it right but in that  room at that time seven of those people will say c   they create a false consensus in the  room what is the eighth person the   actual subject to a third of the time they  actually go with the wrong answer they go with the   group answer whether because they want to conform  socially whether because they really think they   might be wrong maybe this is an obstacle optical  illusion and i'm not getting it maybe they have   genuine doubt a third of people um a third of  participants do that and us in 75 of the time   a person will do it in at least one trial  in multiple trials so now flash forward to   the presence suppose you've got a community  like a university suppose a group a small   group of faction you know maybe 20 percent of the  university or 10 or whatever suppose they are very   motivated activists who want to impose a point  of view manipulate the environment for political   advantage intimidate silence their opponents well  you can weaponize social media you can weaponize   course evaluations against professors you can use  rules against harassment to launch investigations   you can just use denunciations of people as racist  so that people who hold certain points of view or   want to ask certain points of questions will feel  very reluctant to do that it becomes very risky to   go anywhere near these topics they become chilled  and indeed polls now find that two-thirds of unity   university students say that they avoid  expressing a real political views for   fear of social consequences i've talked to many  professors they're quoted in the books including   by the way many many progressive professors  who say they don't feel safe teaching the   way they want to teach they're worried  about social consequences investigations   so this has two results one is the obvious result  which is you can shut down the people that you   don't want to be heard but the second result is  you're actually playing with people's minds right   because you're creating a false consensus it  looks like everyone on campus believes for example   um well take your proposition we won't get into  everyone believes that anyone who doesn't believe   that is isolated shameful stigmatized that plays  with our brains that makes us think we're in doubt   we're ashamed of ourselves we must be wrong so  that can go on in a university environment then   it turns out social media makes that quite easy  to organize and do in a public environment so   now we see cases again and again of social  media campaigns being used to isolate shame   people go after their employers people are now  fired um if they become controversial on social   media demolish people's reputations if they're  called racists so that's what comes up on google   secondary boycotts big part of that that's where  you go after their friends their professional   associates they say bruce kane how can you  associate with jonathan rash you know he's   a racist right so now you're going to have to  denounce me you're going to feel intimidated   you'll be drawn into the same denial of reality  so that worked in the soviet union although they   used cruder methods for the most part they just  you know sent you to siperia but this can allow   a minority meaning a numerical minority to  sustain a false consensus and impose its   alternative vision on reality on a society really  for quite a long time we now see that happening   nationally 60 percent of americans say that  they're reluctant to state their true political   views for fear of social consequence a third of  americans say they're worried if they state their   true political views that they will lose a job  or job opportunities and that by the way bruce   this is a new and important development that  is now just as true of progressives as it is   of conservatives so houston we have a problem  so do you see this as primarily a kind of   problem of a new technology of communication and  combined with some sort of culture of going public   it just seems people want to go public with their  views a lot more and in other words is it possible   that there was always this danger but it's just  the fact that a so many people are now easily   part of the public dialogue that they're  confronting what normal political figures   always had to confront in terms of castigation  etc yeah that's that's such an important question   there's a bunch of historical material in the book  but it's it's a perfect storm it's new technology   um new ideologies and above all new actors so we  know cancel culture is ancient um we saw it in   the salem witch trials we saw it in 1835 alexis  de tocqueville that's the name you'll recognize   came to america and says the biggest threat to  freedom in america is not from the government   it's from what we now call canceling if you  get on the wrong side of received opinion you   can lose your livelihood your friends so you'll  submit you'll just be quiet in 1859 john stuart   mill says exactly the same thing is the case in in  victorian england the disinformation tactics the   fire hose of falsehood that dates over a century  hitler and goebbels used that lenin used that so   why do we have this new problem in america  right now number one we have the technology   we've talked about which have made it trivially  easy to spread this information to target this   information uses uses bots to do that you can test  this information in seconds you put it out there   you see what spreads virally bots automatically  are programmed to amplify that you can exploit   vulnerabilities in social media you know it  used to be very hard to do this a kgb agent   would have to plant documents on like a shipwreck  in order to make them seem authentic well you know   now you just kind of found stuff on hunter biden's  hard drive and you send it through social media   so you got technology you have ideologies which  is for example emotional safetyism which is   useful for counselors because it says if  that emotional damage aka offendedness is   equivalent to physical damage and  that's a violation of my rights   so that's useful on college campuses to suppress  alternate viewpoints and then the i think the   most important i know this sounds partisan  i'm not a partisan person i'm center-right   i've voted for and supported many republicans  i just think this is the truth the facts right   now you have new actors you've got trolls on  social media that's anti-vaxxers it was gamergate   um new publications you've got conservative  media which is in many ways in its own epistemic   environment most important you have donald j trump  bruce we have never seen the situation before when   a presidential candidate and then a president  with all the uh the capabilities of his office   and his genius he is a disinformation  genius she's the best since the 1930s   plus conservative media plus the republican  party have all been used as an institutional   organ of disinformation propaganda we have just  simply never had to deal with that in america   before it is it is new when you add those three  things together yeah you get a complicated and   worrisome situation well actually answer touches  on a question that one of the viewers brought up   which is the role the republican party so let me  pull it out a little bit on this question uh he   wants to know what role the parties had so let's  explore this for a second uh and ask the question   that often gets asked in washington is it more  of the democrats or is it more the republicans   uh you could say that it's it's uh based on what  your comments that it seems like you believe that   it's the republican party is is more should we  say dedicated to this task of disinformation but   if you look at the history of sort of political  consulting 20 years ago you and i were you know   talking about terms like truthiness and  spins and as does to what extent uh do   political consultants take facts and spin the  interpretation in a direction that sort of leaves   things out it doesn't lie but it leaves things  out so is there a pathway in terms of the sort of   win-now mentality on both parties to the kind of  disinformation you're talking about or and if we   crossed a line that's different from the line that  we maybe had 20 or 30 years ago in your view again   this will sound partisan i think it's just the  case we haven't crossed the line the republican   party has crossed the line the democrats have  not they could you know if history were different   they might have just as well done what trump did  these tactics are available and anyone can pick   them up they're not ideological these are just  tools they're just weapons leninists use them   communists nazis use the fascists you can use them  in all kinds of ways but no the democrats have not   whether because of opportunity or motive or just  because this structure their party is different   they have not nor in the past have republicans  ever done anything like for example the stop the   steel campaign a a massive effort by the party  by conservative media by the republican base   and above all by donald j trump to push out all  kinds of falsehoods conspiracy theories half   truths exaggeration through every available media  channel as well as through political channels   as well as through the courts that's what those  frivolous lawsuits about they weren't going to win   but if you can push dozens of them out there  and then they get rejected you can say see   we know the truth but the establishment is  covering it up that's that's a tactic called   conspiracy bootstrapping so no we have never seen  that uh we we have seen ordinary political spin   ordinary political lies that's as old as the  hills what i try to communicate is that what's   happening now russian style disinformation mass  scale fire hose of falsehood tactics conspiracy   bootstrapping trolling out of the oval  office um that's never been tried in america   so let me dive a little deeper into some of  the core ideas of this sort of constitution of   knowledge a lot of your examples are about facts  and how we come to understand facts and science   in journalism and law et cetera but when we're  talking about the political realm uh we're not   just talking about facts we're talking about  interpretation and we're talking about values   and you can tell a pretty good story about how  we determine facts and chemistry and physics or   even in reporting in terms of what actually  happened but when we go to try to understand why   it happened or you know what it means inevitably  sort of subjective judgment come in so does the   constitution of knowledge you feel like we've  made as much progress uh in sort of the realm of   politics and policy uh in terms of finding ways  to establish truth or is it impossible when it   comes to political behavior to talk about truth  because it necessarily means did you have this   subjective component that that really all we can  hope for is agreement or agreement to disagree   but we can't really find truth i mean i'm just  wondering whether the knowledge component you   have is largely about facts and determining  facts which is important because of all the   manipulation you're talking about but in terms  of the finding consensus don't we have to go   further and figure out how to get agreement when  our values are different so here's something my   book says that others um some philosophers will  not agree with but which i think is is the case   um i'm going to reframe your question a little  bit bruce and say can political science ever be   as crisp an empirical science as chemistry or  can morality ever be as crisp discipline as   political science and the answer is that there's  a sliding scale and that some kinds of questions   are very amenable to being settled empirically  which is to say by different observers looking   at different things applying different tests  and coming to some kind of consensus over time and that's right moral questions when does a  human life begin um is one close to my heart   is homosexual love in some way inferior to  heterosexual love you know these questions are   not going to be settled in a lab but okay so  here's my claim constitution of knowledge cannot   resolve every kind of disagreement in fact on  any given day it can't resolve most of them   it does resolve some that's a big deal but on  any given day the constitution of knowledge can   organize the conversation a public conversation  about a disagreement in a way that's most likely   to be peaceful and productive so one way to talk  about abortion is just to scream at each other   you know have have competing protest lines yelling  at each other from across the sidewalk in front of   the abortion clinic another way is to have a  conversation where we disagree but i say well   here's my reason for thinking life begins at birth  if that's what i think look at the heartbeat look   at the sonograph look at what aristotle has to say  about human life look at the christian tradition   you martial factual arguments and moral arguments  and values arguments on the other side and then   we do what the constitution of knowledge does we  present those to the larger network of reality   based observer and they go to work on it they  say well is bruce wright about this is john   right about that what are the implications of that  what other ideas do we bring in it does turn out   that over time on moral questions like slavery  a classic example the constitution of knowledge   does a pretty good job of guiding the conversation  in ways that are actually more pro-human more   grounded in reality i'm a beneficiary of that i  am i am married to the man whose picture you saw   a few minutes ago the world i grew up  in gay marriage was inconceivable i mean   it was it was laughable it was unthinkable  that's because of a structured conversation   that people like me were involved in  making our case making claims saying   we're strengthening marriage not weakening  it and here's what happened in massachusetts   and over time making headway and by god we were  right and by god eventually people came around   yeah well that's an a that's a good story but uh  sometimes i get very discouraged on it then about   the story with respect to race i guess i sort  of was one of those people that thought we had   made a lot of progress and i think we have made  some progress but then you see what's happened   recently in terms of racial polarization and you  wonder whether the constitution of knowledge is   working very well in that why do you think we  succeeded with respect to gay rights but we   have seemed to fallen back into controversies that  i guess i naively thought we had made progress on   you know uh several decades ago well we're not  done on sexual minorities of course because   there's issues about transgender and  my transgender friends will tell you   that their life is not easy and there's some  very thorny debates there that are happening   about the medicine of what to do about kids and  what to do about sports and what is fairness so   this is like peeling an onion and you know race  is is so freighted and so complicated um but i   see what's happening now as as an advance for  the constitutional knowledge at least if we do   it right and here's what i mean by that um you're  a scientist by training a political scientist but   you know as you understand every so often you know  science thinks it's got a conclusion that can't   be questioned and then someone brings something  new to the table a new way of thinking about it   new evidence sometimes it's so big  people call it a paradigm shift   every generation will bring new evidence and  another thing about the constitutional knowledge   is it keeps expanding the community that it works  with it used to be basically a small subset of   very privileged educated white males the biggest  development in science right now is the onboarding   of millions of first-rate  mines in developing countries   in places like africa which are now joining  the system and bringing their own perspectives   uh gay people have come in and are questioning  some fundamentals about sexual research so   that's a natural part of the process and i see  these new questions that are coming up as vital   questions that in some ways you know if most  of the people having a conversation are white   or privileged or whatever you know that  doesn't mean they're getting the wrong answer   or that they're racist but it might mean that  they're questions that they're forgetting to ask   assumptions that they're taking for granted i'm  happy to see this challenge i just think it's   very important they be challenged in the right way  cancel culture should not be part of anti-racism   anti-racism should be debated like any other  point of view you should be able to disagree   without losing your friends or your job and if  we get that right then i think we're we're in   store for another big spurt of learning about  what racism is and what defines it what drives   it and how to deal with it if we get it right  i hope you're right so let's go to some of the   questions that have been put in and actually  this one we'll start with this one it says   uh what might be the motivation for disinformation  campaigners like steve bannon what does he gain   within the trump organizations especially since  he's not really in it these days uh but what does   he gain and um what's he doing is it is it i  can do this because i can do this and it's fun   what what exactly is the motivation he wants to  know well that's a rich and complicated question   there is actually evidence called the need for  chaos finding that about 20 to 25 percent of   people actually have an instinctive thirst for  chaos they like nihilism they like tearing things   down kind of social vandalism they think that's  fun and we do see that in trolling behaviors we   saw it in gamergate we see it in people who engage  in harassment for the sphere what they call walls   of it but no that's not most of what steve bannon  is doing he's doing a couple of things now he   i'm going to generate generalization people  let's say people like that bannonites trump bites   so first thing is they're making money off it  right because a great way to sell a media product   is by being outrageous and finding out what your  audience wants to hear giving them more of it   even if it's false second there is a big political  advantage this is why vladimir putin does it   suppose you want to keep power and suppose the  facts are not amenable to you're doing so like   for example suppose you're a kleptocrat who's  you know stealing probably i don't know what   one or two percent of the gdp of russia well  what you want to do is make people cynical   and doubtful about those facts or any other facts  so they won't know who to trust and that makes   it easier for you to manipulate the system and be  demagogic create cynicism mistrust and capture the   narrative the story for yourself if you're putin  you can say well i'm not corrupt you're corrupt   um everyone's corrupt no one's corrupt  who knows we'll never really know   this paves the way for demagogues the slogan  here that i like to keep in mind is remember   that the ultimate target of most disinformation  campaigns is to demoralize the other side   the people who politically you want to dominate  by making them feel helpless cynical isolated   just plain wrong doubtful but  if you can succeed in doing that   demoral demoralization is demobilization  they'll stay home they'll stop fighting you   and that's what you want if you're a demagogue and  that's what you want if you're an american leader   who wants to create a cult  of personality around himself   and who wants as few questions as possible asked  about um about his domination of a political party   so what kind of couple questions is the  origins of some of the disinformation so   one of our viewers asks what can be done about fox  news this gets to that sort of third part that you   wanted to talk about the 10 feet tall what can be  done about fox news which has been promulgating   a false reality through a fire hose of  disinformation for decades so is there something   to be done and if so what is it within the sort  of framework of the constitution of knowledge   well there's all kinds of  things to be done that's um   i'm gonna i'm gonna generalize the question  beyond just fox news fox news you know it's it's a   mixture because the late night host lineup can go  in for some really uh extraordinary disinformation   campaigns like hannity's campaign on on seth  rich a false conspiracy theory but other people   there chris wallace are very good and they called  arizona right so it's a mix the media environment   is always a mix so i'm going to generalize the  question and say to what sorts of things work   when you're when you're in an environment  where you've got a lot of disinformation a   lot of cancelling going on remember we should  think about this as an environmental problem   it's like you know the kids are getting  dumber they're not doing as well in school   their attention spans are getting  shorter you can sit around thinking   well what are we doing wrong as parents how do we  improve the curricula but check the water first   because if there's lead in the water you've got  an environmental problem same thing is true here   so how do we clean up the environment first  you get more resilient that means individuals   need to get savvier about the fact that we're  being targeted now by very effective sophisticated   weapons of epistemic warfare it's harder not  impossible but it's harder to manipulate a   population that knows that it's being manipulated  these are still powerful tools either way   and we're seeing some of that people are more  aware of that now and they're getting more   sophisticated about things like what they retweet  you need a media that's smarter about debunking   stuff without repeating it about checking  the provenance of stuff before it circulates   about covering disinformation as part of  the news media is getting better at that   need watchdog groups that will alert the public  and especially social media and on occasion   governments when they spot the germination of  a conspiracy theory that's about to go viral or   a disinformation campaign and we've seen that  places like the stanford internet observatory   right there on your campus there are now dozens of  those places and countries around the world that   are helping keep us informed and understanding  what we're what we're going to get hit with   you redesign social media platforms you also  change their policies but i think people debate   too much about you know who who goes on who  who stays who goes content moderation that's   important but more important is redesigning  these systems so they're more epistemically   robust because right now they're encouraging us to  immediately say retweet an outrageous statement or   conspiracy theory well twitter started putting up  a warning screen before you do that saying do you   want to read the link before you retweet it stuff  like that behavioral intervention sounds small   but in the constitution of knowledge  those add up to the incentives that   make bruce kane for example think twice before  he lards his academic journals with insults there   are a lot of disincentives a lot of stopping  points that'll prevent him from doing that   liberals are starting to organize progressives  that's a big deal against cancel culture you   need counter organization because remember the key  here is that numerical majorities can dominate the   debate by intimidating disorganized majorities  when the majority start counter-organizing   and forming groups and pushing back  that changes the power equation we're   starting to see that we're seeing  many new groups that are advocating   um different kinds of free speech putting  pushing back against council culture things   like counterweight which is helping employees  who are targeted academic freedom alliance out   of princeton uh foundation against intolerance  and racism and they're more coming by the day   and especially important progresses who are now  something that was not true three or four years   ago progressives now realize that they are equally  targeted as conservatives by disinformation so   they're joining the fight and that could be  a game changer civil society is mobilizing   that's like braver angels a group that i  work with which is a national grassroots   depolarizing movement we don't have to be  slaves of these media and depolarization we   can take community level action to begin to  repair some of the social bridges that help   help guide us against polarization and and  toward truth and it turns out that that's   starting to work so i'm not saying any of this is  inevitable i'm just saying that if we start doing   these and many other things across society it's  a whole society effort not just one or two things   then i think we win and they lose but we got to do  those things sorry about the long answer bruce but   oh i think i'm sure you appreciated  that so uh another question that comes   up becomes brings us back to the role of  universities and uh asks whether in some way   disinformation from academia maybe from research   is somehow responsible for the proliferation of  cancer culture and so i guess let's try to unpack   a little bit about why you think universities  have taken this turn uh in terms of you know   if you like policing speech rather than  promoting speech what's your take on all that   well uh thanks for raising it i'd actually be  interested in your take if we have a minute to   to hear it because i'm not a academic creature  i'm a journalist by training and by disposition   but i sure have read a lot of the  evidence and talked to a lot of the people   the case of academic academia is  very different from say steve bannon   i don't think we're seeing massive intentional  disinformation propaganda campaigns pouring out   from academia in an effort to make  the public cynical divided demoralized   and so forth i think what we have seen especially  in some disciplines in the social sciences and   humanities is a decline in viewpoint diversity  and that has direct and indirect political effects   and also scientific effects so we are incapable  of seeing our own biases this is well proven   how do we find mistakes as a society  well we look for other people's biases   other people look for our biases that's how we  correct errors and we have to let that happen   constitution of knowledge like the us constitution  only works where you have diversity otherwise   one point of view will take over it'll go  unquestioned it'll become a dogma and you will   see you won't see knowledge advance in academia in  a bunch of fields and certainly on some campuses   in some departments you're now seeing disciplines  where they're basically no conservatives or so few   is to make no difference and recent studies are  looking at out and out discrimination viewpoint   discrimination in academia they're finding  that too interestingly they're finding that   conservatives are just as willing to discriminate  against progressives as progressives are against   conservatives it's just conservatives don't have  the opportunity because there aren't enough of   them to do the discriminating but one result of  that is it makes it very easy for activists with   a certain point of view to essentially  run rampant to control the conversation   because there aren't enough people around who can  call that into question and another problem is the   scientific problem too many questions don't get  asked too many easy lazy assumptions get made when   you don't have real viewpoint diversity that's  the problem with for example making it a hazardous   condition at a university for a professor to talk  in a class about evidence that maybe police are   not discriminating on bases of color maybe it's  other kinds of discrimination other kinds of   problems at the journal of the american medical  association an editor was fired not for something   that he said but just because someone else on  a jama podcast suggested that race was not the   leading factor disadvantaging people of color  that it was socioeconomic he's fired for that   well when that's going on when there's not enough  viewpoint diversity to sustain a debate academic   work will become distorted and slanted and we will  lose knowledge the good news is that there is a   growing movement led by heterodox academy jonathan  height an inspiration for this book and now an   increasing number of other people in academia  who are becoming aware of this problem and who   are starting to put their heads together and try  to figure out if it can be fixed it's not an easy   problem to solve because as you know bruce right  now there are not a ton of conservatives in the   academic pipeline in the social sciences but if we  put our minds to it if we realize it's a problem   i don't know what do you think do you think  this is addressable or do you think my diagnosis   is even right um no your diagnosis uh has a lot  of elements of truth i mean certainly i agree   with you that particularly say in law schools and  the humanities there's actual papers that show   the law school data is actually adabataka at  stanford has actually analyzed the campaign   contributions from law school faculty and it is  overwhelmingly uh democratic and liberal so and   certainly many of the humanities are also that way  a little less so i would say with economics and   engineering and some other fields or business for  example so i think sometimes the picture of the   university is being uniformly liberal is a little  overdrawn let's remember stanford which is a   pretty damn liberal place in terms of the student  body has the hoover institution okay uh and we   have as a faculty affirmed the right of the hoover  institution to remain part of stanford university   but it is it is something that a lot of us and  the faculty worry about which is getting students   to think for themselves there is something that  you're on to i think jonathan about the the degree   to which their social media habits the homogeneity  of the people that show up particularly in the   elite campuses as opposed to the public campuses  create a kind of real pressure to go along in   order to get along and that's always there in that  age group i mean you and i when we were in college   remember that that was going on but it seems i  think in many ways to be reinforced and i think   a lot of faculty believe that it's very important  to uh to push back against that into challenge but   you're right if you if your salary depends upon  the fact that the student evaluations on courses   are positive you're going to be less likely to  push and so i do worry a lot about the kind of   u.s news and world report ranking of schools so  the schools have to compete for the best students   on in terms of numerical indicators i do worry  about the fact that faculty evaluations from the   students are are put into whether you get promoted  or tenure because i think that does make people   hesitate want to be popular with the students  and i think that does mean that you abdicate   your responsibility to challenge them but that  said i mean there's a deeper question that i   want to get to which is what's the role of a  university in this spectrum uh that includes   the kinds of places like brookings and the aei  and then you know the actual elected officials   i mean to what degree i think a lot of my  colleagues want to get into the business of   actually advocating for solutions and once you  do that i think you necessarily have to bring   in value as well as fact and so i i wonder  whether some of our problems with respect to   people doubting the science of climate change  has to do with the fact that uh if if you're a   judge you have to appear to be neutral if you're  somebody providing the facts maybe you have to go   out of your way to let your value judgments be in  the background or to act more neutrally you know   some of the problems we've had with climate  change has to do with the fact that people   some of the scientists were caught thinking about  climate change politics right they were there was   a discussion going on with some british academics  about it and so it became unclear as to whether   they were acting as scientists or as political  actors so i mean i think though do you see a kind   of a more cabined role for academic research that  it should stay out of the engagement of issues   or do you think that we should be engaged more  because that's a big issue right now on a lot of   campuses are we doing too little or too much well  as as you probably know bruce american academia   arises from long from from decades before there  were research universities our colleges were there   to train ministers and farmers um to teach them  the classics to make them better citizens and   to teach values really so and universities  have always been hotbeds of activism social   activism too so both of these things are  part of their role and i'm okay with that   but the condition there is a condition that  that you alluded to don't compromise on rigor   don't compromise on checking for error don't let  your politics interfere with the constitutional   knowledge our first political commitment and it is  a political commitment it is a values commitment   is to the rules that say things like no truthiness  in science in journalism in law and government   the fact that you think something should be  true or that maybe it's part of a narrative   that's kind of kind of you think might be true  that's not good enough when you get into the realm   of of knowledge there's some rules you need to  apply and those rules including include saying you   know what this is what i think but i'm not sure  here's the best evidence what do you think if we   do that then i think we can do a pretty good job  of not getting too politicized um sure i accepted   the values and facts always commingle and and they  always should and the case i'm making my book is   ultimately case for values because the claim i'm  making about the constitutional knowledge rests on   my argument that it is better at producing  freedom knowledge and above all peace   by far than any other social system for  deciding what's true and what's false but   to be convincing people have to agree with me  that freedom knowledge and peace are good things   so yeah a very specific application of the point  you're making bruce is a lot of journalists   including me are more and more uneasy with  the crossover into opinion and the news pages   in particular with the use of social media by  reporters to express opinions and i know a lot   of editors a lot of publications that would put a  stop to that if they thought they could right now   they think they can't but people are becoming more  aware of this problem we lose the public's trust   in the reality-based community if we either  are politicized or if we're seen as politicized   yeah i mean it's interesting because when i  was growing up it seemed to me that we went to   the newspapers to actually get what happened now  because of social media you know we already know   what's happened when we wake up in the morning and  read the newspapers which then pushes the media   necessarily into interpretation so it does seem  like once again uh a kind of underlying change   in the way we get information is uh part of this  the the the the sort of velocity problem that you   talk about in the book that that information gets  out there so fast maybe in in in advance of our   uh you know our ability to judge it so let i mean  we only have uh we're getting towards the end so i   want to come back to uh the suggestions you make  and the question of whether you have optimism or   uh about where we are are we i mean i i at this  particular point in time there we still have   the disinformation on uh the january sixth  insurrection uh the republicans refused to   go along with the plan to have an independent  commission and so now the democrats are going   forward with a select committee nancy pelosi has  said that they're going to discover the truth   is trying to find that truth to a select committee  within you know is that likely to make any   progress in getting us to understand the truth  or well what do you do when you can't have i mean   your constitution and knowledge would prefer  the independent commission i'm assuming   not the democratic controlled select committee  so what do you do when you can't have   the can the right conditions of objective  did do you do nothing or do you go ahead   with something which is uh itself somewhat  tainted by the suspicion of partisanship the   big answer to that question society-wide is  you rebuilt in all the ways that i mentioned   uh the specific answer in terms of that commission  is you show your work you just be extra rigorous   and extra careful to document every claim that  you make and you go out of your way to include   dissenting views and you put that down there too  but you go into it knowing that because it's nancy   pelosi's select committee that a lot of americans  are simply going to reject it out of hand   and other americans who might not reject it will  think its conclusions might or might not be true   when in fact its conclusions are just plain true  a disinformation warfare campaign will be waged   against that report regardless of what it says um  and so this is why i call this an environmental   problem earlier anything you introduce into a  corrupt environment becomes corrupted it corrodes   if you introduce it to an oxygen you know if it's  metal and you you leave it outside in the rain   same thing is true here and that's why i keep  emphasizing the answers to the specific problems   are to begin fighting back on all these multiple  fronts so you asked am i optimistic i tell people   i'm hopeful uh it's too early to be optimistic  because these tactics that we're talking about now   uh disinformation trolling canceling conspiracy  bootstrapping they are in control of a major   political party at the moment it is now  established that that party can can and   will continue to do those things even if donald  trump loses the presidency in his twitter account   cancellers are still pretty much running  rampant um and we're in the same position that   an epidemiologically naive population meaning  a non-previously exposed population is when   it hits a new virus it just seems  to run rampant to the population   will we develop enough resilience enough immunity  enough resistance fast enough to get back on our   feet re-establish some public norms for truth um  rebuild trust and rebuild buy-in i don't honestly   know the answer that bruce but i do know one  thing for sure which is if we sit on our rear   ends thinking well it'll all sort itself out  the marketplace of ideas will find uh is it   will do the job and cancel culture will subside  because people get bored with it that's not enough   so i i i i i agree with a lot of what you said uh  one question i would have though is the context   of politics right now where we have two  closely divided parties right where winning   is really at stake and the polarization has been  going on for 20 years we have rising inequality we   have challenges presented by immigration um how do  we sort out in terms of what we're doing to sort   of you know make the discussion more rational how  much of it should be actually addressing some of   these underlying problems of people that used to  be able to have union jobs not having union jobs   people being threatened by cultural change i  mean how much time do we spend on the way we   communicate with one another and how much is  it really addressing some of these underlying   problems in your view i think we all do as much as  we can wherever we can be most constructive it's   just that simple the problems you mentioned  do feed into each other one of the products   of propaganda maybe the most important is  polarization this is what vladimir putin does   he determines where the dividing lines where the  schisms the fractures are in american society and   then uses propaganda to amplify them that's why  during 2016 russian trolls were able to stimulate   opposing protests on both sides of  the street in several american cities   thereby making demonstrations of how weak and  divided our society is and polarization in turn   returns the compliment because it makes it lays  the groundwork for propaganda a polarized society   is more willing to think the worst of the other  side to believe conspiracy theories to disbelieve   facts so these things all feed each other  and that makes it all sound insurmountable   i would just remind people that we have surmounted  challenges crises of these in the past not with   ease the civil war that that was we don't  want that again but there's a lot we can do   and and the point is to get started doing what we  what we as an individual and what our institutions   stanford brookings wherever we work what we  can do and just start and go and and not forget   that over time the constitution of knowledge  has been society's best performing institution   it has revelation sorry it has revolutionized  our capacity as a species to have peace and   freedom and knowledge and we still got those  principles on our side if we mobilize so one   last question from the audience which is uh you  know is there any role or important role here for   intellectual humility and genuine willingness to  persuade to be persuaded oh yeah that's a softball   yeah yeah of course that's that's the spirit of  learning um and that doesn't mean we should go   into every conversation without having strong  opinions strong opinions are the the lifeblood   of the constitutional laws you want people to  take strong opinions and defend them vigorously   that's that's how we get the the passion  that is needed to surmount all the   many difficulties and expenses of building  knowledge but at the end of the day it's like   you know if you lose an election you have to  be willing to move on to the next election   if you lose the argument you need to be willing  to say okay maybe i was wrong that time i'm still   not sure i was wrong but let me see how else  i can contribute constructively to the debate   yeah sometimes easier said than done always yeah  so uh i think um you know our time is uh coming up   to uh the end here and so i want to thank jonathan  for joining us today's commonwealth club program   nice bruce i want to thank you i can't i can't  imagine a better interlocutor and i've learned   so much from your political science over the years  i hope i can repay a little bit of that in this   this thinking you did very much i really enjoyed  reading the book and i want to encourage all the   viewers to purchase the new book again it's called  the constitution of knowledge a defense of truth   uh and you can buy it wherever i think almost  all bookstores are probably carrying it   and this program will be placed on the  commonwealth club website which you can   find at commonwealthclub.org and we encourage you  to view it and share it i'm bruce kane and this is   the commonwealth club program is now adjourned  so thank you very much and thank you jonathan you

Channel: Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California

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Keywords: CommonwealthClub, CommonwealthClubofCalifornia, Sanfrancisco, Nonprofitmedia, nonprofitvideo, politics, Currentevents, CaliforniaCurrentEvents, #newyoutubevideo, #youtubechannel, #youtubechannels, jonathanrauch

Id: DMoZzm1owFw

Length: 65min 42sec (3942 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 31 2021