Exploring Political Polarization, Big Tech Influence, and Academic Freedom with David Beckemeyer

Ever found yourself struggling to express your sentiments on sensitive topics? Picture yourself in a conversation with David Beckmeyer, a retired tech executive, host of the Outrage Overload podcast, and a research enthusiast. Together, we're going to navigate the tightrope of the modern political landscape, where labels are quick to stick, and accusations fly for those not conforming to the stereotypical 'lefty' or 'hardcore trumper' moulds.

We'll dissect the impact of media, psychological fallacies, and the glaring lack of communication between folks with differing opinions in creating a polarized environment. Hint: It's not as simple as 'good versus evil.' We'll explore how this moralization of the political landscape obstructs productive debate and compromise, the very essence of democracy and a representative republic. As we shift gears, we'll also discuss the outsized role and oversight of big tech in our society, their influence on free speech, and the necessity for public oversight to prevent censorship.

Finally, we'll connect the dots between the DeSantis campaign's use of video graphics, the Buckley Institute poll's findings on college students' views on free speech, and their wider implications. We'll reflect on the challenges that the academic world faces due to political polarization and its impact on professors and students. In the end, we'll contemplate the importance of trust in news sources, the danger of false information, and the need for a nuanced approach to complex issues. Together, we'll seek the path towards rebuilding trust, appreciating disagreements, and fostering a culture of respectful dialogue. So, are you ready to step into the gray area?

Time Stamps

0:00 Political Extremism and Lowering the Temperature

11:00 Perceptions of Political Labels and Bipartisanism

14:32 Political Discourse and Media Influence Challenges

21:22 Impact and Oversight of Big Tech

30:20 Media, Free Speech, and College Students

34:57 Academic Freedom and Public Trust Challenges

39:47 Navigating Trust in News Sources

45:17 Rebuilding Trust and Seeking Direction

50:16 Restoring Trust With Expert Involvement

57:56 Pleasure of Conversation and Disagreement

Music: Coma-Media (intro)
                 WinkingFoxMusic (outro)
Recorded: 9/16/23

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello everyone, thank you for tuning in today. In today's episode, get ready to hear about societal outrage, political extremism and our featured guests' work on lowering the temperature in contemporary politics. This episode features David Beckmeyer. Beckmeyer is a retired tech executive, entrepreneur, developer, mentor, investor and advisor in the San Francisco Bay Area, with over 20 years of experience founding, running, advising and investing in tech startups. These days, he is a science communicator and host of the Outrage Overload podcast, where he speaks with scientists, researchers, authors and experts on outrage in society, outrage in politics and lowering the temperature. If you enjoy this conversation, all I ask is that you share it with a friend. Thank you. What led you to this work in political extremism and outrage politics? What brought you to this moment where you're now operating in?

Speaker 2: 1:12

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of us can relate to some of this. Ultimately, I reached my own outrage overload. I was sort of the guy out there singing and dancing about things and getting online arguments about things. I was also witnessing a lot of other people doing that to even larger degrees. We were watching this escalate over between the lockdowns and people getting angry about that and just escalation of political campaigns. It's in the news, it's in the campaigns, it's in our own personal lives.

Speaker 2: 1:48

I think all of those things contributed to taking a step back and saying there's something going on here. And being retired and then, being a researchy nerd, it got me interested in trying to look at this. There's something going on, like for losing friends and family. There's something going on. Then I sort of went down that path and then dove in. I said is there something here? Is this going to be a blog? Is this going to be a blog? Is this going to be just some essays or is there anything here at all?

Speaker 2: 2:20

That's kind of led me ultimately to a podcast. Seemed like a good format. You could go as you know. You can go in a little bit more depth than a 10-minute or a five-minute segment on TV and really give experts some more time to really dive into things. That's kind of where it took me, like a combination of what I saw in the world and my own personal life. I was kind of like a big fan of the musical as well, like people. I know One of the things with my son getting off social media and then us having a conversation about what drove that and that kind of thing. So yeah, it was this kind of combination of life experience and then witnessing what was going on out in the world.

Speaker 1: 2:54

Yeah, almost that you could ignore it no longer, and then might as well be an active participant in a productive way, rather than be a bystander in this kind of toxic way.

Speaker 2: 3:06

Exactly, and I think that there was very much. I spent a fair bit of time researching what this looked like and what might this be about, and I really started to get this kind of visceral sense, for there is, like a lot of people that are in a similar boat. There's a lot of people that have been pushed on the edge there and they kind of know maybe I don't want to be angry all the time and maybe I don't want to be fighting with my friends and neighbors and so on, and maybe we need to maybe look at what some of these options are. And I think that really also helped that fire it up, that there's a thing Like nobody was really serving that too well. So I thought, well, I can take a science spin to it and look at what scientists and researchers and experts and practitioners are saying about this.

Speaker 1: 3:52

Yeah, and in that vein, what have been some of your biggest takeaways so far?

Speaker 2: 3:57

Yeah Well, I think right away it started off, even before the podcast launched I started doing these what I call sort of these street outrage man on the street interviews. So I was talking to sort of regular people and I had some anthropologists and social scientists help me kind of craft some questions. They're sort of nonpartisan and I asked, like everybody you know, the same questions, and I don't push back, I just listen. And in those conversations I learned so much because you find you don't often go into that mode where you just listen and let people and other people aren't expecting you to either. So what you find is people would say things that they often are sort of afraid to say once they realize you're not going to push back, you're not going to argue with them and you're not going to criticize them for whatever. And so I started to really see, as I was able to have conversations with people across the political spectrum, I was able to learn quite a lot from it. That and that was sort of step one that there's that's one problem right there that we're sort of there's a lot of people that are sort of afraid for lack of a better term to sort of even talk about these, these, these issues, and so when you give them that, that platform, they're there. And that that made me actually put the whole thing on pause and maybe think about it a little bit is, you know, just that like what's going on there, and because that starts off right there, there's something wrong and people can't even express their sentiments on things, and so that that was thing.

Speaker 2: 5:18

Number one is that there's a lot of that out there and then as I learned about it, I mean a lot of the big ones are just, you know, it's a hard problem. A lot of people have a lot of thoughts about what's kind of broken or what's happening, but it's hard to find solutions. So I think you know those practitioners are out there trying things and scaling things up is going to be is a challenge. So that's one thing. I think you know the psychological factors are so prevalent and how we all have so many blind spots of these things.

Speaker 2: 5:50

Another thing I've really seen you know viscerally, not just you know the literature. You can read it, you can read the academic papers. I can talk to the scientists, but when you actually see it occurring, so, like when I have those conversations, you can see people doing the things that they're sort of describing. While they're describing it, they're doing it, and so we just have blind spots of that, you know. So we're like we're saying you know, you know things. Like yeah, you're, I'm glad you're working on this division, because the other side is so terrible.

Speaker 1: 6:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:19

You know, and so we just have these blind, and that's just sort of one example. We just have these blind spots that we can't see ourselves doing it and that, you know, is backed up by, you know, the science, and there's lots of theories and different things about that, but that's a big one. It is, I think, so much of it starts with us. You know like and you know I say this all the time that sort of met the enemy and it's us kind of thing, because you know we want to complain about the media, it's the media's fault. Well, we're the ones liking the things, clicking the things, watching the things, you know. And same with politicians. We say we're bad at the politicians but then we reward them when they behave this way. So, you know, that's a big piece of it is, you know, somehow, you know we can't see that we're part of the problem, kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 6:59

And I think what also comes to mind when you mention that person, like I'm glad you're working on this division because other sides, so awful though important is, it almost postures one side is good and the other one is evil. And you see this actually in war, whether that be like, even like World War II, but all every war you know, like calling like Germans to crows and save Vietnam. But the point being is, if they're not human, like, if you go like to subhuman around like they're evil, they're not human, then it justifies your actions against them because they're not human. You know this argument has been made multiple times about history and it justifies horrible behavior as a response.

Speaker 2: 7:40

But I'm yeah, I'm sorry, yeah, exactly, that's exactly right and it helps. It lets us sort of move the bar for what we consider moral behavior right and it also justifies our sort of position. We, to see people, you know, and there's also these incentives right, but they're going to finish the sentence To see people sort of do these important what we consider bad things. That helps us confirm that that's that thing, that we, when we put them in that bucket that says they're bad, we kind of want to keep seeing them do bad things. That keeps confirming that we made the right choice and you know, and so, yeah, so that's a huge piece of it. And so when we and once you moralize something, it's a lot harder to sort of unravel it because you know you can't, because it's wrapped up in your identity now, and so that's a big piece of this too is that we and there's and the incentive systems are what drive that. Like you know, there's a lot of people out there. There's even a lot of podcasts that kind of talk about conspiracy theories and type stuff. I mean that there's a big group somewhere that's in charge of making this happen, and that may be true. I don't know, but you know you can, but you don't need that for this, for this to work right.

Speaker 2: 8:52

Once these incentives are in place, all these actors are just doing what's natural within that incentive structure, right? I mean, so if we're asking for it, politicians are going to do it. Now, did it sort of originate of somebody's idea that we were going to create this environment? Who knows? But it doesn't have to be that way. I mean, all these actors are now in this system and this system encourages that behavior both you know from. So there's all these actors that benefit from this environment. They benefit from us having that black and white, good and evil kind of attitude about things. And so so you see that from politicians, you see it from the news media, you see it from social media, you see it from tech giants, you see it from all these players. And now is there a conspiracy to do it? It doesn't really matter, because the fact is, the incentive structures are there. So it happens.

Speaker 2: 9:45

And I think that when you start to unravel that, it's really hard, because coming up with different incentives like it's sort of just fundamental to the way things have been built and undoing that, gets really hard. A lot of people have proposed ideas for it. But replacing that economy if it's producing all this wealth, replacing that economy like in a one little click of a switch, is quite difficult, right, because nobody wants to give up that position. And I think another thing there that points out that that perception gap is a big one towards improving things, right, so we think they're evil and we think they hate us, and to the degree that both of those things aren't true, to the extent that we think they are, that can make a big difference to start to bring back that humanization of folks. So that's one of the big seems like one of the promising areas If you can start to lower that perception gap and or decrease that perception gap and also bring in those moderate voices, because those loud voices have kind of taken over the space and pushed out the more moderate voices, and so it's harder for someone that says that, someone that is more willing to look at things.

Speaker 2: 11:00

And I don't know if you suffer this on your podcast or not, but I sometimes get accused of not being hard enough on one side or the other. You must be a lefty or you must be a hardcore trumper or whatever. Because I wasn't sort of they didn't feel like I was hard enough on somebody that they thought I should be harder on, and I don't know if you experienced that on your podcast, but that's kind of the environment we're in now, because everybody's sort of trying to label you and when you don't fit the label they almost get mad about it.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Mm-hmm, yeah, I would always and a few people describe themselves as this and I also would identify as such as politically homeless Some issues. Personally, what I like to do too is, when I explore issues, I have my personal beliefs, and I don't usually out them Like it's obvious that someone's listening, paying attention, but what usually happens sometimes too, the panel who listens is because of that say belief before it. Just since I believe in X, I must believe in Y, and therefore, yeah, every position has to be on the right or the left, which is often not the case whatsoever, and you know what.

Speaker 2: 12:05

Sorry, I was just gonna say and as best I can tell is that that's true of most of it Like that's, the largest majority is people. You know, if we sort of divide up, you grabbed a bunch of issues and said, well, these seem to be mostly left issues and these seem to be mostly right issues. And you say, oh, then you know, I mean this column or that column most of us actually are sort of a random shape around those issues. We're grabbing some here and we're grabbing some there. Hardly anyone is just totally in one of those columns.

Speaker 2: 12:30

And that's one of those misperceptions that we, we all feel that way. We all feel like we're you worded it as sort of the homeless. I think, yeah, politically homeless, yeah, politically homeless, we all kind of feel that way, but we all somehow also or not all, but a lot of us also, or a lot of a good percentage of the people also still like, don't kind of create this evil, someone else out there is more evil in some way, and so you know, and but I think that majority, there is a majority out there that fits that kind of category. That is much more fluid about. The fluid's not quite the right word, but they're not necessarily just in one bucket or the other on all issues. And I think, and that doesn't work Like that, doesn't? Politicians don't like that, right? Because it's harder to message, right? They like to message those simple messages, and the same is true for the news media as well. So this is why they all present the false picture that everybody must be in one of those two buckets.

Speaker 1: 13:27

The Wall Street Journal recently conducted a poll and found that both Trump and Biden have identical favorability and unfavorability numbers, with 39% favorable and 58% unfavorable even obviously the majority. Yet most of us vigorously defend these people not just Trump and Biden, but people in those parties and feel as if someone is attacking one or the other is almost an attack on us. What do you think the rationalization is behind this?

Speaker 2: 14:02

Yeah, well, I'm gonna challenge that a little bit because I'm not convinced that most of us do that. I think they're definitely the segment, and they're a loud segment, like I say, and they're the ones that get the clicks, they're the ones that get the likes, they're the ones that show up on news stations and they're the ones we hear about in the news. But I think there is a pretty large majority that is probably interested in one candidate or the other, for lack of a better term, but not necessarily ready to defend or just jump up and down the screen about. But yeah, there's definitely those people and they're out there on both sides. And I think it's exactly what you were saying before is the ultimate piece of it is that it's become that good and evil thing, right, so that and it all drives from all that media that we're being exposed to and being told that. But yeah, it drives from that and we've made this sort of and again, I think you've also you've probably also seen a lot of the studies that it's a lot of negative choices, right? I mean, many times we are picking our side quote, unquote because we feel the other side is evil and the danger and gonna destroy the country, or they're not gonna do the founder, they're not listening to the founders, they're not adhering to what the founders wanted and things like that, and so we see them as sort of an existential threat and so we will maybe defend our side, but even more we'll really attack the other side.

Speaker 2: 15:25

And we really do believe, because we've made that that we walk down that path to moralize it, that we can't understand the other side very well most of the time, right, because there's a lot of things that a whole bunch of psychology about this and how we look at things, and that we need to sort of become more educated on that are sort of a lot of fallacies, not like one fallacy, like it's not all confirmation bias, it's not all this, but there's a whole bunch of fallacies that we do. And one sort of area of that is we still think, even though all the science has shown this is not how it works, we still sort of think this information model is how people have come to know things right, that if we all have the same information, we'll all make the same arrive at the same conclusions, right? And so we just keep thinking the other side just hasn't got the facts yet, so we're gonna give them more facts and what we don't understand oh, it was hard for us to grasp. It literally is hard for us to grasp. We really think the other person if they got these facts and came to a different conclusion, we literally think they're sort of crazy, like we really think there's something wrong with them, like they don't know how to think, and we can't accept the idea that they use all the same exact kind of rational ways. I mean, yeah, there's lunatics out there somewhere, sure, but most of the people that someone thinks are lunatics the bad majority, I mean very tiny percent are thinking just like you. They're using the same kind of rational logic that you're using. They're using the same same, you know roughly the same brain power, the whole thing, and they're just coming to a different conclusion with the same facts.

Speaker 2: 16:52

Now, sure, there are some fact differences here and there there are some fact gaps, but you know, the one that's the biggest problem is, even when we all have the facts, accepting that somebody else could have come to a different conclusion, and we get that moralization about it that when they came to that conclusion they must have done so for some immoral reason. And I think that's the biggest part of it that's going on now is that we have a lot of that cognitive challenge there and so we're not listening to each other, right. So all this stuff adds up to make it a bigger problem, because you know there's the whole bowling alone Putnam story. You know that we're in all the big sort and all that, where we're not living with people that think differently than us, we're not living here, then we're not associated with, we're not communicating with them, and we have social media, which is the worst place for these kind of conversations. So you get this kind of labeled caricature version of people and when we have political debates, there was no context for it, so we don't, like you say, we don't treat them as human, and so all that stuff adds up to it. I mean, I think that's the biggest thing is that we need to actually work to do this. Like, if you look at how democracy this is another big takeaway If you look at how democracy and a democratic republic is almost even more so because you have the representative aspect to it that you need to have solid debates.

Speaker 2: 18:14

You need to have productive, effective debate. You don't need, you know we're not asking. I mean my podcast, and I'm sure you're not either. You're not asking people to all think the same. You're not asking people just to play nice and somehow we'll all think the same way. You want diversity of thought, right, and you know that's how democracies work, is you're able to hash things out and sometimes you agree, sometimes you can't come to a, sometimes you compromise.

Speaker 2: 18:37

You do all those things but in this environment where the other side's evil all the science I think you were even talking about this as well that when you're siding all that looking at all that all the science kind of shows, once it's become moral like that and the other side's evil, those conversations kind of can't happen because you know you morally can't. I can't sort of agree with or tolerate evil, right. So I'm just never not going to go anywhere with that. So I think that's the biggest thing that we have to get better about is appreciating that the other side has valid. They got to where they're at with the same kind of process you did. They're not evil. It wasn't through more some immoral way. They got there through other kinds of logic.

Speaker 2: 19:18

They don't miss all the facts.

Speaker 2: 19:20

Yeah, there's a small fact, there's some fact gaps in certain places, but that's not the primary issue and it's just accepting that they're in a different place and there are people out there in a different place and we're not interacting enough.

Speaker 2: 19:33

We're not used to those conversations. So when they do happen, you know, it's like just a shock, like we don't know what to do because we just don't have those kinds of interactions enough, and we revert you know the fight or flight, whatever way you want to look at it we revert to this. They're bad, they're just idiots, like they don't understand how the world works, and you just fall back to that very quickly. And you know, and it's gonna be a challenge because of all these factors that add up to the environment we're in, and it's gonna take us to, you know, kind of get proactive about this and realize we're part of the problem and start to do the things Like people know how to do things. You know there's a lot of opportunity to do it and you know we just have to start doing it Now. I think there also has to be some stuff from the top, maybe some structural changes as well, but we can do a lot without that.

Speaker 1: 20:23

Yeah, and I listened to one of your episodes on free-spress actually and censorship and countering censorship, which was well done and I'll link in the description for anyone else who's curious to take a listen to it. But people in the US specifically see big tech as a propagator to censorship. That'd be on the Hunter Biden laptop story or the Twitter files that the independent journalist Matt Taiyei be published. And you, coming from a tech background, I'm curious how you approach this issue because a lot of times there's some government interaction with these tech companies and they felt pressured specifically by government officials to take the action that they did. I'm curious how you kind of, when you mentioned structural issues changing and changes on our ends necessary, it's kind of, I would say, difficult to change when the structure itself it may be jaded.

Speaker 2: 21:22

Yeah, I mean, and I think that one of the first things to think about when you're thinking about the tech that we've, in some sense this is not a new problem. You know, we've been here before, all the way back to the printing press, right, I mean, there's a new tech that comes along. It's different. It sort of is a big disruptor. I mean, people were fought wars about it for a hundred years to Before we figured out what to do or how this we could live with this and and so this. We've been here before. We we were here with newspapers, we were here with, you know, with telegram and and TV when it came out, and radio and TV. So in some ways it's not new. It's a similar type of situation, you know, with some different dynamics and some different players, I think you know. And so so we're left with thinking we're. I Mean a good episode on this is is Tobias Rose Stockwell. I think it's episode 17 on on the show he goes and you know we talked about this a lot. It's. The episode is his book is called how tech amplifies discontent and disrupts Democracy, and it finishes with a lot of talk about sort of modern tech and big tech. But it, you know, sort of begins with you know those earlier things and takes us through all that. So tech can mean sort of the pony express, right, I mean, that was new tech, stuff like that. So so that's a good, good way to think of it.

Speaker 2: 22:48

But to try to get back to your question, I think and, and so what we're left with is is there's two things? Right, you, kind of, and it comes back. We're doing the same thing. We put these things in buckets, right, you? You can have someone who, who you know, leans blue or whatever, or Self-identifies as as liberal or left, and they're gonna say big tech is disruptive, or is is, is, is a is being acting fascist or Impacting free press because they're blocking, they're not giving us, you know they're blocking. You know some something about, you know race or or, or Equity or something like that. Right, and you'll have the same you'll have. Then someone on the right will say there is big tech is being, you know they're, they're, they're impact, impacting our free speech because they're blocking.

Speaker 2: 23:41

You know my views on on a right-leaning issue and you know, and the thing is that and so, yeah, so the challenge here is that our a challenge here is similar that we had with newspapers, right? I mean, you had that like first controlled, you know, a huge percentage of the newspapers and could really Sort of dictate the messaging that was going out to a lot of the country through those newspapers. And and in big tech it's, it's even worse because you are, I should say it's. I guess it's similar because now you have, you know, relatively small. You know, you, when you look at this centralization, you have a relatively small number of players, that Kind of a black boxes, and if you look at, you know, and I think, with Musk now at Twitter and it not being a public company, you know you have these black boxes and you know, at any one time we don't know who's trying to influence or not influence them, because it's all kind of a black box to us.

Speaker 2: 24:34

There's no, there's no public oversight. So you know you have those opportunities, you have those opportunities for that kind of behavior to happen and and and it probably is happening, right, whether it's somebody on the left or somebody on the right, and but also, and then you have the, the desires and goals of the owners of the company I mean, if 30 or 40 percent of Twitter is now owned by yes, is backed by Saudi money. Maybe it's more than that, I don't remember the number, but there's a good percentage of of Twitter now backed by Saudi money. They're probably having some influence on how Twitter behaves and what they do. So so I think that that this is an area where we have the.

Speaker 2: 25:15

We have a big problem in the sense that these platforms are Unrestricted. I mean, this is in America. We have a very strong First Amendment, right, and so it's very challenging to do much, or we think it's a lot more challenging than it really is but because there are some structural things you could do with the First Amendment, even that are still compliant with the Constitution, but there's sort of no appetite for that because we have a very strong cultural aspect of the First Amendment as well. So but what I think you could, we, one place we could really improve is, I think, more oversight. So I think you can do more like public oversight, and this is a challenge.

Speaker 2: 25:51

Like in, you get into tick-tock and it's even scarier, right, because that's even more, that's even more of a black box, and I think this is the place where things have really gone downhill, like at one point, twitter had, you know, a Connection with the Academia, that they would publish anonymous data and you could look at the algorithms and things like that to some degree. And Facebook had something similar as well with crowd-tangle. Well, all that stuff is pretty much shut down now. I mean, there are some collaborations and they're really weirdly orchestrated. So, you know, you don't really know how open Facebook is being, and likewise with Twitter and Tick-tock has nothing like that, but for the most part, a lot of that is shut down.

Speaker 2: 26:33

So, and now, that was only one kind of nominal oversight, because that's sort of just academia and people could argue well, academies 90, some hundred percent left, so they're only caring about if they're, you know, looking at things on the left or whatever.

Speaker 2: 26:44

But but you, but I think so. I think that there's an opportunity there for the people to be more, stand up for more, and you know we have a big problem in Congress that there's a lot of you don't even know how these services work, or it's long, even though the Internet's been around for 50 years and certainly been Similar to what not similar, but on the trajectory it's been on for 20 years or something right. So it's not like it's a new technology, but, but you still have a lot of members of Congress that just don't really get it, and so. But I think there's an opportunity there for a lot More oversight, right, and I think you can have public oversight that are that are well represented right. So I mean, you're always going to get people saying there's too many on the left or too many on the right. It's not fair, blah, blah, blah. But we can do our best to get a well represented Oversight system where there's people that you know kind of a representing.

Speaker 1: 27:32

Is that call for government regulation?

Speaker 2: 27:33

then Well, that type of regulation yeah type of regulation that if the if the companies won't do it themselves which I think you know a lot of time they don't the same to do it, then, yes, I think there is room for for for that kind of regulation where we can have more Oversight and visibility into these over sights the wrong word visibility is really what I'm talking about so we can know more about the algorithms, we can know more about the ways people are affected I mean, it was a few years ago now, but Facebook internal research did a, did a. You know some research that showed that you know people, there was all kinds of negative impact of people Using the show and using their platform, and it was children and, and at some point, mark Mark sorry, I'm spacing on his name now Zuckerberg Mark Zuckerberg told his research team I never, I never want you to tell me about this kind of research again kind of thing, right, and so so you know, without without some third parties getting access to some of that data that lets us look at what's going on and who's being affected by this stuff. That's one thing I think that we could do in those spaces that would be Reasonable, because other things have that right. I mean you do have. You do have outside bodies looking at some of these things, and I think that could probably be even amped up again, right, because this the next place this leads, is some kind of a controlled, totally controlled environment, right, and you have this and and so and so, and nobody wants that either, right, so you've got.

Speaker 2: 28:54

I think that there are some reasonable things we can do to Bring in moral again. I keep it up, I think that's a good thing to do. I think that's a good thing to do. Bring in moral again. I keep saying oversight, but what I really mean is visibility To these platforms and and I think it could happen in other other media as well.

Speaker 2: 29:13

But I do want to add one more sort of point to this is that Social media is not as impactful as we all think it is. If you look at, you know, it's sort of like I guess you know cable news media, I guess is going is happy to hear these, this data, because a lot of us sort of just assume nobody watches TV anymore, that kind of stuff. But if you look at, still, I mean we're even where we are today. Now, who knows, you know, maybe five years, ten years is going to be different, but even still like the difference between the impact of money spent For campaign type things in social media realm. It's just the impact of that. It's just minuscule compared to old-fashioned cable TV and and even, of course, the streaming version of that now.

Speaker 1: 29:53

But but so we have to keep that in mind as well. I think that'd be like a demographic Issue, because, in terms of spent? Yeah, because if you talk about like ad dollars and donations, no, I think it, and it is much more unlikely the ad campaign dollars being donated from no younger demographics compared to older demographics, who are more likely to watch, say, mainstream cable news, which is.

Speaker 2: 30:20

Sorry, I was just going to say I wasn't really. It wasn't. I was trying to say it's not the Amount spent but the effectiveness of that spin. I say, right, how much it, how much it moved the needle On things. Cable news media is still like I'm fascinated by, I'm kind of blown away by this too. It's like, wait, people still watch that stuff, but apparently do. But you could be right that that's still a demographic thing, right? So you still have this Aging demographic. That's still the ones that have maybe more impact, maybe they're well and there is some research about that as well that they're more engaged in politics and this kind of stuff. So so maybe that's that's also a piece of it. But my main point was that social media is not quite as impactful as we we talk about either. So we have to kind of keep that in mind, that there's still a lot of other media out there that that's Impactful as well.

Speaker 1: 31:05

Yeah, there's a lot going on there that you touched on. Now I think one thing the last thing that you're mentioning is social media. There is something I would say by the DeSantis campaign and his campaign team that they have developed video graphics or video snippets and graphics that are catered towards a more online presence. That online presence doesn't materialize in the sense of Poll numbers or poll increases, because it's an online presence and those people who are online are Younger demographics and it's usually more so the college educator, republicans, who are more a favor of them or of him specifically, but that doesn't outnumber the number of by no means the number of Republicans who did not attend college and or much more in favor of, say, trump.

Speaker 1: 31:51

But Hopping into something speaking of colleges and speaking up for speech, the Buckley Institute and this is a poll conducted by them.

Speaker 1: 32:00

They've been doing it for quite some time now.

Speaker 1: 32:02

For the first time in its history of that poll being conducted, they found a plurality 46 of college students agree with the following statement is sometimes quote, is sometimes Appropriate to shout that, shout down or disrupt a speaker on campus, on my campus.

Speaker 1: 32:21

That is something that I personally find deeply concerning and to articulate a little more and looking straight from these numbers now to an outright majority, 51 of college students support speech codes on campus, which is a complete change from the last year as well, and I am concerned I wonder what your thoughts on this is creating a culture that is more anti-free speech based, that postulates itself that it is in for the sake of kindness and for the sake of whatever say virtue signaling someone may gear towards and we know that academia leans much further left, but that doesn't say um, there's not shout downs for left speaking Speakers on conservative campuses either. But it's more so to the point that creating a culture of just Incivility towards people who disagree with and almost taking away their rights Because you're doing recognize them as rights because they're violently, because they're not, because the hate speech say, which that was really interpreted and up to the listener than anything else.

Speaker 2: 33:30

Right, yeah, and you know I always want to be careful about using the term free speech because often times people sort of convert that very quickly like First Amendment rights and stuff and it is in some cases when you're talking about like a free press and things like that. But you know, to have the right to go talk at a campus isn't really a First Amendment, right, right, and you know, but it's still. It's still a matter of hearing dissenting voices, you know, and hearing and having a having a culture, free speech and freedom which is what universities are supposed to put into challenging intellectuals to think for themselves and also hear diverse viewpoints.

Speaker 1: 34:07

So it kind of speaks in that vein. I'm glad you cleared that up as well, because, you're right, there is a difference there, but they are.

Speaker 2: 34:13

Yeah, exactly, it's that sort of diversity of thought. And yes, I mean, I have to say that I, you know, in my I'm still on this venture, on this journey. So I mean I'm not an absolute expert at this point. I'm, but I've learned a lot from the beginning but but I'm on a part of my whole podcast is sort of I'm going on this journey with the listeners to and we're sort of doing it together, and so, you know, and, to be honest with you, I'm kind of surprised that that number wasn't true in the, you know, in the past. I mean, I don't know exactly how that has changed over the last 10 years, but but I'm not surprised by that, as I can remember that that occurring even back when I was in school, but and that was a while ago, but but yes, I'm definitely getting this.

Speaker 2: 34:57

There is like a. You know, there's a segment in academia that is quite aware of this and it's it's, it's a, it's a problem that's building both, you know, within the, the Academy, so the actual professors and others, as, and, of course, as well as the student body. So, you know, I'm not I'm not that surprised about it and and you know, and it is, it is a, it is a problem. I think particularly we're seeing this particularly in things like social, the social sciences that you know. So you have even professors who are reluctant to say things because they can be shouted down so fast and if they're not tenured, you know, they can get in getting big, really big trouble and lose their jobs Even if they are tenured. There's cases, and even if they are tenured exactly that's what I was going to say, exactly yeah, even if they are tenured, but they're maybe have a little bit more courage if they're tenured at least, to maybe start to raise some of these issues.

Speaker 2: 35:49

So I do think that there is a awareness of this and I think it all stems to. It all comes from sort of the same stuff we were talking about before, where people start feeling morally right and morally superior and and morally justified in that kind of behavior and you know, and and I think there's a lot of instances where they're sort of this it's, it's simply given right Like it's, it's it, we don't need to talk about it anymore because it's settled science or it's a settled question and and that we're being way too quick to, or we're just using that term when it doesn't actually apply, but we're using it almost in a cultural way, like you're saying, where it's become like within the circles, it's become like, yeah, we're going to call it settled science now and and if you don't say that, then you're like you're saying maybe you're a racist or maybe you're something else and and you're going to be doing hate speech or whatever. Even if you're, you know, legitimately sort of questioning some science or presenting another viewpoint, that is not, you know, it's kind of a both sideism thing. There's a valid, valid side to that, and I think that, yeah, that's that's happening out there. And I, you know, and I think it's something that the Academy is going to have to address at some point, to really start looking at this closer. And I'm encouraged by some of what we see in the, in the younger generations, because there's a lot of misperceptions about that as well.

Speaker 2: 37:18

But I'm also a little bit concerned as well too, because they're being fed, you know, and a whole new generation of kind of outrage media and and and you know, and even you know, I think one of the things that concerns me is that we're have, you and I, we talk about this stuff all the time and we maybe you don't.

Speaker 2: 37:39

But we kind of all sort of think, oh, everybody else must be sort of talking about these things too, right, but they're really not.

Speaker 2: 37:44

Most people, the vast majority of people are really hardly consume any news at all.

Speaker 2: 37:49

So most of anything that comes close to news for them might be some of these alternative sources, right, and, and maybe that's okay, because I mean I'm out there, I'm an alternative source, right, so, and I, you know, but I try to take the science and I try to be real reasonable with it and you're doing the same thing, trying to see what's out there and see these dissenting views and a disparity of positions and things like that, and you know. So hopefully we're doing good. I don't think we're doing well and but but yeah, there's so that. So that's one challenge too, is that that's one thing that concerns me in that space is that there's that there's so many people are just getting, if they have political views or if they know the things that politics are coming from, like a dance, tick, tock, right and and so that that, I think, can help fall into what's the cultural norm right now, and it can fall into these memes that say, well, this is settled science. So if you don't think this, you're a bad person.

Speaker 1: 38:43

I think that happened a lot over a number of different issues, one being the pandemic, where there was a lot uncertainty but times there was a declared certainty and then you know after the fact, months later, a year later, it comes out that wasn't and but in those moments it appear that this was. You know. Not no need to go into specific examples, but one just being, say mass, or another one just being you know you won't get COVID, get the vaccine, like, regardless of how anyone feels those were settled at certain points and then they weren't years later and that just erodes trust institutions. I think that really gave way to independent media having credibility because obviously, if the mainstream, if people view I personally view this as well, so I won't say people don't see this as self included, people see mainstream as peddling talking points for X or Y. I won't be like another spoke on the wheel for them. I rather get my sources from a diverse viewpoint but and I'll maybe solicit the mainstream just to see what they're saying but the level of trust there is gone like all together.

Speaker 1: 39:47

I think that happened a lot with people over the pandemic, but also just over the years. To that you can, when someone plays a clip of someone just outright lying like how can you that have the me to own a quick tangent? I remember now growing up and in high school to I was, I would say, pretty conservative in college, kind of diversified viewpoints and still on that path and where some issues some souls say on the right and other ones I'm more so on the left. But I remember Charlie Kirk on Twitter once sent out something that was just completely false. I bought into it someone like comment under my tweet of why I tweeted, retweet him and why I tweeted with them, and someone comment on mine saying like the correct news source and what actually happened. And I forever I'm like what that? Like what the heck was that? Like I just made it look like a fool, like there's no way I ever trust you again.

Speaker 1: 40:38

I think that was like the first time where I'm like why kind of challenge this side I fill a more with. I'm like you guys do it to. You say it's always on that side that spreads a misinformation, is lying to. You guys are just doing as much. And that's where I kind of always check myself when approaching issues like well, what's the other side saying? Because they have that points to and I rather, as you mentioned earlier, not have blind spots, even if I still believe what I originally heard. I still want to know what the other side saying, because it only makes me more educated on topic and I may know new want have a nuanced view after all.

Speaker 2: 41:12

Yeah, I mean, as you said, the biggest that, that the biggest consequence of that is, yeah, that loss of trust and that's very expensive when that, when people get that wrong and we're getting that wrong, I think in a few, in a few areas today that are really touchy subject, and these are, and the problem is, the ones where most people are getting it wrong or more likely to get it wrong. Are these nuanced problems right, because many problems aren't nice and black and white and don't have nice and clear answers and should be a spectrum of confidence, right for sure, and we're not. A lot of people are comfortable that they want a hard and fast answer and some people want to give a hard and fast answer, which is just a mistake, like we just shouldn't do. That is particularly on these very nuanced and complex issues. But there's a certain culture that is sort of grabbed on to some of these and decided they're settled, they're done, we can't talk about it anymore. And I think that did happen. I think the pandemic, really that happened a lot and you know, and there were specific cases where we people were just way too certain too soon on on a number of things and should have been more, and whether they were sort of just thinking they were doing the right thing where they really believed it. I don't know, but it was. It was kind of wrong to do that and I think that it's a little bit of a misconception a lot of people have about science anyway.

Speaker 2: 42:25

I mean, you hear people say this thing has been proven by science and the scientists is never going to really say they proved something. It's all about it hasn't been disproven yet. In other words, it's held up to a lot of evidence. The scientists is going to look for disconfirming a way to an experiment that could disconfirm the hypothesis and, if it survived, a whole bunch of experiments and it starts to be called a theory and you can keep adding to that confidence level. But it's always a spectrum, right, you're never at 1.0, right, you're always somewhere below 1.0 and confidence. But you're building confidence because you got this larger and larger body of experiments that this theory has survived, and so we start to call it a theory and we start to sort of say, yeah, we're pretty confident about this thing with pretty high degree of confidence. We can say X or Y, but so.

Speaker 2: 43:08

But there's this kind of idea that something is sort of proven and settled and done and we're all done. And with these cultural things or with some of these other, some of these contentious issues like gender and race and things like that, those issues are so complex that that they're a big challenge, especially when people start deciding that things are are settled, and but I also want to just kind of throw a caveat out there that throwing the baby out with the bath water is also not a good approach or going for our rubber banding over to some very extreme, like you don't. I wouldn't recommend you sort of go from. You know, I didn't like what somebody said on MSNBC, so I'm going to go to sort of Alex Jones. I don't think that's a good, good solution. So it's still a matter of kind of trying to find reasonable sources and that can be hard. On some topics because we were talking about before a little bit there's unpopular positions that are totally valid, right, and so they're often not. They're often a little bit harder to find and again, it's a little bit of a challenge.

Speaker 2: 44:06

I will pitch another episode on this topic.

Speaker 2: 44:08

It's episode 14 with with Lawrence Eppard, who runs the Carnar Forum and is very much a centrist, very much a loud centrist, and and the episode is about this kind of idea trust in news, trust in information sources and sort of how to navigate that, that world, and and so it's.

Speaker 2: 44:33

That's a good episode for that, but that's the whole thing I want to throw out. That would be a little careful about getting, so I'm only going to go to these totally alternative news sources either and, as you were saying, it's kind of nice to get, if there is a both sides of that readily out there and sort of from a semi reliable source. You know even the term reliable source people get you know. Now people have just thrown out entire blankets of news media because they're not, they believe, because of some of the problems you talked about, where they were. They lost a lot of credibility and I think in that episode I cited some research saying it's like down to like, I want to say like 14% or something of Americans. Believe you know that that news media is reliable?

Speaker 1: 45:14

That's interesting. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that episode to. I Think in, like, when it comes to like the loss of trust to people also feel people need direction. Sam Harris has made this point to, I think, jordan Peterson and others, but in different degrees, in different ways that people need a sense of direction. Like, who do I go to say? Don't use the example of vaccines, use the example of just food like the FDA and people having more skepticism about the FDA now too, and their approval process. But if I think the FDA is corrupted by special interests, I'm just saying this as a hypothetical. But if I think that's true, who do I now go to? There's not a lot of people in that world like and Not even using Alex Jones been using just in that same vein, do I go to all these people who are just preaching no feet, vegetables or eat this one food like it's go blow up your inflammation and you're gonna feel awful? Or am I gonna go to the complete other side, like, who do I go to?

Speaker 1: 46:13

So I agree with you that we need trust institutions, but there's like a lot of work to be done, like there has to be like a shift change. If you, if someone were to say if I was engaged in a friendship and I trust that person and they know repeatedly Betrayed me and lied to me, I will lose all trust. I won't want to talk to you. But can I feel that like same friendship boy? Probably not immediately and I might feel lost and there is a chance that maybe I go back to that friend.

Speaker 1: 46:39

But there has to be a Behavior, displayed over and over again, of change, that something has changed and that you are now a better person or a better friend Because of that. But at this point in time it's almost like doubling down, like there's no acknowledgement of wrongdoing, no acknowledgement of like reform or direction, a new direction we're moving into. It's just like it never happened, it's gasoline in a sense. I think that's what a lot of people get fury by, but that, being on the left or the right to like Nothing has changed. I don't forget what happens and yeah, I have no trust in you.

Speaker 2: 47:15

Yeah, for sure, and I think that there's a lot of other examples. But I mean, I think this is one where the all the stuff that happened during the pandemic is a big one, where we haven't had that Retrospective, we haven't had that clearing of the air, we haven't had that healing and, you know, and seems like nobody really wants to do it, I tried to do an episode about this and it and I sort of couldn't even I'm not know to do with all the content now, because it's Still such a contentious issue that you know if I'm supposed to be out here trying to say, you know, find ways to lower the temperature and have a calming voice, the and with COVID you can't because everybody's so triggered. Still, it's like we still need a lot, a lot of healing.

Speaker 1: 47:51

But even myself, yeah, I get, I get pray pat. That's like one of the few. There's certain issues I know they trigger me and like that's definitely one of them, because it's recent and there seems to be no recourse, as happens since. But yeah, please continue.

Speaker 2: 48:03

Yeah, and you know, and in terms of like, I think it does help you can you can, you know, take it all with. You know, if you do like you're saying where maybe you look at something from the New York Times or the Washington Post and you kind of Contrast that with something from the Wall Street Journal or something that you think leans more right but you still feel like is at least doing journalism, you know, because they sort of want to catch each other. So sometimes that'll happen and you can sort of say, well, how often is are they sort of being caught in a kind of and if it's not a flat-out lie, like that was a little bit of a spin or they left some facts out. They're not telling me the whole story and you can kind of start weighing that as, because I guarantee you that you know we can all find, I'm sure, cases like you say we don't forget. I can go find those headlines and there's their archive somewhere where it was like you guys said this thing, are you ever gonna like mess up to that? Like you said this thing, and this is quite clearly like just incorrect or a very poor spin on what was said.

Speaker 2: 49:02

So I mean, I think that can help a little bit to sort of say, okay, well, they're usually doing okay or they're not too bad. If I kind of keep mixing, kind of paying attention to a couple of Couple of reasonable sources from that that kind of either lean left or lean right, and kind of have them check each other a little bit, you know, and hopefully when there is something that Dramatically incorrect, somebody out there with that that's a reasonable new source will catch it, because they usually want to. Now Sometimes they don't. I mean those stories just kind of live out there and nothing happened. But but I think that can help build the trust a little bit, because for the most part there is still journalism and and but yeah, you does make you like sort of raise your eyebrows a couple times, going that was kind of weird like you did this thing.

Speaker 1: 49:46

Yeah, that's. It's interesting how, like most people like can discuss it too, but once, like most people can say, discuss, like acknowledge it, but once you go into the specifics then people get like more annoyed at it. Because, like you're kind of like reminiscing on what occurred and I do want to kind of quickly touch on with that like In your mission too, do you see a way of restoration as well in trust with these experts? Because a lot of the conversations you have are with a subject matter expert? Is that part of your mission as well? They're trying to restore trust and these people that know otherwise, you know general public may not have heard of before, or they just only see an oracle of them in some kind of journal and they maybe just not read it. So is it you trying to? What's your mission I guess I'm asking with speaking to these on experts and bringing that out?

Speaker 2: 50:43

Yeah, I don't know if I have a specific mission about trying to restore trust. I do. I do, I guess, talk about it some sometimes and you know, and I kind of you know, I'm kind of taking the research that I find and trying to let the researcher say what that research says. And there's an editorial factor. You could say that I might be even not even Annoyingly being selective about the research that I exposed, but I try to find things that you know are, you know, relatively even handed and don't seem to be heavily biased. And you know, and I and I talk about this a lot about, are the research that you know, and there's people that say like I don't trust any science, they're all lying to me and they're all in it, like they're like in a club somewhere and it's a secret, meaning they get together and they want to lie to you, right, and obviously that's like it doesn't have a lot of credibility. But but you know, we can still fall. Even scientists can fall into their biases.

Speaker 2: 51:40

Now I know there are, you know, like I said, there's always going to be some fringe that probably have a very strong agenda and really married to that agenda and they've fallen into the same moral traps that we've talked about.

Speaker 2: 51:51

But I think, for the most part, all the scientists I'm talking to have good intentions and they want to be fair with the science within the academy, within the parameters the academy lets them be, and and so you know. And so I'm not implicit, I'm not explicitly saying trust the science, but I'm hoping, with enough you know, exposure to it, you can kind of go read the paper yourself and then contrast it with other, maybe papers that that that conflict with that paper, and maybe I need to do more of that on the show. Like maybe I have to say well, this paper, there was also these other three papers that that kind of said maybe this there's some things about this paper that aren't aren't right and maybe I need to do more of that, because but that's also a lot of research too- yeah, it's because you're really stacking the pile of papers.

Speaker 2: 52:36

Yeah, because the academic papers I'm I'm reading are citing 50 or 100 things, right, and I have read and sometimes I will find really interesting things in those citations and I'll go off and read that, but I'm not reading all 50 or 100 papers or books or that they're, that they're citing. So you know you're taking their word for it a bit on all that's, on those citations as well. But yeah, so I'm not, I don't, I mean I do personally, I would, I would love if we could reasonably find some way to find the balance on that restoring trust, because I don't want, I don't want to tell people that you just blankedly trust whoever. There's nobody out there that I can think of that you should just blankedly trust, not even me, right? So I'm not necessarily saying that, but I also I do, I do.

Speaker 2: 53:16

I am concerned about the folks that throw the baby out with the bathwater thing and I get it. I get how you get there. I mean that's, it's very clear how you get there. But I, I, I. That concerns me a bit when you just say all science is is lying to me, or all media is lying to me, or I can't, you know, trust anything and I'm only going to trust. You know the guys I follow it. I can find in my Facebook feed, which is probably not giving you a great picture either.

Speaker 1: 53:42

If someone was just tuning in right now and this is the only part of the conversation that they're growing you here what's one thing you would want them to take away? What's one point that you would want to get across throughout this whole conversation?

Speaker 2: 53:55

Yeah, I mean, I think it's. It's that same big point that look inwardly like, look in the mirror and the things that you're really mad about. Ask yourself those same questions. Be, you know, do critical. You know you talk about, everyone talks about critical thinking and doing their own research. Do that critical thinking on yourself first, and, and you know, and then also on the folks on your side as well, right, so, and and I don't you know, I'm saying that to people that are on left, and saying that people on the right, people in the middle as well, for that matter, and and those labels to me. I have a whole world of problems with all those labels anyway, but that would be thing number one is we have to be critical. It's so easy to be critical of the people you sort of disagree with, and if you can turn that around a little bit and really start asking yourself some of those same questions that you would have asked them and really start understanding your beliefs better, so, question you know, ask yourself why do I think this? What? How did I learn about this thing? And am I getting a dissenting view? Have I had dissenting views on this? And where would I go to find those dissenting views. So that's that's a place I would start is is is really being introspective, because that's, I think, the biggest hole that we all have is that we, you know, we just want to be mad at the other side and accusatory of somebody, and sometimes it's a media, sometimes it's the scientists, sometimes it's just the left or right or whoever, and so that's one place I would just start, and then maybe the follow up to that is is that humanization thing we talked about in the beginning. So if you find yourself using labels like the radical left says this, or the set extreme right says that, or any of these sort of labels, you've already kind of broken the conversation. At that point we already know you're not coming from a, from a good faith position, right? So try to catch yourself doing that, and that's also literally dehumanizing, right. You've thrown everybody in a bucket. So that would be sort of thing.

Speaker 2: 55:59

Number two is to and same. When, when you see that from people on your side, when you see them using that language in the news media, you see your politicians that are asking for 10 bucks, you know saying these people are terrible, send me $10. You know, you know, ask yourself am I going to send that guy $10? Or can I write him a letter and say, maybe don't do that anymore? If you don't, if you stop doing that, maybe we'll send you, because I, maybe I like what you do, or I've seen some of your voting records and I think you're an okay person, but if you keep doing this, I don't want to send you $10.

Speaker 2: 56:28

And I think that's my main message is focus on yourself and your own side First, because it's easy. You know, trust me, you're still going to be mad at the other side. I don't have to tell you to do that. You can do that anyway. So I would I would say that's a big thing is beginning more really have a better understanding of why you believe the things you believe and, if you're, if you can question yourself on those dissenting views. Yeah, it's much easier to burn a house than it is to build it.

Speaker 1: 56:55

And, yeah, being able just to like tear everything else down without really having to do some introspection on what you believe in mind. That holds up is no easy. It's an easy way out, but go on. D David, you mentioned some episodes here. Where could people find those episodes? Where could people keep up with your work?

Speaker 2: 57:15

Yeah, so the website is outrage overloadnet and we have that. You can find the episodes there, so they're. You can drill down into all the episodes right on the homepage or the latest one, but then there's a sort of all episodes link. It'll take you down to everything that we've talked about and so, yeah, that's the best place to go is outrage overloadnet. If people want to talk to me directly on Mr Blog on Twitter, say hi, I'm Mr Blog on Instagram Instagram personally. That's my personal account. There's also outrage overload accounts on both those on Facebook and Twitter and an Instagram. But if you want to literally just talk to me directly, my personal one is Mr Blog on Twitter and Instagram and I'd love to hear your feedback. If you listen to a few episodes, perfect. Well, thank you for being here today.

Speaker 1: 58:00

David, it was a pleasure. Oh, thank you for having me, daniel, and it was really a pleasure.

Speaker 2: 58:06

I really, I really. It's such a joy to you know speak to other people, even if I'm sure if we sat down and sat about issues, we'd probably disagree about them, but we could still have a conversation about all those things. That's the most important thing.

Speaker 1: 58:19

Disagree, but still be able to walk away and shake hands.

Speaker 2: 58:22

For sure, all right, take care and see you guys.