What this covers
What can moral psychology teach us about better understanding those who hold opposing viewpoints? In the final event of the 2023 Phil Lind Initiative series, (Un)Civil Discourse, Jonathan Haidt discusses the state of political dysfunction and fracture in the US with his talk Democracy After Babel: Self-governance in an era of fragmentation, outrage, and anomie moderated by Kathryn Gretsinger.
Find more details on the series hosted by UBC's School of Public Policy and Global Affairs here: https://lindinitiative.ubc.ca/series/uncivil-discourse/
Source description (no synthesized summary yet).
Social media platforms fundamentally rewired democratic discourse and childhood development starting around 2012-2014, fragmenting shared reality and creating structural stupidity in institutions by amplifying extremes while silencing moderates, a process that will accelerate with AI unless we make urgent structural changes to institutions, social media design, and child-rearing practices.
- Gen Z mental health crisis (anxiety, depression, self-harm) directly correlates with Instagram adoption in 2012-2013, not global conditions
- Social media's algorithmic amplification of outrage, virality, and extreme voices created 'structural stupidity' where institutions become polarized and moderates self-censor
- Removal of unsupervised outdoor childhood play and delay of independent decision-making stripped developmental resilience, making youth vulnerable to social media's psychological harms
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The 2009-2013 period saw the transformation of social media into what Haidt calls 'the era of rage' through a cascade of architectural and algorithmic changes: algorithmic feeds (2010), clickbait headline optimization (2012), threaded comments enabling visible arguing, and Russian disinformation activation (2013) that collectively created structural incentives for outrage and polarization.
“in 2010 Facebook has this huge amount of data coming in from all those likes now they know a lot about you and so now they can use algorithms for everything so everything gets algorithmicized... in 2012 um Upworthy figures out this way of packaging headlines to get maximum clicks and now all the news is go everyone's doing this”
Conservative political philosophy (Edmund Burke) teaches that societies are complicated systems where it is very easy to tear things down but very hard to rebuild them up; this wisdom was forgotten in the 2010s when social media gave everyone the technological power to tear down institutions without the ability to rebuild
“if you're a conservative the wisdom of conservatives that I learned when right in the Righteous Mind is basically Edmund Burke Edmund Burke is one of the wisest political philosophers and he basically taught that the societies are complicated and it's very easy to tear things down it's very hard to build them back up and what happened in the 2010s we had this technology that allowed us to everyone can tear down everything and that's where we are”
James Madison's Federalist 10 contains a prescient analysis of democratic vulnerability in which he noted the 'latent causes of faction are sown in the nature of man,' and that 'frivolous and fanciful distinctions' are sufficient to kindle mutual animosity and violent conflict—a description that applies almost perfectly to social media outrage dynamics
“James Madison do you all know who James Madison was...he says the latent causes of faction or division are thus sown in the nature of man and then he goes on to say there's you know throughout history there's been so many circumstances that divide mankind into parties inflame them with mutual animosity and rendered them much more disposed to Vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good...Madison continues he says so strong is this propensity to fall into these Mutual animosities to divide into these teams so strong is this that we're no substantial occasion presents itself the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to Kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts that's Twitter that's the outrage of the day”
The business model of social media platforms (maximizing engagement and ad revenue) creates structural incentives to amplify outrage, viral content, and extreme views while suppressing nuanced discussion, leading to radicalization of both extreme left and extreme right
“once everything's optimized for engagement and the goal is to keep people on as much as possible which mostly means trigger emotions and addictions so in 2009 is when they make those little those small architectural changes that changed everything”
In 2012, Upworthy figured out how to package headlines for maximum clicks through social media, setting a new standard for clickbait journalism and forcing traditional media outlets to compete by adopting similar tactics, reorienting news toward emotional engagement rather than informative content
“in 2012 um Upworthy figures out this way of packaging headlines to get maximum clicks and now all the news is go everyone's doing this and everyone's getting it through Facebook so the news media are plummeting they're not getting people coming to their sites anymore so they have to reorient themselves they have to be more clickbaity everybody has to enter the Facebook era now”
Raising the age of Internet adulthood to 16 (up from the current 13) is necessary and politically achievable because there is bipartisan consensus among Congress members, governors, and public health officials that the mental health crisis among young people is a non-partisan issue requiring policy intervention.
“we have to raise the age of Internet adulthood to 16. it's insane that any nine or ten year old can just say that she's 13... I believe we're going to be successful there I think we're going to actually raise the age of Internet adulthood to 16.”
Young people should prioritize developing intellectual humility and seeking out serious disagreement with people across political divides rather than engaging in 'groupish activism' that demands conformity to group beliefs.
“think for yourself that's the kind of guy I was expecting to meet but but you told us earlier today that your new book is called adapting to a world we can never share again... don't do groupish activism don't get sucked into groups that are just just forcing beliefs on each other think for yourself”
Twitter is the most poisonous platform to democracy while Instagram is the most poisonous to girls' mental health; without Twitter, Donald Trump would never have been elected president, and the Tower of Babel metaphor would not have fallen
“Twitter I believe has been the most poisonous to democracy Instagram is the most poisonous to girls Twitter has been the most poisonous to democracy without Twitter there would have been no Donald Trump without Twitter I think the Tower of Babel would not have fallen frankly”
The mental health crisis is far more severe in girls than boys, with girls showing dramatic increases in self-harm behaviors (particularly cutting) and dropping well-being beginning in 2010-2012 and continuing through the 2010s, while boys show similar trends but much less severe in absolute terms
“it's mostly the girls the boys are up in relative terms but the absolute increase for girls is gigantic”
Confirmation bias (tendency to seek evidence supporting existing beliefs) is a universal human cognitive bias, but it historically required active effort to find confirming evidence; social media removed this friction by making a curated feed of confirming information appear without any effort, dramatically increasing confirmation bias's effects
“confirmation bias we all want to find evidence to support our current beliefs and we're really good at finding that evidence so as long as everyone's doing that you know it used to be that Google was God's gift to confirmation bias because you could just type in whatever you want and it would give you information but you had to actually move your fingers to type once Twitter comes along you don't have to do that just just look at your timeline and oh you know there's here's more evidence that the other party is the spawn of the devil”
A new study from Azeem Sharif shows that when people perceive an institution as politicized, they distrust it even if it's their ideological team; therefore, as organizations identify as 'anti-racist,' even left-leaning people lose trust in them because they see them as politicized
“azim Sharif is a professor here I just had lunch with him yesterday and he just he has this new paper just posted yesterday new research showing that when people perceive that institution is politicized well if you're on the left you like a left-wing institution more than a right person does but guess what even you distrust it if you think it's politicized”
Girls' aggression is fundamentally relational—harming other girls' relationships and reputations—while boys' aggression is typically physical; Instagram and other social media platforms enable girls to conduct relational aggression 24/7 anonymously, creating hell for middle school girls in particular.
“boys and girls equally aggressive boys aggression is traditionally physical it's ultimately backed up with threats of violence and so once you move online there's no violence girls aggression has always been relational girls of girls exhibit aggression by harming other girls relationships and reputations that's the worst part of seventh grade especially for girls and once everybody's on Instagram and other platforms now they can do it to each other all the time even on weekends anonymously so this has been hell for girls especially Middle School girls”
Facebook opened to the general public in 2006, the iPhone was released in 2007 (but was expensive and not widely adopted by children), and the critical turning point came in 2009 when Facebook added the 'like' button and Twitter added the retweet button, transforming social networking sites into high-engagement social media platforms optimized for virality
“this graph shows the year uh shows for each year uh high school kids how often uh what percentage of them were daily users of social networking sites now remember we used to call them social networking sites they used to be on social networking now we call them social media...so um this is the growth...in 2006 Facebook opens to the world before then you had to be a college student with an account in 2007 the iPhone comes out but kids don't have it it's expensive um in 2009 Facebook adds the like button Twitter has the retweet button so now social media gets much more viral quick hyperactive judgmental crazy interesting”
The only antidote to confirmation bias is exposure to people who don't share your confirmation bias—good faith critics challenge your beliefs in ways you couldn't achieve alone, making you smarter even if you ultimately disagree with them
“the only cure for confirmation bias that we can find is other people who don't share your confirmation bias because they will do for you the favor of challenging your beliefs in ways that you couldn't and that's again what that's what Socrates did in ancient Athens that's what John Stuart Mill realized when he wrote he who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that we need opposition we need others to challenge us or we can't get smart”
Three urgent structural changes are necessary to navigate the coming chaos: (1) End closed-party primaries and replace with open primaries and final-five voting to break the power of partisan primary voters who reward extremism; (2) Restore viewpoint diversity in institutions (universities, media, government) so that institutions can function as truth-seeking rather than political machines; (3) Reform child-rearing practices and raise the age of internet adulthood to 16 to restore childhood autonomy and protect teen mental health
“at least the United States it might be a little different here but we have this ridiculous thing called the closed Party primary where in order to get to Congress it doesn't matter what happens in the general election because your district is 70 or 80 Republican it doesn't matter all that matters is the primary and the only people who own the primary are the furthest right Republicans or the furthest left Democrats crazy so we have to end that and replace it with open primaries and final five voting”
Closed party primaries where the winning party controls the voting process and only the most extreme primary voters participate create structural incentives for extremism because candidates must appeal to the partisan base rather than the general electorate.
“we have this ridiculous thing called the closed Party primary where in order to get to Congress it doesn't matter what happens in the general election because your district is 70 or 80 Republican it doesn't matter all that matters is the primary and the only people who own the primary are the furthest right Republicans or the furthest left Democrats crazy so we have to end that and replace it with open primaries and final five voting”
History is fundamentally cyclical rather than linear, with societies experiencing cycles of rise and decline; many cultures have developed metaphors for this pattern (Wheel of Fortune, etc.), and understanding this cyclicality is necessary to avoid the hubris that comes from assuming one's era is the permanent peak
“never mind um but but history is really much more cyclical that's that's the point I Want To Make History is cyclical and there's a lot of work on this there's a lot of interesting theories Peter Church in there's all kinds there's all kinds of things about the cyclical theories of History so uh some of us got to live through the high point you know from the 80s through about 2010 we got to live through the high point and that was thrilling but this okay this is another thing I would say to you is um just learn you know learn the best that has been thought and said because it's because you know I had a good education at Yale we read Greek tragedies and myths the Greeks had the idea of The Wheel of Fortune like many societies sure you're up but guess what you're going to go down and then guess what you're going to go up again”
The core vulnerability of democracies is human nature itself—humans are naturally prone to forming tribal groups with in-group loyalty, and under conditions of perceived threat or ambiguity, these tribal impulses become dominant, making democracies fragile when institutions fail to provide sufficient checks on tribal conflict
“the latent causes of faction or division are thus sown in the nature of man...there's you know throughout history there's been so many circumstances that divide mankind into parties inflame them with mutual animosity”
Childhood needs to involve unsupervised peer interaction and age-appropriate risk-taking (like learning to climb trees despite fear and be confident) through outdoor play; this is what Mariana Brussoni's research demonstrates is necessary for healthy psychological development.
“what kids really need to develop to get to become unanxious we we're born with the preparedness to be afraid of all sorts of things and then we need to play explore uh we need to take risks we need to climb a tree and be afraid and then we are more confident the next time that's what we need that's what Mariana's work shows”
People are naturally drawn to epistemic institutions (journalism, academia, social sciences, arts) if they are born with a personality predisposition toward openness to experience, which correlates with left-leaning or progressive values, creating an institutional imbalance where left-wing worldviews dominate knowledge-generating institutions and lack conservative viewpoint diversity.
“the left is people who are born with a as you if you know from The Righteous Mind people are born with a temperament that predisposes them to left-leaning or Progressive ideas they tend to be high in opens to experience... the left tends to be higher and opens to experience so they tend to be attracted to all the epistemic institutions epistemic just means like knowledge generating so people who are attracted to journalism to the social sciences to the Arts they tend to be on the left”
Universities must be institutions devoted to truth-seeking through dialogue between people with different viewpoints, not political power bases; the fundamental purpose of a university traces back to Plato's Academy and the goal of arriving at truth through dialogue, which cannot happen without viewpoint diversity.
“what is a university in your mind or a university a university is an institution tracing its Origins back to Plato's Academy um that's why we call it the academy in which it's it's it's humans organized around practices that get at the truth and you get at the truth through dialogue with people who have different ideas than you do that's what a university is that's its Telos it's purpose”
Haidt's new book is titled 'Adapting to a World We Can Never Share Again,' reflecting the view that the era of shared mass media and shared facts (1990s-2010) was historically exceptional and will not return; we must learn to function in a world of fragmentation and information plurality.
“you told us earlier today that your new book is called adapting to a world we can never share again that's right so it's like wait no no hold on hold on oh I see him so the optimism thing yeah okay um think about it this way you know until you know until 1492 we didn't share the world at all and you know and then when we shared it it wasn't a very nice way for many hundreds of years um and then we had this brief period the age of mass media where actually you know there was incredible the post-world War II world we were linked by television and which which was regulated and generally responsible”
Democratic countries reached their historical peak of freedom and the number of free people around 2010-2011, after which democratic metrics have declined, coinciding exactly with the timing of when social media architectures became viral and algorithmic.
“we have the greatest surge in free countries ever in history reaching its Pinnacle in around 2010 2011 and that era is the freest the the largest number of free countries and free people ever in human history”
Mark Zuckerberg's claim that 'how could it be wrong to give more people more voice' fails to recognize that social media's amplification is not neutral—it disproportionately amplifies extreme voices, lies, and people with psychopathological traits rather than democratizing voice equally.
“Zuckerberg likes to say how could it be wrong to give more people more voice that's a quote that he uses a lot my answer is well if you truly gave everybody a boost or everybody who didn't have a voice that would be nice but what if you primarily boosted the far left the far right trolls and people with psychopathological disorders that make them enjoy being jerks”
AI and large language models (like ChatGPT) will dramatically worsen the problems identified with social media by enabling: creation of vastly more garbage content, deepfake audio/video of real people, super-influencers using AI to impersonate loved ones, creating continuous chaos that will never calm down
“I have an article I'm writing an article with Eric Schmidt of Google um about exactly how AI is going to take all the things I told you about social media it's going to make them all a lot worse and I won't go into it but just you know we have a lot more garbage uh we're gonna super influencers are gonna be calling us up pretending to be other people or sounding like other people that we love um it's going to be a wild ride forever it's never going to end it's never going to calm down this is our future”
Young people's in-person social time dropped dramatically after smartphone adoption, from over 2 hours per day in 2012 for 15-24 year olds to substantially less by 2019, demonstrating that social media redirected in-person socializing rather than supplementing it
“this is time use studies of Americans so as you can see uh most people are spending you know most Americans are spending between 30 you know let's say 30 to 40 minutes a day with physically with their friends because you know they're married they have jobs but the young group 15 to 24 they're spending more than two hours a day with their friends until they get iPhones and then what happens now what you see here I want to point out something about this so 2019 this data was collected before covid and this data was collected during covid lockdowns and do you see the covet effect there do you see how covet accelerated things I don't because they were already socially distanced by 2019”
Jon Haidt co-founded Heterodox Academy in 2015 as an organization advocating for viewpoint diversity in universities, with approximately 5,500 professors and administrators having signed on to support the principle that ideological diversity strengthens institutional thinking
“I I co-founded an organization called heterodox Academy in 2015 we advocate for there being Viewpoint diversity in universities we think that everyone shouldn't think the same um please raise your hand if you are a professor in any way shape or form or an administrator at UBC please raise your hand High okay so every one of you please just go to headrocksacademy.org and join it's free you'll be one of about 5 500 professors and administrators who've just signed on to say I think Viewpoint diversity is important”
Lenore Skenazy's 'Free-Range Kids' movement and let grow.org provide frameworks and resources for parents to restore childhood autonomy while coordinating collectively so that individual parents are not prosecuted for allowing unsupervised child independence
“go to you can also get ideas at let grow.org I co-founded that with Lenore scenesia who wrote a book called free-range kids um and we need to raise the age of Internet adulthood to 16”
The period from 1989-1992 (fall of Berlin Wall through Gulf War) represented a glowing era of techno-democratic optimism where liberal democracy seemed to be the inevitable end-state of history and technology seemed positioned to democratize the world
“so many of the older folks here remember that 1989 through 1992 is this glowing period where the Berlin Wall fell and we were liberated from the nuclear war threat that we all grew up with...and we thought we thought that liberal democracy is the end point of History the direction that societies will naturally go”
The post-WWII era through approximately 2010 represented a period of genuine progress toward reduced injustice and increased inclusion, with decade-by-decade improvements in treating marginalized groups until 2013 when the trajectory reversed
“we had this period um of incredible you know connection and shared shared facts shared understandings shared identities and of course there were all kinds of injustices but guess what decade by decade those injustices got smaller and small smaller at an unbelievable rate until 2013. um so we were making incredible progress”
The human brain has hemispheric specialization where the front-left cortex contains circuits for approach motivation (behavior activation system) and the front-right is specialized for withdrawal, fear, and disgust (behavioral inhibition system), and individuals can operate predominantly in either 'discover mode' or 'defend mode'
“the human mind in the brain is divided into hemispheres and they have specialized functions and in the front left cortex there are a bunch of circuits that are involved with approach motivation it's called the behavior activation system it makes us want to do things go get something goal Pursuit and the front right is specialized for withdrawal fear disgust the behavioral inhibition system stop what you're doing freeze or run away”
UCLA mental health surveys show that student rates of psychological disorders remained stable through 2012 when all students were Millennials, but beginning 2013-2014 when Gen Z started arriving on campuses, psychological disorder rates increased significantly, particularly mood disorders (anxiety and depression)
“in 2010 and 2012 when all the students were Millennials...the rates of these disorders um by 2012...2013 2014 is when Gen Z begins to show up on campus and they go up a little except for that yellow line which goes up a lot and that's psychological disorders that's what really Rises when Gen Z comes they come with very very high rates of psychological disorders”
Russian state actors (KGB/Putin-affiliated) have been attempting to sow division in the United States since the 1950s through disinformation about race, religion, and ethnicity, but social media platforms in 2013 gave them exponentially more effective means by enabling them to deploy millions of fake accounts (sock puppets) from St. Petersburg without physical presence
“and into this chaos the Russians and of course Putin was a KGB agent they they had uh what were they called not direct operations they've been doing this since the 50s of trying to sow in the United States trying to make us think that we're all racist and anti-semitic trying to divide us especially by race and ethnicity and religion they've been trying to do this since the 50s but they had to send a guy over and give him cover it was very hard now they can sit in St Petersburg and just put up fake stories um so 2013 is when the Russians activate all their sock puppets their you know millions and millions of fake accounts um and so they're really trying to split us”
In 2009, Facebook's algorithmic innovations created massive data collection capability, which enabled sophisticated profiling and targeting of users, advancing the technological capability for algorithmic amplification and personalization
“in 2010 now Facebook has this huge amount of data coming in from all those likes now they know a lot about you and so now they can use algorithms for everything so everything gets algorithmicized”
Mark Zuckerberg was named Time Person of the Year in 2010 for creating a technology that transformed the world, but in 2012 when Zuckerberg took Facebook public, his shareholder letter revealed the company's goal was to 'transform all core institutions and industries' without clear understanding of the consequences
“in 2010 Mark Zuckerberg is Time person of the year because he created this product that's changing the world and in 2012 Zuckerberg takes Facebook public and in his letter to prospective shareholders he says today our society has reached another Tipping Point which he was right about we live when many most people have access to mobile phones Facebook aspires to build the services that give people the power to share okay that's good and help them once again transform many of our core institutions and industries what do you think about that let's invent this thing that lets people just transform our let's just transform all of our institutions and industries what could go wrong”
The iPhone 5 (2010) introduced a front-facing camera, making selfies easy and accessible to teenagers for the first time, which combined with Facebook's acquisition of Instagram (2012) led to a massive surge in girls adopting Instagram and social media, with mental health epidemics beginning the very next year (2013)
“in 2010 the iPhone 5 gets a front-facing camera before then it was hard to take selfies now it's really easy in 20 so this is the period this two-year period this is the period you can see here uh appointment start right there where the slope is very steep this is where high school kids are basically all moving on to social media and they're getting a camera a phone with a front-facing camera and they're taking selfies and in 2012 um Facebook buys Instagram which is what leads to it a huge surge in popularity that's when all the girls hear about it that's when all the girls go on it and the very next year is when the mental health epidemic Begins”
The New York Times, when trans activists tried to pressure it to fire journalists over trans-related coverage, stood up and defended its journalistic independence, representing a turning point where media institutions began resisting ideological capture.
“the New York Times when trans activists tried to uh say you you know you got to fire these people you can't do I can't remember the exact issue was but but there was a protest and for one of the first times the head of a newspaper stood up and said no we're going to do our job as newspapers”
American and Canadian universities are among the most welcoming, inclusive, and safe places ever invented for adolescents, making the widespread student perception of threat and danger on campuses in 2014-2015 an apparent paradox
“American and Canadian universities are among the most welcoming inclusive open safe places ever invented for adolescents um so this was the puzzle”
The United States faces a very good chance (estimated as more than minimal by Haidt, who is dispositionally optimistic) that it will not maintain the U.S. Constitution in its current form or as 50 states for the next 30-40 years, with very bad political events likely to occur
“I think there's a very good chance the United States is not going to make it for the next 30 or 40 years with the continuous U.S Constitution in 50 states I think some really bad things are are there's a very good chance that very bad things are going to happen in the United States”
Self-governance is a learned capacity that requires childhood practice making decisions in small groups without adult supervision; American and Canadian parents have prevented this practice by locking down childhood, which threatens the foundational assumption of the American experiment—that citizens can govern themselves without authoritarian control
“what we're doing here is we're saying you never get to be self-governing you never get to make decisions for yourself in a small group of kids...now do you know the phrase the American experiment is that a phrase you've ever heard here in Canada um it's a phrase the founding fathers didn't use it but they they wrote about what they were doing as if it was an experiment the experiment was can we govern ourselves without a king...we proved them wrong we were able to not only do we self-government we went on to become this Premier country...and then in we've stopped our kids from Ever Getting Any practice in self-governance”
On the left, extreme voices shoot darts at moderate voices, causing moderates to self-censor or withdraw from public discourse; on the right, far-right voices attack moderate conservatives, causing them to go quiet; this creates a pattern where each side only hears the most extreme version of the other side, leading both to think the other side is insane
“the far left shoots darts into the modern lift they don't I mean they can shoot at the far right but they don't care so the far left aims most of its darts at moderate left and so that means that the moderates go quiet and once the moderates go quiet then everybody only hears the extreme View and they think well that's what we believe and the far right or the people on the right all they see is the most extreme views on the left and they think that the left is insane and then the same thing happens on the right the far right shoots its moderates they go quiet they don't question the move to”
Haidt quit all his professional societies in American psychology because they have all adopted 'anti-racist' institutional positions, meaning all discourse is filtered through race frameworks, which he sees as politicization that undermines institutional truth-seeking
“I had to quit all my professional Societies in Psychology United States because they've all they're they they're anti-racist which means everything has to be about race um and so when they do that guess what even people on the left lose trust in them”
Social media platforms require identity authentication to prevent the deployment of millions of fake accounts (sock puppets), and algorithmic changes are necessary to reduce viral amplification and emotional triggering while slowing down information spread
“we have to reform social media and so I won't go into this but we're going to have to I think it's the point where for large platforms you can't just be sitting in St Petersburg opening a thousand accounts a day and of course with AI you can open a billion accounts a day we're going to have to have some sort of identity authentication I think there's all sorts of things we can do to make things less explosively viral we need to just calm those things down”
The Dean of Stanford Law School recently wrote a letter stating that students were wrong to shout down a federal judge speaker, representing one of the first times since 2015 that institutional leadership has publicly defended open discourse against pressure to de-platform speakers.
“in the last three months we actually saw someone at a university stand up after after humiliating episodes we actually saw the dean of of Stanford law school wrote a letter saying no you students were wrong to shout this professor this speaker this judge down and that hadn't I've been waiting since 2015 for someone to do that”
During COVID, San Francisco school board shut down schools but spent extensive time debating renaming schools; they renamed Abraham Lincoln School based on unverified claims that Lincoln did something harmful to Native Americans, demonstrating how institutions lacking viewpoint diversity pursue absurd priorities while ignoring urgent problems
“so San Francisco shut down all it's called the Blue States shut down they go way too far they're almost like Canada in its Insanity of shutting down...So San Francisco schools are shut but what do they do the school board meets and meets and meets to decide what schools to rename we don't want I'm serious you know a school named after Lincoln we got to rename it why because somebody on the board read that Abe Lincoln once did something that was bad for the Indians and it wasn't even true didn't matter he was accused let's take off the name it's insane completely insane”
Republican party has become the 'stupid party' due to becoming structurally polarized without moderate voices, evident in the January 6th Capitol invasion being defended as 'legitimate political discourse' and an attempt to overturn an election being called protected speech
“the Republican party in my country has become the stupid party I mean they truly are stupid in the sense of like you know to I mean to invade the capital and try to stop a democratic election like this is the worst thing that has happened since the Civil War um and for then for Republicans to say oh well this is just legitimate political discourse you know coming and trying to kill the speaker and they're just expressing their free speech rights you know so this is this is you know so this is unbelievable”
The age at which children can legally sign binding contracts and consent to terms of service on social media platforms is 13 years old as set by the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which was established without consideration for mental health and is a complete disaster.
“Congress set the age of Internet adulthood to 13. in 1998 Congress passed a law saying at 13 kids can make a legally binding deal with AOL or a company they can give away their data give away their rights and and sign a contract at 13. oh and you don't have to show your 13 just say you're 13”
Web 2 (two-way commerce and engagement on social media platforms) is the problem; Web 3 (blockchain-based, user data ownership) may provide an alternative that doesn't require platforms to optimize for engagement and advertising revenue.
“so you know web one was the early interview like you you know you can put stuff up and people can read it like wow you can read stuff and web 2 was oh no you can write stuff back and give credit cards like it's two-way you can have Commerce that's what the disaster was so you know we first got the side of the engine like information is free amazing and then we got to web 2 like oh it's all about commercial engagement and and you know so it's web 2 that's messed us up web three is is based on blockchain you can own your data it's it's a little hard to explain but the internet the the social media we have now I'm guessing is not going to be what we have in 10 years so I think things are going to change and there will be some technological changes okay”
Greg Lukianoff (president of Foundation for Individual Rights and Education) recognized that students in 2014-2015 were using cognitive distortions identified in cognitive-behavioral therapy—catastrophizing, overgeneralizing, black-and-white thinking—to justify censoring speech, books, words, and ideas
“Greg is prone to depression he'd had a suicidal depression 2007 he learned how to do CPT cognitive behavioral therapy he learned to recognize distorted thoughts and Greg his job was to push back against College administrators...but all of a sudden in 2014 Greg saw that students were trying to shut down speakers books words ideas and they were using arguments that he recognized as among the 12 or 15 cognitive distortions they were catastrophizing over generalizing black and white thinking”
Structural stupidity is stupidity built into the structure of institutions, not individual stupidity—people in institutions (universities, newspapers, government agencies) with low viewpoint diversity become collectively stupid because the lack of disagreement means confirmation bias goes uncorrected and extreme voices dominate
“this leads to what I've called structural stupidity that is its stupidity built into the structure within which people operate so people aren't stupid IQ hasn't gone down but the structures that we work in particularly universities and newspapers and agencies and magazines any place where there's not Viewpoint diversity any place where almost everybody is on the same team becomes really stupid in the age of social media”
Eliezer Yudkowsky (starting at age 18 in 2000) worked out that if artificial general intelligence (AGI) is achieved, it will recursively improve itself to superintelligence, reaching god-like capabilities within 24 hours, and is likely to kill all humans
“we had a talk from from Eliezer yodkowski who at the age of 18 back in 19 back in 2000 theaters of 18. he was he he was you know this like kid totally focused on computers he loved AI he worked out wait if we actually get AI and it becomes what we think it will become on that day it will then get smarter and smarter and smarter so fast like 24 hours later it could you know it could be like another species and basically he figured out like it's actually going to kill us all like if we actually get AGI that that will likely be the end of humanity”
Childhood autonomy has been substantially constrained since around 1995 in the US and Canada, with older generations reporting free unsupervised outdoor access at ages 6-7 while Gen Z typically first received such independence at ages 10-14, despite the 1990s being an era of historically low crime rates
“think of your number what age were you when you had you were given Independence you didn't have to be supervised all the time okay got your number...if you were born um 1981 or earlier you are Gen X or baby boomer...yell out your number...so you see so it sounds like there's a pit of snakes because it was all six seven everyone's six and seven right”
2014 is when the Tower of Babel begins to fall—the year when unexpected political events began (Trump, Brexit, etc.), when democratic decline began globally, and when societal dysfunction became visible across multiple domains simultaneously
“wait a moment um this is 2014 again this is I say 2014 is when the tower begins to fall this is when all the crazy stuff begins to happen on campus this is when Donald Trump comes in he never could have won if we weren't in if the tower had not Fallen if we if he was running in 2012 he could not have won this is when you get unexpected votes not that this was not Democratic I'm just saying huge political surprises”
The metaphor of the Tower of Babel—where God confounds human language so people can no longer understand each other and scatter—accurately describes the current state of American discourse where despite advanced communication technology, people cannot understand across political lines or engage in shared reality.
“I want you to imagine like really try to imagine what would it be like if you know your your five generations since Humanity was almost wiped out and you're repopulating the Earth you build something like this obviously this is a you know like a Renaissance Europe Vision... and then one day this happens and it's not just that everything is destroyed it's that you can't even talk to your neighbor about what just happened to you that's a state of extraordinary confusion and really kind of horror um which I think is actually a pretty good analog for our current age”
Elon Musk violates fiduciary duty as CEO of Tesla and other companies by making explicitly partisan political statements that alienate significant customer segments, demonstrating irresponsible leadership and providing a poor role model for young men.
“I'm a professor in a business school and I teach business ethics and I I teach my students about fiduciary duty and he is the you know he's the founder or head or head of the board whatever of like you know many companies and as that he has a fiduciary duty to that company and for him to go saying the Democrats are the party of hate... he has some terrible he said like that is completely insane as the head of Tesla you're really going to say to the world hey audience I'm a republican I hate Democrats I don't care if you don't buy my cars like so he's incredibly responsible as a CEO”
Haidt's metaphor for social media is a 'dart gun' where everyone can accuse anyone of anything at any time with no evidence and anonymously, making all leaders and public figures vulnerable to thousands of attacks and disinformation, with no mechanism for accountability or truth-checking
“the metaphor that I use in the Atlantic article is that social media especially Twitter in the age of virality is like a dart gun everybody gets a dart gun everybody can accuse anyone of anything at any time no evidence anonymously so everyone is vulnerable especially leaders anyone leading anything has been shot with thousands of darts because someone doesn't like what you did and they say terrible things about you with no no need for evidence”
Something fundamental changed in American society around 2014-2015, marked by a shift in the basic fabric of society that first manifested on university campuses as students entered 'defend mode' rather than 'discover mode'
“in 2014 it was like there was a disturbance in the force it was like there was a glitch in The Matrix something changed”
Twitter's algorithmic retweet feature and the resulting ability to amplify messages instantly created Twitter mobs, and one of the engineers who designed the retweet button later compared it to handing 'a loaded weapon to a four-year-old,' acknowledging the feature's destabilizing effects
“when one of the engineers who worked on the retweet button you know he thought that giving people more power to share this would Elevate voices from underrepresented communities but in fact as he put it when they saw the Twitter mobs forming with this new feature he said we just handed a loaded weapon to a four-year-old that's what it looked like and that's what it's felt like in the age of Twitter”
Starting in 2014, incoming Gen Z students began requesting trigger warnings on course material, responding to assignments on Shakespeare and Greek mythology containing racism or sexual violence by asking instructors to warn them in advance so they could 'brace themselves'
“all of a sudden from out of nowhere students were asking for trigger warnings um and it's because like if you're going to assign you know Shakespeare or Greek myth or anything and if there's racism in it or sexual violence you can't just expect students to just read that you have to warn them so they can brace themselves”
In January 2015, at NYU, Haidt personally experienced the new campus environment when a student reported him for showing a research video containing one objectionable word that he had previously shown 50 times without incident, and the system felt compelled to investigate despite the minor nature of the complaint
“a student at NYU reported me for showing a video that I'd shown 50 times before research videos just a video about experiment and she objected to one word in it um and and said she felt unsafe and reported me and the system nobody could stand up and say wait this is you know it had to be investigated and and and you know so so that was the thing like what just happened this is the worst thing in my academic life”
Threaded comments (where users can respond directly to specific comments rather than to a general post) transformed online discussion from monologues into escalating argument threads, enabling 'fighting' dynamics similar to bar brawls where everyone is fighting with everyone
“another important innovation is threaded comments it used to be if someone says something you could say you know go to hell you jerk you're an idiot you could say that and it comments and it would just be one of a thousand comments but now but with threaded comments you know you can say that and then someone gets to and then Facebook asks them do you want to respond to to Bill who said that you're a jerk and then you know and you get fighting in the comments now it's everybody's fighting everywhere everybody can fight everyone it's like it's like those you know westerns where suddenly everyone's throwing chairs at everyone”
The University of Austin and recent leadership at Stanford Law School and the New York Times represent emerging counter-movements within institutions to resist social media-driven politicization and defend intellectual independence, suggesting potential for institutional recovery.
“the University of Austin is an attempt to just start from the ground up build a place devoted to the classic functions of the University... also in the last three months we actually saw someone at a university stand up after after humiliating episodes we actually saw the dean of of Stanford law school wrote a letter saying no you students were wrong to shout this professor this speaker this judge down”