[Applause]
so I’ve spent most of my career as an
apologist for the Internet and the last
10 years of my career as a critic of
governments in particular of the United
States government and in the background
of that apology and the background of
that criticism there has been a glorious
group called the people never criticized
by me never questioned never questioned
that at the core of democracy there was
a well-functioning idea called We the
People if only we could speak so today I
don’t want to apologize for the net
anymore I want to criticize it and I
don’t want to talk about the corruption
of government I want to ignore it and I
don’t want to praise we the people I
want to show you just how pathetic we
have become we’re at least how pathetic
we are understood because unless we find
a way to recover a reason for democracy
there is no fight for democracy to be
had so I want to start with two things
we could call them thing one and thing
two thing one I want you to think about
common knowledge knowledge held by all
of us and thing two I want you to think
about common will so common knowledge
things known generally within a people
everyone knows there was a wall in
Berlin everyone knows this is our
president everyone knows that most
Americans don’t like that president
these are common knowledge among
Americans at least and then there’s
common will what we want or we believe
so Gallup tells us that Americans
believe the freedom in their life has
contracted over the last decade tells us
that the confidence in the economy has
grown and just to remind you it tells us
that most Americans don’t like Donald
Trump as our president these are the
elements of common will so think one
thing to seeing one things we know thing
two things we want it’s good to get that
order right if you want things before
you know you get into trouble so we know
before we want thing one versus thing
two now what I want you to do is to
think about thing one and thing two and
three different periods over the last
200 years
so first the period of the 19th century
very cleverly took iconic images from
Berlin but I’m not talking about Berlin
I want to talk about America but iconic
images from the 19th century in Berlin
20th century in Berlin and the 21st
century in Berlin these images to
trigger recognition of different periods
so let’s start with the 19th century and
question thing one asks how did we know
in the 19th century well in the 19th
century people knew or those who knew
knew through technologies like this
printed journals newspapers many many
sources which would filter out to
produce knowledge in a public fragmented
and diverse there’s no Broadcasting in
the 19th century no real syndication at
least in the United States in the 19th
century to the extent there is common
knowledge common knowledge
it is little and thin there are certain
facts everyone knows that there was a
war called the Civil War who the
president is but facts like whether the
tariff should go up and down those are
not things that ordinary people knew but
if you would ask the question what did
ordinary people know or what did they
want the proper answer in the 19th
century was who
frac knows because there was no
technology to know what people wanted
there was no polling there were no
surveys people like James Bryce had
mystical theories about how politicians
came to know what the people wanted but
in fact it was more like a Catholic
priest or this is a Methodist priest but
anyway a priest telling us what God
wants never really believing we know
what God actually wants just the priests
interpretation that’s all we have and
the consequence was that the will of the
people was actually pretty irrelevant to
most of what government does if somebody
had stood up and very earnestly said
what does the public want to a
government official the reaction would
have been sort of minion like ha ha yes
sure as if that could possibly matter
policymaking in the 19th century was by
policy making elites so we have a 19th
century knowledge fragmented what the
people cared about basically unknown
then the 20th century how do we know in
the 20th century well the 20th century
has two extraordinary technologies we
need to reckon and to think about first
a technology of broadcasting for the
first time we have the capacity to speak
to everybody at the same time and
broadcasting dramatically affects news
as leaders go to the radio to speak to
the people for the first time and it
affects culture generally far beyond
issues of policy and this troubled many
people in the history of culture 1906
this man John Philip Sousa went to the
United States Capitol to testify against
the evil technology called
the talking machines Sousa was not a fan
of the talking machines as he testified
these talking machines are going to ruin
the artistic development of music in
this country when I was a boy in front
of every house you would in the summer
evenings you would find young people
together singing the songs of the day of
the old songs today you hear these
infernal machines going night and day
we will not have a vocal cord left Sousa
threatens the vocal cords will be
eliminated by a process of evolution as
was the tale of man when he came from
the apes what Sousa feared here
was it a certain technology technology
of broadcasting or the technology of
music in record players would make a
certain kind of culture kind of couch
potato culture a passive receptive
culture that would not engage in
creation on its own but consume creation
produced elsewhere and that was the fear
in politics too but an extraordinary
technology that the birth of the 19th
20th century nobody ever thought about
radically changed that affect the
television and as an extraordinary
scholar from Princeton Marcus Pryor has
shown us through an incredible empirical
analysis of political attitudes as it
relates to the technology of
broadcasting technology of television
changed everything not just because of
the concentration one or two channels
that broadcast everything and indeed
there was an extraordinary concentration
sir Agnew writes at least 40 million
Americans every night watched the
network news in 1969 according to Harris
polls in other studies for millions of
Americans the networks are the sole
source of national and world news even
in 1977 news in this sense ninety
percent of people got their news from
three television networks so there’s an
extraordinary concentration in the
information people are exposed to but
more than the concentration is priors
demonstrates it’s also a certain kind of
addiction people can’t turn the
television off and not just in the 80s
of the 90s but in the 1950s the
television is turned on and just left on
in the United States for those times of
the day when the television is running
always in the background and there’s a
regular pattern to the day and if part
of the day everybody
is watching the news and what that does
by putting the news through a channel
that was inherently understandable to
everybody was that we had a media that
conveyed the news so that ordinary as
well as elite citizens understood it for
the first time this wasn’t speaking just
to an elite in journals or newspapers
that only the highbrow would consume
everybody consumed it and what that did
was to produce an extraordinarily
egalitarian exposure to politics and in
America radically changed who voted
instead of just polarized extremes
voting what Pryor demonstrates is that
ordinary Americans who otherwise never
were involved in politics turned out and
voted and shifted America fundamentally
towards what you would not recognize as
the left but in America we think of as
the left more citizens were engaged and
the made in mainstream trusted sources
because of course the three news
channels shot right down the middle and
they created characters like Walter
Cronkite who conveyed a sense of trust
in the public that the public followed
it developed a common understanding
common understanding which was thick and
great a common set of facts sensible
judgments shared by millions of
Americans now don’t get me wrong I don’t
mean to idolize what people believed at
the time there was an obliviousness
about race and obliviousness about
poverty and obliviousness about issues
nobody even thought about like sexual
orientation there was all sorts of ways
the system was biased but my point is
the architecture at least made it
possible for a public to understand a
common set of questions and issues which
they must themselves address politically
it made sense a few sources concentrated
everywhere okay that’s the first big
change in technology the second relates
to thing too because then you ask what
is the public’s will the other thing the
20th century did was to provide a huge
change as poor as important as the
change of broadcasting and that change
was really triggered by this
extraordinary man George Gallup now
Gallup of course you know is Gallup
polls but Gallup began in 1936 as a
figure in America because in 1936 there
was an election the third time that FDR
sorry second time FDR was going to be
elected and when FDR ran for this his
re-election by this time the elite in
America was tired of this socialist I’m
sorry Democratic Socialist running the
country so the view of the elite was
that he was going to be defeated and
what literary digest did every election
from Calvin Coolidge until FDR was that
they would send out millions of ballots
to people to ask them who they were
gonna vote for and these millions of
ballots would be sent back and they
tallied them and they would predict who
was going to win in every election until
1936 they were spot on within one or two
points so they believed they had a
system for polling down it just was
unfortunately very expensive because you
had to send out millions and millions of
ballots well George Gallup looked at
this he said wait a minute
the views of people who owned
automobiles or people who owned
telephones the perfuse of the people who
literary digest was reaching out to
don’t represent the country because they
are rich people and what I think we
should do is instead randomly select
people from the country and go out and
talk to them not millions just a couple
thousand and so whereas literary digest
predicted Alf Landen would beat FDR 57
percent to 42 percent when Gallup was
finished he said actually I think it’s
going to be FDR winning by fifty four
percent over Alf Landen and in fact the
results were FDR beat him by 61 percent
but with that defeat radical change in
the tech
nology of polling and George Gallup was
a star and in a certain sense he was the
Martin Luther of democracy right because
he said we don’t have to talk to the
priests we can talk directly to the
people we can reach directly to the
people to know in a practical way what
the people want and indeed James Bryce
who thought that there was a mystical
way that we might be able to reach the
people in visions in the 19th century a
final stage in the evolution of
democracy would be reached if the will
of the citizens were to become
ascertainable at all times and that’s
precisely what George Gallup believed he
was doing and he believed he was doing
it in the name of supporting democracy
for myself I have no hesitation Gallup
wrote in living in a country whose
everyday citizens feel about major
issues as the citizens of our country
feel if you say let the people rule you
can count me on your side now the
technology was expensive so there are
relatively few polls early on but
through the course of the 20th centuries
of rising importance making in a sense a
respectable public because the public in
part because of what I described as
thing one was a public where we all knew
we all had a common knowledge upon which
to base our judgments about public
policy we all judge in common and what
that produced was sensible judgments
that people like George Gallup could
celebrate of a general public that
understood and made sense so its 20th
century is a century of concentrated
information where the public’s views
known and increasingly respected okay
what about the twenty-first century well
first how do we know what’s how do
people come to know things in 21st
century it’s back to the future because
of course broadcasting is finished in
the United States the way we know things
is through a billion sources not three
anymore and the most important
of those sources our social media
sources increasingly completely
uncontrolled by any form of editor
Donald Trump did me the favor yesterday
of tweeting a relevant tweet he wrote
the fake and fraudulent news media is
working hard to convince Republicans as
I should not use social media but
remember I won using social media
now mr. Trump you didn’t win because of
Twitter you won because you got more
votes than Europe I’m sorry
forget that just forget the whole point
but the point is this form of expression
is many sources hugely fragmented public
a diverse public which of course is a
great thing for cultural issues Game of
Thrones is something imaginable only in
our time not in the time of the 60s or
70s when it would have to appeal to a
much more mainstream audience and our
friend Sousa would have loved the
technology that enables this kind of
diversity but though it’s great for
culture it’s terrible for democracy
because what this fragmentation means is
that there’s no common story no common
facts radical polarization in what we
know and radical polarization in what we
should do and there’s no better proof of
this than this man you probably live in
circles like I do where people cannot
understand how he’s not being called out
by the umpires of our democracy just
pulled off the field for whatever reason
how is it possible the man is still
president we wonder doesn’t everyone see
how ridiculous this is yet a poll last
month found that of people who voted for
Donald Trump only 2% would not vote for
him again and in fact more people who
voted for Hillary Clinton would not vote
for her again if the election were held
a month ago that is because we’ve
separated ourselves and we live in
totally different worlds and the reality
we know is completely affected by the
niche markets of those worlds so you
might say okay so we in a sense have
gone back to the 19th century fragmented
media once again you might say what’s so
bad about that but it’s not quite
the 19th century because yes of course
we’re fragmented again but in the 19th
century the will of the people was
silenced they didn’t even know what it
was but for us today because of the 20th
century there’s a normative will of the
people a public that remains and if we
think of this question of thing to what
is for us the public’s will we still
know what the public’s will is today all
the time thousands of poles asking us
what do we think and these answers get
used they get used against us because
they have a presumptively normative role
they’re relevant but this will that gets
identified what we the people believe is
not informed by common facts this will
is ignorant I don’t mean stupid
I mean ignorant a white guy my age from
America is likely to be able to tell you
all sorts of things about this activity
I think it’s it’s football right likely
be able to tell you all sorts of things
about who’s winning what the stats are
blah blah blah I don’t know any of this
stuff I don’t know the first thing about
that game my dad used to make me watch
it I like like to pretend I liked it
because I like to be with my dad but I
hate the game but that’s not because I’m
stupid
I’m just ignorant I don’t know anything
I could learn a lot about this game I
could learn I think everything there is
to know about telling you about this
game but I don’t because I don’t want to
I’m ignorant I’m not stupid
and so too with us because for us for
most of us in a democracy life is not
politics there are other things to life
and for most of us in liberal democracy
what we do is live with our tribe people
like us we live with our friends and
those two facts mean we don’t know a
clue about most important issues most of
the time and if we do we’re likely to be
biased because we’re doing what our
tribe says we don’t know but we could
know
now that’s bad enough but it gets even
worse because in this business model of
media in a fragmented media environment
which the United States is the business
model makes this problem even worse
because the aim of the business is to
polarize the aim is to find a way to
make people even hate each other more
because that drives loyalty to the brand
so think of the problem of science Dan
kahan from Yale and others have
developed where they call cultural
cognition theory and what this theory
demonstrates massive empirical work is
that how people view facts not arguments
about what’s good and bad not values
questions but facts is a function of
your tribe who you are the same facts
told the different tribes produce
radically different understandings now
that’s depressing
yeah what’s interesting about that is
that’s only true with issues that have
become polarized issues on the right
like climate change where nobody on the
right will admit that climate change is
caused by humans issues on the left like
GMO or no person the left will admit the
GMOs could be safe to consume so for
example climate change at first
everybody agreed with climate change in
2008 both McCain and Obama endorsed
radical changes to deal with climate
change then this extraordinary movie in
community truth came out and tied the
issue to a very polarizing figure a hero
of mine but still a polarizing figure Al
Gore and after that was done people on
the right can’t hear arguments about
climate changes anymore because it’s to
identify them with Al Gore now what’s
interesting is not all science is
partisan like this this you can’t read
this but basically what this shows is
those graphs where the lines are
diagonal are partisan air questions so
climate change is the first but those
graphs where the black lines are flat
are not partisan which means that
whether you’re on the right of the Left
are basically going to believe the same
thing for those questions of science
here’s why this is really terrifying
because if the media’s business model is
to polarize what they’re doing is
looking at those non partisan scientific
questions and finding ways to make them
partisan they have an interest in a
sense in making us stupid and that
interest manifests itself most violently
in this highly fragmented media
environment this is a problem it is a
problem for democracy as we get rendered
ignorance the push against a democracy
grows around the world it’s a great book
terrible title but great book
technocracy in America which that’s what
can we learn from these amazing
countries Singapore and Switzerland
which have highly functional governments
and the answer as this author puts it is
that we should focus less on democracy
and more on governance lesson trying to
get democracy writers work on making
government work that of course is the
precursor to the authoritarianism we see
spreading everywhere in the world my
view is the answer is not to reject
democracy the answer is to find a way
for democracy to represent us better to
give up the idea that when we talk about
we as in we the people we’re talking
about what we all happen to think now
and replace that idea with a conception
of we where what may mean is what we
think when we are informed and
deliberated for any thing about talking
to audiences that are not
english-speaking audiences natively as
you can make up words like The Liberator
doesn’t completely made up word but you
get the sense right the fact the fact of
having deliberated okay so the public is
deliberated meaning they’ve had a chance
to talk now I’ve seen such publics I’ve
seen such a week I’ve met them they are
extraordinary people here’s a picture of
the one I saw most recently so that
picture comes from this place
that’s Mongolia the Mongolian Parliament
for mystical reasons passed a law that
said whenever there’s a change to the
Constitution the government has
to pick a random selection of 800
Mongolians
from across Mongolia c’mon goalie is the
size of Western Europe for the
population of 3 million so here is 800
randomly selected Mongolians
representative who traveled to the
capital to sit in the parliament for two
ten-hour days to deliberate the proposed
changes to the Constitution now I’m a
law professor at Harvard
I am elitist therefore and I’m a pretty
snobby law professor meaning I pretty
regularly condemn people when they start
talking about constitutional laws people
who don’t know anything but i sat there
through a translator listening to what
these ordinary people said and argued
about for two days as they deliberated
these really important changes the
Constitution and I was humbled by
recognition that if you give people the
information and you give them a sense
that they are important and you give
them a chance to talk they are actually
worth listening to and that the
conception of We the People that we get
through the stupid press is not a
conception that reflects who we can be
if we structure who we are in our
democratic process properly now what
they did is something called a
deliberative poll and there have been
scores of these done across the world
but what a deliberative pole is
represents we as representative and
informed and deliberated people making
judgments that are smart and balanced it
is a we we can all be proud of it is a
way to represent us the challenge here
is how do you scale such a project and
the truth is the depressing truth is the
reason I don’t have a witty happy ending
to my story is I have no idea not even
sure it’s possible what I know is we
have to resist a media that works hard
to make us seem stupid a media that
represents us as stupid yes we don’t
know everything always why would we
that’s not embarrassing we live a life
we are humans
but we can if a democracy learns how to
listen to us speak in a way that ought
to be respected and we have to find a
way to recover that truth about us
because the alternative the alternative
that imagines us as a people who
responds the way democracy engages us
today for example again thanks to my
friend Donald Trump I have a great
example here he tweeted yesterday my use
of social media is not presidential
it’s modern-day presidential make
America great again if this is the way
our democracy engages with us this is
not just not great about America it is
hopeless about the future of democracy
we have to find a way to elevate the
people again because we are an
extraordinary resource that makes
democracy work thank you very much
[Applause]
so I’ve spent most of my career as an
apologist for the Internet and the last
10 years of my career as a critic of
governments in particular of the United
States government and in the background
of that apology and the background of
that criticism there has been a glorious
group called the people never criticized
by me never questioned never questioned
that at the core of democracy there was
a well-functioning idea called We the
People if only we could speak so today I
don’t want to apologize for the net
anymore I want to criticize it and I
don’t want to talk about the corruption
of government I want to ignore it and I
don’t want to praise we the people I
want to show you just how pathetic we
have become we’re at least how pathetic
we are understood because unless we find
a way to recover a reason for democracy
there is no fight for democracy to be
had so I want to start with two things
we could call them thing one and thing
two thing one I want you to think about
common knowledge knowledge held by all
of us and thing two I want you to think
about common will so common knowledge
things known generally within a people
everyone knows there was a wall in
Berlin everyone knows this is our
president everyone knows that most
Americans don’t like that president
these are common knowledge among
Americans at least and then there’s
common will what we want or we believe
so Gallup tells us that Americans
believe the freedom in their life has
contracted over the last decade tells us
that the confidence in the economy has
grown and just to remind you it tells us
that most Americans don’t like Donald
Trump as our president these are the
elements of common will so think one
thing to seeing one things we know thing
two things we want it’s good to get that
order right if you want things before
you know you get into trouble so we know
before we want thing one versus thing
two now what I want you to do is to
think about thing one and thing two and
three different periods over the last
200 years
so first the period of the 19th century
very cleverly took iconic images from
Berlin but I’m not talking about Berlin
I want to talk about America but iconic
images from the 19th century in Berlin
20th century in Berlin and the 21st
century in Berlin these images to
trigger recognition of different periods
so let’s start with the 19th century and
question thing one asks how did we know
in the 19th century well in the 19th
century people knew or those who knew
knew through technologies like this
printed journals newspapers many many
sources which would filter out to
produce knowledge in a public fragmented
and diverse there’s no Broadcasting in
the 19th century no real syndication at
least in the United States in the 19th
century to the extent there is common
knowledge common knowledge
it is little and thin there are certain
facts everyone knows that there was a
war called the Civil War who the
president is but facts like whether the
tariff should go up and down those are
not things that ordinary people knew but
if you would ask the question what did
ordinary people know or what did they
want the proper answer in the 19th
century was who
frac knows because there was no
technology to know what people wanted
there was no polling there were no
surveys people like James Bryce had
mystical theories about how politicians
came to know what the people wanted but
in fact it was more like a Catholic
priest or this is a Methodist priest but
anyway a priest telling us what God
wants never really believing we know
what God actually wants just the priests
interpretation that’s all we have and
the consequence was that the will of the
people was actually pretty irrelevant to
most of what government does if somebody
had stood up and very earnestly said
what does the public want to a
government official the reaction would
have been sort of minion like ha ha yes
sure as if that could possibly matter
policymaking in the 19th century was by
policy making elites so we have a 19th
century knowledge fragmented what the
people cared about basically unknown
then the 20th century how do we know in
the 20th century well the 20th century
has two extraordinary technologies we
need to reckon and to think about first
a technology of broadcasting for the
first time we have the capacity to speak
to everybody at the same time and
broadcasting dramatically affects news
as leaders go to the radio to speak to
the people for the first time and it
affects culture generally far beyond
issues of policy and this troubled many
people in the history of culture 1906
this man John Philip Sousa went to the
United States Capitol to testify against
the evil technology called
the talking machines Sousa was not a fan
of the talking machines as he testified
these talking machines are going to ruin
the artistic development of music in
this country when I was a boy in front
of every house you would in the summer
evenings you would find young people
together singing the songs of the day of
the old songs today you hear these
infernal machines going night and day
we will not have a vocal cord left Sousa
threatens the vocal cords will be
eliminated by a process of evolution as
was the tale of man when he came from
the apes what Sousa feared here
was it a certain technology technology
of broadcasting or the technology of
music in record players would make a
certain kind of culture kind of couch
potato culture a passive receptive
culture that would not engage in
creation on its own but consume creation
produced elsewhere and that was the fear
in politics too but an extraordinary
technology that the birth of the 19th
20th century nobody ever thought about
radically changed that affect the
television and as an extraordinary
scholar from Princeton Marcus Pryor has
shown us through an incredible empirical
analysis of political attitudes as it
relates to the technology of
broadcasting technology of television
changed everything not just because of
the concentration one or two channels
that broadcast everything and indeed
there was an extraordinary concentration
sir Agnew writes at least 40 million
Americans every night watched the
network news in 1969 according to Harris
polls in other studies for millions of
Americans the networks are the sole
source of national and world news even
in 1977 news in this sense ninety
percent of people got their news from
three television networks so there’s an
extraordinary concentration in the
information people are exposed to but
more than the concentration is priors
demonstrates it’s also a certain kind of
addiction people can’t turn the
television off and not just in the 80s
of the 90s but in the 1950s the
television is turned on and just left on
in the United States for those times of
the day when the television is running
always in the background and there’s a
regular pattern to the day and if part
of the day everybody
is watching the news and what that does
by putting the news through a channel
that was inherently understandable to
everybody was that we had a media that
conveyed the news so that ordinary as
well as elite citizens understood it for
the first time this wasn’t speaking just
to an elite in journals or newspapers
that only the highbrow would consume
everybody consumed it and what that did
was to produce an extraordinarily
egalitarian exposure to politics and in
America radically changed who voted
instead of just polarized extremes
voting what Pryor demonstrates is that
ordinary Americans who otherwise never
were involved in politics turned out and
voted and shifted America fundamentally
towards what you would not recognize as
the left but in America we think of as
the left more citizens were engaged and
the made in mainstream trusted sources
because of course the three news
channels shot right down the middle and
they created characters like Walter
Cronkite who conveyed a sense of trust
in the public that the public followed
it developed a common understanding
common understanding which was thick and
great a common set of facts sensible
judgments shared by millions of
Americans now don’t get me wrong I don’t
mean to idolize what people believed at
the time there was an obliviousness
about race and obliviousness about
poverty and obliviousness about issues
nobody even thought about like sexual
orientation there was all sorts of ways
the system was biased but my point is
the architecture at least made it
possible for a public to understand a
common set of questions and issues which
they must themselves address politically
it made sense a few sources concentrated
everywhere okay that’s the first big
change in technology the second relates
to thing too because then you ask what
is the public’s will the other thing the
20th century did was to provide a huge
change as poor as important as the
change of broadcasting and that change
was really triggered by this
extraordinary man George Gallup now
Gallup of course you know is Gallup
polls but Gallup began in 1936 as a
figure in America because in 1936 there
was an election the third time that FDR
sorry second time FDR was going to be
elected and when FDR ran for this his
re-election by this time the elite in
America was tired of this socialist I’m
sorry Democratic Socialist running the
country so the view of the elite was
that he was going to be defeated and
what literary digest did every election
from Calvin Coolidge until FDR was that
they would send out millions of ballots
to people to ask them who they were
gonna vote for and these millions of
ballots would be sent back and they
tallied them and they would predict who
was going to win in every election until
1936 they were spot on within one or two
points so they believed they had a
system for polling down it just was
unfortunately very expensive because you
had to send out millions and millions of
ballots well George Gallup looked at
this he said wait a minute
the views of people who owned
automobiles or people who owned
telephones the perfuse of the people who
literary digest was reaching out to
don’t represent the country because they
are rich people and what I think we
should do is instead randomly select
people from the country and go out and
talk to them not millions just a couple
thousand and so whereas literary digest
predicted Alf Landen would beat FDR 57
percent to 42 percent when Gallup was
finished he said actually I think it’s
going to be FDR winning by fifty four
percent over Alf Landen and in fact the
results were FDR beat him by 61 percent
but with that defeat radical change in
the tech
nology of polling and George Gallup was
a star and in a certain sense he was the
Martin Luther of democracy right because
he said we don’t have to talk to the
priests we can talk directly to the
people we can reach directly to the
people to know in a practical way what
the people want and indeed James Bryce
who thought that there was a mystical
way that we might be able to reach the
people in visions in the 19th century a
final stage in the evolution of
democracy would be reached if the will
of the citizens were to become
ascertainable at all times and that’s
precisely what George Gallup believed he
was doing and he believed he was doing
it in the name of supporting democracy
for myself I have no hesitation Gallup
wrote in living in a country whose
everyday citizens feel about major
issues as the citizens of our country
feel if you say let the people rule you
can count me on your side now the
technology was expensive so there are
relatively few polls early on but
through the course of the 20th centuries
of rising importance making in a sense a
respectable public because the public in
part because of what I described as
thing one was a public where we all knew
we all had a common knowledge upon which
to base our judgments about public
policy we all judge in common and what
that produced was sensible judgments
that people like George Gallup could
celebrate of a general public that
understood and made sense so its 20th
century is a century of concentrated
information where the public’s views
known and increasingly respected okay
what about the twenty-first century well
first how do we know what’s how do
people come to know things in 21st
century it’s back to the future because
of course broadcasting is finished in
the United States the way we know things
is through a billion sources not three
anymore and the most important
of those sources our social media
sources increasingly completely
uncontrolled by any form of editor
Donald Trump did me the favor yesterday
of tweeting a relevant tweet he wrote
the fake and fraudulent news media is
working hard to convince Republicans as
I should not use social media but
remember I won using social media
now mr. Trump you didn’t win because of
Twitter you won because you got more
votes than Europe I’m sorry
forget that just forget the whole point
but the point is this form of expression
is many sources hugely fragmented public
a diverse public which of course is a
great thing for cultural issues Game of
Thrones is something imaginable only in
our time not in the time of the 60s or
70s when it would have to appeal to a
much more mainstream audience and our
friend Sousa would have loved the
technology that enables this kind of
diversity but though it’s great for
culture it’s terrible for democracy
because what this fragmentation means is
that there’s no common story no common
facts radical polarization in what we
know and radical polarization in what we
should do and there’s no better proof of
this than this man you probably live in
circles like I do where people cannot
understand how he’s not being called out
by the umpires of our democracy just
pulled off the field for whatever reason
how is it possible the man is still
president we wonder doesn’t everyone see
how ridiculous this is yet a poll last
month found that of people who voted for
Donald Trump only 2% would not vote for
him again and in fact more people who
voted for Hillary Clinton would not vote
for her again if the election were held
a month ago that is because we’ve
separated ourselves and we live in
totally different worlds and the reality
we know is completely affected by the
niche markets of those worlds so you
might say okay so we in a sense have
gone back to the 19th century fragmented
media once again you might say what’s so
bad about that but it’s not quite
the 19th century because yes of course
we’re fragmented again but in the 19th
century the will of the people was
silenced they didn’t even know what it
was but for us today because of the 20th
century there’s a normative will of the
people a public that remains and if we
think of this question of thing to what
is for us the public’s will we still
know what the public’s will is today all
the time thousands of poles asking us
what do we think and these answers get
used they get used against us because
they have a presumptively normative role
they’re relevant but this will that gets
identified what we the people believe is
not informed by common facts this will
is ignorant I don’t mean stupid
I mean ignorant a white guy my age from
America is likely to be able to tell you
all sorts of things about this activity
I think it’s it’s football right likely
be able to tell you all sorts of things
about who’s winning what the stats are
blah blah blah I don’t know any of this
stuff I don’t know the first thing about
that game my dad used to make me watch
it I like like to pretend I liked it
because I like to be with my dad but I
hate the game but that’s not because I’m
stupid
I’m just ignorant I don’t know anything
I could learn a lot about this game I
could learn I think everything there is
to know about telling you about this
game but I don’t because I don’t want to
I’m ignorant I’m not stupid
and so too with us because for us for
most of us in a democracy life is not
politics there are other things to life
and for most of us in liberal democracy
what we do is live with our tribe people
like us we live with our friends and
those two facts mean we don’t know a
clue about most important issues most of
the time and if we do we’re likely to be
biased because we’re doing what our
tribe says we don’t know but we could
know
now that’s bad enough but it gets even
worse because in this business model of
media in a fragmented media environment
which the United States is the business
model makes this problem even worse
because the aim of the business is to
polarize the aim is to find a way to
make people even hate each other more
because that drives loyalty to the brand
so think of the problem of science Dan
kahan from Yale and others have
developed where they call cultural
cognition theory and what this theory
demonstrates massive empirical work is
that how people view facts not arguments
about what’s good and bad not values
questions but facts is a function of
your tribe who you are the same facts
told the different tribes produce
radically different understandings now
that’s depressing
yeah what’s interesting about that is
that’s only true with issues that have
become polarized issues on the right
like climate change where nobody on the
right will admit that climate change is
caused by humans issues on the left like
GMO or no person the left will admit the
GMOs could be safe to consume so for
example climate change at first
everybody agreed with climate change in
2008 both McCain and Obama endorsed
radical changes to deal with climate
change then this extraordinary movie in
community truth came out and tied the
issue to a very polarizing figure a hero
of mine but still a polarizing figure Al
Gore and after that was done people on
the right can’t hear arguments about
climate changes anymore because it’s to
identify them with Al Gore now what’s
interesting is not all science is
partisan like this this you can’t read
this but basically what this shows is
those graphs where the lines are
diagonal are partisan air questions so
climate change is the first but those
graphs where the black lines are flat
are not partisan which means that
whether you’re on the right of the Left
are basically going to believe the same
thing for those questions of science
here’s why this is really terrifying
because if the media’s business model is
to polarize what they’re doing is
looking at those non partisan scientific
questions and finding ways to make them
partisan they have an interest in a
sense in making us stupid and that
interest manifests itself most violently
in this highly fragmented media
environment this is a problem it is a
problem for democracy as we get rendered
ignorance the push against a democracy
grows around the world it’s a great book
terrible title but great book
technocracy in America which that’s what
can we learn from these amazing
countries Singapore and Switzerland
which have highly functional governments
and the answer as this author puts it is
that we should focus less on democracy
and more on governance lesson trying to
get democracy writers work on making
government work that of course is the
precursor to the authoritarianism we see
spreading everywhere in the world my
view is the answer is not to reject
democracy the answer is to find a way
for democracy to represent us better to
give up the idea that when we talk about
we as in we the people we’re talking
about what we all happen to think now
and replace that idea with a conception
of we where what may mean is what we
think when we are informed and
deliberated for any thing about talking
to audiences that are not
english-speaking audiences natively as
you can make up words like The Liberator
doesn’t completely made up word but you
get the sense right the fact the fact of
having deliberated okay so the public is
deliberated meaning they’ve had a chance
to talk now I’ve seen such publics I’ve
seen such a week I’ve met them they are
extraordinary people here’s a picture of
the one I saw most recently so that
picture comes from this place
that’s Mongolia the Mongolian Parliament
for mystical reasons passed a law that
said whenever there’s a change to the
Constitution the government has
to pick a random selection of 800
Mongolians
from across Mongolia c’mon goalie is the
size of Western Europe for the
population of 3 million so here is 800
randomly selected Mongolians
representative who traveled to the
capital to sit in the parliament for two
ten-hour days to deliberate the proposed
changes to the Constitution now I’m a
law professor at Harvard
I am elitist therefore and I’m a pretty
snobby law professor meaning I pretty
regularly condemn people when they start
talking about constitutional laws people
who don’t know anything but i sat there
through a translator listening to what
these ordinary people said and argued
about for two days as they deliberated
these really important changes the
Constitution and I was humbled by
recognition that if you give people the
information and you give them a sense
that they are important and you give
them a chance to talk they are actually
worth listening to and that the
conception of We the People that we get
through the stupid press is not a
conception that reflects who we can be
if we structure who we are in our
democratic process properly now what
they did is something called a
deliberative poll and there have been
scores of these done across the world
but what a deliberative pole is
represents we as representative and
informed and deliberated people making
judgments that are smart and balanced it
is a we we can all be proud of it is a
way to represent us the challenge here
is how do you scale such a project and
the truth is the depressing truth is the
reason I don’t have a witty happy ending
to my story is I have no idea not even
sure it’s possible what I know is we
have to resist a media that works hard
to make us seem stupid a media that
represents us as stupid yes we don’t
know everything always why would we
that’s not embarrassing we live a life
we are humans
but we can if a democracy learns how to
listen to us speak in a way that ought
to be respected and we have to find a
way to recover that truth about us
because the alternative the alternative
that imagines us as a people who
responds the way democracy engages us
today for example again thanks to my
friend Donald Trump I have a great
example here he tweeted yesterday my use
of social media is not presidential
it’s modern-day presidential make
America great again if this is the way
our democracy engages with us this is
not just not great about America it is
hopeless about the future of democracy
we have to find a way to elevate the
people again because we are an
extraordinary resource that makes
democracy work thank you very much
[Applause]
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