The best and worst thing in the world

Thomas Edsall has a characteristically interesting curation of views on the relationship between the rise of social media and populist authoritarian movements in general, and Trumpism in particular.

Francis Fukuyama is pretty doomy about it all:

In an Oct. 2 essay posted in Persuasion, “It’s the Internet, Stupid: What Caused the Global Populist Wave? Blame the Screens,” Fukuyama, after nearly a decade of examining the causes of rising global populism, wrote, “I have come to conclude that technology broadly and the internet in particular stand out as the most salient explanations for why global populism has arisen in this particular historical period, and why it has taken the particular form that it has.”

The advent of the internet, Fukuyama continued,

can explain both the timing of the rise of populism, as well as the curious conspiratorial character that it has taken. In today’s politics, the red and blue sides of America’s polarization contest not just values and policies, but factual information like who won the 2020 election or whether vaccines are safe.

The two sides inhabit completely different information spaces; both can believe that they are involved in an existential struggle for American democracy because they begin with different factual premises as to the nature of the threats to that order.

In an email, Fukuyama said that “without the internet, Trump’s whole narrative about the 2020 election would never have gotten any traction.”

You can’t argue with people who think Trump won the 2020 election or with anti-vaxxers, because these people have, in the most straightforward possible empirical sense, false beliefs that are not open to correction absent a complete conversion experience. My favorite quote from a somewhat unhinged central European philosopher (no Slavoj not you):

Men have believed that they could make the rain; why should not a king be brought up in the belief that the world began with him? And if [G.E.] Moore and this king were to meet and discuss, could Moore really prove his belief to be the right one? I do not say that Moore could not convert the king to his view, but it would be a conversion of a special kind; the king would be brought to look at the world in a different way.

On a much more optimistic note:

Duncan Watts, a professor in the department of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania, took his skepticism of technology doomsayers a giant step further than Papageorgiou or any others I reached.

In an email, Watts wrote:

I understand the temptation to draw causal connections between macro technological trends such as the rise of smartphones and social media on the one hand and macrosocietal trends such as the rise of global populism, increases in teenage mental health problems or changes in how students learn. Having said that, I think it’s a fruitless exercise — at least scientifically. (It can be very fruitful for building one’s personal brand as a public intellectual.)

Right now, Watts argued,

it’s fashionable to focus on the negative effects of social media, but it’s worth remembering that it can also have many positive effects. The very same technology that allows conspiracy theorists to cast doubt on the safety and efficacy of vaccines also allows for extremely high-quality science and educational channels to proliferate.

The very same technology that allows small groups of extremists to communicate and coordinate also allows for small groups of cancer survivors or others who suffer from chronic pain or social alienation to form support groups that improve their lives. And the very same technology that draws some people away from meaningful social connections allows others to form meaningful social connections — with prospective romantic partners, with neighbors (e.g., neighborly gifting groups) or with old friends who might otherwise have fallen out of touch.

I would say the truth is somewhere in the middle and that the next six months will be crucial.