Invoking a symbol of distress, a protester carried a U.S. flag upside down on Thursday night in Minneapolis.Credit...Julio Cortez/Associated Press
Why I think the way I do.
I just went deep into the Complexity Theory rabbit hole… Really deep.
I found myself, reading a lot on topics like emergence, on systems theory, and a lot more.
You tend to realize how interconnected everything is; how much different things rely on each other. But you also tend to realize how many things move towards disorder.
Complexity Science sees much of the world like a thick sandwich.
The more you add on top…the more you stuff in, or spray on, the more ways you make it likely for it all to fall apart. Entropy— a concept that was manifested in physics— finds itself useful in the context of studying Complexity.
But I’m not here to talk to you about that sandwich.
I want to talk to you about polarization— the socio-political kind.
Much of western society has found itself severely polarized since 2016. It’s when we started seeing those “Ben Shapiro DESTROYS…” videos. It’s when we saw Right-Wingers hype out socialism invading campuses. It’s when we got Trump, Le Pen, and Bannon. It’s when we saw the word Democratic Socialism gain prominence. In many ways, 2016 was the dawn of the crazy world we find ourselves in today. It was the pandemic before the covid19 pandemic.
Since, then, we’ve seen much of the world reenter staunch ideological positions. It would also seem like, that’s what people want. We’ve seen populism sweep the world over.
My question is why?
Why have the far-leaning aspects of political ideologies seen such a resurgence?
Ezra Klein takes a more Darwinian perspective on this. His opinion is that evolution has made it such that we naturally tend to form in and out-groups. We play social games, that take pride in domination. We seek status among those in our in-groups. This leads to a toxic, war-like environment in which every issue is debated on the merits of one’s standing in the group.
Smells like cheap scientism to me honestly.
Evolution can be blamed for anything on earth, but it doesn’t tell us much. It removes the more human aspect of things; it removes the individual choices and actions that lead to a situation; it removes history, and we know history is very important.
I think in systems, and so when I’m faced with a question like this, I look for feedback mechanisms, the individual players involved, and other components in the system.
My hypothesis.
In the field of Complexity Theory and conversely Game Theory, there are experiments called Minority Games.
These are games/experiments that play out in phases.
There’s usually a limited resource. This can be anything, ranging from an uncrowded bar, or more contextually, a political win.
The most important aspect of these games are the players involved. Each of them has to guess what the other agents are going to do, given the same information. After a bit of thought, they make a decision, that either earns them that limited resource, or denies it to them. When this experiment is repeated, a clear pattern is formed.
An example of this “game” is the El Farol Bar problem.
Let’s say you and three other people somewhere in town, all want to go to the same bar. But there are only a limited number of seats, in our case, let’s say 1.
What do you do?
Do you go and risk having a terrible experience in an overcrowded bar, or do you stay home?
Staying home means you risk not having a great time in a potentially undercrowded bar. But at least you do not have to waste time getting dressed, and all that socially responsible stuff.
When experiments like these are repeated over time, we tend to see people move towards more extreme and consistent choices. In the case of our bar problem, what we see is that people either choose to go on very specific days—days they guess to be undercrowded from experience— or not go at all.
This emergent phenomenon is called the Crowd/Anticrowd phenomenon.
Let’s make this contextual.
Now let’s imagine this very scenario in the political arena. The agents are everyone from the lawmakers, to their constituents, to the businessman, to the working class individual, etc.
In short, everyone with a stake in society.
Now let’s make the limited resource in question to be that of a specific bill being passed. Given the personal experiences of many of those with a stake— experiences that are likely to overlap— we should see similar views regarding that said bill. Over time, we should see a consistency in the views or beliefs regarding that said bill or political position. We should see those with extreme views regarding issues related to that bill, more consistently cause the failure or passing of those said bills.
If this holds, which my perception tells me to be— especially with America’s GOP’s recent successes in denying or passing its anti-regulatory agenda, the ideological positions are not in themselves, goals, but are far more likely to be tools and frameworks of decision making.
That means polarization is a natural consequence of a competitive political arena.
What does this mean?
The implications of this haven’t dawned on me yet. But my initial intuition, tells me that we need more radical positions.
I know it sounds weird saying we need more polarization. But perhaps, when we have a clearer view of what we want, we get our needs met.
What I failed to mention in the previous section, is how the center, or those with a more wavering stance on issues, tend to fail in comparison with the more radical extremes at achieving their desired outcomes.
I wish I had the scientific networks and connections to explore this hypothesis in more detail. But if I’m proven right, it would mean that we need more staunch positions in our socio-economic discussions.
It would also mean, that we need a diversity of staunch positions if we are to prevent any one radical group from dominating the discussion, which is very likely if the hypothesis holds up.
In case you want to find out more about the topics discussed, you can go through my reading list.
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