General Disarray

There is currently a small debate taking place regarding whether the Daily Show is dangerous for democracy (see here, for example). The thrust of the argument against the show is that its sarcastic portrayal of politics engenders complacency by portraying all political actors as incompetent and hopelessly out of touch with reality (serious paraphrasing, here).

First, I’d like to point out that this “debate” is a rehash. The same criticisms have already been raised, though obviously not laid to rest. I’ll leave the obvious interpretation of the debate as new media sources colliding with old ones to others. But I feel the need to point out a few glaring deficiencies in the analysis.

1) More people are paying attention to politics as a result of the Daily Show. It’s a popular, funny show with a lot of political content. Regardless of whether its spin on political matters is biased or jaded, can we honestly argue that it would be better if all of those viewers that would otherwise be totally oblivious to current affairs were completely tuned out? I’d argue not.

2) Politics as a comedic subject is nothing new. What is new is entire shows devoted to political comedy that don’t fail due to a lack of interest. I’m not sure that it’s fair to fault the Daily Show for the fact that politics is a fertile ground for comedy, especially if you look at it from the right perspectives.

3) It’s entirely possible that the endless highlighting of the failings of politicians will, in the end, encourage people to hold their representatives to higher standards. The Daily Show does not view the world through a pair of disenfranchised glasses. The show is actually very laudatory of some lawmakers and thinkers. And they’re not all left-wingers — observe the relationship between Jon Stewart and John McCain, a Daily Show favorite.

It’s logically fallacious to conclude that, because the Daily Show mocks some politicians for their apparent shortcomings, its viewers will believe that all politicians are incompetent or crooked. Elections are essentially transactions in the public opinion market. Electoral rules and institutions can distort that market, making incumbency a near-guarantee of re-election, for example, or making personal wealth and fundraising far too important for the process of seeking office. I think that the Daily Show might correct some of these market distortions by forcing politicians into a constant, critical public eye that can’t be avoided by sending out glossy flyer and buying thirty second TV spots.

Part one: What is a religion?
I caught Ann Coulter on Leno tonight. She has a new book out: “Godless: The Church of Liberalism” (disclaimer: I have not read this book). In it, she apparently makes the argument that it is hypocritical for liberals to oppose, for example, prayer in school because liberalism itself is a religion, insofar as its members are indoctrinated into believing in global warming and safe sex (actual items she listed during the interview). This argument raises the obvious question of what, exactly, constitutes a religion. Here are the American Heritage Dictionary entries:

1a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
1b. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.
2. The life or condition of a person in a religious order.
3. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
4. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.

I would say that, under all but the fourth definition, Coulter’s attempt to classify liberalism as a religion fails (assuming you define “spiritual” as having something to do with the supernatural). I am not going to pretend that defining religion is an easy task, especially for legal purposes. Even though it is an imperfect standard, consider the definition of religion used by the IRS:

a distinct legal existence, a recognized creed and form of worship, a definite and distinct ecclesiastical government, a formal code of doctrine and discipline a distinct religious history, a membership not associated with any other church or denomination, an organization of ordained ministers, ordained ministers selected after completing prescribed studies, a literature of its own, established places of worship, regular congregations, regular religious services, Sunday schools for religious instruction of the young, school for the preparation of its ministers.

Clearly “liberalism” fails to meet this standard. In other words, no, Ann, liberalism isn’t a religion, it’s a loosely organized set of political principals, and if you were better able to sort out religious and political ideology, your writings and opinions would be more coherent.

Part two: Ad hominem attacks[*][**]
You can debunk fallacious arguments all day and get nowhere in American political discourse. It’s not about debate, it’s about show. And Coulter fully embraces this aspect of our civic society. But what bothers me is that she’s so horribly bad at it. If she sought fame through any channel besides politics, she would fail. It is only when standing next to the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh that she appears charming, attractive, eloquent, or, well, palatable. Consider the following.

Ann Coulter’s verbal mannerisms remind me of Lilith from Cheers. She over-enunciates certain words, and she does it with a Cheshire cat smile to let you know that she’s being patronizing intentionally. Occasionally, for effect, she’ll end a sentence by slowing her speech and lowering her voice (”that’s what I thiiiink abooout thaaaat…”). This voice modulation has the same efffect — it’s obvious and forced to the point of being distracting.

Ann Coulter has a reputation as being the “attractive” conservative pundit. I don’t mean that in a mean way, it’s true. She uses that fact too deliberately. Once again, it erodes her credibility as an expert (and not an entertaining public figure). She overuses simplistic conservative vs. liberal stereotypes the same way. On Leno, she made the argument that she didn’t need body guards because she travels with “a bunch of conservative men” — implying that conservatives are more able to defend (presumably because they don’t abhor violence as much). In my opinion, a real political theorist would attempt to emphasize actual ideological differences and try to dispel factoids.

To summarize, while Coulter may have deep conservative ideological beliefs, she does not argue them. Rather, she advocates using cheesy showmanship. A fine practice, but if you are going to be deeply offensive, you need something more than legs, a fake smile and some verbal caricatures to back you up.

[*] I feel comfortable presenting these because this is how I describe my blog on the about page “…it’s where I house miscellaneous computing tips, sheet music and tablature that I have created, short essays about computing, open source ideas, research, economics and politics, and the occasional snarky jab at a public figure.” So you knew what you were getting yourself into.
[**] God I love asterisks.

Recently, this post about the “danger” of social news sites like Reddit.com and Digg.com made its rounds through those same sites, even rising to the Reddit front page. There’s an irony here, which I’ll get to later, but first I want to address some of the logical flaws in the argument.

The author gets the intent of social news sites right:

The idea is that users as a collective diversity of minds can make better editors for each other than a singular, unitary mind. The appeal of this idea extends to those who want to promote some stories that would normally not get much media coverage because of the bandwagon tendencies of the media, which is a good thing.

That’s a great point. There are some stories that don’t make their way to the mainstream media. Some of them are too far to the left, some too far to the right, and some just cover topics that don’t really appeal to a mainstream audience. So, what a great idea — a site where anyone can post an article, and people get to vote on whether the story should be promoted or demoted.

But wait, this is a bait and switch! The author actually distrusts those sites.

Unfortunately, such a system is only as good as - you guessed it - the ability of users to restrain their own bandwagon tendencies. In my experience, it looks like a lot of rabid Lefties have gotten hold of these sites and automatically vote down anything that isn’t morally libertarian or Bush-hating. Rabid righties will respond in turn on these sites, of course, and it’s only a matter of time before they get their own social bookmarking site (I’ve checked out quite a few. Only one seems to have a rightward tilt so far).

Okay, a couple of issues here. First, I’m doing an informal survey of Digg and Reddit right now. Here’s what I see (excluding the article in question, of course):

• Digg has articles about: pens, liquid oxygen, evolution, MacBooks, a potato battery, ISPs and BitTorrent traffic, Bush’s iPod having “illegal” mp3s, China’s president visiting Bill Gates, the inventor of wireless email, a world population tree map, McDonald’s recipes, photos of the bay bridge, interactive surfaces, and the ability to “spy on Iran’s nuclear facilities” with Google Earth.
• Reddit features: Pictures taken by Rachel Papo, an article about mocking religious beliefs by Scott Adams (the Dilbert guy), a world population tree map, A discussion of the “facts that every graduating high-school student should know” piece, German schooling, Apple’s legalese sent to a little girl, movie studios and critics, the GreenPeace founder’s conversion to supporting nuclear power, an article about whether Bush is stupid or whether he is fooling Americans, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the rewards to a life of crime, Stanislav Petrov, random birthday shooting, Blair’s refusal to back Iran strike, the war on fat, an analysis of high gas prices, the MIT magic switch, Bush-Nazi dealings, “The Ghost of Shinseki”, A gay rights and Christianity cartoon, the world’s most powerful camera, and self-employment and intellectual property.

Granted, this is not a random sample, but it is illustrative. I classified these articles into two categories (”leftist” or not), using two different definitions of leftist. The first definition is more permissive with regard to what counts as leftist. Anything that even mentions an issue that liberals tend to care about gets counted. The second is more strict — an article has to (a) imply something negative about the Bush administration, Republicans, or the US in general, (b) take a clearly liberal position on an issue such as evolution, or (c) be otherwise blatantly liberal to be counted in the “leftist” category. The data are here, along with annotations of my decisions to categorize as leftist or not. Here are the basic results:

• Using the permissive definition, 28% of the articles could be considered liberal
• Using the strict definition, only 14% could be considered liberal

On the other hand, there weren’t any articles that were clearly conservative, unless you count the GreenPeace founder’s conversion to supporting nuclear power, which has been supported more by conservatives than liberals (but I’ll say that the article is more about energy efficiency than nuclear politics).

What’s the point of all this? The author of the article writes that liberals vote down anything that isn’t “morally libertarian or Bush-hating.” Okay, that works, as long as you consider the use of potatoes as batteries as being morally libertarian. And I won’t bother to elucidate the difference between libertarianism and liberalism, especially as it relates to morality. The point is that only about 14% of the articles on Reddit and Digg in my little sample were obviously leftist. It’s hard to argue that liberals have taken these sites over to pursue their secular humanist agenda.

The author goes on:

My concern is with the “voting” on these sites, mainly. The voting is secret, which leads to things like this:

* People voting down anything they don’t like without giving a response as to why they don’t like it. [1]
* People arguing seriously, when they do respond, that a large number of negative votes upon an argument constitutes the defeat of an argument. [2]
* The same sorts of stories making it to the front page - usually they’re bland or things everyone knows already, because everyone agrees that the content is relevant. [3]
* Conspiracy theory posts or openly false posts not getting voted down or declared to be false in the comments getting to the front page. [4]
* Such posts like the former being used as the basis for argumentation or other posts entirely. [5]
(Numbering added)

Let’s look at each of these issues in turn:

1. True, people don’t give a response as to why they don’t like the articles (although technically on Digg they can differentiate between inaccuracy, duplication, or “okay, this is lame). But if they did, would you read everyone’s opinion? How many people look at Digg every day? Do they all have time to give an explicit account of why they chose to digg each article or not? We don’t get a chance to give a written essay explaining why we voted for our chosen presidential candidate, so why should hold entertaining webpages to a higher standard?
2. Nobody honestly believes that because an article about George Bush’s adequacy as commander-in-chief doesn’t make it to the top of Reddit.com that Bush has been proven incompetent. This argument is complete hyperbole.
3. This argument has two parts: (i) The same sorts of stories making it to the front page. I totally agree, and I think this is because people don’t spend enough time digging around for good stories. (ii) The stories are bland or irrelevant, and everyone already knows the information that they contain. This contradicts the entire premise of the article. If everyone already knows everything that gets posted, then all of those leftist articles must be true, right?
4. Conspiracy theory posts not getting voted down, but the comments say that they’re false. First, I have to say that the article to which I’m responding probably qualifies as a conspiracy theory post, so maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to bite the hand that feeds us. Second, people can vote for a conspiracy theory because they find it outrageous and, consequently, funny. See here.
5. Guilty as charged. I’m using a conspiracy theory article as the basis for a new article. But note the hypocrisy here — in argument #1, the author claims that people don’t explain their reasons for voting an article up or down. In argument #5, he says that new articles arise because of controversy over old articles. Isn’t that a form of the explanation he seeks?

As you can see, there are some flaws in the logic of the article. Why is all of this so disturbing for the author? There is a short explanation:

It is regarding politics where these sites fail miserably, and I’m really worried when Rightist sites like these will emerge. It’s pretty clear to me that the Internet is teaching us new habits of how to conduct ourselves in a democracy, and I don’t think any of the lessons these sites offer are any good.

So, by teaching us to vote Yes/No depending on how we personally feel, internet news sites are threatening democracy? Apparently…

For what the existence of such a site seems to say is that an article is only worth what others “think” (does voting really involve thought?) of it, and that’s a scary thought. If people are allowed to make their basest biases the news with the “justification” that the MSM is no better, how can thoughtful political discussion ever happen? It would seem sites like these - if they get popular - could destroy the possibility of such discussion, even on other sites, for they empower via voting, and voting is a lot more effective than speaking.

First, nobody is saying that an article is only worth what others think. Any addition to discourse is valuable. However, how much the first, say, 500 people that read an article enjoyed it is obviously a pretty good predictor of how much the next 500 people will enjoy it, assuming that there aren’t any systematic ideological biases between readers according to the order in which they access articles. That’s the whole point of these sites. Second, what is the alternative here? Clearly, it’s sites where a select few individuals get to choose what makes it to the front page. The author already admits that this kind of selection lends itself to abuse. Third, and I can’t emphasize this enough, social news sites do not banish articles, they only promote the most popular articles to the front page. Anyone can post any opinion.

At this point in the article, I’m clearly getting the sense that the author can’t really prove that Digg and Reddit are unfair or dangerous, as he claims, but that he just dislikes a lot of the articles, and needs an outlet to express his discontent. And just when I have that thought, I read this:

Voting by itself does not make a democracy. In fact, voting is really a last resort sort of mechanism. It is speech and the ability to persuade and be persuaded that counts most.

which pretty much clears everything up. The author needed an outlet for opposition. That’s fair enough. But note two things here:

1. The fact that this article actually made it to the front page is fairly strong evidence that speech and persuasion have their place on social news sites.
2. Democracy: “Government by the people; especially : rule of the majority.” How do you determine who the majority is? Some kind of process by which each individual’s position can be counted. Hmm, there’s got to be a name for that…

The article ends:

What makes the social bookmarking sites dangerous is the reduction of speech to voting, or the constant trumping of speech via voting. That is not the lesson which people should be learning. They should be learning how to persuade and to compromise, to work with each other, not merely exercise strength through the forces governing popularity in a given context.

As I think I’ve shown, this process is already thoroughly implemented on Reddit, Digg and their sister sites. Persuasion takes place through the articles that are posted, and everyone has an opportunity to voice their opinion. Through the presentation of opposing viewpoints on these sites, compromises can be proposed, and a fuller understanding of each topic can arise. It’s called a dialectic. This is not dangerous — this is how all political discourse works. The vote is only the final stage — a technical aspect that is absolutely necessary to actually come to a firm decision. Voting in a presidential election is still “the reduction of speech to voting.” Even though it may be a simplistic way of conveying one’s opinion, what is the alternative? How would we select a president (or which stories should be on the front page) in a democratic way without taking a vote?

In other words, fellow Digg and Reddit readers, keep submitting articles and keep voting for the ones you like. And try to keep the political stuff (like those “leftist McDonald’s recipes”) to a minimum.