Almost anything you say about how ideas spread and eventually get accepted and acted upon is liable to be (a) true, but (b) over-simplified, because the whole truth about how ideas spread and get acted upon is far, far too complicated ever to keep complete track of. Where the definite falsehood creeps in is when people say, or more commonly imply through the other things that they say, that ideas can only spread in this way or that way, and that all the other ways they can spread don’t count for anything.
There is one such implied falsehood which we at Samizdata, for humiliatingly obvious reasons, are likely to be particularly interested in and cheered up by contesting. This is the idea that what matters when it comes to spreading ideas is sheer weight of numbers. It’s the idea that getting some other idea to catch on and be acted upon is a question of assembling a sufficiently huge number of people who believe this idea to be true or good or appealing, and then for this vast throng of supporting people to prevail against the other almost equally vast (but not quite) throng of people who believe the opposite.
Clearly, as a partial description about how some ideas spread, at some times and in some places, this kind of thing can definitely happen. Political elections are often just like this. This vast throng of humanity votes for this idea, that throng votes for that idea, and the winners are the ones who appeal to the biggest throng.
But as a complete description of how ideas spread this picture is false. Most things, after all, are not decided by political elections. For example, I would say that when historians look back on our era, they will say that the development of the Internet was a huge historical event, up there with the first printed bibles in local languages, or with the development of the railways or of the motor car. Yet neither the internet, nor printing, nor railways, nor motor cars were any of them set in motion merely by political electorates, and nor, once they had got underway, were any political electorates ever invited to vote against them.
The weight-of-numbers model is even seriously false when it comes to understanding the full story of most political elections. Yes, elections decide who will occupy various political offices, and what will be written about in newspaper editorials for the next few years. But these elections seldom decide very much about what actually gets done from these offices. Instead, democratic true believers (the ones who really do believe that absolutely everything should be decided with a head count) constantly rage at how “undemocratic” democracy typically turns out to be. They have a point.
I will now offer you a thought experiment, the point of which is to explain how unimportant mere numbers of believers in an idea can be, and how much more interesting and complicated the spread of and adoption of ideas can sometimes be. Suppose that a group of about a dozen men are stuck in the first floor of a building, the ground floor of which is seriously on fire. They can’t run down stairs, because if they do they will be greeted by a deadly wall of flames. Worse, if they don’t somehow escape by some other means they will also die horribly, just as soon as the fire reaches the first floor, and only a few minutes later than they would if they tried to run through the flames.
What to do?
There are two schools of thought, consisting of One Man with a Plan, and Eleven Men telling that One Man that his damned Plan is crazy.
The One Man with a Plan says: We must all jump out of the window.
The Other Eleven all say: No! The ground on which you want us to jump is hard, not soft. The window from which we must jump is quite a long way off that hard ground. Most of us are likely to get hurt, and maybe some of us quite badly. One or two of us might even die.
Not content with denouncing the Plan of the One Man for being mistaken, the Other Eleven ? who are panicking and consequently desperate for someone or something to blame ? actually get quite angry, and start calling the One Man a fiend and a sadist and a murderer, who seems to want them all to get hurt and even to want all of them to die. What kind of monster are you? ? etc. etc. etc., blah blah blah.
Nevertheless, the One Man wins the argument, and all twelve of them do duly jump out of the window.
Many of the gloomy prophecies about the harm this might do are proved right. One guy does get killed, and almost all of them suffer more or less severe injuries. As a result of these misfortunes, although some of the Other Eleven realise afterwards that the One Man was right and even say thank you to him, others among them go to their more or less speeded up deaths cursing the One Man for “making us do that”.
The reason this One Man won this argument, and his Eleven opponents lost is that the contending ideas were of two different kinds. The Eleven were not actually offering any answer to the question posed by Reality, in the form of the fire. They were merely saying that getting out of this mess was going to be painful and dangerous, which added nothing to the debate because all present already knew that. They might just as well have said “oh bugger”, for all the difference they were making with their “argument”. The One Man, on the other hand, was answering the question posed by Reality, and was supplying the only answer that anyone was offering. Therefore, that is what ended up being done.
That Reality is what it is doesn’t mean that men like my One Man will always be heeded. I can reveal that this One Man had spent the previous few years before the fire arguing that the building they all ended up jumping out of needed a fire escape. He also argued for better anti-fire safety procedures in the restaurant below that started the fire. The Eleven pointed out, again quite correctly, that a fire escape would be costly, and furthermore that it would increase the chances of burglary. They added that starting an argument with the restaurateurs downstairs would be most unpleasant, and once again, they were correct. And because not having a fire escape and not arguing with their neighbours were decisions which it was possible to make without immediate disaster, that is what was decided, even though the One Man was later able to claim that he’d been proved right about all of that also. So sometimes, weight of numbers wins.
But sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it is enough simply to flag up, so to speak, a set of ideas, which are of the sort that can now be ignored in relative safety and relatively easily, but which in the future will not be so easy to ignore, because in the future Reality may be asking different questions. At which point, this set of ideas stands ready to save the day.
Our answers here at Samizdata may not now be doing very well, numerically speaking. But the questions can change, and if they do our answers might suddenly become very popular indeed. Meanwhile we must keep them visible and ready. (This is one of the reasons why sheer repetition is such an important propaganda technique. Repetition means that if the question changes to something more favourable, the answer will still be around to answer it.)
Final point. My “thought experiment”? All very nice in theory, Brian, but give us an example. Right? Okay: Margaret Thatcher. She had a Plan to rescue the British economy from going down the toilet in the early 1980s. Her vastly more numerous opponents merely said ad nauseam that her Plan was itself decidedly toilet-like also. They were right about that, but they lost the argument that mattered most, the one about what should be done. That there were about a thousand of them to every “Thatcherite” had nothing to do with anything. She had a Plan. Her opponents, as she constantly challenged them to admit ? “There is no alternative!” ? had no Plan. Therefore, she won.
A week or two ago, it was rather fancifully suggested in a comment thread here that the British electorate had voted to “roll back the state”. They did no such thing.
All they did was prefer Britain jumping out of the window to Britain getting burned to death. At which point my metaphor breaks down because then we get involved in arguing about whether what I’ve been calling “jumping out of the window” wouldn’t actually be rather a good thing, which of course really jumping out of the window wouldn’t be.
But as I said at the beginning of this, it can get complicated. Any short description of how ideas catch on and get acted upon is going to be an over-simplication, but I trust that this particular over-simplication has been useful.
I hope to have many further over-simplications to offer on this topic of how ideas spread and catch on in future postings.
Interesting. In the end, though, it still takes a large number of people who like the internet to make it useful and workable (network effect), and it still takes an eventual mass decision to jump out of your burning building.
There is another option that will completely change the nature of the argument: The man with the plan can just go ahead and do it (a plan – any plan) regardless of any consultation (or do it while describing what he is doing).
Immediately that he takes action the situation changes. The others will see this “plan” of his progressing and actually taking shape. Because they don’t get the chance to see it only as a theory – this completely changes the reasoning that causes their inaction. Just by doing it the action changes the very nature of their position and the nature of their argument. Action being taken is a very different process to theory being discussed – it is processed very differently by the brain. Seeing it being done makes the viewer much more receptive to the idea.
Brian,
Margaret Thatcher did indeed have a plan but her election victory meant she was in a position to execute her plan despite all the opposition. You and I have plans but so what? We have no power so, for all practical purposes, we simply don’t matter.
Ideas are important alright but I am simply not persuaded that they swirl around randomly in the global winds, settling on some and bypassing others. As if this is all a part of Chaos Theory.
Ideas are at their most effective when they advanced by people who have a direct interest in seeing those ideas triumph. In other words, ideas alone are not enough and never have been. Until such time as they become convergent with a particular class interest they are merely akin to software applications without computers to run on.
David, ideas are at their most effective when the people who the ideas are aimed at are given direct experience of those ideas.
Hearing is ok, seeing is better, doing is best.
For any idea – spread as a theory- to be accepted by anyone the best thing to do is to make the audience receptive by letting them experience the outcome as fully as possible in advance.
Cast the idea in a form that mirrors something they have already experienced or are currently experiencing. The less theoretical and the more real you make it appear – the more it readily it will be accepted.
I’m with Joe’s first comment — once action is taken, the dynamics change.
Joe is right. The best possible solution is for One Man to jump and let the others see his demonstrated sucess. In addition, the last man to jump will have been able to learn from the jumping methods used by his predecessors.
At the begining of the last century there were something like 11 democracies in the world. By the end of that century most of the world had adopted the Western system. Our demonstrated sucess is what gave our ideas force, and it is why Russia and China are finally coming around.
That’s the problem with the libertarian argument. One cannot point to a libertarian society and say “Here’s the proof”. It is a complex concept — especially with all the socialist propaganda floating around — and to be persuasive it needs illustrations, not lofty theory.
And so, lacking the courageous One Man, I suspect that we will probably all go out in a blaze of fire rather than leap out the libertarian escape-hatch.
Abby – Interesting post and I fear you’re right.
I disagree with you all.
Examples abound of entrepreneurial types making a conspicuous success out of themselves by ‘doing it their way’. It doesn’t change diddly-squat.
Libertarian circles have been too heavily influenced by this Randian ideal of the heroic individual striking out and hitting the whole word upside their heads but I have yet to hear or read of any case where real change has been thus facilitated.
So what is this theoretical Super Man/Woman going to do exactly? How are they going to do it? Any ideas? You can search me but I haven’t the foggiest.
What I do know is that the Western World is in the firm grip of hegemonic ideology and an entrenched and self-perpetuating ruling class and nothing short of a French-style revolution is even going to put a dent in it.
It’s never ever about one man really. It’s about circumstances. You know, the way things build up and frustrations, disenchantment, anger etc start spreading. Then, one charasmatic person in the right place with the right abilities comes along and says “That’s it! Enough is enough!” and everyone else thinks “Blimey, about time too. Now let’s kick some ass”.
Politically, of course, David is the more realistic here. All one can do individually is to speak one’s truth. I take it everyone on these threads is doing just that.
Theoretically, however, the one element missing from all your comments is suggestibility. It is an all too depressing fact that this, not demonstration or didactisism, is the fatal flaw by which ideas cotton on. Like Brian, I’ll give you an example. But unlike his, mine is from the real world.
My first job in the marketing department of a consumer products company brought me into contact with Campaign magazine, the weekly source of news and jobs for the ad industry. One fine day in, I would guess, 1970 or 71, Campaign reported on its centre spread a global conference of heads of the perfume industry. Momentously, this had decided to double market size and sell perfume to all us highly resistant males. There were no groundbreaking discoveries or inventions involved. It was an entirely calculated decision taken on the back of the fashion revolution and for the pecuniary advantage of the industry.
Ad agencies in America were asked to propose methods of changing males’ attitudes to perfume throughout the western world. The winning idea targeted women. They were more suggestible and could be told, in effect, that the perfumes smelt good and men did not – always. Pointedly perhaps, they could be prevailed upon to purchase said noxious stinks for their boy friends. A flood of new “male” products sprang into being, finally halting at the failure of genital sprays! But an entirely new insecurity had been rooted in the youthful male mind. It survives in spades to this day, indeed goes unquestioned. It is, I would add, not a good libertarian example of free enterprise.
Now, as readers of Nature will know, perfume is a dumb move for males. Science has demonstrated conclusively that females respond sexually (by relaxing) to the natural male aroma. It’s genetic. From a Darwinian perspective, then, the male underarm will do its job more successfully if unpolluted by plant extract.
But how to get out this meme? It’s true. It’s liberating. It’s economical. But, as David would say, the western world is in the firm grip of a hegemonic (if fragrant) ideology. There is no mechanism, no subtle ad strategy and gargantuan airtime budget to disseminate it.
It’s the same with libertarian ideas. The left has its memes in situe (industry fat cats, the much loved NHS etc). They are their not because these things are true. They are there because, first, they’ve been a long time in the forming – and that’s necessary in the absence of a perfume industry style “hit” – and, second, because of public suggestibility. Sadly, it’s just the state of affairs with average human curiosity and intelligence.
Believers in freedom have much thinking and much work to do.
Of course the answer to the above is obvious: the unperfumed males get more women more often. Always worked fine around the rock bands…
Natural selection’s a bitch, ainit?
I agree with David on this. Although I think it has more to do with the evolutionary background of our species than other things.
We’re a social animal. Historically our oldest systems work on families and tribal arrangements. All we’ve done really is upgrade these to larger and larger social sets.
Dawkins is probably right in his view of this sort of thing.
“it still takes a large number of people who like the internet to make it useful and workable ”
Correct.
But it only takes a few to shut it down again and make it useless – Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, Senator Disney – because they have the power to do so and it suits their purposes.
They will too. Come back in ten years and see if I’m right. Except you won’t be able to, because every site like this will have been shut down by then.
Another real problem here is attention span and apathy. It is frustrating to me (and I hope to others in the Samizdata sphere) how utterly uninterested most people seem to be in their own disappearing freedoms. Socialism and statism of any kind lead nowehere in the end and, as David Carr points out, can sometimes only be redressed through some sort of violent catharsis once it has all become too unbearable (a future history of the EU in my prediction). The lesson of history couldn’t be clearer – so why are there still committed statists around? Because Joe Blow sitting in front of his telly couldn’t give a f***. 99% of us are utter puddings and we get the government we deserve.
David, “Examples abound of entrepreneurial types making a conspicuous success out of themselves by ‘doing it their way’. It doesn’t change diddly-squat. ”
This is very true in one respect – the respect that an entrepreneur needs a fairly ‘unique’ idea to be able to make money on it… therefore a specific entrepreneurial idea is only copyable by a very small number in any market area.
There is no such market force in opertion on political ideas… the problem that libertarian/individual/freedom thinking faces when trying to sell itself is that the aspects which bring society together are the same aspects that create a tyranny when taken beyond a certain level.
The ‘need’ for security, the ‘need’ for a controlling authority, the ‘need’ for executable law enforcement are all necessary within even the most basic society – so they are fairly acceptable as requirements by the populace.
Tyrannies thrive on this because they are using the basic ideas of ‘need’ that the society has against itself. To create a Tyranny all that is required is create an idea of necessity for making changes to these basic needs.
Take Iraq as an example… At the moment their society is fairly open and libertarian whether they realise it or not. In order to create Tyranny from this libertarian structure attacks are made on the controlling authority (the US army) in order to make it look unstable and out of control. The attackers hope that the society will see these attacks as a sign that the US is not in control. Their small attacking actions seem (especially when reported by the media) as huge events… therefore they have more effect on the people of Iraq than a mere theoretical idea ever could.
To counter this propaganda all the US army has to do is shrug it off (downplay all attacks) and remain unfazed and try to protect the people and their developing private sector as much as possible. It would be greatly helped if it could get the media to actively SHOW what progress the individual Iraqis are doing for themselves… People will learn from seeing any and all progress the individual Iraqis are making. Its so much more difficult to knock it if the world can see it happening!
Supermen and Superwomen doing super things are not required – what is required is showing the world how ordinary people can do ordinary things to produce extraordinary results.
Socialism and statism of any kind lead nowehere in the end and, as David Carr points out, can sometimes only be redressed through some sort of violent catharsis once it has all become too unbearable
While we have some concrete examples within the application of communism as many have tried it. I have reservations about the comment.
Firstly our historical period is too small to do anything other than speculate. I don’t think its practical to separate the fact that we live in an advancing technological society which has only been around for the last 2-300 years.
Likewise China has a relatively continuous history with fairly stable elite based governments dating back to before the Egyptian dynasties. At no stage have they been particularly free or free from a complex and hard to understand government. I’d even argue that the communists have effectively settled into the place the old system occupied.
I’d argue we don’t yet know what the best system for an advanced technological society is yet.
I would guess that it will have libertarian basis, or rather I would prefer that it did. However, how that translated to an economic system, given some of the potential changes there could be in the next few decades, I can’t say.
Surely they’d all have been better off waiting for the fire brigade to come and help save them. It’s what they pay their taxes for.
Dynastic China’s a pretty good example of how a heavily statist nation can be left static in terms of technology and development. Few new ideas are generated, the government is intent only on maintaining its own power and not the people’s welfare etc. When everything depends on the ruler’s will(eg. Zheng He’s voyage), the wrong ruler can bring about disaster.
Just for fun. I’m a Singaporean, and by any definition, we’re a heavily statist nation(hell, some consider us a dictatorship despite the fact that the ruling party can be toppled via elections). The goverment has VAST powers, like imprisoning individuals(ironically, socialists) without a trial, implementing all sorts of bans and restrictions, controlling what we learn in schools etc. Civil institutions are practically non-existent. You would think we’re an technologically obsolete, backwards bunch of people. But we’re not.
Statism and innovation are not exclusive terms. In fact, from my present experience, the government can indeed encourage progress with well placed initiatives. Not acting alone, of course, but also by working with the market. Elections provide the people with a way to tell the government if it’s doing a good job, and the government does fulfill its promises to the people(gasp!). Hell, a few years back they won elections by a hefty margin even when they were forcing wage cuts… one wonders what they are feeding us in the water!
I’m not saying our system is the best. But what I’m saying is that we’re a massive contradiction that puts the lie to many assumptions. Technological and economic progress CAN exist alongside lack of political and personal freedom, and not be impaired in any way when compared to other, freer, systems. The lack of political and personal rights does not imply the same for the economy and progress of technology.
Statism in the service of capitalism and science. Gee… Who’d have thunk it?
Singapore has to focus on capitalism and technology or have nothing, because of the geography. It’s one of those questions imposed by Reality.
But that doesn’t explain why our success so far is achieved without much political or personal freedom. You would think with our lack of rights, we’ll be ignorant peasants.
In other words, rights are irrelevant to economic prosperity and knowledge. Statism when channeled correctly can pretty much get the same results.
I’ve recently read a William Gibson piece on his visit to my country. And his point about my country being the ultimate manifestation of information and progress without free expression seems pretty much on the spot.
Terrifying? I would think so. I may not mind it(much), but others here will definitely scream…
David Carr finds no examples of a man-hero who pioneers a path towards freedom that is substantially followed. What of the Chinese guy in front of the tanks? It’s not too hard to find an eastern-European who found that image inspiring who then was surprised to find how many of his friends ALSO found it inspiring. Many then went to the streets and endured the danger necessary to bring the change.
Had it not been for the images of that courageous man, we might still have an apparently functioning communist dream for millions of leftists to support. We might also have eventually had the nuclear war that was always a possibility. And many of our neighbors would still be trapped behind that rediculous iron curtain.
Does anyone know where that Chinese man is? How would we feel if we later found we could have gotten him out of prison, if we had but tried?
I had a funny experience at my office the other day. A colleague, to whom I don’t speak much, came up to me at the coffee machine and said, “Oh, I suppose you will be off to join the Free State project then” with a huge grin. It often still surprises me when I hear that what I thought were my fairly well-concealed libertarian sympathies get known around a blue-chip corporation!
I think we at Samizdata and the Libertarian Alliance and other groups can certainly influence the terms of debate in philosophy, economics and culture simply by making a noise, and as Brian noted, by sheer force of repetition. But I agree with David Carr that unless our views coincide with an important set of interests or large group of receptive people, it is hard to see things changing our way in a peaceful manner. That’s one reason why I fear for the future sometimes.
Of course, at other times I think nirvana is around the corner. This usually happens after about three pints of lager, however.
Translator’s note: British “first floor” == American “second floor”
I think good ideas can gain broad acceptance without using underhand manipulative techniques to communicate them. I think it important that libertarian ideas are not presented in that kind of way. The ideas must be made real to the public. They must be shown to be workable and sane.
But the main point I wanted to make is that determined individuals and dedicated groups do make positive differences in the world, in fact they are the only ones who do. There are many ways to get libertarian ideas out there but once people start to say “Eureka” there will need to be a box to tick.