Social media through the lense of Moral Philosophy
Jade Ambrose
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At the moment I'm reading "The Righteous Mind", by Jonathan Haidt. It paints a picture of how people make moral descisions which is making me a little uncomfortable, but also resonates as sounding very accurate (disclaimer: I know nothing about psychology or philosophy).
One of the contentions of the book is that our moral judgements are usually quick, emotional, and unconscious, and that our rational mind is used more for explaining reasons that are really justifications invented after the fact, more like an internal lawyer than an internal scientist.
If this is true, then connecting across the liberal/conservative divide on social media is much more than a case of needing to burst media bubbles, fix fake news sites, and expose everyone to good logical arguments. Our moral decisions don't work like that.
This makes me want to do one of two (rather contradictory things).
Build a diverse bipartisan social network, much as described in my (medium article](https://medium.com/enspiral-tales/taking-back-social-media-could-be-world-changing-35c479cc387f#.2z12to1jj), but particularly focus on how to help people with different morals feel comfortable communicating with each other.
Use the strategy of understanding how conservative moral philosophy works, to build and mobilise a winning strategy for liberals to defeat it.
I'm a bit stuck between whether I should try and help make peace, or help win the war. :)
Timothy Ryan High Wed 23 Nov 2016 2:56PM
Excellent point, and I absolutely agree. Your comment reminds me that there's an important component missing from the Wikipedia idea, which is getting to know one another (and one's own viewpoints) via simple questions. This is an incredibly valuable technique. But perhaps it is out of the scope of my idea (if it don't fit, don't force it). I imagine the debate "foundation" being a group that promotes constructive debate via many aspects, person-to-person discussion being a totally separate, and essential, sphere.
Greg Cassel Wed 23 Nov 2016 2:48PM
This may look kind of techy, but I think that when we look for common moral ground-- and when we design media networks-- we should minimize precise definitions and emphasize systemic [specifications](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specification_(technical_standard).
Specifications don't attempt to comprehensively define the elements or components of systems. Rather, they simply describe whatever must be present and, when applicable, what must not be present. Thus, specifications are fundamentally looser and less precise than definitions.
In media network design, specifications can be directly described via vision statements, guidelines, expectations, terms of service, prohibited content, etcetera.
On a related note: Jonathan Haidt's research identifies purity as a key moral principle. I believe he's quite right to identify it, and I believe that people and groups should generally be free to pursue pure/ precise forms when they desire to. However, I believe that people generally default to being too definitive in how our relationships 'ought' to be, outside of our most intense personal circles such as family, friends and co-workers. I think that purity naturally fails at large scales of organization in the absence of oppressive violence, coercion or fraud-- and I deeply oppose those forces.
Ronen Hirsch · Wed 23 Nov 2016 1:14PM
I'd like to highlight a more subtle pattern that I recognized in your thought process (this is an idea I picked up from the work of Christopher Alexander in The Nature of Order): If we ask good questions, that are specific, clear and simple enough, it is easier to have clear answers AND many times we will find that there is agreement. When we ask questions that are too broad, that represent many smaller choices which are not made clear, that we arrive at diagreement and argument. This suggests that often the fault that manifests as disagreemnt is in the process not the actual subject matter.
I would also like to raise the bar on "civil and informed" since I feel that many of the crisis we face are a result of civil and (superficially) informed dialogue. I would like to have conversations that are direct, authentic, clearly & simply stated, well informed in the mind and softly held in the heart.