The Fracturing Of The Human Mind with Jonathan Haidt and Guests

Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman.
This episode is a recording of a live event that I did with Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff, and Rikki Schlott.
Jonathan Haidt is a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business. He is also the co-founder of Heterodox Academy, which I once wrote a blog post for back when I was probably 21 years old. Jonathan is the author of many books including "The Happiness Hypothesis", "The Righteous Mind", and "The Coddling of the American Mind" with his co-author Gregory Lukianoff.
Greg Lukianoff is the president of FIRE which is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and probably the pre-eminent defender of free speech on college campuses. Greg is also the producer of several documentaries about free speech and is also a trained lawyer. Rikki Schlott is a columnist for the New York Post, a fellow at FIRE, a contributor at Reason Magazine, and the host of the Lost Debate Podcast.
We all discuss what has changed since Jonathan and Greg published "The Coddling of the American Mind" back in 2018. We talk about the effect of social media on political polarization and mental health. We also discuss Jonathan's recent viral Atlantic essay called "Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid", and lots of other related topics. Unfortunately, because of the constraints of the live event, this is a shorter podcast than usual. However, I'm getting Jonathan back on the podcast very soon to have a full-length discussion about all this stuff.
I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did!
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[@ColemanHughesOfficial]

Glad you caught the show. Let me know what you think in the comments and I’ll reply as soon as I can. If you’re a regular listener and would like to show your support and gain access to exclusive talks with some incredible minds, check out the Coleman Unfiltered membership here: bit.ly/3B1GAlS

[@tbwatch88]

Coleman, have you read Erich Fromm's Escape From Freedom? my best guess is yes. great show here. great guests. thank you, mate.

[@burleybater]

The causation of the coddling? I'm a pretty stubborn guy. After having the pleasure of at least raising the issue in 2018 at a book launch talk at my university (of Toronto) and still not convinced my observation made an impression of any magnitude on Jonathan - here goes. I grew up a real free kid. From north of the border I soaked in American culture. I contemplated the lyric lines of the star spangled banner. Especially that bit about the home of the brave, and the land of the free. I took in the lines of what has to be America's most famous statue. Liberty, herself. And I continued to grow up so free that when I left my home, my school, my hometown, my friends at the age of 16, came away to my nation's largest city, settled in, set up shop, and went about the business of working and earning and paying my own way in the world, I managed to avoid almost every single pitfall and sad mistake I might have made at such a "tender" age. (And I was not alone in this, oh no.) How was that even possible? Simple. All along the evolution of my childhood, I acquired tools, skills, attributes, very easy and ordinary stuff that I was allowed to gather, because I had the freedom to go and do so. And build upon a gathering consciousness, a growing belief in myself and my own abilities, and the confidence that I did not need adult caretaking to do all this for myself. I'm going to guess that it was round about somewhere in the early 1980s that we let all this get away from us, socially. And that over the span of 4 decades, this land of the free and home of the brave was still a foundational thing for many citizens who had attained the age of majority. But for kids? Not at all. Shut down, kept inside, chauffeured around everywhere, and even that short distance to school. No playground, Main Street, athletic field, beach front, park, neighborhood hangout, or much of anywhere else anymore without adult supervision. Playdates? Absolutely reek of adult meddling. My social life as a kid was my own business. I had dozens of friends that my parents never met. Starting young. Older denizens still remember learning ropes. Settling issues on our own. Learning skills. Social skills. Being a free agent outside, the kitchen door, the driveway, around the corner of the hedge, out of sight of the kitchen window, and off, and gone. Jumping a backyard fence. Through a swinging gate. In order to get out there, you had to prove you could handle it. Without too much blood. Without major injury. Without bringing the cops to the door. Without bringing irate parents to the door. You had to learn, and be trusted to know how to conduct yourself. Learning a neighborhood from the inside out. Intimately. Navigation. Knowledge. Understanding. And of course, access to an entire real world where things happen that are referred to in books, and illustrated in film, but encountered in person have an entirely different three-dimensional flavor. So whence comes the coddling? When all this stuff so described becomes by default, unnecessary, paved over, airbrushed, media-manipulated, and incessantly made easy - when so much of the basic challenges in life have been removed, when an entire sense of what it means to be a free agent individual, responsible, accountable, trustworthy, capable, competent (as one still young but learning adult abilities) when all of these things are basically removed, and for the worst reason: safety? As if life itself in its basic evolution on a human scale has just become too risky. For what? An entire society that reinforces this notion, will impress upon an impressionable kid the idea that maybe rampant paranoia is a thing. After all, what do they know? Precious little, perhaps, if they never had a chance to learn and experience anything different. In closing. Not all children grow up this way. Many don't. Many cannot afford to. Many of these will not likely grace the hallowed halls of higher education. So we have a kind of rich and thickening mixture, a gathering of like-experienced students who sort of pile on in academia. And even then, are they a majority? Possibly. Or maybe they're just loud in their demands. The one thing they really got down in the first 12 years of school. That's my theory, anyway. Pretty basic, if read just as the result of over-protective smotheration. I was lucky. I was a Huck Finn kid. From a very early age. Which gives me attitude and bias. But I like to think, a bit of perspective.

[@jamesmassey2089]

First, we have to recognize it's a trust issue and each "side" must be hold its members accountable to violations based in principles, not rhetoric. Success cannot be achieved unless leadership comes from the right because it has the economic and political advantage. You know. cast the beam out of your own eye.

[@lindontilson471]

Jonathan is one of my favourite speakers and social psychologists . Great interview

[@willmercury]

@Spencer Caron Doesn't everyone?

[@FourthExile]

@Spencer Caron yeah it's pretty hard to not rank things, explicitly or otherwise. I don't think that's what Lindon was saying anyway.

[@fullmatthew]

@Spencer Caron If he did have a ranked list of social psychologists, would you think any less of him?

[@Grappapappa]

He is my favorite social psychologist because he is the only one I know.

[@burleybater]

One of the great and important thinkers of our time. Had the pleasure to meet him and shake his hand twice! (and bend his ear for about 5 minutes after a book launch talk [Coddling] at my university.) Quite a compelling presence in person. That rare combination of great writer and great speaker.

[@ThirdGateMedia]

I need this conversation to be longer and in liquid form so that I can consume it intravenously 24/7.

[@sincerityissacred5101]

The Gaslighting of the American Mind. I would read that.

[@urbansetter1]

Thats whats going on

[@arwurth]

Really love John, he is able to articulate the issues with social media perfectly. His Tower of Babel metaphor he starts around 17:30 nails it, people talk different languages and can't even understand each other

[@wiseonwords]

It's a brilliant metaphor.

[@offshoretomorrow3346]

Amazed that The Atlantic would publish a piece by Jonathan. Always such a morale booster to listen to his agreeable tone. One great note of optimism since this interview: Elon and Twitter. Miraculous infact.

[@maryann2970]

Haidt is left wing. Why wouldn't they?

[@quinntissiere3869]

Haidt is fantastic. Definitely, get a full episode with him.

[@prof.jezebel]

I so appreciate your Let Grow initiative to get kids outside playing and off screens! They need this independence and openness!

[@ambrose0]

Outstanding and interesting conversation! Keep up with the Haidt speech

[@WeAreFulcrum]

For me, I noticed the shift occurred right around 2012 because that was the year that over 50% of Americans owned a smartphone. Conversations and relationships shifted drastically from this moment on in my family and friend circles.

[@burleybater]

Yep. I completely agree. The great silence and solitude. Nobody talking, chatting, conversing, debating, arguing, rolling around in the great social noise. And nobody hardly noticing how easy it had become to actually miss each other. Which of course, exacerbated this strange modern social disease: loneliness. A thing that arguably, and ironically, exponentially skyrocketed just as we had never had more communication devices and opportunity to address it. I remember a time in my life, long ago, when dialing a phone number and absently listening to 27 rings before hanging up, made that connection feel like it was between two planets. Now, that was lonely. What we have created currently, is an entirely artificial construct.

[@Rorshacked]

Excited for lukianoff’s follow up to coddling

[@dvntlife]

Coleman this was super dope

[@tellemanndergaertner]

STOP the rapid deconstruction of humanity into bits and bytes! STAND up for the ideas of freedom, peace, and joy! SAVE our children from a ghoulish future of war and famine! LIVE LIKE A HUMAN! ❤

[@911heroesandme]

FANTASTIC discussion. Thank you for bringing this to us, Coleman.

[@curtislundberg3570]

Excellent discussion! Would love to see the follow up book to Coddling of the American Mind.

[@Mike.Garcia]

Thanks for sharing

[@feeble_stirrings]

Excellent conversation!

[@kevinbrowning1578]

This is very important work. But, in PC places (Red, Blue or Green) these problems have been around for a long time. I can give many examples I experienced in the 1980s and 1990s. Also, 20 years ago I made a complaint to the UCSC bookstore that there was not a single book or publication that presented a conservative perspective. And I was far from conservative, in fact quite a radical. I think much of censorship has to do with victim mentality. Nearly anything is justifiable when one uses a victim’s perspective to justify it. The SPLC has been slandering decent people for decades. As nice as it is to hear public intellectuals talking about these issues, I feel a bit resentful that I (a ghetto-raised flunky) was pointing out many of these things long ago. Most people are social cowards, and as long as that’s the case, even free speech won’t free people’s minds. Intellectual honesty is extremely rare.

[@StrategicWealthLLC]

I heard someone once say that boldness was a valued trait…because it’s rare. Same said for excellence.

[@christopherhamilton3621]

“…decent people…” Nonsense.

[@kevinbrowning1578]

@@christopherhamilton3621 Hey Chris, to be clear, I'm not saying most people the SPLC has put on its lists are people of high moral character. But there are people who do/did not deserve to be portrayed the way they were. And this sort of smearing has become an all-too-common way to silence political opponents. Just call someone hateful rather than have an honest conversation. And feel like a hero while you do it. I've known people with the SPLC, and I've known some of the people they've smeared. I know of what I speak.

[@mark4asp]

SPLC = Southern Poverty Law Center Be less insular. Don't use abbreviations in a context where other people won't understand them. People, like me, listen to Johnathan Haidt from outside the USA.

[@kevinbrowning1578]

@@mark4asp Good advice. Thanks.

[@tysparks598]

Another Illuminating conversation, thanks. Spreading the reality of the problem helps, there are still so many people out there who don't think there's an issue.

[@chrisr9320]

great conversion!

[@DavesGuitarPlanet]

So much right on here

[@wescolumbus621]

Terrific show, Coleman. Great guest. Good length of time! Yes, the word Babble = linguistic chaos, confusion and disorientation. That's why Ecclesiastes, the first existential philosopher, who could observe--without any media, radio, TV, etc--that "there's no news under the sun" was so brilliant. That's why many Americans (especially, those who haven't read former NYU professor of Philosophy, Leonard Peikoff's, "The Cause of Hitler's Germany"), can't see that the "Lens of Race," too and the current moral. disorientation is a flip side repeat of Weimar Germany and equally idiotic, dogmatic, dangerous to downright sinister. That's why various Black intellectuals who speak courageously about what McWhorter calls, "Woke Racism," or about "Racelessness" are on to something important, even if they lack the European pre-WWII perspective which Peikoff unpacks like no other (def, a must read for you, Coleman).

[@thomashickok9277]

Correlation does not equal causation.

[@buffalobill2874]

Hi there Coleman Hughes and company 🙂👍.

[@TwoKnowingRavens]

Good grief are they shadow-banning the crap out of Coleman - I don't think I've seen your content on my feed in months, and I only have like 30 people I sub to on KZbin. I'm going to catch up on listening. Hope you are well!

[@danmoriarty6901]

This entire conversation needs to be screamed from the rooftops.

[@hermitthefrog8951]

Excellent discussion (as _ANY_ conversation with Haidt is) but one thing puzzles me... there are 6 water glasses for 4 people... who's the thirstiest?

[@user-og2wt3le4j]

Coleman must be the first jazz musician with a podcast.

[@cherrybee3758]

💗💗💗

[@herbertrichard614]

Niceness holds that good conduct is whatever self-styled nice people happen to do. Objective standards of right/wrong have been jettisoned in favor of nice/rude subjectivity.

[@amaryllisequistra]

If institutions and the media start enforcing free speech (aka, be the adults in the room), and students who shut others down are sanctioned according to institutional codes of conduct, that would be a great start…

[@deal2live]

Just remember Rwanda! Things can get out of hand quickly!

[@KirimotoTV]

Was anyone able to find the podcast that Haidt referred to towards the end of this segment at 40:05, with Jonathan Rauch and I believe he said Nelly Foster? I can’t seem to find it.

[@blaisetzu]

These kids don't realize they are foot soldiers in a collective authoritarian wave that will only cripple their rights in the long run, and hinder their ability to think objectively on an individual level, which will make them easier to manipulate... Not to mention, this is giving them a thin skin, and reducing their ability for forgiveness... This has echoes of Mao's cultural revolution among other things...

[@briananderson8428]

The real authoritarian wave is that of our corporatocracy, which is bludgeoning American middle and poor classes over the head and into hell.

[@blaisetzu]

@@briananderson8428 its coming from multiple directions, and at times working in concert. Various movements, profit obsessed corporations, power obsessed individuals try to ride that dragon.

[@dharmadefender3932]

Oh who cares.

[@JanPBtest]

19:26 It's interesting that, as we know now, too easy means of information are equally problematic as too little. I experienced the latter in Poland after the December 13 1981 martial law was imposed by the communist government. This meant no information circulation for the first couple of weeks or so. The sheer amount of wild, false, stories that started circulating as a result is comparable to what is happening now. So, like everything else in life, a goldean mean is necessary.

[@serpentines6356]

Very good point. How IS Poland doing these days? My paternal grandmother came from Poland, but sadly, I never knew her.

[@JanPBtest]

@@serpentines6356 It's doing very well, I highly recommend a visit!

[@serpentines6356]

@@JanPBtest 🙂

[@tomspaghetti]

00:27:48 Haidt, sayin what we all should be thinkin.

[@richardlanahan8089]

Is there a large divide in degree of woke influence between those who study math and science and those who study humanities and social 'sciences'?

[@annetteniebelski7513]

The Woke are tanking STEM

[@27Pyth]

Coleman, tidy up that bookshelf brother! It looks like a metaphor for a disordered mind. Love your work.

[@VOLightPortal]

Can we get the study cited at 23:17 and 24:32

[@lisanidog8178]

Well how about this! Don't give a kid a phone! They don't need them! I grew up in the 60's and 70's! No cell phones! We got along fine! We played outside! Or we were sent during the summer to camp and learn interesting things. Both parents and kids today are too dependent on their phones and won't get their snoots out of them! There wasn't a lot of crap on TV back then as there was no such thing as Cable you had 3 or 4 channels and you were lucky if you even had a remote. There was no such thing as the internet. We called friends and we played together.

[@blastpeed9994]

There appear to be two main aspects to this phenomenon, the existing psychological-moral-religious paradigm of the modern secular egalitarian west (left wing dominated culturally & institutionally) and radicalisation dynamics brought inevitably by the internet. The result is the following: the moral-psychological paradigm sacralizes minority demographic X, however demographic X is afflicted with a radically dysfunctional and antisocial culture. When we then get the manifestation of said dysfunctional culture, society is however psychologically and politically incapable of expressing the that a sacred demographic can have any dysfunction. Many steps down the road you get all manner of blame levelled everywhere else, generally solidifying at the acceptable demographics of demonization of the moral paradigm: straight, white, heterosexual, male etc

[@JonathanRossRogers]

40:27 Kamely!

[@danielleal1037]

On “safe spaces”, the best option with regards to that concept one could choose for themselves is to GROW THICK SKIN. Simple as that. But so long as the utterly self-destructive practice of glorifying perceived victimhood continues to be praised and valued, rather than mocked and ridiculed, it’s unlikely that we’ll see any changes in that direction.

[@davidhawley1132]

Women have thinner skin, but they are now inhabiting formerly male spaces, and demanding those spaces to change to suit them. It's not clear that is even possible.

[@BennySalto]

Playing outside is not a thing that stopped in the 90's. Maybe in the US?

[@uhtredlundar8394]

This is a great conversation but I don't think Social Media, the cesspool that it is, is causal. It is an absurdly powerful multiplier but not the center.

[@rogerward801]

Being the multiplier is the issue

[@susiehulcher1494]

Wow great content! Add in transgender conflicts and this show would be about six hours long.

[@mmille10]

I think Haidt had the "Trump period" the wrong way around. He said, "Trump made things worse," but what he described was the faculty's response to Trump, which was to my mind ideological, not a response based on, "He's going to shut down our institution," or, "He's taking away our funding." They just hated him for who he is, or because of some narrative about him, which they took to signify a cultural phenomenon they felt they had to resist. I'm curious why, in his language, he blamed Trump for this, when he should really be pointing the finger at "This is the problem with the culture on campus. It was magnified and focused by Trump being in the White House."

[@stvbrsn]

Greg looks really healthy, must have lost 50 lbs since the last time I saw him!

[@Eric-tj3tg]

As the ACEs study shows very clearly, if one is maltreated (not "coddled") in infancy and early childhood, there are going to be problems, physically and mentally. This is also corroborated by Interpersonal Neurobiology (see "The First 1000 Days" on YT...Dr. Allan Schore). We are looking at downstream effects here. "Psychology/Psychiatry measures a person's adaptation to the society in which they find themselves. No inquiry, however, is made as to that society's adaptation to life as it naturally is."- Dr. Hubert Benoit (Zen and the Psychology of Transformation). The traits of resiliency, emotional regulation, boundaries, and perspective-taking, are compromised under an epidemic of unaddressed early childhood trauma. These are the realities we're trying to deal with much too late, and therefore the "causes", thus the "treatments", are both off mark.

[@lorileifer613]

But I AM a member, so why am I still on the public feed??? 😭

[@skiphoffenflaven8004]

Narcissism was allowed to be considered a financial asset.

[@jimorgain63]

We are so screwed

[@clydekimsey7503]

What i see as common factors in the students they are talking about is fear and victimhood. Fear=false evidence appearing real

[@susandrakenviller3683]

Weird that Haid starts at f saying how weird it is that ideas are dangerous and violent even, and then goes on to demonstrate this is true with regards to the ideas of thr generation he doesnt understand

[@aresmars2003]

I'm only on twitter, and while crazy abusive stuff there for an average person you can block a troll in 3 mouse clicks, and satisfying as well. But for someone who WANT 100 likes on something, and ends up with 1000 trolls, I can see it would be overwhelming. Still I'd gladly spend an hour some days blocking 1000 trolls, if that's what it takes to send a message, I'd be glad to do it. I admit "cancel culture" of "one strike, you're out" is poor standard for one snarky reply, but once you get blocked and care that you're blocked, you know to take care if you don't want to be blocked by another person. It would be nice to have an "apologize" button where you could send a message "Hey sorry for my snark! I'll play nice!" and twitter could keep a record if you give people second chances.

[@blaisetzu]

Who came up with the concept 'words are violence'?

[@jodycwood]

You can find it in Judith Butler. Maybe she isn't the originator, but she was/is influential. “The violence of language consists in its effort to capture the ineffable and, hence, to destroy it, to seize hold of that which must remain elusive for language to operate as a living thing.” (from Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative)

[@DieFlabbergast]

@@jodycwood I presume you were forced to read this verbal effluent?

[@jodycwood]

@@DieFlabbergast Haha! I forced myself to read it because I had the same question as the OP about where this concept came from...it was pretty torturous! There were also some statistics about death row in one of her pieces that were flat wrong, and of course uncited. How does this stuff get published?

[@safebelayer]

The Dynamics and phenomenon that they are seeing with preteens, teenagers, and 20-year-olds, is also happening to a great degree with the parents of these groups. How did that come about?

[@tjbroussard3524]

The duel edge of diversity collectivism. The more centralized the more exposure to concepts, ideas, experiences good and bad faster than comprehension (building the tower) Which also means more points of contention or friction for the increasingly high level of diversity found. Maybe in overwhelm of the unknown and unfamiliar or unpleasant....we cling or double down to our most familiar tribes or new ones found. Peer pressure and sense of belonging also playing a role as well with our personal uncertainties. I think we can only handle so much of anything or at a certain pace to rationally process...and the modern world makes that difficult too. So our personal practices are even more important for sorting the world in front of us now but we may be more and more reluctant to take that hill or at least in full due diligence for some reason. A quick search for validation over best practices to get to a agreeable if not consistent truth. Faux interactions in the name of civility or appearances with induced hyper awareness in modern society.

[@danielkelley9861]

"They marinate in this victimhood culture". Damn

[@62Cristoforo]

Assuming a victimology easily offers the victim a sympathetic ear and a reverent audience, but it also retards or shuts down their own personal development.

[@JH-ji6cj]

Where's the line between playing nice and giving constructive criticism or disagreement? For example, in this talk, it is assumed (credited) that depression and self-harm is a product of the social media spaces, YET the woman on the panel gets away with exemplifying the victim narrative by blaming her own generations narrative that magazine companys were to _blame_ for unrealistic body types (indirect body shaming). Where is the personal responsibility if the micro aggressions are from pictures on a Facebook page of someone's vacation? Why is the attention seeking seen in both cases not equated? She is fully displaying the negative stereotypes supposedly deemed socially damaging by the research, YET she gets a pass by being part of the panel? To me, the greatest fault of this current generation is the fascination with empathy as an empirical quantifiable belief (as-in, the belief you can equate your thoughts or feelings with another person's directly) and _ally-ship_ . I think the 2 are negatively intertwined as well.

[@simonyricools]

Interesting.

[@TopNotch770]

Wokeness made me a Christian.

[@brianmeen2158]

It’s driving quite a few toward religion

[@hunterbidensaidslesion1356]

Wokeness is a primitive religion. Its adherents are Gender Jihadis.

[@malissahyatt2425]

Huh. I was a Christian before I was woke. How did that happen??? Think I'll stay here though. A colorful, awesome bunch of people live here. I've made interesting friends I wouldn't have otherwise. Reveling in the sanity.

[@grahamstrouse1165]

That is so much bullshit.

[@martaamance4545]

I'm 75 and our generation's nemesis was television. For the most part my mother (and my friends had the same experience) would kick me out of the house to go "play". If I ventured to tell my parents I was bored they would find something for me to do like weed the yard. Softball was the passion for the boys in elementary school once they reached 4th grade and no female teacher was going to direct their game. I was shocked to find in California elementary schools the kids were not allowed to engage in any kind of sports activity in the 1980s.

[@serpentines6356]

What? Kids play sports all the time in Calif? Don't know what schools are up to, but plenty of kids run, and play sports.

[@martaamance4545]

@@serpentines6356 During the 1980s and 90s during recess in elementary school in the Silicon Valley and even in Santa Cruz children will not allowed to throw baseballs, soft balls, footballs, tennis balls play pick up games of kick ball, etc. I witnessed that first hand at my grandsons school and else where. After school they could engage in organized sports under adult supervision. Now maybe that has changed but I doubt it.

[@burleybater]

Activity and exercise. I recall the days when each different grade classroom had one or two "chubby" kids. That was it. The rest of us (an established norm) got all the exercise we ever needed to stay healthy just by going places - either by foot (in winter) or by bike (the other three seasons.) We are helplessly clueless about all this now, and our rates of obesity skyrocket. In this way as a society, do we miserably fail our children. Sports? A thing that used to be the domain of kids themselves, unsupervised, messed or meddled with by adults. The stars fell into organized sports. The relatively well-born fell into the pattern of dues, fees, expensive equipment, and so on. The rest of us? Played sports to our hearts' content, making up bizarre rules, lying on our backs laughing our heads off, relishing the sheer joy of what to us was the best part of the human comedy. And we did it all for free. A beat up old ball glove that took you from the age of 8 (too big) to 18 (almost too small.) A home-made golf club. (Don't ask.) Finding out at the age of 9 just how long a hundred yards really is (while lugging a football being chased by a mob.) Praying that your good (ice rink) stick and your lousy (street hockey) stick would get you from October to April. And yes. Those times were full of parents and other adults howling at us to get the bloody hell out of the house. And there were even times when we would go begrudgingly. We were blessed enough to actually have that option. Times have changed indeed. Walk each and every residential neighborhood across the nation, that 60 years ago would have rung to high heaven with the racket of kids outdoors, and what will you hear? A strange silence. Sure, a lot less kids live there now. But the ones that do? Are mostly inside. Sedentary. Completely oblivious to the very concept of a life outdoors. The Land of the Free is now a land for age of majority. Not for children.

[@serpentines6356]

@@martaamance4545 Hmmm. I knew it got worse for a while in Calif, but didn't know that bad. That's insane. Guess the schools were afraid of lawsuits. Went to private school decades ago and they ran us ragged. Thank goodness. I loved it. They have very good sports where my friends children went to school in N.Calif.

[@daheikkinen]

My friend at college also had a photo of Reagan on his wall. Then again, this was Hillsdale College, so the girls didn’t mind.

[@briananderson8428]

HaHa. Hillsdale "College" is a fraud and a grift.

[@benprytherch9202]

I'm generally sympathetic to the arguments this group makes, but Haidt is misrepresenting both the strength and the proper interpretation of the evidence on social media and mental health for teenage girls. I appreciate Hughes for putting this question to him, and I find his response disappointing. At around 24:20, Haidt says that the effect of lead exposure on adult IQ is roughly r = 0.1, a value pulled from one paper that committed what most would consider a methodological error in controlling for early childhood IQ when assessing the effect of lead at age 11 on IQ at age 38; most studies on this give larger effect sizes. But, the real jaw-dropper is his claim that r = 0.1 (or perhaps 0.2, it isn't clear which he is referring to) is roughly the effect size for SMOKING on CANCER. This is a shocking and preposterous claim, and one that I can't find in any of his written work. A correlation of r = 0.2 converts to an odds ratio of about 2 to 1 (ignoring for the sake of argument the problems inherent in making these kinds of effect size conversions). The odds ratio comparing odds of lung cancer among smokers vs. non-smokers is around 20 to 1 on the low end and over 100 to 1 on the high end, depending on how the comparisons are set up (see www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296911/). Now, odds ratio will overestimate the relative risk (ratios of probabilities of getting lung cancer, rather than ratio of odds), but when baseline probability of an outcome is small, the relative risks and odds ratios are similar. In this case, baseline probability of lung cancer for a non-smoker is indeed very small. Haidt's claim that the effect of social media on mental health problems in teenage girls is similar to that of smoking on cancer is extremely misleading. After stating this, Haidt says that you would be "completely insane" to let your daughter use social media, given this correlation of r = 0.2. Haidt is well aware that r = 0.2 is not a causal estimate; it's a correlation. He's addressed this in his scientific writing, saying that there are other reasons to believe that there is a causal effect of social media use on negative mental health outcomes. And that's fair enough, but he doesn't say it's r = 0.2! And yet, everything he says after addressing the effect size issue is couched in causal language. This is a serious caveat that should have been acknowledged. But, let's go ahead and suppose r = 0.2 is a genuinely causal effect. That still would not justify the claim that one would have to be "completely insane" to allow social media use. And I'm sure Haidt knows, r = 0.2 is a very weak effect size when it comes to individual predictions. He correctly points out that weak effect sizes for individual predictions can still be of serious public health concern at the aggregate level. But to talk about what you should or should not let your daughter do is to switch from the topic of aggregate effects to individual prediction, and from that point of view the variance in individual mental health outcomes is overwhelmingly influenced by forces other than social media use. And this is assuming that mental health outcomes are being quantified using measures with good reliability and validity properties, which for the most part they aren't. This isn't Haidt's fault; we're talking about something that is tough to measure well. But consider again the effects he lays out as comparisons: lead on IQ and smoking on cancer. IQ may be controversial, but it has far better psychometric properties than the mental health measures used in most of these studies. And cancer... yeah, that's pretty easy to measure. None of this is to say that social media use isn't harmful to teenage girls (or adults, for that matter!). Haidt makes many compelling arguments at to why is could be. But his response to Coleman's question about the strength of the empirical evidence should be taken with a grain of salt. For a much more nuanced take, co-curated by Haidt himself, see: docs.google.com/document/d/1w-HOfseF2wF9YIpXwUUtP65-olnkPyWcgF5BiAtBEy0/edit (If it matters to the reader, I'm a statistician)

[@JeffCaplan313]

You sound more like a lobbyist for a social media tech company. Who do you work for?

[@benprytherch9202]

​@@JeffCaplan313 you got me. I work for social media. I was planning to spend my day unduly influencing a few of our federal representatives and senators with my totally made up BS stats talk, but sadly for me a bunch of apparently "more important" stuff happened while I was flying in to DC. So all I could do was leave a few envelopes full of hundos under their office doors and I didn't think that would be enough but lo and behold the next day they're talking about some random day in January and a dude call Dopps or something like that, dunno, but all that matters is they're not calling us out so that pays for my plane ticket a few times over. And I looked at the congressional record and they didn't pass any laws banning social media brainwashing mind control for kids, so that's job done for me! I think I deserve a bonus but I heard that Musk dude is pretty tight, wish me luck.

[@tlcetc4506]

​​@@benprytherch9202 that was a good response lol. I think your original comment showed fairness yet someone reads it and takes it as a full opposing attack. Another good example of Weaponization of the Dialectic (another video I watched) and the problems implied in the title of this video itself.

[@burleybater]

Agree in principle on the basics of your argument. People up there at Mr. Haidt's pay scale have a responsibility to tighten up their postulations. What I really heard in your argument (let me know if I missed the ball) is that a decision regarding the allowance of a daughter to have and to hold a smart device, can depend much on the daughter herself. On the micro level. The macro level is a thing that does not follow or play by those specific rules of engagement. Another thing I'm in agreement with: It does us next to no good at all, raising great issues, but with weak and sloppy arguments. This is a byproduct of a thing (a sort of weak-kneed culture of fear) that has become ubiquitous in current discussion. Tip-toeing around the tulips stating divers' versions of obvious observations - and never really getting to the heart of the matter. The meat on the bone. Saying the thing that must be said but apparently, cannot be. Muddying the waters. Clouding the vision. In a time when normativity, reality and simple provable and factual truth are often not even the foundational basis for meaningful discussion, our linguistic hiccups resemble something more along the lines of a surrealistic farce, then anything which might lead to illumination and understanding. Pre-adolescent girls en masse, are, and have been famous for fads, upswings in hysteria, social movement uprisings, and a host of social messes and calamities since Frank Sinatra first showed up and became a thing. The patterns and trends persist. That being said, understanding the nature of the beast (the combination of the girl and the device) requires a lot more focus, humor, sarcasm, skepticism, sharpness of wit, human compassion, and a whole host of other humanistic responses, besides just a "scientific" method. (Great rebuttal, by the way.)

[@JimSky]

A terrifying issue.

[@danielbroderick9008]

"Jonathan Haidt and Guests" is such a massive diss

[@clappincheekz]

Too many ads

[@jsnadrian]

wait, coleman was/is a jazz musician?!

[@62Cristoforo]

What exactly are you insinuating? Just cause he’s black? Shame on you

[@jsnadrian]

@@62Cristoforo ha! this is the first time I heard him talk about it

[@JohnJohnson-pq4qz]

i went through the Canadian University system, went to a couple of different schools and generally had a positive experience The undergrads like me, were generally treated like cattle (good only for the milking ) and I do recall not a few pompous, entitled professors often quite lazy and spending there time forcing us to buy their own crap textbooks and farming out there oh so difficult marking work to TAs. With the tenure system of those days, those clowns were virtually untouchable and they knew it. I wonder how much of this is those ass clowns getting their over due comeuppance?

[@catocall7323]

Like those clowns are weaponizing critical theory to root out better professors

[@lisanidog8178]

Parents these days refuse to teach kids things. They expect teachers to be surrogate parents and they're not. It's pathetic!

[@tlcetc4506]

This has really gone on for generations, though, and now a lot of parents don't even know how or even what.

[@lisanidog8178]

@@tlcetc4506 not my parents. They knew how to parent. They weren’t perfect, but no one else but my parents raised my brother and I. They taught us right from wrong and that nothing was owed but given because they wanted to.

[@blaisetzu]

Who would have thought an innocuous joke about saxophone players would spark lost sjw's to spark a bitter etiquette war. There was a time long ago when jazz musicians were cool...

[@panushjo]

Reason why Coleman doesn't have a million subs: 1. Doesn't have really strong partisan opinions 2. Doesn't think people who vote on the other side are evil 3. Way too nice,soft-spoken,skinny. Needs to lift or something

[@StrategicWealthLLC]

Funny.

[@karinelaxa959]

No he doesn’t. He’s absolutely perfect being in his own body. Because it’s not his wrong body.

[@EvilMAiq]

@@karinelaxa959 I wish we were on a platform where I could really tell you what you need to hear. Instead I'll just say you should grow up.

[@gregmckenzie4315]

In order to survive as a species we will need to make deep and radical changes in our culture, language, and educational systems. This will be very uncomfortable for many conservatives. Those resisting change will become more and more militant and dangerous as their worldviews are exposed as tools for manipulating and controlling large populations. Christofascism is emerging as a real threat to our very existence as a species. We will need to foster and defend our right to question the basic tenants of all popular religious systems while formulating newer and more accurate descriptions of our world and our relation to all of our more-than-human relations on this planet. We need to welcome these changes, and formulate more positive and realistic origin stories that will change some of the basic assumptions of our place in Earth's ecosystem. Hold on! It's going to get very interesting and weird.

[@lisanidog8178]

Of course kids don't want to play outside! They've become too attached to being online! But there are exceptions. On my block I see kids playing outside all the time. Lot of bike riding kids.

[@DanHowardMtl]

A couple of months back Haidt was eye-rolling over Peterson's connections with the Bible. At least these atheists learn slowly.

[@eS-ql7vm]

You are absolutely right. Same with James Lindsay. I can even see it in my Atheist friends as well. Wild

[@christopherhamilton3621]

You’re joking, right?

[@DanHowardMtl]

@@christopherhamilton3621 I see you're one of the typical slower atheists. Well at least that $200,000 student loan debt is working for you.

[@christopherhamilton3621]

@@DanHowardMtl I see you’re one of those assumers & accusers…🙄

[@grahamstrouse1165]

@@DanHowardMtlJesus is laughing at you.

[@patroit2931]

Thank you for the conservation. One serious question, I truly believe Hillary Clinton was as much to blame for the divisiveness in 2016, and many others like a AOC continue the tread on left. As the blame game accelerated, from Hillary's speech about everyone on the right was any derogatory thing. Racist, uneducated, stupid, Islamophobic, sexist, etc etc. I was center, had agreement (policy wise) on each side, but because of all the attacks on "whiteness" I started to hate the left, as they were attacking myself, and my lineage. My relatives had nothing to take blame for. So question, Isn't Hillary as much blame as Trump?

[@FUCKMAGA45]

What a load of BS...

[@BradSamuelsPro]

Hillary Clinton apologized for her "deplorable" gaffe and still lost the election. Donald Trump has never apologized for anything, even though his rhetoric was a thousand times worse than anyone who came before, and he was rewarded in 2016 for his volatility and lack of empathy.

[@FourthExile]

I've had a similar experience to you. I also remember how the democrats also didn't fully accept the defeat and learn from it. The holier-than-thou posturing only continued among other things. I've had to go to alternative sources for genuine left-wing thought so as not to poison the well of progressive ideas, for me at least. And yeah I blame Hilary, Trump and other variables.

[@BradSamuelsPro]

@@FourthExile russiagate was an insane delusion but Hillary Clinton at least had the decency to concede the day after it was obvious that she didn't get enough electors in the electoral college

[@alQarafi]

Trump a draft dodger made fun of John McCain a war hero and John’s time as a POW. Every thing about Trump was a con. A narcissist with no class. There is no one as bad as Trump. Not even close.

[@nelsonrushton]

"Trump made it very difficult for anyone on the left to take these problems [of woke authoritarianism] seriously" [Haidt, 11:40]. If that made it difficult for someone to take the problem seriously, it was only a matter of time before they started clamoring for gulags in any case. Just before that he says, "What are you to do [when circumstances of conflict tempt you to compromise your principles?]" as if it is an impossible question. What you are to do is what Daniel did.

[@steveunderwood3683]

Jonathan Rauch is great when he's talking about principles. As soon as he talks about the real world he's one of the most deranged partisans I've heard. I find it disturbing that man completely free of nuance and balance is one of the few we can look to for a well expressed model of how things should be run.

[@jenniferabel2811]

From your perspective, where's he going wrong about the real world?

[@steveunderwood3683]

@@jenniferabel2811 He fails to apply any of the principles he espouses. He simply has a my side good, anyone else evil approach to everything. There's no nuance. No attempt to inderstand why people might choose a different path to him.

[@jenniferabel2811]

@@steveunderwood3683 What's an example of a principle that he doesn't apply?

[@christopherhamilton3621]

Rauch? He’s not here, bud!

[@christopherhamilton3621]

It’s about what Rauch says about not breaking the system down & seeing the. ‘Knowledge Institution’ for what is really is, not what the anti-intellectual mob wants to paint it as… He certainly does espouse the principles: you’re conflating something else here I’m afraid.

[@TheWhitehiker]

Woke strategy, such as it is, is to declare any view they dont accept as 'harmful' or 'dangerous' to certain types, usually not present at the time. Moreover, Trump was/is routinely castigated for purely strategic reasons, despite the hugely inaccurate characterizations of him.

[@Pseudify]

Coleman: The “profit seeking motive” is not the problem. Bad parenting is the problem. Just as good parents don’t let their kid play in the street, they don’t let them engage willy-nilly with social media. And they don’t let them skip school, and join gangs, and experiment with sex and drugs, and otherwise engage in harmful parenting. When will we get back to the root problem of so many social ills?

[@amaryllisequistra]

When our child became a teen in 2010 we didn’t know how bad social media would be. We are not in the US, so the local conversation around it was pretty parochial, and we were not on social media ourselves. We limited the child’s time on the internet and thought that the age limits for joining sites would keep the child from joining any sites. We also thought that a child raised with no tv or devices would not be interested in SM. Wrong! It took about 2 weeks for their attention to be totally captured, and yes, their mental health tanked for the next 6 years. It was an awful mess. I feel for the job parents have trying to counteract all these malign cultural forces…

[@JanPBtest]

8:46 There always was an easy response to that, and this is something that science uses all the time: _order of magnitude is very important._ In other words: making a claim like "There is a fascist at the White House" or whatever is what Carl Sagan would refer to as _an extraordinary claim._ And such claims cannot be just made at the same breath as other claims. As Sagan would say: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs." It's simply a _completely_ different thing to say "As I went out to buy groceries, I tripped and twisted my ankle" versus "As I went out to buy groceries, I was abducted by space aliens who operated on my ankle and broke it". Those two claims are not even comparable. It's the same with claims like "Trump is like an asteroid about to destroy the Earth": one simply CANNOT just say things of that sort _and leave them at that,_ as if they were a valid argument, because allowing this method of logic and arguing would instantly render all rational discourse impossible. All one would have to say is "X is Hitler", and that's the end of the argument. So the phrase "order of magnitude" should enter the mainstream to be used widely as a weapon against such ludicrous nuclear-option arguments, so people can understand that it's simply not a valid method of rebuttal.

[@nicobruin8618]

Great discussion but Greg has really let himself go 😂

[@glukianoff4077]

If you are saying my beard was excessive, well....oh, yes, correct. I am going to rein that puppy in. 🙂

[@elizabethk3238]

Only a man would not see the sexism in that post with the jazz musicians. Women are not a common oddity by which your masculinity is measured. BTW I am a 75 year-old highly educated liberal mother/grandmother of 2 daughters and 2 granddaughters.

[@DIYDSP]

Tight control of discussion to avoid talking abt climate change and school shootings as factors in mental health. But if you ask young people they will tell you this.

[@gingrai00]

~35:00 the discussion turned towards student activism. This is an area where parents and students are being offended against greatly by people in power in academia. They are mobilizing and biasing the impressionable on behalf of their own political and moral sensibilities and they are doing this in the name of education. I don’t think they mean to be sinister but this is sinister… and deeply divisive.

[@gingrai00]

@Slightlylesswrong I should have qualified my statement… academia is too broad and typically implies higher learning… I was thinking more about the K-8 arena. I am also quite supportive of educators who challenge students to think better but I think we would both agree that indoctrination is to be avoided.

[@gingrai00]

@Slightlylesswrong looks like we have quite a bit in common! Cultivate young minds to think rightly, to think critically, to love knowledge and hopefully to see the value of virtue. If the schools are turning out corporate cogs, that too would be an egregious error. there is so much, though that falls in the realm of academics that I see hardly any need to venture into the more speculative and clearly more provocative realms of gender, sexuality, political ideology etc. We would be making big gains if teachers were able to ignite, in students, a passion for learning and for truth and any administrators or administration that got in the way of that, I think, should be opposed. Thank you for your thoughts on this.

[@briananderson8428]

Is it woke to point out that of course the three men speak before the one woman...?

[@sobersherpa]

Some of Gen X's and Gen Z's deem Gen X and Boomer generation as trash / deplorables. This is in my opinion a clear indicator of lack of maturity and general respect for their fellow Americans.

[@sobersherpa]

Grandiosity definition; The term "grandiosity" refers to an unrealistic sense of superiority in which you consider yourself unique and better than others. It also infers a disdain for those people you consider to be inferior to you (by way of class, intelligence, beauty, or heritage, etc.). As a symptom, grandiosity exists on a spectrum.

[@Wandering.Homebody]

@@sobersherpa how can "it" infer anything? What a bizarre notion.

[@clydekimsey7503]

No, the solution is censoring or changing algorithms on social media. There needs to be an emphasis on aristitilian logic

[@DieFlabbergast]

"aristitilian" ??? Aristotelian, perhaps?

[@clydekimsey7503]

@@DieFlabbergast yes, sorry. I edited it 5 times, but the auto correct still couldn't get it right

[@dannysullivan3951]

While I sympathize with this need to keep campus’ life diversified, these guys point to Trump as having magnified the problem, while I believe the slow erosion of the white majority was building towards this. I applaud and support their efforts, but we can’t pretend that vast demographic changes aren’t driving some of this polarization.

[@YoungSantasGroupie]

As someone who works at a hospital, I've noticed that masks tend to flatter people, sort of like when big sunglasses were trendy. Don't discount how much of a factor that might be for females to keep wearing them. I mean, it's not a main reason. Fear-mongering and politicizing/moralizing seem to be the main ones.

[@mikealexander1935]

But things were NOT going well in 2011. Only three years earlier, we had a financial panic for the first time in 75 years. Just 8 years before that we had the first large-scale asset bubble since the 1920's. Today we are in our third such bubble in 25 years. Clearly financial markets were indicating something was very wrong. Then there is the phenomenon of mass shooting, like the recent two in Buffalo which began a rising faster about 15 years ago. Then there is rising economic inequality over the past three decades and in tandem, the rise in polarization. What you are discussing appears to be a single strand of a much larger dynamic that has happened before. If this is true, then the incidence of these event should gradually decrease as did the social violence after the "Red Summer" peak a century ago or the peak around 1970. That is, by the end of the decade cancel culture and related stuff should no longer be a topic of concern relative to other things.

[@tlcetc4506]

It seems they don't go back far enough, dig deep enough, or in other words, quite get to the real root causes and beginnings.

[@freddieoblivion6122]

I was saying that all throughout the coof - the dividing line is SEX - If it were still men at work, women at home with the kids, we wouldn't have seen a SINGLE MASK. See what they can accomplish having women in the workplace? It's Father, Son, Holy Spirit; not parent, child, holy spirit.

[@adrianarchie]

Haidt is naive...

[@CH-sl1yd]

LGBTumblr

[@thomasmills3934]

Where do you people live? Lol. No one has been actually wearing masks for over a year where im from. And im in one of the bluest states in the country...

[@benprytherch9202]

Yeah, at my blue state public university about 90% of students stopped wearing masks when the mandate was dropped. There are still some students wearing them but they are in a small minority.

[@sobersherpa]

Students may be able to get away with manifesting grandiosity and narcissism at some universities however in the typical workplace and public social settings this behavior ain't going to fly. Manifestation of grandiose and narcissism will create unhealthy dynamics in the workplace and will ultimately result in continuous stings of hired and laid-off and/or fired.

[@dogperson432]

You'd think that, except many times the people who behave this way are also intentionally manipulative in the workplace to gain the advantage in these situations. For example if a supervisor says the behavior isn't going to fly, they will happily lie or stretch the truth to destroy that supervisor's reputation before there's any open conflict so that they end up staying and anybody who opposes them gets fired.

[@davethebrahman9870]

That isn’t true anymore. Workplaces are bending to ideology.

[@davegold]

I think you need to consider that the human resources departments of major institutions are potentially the first places to be populated with these sorts of people.

[@thomasmills3934]

Is anyone else like, what the everloving hell are you talking about?

[@willmercury]

Keep listening to gain perspective. Read Haidt and Loukianoff. Explore Heterodox Academy on YT.

[@nicobruin8618]

Have you browsed the internet or in any way interacted with the world in the past decade? And were you around to experience the decade before that?

[@thomasmills3934]

Idk what the two responses are referring to but when they started talking about the tower of babel etc they lost me. I own "the Coddling". Some of the book u turned out to be true. But their wholesale acceptance of the Steven Pinker "everything is fine" worldview is basic. That worldview is an example of confirmation bias. The averages can be used to show whatever you want. Just like the whole "air travel is the safest form of travel" ya sure. When u include all drivers (drunks, old people etc) in the average. But if you operate your car in a certain way at certain times you can improve your odds of safety to greater then that of air travel...

[@thomasmills3934]

I do love how everyone who responds to youtube comments feels like they have been revealed some knowledge unbeknownst to the rest of us feeble masses...

[@nicobruin8618]

@@thomasmills3934 he says whilst responding to KZbin comments.

[@RobertWGreaves]

I have really appreciated the work of Jonathan Haidt. But there is one thing that I find puzzling. I have a number of deeply conservative friends and a number of deeply liberal friends who have read his book, The Righteous Mind. But when I speak to them, they seem to think that his book exonerates their side of the aisle while it really exposes the hypocrisy of other side of the aisle. This gives me the disappointing impression that the work of the heterodox academy will not be successful until it actually makes a change of balance at the academic level.

[@fraziet2]

I am sorry but there are no women of color on this panel so I can’t listen to this. Did I miss anything?

[@mark4asp]

Can someone explain to me how "Trump made things worse"? This sounds like the "you made me do it" argument. Q: Hey - why are you behaving like a censorious, authoritarian idiot? A: Trump made me do it!!!