Public silence can hide majority opinion

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 41:35

   for this roaring 20s where people are like no more bullshit let's get shit done yeah so let's go through the we'll go through the theory of preference falsification just by the way amazing the books on this is fascinating yeah yeah so this is this is exactly this is one of the all-time great books incredibly about 20 30 year old book but it's very it's completely modern and current um and what it talks about uh as well as very deeply historically informed um so it's called private truths public lies and it's written by a social science professor named timur quran um at i think duke um and it's it's definitive work on this and so he he has this concept he calls preference falsification. And so preference falsification is two things. Preference falsification, and you get it from the title of the book, Private Truths, Public Lies. So

2. 42:16

   preference falsification is when you believe something and you can't say it. Or, and this is very important, you don't believe something and you must say it, right? And the commonality there is in both cases, you're lying. You believe something internally and then you're lying about it in public. And so the thing, you know, and there's sort of two classic forms of it. there's the, you know, for example, there's the, I believe communism is rotten, but I can't say it version of it. Um, but then there's also the, the, the famous parable of the, the real life example, but, um, the thing that Václav Havel talks about in the other good book on this topic, which is the power of the powerless, um, you know, who is an anti-communist resistance fighter who ultimately became the, you know, the, the, the president of Czechoslovakia after the fall of the

3. 42:57

   wall. But he wrote this book and he, he describes the other side of this, which is, um, workers of the world unite, right? And so he, he describes what he calls the parable of the green grocer, which is you're a green grocer in Prague in 1985 and for the last 70 years it has been 50 years it's been absolutely mandatory to have a sign in the window of your store that says workers of the world unite right and it's 1985 it is like crystal clear that the world the workers of the world are not going to unite like like of all the things that could happen in the world that is not going to happen the commies have been at that for 70 years it is not happening but that slogan had better be in your window every morning because if it's not in your window every morning you are not a good communist. The secret police are going to come by and they're going to get you. And so the

4. 43:39

   first thing you do when you get to the store is you put that slogan in the window and you make sure that it stays in the window all day long. But he says, the thing is, every single person, the green grocer knows the slogan is fake. He knows it's a lie. Every single person walking past the slogan knows that it's a lie. Every single person walking past the store knows that the green grocer is only putting it up there because he has to lie in public. And the green grocer has to go through the humiliation of knowing that everybody knows that he's caving into the system and lying in public. And so it turns into demoralization campaign. It's not just ideological enforcement. In fact, it's not ideological enforcement anymore because everybody knows it's fake. The authorities know it's fake. Everybody knows it's fake. It's not that they're

5. 44:17

   enforcing the actual ideology of the workers of the world uniting. It's that they are enforcing compliance, right? And compliance with the regime and fuck you, you will comply, right? And so anyway, that's the other side of that. And of course, we have lived in the last decade through a lot of both of those. I think anybody listening to this could name a series of slogans that we've all been forced to chant for the last decade that everybody knows at this point are just like simply not true.

6. 44:41

   I'll let the audience, you know, speculate on those on their own group chats. Send Mark your memes online as well, please. Yes, yes, exactly. But okay, so anyway, so it's the two sides of that, right? So it's private truths, public lies. So then what preference falsification does is it talks about extending that from the idea of the individual experiencing that to the idea of the entire society experiencing that, right? And this gets to your percentages question, which is like, okay, what happens in a society in which people are forced to lie in public about what they truly believe? What happens, number one, is that individually they're lying in public, and that's bad. But the other thing that happens is they no longer have an accurate gauge at all or any way to estimate how many people agree with them. And again, this literally is like how you get something like the communist

7. 45:22

   system, which is like, okay, you end up in a situation in which 80 or 90 or 99% of society can actually all be thinking individually, I really don't buy this anymore. And if anybody would just stand up and say it, I would be willing to go along with it, but I'm not going to be the first one to put my head on the chopping block. But because of the suppression, censorship, you have no way of knowing how many other people agree with you. And if the people who agree with you are 10% of the population and you become part of a movement, you're going to get killed.

8. 45:49

   If 90% of the people agree with you, you're going to win the revolution, right? And so the question of like what the percentage actually is, is like a really critical question. And then basically in any sort of authoritarian system, you can't like run a survey, right, to get an accurate result. And so you actually can't know until you put it to the test. And then what he describes in the book is it's always put at the test in the same way. And this is exactly what's happened for the last two years, like 100% of exactly what's happened. It's like straight out of this book, which is somebody, Elon, sticks his hand up and says, the workers of the world are not going to unite.

9. 46:20

   Yeah. Right. Or the emperor is actually wearing no clothes. Right. You know, that famous parable. Right. So one person stands up and does it. And literally that person is standing there by themselves and everybody else in the audience is like, ooh, I wonder what's going to happen to that guy. Right. But again, nobody knows. Elon doesn't know. The first guy doesn't know. Other people don't know. Like, which way is this going to go? And it may be that that's a minority position and that's a way to get yourself killed. Or it may be that that's the majority position in that, and you are now the leader of a revolution. And then basically, of course, what happens is, okay, the first guy does that, doesn't get killed. The second guy does, well, a lot of the time, that guy does get killed. But when the guy doesn't get killed, then a second guy pops his head up,

10. 46:55

    says the same thing. All right, now you've got two. Two leads to four, four leads to eight, eight leads to 16. And then as we saw with the fall of the Berlin Wall, this is what happened in Russia and Eastern Europe in 89. When it goes, it can go, right? And then it rips. And then what happens is very, very quickly, if it turns out that you had a large percentage of the population that actually believe the different thing, it turns out all of a sudden, everybody has this giant epiphany that says, oh, I'm actually part of the majority. And at that point, like you were on the freight train to revolution, right? Like it is rolling, right? Now, the other part of this is the distinction between the role of the elites and the masses. And here, the best book is called The True Believer, which is the Eric Hoffer book. And so the nuance you have to put on this is

11. 47:36

    the elites play a giant role in this because the elites do idea formation and communication, but the elites by definition are a small minority. And so there's also this giant role played by the masses. And the masses are not necessarily thinking these things through in the same intellectualized or formal way that the elites are, but they are for sure experiencing these things in their daily lives. And they for sure have at least very strong emotional views on them. And so when you really get the revolution, it's when you get the elites lined up with, or either the current elites change or the new set of elites, a new set of counter elites, basically come along and say, no, there's actually a different and better way to live.

12. 48:09

    And then the people basically decide to follow the counter elite. So that's the other dimension to it. And of course, that part is also happening right now. And again, case study number one of that would be Elon and his. you know, it turns out, you know, truly massive following. And he has done that over and over in different industries, not just saying crazy shit online, but saying crazy shit in the realm of space, in the realm of autonomous driving, in the realm of AI, just over and over and over again, turns out saying crazy shit is one of the ways to do a revolution and to actually make progress.

13. 48:40

    Yeah. And it's like, well, but then there's the test. Is it crazy shit or is it the truth? Yeah. Right. And, and, and, you know, and this is where, you know, many, there are many more specific things about Elon's genius, but one of the really core ones is an absolute dedication to the truth. And so when Elon says something, it sounds like crazy shit, but in his mind, it's true. Now, is he always right? No. Sometimes the rockets crash. Sometimes he's wrong. He's human. He's like anybody else. He's not right all the time. But at least my through line with him, both in what he says in public and what he says in private, which by the way, are the exact same things. He does not do this. He doesn't lie in public about what he believes in private, or at least he doesn't do that anymore. He's 100% consistent in my experience.

14. 49:16

    By the way, there's two guys who are 100% consistent like that, that I know, Elon and Trump. Yeah. Whatever you think of them, what they say in private is 100% identical to what they say in public. Like they are completely transparent.