The cocktail circuit preference cascade (08-27-2024--Hour2)

[00:00:04] [SPEAKER_00]: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalinershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] [SPEAKER_00]: All righty, hour number two, Pete Kaliner here. Thanks a lot for hanging out. I appreciate it. News Talk 1110-993-WBT. The phone number, as always, is 704-570-1110. The email is pete at thepetekalinershow.com. You can also hit me up on Twitter at Pete Kaliner. And remember, get the podcast. Go to wbt.com or thepetekalinershow.com and you can subscribe for free.

[00:00:58] [SPEAKER_00]: And then each hour of the show comes to you as its own separate episode. And you can speed listen and catch anything that you missed throughout the day. All right, so there is a fella named Yasha Monk is his name. And he's got a Substack newsletter. I've been reading it off and on for years. Well, not off and on. For years, I have read intermittently.

[00:01:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Intermittently. Let me say it that way. I'll see something that catches my eye. And he strikes me as somebody who is centrist to left-leaning a little bit. He writes very lengthy pieces.

[00:01:38] [SPEAKER_00]: And every so often there's one that catches my eye. And I will read it. And he had one about, well, five days ago. And it was called, Why the Media Moves in Unison.

[00:01:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And as I was reading it, I came across a term. The preference cascade. So automatically I know he's on to something. Because the preference cascade, I've talked about this for years.

[00:02:05] [SPEAKER_00]: It explains a lot about why people move as groups. The first time I want to say that I encountered this concept was there was somebody who gave a lecture or a speech at Hillsdale College and they reprinted his comments in the Hillsdale newsletter.

[00:02:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And that was the first time I read it. And that was the first time I read it. This was, gosh, probably seven or eight years ago maybe. I don't remember.

[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_00]: But the speaker was talking about a social sciences guy, a sociologist, who examined the cause of riots in the 60s, if I recall correctly.

[00:02:53] [SPEAKER_00]: And he talked about how everybody basically has their own number. And your number is zero, one, two, ten, a hundred, whatever.

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_00]: And so if your number is one and my number is zero when it comes to violence during a demonstration, my number zero means I don't need to see any other example of somebody doing violence for me to do it.

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_00]: I am already, for whatever reason, I'm predisposed to pick up a rock or a brick and chuck it through a window, right?

[00:03:27] [SPEAKER_00]: My number is zero. But if your number is one, you've now seen me do this and now your number gets punched.

[00:03:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Now you've seen it. That gives you a permission structure to engage in the similar behavior.

[00:03:41] [SPEAKER_00]: The vast majority of people's number is, you know, way higher or, you know, there's, you know, a million.

[00:03:48] [SPEAKER_00]: It has to be like a mass movement, a revolution of some kind in order for them to actually participate themselves in any kind of destructive behavior like that during a demonstration.

[00:03:59] [SPEAKER_00]: But what happens then is that you end up with this rolling preference cascade that starts building where people whose numbers were zero engage in the violence.

[00:04:09] [SPEAKER_00]: People whose numbers were one then follow suit and then very quickly from there, it'll just start building, right?

[00:04:17] [SPEAKER_00]: It gains momentum. And that's so that's the preference cascade is that now that is the preferred course for most people because their numbers get punched.

[00:04:27] [SPEAKER_00]: All right. So that's just sort of the background on what that means in this kind of a setting.

[00:04:32] [SPEAKER_00]: There's also in the business world, same sort of concept applies early adopter of a new technology.

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody else is using it like, oh, my gosh, an electric vehicle. That's silly.

[00:04:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And then somebody else sees it and they're like, no, actually, I like that because their number was one.

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Right. The early adopters, their numbers are zero.

[00:04:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Somebody comes along and sees it. Oh, my buddy's got the Tesla. I'm going to buy one, too.

[00:04:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Now somebody else, their number is two or three and they see a couple of people.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And now it's like, oh, I want to get this, too. And then it builds this preference cascade.

[00:05:03] [SPEAKER_00]: And then it's, you know, it it just spreads.

[00:05:09] [SPEAKER_00]: So Yasha Monk, he says, for much of the pandemic, mainstream publications confidently rejected the possibility that an inadvertent lab leak may be the origin of COVID.

[00:05:21] [SPEAKER_00]: The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Guardian, Vox dot com all referred to this notion as a conspiracy theory.

[00:05:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Fact checkers at PolitiFact and other leading outfits claimed that the idea had definitively been debunked.

[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Renowned scientists were banned from Facebook and YouTube for dissenting from the approved line.

[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Then in the course of a couple of weeks, the theory suddenly stopped being taboo.

[00:05:50] [SPEAKER_00]: The evidence that there was reason to take the theory seriously had gradually accumulated on social media.

[00:05:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Right. Because people who are not bound by the permission structure of the quote unquote mainstream media, they were free to piece these things together.

[00:06:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And they did. I covered them during the pandemic, the emerging evidence.

[00:06:12] [SPEAKER_00]: People people went through looking at help wanted ads in Wuhan looking for that.

[00:06:20] [SPEAKER_00]: They were looking for people and they were able to pull employment records and stuff like that.

[00:06:26] [SPEAKER_00]: They were what happened to the scientists.

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_00]: People were doing all of this detective work either on their own or for upstart, small, you know, web based publications.

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_00]: But in the course of a couple of weeks, the theory then becomes acceptable.

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_00]: The evidence that there was reason to take it seriously was accumulating on social media.

[00:06:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And then finally, in January of 2021, there was the major article in the New York magazine.

[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_00]: And it pulled together some of the strongest evidence for this theory.

[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Though it did not contain much new information, he says, serious consideration of the topic started to appear in all of the most prestigious outlets over the following days and weeks.

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Before long, the theory was routinely being described as plausible and perhaps even likely.

[00:07:16] [SPEAKER_00]: The media's change in how it covered the origins of the pandemic is one of the most extreme examples of groupthink in recent history.

[00:07:25] [SPEAKER_00]: But it is far from the only case in which journalistic coverage of an important topic has radically shifted over the course of a stunningly brief span of time.

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_00]: I would submit that the latest example of this is Kamala Harris.

[00:07:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Right. She went from.

[00:07:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Inconsistent and unacceptable as a vice president to be elevated to the presidential nominee to the second coming of Barack Obama virtually overnight, like literally virtually overnight.

[00:07:59] [SPEAKER_00]: In this in the span of about a week, even once voters had grown deeply concerned about Joe Biden's mental acuity.

[00:08:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Mainstream journalists hesitated to write about the topic.

[00:08:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Even once evidence about the harmful side effects of cross sex hormones administered to teenagers had mounted, mainstream journalists insisted that the science on the topic had long ago been settled.

[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And even once it was becoming very clear that prolonged school closures were having a devastating effect on learning outcomes.

[00:08:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Mainstream journalists dismissed and ridiculed those who expressed concerns.

[00:08:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Only long after the evidence which warranted a change of tune had started to accumulate, did all three taboos crumble seemingly from one day to the next.

[00:08:50] [SPEAKER_00]: So these kinds of cases are a big part of the reason why trust in media has fallen so dramatically.

[00:08:57] [SPEAKER_00]: He goes on to say it is rational.

[00:08:59] [SPEAKER_00]: By the way, this is this piece is one, two, three, four, five pages is very, very lengthy.

[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_00]: It'll take you about 20 minutes to read through the whole thing.

[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_00]: But I will break it down into digestible nuggets for you.

[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_00]: You're welcome.

[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_00]: He says it is rational and even laudable for journalists to change their mind when, you know, new evidence comes up.

[00:09:20] [SPEAKER_00]: But when journalists ignore evidence for weeks or months only to change their tune all of a sudden, it's only understandable and actually inevitable that a lot of people are going to smell a conspiracy.

[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_00]: When so many journalists march in lockstep and then pivot in lockstep, the simplest explanation seems to be that they're obeying a set of orders that they share.

[00:09:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:09:50] [SPEAKER_00]: But Yasha Monk says it doesn't take some grand conspiracy.

[00:09:55] [SPEAKER_00]: He says the real reason is actually.

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Pretty prosaic.

[00:09:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Writers care about being read.

[00:10:03] [SPEAKER_00]: They care about building a following.

[00:10:05] [SPEAKER_00]: They care about making money.

[00:10:07] [SPEAKER_00]: But more than any of these things, they care about not being cast out of their social milieu.

[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_00]: In other words, what Rush Limbaugh would always talk about.

[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_00]: The cocktail parties are to be shunned.

[00:10:22] [SPEAKER_00]: We'll pick it up there in a minute.

[00:10:24] [SPEAKER_00]: News Talk 1110 99.3 WBT 704 570 1110.

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_00]: If you would like to discuss any of the topic material, feel free to call.

[00:10:33] [SPEAKER_00]: You can also shoot me an email.

[00:10:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Pete at the Pete calendar show dot com.

[00:10:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Yasha Monk.

[00:10:39] [SPEAKER_00]: He's got a sub stack.

[00:10:40] [SPEAKER_00]: You can subscribe to it.

[00:10:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Some of this stuff he posts up for free.

[00:10:44] [SPEAKER_00]: This is titled Why the Media Moves in Unison.

[00:10:48] [SPEAKER_00]: He says writers care about being read.

[00:10:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And they care about building a following.

[00:10:54] [SPEAKER_00]: They care about making money.

[00:10:56] [SPEAKER_00]: But more than anything, they care about not being cast out of their social circle.

[00:11:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:11:02] [SPEAKER_00]: This helps explain how journalistic taboos form and then wane.

[00:11:08] [SPEAKER_00]: A certain fact or a point of view seems to help the wrong people.

[00:11:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Dare I say deplorable.

[00:11:17] [SPEAKER_00]: For rational or less than rational reasons, it is perceived to open the door to prejudice,

[00:11:23] [SPEAKER_00]: for example, against Asian Americans.

[00:11:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Remember that?

[00:11:26] [SPEAKER_00]: That was the lab leak theory.

[00:11:27] [SPEAKER_00]: You can't say that.

[00:11:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Asians are now being targeted.

[00:11:31] targeted.

[00:11:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Generally by black people, but whatever, like that's the doesn't matter.

[00:11:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Like the point is, we're trying to we're trying to protect people.

[00:11:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe it's perceived that it will harm the fight for transgender rights.

[00:11:44] [SPEAKER_00]: So you can't you can't attack the cross gender hormones and the damage that they do in the

[00:11:49] [SPEAKER_00]: transitioning process and all the people and institutions that are making money on that

[00:11:53] [SPEAKER_00]: can't talk about that.

[00:11:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe it undermines the efforts to contain the pandemic.

[00:11:58] [SPEAKER_00]: So don't you talk about school closures.

[00:12:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe you're afraid that if you do some reporting, you're going to weaken American

[00:12:07] [SPEAKER_00]: democracy.

[00:12:08] [SPEAKER_00]: So don't talk about Biden's cognitive decline.

[00:12:11] [SPEAKER_00]: This is enough to render anybody who reports this fact or expresses this point of view as

[00:12:16] [SPEAKER_00]: suspect inside their social circle.

[00:12:20] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not a conspiracy.

[00:12:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Per se, like it's not organized to say we're going to suppress this because they don't have

[00:12:28] [SPEAKER_00]: to give the order.

[00:12:29] [SPEAKER_00]: It just happens.

[00:12:31] [SPEAKER_00]: It is to put the phenomenon in the simplest terms.

[00:12:34] [SPEAKER_00]: The desire of many journalists not to face awkward questions when they attend their next dinner

[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_00]: party.

[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_00]: The need for social connection and social approval.

[00:12:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Is almost as old as we are.

[00:12:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:12:49] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it is instinctive.

[00:12:50] [SPEAKER_00]: He then spends a good bit of time talking about, you know, fear of isolation.

[00:12:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Because if you I mean, think about it, you know, thousands of years ago, if you got kicked

[00:13:02] [SPEAKER_00]: out of the tribe, you're probably dead.

[00:13:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:13:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Because you can't do everything that the tribe can do together.

[00:13:10] [SPEAKER_00]: He says fear of socialized social isolation looms all the larger for those who have grown

[00:13:19] [SPEAKER_00]: up in physical safety and material comfort.

[00:13:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:13:22] [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people in journalism.

[00:13:25] [SPEAKER_00]: They come from privileged backgrounds and classes.

[00:13:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And so losing that status means losing the stuff that matters most.

[00:13:34] [SPEAKER_00]: One way to describe a member of the upper middle class in an affluent capitalist society

[00:13:40] [SPEAKER_00]: is to say that he or she is the kind of creature for whom the prospect of social disapproval is

[00:13:46] [SPEAKER_00]: one of the most salient disasters that looms over their lives.

[00:13:51] [SPEAKER_00]: I have heard.

[00:13:53] [SPEAKER_00]: And read accounts from people who have been, quote unquote, canceled over the last decade.

[00:14:00] [SPEAKER_00]: And they talk about how it affects them physically.

[00:14:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Like it, it sends them into depression.

[00:14:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:14:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Suicidal thoughts.

[00:14:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Why am I even here?

[00:14:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I've lost all of my friends.

[00:14:16] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm never going to get a job like they're destroyed.

[00:14:21] [SPEAKER_00]: They are destroyed.

[00:14:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Now, think about if you're, you know, self-sufficient out on a farm someplace and somebody's like,

[00:14:29] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to cancel Pete.

[00:14:31] [SPEAKER_00]: You go right ahead.

[00:14:32] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even know you existed.

[00:14:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Don't care.

[00:14:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:14:36] [SPEAKER_00]: The deeply rooted need for social approval explains why people are so willing to defer

[00:14:40] [SPEAKER_00]: to social taboos.

[00:14:42] [SPEAKER_00]: But it does not explain why the nature of the social taboos that are binding on society

[00:14:47] [SPEAKER_00]: can shift so rapidly and seemingly unpredictably.

[00:14:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:14:51] [SPEAKER_00]: So to solve that part of the puzzle.

[00:14:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Why does it shift so quickly?

[00:14:56] [SPEAKER_00]: He then cites a fellow by the name of Timur Kiran, a Turkish-American economist who back in

[00:15:04] [SPEAKER_00]: the late 1980s set out to explain the origins of political revolutions.

[00:15:11] [SPEAKER_00]: And this is where it gets really interesting.

[00:15:16] [SPEAKER_00]: He talks about the Bolshevik revolution and how two days prior to the revolution,

[00:15:24] [SPEAKER_00]: the Tsarina Alexandra of Russia was dismissing the importance of the, quote, young people who run around and shout that there is no bread simply to create excitement.

[00:15:40] [SPEAKER_00]: If the weather were very cold, they would probably all stay home.

[00:15:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:15:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Dismissing these protests and this revolution that would soon overthrow her family and murder them all.

[00:15:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Two days prior, she was saying this.

[00:15:54] [SPEAKER_00]: So how do things flip so quickly?

[00:15:58] [SPEAKER_00]: And this is where we get into the preference cascade.

[00:16:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Newstalk 1110 99.3 WBT 704 570 1110.

[00:16:06] [SPEAKER_00]: The key to understanding why revolutions tend to come as a surprise, according to Timur Kiran, a Turkish-American economist who wrote about this in the 1980s.

[00:16:21] [SPEAKER_00]: To understand why revolutions are a surprise lies in the gulf between the views that people hold privately and the views that they are willing to express publicly.

[00:16:37] [SPEAKER_00]: So if you think about this, right, if you are in an oppressive regime.

[00:16:43] [SPEAKER_00]: There will be strong penalties for expressing the wrong views.

[00:16:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever the regime says is the wrong view.

[00:16:51] [SPEAKER_00]: You don't say that.

[00:16:53] [SPEAKER_00]: This leads to the widespread adoption of what.

[00:16:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Quran called.

[00:17:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Preference falsification.

[00:17:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Preference falsification.

[00:17:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:17:03] [SPEAKER_00]: This is why people lie to pollsters when they're not just trolling them or, you know, wanting to create chaos or something.

[00:17:10] [SPEAKER_00]: It's why people don't feel comfortable telling a live person on the phone who their political preference is in a poll.

[00:17:18] [SPEAKER_00]: But if you ask them to punch a number of who they prefer, they're more willing to do that.

[00:17:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Again, this is Yasha Monk writing at his Substack publication, Why the Media Moves in Unison.

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_00]: He said in societies in which a lot of people engage in preference falsification, it's going to be hard for everybody.

[00:17:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Across the entire society, from the humble citizen to the most powerful government minister,

[00:17:45] [SPEAKER_00]: nobody's going to know the real distribution of views in the population.

[00:17:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:17:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Because we're blinded to it.

[00:17:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Because when you say you can't think that thing, that's taboo.

[00:17:57] [SPEAKER_00]: But people are not going to abandon what they think of a thing.

[00:18:01] [SPEAKER_00]: They're not going to say, oh, well, they don't want me to think that, so I won't.

[00:18:05] [SPEAKER_00]: No, they're just going to lie about whether they think a thing is true or not.

[00:18:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Much like the lab leak theory with COVID.

[00:18:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:18:11] [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people talked about, yeah, that probably, if it wasn't intentional, it was an accidental escape from a lab.

[00:18:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And when they got censored on Facebook over this sort of stuff, they didn't abandon that belief.

[00:18:30] [SPEAKER_00]: It just got hidden.

[00:18:34] [SPEAKER_00]: This is also kind of what RFK Jr. was talking about as well.

[00:18:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:18:39] [SPEAKER_00]: When you have, like with the Democrat Party, suppressing the will of the voters in their own party, trying to block people's access to the ballot.

[00:18:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:18:47] [SPEAKER_00]: So only Joe Biden can be on the ballot.

[00:18:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:18:50] [SPEAKER_00]: When you engage in that kind of behavior and you suppress opposing views, you are now hiding that information from yourself as well as everybody else.

[00:19:01] [SPEAKER_00]: And RFK Jr. asked in his speech on Friday, you know, how are the citizens supposed to be able to elect somebody?

[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_00]: If they don't ever get to hear from that person.

[00:19:17] [SPEAKER_00]: And if you are the regime and you're in power, you don't care.

[00:19:22] [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter to you as long as you get to stay in power.

[00:19:25] [SPEAKER_00]: But that is not a long term strategy because you're going to have to get increasingly more oppressive because the ideas haven't died.

[00:19:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Timur Karan also points out that this creates the preconditions for a preference cascade.

[00:19:49] [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, when I read that, you know what I thought?

[00:19:51] [SPEAKER_00]: What first off?

[00:19:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[00:19:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Preference cascade.

[00:19:55] [SPEAKER_00]: But no.

[00:19:56] [SPEAKER_00]: What I also thought was.

[00:19:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Again, Rush Limbaugh.

[00:20:00] [SPEAKER_00]: How many people.

[00:20:03] [SPEAKER_00]: I've heard for years say and you've heard to and you've probably felt yourself that before Rush came on the scene.

[00:20:11] [SPEAKER_00]: People thought they were the only ones that believed the things that they believed.

[00:20:17] [SPEAKER_00]: That saw the things they saw, thought the thoughts that they had.

[00:20:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Limbaugh gets on the air and he is now giving voice to these things.

[00:20:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And people realize I'm not alone.

[00:20:30] [SPEAKER_00]: So their number was one.

[00:20:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:20:34] [SPEAKER_00]: They heard one person espousing these things and they said, I agree with him.

[00:20:39] [SPEAKER_00]: I have thought this way, too.

[00:20:41] [SPEAKER_00]: But I thought I was alone.

[00:20:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Somebody else hears you say that their number is two.

[00:20:48] [SPEAKER_00]: They've now heard Rush say these things.

[00:20:51] [SPEAKER_00]: They've heard you say you agree.

[00:20:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And now their number is punched and their number.

[00:20:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Their number was two.

[00:20:56] [SPEAKER_00]: They agree.

[00:20:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Also, somebody else's number is three.

[00:20:59] [SPEAKER_00]: They've now heard three people.

[00:21:01] [SPEAKER_00]: They're now in.

[00:21:01] [SPEAKER_00]: And it just replicates.

[00:21:03] [SPEAKER_00]: So a small and seemingly insignificant event can reveal to what extent the officially sanctioned narrative has become unpopular.

[00:21:14] [SPEAKER_00]: And that makes it far easier for people to say in public what they have long believed in private.

[00:21:20] [SPEAKER_00]: The preference cascade.

[00:21:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's why political revolutions occur what appears to be very quickly.

[00:21:29] [SPEAKER_00]: But it is actually not.

[00:21:31] [SPEAKER_00]: There's another there's another axiom slowly at first and then very quickly.

[00:21:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:21:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:21:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Think of.

[00:21:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, they're an overnight success.

[00:21:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Chances are they're actually not.

[00:21:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Chances are that musician that just got, quote, discovered and is an overnight success has been toiling away in the bar scene for a decade.

[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Writing music, living out of their car, selling CDs.

[00:22:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, am I dating myself with that one?

[00:22:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:22:03] [SPEAKER_00]: OK.

[00:22:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Out of the back of their trunk.

[00:22:05] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, that kind of thing.

[00:22:06] [SPEAKER_00]: They've been doing the work.

[00:22:08] [SPEAKER_00]: They've been grinding away.

[00:22:09] [SPEAKER_00]: And finally, it pays off.

[00:22:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Slowly at first, then very quickly.

[00:22:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Kiran originally focused on political revolutions.

[00:22:18] [SPEAKER_00]: But as he himself soon recognized, his model is helpful in explaining a much broader set of phenomena.

[00:22:25] [SPEAKER_00]: It can explain why scientists hold on to erroneous paradigms, even as its limitations become painfully obvious, only to then abandon it for a competitor at a seemingly random juncture.

[00:22:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:22:39] [SPEAKER_00]: When the science changes.

[00:22:42] [SPEAKER_00]: It can explain how activists come to dethrone a party's nominee to whom they are supposedly unwaveringly loyal, only to rally around a successor about whom some of them had only recently expressed serious reservations.

[00:22:57] [SPEAKER_00]: That's Biden and Kamala.

[00:23:00] [SPEAKER_00]: And yes, it can also explain why the media so often moves in unison until equally in sync and without any obvious precipitating incident.

[00:23:09] [SPEAKER_00]: It suddenly marches off into a different direction.

[00:23:14] [SPEAKER_00]: He goes on to say that there's a big payoff to being a successful revolutionary.

[00:23:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:23:19] [SPEAKER_00]: You, if you're.

[00:23:21] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're like, I'm not going along with everybody.

[00:23:24] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not getting the shot.

[00:23:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:23:26] [SPEAKER_00]: You get to live in truth.

[00:23:28] [SPEAKER_00]: You advance a cause you care for.

[00:23:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And with a bit of luck, a new government may even reward you for your loyalty.

[00:23:36] [SPEAKER_00]: If it's a political revolution.

[00:23:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:23:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it pays off for you.

[00:23:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Big payoff.

[00:23:41] [SPEAKER_00]: But.

[00:23:42] [SPEAKER_00]: If you fail.

[00:23:44] [SPEAKER_00]: If you are a failed revolutionary.

[00:23:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the cost there can be pretty big.

[00:23:51] [SPEAKER_00]: If your cause falters.

[00:23:53] [SPEAKER_00]: He says you may well find yourself on a literal chopping block.

[00:23:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And if so.

[00:24:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Or and even if rather.

[00:24:01] [SPEAKER_00]: After your time.

[00:24:02] [SPEAKER_00]: The glorious day of victory finally comes.

[00:24:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Your comrades.

[00:24:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, they're not going to be able to resurrect you from the dead.

[00:24:09] [SPEAKER_00]: But your name will live on.

[00:24:11] [SPEAKER_00]: So I guess there's that.

[00:24:12] [SPEAKER_00]: But you're still dead.

[00:24:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Also, although much lower stakes here.

[00:24:19] [SPEAKER_00]: If you are a failed revolutionary.

[00:24:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:24:22] [SPEAKER_00]: In, say, journalism.

[00:24:25] [SPEAKER_00]: We'll finish it up there in a minute.

[00:24:26] [SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[00:24:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, real quick.

[00:24:27] [SPEAKER_00]: If you would like to get your product or service in front of about 10,000 people multiple times a day.

[00:24:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Send me an email at Pete at the Pete calendar show dot com and ask me about advertising.

[00:24:38] [SPEAKER_00]: It's super affordable.

[00:24:40] [SPEAKER_00]: It's baked into this podcast forever and podcasts have a higher conversion rate than other social media platforms, making it the best bang for your buck.

[00:24:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Send me a message.

[00:24:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Pete at the Pete calendar show dot com and I can show you how it works.

[00:24:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Run the numbers with you.

[00:24:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Again, that's Pete.

[00:24:54] [SPEAKER_00]: News talk.

[00:24:54] [SPEAKER_00]: 1110 99 3 WBT 704 570 1110.

[00:24:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Email is Pete at the Pete calendar show dot com and on Twitter at Pete calendar.

[00:25:05] [SPEAKER_00]: I have a message here from Melissa.

[00:25:08] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a Pete tweet.

[00:25:10] [SPEAKER_00]: She says the topic hits home after 25 years at a premier private university hospital with straight five out of five ratings on performance reviews.

[00:25:20] [SPEAKER_00]: A founding member of a specialized procedure department in December 2017.

[00:25:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I received a two out of five on a review.

[00:25:28] [SPEAKER_00]: I knew it was politically motivated as my peers were anti Trump and made no bones about it.

[00:25:35] [SPEAKER_00]: I opted to leave to preserve my pension, which includes health care costs for life.

[00:25:39] [SPEAKER_00]: The institution lost a seasoned outstanding professional because of the hatred and ostracizing pathetic.

[00:25:46] [SPEAKER_00]: She says and then recommends a book called destructive generation.

[00:25:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Second thoughts about the 60s by Peter Collier and David Horowitz.

[00:26:00] [SPEAKER_00]: She says highly recommend you and your listeners read this book.

[00:26:04] [SPEAKER_00]: The 60s generation, many of whom are still stirring the pot in government and most assuredly in the universities.

[00:26:11] [SPEAKER_00]: So the last part of this piece by Yasha Monk, why the media moves in unison.

[00:26:18] [SPEAKER_00]: He says, while not obviously the as high stakes as a revolution where if you are successful, I mean, yeah, there's going to be a lot of upside for you in whatever regime takes over.

[00:26:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:26:30] [SPEAKER_00]: But if you're if you're not successful, then you're probably going to get, you know, hanged or something.

[00:26:36] [SPEAKER_00]: So obviously much lower stakes here.

[00:26:39] [SPEAKER_00]: But.

[00:26:41] [SPEAKER_00]: There is a significant payoff to setting in motion a preference cascade that effectively does away with a taboo in the mainstream media.

[00:26:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:26:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Your article goes viral.

[00:26:54] [SPEAKER_00]: You are in praise for your coverage or courage.

[00:26:58] [SPEAKER_00]: There may even be a promotion for you.

[00:27:02] [SPEAKER_00]: But here, too, the cost of failure is comparatively high to the success, not obviously to being hanged, but professionally.

[00:27:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:27:11] [SPEAKER_00]: If you're part of the the revolution, you're part of advancing the taboo or advancing a certain narrative rather and enforcing the taboo and keeping people out like you could be celebrated.

[00:27:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And we see this all the time.

[00:27:23] [SPEAKER_00]: There are people that literally write the same.

[00:27:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Think pieces or op eds.

[00:27:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And they have been since what?

[00:27:32] [SPEAKER_00]: 2017, 2016 against Donald Trump.

[00:27:36] [SPEAKER_00]: These are people that were Republicans, conservatives or self-described at least.

[00:27:41] [SPEAKER_00]: And they have done nothing for the last eight years except say, I'm a Republican against Donald Trump.

[00:27:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And it has been very lucrative for them.

[00:27:55] [SPEAKER_00]: There are people like the Lincoln Project.

[00:27:57] [SPEAKER_00]: They have raised millions of dollars.

[00:28:00] [SPEAKER_00]: It has been way more successful than any of the campaigns they ever ran for Republicans.

[00:28:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:28:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Grifting off of millionaire donors on the left has been a very, very successful business model for them.

[00:28:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Now, what if you go against the taboo?

[00:28:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:28:23] [SPEAKER_00]: That could be comparatively high cost.

[00:28:28] [SPEAKER_00]: If the taboo ends up holding, then you could find yourself denounced on social media, iced out of your friendship circle.

[00:28:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And even if everybody eventually comes around to your point of view, being out of the gate too early can easily inflict permanent damage on your reputation.

[00:28:46] [SPEAKER_00]: This explains a phenomenon about mainstream journalism.

[00:28:51] [SPEAKER_00]: He says that has struck me as strange and important in equal measure.

[00:28:55] [SPEAKER_00]: You might think that the people who were first to argue that we should take the lab leak theory seriously or that there are some serious questions about cross-gender treatments for teenagers, you would think they would be rewarded for their prescience.

[00:29:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:29:09] [SPEAKER_00]: For their predictive abilities.

[00:29:11] [SPEAKER_00]: But that's not how the social dynamics of the media work.

[00:29:14] [SPEAKER_00]: If you violate a taboo before other reputable quote unquote journalists have done so, well, you're a crank.

[00:29:23] [SPEAKER_00]: You earn the reputation as a crank and that reputation tends to linger even after all of your peers have finally come around to your point of view.

[00:29:35] [SPEAKER_00]: On a completely unrelated note, did you see that fluoride has been connected to a lower IQ?

[00:29:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Fluoride in water takes off about two to five IQ points, which tells me I had way more to spare than I thought.

[00:29:55] [SPEAKER_00]: That's, uh...

[00:29:56] [SPEAKER_00]: All right, let me go over to Ray.

[00:29:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Hello, Ray.

[00:29:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the show.

[00:29:59] [SPEAKER_00]: I have about a minute, Ray.

[00:30:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[00:30:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, Pete.

[00:30:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Back before Rush Limbaugh came along, probably 85, 86, I remember having a thought.

[00:30:13] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how well this ties in with what you're talking about, but I think it does.

[00:30:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it does sort of like the thinking you're the only person that thinks a certain way.

[00:30:24] [SPEAKER_01]: I remember thinking back at that time, and I was about 34, 35 then,

[00:30:30] [SPEAKER_01]: and I thought to myself, you know, about the Democrats are destroying their own voter base,

[00:30:40] [SPEAKER_01]: genetically connected voter base, by having all these abortions,

[00:30:43] [SPEAKER_01]: and I had never heard anybody talk about that before.

[00:30:46] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of like, you know, I kind of felt like I was the only person in the world that had that thought.

[00:30:55] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's my comment.

[00:30:57] [SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[00:30:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Ray.

[00:30:57] [SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate the call.

[00:30:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, and I'll say just real quick to that point.

[00:31:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Abortion as a topic was ignored by talk radio for a very, very long time,

[00:31:11] [SPEAKER_00]: and the emergence of the videos from the undercover operation against Planned Parenthood

[00:31:17] [SPEAKER_00]: exploded the topic again, and all of a sudden we found out how little half of the country knows

[00:31:24] [SPEAKER_00]: about the procedures, but also how many people agree with us on those items too.

[00:31:32] [SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[00:31:32] [SPEAKER_00]: That'll do it for this episode.

[00:31:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for listening.

[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_00]: I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast.

[00:31:40] [SPEAKER_00]: So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here.

[00:31:43] [SPEAKER_00]: You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to the Pete calendar show.com.

[00:31:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.