How did the Nazis gain their popularity? Surely it was a fluke, no? It couldn't happen here -- could it? Or equal extremism on the Left?
When the Center Becomes Radical is the title of a German newspaper article which reports the results of some interesting analysis from agent-based modelling. (ABM is a technique that combines intelligent software agents, complexity theory and sometimes social science theory to explore emergent behavior in complex systems - including human societies.) Here's a bit of the article, in translation:
"German conditions" is the title of a frightening study conducted by the Bielefeld Institute of Interdisciplinary Research into Conflict and Violence: people hostile against foreigners, Jews, homosexuals, handicapped and homeless people have the potential to become a majority. It is not a nice observation that Die Zeit published last Thursday. Readers ask themselves uneasily whether and to what extent the centre — however one could describe the centre — is moving to the right.A week before, the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS) published a study (Deffuant et al 2003) on the conditions in which extremist attitudes win a majority.
The model presented in the JASSS paper describes individuals who have only two properties: first, an opinion about something: foreigners, music, religion, science, cheese, no matter what. This opinion can be represented as a point on an axis from -1 to +1: these are the extremes, while 0 is the centre. The second property is uncertainty, also expressed by a number. The law governing the interactions is the following. The individuals' opinions and uncertainties influence each other the more the more similar they are and the individual who is more certain exerts the greater impact on the one who is less certain. If the two individuals have the same degree of certainty, they will not influence each other at all....In every simulation step, the program picks two individuals at random, compares their opinions and certainties and updates their values accordingly. While this happens several hundred or several thousand times, the researchers observe the computer screen which shows them how the opinions of the simulated individuals change... The most important parameters were the proportion and distribution of the extreme opinions at the outset of the simulation and the initial values of uncertainty and their distribution. The most interesting run was of course the one in which ... in the beginning the extremists on either side were equally strong, but the uncertainty of the non-extremists was very high ... A uncertain centre is more susceptible to extremists .
You can read the entire article here - check out the graphics. The journal article it is based on is here and the authors' replies to the criticisms cited by the journalists is here.
An uncertain center is more sucsceptible to extremists. - when decent people don't speak up, those at the fringes grow increasingly bold. It's something we all intuitively know, but do we really stop to consider what that means?
Only two factors were needed for the model to rapidly result in a society dominated by extremism: bold confidence on the part of the exremists and weak or no clear convictions on the part of the seemingly moderate middle.
Worth thinking about in these days of political realignment .....
"No absolute truth" makes everything questionable and therefore confusing. Since liberalism embraces "no absolute truth" more than conservatism, extremists are more likely to be libera.
"No absolute truth" is an interesting concept.
Maybe.
G.M.
The study notes its own limitations, but it is hardly alone in this field. There has been some very good stuff.
See esp. the work in "Modeling Civil Violence: An Agent-Based Computational Approach" (CSED Working Paper No. 20) by Joshua M. Epstein, John D. Steinbruner, and Miles T. Parker, January 2001. [Brookings Institution Page | Full PDF format | 3rd party Paper discussing the results]
This was a much more sophisticated study, and the conclusions were very interesting on a practical level. The "Dip before the storm" phenomenon, punctuated equilibrium in unrest, the role of "cops", even the tendency of competitive social systems to genocide in the absence of same.
Highly recommended.
There's only one solution. Centrists must cultivate the certainty and conviction that extremists are endogenously drug-addled whack jobs! (This is true. The brain hormones released by persistent cultivation of self-righteousness are highly addictive. Content of the conviction set is relatively unimportant, though an assist from literalist fundamental religion which assures you God Agrees With You can have a booster effect.)
Joe, interesting study, I just skimmed through part of it but I'll take a closer look later.
I'm wondering about the effect of a realistic social topology in these models - real social topology is a bit non-linear (see e.g. Malcom Gladwell's model in the Tipping Point with Connectors, Mavens, etc).
The entity which knows the most about the detailed social fabric in the US is perhaps Google, with it's GMail invitation based diffusion, or perhaps Friendster. I think it would be interesting to run simulations on real social network data or synthetic data generated from parameters extracted from real data.
One thing bothers me:
"How did the Nazis gain their popularity? Surely it was a fluke, no? It couldn't happen here -- could it? Or equal extremism on the Left?"
You imply the Nazi's werent of the Left - but they are explicitly National Socialists, not just in name but in the domestic program they followed once they got power.
On the analysis, does this come as a surprise to anyone? It seems to me to just be restating the blindingly obvious, with some handwaving using pseudomathematical tools.
lewy14: I think it would be interesting to run simulations on real social network data or synthetic data generated from parameters extracted from real data.
There has been some work in that area -- I'll see if I can find some time to dig up links.
It's true that this model is simple. That was its point. I'm not a fan of some of the social modelling coming out of the French schools, but in this case they were looking for the one or two factors that might account for a shift towards extremism.
The original paper was an attempt to validate a causal factor theory, not intended to be a full predictive model. It's really a stretch to call this an agent-based model at all - it's more like a simple cellular automaton, i.e. a look at how a very simple set of rules can produce a complex phenomenon. And yes, it seems like common sense - but what appears to be common sense isn't always borne out in research.
I thought our WOC readers might be interested in the German journalists' article (and the underlying paper) for two reasons: first, because the model in question does focus on a simple but powerful mechanism - one that I hoped would spark some conversation here. And second, because of the echoes the FASZ column has stirred in Europe, given recent events such as the murder of van Gogh.
Re: Left vs. Right extremism, as far as I'm concerned the scale isn't linear - it's circular. Whether you get there from the left or the right, a tendency to statist totalitarianism ends up being the same thing to those who suffer under it.
William Butler Yeats said it a long time ago. When "The best lack all conviction/While the worst are full of passionate intensity" then "The blood-dimmed tide is loosed."
Um, firefall, the Nazis came to powr in large part as a coiuntervailing force to the rising power of the Communist-led unions.
They were explicitly anticommunist; that doesn't mean they weren't believers in state direction of industry - they just did so on behalf of favored industrialists.
A.L.
Fred is referring to this poem. The principle of a strong middle has been around since Aristotle, and expressed in many ways. Yeats may have expressed it best in 1920-21:
The poem's timing has caused it to be associated with Europe's long fall, an association intensified by subsequent events. It works on that level, though lovers of poetry may wish to pursue other interpretations based more strongly in the author himself. 17-year old Bill "jdpassos3@" Cordts of Troy, NY, had some excellent thoughts over at this Rice Univeristy web page.
I've written about this on my own blog. Think about the situation in, say, Palestine: People in the center have no ambition to speak up, their society is almost certain to be co-opted by the extremes if you follow this model...