I've just taken a look at the Professor's link. It's nothing but an abstract! That provides no way of analyzing the study. But here goes. I'm analyzing the abstract.

First sentence:

What are the effects of deliberation about political issues?

Right there I have a problem with the study. This question relates, yes, to deliberation in a group. But the question is way too broad as a research question. In order to do good research you have to narrow your question down. When you discuss your results you can, if the results warrant it, draw broader conclusions. But this question is too broad - especially as we already know a bit about the study. Too broad to operationalize "deliberation," for example.

Next sentence:

This essay reports the results of a kind of Deliberation Day...

Ok. So right there they call it an "essay" rather than a refereed research paper. Ok. Well, that means we're not talking what researchers would really call "research."

We move on:

The major effect of deliberation was to make group members more extreme...

"The major effect" - well, what if the major effect was to bring about consensus? Bonding? How can you be sure you have the "major effect?" So if it were a research study that had to be read and critiqued by a panel, I would expect that they would insist in a different way of wording the "results" as "results"- not as a value judgment of "major effect."

Next problem. Once again we have the word "more extreme." And that word, apparently a value judgment, has not been operationalized as part of the original question. Which could have read: Does deliberation on ......in a group of politically like-minded people lead to more extreme views on the part of the individuals? Then, you would have to operationalize how you'd measure for "extreme." Etc.

That's as much as I have time for at the moment. But this "abstract" does not make me happy - as psychologist who's had to do research. And it would not make me happy were I looking for research to make use of.

Just some preliminary thoughts here. To throw into the mix.

Like the greeter at Sam's Club with whom I share antipathy to bush!  It was an "unanticipated, unchosen encounter" which has, in the view of the study, increased the "extremism" of myself and the greeter!  

Thank you for this helpful understanding, Professor! 

The paper is easy to download from the link. It was published in the California Law Review and the principal authors are Reid Hastie (one of the best empirical social scientists in the world, and probably the world's leading expert on group decisionmaking) and David Schkade (also a superb empiricist). It is described as an essay to fit with law review conventions; it was reviewed prepublication by many people in many fields.

It is described as an essay to fit with law review conventions;

For those people who don't understand what "law review conventions" are, here's a quick primer:

1. Law Reviews are not peer reviewed.

2. Law Reviews are edited by students.

3. The editing process consists largely of fixing typographical and grammatical errors. This is necessary because law professors write the articles knowing that students will be revising them.

4. The editing process also involves ensuring that every proposition cites some authority.

5. The students editing the article do not check the strength of the authority cited, but rather check to see that the "authority" states what the article's authors claim.

6. Most law reviews have no standard for publication other than, "This is interesting." Once again, this is a decision made by students.

7. If one law review deems something to be interesting, it is common for the author to submit it to another review and then another ultimately trying to be published in the most prestigious journal.

I apologize, Cass, but it should be abundantly clear by now that I have almost no respect for the legal academy or legal scholarship.

I have to agree this second post by Cass Sunstein has all the same flaws as the first, and is perhaps just entrenching and digging further.

1) The studies refer to an obvious phenomenon on the most superficial level. Call it groupthink, polarization, consensus, homoginization, or whatever semantics one attaches. But regardless, it can be either beneficial or detrimental, entirely depending on circumstances beyond the scope of the study. For example, positive outcomes can be consensus, agreement, harmony, shared purpose, etc. Negatives can be lemming-like behavior, groupthink, echo chambers, ivory towers, etc. But again, that's all common sense and applicable to any social interaction.

2) The study preselected for homogenization and (suprise!) got homogenization. It's similarly possible to preselect for multi-polar divides or other outcomes. I don't see what that supposedly proves except researchers using common sense about human nature can manipulate outcomes.

3) Nor do I see that having particular utility to the internet any more than the telephone, printing press, church going, school rallies, or other social occurrences. The same study could have been conducted millennium ago with the same outcome. Actually, it seems least applicable to the internet, being a study of preselected like-minded individuals conducted in a physical location over a short term.

4) All of which contradicts Sunstein's premise in framing the issue as a danger of the internet specifically. In fact, it the opposite could be said relative to other means of communication.

5) I'd fathom a guess that Sunstein has notions about juries which he must be intimately familiar with, which he's generalized over a period of time to democracy, to which he's bolted to this study for the a pretense of sophistication, and latched onto "the internet" for a hook.

6) Bolting this study to "the internet" as opposed to more relevant technology and social gatherings throughout histroy, seems the sort of technophobia and hysteria one often hears in regards to any new technology. It seems that a rational alarmist (if there is such a thing) should be more concerned about the telephone, office culture, church attendance, school associations, professional conventions, and so on.

7) Regulars on political internet fora are part of a far more relevant "experiment" on a the subject of the internet and democracy. It's ongoing, conducted on a regular basis, over a far longer duration. To which Sunstein is of course entitled his opinion.

A side note: the qualifications of the researchers don't improve the relevance of their study to Sunstein's rather vague assertions here regarding the internet and democracy. That seems a rather sloppy appeal to the transitive power of authority. And a Harvard grad and law professor should have something better to do than banging on virtual tables for the sake of it. Which begs the question why he bothered posting at all unless an irresistible opportunity presented itself to pontificate on "the internet" and this pet theory was the best he could do on short notice.

Right. Or at least he's not saying anything particularly interesting or insightful and is making some rather flawed assumptions.

Frankly, it's rather insulting and seems more an airing of his personal technology and democracy phobias more than astute observations on human nature or useful advice.

We already have a national deliberation day - it's the first tuesday in November.

I apologize, Cass, but it should be abundantly clear by now that I have almost no respect for the legal academy or legal scholarship.

That seems a bit over heated. One can take issue with the process, as you have, without completely dismissing legal scholarship. And that seems a bit of an over simplified insult, which perhaps Sunstein has earned in kind, but there's no need to return the favor.

Regardless, interesting analysis of legal scholarship.

Trust me, it's not 'science' - unless you mean in the Greek sense of "learning."

See my post above for what would be needed if this were genuine research. 

The irony being the training encourages the presumption of precedent to support one's own interpretation, ideology, and so on. But of course it could be no other way, and demanding that law (or politics) become a hard science is pointless.

Which is a problem I've always had with so called "strict constructionists" who actually construct arguments rooted in their bias to support preordained conclusions. It's a bit like objective journalism. A noble goal to be sure, that can be systematically approached if never achieved fully, but the most boastful claims of objectivity are often made by those least aware of their bias.

"unanticipated, unchosen encounter" which has, in the view of the study, increased the "extremism"

Actually, I think the opposite conclusion is being implied. i.e. That chance encounters widen the set of ideas one is internally seeking to reconcile or simplify, which has the effect of increasing diversity and reducing extremism.

Which seems fairly obvious really, unless I'm missing something profound which was cleverly hidden. Call it provincialism for example. Or the theory of similarity. Flocking. Herding. And whatnot. Not exactly a new concept.

Actually, evolutionary biology stipulates it's at the root of, and necessary for, all group cohesion, as is mutation and diversity also necessary for adaptation, both important to fitness. Not only psychologically, but biologically as well. Consider the concepts of species and mating compatibility, as well as inbreeding, and genetic diversity.

And while I have my smarty pants on, the Bible claims the meek, as led by their sheppard, and conforming to certain laws, shall inherit the earth. Which sounds like a subset of Darwinian evolution dealing with efficiencies of social models, though it perhaps lacks equal consideration to the merits of diversity, as one would expect from cultures emerging and aggregating from smaller and more chaotic tribal groups.

Though I doubt Sunstein wants to wrestle with such hot-button aspects of social conformity, at least not in a public venue. "The internet" seems an easier target.

He, like many of us, may discuss prickly subjects at dinner parties and small social gatherings, or perhaps on the psychologist's couch, or place of worship, but that's also a relatively small self-selecting group.

Perhaps Sunstein should try an anonymous account on the internet if he wants to really delve into difficult subjects like social conformity?

I'm willing to completely dismiss the system. Sunstein has earned it only insofar as he is part of that system. I wasted three years of my life in law school. I worked on a journal. I worked as a research assistant for a (relatively well respected) professor. And it just pissed me off. Legal scholarship is in large part a joke. But the joke is at the expense of students, the legal system, and society.

If you want to read a truly damning critique of legal scholarship, I would suggest The Rules of Inference (.pdf) by Lee Epstein and Gary King. Epstein and King go about showing how legal scholarship continually misuses and abuses empirical research.

For their trouble, they earned the scorn of much of the legal academy and a round of facile and juvenile ad hominem attacks masquerading as critiques of their article. See for example 69 U.Chicago L. Rev. 135 (2002)., if you can find the text online. EDIT: The "critique" can be found here. (Also a pdf)

Well, there are studies of long distance education groups in which polarization is observed and there are some studies on internet groups in which polarization is observed, but polarization can be observed at high school pep rallies and political conventions.

Btw, to be fair, points should be addressed specifically.

1. We may or may not be speaking of "groupthink," which is an ill-defined concept, lacking a clear hypothesis or a clear mechanism.Group polarization is not "groupthink" (it is not evident what groupthink is, in fact).

I think we're getting into semantics there. Groupthink, polarization, and so on are common terms describing common events understood in common sense.

For a more specific definition one needs to go to Group Theory or such, perhaps applying it to evolution specifically in social species, and weighing the merits of various strategies in specific context. Which Sunstein is welcome to do.

2. The greater extremism might be good rather than bad (as at least one commenter rightly observes). When I speak of extremism, I am not making any kind of evaluation of whether the less moderate or centrist position is right; extremism is being measured statistically.

Again with the semantic barbs and flaws.

"Extreme" is a loaded and inappropriate choice for a discussion on politics and idenity groupings. "Extremism" is obviously a loaded term with negative connotations of excess. Terrorists are extremists for example.

I hope your book isn't loaded with "extremism" as the time already spent clarifying it here might have been useful prior to publishing, which is amusing given the subject matter and the isolation of writing a book.

What you're referring to are prevalences for convergence, divergence, sub-set convergences and divergences, and so on, statistically measured, but not described mechanically which requires another language, again Group Theory, genetics, sloppy psychology, or such.

3. Society as a whole may benefit from extremism from its disparate parts. Perhaps the judicial systems benefits from RRR and DDD panels. Perhaps the United States benefits from having Colorado Springs and Boulder, even if group polarization occurs in both places. Perhaps group polarization, as it occurs on the Internet, has large systemic benefits.

Again, same problems as above. And, unless I'm missing it, I'm not seeing the originality or insights one might hope for following the word "perhaps."

Maybe I'm being too harsh, as the topic can be an interesting one, and it has kicked off some discussion. But so far the main entries have left me mightily underwhelmed...

I promise to get, soon, to the question of what all this has to dowith the Internet. (My book's thesis is not quite what some of the comments appear to suggest.) A quick clue is that the point is not that America is falling apart or that the Internet is bad for democracy; the point is instead that unanticipated, unchosen encounters have an important democratic function.

Sorry to be so critical, but if Sunstein is going to say something, with due appreciation of him laying down the foundation of his argument, and clarifying some points, he should hurry up and say it. And I hope it's going to amount to more than the above, which sounds a bit like a treatise on the relative value of wooden nickels as applied to the post internet era.

Okay, I haven't read your book, so I am going by what you've posted here. The experiment you describe here is much more convincing. But this whole conversation bugs me on the most basic level. What you state is obvious. People who only listen to like-minded folks create what we call the echo-chamber, it creates passion and unity, and motivation for enacting a commonly shared belief. There are dangers of self-selecting, cherry picking, and narrowing your exposure.

What I object to is the entire frame of this study. First of all, to focus on the Internet may simply be that you are applying a well-established idea to a new medium, but the previous applications did not warrant a book discusion here. What makes peering at the Internet through this prism so appealing is that it reinforces a lot of misperceptions of all the wrong people. For someone like David Broder, you're providing ammunition to say that because he remains ignorant of the back-and-forth among the plebes, he remains objective and above the fray. Don't believe me? It's already happening. Here is one example of this idea taking hold among the MSM over at CBS's PublicEye on "Partisan Tunnel Vision". The idea being that when you go to a blog you get dumber, as David Brooks gleefully suggests.

Hopefully that is not what your book claims, but that is what your thesis, as it is being framed, is being used for. It gives the punditry an academic study to point to as proof of their superior intellects, and to reinforce their own belief in their own objectivity.

Yet, this idea, if you're trying to apply it to political blogs, seems in danger of misunderstanding what's going on. If you are simply making left and right six of one, half-dozen of the other, "both sides do it", split the baby -- then you have become susceptible to the biases of the ideaology of centrism, or of achieving the style of an open-mind without actually developing one in substance.

You do see this phenomenon on Free-Republic and DemocraticUnderground -- a lot of like-minded folks, sharing links and articles to the outside world from a variety of sources, which seems to undercut this argument, though these sources are selected because they either support your position or are prime for mockery. Or, WE may post it because it is a well reasoned thesis that challenges our ideas of ourselves, as you are here to do. Which contradicts your thesis as well.

If you look at Malkin and Instapundit, people show up to find stories that support their worldview, and there is now a political press that is very willing to distort facts to mold the universe according to these pre-set assumptions arrived at by faith, partisanship, prejudice, or whatever other non-empirical means someone like Bush develops their "gut" feeling about what actually is going on in Iraq despite what the intelligence says. But they aren't used to share ideas -- Malkin doesn't allow comments. They are more like military briefings, where the faithful get their marching orders and run off to use today's ammo of talking points, without much concern for the truth so much as the consequences.

I just spoke with a Physics professor who says he has never seen such a blatant willingness to not just distort data, but out and out rewrite data to fit a particular idea in the press. When I pushed him on this, it became clear he's referring to these pundits like George Will and various think tanks designed to convert any scientific study into support for their ideas.

That's not really the phenomenon you're talking about. That's a lot of loyal followers engaging in what they see as a war, where the methods are less important than the victory. They don't need to be convinced of anything -- they already have all the answers. They just need something that makes the opposition bleed.

On the left, you have actual discussions. When someone posts something wrong, it is usually updated with a correction after being pointed out in comments. Drudge doesn't take stories down because they're proven wrong. He posts them, whether they're wrong or not, because false information might be just as effective as factual information when converting someone over to your POV.

It also assumes the people that go to TPM go so they aren't exposed to other sources. Virtually anyone who comes here reads books like yours and many other sources, and we come back to put in our two-cents. How can I tell you what's going on at PublicEye if I only read what I agree with? How do we know about the outrage at FOX News if we don't watch it?

So when you say "the Internet", you are ignoring differences between these two parties and the approach their followers take to politics. You are also ignoring the major political dynamics since the 90s, when the Republican Party saw their success as rooted in riling up an extremely partisan and motivated base, and a Democratic Party clinging to the triangulating success of Clinton, and his center-worshipping "third-way", that centrists have to cast as looney to remain at the coveted fulcrum.

So, when you talk about the left, and if you conclude they are unifying, and becoming motivated, and developing strong beliefs -- that, more than anything is what the Democratic Party needs.

When I first showed up at DU, a cool breeze was all it took to get the naval-gazing started. Suggest taking a stand at all, and people started going, "Does this make us as bad as they are?" Like the kid getting his face pummeled by a bully, wondering, if I block his fist, is that ethical? Am I stooping to his level?

My first and only effort to work on a political campaign was around the time Republicans were running fake voter registration efforts and throwing away all the applications filled out by Dems, and robo-calls, and Republicans making fake fliers making fun of retarded kids they'd plant in the Dem offices and then alert the media. When we had a get together outside, every fifth car or so, someone threw a can of beer at us, without anyone so much as glancing over at the screaming pickup truck driver. If you're a Dem, about 1 out of 5 Republicans are going to throw shit at you. And you know what they were arguing about? A bumper sticker that said, "Tire of BuShit?" One faction was terribly offended and threatened to leave because the reason they were a Democrat is that we didn't do stuff like that. Nevermind, the Democrats had nothing to do with that bumpersticker. We should denounce it!

In the Clinton years, if you told a Republican Clinton murdered someone, they'd say, "Damn straight." Say a Republican did, and they'd blame the liberal media. Tell a Dem a Republican commited a crime, they'd say, "Yeah, probably." Tell them Clinton did, and they'd say, "Yeah, probably." Because that's what open-minded people do. They believe any scandal you throw at a Dem because "both sides" are guilty, "They all do it". That's what open-mindedness has gotten us.

So, the fact that Dems are actually able to counteract some of those knee-jerk even-handedness to a place where we can choose our actions based on what's best for the circumstances rather than some knee-jerk even-handedness and naivete is a good thing. It has been essential for making the government as capable of governing as they are -- and they still have a long way to go.

on the other hand, the effect you cite only exacerbates the worst tendencies of the Republican Party, and has turned blind loyalty into cult operating in its own mooreless universe.

If you want an example of this phenomenon you cite, then turn to the Washington Village. What you describe goes on at these DC parties, where the Press and Republicans and Biden and Lieberman all talk amongst themselves and create a "conventional wisdom" with conformity so powerful, Democrats think they hate America.

If you went over to SwampLand yesterday, the conformity is so ingrained into their marrow that three out of the four crack investigative journalists immediately posted on the same NYTs story on John McCain. Of those three, it was the two beltway journalists who pulled the same quote that demonstrated the "tough" stance McCain had taken against a group set up by one of the geniuses of the Swiftboat Vets and media strategist for McCain in 2000 and 2008, that just happened to run ads praising McCain, ostensibly to advertise a bill that didn't need to be advertised. Only Ana, who has not quite developed the Beltway reflex, saw anything of interest in the fact that Reed had run the ad. None of them noticed the similarity in how Bush had the same man form an "unaffiliated" group that was central to Bush's campaign, or that or that Bush, also, denounced the ads by that group, so that he could be praised as a reformer while he benefited from those ads he claimed to want banned.

How else to explain this, except by what you describe? If you travel the same circles in DC, then you all rush to print a story demonstrating McCain's principle, and you all miss the hypocrisy of McCain benefitting from the very tactic he decried. With the same facts, Hillary would be "calculating" because like minded back-slappers have cast her that way.

Yet the framing here only adds one more backslap and echo to that DC chorus, by convincing David "Bush Bounce" Broder and the like that bias is "out there", something suffered by other people, of which their superior minds are immune. Yet, the track record speaks otherwise. By any empirical analysis, we have had a far better handle on the world as it is, rather than as we want it to be.

This is because for us, blogs did not limit our views, but expanded them. Not only do I now get a POV that differs from the Conservative Wisdom of Washington, but whereas before I read Time and the Houston Chronicle, now I read stuff from every newspaper. Rather than passively downloading David Brook's bogus ideas, I challenge him. I search information that puts his ideas under the microscope. Now, I am a participant -- which is what really frightens these guys. Not to mention, it threatens their very existence -- if anyone can form their own opinions, what would we read them for? That's misguided -- I still read people, only now I do it because they're good (like Digby) and get it right (like Atrios and Krugman), not because Murdoch made a deal about the hiring and firing on the WSJ editorial board.

Most of all, the framing of this study, as it will be presented by Broder when he finds out about it, will be to claim that we're angry because we're talking. But there are many, many reasons we're angry, and many reasons why we should be angry and shaken out of our complacency -- thank God for blogs! Some of it has to do with the fact that a President used a national tragedy for purely partisan reasons, and timed a war to attack the patriotism of those who put politics aside to vote for his resolution and write him a blank check. It has to do with the very limited, tunnel vision of the major news outlets, and the lack of dissent presented there. The medium serves the same sort of function as talk radio did for disgruntled conservatives who didn't find their views on the network news -- a place where they could go to hear what the news wouldn't say.

So first, you need to recognize the diversity of the Internet, and the fact that a focused site does not mean that's all we read. And it needs to recognize the political and emotional motivations for us coming here: we flee the victims of the very phenomenon you describe, in the hopes of bringing more people to the table, so the narrow minds of Think-Tank geniuses can't cook up another narrow fantasy based on their belief rather than the evidence.

BTW Mr Sunstein - the theory that more information makes for more polarization is also interesting from the standpoint of free speech jurisprudence and democratic theory.

In the "traditional" version of democratic theory, the role of free speech is to create a "market place of ideas" which leads to the emergence of the "truth" - a rational, debated compromise.

However if in reality people just become more polarized, then that's not what's happening at all.

These sorts of challenges to political/legal theory aren't new of course: the Enlightenment idea of humans as "rational beings" who deliberate and are actually interested in politics - a myth upon which most of the "traditional" Madisonian democratic theory is based - has been shown to be false in many ways. Pscyhologists, for example, tell us that humans do not simply accept and process information rationally - they resist any new information that challenges their preconceptions (Cognitive Dissonance) and deliberately misinterpret it to suit their preconconceptions. Most people spend less time "deliberating" politics than they do deliberating their next auto purchase. etc etc./

So really, your thesis about more information causing polarization amounts to yet another pretty fundamental challenge to our whole theory of government. Its not jsut the internet thgat's the problem - the problem is fundamentally about human rationality (or lack thereof) which democratic theory simply assumed (falsely) to be an inherent characteristic.

Congrats!

(anyway as for judges - wasn't it Holmes who had the "Bad Man" theory - that judges decide who should win or lose a case and then choose and twist the law to rationalize their decision?)

Not to mention a few bucks...

Only if they had another idea with funding.

I believe that where he's going with this is his theory of the "missing link." He wants the large portals to provide automatic links to those websites that offer a different viewpoint or "side" than the "preferred" site. For example, if you have a customized Google page with all the links you like, then Google should voluntarily provide links to the opposite viewpoint or side. If your page has links to "The New Republic" then it should provide links to the opposite viewpoint to "The Weekly Standard." That provides some sort of cultural inoculation to extremism and group polarization.

Say just as an experiment, that Amazon, which customizes your page with future purchases based on past purchases voluntarily provides you with books/music etc, that are the opposite of what you've bought in the past. I have no idea as to how that would work - maybe, "if you loved this book, you'll hate this one" or "we've noticed that you've purchased music by white musicians, here are some cds by black musicians" or something like it. Perhaps you're a fan of neo-nazi websites - those websites would politely through either government mandates or standards or just the polite urgings of someone or something would link to some diversity website - I'm not sure, he's not really clear on this.

Every once in awhile, a democrat should say, "by golly those republicans are right about this!" and vice versa to maintain the fiction that we're all listening to each other. Supposedly this will discourage polarization and identity politics and encourage diversity in the political discourse. It might also serve to ease consciences and cheer everyone up.

As late as 2003 a lot of progressive and liberal sites did have exactly such links. The problem being that between 2004 and now it has been virtually impossible to find any conservative sites that provide reasonable counterarguments. John Cole was one; he has now abandoned his own party and switched to a guilty libertarian/Scoop Jackson Democrat philosophy. Daniel Drezner used to give a reasoned conservative economics viewpoint but he went off the rails during the Dubai Ports deal and he will brook absolutely no criticism of Cheney's corporatism. And so on - there really don't seem to be any sane, reality-based conservatives out there in blogland. To be reality-based would be to utterly reject Bush/Cheney and they just can't do that.

sPh

Yeah, that's a good point. The netroots phenomenon generally is largely a lefty affair. Conservatives and Republicans simply don't organize on the net the way liberals and Democrats do. This is true in large part because the Republicans are and have been a top-down organization. Free organization on the net doesn't allow them to control the message.

"I'm not a member of any organized political party--I'm a Democrat." -- Will Rogers

"...the point is instead that unanticipated, unchosen encounters have an important democratic function."

Academics who use the language of contracts and rules have little idea how the society they pretend not to be part of functions. There is no trust between liberals and conservatives in this country. And there is little trust between the educated and the uneducated, and the poor and anyone who isn't. But trust is not an idea and it's not a rule. It can not be taught, it can only be fostered. It's a function of long term contact. So academic geeks who write papers about how the rest of us behave are missing the point, since they've isolated themselves in a cacoon of expertise (and geogrpahy as well). You think the academy hasn't become a gated "community?"
To put it another way: you've left the house and now you're looking in the window, as if somehow that means you're less a creature of society, less predictable in your attitudes and reflexes than we are.
In fact you're more predictable than most. How is that possible?

That's a question for you to answer, not me.

I believe that where he's going with this is his theory of the "missing link."

Well that would sure be interesting. Hope he's wearing asbestos if so. The problems you point out are valid, and the tip of the iceberg, and I'm sure anyone could bring up another ten or so serious problems with it.

btw, the format of his posting is all wrong for the internet. It's attempting to be a long format lecture, broken into parts over multiple days, and with him throwing out problematic and inane assertions early on with little clue to a framework for interpreting his dubious comments. Which just doesn't work. He needs to establish some framework and direction earlier and choose his language more carefully.

Could Golis perhaps help contributors to the book club with the peculiarities of the format?

We now know that in ideologically contested areas (eg sex discrimination, disability discrimination, environmental protection, labor relations), R appointees show VERY conservative voting patterns on RRR panels -- and D appointees show VERY liberal voting patterns on DDD panels

The fact that, when not confronted with an opposing view, judges' decisions conform with their original bias, suggests that may be equally true whether sitting with like minded jurists or just sitting alone.

My guess is what the study shows is not that peer support creates closed minds but that most minds are already closed unless ,just possibly, they can be opened by contact with different views.

Not that that would necessarily be good. At the end of "I Am A Camera".The staunch anti-nazis in Chris's rooming house are starting to think that maybe there's at least something to be said for Hitler's ideas. They're becoming less "extreme". We know where that led.

Yea, I git it. :)

btw, it just occurred to me (probably last) that Amazon already has that functionality. And so does any forum. In Amazon ratings people frequently recommend alternatives, and many of those get uprated as helpful. Forum do the same.

For example, I don't care for Norah Jones, but happened to be reading what people liked about her out of curiosity, to see if I was missing something or being too snobbish. Many reviewers feel she serves a valauable purpose as a transitional artist. After another listen, trying hard, I still didn't care for her. But, the loathing some feel for her even seemed to inspire some particularly great alternative recommendations which were helpful.

And that happens all the time on the internet.

As soon as someone recommends an alternative book to Sunstein's, it'll have happened here, which he should celebrate.