Why we are stuck - the attraction of a polarized America: Peter T. Coleman at TEDxMIA

red states and blue states if you had a chance to watch the presidential debates last night in Boca or have watched any television whatsoever in the last two years in the state of Florida you'll recognize that politics in America are more polarized today than they have been since 1879 since around the end of the u.s. Civil War and in fact we've become more and more polarized every year for over 30 years now this graph by Nolan McCarty who's a professor at Princeton University shows polarization trends between Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate since

1979 and as you can see at this point we're reaching almost complete opposition and voting which means that our leaders can agree on almost nothing right so you probably think well that's politics right that's how its work that's how it's been that's always it's always been but the truth is it's not how it's always been and in fact if you look back 150 years or so you can see that we've actually enjoyed many decades where our leaders could come together in a bipartisan way and work effectively to solve our more difficult problems but not today

today we are on the verge of serious trouble and it's happening at a time when our deficit increases 4.2 billion dollars every day right millions of Americans possibly some of you are in desperate need of jobs of decent housing and nutritional food our education system is in a freefall and in the state of Florida 23 percent of children live in poverty and the state is amongst the worst in violence and homelessness in affordable housing and in unemployment and yet our leaders are too disdainful and too divided to really talk effectively about this and you know

why well we really don't know why so four for the past 15 years or so I've studied these kinds of conflicts these stuck protracted long-term conflicts by reading everything I could get my hands on in the science of intractable conflict and then I put together this team this is a group of multidisciplinary scholars who were interested in this kind of problem physicists complexity scientists psychologists anthropologists and we came together for several years and have been collecting data on these kinds of stuck conflicts we've looked at case studies archival data we've done laboratory studies on moral

conflicts we've even created some interesting little computer of visualizations and simulations to model it and what I want to talk about tonight is what we've learned from that research that can help inform why we're so stuck but most particularly I want to talk about what applied mathematics has to tell us so don't freak out it's I'm going to just talk about one idea from applied mathematics which is an idea called attractors an attractor is here's an attractive attractors are simply patterns that mathematicians can see in data as they track something over time and they're patterns

that become very simple and stable and then resist change I'm going to talk about what attractors can teach us about why we're so stuck in this country and about what you as Floridians and Americans can do to change this because we really think that attractors may shed some light on the essence of why we're so stuck why are we stuck is it is it party loyalty or is it the lobbyists fault or is it big government or is it big business why why are we so stuck the truth is it's all of these things and

more but unfortunately they don't list really nicely like this but they tend to operate more like this where different issues and elements kind of trigger and reinforce other issues so that it starts to become a very complex and kind of overwhelming problem the split between the Reds and the blues and because complex problems like this make us crazy anxious we really prefer to see them like this this seems much easier to handle you or the problem right well science has mathematicians have a name for this they call very complicated problems that spread and interact over

time and then collapse into certain patterns they call them attractors okay and attractors again are when we move into or are attracted into a certain pattern that's why we call them attractors they actually draw us in to certain ways of thinking and feeling and acting that we start to repeat again and again even if we don't want to do that so we see these kinds of patterns with addicts in addiction where people consistently return to the same kinds of behaviors over and over again we see it in international conflicts for example in Israel Palestine where

you see the same kinds of patterns where on for years and years you even see these kinds of patterns in chronic traffic jams and cities were in some locations you always hit the same kinds of patterns right in Washington and in Florida and across this country we are stuck in a pattern of how we think and feel and act towards them the Blues or the Reds you know the people that are responsible for everything that's wrong in this country them that's what we're stuck in but what's really important to understand about these patterns is that

they're not caused by any one thing they're caused by many things such as what I listed up there but most importantly it's how those things kind of collapse and come together and then put powerful constraints on how we think and feel and act we get sort of sucked into the gravity of these things and it feels impossible to change however we have learned some things about where these things where these attractors come from that we think that can help so this is research by two political scientist Paul deal and Gary gets who studies something called

the correlates of war database and this is a database from 1812 that looks at all kinds of interstate exchanges and in that time they've identified about 915 cases of international conflict but of those only 5% get stuck and they drag on and on and on sometimes for decades sometimes for generations and it's the study of this 5% that we've learned something particularly fascinating which is that these types of conflicts about 95% of them erupt or begin within 10 years of what they call a political shock so something major happens an assassination an overthrow a coup

attempt of a governor a government and then 10 years later you see one of these conflicts emerge and then lock in and become entrenched for decades more right but that's not typically how we think it's typically we'll see a war or a conflict break out and then we'll say well what happened here something happened to trigger this conflict but the truth is that something possibly had happened a decade before some major event a decade before that sort of established the conditions so let me give you an example in 2011 the Arab Spring erupted and as

did the beginning of the suit current Syrian conflict right well what happened about 10 years before the Arab Spring 9/11 happened exactly 10 years before and then the American incursions in Iraq and Afghanistan now does this mean that 9/11 and the wars caused the Arab Spring no that's not what we're saying what we're saying is that it set the stage it destabilized the Arab speaking world sufficiently so that 10 years later you see young people rising in the street and overthrowing governments on Twitter right a major change over that 10 years all right well something

very similar is happening in this country we think so pundants usually suggests that our current political quagmire us being stuck really started with Reagan that it was a Reagan administration that triggered it triggered it but if you look at ten years before Reagan what you see is a series of major political shocks that happened in this country assassinations a huge anti-war movement and anti-establishment movement there were major shocks to our culture that 10 years later moved into the divide of reds and blues that were trapped in today and that become increasingly more problematic okay so

what does all this have to do with attractors and change and how can we possibly get out of this well first it's important to know that you can't really force attractors to change right there's too many things that hold them into place to to force them out but there are some things that we can do you and I tonight to begin to decrease the probabilities that will remain stuck and increase the probabilities that our leaders will be able to come together and work effectively but first it's important that you understand when these kinds of patterns

change right because not only do 95% of these long-term stuck conflicts begin within ten years of a shock but about seventy-five percent of them also also end within ten years of a political shock so if you look back at the graph you can see that in 1924 which was about ten years after World War one the shock of the war to end all wars we began to enjoy a time when our leaders were really quite effective at coming together and solving problems together right what that means is that political shocks crises for example like the

recent financial and economic crises can provide ideal conditions to end polarization and move us in a more positive direction now we may not see the effects for years and it doesn't guarantee that will change but it sets the conditions so another thing that mathematics tells us that can help us determine whether we can change or not is something that they call the power of initial conditions you know mathematicians they like to come up with these terms initial condition so what does that mean all it means is when a new regime or a new system is

established like a new government or a new administration comes in that the very first decisions that they make in that new it in that new administration really largely determine the future trajectory of it the first decisions the first action that they take really determine its future that means that whoever wins the election in two weeks has this unique but small window of opportunity to reset us right we are a nation that is stuck has been in decline for decades and we radically need our leaders to change course to figure out how to work together across

this divide but it's going to require kind of radically different thinking so this is what people like FDR and Nelson Mandela did after major crises they reset the agenda so imagine if on Wednesday November 7th after the next election the president whoever you may be comes out and says I'm going to propose a radical new approach to governance and it requires the president me and the Congress to come together in the first hundred days and to come up with a vision and a mission and a set of clear objectives that will address the more serious

challenges we face today and we're required in the first hundred days to come up with that and if we don't then I'm required and by executive order will trigger a shutdown of the government right can you imagine that it would take full advantage of the current disabled izing a place where in due to the economic and financial crises and reset our course okay so that's just an illustration of what leaders could do to try to take advantage of this time and change our direction but what about you what can you do or I do because

let's not fool ourselves that this this pattern this SM pattern that we're trapped in is not just a DC phenomenon it takes place because of the things that you and I do in our homes and communities every day our acts and our deeds really contribute to this but the good news is that what we found is that even very small changes in what we call control parameters which are kind of our basic rules of behavior small changes in those parameters can make a huge difference on whether or not we we find our way out of

this or not so for example realizing that the problems we face today in national security economics banking education these are extremely complex problems and there are no simple solutions to these as much as we'd like them in fact any solution to these kinds of problems are going to be mixed there's going to be good things about them and bad things about them in the short run and in the long run and simply recognizing that will force us to require of our leaders that they be more transparent and clearer and come up with solutions that are

feasible and realistic and sustainable so how do you do this well tonight there are groups like search for common ground from the national issues forum and the public conversations projects which are community based organizations working locally here in Florida and across the country to have conversations in communities with community members on these more difficult issues and to try to reintroduce a sense of nuance and complexity into their understanding of these issues that have become oversimplified and polarized the only way that we're going to find our way out of these is if we recognize the complexity

of the matters that we face but one other thing that I would suggest that we do which is simply pay attention to our own behaviors science tells us is something like 90 to 95 percent of our daily behaviors are automatic the things we do without thinking like taking a shower driving a car reacting to our kids they're automatic and many of those things really contribute to the divisions that were in so let me ask when was the last time that you MSNBC ears out here watched bill reilly not to scowl or ridicule bill reilly but

to try to get a different perspective on an important issue or when was the last time you Fox sirs tuned in to PBS with the same kind of intention now these things are may seem trivial but their basic their fundamental to who we are and how we interact as a nation and they can't add across people and over time and really have a major impact on whether or not we escape this trap the good news is that we are in a crisis so ask not what your country can do for you but think about what

you might be able to do with this rare opportunity of a crisis thank you you