Diversity, Disagreement, and Democracy
Lecture, three or four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Designed for juniors/seniors. Can’t we all just get along? Study of diversity, disagreement, and democracy. Diversity covers individual differences, cultural differences, and human universals; groupism, factionalism, and identity politics; multiculturalism and one-world ethics. Disagreement includes moral, ideological, and party-political disagreement; resolvable and irresolvable kinds of disagreement; groupthink and group polarization; herding and information cascades. Democracy stands for political mechanisms of information aggregation; political mechanisms to resolve differences, or to keep peace among people with irresolvable differences; emergence and spread of democracy, liberty, and rule of law. Letter grading.
