The Open Society as an Enemy: Populism, Popper and pessimism post-1989
01:31:11 Share

Welcome to the LSE Events podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science. Get ready to hear from some of the most influential international figures in the social sciences. Welcome everyone to this event. It's the book launch for Jason Alexander's book, Open Society as an Enemy. It was published late last week, so it really, really is hot off the press.

I'm Sarah Worthington. I'm a professor of law at the LSE, but the reason I'm here in this role tonight is that I chair LSE Press.

with other publishers. So that's my reason for being here. I thought I'd do three things before we get into the main event. I'll tell you a little bit about LSE Press, a little bit about this event and the people who are speaking and on the panel, and then a little bit about format for the event. So if I start with LSE Press, it's a relatively new academic press, which is partly why I wanted to say something about it.

We publish works of serious and original scholarship in the social sciences, so very LSE-ish. We're non-profit, and every book we publish is open access, so available free online or in these rather lovely print-on-demand copies, not free.

Our goal is really to publish the highest quality social science research that has the potential to influence academic debate, public policy and wider audience participation in things that interest the issues of our time. LSE Press is mentioned as part of LSE's 2030 Research for the World Strategy.

Although we were founded in 2018, so quite young, we are aiming to reach the widest possible readership and I think you'll see tonight that this book fits the mold of the sorts of books we are trying to publish.

Other recent titles you may have come across, either because you've seen them open access or because you've been to other events, are the wonderfully reviewed Renegotiating Patriarchy by Naila Kabir, and that was launched at the LSE Festival.

Naila Kabir is from the International Development Department. And then a couple of weeks ago, we had the launch of Dead Men's Propaganda by Terhi Rantanen from LSE's Media and Communications Department. And I think in a couple of weeks, but before Christmas anyway, the press is publishing Australian Democratic Audit, which Patrick Dunleavy and a couple of colleagues have published recently.

and he was my predecessor in this role at LSE Press. And then two more books that I can't resist mentioning. We've had our first prize-winning book, and that was David Luke's How Africa Trades, which was awarded the BCA African Business Book of the Year this year. And then there's Gwynne Bevan's How Did Britain Come to This, which came out this year. Great title, isn't it, for this year?

That book launch was one of LSE's events most viewed videos of the year. It's had over 200,000 views on YouTube and this is the nice bit, included by Paul Collier in the Times Literary Supplement Book of 2024. That was on his list.

So all that about LSE Press is by way of encouraging any of you who are aspiring authors to contact us. Our door is always open and we are keen to publish good social science research. But then you're here for tonight. So tonight, I'm obviously not going to take up the airplay for the speakers, but I want to do a little warm-up.

It's true, and perhaps you're all here because it's true, that around the world, populist agendas on both the left and the right threaten to undermine the fundamental principles that underpin liberal democracies. So that what we previously saw as virtues of the open society are now, by many people, seen as vices, dangers, threats.

And as global citizens, we're implicated by a range of contemporary social questions informed by open society, from the free movement of people, the erosion of privacy, no platforming, the increased political and social polarisation that is fuelled by social media. And it's now almost 80 years since Karl Popper's original speech

that spirited philosophical defense of open society. 80 years later, Jason Alexander's new book, "The Open Society as Enemy," argues that we need a new defense of the idea of open society in the decades since the end of the Cold War. And what he does is interrogate four interconnected aspects of open society. He picks on cosmopolitanism, transparency,

free exchange of ideas, and communitarianism. And in re-examining their consequences, Jason calls for a resistance to the forces of reaction and makes the claim that the concept of open society needs to be rehabilitated and advanced. So we're in for a treat, but I just must quote from one review of Jason's book, which tells you what sort of treat we're in for.

Ross Taylor wrote about his book, "Many people have waded into the culture wars, but few have rigorously and engagingly examined why we think about each other, why the way we think about each other is changing." Jason Alexander probes the assumptions we make about contemporary society and exposes who benefits from outrage and polarization.

Everyone who talks about open society and what it means should read this book. So we get to whet our appetites for the book, a chance to hear from the author himself and two of our panellists. Now I'm not going to give you long introductions to the people here, I'm just going to indicate who they all are so that you can identify them, both for the people here in the room and for the people online.

So to my immediate right, the author, Jason Alexander. He's a professor in philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the LSE. And then to his right, Alan Manning is a professor of economics at the LSE and director of the Labor Market Program in the Center for Economic Performance.

And then to Alan's right, Ilke Gleips is an associate professor at the LSE in the Department of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences. So you'll see that we've got three different departments represented, which says something about what this book is about and the ideas it's trying to bring together. And the way we're going to run this evening is Jason is going to speak for 20 minutes or so to talk to you about the book,

from the author's own mouth, in the author's own words. And then we're going to have a panel discussion all on stage for about 30 minutes, and then we'll open it to Q&A for the audience, both here and online. Without more ado, I hand over to Jason. Thank you very much, Sarah, for that very kind introduction. So I grew up in the final decades of the Cold War.

For as long as I could remember, the world was divided into East and West, with the US and the Soviet Union the two superpowers battling for global dominance. In an age before active shooter drills, I can remember practicing duck and cover exercises in the event of a nuclear war.

Films such as The Day After, viewed by 100 million Americans in 1983, depicted the all-too-foreseeable consequences of a nuclear holocaust. I remember watching television on the 12th of June, 1987, as the U.S. President Ronald Reagan gave a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, addressing the leader of the Soviet Union, stating, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall, but...

From my perspective, the wall had always been there. It was part of the basic architecture of the world. Nothing was going to change. And then it did. On the evening of the 9th of November 1989, as the result of a communications error, the East German Secretary for Information said in an interview with the press that the border between East and West Berlin would be opened with immediate effect.

Thousands of people in East Berlin heard the news and began gathering at the six checkpoints, demanding to be let through. Late in the evening, around 11 p.m., the border guards opened the gates, and the beginning of the end of history was broadcast around the world. On the 3rd of October, 1990, the reunification of Germany took place.

On the 26th of December 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved, yielding 15 new countries. The Cold War was over. The threat of global thermonuclear war receded into the distance, and it seemed that a new era of freedom, openness, and opportunity had begun. What a difference 35 years can make.

During the Cold War, there were a number of core underlying values endorsed by the West, all given different realizations country to country, but all recognized as important and worth fighting for. These values are bound together in a concept called the open society, a term tracing back to the philosopher Karl Popper and to the philosopher Henry Bergson before him.

When I speak of the open society, I am building upon their understanding, but I also deviate from it in important ways. What is the open society? It is a vision of a society grounded in respect for individual liberty and human rights. Respect for the freedom of individuals to act and to choose and to associate with other persons.

It is a rejection of totalitarianism and authoritarianism, recognizing the right of persons to adopt a form of life which works for them and to go their own way. In support of that ideal, the open society recognizes the importance of the free exchange of ideas, rational discourse, and critical thinking.

The open society recognizes that although there will be great variation in all of our experiments in living, there's a common universal humanity which we all share and which provides a source of obligations and constraints on how we treat others. To paraphrase Karl Popper, in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.

In the years since the end of the Cold War, it seems that a curious inversion of values has taken place regarding the open society. Many things which were once seen to be a value are now seen as a threat or a danger. Many practices which were once embraced are now shunned. This is the reason my book is called The Open Society as an Enemy. It offers a diagnosis and analysis of what has happened and why.

It argues that the rejection of the open society resulting from this inversion of values is mistaken. It attempts to defend and rehabilitate the open society, rendering it fit for purpose for the future in a world where it is needed more than ever. In the remainder of my time, I will briefly articulate the four aspects of the open society with which the book is concerned.

explaining their senses and the inversion of value that has occurred. Of these four aspects, I shall concentrate on the two which are most relevant for my panelists, who I anticipate will have much to say. So, let me now turn to the four parts of the book. I should note that the names of these parts are the actual names of the parts from the table of contents, so hopefully that gives you an idea for the tone with which I write. Part one, don't come around here no more.

This aspect of the open society concerns the free movement of people. The basic background value is that the free movement of people across borders is generally a good thing and should be encouraged.

If you look at films from the period of the Cold War, you'll often see this represented as a communist police officer stopping someone on the street and asking them for their papers, please, so that they can check to see that the person has the correct permission to go where they want to go. In the West, this was viewed as an absolutely remarkable occurrence. Needless to say, over the past few decades, I think we have seen the following inversion.

With Trump promising to deport thousands of migrants, the vote for Brexit, to stop the boats, and so on, it now seems that immigration is viewed as generally a bad thing and one that should be restricted or stopped. What is my response to this? Well, to begin, I would like to note that there's a very powerful moral argument for the free movement of people.

This moral argument is rooted in the fact that the way in which a citizenship is bestowed upon a person depends generally on one of two things: either where that person is born, or second, who their parents were. And I hasten to add, neither of these two factors are under the control of the person who receives the citizenship.

Since a citizenship is the determinant of the lifetime opportunities, or I should say the greatest determinant of the lifetime opportunities for an individual, this creates an enormous natural injustice. That, I think, is the primary argument for the free movement of people.

When I give this argument, two responses are generally made. The first is, "What about the economic consequences?" And the second is, "What about the social consequences?" Let me turn to each of these in turn. What about the economic consequences? Well, if you look at the economics literature, many people have attempted to model what would happen if we opened up borders and allowed the free movement of people.

And it might come to your surprise that many papers actually say that the consequences would be really rather remarkable. Estimates vary, of course, but the general range seems to be that the economic gains of the free movement of people could be anywhere between 50 and 150 percent of world GDP recurring.

If you look at the literature, here's one paper that makes this argument. Its title is "Economics and Emigration: Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk." By choosing to not have free movement, we are choosing less rather than more. What about the social consequences? Well, these are, I think, a bit more tricky to think through.

But I think we can learn a lot from one natural experiment of the United States, which suggests that perhaps the issue has more to do with the way in which immigration is introduced rather than whether immigration is introduced. The natural experiment is this: the United States has had the free movement of people

in essentially some form ever since it was founded. Now, admittedly, in the early 1800s, it was actually rather difficult to move from point A to point B, and so the technological challenges placed a natural limit on the way, at the rate in which migration could take place.

But over time, what we've seen is that the U.S. has achieved a type of equilibrium. The fact that someone can choose to move from Florida to Texas or California, Montana, or Washington without any kind of permission or passport or invitation is just taken as part of the landscape. That, I suggest, is

is a point about the way in which immigration is implemented rather than whether it is permitted. The conclusion? I think we should at least be willing to entertain increasing, and possibly to increase, immigration to levels greater than we currently have. This is a powerful response to the natural injustice of the birthright lottery. Part 2. The Panopticon of the Soul. This concerns information.

And in particular, the kind of information it concerns is transparency of information. The original value was that information related to governments, organizations, and institutions should be made widely available in order to hold those entities accountable. It is a way of reducing corruption and helping to ensure that the right decisions are made for the right reasons.

What we have seen over the past two decades with the rise of social media is actually a rather different kind of implementation. We have seen that information related to the private lives of individuals should be made widely available to corporations, enabling them to profit. This information is often potentially used against those individuals in various ways.

Needless to say, I think this has a number of very grave concerns, and I talk about that in this part of the book. Part 3: Safe Spaces This, I think, is perhaps a natural form of the open society that most people consider. It concerns what I call the Enlightenment conception of the open society.

And here, the idea is that the free exchange of ideas, rational debate, and critical thinking, even if it makes us uncomfortable, is generally a good thing. However, if you look at some of the shifts in cultural attitudes over recent years,

Sometimes it seems that some people are willing to argue that the free exchange of ideas, if it makes people uncomfortable, is a bad thing and should be restricted or regulated or at least monitored in some form. In this part of the book, I try to give a fairly nuanced response to this, arguing that what some people have argued against is

trigger warnings and safe spaces, I think are all things considered actually overblown and that those items are actually fine when understood properly. I think no platforming has a number of concerns and I talk about that in the book. But basically the important thing is that the free exchange of ideas is essential if we're going to make informed decisions for the right reasons. Turning now to the last part of the book, modern tribes.

This, I think, is a rejection of a communitarian conception of the open society. The original view is that a diverse multicultural society is generally a good thing, and that it encourages people to interact with those who are different from oneself.

In the contemporary era, I think what we often find is some people thinking that diverse multicultural societies can make them feel uncomfortable, especially if confronted with ideas with which they disagree. And as a result, some may feel encouraged to interact with people similar to oneself. What do I think about this?

Well, first let's begin. Is it really the case that polarization is on the increase and that people tend to interact more with their own kind than before? In one chapter of the book, I do argue that when you look at some of the information, it suggests that at least according to some measures, polarization has increased in societies such as the UK, the US, and elsewhere.

What drives this? Again, many people have pointed to potential causes, identifying social media, the filter bubbles that search engines generate for us, echo chambers where we all encounter only those ideas with which we already agree, and so on. But that said, you might ask yourself, should we really be worried about polarization? Is polarization a bad thing?

I think that it is. And I think one reason it's a bad thing is because of a phenomenon known as in-group out-group bias. In-group out-group bias is a form of bias in how people make decisions which can arise when group identities are made salient. When an identity is made salient and people, say, have to allocate resources between group members, they are often found to favor their own group at the expense of others.

And this is of interest because it turns out that this bias can appear even if the group identity is minimal. That is, even if you put people into groups at random and you tell them that they were put into groups at random, they can still demonstrate in-group bias. If that happens in that context, then you have to ask yourself,

What goes on when the group identity formation criteria really matter to people? I also think this matters because this form of bias can be weaponized given that we have multiple social identities. Everyone in this room will have perhaps a religion, a nationality, a race, an ethnicity, a socioeconomic background, and many other kinds of social categories.

Which kind of social category and which kind of social identity is salient is something which is ambiguous and is highly reliant on contextual cues. What that means is that by choosing which identities one makes salient, you can draw people's attention to either social identities which conflict or ones which are compatible with

This is potentially a powerful vehicle for the engineering of intergroup conflict, or at least the perception of intergroup conflict. In addition, groups that are polarized can become more extreme in their beliefs over time because members of groups feel the need to prove that they are authentic, that they are a real believer of a certain kind.

Attempting to establish authenticity can lead to the growth in extreme opinions. And lastly, strange beliefs can take hold in groups because beliefs can come to serve as signifiers of group membership, even if they're false. In 2020, Forbes magazine reported on a study that 56 Republicans said

generally thought that the QAnon conspiracy theory was either partially true or true. And that is an interesting example because I think what has happened is that QAnon became a signifier of being a hardcore Republican, an extreme Republican, an authentic Republican. And that belief spread independent of the amount of evidence that someone may have had for that.

So, in conclusion, our social identities present a thorny challenge. On one hand, we are told that we should embrace and celebrate our social identities as they are a deep aspect of our individual character. At the same time, those social identities can drive us further apart.

The response, I think, is that we need to recognize our common humanity and prioritize the fact that society must be intolerant of intolerance, especially when we are celebrating our social identities. What is the conclusion that I try to draw from the book? I argue that there are many good reasons for rejecting the inversion of the values regarding the open society.

This then raises an important question: How do we rehabilitate the concept of the open society? What do we need to do? I think what we need is a revolution in how we think about things. We need a revolution in our understanding of the concept of the open society, what it means, and what it recommends for contemporary life. What kind of revolution is this?

I think the kind of revolution it is is best expressed by the spoken word poet Gil Scott Heron, who is best known for his work, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. In 1982, in an interview, when asked about the meaning of the title of the poem, Scott Heron explained,

The first revolution is when you change your mind about how you look at things and see there might be another way to look at it that you have not been shown. Thank you. - Thank you, Jason. That was a lovely introduction to the book. So by way of opening up this panel discussion, I want to ask perhaps the predictable opening question. So both of you have read the book.

Can you give me your initial responses when you read the book and some indication of what you think are the most important issues that we should pay attention to? So Jason has been through a run of them. I just wonder which you might pick as crucial. Ilka, perhaps I could start with you.

Yeah, thank you so much. I mean, first of all, I have to say it was a pleasure to read the book. And even though I'm an academic, I prefer to read novels over non-fictional books. But this is really well written, almost like a novel. So I can really highly recommend the book. It was a pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me. I think I have two initial reactions. And the first one is less as a psychologist and maybe more as...

a human being living in this world. And I was wondering whether one of the premises of the open society as a place in helping individuals utilize individual freedom of self-determination and association is part of the problem because it makes a promise that we as individuals can achieve almost anything

and everything if we want to. And so this liberal ideal of choice, freedom, and autonomy might be itself problematic and makes this promise that is impossible to achieve both on an interpersonal level, because I

I live in relationships and so I cannot just move countries if I want to because maybe my partner or my children will be against that. But also structurally and systemically as a woman I experience barriers, as someone migrating into a country I experience barriers. So I will constantly be frustrated in my endeavor to live my individual freedom.

And I think that leads to another problem, maybe even bigger problem, that it also creates social dilemma. Because my individual freedom and my individual agency are not always compatible with what is needed in society. And we saw that very clearly during COVID. Even a simple thing like wearing a mask was something that maybe as an individual, I felt very uncomfortable with that. I couldn't breathe right or whatever reasons people had not to wear a mask.

but it was something that was required to maybe help people I will never ever meet in my life. So we are always in this tension between me as an individual and the relationships I have in the society I live in.

And so I was wondering whether in the extension of the concept of the open society, we also have to bring in some other existential values such as community, collective responsibility, relational responsibility that

move a little bit away from this very strong emphasis on the individual and that somehow I think also created this hyper individualism that might be part of the reason why we see some of the challenges and problems that you describe in your book. So that's a very big question. There you go.

Shall I give you a little bit of time to think about a very good answer to that very good question and just ask Alan what his initial response was? I'm happy to proceed however you want. I mean, if you like, I can actually say something in response to that now. So, I mean, to be honest, I very much, I think, am entirely supportive and I think I largely agree with the point that Ilka just made.

In thinking about the foundations for the open society, I do, as you say, kind of

an existentialist foundation and think about it in terms of individual choice. But I am careful to adopt a form of existentialism that sees itself rooted with Simone de Beauvoir rather than the kind of radical Sartrean notion of existentialism. And part of the reason why I did that is because I think that de Beauvoir was much more conscious of these kinds of constraints that you mentioned regarding

individual choice and what is actually possible for individuals at a time. I suppose my way of thinking about the role of choice is this: it's not the case that we can actually achieve anything, but that when we find ourselves subject to the constraints of social norms, social practices, and the world into which we're born, that although it may seem at the moment impossible for us to do otherwise,

that we do actually have that kind of freedom, even if it might take quite a lot of effort to eventually get to the point of where we are able to try to resist or overturn or to change social norms which might feel oppressive.

So, I admit that one point which I didn't develop as much in the book and which I probably should have said more about is the positive aspect which you mentioned, which is that societies into which we're born, our network of relations, friends, and so on, are actually very powerful enablers of what it is possible for us to do. And so, when we think about...

human choice and what it is possible for us to choose, that is very much rendered possible by the presence of others in the society in which we're a part. And it's important to see that we are both at the same time. We are individuals in possession of great freedom, but at the same time that freedom is necessarily exercised within the social context. I could have and should have said more about that.

Yeah, I mean, the book is long enough. It's fine. You cannot cover everything. Although, when you mentioned Simone de Beauvoir, I was wondering that you mentioned part of her work, but you do not mention the fact that she also wrote The Second Sex, and she wrote about her experience as a woman. And that was constrained her greatly, and more so than Jean-Paul Sartre was constrained. And so I think that is the point. I'm like, some of the constraints...

are based on the relationships we have or our social position in society. And yes, maybe eventually we might or might not overcome them, but it's also the question, do we need to overcome them? Or can we also imagine a world which actually exists in parts of the world where it's much more about an interdependent self than an independent self? So where I can self-realize

within the relationships I have with other people and it's not just about me doing my thing but me being, I think there's the saying, I am because we are. So this, I can realize us, I can realize

the relationships I live in. So that's kind of just going back to what you described earlier, the West-East, it's maybe more like a thinking of West and Global South or interdependent cultures.

- Just very quickly, once again, I completely agree. The reason why I didn't include a discussion about the second sex, and De Beauvoir's thinking about that there, was I think purely a strategic thing in that I think that the world has had far too much about men pontificating on women's theorizing and understanding of themselves, and so I wanted to not contribute to that already too large body of literature.

The one thing I would note, which I was quite pleased with the book, is that when I talk about de Beauvoir, I've made it also a very clear decision to make no mention whatsoever about her relationship with Sartre. So that was omitted from the book entirely. - Helen, your reaction and what you think are some of the most important issues that emerge, and if you've got an equally hard question for Jason,

Go for it. Hi, I'm interrupting this event to tell you about another awesome LSE podcast that we think you'd enjoy. LSE IQ asks social scientists and other experts to answer one intelligent question. Like, why do people believe in conspiracy theories? Or, can we afford the super rich? Come check us out. Just search for LSE IQ wherever you get your podcasts.

Now, back to the event. Okay. Well, I'm going to start by committing the sin of envy. I'm not sure if that's part of the Open Society or not. I had to deliver the first draft of a book of my own last Friday, and I was right at the wire concentrating on that. So I said I'm going to set aside Jason's book to read at the weekend.

and that just made me very depressed because I realised I didn't write as well as Jason did. And so whereas Ilka said she read the book with great pleasure, I must confess to having read it with great displeasure. I think...

I'll just focus on a couple of issues where I think Jason is sort of wrestling with the questions which sort of, the big questions which sort of trouble us as a society. The first is around data and information. So I think data and information is the most valuable resource increasingly in our society.

Everything is now digitized. We have the ability to process that vast amounts of data. Basically, sometimes we do call it data mining. There's just enormous amounts of money to be made from using data both for good and for ill. Our existing frameworks for thinking about ownership are very good for owning a physical thing like this book, but are really, really ill-equipped

for thinking about ownership of data and information. And into that vacuum, which I think, you know, so Jason described it as an inversion, that it's a positive thing that private companies should be able to use of it. I think I think of it more as a vacuum that private companies have seen an opportunity and sees an opportunity. So thinking about that is really, really important.

And then the second issue he talks about, which is one that I also have been involved in quite a lot, is around immigration and immigration policy.

I think some of the things actually, and I'll perhaps link to some of the things Ilka said are what is difficult. One of the problems with saying, "Well, people should have freedom to choose or say something or do something," is that that freedom, when they exercise that freedom, that might have negative effects on other people. Where do then their individual's rights end or start or end?

And, you know, and I think that's sort of... And then we also have the fact that people aren't just individuals. They care about people, other people, but they care about some people, other people, more than other people. And, you know, that becomes particularly acute, I think, when we're thinking about immigration, that people tend to think more, they care more about people within immigration

the nation state, their nation state, than they do people outside. And how does one address that? I mean, Jason talked about, well, there's a very strong moral argument against birthright citizenship, but I'm not sure that those moral arguments would actually help with people who are attracted to populist arguments. I mean, there's a famous open borders argument that draws on

Bentham, Nozick and John Rawls, very, very different people who said they'd all be in favour of open borders. I'm not sure the typical reform voter would be very impressed by anyone saying, well, actually, take your pick from these three. They all came to the same conclusion. So I think that immigration is an issue where these things become very acute. And often that trade-off between who we care about and who we don't is very, very uncomfortable.

It's really not who we don't care about, who we care more about and who we care less about. Faced with that being so uncomfortable, we sort of try and sort of pretend it doesn't really exist at all, those trade-offs, but I kind of worry with immigration policy that perhaps it does. I'll just leave it there. - All right. - Do you want-- - Okay, well, thanks for the-- - Because that was a big thing in your presentation about open borders. - Mm-hmm.

I think that there are a number of the concerns about open borders stem from a couple of factors. One is that I think that there is a concern about what happens when you allow for migration, where there is a sense that people...

do not become sufficiently a part of the society. In other words, that you end up having people in society but who are not actually of that society. And the way I try to conceive of the cosmopolitan model in the book, which imperfectly maps onto the real world, is something like this. Is that...

In the world, you have a whole number of different experiments in living communities, some within countries, some actually entire countries, where people exercising their freedom of association form these communities to go about constructing the life along the lines that they see fit. And when someone, and when you form these communities, there is a question about what they are.

want to do if someone applies to join that community. Now I think that although it's admirable if communities want to accept other people, I don't think that respecting individual freedom about who they associate with, that you can force or request people to allow someone else to join their community. You certainly can't force someone to be friends with the person who doesn't want to be friends with them.

So, I agree that there are limits to which you can have kind of the flow of individuals across communities. But I think that if communities are willing to open themselves for new members to join, then there are a set of obligations that are created.

One is that a community that welcomes a member to join it has a duty of reasonable non-interference regarding what they ask that person to comply. And that's simply respecting the autonomy of others.

But I think that a person who joins a community also ends up having a duty of partial assimilation. By joining a community that has welcomed me as a member, I have a duty to actually take on some of the ways, some of the attributes of that community in order to actually show belonging to it. I think part of the concern about immigration is that we've had a relatively

poorly thought out policy about how we try to welcome new members into countries and actually ensure that they become a member of that country. Just reflecting on my own experience, I moved over into the UK in 2001 and I remember that the totality of my attempt to integrate me into UK society consisted of the border guard saying welcome to the UK.

And after that, I was left entirely to my own devices to find my way around. So I just think that the point is, this goes back to my point about it is a question about how immigration is managed rather than when or whether we have immigration. I also think that sometimes what passes for concerns about immigration with populism is it really serves as a proxy argument for economic concerns.

that in an era of great economic upheaval where a lot of people have great economic concerns, populists, rather than addressing the hard economic facts about why their real income has declined over the past few decades, instead divert their attention to immigration, blaming others for something which has very different causes.

So I agree that the challenge of trying to get people to understand what the birthright lottery requires of us as moral individuals is difficult, but I think that when we think about the kind of emotional reactions that underwrite some of the populist responses to immigration, that I think that there are a number of factors that are all causally interconnected in explaining why people react the way that they do.

And I think that trying to untangle that will be complicated and very difficult, but I think it's important to have a relatively clear sense about why immigration is something that we should actually try to embrace and to see the value of. I'm not sure I have a lot more to say than that. Shall I try the easier question on information?

Can we come back to that? Okay. Because it fits with something else I want to ask later. And I'm watching the clock. And I want to ask you a question that is not in that same vein that we've been going along. So it's a bit of a left-hand bend or right-hand bend. I'm not sure which, but we're changing direction. So one of the things I want to ask you about is, in your book, one of the common themes is the idea of value pluralism.

you seem to make that quite an important issue for an open society, that we should have this respect for other people's values. And yet, perhaps especially towards the end of the book, you're also quite critical of the increase in polarization in the West, and it's a bad thing. So, how do you reconcile this idea that we'll have values pluralism

but will be critical of the idea that there are these groups that hold such distinct values. Okay, good. Thank you very much for that. So the reason why I actually defend a form of value pluralism is...

quite frankly, I just believe that that is the human condition. As you look around the world, you see a wide variety of different forms of life that overlap in some of their values, but certainly don't overlap in all of their values. And I think that if we don't accept value pluralism as a possibility, then we're led to a very uncomfortable position of having to say that some forms of life just are making mistakes. And I think that that's a very uncomfortable

comfortable place to be in. I should say that when I talk about value pluralism, that I mean by that something very different than value relativism or moral relativism. I'm not defending a view that says anything goes. What I'm arguing for is a view that thinks of morality and values as a social technology that is used for solving interdependent decision problems that

that are created when you have a society of people all trying to do something, follow their own plans, goals, and ambitions, and those goals, plans, and ambitions unavoidably conflict in some fashion. And so morality and values as a kind of social technology provides a way of trying to mitigate that conflict.

But thinking of it as a social technology is helpful because it shows why value pluralism would then be expected. Because for almost any problem, there's more than one way to try to solve it. If you think about, say, a smartphone, there are certain basic functions that a smartphone has to solve or it has to provide.

But there are many different ways under the hood, so to speak, that a smartphone can actually implement those solutions. And that's the role that value pluralism has. There are different solutions for organizing society, all of which are capable of achieving certain essential functions, even if they differ in many respects.

Now, why is that compatible with, say, diverse societies where people do things very differently? I think it's useful because it helps show one of the dangers of polarization in the current world. If you disagree with value pluralism, then you are led into the following type of reasoning: "I have my own moral beliefs, I have my own set of values, I believe they're correct. If I see a group doing something different,

then the only inference I can draw is that group is doing something wrong. That then provides a foundation for critique of the other group.

Whereas under value pluralism, if that's accepted, then if I see another group doing something different, then the natural inference to draw is just that's a group doing something different. We remove a huge driver of that normative evaluation which renders a type of critique that could lead into inescapable, unavoidable conflict.

So I think that value pluralism is actually potentially quite helpful. And that's the way I try to address this question about how is it that you have diverse societies with value pluralism? I think value pluralism is a way of trying to mitigate or minimize some of the social conflict that can be generated. I can't resist doing this. So we have a philosopher and an economist and a psychologist.

So Ilka, I might start with you. I mean, you work on social dynamics and that sort of thing. So when a social scientist talks to this kind of social scientist, how do you think about value pluralism and where it comes from and how we get to either value pluralism or acceptance of the value of different values, if you put it like that, rather than the polarization? How do you think about it?

It's going to be even harder for an economist. Well, I think actually it's part of what

It is mentioned in the book, the different tribes, although social psychologists don't use the term tribe and tribalism, we generally just talk about groups. And we would say you're part of an in-group or you might be part of an out-group where I want to make one thing very clear. These groups are not fixed. And you mentioned that briefly, but still I think people often talk about it as you have an in-group and that is fixed and you will always favor that and that is innate or hardwired.

That is not the case. We are members of many, many groups and in any given moment of time we can be part of an in-group or part of an out-group. So now we are academics talking together, we are in an in-group, and then we could say, someone says, everyone who wears glasses is horrible, then all of a sudden Jason and I would be part of an in-group and you would be part of an out-group. So I think that is very important to keep in mind because that...

then leads to the possibility of value pluralism because these different groups

can have different values. So when I talk as an academic, I endorse the values and the norms and the behaviors of being an academic and I try to look very professional and I try to talk professionally, but maybe tomorrow I go to an Arsenal game and I behave like an Arsenal fan and I sing good songs and sorry to all the Tottenham fans in the room.

So you see the norms will change, the values will change, and how I behave will change depending on which group is relevant and salient at any given moment. So I think value pluralism, therefore, is important.

possible between groups, but it's also possible within individuals. So we can also hold different values and sometimes that leads to conflict. So there's a lot of really good research around, for example, being gay and being religious, Muslim or Jewish or also Christianity is still an issue, right? So you could hold memberships in these different groups and these values are

conflicting within yourself. And people try to resolve that with psychological mechanism. And of course the same can happen between groups. And we have different resources or models of resolving value conflict between groups. So I think this fluidity of groups and the fluidity of our own personality or identities is very much compatible with the idea of value pluralism.

And I think therefore we also have to be careful when we use arguments about tribalism or tribes not to make something seem very static which might not be as static. So even a Republican who believes in QAnon

might be in conflict when they are reading something that would be against those norms and values. And some people will not resolve that conflict and other people will resolve that conflict. So I think that was a long answer to your question. I think it's really a plea for trying to not simplify these matters too much because

I think we can endorse the pluralism and the complexity of groups and individuals within groups. It's thought-provoking. Alan, it was probably an unfair question to you, but in the sense of thinking like an economist, when an economist thinks about what open society means, if they ever do, you know...

What would an economist have brought to this book that would have been quite different? I like to think I'm not a very typical economist, so I don't struggle. I think, I mean, there's quite a lot of economics in this. I mean, I think, I mean, this sort of going back a little bit to the previous one. I mean, I do think actually within the social sciences,

we're not very good at the value pluralism. So if we can't sort it out, how do we expect the whole of society to sort it out? And the problem is, and economists are guilty of this, is that good social science is what other social scientists say is good, by and large. And so that naturally leads to you becoming little groups, tribes, and you all agree with each other.

within a framework. And then there's another group over there who believe something different even happens within economics, within different fields.

One group would make one set of assumptions that everyone in the group accepts as totally reasonable and plausible, and anyone looking at it from outside thinks that's totally unreasonable and implausible. And so we're not actually very good, I think, at having true value pluralism within ourselves. I think the forces towards the fragmentation are actually quite powerful. So, I mean, in terms of, you know,

economics in this. I mean, there is quite a lot on economics in this when it comes to talking about immigration. I mean, Jason mentioned economics. I think it's a little bit

For my taste, that was a little bit the right-wing libertarian style of economics, which I'm not sure Jason is. To be fair, when I wrote this book, I did try to do a little approach in the sense that if I figured, if I alienated the left and the right in equal measures, then I was basically doing the right thing.

I think you need to, I think that's a fundamental message. You think I'm giving everybody something for them to like, but unfortunately you're also giving everybody something for them to hate. And I'm afraid in our polarised society, sometimes the way things get very unfair. So I think it's, you know, that becomes, you know, you just, I mean, Jason put up the example of Michael Clemens article. He's in

He's a very passionate advocate. He's in favour of huge increase in temporary low-skill work migration programmes. He basically wants everywhere to become like Dubai. And, you know, is that quite... That isn't quite perhaps what we normally think of as being the open society, because it is very much a two-tier society.

So I think there's some tensions in that. - Very quickly. So in my defense, I will just note that although I cited the economic literature on the benefits of completely open borders

I walked very far back from the precipice of actually jumping off and endorsing open borders. So I was just trying to say that there are economic gains that are possible. And so shouldn't we just kind of test the waters and just see whether some of that can be tapped into without going the full extreme to open borders?

I mean, I think I agree with that. Yes, I do too. I'm about to open it up to the audience, but can I do something, really a two-word reply from each of you, just by way of seeing how wide this idea can go. So in your book, Jason, you picked four aspects of an open society, and I won't ask you why you chose those four, but...

But if you'd had another couple of chapters and there were another couple of aspects, what would you have included? What would you both have liked to have seen included to be discussed? Not to discuss, I just want the audience to think about other issues that might come into this dilemma we're facing at the moment with the idea of an open society.

Sorry, I gave you no warning about that. Could I start? Yes. There's one point that I... And I think that's what I'm really missing in the book. I mentioned it before, but I think what I miss, or maybe what you do, and maybe it's unintentionally, is that you provide relatively...

strong individual level explanation for why there are these problems and this is because there's confusion of wants and needs. So many of those wants, and now I quote from your book, "I suggest we have adopted as a result of relying on instinct, we're making decision tendencies to favor in you

and demonize the output, fundamental attribution errors and so on. So you kind of make a very psychologizing argument. It's based on individual biases and how we are hardwired and that makes us defect decision makers. And you shy away, and I think that is what I'm missing, in bringing in a much stronger argument around inequality.

and why these maybe innate, although I really don't like that term, tendencies or cognitive tendencies might be related to the context in which we live, which is growingly living in a more unequal world. And a lot of the

problems you see or that you describe around polarism, polarization and so on, are much stronger in more unequal societies. So I think sometimes you kind of mention this, but it seems it's a little bit the elephant in the room or in the book to name

a stronger focus on the really structural and systemic barriers and inequalities that we have in society. And as a social psychologist, that's what I'm interested in, like how the individual is influenced by the context. But you kind of focus on context, but then you provide an explanation that is very much on the individual and the cognition of individuals.

even though I'm a psychologist, I feel like you put almost too much psychology in there and you shy away from maybe the big economical questions of how inequalities in the world we now see, the political system and elites and decision makers are responsible for some of these threats to open society. So I think that would be good next chapter.

Second edition. Second edition. Alan. Yeah, I just got one. I think it was like I always think when I've been involved in sort of policy things, at the end of the day, you have to do something. So you have to come down at the end of the day and say what you would actually do.

And, you know, there are normally going to be arguments this way, arguments that way. And so, for example, on immigration, the choice is not really open versus closed borders. There's hardly anyone who says we're going to have no immigration. At the same time, I mean, I agree with Jason. I don't think really realistically one could have completely open borders right now.

But then in between those two extremes that are very clearly defined, there's a huge spectrum. And so what actually would the immigration policy be that you would actually...

And that, I think, is also part of dealing with people are sort of suspicious of others because often others are not entirely clear about exactly what they do. So I think more clarity about what one would actually do. Another chapter. Jason, what did you want to put in but refrained from? Gosh, that's actually a very difficult question to answer. I mean, I felt like

I completely agree with the suggestions from both Ilka and Alan about topics that I could have added to the book. I suppose the one challenge that I found in writing this was just trying to... This is something I say in the preface. I was approaching this as an analytic philosopher

In a sense, that was actually a disadvantage for this kind of project because the way an analytic philosopher approaches problems is, I say in the preface, they take out their conceptual cleaver and they chop, chop, chop the problem down into its clearest, most precise, and least interesting formulation. And

I think that's generally true. And what I wanted to do in this book was resist that, but that meant then that I had to try to go and look at a fairly complex, intertangled, messy, complicated problem and to try to find some way of making sense of it. I picked these four aspects of the open society

just because I felt like I could say something sensible about that. I agree that I've left out probably a lot of important areas to talk about inequality. I could have said a lot more about, say, structural problems. I could have said a lot more about how communities and societies enable choice rather than create potential problems.

But already I felt like I was working at the limits of what I could achieve sensibly. I mean, this book already took me seven years to write, and that was quite a painful process. So if I were to do a volume two, does anyone really want to be waiting ten years to turn up here for the next session?

You were generous enough to say, and the other limitation was that the publisher wouldn't let it be any longer. But it doesn't read as though it's been a painful exercise, and that's a real tribute to the author. It reads incredibly well.

Okay, it's your turn now. So if you're in the room, please put your hand up if you want to ask a question. Wait for the microphone to come. You've all done this before, haven't you? Wait for the microphone to come. Say who you are and where you're from.

and keep the question short because there are a lot of people. And then those who are online, I'm getting them on the iPad, please again say who you are and where you're from, geographically also where you're from. It's nice to know how broadly based our online audience is. But we'll start in the room. So hands up again in the room, please. Where shall I start? Why don't I start here?

Hi, my name's Reagan. I'm a master's student in the Department of Government, public policy degree. I'm from New York. My question is, I can't necessarily speak to the European academic circles, but in the American ones, there's kind of been a new movement or argument, particularly, honestly, around far-right academics. This argument that liberalism's current issues are kind of because of its success,

and that the challenges that liberal societies are facing are not necessarily the subversion or inversion of its values, but the natural evolution of them. And I was wondering kind of your response to that current kind of strain of thinking. So, I mean, I find that...

An interesting argument to be advanced from the U.S. context, because if it's the case that it's the kind of success of liberal values which has kind of generated this situation which we find ourselves, the one thing that I would note is that the U.S. is actually quite skewed on the political situation.

with respect to other parts of the world. And so I find it kind of strange to reconcile the starting assumptions that it's been the success of liberal values as realized within the U.S. with the fact that the center ground is already so heavily skewed to the right. So I would, well, given that, my initial inclination would be to think that I suspect it might be

That might be a convenient narrative for some people to tell that this is the natural evolution, but I don't necessarily see how that's realized in the US given the drift to the right over so much of time. I would find that a much easier suggestion to accept in a country that was already quite naturally far to the political left.

In the middle of the third row, please. And then perhaps pass the microphone forward when you're done.

I just wanted to just kind of answer your question about... Name first. Oh, sorry, yes. Ben Odofin, postgraduate, modern history and politics graduate, and somebody who's really devoted their life to fighting for social justice and fighting against inequality in different jobs that I've done. I just wanted to just make the first point that in response to your question about the two missing chapters...

I agree with Dr. Glebe about, if you like, the social injustice and inequality, which seems to be missing from your analysis. But I'll also add the increasing challenges as never before against, you know, against, you know, critical thinking.

Because can you imagine someone like a Hitler or a Stalin having access to the type of digitalized mass media and algorithms which are now available to the populists, the hard right and the hard left populists?

But my question is really about my frustration with liberalism because I see the Overton window has increasingly been pushed to the hard right. And I don't see any counter response, any counter balance, any equally robust response from liberalism that actually counteracts

and robustly defends the values that Karl Popper and yourself have been seeking to articulate. What I see is endless triangulation with the narrative that is set, the whip hand, which the far right seem to increasingly have in our political discourse. And that spells very ominous dangers for the future. Thank you.

If you could pass it forward, but I'm not... You want to respond, but I just... I'll give a quick response to that. So in response to the two parts of your question. So I'm very glad that you made the connection with the critical rationalism of Karl Popper because I think that point, the emphasis on the importance of critical thinking, rational discourse, and the ability to respond to challenges, that was very much a reason why I wanted to...

kind of place this book within that legacy of Popper because critical rationalism was such a central component of what he did. And I think that's incredibly important. I completely share your worries about what would happen if certain political figures from the past had access to social media today. In terms of the Overton window, yes, I agree that the

perception of what is acceptable discourse to articulate in public has actually been shifted considerably. And actually, in response to just, you mentioned liberalism,

You'll notice that I actually avoid use of liberalism entirely in this book for the most part. And that was actually a calculated choice because I think in response to the Overton window, for whatever reason in the US context, describing something as a liberal position is basically a guarantee that it would not be read by a significant portion of the population.

Part of the reason why I like the idea of the open society is that it has much less conceptual baggage associated with it. And so in talking about the open society, I thought it gave me an opportunity to try to articulate some of these values, free movement of people, free exchange of ideas, the value of diverse multicultural communities, in a way that might actually make it more accessible to people who wouldn't write it off immediately as just

something which falls within the traditional kind of liberal tradition. I'm going to take one question from online, and then I'm going to ask you to put your hands up again, but I'll have you first, all right? No, after I've done the online one, if that's okay. So my first online question, anonymous person, so they haven't done what I asked them to do, but back to open borders. Okay.

How robust is the finding that open borders would be economically advantageous? But it's the second bit I think is a bit more... It takes us in a slightly different direction. Do those findings rest on the assumption of international cooperation or do we have a problem of collective action? So, well, the findings actually do vary quite considerably because, I mean, all of these different models make a wide variety of different assumptions. Some find...

values that are below the 50% increase on world GDP that I quoted, others find values around 60, 80%, and so on. There is actually quite a wide range.

So the point that I was just trying to rely on was not the fact that there was any particular amount of gain that was so much the figure that was on the table, but actually it was rather, if you like, kind of relying on robustness analysis from philosophy of science, the fact that so many different economic models which made very different underlying assumptions all generally pointed in a similar direction

namely that there would be substantive economic gain from allowing this to happen. And following robustness analysis and philosophy of science, that's important because it suggests that truth is found at the intersection of independent lies. So multiple models, they all disagree, they all point in a similar direction of travel.

Now, in terms of how do we solve a problem of collective action, well, I mean, this is obviously the kind of next important strategic question because once you imagine this kind of scenario, then you just can immediately ask, well, what happens in the next few stages? Can people try to find ways of gaming the system so as to...

not completely have open borders but only partially and then you being able to share the resources unequally i mean i'm in working with the economics literature i'm working at the kind of limits of my pay grade and i would have to defer to you know a real economist like alan or others to kind of tell the final story on this i mean i'm

I'm just a philosopher. Thank you. Hi, I'm Yusuf. I'm a non-academic from New Zealand. My question is kind of about sovereignty, I think. So, in your opinion, at what point does an individual or group become intolerable to the open society and then warrant sanction? And what does that mean? Or, looked at another way, how should...

open societies relate to so-called closed societies internationally? Thank you very much for that question. I think that's a very interesting question. So with the defense of value pluralism, the vision of the open society that I have is one which is not necessarily liberal. It's one that does allow communities to organize along conservative principles, perhaps really quite highly conservative principles.

The point that I articulate in the book is that it all depends on whether the members who choose to join that community are fully informed, they consent to joining the community, and then they also have the ability to leave if they decide that they want to later. And so the point is, when would a community that's, say, very conservative, has very kind of restrictive, perhaps unpleasant practices,

be seen as falling afoul? Well, I think it's when there start to be significant negative externalities that that community creates and imposes on others. I think that if you think that free, fully informed adults can exercise their freedom of association to form groups and then engage in whatever social practices they want,

as long as they're all consenting fully informed individuals, then there's quite a wide amount of what's permissible. But it's the moment that there are negative externalities that then spill across the community boundaries into others.

And so then it's a question of, well, at that point someone needs to step in and say, at this point the society can no longer tolerate this because you're actually not just engaged in your own form of life, you're creating problems for other people. In another part of the book I do say that we have to be careful about how we understand problems.

Simply knowing that a community exists, engaged in practice of which you morally disapprove, does not count as the right kind of negative externality. This is kind of tied into the joking definition of a Puritan, right? The person who believes that

someone somewhere is having fun, right? And that's a bad thing that needs to be stopped. It is simply knowing that another community exists engaged in a practice is not a negative externality. Okay, can I have show of hands again? Right, which way shall I do this? If you pass the microphone back, we'll start there, then here, then here, then there, and then we probably run out of time. And I have one other online question.

Hi, I'm Jemima. I'm a philosophy and public policy student here at the LSE.

I was wondering, it seems like kind of throughout what you said and what you've presented that there is sort of a cyclical nature to kind of the destructiveness of the open society. Do you believe that there is kind of this connection between the structures of the open society and this inversion piece? And if so, is there something, is there some sort of checks and balances system that we can build into so that we're not constantly having

Like we don't have to have people like you publishing a book like every couple of years saying we need to reform this now and if so or if not is that then just an argument against the open society. Right okay I mean thank you for that question I mean I think that's that's another very difficult question to answer I mean.

I'm afraid this kind of goes into the point that Alan was saying about, you know, at the end of the day, you have to give a policy recommendation. And this is kind of along the lines of a policy recommendation. I would actually, I suppose...

can go back to maybe the remark about critical rationalism and the comment that Ilka made about wants and needs and intuition-based decision-making. Because I think part of the reason why we have ended up in this situation is that one reason why

we have ended up here is that people have been making decisions for reasons that are understandable but I don't think are necessarily good reasons or well-informed reasons. They're reasons that might be based on kind of perfectly understandable emotional responses. They might be based on

either individual biases, but in other cases it could also be people are reacting in ways which are being exploited strategically by others. And I think that if we, following Popper, at least embrace some of the values of critical rationalism more generally, then that would actually provide some kind of corrective mechanism towards the situation.

Other than that, I'm at the limit of my recommendations. And the gentleman in the second row here. Thank you very much, Jason. It's Charles Sherwood, part of the extended faculty here at the LSE. I wanted just to ask about the open borders. So...

I find the argument for open borders over the long term very compelling. But the problem seems to me to be the transition costs. And those transition costs fall unevenly on different groups. In my business career, I felt I was a major beneficiary of the EU agreement.

but I'm not sure that's true of unskilled workers here in the UK. We had a long period of high employment, but no responding increase in real wages and little investment in productivity, and I think many perceive that as a result of the open borders and the influx of cheap labour from Eastern Europe. Is that a concern for you when you advocate open borders?

Yes, yes it is. I think this goes back to a point that Alan mentioned earlier as well. I mean, I think that we do need to realize that any kind of policy of the movement of labor is going to be disproportionately advantageous to certain skill groups. I think what we need to then think about, though, is

over the longer run, how the state can best use the additional economic gains that are generated through immigration so as to be able to use that as additional revenue or wealth to reinvest in its own country. Because

One of the difficulties that we find ourselves in right now is that with the low economic growth, there's just insufficient resource for the labor government to be able to make the kinds of necessary investments in infrastructure and elsewhere that it wants to and believes it needs to. If it's the case that opening up borders allows economic growth, admittedly, initially, it

certain skill sets, that then at least gives you the opportunity to redeploy that revenue and invest it in the country in ways to try to help the worst off. So I think my response would just be you need a very, a plan with some

longer term vision about how you're going to try to use the growth as a way of investing into the country to try to help those people who don't immediately benefit from such a policy. And a government with the will to do it.

So, and so now only one there. This could be good because we might finish on time. So one question over here, please. Yeah, my name is Jeneet Mehta and although I'm an entrepreneur, I have studied philosophy at the University of Mumbai.

So you talked about value pluralism. I want to ask you about what kind of solution you have. For example, there are universally agreed truths or values like everyone knows animal cruelty is bad. I come from west of India where a majority of the population is vegetarian.

Very similarly, you talk about alcohol. So there are certain things on which everyone agrees. Everyone in the room will also agree that yes, this should be the right thing to do. But if

A person in an open society, they talk that we are not able to control ourselves. We think animal cruelty is bad, but it's like part of our life and we can't have a solution for it. So what kind of approach you suggest for how an open society should respond? Should it be tougher or what kind of an approach you should take?

Jason, could I integrate that with this other question from online, which is we live in very politically divided and polarized times. So where do we go from here economically, psychologically, philosophically? And what's the end point of this perpetual polarity? It does end saying, and what do you think of Trump's reelection? But...

Maybe you answered that in an early question without actually saying anything about him. But I thought they might... Yeah, so I will just answer the Trump re-election question first, which was that, in a way, it reinforced, I think, the timeliness of the book because it showed that the issues...

populism, which I was talking about, are still live and present in a way which would have been less obvious if Trump had not been elected, especially with the popular vote, as well as the Electoral College. So in response to the question, I think that there are a number of interesting tensions here. And I think it goes back to a question of whether, how we think about value pluralism across countries

and value pluralism as realized within a country and within different groups within a country. Now, one thing that I would suggest is that when it comes to some of the examples that you give, like perhaps animal cruelty, at least with some more extreme forms of animal cruelty, I would say that that's a reason why I'm talking about value pluralism rather than

value relativism because I would thought that there would be some forms of animal cruelty which I would think that no kind of sufficiently advanced form of social technology would end up kind of incorporating into its body of practices. So I think that there's a way of trying to accommodate that. I think that there's a real challenge in thinking about what to do if you've got significant differences in practices across countries. I'm

Sometimes I worry that I'm left in a slightly uncomfortable position of saying that, well, so long as everyone in that country is sufficiently informed of the alternatives, they perhaps consented to agree to participate in the practice, but they have the opportunity to leave if they don't like it.

then at some point you end up getting perhaps a kind of a group selection argument that if a practice is sufficiently discomforting to enough people, then you'll end up having enough people leave so that that practice is no longer a sustainable ongoing concern. I think that that's also, I think there is something to be said for that.

But I think that one unfortunate fact about value pluralism is that there will be times when there are variations in social practices where looking at it from the outside, you are left in a state of feeling uncomfortable that that persists. And I think that having to endure that feeling of discomfort is perhaps a necessary price to pay for the avoidance of totalitarianism and authoritarianism.

Okay, so the only thing left is for me to do some thank yous. So first of all, thank you to you, the audience, both here and online. I get to look at all of you. You have been remarkably attentive. It's been wonderful watching you and wonderful listening to your questions. So thank you very much.

if you want this book on sale outside with Jason who might sign it or there are cards with the QR code to get the download that is open access so free. So thank you to all of you. Secondly, thank you to these two people on the panel. It's been marvelous having you here. I think it always adds to what you get out of an event if you've got other people talking with the author.

but thanks most of all, Jason, to you. Thank you for writing the book. Thank you for your time talking to all of us about it and answering all of these questions. Marvelous effort. Well done. Thank you.

Thank you for listening. You can subscribe to the LSE Events podcast on your favourite podcast app and help other listeners discover us by leaving a review. Visit lse.ac.uk forward slash events to find out what's on next. We hope you join us at another LSE Events soon.