Why We Talk Past Each Other

Coupling, Decoupling, and Different Perceptions of Money

Have you ever had a conversation where you felt like you and the other person were living in different universes? This happens to me. Fairly often. Whether it's in a friendly chat, a book I’m reading, or, especially, a campaign speech, it can feel like we're not even speaking the same language.

Obviously, people have different values, but this isn't about differing values. It's about fundamentally different perceptions of reality. It’s about describing what is true about the world, yet somehow describing different realities. It happens when we’re talking about whether things are easier or harder than they used to be, whether the world has gotten better or worse. Sometimes it seems like we’re talking about different worlds.

Why do we so often talk past each other? I think there are many reasons for this, but I want to address two in this essay:

1. The divide between "couplers" and "decouplers" in processing information.

2. Our vastly different perceptions of money.

By understanding these concepts, we might just be able to bridge the communication gap and have more productive conversations. Or, at the very least, we'll understand why some conversations are so confusing.

Decoupling

I’m a natural decoupler. That is, I tend to separate my thoughts on issues, people, and ideas into multiple, independent axes. This is just how I naturally think about things. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing, but I lean towards thinking it’s good and, if nothing else, recognizing that some people are decouplers while others are not seems beneficial.

One of my first “blog posts”, from well over a decade ago, (and way before I was actually publishing any of them, hence the quotation marks) was on the way people talked about torture. (Remember when that was the talk of the town? Seems so long ago… *Pauses to check if Guantanamo Bay is still open*... yes, it still is.)

Back then, people fell into two camps:

1. "Torture is effective and moral"

2. "Torture is ineffective and immoral"

This always confused me. The effectiveness and morality of torture seem like two separate, mostly unrelated things, which would imply that some people should think torture is moral and ineffective or immoral and effective. But where were the other two camps? These people didn’t seem to exist.

That’s because people had joined these two distinct concepts in their heads into one, something like, “I support torture in this case” or “I don’t support torture in this case”. But to a decoupler, combining these just confuses things. Here’s how a decoupler sees the issue:

Maybe things aren’t perfectly orthogonal in all cases. If people see you doing immoral things, they might be less likely to work with you, thereby making you less effective. But, in the case of torture, they’re close enough to orthogonal. No terrorist is going to say, “Based on the suffering you have bestowed upon me, I would tell you all you want to know to make it stop, but I believe this torture is immoral. Therefore, I shall not speak.”

You see the same thing with how people use the terms ‘brave’ and ‘cowardly’. Couplers (or are they “non-decouplers”? I don’t know) like to say things like, “Those cowardly terrorists…”. To a decoupler, this is confusing: “Those people who snuck into the country of their enemy, hijacked planes, and flew them into buildings… those people… they lack the courage to stand up for their beliefs.” What??? Are we speaking different languages?

Couplers tend to use 'brave' only to describe people who stand up for causes they agree with. They rarely, if ever, describe their opponents or enemies as brave, even if those people take risks for their beliefs. In contrast, decouplers view bravery as a separate concept from agreement or disagreement. To a decoupler, someone can be brave even if you disagree with their actions or beliefs.

Perhaps the biggest source of confusion between the two approaches is in discussing what one thinks is true and what one wants to be true. These are very different things for decouplers but some couplers conflate them. For example, there are lots of things I would like to be true about people, society, and humanity, that simply aren’t. 

For example, I like diversity. I also like trusting societies. I would like for more diverse societies to be more trusting. However, study after study has shown that this is not true.

In Robert Putnam’s famous “Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century”, he found that “immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital”. That is, people living in more diverse areas have lower levels of trust in their neighbors.¹ More recent meta-analyses have shown the same thing. You can see the same thing in international comparisons. The Scandinavian countries are always at the top of international lists of social cohesion and trustworthiness, but they’re near the bottom of lists of countries by diversity.

This is not something I would like to be true. The US is only going to get more diverse, and, at first approximation, this sounds like we’re heading towards a less trusting society.² But that doesn’t make it any less true.

There are plenty of such examples. Many people want to believe that money doesn’t correlate with happiness above a certain level, but this is not true. The question of whether an omnipotent creator of the universe has taken a personal interest and willingness to intervene in our successes is also one where opinions diverge. The same coupling is probably behind the mentality of a lot of opposition to climate change—through motivated reasoning, they confused what they wanted to be true with what was true.

There are plenty of such examples where people allow what they want to be true to affect what they think is true. 

• Money and happiness: Many people prefer to downplay the impact of money on happiness, for example by believing that money doesn’t correlate with happiness above a certain level. However, research suggests this isn't accurate—income and happiness continue to correlate even at higher income levels.

• Religious beliefs: It’s easy to see why someone might want an all-powerful deity on their side. It would be nice for an omnipotent creator of the universe to take a personal interest in one's life and to respond to one’s prayers. But this does not make it more likely to be true.

• Climate change: People might not want climate change to be real because it suggests a larger role for government, but that doesn’t impact the question of whether it’s true.

People seem to decouple more in some domains than others. Although people are probably still biased toward thinking their candidate is going to win, it’s not uncommon to hear someone say, “I want candidate X to win, but I think candidate Y will”. So perhaps the amount of coupling varies by topic or domain.

But you can still see evidence of coupling in how people describe their preferred candidate. However, with electoral candidates, the qualities aren't orthogonal—the smarter candidate might very well be the best candidate. But we should suspect that we’re talking to a coupler when candidate X is not only the smartest and nicest, but also the best-looking, most eloquent, wittiest, and, of course, the most fun to have a beer with.

I do wonder if there are times when a decoupler would benefit from thinking like a coupler. Not just understanding that there’s a difference, but genuinely coupling orthogonal ideas. One possibility is when you need to “fake it till you make it.” Or perhaps couplers excel at making quick decisions or convincing themselves they enjoy the taste of broccoli. People who work in sales might also perform better as couplers, as they can blur the distinction between what’s good for themselves and what’s good for the customer.

I think the coupler vs decoupler dichotomy explains some of the times when people talk past each other, though, clearly, there are other sources. Let’s talk about another source: money. 

Money

What is money? What does it do? Is money stuff? Is it a proxy for stuff? Or is it status? Is it a relative thing or an absolute thing? If we both have $100, then a year later, I have $200 and you have $1,000, am I richer or poorer?

Psychologist David Pinsof provides his insight: “Money is not about stuff. It’s about two things: status and coldness.” His whole article is worth reading, but, in short, Pinsof argues that money represents status and coldness because:

Money is about status:

• Money acts as a modern status symbol, similar to yam size in Pohnpei or battle trophies in other cultures.

• It explains why poverty is relative, why the desire for money is insatiable, and why "greed" is considered icky (overt status-seeking).

• Even basic necessities like housing, clothes, and education are often tied to status concerns.

Money is about coldness: 

• Money represents "explicit contingent exchange," which signals a lack of warmth or true friendship.

• It explains why we prefer giving gifts over cash, why commercial transactions feel impersonal, and why mixing money with personal relationships can feel awkward.

• The use of money often implies a lack of deep, caring relationships and instead represents a cold, transactional approach to human interaction.

The way people think about money obviously varies by person and, on average, with income levels. But I think Pinsod is largely correct here. This leads to: 

So if money is a signal of status and coldness, then money is not going to have positive vibes for us, is it? No, when we think of status-seeking, we think of selfishness, narcissism, and pettiness. When we think of coldness, we think of cruelty, dehumanization, and manipulation. No wonder we think money is the root of all evil! It’s a combination of the two ickiest things in the world. And no wonder we’re so eager to show we hate capitalism. We want to show that we’re warm people who don’t care about status (which, of course, boosts our status). And no wonder libertarians—the people who like capitalism—seem so selfish and heartless. It’s like they’re wearing T-shirts that say “I’m a cold, competitive asshole.”

Speaking of libertarians, I think the main reason they’ve failed to convince anyone of their icky-sounding philosophy is that when they say “money,” they mean “stuff,” but when progressives say “money,” they mean “symbols of status and coldness.” 

For example, when progressives say, “Let’s raise the minimum wage,” what they mean is, “Let’s raise the status of poor people,” but libertarians hear: “Let’s stupidly force poor people to demand more stuff in exchange for their labor, thereby making them less employable.” When progressives say, “Economic inequality in America is terrible,” what they mean is, “The fact that some Americans [i.e. my political enemies] get way more respect than other Americans [i.e., my political allies] is terrible,” but libertarians hear “The fact that some Americans have an unfathomable amount of stuff, while other Americans have a merely fantastic amount of stuff, by global and historical standards, is terrible.” When progressives say, “Capitalism is exploitative,” what they mean is, “Cold, amoral status competition is exploitative,” but libertarians hear, “People voluntarily trading stuff is exploitative.”

I’ve never identified as a libertarian, but Pinsof seems to be taking the words out of my mouth when he quotes the libertarian, so… I guess that’s why I start all my stories with "Once upon a time, in a land free from government intervention..."

I don’t have much to add here. It’s common to hear that “capitalism is exploitative.” I hear this roughly in the way that Pinsof attributes to libertarians, but I think the speaker means it more in the progressive case. It’s a significant source of talking past one another. The way we think about money and status fundamentally shapes our worldviews. 

These differences in coupling and our perceptions of money are just two of many reasons we talk past each other. However, I believe they are foundational, shaping how we communicate, form opinions, and approach complex societal issues. It’s not always about having different values or information; sometimes, it’s about having different cognitive frameworks for processing that information.

1. There are enough researcher degrees of freedom in defining terms and how exactly to measure them to leave room for disagreements with any particular study. But, the general principle that some things about people and societies that we would like to be true are, in fact, not true, seems uncontroversial.

2. There are countless caveats and counterarguments one could make here (e.g., could this fact change over time?), but, I’m going to skip them for now so as not to distract from the main point, which holds whether or not this specific finding is true.