The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2026 features a town hall discussion on dilemmas associated with binary choices
At a World Economic Forum town hall on “Dilemmas around Binary Choices,” panelists explored why societies gravitate to either-or thinking despite complex realities. Behavioral economist Iris Bohnet explained “categorical thinking” as an adaptive shortcut—useful for rapid threat detection—but prone to stereotyping when categories harden. Former UK Foreign Secretary William Hague argued today’s politics and media ecosystems intensify binary framing, citing targeted messaging that replaces shared civic experiences: “This is what we’re now doing to democracy…giving people different sets of information.” He suggested citizen assemblies as a corrective, noting Ireland’s abortion process showed randomly selected citizens can produce workable compromise.
Journalist Barak Ravid urged separating “noise” from actionable facts, arguing audiences still value reporting on “what happened” more than commentary. Alice Evans connected polarization to structural shifts: fragmented media, individualized “echo chambers,” and rising solitude. Yet she emphasized “cultural leapfrogging,” where global content helps young women challenge patriarchal norms. She also warned that social disconnection erodes empathy and, eventually, willingness to redistribute amid AI-driven labor disruption.
Audience polling reinforced the tension: 75% felt public debate forces side-taking even with nuanced views; 62% believed binary choices can improve decision speed. As Bohnet put it, binaries may be “faster,” but not necessarily “better” or “morally right.”
Hello and welcome to Dilemmas Around Binary Choice, a panel discussion about how we navigate nuance in the decisions that we make. We have a really phenomenal panel. Thank you all for coming. I know it's a strange moment, but we're very happy to have you here. And I think it is a very timely discussion. First up we have, I will start with you, Iris. We have Iris bonnet, behavioral economist and director of women in public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School. We have Alice Evans, a visiting professor at Stanford and author of the forthcoming book, The Great Gender Divergence. We have Lord William Hague of Richmond, Chancellor of Oxford and former foreign Secretary under David, under David Cameron. And finally, we have Barak Ravid, a renowned political analyst and a reporter for Axios. Welcome, everyone. Iris, I wanted to start out very generally with you, as a behavioral economist. Obviously, we live in a very nuanced and complicated world. Things are very, very rarely black and white. But it seems like as humans, we do like to categorize things very definitively. We gravitate towards that. At least that is my sense. Why is that?
In fact, you just named the phenomenon that psychologists call categorical thinking. So we love putting things people, but also objects into categories, and that serves us well at times. So, you know, you walk across the street, you hear a sound, coming your way. This is not the moment to have very deep thinking, nuanced thinking, analytical thinking, but you follow your instinct. And sound means danger means a car and you run. So sometimes these categories serve us really well, and then other times they lead us to stereotype stereotyping people based on whether we're used to a woman being an engineer or a man being a nurse. And that just doesn't quite fit the category.
Well, speaking of binary choices, we have our own binary choices that we are presenting you. This is an interactive panel, so you can scan the QR code with your phone. There are a series of questions and you can feel free to answer them. And we will, we will address those at different moments in the conversation. But as we are, getting all of that lined up, I would love to go to you, William. You have a lot of experience in politics at the national and international level. Many of us have just come from a very interesting speech by U.S. President Donald Trump about Greenland, which was quite shocking and divisive. I think for many of us. I'm wondering how you see this moment as far as binary choices. I feel like I ask you this, and I'm putting you on the spot a little bit, because at this moment, I feel like nuance is being used in certain cases, or people are being accused of using nuance as ground cover for avoiding potentially standing up to President Trump or taking a stand, that that might be politically difficult.
Well, it was certainly yes, it was a speech with a lot of binary choices in it. One might almost say unitary rather than binary. You know, there's only one way, one choice, not even binary. But on Greenland it was quite binary. You will give it to us and we will be very pleased with you, or you will not give it to us, and we will remember that which is a threat of some kind. So there was a lot of there were a lot of categorical, category thinking in it, to, to pick up on what we, just heard, not a speech that will go down very well with audiences. Most audiences outside the United States, I think. And of course, what particularly struck me since I spent so much time working with the United States on Afghanistan when I was foreign secretary, and many British soldiers were killed there. I went there many times. Is that the president argued in this speech that if America was attacked, other the NATO allies would not come to its aid, that he would come to their aid. But actually, when America was attacked on nine over 11 NATO countries, all came to the aid of the United States. So even though the war was thousands of miles away, and in fact, dozens of Danish soldiers were killed in that war. So the, so I think that that will not go down well, but that's beside the point of whether this is binary. It's just that if you're going to give people binary choices, you do have to remember when they made a binary choice before of peace or war. That's a binary choice. And NATO allies made that choice for the United States. So, so not a speech will go down that well in, in Europe. But on your question about the, our other people hiding under the cover of nuance, well, no, faced with such a binary choice, they are trying to find the nuance of a solution. In dealing with a very, very powerful entity, the United States, and its president. So obviously they do not want to make it impossible to the last hope of a nuanced solution. They don't want to lose that. And that's why European leaders and British leaders have been quite tentative at the moment.
Searching for nuance, maybe, or or.
Searching for nuance.
A little breathing space.
Because there is a solution, there is a nuanced solution. And the president himself spoke about how many American bases were there in the Second World War in Greenland. They didn't have to own Greenland in order to do that. And indeed, there are US bases all over Europe. But it's not necessary to own Germany, in order to have US forces there, and for that to be part of defending the Western world. So, of course, there is there are there are many good nuanced solutions to this, dispute. And it was disappointing in the speech that he didn't seem open to that.
And, Barack, you have covered, geopolitical issues all over the world, all kinds of different situations. Is this one different in terms of the choices that leaders have, or is this typical of geopolitical situations?
So first it's it's different because if you told me, I don't know, a year ago that I'll have to as part of covering foreign policy and national security, the number one issue will be Greenland. I would tell you that you're completely nuts. And I found myself, having to cover, this issue, that, you know, first, I have to say, as somebody who covered wars in the Middle East for the last 20 years, there's something refreshing in covering a possible U.S. invasion to Greenland. Okay, from a journalistic point of view, but.
Just like a good headline.
It's it's not it's not even a good headline. It's it's it's it's an amazing headline. I mean, no, I mean, think about it. We discussed it. I sat with my editors right before we entered here and we said, and our headline was Trump rules out using force in Greenland. And we said, how incredible or crazy or terrible it is that that's our headline, because the headline is what's interesting and what's new and what's different. And the fact that the we we took a headline that the US president will not invade the NATO, NATO ally and we said, wow, this is amazing. And not so I mean, up until a few months ago, if I told you that the president of United States say they will not invade Greenland, you tell me. All right. So from a from a journalistic point of view, without again, I'm not this is something I try to do a lot. Which is not to say, I mean, I just think that it doesn't really matter. You know, what I personally think about, you know, what Trump's doing in Greenland or any other thing. I'm trying to just like report the facts. I think it's it in in today's world of, you know, I think the, the, it matters to people, even though a lot of the media is, has a lot of opinions in it, I still think it's really matters to focus on, like, what actually happened. And I think that in this case and in the speech we just heard, I think it's there was a lot of noise, as in everything with Donald Trump, there's a lot of noise and a lot of time, especially, by the way, in Europe, people focus on what Trump says and not what he does. And if you, at the end of the day, take out all the noise, okay? And all the this is why, by the way, you said it was a, you know, it was a divisive speech. Okay. It's which is a legitimate opinion. Okay. But it's an opinion, okay. Because in today's world, I don't know. There's almost anything anyone would say. Somebody else would be able to say that it's divisive. Okay. So but at the bottom line, when you take out all the noise, what happened here? Trump said that he wants to start immediate negotiations. That's the that's the main action item out of the speech, which to me sounds like sort of a sort of a shift. Okay. So that's what I'm saying. There's a lot of noise, and especially with a speech that is like three hours or whatever it was. But if we take out all the noise at the end of the day, what he said, let's start negotiations.
So, Alice, I want to talk to you, because obviously, binary traces are not just something that happens in the geopolitical sphere, but in other spheres as well. You have a book that is coming out very soon, quite soon on On Gender, The great gender Divergence. Talk about how how these issues come up in gender and how they're playing out, especially at this moment now.
Okay, so maybe if I just take a step back to think away from January 2026 and think about technology and ideological persuasion in the grand historical period. So, you know, let's go back 200 years ago. You're living in your village. You're paying close attention to what your church leaders or neighbors say and think. That is your bubble. Then over the early and mid 20th century, we see the rise of state media and independent media companies. So our thought, our ideas become increasingly national homogenization. Right? So Swiss people might watch similar media, Germans think similar media. And from 1929 in America, and they start watching national radio. The rise of Joe DiMaggio. Right. So that's building up a sense of national culture. But over since the 1970s, you know, there's been you require less capital to build a media company, more people can entrance, more media entrance. So that enables a democratization of the media environment. More people can start their own podcasts, you know, very easily. I've got my own podcast. But as more people enter the media environment, you also get much greater diversity. Simultaneously, each of us on our own smartphones can start to curate our own echo chamber. And so you might see that people's natural inclinations, whether it's in a progressive or conservative direction, might become more polarized simultaneously. Let me point to two additional trends we see in many countries in Europe, the US, Latin America, more women entering the world of work and starting to curate their own content, starting to persuade people at scale not just women writers in the 19th century, but women writing their own TV shows, persuading the world to push them to be more egalitarian. And thirdly, I suppose we see the rise of people spending more time alone. So as people get sucked into those bubbles, as people start curating their own content, spending less time with people in their village that would cause more polarization. And what I'd say is that but that ideological polarization isn't an inherently negative thing. So, for example, I do interviews all over the world in Mexico, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Malaysia. And what I see there is what I call cultural leapfrogging. So a young woman living in a patriarchal city might decide, no, I want to go and watch Netflix. I want to watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel or Emily in Paris. And I get a taste for female independence. And I see this all over the world that young women on their smartphones, and we see it right now in Iran, that young women are pushing back against patriarchal ideas. So I just wanted to say that, you know, the world is changing. People can curate their own content, and a lot of technological changes are leading to polarization. But for young women in the world, that's not necessarily a bad thing because of this cultural leapfrogging.
Well, that is very interesting. I feel like you are right that right now it's so easy to reach a global audience and for people to tap into global content in a way that is very radically transformative. I think it's happened so gradually and is so widespread, it's almost difficult to think of it. I mean, it's definitely happening. Iris, both you and William are at colleges now at Oxford and Harvard. I'm wondering if this is something that you are seeing at the collegiate level. If you're seeing kind of more of this exposure and maybe more polarization.
Good question. I don't really know. I think something that's happening in colleges, and I think both of our colleges are probably very typical in that respect, is that people develop a superordinate identity. And that's actually one way to overcome polarization. What is super. And that means you are a Harvard student. You are now a Harvard student, you're now an Oxford student, and we are all at the web. We are all wafers now. And there are certain rules that come with being a wafer. I just made this up. This is not very elegant, but it's true. Is that true? Okay, but yeah, the rules of being wafer. You get an email, somebody like to meet you, you say yes. Right you are. It's just so, That's why I think our microcosms are probably not necessarily representative of the world, so we don't see that quite as dramatically. But I think it is because, students and faculty and staff, everyone really kind of feels like we have this shared identity.
Yes, I think that's true. And also in universities, in leading universities make a huge effort to avoid polarization of any polarized debate in the world does become a debate in a student body and in a university. But universities are particularly well placed to take countermeasures to say, for instance, in Oxford, we say, right, we will have we have this thing called the Sheldonian series and the Sheldonian Theatre, where we invite people to debate difficult issues that are nuanced with each other and listen to each other and realize there is not necessarily a single right answer. So. So if you're an Oxford student, you can benefit from from that. That is the environment that you're in and that the university is trying to create. So it's not necessarily the Harvard student or the Oxford student that is the most subject to this.
Also, if I can jump in here because you just made me think of that, and I don't know how prevalent that is at Oxford, but negotiation is actually an important topic that we teach. Now it's quite different from the context that you just discussed before because, one of the core principles, actually, of negotiation is that you go beyond the binary and you also go beyond zero sum thinking that it is about creative thinking, about finding solutions, about getting into nuance, about give and take, about multi issues. And I, I want to believe that this is not based on empirical evidence, but I want to believe that, you know, learning how to debate, being confronted with different perspectives and learning how to negotiate productively might help.
Can I add one other thing we've got at Oxford? So we have something you don't have in the United States, an 800 year track record. So we can go back a long way and see the evidence of history. So if you divide up the history of Oxford for 300 years, you had to be a Catholic to be at Oxford. That was the whole point of the place, was to educate the Catholic clergy. Then for 300 years you had to be a Protestant. You must not be a Catholic.
Speaking of binary, yes.
So actually it was more binary in the past. You are a Catholic or you don't go to Oxford, then you are a Protestant. You don't go to Oxford. It took 600 years before they said, we don't care whether you are a Catholic or a Protestant, which of course now we consider to be the correct position or whatever religion you may be, but that's quite recent. That is that's quite recent in the history of the institution. So there are, you know, it wasn't like the there was a natural human state where everything was, where everything was perfect and not polarized. I think we are going into a bad period now, I think, although with many with many beneficial effects as well, but looked at in the perspective of history. But most of human history is pretty binary. I think.
That's really interesting. Barack, I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind weighing in on what Alice said, that that an increase in binary choices is not necessarily a bad thing, that it can be a good thing. Do you see it that way from your perspective?
First, I, I mean, I totally agree, because, you know, sometimes we, we sort of, say, oh, you know, the polarization is terrible. People are, you know, like in the media. All right. People, if they watch Fox News, they don't watch CNN, if they watch MSNBC, MSNBC, they don't watch Fox News. They're in their echo chambers. ET cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I, by the way, I suffer from it personally, because it's very hard to, you know, you know, I'm trying to reach audiences. But at the same time, I think what it does is that, it creates, it creates more content. You know, exactly that. I totally agree. First, I think more content is good. Okay. That's because it's, you know, more content is more work for me or more job opportunities for me. But, but I think it's good because, you see, like, a lot of creativity out of this. I mean, the again, the problem is that again, it's echo chambers and you, you like, you don't, you know, podcast is a good is a is a good example because that's like the the big fashion now. But you see how you have you know, on the one hand you have especially in politics, you almost don't have, podcasts that are, that are catering to everybody who's just interested in politics. Like the podcasts are very much, you know, if you're a conservative, if you're.
Yes, very particular.
If you're liberal, if you're if you're a Democrat, but like, moderate Democrat, you have your, podcast, if you're like, lefty progressive, you have your podcast and it's the same thing on the other side. So but at the same time, you see how it's like, it's really fascinating to, you know, to see the, the kind of, creativity it brings out. You know, I'll give you an example. And again, it's not I'm not saying if it's a matter of personal taste, but, for example, Joe Rogan. Okay, you.
Know.
Very famous American podcast.
Yeah. I mean.
In fact, went on.
Yeah.
So again, some people like it, some people don't like it, but it's like, it's and this is like, this is an example of something that went huge. Okay. But there are a lot of those people, people that, you know, just decided, okay, I'm doing this thing. And I think it's great.
May I just interject? I was going to answer the question. Yes. So I want to say.
That, you know, I'm not going to say that polarization is inherently good or bad. I was just trying to highlight in more patriarchal countries, what we're seeing is that women are carving a space for themselves and, you know, opting out of that patriarchy. That said, in many Western societies, I do think that there is a problem not just in terms of polarization, but the fact that if people spend more time alone, if they're not forming so many friendships, young men in their 20s spending as much time alone as men in their 70s, a massive decline in coupling 55% of Americans under the age of five are single. Among 12th graders. People increasingly do not want to marry, do not want to have children. That is a society not just ideologically coming apart, but also socially. And so going forward, you know, it is a world in which people do not necessarily listen and learn from each other's perspectives. I was recently in Catalonia and I was interviewing a young man, and he was saying, you know, having female friends was so important to him because they know women had told him, you know, the one guy called her when she rejected some guy, right? I apologize for the expletives. And so and he learned and he came to empathize with his friend. Or she had said that, you know, when they went to watch a football club and it was especially rowdy, she didn't like that, or she preferred to have a handshake rather than kiss on the cheeks or all these kinds of preferences. That's the way that we have friends. We care about their well-being and we adjust and we create a more inclusive society, right? Whereas if people don't understand each other, if they're not spending time together as friends or couples, then there's less empathy. And I think that going forward, you will have all been to sessions at Davos, all about Davos, all about AI and labor productivity. If we do see labor displacement, then more people spending time at home alone, then we will have to, you know, the only way that societies will maintain consumption is through redistribution. But if society frays, if that social contract breaks, then people will be less inclined to redistribute. So if people are not socializing on the jobs, they're not socializing on the friends, then there is a number of problems associated with solitude. So I see ideological polarization as part of this broader problem of people coming alone. So, you know. Yes.
Thank you. Add to that how that manifests in politics, how this has changed. When I was first elected to the British Parliament, which was 1989. So before we moved into this media age, and this is the downside of the barrack, but the upside really of the change, but the downside, I was in a very rural district that I represented. My way of campaigning in an election would be to go to a village, get out a loudhailer, ask everybody in the village to come out onto the village green. Yes, yes, a megaphone. Okay. Megaphone. And on the whole half the village would come out onto the green and I would address them, and then they would ask me questions. And it was a collective experience of democracy. Some of them were my supporters, some of them were not my supporters, but they all got heard the same message and they could all discuss it together. Now, if I was the candidate in that district, that would never happen. That would be.
Because you wouldn't go, because they wouldn't come.
Out because you would. What you would do is you would have the profile. You would deal with them individually, right? You would get them on Facebook, you would get even if you went to that village, you would visit that house and that house and that house and miss out the rest, because you want to turn out your vote. And you would you would have already probably got to them on, whatever, whichever social media channel based on their profile. And they are not then having a collective experience. Some are receiving one message, some are receiving another message. Imagine if you tried to run your company by giving half the board of directors one set of information about the company. It's doing really well. And the other half, oh, the company is doing really badly. What would happen at the board meeting? It would be very polarized. They would all fall at the company would probably collapse. This is what we're now doing to democracy. We are giving people different sets of information to some of them, while they become more socially disconnected.
You could call.
This precision democracy or precision campaigning, right?
Because I'm not a.
Collective no, no, no. But I'm thinking of precision medicine. Precision medicine is kind of something beautiful. We're thinking, I really understand you. I give you exactly the right medication. That's what you're just describing to us. We're also doing democracy with these very horrible side effects.
Yes,
But if I may disagree, apologies for usurping the chair. I don't know if we necessarily call it precision democracy, because as people become more cocooned in their ideological echo chambers, cocooned by this righteous groupthink, you know, we're the we're on the side of the angels, and everyone thinks they're on the side of the angels, then people might become more illiberal that they want, by all means, their group to stay in power, to monopolize power, and to repress the opposition. So I would think that the rise of ideological polarization might be weakening tolerance of dissent. So I don't know if it's necessarily precision democracy.
William, I do want to bring up something that you mentioned to me right before our panel, which is that one thing that you noticed was when you were a representative, that you found yourself, that it was harder to change your mind or that you were, in fact, more polarized because you felt like you were answering to people. Whereas would you mind talking about that?
Well, yes. My point is that if you go into the House of Commons now or the House of Representatives in the United States, it's very binary, you know, on our topic and the member, you can predict almost exactly how everybody is going to vote and how they're going to argue. But if you actually got a group of their constituents together in there, the people who voted for them, it would be nothing like as binary, and they would be able to arrive at more nuanced and compromise solutions and therefore more able to arrive at solutions. And a good example of I think we need to find innovations in Democracy Now, such as citizens assemblies, which have been used successfully, because it turns out that if you have a randomly chosen group of people, they have to be randomly chosen so that they are not represented. They are. They don't have a track record. They aren't committed to campaign for danger.
I mean, I feel like fear in my heart, but maybe.
Well, you don't, of course, but don't use them to govern the country necessarily, but use them to recommend. Ireland did this, for instance, a very binary problem. The abortion law in Ireland set up a citizens assembly they came up with. They included lots of people who were very strong religious, had very strong religious beliefs. But they when they sat together, they came up with a solution that was then proposed in a referendum in Ireland. And the people approved it. And I think we could use these kinds of techniques much more, because politicians are now they are, they are they have to please that media audience because that's their audience. They've lost the other audience. They've only got one audience now. So they have to please that. And so they're stuck with their party and their party line and they or if they're a Republican, they have to do what President Trump says because they, they've got no other way to go. Whereas take some random citizens, they don't have these inhibitions. And it turns out that people put together are dramatically more reasonable than one might think.
That is very interesting. I wanted to also talk a little bit about something you mentioned, Alice, which was work, and AI, which is another one of the big themes, here at World Economic Forum this year. I think I have a we wanted to look at some of our results, but I think I had a clicker somewhere and I do not have it. Oh, okay. I have failed in my duties as a moderator. But I did want to ask because you have a book coming out about work, I believe. And would you mind talking a little bit about some of the choices that we're going to be seeing in our workplaces and our jobs.
That's happening? So the book is called the Make Work Fair. So it's primarily about fairness at work. And the argument that we're making is that meritocracy, meritocracy can't happen without true fairness. And so we have to make sure we equalize opportunities for everyone. And that means them going into our systems, how we organize work. That includes AI, but is not just AI. Many, many systems don't include AI at this point. Performance appraisals, for example, are still typically made by humans. We run our meetings sometimes, of course, virtually, but also in person. And so that's what we're getting into. We're we're focusing on the types of behaviors that we'd like to see in organizations that would allow people to thrive.
Is that I mean, are you seeing this in, I don't know, in media and in politics, obviously, you have been working in media for a long time and many different media.
You mean the.
How the how AI influences the.
Yeah, just I mean, media, certainly. I mean, I am also in media, so perhaps I'm a little bit biased, but it does seem to be under an enormous transformation at this point at least. I mean, coming from the perspective of the US. But technological is certainly a big part of it, but it's also become a lot more politicized and other things. So yeah, I'm wondering if that's something that you're noticing.
So I think.
In the workplace.
I think this is and again, this is my personal opinion, after, you know, doing this for 20 years. I think that at the end of the day, I'm not saying that there's no technological revolution and that AI doesn't influence. It's all true. But at least in journalism, I think it is. It is maybe, I hope I'm not, like, totally wrong because then it's going to be a problem. But I think that at least in journalism, it's one of the only professions that I think they will still need us, regardless of the revolution, because they're not going to need all of us, but they're going to need, those who are good and those who are professional, because you cannot I don't think that AI can replace, what professional journalists are doing. And.
I keep thinking of of Iris's term precision democracy. I mean, in that case, though, do you need journalists? If you have algorithms telling you what different people want to hear?
I think you need. I think you need them if you if you if you're interested.
People want them.
I see that every day.
Going to report. They're going to say that you're a liar. And there are people with another point of view that it doesn't matter what you report, they'll say that you're a genius. Okay, I'm not talking about that. But I still feel that regardless of that, this is something that I do see that it's it manages to cross political divides, that people are still very much interested in what happened. People are still interested. They want to know. They want you to tell them the story of what happened, okay? They don't want you, or they'll start, you'll start losing them if you start telling them. What do you think about what happened? Okay, then. But if you tell them what happened, okay, if you tell them. How did Trump made the decision not to attack Iran last week? Okay. People are fascinated. They want to know. They want to read about it, even.
If it's something they don't want to hear.
Yes, they want to read about it. They might get angry, but they want they're interested in what happened and how decisions are made. And this is something that only professional journalism can do. AI cannot do that. Okay.
The tragedy is that we've lost the professional journalism at the local level. We've already lost most of our journalists, not not you, but the future you who would be a local reporter in a small American town or British town, is now not becoming a journalist because the local news has been destroyed. Local newspapers have been destroyed, not by AI, but again by. You can see I've really got it in for social media. But the by that but no but.
Replaced.
Well they're not being replaced because where is the person who said, well irrespective of whether that mayor is Republican or Democrat, I think there is corruption going on in this town. And I am the investigative reporter who is going to find it out. And that reporter doesn't exist in most cases.
So so I again, I think they are being sort of reborn, how they're being reborn in, in people saying in, in, expert in, in expert matter, you know, in, in subject matter experts, okay. That you have I don't know if you have that, for example. I'm sure you will because this is where it's going. You will have this one reporter in Dallas, Texas, that will will be able to tell you exactly what happened. Okay. And he might not work for, a big newspaper. He might do it on his Substack. Okay. But you you see that in many, many different fields that you have this one or 2 or 3 reporters or journalists, that the platform doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't matter if they work for the New York Times or if they have Substack. If they're good, okay, they'll be able to make a living. And I think this is where this is.
Well, I hope so, but I don't really see the evidence of that. May I interject.
With a third perspective? So we might think, okay, there could be an investigative reporter coming from any avenue. But another trend that we haven't mentioned is fertility. Now, fertility across many parts of the world is plummeting, but it is highest amongst religious conservatives. Religious conservatives in every OECD country have more children, even in Britain. So in Britain. In England and Wales, the average TFR is 1.4. But Pakistan and Bangladeshi, Muslim, British people have 2.6. Now let's go back to corruption in East London today. They just announced that the government has no confidence in the East London Tower Hamlets mayor to manage public finances. So if different people have different, if different people have different priorities about how public funds should be spent, then they may not want to investigate them. They may think it is more important that the public funds go to our local mosques and madrassas. So even though our East London mayor was found guilty of electoral fraud, was found guilty of spiritual influence, this is true. This is totally true. He was found guilty of all these things and then re-elected into office. So no matter the investigation, he gets the popular support. So if you see a shift in demographics, we shouldn't expect those investigative reporters.
To different things.
I know, I know, I raised.
It as a journalist. I'm telling you, people ask me, people think that the media has incredible influence. Okay, on on public opinion and on politics. It does not. Okay. It has influence on micro tactical things sometimes. Okay. But I don't think as a again, by doing this for 20 years, I don't think that, the press has the influence people think there is. So it's not it's I mean, it's not I don't think that the, the the that you need to measure it about. Okay. Did it, did it get people not to elect this guy? Okay. That's not the in my opinion. That's not what. That's not the question. The question is, did they uncover this? Did the press uncover what he did? I have no idea because I don't know the case. But if they did, this is what matters. What happens with it afterwards? That's not the job of the of the press.
All right. I do want to get to our poll and see what binary choices we saw. Okay. Do you feel the public debate today forces you to choose a side, even when your views are more nuanced? 75% said yes, 25% said no. What? Is there a surprise? Is this about what you thought?
I thought it would be higher. You thought I thought it would be more than 70.
Like they feel forced to choose a side because of this moment. Iris is a behavioral economist. I want.
To ask. I'm not even going into behavioral economics right now. I'm going into Switzerland because we are in Switzerland. I am Swiss, although I've been living in the US for a very long time now. And I'm going back to what you said before on, you know, what happened in Ireland. So Switzerland also is a direct democracy. And I'm wondering whether what you described before also has something to do that, people in Ireland talked about a topic. They didn't talk about a person, although of course, very often these topics are then very linked to the messenger. So I'm not saying it's completely devoid of a messenger of a person. But I wonder, as I read this, I was wondering how that might be in Switzerland. Maybe it's exactly the same thing, and maybe it isn't, but certainly we were hoping at some point at least having lots of referenda and lots of different things. People take different sides. They might be more progressive on the environment, but maybe a little more conservative on gender.
Less binary, more nuanced.
Exactly. Because there's these all these different. So we sometimes call these overlapping groups that you are part of this group today, but part of that group tomorrow, because we don't all agree on the same topic. So anyway, so I think that might have something to do with the type of system that you live in as a one is it's more of a question than an answer.
Excellent. Well, we have time for to look at one more thing, and I know that our time has been kind of crunched because of the big speech today. And I know that you both have to be somewhere. Do you think clear binary choices can sometimes help societies make decisions more efficiently? 62% said yes.
69.
Oh, sorry. I need to get my glasses updated. Does anyone want to weigh in on that as we close?
What is efficient mean? Right? I mean, how do we measure efficiency? I'm saying this as an economist now, is it faster? Yes, of course.
Are very inefficient.
No, that's what I'm saying. I mean yeah. Faster. Yes, absolutely. If it's just zero one, that's you know, we can make that decision very fast. Is it a better decision? Is it the right decision? Is it morally right. Is it how is it going to affect inequality? I mean, there's lots that's what I'm saying. It all depends on how we decide efficiency, how we excuse me, how we define efficiency. Speed. Yeah. Speed. It will it will make us faster.
Well, I am actually quite shocked at how fast the time went. This was such a wonderful discussion, and I really want to thank you all for weighing in and giving us your wonderful opinions. And thank you all for participating. I think we have to let a couple of our panelists go, but please give them a round of applause and thank them for this.
Thank you.