There often seems to be an assumption that being in the elite and being an outsider are mutually exclusive qualities, but they’re not.

Many rivers to cross
But I can’t seem to find my way over . . .
Many rivers to cross
And it’s only my will that keeps me alive
I’ve been licked, washed up for years
And I merely survive because of my pride
And this loneliness won’t leave me alone
It’s such a drag to be on your own . . .
— Jimmy Cliff

We had a discussion the other day about insiders like Andrew Cuomo and Steven Levitt who style themselves outsiders (in Cuomo’s words, “not part of the political club”; in Levitt’s, a “rogue”), and the comments inspired some clarifications that I’d like to share.

One way for us to understand the phenomenon of insiders calling themselves outsiders it to flip it around. Instead of bemoaning that various ultra-connected people from Andrew Cuomo to Steven Levitt proclaim their outsider status, we could consider that our social world is so high-dimensional that just about everybody can consider him or herself to be an “outsider” in some dimension. Pat Buchanan’s been a media insider for decades but he’s also an outsider in Washington for decades because he’s a fascist, and, until recently, just about nobody in official Washington was a fascist. Even before his forced retirement, Andrew Cuomo was an outsider in New York politics because he’s a moderate Democrat, and almost all the party leaders in the state are liberals, especially with the demise in recent years of various members of the old guard. Steven Levitt’s an outsider in academic economics because, before he blazed the Freakonomics trail, it was generally considered second-rate for economists to work on fun little problems instead of the big questions. I often feel like an outsider myself because I do applied statistics and it sometimes seems that theoretical work gets more respect within the statistics profession. I know this feeling is ridiculous—I’m as much of an insider in statistics as Levitt is in economics or Cuomo was in politics—but it’s hard sometimes to avoid having that outsider feeling. At the same time, I’m sure the theoretical statisticians feel like outsiders because, in modern statistics academia, applied work is so celebrated. Basically, everybody feels like a outsider except for the occasional really really smug person, and I guess we don’t get so many of these anymore. Even Lawrence Summers probably feels like an outsider sometimes!

I don’t think anyone denies that there are elites. Josh Hawley etc., might deny that they are part of the ruling elite, but in that case they’re just wrong, which is the point that was discussed in the above-linked post (motivated by an op-ed from political scientist Samuel Goldman). A separate question is, who’s an outsider? Cuomo was part of a ruling elite—indeed, a bit of a hereditary elite—but he was also an outsider in NY politics, as a moderate Democrat. Hawley is part of a ruling elite, and has been in elite training for a long time, but he’s also somewhat of an outsider in national politics, as being a fascist sympathizer.

There often seems to be an assumption that being in the elite and being an outsider are mutually exclusive qualities, but they’re not. Indeed one might argue that at this point that just about everyone’s an outsider in some sense. Well, maybe not Steven Spielberg or Bill Gates. But just about everybody else in this world.

60 thoughts on “There often seems to be an assumption that being in the elite and being an outsider are mutually exclusive qualities, but they’re not.

  1. > Pat Buchanan’s been a media insider for decades but he’s also an outsider in Washington for decades because he’s a fascist

    Surely you don’t mean this literally? Is this every bit as reprehensible as Fox news calling every social Democrat a “communist.”

    • D:

      I didn’t refer to a class of people; I’m just talking about this one guy! But you can make your own judgment. If you want to read Buchanan’s wikipedia page or whatever and decide that he’s not a fascist, he’s just a political figure with many fascist traits, then . . . whatever. You can replace “fascist” by “extreme right wing racist Nazi sympathizer” or however you want to put it. In the context of the above post, the point is that he is, and has been, both an outsider and an elite insider.

      • Both democrats and republican parties are both blatently fascist.

        You need to look into how Italy and Germany were actually run during the 1920s and 30s. What were the day-to-day interactions of the people with their government like? What were the party platforms back then?

        That is what the US has had for awhile but its getting worse.

      • Andrew, you object to the Nudgelords who call their lessers Stasi. Yet, you defend calling Buchanan a fascist by writing that extreme right wing racist Nazi is an approved substitute.

        Are you familiar with Godwin’s Law?

        • I wonder if any of his defenders on this site actually know who Pat Buchanan is specifically, or if they’d react the same way to calling *anyone* a fascist due to the term’s general over-application as a pejorative.

        • I don’t know or care about Buchanan, but the idea that fascists are rare in Washington is ridiculous. Andrew just hasn’t taken the time to inform himself on the nature of fascism and thinks it means people obsessed with racial supremacy or something.

          In fact, the Nazis indoctrinated people to hate the jews because they got sick less often (due to their kosher practices). They were said to be the origin of many illnesses like tuberculosis for this reason.

          You can do the same without race involved at all. But that still has little to do with fascism as a method of government per se. It is related in that once the power is centralized into an inefficient bureaucracy that mismanages everything they eventually start pointing fingers to deflect blame for their incompetence.

        • William:

          I’m not quite sure what you’re saying. It’s on the record that Buchanan is an extreme right wing racist Nazi sympathizer. That’s one of the things that’s made him famous. Without the extreme views, he’d just be one more retired speechwriter.

          In contrast, when Sunstein called his critics Stasi, the people he were talking about had zero connection to the communist secret police, had never expressed sympathy for the communist secret police, etc.

          In short: I think it’s ok to label people as fascists or communists when they are. I don’t think it’s ok to use the label when there’s zero connection.

        • I think the claim that someone is “fascist”, like the claim that someone is “socialist”, is best understood in a sort of fuzzy logic sense rather than either/or.

          Fascism is characterized by extreme nationalism; use of force both internationally and to suppress political opposition at home; protectionist economic policies to promote economic self-sufficiency; enthusiastic loyalty and devotion to an authoritarian leader; anti-Semitism; and racism.

          If we rank Hitler, Mussolini, and their most enthusiastic followers at 10/10 on each of these, Buchanan’s scorecard would mostly be sixes, sevens, and eights, I think. And a few would be 2 or 3: For instance, I don’t think he had expansionist military goals for the U.S. And Buchanan didn’t follow or promote an authoritarian leader, or suggest that the U.S. should have one.

          It’s not absurd to call Buchanan “a fascist” but personally I’d call it an overstatement, like calling Elizabeth Warren “a socialist.” It’s not completely wrong but not completely right either.

      • These types of posts and comments are disappointing (the appeal to Wikipedia is just embarrassing). As someone else said, the are so because they come from an “actual political scientist, and who in other contexts is [or at least used to be] the voice of reason and moderation.” The sophomoric fascist this and fascist that was stale already in the 1960s. The great thing about throwing the “fascist” label around if one is so inclined is that there is no agreed upon definition of fascism. One can just take whatever definition is out there (or make up one’s own). For instance, one can easily find definitions of fascism fitting the current rage for social justice, particularly BLM.

        On another note, a few years ago the historian Grace Hale published an interesting take on the will to outsider status: “A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America.”
        https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-nation-of-outsiders-9780199314584

  2. we could consider that our social world is so high-dimensional that just about everybody can consider him or herself to be an “outsider” in some dimension

    Coincidentally, I just started thinking this week that context-free dimensionality reduction for 2D projections is a hopeless endeavor, and the high-dimensional unsupervised clustering common in marketing analytics is nothing but snake-oil.

    • Most often you are an outsider to elites if you are also not raised in elite circles. Bill Clinton could have qualified as an outsider. But then again we have a tradition of bringing those along that can serve elite interests.

        • Being an outsider usually seems to be a self-declared identification and is used to create a foundation to view success as a result of personal abilities and effort rather than a result of advantages conferred by birth or social circle. The heavy emphasis western society places on personal agency encourages such myth making. Finding ways to rationalize such a view is made easier by being able to choose, at least implicitly, which dimension to measure on.

        • “personal abilities and effort”

          Even more: “I built a house myself” (ability, effort) + “for you” (hero) + “while *THEY* were trying to stop me!” (super human)

        • bbis –

          > Being an outsider usually seems to be a self-declared identification and is used to create a foundation to view success as a result of personal abilities and effort rather than a result of advantages conferred by birth or social circle. The heavy emphasis western society places on personal agency encourages such myth making. Finding ways to rationalize such a view is made easier by being able to choose, at least implicitly, which dimension to measure on.

          Very nicely put. I agree.

          Having spent a fair amount of time traveling in Asia, and risking being overly general and potentially micro-aggrressing, my impression is that claims of being an “outsider” don’t have nearly the same cache or romanticism in other cultures, particularly in Asia.

          Perhaps related, when I’d go hiking in Korea the trails would be packed, I mean packed way more than the most crowded trails in the US. When people would summit, they’d let out a loud shout and then break out the soju and start partying. The idea of solitude wasn’t really part of the experience. When I would tell people I would go for multi-day backpacking trips solo, people would often make it clear they had no idea why anyone would want to do that.

          I suspect that the admired ideal of rugged individualism does connect to the admiration of “outsiders” and being self-made – which in some ways runs opposite to the ideal of being a member of a more collectivist society. Koreans often told me of the expression and social norm that the nail that sticks out above the rest is the first to get hit with the hammer.

        • >Perhaps related, when I’d go hiking in Korea the trails would be packed, I mean packed way more than the most crowded trails in the US. When people would summit, they’d let out a loud shout and then break out the soju and start partying. The idea of solitude wasn’t really part of the experience. When I would tell people I would go for multi-day backpacking trips solo, people would often make it clear they had no idea why anyone would want to do that.

          I wouldn’t read too much into this. The simple explanation is that Korea is a very dense country and people love hiking so there are not that many good/accessible trails for solitary hikes.

        • Fred –

          > I wouldn’t read too much into this. The simple explanation is that Korea is a very dense country and people love hiking so there are not that many good/accessible trails for solitary hikes.

          I’m sure it’s possible to “overfit” the evidence. I’m mostly talking about hikes within a couple hours’ train ride of Seoul, which of course has a huge population. And I’m reasoning by anecdote, always dubious.

          That said, the socially/group oriented wilderness behaviors I’m talking about are completely different than anything I’ve seen the many times I’ve climbed Mount Manadnock (2nd most climbed mountain in the world, supposedly) even in peak season.

        • Hi Andrew,

          It’s much about context, then, Is it not? You stated, “..we could consider that our social world is so high-dimensional that just about everybody can consider him or herself to be an “outsider” in some dimension.

          In any case the label ‘outsider’has 16 synonyms: two of which are ‘newcomer’ and ‘nonmember’. Cuomo, in particular, I would characterize as a newcomer. As a newcomer, Cuomo [and others] uses a labeling device [outsider] to induce audiences to respond it. I admit it is a discursive exercise to ascertain the meaning of a term used in different context. Apologies if I’m getting all wound up.

          Not sure about the characterization ‘royal pedigrees’ b/c in listening to Bostonian Italians who have acquired high status, I get the impression that subsets of them harken back to accounts of exclusion and discrimination. I suppose that might be the sentiment of several ethnic groups. What I am suggesting is that characterizing someone as a ‘royal’ is kinda anachronistic to me.

          My point is

      • Haha that’s what got me thinking on this. There’s a lot of money being spent out there in the marketing world on what the thread calls “specious art.”

  3. This post has done two things to me:

    1. Got me singing a sad song out loud all day, which does its thing on the soul (and probably has the neighbors wondering).

    2. Led me to imagine Andrew Cuomo walking around upper-class suburban Kingston in rags begging for day labor work and getting told off by a rich woman for being lazy.

    https://youtu.be/j9U1zc8ys-Q?t=855

  4. I think your that in high-dimensional settings we shouldn’t expect perfect correlation on centrality is exactly correct. Another set of concepts from social network analysis I use to think about this are “catness” (short for category/-ical, meaning a clearly articulated common identity) and “netness” (internal connections among nodes in a network). So for example, clearly for a long time there were lots of people with broadly white supremacist/fascist sympathies (a high-cat network), but they weren’t really connected with one another (low-net). High-cat, low-net formations are powerful latent tools of social mobilization (especially for anyone who becomes the broker). Someone who is highly networked in existing institutions can fill a structural hole by mobilizing previously low-net nodes with whom (s)he shares a categorical identity. Basically I see Hawley trying to turn this trick.

    I guess I find this useful because the elite/outsider language is imprecise in a way that can obscure the strategic aspects at work. Which isn’t to say that all insider-outsiders are disingenuous – phenomenologically, I’m sure Cuomo and Hawley experience a genuine feeling of being on the outside looking in. Contrast with someone like J.D. Vance who is completely playing the strategic game.

    • Ahs:

      I don’t find the concept of “disingenuousness” to be particularly useful here or elsewhere. Rather I’d say that Cuomo, Hawley, Vance, etc., all feel like outsiders in some dimensions and also use this strategically when they can. They’re politicians—they’re supposed to think strategically!

  5. So maybe “outsider” is a meaningless term? If there are so many dimensions by which we could measure one’s proximity to the “inside”… If people desire to be perceived to have this status, then they will find a way of wiggling into the category some how.

    • Jonathan:

      I agree that saying someone is an outsider doesn’t convey much information, given that just about anyone can grab that label. However, as an observer of politics (and science), I notice that people sometimes highlight their outsider status, and as a political scientist I find that interesting. For example, what’s interesting about Levitt is not so much that he thinks of himself as a “rogue” but that he decided to label himself that way. Rather than presenting himself as an informant from the inside, he presented himself as an outsider. He had the choice of taking either tack, and he decided on the outsider label. That’s interesting.

      • Yes, I agree. So the real question is why being an outsider is so desirable a status. I think it’s similar to why it’s more interesting to watch a movie about a rogue police officer, who breaks the rules or is at odds with the lieutenant, rather than someone who follows the rules.

        • Jonathan:

          That I agree. Sherlock Holmes is an outsider too. And Columbo works for the police department but has this shtick so that the perps think he’s an outsider.

          But here’s a question: why would people want economics advice from a “rogue” outsider who thinks that drunk walking is more dangerous than drunk driving, thinks we are assured of 30 years of global cooling, and believes that beautiful parents are 36% more likely to have girls? Wouldn’t you prefer economics advice from an insider, someone with a Harvard and MIT education who’s now the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago? That’s what baffles me.

        • I think outsiders fit into the hero and underdog narratives. The little guy standing up to the big bad is a really cherished narrative. What’s more is that being an outsider assigns individuality. If you’re just a messenger for established academic economics then the story isn’t really about you, is it? An informant, as you call it, does not require unique characteristics so the story would be about some abstract notion of incremental scientific progress or something like that. Which is less appealing, both for the audience and for the individuals in question.

          For the audience, it’s not only an easier and more entertaining story, but it also confers some sense of superiority over (some vague notion of) elites or the established power. If an outsider says “here’s what all those Harvard people are missing” and you believe her, then you can also say that you know stuff or can see things more clearly than all those Harvard people.

          Just some hypotheses.

          As an aside, I should say that although the above sounds kinda cynical, I actually do like outsiders and think they’re important. Even when they’re not “true” outsiders they can still shake things up a bit and provide a check for the establishment. But I also do recognize that we sometimes give undue and uncritical attention to some outsiders and that’s problematic.

        • It takes both kinds. Ramanujan was as outside as you could possibly get, and probably would have stayed that way had not the ultimate insider, Hardy, been able to use his insider status to get people to recognize Ramanujan’s genius. (Is there any sense in which Hardy was an outsider?) Insiders have the ability to make anything they want mainstream, but they can only champion the iconoclasts — they can’t become them without losing their insider status.

          Just imagine if Andrew Wiles called Stephen Wolfram a genius. Or if Eugene Fama started introducing Taleb at conferences. Or anybody liked Nathan Myrhvold.

        • I see this as related to the “anti-expertise” sentiment that is so pervasive in the US (world?). People who want power/acclaim/followers are aware of it and tap into it. If you want a horde of fanatical minions, it’s better to be an outsider than an expert.

          I don’t exactly get where it is coming from – but I suspect some sort sense of powerlessness/inferiority/futility on the part of those without expertise.

        • Michael:

          I think that’s part of it, but not the whole thing. I never wanted to be an outsider, but after my initial experiences at Bayesian conferences and then my experiences with my colleagues at the University of California, I felt like an outsider. I’d thought that my approach to statistics was pretty much standard, and I felt disappointed and left out when I learned that most Bayesians and 100% of the faculty in my department felt that way. And then when it was a struggle to get my paper on model checking published, I felt like even more of an outsider in academic statistics. I put lots of effort into becoming an insider—rather than moving myself to the inside of the field, I moved much of the field toward me (see here), but in any case that outsider feeling was real. It didn’t come from a desire for power/acclaim/followers (for that, my insider status was more useful, or at least it was more useful back in the 1990s; maybe if this had all happened in the 2010s I just would’ve become a loud person on twitter). My outsider feeling came from frustration at the complacency and closed-mindedness of the insiders in the field.

        • Andrew –

          So you were an outsider because you felt like an outsider.

          Is that in some way(s) definitiomslly different than how Buchanon or Hawley feel?

        • Andrew:

          I think there may be two different versions of this.

          Type 1: People who really feel like outsiders for all sorts of explainable reasons (I can definitely relate to your story in my own professional career).

          Type 2: People who simply want to brand themselves as outsiders for some strategic purpose (e.g. Hawley, Levitt, …)

          Of course, now I’ve fallen into the dichotomous thinking trap ;)

          In any case, it’s certainly an interesting topic/observation (as indicated by the comments)

        • Schwartz:

          I’ve never met either Levitt nor Hawley but I could well believe that both of them have felt they are outsiders, Levitt because he worked on little empirical problems rather than mathematical theory, and Hawley because he falls outside of the traditional two-party consensus that says that election results should be respected. Sure, the branding is part of the story, but maybe not the whole story.

        • “related to the “anti-expertise” sentiment….I don’t exactly get where it is coming from”

          Expert = Insider, right?

          “Insiders” in any social group have a strong tendency to mold the processes they control to benefit their personal situation. This commonly results in insider benefits coming at the *expense* of outsiders, or at the very least in outsiders believing that’s true.

          Just read any CNN piece on stocks and wall street. CNN always plays off and enhances the public belief that Wall Street is corrupt, stealing from the public to benefit itself. And Wall Street does do this, even if on the whole the public mostly benefits from Wall Street’s behavior.

    • To know the context in which the label is used would be helpful. There may be cache in being regarded as an ‘outsider’ in some situations. I think that Pierre Bourdieu notion of habitus and doxa is most useful toward understanding the import of a label.

      • Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and doxa suggests a very clear and static insider-outsider structure. That people try to gain cache by calling themselves outsiders is irrelevant; there is no room for situational agency in his deterministic structural theory.

        • Obviously, that is your perception of Bourdieu’s work. And guess what? You are entitled to it.

          I see that Bourdieu’s theory has been characterized by some, but not all, subsequent interpretors of Bourdieu’s work. See Bourdieu’s Wiki page and the Wiki on Habitus.

          I met a few of his colleagues associated with the interdisciplinary journal of which Bourdieu was the editor. I believe they went on to interpret habitus and doxa in different ways, which actually contraindicate the characterization of a ‘static insider-outsider structure. This was in the early 80’s and 90’s.

          Bourdieu’s own intellectual activism, as an ‘outsider’ is a testimony to the role of agency in different domains. It is best reflected in his book Television and Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment o Taste, which resulted in very nuanced and lively debates among French academics at least.

          Bourdieu was born into a poor family. He was also chronicling his own journey among elite academics. A fascinating life for sure.

  6. > Pat Buchanan’s […] a fascist… Hawley is […] a fascist sympathizer.

    A perfect example of the sort of toxic, divisive rhetoric that is tearing the country apart. It’s on a par with my far-right friends calling Obama a communist. But I expected better from someone who is an actual political scientist, and who in other contexts is the voice of reason and moderation. I guess politics really is the mind killer.

    • Kevin:

      As a political scientist, let me just say that I’m using “fascist” as a shorthand. The longer version would be something like, “Buchanan’s been a media insider for decades but he’s also an outsider in Washington for decades because he was an extreme right wing racist Nazi sympathizer, and, until recently, just about nobody in official Washington was an extreme right wing racist Nazi sympathizer,” and “Hawley is part of a ruling elite, and has been in elite training for a long time, but he’s also somewhat of an outsider in national politics, as being a supporter of throwing out election results and the violent overthrow of the government.” This does not change the essential meaning of what I wrote.

      Unfortunately, Buchanan really did make inflammatory racist statements and defend Nazis, and Hawley really did support people who wanted to nullify the election, and these are, or were until recently, extreme views in modern American politics, which is how these two politicians can be both insiders and outsiders at the same time. Relevant to the above post is that both these people had the insider status but went to the effort to take extreme positions that put them in the outsider position.

    • I kinda favor the distinctions conformist and non-conformist OR eclectic and unvaried. The techies have seemed to be more tolerant of non-conformity and eclecticism. But this wave of censor on the Internet, I am surprised that they eliminate opinions.

      But many of these labels seem anachronistic. Take Obama being called a ‘communist’. Really?

  7. Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter’s “The Rebel Sell” from 2004 (it has another title in the United States) also talks about how tastemakers and members of the establishment in the United States started to posture as outsiders. Apparently even David Brooks has thoughts on the topic! Heath and Potter’s book is kind of journalisitc too and I don’t know if there is a more rigorous version.

      • Andrew: humh, I have not read Frank’s “The Conquest of Cool,” but it is from a university press so might be more rigorous. In their Second Edition appendix, Heath and Potter say “we owe a large intellectual debt to this book.”

        American pop culture has long been torn whether to identify as scrappy rebels or the embodiments of cosmic forces which will inevitably conquer the world. I think that also has something to do with these people’s self-representation.

  8. > we could consider that our social world is so high-dimensional that just about everybody can consider him or herself to be an “outsider” in some dimension.

    You’re referring to the thing where, as the number of dimensions goes up, the proportion of the volume that’s closer to the center than to the boundary falls off exponentially, right?

    That is:
    on a 1-D line segment, 1/2 is closer to the center point than to either end point;

    on a 2-D circle (fine, disc), 1/4 is closer to the center than to the circumference;

    in a 3-D sphere, 1/8 is closer to the center than to the boundary; etc.

    This is a little more interesting than just the idea that given big enough D, some point will not be in the middle two quartiles on some dimension. What’s the term for it?

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