  Some political strategies to win elections over the last years were based
heavily on fomenting general distrust in information institutions and favoring
distrustful sources. The misinformation pandemic has the straightforward
consequence that people do not believe any information unless it is compatible
with their own beliefs. We present a simple model to study the emergence of
consensus in opinion pools of uncertain agents that trust (couple to) their
neighbors (information sources) with strength K. We focus the studies on
regular lattices and linear coupling. Depending on the coupling constant, K,
and the propensity to choose an opinion (the probability to manifest a given
opinion in solitude), p_0, we get regions where consensus is surely reached
even in infinity systems (K greater than or equal to K_c), regions where
not-consensus is the only steady state (K lesser than K_c), and a region where
consensus on any opinion is transitory with each agent presenting periods of
strong oscillation of opinions before changing polarization (p_0 equal to p_c
and K greater than or equal K_c. The first model in this last region presents
transition probabilities identical to the voter model (p_0 equal to p_c and K
equal to K_c). Different upbringings, exposition to education biased to a
single political view, and previous coexistence with opinion polarized people
can change the opinion of agents in isolation. We model such characteristics
with heterogeneous populations (p^i_0 not equal to p^j_0 for some pairs of
nodes i,j). Such systems present regions where the coexistence of local
consensus (bulk-stable clusters of like-minded opinions), weak consensus
(bulk-unstable temporary clusters where contrary opinions emerge inside the
cluster), and distrust (random orientations that do not form clusters) are
possible.
