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I think the same, and I'd go a step further. I don't particularly _want_ to get along with people who have no problem with abortion, nor with people who have no

I think the same, and I'd go a step further. I don't particularly _want_ to get along with people who have no problem with abortion, nor with people who have no problem with torture. Why should I see being de-polarizing as something desirable? (And where can I move to?)

sanderjd 11y ago
I think the article makes lots of good arguments for why being de-polarizing is a desirable thing, so I'm not going to attempt to make better ones. But I think your comment is a really good example in and of itself. You've done the binary thinking thing that the article discussed in detail! I've never met anyone who has no problem with abortion, or anyone who has no problem with torture, but I've met people who think the trade-offs justify limited use of one or the other, which I agree or disagree with to varying degrees. It seems likely to me that you're either not talking to people that think these things, and instead building straw-men to knock down, or you're not really hearing the people you're talking to. (Or, I'll admit, it's possible you know a lot more extreme people than I do.)
- whitegrape 11y ago
  I find if you can get anyone to consider the tradeoffs of things they believe, that alone makes it possible and worthwhile to have a conversation. But those people are rare. (I think Rich Hickey noted this is even a problem in programming language flamewars...)
  - clock_tower 11y ago
    That's certainly true -- although I can hardly say that I have a gift for it. More often, I've found that discussing almost any issue results in me making concessions and the other person not doing so; I'm trying to lean the other way and hopefully reach a suitable balance. This article left me more ticked-off than it should have; I think it's because I got the sense that the author valued consensus and national cohesion more than he valued any ideological question. If the article had said, "we're at war, but remember that chivalry is a good thing," I would have simply agreed; instead, he quoted Lincoln.
- clock_tower 11y ago
  In the case of abortion, I'll grudgingly admit that reasonable people can differ, at least in cases of rape or incest; in life-of-the-mother cases (pregnancy in the Fallopian tube), the other side might even be right. But on torture? I'm not willing to make any concession to people who think that hanging a Japanese general for waterboarding US soldiers is fine, while leaving a US president entirely unpunished for waterboarding actual and suspected terrorists is not fine. Either we owe the Axis (and especially that general's heirs) some enormous apologies, or we need a few trials of a certain past political administration. I tend be a fan of bright lines in general. If you don't know that some things are wrong (and, therefore, that any line of reasoning that leads to them has a problem with it somewhere), how do you know when you've gone astray?
  - tamana 11y ago
    Your post specifically opened with an example of how important issues don't have bright lines. When the population is split on an issue, it's unlikely that one and only one half are evil/idiots. Life is complicated.
    - clock_tower 11y ago
      Abortion gets murky in a narrow range of cases, but torture is never murky. War crimes are war crimes, and they're off limits for everyone, under all circumstances, by definition.
bovermyer 11y ago
I think the idea is to apply "depolarization" generally, rather than specifically. You call out two specific issues; it's fine to not get on with people who have different (and strong) opinions on those positions, but it's entirely different to label an entire broad category of people ("conservatives" or "liberals" in the context of the article) as Evil and Not Worth My Time.
alistproducer2 11y ago
A person as you describe, complete devoid of nuance, would not likely be a very agreeable one. Luckily most people think in varying shades of grey. Lots of us are more "grey" than we think, but you'd never know it unless you talk to people away from the Internet.
cookiecaper 11y ago
Spend more time with real people and you'll see why it's worthwhile to have relationships with persons who have differing political or social philosophies. Variety in personal judgment and alternative worldviews are really beneficial to be able to access; you can learn a lot that way, and your own perspectives and arguments will be improved. You don't have to agree, but people are still worth something and still have valuable information no matter how vehemently you disagree with them. Also note that the vehemence of disagreement is usually heavily exaggerated, for propaganda purposes. Very few people, in the global sense, are sufficiently different from each other that they're actually totally incapable of getting along. If we make a basic effort to keep an open mind, I think we could fix a lot of our contemporary issues. A total breakdown in communication and dismissal of people on the other side is not a win. It's a massive loss, one that means that the parent society is on thin ice. We need to maintain basic levels of respect for each other.
- m_fayer 11y ago
  I happen to know a few people who have grown up stewing in a sometimes-violent sometimes-cold conflict. They are openly and honestly essentialist racists, and if given the red genocide button would likely push it, or so they say. They are on the borderline about compatriots who question them, making dark jokes about traitors. I've never truly tried to engage with them, hampered by internal disquiet that kept me mostly quiet. I would say the value of knowing them lies in the knowledge of where complete breakdown of the peace leads. But I am disturbed by the way I see them, as lost causes and human writeoffs.
  - clock_tower 11y ago
    I upvoted both you and cookiecaper; I agree with you both.
ZeroGravitas 11y ago
I'm not sure how many people have "no problem" with either abortion or torture. The people who support them after having thought about it generally do so because they see the alternative as worse, similar to people who want to see hard drugs legalized to ensure people don't have to deal with black markets, criminal gangs, and dangerous substitute chemicals. (disclosure: I'd ban torture, but for both abortion and most drugs I'd legalise them and try via other methods to reduce the amount that actually occured e.g. better sex-ed and provision of contraception, or better addiction treatment and channeling people towards less harmful (though still currently illegal) drugs.
nikdaheratik 11y ago
I don't think there are very many people who actually have "no problem" with torture, and even fewer who have "no qualms" about abortion. It's just a question of whether they should be legal or not (I'm "no exceptions" for torture, but not abortion, FYI). And the reason why we should be less polarized, politically, is because there are a large number of important issues that can be solved, and need to be solved, even if we can never come to agreement on others. The way politics is being managed in the U.S. is basically an "all or nothing" grab bag on every single issue, with no chance for compromise, and that just leads to hours of pointless rhetoric and gridlock while the problems just get worse. IMO, one of the parties is a worse offender than the other, but it really only takes one side being intractable to ensure nothing gets done the way the U.S. government is set up.

sanderjd 11y ago

I think the article makes lots of good arguments for why being de-polarizing is a desirable thing, so I'm not going to attempt to make better ones. But I think your comment is a really good example in and of itself. You've done the binary thinking thing that the article discussed in detail! I've never met anyone who has no problem with abortion, or anyone who has no problem with torture, but I've met people who think the trade-offs justify limited use of one or the other, which I agree or disagree with to varying degrees. It seems likely to me that you're either not talking to people that think these things, and instead building straw-men to knock down, or you're not really hearing the people you're talking to. (Or, I'll admit, it's possible you know a lot more extreme people than I do.)

whitegrape 11y ago
I find if you can get anyone to consider the tradeoffs of things they believe, that alone makes it possible and worthwhile to have a conversation. But those people are rare. (I think Rich Hickey noted this is even a problem in programming language flamewars...)
- clock_tower 11y ago
  That's certainly true -- although I can hardly say that I have a gift for it. More often, I've found that discussing almost any issue results in me making concessions and the other person not doing so; I'm trying to lean the other way and hopefully reach a suitable balance. This article left me more ticked-off than it should have; I think it's because I got the sense that the author valued consensus and national cohesion more than he valued any ideological question. If the article had said, "we're at war, but remember that chivalry is a good thing," I would have simply agreed; instead, he quoted Lincoln.
clock_tower 11y ago
In the case of abortion, I'll grudgingly admit that reasonable people can differ, at least in cases of rape or incest; in life-of-the-mother cases (pregnancy in the Fallopian tube), the other side might even be right. But on torture? I'm not willing to make any concession to people who think that hanging a Japanese general for waterboarding US soldiers is fine, while leaving a US president entirely unpunished for waterboarding actual and suspected terrorists is not fine. Either we owe the Axis (and especially that general's heirs) some enormous apologies, or we need a few trials of a certain past political administration. I tend be a fan of bright lines in general. If you don't know that some things are wrong (and, therefore, that any line of reasoning that leads to them has a problem with it somewhere), how do you know when you've gone astray?
- tamana 11y ago
  Your post specifically opened with an example of how important issues don't have bright lines. When the population is split on an issue, it's unlikely that one and only one half are evil/idiots. Life is complicated.
  - clock_tower 11y ago
    Abortion gets murky in a narrow range of cases, but torture is never murky. War crimes are war crimes, and they're off limits for everyone, under all circumstances, by definition.

bovermyer 11y ago

I think the idea is to apply "depolarization" generally, rather than specifically. You call out two specific issues; it's fine to not get on with people who have different (and strong) opinions on those positions, but it's entirely different to label an entire broad category of people ("conservatives" or "liberals" in the context of the article) as Evil and Not Worth My Time.

alistproducer2 11y ago

A person as you describe, complete devoid of nuance, would not likely be a very agreeable one. Luckily most people think in varying shades of grey. Lots of us are more "grey" than we think, but you'd never know it unless you talk to people away from the Internet.

cookiecaper 11y ago

Spend more time with real people and you'll see why it's worthwhile to have relationships with persons who have differing political or social philosophies. Variety in personal judgment and alternative worldviews are really beneficial to be able to access; you can learn a lot that way, and your own perspectives and arguments will be improved. You don't have to agree, but people are still worth something and still have valuable information no matter how vehemently you disagree with them. Also note that the vehemence of disagreement is usually heavily exaggerated, for propaganda purposes. Very few people, in the global sense, are sufficiently different from each other that they're actually totally incapable of getting along. If we make a basic effort to keep an open mind, I think we could fix a lot of our contemporary issues. A total breakdown in communication and dismissal of people on the other side is not a win. It's a massive loss, one that means that the parent society is on thin ice. We need to maintain basic levels of respect for each other.

m_fayer 11y ago
I happen to know a few people who have grown up stewing in a sometimes-violent sometimes-cold conflict. They are openly and honestly essentialist racists, and if given the red genocide button would likely push it, or so they say. They are on the borderline about compatriots who question them, making dark jokes about traitors. I've never truly tried to engage with them, hampered by internal disquiet that kept me mostly quiet. I would say the value of knowing them lies in the knowledge of where complete breakdown of the peace leads. But I am disturbed by the way I see them, as lost causes and human writeoffs.
- clock_tower 11y ago
  I upvoted both you and cookiecaper; I agree with you both.

ZeroGravitas 11y ago

I'm not sure how many people have "no problem" with either abortion or torture. The people who support them after having thought about it generally do so because they see the alternative as worse, similar to people who want to see hard drugs legalized to ensure people don't have to deal with black markets, criminal gangs, and dangerous substitute chemicals. (disclosure: I'd ban torture, but for both abortion and most drugs I'd legalise them and try via other methods to reduce the amount that actually occured e.g. better sex-ed and provision of contraception, or better addiction treatment and channeling people towards less harmful (though still currently illegal) drugs.

nikdaheratik 11y ago

I don't think there are very many people who actually have "no problem" with torture, and even fewer who have "no qualms" about abortion. It's just a question of whether they should be legal or not (I'm "no exceptions" for torture, but not abortion, FYI). And the reason why we should be less polarized, politically, is because there are a large number of important issues that can be solved, and need to be solved, even if we can never come to agreement on others. The way politics is being managed in the U.S. is basically an "all or nothing" grab bag on every single issue, with no chance for compromise, and that just leads to hours of pointless rhetoric and gridlock while the problems just get worse. IMO, one of the parties is a worse offender than the other, but it really only takes one side being intractable to ensure nothing gets done the way the U.S. government is set up.