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A new study shows Americans have little understanding of political adversaries

16 points by 11thEarlOfMar 7y ago

mindslight 7y ago
... driven by a news media and political arena that channels bikeshed outrage onto the other team, shielding the government to continue working against the interests of the People. The way I see it, Left/Right are fundamentally just two different modes of thinking - inductive vs deductive, open world versus closed world assumption, etc. Each has its own merit, and is worth sympathizing with the arguments even if you don't agree. Adding to this, each team ends up organizing around different topics of concern, which are then casually brushed aside in the rhetoric of the other team. The only guarantee is that behind every issue that manages to get political momentum, some entrenched interest has figured out how to make money off of it.
solidsnack9000 7y ago
...the best educated and most politically interested Americans are more likely to vilify their political adversaries than their less educated, less tuned-in peers. [...] Perhaps because institutions of higher learning tend to be dominated by liberals, Republicans who have gone to college are not more likely to caricature their ideological adversaries than those who dropped out of high school. But among Democrats, education seems to make the problem much worse.
dragonsky67 7y ago
...Americans who rarely or never follow the news are surprisingly good at estimating the views of people with whom they disagree This is the scary bit of the article. If actually being more engaged with news gathering (in the traditional sense) means you actually have more inaccurate information then I think it clearly shows our "news" sources are broken. I don't know that this would be any surprise to most people, but it seems that the "news" industry is not about the transmission of facts, but that of a covert (and no so covert) psyop influence operation.
- thatoneuser 7y ago
  It's also tragic that most online discourse is so polarized, yet when I go out and talk politics irl with people who have drastically different views I'm able to have nuanced conversation where both parties can at least see where the other has good points. Idk what can be done. It's easier to manipulate people into poor self serving thinking than to get them to rationalize.

16 points by 11thEarlOfMar 7y ago

... driven by a news media and political arena that channels bikeshed outrage onto the other team, shielding the government to continue working against the interests of the People. The way I see it, Left/Right are fundamentally just two different modes of thinking - inductive vs deductive, open world versus closed world assumption, etc. Each has its own merit, and is worth sympathizing with the arguments even if you don't agree. Adding to this, each team ends up organizing around different topics of concern, which are then casually brushed aside in the rhetoric of the other team. The only guarantee is that behind every issue that manages to get political momentum, some entrenched interest has figured out how to make money off of it.

solidsnack9000 7y ago

...the best educated and most politically interested Americans are more likely to vilify their political adversaries than their less educated, less tuned-in peers. [...] Perhaps because institutions of higher learning tend to be dominated by liberals, Republicans who have gone to college are not more likely to caricature their ideological adversaries than those who dropped out of high school. But among Democrats, education seems to make the problem much worse.

dragonsky67 7y ago

...Americans who rarely or never follow the news are surprisingly good at estimating the views of people with whom they disagree This is the scary bit of the article. If actually being more engaged with news gathering (in the traditional sense) means you actually have more inaccurate information then I think it clearly shows our "news" sources are broken. I don't know that this would be any surprise to most people, but it seems that the "news" industry is not about the transmission of facts, but that of a covert (and no so covert) psyop influence operation.

thatoneuser 7y ago
It's also tragic that most online discourse is so polarized, yet when I go out and talk politics irl with people who have drastically different views I'm able to have nuanced conversation where both parties can at least see where the other has good points. Idk what can be done. It's easier to manipulate people into poor self serving thinking than to get them to rationalize.