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I haven't read the series but it seems that political polarization is the topic. This is perhaps the biggest mystery I'm aware of in the world today, especiall

I haven't read the series but it seems that political polarization is the topic. This is perhaps the biggest mystery I'm aware of in the world today, especially because it's not specific to America, I'm seeing the same trends in my country as well: - Extreme polarization along similar axes (conservative/liberal, urban/rural, age, ...). - Outright hatred of traditional political parties. - Rise of populist and non-traditional politicans. - Distrust of traditional media, rise of low quality media (fake news in the extreme). There's surprisingly little discussion and research about the cause of this. One interesting theory I recently came across is that the driver is the process of people moving from rural to urban areas. People who make such move are demographically distinct - more liberal for example. So over time this has cumulative effect and leads to increasingly distinct demographies.

Enginerrrd 7y ago
>(can I say more intelligent and ambitious?) Seriously? As someone in a rural area who is not particularly deficient in intelligence, who regularly keeps up with research and innovations in a variety of industries, who bootstrapped my own consulting business & hired two more employees this year, and who regularly deals with the mess created by a regulatory situation where policy makers and voters in CA forget there are a lot of very rural areas in this state and that a one-size-fits all approach is actually crippling to people outside of the bay area and LA: NO. You cannot say that. And even being so willing to jokingly suggest it is an enormous part of the rural/urban political divide. I'm frankly pretty incredulous to see you do that in a post noting this very issue. The reality is, and I understand that this seems like a hard pill to swallow for the urban elite, different people in different places have different needs and issues. That said, prior to your dig on rural people, I agree with everything else you said, and I find the trend deeply troubling.
- RivieraKid 7y ago
  I apologize, I edited it out.
- solveit 7y ago
  > Seriously? As someone in a rural area who is [...] NO. You cannot say that. Sure but you're just one person out of millions. We're trying to compare populations. And obviously the prior poster didn't mean that every rural person who moves to a city is more intelligent/ambitious than every person who stays, but you knew that already (note how you didn't object to more liberal, presumably because it doesn't carry a value judgment with it and also because it's clearly true in an important sense). I haven't seen any studies, but it is very plausible to me that people who up and leave tend to be more intelligent and ambitious, if only because it's a costly thing to do and income/wealth correlates with everything good.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    I think the definition of "intelligent" and "ambitious" will differ based on who you ask. A lot of folks in rural areas think taking out debt to go to school is not a very intelligent thing to do. Likewise a lot of urban dwellers would likely say that going to college is the intelligent and ambitious thing to do. It really depends on your previously-held beliefs, which are only reinforced by the echo chambers we live in.
    - solveit 7y ago
      My argument that leaving your home town is costly stands regardless of what your definitions are. For a similar example, tall people tend to both be more intelligent and to come from richer families because malnutrition as a child negatively effects both height and intelligence. You may ask if I'm not using a pedantic, irrelevant definition of correlation that captures even tiny correlations we don't care about, but when we're talking about politics (where swings of a few percent can reliably flip elections), and polarisation (which is pretty much defined to be the amplifying of small differences), I think this is very relevant.
nyolfen 7y ago
here are a couple of interlocking potential causes: diminishing job security and social mobility for nearly half a century creating a general sense that ordinary peoples lives by and large are not getting better; political cultures isolating themselves in increasingly frantic and hyperbolic media bubbles, and escalating feedback loops of political signaling inside those groups; general distrust of social elites for failure to maintain or fix the system; elite overproduction incentivizing people who under different circumstances may have worked their way up traditional institutions to defect to alternatives and attack the old ones; proliferation of technologies of social influence and control. we're in for an interesting century for sure.
flukus 7y ago
I'd add to your list the increasing disconnect between wealth and quality of life. Economists and politicians will tell us how much richer we've become, how much our GDP has grown, etc, but so much of that "wealth" is that we have ipads and flat screen TV's. The things we actually need for a better life like housing security, social opportunities and stability are getting more and more out of reach. I think this is the main driver of populist politicians, they've tapped into this growing discontent quite literally because being content is getting harder.

Enginerrrd 7y ago

>(can I say more intelligent and ambitious?) Seriously? As someone in a rural area who is not particularly deficient in intelligence, who regularly keeps up with research and innovations in a variety of industries, who bootstrapped my own consulting business & hired two more employees this year, and who regularly deals with the mess created by a regulatory situation where policy makers and voters in CA forget there are a lot of very rural areas in this state and that a one-size-fits all approach is actually crippling to people outside of the bay area and LA: NO. You cannot say that. And even being so willing to jokingly suggest it is an enormous part of the rural/urban political divide. I'm frankly pretty incredulous to see you do that in a post noting this very issue. The reality is, and I understand that this seems like a hard pill to swallow for the urban elite, different people in different places have different needs and issues. That said, prior to your dig on rural people, I agree with everything else you said, and I find the trend deeply troubling.

RivieraKid 7y ago
I apologize, I edited it out.
solveit 7y ago
> Seriously? As someone in a rural area who is [...] NO. You cannot say that. Sure but you're just one person out of millions. We're trying to compare populations. And obviously the prior poster didn't mean that every rural person who moves to a city is more intelligent/ambitious than every person who stays, but you knew that already (note how you didn't object to more liberal, presumably because it doesn't carry a value judgment with it and also because it's clearly true in an important sense). I haven't seen any studies, but it is very plausible to me that people who up and leave tend to be more intelligent and ambitious, if only because it's a costly thing to do and income/wealth correlates with everything good.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  I think the definition of "intelligent" and "ambitious" will differ based on who you ask. A lot of folks in rural areas think taking out debt to go to school is not a very intelligent thing to do. Likewise a lot of urban dwellers would likely say that going to college is the intelligent and ambitious thing to do. It really depends on your previously-held beliefs, which are only reinforced by the echo chambers we live in.
  - solveit 7y ago
    My argument that leaving your home town is costly stands regardless of what your definitions are. For a similar example, tall people tend to both be more intelligent and to come from richer families because malnutrition as a child negatively effects both height and intelligence. You may ask if I'm not using a pedantic, irrelevant definition of correlation that captures even tiny correlations we don't care about, but when we're talking about politics (where swings of a few percent can reliably flip elections), and polarisation (which is pretty much defined to be the amplifying of small differences), I think this is very relevant.

nyolfen 7y ago

here are a couple of interlocking potential causes: diminishing job security and social mobility for nearly half a century creating a general sense that ordinary peoples lives by and large are not getting better; political cultures isolating themselves in increasingly frantic and hyperbolic media bubbles, and escalating feedback loops of political signaling inside those groups; general distrust of social elites for failure to maintain or fix the system; elite overproduction incentivizing people who under different circumstances may have worked their way up traditional institutions to defect to alternatives and attack the old ones; proliferation of technologies of social influence and control. we're in for an interesting century for sure.

flukus 7y ago

I'd add to your list the increasing disconnect between wealth and quality of life. Economists and politicians will tell us how much richer we've become, how much our GDP has grown, etc, but so much of that "wealth" is that we have ipads and flat screen TV's. The things we actually need for a better life like housing security, social opportunities and stability are getting more and more out of reach. I think this is the main driver of populist politicians, they've tapped into this growing discontent quite literally because being content is getting harder.