8 ms·

The Purpose of Persuasion

82 points by apsec112 6y ago

anonms-coward 6y ago
I think the rise of a well headed, free speech space is extremely important. The US has reached a point where certain topics are not even up for debate, as ruled by the court of twitter mob.
- k__ 6y ago
  I don't know really. On the one hand, I don't care much about rich and/or prominent people getting served online, when they promote toxic behavior. On the other hand, I don't like this fake ally culture either. I believe most allys are in for social signaling and to improve their status, and not because they really care about the issues at hand. And I'm torn. If I tear down a fascist because it was also my competitor, how good or bad am I?
- seebetter 6y ago
  Few people correctly remember that "yelling fire in a crowded theater" was a comment directed at anti-war socialists who were distributing 'propaganda' against World War I. It's a rallying cry for suppressing war protesters.
- keenmaster 6y ago
  I can't wait for VR-style chat[1] to become a dominant mode of online discourse. It is much more likely to emulate the civility of in-person discussions. [1] Chatting with avatars that can navigate in a 3D digital environment, with or without an actual VR headset. That's just like the eponymous VRChat which allows 2D users to interact with 3D users and vice-versa. I highly recommend trying it. It's free and the worlds are beautiful. https://vrchat.com/ https://vrchat.com/
  - anonms-coward 6y ago
    It can, but mostly due to the fact that the amplification of voices would be less, since people won't be talk to thousands of people, unlike twitter.
  - chongli 6y ago
    I doubt VR will become the dominant mode of anything for the simple reason that it's synchronous. Asynchronous communication in text form has become the dominant mode for good reason: it demands way less time and attention from users. People find synchronous voice/video communication exhausting (it's called "Zoom Fatigue" [1]). [1] https://hbr.org/2020/04/how-to-combat-zoom-fatigue https://hbr.org/2020/04/how-to-combat-zoom-fatigue
    - keenmaster 6y ago
      Asynchronous communication is possible in VR/AR. However, if a material amount of deep conversation moves from asynchronous to synchronous format, that can have a big impact. There's also no reason that synchronous and asynchronous discussion can't be combined. A phrase like "Let's take this IRT" (in real time) can become the new "let's take this offline." Think about the really controversial tweets that garner thousands of responses. What if there was a link next to the tweet that launched you into a virtual lounge where you can interact with other people looking to discuss the tweet? If someone who joins one of those groups wants to summarize their thoughts and conclusions from the discussion afterwards, in an async format, their response would indicate which discussion group that they were in. It would also be bundled with posts from other users in the same discussion group. It would be like "Twitter meets Reddit meets VRChat."
      - chongli 6y ago
        It's a nice thought, for sure. I think people would generally use it only to hang out and relax with their friends though. People, for the most part, don't want to sit down and get into an intense discussion/debate over controversial topics with someone from "the other side". They'd much rather be around people with whom they agree. I could see it being useful as something of an intermediate between traditional online video games and offline gatherings involving food & boardgames. I don't see it being used as a primary mode of communication though, for the simple reason that it demands too much time and attention. Text messages and email occupy that space because it's so convenient to pick up and drop them at any time, even with a half-read message or a half-written reply. With VR that means putting on your gear every time, and resuming the "VR video" or whatever. Heck, tons of people complain when video talks are posted without slides/transcripts. They want the information. They don't care about any other aspects of the presentation. VR in that case just seems to be more distracting stuff that gets in the way of the information.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  There was no mythical time in the US when all topics were up for public debate, or without severe consequences for those holding the wrong opinions. The only real difference that I can see (other than the speed of communication) is that advocating some positions that were supported by an overwhelming majority of public voices 70 years ago will now make a vocal proportion of people see you as a bad person, and if you work for a company who wishes to appeal to those people, maybe get you fired. It's not even possible to create a "free speech space" where attributed comments will not result in judgment, other than by creating new protected classes for people who say racist, sexist, or homophobic things. Of course, if the state takes a position that those things are worth special protection, while expressing a negative opinion on (for example) the K-pop boy band BTS wouldn't be and could still get you fired or denounced, that's pretty terrifying. edit: I guess the main difference is that everybody is publishing, now. Once, you couldn't publish unless you agreed with the people who owned the presses, and nothing you said would be reacted to except by other people who owned presses. It gave the impression that the ideas that were held by the most privileged were more secure than they actually were. I think that through internet centralization, we'll be back there soon, and since the presses are still owned by the same people, the world will start to look familiar again.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Once, you couldn't publish unless you agreed with the people who owned the presses Presses weren't all that uncommon -- every town could have its own paper, maybe more than one. In the 20th century there were also typewriters, carbon paper, photocopiers, physical bulletin boards, open town squares, letters to the editor, subscription hand-mailed newsletters, ...
teddyh 6y ago
If you’re trying to start another venue with a stated specific bias, there is every reason to believe that it will (eventually, if not immediately) become exactly as limiting and echo-chambery like the rest of them. However, if you’re trying to not do that, and create a truly open environment, you run into the problem which was perhaps best described like this: “If you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.” (Emphasis in original.) — https://web.archive.org/web/20200618093842/https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservative-the-eternal-struggle/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200618093842/https://slatestar...
- afarrell 6y ago
  > echo-chambery What is the distinction you draw between an echo chamber and a community which mostly shares certain baseline assumptions and values?
  - bananamerica 6y ago
    An echo chamber is violently hostile to different opinions and the individuals that defend them. A community with shared values tends to voice their disagreement (sometimes vehemently) without ejecting or deplatforming alien elements This usually excludes acts of moderation that enacts policies, guidelines, etc.
  - teddyh 6y ago
    Since you ask: A community which just happens to mostly share common values is merely that and nothing more. An “echo chamber”, on the other hand, is when such a community does not get any significant input from any outside sources, and as a result keep reinforcing their own internal beliefs, even though those beliefs may be erroneous. This extreme homogeneity, thus created, in turn gives rise to a culture in which any persistent dissenters are viewed as anomalous and therefore dangerous. And this is limiting for those who sometimes wishes they could express dissent. It is also restricting the community itself from ever developing any further. To contrast, a normal community with mostly shared values would occasionally be affected by outside influences. This would create a constant level of turbulence in the system; there would always be some base level of variation between individuals, and over time, the median belief would slowly change this way and that, somewhat like fashions, and this would be normal.
marktani 6y ago
> It is difficult to convey just how many amazing writers, journalists, and think-tankers—some young and some old, some relatively obscure and others very famous—have privately told me that they can no longer write in their own voices; that they are counting the days until they get fired; and that they don't know where to turn if they do. Why? Name a number.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  Humans are bad at counting. It'd be the proportion of writers, journalists and think-tankers that this person knows that should be communicated, and even then you have to take into account selection bias effects… It's hard to communicate a felt-sense of the magnitude of a quantity like that.
shoes_for_thee 6y ago
Somewhat tangential... I've been thinking lately that there is a need for a space in which political discussions can be had where people are as committed to the values of civility and good-faith argument as we are at news.yc.com I have not a clue how such a space could be moderated. It's obvious to me that a person violating guidelines would quickly claim suppression if their posts were moderated, and the space itself would quickly devolve into the things it tries to avoid. Eg, echo-chamberiness, sophists, trolls. It seems like a paradigm shift is required, or that the medium just isn't appropriate. It also seems widely-accepted by nearly everyone that our current medium is destructive and no longer serves constructive use. Reputation, ranking, and moderation based on the 'wisdom of crowds' is no longer viable in its current form, but I'm utterly unwilling to cede control to an authority... How does one establish trustless good-faith?
- anonms-coward 6y ago
  People are committed to civility at HN and good faith arguments mostly because HN is a small community, much smaller than twitter e.g. It is also inhabited by mostly people with intellectual curiosity, and accounts violating the guidelines get banned quickly in their infancy. I followed quora since when it was a very small website. It was full of very useful and well written content. As the userbase grew, the quality of the content went on continuous downward trajectory. If HN had 100 million users, you would see the same content quality at HN, and the volume would make moderation hard, if not impossible. Not to mention, you might start seeing calls to cancel user XYZ on HN too if it reaches a userbase as large as twitter.
- uniqueid 6y ago
  A lot of approaches to moderation seem destined to fail, afaic. I think first principles should be: 1. There is no such thing as objective moderation. The universe gives us no way to conclusively prove something is good, fair or true. 2. You cannot moderate a forum at internet-scale using exclusively paid employees. 3. A tech company is not the government. There is no shame in a company looking out to protect its own good name. Some takeaways: (1) and (3) suggest a social network should admit its point of view, and moderate according to its tastes from the top-down. (2) suggests the bulk of moderation should either be AI-based, or delegated down via a hierarchy of its users. Since AI won't be capable of competent moderation for at least a decade, the primary method should be the community. (3) means that the the positioning on moderation should be heavy-handed. Eg: "If we dislike your contributions or feel you make us look bad, we will ban you. We offer no 'court of appeals', because it's an esthetic judgment." This ideology of my model is rather depressing, but the current state of the internet (compare HN or Tildes with 8chan or Gab) hints that it's better than the status quo.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
It was interesting to read the description of ‘fighting institutions’ that focus on arguments about certain topics that are mostly based on fallacies. The sad situation in the U.S. is also a result of it being the target of so much psychological warfare from Russia. The internet is an excellent medium to cause confusion. Fix that, and you might heal democracy.
- lopmotr 6y ago
  I've got an idea you might like. Protect Americans from being exposed to dissenting ideas by blocking non-approved foreign content from their internet. You could call it the Great Freedom Wall. /s
- fuoqi 6y ago
  If you really blame Russia for the current US situation, I have bad news for you. Blaming an external power is a political manipulation 101. Focusing public attention on them is almost always used to hide real structural domestic problems. Soviet Union also loved to shift blame onto the US and modern Russia does it as well. Did that help them to built a better society? External powers can only do so much. Usually most that they can do is to give a little push to processes already existing in society (and the US is a world leading expert at giving such pushes). So my advice would be: look at domestic roots of a problem first, not at foreign powers which try to exploit them.
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    > So my advice would be: look at domestic roots of a problem first, not at foreign powers which try to exploit them. External powers have done a lot to manipulate US elections… via Facebook, a US company. This is good advice.
    - fuoqi 6y ago
      Do you seriously believe that the main reason that Trump got elected is a bunch of Facebook ads?
tranchms 6y ago
Rhetoric may well find its place as an esteemed study once again.
- war1025 6y ago
  This guy is apparently "alt-right", though I don't know exactly what that means these days, but someone mentioned him here on HN the other day which led me down the rabbit hole. I thought this video [1] was interesting and it introduced me to the difference between rhetoric and dialectic. Rhetoric is using emotion to convince people. Dialectic is using reason. He points out that you need to know how to read your audience to choose the correct angle of argument. Some people get hung up on, for example, always persuading through facts (dialectic), when what they really need to do is reach for emotion (rhetoric). Anyway, I thought it was an interesting intro to the topic. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHpalC3WaXY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHpalC3WaXY
  - mturilin 6y ago
    Alt-right is technically a white supremacy neo-nazi movement. However, most of the time this label is used by woke people to discredit anyone who doesn’t share their views. Would you be able to share what led you to think why Yascha Mounk is alt-right?
  - tottenhm 6y ago
    > This guy is apparently "alt-right"... Yeah, no. I mean, I don't know this guy from Bob, but the above has neither citation nor argument, and everything I've seen disagrees with that assessment. Skim the list of the board of advisors... https://www.persuasion.community/p/our-board https://www.persuasion.community/p/our-board Several names pop out - and not because they're alt-right / reactionaries / populist right-wingers. Some bios: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Applebaum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Applebaum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Fukuyama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Fukuyama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kasparov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kasparov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheri_Berman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheri_Berman Again, I don't have any personal knowledge here, but it's interesting to consider, eg, this bit from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yascha_Mounk#Political_positions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yascha_Mounk#Political_positio... > Mounk stated that he had changed his position on nationalism. He initially considered it a relic of the past that must be overcome, but he now advocates an "inclusive nationalism" to head off the threat of aggressive nationalism. On the German television newscast Tagesthemen, he stated that Germany is on a "historically unique experiment, namely to transform a mono-ethnic and monocultural democracy into a multi-ethnic one." I suppose words like "nationalism" and "mono-ethnic" might appear in an alt-right missive, but IMHO the above doesn't sound anything like an alt-right perspective.
zuhayeer 6y ago
I think pseudonymity will be important for the future of ideas (expanded beyond HN but into actual journalistic practice). You don't have to put up your real name, aka your full reputation behind interesting ideas that could risk damage to you as a person (being cancelled, character assassination, or otherwise) I also believe that this kind of work will invite better discussion and critique around different topics since the focus can only be on the merit of the content. Of course, anonymity also has its downsides, but good work usually finds a way into circles while bad work gets nipped at the bud fairly quickly
- alextheparrot 6y ago
  The Rolodex re-purposed, keeping track of all of our own identities instead of other's I do think this is interesting as an adaption, though to have any coherence of identity then that identity will need to re-used. That makes an interesting game, where people effectively wager different amounts of reputation, while understanding that some or total loss of that reputation could also occur. The natural advantage to having reputation is that you are better discovery status, more exposure. Imagine debating if the "top" tier identity or the "low" tier identity should be used to promote a new idea, as it is riskier. Overall, I think this expansion of pseudonymity as a society would just lead to additional fragmentation of personality. The "coherence" of a person as one, consistent individual is an interesting breakdown of self. We see this already with "online" vs "real-life" personalities can be highly divergent (Insta-self vs actual-self).
  - bobbiechen 6y ago
    > Imagine debating if the "top" tier identity or the "low" tier identity should be used to promote a new idea, as it is riskier. This sentence reminds me a lot of Ender's Game, in which the characters of Locke and Demosthenes are created to contrast views. > They used throwaway names with their early efforts, not the identities that Peter planned to make famous and influential... When Peter was satisfied that they knew how to sound adult, he killed the old identities and they began to prepare to attract real attention.
    - 6y ago
steffandroid 6y ago
There's hardly a shortage of liberal media outlets, does the world really need another one?
- apsec112 6y ago
  Liberal here means classical liberalism, not just "left-wing": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
  - steffandroid 6y ago
    Yes, an ideology which is already vastly overrepresented in the media. I'm sure we'll soon find out exactly how necessary this particular venture is.
gattis 6y ago
am i reading that we need to get militantly centrist?
prvc 6y ago
A bit of a self-important way to start what appears to be a blog, imho.

82 points by apsec112 6y ago

I think the rise of a well headed, free speech space is extremely important. The US has reached a point where certain topics are not even up for debate, as ruled by the court of twitter mob.

k__ 6y ago
I don't know really. On the one hand, I don't care much about rich and/or prominent people getting served online, when they promote toxic behavior. On the other hand, I don't like this fake ally culture either. I believe most allys are in for social signaling and to improve their status, and not because they really care about the issues at hand. And I'm torn. If I tear down a fascist because it was also my competitor, how good or bad am I?
seebetter 6y ago
Few people correctly remember that "yelling fire in a crowded theater" was a comment directed at anti-war socialists who were distributing 'propaganda' against World War I. It's a rallying cry for suppressing war protesters.
keenmaster 6y ago
I can't wait for VR-style chat[1] to become a dominant mode of online discourse. It is much more likely to emulate the civility of in-person discussions. [1] Chatting with avatars that can navigate in a 3D digital environment, with or without an actual VR headset. That's just like the eponymous VRChat which allows 2D users to interact with 3D users and vice-versa. I highly recommend trying it. It's free and the worlds are beautiful. https://vrchat.com/ https://vrchat.com/
- anonms-coward 6y ago
  It can, but mostly due to the fact that the amplification of voices would be less, since people won't be talk to thousands of people, unlike twitter.
- chongli 6y ago
  I doubt VR will become the dominant mode of anything for the simple reason that it's synchronous. Asynchronous communication in text form has become the dominant mode for good reason: it demands way less time and attention from users. People find synchronous voice/video communication exhausting (it's called "Zoom Fatigue" [1]). [1] https://hbr.org/2020/04/how-to-combat-zoom-fatigue https://hbr.org/2020/04/how-to-combat-zoom-fatigue
  - keenmaster 6y ago
    Asynchronous communication is possible in VR/AR. However, if a material amount of deep conversation moves from asynchronous to synchronous format, that can have a big impact. There's also no reason that synchronous and asynchronous discussion can't be combined. A phrase like "Let's take this IRT" (in real time) can become the new "let's take this offline." Think about the really controversial tweets that garner thousands of responses. What if there was a link next to the tweet that launched you into a virtual lounge where you can interact with other people looking to discuss the tweet? If someone who joins one of those groups wants to summarize their thoughts and conclusions from the discussion afterwards, in an async format, their response would indicate which discussion group that they were in. It would also be bundled with posts from other users in the same discussion group. It would be like "Twitter meets Reddit meets VRChat."
    - chongli 6y ago
      It's a nice thought, for sure. I think people would generally use it only to hang out and relax with their friends though. People, for the most part, don't want to sit down and get into an intense discussion/debate over controversial topics with someone from "the other side". They'd much rather be around people with whom they agree. I could see it being useful as something of an intermediate between traditional online video games and offline gatherings involving food & boardgames. I don't see it being used as a primary mode of communication though, for the simple reason that it demands too much time and attention. Text messages and email occupy that space because it's so convenient to pick up and drop them at any time, even with a half-read message or a half-written reply. With VR that means putting on your gear every time, and resuming the "VR video" or whatever. Heck, tons of people complain when video talks are posted without slides/transcripts. They want the information. They don't care about any other aspects of the presentation. VR in that case just seems to be more distracting stuff that gets in the way of the information.
pessimizer 6y ago
There was no mythical time in the US when all topics were up for public debate, or without severe consequences for those holding the wrong opinions. The only real difference that I can see (other than the speed of communication) is that advocating some positions that were supported by an overwhelming majority of public voices 70 years ago will now make a vocal proportion of people see you as a bad person, and if you work for a company who wishes to appeal to those people, maybe get you fired. It's not even possible to create a "free speech space" where attributed comments will not result in judgment, other than by creating new protected classes for people who say racist, sexist, or homophobic things. Of course, if the state takes a position that those things are worth special protection, while expressing a negative opinion on (for example) the K-pop boy band BTS wouldn't be and could still get you fired or denounced, that's pretty terrifying. edit: I guess the main difference is that everybody is publishing, now. Once, you couldn't publish unless you agreed with the people who owned the presses, and nothing you said would be reacted to except by other people who owned presses. It gave the impression that the ideas that were held by the most privileged were more secure than they actually were. I think that through internet centralization, we'll be back there soon, and since the presses are still owned by the same people, the world will start to look familiar again.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Once, you couldn't publish unless you agreed with the people who owned the presses Presses weren't all that uncommon -- every town could have its own paper, maybe more than one. In the 20th century there were also typewriters, carbon paper, photocopiers, physical bulletin boards, open town squares, letters to the editor, subscription hand-mailed newsletters, ...

teddyh 6y ago

If you’re trying to start another venue with a stated specific bias, there is every reason to believe that it will (eventually, if not immediately) become exactly as limiting and echo-chambery like the rest of them. However, if you’re trying to not do that, and create a truly open environment, you run into the problem which was perhaps best described like this: “If you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.” (Emphasis in original.) — https://web.archive.org/web/20200618093842/https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservative-the-eternal-struggle/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200618093842/https://slatestar...

afarrell 6y ago
> echo-chambery What is the distinction you draw between an echo chamber and a community which mostly shares certain baseline assumptions and values?
- bananamerica 6y ago
  An echo chamber is violently hostile to different opinions and the individuals that defend them. A community with shared values tends to voice their disagreement (sometimes vehemently) without ejecting or deplatforming alien elements This usually excludes acts of moderation that enacts policies, guidelines, etc.
- teddyh 6y ago
  Since you ask: A community which just happens to mostly share common values is merely that and nothing more. An “echo chamber”, on the other hand, is when such a community does not get any significant input from any outside sources, and as a result keep reinforcing their own internal beliefs, even though those beliefs may be erroneous. This extreme homogeneity, thus created, in turn gives rise to a culture in which any persistent dissenters are viewed as anomalous and therefore dangerous. And this is limiting for those who sometimes wishes they could express dissent. It is also restricting the community itself from ever developing any further. To contrast, a normal community with mostly shared values would occasionally be affected by outside influences. This would create a constant level of turbulence in the system; there would always be some base level of variation between individuals, and over time, the median belief would slowly change this way and that, somewhat like fashions, and this would be normal.

marktani 6y ago

> It is difficult to convey just how many amazing writers, journalists, and think-tankers—some young and some old, some relatively obscure and others very famous—have privately told me that they can no longer write in their own voices; that they are counting the days until they get fired; and that they don't know where to turn if they do. Why? Name a number.

wizzwizz4 6y ago
Humans are bad at counting. It'd be the proportion of writers, journalists and think-tankers that this person knows that should be communicated, and even then you have to take into account selection bias effects… It's hard to communicate a felt-sense of the magnitude of a quantity like that.

shoes_for_thee 6y ago

Somewhat tangential... I've been thinking lately that there is a need for a space in which political discussions can be had where people are as committed to the values of civility and good-faith argument as we are at news.yc.com I have not a clue how such a space could be moderated. It's obvious to me that a person violating guidelines would quickly claim suppression if their posts were moderated, and the space itself would quickly devolve into the things it tries to avoid. Eg, echo-chamberiness, sophists, trolls. It seems like a paradigm shift is required, or that the medium just isn't appropriate. It also seems widely-accepted by nearly everyone that our current medium is destructive and no longer serves constructive use. Reputation, ranking, and moderation based on the 'wisdom of crowds' is no longer viable in its current form, but I'm utterly unwilling to cede control to an authority... How does one establish trustless good-faith?

anonms-coward 6y ago
People are committed to civility at HN and good faith arguments mostly because HN is a small community, much smaller than twitter e.g. It is also inhabited by mostly people with intellectual curiosity, and accounts violating the guidelines get banned quickly in their infancy. I followed quora since when it was a very small website. It was full of very useful and well written content. As the userbase grew, the quality of the content went on continuous downward trajectory. If HN had 100 million users, you would see the same content quality at HN, and the volume would make moderation hard, if not impossible. Not to mention, you might start seeing calls to cancel user XYZ on HN too if it reaches a userbase as large as twitter.
uniqueid 6y ago
A lot of approaches to moderation seem destined to fail, afaic. I think first principles should be: 1. There is no such thing as objective moderation. The universe gives us no way to conclusively prove something is good, fair or true. 2. You cannot moderate a forum at internet-scale using exclusively paid employees. 3. A tech company is not the government. There is no shame in a company looking out to protect its own good name. Some takeaways: (1) and (3) suggest a social network should admit its point of view, and moderate according to its tastes from the top-down. (2) suggests the bulk of moderation should either be AI-based, or delegated down via a hierarchy of its users. Since AI won't be capable of competent moderation for at least a decade, the primary method should be the community. (3) means that the the positioning on moderation should be heavy-handed. Eg: "If we dislike your contributions or feel you make us look bad, we will ban you. We offer no 'court of appeals', because it's an esthetic judgment." This ideology of my model is rather depressing, but the current state of the internet (compare HN or Tildes with 8chan or Gab) hints that it's better than the status quo.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

It was interesting to read the description of ‘fighting institutions’ that focus on arguments about certain topics that are mostly based on fallacies. The sad situation in the U.S. is also a result of it being the target of so much psychological warfare from Russia. The internet is an excellent medium to cause confusion. Fix that, and you might heal democracy.

lopmotr 6y ago
I've got an idea you might like. Protect Americans from being exposed to dissenting ideas by blocking non-approved foreign content from their internet. You could call it the Great Freedom Wall. /s
fuoqi 6y ago
If you really blame Russia for the current US situation, I have bad news for you. Blaming an external power is a political manipulation 101. Focusing public attention on them is almost always used to hide real structural domestic problems. Soviet Union also loved to shift blame onto the US and modern Russia does it as well. Did that help them to built a better society? External powers can only do so much. Usually most that they can do is to give a little push to processes already existing in society (and the US is a world leading expert at giving such pushes). So my advice would be: look at domestic roots of a problem first, not at foreign powers which try to exploit them.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  > So my advice would be: look at domestic roots of a problem first, not at foreign powers which try to exploit them. External powers have done a lot to manipulate US elections… via Facebook, a US company. This is good advice.
  - fuoqi 6y ago
    Do you seriously believe that the main reason that Trump got elected is a bunch of Facebook ads?

tranchms 6y ago

Rhetoric may well find its place as an esteemed study once again.

war1025 6y ago
This guy is apparently "alt-right", though I don't know exactly what that means these days, but someone mentioned him here on HN the other day which led me down the rabbit hole. I thought this video [1] was interesting and it introduced me to the difference between rhetoric and dialectic. Rhetoric is using emotion to convince people. Dialectic is using reason. He points out that you need to know how to read your audience to choose the correct angle of argument. Some people get hung up on, for example, always persuading through facts (dialectic), when what they really need to do is reach for emotion (rhetoric). Anyway, I thought it was an interesting intro to the topic. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHpalC3WaXY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHpalC3WaXY
- mturilin 6y ago
  Alt-right is technically a white supremacy neo-nazi movement. However, most of the time this label is used by woke people to discredit anyone who doesn’t share their views. Would you be able to share what led you to think why Yascha Mounk is alt-right?
- tottenhm 6y ago
  > This guy is apparently "alt-right"... Yeah, no. I mean, I don't know this guy from Bob, but the above has neither citation nor argument, and everything I've seen disagrees with that assessment. Skim the list of the board of advisors... https://www.persuasion.community/p/our-board https://www.persuasion.community/p/our-board Several names pop out - and not because they're alt-right / reactionaries / populist right-wingers. Some bios: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Applebaum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Applebaum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Fukuyama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Fukuyama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kasparov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kasparov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheri_Berman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheri_Berman Again, I don't have any personal knowledge here, but it's interesting to consider, eg, this bit from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yascha_Mounk#Political_positions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yascha_Mounk#Political_positio... > Mounk stated that he had changed his position on nationalism. He initially considered it a relic of the past that must be overcome, but he now advocates an "inclusive nationalism" to head off the threat of aggressive nationalism. On the German television newscast Tagesthemen, he stated that Germany is on a "historically unique experiment, namely to transform a mono-ethnic and monocultural democracy into a multi-ethnic one." I suppose words like "nationalism" and "mono-ethnic" might appear in an alt-right missive, but IMHO the above doesn't sound anything like an alt-right perspective.

zuhayeer 6y ago

I think pseudonymity will be important for the future of ideas (expanded beyond HN but into actual journalistic practice). You don't have to put up your real name, aka your full reputation behind interesting ideas that could risk damage to you as a person (being cancelled, character assassination, or otherwise) I also believe that this kind of work will invite better discussion and critique around different topics since the focus can only be on the merit of the content. Of course, anonymity also has its downsides, but good work usually finds a way into circles while bad work gets nipped at the bud fairly quickly

alextheparrot 6y ago
The Rolodex re-purposed, keeping track of all of our own identities instead of other's I do think this is interesting as an adaption, though to have any coherence of identity then that identity will need to re-used. That makes an interesting game, where people effectively wager different amounts of reputation, while understanding that some or total loss of that reputation could also occur. The natural advantage to having reputation is that you are better discovery status, more exposure. Imagine debating if the "top" tier identity or the "low" tier identity should be used to promote a new idea, as it is riskier. Overall, I think this expansion of pseudonymity as a society would just lead to additional fragmentation of personality. The "coherence" of a person as one, consistent individual is an interesting breakdown of self. We see this already with "online" vs "real-life" personalities can be highly divergent (Insta-self vs actual-self).
- bobbiechen 6y ago
  > Imagine debating if the "top" tier identity or the "low" tier identity should be used to promote a new idea, as it is riskier. This sentence reminds me a lot of Ender's Game, in which the characters of Locke and Demosthenes are created to contrast views. > They used throwaway names with their early efforts, not the identities that Peter planned to make famous and influential... When Peter was satisfied that they knew how to sound adult, he killed the old identities and they began to prepare to attract real attention.
  - 6y ago

steffandroid 6y ago

There's hardly a shortage of liberal media outlets, does the world really need another one?

apsec112 6y ago
Liberal here means classical liberalism, not just "left-wing": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
- steffandroid 6y ago
  Yes, an ideology which is already vastly overrepresented in the media. I'm sure we'll soon find out exactly how necessary this particular venture is.

gattis 6y ago

am i reading that we need to get militantly centrist?

prvc 6y ago

A bit of a self-important way to start what appears to be a blog, imho.