7 ms·

I think this comes down to a lack of trust in good-faith debate. People don't trust that someone "from the other side" will actually have the empathy and gener

I think this comes down to a lack of trust in good-faith debate. People don't trust that someone "from the other side" will actually have the empathy and generosity required to have a good-faith discussion on a topic. Also, I believe that we're constantly hearing so many voices trying to convince us one way or another, that our own discussions on those topics end up being attempts to convince others. That would explain "safe spaces" to some degree -- people don't want the pressure of having someone else try to convince them of something they don't agree with. Some of it just the two-party system. The points don't matter, just which side of the line each person is on. I wonder if more parties would help depolarize the situation. I'm really not sure.

bovermyer 6y ago
Your first point sounds accurate to me. I think what we're seeing is the solidification of identity in such strong and unyielding terms that anything that threatens that identity immediately triggers a basic survival instinct. At that point, rational discourse is not possible.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  Correct. Rational discourse has already happened, for decades. We appear on the cusp of a structural shift, and in that span of time rational discourse isn't welcome. People talked about whether the US should enter World War I for years before the German navy targeted US merchant vessels. After the decision to enter, speaking out against the militarization was grounds for arrest. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fiery-socialist-challenged-nations-role-wwi-180969386/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fiery-socialist-chall...
anonms-coward 6y ago
People not willing to venture out their echo chambers is bad, but much better than being hell bent on taking away the livelihood of others for bad tweets.
Fellshard 6y ago
It's also experiential - people reaching out in good faith for debate have consistently had their hand chewed up in return; and then a whole audience that sees that exchange and cements their opinions further. I'd argue the problem is often the choice of venue, and the expectation that internet strangers are truly going to come to a debate in good faith, but it still sets a consistent tone.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
082349872349872 6y ago
We have more parties than the US and are less polarised[1]. I recommend more parties, but don't see any incremental way the US could get them. [1] but then again, we had a mid-nineteenth century religiously-motivated civil war and it only killed a few hundred people. So maybe we support a plurality of parties because we're less polarisable, and not the other way around? (rather than having a fabric of society, prone to ripping, having a dense irregular felt of society, of tocquevillean overlapping voluntary associations, FTW?)
- etrautmann 6y ago
  Ranked choice voting would help considerably
eli_gottlieb 6y ago
> That would explain "safe spaces" to some degree -- people don't want the pressure of having someone else try to convince them of something they don't agree with. In my experience, it's more that people don't try to convince. Hell, the people who need safe-spaces, and the people they're trying to be "safe" from, don't even share the underlying epistemic assumptions that would allow them to "convince" each-other of anything less clearly observable than the sky being blue. The latter group, the people who other people need to be "safe" from, usually just scream, berate, harass, and often resort to violence. (Note that I've avoided identifying "which side" is which. The answer is: it depends which side is dominant in your particular area. Boston and San Francisco and Brooklyn are left-dominant. Middle America is right-dominant.)
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  No place in the US is left-dominant (this is true of most of Europe as well). There are right-dominant areas and centrist-dominant areas. Left discourse (think Chomsky) is extremely rare and almost never accepted in the media.
  - leftyted 6y ago
    > Left discourse (think Chomsky) is extremely rare and almost never accepted in the media. It must really baffle you that Chomsky signed this letter.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      Why would it? There is a real problem with lack of tolerance of opposing ideas and witch hunting, obviously on the right but also in the center and even on the left. And I have seen a lot of people on the left raising this problem and discussing how this will ultimately be used against them when, even when today it is done for mlre left-leaning goals. I think Professor Chomsky is extremely well aware of how easily tools of censorship are wielded against the voices of the minority. And note that a lot of the grand-standing and calls to boycotts on these issues is coming from liberals, not leftists.
  - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pdonis 6y ago
> The points don't matter, just which side of the line each person is on That's because it isn't just about ideas, it's about power. Politics and government now are not about coming to consensus solutions that everyone, or at least everyone but a small minority who just wants to game the system, can live with. Politics and government now are about imposing on everyone whichever set of ideas gets a slim 51% majority. That isn't the way it was supposed to work. I personally would like to see a Constitutional amendment that would require a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress to pass any legislation, and a 3/4 majority required to override a Presidential veto. That would at least require some amount of bipartisan consensus, and therefore some amount of actually somewhat reasonable debate instead of just shouting back and forth, before a public policy was imposed on everyone.
- mcguire 6y ago
  "That would at least require some amount of bipartisan consensus, and therefore some amount of actually somewhat reasonable debate..." What you would get would be a lot of back-room deals and strange bedfellows. Like now, only more so.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    I'm not so sure. The back-room deals that go on now are not about getting the other side to vote for things they really don't want to vote for, as much as horse trading on which bills come up for a vote vs. getting stuck in committee or tabled. It would be harder for either side to get any value out of that if a 2/3 majority was required to pass a bill--back-room deals can't get that many votes to switch in the opposition party about something that's really contentious. That's not to say that any bill that gets enough bipartisan consensus to pass a 2/3 vote must be good; plenty of bills that have passed in the past with that much consensus have been bad. But I think it might change the dynamics in at least something like the right direction.
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      That's because the tools in place to override a tabling are the 2/3 vote tools. Make everything 2/3 vote and you increase the need for the dealings that override the current 2/3 vote tools.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
I think a big part of it is the public space. Let's say I'm on X side of a debate. I can, in good faith, try to talk to someone from side Y. I might find some such person, or even several. The problem is, if we're talking in a public forum, anyone can come up (from side X, side Y, or both) and jump in not in good faith. And so I get, as Fellshard said, my hand chewed off, not by the person I was talking to, but by a bunch of drive-by conversation-killers. Under current conditions, I don't think a real conversation can happen in public (which includes social media).
rayiner 6y ago
We don’t want to convince each other, we want to destroy each other.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  handwave I think it's more "disempower," in general. There's nearly no doing open shooting, but people out in the streets are extremely disinterested in a conversation about "Maybe cops aren't so bad, you guys."

bovermyer 6y ago

Your first point sounds accurate to me. I think what we're seeing is the solidification of identity in such strong and unyielding terms that anything that threatens that identity immediately triggers a basic survival instinct. At that point, rational discourse is not possible.

shadowgovt 6y ago
Correct. Rational discourse has already happened, for decades. We appear on the cusp of a structural shift, and in that span of time rational discourse isn't welcome. People talked about whether the US should enter World War I for years before the German navy targeted US merchant vessels. After the decision to enter, speaking out against the militarization was grounds for arrest. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fiery-socialist-challenged-nations-role-wwi-180969386/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fiery-socialist-chall...

anonms-coward 6y ago

People not willing to venture out their echo chambers is bad, but much better than being hell bent on taking away the livelihood of others for bad tweets.

Fellshard 6y ago

It's also experiential - people reaching out in good faith for debate have consistently had their hand chewed up in return; and then a whole audience that sees that exchange and cements their opinions further. I'd argue the problem is often the choice of venue, and the expectation that internet strangers are truly going to come to a debate in good faith, but it still sets a consistent tone.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

082349872349872 6y ago

We have more parties than the US and are less polarised[1]. I recommend more parties, but don't see any incremental way the US could get them. [1] but then again, we had a mid-nineteenth century religiously-motivated civil war and it only killed a few hundred people. So maybe we support a plurality of parties because we're less polarisable, and not the other way around? (rather than having a fabric of society, prone to ripping, having a dense irregular felt of society, of tocquevillean overlapping voluntary associations, FTW?)

etrautmann 6y ago
Ranked choice voting would help considerably

eli_gottlieb 6y ago

> That would explain "safe spaces" to some degree -- people don't want the pressure of having someone else try to convince them of something they don't agree with. In my experience, it's more that people don't try to convince. Hell, the people who need safe-spaces, and the people they're trying to be "safe" from, don't even share the underlying epistemic assumptions that would allow them to "convince" each-other of anything less clearly observable than the sky being blue. The latter group, the people who other people need to be "safe" from, usually just scream, berate, harass, and often resort to violence. (Note that I've avoided identifying "which side" is which. The answer is: it depends which side is dominant in your particular area. Boston and San Francisco and Brooklyn are left-dominant. Middle America is right-dominant.)

tsimionescu 6y ago
No place in the US is left-dominant (this is true of most of Europe as well). There are right-dominant areas and centrist-dominant areas. Left discourse (think Chomsky) is extremely rare and almost never accepted in the media.
- leftyted 6y ago
  > Left discourse (think Chomsky) is extremely rare and almost never accepted in the media. It must really baffle you that Chomsky signed this letter.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Why would it? There is a real problem with lack of tolerance of opposing ideas and witch hunting, obviously on the right but also in the center and even on the left. And I have seen a lot of people on the left raising this problem and discussing how this will ultimately be used against them when, even when today it is done for mlre left-leaning goals. I think Professor Chomsky is extremely well aware of how easily tools of censorship are wielded against the voices of the minority. And note that a lot of the grand-standing and calls to boycotts on these issues is coming from liberals, not leftists.
- 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pdonis 6y ago

> The points don't matter, just which side of the line each person is on That's because it isn't just about ideas, it's about power. Politics and government now are not about coming to consensus solutions that everyone, or at least everyone but a small minority who just wants to game the system, can live with. Politics and government now are about imposing on everyone whichever set of ideas gets a slim 51% majority. That isn't the way it was supposed to work. I personally would like to see a Constitutional amendment that would require a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress to pass any legislation, and a 3/4 majority required to override a Presidential veto. That would at least require some amount of bipartisan consensus, and therefore some amount of actually somewhat reasonable debate instead of just shouting back and forth, before a public policy was imposed on everyone.

mcguire 6y ago
"That would at least require some amount of bipartisan consensus, and therefore some amount of actually somewhat reasonable debate..." What you would get would be a lot of back-room deals and strange bedfellows. Like now, only more so.
- pdonis 6y ago
  I'm not so sure. The back-room deals that go on now are not about getting the other side to vote for things they really don't want to vote for, as much as horse trading on which bills come up for a vote vs. getting stuck in committee or tabled. It would be harder for either side to get any value out of that if a 2/3 majority was required to pass a bill--back-room deals can't get that many votes to switch in the opposition party about something that's really contentious. That's not to say that any bill that gets enough bipartisan consensus to pass a 2/3 vote must be good; plenty of bills that have passed in the past with that much consensus have been bad. But I think it might change the dynamics in at least something like the right direction.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    That's because the tools in place to override a tabling are the 2/3 vote tools. Make everything 2/3 vote and you increase the need for the dealings that override the current 2/3 vote tools.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

I think a big part of it is the public space. Let's say I'm on X side of a debate. I can, in good faith, try to talk to someone from side Y. I might find some such person, or even several. The problem is, if we're talking in a public forum, anyone can come up (from side X, side Y, or both) and jump in not in good faith. And so I get, as Fellshard said, my hand chewed off, not by the person I was talking to, but by a bunch of drive-by conversation-killers. Under current conditions, I don't think a real conversation can happen in public (which includes social media).

rayiner 6y ago

We don’t want to convince each other, we want to destroy each other.

shadowgovt 6y ago
handwave I think it's more "disempower," in general. There's nearly no doing open shooting, but people out in the streets are extremely disinterested in a conversation about "Maybe cops aren't so bad, you guys."