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> The polarization spiral, which is fed and accelerated by social media, is making extremists on both right and left more extreme, more powerful, and more intim

> The polarization spiral, which is fed and accelerated by social media, is making extremists on both right and left more extreme, more powerful, and more intimidating. Both sides feed off of each other. Both sides are essential for a polarization spiral. And that means that neither side can win by attacking or humiliating the other side. Such tactics only serve to energize the other side. It's not about who can "win". What would winning this "culture war" even look like? Everyone becomes a leftoid/rightoid and lives happily ever after? That would defeat the purpose of all this, which is to make money. How do you make money on social media? Ads. How do ads work? Engagements. How do you maximize engagements? The best ROI formula is posting polarizing content that begets flame wars and hate-shares and thinkpieces. The "culture war" is an illusion perpetuated by the influencer/grifter industry that monetizes it.

neogodless 5y ago
Is this culture war (illusion) dangerous? Are we against it, and if so, how do we end that?
- pphysch 5y ago
  The solution is more offensive to Americans than the problem. Stricter controls on online content including ads. Alas, that would be censorship.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    Since there is zero chance of it being applied impartially, yes it would be censorship and yes that cure would be worse than the disease.
    - tremon 5y ago
      Yes, that is the point the GP was making.
  - dillondoyle 5y ago
    Leaves out the big elephant in the room, the o.g. Fox news, which is now metastasizing to even crazier alternate reality media outlets. For sure some non digital media examples on the left too but nothing even close to that scale. I do agree social media plays a big role in spreading alternate reality craziness on both sides, but political polarization won't go anywhere imho.
    - pphysch 5y ago
      Content controls would apply equally to "traditional" media.
      - dillondoyle 5y ago
        I probably wouldn't. But I do think it would be worth having 'truth in advertising' labels - that people will just ignore lol. Like Tucker Carslon != Walter Cronkite.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  The only solutions to a culture war: 1) Domination: fight it out and exterminate the other side or disenfranchise them so much they become powerless to oppose your agenda. Then you rule over them and make sure to keep them weak and defeated otherwise they will switch tables on you. (Examples: Bismarcks' original Kulturkampf reversing to Weimer reversing to Nazis, Argentina's dirty war) 2) Devolution: decentralize even more and reduce power of Federal government (Examples: Lebanon. Switzerland) 3) Divorce: split into two different nations entirely. (Examples: Ethiopia/Eritrea split, Yugoslavia breakup) The reason why is that this is ultimately a religious war about values. People will die rather than give up their religion or change their core values. That means that if their core values are diametrically opposed, then will rather die than stop doing what the other side is convinced is immoral. This brings us to my favorite trilemma: a) diversity (of values) b) liberty c) a strong central government Pick two. Historically nations dealt with diversity of core beliefs by Federalism, e.g. letting one province be Catholic and the other Protestant and they just leave each other alone, with a central government that only takes action if both sides agree. But that's a very fragile arrangement prone to civil war -- e.g. Lebanon -- when there is a demographic shift that upsets the balance of power. The left, also, would not accept if, say, America split into a red and blue nation with the Red nation say not respecting gay rights or emitting lots of carbon. Blue America would invade them as they have a crusading vision that is global and totalizing. Personally, I favor devolution (best) or a national breakup (second best). Obviously I do not favor domination. But most people I know, and everyone I know on the left, favors domination. The right must be defeated. But it's easy for me to emigrate to a nation which is much more sane than the U.S., so I have less at stake than those stuck in America.
  - ff317 5y ago
    I mostly agree with your analysis, but while Devolution sounds good on paper at an abstract distance, the reality of it is going to be (and is) a lot messier. The problem is that we don't have just Red-vs-Blue states in the US. We also have Red-vs-Blue subregions and counties within most (all?) states, and even within a nominally Red or Blue county, city, or town, you'll almost universally find a a sizable sub-population of the opposite bent. So, to pick an example hot-button issue: Abortion Rights. If the feds decentralize this issue and let states find their own paths, you'd have ample abortion rights in the blue states and virtually no abortion rights in red states. But many of these nominally red or blue states are really, say, a 70/30 or 60/40 split by population, and so a large (but non-majority) population of each state is now living under laws they despise, which is not going to make for good long-term outcomes. Over a long-enough time period, I suppose many would choose to move to other states and physically polarize the nation by-state, which is then going to make it easier and more natural to eventually Divorce the two sides as separate nations, and then they will almost surely have wars in the future over turf, politics, etc. But in the shorter term, most people don't have the freedom to just move states on a whim because of political change: they have families and friend networks, they have jobs to consider, financial and social costs of uprooting and moving, etc. It's still a relatively-rare privilege, among the whole US population, to be in a situation where you can easily move states as you feel like it on a political whim. You could also imagine a path where Devolution just gets more-fine-grained - the Feds leave more to the states, the states leave more to the counties, they leave more to the cities, etc. This would allow things to differ at a much more local level. All over the country, you might find a flip of the abortion laws every 20-30 miles traveling down the highway. This reduces the costs and challenges for the individual - now they can more-easily move a short distance for a set of laws they find palatable, or simply drive across legal lines for various services/purposes. However, I think having such a large menu of divisive and important legal issues vary at such a low level would lead to a lot of chaos and friction. You'd lose a lot of the advantages of being a relatively-homogeneous country. Imagine doing business in such a country and having to pay far more attention to the more-significant legal differences in every jurisdiction. It sounds like a mess! My current (perhaps naive!) opinion is that you can't fix this in an effective way through Devolution or Divorce - the costs are too high. I think this needs to be fixed at the per-human level: we need to become less-polarized as individuals, and elect less-polarized politicians as well. We need to learn to disagree without being disagreeable again, and to understand where each other is coming from. We used to have that (well, to a much larger degree than we do now) decades ago. I don't think Facebook alone created this mess, but tech is certainly playing a significant role in amplifying the problem rather than solving it. You have to reach a point where everyone can have conversations with all of their neighbors of the form "I disagree with your stance on X, but I can see why you think that way, and I want to explore where we have common ground and find a compromise solution that can make both of us reasonably happy to live alongside each other", or your society is doomed to eventually be a failed one. Being "right" on an issue is not as important as being good neighbors to each other and respecting others' views. Perhaps your particularly strong view of a certain issue will eventually prove itself to be universally acceptable/accepted (in the sense that eventually in some future year, an overwhelming majority of the population will agree with you instead of say, just the 35% that are in your political subcamp). However, you're not going to get there by going to war with the other 65% and demeaning and degrading them. You're going to get there by being understanding enough to have healthy relationships with them, and then perhaps minds can change more-naturally (and it may take a generation or two for some changes, but it's the only non-violent way to get there). You have to do this even if you don't think the other side is doing it, or even capable. It's the only way to have hope for a better future.
xvedejas 5y ago
Not just money; I've read that political scandals have a much larger effect size on who wins political elections than all of campaign spending does[0]. This suggests to me that there's a huge political incentive to fabricate scandals, and to get a large cohort of people talking about it and spreading it as fast as possible. [0](I wish I could find the article, if this rings a bell to anyone, let me know)
- native_samples 5y ago
  Russiagate and its slow-mo collapse seems a good example of this incentive to fabricate scandals. Matt Taibbi has been writing about it for years, the details are too much inside baseball for me, but it's clear that the whole set of claims has been falling apart for years and that the TV channels and newspapers that were pushing it have never really admitted any fault.
- pphysch 5y ago
  Good point. Contemporary American political campaigning is just marketing. All about the eyeballs.
- johntfella 5y ago
  probably not what you're thinking of but this came to mind per your comment; (pdf) https://www.uakron.edu/bliss/state-of-the-parties/papers/Kolodny.pdf https://www.uakron.edu/bliss/state-of-the-parties/papers/Kol...
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  Above the level to get your basic message out, campaign spending doesn't have much effect. So I'm not surprised that learning about the candidates character had bigger impact.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
The culture war is not a creation of those selling ads. (It's fueled by the outrage machine that the ad-sellers drive, but they didn't originate it.) "Winning" would look like the other side being marginalized, and everyone else agreeing that you were right, and agreeing with and implementing your political and social program. But since this involves the utter capitulation of the other side, which is north of 40% of the population, that's not going to happen. Instead, the threat makes the other side more outraged, and therefore more extreme.
taneq 5y ago
> What would winning this "culture war" even look like? Everyone becomes a leftoid/rightoid and lives happily ever after? I dunno, I figure if I'm being called a Nazi by the lefties and whatever their puerile insult-du-jour is by the righties then I'm probably about on track.
PaulHoule 5y ago
The winner is special interest groups that can go ahead with their special interests because mass-bases groups on the left and right are neutralized and off the agenda.
- pphysch 5y ago
  I agree. Very convenient state of affairs for the oligarchs and SIGs. For example, oligarch Peter Thiel has the current strategy of funding hate-spewing demagogues for political office because he thinks that America needs an "enemy" to be united. I wonder who that "enemy" is scapegoating for?
rayiner 5y ago
> The "culture war" is an illusion perpetuated by the influencer/grifter industry that monetizes it. It’s absolutely not an illusion. Americans are diverging on fundamental aspects of how we should organize our society. For example, by 2060, half the country will be Latino, Asian, or Black. For decades, there was a consensus that children should be socialized to see “color blindness” as an ideal. Now, many on the left say “color blindness is racist.” My third grader is being taught a “racial literacy” curriculum that will “help her develop her identity” “around her skin tone.” I don’t want my kid developing an “identity” around her brown skin. It’s a pretty fundamental disagreement over a pretty fundamental aspect of life—how to socialize children. There’s other related examples, e.g. addressing sexuality and family formation. These are fundamental issues, not trivial disagreements. There’s a fundamentally new ideology taking shape, one that shreds previous shared assumptions. That ideology elevates non-discrimination to an overriding principle. I’ve had conversations with center left friends who won’t say they favor open borders, but can’t really think of any reason to have them other than “discrimination against brown people on the other side.” It’s overridden a bunch of other ideas underlying the Westphalian model. E.g. they’ll attack Japan as “racist” for wanting to keep the country for Japanese people—which can’t be reconciled with the Westphalian notion of self determination. The new ideology also elevated credentialed expertise to primacy. I’ve shared with my center left friends a study showing that over 60% of Black and Latino people agree with Trumpian immigration rhetoric when not attributed to Trump: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/biden-latino-vote-strategy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/biden-latino-vote.... The academics running the study express shock that minorities agree with language that is in their view “obviously racist.” To me that’s a contradiction in terms: if most Black or Latino people don’t think something is racist, then it’s not racist. But I’ve had numerous center-left friends take the opposite position. In their view, whether something is racist is best decided by experts, not lay people. Similarly, with respect to the recent issues in Virginia, they think experts should decide the content of race-related instruction in schools, not parents. That’s upends previously shared notions. Article 18 of the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights expressly makes parents the arbiters of the “moral” “socialization” of children.
- pphysch 5y ago
  > There’s a fundamentally new ideology taking shape This is where I disagree. It's the same old (Lockean) liberalism adapting to an increasingly decentralized and connected (i.e. diverse) setting.
vintermann 5y ago
I see a lot of dark muttering from "old left" circles that the point of culture war is distraction. To keep focus on cultural and symbolic issues to divide us with infighting and keep us from focusing on shared economic interests. Culture war to distract from the class war, to put it like that. And I think there may be something to that. It's not all about grifters. But I think it would be wrong to attribute all that to cynicism. I think e.g. workers at big organizations need to feel that they're doing good, especially when it looks like they're doing some pretty bad things. All the culture war drama at Google, for instance, or CIA's infamous "Intersectional mentally ill latina millennial" ad, I think they may not be top down efforts to whitewash, but genuine attempts to cast yourself as good in a messed up way.
- pphysch 5y ago
  I generally don't buy into theories that it was by design, i.e. a conspiracy to distract us. Instead, it's a result of market forces (the attention industry) and the powerful (oligarchs & SIGs) gradually nudging things in a direction that works better for them. Coupled with virtually zero accountability to the American people.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    It doesn't really need to be "by design". Those with an outsource chunk of wealth and power tend to (a) be a small percentage of the population (b) have naturally aligned goals; those goals will be addressed using the tools at hand. Those without much wealth or power represent a large and almost ridicuously diverse population, by almost every metric except having much wealth and power. It is much more difficult for them to agree upon goals let alone coordinate any sort of action that would further those goals. Consequently, the "natural" state of affairs, once you allow wealth and power to accumulate in the hands of a fraction of the population, is for the goals of the wealthy and the powerful to take precedence.
- rayiner 5y ago
  Worth reading: https://www.amazon.com/Woke-Inc-Corporate-Americas-Justice/dp/1546090789 https://www.amazon.com/Woke-Inc-Corporate-Americas-Justice/d...
golergka 5y ago
> What would winning this "culture war" even look like? Easy: opposition gets the firing squad.
gremlinsinc 5y ago
So instead of govts using manufactured consent to control us like 1984, Facebook does it to glean money/data out of every view, but it still ends up probably pushing us into some authoritarian nightmare... this is why I limit FB to very very infrequent visits, or chats w/ family in messenger, and pretty much only stick to reddit/HN. there's a bit more intellectual discourse or at least witty sarcasm (in reddit's case), that appeals to me, and can keep my ADHD attention... FB is just stupid memes, and flame wars.

neogodless 5y ago

Is this culture war (illusion) dangerous? Are we against it, and if so, how do we end that?

pphysch 5y ago
The solution is more offensive to Americans than the problem. Stricter controls on online content including ads. Alas, that would be censorship.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Since there is zero chance of it being applied impartially, yes it would be censorship and yes that cure would be worse than the disease.
  - tremon 5y ago
    Yes, that is the point the GP was making.
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  Leaves out the big elephant in the room, the o.g. Fox news, which is now metastasizing to even crazier alternate reality media outlets. For sure some non digital media examples on the left too but nothing even close to that scale. I do agree social media plays a big role in spreading alternate reality craziness on both sides, but political polarization won't go anywhere imho.
  - pphysch 5y ago
    Content controls would apply equally to "traditional" media.
    - dillondoyle 5y ago
      I probably wouldn't. But I do think it would be worth having 'truth in advertising' labels - that people will just ignore lol. Like Tucker Carslon != Walter Cronkite.
rsj_hn 5y ago
The only solutions to a culture war: 1) Domination: fight it out and exterminate the other side or disenfranchise them so much they become powerless to oppose your agenda. Then you rule over them and make sure to keep them weak and defeated otherwise they will switch tables on you. (Examples: Bismarcks' original Kulturkampf reversing to Weimer reversing to Nazis, Argentina's dirty war) 2) Devolution: decentralize even more and reduce power of Federal government (Examples: Lebanon. Switzerland) 3) Divorce: split into two different nations entirely. (Examples: Ethiopia/Eritrea split, Yugoslavia breakup) The reason why is that this is ultimately a religious war about values. People will die rather than give up their religion or change their core values. That means that if their core values are diametrically opposed, then will rather die than stop doing what the other side is convinced is immoral. This brings us to my favorite trilemma: a) diversity (of values) b) liberty c) a strong central government Pick two. Historically nations dealt with diversity of core beliefs by Federalism, e.g. letting one province be Catholic and the other Protestant and they just leave each other alone, with a central government that only takes action if both sides agree. But that's a very fragile arrangement prone to civil war -- e.g. Lebanon -- when there is a demographic shift that upsets the balance of power. The left, also, would not accept if, say, America split into a red and blue nation with the Red nation say not respecting gay rights or emitting lots of carbon. Blue America would invade them as they have a crusading vision that is global and totalizing. Personally, I favor devolution (best) or a national breakup (second best). Obviously I do not favor domination. But most people I know, and everyone I know on the left, favors domination. The right must be defeated. But it's easy for me to emigrate to a nation which is much more sane than the U.S., so I have less at stake than those stuck in America.
- ff317 5y ago
  I mostly agree with your analysis, but while Devolution sounds good on paper at an abstract distance, the reality of it is going to be (and is) a lot messier. The problem is that we don't have just Red-vs-Blue states in the US. We also have Red-vs-Blue subregions and counties within most (all?) states, and even within a nominally Red or Blue county, city, or town, you'll almost universally find a a sizable sub-population of the opposite bent. So, to pick an example hot-button issue: Abortion Rights. If the feds decentralize this issue and let states find their own paths, you'd have ample abortion rights in the blue states and virtually no abortion rights in red states. But many of these nominally red or blue states are really, say, a 70/30 or 60/40 split by population, and so a large (but non-majority) population of each state is now living under laws they despise, which is not going to make for good long-term outcomes. Over a long-enough time period, I suppose many would choose to move to other states and physically polarize the nation by-state, which is then going to make it easier and more natural to eventually Divorce the two sides as separate nations, and then they will almost surely have wars in the future over turf, politics, etc. But in the shorter term, most people don't have the freedom to just move states on a whim because of political change: they have families and friend networks, they have jobs to consider, financial and social costs of uprooting and moving, etc. It's still a relatively-rare privilege, among the whole US population, to be in a situation where you can easily move states as you feel like it on a political whim. You could also imagine a path where Devolution just gets more-fine-grained - the Feds leave more to the states, the states leave more to the counties, they leave more to the cities, etc. This would allow things to differ at a much more local level. All over the country, you might find a flip of the abortion laws every 20-30 miles traveling down the highway. This reduces the costs and challenges for the individual - now they can more-easily move a short distance for a set of laws they find palatable, or simply drive across legal lines for various services/purposes. However, I think having such a large menu of divisive and important legal issues vary at such a low level would lead to a lot of chaos and friction. You'd lose a lot of the advantages of being a relatively-homogeneous country. Imagine doing business in such a country and having to pay far more attention to the more-significant legal differences in every jurisdiction. It sounds like a mess! My current (perhaps naive!) opinion is that you can't fix this in an effective way through Devolution or Divorce - the costs are too high. I think this needs to be fixed at the per-human level: we need to become less-polarized as individuals, and elect less-polarized politicians as well. We need to learn to disagree without being disagreeable again, and to understand where each other is coming from. We used to have that (well, to a much larger degree than we do now) decades ago. I don't think Facebook alone created this mess, but tech is certainly playing a significant role in amplifying the problem rather than solving it. You have to reach a point where everyone can have conversations with all of their neighbors of the form "I disagree with your stance on X, but I can see why you think that way, and I want to explore where we have common ground and find a compromise solution that can make both of us reasonably happy to live alongside each other", or your society is doomed to eventually be a failed one. Being "right" on an issue is not as important as being good neighbors to each other and respecting others' views. Perhaps your particularly strong view of a certain issue will eventually prove itself to be universally acceptable/accepted (in the sense that eventually in some future year, an overwhelming majority of the population will agree with you instead of say, just the 35% that are in your political subcamp). However, you're not going to get there by going to war with the other 65% and demeaning and degrading them. You're going to get there by being understanding enough to have healthy relationships with them, and then perhaps minds can change more-naturally (and it may take a generation or two for some changes, but it's the only non-violent way to get there). You have to do this even if you don't think the other side is doing it, or even capable. It's the only way to have hope for a better future.

xvedejas 5y ago

Not just money; I've read that political scandals have a much larger effect size on who wins political elections than all of campaign spending does[0]. This suggests to me that there's a huge political incentive to fabricate scandals, and to get a large cohort of people talking about it and spreading it as fast as possible. [0](I wish I could find the article, if this rings a bell to anyone, let me know)

native_samples 5y ago
Russiagate and its slow-mo collapse seems a good example of this incentive to fabricate scandals. Matt Taibbi has been writing about it for years, the details are too much inside baseball for me, but it's clear that the whole set of claims has been falling apart for years and that the TV channels and newspapers that were pushing it have never really admitted any fault.
pphysch 5y ago
Good point. Contemporary American political campaigning is just marketing. All about the eyeballs.
johntfella 5y ago
probably not what you're thinking of but this came to mind per your comment; (pdf) https://www.uakron.edu/bliss/state-of-the-parties/papers/Kolodny.pdf https://www.uakron.edu/bliss/state-of-the-parties/papers/Kol...
BurningFrog 5y ago
Above the level to get your basic message out, campaign spending doesn't have much effect. So I'm not surprised that learning about the candidates character had bigger impact.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

The culture war is not a creation of those selling ads. (It's fueled by the outrage machine that the ad-sellers drive, but they didn't originate it.) "Winning" would look like the other side being marginalized, and everyone else agreeing that you were right, and agreeing with and implementing your political and social program. But since this involves the utter capitulation of the other side, which is north of 40% of the population, that's not going to happen. Instead, the threat makes the other side more outraged, and therefore more extreme.

taneq 5y ago

> What would winning this "culture war" even look like? Everyone becomes a leftoid/rightoid and lives happily ever after? I dunno, I figure if I'm being called a Nazi by the lefties and whatever their puerile insult-du-jour is by the righties then I'm probably about on track.

PaulHoule 5y ago

The winner is special interest groups that can go ahead with their special interests because mass-bases groups on the left and right are neutralized and off the agenda.

pphysch 5y ago
I agree. Very convenient state of affairs for the oligarchs and SIGs. For example, oligarch Peter Thiel has the current strategy of funding hate-spewing demagogues for political office because he thinks that America needs an "enemy" to be united. I wonder who that "enemy" is scapegoating for?

rayiner 5y ago

> The "culture war" is an illusion perpetuated by the influencer/grifter industry that monetizes it. It’s absolutely not an illusion. Americans are diverging on fundamental aspects of how we should organize our society. For example, by 2060, half the country will be Latino, Asian, or Black. For decades, there was a consensus that children should be socialized to see “color blindness” as an ideal. Now, many on the left say “color blindness is racist.” My third grader is being taught a “racial literacy” curriculum that will “help her develop her identity” “around her skin tone.” I don’t want my kid developing an “identity” around her brown skin. It’s a pretty fundamental disagreement over a pretty fundamental aspect of life—how to socialize children. There’s other related examples, e.g. addressing sexuality and family formation. These are fundamental issues, not trivial disagreements. There’s a fundamentally new ideology taking shape, one that shreds previous shared assumptions. That ideology elevates non-discrimination to an overriding principle. I’ve had conversations with center left friends who won’t say they favor open borders, but can’t really think of any reason to have them other than “discrimination against brown people on the other side.” It’s overridden a bunch of other ideas underlying the Westphalian model. E.g. they’ll attack Japan as “racist” for wanting to keep the country for Japanese people—which can’t be reconciled with the Westphalian notion of self determination. The new ideology also elevated credentialed expertise to primacy. I’ve shared with my center left friends a study showing that over 60% of Black and Latino people agree with Trumpian immigration rhetoric when not attributed to Trump: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/biden-latino-vote-strategy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/biden-latino-vote.... The academics running the study express shock that minorities agree with language that is in their view “obviously racist.” To me that’s a contradiction in terms: if most Black or Latino people don’t think something is racist, then it’s not racist. But I’ve had numerous center-left friends take the opposite position. In their view, whether something is racist is best decided by experts, not lay people. Similarly, with respect to the recent issues in Virginia, they think experts should decide the content of race-related instruction in schools, not parents. That’s upends previously shared notions. Article 18 of the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights expressly makes parents the arbiters of the “moral” “socialization” of children.

pphysch 5y ago
> There’s a fundamentally new ideology taking shape This is where I disagree. It's the same old (Lockean) liberalism adapting to an increasingly decentralized and connected (i.e. diverse) setting.

vintermann 5y ago

I see a lot of dark muttering from "old left" circles that the point of culture war is distraction. To keep focus on cultural and symbolic issues to divide us with infighting and keep us from focusing on shared economic interests. Culture war to distract from the class war, to put it like that. And I think there may be something to that. It's not all about grifters. But I think it would be wrong to attribute all that to cynicism. I think e.g. workers at big organizations need to feel that they're doing good, especially when it looks like they're doing some pretty bad things. All the culture war drama at Google, for instance, or CIA's infamous "Intersectional mentally ill latina millennial" ad, I think they may not be top down efforts to whitewash, but genuine attempts to cast yourself as good in a messed up way.

pphysch 5y ago
I generally don't buy into theories that it was by design, i.e. a conspiracy to distract us. Instead, it's a result of market forces (the attention industry) and the powerful (oligarchs & SIGs) gradually nudging things in a direction that works better for them. Coupled with virtually zero accountability to the American people.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  It doesn't really need to be "by design". Those with an outsource chunk of wealth and power tend to (a) be a small percentage of the population (b) have naturally aligned goals; those goals will be addressed using the tools at hand. Those without much wealth or power represent a large and almost ridicuously diverse population, by almost every metric except having much wealth and power. It is much more difficult for them to agree upon goals let alone coordinate any sort of action that would further those goals. Consequently, the "natural" state of affairs, once you allow wealth and power to accumulate in the hands of a fraction of the population, is for the goals of the wealthy and the powerful to take precedence.
rayiner 5y ago
Worth reading: https://www.amazon.com/Woke-Inc-Corporate-Americas-Justice/dp/1546090789 https://www.amazon.com/Woke-Inc-Corporate-Americas-Justice/d...

golergka 5y ago

> What would winning this "culture war" even look like? Easy: opposition gets the firing squad.

gremlinsinc 5y ago

So instead of govts using manufactured consent to control us like 1984, Facebook does it to glean money/data out of every view, but it still ends up probably pushing us into some authoritarian nightmare... this is why I limit FB to very very infrequent visits, or chats w/ family in messenger, and pretty much only stick to reddit/HN. there's a bit more intellectual discourse or at least witty sarcasm (in reddit's case), that appeals to me, and can keep my ADHD attention... FB is just stupid memes, and flame wars.