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Yesterday I made the comment "everything is collapsing underneath" though there's context etc. I think the better way to say it. "Is everything falling apart fo

Yesterday I made the comment "everything is collapsing underneath" though there's context etc. I think the better way to say it. "Is everything falling apart for the USA?" Yes indeed. Most other countries have problems. Sure Sri Lanka has the same problems. Sure the middle east just went through the same problems and some states are still enduring civil war. Though from what I can tell it's mostly the USA in this 'falling apart' situation. Canada is certainly not far behind. >“The story of Babel,” Haidt writes, “is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.” Damn that's a good analogy! Elon tweeted this yesterday: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519735033950470144 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519735033950470144 The political polarization starting pre-existed social media. This started late 90s or for sure early 2000s with GWBush. Bush knew something from his father's reign. He could play identity as a victim. So he would pretend to be a yokel and when the elites would make fun... it told every yokel that Bush was the only option. Obviously he never passed laws or tried to 'fix' something for yokels. It was shallow identity politics but identity politics breeds more identity politics. The democrats then needed identity politics of obama. It's an inevitable scenario, 'first black president' will eventually happen in history and inevitably it would be toxic with identity politics. The rest is history, Trump is a symptom. Biden is a symptom. >By “here” I mean a time when a big change in information technology has implications for social structure too dramatic to play out without turbulence. In Nonzero I discussed a number of such thresholds, including the invention of writing and the invention of the printing press. Blaming social media is not legitimate in my opinion; social media will be what fixes this. The fix to the USA falling apart is free and open discussions between the camps. This is what Elon is planning to do with twitter. He's a billionaire and will be the world's first trillionaire, ONLY if the USA doesn't fall apart. He has a vested incentive/interest to help make this not happen. >One grievance that drove support for Donald Trump in 2016 was that American coastal elites felt more connected to elites in other countries than to their fellow Americans in the heartland. Which is for sure true. The reality is that they are still the same team. You can enjoy F1 over Nascar. You have to still realize you're on the same team. When the left-wing attacks the right-wing. You can't take actions that harms your own team. Eventually that team breaks and here we are.

cheschire 5y ago
> social media will be what fixes this. The fix to the USA falling apart is free and open discussions between the camps. I feel like cancel culture may be your blind spot.
happytoexplain 5y ago
>American coastal elites felt more connected to elites in other countries than to their fellow Americans in the heartland >When the left-wing attacks the right-wing This is part of the problem. When you casually define the left as "coastal elites who are out of touch" and the right as "Americans in the heartland who are uncared for", you are taking a real problem and reframing it as "all left-wingers vs all right-wingers". You are making people feel attacked who are not in the group you are trying to criticize. People (on both sides) do this to each other constantly (though they have been since prehistory - it's just particularly bad in the US lately).
- incomingpain 5y ago
  That's a good point. That first part was a copy and paste from the article. In defense of nozero or haidt, statistically that is accurate. The red vs blue is certainly concentrated rural vs urban. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/upshot/america-political-divide-urban-rural.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/upshot/america-political-... It's interesting the consequences of this as well. There are policies being changed without a mindset of urban vs rural. Where a policy that makes sense in a urban point of view is catastrophic to rural communities. "If you think the world is overpopulated, leave the city." Political policies like carbon tax for example disproportionately harm rural people. Some dude living in downtown toronto taking the subway is basically getting a pay cheque from the government at the expense of rural folks who must drive a low mpg pickup truck. What you think farming can be done in a econobox? https://metro.co.uk/2015/03/28/udder-disgrace-cops-find-cow-in-back-of-farmers-car-5125337/ https://metro.co.uk/2015/03/28/udder-disgrace-cops-find-cow-... In fact, if you know a bloc of people support your policies and another doesn't. Figuring out of a system which transfers wealth to your supporters at the expense of your political opponents is an ideal system. The problem though is that we in a country are the same team. Attacking 1 side is never beneficial. Urban folks attacking farmers with carbon taxes? Ok well how's that food inflation working out? Attacking oil workers with carbon taxes? How about the gas prices? >People (on both sides) do this to each other constantly (though they have been since prehistory - it's just particularly bad in the US lately). It's interesting as well to imagine how to solve this in the USA. Lets say Elon fails or even makes this worse and he deletes twitter. It just doesnt exist anymore. How do you bring both sides back together without blood being shed? You cant do nothing, it's actively becoming worse right now. Act now or else. It's certainly not going to be solved by more censorship and removing free speech. In fact, censorship is a new thing. Free speech has been around for plenty long to know it's not causing it. My hypothetical also assumes reduction in censorship by elon failed. So as president happytoexplain of the independent party. How do you bridge the divide? How do you bring people back together? You might try to go nationalism. Tell everyone they are Team America, that the fight isnt with each other. Build some foreign enemy for people to rail against. At the same time go around ending all the wars the USA involved in. End wars that the USA arent even involved in. Reduce tension, reduce war exhaustion. Make sure people's economic situation is as good as possible because of high correlation between violence and economic situation. Reduce the poor mindset in general, tackle it directly. Who did I just describe?

cheschire 5y ago

> social media will be what fixes this. The fix to the USA falling apart is free and open discussions between the camps. I feel like cancel culture may be your blind spot.

happytoexplain 5y ago

>American coastal elites felt more connected to elites in other countries than to their fellow Americans in the heartland >When the left-wing attacks the right-wing This is part of the problem. When you casually define the left as "coastal elites who are out of touch" and the right as "Americans in the heartland who are uncared for", you are taking a real problem and reframing it as "all left-wingers vs all right-wingers". You are making people feel attacked who are not in the group you are trying to criticize. People (on both sides) do this to each other constantly (though they have been since prehistory - it's just particularly bad in the US lately).

incomingpain 5y ago
That's a good point. That first part was a copy and paste from the article. In defense of nozero or haidt, statistically that is accurate. The red vs blue is certainly concentrated rural vs urban. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/upshot/america-political-divide-urban-rural.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/upshot/america-political-... It's interesting the consequences of this as well. There are policies being changed without a mindset of urban vs rural. Where a policy that makes sense in a urban point of view is catastrophic to rural communities. "If you think the world is overpopulated, leave the city." Political policies like carbon tax for example disproportionately harm rural people. Some dude living in downtown toronto taking the subway is basically getting a pay cheque from the government at the expense of rural folks who must drive a low mpg pickup truck. What you think farming can be done in a econobox? https://metro.co.uk/2015/03/28/udder-disgrace-cops-find-cow-in-back-of-farmers-car-5125337/ https://metro.co.uk/2015/03/28/udder-disgrace-cops-find-cow-... In fact, if you know a bloc of people support your policies and another doesn't. Figuring out of a system which transfers wealth to your supporters at the expense of your political opponents is an ideal system. The problem though is that we in a country are the same team. Attacking 1 side is never beneficial. Urban folks attacking farmers with carbon taxes? Ok well how's that food inflation working out? Attacking oil workers with carbon taxes? How about the gas prices? >People (on both sides) do this to each other constantly (though they have been since prehistory - it's just particularly bad in the US lately). It's interesting as well to imagine how to solve this in the USA. Lets say Elon fails or even makes this worse and he deletes twitter. It just doesnt exist anymore. How do you bring both sides back together without blood being shed? You cant do nothing, it's actively becoming worse right now. Act now or else. It's certainly not going to be solved by more censorship and removing free speech. In fact, censorship is a new thing. Free speech has been around for plenty long to know it's not causing it. My hypothetical also assumes reduction in censorship by elon failed. So as president happytoexplain of the independent party. How do you bridge the divide? How do you bring people back together? You might try to go nationalism. Tell everyone they are Team America, that the fight isnt with each other. Build some foreign enemy for people to rail against. At the same time go around ending all the wars the USA involved in. End wars that the USA arent even involved in. Reduce tension, reduce war exhaustion. Make sure people's economic situation is as good as possible because of high correlation between violence and economic situation. Reduce the poor mindset in general, tackle it directly. Who did I just describe?