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It is what it is. That's life. Don't overthink it. ... Seems to me that these clichés grew rapidly in the last couple decades. The fact that people just acc

It is what it is. That's life. Don't overthink it. ... Seems to me that these clichés grew rapidly in the last couple decades. The fact that people just accept without challenge that Threads will de-platform anything "political" [0] is an outcome of this kind of thinking, imo. People would have been a lot more cynical about such a move (from Mark "they trust me - dumb fucks" Zuckerberg) fifteen years ago. 0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36636486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36636486

pphysch 3y ago
More examples: "whataboutism", "you sound like <bad guy>", "this is <bad thing> propaganda" It's definitely gotten worse in recent decades. Oratory and intellectual debate are increasingly rare in our society since the Cold War. Political bipolarity eviscerated the American/Western intellect.
- mandmandam 3y ago
  Indeed - there seems to be a concerted attack on nuance, and even thinking. Great people like Stallman, Tesla, Feynman, Chomsky, Assange and Snowden, etc, are smeared and dismissed due to unrelated, out of context, twisted, false selections of views. Tribalism is fed and magnified, saying the 'wrong' (no matter if true) thing gets you dismissed as a conspiracy theorist / tankie / Trumpist / how many other "thought-ending insults". No questions, no time for looking at evidence, just thrown in the 'other' bucket. Biden asked Twitter to censor true information that went against the preferred narrative, and the so-called left wing collectively decided "there's no there there", it's a "nothing-burger". More clichés. And the 'other' sides thought-ending clichés are so barmy that it's impolite to even describe them accurately; and it physically hurts to even try. And it does go back to that "bipolarity", which acts very like a monopole on certain big issues like oil, war, equality, censorship, and people not in the tribe. I don't think we can blame it all on social media or human nature either. In too many cases, you can point to someone shadowy putting their finger on the levers of power. Murdoch, Turner, Zuck, etc; they all have a lot more in common with each other than with us.
  - robocat 3y ago
    > And it does go back to that "bipolarity" It happens in New Zealand too, and we don’t have bipartisan politics
    - Given_47 3y ago
      Interesting. So I’d imagine it’s less predetermined but people still end up taking a certain side and from there all the same toxicity appears
    - mandmandam 3y ago
      That is a very fair point - this is quite possibly an issue right across "the West" (which can include NZ in this case). I've noticed it in Ireland, in France, in Germany. Even the Scandos seem not to be immune. I'll have to think about it some more. I will say this though - America is at the vanguard of anti-intellectualism, and has been for quite some time. Mark Twain commented on it frequently, for example. And even so, the last couple decades have seen the dismissal of deep / nuanced thinking grow far worse, even as "bipartisanship" also rapidly got bad enough to bring us a lot closer to civil war than I expected in the 90s. One last point - it's weird that this would happen even as everyone gets nerdier. People all use computers, watch LOTR and Harry Potter, cosplaying and conventions are all normalized... It's not what I'd have expected.
      - HKH2 3y ago
        I could be wrong, but Americans seem very interested in keeping up appearances. People have freedom of speech, but do they really try to say what they want to say and risk looking like a bumbling idiot? Pioneering in one's mind and creating nuance is not easy and cannot be prepackaged for the masses, so how can it compete in a materialistic society?
    - pphysch 3y ago
      Polarization is everywhere (in AUS/NZ mainly due to being part of Anglosphere yet proximal to China), but in America it is on a totally different level than NZ. I occasionally will see nuanced, heterodox comments from AUS/NZ politicians that would not be tolerated in Washington.

pphysch 3y ago

More examples: "whataboutism", "you sound like <bad guy>", "this is <bad thing> propaganda" It's definitely gotten worse in recent decades. Oratory and intellectual debate are increasingly rare in our society since the Cold War. Political bipolarity eviscerated the American/Western intellect.

mandmandam 3y ago
Indeed - there seems to be a concerted attack on nuance, and even thinking. Great people like Stallman, Tesla, Feynman, Chomsky, Assange and Snowden, etc, are smeared and dismissed due to unrelated, out of context, twisted, false selections of views. Tribalism is fed and magnified, saying the 'wrong' (no matter if true) thing gets you dismissed as a conspiracy theorist / tankie / Trumpist / how many other "thought-ending insults". No questions, no time for looking at evidence, just thrown in the 'other' bucket. Biden asked Twitter to censor true information that went against the preferred narrative, and the so-called left wing collectively decided "there's no there there", it's a "nothing-burger". More clichés. And the 'other' sides thought-ending clichés are so barmy that it's impolite to even describe them accurately; and it physically hurts to even try. And it does go back to that "bipolarity", which acts very like a monopole on certain big issues like oil, war, equality, censorship, and people not in the tribe. I don't think we can blame it all on social media or human nature either. In too many cases, you can point to someone shadowy putting their finger on the levers of power. Murdoch, Turner, Zuck, etc; they all have a lot more in common with each other than with us.
- robocat 3y ago
  > And it does go back to that "bipolarity" It happens in New Zealand too, and we don’t have bipartisan politics
  - Given_47 3y ago
    Interesting. So I’d imagine it’s less predetermined but people still end up taking a certain side and from there all the same toxicity appears
  - mandmandam 3y ago
    That is a very fair point - this is quite possibly an issue right across "the West" (which can include NZ in this case). I've noticed it in Ireland, in France, in Germany. Even the Scandos seem not to be immune. I'll have to think about it some more. I will say this though - America is at the vanguard of anti-intellectualism, and has been for quite some time. Mark Twain commented on it frequently, for example. And even so, the last couple decades have seen the dismissal of deep / nuanced thinking grow far worse, even as "bipartisanship" also rapidly got bad enough to bring us a lot closer to civil war than I expected in the 90s. One last point - it's weird that this would happen even as everyone gets nerdier. People all use computers, watch LOTR and Harry Potter, cosplaying and conventions are all normalized... It's not what I'd have expected.
    - HKH2 3y ago
      I could be wrong, but Americans seem very interested in keeping up appearances. People have freedom of speech, but do they really try to say what they want to say and risk looking like a bumbling idiot? Pioneering in one's mind and creating nuance is not easy and cannot be prepackaged for the masses, so how can it compete in a materialistic society?
  - pphysch 3y ago
    Polarization is everywhere (in AUS/NZ mainly due to being part of Anglosphere yet proximal to China), but in America it is on a totally different level than NZ. I occasionally will see nuanced, heterodox comments from AUS/NZ politicians that would not be tolerated in Washington.