4 ms·

Absolutely, that's why I believe politics are the way they are right now, people see content that's more and more extreme of their preferred side and they belie

by htk 2y ago

Absolutely, that's why I believe politics are the way they are right now, people see content that's more and more extreme of their preferred side and they believe that's the complete representation of the situation, the truth. This makes it hard to take someone else on the opposite side seriously, let alone have a conversation.

dpkirchner 2y ago
In a lot of cases -- at least in every case I care about -- the opposite side is so different that it is indeed hard to have conversation with them. I don't think this is the result of an algorithm, I think the algorithm just reflects reality. For example, I believe people should be able to use a doctor to get healthcare, and they believe the government should prevent that. There's no middle ground there, it's a boolean.
- giantg2 2y ago
  Is this meant to be ironic? The example given is a great example of the sort of extremist strawmanning meant to warp people's views to promote a boolean mindset on the issue.
  - dpkirchner 2y ago
    No, not ironic. One side says the government should be involved in the decision (and may tell you that you can't get care). The other says it's up to you. There's no third option.
    - giantg2 2y ago
      I know of no proposals that don't involve the government regulation of care. The government can mandate treatment just as they can ban treatments in any of the systems. There are a variety of proposed systems that display these properties to varying degrees.
      - BobaFloutist 2y ago
        You can frame it however you want, but there's no common ground between the abortion position of even mainstream Republican politicians and the position of the typical Democratic voter.
        giantg2 2y ago
        That's because the real root questions have been hidden under all the political games. Now we will likely never get answers to these because of how perverted the debate has become. The issue philosophical boils down to 1) what defines a human life, and 2) when is it acceptable to kill.
        dpkirchner 2y ago
        If this were merely a philosophical debate then yeah, we could have a lively discussion to come up with some answers that would satisfy us individually. We probably wouldn't all agree and that'd be OK. But IMO the debate is not really about that -- it's about what we do based on the answer to those questions. It's about what governments can force upon people. Should they be allowed to imprison you if those that write laws believe in something without hard evidence and for which harm is likely unprovable?
        musicale 2y ago
        > Should they be allowed to imprison you if those that write laws believe in something without hard evidence and for which harm is likely unprovable? Should they? Maybe not - penalties that are disproportionate to provable harm seem unjust and opposed to personal liberty. Do they? Absolutely, because for certain things we've decided (rightly or wrongly) that we should lock people up. For example, a case of attempted murder can result in a life sentence, even if the attempted victim is provably very alive and physically unharmed.
        giantg2 2y ago
        "Should they be allowed to imprison you if those that write laws believe in something without hard evidence and for which harm is likely unprovable?" They do all the time, on a variety of issues. That's part of the social contract of living in a society.
giantg2 2y ago
I think the big problem is that people use social media and other highly biased sources for important information (political, health, etc). In theory, school reports and experiments requiring citations are supposed to demonstrate the way to scrutinize and select sources of information. It seems that's mostly lost though.
jmyeet 2y ago
The argument that social media is responsible for political polarization is reductive and ahistorical. It ignores the thousands of years of division that we've had along ethnic and religious lines. What we have now is simply the peak of a longstanding trend that's older than the United States: it's white supremacy. That's all it is. Anti-immigrant hysteria? White nativism and white chauvinism. These things are manifesting now because of deteriorating material conditions and longstanding beliefs, not because of social media (eg [1]). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_Jew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_Jew
- totallykvothe 2y ago
  Case in point
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  You contradict yourself very quickly. If we're at "the peak", how did we get there? Couldn't social media be a factor? Moreover, the idea that white supremacy is at its peak right now is ridiculous and ahistorical in its own right. It's also massively disrespectful to those who lived through things like chattel slavery or the holocaust. To say that seeing some loudmouth spout off on Twitter is worse than either of those is pretty gross.
  - jmyeet 2y ago
    I should be more specific. By "peaking" I mean a local optimum rather than a global optimum. I would liken it to the reaction of, say, the civil rights era. Put another way: the civil rights era (particularly desegregation) caused a reaction by those who resisted progress and sought to reinstate their desired social order. What we've seen in the last 10-20 years is a similar reaction to improvements in the rights for various minorities. Combine this with poor material conditions and you have a recipe for reactionary attitudes and violence. There are many parallels between now and 1930s Germany. The Great Depression hit Germany hard so there's your declining material conditions. One of the earliest targets of the Nazis was what's likely the world's first transgender clinic, Berlin's Institute for Sexual Research [1], complete with book burnings. We also have increasing nationalistic sentiment, currently with the completely invented anti-immigration crime hysteria. Also in common: this idea of moral decay. Then with "cultural Bolshevism" [2], now with "cultural Marxism" [3]. And the Great Replacement [4]. What's required is a normalized belief system and the right material conditions for this radicalization and polarization to spread. Social media is, well, a medium. It cannot replace or create either of those conditions. It's like blaming radicalization in earlier times on the existence of the printing press. [1]: https://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/6-may-1933-looting-of-the-institute-of-sexology/ https://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/6-may-1933-looting-of-the-in... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th... [4]: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/what-is-the-great-replacement-what-are-its-origins-2022-05-16/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/what-is-the-great-replaceme...

by htk 2y ago

dpkirchner 2y ago

In a lot of cases -- at least in every case I care about -- the opposite side is so different that it is indeed hard to have conversation with them. I don't think this is the result of an algorithm, I think the algorithm just reflects reality. For example, I believe people should be able to use a doctor to get healthcare, and they believe the government should prevent that. There's no middle ground there, it's a boolean.

giantg2 2y ago
Is this meant to be ironic? The example given is a great example of the sort of extremist strawmanning meant to warp people's views to promote a boolean mindset on the issue.
- dpkirchner 2y ago
  No, not ironic. One side says the government should be involved in the decision (and may tell you that you can't get care). The other says it's up to you. There's no third option.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    I know of no proposals that don't involve the government regulation of care. The government can mandate treatment just as they can ban treatments in any of the systems. There are a variety of proposed systems that display these properties to varying degrees.
    - BobaFloutist 2y ago
      You can frame it however you want, but there's no common ground between the abortion position of even mainstream Republican politicians and the position of the typical Democratic voter.
      - giantg2 2y ago
        That's because the real root questions have been hidden under all the political games. Now we will likely never get answers to these because of how perverted the debate has become. The issue philosophical boils down to 1) what defines a human life, and 2) when is it acceptable to kill.
        dpkirchner 2y ago
        If this were merely a philosophical debate then yeah, we could have a lively discussion to come up with some answers that would satisfy us individually. We probably wouldn't all agree and that'd be OK. But IMO the debate is not really about that -- it's about what we do based on the answer to those questions. It's about what governments can force upon people. Should they be allowed to imprison you if those that write laws believe in something without hard evidence and for which harm is likely unprovable?
        musicale 2y ago
        > Should they be allowed to imprison you if those that write laws believe in something without hard evidence and for which harm is likely unprovable? Should they? Maybe not - penalties that are disproportionate to provable harm seem unjust and opposed to personal liberty. Do they? Absolutely, because for certain things we've decided (rightly or wrongly) that we should lock people up. For example, a case of attempted murder can result in a life sentence, even if the attempted victim is provably very alive and physically unharmed.
        giantg2 2y ago
        "Should they be allowed to imprison you if those that write laws believe in something without hard evidence and for which harm is likely unprovable?" They do all the time, on a variety of issues. That's part of the social contract of living in a society.

giantg2 2y ago

I think the big problem is that people use social media and other highly biased sources for important information (political, health, etc). In theory, school reports and experiments requiring citations are supposed to demonstrate the way to scrutinize and select sources of information. It seems that's mostly lost though.

jmyeet 2y ago

The argument that social media is responsible for political polarization is reductive and ahistorical. It ignores the thousands of years of division that we've had along ethnic and religious lines. What we have now is simply the peak of a longstanding trend that's older than the United States: it's white supremacy. That's all it is. Anti-immigrant hysteria? White nativism and white chauvinism. These things are manifesting now because of deteriorating material conditions and longstanding beliefs, not because of social media (eg [1]). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_Jew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_Jew

totallykvothe 2y ago
Case in point
AlexandrB 2y ago
You contradict yourself very quickly. If we're at "the peak", how did we get there? Couldn't social media be a factor? Moreover, the idea that white supremacy is at its peak right now is ridiculous and ahistorical in its own right. It's also massively disrespectful to those who lived through things like chattel slavery or the holocaust. To say that seeing some loudmouth spout off on Twitter is worse than either of those is pretty gross.
- jmyeet 2y ago
  I should be more specific. By "peaking" I mean a local optimum rather than a global optimum. I would liken it to the reaction of, say, the civil rights era. Put another way: the civil rights era (particularly desegregation) caused a reaction by those who resisted progress and sought to reinstate their desired social order. What we've seen in the last 10-20 years is a similar reaction to improvements in the rights for various minorities. Combine this with poor material conditions and you have a recipe for reactionary attitudes and violence. There are many parallels between now and 1930s Germany. The Great Depression hit Germany hard so there's your declining material conditions. One of the earliest targets of the Nazis was what's likely the world's first transgender clinic, Berlin's Institute for Sexual Research [1], complete with book burnings. We also have increasing nationalistic sentiment, currently with the completely invented anti-immigration crime hysteria. Also in common: this idea of moral decay. Then with "cultural Bolshevism" [2], now with "cultural Marxism" [3]. And the Great Replacement [4]. What's required is a normalized belief system and the right material conditions for this radicalization and polarization to spread. Social media is, well, a medium. It cannot replace or create either of those conditions. It's like blaming radicalization in earlier times on the existence of the printing press. [1]: https://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/6-may-1933-looting-of-the-institute-of-sexology/ https://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/6-may-1933-looting-of-the-in... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th... [4]: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/what-is-the-great-replacement-what-are-its-origins-2022-05-16/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/what-is-the-great-replaceme...