Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's 2016
what compels someone to downvote this?
Stating the current year is not an argument.
Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with
211–220 of 234 posts
Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Donald Trump's side. Trump has repeatedly said he wants to remove all 11 million undocumented men, women, and children, by force if necessary. And that means more armed paramilitary shock troops in U.S. cities, more families held in immigrant detention centers, more children being condemned to violence and deprivation in countries they've never known, college students getting torn away from nearly-finished educations…
You're being disingenuous by equating illegal immigrants with all immigrants - he never said he wanted to get rid of all immigrants. Those illegal immigrants are and were already breaking the law by the way, so his (apparent) intention is merely to enforce it more thoroughly. You knew this. When you engage in dishonest behaviour to prevent any form of concession, then indeed there is no point in conversation.
Personally, I refuse to draw a distinction between illegal immigrants and all immigrants, assuming that when you say "illegal immigrant" you mean someone who only broke the law by coming to the US via unapproved means.
It should not be criminal to just enter the country. There would be no "illegal immigrants" if they were allowed or had the means to enter the country legally in the first place.
Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't avoid "debate" because I fear disagreement or attacks. I avoid "debate" because so often when I enter one, the person engaging with me immediately employs ad hominem attacks or strawmen or appeals to emotions or any number of other unconstructive argumentation techniques. I am tired of engaging people who cannot argue using logic or rationality. I avoid it because it will be tedius and draining and there is n…
People aren't good at rationality and logic. They are too abstract, so they wield abstract (read: stereotyping) tools to combat it. To successfully debate people, focus on actions and consequences that are relevant to their life, and back it up with an understanding of what their life is and evidence that these considered actions lead to undesirable consequences for them and/or others. Debating in the abstract is som…
> Logic isn't what you need to wage debate, evidence is.
Depends on your goal and your audience. When talking to people who aren't particularly interested in the logic of a given argument, evidence won't help you.
>To successfully debate people, focus on actions and consequences that are relevant to their life, and back it up with an understanding of what their life is
However, you nailed it with this!
Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with
#214While I think that tech tools like this have the potential to be great, so far I think technology has made the problem worse. My conclusion from my recent experiences over the last year or so with the election and before (and volunteering/organizing volunteers therefor) is that people don't just need to communicate, we need to interact, and my observation is that this needs to happen (or at the very least works best)…
I think modern transportation and communication have contributed to our increasingly divided society... by extending our interactions over larger areas, those tools allow us to naively fall into our own physical "filter bubbles". Modern transportation contributed towards physical obesity. Technology became so efficient and so cheap that we became isolated from physical reality... we have to work out in order to stay…
Environment is continuously changing. There are infinite agents in the nature causing that change. Human being is one of them, technology developed by human is another. At the end fittest (not to confuse with physical fitness) survives.
Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree in principle, but one thing that threw me off off the bat- it asked if I was for or against trump. My views are more nuanced than that- to the point I wouldn't feel comfortable selecting either. Not sure how to best express that in the app, but I do think it's one of the things people misunderstand about "the other".
If it didn't divide people into two groups then how would it match them up? Just pick the answer that best fits. If you're really in the middle then you presumably wouldn't need to have the conversation.
You could divide into four groups: For, somewhat for, against, somewhat against. It still wouldn't be ideal, but would be more realistic. I don't think I'm "in the middle"- I simply agree with some policies of Trump's, disagree with others, and have serious reservations about him personally. That said, people "in the middle" deserve to be a part of public discourse just as much as those on each side.
Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree in principle, but one thing that threw me off off the bat- it asked if I was for or against trump. My views are more nuanced than that- to the point I wouldn't feel comfortable selecting either. Not sure how to best express that in the app, but I do think it's one of the things people misunderstand about "the other".
Maybe 'rate your support of Trump/the outcome of the election on a scale from 1 to 10'?
Thinking about it, I think maybe four groups: For, somewhat for, against, somewhat against. The app could still match up the "for" with the "against", but users wouldn't feel so gross choosing just for or against.
Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My conclusion from my recent experiences over the last year or so with the election and before (and volunteering/organizing volunteers therefor) is that people don't just need to communicate, we need to interact, and my observation is that this needs to happen (or at the very least works best) face to face. I agree. People are much more civil face to face. It also helps in a disagreement to see body language and fa…
I agree. And as someone who works with telemedicine, I can say that even video pales in comparison to in person. Our body language reading machinery is weak and ignorable when a person is reduced to a small 2 dimensional image, let alone text. And it's the signals that this machinery produces that trigger empathy. Without it, and especially when talking to strangers, it's easy to slip into a mild kind of psychopathy.
Interesting way of putting it!
Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've had what I thought were pretty constructive and interesting conversations about this topic right here on Hacker News. Maybe you could talk about smaller and more specific aspects of the issue with people, like * How has present-day opposition to immigration in the U.S. developed? Was there always strong anti-immigrant sentiment in this country? How were immigrants viewed in different eras? Were parts of those vi…
And if this were a normal election we would have time for genteel debate about this subject, but currently, the President-elect is preparing a plan to send armed paramilitary troops into neighborhoods like mine to try to forcibly remove 11 million people. So those are all real cute cocktail party questions and all but all of them are meaningless until I can answer the question of how can I prevent the promised onslau…
I respect your commitment to protecting people and I hope you succeed.
Earlier in this thread you were saying that there was no point in talking to your opponents. The way you phrased it looked to me like you meant that there was nothing that you could learn from each other and nothing that you could convince each other about. As you can see, I don't think that's right. Now, it seems that you meant to make a narrower point that talking to your opponents won't stop deportations now, which is probably true.
Depending on hard-to-predict factors, there might be conversations you could have that would convince some people not to turn their neighbors and coworkers in for deportation even if they strongly disagree with you about immigration in general.
Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with
#219I think the concept of having a single person - President, being head of the country is outdated.
We do not need a President. This ancient concept has to go. We have congress, senate, house of reps, judges, courts. Enough to make decisions and develop policies.
There would be less drama without President in America.
Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, as a species we all but glorify conflicts... but I think democracy does require some degree of social cohesion. I see a lot of danger if our continent-spanning superpower starts to crumble due to internal divisions, especially considering we don't have a clear path to secession.
I wouldn't bet on the US's longevity. Read Peter Turchin, War and Peace and War (discussed here a week or two ago), particularly noting his part about how multiple imperial peoples can't coexist in a single country... The Fourth Turning -- on the patterns that generations tend to fall into -- might also be interesting.
Thanks for the recommendation, I previewed Turchin's book and it's fascinating... I ordered a physical copy right away.