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The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

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Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#61

Post by TeMPOraL »

memracom wrote: post #54
TeMPOraL wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the side effects of the Internet is that you can find pretty much any plausibly sounding justification for any view. Couple that with the modern world being insanely complicated - acknowledging which leads to feelings of helplessness - and there's no surprise people end up believing different things depending on what they happened to read. People want to feel they understand things. Nobody wants to feel stupid…

In the British tradition, university students used to participate in debates where two people argued the opposite sides of a question. The debaters got brownie points for winning the debate, not for arguing the RIGHT opinion. Often the debaters had to argue for a question which they themselves were against, or vice versa. The audiences who voted the winner, paid more attention to the quality of the debate, not to the…

I always viewed this kind of debates as potentially harmful though. If you award brownie points for "debate quality", as opposed to "getting it right", you may end up promoting eristic over rationality.

But maybe British universities get it right. I don't know, I haven't had the experience. We had debates in my secondary school, and I remember that the best way to win those was to be the cleverest bullshitter in the room.

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#62

Post by Albright »

Animats wrote: post #6

The "Other side" is scared, not dumb. Molly Ivins used to point this out. For the white lower middle class, life has been a slow downhill slide since the mid-1970s. Those are the people who support Trump and the Tea Party. Unfortunately, exploiting that fear is politically effective. This is a problem with a long history. There are records of it back as far as Cicero. It's not their fault that they don't know what to…

Trump is hardly a Tea Party favorite. If you're thinking Trump supporters and Tea Partiers are one in the same, you misunderstand the goals of one, if not both, groups.

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#63

Post by TeMPOraL »

Nursie wrote: post #59
lostcolony wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is more true online, and for a lot of reasons. I meet someone at a party and we become Facebook friends. I then post some sort of political article or comment to my feed. They see it, disagree with it, and (likely) either comment on it in a non-polite manner, or stay silent, but either way categorize me in their head as a crazy right/left winger. Why? Because these are what is easiest to do for 'crazy' opinions co…

I don't know. I had one or two friends come out as anti-vax IRL and we didn't have a discussion, instead my opinion of them just plummeted.

Try to have that discussion. It's enlightening.

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#64

Post by rtpg »

nikdaheratik wrote: post #51

As a former card carrying Debate Club member, I suppose this article may be helpful for people who aren't used to having these arguments. But I don't believe it is very helpful for most interactions on anything really controversial right now. Most people making arguments for "the other side" haven't actually had to defend them against real criticism. They also are usually not the originators of their position, they'r…

Isn't this kind of the reasoning the article is talking about?

I mean, I assume you think your positions are reasonably thought out. Perhaps other people also think their positions are reasonably thought out?

My takeaway from this article is to give people this benefit of the doubt. Sometimes this means acknowledging that _I_ am the one who is parroting something I heard from someone I agree with generally.

On a practical level, Onion articles aren't going to stop people from Trump/Cruz/Le Pen/Farage(well nobody votes for Farage anyways ;)). Though sometimes there's good fun in circlejerking, if you're legitimately worried about the other side's positioning, not taking them seriously from the outset you won't be able to do much convincing/persuading.

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#65

Post by foxhedgehog »

rtpg wrote: post #64
nikdaheratik wrote: post #51

As a former card carrying Debate Club member, I suppose this article may be helpful for people who aren't used to having these arguments. But I don't believe it is very helpful for most interactions on anything really controversial right now. Most people making arguments for "the other side" haven't actually had to defend them against real criticism. They also are usually not the originators of their position, they'r…

Isn't this kind of the reasoning the article is talking about? I mean, I assume you think your positions are reasonably thought out. Perhaps other people also think their positions are reasonably thought out? My takeaway from this article is to give people this benefit of the doubt. Sometimes this means acknowledging that _I_ am the one who is parroting something I heard from someone I agree with generally. On a prac…

I think that it's useful to distinguish between arguments that are, and are not, put forth in good faith.

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#66

Post by golemotron »

This is a good analysis but it misses something. People on the "other side" in most social media conversations are either "red tribe" if you are "blue tribe" or "blue tribe" if you are "red tribe."

Scott Anderson gets into that filter-bubble issue: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#67

Post by caf »

gpsx wrote: post #18

Having grown up in West Virginia and now living Silicon Valley, I see extremes from both sides. And they both _really_ think the other side is dumb. And that the president (Obama or Bush) is purposely trying to destroy the country. It is like two people in a marriage that has gone bad. Is there any way to fix it? My two cents is that a place to start is to try to make a single news source that both sides can read, to…

My experience is that such a news source would quickly be denounced as irretrievably biased by both sides.

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#68

Post by memracom »

Ever think that on most issues, say 985 times out of 100, the other side is roughly 50% of those that are not undecided. If you look at the issue overall, and allow for shades of gray between the positions, then most people are in rough agreement around some central position.

I think that if you can construct a survey on the issue that correctly breaks out several shades of gray in the position, then the results will plot out on a normal curve. Only when the normal curve is heavily weighted to one side or the other, i.e. there is a larger group on one side of the median, do you have a winnable issue.

It's too bad that media just spends so much time groveling in the mud with everyone else, when they could actually be doing such surveys and illuminating the issue.

Take gun control for instance. How many of you have any idea what shape of curve would result from such a survey? And if you compared it to the results 25 years ago, how would it differ? If you had a series of such surveys over time, then what trends would they show?

Without this info, there is no point in debating. I don't doubt that somebody has done such surveys and does have this info. And those people do influence politicians. But that just reinforces an elite separate from the masses, and is fundamentally anti-democratic.

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#69

Post by DrScump »

Nursie wrote: post #59
lostcolony wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is more true online, and for a lot of reasons. I meet someone at a party and we become Facebook friends. I then post some sort of political article or comment to my feed. They see it, disagree with it, and (likely) either comment on it in a non-polite manner, or stay silent, but either way categorize me in their head as a crazy right/left winger. Why? Because these are what is easiest to do for 'crazy' opinions co…

I don't know. I had one or two friends come out as anti-vax IRL and we didn't have a discussion, instead my opinion of them just plummeted.

Does someone who opposes media-driven thinking (with supporting science to show why) about any one vaccine get lumped into "anti-vaxxers" in your mind? Because that all-or-nothing thinking fallacy is a key symptom of the problem.

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#70

Post by DrScump »

Cyberdog wrote: post #55
Swizec wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's what I don't understand, and I'm likely the weird one here: Why are political opinions considered private? Is it an anglosaxon thing? Is it a middleclass thing? It feels completely alien to me. Where I come from politics (in one form or another) are the first thing you talk about with new people that you meet. It's the most fruitful ground for conversation that goes beyond mundane boring smalltalk nobody cares…

> Here's what I don't understand, and I'm likely the weird one here: Why are political opinions considered private? People often keep their political opinions private in polite society simply because of what this whole thread is about - it's very easy for people who don't know you very well to judge you by the political opinions you spout and then possibly treat you more poorly because of that. This is why I tend to…

This.

And if you differ because you are more informed about the topic than your peers, that only makes the social isolation problem worse.

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