The Seven Habits of Highly Depolarizing People • Hacker News Board

Re: The Seven Habits of Highly Depolarizing People

#91

Post by mfoy_ » Tue, Feb 23, 2016, 4:34 PM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #82

mfoy_ wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this context opposition is not necessarily conflict. Are two sides of a bridge opposing each other or conflicting with each other? In a client-server security model the client usually wants as much as it can take and the server wants to provide as little as it has to. Are these opposed, or in conflict?

> In this context opposition is not necessarily conflict. Than it's not an opposition. > In a client-server security model the client usually wants as much as it can take and the server wants to provide as little as it has to. Are these opposed, or in conflict? Now you create a malicious client which will pretent it has little, say, computational power or network capacity. So the server will have to do lots of work.…

I apologize if I'm incorrect, but I believe English is not your first language. There is a difference between opposition and conflict. It's a bit subtle but it's very important in this context.

When you say a "malicious client" you are misunderstanding the purpose of my analogy. A malicious client would be "the enemy". I'm talking about a client that is interested with engaging with the service, not just shutting it down. The client may like to have all the information and resources the server has available to it, (for example, perhaps a facebook user might want to see when people look at their photos, not just like/comment) but the server needs to consider the experience of all the clients and users, not just the one. So there is opposition (but not conflict!) between the two. The client will not be allowed to have this information, even though the server has it. Conflict would be manifested by the user abandoning the service (or attacking it, as in your example) because of this incompatible or insurmountable difference.

Re: The Seven Habits of Highly Depolarizing People

#92

Post by mindslight » Tue, Feb 23, 2016, 4:35 PM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #67

mfoy_ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to your point, holding opposing ideas in your mind doesn't mean you accept both ideas as correct and valid and good (as in the Orwell quote). It just means that you can appreciate them and understand some of the points they try to make. The issue with polarized politics is that it encourages one-mindedness. Instead of trying to understand where your political opponents are coming from, you are encouraged to re…

> To add to your point, holding opposing ideas in your mind doesn't mean you accept both ideas as correct and valid and good (as in the Orwell quote). It just means that you can appreciate them and understand some of the points they try to make. If two theses conflict each other at least one of them (perhaps even both) must be wrong. That is basic science. This is also why physicists still try to unify general relati…

This is only true if you can be sure of your starting axioms, which is not the case in social organization. Experiments simply add specific metrics to your set of axioms.

It all comes down to heuristics, and differing heuristics are not mutually exclusive.

Re: The Seven Habits of Highly Depolarizing People

#93

Post by wolfgke » Tue, Feb 23, 2016, 4:38 PM UTC

mfoy_ wrote: post #85

aangjie wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why your answer was downvoted. Your point is a sane approach to handling opposing/conflicting ideas. Though I didn't read the Original quote as accepting opposing/conflicting ideas.

I believe it was originally down-voted for making the assumption that science could solve politics (we're talking opinions, not facts, so you cannot rigourously apply the scientific method). The comment also fell for the trap of falsely equating opposition with conflict. As a thought experiment, take the issue of abortion. GP is telling me that certainly either "Abortions should be allowed because of the mother's rig…

> As a thought experiment, take the issue of abortion. GP is telling me that certainly either "Abortions should be allowed because of the mother's rights" or "Abortions should not be allowed because of the unborn child's rights" is WRONG. Tell me how anyone could possibly create an "experiment" which would result in a meaningful answer. How would you measure the morality and goodness of the event in a way that everyone could agree upon? Do you see the problem?

The problem here is that biological and neurological research has a long way to go to resolve the question after what week of pregnancy what level of consciousness or intellectual capacity is there. So at the moment there is no way to answer this question in an acceptable way.

Re: The Seven Habits of Highly Depolarizing People

#94

Post by DannoHung » Tue, Feb 23, 2016, 4:38 PM UTC

Xcelerate wrote: post #81

carsongross wrote: post #80

Politeness comes from social solidarity: it is a consequence of social harmony, not a precursor. What if the polarization represents actual, fundamental disagreements on politics and, at root, moral axioms? Being polite hasn't done much for the respectable right for the last fifty years. I would rather focus on solutions like secession or federalism that allow groups of people with different and irreconcilable moral…

While I think secession should probably be a last resort, it would indeed be an intriguing thought experiment to separate the two ideological groups and see what happens. Each side thinks a society run under the opposing side's view would fall apart; wouldn't it be interesting if you could actually see which group does better after a century on their own?

Only if you could keep them from interfering with each other as nation states.

Re: The Seven Habits of Highly Depolarizing People

#95

Post by Xcelerate » Tue, Feb 23, 2016, 4:41 PM UTC

carsongross wrote: post #89

Xcelerate wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I think secession should probably be a last resort, it would indeed be an intriguing thought experiment to separate the two ideological groups and see what happens. Each side thinks a society run under the opposing side's view would fall apart; wouldn't it be interesting if you could actually see which group does better after a century on their own?

wouldn't it be interesting if you could actually see which group does better after a century on their own It very much would be. This is another argument for federalism/secessionism: a laboratory of governments/social structures will provide better feedback as to what works and what does not for various populations. I think it is also worth bearing in mind that "does better" is inherently subjective, since value is s…

It would be interesting if we had "virtual countries" where you could choose among the tradeoffs for yourself. I suppose the difficulty would be handling the interactions between each person's virtual country, but the idea that everyone signs up for a different set of laws and freedoms has interesting implications.

Re: The Seven Habits of Highly Depolarizing People

#96

Post by specialist » Tue, Feb 23, 2016, 4:42 PM UTC

carsongross wrote: post #80

Politeness comes from social solidarity: it is a consequence of social harmony, not a precursor. What if the polarization represents actual, fundamental disagreements on politics and, at root, moral axioms? Being polite hasn't done much for the respectable right for the last fifty years. I would rather focus on solutions like secession or federalism that allow groups of people with different and irreconcilable moral…

Please do not confuse what you see on TV with face to face political party functions.

I've been invited to speak to a fair variety of Green, Socialist, Democratic, Republican, Libertarian and non-partisan events. There are definitely cultural differences.

My Republican hosts have always run polite, organized, on time meetings. If you have the mic, everyone is listening to you.

Whereas my own peeps, the Democrats, run meetings quite a bit more loosely. People interrupt, there's a lot of shushing, arguing over the rules, people chatting in the aisles, etc. Mostly good natured, but it sometimes drives people like me nuts.

I can't speak to the Tea Party, Occupy, BLM efforts, since those are after my time. But I imagine they're not so different from their precursors, because people are people.

Re: The Seven Habits of Highly Depolarizing People

#97

Post by specialist » Tue, Feb 23, 2016, 4:47 PM UTC

The increasing political divide in the US is the direct result of ever more aggressive gerrymandering.

Jurisdictions are becoming ever more partisan. So now only the most partisan (divisive) candidates can win their primary election, which then pretty much makes the general election moot.

The fix is California style redistricting, where citizens and not politicians are in charge of the process.

Re: The Seven Habits of Highly Depolarizing People

#98

Post by tryitnow » Tue, Feb 23, 2016, 4:47 PM UTC

carsongross wrote: post #80

Politeness comes from social solidarity: it is a consequence of social harmony, not a precursor. What if the polarization represents actual, fundamental disagreements on politics and, at root, moral axioms? Being polite hasn't done much for the respectable right for the last fifty years. I would rather focus on solutions like secession or federalism that allow groups of people with different and irreconcilable moral…

Secession and federalism are fairly naive. We already tried those solutions. In the US context it led to slavery and ultimately to a massive armed conflict.

And at what unit do we consider secession acceptable? The Confederacy believed states had the right to secede but not individuals of African descent. Indeed, it was the American South that originally wanted to interfere in the business of the North in order to crack down on fugitive slaves.

As for people with different moral axioms leaving one another alone, good luck with that.

The US and ISIS have different moral axioms but they're both in one another's business.

The world is interdependent, there's just no way around that simple fact.

I don't mean to silence discussions of federalism/secession, it just seems like this is well-trod territory that some people keep bringing up again and again as if it will solve anything. It hasn't and it won't.

Re: The Seven Habits of Highly Depolarizing People

#99

Post by alexashka » Tue, Feb 23, 2016, 4:48 PM UTC

"Of all the mental habits that encourage polarization, the most dangerous is probably binary thinking"

Does this article recognize it's own irony? It's a whole article about 'depolarizing' as opposed to 'polarizing' and within it, is the line I quoted above.

Here's a thought - intelligent people don't have these problems and they don't need 7 vague bullet points that are impossible to follow.

Dumb people lack nuanced points of view - they polarize/simplify a great deal because that's how humans are - we first learn to think 'hitting other people is bad', and only later learn that 'most times hitting other people is bad'.

When do people learn philosophy and different types of fallacies? For most people, the answer is never. How many people grok fallacies, philosophy and have emotional intelligence to boot? Even fewer.

Thank god someone wrote an article that by-passes all that though, it's just the 10 commandments you need, oh sorry I meant 7 habits...

Re: The Seven Habits of Highly Depolarizing People

#100

Post by jschwartzi » Tue, Feb 23, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

qznc wrote: post #37

jschwartzi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between considering A and not A, and accepting A and not A. In formal logic, one or the other statement must be true. The point being made is that we should refrain from choosing the true statement until we've taken the time to consider both on their own merits.

Mixing reality and absolute statements seems like a recipe for falsehood. Probabilities work much better. "I'm 50% certain of A and 50% of not-A", which means complete ignorance. A "80% A" means you have an opinion, but you acknowledge a 20% possiblity of being wrong. If anybody claims "100% sure of something", it is an obvious sign of idiocy.

The purpose of ideal statements is to expose some facet of reality in isolation so that it can be understood. Where people get tripped up is in closing the loop and recognizing that the ideal is never present in isolation. It shows when they ignore details that might make their ideal less valid. They're still useful, though.