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Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

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Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#181

Post by mwfunk »

flukus wrote: post #168
mwfunk wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people do have real issues that rightly or wrongly get blamed on immigration, but there's also no shortage of actual racism among those who really, really seem to care about immigration. It's not like you don't see tons of explicit or implicit racism on Reddit or Twitter or Facebook among Trump supporters. Or at Trump rallys, for that matter, like "Jew S A" chants or people proudly wearing t-shirts that they thi…

I'm not denying there's actual racism, just that there is enough of it to make an difference to the election. The KKK might vote for trump, but they aren't the reason he's president. >Also, the fact that the strongest support for Trump's anti-immigrant views came from the parts of the country that have the fewest immigrants doesn't help. Here's the kicker, why aren't people migrating to these places? They are lovely…

They are lovely places. I wonder if, statistically, it's a function of how long a given family has been in the country. A first generation immigrant (or immigrant family) seems more likely to initially move someplace where they already have friends or family, a home or a job lined up, and/or a preexisting community, and for Mexican immigrants that naturally tends to be in big cities along the southern border. After 10 or 20 or 30 years, new generations grow up in those cities, and some people might move away from their families, to more rural or remote parts of the country.

So, there could be a 30-year delay between a Mexican family's immigration into Texas, and a subset of that family and their descendants moving to Nebraska (random example). When someone is moving to a foreign country with a different language, and mostly populated by other ethnicities, it makes sense that families would usually start out in big border cities, and only gradually make their way to more and more remote, sparsely populated, and less diverse areas.

Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#182

Post by mwfunk »

erichocean wrote: post #180
mwfunk wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people do have real issues that rightly or wrongly get blamed on immigration, but there's also no shortage of actual racism among those who really, really seem to care about immigration. It's not like you don't see tons of explicit or implicit racism on Reddit or Twitter or Facebook among Trump supporters. Or at Trump rallys, for that matter, like "Jew S A" chants or people proudly wearing t-shirts that they thi…

> Hell, the KKK endorsed Trump and he didn't denounce them. The KKK's official newspaper endorsed Trump[0], but according to CNN[1], Trump has disavowed the KKK (and David Duke in particular): > Donald Trump issued a crystal clear disavowal Thursday of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke after stumbling last weekend over a question about the hate group leader on CNN. "David Duke is a bad person, who I disavow…

I take it back! I am very happy to be wrong about this fact. :)

Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#183

Post by flukus »

mwfunk wrote: post #181
flukus wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not denying there's actual racism, just that there is enough of it to make an difference to the election. The KKK might vote for trump, but they aren't the reason he's president. >Also, the fact that the strongest support for Trump's anti-immigrant views came from the parts of the country that have the fewest immigrants doesn't help. Here's the kicker, why aren't people migrating to these places? They are lovely…

They are lovely places. I wonder if, statistically, it's a function of how long a given family has been in the country. A first generation immigrant (or immigrant family) seems more likely to initially move someplace where they already have friends or family, a home or a job lined up, and/or a preexisting community, and for Mexican immigrants that naturally tends to be in big cities along the southern border. After 1…

I was thinking more that they aren't moving there because there aren't jobs in the area to move too, which is why the people there are angry.

Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#184

Post by schoen »

grzm wrote: post #173
schoen wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are a number of principles that a site like this could promote. One list is http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html I can also recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y although I'm not positive of its educational value. :-) Edit: This version of the sketch has what I find to be kind of pointless violence at the end.

Also - Crocker's Rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12881288 - Principle of Charity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12774600 - Rapaport's Rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12774692

There's also this thing that Eliezer Yudkowsky observed

https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Arguments_as_soldiers

It includes the impulse to suggest that things we favor have no negative consequences (or reasons to doubt them), while things we oppose have no positive consequences (or reasons to believe them).

In some forms of high school and college debate, you can lose points if you don't rebut every single argument raised by your opponent (but your rebuttal doesn't necessarily have to be good in the ordinary sense of the word!). In policy debate this can lead to spreading, where people speak absurdly quickly because they want to be counted as having formally responded to everything the other side said, or having introduced points that the other side failed to rebut.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_debate#Style_and_delive...

This is kind of wacky because it gets into a stylized activity far removed from what most listeners would understand as substantively discussing an issue. And it doesn't seem to admit the possibility that both sides might have some points to which there is no convincing rebuttal (which Eliezer suggests is actually a normal state of affairs for talking about real-world issues).

Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#185

Post by paublyrne »

Houshalter wrote: post #153
r3dk1ng wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for mentioning Instant Runoff Voting. I've been trying to get anyone IRL to have any interest in it at all. Even the third party nerds weren't interested even though it'd benefit them.

IRV is better but not perfect. If third parties actually start to become viable, then they would start to steal first votes away from the moderate parties. Eventually they would steal enough votes to cause them to be eliminated. So you are still better off selecting the two major parties as your first vote, even if you don't really like them. If you have full tactical voting, it ends up exactly the same as plurality…

There is no reason why a 'third' or non mainstream party would not be moderate also. You will get the full gamut.

Of course most countries that have this system end up with regular coalition governments which is sometimes one criticism of the system. But surely a coalition working together as part of a parliament with at least three groups is better than two groups at perennial loggerheads with each other.

This only seems to lead to ever greater tribalism and us and them politics.

Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#186

Post by acchow »

okreallywtf wrote: post #75

While 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)…

Stephen Colbert last night: "Politics used to be something we thought about every 4 years. That's good that we didn't think about it that much, because it left room in our lives for other things and OTHER PEOPLE"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXhFGO8R7aU

Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#187

Post by vehementi »

robbizorg wrote: post #160

Hey everyone, this has been a pretty crazy day for me, and I'm pretty sure it's been crazy for everyone else as all. Sorry for only just responding to everyone on this thread, I've been super busy and have only just gotten a chance to sit down and get to work. First off, I'd like to thank everyone for the feedback of gotten on the project, both positive and negative. As was revealed by the ton of technical difficulti…

Is there a way I can get in touch with you, just want to bounce some ideas around

Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#188

Post by slowmotiony »

beatpanda wrote: post #119
robbizorg wrote: post #2

Hi everyone, Recently, given the results of the election and the divisiveness that's been revealed because of it, it seems like the country isn't talking to one another anymore. We're afraid of one another and the polices the other political party will put in place. A lot of this, I think, has to deal with the lack of communication between actual human beings that lie on both sides of the isle. I made this app, Mest,…

This is stupid. One side is saying "we want to get rid of all the immigrants." My disagreement with that is not a communication problem, it's that that position is a red line. There's no chance of me being convinced that forcibly removing immigrants is a good idea. So why even have the conversation? What good could that possibly do?

Which side is saying they want to get rid of all immigrants?

Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#189

Post by inimino »

shireboy wrote: post #9
robbizorg wrote: post #2

Hi everyone, Recently, given the results of the election and the divisiveness that's been revealed because of it, it seems like the country isn't talking to one another anymore. We're afraid of one another and the polices the other political party will put in place. A lot of this, I think, has to deal with the lack of communication between actual human beings that lie on both sides of the isle. I made this app, Mest,…

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.

Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#190

Post by beatpanda »

slowmotiony wrote: post #188
beatpanda wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is stupid. One side is saying "we want to get rid of all the immigrants." My disagreement with that is not a communication problem, it's that that position is a red line. There's no chance of me being convinced that forcibly removing immigrants is a good idea. So why even have the conversation? What good could that possibly do?

Which side is saying they want to get rid of all immigrants?

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 and productive careers to be imprisoned or deported, and so on.
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