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New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikable, contemptible

scientificamerican.com

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Re: New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikable, contemptible

#61

Post by navidfarhadi »

swiley wrote: post #10

Delete your twitter/facebook/reddit account. Seriously! Go do it now! These sites are built with the goal of pushing people into groups that are always angry at each other. Angry polarized groups spend more time on the site and are easier to sell things to. The only thing ignoring this trash will do is make you a happier, more functional person.

It’s possible to (mostly) avoid political stuff on those websites if one wants to, instead of refusing to use the sites completely. Just as an example, I rarely visit r/all, but I do visit specific subreddits that I’m subscribed to like r/privacy, r/pihole, and r/thinkpad. On Facebook, I never browse my newsfeed, but I am a member of a group for my apartment complex in the Stockholm area which lists local events and people selling stuff or giving away stuff in the community.

My point is that is that it’s possible to filter out a lot of the political garbage on those sites if one wishes, but it does appear to be getting more difficult since political stuff is appearing more and more often in places that I personally wouldn’t expect.

Re: New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikable, contemptible

#62

Post by Tycho »

Waterluvian wrote: post #7
Tycho wrote: post #2

According to the article, this phenomenon is most obviously manifested in the humorous expression “own the libs”, and not, say, by shrieking scaremongering about fascism and comparing the other side to the Nazis.

The interesting thing is that the claims about fascism at least have the possibility of being true while "owning the libs" betrays its own disingenuous purpose of not even trying to make a point other than winning against the other team.

“own the libs” is satire, it’s not literally the political platform

Re: New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikable, contemptible

#63

Post by [deleted] »

swiley wrote: post #10

Delete your twitter/facebook/reddit account. Seriously! Go do it now! These sites are built with the goal of pushing people into groups that are always angry at each other. Angry polarized groups spend more time on the site and are easier to sell things to. The only thing ignoring this trash will do is make you a happier, more functional person.

[deleted]

Re: New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikable, contemptible

#64

Post by ache7 »

matwood wrote: post #20
ache7 wrote: post #15

It is very sad that the authors of the article either believed in all these accusations against the Russians or are afraid to say that this is nonsense so that they are not accused of supporting the Russians. I want to note that the Russian government also accuses its political opponents of being foreign agents, using the same rhetoric.

It's well known that Russian trolls/bots use fake personas on social media in order to sow discord. Are you arguing that's not done at all, or that there is no evidence it's done in the article specific instance? Here's an article examining how it's done in relation to anti-vaxx. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/

These trolls really exist on Russian social networks, trying to refute any news from the opposition media. And some people (Russian enthusiasts) count and list these bots. But your article does not prove it to me, because some Russians are afraid of vaccinations and there are crazy paranoids in Russian social networks that convince not to get vaccinated, including vaccines that are done by Russian medicine - what do you think this proves? That Russian bots are trying to weaken their own nation? For me, these are not bots, but religious fanatics, religions often reject medicine. You may have noticed that many religions have denied the existence of COVID this year.

Re: New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikable, contemptible

#65

Post by op03 »

bogwog wrote: post #33
swiley wrote: post #10

Delete your twitter/facebook/reddit account. Seriously! Go do it now! These sites are built with the goal of pushing people into groups that are always angry at each other. Angry polarized groups spend more time on the site and are easier to sell things to. The only thing ignoring this trash will do is make you a happier, more functional person.

Social media might need to be controlled in the same way cigarettes are. At the end of the day, both are drug dealers. One of them sells nicotine, the other sells dopamine. Not sure what that would look like though. Cigarettes have scary labels and enforced age requirements. Maybe social media would have to change the way likes/upvotes/etc work to be less polarizing, in addition to an age limit enforcement?

Its not complicated. There are dose response curves for everything once you start studying them -

https://www.epa.gov/environmental-topics/chemicals-and-toxic...

https://www.epa.gov/fera/dose-response-assessment-assessing-...

How did we build these tables?

Same process will apply to how much dopamine (and whatever else) you can keep giving a kid or a group of people over time without serious consequences

Whether that takes 2 years or 20 years more to tabulate, lots of people will take a hit thanks to their internal reward mechanisms being gamed.

Re: New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikable, contemptible

#66

Post by ploika »

swiley wrote: post #10

Delete your twitter/facebook/reddit account. Seriously! Go do it now! These sites are built with the goal of pushing people into groups that are always angry at each other. Angry polarized groups spend more time on the site and are easier to sell things to. The only thing ignoring this trash will do is make you a happier, more functional person.

"Rivals are alien, unlikable, contemptible" could be a description of feelings in Northern Ireland during its worst days, long before the advent of social media. Poisonous rhetoric definitely made things worse, but the real damage was done by things like gerrymandering, unequal access to jobs and housing, and repressive one-sided policing.

From a distance, it looks like some of those same problems are contributing to the USA's polarisation. Fixing them will be much more important, and much harder, than just tuning out obnoxious media.

Re: New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikable, contemptible

#67

Post by BurningFrog »

bogwog wrote: post #33
swiley wrote: post #10

Delete your twitter/facebook/reddit account. Seriously! Go do it now! These sites are built with the goal of pushing people into groups that are always angry at each other. Angry polarized groups spend more time on the site and are easier to sell things to. The only thing ignoring this trash will do is make you a happier, more functional person.

Social media might need to be controlled in the same way cigarettes are. At the end of the day, both are drug dealers. One of them sells nicotine, the other sells dopamine. Not sure what that would look like though. Cigarettes have scary labels and enforced age requirements. Maybe social media would have to change the way likes/upvotes/etc work to be less polarizing, in addition to an age limit enforcement?

The various Wars On Drugs do not inspire.

According to me, they have at best been ineffectual, and more commonly made a bad thing worse.

I think/hope we're in a transitional phase of our civilization where we haven't figured out how to handle these new things yet. Over time, institutions will emerge. They always do, right?

Re: New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikable, contemptible

#68

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

swiley wrote: post #43
Tycho wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it wasn’t for Twitter I would have literally no clue about the machinations of the intelligence agencies to undermine the president or the corrupt activities of the Biden family. Unfortunately the mainstream media outlets choose not to report or pursue a lot of stuff, and have an alarming habit of citing dubious statements from “the intelligence community” as legitimate evidence that resolves the matter.

twitter is a terrible tool for this. It's heavily censored and biased. You could have heard it here or from a decent journalist.

This site is censored too, and the news media is becoming increasingly partisan an consolidated as well.

Re: New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikable, contemptible

#69

Post by BurningFrog »

_iyig wrote: post #54
laurent92 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The double problem is, we are isolated, often after various moves due to our studies and first years of work, otherwise because we diverge politically from other ex- or people in our family who, themselves, got polarized the other way. So deleting social networks would be a good thing, but we depend on them for out last human interactions on weekends and evenings. Even worse during confinement.

Computer games with voice chat have helped me weather COVID cabin fever as an alternative to social media. Particularly in PvE MMOs, players are just there to collaborate and have fun, with no room for politics to intrude.

Can you recommend some PS4 titles?

Re: New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikable, contemptible

#70

Post by nabla9 »

swiley wrote: post #10

Delete your twitter/facebook/reddit account. Seriously! Go do it now! These sites are built with the goal of pushing people into groups that are always angry at each other. Angry polarized groups spend more time on the site and are easier to sell things to. The only thing ignoring this trash will do is make you a happier, more functional person.

People in social media spend several hours per day following politics but almost nobody of them is engaged in any real political work. They are engaging with politics to satisfy our own emotional needs and intellectual curiosities. That’s political hobbyism/consumerism.

It's not different from being sports fan. Making noise from the couch but not having no effect in the game and annoying people who don't follow.

They have no serious purpose. They are just wasting energy.

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