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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

#141

Post by Tycho »

ForHackernews wrote: post #129
Tycho wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want to get into an argument with you, I was just curious if that was your actual opinion. Similar to how you asked if I was joking and I answered you.

Yes, my actual opinion is that Joe Biden is a vastly less corrupt candidate than Trump. Presumably Hunter Biden traded on his famous name to get job opportunities (in a smaller way than the Trump kids), but I've seen no credible evidence (and please don't reply with a gish-gallop of shady twitter and youtube links) that Joe Biden compromised his office to assist his son.

If it wasn’t for Twitter, I too might think that Hunter Biden was just getting a cushy job similar to, say, Bush’s daughter getting a job at the Smithsonian Design Museum. It might not occur to me that of all the jobs he could have landed, these just happened to be big money deals in China and Ukraine, where Joe Biden was active in foreign policy - negotiating trade deals and firing financial fraud prosecutors - that seemed to involve a lot of free money for the Biden family. It might not strike me as corrupt, and I might not notice that the press are clinically uninterested in finding out more, or even asking the Bidens to clear things up.

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

#142

Post by throwaway_hey »

the-dude wrote: post #136
blablablerg wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also from NL, and first of all, you are blaming a big and diverse group, the 'left', for unnuanced statements and regrettable actions of some individuals. Every group has its crazies. Doesn't mean the whole 'left' is like that. Second, they may be right. Which groups with 'different opinions' are you talking about? Geert Wilders has been convicted for libel against ethnic minorities. And Baudet has said that he…

I will only respond to one part of your rebuttal : do you think being called 'crazy or lazy' is in any way comparable to being called a fascist, nazi or murderer? I don't think so.

[dead]

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

#143

Post by intended »

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.

America had this issue before these sites came up.

Ignoring this will make a single individual better, but that will only leave you back at square one - which is being at the mercy of the America news media environment.

For an individual this may be the right call, for the scope and scale of the issue being discussed in this article, it doesn’t seem like it.

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

#145

Post by cozuya »

mnd999 wrote: post #17

Peoples willingness to line up behind banners, flags and slogans without bothering to look at what those politicians are actually selling baffles me. I think if people from both sides were willing to ignore that and just sit down and talk about what kind of county they want to live in they would find they have a lot more in common than they think. I think this is what the article is proposing, and I think I agree wit…

There is no reasonable discussion to be had with people that deny science, deny inclusiveness, promote racism, accept white supremacy, and refuse to condemn violence against groups they don't like.

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

#147

Post by gruez »

vinay427 wrote: post #110
gruez wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Well, this is literally true if you consider non-human lives. [...] Stating a legitimate political or moral view alone is not (itself) what induces polarization, as I see it. Calling the other side "murderers" goes beyond "stating a legitimate political or moral view". You're accusing the other side of being criminals of the worst kind, so of course it's going to be polarizing.

> Calling the other side "murderers" goes beyond "stating a legitimate political or moral view". Can you explain your reasoning for this? More specifically, if one only considers certain types of X to qualify as X, does calling someone X if they perform an action not universally considered to be X go beyond "a legitimate political or moral view?"

It's not so much their view is illegitimate, it's that it's possible to state their moral/political view without alienating the other side. "We shouldn't slaughter animals because they're living beings too" gets the same point across without accusing the other side of being heinous criminals. It's not as provocative as "meat is murder", but I doubt many meat eaters are going to do a 180 because someone called them a murderer.

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

#148

Post by specialist »

Editorial references this OC:

Political Sectarianism: A Dangerous Cocktail of Othering, Aversion, and Moralization

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/political-sectarianism.pdf

Same topic, list of authors match, recently published, near match on title. I'm pretty sure this is the paper referenced. For the love of the FSM, why can't people use links?

Skim reading this paper, it appears complimentary to other reports. Will read in full shortly.

--

Polarization isn't just one thing. It's the result of everything mushed together.

Ezra Klein's Why We Are Polarized is a terrific summary, synthesis of the research. Connects so many dots. Physical sorting (urbanization) promotes polarization, faceted identities are now super identities, nationalization of media begat the nationalization of our politics, the massive political reorg fallout from LBJ's Great Society ending the Dixiecrat's strangle hold on southern states (aka Nixon's Southern Strategy), and many more.

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Were-Polarized-Ezra-Klein/dp/1476...

--

Klein doesn't much touch on social media in this book. Some of his podcasts episodes are relevant. Two underreported factoids popped out for me, First, how the landscape changed from blogging to social media. Second is the elephant in the room about the algorithms and how most critics are guilty of conflating speech with signal boosting.

(I have my own thoughts about social media, shared piecemeal thru my comment history. No thesis or narrative yet, sorry.)

Whatever the evil of social media today, eliminating it outright (not gonna happen) would only mitigate some of the toxicity and definitely won't unwind polarization.

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

#149

Post by ryandrake »

cozuya wrote: post #145
mnd999 wrote: post #17

Peoples willingness to line up behind banners, flags and slogans without bothering to look at what those politicians are actually selling baffles me. I think if people from both sides were willing to ignore that and just sit down and talk about what kind of county they want to live in they would find they have a lot more in common than they think. I think this is what the article is proposing, and I think I agree wit…

There is no reasonable discussion to be had with people that deny science, deny inclusiveness, promote racism, accept white supremacy, and refuse to condemn violence against groups they don't like.

Remember, the other side is saying the exact same thing: "There is no reasonable discussion to be had with people that deny freedom, want to take away guns, promote socialism, accept killing babies, and refuse to condemn enemies."

Nobody is willing to even come to the table anymore because of how totally wrong and evil they see the other side as. Which is kind of the point of the article.

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

#150

Post by scrollaway »

civilized wrote: post #134
scrollaway wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both, but maybe unlike you I didn't get stuck only on the parts that criticized republicans.

If you actually read the article, why would you choose an irrelevant metric that is basically uncorrelated with the actual content of the article to prove your point?

Very easy way to disprove your frankly very low effort post. You have since edited it to be a bit more substantive but when I replied it was reddit grade.
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