Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers • Hacker News Board

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#211

Post by multiplegeorges » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

fartcannon wrote: post #36

There's a thing that happened with the Canada subreddit. It used to be kind of an interesting sub where youd get neat Canada-wide local stories (mostly Ontario) that were genrally pleasant. It was a nice place to visit after being inundated with American politics. Then, sometime in the early 10s and it gradually became very partisan and political. Which, to clarify, means it got substantially worse. It, like the comm…

It's interesting to see how you've characterized what happened in r/canada. I think it is itself an example of polarization.

r/canada used to be great, as you said, but it didn't become polarized in a right vs. left manner. The moderators were self-admitted alt/far-right people who were pushing a particular agenda.

When the country as a whole votes left at a consistent 65-70%, then r/canada simply no longer represents the Canadian viewpoint. r/canada used to give center-right viewpoints attention at about the same rate as the support they got in elections. The push from right-wing mods to move to an even or greater split doesn't reflect the political reality of Canada.

r/OnGuardForThee is now a far more accurate representation of the political landscape of Canada where 70% of people vote center-left to left.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#212

Post by antiterra » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #156

antiterra wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump’s positions included his belief that people should be able to be fired solely for being LGBT+. You know, like cancelled. So, people who are or care about LGBT+ share the information that Cawthon voted in a way that could harm them. That’s not ‘siccing a tiger’ for any disagreement whatsoever.

Trump was cancelled by the election, so that makes sense. People vote for lots of reasons so assuming that a voter supports every single issue is simplistic.

Imagine people not being impressed with arguments like “I don’t agree with his attempted oppression of a vulnerable group of citizens, but I sure do like his position on immigration/tariffs/capital gains tax.”

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#213

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

asguy wrote: post #180

whimsicalism wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I would flip this and say that going to church weekly is not a necessary condition for being within Christian sphere of influence. Xmas is most certainly Christian.

> Xmas is most certainly Christian. ... didn’t Xmas start being used exactly for that reason, i.e. to separate the event from religion. I didn’t grow up believing in Jesus, but I definitely believed in Santa Claus.

> didn’t Xmas start being used exactly for that reason, i.e. to separate the event from religion.

No, its a Christian abvreviation originating from the ancient use of the greek Chi (visually identical to Latin X), sometimes along with Rho (Latin P) — the first two letters of Christ in Greek — as an abbreviation for Christ. Itsl dates back to, IIRC, the 16th C with similar forms back to the medieval period.

Its been railed about as originating in a modern attempt to de-Christianize (or even explicitly paganize) Christmas more recently, but that is completely ahistorical.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#214

Post by sswezey » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #202

whimsicalism wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it has long since become just a western culture tradition with no particular religious significance for a lot of people I think that people have a tendency to underestimate the degree of Christian influence on their way of life, and the vast majority of people who practice xmas are Christian, even if they are not weekly church attendees. I was raised in an atheist household, we definitely viewed Christmas as a reli…

> I think that people have a tendency to underestimate the degree of Christian influence on their way of life, One is not a Christian because Christianity influenced their culture. > and the vast majority of people who practice xmas are Christian The vast majority of people on the planet are also Christian. Does that make "humanity" a Christian institution?

Christians are a plurality of the world population but far from a majority.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#215

Post by throwaway6734 » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

vsskanth wrote: post #8

I tried this experiment: read nytimes, wapo, fox, national review and politico. I wanted to get different perspectives. However, I encountered a bunch of issues: They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives. This is the most common form of bias I've come across. In the rare case they do cover the same thing, many articles either simply do not…

I've found that looking at higher level, more commentary based news sources helps.

Some examples: Persuasion, The Dispatch, The Bulwark, and an assortment of substacks.

I get my news from Reuters with a sprinkling of fox/nytimes/reddit thrown in

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#216

Post by bluGill » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #118

threatofrain wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it takes serious anthropological commitment to have a non-idiot understanding of a people. I feel this shouldn't be an individual job. Either your entire community has deep, embedded relations with another community or it doesn't. Otherwise it's like asking for better sources to read about Chinese culture, or like visiting China once a year for vacation. You can't read your way into being culturally competent. Yo…

Of course, seeing a movie on the Himalayas is no substitute for visiting the Himalayas, and that's no substitute to living in the Himalayas. But I'd rather have there be movies on the Himalayas than not, even when we are aware it's not a perfect substitute for the real thing. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

The problem is that movies influence what we think the truth is. Is Tokyo like the Godzilla movies? I would hope that everything not obviously related to the fictional attack is realistic to how the people actually live, because like it or not movies influence us.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#217

Post by ahelwer » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

prof-dr-ir wrote: post #33

> "Until you can passionately make arguments for both sides," she says, "you don't understand the issue." I think this is the key quote. It should really be taboo to have an opinion without an understanding of how the other side argues. (Ironically the search for counterarguments would often strengthen my position because they would turn out to be quite weak. Nevertheless I think that the exercise is important.) I th…

The issue with this standard is it can only be applied to situations where you're making decisions about the fates of other people - where you don't have skin in the game. It would be ridiculous to, for example, require that all trans people possess in-depth knowledge of TERF arguments against the validity of their identity (along with counter-arguments) before accepting that they understand their own identity. So sure, subject the lofty peanut gallery to this standard. If you're actually personally affected by a political issue it's usually pretty easy to figure out where you stand on it.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#218

Post by bogota » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #111

vsskanth wrote: post #8

I tried this experiment: read nytimes, wapo, fox, national review and politico. I wanted to get different perspectives. However, I encountered a bunch of issues: They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives. This is the most common form of bias I've come across. In the rare case they do cover the same thing, many articles either simply do not…

I highly recommend the Economist . Their articles mostly follow a dialectical format -- thesis, antithesis, synthesis, with about a third of the article spent on each one. I don't know of any other publication whose house style is so rigorous in this. It's also highly editorialized, but very open and transparent about the positions it takes -- any bias they have is in the open, but is in the final synthesis after the…

I have been reading the economist for a while now and im curious if you have felt a decline in quality or maybe its just my differing in opinion from recent articles.

Mostly i feel more articles coming up that are worded in a way to convince the reader or a certain point without any data. This is something i never really noticed in the past.

It might just be me though.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#219

Post by whimsicalism » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

asguy wrote: post #180

whimsicalism wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I would flip this and say that going to church weekly is not a necessary condition for being within Christian sphere of influence. Xmas is most certainly Christian.

> Xmas is most certainly Christian. ... didn’t Xmas start being used exactly for that reason, i.e. to separate the event from religion. I didn’t grow up believing in Jesus, but I definitely believed in Santa Claus.

> ... didn’t Xmas start being used exactly for that reason, i.e. to separate the event from religion.

No lol, that's just what Fox news said when they were talking about the "War on Christmas". It's a historical typographical thing where X was used as an abbreviation for Christ, you can look it up. Nothing about trying to separate it from religion.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#220

Post by bnralt » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

vsskanth wrote: post #8

I tried this experiment: read nytimes, wapo, fox, national review and politico. I wanted to get different perspectives. However, I encountered a bunch of issues: They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives. This is the most common form of bias I've come across. In the rare case they do cover the same thing, many articles either simply do not…

I highly recommend experimenting with turning off the news completely for a time. You quickly find that the vast majority of "Breaking News!" that gets shoveled out simply isn't that important for most people, and is there mainly to feed a news addiction.

Alternatively, use the Internet Archives to read news from this date from 2-5 few years ago. You'll probably find that most aren't worth reading, which gives you a good sense of how important the news you read today will seem in just a few years.