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

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#561

Post by NaturalPhallacy » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:23 PM UTC

api wrote: post #7

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #4

I identify pretty closely with one side. But certainly there are Outrage Machines on both sides, a network of media and personalities hyping up the latest calumny that the other side committed, for views and clicks. These machines can't slow down -- even if the other side has been quiet lately, all those people need something to do and talk about. They'll find something.

One thing a lot of people miss is that there is a profit motive here. You can make money, sometimes a lot of money, by building a huge social media following being a political outrage merchant. You can find examples of people doing this on all sides, especially at the extremes where outrage and other powerful negative emotions can most easily be stirred up. All the outrage over "cancel culture" is not about censorshi…

>Censorship means state power is deployed to silence speech, and that is not (at least in the USA) happening much.

>cen·sor (sĕn′sər)

>1. A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and *to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable.*

Being authorized by twitter to do it on twitter is still censorship. A simple non-political example: censor bars on nudity in media, literally labelled 'censored': https://duckduckgo.com/?q=censored&iax=images&ia=images

The mental gymnastics to excuse censorship by private entities when it's done to the "correct" targets or for the "correct" reasons is infuriating.

Censorship is censorship. It doesn't matter who is doing it.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#562

Post by cwkoss » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:23 PM UTC

parafactual wrote: post #514

prof-dr-ir wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I see what you are trying to argue and let me say, with as much respect as this comment box allows me to convey, that I completely disagree. First of all, if you have skin in the game then it becomes even more important to try to understand the opposition's arguments in order to convince them to join your cause and to prevent others from joining the other side. As for your example, I am convinced that trans p…

Deeply understanding viewpoints that pose a direct threat to you takes a lot of effort. It takes time and mental resources. I don't think it is fair to expect that of everyone; activists, sure, but most people just want to live and feel safe. That is hard as is, especially for trans people.

Yeah, I would estimate any issue.

It would be great if we had a reliable way to identify that 1% and sort articles/comment/reach by this metric, but it's a hard problem.

For as many people that deeply understand a topic, there are many more that are parroting or making up rationalization for the beliefs they think they are expected to have. These sorts of arguments aren't really arguments, they are just a self-soothing method of tribal identification.

I think there is a pitfall with trying to "understand the other side" because there are an infinite number of possible opinions and not all have merit. It is useful to a point, but when taken to the extreme you just waste a bunch of time reading garbage.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#563

Post by whimsicalism » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:24 PM UTC

JAlexoid wrote: post #550

sudosysgen wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not. I don't think the GOP definition of conservatism admits conservative socialism. You definitely can be a conservative liberal. The American society by and large is founded on liberal principles. All you have to do to be a conservative liberal is to stick to 18th-19th century liberalism, in being a so-called "classical liberal". I agree that the GOP is reactionary more than conservative.

Classical liberalism - complete laissez faire market, no government interference and individual wealth creation. Today's libertarians are closest to classical liberals. The term classical liberal exists specifically, because conservative liberal creates a massive ambiguity. And getting back to The Economist - they aren't conservative at all. It's a modern liberal magazine, that routinely promotes wealth redistributio…

This is a frustrating comment chain for me to read. The person you are responding to clearly is already familiar with the concept of classical liberalism, and you are responding as if they are a dunce.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#564

Post by watwut » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:24 PM UTC

anm89 wrote: post #346

fancyfish wrote: post #287

The elephant in the room is that this sort of enlightened centrism, while it sounds noble, rests on several ill-formed assumptions. The first is that, by reading from both sides, they’ll balance and you’ll arrive at an enlightened center. This assumes the Overton Window is balanced, stationary, and not tilted to one side or the other. You’re beholden to the good judgement of each side to not move themselves further l…

Attacking the center is always the craziest narrative to me. It's saying: not only is it not okay to disagree with me and be on the other side, it's also not okay to not passionately agree with my exact side. The only right way to view these complex issues is to sign your name to join my party and then hold the party line, and everything else is unethical. I can't imagine a more obnoxious political viewpoint than tha…

The middle between truth and lie is a lie. The middle between torture and fredom is less bad torture.

I could continue, but that is the point.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#565

Post by beprogrammed » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:24 PM UTC

mariodiana wrote: post #446

Moodles wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, sure, but why are we talking about Fox specifically? CNN, MSNBC, etc. are just as bad. I find this ironic since this thread is about how bias isn't necessarily about outright falsehoods, but story selection and what is not said :)

Jonathan Haidt (who is mentioned in the article) did a study years ago. He separated a group of people into conservatives and liberals and then gave them a questionnaire on politics. Then he got a second group, separated them, and gave them the same questionnaire. Only he asked the second group of liberals and conservatives to answer the questionnaire the way they imagined the other side would. What he found was that…

Then he turned to his conservative flock and said 'See? We ARE smarter than them!'

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#566

Post by bobthechef » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

I sense that in a lot of these posts, "objective news source" = "they agree with me".

No news source is "unbiased" as in "not guided by what the newspaper things is valuable". It's a ridiculous notion. Even when full honesty is assumed (not sure why anyone would; all newspapers publish what they want you to think for all sorts of reasons), even putting aside external factors that constrain or compel what is said, there is a selection process informed by what is held as important. I am not dismissing the objectivity of value (no fact-value dichotomy in my world), but in practice, you will see a variation in what people hold that to be or want to hold that to be.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#567

Post by myfavoritedog » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:26 PM UTC

trophycase wrote: post #515

lamontcg wrote: post #495

I don't understand this fetishism with centrism and all opinions being treated equally, and that having made up your mind on an issue is necessarily wrong. When it comes to an issue like, say, climate change, I spent years reading the blogosphere, reading blogs like WUWT and whatever Judith Curry would come up with, and then the rebuttals, sometimes waiting years for the science to come out. For any issue around clim…

Unfortunately the whole "Lab Leak" COVID thing has given them another 5 years of legitimacy probably.

Unfortunately?

This is exactly why living in the default media bubble is such a problem. The COVID lab leak coverup was the normal state of affairs. It wasn't an outlier.

We saw all last year as the media stood in front of looting, rioting, and burning buildings and told us that the protests were "mostly peaceful". We heard that the police are "systemically racist" and practically hunting black people in the streets, but if you looked at the police interactions statistics, you saw that it just wasn't true.

We were told by the media last year that Hydroxychloroquine was a dangerous drug... simply because Trump suggested it might be a good treatment for COVID. Social media companies are still banning people for touting it: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9671029/Hydroxychlo...

The current normal is for most of the media to lie and push Democrat political narratives. Yeah, yeah, Fox News is a real counterbalance when they aren't even a tenth of the audience of ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, and PBS. There's no social media narrative bubble to speak of. It's all Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and on and on.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#568

Post by renewiltord » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:26 PM UTC

hindsightbias wrote: post #551

renewiltord wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, dude, that’s what it means to have a defacto state religion: it becomes the default thing. A classic characteristic of state religions is that even those who do not believe will institutionally practise. So, for instance, even Buddhists in Jordan must not eat in public during Ramadan. Considering everything I was told about America, I was surprised to see that it is a Christian nation (I expected it to not be b…

> SF has recently made specific parking laws for churches Context matters. This is not a general xtian supremacy thing. It is a unique historical thing with SF AA Baptist churches whose populations were gentrified out of their neighborhoods. Their churches remained and they commute from all over the Bay Area to attend Sunday mass. Cops and neighborhoods accomodated this practice, but the latest generation of gentrifi…

To be clear, I do not live in that neighbourhood and I don't really mind the America-as-moderate-theocracy system in place. You won't see me whining about the Christian median parking. I have a motorcycle. SF's traffic doesn't bother me and the numerous curb cuts advantage me (cars can't park, but I can).

However, the fact that this stuff happens repeatedly for Christian institutions and rarely (almost never, in fact) for others is not something that escapes me. The state does privilege Christianity. That makes sense since America is a Christian nation.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#569

Post by mariodiana » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:26 PM UTC

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #519

mariodiana wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jonathan Haidt (who is mentioned in the article) did a study years ago. He separated a group of people into conservatives and liberals and then gave them a questionnaire on politics. Then he got a second group, separated them, and gave them the same questionnaire. Only he asked the second group of liberals and conservatives to answer the questionnaire the way they imagined the other side would. What he found was that…

I'm currently a registered Pacific Green, lean left, and on the political compass I'm basically smack dab on top of Bernie Sanders (whom I voted for and donated to in the 2016 primaries). And have never voted Republican. So his observation is about my own "side" more or less. But I'm totally unsurprised to see this downvoted here only 18 minutes in. Here's a short article on the paper: https://ricochet.com/76902/arch…

Thank you.

I have a friend I haven't seen since high school, though I'm connected with him on Facebook. He will outright tell you himself that he's a communist—familiar with the writings of Marx, etc. We could not be more diametrically opposed. However, he's as clear-eyed as you seem to be.

I suspect that most people simply aren't all that intellectually curious. I don't remember if Haidt explicitly mentioned this, but I think somewhere either he or someone commenting on his study asserted that it is much easier to pick up the party line of liberals through osmosis, since those in education, the media, and so forth tend to be liberal. So, even conservatives are more readily exposed to the liberal take on things. Liberals on the other hand are not.

But the point I'm making by mentioning my friend and thanking you is that I suspect that people who are intellectually curious are more or less inoculated against mischaracterizing the side they disagree with, since they don't learn almost exclusively through osmosis.

I appreciate your contribution to this thread.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#570

Post by ABCLAW » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:26 PM UTC

anm89 wrote: post #346

fancyfish wrote: post #287

The elephant in the room is that this sort of enlightened centrism, while it sounds noble, rests on several ill-formed assumptions. The first is that, by reading from both sides, they’ll balance and you’ll arrive at an enlightened center. This assumes the Overton Window is balanced, stationary, and not tilted to one side or the other. You’re beholden to the good judgement of each side to not move themselves further l…

Attacking the center is always the craziest narrative to me. It's saying: not only is it not okay to disagree with me and be on the other side, it's also not okay to not passionately agree with my exact side. The only right way to view these complex issues is to sign your name to join my party and then hold the party line, and everything else is unethical. I can't imagine a more obnoxious political viewpoint than tha…

>Anyway yeah, I'm a centrist and it's not because I'm trying to be neutral, it's because both sides are terrifying cesspools

You aren't being neutral. Your position is a very strong affirmative for the current status quo. You don't want anyone to be able to enact change.

That's an understandable position, but it isn't neutrality. Especially not if the status quo is actively negative for certain people.

As an aside, this portion of your statement:

>It's saying: not only is it not okay to disagree with me and be on the other side, it's also not okay to not passionately agree with my exact side.

Feels like a strawman. The existence of critique isn't a censure. It's just how rational analysis works. You find ideas and you work through them.

If your goal is to never be critiqued because you can't stand to be wrong, and that's why you've adopted a 'centrist' standpoint to get above it all that's a very political position to adopt.