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

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#581

Post by NaturalPhallacy » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

arecurrence wrote: post #416

throwawaysea wrote: post #139

This article mentions Blindspotter, which is a great way to explore the bubbles around Twitter accounts ( https://ground.news/blindspotter/twitter ) and also Subreddits ( https://ground.news/blindspotter/reddit/ ). For example, try: John Oliver - https://ground.news/blindspotter/twitter/iamjohnoliver Tucker Carlson - https://ground.news/blindspotter/twitter/TuckerCarlson r/politics - https://ground.news/blindspotter/…

Surprised to see you downvoted when so much complaining in this thread is already covered by Ground News. I suppose Hacker News itself is unable to escape its own echo chamber.

HN is very, very authoritarian left.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#582

Post by joe_the_user » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

ggggtez wrote: post #87

The problem of course is that not every issue needs a "both sides" treatment. Sometimes there are questions of objective facts that reading lies from alternative sources do not actually help you in understanding the truth of the world. The person who desperately tries to cite "50/50" liberal and conservative sources in the article is the worst kind of fence sitter. Sometimes, one side or the other is just wrong, or t…

The problem of course is that not every issue needs a "both sides" treatment.

Another point is that there aren't "two sides" to political issues but a wide variety of sides and that often, when you pick the two supposed sides of an issue, you've actually picked the answer - without, say, having to have an argument for this answer.

Unpopular note: HN has had too many of these garbage articles leveraging this vacuous and manipulative "two sides" rhetoric - "Ivy League" article but several others. And these have had an actually pretty strong center-right bias and just generally detract from the site imo.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#583

Post by vorpalhex » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #564

anm89 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"If you aren't for us, you are against us."

This is a great tool for crusades and other holy wars. You can paint inconvenient bystanders who don't come over to your side as enemy combatants and justify attacking them. Also fantastic for reinforcing in-group identity, forcing group members to stay loyal or lose their entire friend group.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#584

Post by systemvoltage » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #560

systemvoltage wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Climate change is a terrible example to prove your point. It's an easy one and weakens your argument about balance. Climate change has scientific consensus and has gotten better over time. Most political issues left/right are concerned about issues that are far more nuanced and there isn't enough data to back it up, or even if there is data, there are gaping holes in methodology and eventually boils down…

>Climate change has scientific consensus and has gotten better over time. You do realize that the Fox New crowd and the Republican party are still denying that humans have any affect on the climate, right? 30 seconds in the comments section on this latest story for instance tells you all you need to know: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-climate-change-greate...

Sure, I do. That's my point - Climate change is an easy one to make a point about siding with scientific consensus. I don't need a political side to side with why wearing masks is beneficial to reducing the spread of the virus.

OP is using CC as a token to make a point that we should cease to be centrists. I am asking to listen to both sides (even if it is absolute lunacy), figure out what are the facts and what are ideological positions which are not as clearcut as CC.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#585

Post by NaturalPhallacy » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

throwawaysea wrote: post #139

This article mentions Blindspotter, which is a great way to explore the bubbles around Twitter accounts ( https://ground.news/blindspotter/twitter ) and also Subreddits ( https://ground.news/blindspotter/reddit/ ). For example, try: John Oliver - https://ground.news/blindspotter/twitter/iamjohnoliver Tucker Carlson - https://ground.news/blindspotter/twitter/TuckerCarlson r/politics - https://ground.news/blindspotter/…

This is fantastic! Thank you for sharing.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#586

Post by cwkoss » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:32 PM UTC

astrange wrote: post #578

cwkoss wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the exact same thing true of CNN and MSNBC, but just in the other direction?

What "the" other direction? There isn't a single dimension here.

Fair point - these dichotomies are often false or manufactured.

However I believe that, to a much greater extent than citizen support for particular political issues, media bias tends to polarize along party-line dimensions because of overlapping power structures.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#587

Post by myfavoritedog » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:33 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…

I agree with you in a lot of ways, although my problem with the center is:

When Democrats want to blow out the budget by spending $10 trillion and then centrist Republicans say, "Okay, we'll do $5 trillion", there's nowhere to go besides further to the right.

is to give either of those groups as little power as possible

The only two groups that even talk about decreasing the power of all the extremists are Libertarians and Conservatives. Those people have no voice in the center. The very lack of their agreeing to keep increasing the power of government labels them as "extremists".

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#588

Post by atq2119 » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

slumdev wrote: post #513

laputan_machine wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example of the second type? I see this kind of strawman argument against centrism all the time, yet I rarely see "worst of both worlds" outcomes in a political sense

Most Americans support an abortion ban, but they also support exceptions for rape or incest. If the fetus is a human person with rights, there should be no exception. If the fetus is not a human person with rights, then restrictions of any kind are unjust. The provenance of the fetus has no effect on the moral liceity of killing it. It's a lazy opinion formed by appeals to emotion.

Technically, one could make arguments based on genetics for the "middle" position. Something like: allowing abortion following rape puts a damper on the spread of genes that tend to lead towards rape.

That's probably not a good argument. I'm just playing devil's advocate for why that position isn't necessarily self-contradictory.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#589

Post by tomc1985 » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #518

anm89 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think your flavor of centrism is actually relatively rare. That you distrust both sides I think is the key to enabling 'the good kind' of centrism. Many with a similar viewpoint would call themselves Independent to separate themselves from the parties. The issue lies is the false dichotomy of the two-party system. Centrists I interact with often seem to view the world as if the two party lines are a single dimensio…

I would beg to differ. Anecdotally I have overheard a lot of people expressing frustration that there are only two real choices in political debates. There are a lot of "nonpartisans" out there but they are suppressed by ignorant and xenophobic politicos on both sides

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#590

Post by reedjosh » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

standardUser wrote: post #116

hn8788 wrote: post #31

An underrated way to get out of your echo chamber is to actually talk to people in person. I lean fairly conservative, while my wife and her friends are very liberal. Whenever we happen to talk about political topics, most of the time we end up understanding where each other are coming from, even if we still don't agree.

Perhaps your political viewpoints are fairly mild compared to mainstream conservative discourse? It's difficult to have civil discourse with someone who says your identify (or the identify of those you love) should be outlawed or otherwise severely restricted by the state. That's been a core tenet of conservative politics and policy for several years now and I do not have the intellectual tools nor the emotional stre…

I think a large bit of conservative viewpoint today is that the government shouldn't even be involved in marriage.

I don't at all care what you do with your life, and really I'd like it if you gave me the same courtesy.

But, if you believe that because I consider myself more conservative than not, I must then hate your lifestyle, how can we ever come to a happy coexistence?