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Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

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Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#591

Post by ABCLAW »

spamizbad wrote: post #414
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…

A lot of "local" subreddits started declining around 2015. It's like all the local news website commenters discovered their local subreddits and started posting there.

A lot of investor-relations style astroturfing began in the lead-up to the 2016 election.

We did some threat tracking for certain organizations as a result of the growing extreme rhetoric in some of these communities and with social media aggregation tools it became very clear that there are a lot of paid political shill accounts.

Facebook's toxic communities are far more grass-roots in comparison. They're also, at least in the cases of the files I was on, a lot more violent, and a lot more volatile. Surveiled Facebook groups looked a lot more like Parler than brigaded reddit subs.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#592

Post by standardUser »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #541
standardUser wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a major political party prioritizes limiting the rights and freedoms of entire groups, how can we expect to find common ground with them? If you are asking people who are directly impacted by these laws to find the humanity in their oppressors, you are asking for the impossible.

The fundamental purpose of law is to place limitations on the allowed behavior of other people. The lines between what behavior is right and wrong varies from people to people and group to group, hence why we have democracy to try to form a consensus.

There is a stark, obvious and undeniable difference between "other people" and narrowly defined groups of people, such as Jews, gay people, black people, immigrants or women. Many people view targeted restrictions on specific groups of people as some of our most atrocious and indefensible errors throughout history. I am one of those people.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#593

Post by nyokodo »

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…

> The idea that having made my mind is a horrible thing, is just a tactic to try to creates wedges of doubt to try to keep a zombie political idea going.

You're an extreme minority in how in-depth you've looked into the science. The only really rational position for someone who hasn't done so is at most vague trust based on the scientific consensus. People who both haven't sufficiently looked into the science and yet who still have a strongly held belief are part of the problem even when they happen to be right.

Then the political implications are a different matter to the scientific question. There is a whole range of political positions you can come to even given a consensus on the science. Do you drastically reduce carbon usage or accept the warming and adapt? Maybe both? That is where the political x/y/z axes come in.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#594

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

[flagged]

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#595

Post by hanselot »

pmoriarty wrote: post #273
bluGill wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If your only view of Tokyo is what you get through Godzilla movies then you definitely have a problem. The solution is better movies on Tokyo, not no movies on Tokyo. You're in luck, though, because there are plenty of great movies on Tokyo -- movies that even people living in Tokyo find give great insights in to their own society.

I think he means Tokyo Drift.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#596

Post by myko »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #575
mrkstu wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh- voted against Trump twice. The fact of the matter is the Ratcliffe Letter [0] shows that President Obama was given an briefing well before the Steele Dossier was leaked to the media that the Russians' had picked up intelligence that exactly that kind of fake evidence would be planted by the Clinton campaign. I really don't believe in a coincidence that big and unless Steele was simultaneously a Russian and Clin…

> Sigh- voted against Trump twice. You cannot vote "against" someone in any election except a recall. Who you voted for is who you voted for . Simple example: When I voted for Howie Hawkins in 2020, who was my vote "against"?

I suppose you could say your vote was against "everyone else", but that seems like a pretty useless statement

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#597

Post by systemvoltage »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #548
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…

You think that climate change is a settled issue across the political spectrum? I have seen the contrary.

Here is the core problem that I have a hard time articulating:

Here is what OP is doing:

1) Point out ills on the other side - QAnon, Climate denial, etc.

2) Make a sweeping statement that being a centrist means giving attention to aforementioned theories and giving "equal" importance to both sides. That's not what centrists do.

OP's condenscending take on Centrists is based on low-blows and not much substance.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#598

Post by anm89 »

ABCLAW wrote: post #570
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…

>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, t…

>Anyway yeah, I'm a centrist and it's NOT because I'm trying to be neutral

> You aren't being neutral.

My claim is that I'm not neutral and that I'm also not trying to be neutral.

>If your goal is to never be critiqued because you can't stand to be wrong,

Speaking of strawmen.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#599

Post by reedjosh »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #541
standardUser wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a major political party prioritizes limiting the rights and freedoms of entire groups, how can we expect to find common ground with them? If you are asking people who are directly impacted by these laws to find the humanity in their oppressors, you are asking for the impossible.

The fundamental purpose of law is to place limitations on the allowed behavior of other people. The lines between what behavior is right and wrong varies from people to people and group to group, hence why we have democracy to try to form a consensus.

> The fundamental purpose of law is to place limitations on the allowed behavior of other people.

Maybe the problem is just a majority forcing a minority into their beliefs?

I'm anti-government in general, so that _is_ my standpoint.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#600

Post by passivate »

myko wrote: post #69
mrkstu wrote: post #34

My main issue with American news and commentary is the complete lack of skepticism of those on 'their side' of an issue. On the right, when Trump hadn't yet gotten control of the party, there was some persistent reaction against him from established conservative media. Once he got control, it was almost complete silence. On the left, evidence of how much of the investigation into Russian collusion with Trump's electi…

> On the left, evidence of how much of the investigation into Russian collusion with Trump's election team was completely made up and water carrying by the media of Clinton's team's planted story has never been owned by the participants. This is bizarre. No such thing happened.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-mill...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/03/dear-cnn-...

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