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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

#821

Post by whatshisface »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #802
whatshisface wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of holocaust survivors have made very cogent cases against deniers, you may be underestimating their strength. Maybe some people couldn't do that, but other people could. It is a lot of people we are talking about.

This isn't about making a case, it's about giving equal credence to the narratives of a holocaust survivor and someone who denies it.

Hoisting someone up to get humiliated on national TV is giving them equal credence? It's impossible to give equal credence to Flat-Earth equivalents, except by engineering things so that they get to talk about their "persecution" without saying anything about what they believe. (That is a common trick, watch out for it and you'll see it in many fringe subcultures.) Get them talking about their beliefs on a concrete level and the credence goes out the window. Putting its head on a stake where everyone can see it will do nothing to assist it.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#822

Post by throwaway894345 »

sandyarmstrong wrote: post #816
throwaway894345 wrote: post #799

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re not debating whether or not everyone of every faith celebrates secular Christmas, but whether or not celebrating secular Christmas is sufficient to identify a character as Christian. By your own admission (“All the replies here saying Christmas isn't Christian seem to be from people with a Christian upbringing, even if they are atheist or secular”), it is not sufficient. Even if no one of a non-Christian backgr…

> We’re not debating whether or not everyone of every faith celebrates secular Christmas, but whether or not celebrating secular Christmas is sufficient to identify a character as Christian. Maybe that is what you're debating. It was only one example that I gave in my original post. It seems to me that a lot of people who grew up in the dominant culture of the US are jumping to defend Christmas as a wholly secular th…

No one is saying Christmas is “wholly secular”. They are clearly arguing that “celebrating Christmas” doesn’t identify someone as Christian.

You know, because the context of the thread is characters’ religious identities.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#823

Post by sudosysgen »

crazygringo wrote: post #673
sudosysgen wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, they show both sides, but they choose which two. They are not as forthcoming with their biases as it seems. They mainly set up their ideological oppositions as conservatives, but they in fact have a lot in common with them. This is especially true for foreign relations. I'd be happy to see examples of articles that go against the Economists' editorial agenda in profound ways and that pertain to foreign pol…

If you only read the English language then you're kind of mostly limited to "anglophone", no? And how can 4 "centrist" sources be "very biased"? Isn't it literally the opposite?

Centrism is a political position just the same as any other, and is just as biased.

Most major news sources in the world report in English too. So you can indeed read news from sources that aren't from culturally similar anglophone countries and instead are from anywhere in the world.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#824

Post by slumdev »

tjs8rj wrote: post #803
slumdev wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In general, if lots of people feel a certain way, and your conclusion is completely contradictory, you should assume you’re wrong until strong evidence says otherwise. This is a useful heuristic for becoming popular but not for making moral decisions. It is the worst possible approach to forming one's conscience. > You’re essentially assuming you know better than everyone. You're assuming everyone else formed a rea…

In general, people are about as intelligent as you, and at least the same order of magnitude. People are prone to trends as much as the market is, but the market of ideas tends to be somewhat efficient (not least because all profits from financial to business to psychic stem from people and their expectations). So the conclusion that everyone is wrong requires serious burden of proof. Doesn’t mean you can’t be contra…

Statistically, without any other data, about half of the people will be smarter than I am, and half of them won't. How can I be sure that I chose the right half to follow, especially if we're assuming that I'm average?

Regardless, I still hold that following the herd is a recipe for disaster. It is a form of the Just World Fallacy.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#825

Post by tootie »

systemvoltage wrote: post #792
tootie wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech as a sacred right means you have the absolute right to put yourself anywhere you want on the political spectrum, but that doesn't mean that one isn't right and the other side is wrong. I also think that "centrist" is a pretty meaningless term. I prefer to think of myself as more of an empiricist. I like policy that follows evidence. 90% of the time that's liberal policy. Roughly 0% of the time is that con…

This is how liberal policies of Oakland, California will decide how to educate their children [PDF]: https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11... I am not convinced, at all - this is coming from a liberal who has voted for every democratic candidate since age 18.

Yeah I don't back every policy just because a liberal came up with it. I think racial equity in education is great and it's a thing conservatives don't seem to care about. I'm not familiar enough with this plan to say if it's a bad idea or not. I think it's a really difficult problem to solve and no one has a great solution.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#826

Post by sudosysgen »

JAlexoid wrote: post #727
sudosysgen wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, they show both sides, but they choose which two. They are not as forthcoming with their biases as it seems. They mainly set up their ideological oppositions as conservatives, but they in fact have a lot in common with them. This is especially true for foreign relations. I'd be happy to see examples of articles that go against the Economists' editorial agenda in profound ways and that pertain to foreign pol…

> This is especially true for foreign relations. Their latest issue literally has a massive article against vaccine nationalism. Their opposition to breaking of the Iranian deal. > A good barometer I have for journals as far as foreign policy is their coverage of the Iraq War before it began That's very arbitrary, considering that 18 years have passed. The Economist has changed hands and most of its staff. > 4 centri…

The Economist has not changed its bias in over a hundred and fifty years, staying firmly focused on economic liberalism. Eighteen years is nothing.

>4 sources that aren't radical, have clear motivation behind them. Money makes people write in a particular way, that is easy to gauge.

I don't understand what you're saying here. Just because they have a bias that is for the status quo doesn't mean they are more or less right. As far as I'm concerned all I'm getting from this is "I agree with this ideological bias and I don't want to read anything else"

Anyways, it's your decision to subscribe to a biased news diet. You're not any better because of which bias you choose than someone who only reads Newsmax or CNN.

If your assessment is that anything that's not from the same ideology as these four sources is "insane crap", which it isn't, good points are being made by people of all political persuasions, then it's clear that you have created your own media echo chamber.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#827

Post by sudosysgen »

13415 wrote: post #762
sudosysgen wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't recommend using the Economist as your only source for international news. It's very deeply ideological in a way that is almost invisible if you can't easily compare it to a known truth. It's certainly not only interested in solutions that can be implemented. It's interested in solutions that enforce the free market, and it paints non-market solutions as infeasible, even though they often work and are implemen…

I don't understand why people keep arguing against journals or newspapers because they are allegedly ideological or biased. Everybody is ideological and biased. Are they afraid they might lose all their critical thinking skills once they read such a journal and somehow be influenced or brainwashed without realizing it? The people who recommend against those medias already believe of themselves that they are better in…

Of course not, I myself read it often.

I'm arguing against the GP that said that it's okay to read only the Economist. It's not okay to read only a single source. You can be as critical as you want but if you no longer have any bearings on a subject you're being led by the nose.

Also, "pro-economy bias" is pretty vague. There are many ways one could be biased in a way so as to focus on a better economy, and they can be radically different.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#828

Post by andrepd »

Grim-444 wrote: post #60
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…

"They dont talk about or even cover the same things" - this is the number one fake news tactic in play. I'm not sure what to call it, but it's a 2x2 matrix - If a group is left-leaning, they'll report on everything good about the left and everything bad about the right, If a group is right-leaning, they'll report on everything good about the right and everything bad about the left. For example, you'll almost never se…

Slightly OT but it's disheartening to see the overton window at work when people call Democrats "left". It's like the frame of reference has shifted so far to one side that "slightly progressive corporate-run party" vs "socially conservative corporate-run party" is framed as "left vs right".

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#829

Post by andrepd »

Aunche wrote: post #168
dragonwriter wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, you'll almost never see CNN write an article critical about Democrats, Not true at all. Here's one critical about Democrats as being too beholden to progressives: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/11/opinions/democratic-party-pro... Here’s one critical about the current Democratic VP largely for being too concerned with (and ultimately ineffective at) undercutting Republican talking points. https://www.cnn.c…

CNN is a bad example of a left leaning news outlet. They're quite centrist. The reason mainstream media appears to be left biased is because people use the government's political center as their frame of reference rather than that of the populace. The media caters to political beliefs of actual average American. The federal government caters to the center of voting power, which is heavily skewed towards smaller state…

> The reason mainstream media appears to be left biased is because people use the government's political center as their frame of reference rather than that of the populace. The media caters to political beliefs of actual average American. The federal government caters to the center of voting power, which is heavily skewed towards smaller states which tend to be more conservative. This disparity is what people perceive as "left bias".

Wow, I never thought of that.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#830

Post by hermitdev »

JAlexoid wrote: post #727
sudosysgen wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, they show both sides, but they choose which two. They are not as forthcoming with their biases as it seems. They mainly set up their ideological oppositions as conservatives, but they in fact have a lot in common with them. This is especially true for foreign relations. I'd be happy to see examples of articles that go against the Economists' editorial agenda in profound ways and that pertain to foreign pol…

> This is especially true for foreign relations. Their latest issue literally has a massive article against vaccine nationalism. Their opposition to breaking of the Iranian deal. > A good barometer I have for journals as far as foreign policy is their coverage of the Iraq War before it began That's very arbitrary, considering that 18 years have passed. The Economist has changed hands and most of its staff. > 4 centri…

> That's very arbitrary, considering that 18 years have passed.

Also, not specific enough. Which Iraq war? The one in 2000's? 90s? 80s?

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