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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

#871

Post by eli_gottlieb »

mlac wrote: post #680
ABCLAW wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not that I don't want ANYONE to enact change, I just don't want people with extreme views enacting change. This position sounds fine until you realize all it has done is shift discussion away from the effectiveness and correctness of a given policy, to a pre-discussion of the reasonableness of that policy. The heuristic replaces the thing itself. "Is this an extreme position?" replaces "Is this good policy?" Th…

If a policy is effective and correct, I would not call it extreme. I guess it depends on the definition of extreme, but I would not think "good" policy would be extreme in the sense that it has (whether real or perceived) negative externalities on a large portion of the population. Two years ago, I (and perhaps the country) would have said the PPP for paychecks would have been extreme. Given the (extreme) circumstanc…

>If a policy is effective and correct, I would not call it extreme.

Now if we could just convince most Senators to follow this principle!

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#872

Post by eli_gottlieb »

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…

>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 left or right.

Or, alternatively, and I think this will be a rather more accurate description of most centrists, it means that the partisan axis doesn't really describe any "principal component" of variation in people's actual opinions.

Indeed, this is broadly what political scientists find, IIRC: very few people hold the opinion "we should do as little as possible", but many people hold an opinion on one issue that gets them classed as "left-wing" and an opinion on another issue that gets them classed as "right-wing" -- and see no real contradiction between the two.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#873

Post by JKCalhoun »

systemvoltage wrote: post #855
JKCalhoun wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there was a time when you could be centrist and it made you appear objective, wise, open to discourse from both sides (a bit like Switzerland, LOL?). I think that time has passed though. Maybe it's the extremists that are forcing us to take sides. It's a little too nuanced in today's political climate to say, "I'm a centrist and entertain ideas from both sides … but not those crazy ideas."

Do you think we're being manipulated by foreign adversaries? I know its crazy to think about and conspiratorial, but we're rotting from the inside and it's insane how divided America is.

I think there are foreign actors. But I don't think that's the entire explanation. I think rather they're taking advantage of rifts that were already here. And there are plenty of home-grown actors taking advantage of these rifts as well.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#874

Post by eli_gottlieb »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #745
NeutralCrane wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One aspect of centrism is that it's generally people who either benefit from or want to maintain the status quo, without incurring the conflict that comes with stating so. This absolutely is not true, it's simply the straw man that polarized extremists use to lampoon centrism. It's based on two faulty assumptions: 1. Centrists believe the right course of action is "in the middle" of both extremes on all issues. Thi…

So in the issues of chattel slavery, Jim Crow, anti-lynching laws, Voting Rights what position would a centrist have taken that wouldn't have explicitly maintained white supremacy?

I would call the Civil Rights Act of 1965 pretty damn centrist considering how many of today's "progressives" claim it did absolutely nothing to seriously free black people or abolish white supremacy.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#875

Post by systemvoltage »

reedjosh wrote: post #862
reedjosh wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And bigotry. Wow... I could put together a nasty list of what conservative outlets preach about liberals too, but I don't actually believe the nonsense.

Downvoting now that the context I was responding to has been flagged is juvenille. C'mon people. The original post was ludicrous. And now you're downvoting only knowing I professed to be conservative.

Please don't take this personally, HN downvotes based on disagreement.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#876

Post by systemvoltage »

tootie wrote: post #825
systemvoltage wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> In 2017 Portland ranked third. Now it has dropped to 66th out of 80.

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/06/12/portland-...

The unchecked progressivism is destroying entire cities, enmasse. No one wants to live in defunded police state, and I would be pretty pissed if I owned property in Portland.

I might just vote for the republican party in the next election. I can't stand this just like I couldn't stand the prior republican administration. But, then I think about all the shitty politicians... America, you're broken. Find someone reasonable in the center that I can vote for.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#877

Post by dragonwriter »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #834
dragonwriter wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But Christianity isn’t the default, secular is the default. Says whom? Not-strongly-denominational non-to-weakly (note the “a”; not a typo for “weekly”) practicing Christian, or similarly weakly-attached Jewish, seems to be the norm, outside of showed focussing on a distinct and different subculture. > When there are identifiably Christian characters, they are often some cringey stereotype I don't think that's real…

> Says whom? I suspect just about every avid connoisseur of American media who isn’t out to peddle a narrative, but I didn’t do a survey at our last quarterly meeting so I can’t tell for sure. :) > Not-strongly-denominational non-to-weakly (note the “a”; not a typo for “weekly”) practicing Christian, or similarly weakly-attached Jewish, seems to be the norm, outside of showed focussing on a distinct and different sub…

> Consider that the mainstay of virtually all pop culture are drugs, alcohol, and premarital sex, most or all of which are embraced by the “normal” characters but taboo among American Christians.

Leaving aside the question of whether those are the mainstays of popular culture (the traditional formulation would drop alcohol and add rock-and-roll), that seems...distorted.

While attitudes on some of those things differ between American Christians and the general public, it doesn't really seem at all defensible to claim that either drugs, alcohol, or premarital sex are “taboo” among America Christians, generally.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/31/half-of-u-s...

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/26/religious-a...

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/03/06/americans-d...

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#878

Post by jonathankoren »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #808
jonathankoren wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but also underlines the very point the article was making. In the United States, Christianity is the default. Characters are typically only identified if the stray from the default. Furthermore, given the sheer imbalance of identities in the country, it’s a disingenuous to claim that say Batman is equally likely to be Zoroastrian, because he’s not explicitly stated not to be.

> This is true, but also underlines the very point the article was making. In the United States, Christianity is the default. Characters are typically only identified if the stray from the default But Christianity isn’t the default, secular is the default. When there are identifiably Christian characters, they are often some cringey stereotype (the religious clique in “Easy A”, for example). See also the link about “…

> But Christianity isn’t the default, secular is the default. When there are identifiably Christian characters, they are often some cringey stereotype (the religious clique in “Easy A”, for

You seem to believe that in your face conservative white evangelical Protestants are the only Christians. This speaks more to your own biases than society’s.

Every poll of Americans and religions shows Christianity as by far the most popular choice. There is simply no way to square your idea that nonreligious is the default when over 70% of Americans identify as Christian.[0]

As for representation, I have no way verifying this, but I suspect there are more Roman Catholic characters in American film and television than conservative white evangelicals Protestants. If for no other reason than mass, iconography, and religious tchotchkes photography well. Hell, Catholics have the entire horror genre on lock. WEPs have what? Footloose?

[0] https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#879

Post by _-david-_ »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #377
_-david-_ wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you supposed to argue against something if you don't even understand why someone supports what they support? All you will end up doing is strawmaning their views which won't convince anybody to change their views.

Do I need to understand why someone supports flat earth theory to be able to argue that it's scientifically invalid? Why is it up to me to figure out how they got deluded?

You only need to understand their positions if you want to argue against it. Since like 5 people actually believe in a flat earth (there are a lot of memers) it probably isn't worth the effort to learn about their positions. For more mainstream issues you should absolutely understand all sides of an issue to the best of your abilities. Many people only understand generals and miss a lot of nuance when it comes to their opponent's views.

If you are going to argue with a flat earther they will not accept the arguments you will make if you just argue for a round earth. You can show them some math, images from space, eyewitness testimony or whatever you want, but they have almost certainly seen it all before. They were unconvinced by those arguments in the past and you will likely not be any more convincing to them. The only way to convince them is to tear down their arguments one by one which means you have to actually know what they believe. If you tear down strawman arguments they don't even believe they won't change their mind.

Just to be clear, when you say it is not up to you to figure out how they got deluded. I agree. You don't have to know what books or videos or whatever they consumed. You only need to understand the views themselves.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#880

Post by heavyset_go »

ABCLAW wrote: post #591
spamizbad wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

I'd like to hear more about this if you could share the details.
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