21–30 of 82 posts
> “If we reach that point, we cannot unite even in the face of war, climate change, pandemics, or other challenges to the survival of our society.” We no longer have differences in opinion, we have differences of reality. Climate Change, pandemics, January 6th... the list goes on and on now.
For me, the exclusion of Lawrence Lessig from political debates was a big indicator that things were already off the rails.
I am skeptical of the framing of the original work in the article. If you actually read the original research, it boils down to building a model on willingness to cooperate based on differing views and observing that past a specific point cooperation is no longer possible. This is not uninteresting for the scientist in me, but the kind of large generalization made in the article are simply not supported by the work n…
This might be a positive. Maybe modern society allows for more diversity of thought?
It's a bit like when we have AI papers that anthropomorphize their model by saying they benefit from "dreaming". This is true among the community of experts that actually work on the topic, it is simply irrelevant or downright misleading for a more "public" audience.
How could it possible be irreversible? Is there any partisan polarization that's lasted a thousand years? How about even just a couple hundred? Even slavery was abolished in the US and that seemed like an irreversible polarization.
Slavery took a civil war with 500,000 dead to end the polarization. Yeah, it ended, and that's good, but... is there a way where we can end that kind of polarization without 500,000 dead?
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Yup, it's crazy. Now we're coming up on a million dead in the USA, many of them entirely preventable, and the culpability stands directly at the feet of the culture warriors on both sides of this partisan divide. (Does the previous sentence upset you and make you want to point fingers at your opposing partisan group? If so, you may be part of the problem I am describing.) Only fools try to win an argument with their…
Both sides? Huh.
> Does the previous sentence upset you and make you want to point fingers at your opposing partisan group? If so, you may be part of the problem I am describing.
Interesting. Another way to think about it is that if you always punish everyone for anyone's malfeasance, there is no penalty for malfeasance. It's a great way to ensure malefactors continue malefacting.
Well, we're at a point where foreign attacks on our elections are a partisan issue, the response to a pandemic which has killed some 770k citizens is a partisan issue, whether or not we can use democratic elections to select our leaders is a partisan issue, to say nothing of catastrophic climate change. But then, for much of the first century of the existence of the US whether or not some humans could own others as s…
Not sure what can be done with media pushing disinformation for political reasons, any regulation there would risk violating the 1st amendment.
Well, we're at a point where foreign attacks on our elections are a partisan issue, the response to a pandemic which has killed some 770k citizens is a partisan issue, whether or not we can use democratic elections to select our leaders is a partisan issue, to say nothing of catastrophic climate change. But then, for much of the first century of the existence of the US whether or not some humans could own others as s…
The polarization is mostly between those who trust mainstream media and those who don’t. Not sure what can be done with media pushing disinformation for political reasons, any regulation there would risk violating the 1st amendment.
Perhaps, but its a risk the US took for decades (1938 - 1985) and the political climate was less divisive during that period. You can't say "nothing can be done" when things can and have been done that we don't do anymore.
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Well, we're at a point where foreign attacks on our elections are a partisan issue, the response to a pandemic which has killed some 770k citizens is a partisan issue, whether or not we can use democratic elections to select our leaders is a partisan issue, to say nothing of catastrophic climate change. But then, for much of the first century of the existence of the US whether or not some humans could own others as s…
Also, debt peonage was practiced for a long time after that [0, 1].
[0]: https://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/peona...
Well, we're at a point where foreign attacks on our elections are a partisan issue, the response to a pandemic which has killed some 770k citizens is a partisan issue, whether or not we can use democratic elections to select our leaders is a partisan issue, to say nothing of catastrophic climate change. But then, for much of the first century of the existence of the US whether or not some humans could own others as s…
The polarization is mostly between those who trust mainstream media and those who don’t. Not sure what can be done with media pushing disinformation for political reasons, any regulation there would risk violating the 1st amendment.