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Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

theatlantic.com

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Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#5
This is the dumbest thing I have seen come from Jonathan Haidt. If social media is this powerful a destabilizer of societies, I wonder how Haidt explains first world countries like Germany, Canada, and most of the rest of the planet that have social media but haven't fallen into the same sort of divisiveness the US has.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#7

This is the dumbest thing I have seen come from Jonathan Haidt. If social media is this powerful a destabilizer of societies, I wonder how Haidt explains first world countries like Germany, Canada, and most of the rest of the planet that have social media but haven't fallen into the same sort of divisiveness the US has.

Canada isn't immune from this, just look at these moronic displays. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22926134/canada-truc...

This idiocy was all organized on social media. The convoys are overwhelmingly unpopular among larger Canadian society, but social media allowed them to organize in an echo chamber.

No comment on Germany, but I would be betting on things being similar there, not different.

My personal theory is that before social media, a lot of the people involved in this would have been bullied or shamed into not doing this by their peer group. But social media lets you set your peer group without geographical restrictions.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#8

This is the dumbest thing I have seen come from Jonathan Haidt. If social media is this powerful a destabilizer of societies, I wonder how Haidt explains first world countries like Germany, Canada, and most of the rest of the planet that have social media but haven't fallen into the same sort of divisiveness the US has.

Odd comment coming the day after far right and far left candidates won more than half the votes in the French presidential election, with the center left and right collapsing and centrist Macron getting under 30% (despite having moved significantly to the right on cultural issues).

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#9

This is the dumbest thing I have seen come from Jonathan Haidt. If social media is this powerful a destabilizer of societies, I wonder how Haidt explains first world countries like Germany, Canada, and most of the rest of the planet that have social media but haven't fallen into the same sort of divisiveness the US has.

They may not be as dumb as the US is?

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#10

Because we’ve massively overinvested as a society in trivial meta navel-gazing like The Atlantic, and massive underinvested in technically knowledgeable conversation, teaching, and execution.

That’s actually a big part of the article’s thesis. Were you intending to snark that aptly?
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