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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

#31

Post by rayiner »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #23
rayiner wrote: post #11

Haidt makes an excellent observation about the mid-20th century unity being an aberration due to the technology of the time: > Gurri is no fan of elites or of centralized authority, but he notes a constructive feature of the pre-digital era: a single “mass audience,” all consuming the same content, as if they were all looking into the same gigantic mirror at the reflection of their own society. Something I think we o…

> Differences in world view are less significant when the bureaucrats and executives with power over your life live nearby instead of in another city and state. How do you reconcile this with jim crow-era terrorism, for example? The movements were local and very loosely organized on even a regional level, but the bureaucrats wielded incredible power over individuals in their jurisdiction. There were definitely other…

I don’t think there is any way to reconcile those things. If your primary concern is protecting individual rights in every corner of the country, you need centralization. And frankly you probably need to limit democracy as much as possible—which is what we did in the last several decades by having the Supreme Court take over many issues that other countries have decided by legislation.

But there’s no limiting principle to the above. You’d have more protection of individual rights in Europe if France could overrule Poland through undemocratic organizations like the ECHR: https://eclj.org/marriage/the-echr-unanimously-confirms-the-.... That would probably trigger devastating political consequences, however.

At the end of the day you have to make a decision about how much you care about democracy and self determination versus individual rights. I don’t think that in 2022 we are striking the right balance on that.

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

#32

Post by redmen »

mathlover2 wrote: post #17
pzduniak wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much. If you look at other EU countries, social media was essential in dividing the populations and promoting populist, nationalistic and xenophobic parties.

Was social media the cause of the division, or did it merely allow people to exploit existing problems? Assuming that social media is a primary factor, for the sake of argument, the solution to this problem isn't regulating the platforms via Haidt's proposals (which I should add seem to be too limited in effect). Instead, we should decentralize the platforms into protocols. While this will still allow stupid people t…

We can spend forever debating this, or we can use our common sense that anything Zuckerberg touches is bad for society and probably causing deep rooted issues.

Look, we can spend hundreds of years debating over which foods are bad for us and which are good, or we can just use our common sense and cut out sugars and bad oils. That'll solve 90%.

Why waste time waiting for glacier-speed science to figure this out when we have this common sense. Stop anyone on the street and ask them if they think constant notifications, scrolling, phone addiction and apps like tinder, TikTok and Instagram are good for our brains.

I'd be sad if people didn't unanimously agree that it's poison

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

#34

Post by redmen »

bobobob420 wrote: post #18

This journalist really wrote an entire article about facebook. Why is an essay needed to descibe obvious behaviour that everyone sees and can intuitely understand with their eyes. "In the 20th century, America built the most capable knowledge-producing institutions in human history. In the past decade, they got stupider en masse." ???? People didn't get stupider in the last decade. There is access to more information…

And more information automatically means better?

Look at covid and how dumb people were on that.

I think there is a positive correlation between access to information and vaccine denial.

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

#35

Post by redmen »

bobobob420 wrote: post #19
bobobob420 wrote: post #18

This journalist really wrote an entire article about facebook. Why is an essay needed to descibe obvious behaviour that everyone sees and can intuitely understand with their eyes. "In the 20th century, America built the most capable knowledge-producing institutions in human history. In the past decade, they got stupider en masse." ???? People didn't get stupider in the last decade. There is access to more information…

"The stupidity on the right is most visible in the many conspiracy theories spreading across right-wing media and now into Congress. “Pizzagate,” QAnon, the belief that vaccines contain microchips, the conviction that Donald Trump won reelection—it’s hard to imagine any of these ideas or belief systems reaching the levels that they have without Facebook and Twitter." I feel sad for this author. Still clinging on to r…

You sound so angry here. What are your thoughts on Ray Dalio, polarization?

My thought is that this is a force of nature the USA is up against.

Even in nature before humans, things polarize. There is a balance between the strong and the weak force. Between cooperation and competition. It's when these balances get thrown off we move towards another.

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

#36

Post by mathlover2 »

mardifoufs wrote: post #27
mathlover2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't immune, but it certainly hasn't gotten to the point it has in the US. We had a failed insurrection two years ago that killed 5 people. The truck convoy was a bunch of morons thinking they could get their way by going to Ottawa and being absolutely obnoxious --- and ultimately failing because no one wanted to put up with their shit. Social media is a factor. It's not the main factor, and Haidt's weird focus o…

Canada literally had to suspend the charter and due process by enacting the emergency measures act, which is unprecedented amongst western countries. Why would the government do that if no one supported them anyways? Your insurrection did not kill 5 people by the way. I get that there's a weird urge to make that event some sort of insanely important historical moment but it doesn't mean you have to make up dead peopl…

> Canada literally had to suspend the charter and due process by enacting the emergency measures act, which is unprecedented amongst western countries. Why would the government do that if no one supported them anyways?

Probably because they didn't have to deal with a large number of numpties doing that before.

> Your insurrection did not kill 5 people by the way.

There were five deaths. One was from gunshot and the others were from other reasons. The fact that the deaths occurred among the insurrectionists doesn't change the fact that people actually died as a result of what happened, which from what I can tell is more than can be said about the numbskull protests in Ottawa.

> Ironically, from a neutral outsider view, what happened on the 6th of January can also be described as "a bunch of morons thinking they could get their way and being absolutely obnoxious".

Was some high-profile Tory premier instigating the protests in Ottawa with a rally there? Were his own officials involved in the planning? Was there a large number of people breaching the Canadian parliament building while it was in session? Were extreme right MP's feeding information to convoy organizers on where Trudeau was? Because while that's not what happened in Canada, it's what happened in the US a year ago.

I get what you are saying about Americans thinking anything in the US must be exceptional. I've seen that before myself, especially with certain members of my family. But there is a difference between idiot protesters occupying a capital city's downtown and having to be forced to leave and an attempted self-coup by an outgoing head of state.

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

#37

Post by idiotsecant »

redmen wrote: post #32
mathlover2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was social media the cause of the division, or did it merely allow people to exploit existing problems? Assuming that social media is a primary factor, for the sake of argument, the solution to this problem isn't regulating the platforms via Haidt's proposals (which I should add seem to be too limited in effect). Instead, we should decentralize the platforms into protocols. While this will still allow stupid people t…

We can spend forever debating this, or we can use our common sense that anything Zuckerberg touches is bad for society and probably causing deep rooted issues. Look, we can spend hundreds of years debating over which foods are bad for us and which are good, or we can just use our common sense and cut out sugars and bad oils. That'll solve 90%. Why waste time waiting for glacier-speed science to figure this out when w…

'common sense' often does not have either property.

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

#38

Post by redmen »

idiotsecant wrote: post #37
redmen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can spend forever debating this, or we can use our common sense that anything Zuckerberg touches is bad for society and probably causing deep rooted issues. Look, we can spend hundreds of years debating over which foods are bad for us and which are good, or we can just use our common sense and cut out sugars and bad oils. That'll solve 90%. Why waste time waiting for glacier-speed science to figure this out when w…

'common sense' often does not have either property.

It also ain't common either

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

#40

Post by smackeyacky »

mathlover2 wrote: post #22
russellbeattie wrote: post #20

This article is 100% wrong. Russia's misinformation campaign against the U.S. is 100% the cause of our current national discord. Our entire culture has been maliciously and actively poisoned by a proven state sponsored attack on the U.S. and Western Europe. Everything in the past decade needs to be re-evaluated and filtered through the lens of Russian disinformation. Day in and day out, for over 10 years, the Russian…

Wait, why pardon the Jan 6th people? Just because one's been mislead by misinformation to believe something false doesn't mean that they are blameless for flagrantly breaking the law in response.

I think the idea is to paint Jan 6 as an aberration for which the participants were deliberately mislead by a foreign power and therefore somehow less responsible for their actions.

IMHO its a dangerous step to take. The rule of law is the founding bedrock of civil society where justice needs not only to be done, but seen to be done.

The US hasn't helped itself by having two justice systems, one for the elites and one for the plebs.

I don't think offering an olive branch to people dedicated to the overthrow of elections could possibly work. Not only would it encourage more violence, but it would be a disastrous failure of justice. This was not legit political discourse as some politicians are trying to paint it. Its just a good old fashioned illegal riot.

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