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

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

#41

Post by rootsudo »

mathlover2 wrote: post #15
echlebek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

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…

I wonder what you think about other riots and events. You do know the history of the United States is one that supports insurrection (from the English Monarchy) and those rights are protected by the bill of rights?

"Social media is a factor. It's not the main factor, and Haidt's weird focus on it rather than deeply entrenched and growing economic disparities, lack of education in the US, the rise of the religious right, and other factors is in my view kinda silly. "

The newspaper and printing press back in the day was the social media equalizer. What about pamphlets like Common Sense by Thomas Paine? Was education more common back in those times than today? The average American in a day reads more information/published material than an "American" back in 18th century, or even 19th century.

Was there no religious fueled political class back in the 17th century? Isn't the point of Freedom of Religion?

Even going back, what about the availability of the Bible to the masses vs just the "educated" clergy.

What system is better than the one now, where people are free to come together to support their own notions and beliefs?

--

Reading your reply, and other generalized replies from other people with the same viewpoint is shocking. It feigns complete insight in the "other side" or that people can have different opinions but still come to the same conclusion or end goal.

It is this type of post that creates a "THEM" narrative blame game. It shouldn't be an US vs THEM - or Me vs You.

That's what makes Social Media so powerful, people are divided into their beliefs and opinions and then go seek people to re-enforce those those ideas because they are pushed from one extreme to another. It's the same with Pro Obesity groups, Pro Ana groups, Pro Sexual Fetish Groups, etc.

It warps what was normal into a narrow individual experience. That's only possibly by the ease of entry of social media vs, what was essentially a web ring back 20 years ago and needing to know a bit of html to host a page on geocities.

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

#42

Post by Rodeoclash »

mathlover2 wrote: post #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.

New Zealand had the front lawn of its parliament occupied by a combination of anti-vax, pro indigenous rights (which I support, adding them here because they were a major contingent), some pro trump MAGA types and natural healing types (hippies) for over two weeks before police removed them. This was nominally because they wanted the vaccine mandates removed but soon devolved into general anti-establishment sentiment.

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

#43

Post by mathlover2 »

mardifoufs wrote: post #29
mathlover2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France has its own issues as well, in many ways parallel to the US from what I have heard, with a sharp urban-rural divide and a legacy of colonialism that has largely not been addressed.

I mean yeah if you dismiss or downplay the issues every other country has, the US looks unique. But that's not exactly meaningful right? Also, considering what's happening in france, do you agree that your original comment was not accurate?

My comment is certainly less accurate than I originally thought. I will give you that.

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

#45

Post by rootsudo »

mathlover2 wrote: post #36
mardifoufs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

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

So, the government can suspend rights of the people, while they are using those rights to protest? Is it only okay when the government does it if you "agree" with it?

Convenient.

That's not a good excuse, or reason - the government willy nilly choosing to enforce and invalidate it's own restrictions and human based rights based on "political feeling."

>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.

Stroke (Potentially Unrelated), Heart Attack (Potentially Unrelated), Crushed, Head Trauma (Police Officer), Shot.

Context matters - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/who-died-in-capitol-bu...

While not supporting the insurrectionists/protestors, I still do not see any mention of other riots that happened during 2020 which, IMO were far more deadlier, at 25 from direct physical violence on both sides - the protesters and law enforcement.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-kill...

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

#47

Post by throw_nbvc1234 »

mathlover2 wrote: post #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.

Does the USA have a common national identity to rally around anymore; what do a Floridian, a California, and Minnesotan have in common in the 2020's? America has always been a melting pot of different cultures. You can tell a story about how the "american dream" united Americans in the past but you can also argue that dream has been degraded over the years. Even things such as the constitution and bill of rights are being disputed in various ways.

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

#48

Post by sweetbitter »

> Banks and other industries have “know your customer” rules so that they can’t do business with anonymous clients laundering money from criminal enterprises. Large social-media platforms should be required to do the same. That does not mean users would have to post under their real names; they could still use a pseudonym. It just means that before a platform spreads your words to millions of people, it has an obligation to verify (perhaps through a third party or nonprofit) that you are a real human being, in a particular country, and are old enough to be using the platform. This one change would wipe out most of the hundreds of millions of bots and fake accounts that currently pollute the major platforms. It would also likely reduce the frequency of death threats, rape threats, racist nastiness, and trolling more generally. Research shows that antisocial behavior becomes more common online when people feel that their identity is unknown and untraceable.

Yet anonymity/pseudonymity is incredibly valuable- it is easier to change your mind and be open to new ideas, you can be more honest and direct, and less fearful of bad actors. The author of this post clearly thinks the entire net to be composed of nothing but Facebook/Twitter/Instagram and the like, but the definition of "social media" can be extended to any 1 or more machines which can send and receive IP datagrams between each other. The internet was doing just fine when people owned more of their communications, running servers or at least using infrastructure run by fellow human beings, rather than consuming content from a handful of global feeds susceptible to these social Sybil attacks.

Just outlaw or intensely regulate these massive, centralized/proprietary social media algorithms so that we can return to what was before, all while retaining the gift of anonymity.

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

#49

Post by tharne »

1121redblackgo wrote: post #46

This thread is the prototypical example of what Haidt is talking about. I have no interest in taking part in this comments section other than to make this observation.

> This thread is the prototypical example of what Haidt is talking about. I have no interest in taking part in this comments section other than to make this observation.

One could make the exact same claim about your snarky comment right here. If you actually had no interest in taking part in the discussion, you wouldn't have taken part, but here you are. One of us.

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

#50

Post by tharne »

I'd say the first 10 years of the 21st century were a hell of a lot stupider. We blew a budget surplus on tax cuts for the wealthy. We started two wars that lasted the better part of 20 years, one of which was waged against a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. Oh, and we didn't win either of them.

We completely ignored the rise of China and any threat it posed, assuming all the while they'd become good capitalists and fall in love with Democracy.

Bankers tanked our economy so we bailed out them (bipartisan no less!), but not the average Americans they screwed. We turned our intelligence agencies against our own people.

Heck, compared to the first 10 years of the 21st century, the previous 10 years have been a relative period of enlightenment. In fact most of the problems over the last 10 years stem from the stupendously dumb decisions we made from 2000 to 2009.

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