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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

#51

Post by tomjakubowski »

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…

Refusing to understand that half of the country voted for the candidate he opposes.

No presidential candidate in US history has ever received votes from half of the country, because voter turnout is so low. If you mean half of ballots cast, that's not true in this case either: in 2016 Trump lost the popular vote and nobody won a majority of ballots nationwide.

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

#52

Post by throwntoday »

sweetbitter wrote: post #48

> 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 obliga…

Knowing what these companies do with any bit of data they can extract from you is plenty reason to object to KYC for all rules.

If anonymity is the sacrifice, I just won't partake in the discussion. It might reduce vitriol in discourse, but will do far more to quell debate when the cost is your career, relationships, etc.

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

#53

Post by drewcoo »

> red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory

What about the rest of us? Most of us are not partisans fighting a distracting culture war.

First, let's set social media aside and look at traditional media - TV, papers, radio, et al. Most Americans are completely unserved by traditional media. Because it's ad-funded, ads want attention, nothing gets attention like outrage, and it's easy to outrage the partisans.

Given that, the only place we can find news (beyond sports and weather) that is not partisan bear-baiting is in emerging social media. Social media is a threat to traditional media.

Thus we have traditional media (like this article) trying to scapegoat social media, trying to finger social media for the hyper-partisan content-free hellscape that traditional media has become.

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

#54

Post by zozbot234 »

drewcoo wrote: post #53

> red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory What about the rest of us? Most of us are not partisans fighting a distracting culture war. First, let's set social media aside and look at traditional media - TV, papers, radio, et al. Most Americans are completely unserved by traditional media. Because it's ad-funded, ads want attention, nothing gets attention like…

The "rest of us" are centrist moderate neoliberals. Hating them all is perhaps the one thing Red and Blue can agree on.

Also, Big Social Media is even more ad-funded than traditional media, so your comment applies all the more to it. Do the math.

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

#55

Post by throwntoday »

tharne wrote: post #50

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 g…

>We completely ignored the rise of China and any threat it posed

Buddy we financed that shit

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

#56

Post by oh_sigh »

egberts1 wrote: post #39

Meanwhile, red/blue partisanship has declined and more independent (non-partisan) voters emerge. The article is blowing smokes up where the sun doesn’t shine. Meanwhile, http://www.stevenwwebster.com/negative-partisanship-rabid.pd...

I don't think it is safe to say that more independents means less partisanship. If people are going independent because they see themselves as somewhere between Rs and Ds, then sure. But if they go independent because they think the Rs are not right enough, or the Ds are not left enough, then that is only an example of magnifying partisanship.

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

#57

Post by tharne »

mathlover2 wrote: post #30
redmen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada has massive division. It's just masked.

In the US the division is arguably worse and the masks are coming off.

> In the US the division is arguably worse and the masks are coming off.

You sure about that? As recently as 1995, Canada was with 0.4% of a vote to split the country in two.

In the 1970's the deputy Premier of Quebec was kidnaped and murdered by Quebec separatists.

In 1990 the Canadian and Quebec governments used the military and authorized lethal force to put down an armed rebellion by the Mohawk tribe, after a Canadian court allowed the development of a golf course on native land.

Just because Canada is largely ignored by the American and International media, doesn't mean that everything is lovely and everyone is sitting around singing kum ba yah.

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

#58

Post by Apocryphon »

tharne wrote: post #50

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 g…

You're not wrong. If anything, much of the most glaring political and cultural fiascos of the past decade were just exaggerated echoes of the previous decade.

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

#59

Post by oh_sigh »

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.

Are you intimately familiar with modern life in the US and (Germany/Canada)? Because divisions you see from the inside might not be obvious from the outside.

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

#60

Post by mmastrac »

sweetbitter wrote: post #48

> 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 obliga…

I see a lot of terrible things on Facebook from people writing under their own names. I don't think anonymity is the entire problem.
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