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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

#71

Post by marcusverus »

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…

How do you reconcile a strong federal government with the fugitive slave act, the Dred Scott decision or the Patriot Act? The federal government is just as capable of making terrible policy as the states. But whereas a person can easily escape a state whose policies they find to be reprehensible, (you could literally move to a new state over a weekend) escaping the USA is not really an option for most.

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

#72

Post by worik »

petermcneeley wrote: post #61

Why do these people use the word democracy to propose changes that are oligarchy?

People do not understand what democracy is.

A lot of people confuse democracy and elections.

Voting can be used as a democratic mechanism, but it can also be an instrument of oppression.

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

#73

Post by wrycoder »

rootsudo wrote: post #45
mathlover2 wrote: post #36

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? 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 ba…

It turned out that the police officer died from natural causes, not head trauma.

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

#74

Post by judge2020 »

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…

> 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.

Basically nobody used the internet for social interaction back then. Now that nearly everyone has the internet[0] and we've experienced a large shift of social interactions moving to tiktok/snapchat/twitter/FB, we have to deal with misinformation campaigns by overseas operatives[1]. Now, instead of some government-sanctioned KYC requirement (that would hopefully put more safeguards in to prevent the large social media companies from using it for anything other than verification), we have Twitter using phone numbers as the de-facto standard; this increases the cost of creating tons of fake accounts, but who knows how much more they'll ask for in 2024.

0: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-bro...

1: https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/russian-disinf... (better than the multitude of articles about it imo)

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

#75

Post by russellbeattie »

pessimizer wrote: post #68
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…

The problem with the country is that the bulk of it has retreated into paranoid fantasies.

I totally agree. What I'm pointing out is the reason they're all paranoid isn't something natural. It's a result of Russian disinformation campaign.

Many of the people who got fooled will go to their graves believing that the election was stolen, etc. We have to accept a certain portion of the populace is a lost cause.

However, everybody else who isn't completely delusional needs to understand what's happening. My honest belief is that if enough people can start to realize the root cause of our current national schism, suddenly things will make more sense.

Eventually there will be enough people on both the left and the right that understand who the real enemy is, and will realize that those pushing for a culture war are doing Russia's work for them.

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

#76

Post by fennecfoxen »

throwntoday wrote: post #52
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.

I’ve implemented parts of KYC systems. It’s one component of what is essentially an outsourced surveillance mechanism. It is probably going to abused some day.

People want the government to have that power and to start inspecting and regulating speech so we can be more like China and we can fix the crisis of anonymous dissent and wrongthink? Oh well. I suppose it’s not really surprising.

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

#77

Post by qball »

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.

>Canada hasn't fallen into the same sort of divisiveness the US has

Canada is, politically, even more harshly-divided than the US is. We even have specific political parties for it: the Quebec Party, the Western Party, and the Largest Cities Party (the latter two will deny this, but that's the truth). Quebec has tried to separate from Canada twice in the last 50 years, and was within a Brexit's margin of their latest attempt not succeeding- for all Texas' bluster, they haven't even come close to this.

What makes the division worse here is that the stakes are raised higher- our legislature is unicameral, the executive is formed as a consequence of the vote breakdown for the legislature, every single vote is along party lines, and there's effectively no constitution (as an American would understand it).

The rough equivalent in the US is if there was no Constitution, and NYC and DC picked every single representative, senator, and the President.

The difference is that the average American would go to war if that happened, and the rhetoric downstream of that property makes their division look worse than it is; it's the opposite in the other parts of the world that are more stereotypically concerned with looking polite and respectable.

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

#78

Post by russellbeattie »

smackeyacky wrote: post #40
mathlover2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 on…

Yes, an olive branch is exactly what my idea was.

I think your contrary opinion is totally valid way to look at it. What I'm talking about would definitely be a gamble.

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

#79

Post by Spooky23 »

roenxi wrote: post #21
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…

This might be a weird outcome of the inability of large groups to process nuance. Groups seem to struggle with the idea that things can be done one way in one place and another way in another place - and struggle in a way that individuals seem not to. Groups - even small government types, weirdly - seem to fall into a trap whenever something goes wrong. The answer to a challenge is "centralise power, then do things m…

“Small government types” are a fraud. That stuff is just chum for the masses.

Wedge issues like guns, abortion, etc are designed to break traditional democratic constituencies from the herd. Catholic priests were leaders of socialist revolutions in Latin America. In the United States, some catholic bishops were in favor of child separation due to abortion.

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

#80

Post by jprd »

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.

Whoaaaaaaa...

I'm not one to downplay how bad the divisiveness in US politics is, but if you look a bit closer you'll see the EXACT same dumbsh*t happening in DE and CA, perhaps with less obviousness.

Take a closer look at what is happening in Germany's armed forces, Canada's use of emergency powers to remove...truckers.

The world has lost its collective mind, just as sure as if The Singularity or First Contact was happening tomorrow.

Meaning, the promise of the open 'net has been subverted and this is what we get. Facebook Pograms, the O.J. of NYC (Orange Joke) becoming PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, VV thinking he's the second coming of Ivan the Terrible.

This would all honestly make a lot more sense if Terry Crews was President.

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