Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by coldtea » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

jkhdigital wrote: post #88

roenxi wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Large groups cannot “process” anything; individual humans do that. Maybe what you mean is simply that humans act tribally, and most of the traditional tribe proxies (clubs, churches, etc.) have weakened or died off in modern society so we are left only with borderless ideologies as tribal allegiances.

>Large groups cannot “process” anything; individual humans do that.

That's too reductionist. Ultimately "humans" do it, like ultimately atoms do chemical interactions, but there are absolutely "group dynamics", they have been studied quite a lot, and an "individual" in a group context can operate totally different (and has different options, tradeoffs, etc) than an individual alone.

A very basic example: a human can forget X.

A group, on the other hand, has a collective memory (institutional memory), and even if an individual forgets, it takes many individuals forgetting to erase something.

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

#422

Post by lovich » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:02 PM UTC

isaacimagine wrote: post #418

lovich wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m binning a talk show host who dabbles in politics into a political bin based on their political guests. Judging them on the people they platform is explicitly what you should do. This isn’t his private life with friends and family I’m judging him on. This is especially in light of the fact that he claims to be moderate because he “has anyone on” while his actions do not show that to be true. I don’t mean to single…

I'll bite, but I'd like to preface my response by saying that I'm not particularly a fan of Joe Rogan, even having watched a couple of his shows. The issue with saying that someone is a 'moderate liberal' is that that implies that there is a center to the extremes of the political spectrum somewhere; as the Overton window shifts (especially in the context of, say, hosting a very conservative guest) the relative polit…

Perhaps it would make more sense if we identified in the conversation the difference between Joe Rogan the private individual and Joe Rogan the public persona.

I can see the point you make when it comes to a persons personal life, but when it comes to a publicly aired entertainment show the choice of guests and opinions aired _are_ the political leanings of that public persona. He’s cannot just a sounding board as he is making the decisions of who gets air time.

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

#423

Post by defterGoose » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:03 PM UTC

oconnor663 wrote: post #62

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…

> Yet anonymity/pseudonymity is incredibly valuable > Just outlaw or intensely regulate these massive, centralized/proprietary social media algorithms I feel like I'm seeing a pattern here, something like "Hey, it's not that simple. Your solution ignores important tradeoffs. So here's my simple solution that ignores different tradeoffs." Basically I'm objecting to any use of the word "just" in thorny social issues li…

Maybe more important than social justice is putting "just" on social ice?

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

#424

Post by coldtea » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:05 PM UTC

defterGoose wrote: post #419

R0b0t1 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Groups process things, but you must frame your question in terms of things you can measure about a group. An individual is a system; using your own logic it is inappropriate to talk about how a human feels. One must talk about each individual neuron and cell.

That's a very reductive take on what OP said. We're talking about social science, not biology here, so the individual is the atomic unit. Individual=Indivisible. You can talk about tendencies across a group, but cognition is inherently done on an individual level, even accounting for network effects. OTOH if what you're saying is that large groups of people can tend to share the same psychoses, well, that's a totally…

>We're talking about social science, not biology here, so the individual is the atomic unit.

Not every observable property is available on the "atomic unit". Some only appear (emergent properties) after the association and observation of many such units, that is, in a group.

In particle-terms, a single atom can't be a crystal.

Or a living organism.

But there are absolutely things that happen at the level of crystal forms or living organisms, etc, that don't happen at the single atom level.

>You can talk about tendencies across a group, but cognition is inherently done on an individual level, even accounting for network effects.

Only in a crude understanding of cognition.

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

#425

Post by spupe » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:11 PM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #416

spupe wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France, Canada, Britain and many other countries in the West that have everything you listed are also showing the same signs of division, all emerging in the same timeframe described by Haidt.

And "third way" neoliberalism took off in the US and the UK with Clinton and Blair in the 90s.

Why don't you address any counterfactuals that don't fit your theory?

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

#426

Post by engineeringwoke » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:16 PM UTC

tdba wrote: post #401

engineeringwoke wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the EU has better standards and works better for all citizens of the EU in comparison to the United States, despite the cultural and language barriers. You could have definitely said this twenty years ago and I wouldn't have blinked an eye, but times change. They are doing it... technology and data help governments administrate more efficiently over large land masses. Italy and Germany also have similar federal s…

If you want unions, socialized healthcare, public services and the other trappings of European societies you need to start thinking about immigration and demographics. The very high levels of immigration (both legal and illegal) into the US is what makes it difficult for workers to exercise leverage because they can easily be replaced by people who will work for much less compensation. Ethnically diverse workforces a…

There's a lot to unpack here. Western Europe took in more immigrants than the United States did last year, by numbers and percentage. You could make an argument that illegal immigration tips that towards the US, but I don't think that's true.

> relatively ethnically homogeneous societies, which is what you see in Europe

So, this one. It's always hard to say because European countries don't measure "race" in the way that the US does. The concept of knocking on peoples' doors and asking them what race they are is absurd to the average European. It's funny because this discussion kind of lays clear that the concept is poorly defined and the American conception of "race" isn't really true. Other than the phenotypical differences between east asians, blacks, and red-haired whites; there is so much variance amongst the rest that there is hardly anything you could call a "race" if you mean a demonstrably different genetic phenotype.

If you think that the Netherlands is a white ethno-state, then I'm not sure what to tell you. It's not, not even close. Germany brought a million Syrians into its borders a few years ago. The only part of Europe that doesn't have large-scale immigration and white ethno-states is eastern Europe. Even Scandinavia has pretty large-scale immigration at this point, except for Finland (also not a part of Scandinavia really, but important to clarify). They need the people. If you've ever been to Oslo, it is very obvious why. The place is empty.

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

#427

Post by karmelapple » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:24 PM UTC

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…

Here's an idea: the single-topic, short-lived political party.

Imagine a political party created to achieve one focused accomplishment, and then literally dissolved once it's been achieved.

The more bipartisan support the accomplishment has, the better. Say a political party whose primary focus is to get term limits for members of the US Congress, a topic with broad bipartisan support [1].

People of all political persuasions could join from across the country. The people in this party might differ in major ways, but they agree strongly on this one topic.

Maybe they sign a legal contract to bind them to both vote in favor of term limits if they're elected, and to elect to bring that up to a vote on the floor of US Congress until it's passed. Some consequence would have to exist I suppose. But with that would come the small, focused party's endorsement, and resources from its supporters.

Does such a thing exist? Has it ever?

[1] https://mclaughlinonline.com/2018/02/08/ma-poll-voters-overw...

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

#428

Post by lamontcg » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

spupe wrote: post #425

lamontcg wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And "third way" neoliberalism took off in the US and the UK with Clinton and Blair in the 90s.

Why don't you address any counterfactuals that don't fit your theory?

You haven't cited anything "counterfactual".

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

#429

Post by chimprich » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

jstream67 wrote: post #381

Spooky23 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are legit issues, and wedge issues aren’t necessarily bullshit. But the right-wing playbook is the same everywhere , frame these issues in a way to maximize fear and link that fear to nostalgia of a better past. In the US guns are big. In Russia there’s an appeal to the bygone Soviet era where all Russian speakers were under one flag. In the US, the gun argument is the most transparent. Gun marketers evoke (mos…

To add a counterpoint - it seems to me the main reason the democrats are antigun is that is where most of their funding comes from. When you take money from Bloomberg or Soros you agree to be antigun. This is not something that is controversial to say, Bloomberg and Soros are very proud of it. They directly inject vast sums of money into local elections to force in anti-gun candidates, and they have been very success…

> the main reason the democrats are antigun is that is where most of their funding comes from

From a perspective of a country where gun controls are far stronger, this idea that democrats are "antigun" seems hilariously partisan. Democrats only seem to be proposing modest gun controls compared to Republicans.

What do you define as "most of their funding"? What percentage of Democrat funding comes from Soros or Bloomberg?

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

#430

Post by howinteresting » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:45 PM UTC

blindmute wrote: post #373

Overall, red side wants things to stay the same or go back, and blue side wants things to change. If the gap between them is widening, it's because blue side is trying to change things too rapidly. Red side seems to want to go back to 1950 at the earliest; it doesn't seem to me like they're increasingly backing up into 1800s or earlier. But the blue side is increasingly pushing for things that many are not ready to e…

FYI trans children are not new and minors have been transitioning in the US for the last 50 years. It's only more recently that it has been turned into a vile political issue by the right.

https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/histories-of-...

As a transgender person who was once a child but was not aware of the possibility of transitioning back then, I would have loved the opportunity to do so.