Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization • Hacker News Board

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#221

Post by avensec » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 4:49 PM UTC

tanseydavid wrote: post #19

crazygringo wrote: post #15

> "Despite minor differences between individual surveys, the data consistently show that the average number of close friendships rose from 2.2 in 2000 to 4.1 in 2024," says Hofer. If true, this is an astonishing social transformation, because it goes against everything we here about the loneliness epidemic getting worse . Or have people redefined what they consider to be "close friends"? Or are people actually genuin…

>> goes against everything we here about the loneliness epidemic getting worse This seems like a hot-take. IMHO one does not and cannot cure loneliness by having more online friends .

+1. Just adding my own breakdown.

What most people describe as Loneliness is a specific form of loneliness that represents the degree of disconnection they feel from others. When you don't feel seen and heard in a friendship, you are more likely to feel alone. More people "proving" they don't want to know you or see you, reinforces the idea.

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#222

Post by JumpCrisscross » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:15 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #203

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you ask the question to get a real answer? The difference between right and far right is, in a nutshell, endorsement of insurrection and militarism. The GOP was a right-wing party. MAGA is bona fide far right. There are plenty of conservatives (or pissed-off idiots) who voted for Trump but aren’t MAGA. There are also lots of folks who believe in MAGA to the core. The latter are far right, probably fascists. > dem…

Do the multiple elections contested not count any more? MAGA clearly don't endorse insurrection, their basic strategy to control the government is to win lots of votes and come back to try again a few years later if it doesn't work (they're impressively persistent). Which has involved broadening their support base into low-wage minorities in US society and trying to prise the Black and Hispanic votes away from the De…

> MAGA clearly don't endorse insurrection

Come on, a lot of people in MAGA outright support J6. That is the dividing line between far right and right.

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#223

Post by JumpCrisscross » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:20 PM UTC

stackedinserter wrote: post #211

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are far right, I have to keep secrets from you. For safety Wide gulf between “people that share the same values and ideas as you” and Nazis.

Wide gulf between "far right" and Nazis.

> Wide gulf between "far right" and Nazis

Not really, and I say this with genuine surprise.

The folks who support January 6th are also incredibly quick to support ignoring courts, suspending habeus, concentration camps (sorry, extrajudicial domestic detention explicitly based on probable cause that begins and ends with race, followed by attempted exfiltration from protection from the law), and, like, straight up admitting to revering Nazis [1][2].

Democracy works with left- and right-wing elements because there is a lot of heterogeneity in those sets. That makes compromise possible. Far left and far right groups across history are remarkably similar in their policies, messaging and even colour schemes for reasons I don’t get. (There is autocorrelation due to the heavy lifting homage does in their branding, of course, but why do the far right and left always embrace tariffs and trade wars? Like, going back to the Roman Republic.) This uniformity and quasi-religious zeal basically makes them poisons to democracy.

The moment someone is arguing why their far right position is actually quite different from being Nazi (or far left from its worst elements), you’ve already lost.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2y94xe397o

[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/14/private-chat-among-...

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#224

Post by OkayPhysicist » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:42 PM UTC

FloorEgg wrote: post #156

somenameforme wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you left out the biggest one (though I suppose #3 indirectly hits on this). Social media, and increasingly even online media in general, tends to heavily misrepresent 'the other side.' In the past relationships were formed primarily in person so you actually got see what 'the other side' was like. Now a days people instead depend on completely inaccurate stereotypes that are far more like cartoon caricatures…

I agree completely, though I continually wonder why. Is it by specific design? By economic incentive? Is it because novel threats attract attention, and having a need to be validated continually satisfied maintains attention? I can't help but wonder if the polarization in the media is deliberate (e.g. foreign state sewing division) or accidental (second order consequence of attention economy) or organic (the claims o…

It's a natural consequence of a highly-connected communication graph. People with extreme political views talk about politics a lot, so casual political conversations are naturally going to disproportionately represent the extremes. Similarly, when people more-or-less agree, they tend to discuss politics less (because there's only so much preaching the choir that people can stand). Most meatspace communication graphs happen between people who tend to have similar world views, but online, you've got neonazis and anarchists replying to the same reddit threads. The combination of the above two factors means that by far the most political views you'll end up seeing are 1) your own, followed by 2) extreme versions of your opposition's views.

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#225

Post by stackedinserter » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:46 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #223

stackedinserter wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wide gulf between "far right" and Nazis.

> Wide gulf between "far right" and Nazis Not really, and I say this with genuine surprise. The folks who support January 6th are also incredibly quick to support ignoring courts, suspending habeus , concentration camps (sorry, extrajudicial domestic detention explicitly based on probable cause that begins and ends with race, followed by attempted exfiltration from protection from the law), and, like, straight up adm…

Based on your wording, everything that's right to your position, that you label as "balanced and center" of course, is "far right". I'm probably far right to you, because I have some right-wing views.

It had some meaning maybe 10 years ago but now it's washed out terminology. Keep thinking that you're surrounded by nazis, if it keeps you warm though.

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#226

Post by snozolli » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

WD-42 wrote: post #141

snozolli wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your discord friends can't come over and help you clean up after a flood, or watch your dogs while you're away on a sudden emergency, or cook you a meal when you're grieving a loss I'll make the counter argument that -- although I value those things and try to provide them to friends in need -- all of those can be addressed by hiring someone. On the other hand, I've recently received fantastic emotional support from…

This is how I can tell you don’t get it. It’s not about the value of your friends doing those things for you which you can hire someone for, it’s the value YOU get out of doing those things for your friends.

You really didn't read what I wrote at all, did you?

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#227

Post by OkayPhysicist » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

JulianChastain wrote: post #212

Der_Einzige wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the “lonlieness” epidemic is really an epidemic of young men not getting laid and not getting married. Simple as.

It seems salient to ask the follow up question of "Why aren't men getting laid and/or married?" Actually finding the root cause may be much less simple. Your response seems as hand wavy to me as saying "Most of the loneliness epidemic is really an epidemic of people feeling lonely"

Because if the problem was "everyone is feeling a bit lonely", then that's something that points at actual problems, that aren't self-inflicted, and need fixing. If the problem is "The absolute worst men you know no longer can get laid by being the only available option", then whatever, who cares, it's self-inflicted.

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#228

Post by snozolli » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:59 PM UTC

kulahan wrote: post #92

snozolli wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your discord friends can't come over and help you clean up after a flood, or watch your dogs while you're away on a sudden emergency, or cook you a meal when you're grieving a loss I'll make the counter argument that -- although I value those things and try to provide them to friends in need -- all of those can be addressed by hiring someone. On the other hand, I've recently received fantastic emotional support from…

Yeah and you can rent a truck every time you need to haul something, but it's nice when your friend lets you borrow his - and his manpower/time. And yeah, you can hire an emergency remediation company, or chef, or psychologist for your friends, but that seems... impersonal to me? I'm not trying to say there's no value to Discord friends, but I do think it's substantially less valuable to the human condition than real…

I mean, to be blunt, it sounds to me like you value people for what services they can provide to you rather than what friendship they provide.

Again, friendship takes many forms and there are countless ways to express it. You're judging others for valuing these expressions differently than you do.

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#229

Post by OkayPhysicist » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 6:11 PM UTC

Levitz wrote: post #202

phrotoma wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of that, text based communication for short attention spans is both brief and dehumanized, encouraging "dunking" behaviour. Hard to empathize with folks who have differing views when the discourse can broadly be described as "lol got'em!".

Being someone whose friends very clearly lean to one side, while generally not having a developed interest in politics, I really want to push back on this. Unless you intentionally talk to people whose views oppose yours (which won't happen by default, people sort themselves into tribes) real person communication is very prone towards dunking on people who aren't even there or might very well not even exist. Cue pola…

I disagree. Being exposed to the opposition's views can very easily be a polarizing force in of itself. If it's not carefully curated, in all likelihood one's exposure to the other side is going to be dominated by the more extreme parts of that side. And then it's not an unreasonable leap to go think "if those self-proclaimed moderate people tolerate these more radical elements, then they're all evil".

Which I can't necessarily argue is a wrong thought process to follow. I used to be able to pretend that the average person on the right was merely a brainwashed idiot. Now, with the internet and rise of fascism, I have to contend with the fact that they know they're brainwashed idiots and are happy about it.

Re: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization

#230

Post by somenameforme » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 6:20 PM UTC

FloorEgg wrote: post #156

somenameforme wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you left out the biggest one (though I suppose #3 indirectly hits on this). Social media, and increasingly even online media in general, tends to heavily misrepresent 'the other side.' In the past relationships were formed primarily in person so you actually got see what 'the other side' was like. Now a days people instead depend on completely inaccurate stereotypes that are far more like cartoon caricatures…

I agree completely, though I continually wonder why. Is it by specific design? By economic incentive? Is it because novel threats attract attention, and having a need to be validated continually satisfied maintains attention? I can't help but wonder if the polarization in the media is deliberate (e.g. foreign state sewing division) or accidental (second order consequence of attention economy) or organic (the claims o…

Just look at any form of social media. Many, if not most, people seem to seek out and enjoy drama. A straight forward representation of some event is usually going to get orders of magnitude less "engagement" than a excessively hyperbolized and sensationalized representation of it, even if the latter may often play a bit fast and loose with the facts to further magnify the dramatic effect of it all.

And then with every sort of algorithm and feedback mechanism (e.g. upvotes, likes, etc) based on maximizing "engagement" you then get this stuff spreading everywhere and even further drowning out any sort of rational discussion. So people who regularly follow it are going to be living in some sort of alt-reality all the while convinced that they are the most informed about the latest happenings in the world.