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Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

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Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#161

Post by mwfunk »

flukus wrote: post #149
beatpanda wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is stupid. One side is saying "we want to get rid of all the immigrants." My disagreement with that is not a communication problem, it's that that position is a red line. There's no chance of me being convinced that forcibly removing immigrants is a good idea. So why even have the conversation? What good could that possibly do?

> So why even have they conversation? What good could that possibly do? To see how the came to that conclusion. It's not like they hate brown people that speak funny, they have real issues that rightly or wrongly get blamed on immigration.

Some people do have real issues that rightly or wrongly get blamed on immigration, but there's also no shortage of actual racism among those who really, really seem to care about immigration. It's not like you don't see tons of explicit or implicit racism on Reddit or Twitter or Facebook among Trump supporters. Or at Trump rallys, for that matter, like "Jew S A" chants or people proudly wearing t-shirts that they think are hilarious about lynching journalists (like, actual old-fashioned lynching involving ropes and trees and victims).

Hell, the KKK endorsed Trump and he didn't denounce them. So yes, there are at least some people who like Trump for his anti-immigrant views that base their support on racism. Based on what I've seen online and in person, there are quite a few of them. Maybe that's not all of them, and some or most are really just concerned about it as a law and order issue, but Trump made absolutely no effort to distinguish between the two. At no point did he ever make any statement that attempted to disassociate his views on immigration from racism, and he was called upon to do so throughout the campaign (like after the KKK endorsement).

Maybe he himself has more enlightened views on immigration, but he clearly couldn't care less if people were on his side because of pure racism. He stoked those fires over and over and over again. Maybe he's just incredibly misunderstood, but he sure as hell didn't make an effort to clarify anything if he was. That speaks volumes about his morals. If you're going to take a hardline stance on illegal immigration and make it a centerpiece of your campaign, it makes it that much more important to be very clear and explicit that racism is not a factor, if for no other reasons than to avoid getting lumped in with racists and to avoid indulging racist tendencies within your own base. Leaders are supposed to lead, and someone who wants to be president has a vastly greater responsibility to be a leader.

Also, the fact that the strongest support for Trump's anti-immigrant views came from the parts of the country that have the fewest immigrants doesn't help. I've known plenty of people who've lived their whole lives within 100 miles of where they were born, in parts of the country where they may not ever actually see a black person, much less anyone from the Middle East or Mexico. People in these homogenous rural communities form (in terms of numbers at least) the core of anti-immigrant sentiment, and yet they also seem to think that strange brown people sneaking into the country is the #1 issue facing America today. It's very hard to look at those views coming from those demographics and not think that there's at least some racism and xenophobia driving those views.

Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#162

Post by vacri »

GrinningFool wrote: post #36
shireboy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree in principle, but one thing that threw me off off the bat- it asked if I was for or against trump. My views are more nuanced than that- to the point I wouldn't feel comfortable selecting either. Not sure how to best express that in the app, but I do think it's one of the things people misunderstand about "the other".

Maybe 'rate your support of Trump/the outcome of the election on a scale from 1 to 10'?

Even that is not enough. It's still a bipolar scale, and humans are politically multipolar.

Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#163

Post by vacri »

Houshalter wrote: post #153
r3dk1ng wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for mentioning Instant Runoff Voting. I've been trying to get anyone IRL to have any interest in it at all. Even the third party nerds weren't interested even though it'd benefit them.

IRV is better but not perfect. If third parties actually start to become viable, then they would start to steal first votes away from the moderate parties. Eventually they would steal enough votes to cause them to be eliminated. So you are still better off selecting the two major parties as your first vote, even if you don't really like them. If you have full tactical voting, it ends up exactly the same as plurality…

We have IRV where we live. The major parties are still major parties, and the minor parties are thriving. The past couple of elected governments have had to make coalitions between major and minor parties to form government.

Your concerns just don't play out.

Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#164

Post by grzm »

vacri wrote: post #162
GrinningFool wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe 'rate your support of Trump/the outcome of the election on a scale from 1 to 10'?

Even that is not enough. It's still a bipolar scale, and humans are politically multipolar.

You're right. People are "multipolar". There is a way to think of a binary choice being useful here. By looking at a single, big question like this that clearly has a lot of nuance underneath, you can provide the opportunity for people to find common ground even when they are at opposite sides of the overly-simplifed binary decision.

Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#165

Post by rorykoehler »

losteric wrote: post #95
okreallywtf wrote: post #75

While I think that tech tools like this have the potential to be great, so far I think technology has made the problem worse. My conclusion from my recent experiences over the last year or so with the election and before (and volunteering/organizing volunteers therefor) is that people don't just need to communicate, we need to interact, and my observation is that this needs to happen (or at the very least works best)…

I think modern transportation and communication have contributed to our increasingly divided society... by extending our interactions over larger areas, those tools allow us to naively fall into our own physical "filter bubbles". Modern transportation contributed towards physical obesity. Technology became so efficient and so cheap that we became isolated from physical reality... we have to work out in order to stay…

It felt very ironic up-voting you.

Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#167

Post by jkestner »

vanadium wrote: post #137
pmarreck wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two-party system is a direct consequence of the winner-takes-all, first-past-the-post voting system. If you want more than 2 polarizing parties to emerge, you have to use an alternative voting system which allows ranking, such as IRV, and thus encourages third parties instead of disincentivizing them (due to spoiler effect).

...which just passed in Maine (ranked-choice voting).

Cool. The "laboratories of democracy" in action. Hope it turns out well and spreads.

Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#168

Post by flukus »

mwfunk wrote: post #161
flukus wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So why even have they conversation? What good could that possibly do? To see how the came to that conclusion. It's not like they hate brown people that speak funny, they have real issues that rightly or wrongly get blamed on immigration.

Some people do have real issues that rightly or wrongly get blamed on immigration, but there's also no shortage of actual racism among those who really, really seem to care about immigration. It's not like you don't see tons of explicit or implicit racism on Reddit or Twitter or Facebook among Trump supporters. Or at Trump rallys, for that matter, like "Jew S A" chants or people proudly wearing t-shirts that they thi…

I'm not denying there's actual racism, just that there is enough of it to make an difference to the election. The KKK might vote for trump, but they aren't the reason he's president.

>Also, the fact that the strongest support for Trump's anti-immigrant views came from the parts of the country that have the fewest immigrants doesn't help.

Here's the kicker, why aren't people migrating to these places? They are lovely places that have had high immigration levels in the past. They do know that in other parts of the country those strange brown people are moving in and being more successful than they are in their own country though.

Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#169

Post by jkestner »

beatpanda wrote: post #119
robbizorg wrote: post #2

Hi everyone, Recently, given the results of the election and the divisiveness that's been revealed because of it, it seems like the country isn't talking to one another anymore. We're afraid of one another and the polices the other political party will put in place. A lot of this, I think, has to deal with the lack of communication between actual human beings that lie on both sides of the isle. I made this app, Mest,…

This is stupid. One side is saying "we want to get rid of all the immigrants." My disagreement with that is not a communication problem, it's that that position is a red line. There's no chance of me being convinced that forcibly removing immigrants is a good idea. So why even have the conversation? What good could that possibly do?

While the general goal of this site is a good idea, we'll have a better chance of fostering understanding by approaching the subjects indirectly. Build empathy and rapport first, then you'll have the context to approach the divisive questions productively.

I'd like to see this built on top of Facebook, where a) people are already having conversations unproductively, and b) you have the demographic information to understand who you're pairing without having to bluntly ask them which side of an issue they're taking.

Re: Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

#170

Post by eneifert »

I would love to see something like this for broader issues and I see two big benefits.

1) I think it could be really helpful to bloggers. If I wrote a post on a divisive topic, I would love to have it reviewed by respected people who are on the other side (not sure exactly how you would work out the respected part). When we write it's too easy for us to build up a scarecrow argument then knock it down to the delight of those who already agree with us. For example imagine a metric that showed how much people who disagree with the article respect it anyways. If I saw something like that on my Facebook feed I would be more likely to read it.

2) A place for us to get experience on how to debate better. There are a number of principles that a site like this could promote. For example, when you disagree with someone ask a question you actually want the answer to, then talk about it. It sounds easy but it can only become a habit with deliberate practice. I have seen a number of other TED talks that go over these kinds of things.

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