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Is population density the reason Americans can't discuss politics?

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Re: Is population density the reason Americans can't discuss politics?

#171

Post by mint2 »

MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #99
bombcar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More women will die today from vehicle related injuries than will die all year from prevented abortions. But one topic is at the top of all the news, the other is ignored, because it's so common.

This is not good logic. If the government announced tomorrow they will pick 5 people a year at random to be executed for no reason, it would also be at the top of all the news, despite being many fewer deaths than vehicle related injuries. It’s at the top of the news because it is easily preventable, yet some choose to let people die anyway.

With the abortion thing, it’s not pick people completely at random - It’s arbitrarily pick x number of women, of child bearing age, at random and make them die or suffer grievously.

I don’t think the predominantly male lawmakers in those states would have made the same choices had it been men not women who would be affected.

Re: Is population density the reason Americans can't discuss politics?

#172

Post by kelseyfrog »

lolinder wrote: post #153
zero-sharp wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely some things that warrant distancing. But I try to appreciate the good, even if there is bad. Moral purity is a luxury and self-righteousness can be ugly (sorry).

Not only is it a luxury, it's sheer arrogance to pretend it exists at all. None of us get through life without complicated trade-offs, and in most cases when you disagree with ~50% of a country's population it's because you have different values of what good thing matters most.

In fact it's a privilege to not have to worry about moral purity. Being able to look past views without personal consequences is life free of that burden. Some people don't have that option.

Re: Is population density the reason Americans can't discuss politics?

#173

Post by sunshowers »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #87
whaaaaat wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practice is important. And being able to say, "I disagree, and discussing it further won't change my mind" is important. But many of the current political topics are life or death for parts of the community. Like, I know plenty of trans sysadmins for whom politics isn't just "well, one party advances ideas I support and the other less so". For them it's "One party will make my every waking moment a nightmare". I unde…

> being able to say, "I disagree, and discussing it further won't change my mind" is important Though, I would argue, unnecessary. If you faithfully believe, challenge shouldn’t be burdensome. If you’re open to revision, maybe they have a point. I’m not Epictetus, but unless your conversation partner is an idiot or a bore, there is usually something redeeming there.

We only have a finite amount of time on this planet.

Re: Is population density the reason Americans can't discuss politics?

#174

Post by nataliste »

whaaaaat wrote: post #36
thephyber wrote: post #2

If it really was population density, it would be easy to discuss politics in urban NYC and very difficult/ rare in rural Wyoming. I don’t think that’s really the case. I suspect politics are more discussed in forums where there is more “psychological safety” where the consequence of saying a thing that others disagree with doesn’t cause a rift in the relationship (as evidenced by the “it’s hard enough for a parent to…

Practice is important. And being able to say, "I disagree, and discussing it further won't change my mind" is important. But many of the current political topics are life or death for parts of the community. Like, I know plenty of trans sysadmins for whom politics isn't just "well, one party advances ideas I support and the other less so". For them it's "One party will make my every waking moment a nightmare". I unde…

And this is precisely why people, not just Americans, can't disagree about politics over time. Politics always turns into someone having the perspective "civil disagreement cannot be tolerated because the stakes are too high for my side" which is anethema to reason and concord regardless of whether it's actually true or not.

Catastrophizing is always incentivized in the immediate term because it forces any interlocutor(a) to address it at the expense of any other topic and then the catastrophizer can accuse them of apathy and marginialization if they don't show the requisite enthusiasm and deference.

It's a no-win situation for anyone attempting to deescalate and many just check-out rather than deal with the litany of accusations, which I guess is another kind of victory for the catastrophizers.

Re: Is population density the reason Americans can't discuss politics?

#175

Post by sunshowers »

asynchronous wrote: post #16
lolinder wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the rest of the post. Indian politics are not somehow lower stakes than ours, the Indian subcontinent is not less diverse, and the author's friend included a specific example of people getting literally killed over their politics.

There’s literally no way the nation of India is more diverse than the United States- we have the biggest spread of racial, and religious diversity on the planet, by far.

Actually there's a very easy empirical way to test this claim: look at the amount of subsampling pollsters do. In the US samples are typically weighted after the raw data is collected, by:

gender

age

white college, white non-college, Black, Latino/Hispanic, Asian

party registration

For 1000 samples you get the standard MoE of 3ish percent.

In India you start by dividing up the electorate into hundreds of strata, sample independently from each stratum, then piece it together. This results in Indian polling sample sizes being over 100k for the same 3% MoE.

This is pretty objective evidence of India's diversity.

(I am curious though if 2024 is going to cause pollsters to re-examine polling basics in the US. There are several major warning signs this year that polling is broken, even if it produces the right result in the end.)

Re: Is population density the reason Americans can't discuss politics?

#176

Post by maeil »

Swizec wrote: post #19
thephyber wrote: post #2

If it really was population density, it would be easy to discuss politics in urban NYC and very difficult/ rare in rural Wyoming. I don’t think that’s really the case. I suspect politics are more discussed in forums where there is more “psychological safety” where the consequence of saying a thing that others disagree with doesn’t cause a rift in the relationship (as evidenced by the “it’s hard enough for a parent to…

> rather than through the lens of the broken US political parties / election system This is key, in my observation as an immigrant from Europe who's lived here ~10 years. Europe for the most part has multi-party democracies meaning that for every pet cause you might have there is a party that focuses on your cause. Larger causes get parties that might even get elected into parliament. Those larger parties still have…

> Contrast that with american politics where it's all or nothing. If you like abortion and low taxes, there is no way for you to vote.

I'm European. The most influential topic in voting behaviour is immigration, as any study (or recent European election result) would tell you. In the wealthier countries, climate policy is also in the top 5. If I want to vote for progressive climate policy and being tough on immigration, there isn't a single party that I can vote for. And there hasn't been, for decades.

It's hardly better in Europe.

Re: Is population density the reason Americans can't discuss politics?

#178

Post by zilicc »

teg4n_ wrote: post #160
tourmalinetaco wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no party that will make “every waking moment a nightmare" for the LGBTQIAP+. That’s the same thing we heard in 2016, and nothing came of it then. And in fact between 2020 and 2024 there is definitely an argument that can be made that even under the “preferred” party things got worse. Ironically, that exact rhetoric has led to multiple terror attacks on innocent people.

>nothing came of it I’m guessing you aren’t trans or know anyone that is. Trans people were kicked out of the military under trump. Some republican governments are making it difficult to near impossible for trans people to get transition related medical care. Republican governments are making it difficult to even get identification documents that match your identity. Republican governments are trying to make certain…

[flagged]

Re: Is population density the reason Americans can't discuss politics?

#179

Post by daft_pink »

Vilification of ideas is the reason why people can’t discuss politics in the United States.

Reality is that if you have normal common religious beliefs in this country, people on the left will quickly paint you as some sort of evil intolerant person, when most religious people are nice decent people.

Just because they disagree with your lifestyle doesn't make them evil. Why people can’t tolerate basic disagreement is beyond me.

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