Watching people argue about politics, or even watching people get into politics, reminds me of people arguing about their favourite sports teams. It always comes down to the other team is bad and immoral or whatever, our team is the best, go chosen sports team, you can do no wrong.
Honestly, the way people have been dehumanizing each other over politics kind of scares me. It reminds me of the way propaganda dehumanizes 'the enemy' in war time. It's not a good way to look at other people, especially not over which political party they voted for.
> Honestly, the way people have been dehumanizing each other over politics kind of scares me. It reminds me of the way propaganda dehumanizes 'the enemy' in war time. It's not a good way to look at other people, especially not over which political party they voted for.
It reminds me of this:
> And it is triple ultra forbidden to respond to criticism with violence. There are a very few injunctions in the human art of rationality that have no ifs, ands, buts, or escape clauses. This is one of them. Bad argument gets counterargument. Does not get bullet. Never. Never ever never for ever.
But counterarguments, well, you might not always have one of those. It could be that actually you're wrong about something. And if you're wrong and you still have a big fat angry mob behind you who can shout down anybody who tries to point that out, isn't that better than losing?
No. It isn't. It's better to lose when you're wrong. Because it's the only thing that allows you to win when you're right.
But it still feels bad, and you still have an angry mob at your disposal, and if you're weak you do the wrong thing.
Too many people today are weak. And they, we, should feel bad about that.
This has a lot of explanatory power. Weakness, or more accurately one's perceived vulnerability (inability to weather momentary losses), leads to pre-emption and escalation.
To use vitality as an example, a healthy person can handle the odd cold or cut that could be fatal to someone with compromised immune system. Rightly then the vulnerable person will react quickly and intensely to perceived threats that the healthy person may shrug off (or even engage with, like volunteering in a hospital.
And that's a feedback loop. People feel vulnerable because they're under attack, so they attack others, who then feel vulnerable because they're under attack. Somebody -- better yet, everybody -- has to be a grown up and stop the cycle.
Have you considered that people use angry mobs because good counterarguments get dismissed historically, and how they are angry, and want to do capture the momentum of rhetoric?
Historically, the mainstream news media would not even cover certain stories and would just spike them. People eventually go upset and found other ways to tell their story or force their opinion, e.g., social media and mobs.
An angry mob isn't about stories. It has no correlation with righteousness or reason or fairness. It's an instrument of chaos and destruction that can as easily be turned against you as your enemies. It's the rhetorical equivalent of setting the theater on fire instead of talking to the people inside.
Doing wrong is wrong even when you're angry.
And it's a short term gain for a long term loss. Every careless attack on a person who turns out to be innocent is an advertisement to join the opposition.
Worse than that, if you shout down dissent then you stay wrong. If you can't admit to a mistake then you can't stop making it.
The funny thing is that it happens at every single level, no matter how ridiculous or serious the topic is: football teams, battlefield vs call of duty, right vs left, climate change, pro/anti abortion, religions, &c.
It makes no lasting difference to the world if Team A wins against Team B in a sports event.
But public policy choices are absolutely fundamental to personal opportunity, personal safety, quality of life, and financial stability.
There are objectively right and wrong answers in politics. There's also a hierarchy of importance in policy, with some issues making far more of a difference to all of the above than others.
Misunderstanding policy cause and effect and picking and promoting the wrong answers will lead to objectively bad outcomes for at least some other people, and very probably for you personally.
The toxicity doesn't originate in social media. Social media simply amplifies the toxic effects of industries of dishonesty - from PR, astroturfing, and manipulated academic and media narratives, to calculated and deliberate hostile attempts to focus conversations on low-impact but high-emotion issues, and to split populations along tribal and narrative fault lines.
In politics, all sides are wrong about something big. And it isn't clear whose mistakes are bigger. More importantly, all parties promote narratives where we argue about inconsequential items to distract the public from bigger issues.
For example in the USA, Republicans argue against universal healthcare even though their own internal analyses show that, done right, we would save money and have better healthcare outcomes. Democrats argue for a level of micromanagement in regulation that creates bad outcomes for everyone. Republicans have politicized basic science and generally believe it to be propaganda. Democrats put political correctness above sanity. And so on and so forth.
But neither party wishes to discuss the fact that we have become a surveillance state, with an insane legal system, and a prison system that is one of the horrors of the world. They do not wish it discussed because party leaders have reasons to continue these policies, but according to polls a solid majority of Americans, across political parties, would prefer these policies discontinued. See, for example, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/15/key-takeawa... and https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2018/nov/6/polls-show-p... for evidence of that.
Therefore the fact that politics is about something that matters is an argument that team A vs team B rhetoric is itself actively destructive. The more important you believe the issues to be, the more that you should aim to depolarize the discussion.
Your comment is the most on point here. The real tribe in US politics are those who want status quo vs those that dont. The major parties are both just flavors of the same status quo.
> Social media simply amplifies the toxic effects of industries of dishonesty - from PR, astroturfing, and manipulated academic and media narratives, to calculated and deliberate hostile attempts to focus conversations on low-impact but high-emotion issues, and to split populations along tribal and narrative fault lines.
I would say it just amplifies human traits.
If "There are objectively right and wrong answers in politics." and "In politics the opinions actually matter." we're fucked because surely after 6 million years of evolution we shouldn't be where we are now. We're just fancy apes with a way to shitpost world wide instantly and it's not helping anyone.
You're right that political opinions matter but I don't believe they matter for the right reason. It's still a "us vs them" problem all the way to the top, just that that one is more complex and out of reach to the average joe. So instead of informing people we throw them 5 min clips of clickbait video here and there and ask them in which "team" they are every few years, after a while the teams are naturally swaped because "nothing changed", rinse and repeat.
The relevant point isn't how important the outcome of Team A versus Team B is, but rather the amount of influence an individual has over that outcome.
A normal individual has very little effect on the outcome of sporting competitions, but an individual sports fan does get satisfaction from choosing a team to cheer for.
Likewise, a normal individual has very little effect on the outcome of major government policies (e.g. federal policies in the USA), but an individual voter does get satisfaction from associating with a particular political group, following their events, researching their arguments and rebuttals to opponents' arguments, etc.
It's true that major government policies actually are extremely important, but that doesn't mean that individual political participation has much of an influence on outcomes. It is very common for people to have a strong association with some political group and act similarly to sports fans (e.g. "my group is great, your group are a bunch of hateful cheaters"). It's not as common for people to spend effort and resources attempting to increase their actual influence on political outcomes (things like having constructive discussions, organizing events, campaigning, or even running for office), because people correctly realize that most of the time the effort and resources spent would be larger than the resulting effect on the outcome.
NOTHING is objectively right and wrongs in politics. Right and wrong depend on your personal morals. By my personal morals there are objective rights and wrongs, but every moral I have there is somebody will disagree. For things like planed killing of otherwise healthy adults there is a large enough agreement that it is a wrong and we send those who disagree to prison. Note even there how many qualifies I had to put in - every one is required to get around a large fraction that will disagree.
Stronger: Even if we were in agreement about right and wrong, that doesn't mean that we agree about what to do. We agree that homelessness is bad? Great. How should we fix it? There we may still differ, even if we agree that homelessness is a problem that we should try to fix. How sure am I that my preferred policy is more likely to work than your preferred policy? I would say that at best I am only about 70% sure.
The problem comes when I act as if I am certain that my policy proposals are better than yours - and, worse, that you are therefore evil for proposing such flawed policies as you do. We assign to policies a certainty that they don't deserve.
"In reality no political program can be more than probably correct." - C. S. Lewis.
I think you are confusing whether people agree on right and wrong with whether their is an objective right and wrong. It's entirely possible that there is an objective right and wrong but that some people are mistaken as to what it is.
Philosopher's have not been able to agree on anything. Religion and culture can agree on many right and wrongs, but there is nothing universal across other religions or cultures.
That doesn't mean that there is nothing universal, just that religions and cultures don't always agree on what it is.
Even then, there is generally agreement that murder is wrong, and that murder means killing innocent people. The disagreement is generally over what constitutes "innocent" and "people". Similarly, pretty much everyone agrees that stealing is wrong, the differences are just in the details of what constitutes property and associated rights.
We do not send those who disagree about killing adults to prison. We send there those who we think actually killed people. That is massive difference practically.
Back in college, I took a Contemporary Moral Problems class (from a professor who resembled Captain Kangaroo---it was surreal and probably an example of something). The one quote I remember from the reading was,
"I believe I have a moral responsibility not to wantonly slaughter my neighbors."
It's a short sentence, but the amount of waffling in it is amazing.
> There are objectively right and wrong answers in politics.
Usually not; policy goals are a matter of subjective preference. What policies maximize goals may be matters of objective fact, but most political debate is (sometimes under the surface of the rhetoric) disagreement about goals, not mechanisms.
Totally right, however I think it depends on the people. Like can we all agree that developers who use 3 spaces to indent are going to a special place in hell?
2? Sure, nice and compact.
4? Hipster but OK I can handle it.
Tabs? Well you're probably the most technically correct even if I don't like it.
3? I'll cut you man. I can get along with most people, but everyone has limits.
As I understand, becoming inseparable friends is vastly helped along when there's someone else to hate instead, suggesting there's always got to be a "bad guy".
In my course on the EU the instructor asked why the American colonies formed into a cohesive nation while the EU is still largely fragmented. Of course, there are a lot of answers to that, but I pointed out the colonies had to unite to stand against Britain. The EU hasn't had any external entity to unite against, thus the focus remains on the differences between the member states rather than the goals they share.
I think people agreeing about politics is universally more toxic than people disagreeing. Discussions in which all the involved parties agree, but are obsessively defending themselves against an imagined foe tend to generate a hell of a lot more moral grandstanding than ones in which actual conflict exists.
I've found myself on the receiving end of this 'obsessive defense' more than once in the past and had to completely halt a conversation in order to firmly but compassionately ask the person if they thought I was disagreeing with them and then show them how through statements we've both made we were in complete agreement.
The tenor of the conversation changed almost instantly. It's forced me to be hyper specific when approaching certain topics, but that hasn't come without it's own uncomfortable externalities of conversation.
I am often thinking that people should just stick to sports. Blind faith and false facts are fine if you support a team but politics should be serious business with a lot of consideration before having an opinion.
I find it interesting that in politics it's generally regarded a truism that everyone with the right to vote should vote.
We don't say everyone should make up their mind on whether somebody is guilty of a crime -- we say a few specially informed jurors should make that determination.
This makes me wonder whether demarchy / sortition / Athenian democracy (rule by the randomly selected; similar to juries) is superior to elective democracy.
I always counter everybody should vote with make sure you are informed first. A republic is a terrible system of government, but we haven't found anything better.
> A republic is a terrible system of government, but we haven't found anything better.
Variations of this quote are often banded about to apologise for and defend the imperfections of given democracies. It shuts down questions of electoral reform with the straw-man of autocracy. Not all democracies are equal.
I'm asserting a republic is better than a democracy.
There are minor variations of republics and how they elect people with resulting variations. However they are all better than alternatives (including democracy).
I'm not sure the governmental form of republic is terribly useful to discussions of fairness or freedom in societies. Norway, Sweden, Denmark and New Zealand appear at the top of the Democracy Index, and are democratic constitutional monarchies. North Korea, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic are republics and among the most tyrannous societies.
> North Korea, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic are republics and among the most tyrannous societies.
I don't know about every single country on the list, but at least the one I am somewhat informed about (North Korea) is a republic only in name, as it is pretty much an authoritarian dictatorship state controlled by the military class.
I hear what you're saying, and I don't think you're necessarily wrong. And at the risk of sounding like a partisan, I really don't think the two "sides" in U.S. politics are at all equivalent. There is one party that cares about "winning" at any cost. They absolutely justify this by, as you say, painting the other party—and those in their own party that don't toe the line—as "the enemy". It is terrifying, and I don't know how this gets resolved.
I’m not trying to be glib when I say this, but I really don’t know which side you’re referring to. I’ve witnessed an equal amount of tribalism from supporters of both sides.
I think it's the party engaging in voter suppression throughout the country, and the one that stripped the powers of the governor when someone from the other side won, and the one that literally fled the state so that the legislature didn't have quorum and couldn't pass legislation, even though they were a clear minority. Or the one that refused to confirm a seat on the supreme court for nearly a year, in an unprecedented move. I could go on.
I think GP has a point, and I'll illustrate by trying to simply flip the very convenient mirror that you've set up. Please get past the initial emotional response (canards! blasphemy!) and just realize that this is a paragraph that roughly half the country will read with a straight face and agree with.
"I think it's the party engaging in voter fraud [1] throughout the country, and the one that tried to impeach the president when someone from the other side won [2], and the one that literally fled the state so that the legislature didn't have quorum and couldn't pass legislation [3], even though they were a clear minority. Or the one that falsely accused a supreme court nominee of rape [4], in an unprecedented move. I could go on."
It's evident to me that people of all political bents in this country are extremely tribalistic, and none of the tribes count many saints among their numbers.
Citations added simply to highlight that I'm not pulling any of this out of thin air:
The Democrats are equally corrupt, they just have more control over the media that gets shipped overseas so it warps people's perception.
Both parties have started and engaged in needless wars, both parties spread falsehoods and start witch hunts, both parties are corrupt and suck down tax payer dollars without providing value in return.
Do you really think not a single Republican has critical thinking skills? That of course is incorrect, just as the opposite statement about Democrats would be.
That's not even touching hot button issues that are legitimately subjective or at least have no clear answer (like abortion).
It's best not to dehumanize those you don't agree with and instead realize that organizations as large and powerful as the DNC/GOP are almost inherently corrupt.
> Do you really think not a single Republican has critical thinking skills? That of course is incorrect, just as the opposite statement about Democrats would be.
Seems like that's not at all what he said. He said you'd have to lack critical thinking ability to equate the two parties.
Lots of criminals have great critical thinking skills. Obstruction and disruption are strategies that might be employed by people with great critical thinking skills to achieve their goals.
Ironically, perhaps, I think you've misread his comment, and mine, and overextended your own argument.
Semantics aside, you're missing the point of my post which is that neither party can claim moral superiority and believing that doesn't mean one is lacking critical thinking skills. They are indeed equivalent from that perspective.
I'm not missing anything at all. I commented solely to make the observation that you put words in the mouth of the commenter you originally replied to, which is way beyond semantics.
How do you explain the "party line" dynamic with the Republicans if Democrats are similarly politically cynical. Regardless of media slant it's clear that Republican policy marches in lockstep, with very clear talking points. How can that be explained except being a naked power grab?
Obstructive and disruptive are intensely subjective labels. Anyone who doesn't get what they want can say "oh, I should've gotten it, but I was disrupted and obstructed and that was very unfair". As an American, Brexit really drove this point home for me; the two largest British parties have both been insisting for years now that they're trying to drive Brexit forwards but the other side is unfairly obstructing them.
"Criminal" is less subjective, but I just don't think it's true. I'm unaware of any kind of criminal behavior that Republicans get accused of but Democrats don't.
That's by Peter Schweizer talking about his amazing book "Secret Empires" that came out in 2017. The book documents corruption on both the left and the right and has over 100 pages of citations.
It documents far beyond any doubt massive corruption and treason.
The Chinese deal was having Kerry approve a deal where China got access to restricted US military technology.
Articles documenting the Biden kid's shady "equity fund", which is partially owned by the Chinese government, have been ongoing for many years in a variety of media. They were particularly popular in 2015-16 when the media was trashing the Bidens because they wanted Hillary to get the nomination.
> Mesires said that, in any case, the $1.5 billion amount was never reached. The investment fund raised about $4.2 million "from various sources," Mesires said, without citing further detail. That would be a fraction of what Trump said: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/oct/02...
> The company website in 2016 reported that Bohai Capital managed the 20 Billion RMB ($2.8 billion) fund. [..] business registration filings in China list Hunter Biden and James Bulger as key officials at Bohai Harvest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BHR_Partners
So he is a 'key official' at a fund with billions of dollars of Chinese investment. But you find that claim 'false' because his lawyer states that they only raised $4.2 million, during some unspecified period of time, from unspecified sources, and explicitly declined to give any details. Being a lawyer, I'm sure his statement is technically correct. Given all the other sources, I'm also sure it's utterly misleading.
Ted Kennedy asked the Soviets to help him defeat Reagan, explaining that Soviet-American relations would be critically important in the 1984 election and offering to fly to Moscow to help with their messaging. (Of course, like with Nixon and Trump, many people do dispute this characterization and Kennedy claimed the entire story was made up.)
That's the first time I've gotten a real answer to this question!
Of course, the available information allows one to believe, not believe, or assign significantly differing severity to these, and I do, but I wasn't aware of this before, so thanks.
See, this is the kind of response that makes people not trust Politifact. This article delivers a more detailed version of exactly what I said. There's direct evidence indicating Kennedy reached out to the KGB, and indirect evidence it was tied to his political ambitions, but there's no ironclad proof and some people believe the evidence was just a complete fabrication. The "false" rating is based entirely on the specific claim that Kennedy sat down for a meeting with them, which I think you'll find I did not make.
Just to be clear, you're saying manofstick's response is at fault here, and that an undiscriminating reader might blame Politifact by association, not that Politifact did wrong here, correct?
Manofstick incorrectly suggested that the Politifact article applied to your post, but it looks to me like Politifact itself did an exemplary job. They evaluated the specific claim that a meeting happened, which was made by a conservative pundit, and found it false, which is consistent with the evidence they present and all other evidence I found in my brief poke through google.
I've made no claims of equivalence between the two parties.
The topic we are discussing is moral grandstanding on social media. The comment I replied to suggested that only one "side" is guilty of this behavior. I'm interpreting a "side" as the supporters of particular party and their actions on social media, and not the policies and actions of the party's politicians.
I believe there are people on both sides of the spectrum that routinely cringe at the behavior of those they agree with. There are many staunch Republicans that wish to distance themselves from the social policies of their constituents. Likewise, there are Democrats that are unfairly given stigmatizing labels from their peers for having fiscally conservative views.
Both "sides" are guilty of tribal tendencies, ignoring any possibility of nuance, and pigeon-holing "centrists" into Team Red or Blue. And I'm not distancing myself to relish in my own smug either, I've been guilty of this as well.
Just like with football, neither side likes the guy that supports both teams when it's convenient.
You should looks at Democratic strongholds if you think they are somehow better. As a Californian I’ll say the level of corruption/cronyism in our state is insane relative to that seen in others. We literally got conned into giving Nancy Pelosi’s family a huge ($50B+) contract with our high speed rail bill, that isn’t going to be what we voted on at all[1]. Democrats and Republicans are 2 sides of the same coin. This is very apparent with the rise of Anti-Trumpism.
Neither of your cites supports the claim that corruption or cronyism in California is worse than it is in other states.
Your Wiki citation doesn't mention any link of a connection between Pelosi and the HSR, nor does a Google or DDG search turn up any mention, outside of anonymous blog posts all citing each other.
The genesis of Anti-Trumpism was the Nopublicans. It was the official party line of the GOP during the Obama era to simply vote "no" on everything he tried to pass, even when he was trying to implement GOP policies, because they wanted to (a) make him a 1-term president, and (b) when that failed to limit his successes. In contrast, the Democrats actually worked with Bush and Bush Sr before him on domestic and foreign policy, and have worked with their GOP counterparts on such during Trump's presidency.
Yeah, I got it wrong, it’s Dianne Feinstein not Pelosi, and furthermore it seems that on-the-books financial ties had been broken, but that sure stinks. Furthermore, I’ve had first hand experience with corruption in this state, and I know many other who have. I find it difficult to believe that most states are worse. Oregon seems far more together from what I understand about their politics, for an example of another Democratic state.
My friend, 2 wrongs don’t make a right. I admire(d) Democrats for their pragmatism and I loathe Republicans for their lack of it. I’m not defending Republicans or Conservatives, only pointing out that what we need is fresh blood.
I think the gastropod is basically on point. The democrats aren't beacons of virtue or rationality by any stretch of the imagination, but its a strange kind of self-imposed blindness to pretend the two political parties are playing the same game here.
We can simultaneously see that partisan politics isn't completely rational and also observe that one side, for various reasons, is working that irrationality harder than the other.
The question isn't whether they're playing the same game. Indeed, it'd be surprising if they were, since the goals and principles of the two parties are often quite different. The question is whether "aha, that other party has decided to do the wrong thing rather than the right thing" is a helpful way to conceptualize the difference.
As another reply to you has shown, it's very easy to find specific differences and elevate them to an all-encompassing explanation, if that's how you decide you want to look at things.
A study at Dartmouth found that 45 percent of Democrats say they would be uncomfortable rooming with a Republican. Comparatively, only 12 percent of Republicans said rooming with a Democrat would make them uncomfortable.
My anecdotal evidence bears this out. Progressives tend to be far more intolerant of opposing viewpoints than conservatives.
Historically, the "conservatives" (if you're referring to the Republican party) was actually more tolerant. The abolitionist movement to end slavery, for one, and republicans supported the civil rights act more than the democrats did:
Yes, in all votes, by percentage, more democrats opposed the civil rights act than did republicans.
Earlier, the progressive movement was founded on, among other things, eugenics (sterilization and abortion) of undesirable people, such as minorities and disabled. The progressive movement has since changed its tune.
Minority groups clearly aren't using history to pick roommates they would feel comfortable with.
In fact, it is the same party, but different people.
I was responding to the idea that minorities were using history to choose their roommates, and how if that were the case, it would not be so clear cut.
That is certainly not true in many regards. See for example my sibling comment on progressivism and eugenics.
The Progressive party had followers in its own right, as well as those in both the Democratic and Republican party, at least until Theodore Roosevelt left the Republican party in 1912.
Among the progressive movements goals were getting women the right to vote, and disenfranchising black voters. The philosophies of eugenics, and obsession with purity, were in fact an inspiration for those people who would eventually attempt to purify Germany during the Nazi reign.
Although much has changed in the progressive movement in the years since, the application of eugenics through abortion to eliminate undesirables has not (from my other comment, see Iceland).
Also a part of history, and a disappointing one at that. It does not, however, change my point about history being a poor way to choose one's roommates.
I specifically stated “conservative” because that’s more meaningful across large periods of time than referring to political parties. Yes, the Republican Party was once the more progressive party. That changed, and for ~50 years, Republicans have been the more conservative party.
> As a philosophy, it is based on the idea of progress, which asserts that advancements in science, technology, economic development and social organization are vital to the improvement of the human condition.
That is pretty much the antithesis of conservative, to be sure. However, keep in mind that none of that could have described the Republican party of old. The abolitionist movement and civil rights movement had a lot of support from conservatives for religious reasons. Martin Luther King Jr's message of unity was heard on multiple levels.
That definition of progressivism does still tie fairly closely to what a lot of Democrats would identify with, I think. Unfortunately, eugenics is still alive and well within the progressive movement- consider, for example, Iceland's attempt at eradicating Down's Syndrom by aborting babies. If you were to ask most people with Down's syndrom whether their condition would have been improved had they been aborted, they would disagree.
Maybe I'm older than you but Democrats have held many of those positions for a good portion of my life. They just generally don't hold them now though a sizable minority still do have at least a couple of those views.
Yes, even Barack Obama was against gay marriage. We've come a long way. But since ~1968, the Democratic party has consistently lead the Republican party on social issues.
Except there is still a double standard. For example, approximately the same number of black people are opposed to gay marriage as Republicans (52% vs 49%)[1], and yet only one of those groups gets consistently portrayed as homophobic and detestable.
If you're curious, there are lots of people who've written at length about why they hang out with and indeed support Republicans despite being in those categories. Peter Thiel and Marco Rubio would be two prominent examples if you're looking for recommendations.
I would find it uncomfortable being a roomate with an outspoken holocaust denier. A holocaust denier probably wouldn't find it uncomfortable being my roommate. I would wager this generalizes pretty well to holocaust accepters and deniers as a whole.
Is the takeaway from this that holocaust deniers are more accepting people?
Seriously, if people keep calling everyone a Nazi, the term and horror of what they did and the crimes they perpetrated will be lost to a fairy tale, if it hasn't been already. Stop it. Choose your words more carefully and pick a different School yard insult to call people. That's shameful. The actuality of what Nazis did is horrific. Don't cheapen it in less than a century.
I don't think I called anyone a Nazi. Why don't you stop making up things that people didn't say. Let me know when you're ready to get there and we'll try this again.
Also, instead of whining, consider critiquing the substance of anything I said.
There's only one political party in the US right now that routinely uses labels such as "racists", "Nazis" and "white supremacists" against their opponents to dehumanize them and justify physical violence. Haven't seen anything like it from the other side.
No, because 99% of the time these labels have no basis in reality and those who use these labels don't bother to even try to prove these accusations. They became just fighting words for dehumanization, used without a second thought.
I don't think it could have been said. The Nazis were, from the start, clearly and enthusiastically in favor of violence against their political opponents. Their first attempt at a violent coup happened only a couple years after they were founded.
They didn't go as far as Antifa does but the TEA Party certainly was guilty of many of the same things. Lots of threats to bring "Second amendment solutions" to political disagreements. They certainly engaged in dehumanizing their opponents. Seems like whoever is out of power does this and each cycle it gets ratcheted up another notch. It's worrying what the reaction in some quarters might be if someone like Bernie Sanders, who openly calls himself a Democratic Socialist, wins the presidency.
Both parties care, but one side wants government to do less or not interfere with things, and the other side wants government to do more or redistribute things. One side has an interest in government functioning properly and the other doesn't (until they need Medicare anyway). I think this contributes to the "win at any cost" appearance of the one side.
What are examples of political topics you see people arguing about in a dehumanizing way? What kind of comments do you mean by “dehumanizing”?
I keep hearing this argument that the tone and style of political arguments are getting more vicious and causing harm to society, but nobody can give me concrete examples of what they mean.
That’s pretty vague, can you be more specific? What issue do you have in mind? What is an example of someone claiming that “speech merits a violent response”?
You asked who holds the opinion that speech can constitute violence; I answered. The answer is that a "hodge podge" of people hold that opinion.
If you don't know anything about the survey, read the survey. I intentionally linked the results because I didn't want to present a biased synthesis as fact.
Antifa holds that opinion, and believes violence is justified in return.
From the Atlantic piece previously linked:
> the parade’s organizers received an anonymous email warning that if “Trump supporters” and others who promote “hateful rhetoric” marched, “we will have two hundred or more people rush into the parade … and drag and push those people out.”
> An article in The Nation argued that “to call Trumpism fascist” is to realize that it is “not well combated or contained by standard liberal appeals to reason.” The radical left, it said, offers “practical and serious responses in this political moment.”
> Antifascists call such actions defensive. Hate speech against vulnerable minorities, they argue, leads to violence against vulnerable minorities. But Trump supporters and white nationalists see antifa’s attacks as an assault on their right to freely assemble, which they in turn seek to reassert. The result is a level of sustained political street warfare not seen in the U.S. since the 1960s. A few weeks after the attacks in San Jose, for instance, a white-supremacist leader announced that he would host a march in Sacramento to protest the attacks at Trump rallies. Anti-Fascist Action Sacramento called for a counterdemonstration; in the end, at least 10 people were stabbed.
> A similar cycle has played out at UC Berkeley. In February, masked antifascists broke store windows and hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks at police during a rally against the planned speech by Yiannopoulos. After the university canceled the speech out of what it called “concern for public safety,” white nationalists announced a “March on Berkeley” in support of “free speech.” At that rally, a 41-year-old man named Kyle Chapman, who was wearing a baseball helmet, ski goggles, shin guards, and a mask, smashed an antifa activist over the head with a wooden post. Suddenly, Trump supporters had a viral video of their own. A far-right crowdfunding site soon raised more than $80,000 for Chapman’s legal defense. (In January, the same site had offered a substantial reward for the identity of the antifascist who had punched Spencer.) A politicized fight culture is emerging, fueled by cheerleaders on both sides. As James Anderson, an editor at It’s Going Down, told Vice, “This shit is fun.”
Did you read all of those pieces in the eight minutes between my comment and yours? Your arguments suggest you don't. You can't ask for examples and dismiss them, refusing to read the things I link.
> You asked who holds the opinion that speech can constitute violence; I answered.
I did not.
> You can't ask for examples and dismiss them, refusing to read the things I link.
If your goal was to answer my question (ignoring the fact that you misread my question in the first place), then a more effective approach would have been to write an answer. That answer could have included quotes from your material. It is customary to include links to the raw material backing up your quotes, as a footnote.
Instead you just dumped links with no explanation or context. After a few minutes of skimming your material, a coherent point failed to magically appear.
So no, sorry, I’m not going to invest an hour of my time doing research on your own material to produce an answer you couldn’t be bothered to articulate yourself.
Politically motivated violence is not synonymous with fascism, it's an actual political movement/"philosophy" with hallmarks and such. Plenty of violence happens in the world, both in response to speech and not, without being 'fascism'.
>Plenty of violence happens in the world, both in response to speech and not, without being 'fascism'. Politically motivated violence is not synonymous with fascism
Correct we call that terrorism when it is to further your own political, religious, social, racial, or environmental views.
Domestic terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.
The ideas they believe they are opposing are genocide, ethnic cleansing, slavery, “women are property” levels of misogyny, and “they want our kids” levels of homophobia and transphobia.
How correct they are about what they’re fighting is a separate question. As you have demonstrated, there are many different definitions of fascism. The Berlin Wall was described as the “anti-fascism protection wall” by the DDR. And, of course, “my opponent is literally Hitler” is widely dismissed as a melodramatic overstatement.
However, if we presuppose that they are correct about who they are targeting — sadly plausible, given how many genocides followed the one in WW2 — then to say that Antifa as a movement is itself “fascist” is like saying that the Allied powers in WW2 were “fascist” for violently opposing the “political opinion” of Herr Adolf H. and Signore Benito M.
You're clearly drawing paralells to nazi germany and the holocaust, but it's not as though it was years of peaceful planning followed by a sudden outburst of violence.
A quick timeline:
* Jan. 1933 Hitler took power
* Feb. 1933 civil liberties of Jews "temporarily" curtailed. This is a key step.
* Mar. 1933 Dachau created
* May 1933 Books nazis disliked burned
* Sept. 1935 Nuremberg Laws; gypsies and others sent to concentration camps
* July 1938 Hitler tries to sell German Jews to the rest of the world at $250/head
* Nov. 1938 Kristallnacht; Jewish kids kicked out of public schools
* Dec. 1938 nazis seize Jewish businesses
* Sept. 1939 Germany invades Poland
* Oct. 1939 "euthanasia" starts
* Dec. 1940 Mass murders at Treblinka
Look at the timeline and tell me where you think we are. Then please point to the currently-elected American politician who is "calmly suggest[ing] killing Jews as a way to fix what ails the country". I get fed up with the argument that current leadership is "literally hitler". It's intentionally dis-ingenuous, put forth in bad faith, and designed to incite unrest with no reasonable backing of the points.
"The historian Ian Kershaw points out that several passages in Mein Kampf are undeniably of a genocidal nature. Hitler wrote "the nationalization of our masses will succeed only when, aside from all the positive struggle for the soul of our people, their international poisoners are exterminated", and he suggested that, "If at the beginning of the war and during the war twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the nation had been subjected to poison gas, such as had to be endured in the field by hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers of all classes and professions, then the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain."
"The racial laws to which Hitler referred resonate directly with his ideas in Mein Kampf. In the first edition of Mein Kampf, Hitler stated that the destruction of the weak and sick is far more humane than their protection. Apart from this allusion to humane treatment, Hitler saw a purpose in destroying "the weak" in order to provide the proper space and purity for the "strong"."
Note that this was in a book for popular publication, that Hitler "hopes the book will run into many editions, thus enabling him to fulfill his financial obligations and to defray the expenses incurred at the time of his trial". Announcing that when you rise to power, you intend to kill a significant fraction of the population is probably a bit much to expect.
The "temporary curtailment" was not really the first step.
Scroll to Brooklyn NY. Trump enjoyed 93% support in an all Hasidic Jewish neighborhood (ocean parkway district.) and 80%+ support across most hasidic Jewish districts.
Hitler did not magically appeared in 1933. He was politically active pretty much from 1918. The ideas he drawn from were even more older.
1933 is when Hitler gained all the power and Germany was pretty much at point of no return. The time to stop Hitler was before. Your timeline literally starts when experienced and possible opposition is about to go to Dachau. It is too late at that point.
Even if you believe that Hitler has taken power (which I am sure some people believe), what is your analog of "civil liberties of X 'temporarily' curtailed"? What specific event do you point to that you think is equivalent to that?
(As the article points out, this did not begin with Trump; the illiberalisation of America dates at least to 2001 and the permanent war footing thereafter.)
So "literally hitler" has taken power? Who do you believe this to be? How have the civil liberties of American citizens been curtailed by legislative actions?
> Why would you recommend forbidding anyone from making this comparison?
This is a blatant mis-representation of what I have said. I responded to your comment claiming that we ought to punch people who hold certain positions. I don't believe we ought to restrict anyone from saying anything that's not defamatory; if something defamatory is said, it can be fought out in court. The fact that I disagree with your position doesn't mean I advocate restricting your right to express it.
No. I believe I used the term “analogy” which is the opposite of what you’re implying.
> How have the civil liberties of American citizens been curtailed by legislative actions?
I didn’t mention legislative actions. There’s an overwhelming consensus among experts on authoritarianism (not just US experts, in case you were hoping to dismiss those experts as partisan hacks) that the US is currently in a transition from democracy to authoritarianism. I won’t argue this point with you for the same reason I won’t argue the reality of the climate crisis.
> > Would you recommend forbidding anyone from making this comparison?
> Why would you recommend forbidding anyone from making this comparison?
You are misquoting me: my question does not start with “why”. You added that word out of thin air, completely changing the meaning of my question.
> I responded to your comment claiming that we ought to punch people who hold certain positions.
I never said that either. You must be confusing my post with another.
> people aren't actually interested in the plight of the Uighurs. Rather, it's convenient ammunition for justifying pre-existing political and national feelings.
Hardly anyone would say that to the face of someone who gets tortured, and nobody would say it while they get tortured.
For every Nazi who actually laid hand on anyone, there were hundreds or thousands of Nazis who "merely" looked the other way, with oh so flowery language.
Can't talk about that here, it all gets flagged like a brick, because hey, anyone who cares is just "virtue signalling". I mean, how the fuck could totalitarianism be important for any intellectuals? Just like no intellectuals wrote about the Nazis or Stalin, why would they, it was all just partisan dick waving contests.
Imagine being in bed with something so horrible, you don't even dare to lift the covers. Congratulations, to all whom it may concern. May you live a long life, see interesting times, and all that jazz. All of it.
Abortion is a great one. Pro-choice advocates are painted as baby killers and murderers as opposed to those concerned with the rights of women, and pro-life advocates are portrayed as evil power hungry individuals who want nothing more than to control and degrade the rights of women, rather than people genuinely concerned about ending life at its most helpless stage.
Honestly abortion is one of the messiest, no easy answer issues out there and yet the vitriol and extreme rhetoric is completely over the top.
Here in the UK, we're going through a phase where right-wing middle-aged men are dismissed as "gammons" and progressive young people are dismissed as "snowflake millennials". People that don't buy into Brexit hype are remoaners, people that want to nationalise services are commies/marxists/trots, people that think the free market would be good for the NHS are neoliberal scum, people that are uncomfortable with current immigration levels are fascists etc... . All in the service of categorising and not having to apply any real thought or empathy.
I don't know if it's significantly worse than the situation 50 or 100 years ago, but it does get on my nerves.
On either side of various political disagreements, you commonly find each side regards the other's position as immoral, and the other person thus morally bankrupt. I think this is what's here referred to as dehumanising.
Arguments over abortion rights commonly frame the opposition as condoning infanticide on one side or violating bodily autonomy on the other. Each framing creates a morally bankrupt opposition.
Both those for and against socialism / redistribution of wealth see their opposition as wanting to take unearned wealth.
>> I keep hearing this argument that the tone and style of political arguments are getting more vicious and causing harm to society, but nobody can give me concrete examples of what they mean.
Just visit twitter and search for "muslim" or "jew" or "african american" and you'll find plenty of vicious and dehumanizing rhetoric. In any hour-long surfing session, you'll see accounts calling for all sorts of ethnic cleansing.
To me it’s calling people “racist”, “socialist” or just “haters” whenever they say something slightly off the accepted opinion . In certain camps a person with one of these labels can’t even be talked to, listened to or work at the same company (or any company).
What is an example of something “slightly off the accepted opinion” which I might say, that would get me called “racist”? And what would be the consequences for me of being called that?
People who object to affirmative action programs or special hiring programs for people who aren't white are often called "racist". Same with people who don't support illegal immigration.
The consequence can be an angry social media mob that demands your employer fire you.
Sure, an example would be the opinion that "people should have the right to assemble and engage in free speech, even if they have offensive opinions".
Such an opinion could get accused as being a defense of horrible people, as opposed to a defense of everyone's universal rights.
And some people believe that if you even think that people who are engaging in offensive behavior should have rights, then that makes you just as bad as the offensive people, and therefore deserve to be the target of violence.
Even arguing in favor of free speech, solely in support of these rights, can get you accused of being a terrible person, and therefore a deserving target of violence.
If your talking about the US, I would say the way some politicians paints illegal immigrants. Especially when the discussion about them centers around (what I think are exaggerations of) crime and drugs instead of the reality of how hard we have made it for them to come and help farm/pick our produce and do other manual labor.
One big difference is in sports there is a common higher order set of rules which are already established and everyone follows. Contrast that with the outside world where many higher beliefs, e.g. religion are no where agreed upon.
Slavery is a really exceptional (in a bad way) example of a political disagreement. In that particular disagreement, one side was clearly (in retrospect) right, the other was wrong. Nowadays we’re all on the right side, the wrong side looks obviously wrong, and there’s no real room for doubt.
Most political disagreements are nothing like this. Most political disagreements come down to some combination of (a) a trade-off between two reasonable values or (b) differing predictions about the consequences of a particular policy in the future.
If “slavery vs not slavery” is your go-to example of what a political disagreement looks like, then you’re likely to fall victim to the sorts of bad thought habits (other side evil!) that lead to dumb polarisation and tribalism.
The very reason other issues make for less incisive examples (than slavery, genocide) is that they are less clear-cut, and more beholden to complexities and tradeoffs.
It's a rhetorical trick to invoke slavery/genocide, and then group all the other controversial positions held by my political opponents as being in the same category of clear right/wrong.
But if they really were so clear-cut, they'd be invoked as broadly indisputable, standalone examples just as much as slavery and genocide are.
Slavery was very much an accepted practice by a lot of people then.
There are tons of issues that are not clear cut, like, say, the optimal rate of taxation. It's healthy to argue about those things and try different approaches.
Other things, like trying to subvert democracy, are clear as day.
“Trying to subvert democracy” isn’t really as clear as day, it’s the kind of vague accusation that people throw around about their political opponents.
Yes, but the normal political process in wealthy democratic countries simply does not give much influence to the average individual. Obviously government policies can and do have huge consequences for many individuals, civil rights being a very notable example. But when's the last time you got to vote on a civil rights issue, and even if you did, how much effect did your research and vote have on the outcome?
The reason people tend to just choose a political "team" and root for that team is that there is individual value to that process. If feels good to be part of a team, to cheer with your team's victories, and to complain about your team's losses. That's a big part of what is so fun about sports fandom. It doesn't depend on your actual individual influence on the outcome, which everyone correctly realizes is nearly negligible.
You can both be right, if we take the parent comment to mean “often” when they say always. A lot of political discussions I see are quick to point the finger at the other side without realizing the non-partisan nature of the problem.
Most people think they are sincere while promoting their own side good other side evil. All (not both!) sides do good and bad things both sides have evil people. However most people will overlook the bad someone on their side does because it is "a small thing", while jumping on the accusation bad thing someone on the other side does (often without any evidence, or minimal evidence that is played up).
At different points in history, different sides have been fairly objectively 'good' or 'bad' on various issues.
Slavery was bad.
Nixon was a crook.
Of course people are complicated and you have to look at the entirety of things, which makes it complicated, but still, I don't buy the "both sides" stuff either.
Slavery: Yes. And they're remarkably unconvincing unless you already believe north-western Europeans are God's chosen (literally) or non-whites are universally similar to children and unable to rule their own affairs.
Nixon: Well, no, actually, but as far as I know, his foreign policy was reasonably decent and somewhat effective. The problem was his attempt to subvert the American democratic process and, primarily, his use of presidential power to conceal that attempt.
But you have a good point: the other side is never Snidely Whiplash, twirling his mustache. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
On the slavery point, I would recommend broadening the perspective from just the recent history of white owners of black slaves to the greater history of slavery. For example, the example of ancient Rome and Greece. At least, if you're interested in a defense of slavery -as such- as opposed to just how Americans/Europeans did it.
Of course, Roman slavery still had plenty of problems but it's significantly easier to find examples of humane and (relatively) equitable treatment of slaves (who could be well-educated and own their own property) in Rome than in Europe/early America. And then there was the prostitution/torture/slave soldiers...
I don't know the details in Rome, but in much of antiquity, slavery was what would be considered a war crime now. It didn't need defending, any more than the other elements of warfare.
Well put. But take it a step further - had you been raised in the antebellum South, or had you been Nixon's friend - would have arrived at the same moral conclusions? For the same reasons? It's easy to condemn "the alien other" - it's much harder to reflect on one's own beliefs and the peers that hold them.
Also re: slavery I would agree with your characterization of most defenses of (American) slavery. The next natural question follows: what to do about it? Have you heard of the 1835 postcard campaign?
https://www.econtalk.org/munger-on-slavery-and-racism/
In that case, loudly and publicly condemning groups of people tends to cause them to circle the wagons and double down on their positions. I think there's a lesson for today there as well.
Yes I read it. It was still bad. I also seen Nazi propaganda movie and read their materials and guess what - it was still bad. I read communists articles aaaaand they were still bad. All those were humans, sure. But that does not mean I have to agree with them or see them as good.
Just because I see them as humans does not mean I have to ignore what they caused to other humans. Or that every human actions must be necessary been seen as good by me.
You don't even necessarily have to do this. Polemics against homosexuality and trans issues are still an extremely potent political issue today. You can still get fired from your job or kicked out of housing in many states for merely being openly gay.
As a gay man it would be completely unconsciable to support Republicanism as it exists today, because the overwhelming majority of people in the party are somewhere between apathetic and enthusiastic about denying my rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Wow, it's really messed up that you get downvoted for saying you are gay and people are quick to dimiss or fire people for being gay. And here people are dimissing you.
I agree with you, US Republicanism is completely incompatible with the healthy existence of gay and queer people as understood by the communities in for example San Francisco (where I am from). There must be gay republican communities in other areas, but I'm sure more west coast queer communities would consider those republican gay (prob not queer) communities to be repressive and unhealthy.
It's a shame people cannot relate to what you are saying, and plenty of evidence that even liberal Silicon Valley (assuming it has an outsized influence on this comment thread) has a lot of growth needed before queer people can really be appreciated in tech circles.
If you were an employer, would you fire an employee who was against gay marriage? Should the state protect the continued employment of such an employee?
In general, having opinions and keeping them to yourself is fine. Being shitty to your colleagues because of it is generally not. And publicly threatening or attacking others is not. It's not about your beliefs, but what you do with them.
You can be right wing, or conservative, while still not supporting the current Republican party. And if you look hard enough you might find any permutation of beliefs and support for various things in one person.
A fairly prominent LGBT person, Latrice Royale, at one point did not support gay marriage. That doesn't mean that I agree with that position, nor does that mean the majority of gay people do or should.
You can believe that certain actions people do are wrong with demeaning them as subhuman evil beings. In fact, if you want them to stop doing those things you dislike without resorting to physical violence, acknowledging our shared humanity is the first step.
Well, you have to be careful there, because it very much depends on how acute the situation has become. If the situation is acute enough, you really shouldn't be talking at all, you have to move to action.
For less important issues, sure, talk it out. Like most domestic political issues, those are just little things. No one's dying, no one's being enslaved. So talking it out is actually not only the preferable choice, but the correct choice.
But for acute issues, say something like slavery, or Germany processing thousands of Jews through death camps weekly, or even domestically if some guy goes to shoot up a Walmart, the time for talk has past. I suppose we could ask them to stop, just as a formality, but any answer other than "We'll stop immediately and unconditionally" has to be met with force. That's the whole reason we have police, because sometimes, it's just not practical to "talk it out" in the hopes that the bad actor stops doing what they're doing.
Certainly with slavery we probably waited far too long to stop the behavior, and that hesitation made forcing an end to the problem worse than it otherwise would have been. It's a good reminder that in life, as a general rule, it's always best to handle acute issues as soon as possible.
Now what's funny about all of the animosity today, is that other than the problem of domestic terrorism, there are no acute issues. So there is nothing really worth fighting over. (Again, stopping mass shooters excepted. And I'm not sure anyone is arguing against that idea anyway?) So it's kind of perplexing to me that people get so mad over issues these days? As most of the issues seem so petty in a historic or even cultural sense.
I'd just like to point out that "Germany processing thousands of Jews through death camps weekly" didn't matter to anyone until after the war was over. (Well, anyone outside Germany. And there were people who knew what was going on and tried to show it to the world, but there are cranks everywhere.)
It's possible that the politics is so horrible precisely because the stakes are so small. There's nothing that makes Team A realize that there's something more important at stake than defeating Team B.
> Now what's funny about all of the animosity today, is that other than the problem of domestic terrorism, there are no acute issues.
I was with you the whole paragraph until this. Unless you're living in a nice Suburb and haven't been paying attention to news, we (well, the US, but some are global) face a lot of very serious issues that do demand an urgency of action, since talking hasn't been very useful in resolving them:
* Climate Change and decarbonization
* Social Media destabilizing and undermining democracies all over the world leading to violence against minorities worldwide
* [US] Police brutality and general incarceration of African Americans
* [US] Rising healthcare expenses potentially putting reasonable healthcare out of the reach of most Americans, especially the most vulnerable
* [US] Inequal economic development completely devastating most regions of the US leading to social instabilities
* [US] Massive student load debts, trapping an entire generation under the weight of unpayable debt
And those are just a few things I thought about right away.
There are a variety of issues that need urgent action to tackle them.
Did people take their stances for or against slavery as a result of careful consideration the issue, or did people mostly follow the example of those in their social group and choose to support their own "side"?
We don't need slavery today because we have machines. But in the past if an empire didn't practice slavery implied that other empires will conquer you and slave you. So slavery was required for survival.
It's today that this debate is clear. In ancient times, the reverse was true.
I think you missed the point here - slavery over which the US fought a civil war was not in ancient times nor did it protect US from becoming enslaved.
counterexample: interventionism. An awful lot of people who were vocally against interventionism during the Bush administration became grudgingly accepting of it during the Obama era. I think that's the kind of politics GP is referring to.
> An awful lot of people who were vocally against interventionism during the Bush administration became grudgingly accepting of it...
You'd think that. It was amazing to see the mass protests while W was president that simply evaporated as soon as Obama was in office.
But I disagree that people changed their minds. People were still protesting while Obama was president, and anti-war writers like Greenwald kept up a consistent position.
What went on is the press, really a handful of editors, simply spiked stories about the wars and the protests, and by starving them of media coverage, they didn't weigh on people's minds so heavily.
The higher-ups in a news office have to make judgement calls about what a news program is going to focus on, and to them some stuff feels more or less newsworthy depending on who's in office. It could be some shadowy conspiracy, or, more likely, just their personal unconcious biases.
I think both of these things are true, actually. It does seem that some on the left are fine with war as long as it's a Democrat doing it. For example, look at Hillary Clinton's complicity during the Honduran coup, and how little criticism she received for it. Or deportation and drone strikes under Obama, as another example.
However, it's also true that the anti-war movement died off partly due to failure essentially, as the Iraq War proceeded with essentially no resistance from elected officials, and no coverage from the mainstream media. I think this, more than partisanship, explains why it's basically dead in the water now. If the movement fails to achieve its goals, people will eventually go home. This all happened within W's term.
Protest altogether didn't die out under Obama, however, Occupy Wall Street started in 2011, and was heavily critical of Obama's coziness with the finance industry. Within left movements that exist now, many seem to see a through-line from Occupy Wall Street.
Overall, this speaks to the narrative about tribalism, because there's a tendency to see the opposing group as one mass, when in reality, there are different groups within each side that may disagree with each other as much as they do the nominally-opposed groups. This tendency is also exacerbated by the two-party system in the US that smushes what would really be 3-6 parties together into two.
Only Congress can declare war. Just about anybody with authority in the military can start one. Regardless, Congress has effectively abnegated its authority to the president through the war powers resolution.
This technicality really shouldn't be brought up. War is war and several presidents have taken military action without a formal declaration of war in congress.
> Goes back to watching impeachment proceedings wherein our current President is being proven to have been extorting _another country_ for personal gain while his party fully stands behind him...
That's just not a true reflection of public opinion about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Support for the war in Afghanistan steadily fell from nearly 90% in 2002 to well under 50% during Obama's second term. Similarly, support for the Iraq war plummeted under Bush and remained effectively flat under Obama.
Your comment reminds me of an HN article that was recently posted: "Study of “moral grandstanding” helps explain why social media is so toxic".
More seriously, your comment screams of tribalism. I think that you will find that most people, across all political aisles, are decent humans who genuinely mean no ill-will towards others. I would be surprised if any political comment posted online has ever changed the mind of someone else. What does change the minds of others, though, is face-to-face, compassionate, honest dialogue.
I think it's possible to change the minds of others through online posting. It has happened to me and I think I've effected change in others. However, all online posts are not equal.
Posts like GP I think are likely to have the opposite effect. Bad faith argument tends to let people dismiss any valid content and reinforce existing views and groups.
I find the key is to be respectful and to make an effort to understand where the other person is coming from. This unfornately appears to be a less and less common tactic.
> Have you been in an argument recently about whether women deserve the right to own property?
I have been in plenty of arguments about abortion rights, rights of asylum seekers, rights of minorities, etc. The list goes on. A point being partisan doesn't mean it is untrue or necessarily biased to bend the truth.
>The way partisans exaggerate the crimes of the other team while ignoring those perpetrated by their own is not so far from the way people talk about sports teams.
It is your untrue assessment that anyone criticizing a party like the US Republican party automatically would not criticize their opposition. This assertion - without any context whatsoever here - is pretty tribal in itself.
Those arguments are not property rights. Referring to them as property rights is an intentionally misleading exaggeration. I can't think of how this isn't "biased to bend the truth". Surely not all statements do this, but a lot do. I never made the generalization that the word "necessarily" implies.
I also never made the generalization that anyone making a partisan point would never criticise their own team. But the post in question, and many posts like it, define an all-or-nothing, good-vs-evil struggle that leaves no room for that nuance, and hinders an empathetic discourse with anyone on the "evil" team. It's not limited to any specific flavor of partisan, and the polarization this engenders has had some significant consequences.
To me, your argument kinda feels like a #NotAllMen or "You are racist for pointing out I benefit from and perpetuate racism." I am challenging a specific type of discourse, and you are inventing generalized, absolute extrapolations to declare untrue. Exaggerating to make your opponents position seem untenable doesn't change minds, it entrenches existing positions.
>To me, your argument kinda feels like a #NotAllMen or "You are racist for pointing out I benefit from and perpetuate racism." I am challenging a specific type of discourse, and you are inventing generalized, absolute extrapolations to declare untrue. Exaggerating to make your opponents position seem untenable doesn't change minds, it entrenches existing positions.
I am very confused how you think my comment is in any way an example of this type of line of thinking.
>I also never made the generalization that anyone making a partisan point would never criticise their own team. But the post in question, and many posts like it, define an all-or-nothing, good-vs-evil struggle that leaves no room for that nuance, and hinders an empathetic discourse with anyone on the "evil" team.
You absolutely did make such an assertion just a comment ago. And the whole discussion here started off through a very vague "all sides are the same" calendar motto. They're obviously not.
Where did I assert that absurd generalization you accuse me of? I use fuzzy language about a specific behavior, and you extrapolate it to a absolute that anyone who might ever say such a thing is incapable of nuance or self-criticism. I never said that. I'm really not sure where you see that at all. Can you clear this up for me?
The behavior of exaggerating a claim to knock it down is not unique to to any flavor of partisan. Just as one might respond to criticism of common sexist male behaviors by crying reverse-sexism, one can respond to a criticism of common tribal behaviors with claims of reverse-tribalism. While the behaviors are ultimately different, the structures of responses to criticism tend to be rather similar.
No one said "all sides" are the same. Just that the political discourse is deteriorating. This is well documented by decades of research. It's actually a lot less likely to happen in systems were more than two sides are allowed to exist at once.
Treating politics as 'just politics' suggests a staggering level of willful blindness to the hardships that many people go through. For some people, these 'just politics' encompass matters literally up to and including life and death [1].
Absolutism is never a good thing (ironically), but you are echoing a tired narrative that seeks to undermine objective moral good by making a false equivalence.
Treating people with respect is a good thing.
Helping those in need is a good thing.
Ensuring a fair chance whenever possible is a good thing.
I could go on and on, but I think you know which side of the aisle I stand on.
I hate sports for the very reason you describe, but my objection to people who hold opposing views to me is grounded in an understanding of an intrinsic respect and value of humanity, not some ra-ra us vs. them mentality. I'm more than happy to welcome someone with opposing views if it seems they genuinely wish the best for others in their views. But on asking how they might right the wrongs of this world, their answers usually come down to "tough shit."
Any explanation of why social media is toxic without mentioning the Like button is incomplete.
All of the status-seeking behaviors the researchers describe existed before Likes, but by gamifying social status Facebook threw gasoline on the narcissism fire.
And yes, Facebook didn’t invent the like button (that was Friendfeed) but they made it a standard.
Also worth noting that a key component of Facebook’s initial positioning was that it did NOT have any gamified counters, unlike MySpace and Bebo which were fueled by profile views and friend counts.
indeed , there were forums well before SNs were a thing, and while they were contentious at times, they weren't constantly at the brink of explosion/tribal wars. Makes one wonder if we even need likes/upvotes to reward opinions. It's possible that they were useful to get the social conversation going, but as the networks grew to huge scale, they ve lost most of their usefulness. I wonder how twitter would be without likes for a day
Likes are 100% never going anywhere. They provide a means for Google/FB/whoever to categorize you. The instant you click 'like' on a post about the latest pro-Dems thing, or on a post organizing a pro-life rally, or on something a band posted, they instantly know a lot about you. (Or more specifically, the algorithms begin acting as if they know a lot about you.) Every time you click 'like,' you are fine-tuning the company's profile of you. Maybe at one point they were about rewarding opinions or something, but in today's big-data-driven social networks, they are entirely about categorization for ads.
Certainly possible. I do know they have done some small work to de-emphasize the numbers -- the idea being that seeing a small number next to your own post makes you sad and less likely to use the service. And I suppose I could see the possibility of a place like instagram deciding, actually, we can deduce enough based purely on who you follow, whose stuff you regularly click on.
Who knows, maybe they do actually see the possibility of culture at large making a hard turn away from SM due to its tendencies to increase depression & anxiety, increase conflict, etc., as a serious risk to their business.
But consider that in Instagram's case, it's most likely just an attempt at discrediting "influencers" - which are a big parallel marketplace of ads occurring on Facebook's property without any return for the main company.
> there were forums well before SNs were a thing, and while they were contentious at times, they weren't constantly at the brink of explosion/tribal wars.
The ones I was on were sure tribal and it was just a gaming forum that could get pretty ridiculous over just Xbox vs PS2 vs Gamecube. Because humans are viscously tribal.
I think the like-button is a distraction from a reality we don't want to admit.
I too remember forums back in the day. Usenet via AOL was my first online social experience. I think Twitter etc would be more like that old school experience - much more of a niche product, still with the usual trolls etc but in general higher quality to noise ratio.
> Higher scores on prestige-seeking were associated with narcissistic extraversion and extraversion more generally, while the dominance aspects were strongly associated with narcissistic antagonism (a willingness to exploit others for personal gains), and related to lower conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness.
This is terribly interesting, especially if you've read Haidt. It means that every political argument on the internet will naturally split up into left-associated "virtue signalers" and right-associated "trolls."
These are only two traits measured leaving many who correlate to neither. I am hardly well versed in the jargon discussed here to speak authoritatively, but more than half the variance is unaccounted for. An outsized effect for sure, but not the whole effect, and not even the largest single factor.
The schadenfreude that occurs when someone tries to 'cancel' another person on social media, only for them to be 'cancelled' for their own previously uncovered misdeeds is pretty pleasing. [O]
Unfortunately I think this is reflective of our society. With social media, there is little room for growth, acknowledgement of mistakes, and understand. You're either with the crowd or not. It's a big reason why I've removed myself from social media. Glass houses everywhere.
Isn't 'cancel culture' vastly overstated? We hear so much about it because media personalities (mainstream through to podcasters) are the targets of it, so they're naturally going over-value the threat of it.
Cancel culture also affects everyday people who belong to friend groups, workplaces, schools, and families. We just don't hear about it because the cases aren't newsworthy. People get suddenly ignored, ostracized, and bullied for being many things whether its LGBT, religious, atheist, or conservative.
For examples of people getting cut off or ignored by their families and friends purely based on politics, look up the "WalkAway" group, there are hundreds of emotional video monologues by regular people. Fair warning - it is a partisan FB group, but a majority of the uploads specifically name the cancel culture they experienced as a contributing factor to why they changed their political beliefs.
Cancel culture affects ordinary people's social lives and career just as much, perhaps more so than media figures who can rely on the sympathy of like-minded crowds to bounce back.
Jon Haidt, one of the authors of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coddling_of_the_American_M..., said that "isn't it overstated?" was such a common assertion that it was one of the reasons he wanted to go quantify it for this book. And it's not overstated.
Though the book (nor interview) is just focused on call-out culture. But it does talk about some interesting aspects of it, like how calling out is a way to win prestige.
What I find odd about this is that I am effectively (I hope) anonymous online, even on twitter, but I still get totally mad when people trash my ideas. It's like my ideas are a part of my extended self.
This I think is why moral grandstanding is a more valuable concept than Virtue Signalling - VS wouldn't make sense in an anonymous context, and apparently signalling means something different anyway according to this:
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/stop-saying-virtue-signalling
For many, ideas are a part of identity. I am a good person because I support good policies and vote for good party. I am smart because I have intelligent thoughts and ideas.
When the quality of these ideas is challenged, it therefore can be a challenge to the quality of the person holding them, if they base their identity on their thoughts. I find this is quite common.
Another effect of this mindset is that changing your mind becomes more difficult. It's a hard thing to get out of.
Are there people who have a [strong] sense of identity that's somehow not centred around their ideas? I'm trying to imagine what that looks like?
Maybe "it doesn't matter what I think, I'm $Nationality and that's who I am"? [But does anyone think like that? And isn't that just an idea that informs identity?]
In earlier times, identity was mostly a function of social relationships. This seemed to be a lot more concrete than abstract concept of identity that is popular in industrial societies.
Here are some other things that might inform/create identity besides political opinions shared on twitter: race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, occupation, consumption preferences, skills, activities, appearance.
All of these are ideas to some degree, but some are more concrete than others. But ultimately, identity itself is an idea and I don't think it can be fully separated from other constructs of the mind.
If you ask me about my identity the first thing that comes to my mind is the life I've lived. The things I got to experience, my failures, my accomplishments, the choices I made.
It is not the great taste of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches which you enjoy, it is the idea that 'pb&j tastes great' which informs your enjoyment of it.
I get sad and frustrated when I get downvoted, even though I'm (pseudo-)anonymous. It's completely irrational, and I'm a bit ashamed for it, yet it's gotten to a point where I basically just don't bother anymore with politics online.
It's strange because I don't have such issues in real life. And my friends confirm that I'm intellectually honest and nuanced, or at least not nuts. I just can't imagine people talking to me face to face in the way I'm so used to on the internet, all smug and doing their best to find the worst possible interpretation of a comment.
This study seems like it was designed to reach the specific conclusion that it did, based on the way that it defined "moral grandstanding." Here are some questions they asked to measure it:
13. When I share my moral/political beliefs, I do so to show people who disagree with me that I am better than them.
14. I share my moral/political beliefs to make people who disagree with me feel bad
28. Even if expressing my moral/political views does not help anyone, it is important that I share them.
…and lo and behold, they found that people who answered "yes" to those questions were also more narcissistic and more concerned with appearance than substance. Ok. Well, that's not really surprising. But it tells us nothing about how prevelent these motivations are compared to genuine concern for the issues at hand.
I'm quite sure Hacker News would have ripped into this sort of study if it weren't promoting the "politics is sports" narrative that this community is so fond of, which is sort of ironic given how the study specifically talks about "echo chambers."
> But it tells us nothing about how prevelent these motivations are compared to genuine concern for the issues at hand.
I found that to be a curious statement, because—and I didn't read the study, just here for the commentary—it seems like we're talking about how certain types of behaviour are differentiated from a whole for some reason. In this case, the effort seems to be toward finding disingenuous grandstanding, but how do we define genuine concern? When does a political belief that someone has become genuine and how do others outside this apparent narcissistic group reflect more noble intention?
My impression for some time has been that genuine concern for any given political topic is a function of the cost in having, revealing, or defending it. For example, if you are Brandon Eich, there is a tremendous cost in upholding his homophobic values; to himself and others. The racist who has never met whoever they hate, the gay man with anti-abortion values, nor the 17 year old who screams on reddit about Hong Kong and Blizzard but still buys their games and isn't in the crossfire quite a lot less.
-- Tried to use contemporary references. Brandon recently did an AMA and refused to answer any question about that controversy, not building too much confidence in his product called "Brave"
In fact I replied on Reddit to the one and only good faith question posed there, and in the end gained a Brave user. You can find that on Reddit if you look past all the loaded “have you stopped being a hateful bigot” non-questions, which I did not answer.
That’s right, I don’t respond to baiting — especially from handles with obvious twitter accounts who were planning to drag me in front of a mob. I’ve written elsewhere on Reddit and even more often on HN too, so take your imputation of cowardice back to the shop and do read more of what I have written.
> I found that to be a curious statement, […] it seems like we're talking about how certain types of behaviour are differentiated from a whole for some reason.
This study is being used to attack the character of people who make bold statements about politics online (See: this thread), on the basis that they do it out of narcissism and power-seeking. I think this study does a very poor job demonstrating that, because they clearly selected for people who are narcissistic and power-seeking, which for all we know is small proportion of people who post about politics online. This is sort of like if I published a study saying "people who post on tech forums are greedy, immoral capitalists," but I selected my group of tech forum-posters by asking "Agree or disagree: I lie to drive interest in my products."
> When does a political belief that someone has become genuine and how do others outside this apparent narcissistic group reflect more noble intention?
You seem to be operating from the very strange assumption that by default, all political statements are made out of narcissism, and that we need some special reason to think that they're genuine. This contradicts how we tend to think in pretty much every other area of life. For instance, if I wrote "Java is the worst language in the world." you would probably assume that I was disliked Java for some reason. You would probably not assume that I was secretly trying to make java programmers feel bad, or that I was trying to suck up to C# programmers, or whatever. Likewise, if someone says "$POLITICIAN is a criminal who should be in jail," my assumption is that they really believe it. There doesn't have to be anything noble about it: it's just normal. People say what they believe.
> My impression for some time has been that genuine concern for any given political topic is a function of the cost in having, revealing, or defending it.
That suggests that only minority opinions are genuine, and moreover that broad, genuine agreement throughout the population is impossible. I think almost the entire United States was genuinely concerned about terrorism the day after 9/11, even though you would probably not lose anything by speaking out against terrorism.
I tend to agree with how you've reframed my points, in fact all of them, though I could have been a little more careful with my words.
Regarding the last point, I'd say that cost wouldn't designate a belief genuine or not, and now that I think of it, narcissistic intention doesn't negate that either. Rather, it's an assessment of how bold a statement is, or the degree to which it's likely to be shallow or indicative of attention grabbing for personal gain. More concisely, putting your money where your mouth is.
After 911, if you were afraid of terrorism, it might come up in conversation and you'd talk about it, but going to random places on the internet and discussing it unprompted—especially if you used it as a vehicle for middle eastern bigotry, which was also common—would signal something else, especially if you have a figurative grand stand available. Those that have a minority opinion would be less likely to be doing it for claps—although they might get them—because their audience is more ambiguous. More about the degree being the measure. I'm concerned about climate change, but have only personally given up a bit in the name of it. If I were to be extremely vocal on reddit about that, it would be for imaginary personal gain. That said, a third case of both being true definitely exists. Having high cost and an opinion doesn't negate the possibility that you're moral grandstanding.
I suppose what I was thinking about was more to do with how much you'd need to have considered a given stance, based on potential conflict with your personal beliefs or those of most people around you.
On Reddit, several weeks ago, I strongly objected to an author singling out a presidential candidate with a nickname, while not doing the same for the others.
It's fair to say I was outraged since I threw an "F" word in there. Although I didn't do it to seek status, it got something like 2000 upvotes.
Anecdotally, I can see that grandstanding works, if "karma" is what you care about.
People like to pretend that karma/upvotes/likes aren't "real" but they absolutely are real, if everyone even slightly considers them a symbol of status online.
Real life is hard to deal with. However, if you look at what other people do, then you can learn from their mistakes. But there's still too many scenarios that occur and too few people to watch. So you can listen to the stories that your peer group tells. You're second hand watching the people your extended peer group is watching. And bonus points, you can get tribal knowledge where people remember what others have said long after they're gone.
This makes being a person who people listen to an important aspect of being part of a society. If you're listened to, then you and your "social lineage" get to survive to the next generation of how to live. This also means that you don't have to relearn the lessons of a competing "social lineage" in order to stay compatible with your peers.
Getting likes is an easy feedback mechanism to know if people are listening to your ideas. Additionally, some people will listen to people who others listen to. So getting likes can directly feed into your own social fitness.
Likes are much more real that most other things that people deal with in their day to day lives.
> Political ideology had no relationship with moral grandstanding scores.
i.e. narcissism is a bipartisan problem. (I mean, we knew that already, didn't we? "Crooked X", "X belongs in jail" and the like, relating to a well-known presidential candidate, is not something that the "left" came up with!) OTOH, it's nice to finally have an actual research paper that clearly links this sort of hypocritical grandstanding with narcissistic tendencies.
The psychological root of “call out culture” is the same as sports brawls, wartime civilian massacres, and bullying. Vanquishing people is... can we admit it... fun. That’s why the Olympic gold medalists smile so much. Now, vanquishing someone with no risk to oneself, with no work required, and in the safety of a huge mob? It’s like getting to be a war hero with the risk and effort of playing Call of Duty.
Pretty fascinating and also sort of "no duh." Thinking about how those with access to information networks have leveraged the technology throughout history, it seems like it is always used for the purpose of "moral grandstanding."
Social media is just the fully fleshed out network. I'm just thinking about the progression from letters, the pony express, the railroad, the telegraph, the telephone, radio, movies, television, internet, to now social networks.
Haven't those with access to the information network always used it to express why their opinion is right or wrong? The toxicity is maybe just a function of the rapid increase of access. There is now an "infinite" number of those with access to an "infinite" number of listeners. With TV or radio, the listeners are still there, but access to dissemination is highly restricted. With telegraphs or telephones, both access and audience are restricted.
I'm not sure if this problem was ever solved before. Maybe it was just stifled....
the article speaks about individuals attempting to gain recognition through grandstanding.
I think the more contemporary issue would be with individuals attempting to manipulate the 'psychological set" of a large group through a moderated grandstanding eg your with us, or your with the [insert villain here] !
note this is simultaneously an assertion of brinksmanship.
>“Collectively, these findings provide support for an account of moral grandstanding that conceptualises it as a status-seeking behaviour that is driven by status-seeking motives,” and that could explain some of the problems with social discourse, especially on social media, the team writes.
It gives me hope to see researchers starting to tackle this social phenomenon. Now that there is a foothold on some scientific results, maybe we can finally start to take it seriously and influence behavior. IG's experimenting with removing likes seems to be a step in that direction. Hopefully there will be more initiatives like this.
I'm glad to see this coming from the British Psychological Society. One of the most active feeds in my news reader is the BBC, and they seem way over-the-top PC. (I fear this was beginning to shade my perception of the whole UK.) I feel better about things. God save the Queen!
Doesn't this also explain why traditional media, politics, religion, academia, etc are all toxic? Is it that social media is toxic or that the toxic world has now adopted social media? Moral grandstanding has been around for millennia before social media.
Unfortunately that has become a loaded term because it was only used by "one side" against "the other side." Often that term is rejected and ignored outright because of this. But yes, I agree.
Virtue Signalling is used by everyone, just in different ways.
The intersectional left however, is generally the group with words and actions powerful enough for it to be highly visible, at least at the national level. In local terms, say at the level of school/church/neighbourhood I think, paradoxically, it's people of very conventional/classical morality that might have more power via shaming etc..
Whereas at on CNN for example generally one's 'private sex life' is out of bounds (unless there's something illegal) ... I think that in social circles, there's a lot of gossip and talk about that kind of stuff.
To me the results of this study are obvious, but it would be interesting to point out how it may have nothing to do with the validity of the moralisation. 'Virtue signallers' may often be right, but it's the ugly sanctimony and lack of context that I object to.
My understanding of "virtue signalling" is that it contains the notion that the proclaimed position isn't sincerely held and that it is professed solely as a performance for others. "Grandstanding" is being loud and performative about your beliefs, but carries no connotation that the beliefs are not sincere.
The authors address this in the paper. They claim that MG is different to VS as VS is a colloquial term used to criticise people on social media, whereas MG “has been extensively explored and defined in philosophical literature”.
"Our basic contention is that one grandstands when one makes a contribution to public moral discourse that aims to convince others that one is “morally respectable.” By this we mean that grandstanding is a use of moral talk that attempts to get others to make certain desired judgments about oneself, namely, that one is worthy of respect or admiration because one has some particular moral quality—for example, an impressive commitment to justice, a highly tuned moral sensibility, or unparalleled powers of empathy. To grandstand is to turn one's contribution to public discourse into a vanity project."
Ah ok. Thanks for clarifying. Intent doesn't come across with these things! But I did notice that your comment history hasn't been flamebaity, which is why I gave you the mild version of the standard mod reply.
Maybe stick /s on the end. Poe's Law and all that, and these days folks just scan read things then twitch rather than reconsider a post in its best possible light.
At some point in the last 20 years, politics became a sport.
IMHO its due to the rise of cable news silos and talk radio charlatans taking on the role once reserved for journalists and experts. By oversimplifying very complex issues into Us vs Them, they created an environment ripe for exploitation. And since the currency of media is Attention, the more sensationalist you become, the more attention and money you receive.
This translates perfectly to social media, where the currency is also attention and the rewards, a bit more convoluted than just money. Its what this article describes, the need for attention outweighs the actual results...
In addition to the causes you list, I'd add that education has become increasingly politicized (in the extreme). To the point where many new graduates are either activists or reactionary from having been steeped in that environment for at least the time they were in higher ed.
That's pure speculation based on your own views and experiences. What you probably noticed, is the visibility into these people's lives that you or others did not have prior to social media and 24/7 connectivity. Universities have always skewed towards the left side of the spectrum, it used to be called liberal arts educated, today the right has successfully renamed it as indoctrination.
It's not speculation. "No platforming", "safe spaces", "trigger warnings"... are all relatively recent inventions. Universities have always been left leaning, but the "moral grandstanding" mentioned in the original post is a more recent development.
I agree that those are all terrible as well! The reason I don't think they lead to "moral grandstanding" that we see discussed in the OP is because they were fundamentally outward focused, in that they were meant to accomplish something (misguided and pointless as they may be). Whereas the items I list are very much about in-group signaling. Hence "grandstanding".
No platforming, safe spaces and trigger warnings are all outwardly focused. Especially no platforming and trigger warnings.
The dynamic within christian groups that leads to a the things I described all have considerable in-group signaling component.
Also, some level of that in-group signaling is functional - people don't just randomly take coordinated actions like that. The signaling component is likely necessary for the organization to happen.
I think you might want to revisit some history there. Consider Yellow Dog Democrats and the actions of various political machines. Politics has always been a sport, at least as far as being Us vs. Them. And sometimes sports become politics: see the Nika riots (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots).
Modern social media may exacerbate the effect, but it didn't invent it.
Its always been tribal, but the indoctrination of the uneducated into a army of sorts, is a new phenom. The rise of talk radio and opinion based news/broadcasting has truly amplified this and created the deeply opinionated and woefully ignorant political discourse we have today.
The sheer level of damage and instability social media has done to the West in the past decade can only lead one to suppose that it has been intentional and that there has been a powerful hand behind it.
What benefits has it brought about? We know we're increasingly anxious, lonely and isolated despite it, so what "social" benefits have these "social" enterprises actually caused?
Because the list of damage is endless, and the list of victims never-ending.
Watching politicized animosity, done for the purpose of the researched grandstanding, spill over into universities and public life has been horrifying. Careers and lives ruined for not keeping up with the ever-changing morals of the online mob, culminating in events such as those at Evergreen State College, the Christakis furore at Yale, the constant speech policing because non-adherent political speech now makes others feel "unsafe", etc. People who were once the leaders of progressive movement turned into right-wing nazi bigots over publications that were on-narrative, or ahead of it, when published, now resurrected to be held against them by today's constantly changing standards.
Even in this thread, a topic on an objective study of the effects of social media, simply pointing to it has caused an uncontrolled, partisan, shitshow.
None of this ends well. A society full of increasingly anxious and isolated people, seeking purpose in online identity groups known for electing the most vitriolic doomsday preachers as leaders, who are increasingly viewing the "other side" as an enemy, armed with a treasure trove of historical tweets/fb posts/etc. to dig through for evidence of their crimes, does not end well.
Social media may prove to be the biggest mistake we've ever made.
A billion-dollar idea: a combination pseudo-outrage, crybully, political correctness, troll, flaming and keyboard warrior pre-filter. And for 2.0: a micropayment cost to comment that adjusts based on social reputation and identity verification (people who give very good, high-signal answers should get some payment or bonuses periodically and per engagement).
None of this is true. People do not seek better social status by arguing with unseen, unknown people, they seek social change. The status quo lies to limit the damage, because when unseen, unknown voices speak truth they cannot stop the change, which all the unheard voices want.
It's even odds that a study like this won't be replicated[1], so it's not worth much.
I think the GP's only indefensible claim is "none of this is true," the observations the researchers made could all be statistically valid and people may be "seeking social change" by moral grandstanding.
After all, you have a mess of political tribes vying for influence, and the dominant tribe is the one that broadly gets to set the rules.
What's wrong with this study is that what they claim was found is a complete lie. As in it is not true. What I don't like about it is that it is a lie.
So no matter what I'm wrong. See, that's not true, it's just the status quo seeking itself. They lie, and seek to make it impossible to defy. NOTHING NEW.
You're not wrong no matter what. You're wrong because all you're saying is that the study is wrong. Why? What about the study do you object to? You've provided nothing to back up your disagreement, except that you think they're lying. It's just a pretty decent example of social-media-style outrage. honestly.
That doesn't make me wrong. So somebody lies, and saying they lie is impossible ? I don't have to prove you're a liar to call you a liar, otherwise the liar always gets what they want. It's ok to call liars liars without it needing any work whatsoever. It's just a statement of fact, if you choose to believe the liar because they lied and nobody can do the work necessary to change your mind, that's on you. At least you had a chance to hear something besides the lie.
Epstein didn't kill himself. Sorry, I don't have any proof. But they did a study, and lied.
Except in that case you could cite reputable media channel interviews with the qualified experts hired by his family members who were present for the autopsy. You're just making lazy and borderline intellectually dishonest heckles from your keyboard.
If only that were true. But I’ve never seen a single mind changed from these online “debates”, because no one ever enters them willing to admit they might be wrong.
Suppose we divide up the audience of a typical debate. (Caveats: people are on a spectrum, it's not likely symmetric, and this is somewhat framed in terms of political parties but shouldn't be and I can't be arsed to fix it.)
Your base agrees with you, and is invested in that position. They're not going to change their mind, but they may abandon you if you don't demonstrate that you're committed. Your aim is to motivate them to support you, through money or activity.
The other side's base is the opposite, of course. And your aim there is to get them to stay home, or to abandon their side. This is why hypocrisy is such a common charge and there's so much focus on various scandals.
Persuasive arguments are aimed at people who haven't formed an opinion. That's why plainly ideological outlets will present themselves as objective and authoritative; people who feel they are neutral can sign on with them without feeling like they're actually taking a side.
So the reason you don't hear people changing their mind is the people who are likely to are those who haven't formed an opinion, and thus aren't sounding off in the first place.
Moreover, the evidence you present is rarely as compelling as you think. Ask a lawyer how often they've had to talk down clients who were convinced they had an ironclad argument. The big ideologies have axiomatic differences they are not necessarily fully aware of, and those tend to be why neither is convinced by the other.
But it is possible to raise a point they have a genuine problem with. If you have done so, the thing to look for is not an immediate response. It's that the other side's talking points shift in response; especially if they shift to "let's change the subject."
If what you're saying is true, it means that people never get involved in politics for the wrong reasons. People get involved in all kinds of things in every area of life for all kinds of wrong reasons, and I don't see why politics should be different.
For example, charity is a good thing (feeding the poor, etc.), but would anyone say that making a show of your generosity is a phenomenon that never happens? It's an impure motive, but it's also very common. So common it's a standard PR strategy for companies.
You can say that good can still come of it regardless of motives, and I'd agree, but when trying to understand a social phenomenon, I think it's fair to look at what motivates people to participate.
You don’t see how people seek social status by vocalizing their loyalty to political ideologies ?
In my view I see it as a primary motivator, and I think people are unaware of this.
Take a look around you next time someone starts ranting on “Save the oceans” or Climate change — and as much as you know those individuals think about what is intrinsically motivating them.
>People do not seek better social status by arguing with unseen, unknown people...
Correct, they seek social status by bashing unseen unknown people in front of people with higher social status. The more powerful those they seek to impress, the more people will seek to impress them.
Honestly, the way people have been dehumanizing each other over politics kind of scares me. It reminds me of the way propaganda dehumanizes 'the enemy' in war time. It's not a good way to look at other people, especially not over which political party they voted for.