Separate ideology (or whatever happens to be the object of bias) from identity, and you're halfway there. People are much more amenable to changing their minds if their identities aren't at stake. For example, most people can discuss the pros and cons of F-150s and Silverados fairly rationally; those with the Calvin pissing logos, not so much.

Again agreed. But how would you accomplish that?

For large majorities of voters, dropping that ballot in the box is over 90% an identity game.

On a societal level, your guess is good as mine. Perhaps increased infrastructure spending so that high-skill, high-pay jobs are more evenly spread out and ideological segregation is reduced?

On an individual level, being active in (non-political) hobbies and volunteer groups can help, especially ones that attract both people from the cities and the countryside.

Prove that assumption, please.

We have to design systems that work with the people we have, not the people we wish we had.

Fail to recognize that, and you've failed before you've started.

>> most people can discuss the pros and cons of F-150s and Silverados fairly rationally; those with the Calvin pissing logos, not so much.

How is this different from stereotyping then?

Who am I stereotyping? People with "Calvin pissing on Ford/Chevy/Ram logo" stickers? The vast majority of truck drivers don't really care about brand--they just want the most appropriate truck for their situation.

None of us function in this way. While part of the solution does have to involve people becoming better at vetting their information-sources, it is equally important to acknowledge that for everyone to do this individually would be absolutely impossible given time constraints.

What we need, fundamentally, is a media environment that can harness the collective capacity of humans to vet and debate new information in an organized fashion that can be trusted. This site is a good example where a knowledgeable community, and the simple mechanism of votes does some automatic, crowd-based content curation. But the Reddit-like model is very basic - so much more could possibly be done to allow individual users to contribute to a collective process of knowledge-building.

I think we need more development and discussion devoted to what kind of systems could be designed to encourage transparency, quality, and critical analysis in our news-making.

Well, a good first step would be an education system that encouraged a culture of curiosity and respectful questioning, rather than just "obey".

Hah! It's worse.

As a kid I learnt this and tried to be as rational and aware of my fallibalities as possible.

That makes you an alien to normal human beings. Conversation becomes impossible, processing fast enough becomes impossible, and the penalties for acting weird and communicating weird are huge.

Instead you need to find a way to act in a manner that allows you to blend in with people.

Is that how you function?