I'd actually be really interested in knowing what percentage of people read opposing rhetoric.

I easily spend far more time listening to and reading right-leaning rhetoric, despite being left leaning. I already know "my side". Why would I want to live in an echo chamber?

I have to read NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Economist, The Guardian, Breitbart, TimesofIsrael to get full information. NYT does a lot of censoring/under emphasizing of critical information. Of course there is also general reading that is important.

Interestingly, this is still a significantly limited echo chamber because these sources are all Anglo-centric, perhaps even the Times of Israel despite its location.

Of course, this number of publications is already a large investment of time so I don't think it's reasonable to expect anyone to do more.

> because these sources are all Anglo-centric

They are also mainstream media. They provide a very narrow set of viewpoints.

One example? No newspaper publish material as significant as wikileaks.

The South China Morning Post, even though more under mainland control than it was a year ago, is worth reading. For a while, they had a paywall, but it seems now to be inoperative for the "international edition".

The CIA used to have the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service, later the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, now the Open Source Center. During the Cold War, they had people listening to most of the national radio stations of the Communist countries and taking notes. Most of this was utter drivel; Radio Albania was mostly long speeches by their dictator. Sometimes something important would be announced, and it was the CIA's job to notice, so somebody had to listen. Must have been an awful job before it was computerized.

Have you ever considered that maybe both the big "left" and "right" media is itself an echo chamber?

Indeed, the points on which mainstream American "right" and "left" media agree with each other are more numerous than the points on which they disagree.

Well I should hope so. A nation cannot exist without some social cohesion, Americans need to (and do) agree on most issues.

In a lot of the bipartisan Washington consensus stuff Beltway opinion is in lockstep with itself but not with average Americans.

>The pretense in disputed elections is that the great conflict is between the two major parties. The reality is that there is a much bigger conflict that the two parties jointly wage against large numbers of Americans who are represented by neither party and against powerless millions around the world.

-Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

I find that hard to believe. The American right wing and the general western left wing are MILES apart. I think the fact that there are people who unironically think that center-right Hillary Clinton is a "communist" is evidence enough of that.

I mean I still live within the constraints of reality, and generally only read politics which are widely accepted. I think I'm getting a fairly broad spread by reading opinions that range from "deconstruction of class" to "this is a Christian country".

> I'd actually be really interested in knowing what percentage of people read opposing rhetoric.

It depends what you mean by "opposing" - different sides in a power struggle or genuinely different ideas? I think the number of people who read both WAPO, NY Times and WSJ (even National Review and Reason) is probably quite high, now more than ever thanks to the internet. They'll be familiar with the different sides in the nation's power struggle. And after a while, they'll probably know roughly what those papers' editorials will say before they even read them. It's vanity to think that those readers are often engaging in a some kind of big struggle of ideas, I think, although there's a lot of value in just knowing what is going on.

The number of people who seek out outlets like newspapers representing the views of the Communists, Green Party, Syndicalists, Illinois Nazis, Anarchists or whatever is probably vanishingly small.

Is understanding views that range from "deconstruction of class" to "this is a Christian country" not enough?

The void between the american right and the general western left is HUGE, to the extent that you will have american right wingers calling Hillary Clinton a communist, despite her being by all measures right leaning in any other western country. I don't feel like I'd be doing myself any value in reading extreme fringe politics, since I can read widely applicable politics that are so eclectic. And I do read green and libertarian rhetoric.

I think reading global rhetoric is really useful, especially if you live in a country that positions itself as the center of the universe, but I just don't see the use in digging up hyper-extreme ideology that no one participates in and will literally never see the light of day in my lifetime.

I don't hugely disagree, but the person you were responding to was holding up his daily reading of WAPO and Fox News as being representative of real "critical thinking," hence my wanting you to define your terms.

> The void between the american right and the general western left is HUGE

Of course, there's a gap between the American left and the "general western left" as well. In many ways in America we effectively have a center-right party and a far-right party which harbors substantial fringe elements. There is not really much of an American left by any conventional measure. (America's left wing party just ran a hawkish supporter of the death penalty whose husband "reformed" welfare)

> I just don't see the use in digging up hyper-extreme ideology that no one participates in and will literally never see the light of day in my lifetime.

If you don't think the ideas have intrinsic importance that's fair. On the other hand, it appears to go hand in hand with an American culture wherein people don't even realize that Communism and Socialism both used to be a living, active thing in their country. I don't think you can be a "critical thinker" and just ignore all that history and context, but at the same time... yeah, I'm not seeking out the Socialist's newspapers, or whatever.

agree 100%. How do you know you're really right unless you read opposing viewpoints?

I've noticed that there's a herd mentality going on as well... People would rather "belong" than "be right", as it were

I've started doing that far more over the last year or so - I'm definitely "left leaning" but it's good to try and understand the viewpoint of others even if you don't agree with their conclusions.

Echo chambers are boring.

I mean I don't feel like I get much out of listening to the same talking points trotted out over and over again, personally.

I'm solidly on the liberal side of most issues, and I definitely try to remain informed, which includes exploring conservative viewpoints and media.

The problem is that MOST media (of any focus) is shallow. Reading the "opposing" side is just as tiresome as reading points I already know if obvious information is skipped over or not explored (actually, more tiresome). I end up chasing down lots of details myself, which is time-consuming and frankly, not really my primary skillset. It theoretically is the skillset of, um, journalists.

So when on the left I see "Immigrants on average commit less crime than native-born in the US" and on the right I see "3% of the population (immigrants) commit over 50% of the crime", I'm not finding any media exploring both sides. I can spend a few hours chasing down this one fact (a pretty important one, but still just one), which leads me to find vague references to a DOJ report on reported crimes supporting the conservative view, and surveys of self-reported crimes supporting the liberal view. So neither position is without basis, but I really have no better info on which is more true, and if I spend all this time chasing down evidence myself, the media is serving zero purpose.

Secondly, I've found left-leaning sites that do more factual digging (at least it seems that way) and will cover and attempt to disprove some of the opposing arguments. (Both sides have vapid overly dramatic coverage offered by many sources - I'm referring to the better sources on both sides). The closest I've found on the right is the National Review. I'm all ears if someone has better suggestions, but as it is I tend to read more within my "echo chamber" because it's actually the best source of nuanced information I've found so far.

Thirdly, when you're reading two sides: One side says things that you mostly know and agree with. The other side says things that are often ridiculous and false on their face (as far as you are concerned). Why would you want to frustrate yourself with the state of humanity all the time? I read enough (I think) to get an idea of the zeitgeist of others, I read enough to understand what the basis of their arguments are, but any reading past that tends to be far more frustrating than enlightening. (I assume this is something true for both sides).

Lastly, left and right may both have reasonable people, but the right seems to have a lot more [carefully edits this description several times] general disdain for science and more embracing of hypocrisy. The Left has baseless GMO fears, anti-vaxers, and sometimes more optimism than might be best, but in general I can expect less denial of well-demonstrated concepts and science. (I'm sure this is slanted by bias, but I'm happy to go point by point offline if anyone wants). This means that while I "check-in" with sources espousing opinions I don't agree with, I have no more desire to spend a lot of time there than I do on a site informing me that eating GMO corn will cause me to mutate.

Off topic side note: I really hate how the useful GMO discussions (monocultures, sustainability, environmental impact, prions, etc) can't really get any progress because everyone spends all their time rebuffing ridiculous accusations. Just like "what do we do about climate change" doesn't get as much discussion as "is there actually human-caused climate change".

There is something to that. I agree with a lot of what Glenn Greenwald writes, but I rarely read him because he can get so repetitive.

> Secondly, I've found left-leaning sites that do more factual digging (at least it seems that way) and will cover and attempt to disprove some of the opposing arguments. (Both sides have vapid overly dramatic coverage offered by many sources - I'm referring to the better sources on both sides). The closest I've found on the right is the National Review. I'm all ears if someone has better suggestions, but as it is I tend to read more within my "echo chamber" because it's actually the best source of nuanced information I've found so far.

I think the American Conservative can be good, especially Daniel Larison. But then again, they also run pieces with bizarre claims like "Uber is an example of distributism."

echo chambers are boring, but so is ruining terrible malformed arguments.

neither side has a monopoly on those, to be sure.

As a French, I read HN in part for this, to be reminded there are educated people out there with vastly different ideas about the world (I just hope they do the same...).

I lean left and right depending on the topic. I have a hard time listening/reading either the far right or left because spouting extremes just seems counterproductive.

I'd never thought of legal briefings as good educational material, but I think you are right that doing so would help a person understand how to even approach an issue. Maybe even following up with the court's decision and (in the case of SCOTUS) dissents. On a philosophical level, Leonard Peikoff talks about this issue in his essay "The American School: Why Johnny Can't Think" [1]:

"An education that trains a child’s mind would be one that teaches him to make connections, to generalize, to understand the wider issues and principles involved in any topic. It would achieve this feat by presenting the material to him in a calculated, conceptually proper order, with the necessary context, and with the proof that validates each stage. This would be an education that teaches a child to think."

That kind of process is exactly what good court opinion looks like.

[1] https://campus.aynrand.org/works/1984/01/01/the-american-sch...

The history of law school is a perfect example of developing critical thinking in students, and its pitfalls. Learning to be a lawyer didn't used to be about critical thinking. Up until the late 1800s, lawyers went to school and learned "the law", e.g., what was allowed and what wasn't. But the problem was that the law constantly changed, and what a lawyer learned in school could easily become outdated and wrong.

Around that time, there was a movement (based at Harvard) to change legal education. Rather than learning "the law", law students learned how to develop arguments. They did this by reading the final judicial written opinions, which evaluated both sides of the argument, rather than reading far more concise summarizations of the law. This caused a huge backlash and there was even a lawschool student walk-out when it was first implemented. However, the method caught on at Harvard and quickly spread to the rest of the country, and is now standard fare at every law school. A funny result of this method is that many law students don't remember how important cases turns out, but they are far more likely to remember the arguments that each side made. (It carries through to lawyering to this day: a lawyers job is not to "win" the case, but to craft the best argument for winning the case.)

The newer type of teaching is excellent for developing critical thinking skills, finding logic flaws, and building an argument. That said, having gone through law school, there is far too much of developing these basic building blocks, law students don't need 3 years of it, and the result is that many young lawyers don't know the basic mechanics of law (although they do know the principles). Ask a recent grad how to file a lawsuit, or defend against one, and they will be at a complete loss.

My point is that while building basic critical thinking skills are extremely important for any school, there is a point when it can swing too far in one direction, and law schools are a perfect example of that.

History of American law school, and Canadian because Canada follows America's lead more than Britain's. Every other nation/legal system has law textbooks, what are called hornbooks in American law schools as primary texts. The idea that the law can actually be reasoned about socratically is... strange. Precedent and path dependence are huge parts of the law. And the law doesn't change quickly. If you read a UK law textbook there will be references aplenty to cases from the 1800s, more from more recent times but the law is actually remarkably stable.

Harvard's case system didn't spread because it was better as a method of legal education, it spread because one of the most prestigious college in North America started using it and it's more fun to teach that way. The Socratic method has a place as a method in teaching but having it be the method is overkill.

Maybe the US's federalism is a part of it too. We learned a lot of 'stock' law from hornbooks too, but there was always a caveat that most of the 1L stuff is state law and may-no, will-vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The 'law' varies quite a bit from state to state with regards to criminal, contracts, property, etc. So you can either produce a great California lawyer who will be confused if she moves to Arizona, or a lawyer who understands how to learn the law and reason about it in general who can adapt to any state's idiosyncrasies.

Hence old style classical education on Latin orators (Cicero, Cato etc) comes to mind and the amazing rationality that was imbibed in founding generations and up makes a lot of sense (as a cursory reading of Google Books will impress you with). To bad it's exactly these authors that had to be memorized very often as well are the last thing on the list of our 'modern educational system' - and just for the record I am also someone who believes not enough STEM is taught as well

There are both left-leaning and right-leaning sources that (more or less) apply critical thinking to issues, and then there are sources that attempt to persuade by provoking antagonism. While it is an unpleasant job, it is important to be aware of what is going on in this last category.

Occupy Wall Street's lack of agenda was a deliberate move.

Apparently some of its leaders believed (and I would say, probably correctly) that advancing an agenda simply gives your opponents an opportunity to take you down. Instead they focused on 1 message and making sure it was broadcast: income inequality is a lot bigger than you think and it might be a problem. They left the answer to the public.

The Wall Street journal is maybe worth reading sometimes, but their op-ed page is cancerous garbage (same goes for the NYT actually).

You can read the other side but drawing the comparison with legal briefs suggests that both sides are acting in equally good faith, but the clogosphere is full of idiots who do nothing but argue in bad faith with bad arguments. Granted the left has these things too (cough TYT cough) but these days the right has more of them, I think.

Even the surface politeness that William F. Buckley managed to muster is mostly lost to bluster on the right today. I would say it's sad except that William F. Buckley's arguments were never any good either, so I consider his spiritual descendants more honest than he.

You have an interesting background. But I think the left doesn't read the wallstreet journal because it's paywalled (ha, just kidding). Because the WSJ editorial page is batshit insane, with people like Peggy Noonan writing about conversations with her taxi driver as illuminating her views of the working class, and endless petty complaints about the evils of the global warming conspiracy. There is a reasonable and intelligent different world view than the liberal one of course, but don't go to the wsj looking for it.

Fox and Breitbart have both lost key leaders due to death. (and other causes) They are both rapidly transitioning to the views of typical reporters (journalism majors), which will soon put them on the left. Breitbart has even started firing people who are strongly toward the right.

One America News Network is still on the right. It probably isn't moving... yet.

It's rather hard to operate a non-left media outlet when nearly all potential employees are far left. It's like standing in a stream, trying to push the water back upward with a rake. Good luck with that.

> Fox and Breitbart have both lost key leaders due to death. (and other causes) They are both rapidly transitioning to the views of typical reporters (journalism majors), which will soon put them on the left.

Viewpoints are set by media owners, not line workers, and the entire corporate media has a corporatist conservative pro-capital bias.

To the extent that ends up sometimes favoring Democrats, well, the dominant faction of the Democratic Party for several decades (since the 1990s, at a minimum) has been corporate capitalist conservatives.

Anyhow, Fox and Breitbart aren't moving into the left or even getting closer to centerpoint of the mainstream corporate media; they just aren't moving further to the Right as fast as the Republican Party is.

The media owners have died.

Yes, there are new owners, but those new owners are not putting forth the effort required to enforce a viewpoint. It takes real effort to keep the line workers from setting the tone.

Walmart used to be all about stuff made in the USA. Sam Walton died. I'm sure he spins in his grave.

The same goes for media companies. An original founder with a vision dies, and then things go off track.

> Today I read The Washington Post and Fox News every day, to compare what they're saying.

I (a German) do the exact same thing! I don't even find Fox News stories particularly egregious, it's more in what stories they choose, but it's not any worse than WP or German news, only different. The discussion forums are much harder to bear though, but there is at least one major German newspaper (FAZ) that has very normal articles but a Fox News like crowd in the forums too (but they express themselves much better). WP seems to be a single-issue website these days, it's Trump, Trump, Trump drowning out every other topic. The other articles they still have left are just a side-show. It's waaayyyyy too extreme for my taste.

Realclearpolitics does a good job of sourcing articles from each side next to each other.