This engages System 2, hard. And it's so easy to slip back into System 1 and continue to reject the evidence in front of you, as System 1 does so well when it doesn't like what it's seeing.
I have to constantly remind myself of the possibility that I could be wrong or have an incomplete view of things, but then that allows me to extract the valuable nuances and hidden assumptions that underlie the belief.
Even more importantly, it tends to cast a light on my unconscious biases and assumptions that underlie my beliefs.
After having read books on two sides of various things, I have found that most people don't have firm beliefs at all. Their beliefs don't even have anything to do with how they live. They have everything to do with what they're told will make them look good. So, just because someone says they believe something, I'm not willing to waste any more of my time on learning how it is justified on an intellectual or logical level (which is what books tend to capture). Even the believers most likely don't have any understanding of it themselves or how or why it matters to them. It's simply not worth it.
Or, well, you described it more accurately, it's a bit deeper than disagreement, it's an entirely different epistemology! Like waaayy different
So, if you want to understand what they think they're about, you can just watch the "news" or read other PR material targeted to them. That is now more difficult because it's a bit more targeted because of social media marketing but it is still possible.
But if you want to know what they actually believe without even knowing that they do, you have to look at what they actually do and how they live their lives.
But would you say it makes no sense to read books on evolution just because most people who believe in evolution don't believe in it for the reasons outlined in advanced books?
Why did schools end up teaching evolution? For scientific reasons? To suppress religion in some freemasonry conspiracy?
You can ask the same about the race topics.
I think it has nothing to do with "increasing scientific literacy" or anything like that, for sure. It would be very odd that of all the scientific things you could push to teach kids, the theory of evolution is somehow the most important one. I think it has everything to do with attacking the Christian Right at their homes by forcing their kids to learn something they don't want them to. It's a socio-economic and political tool for war.
When grilled by someone, I remember Richard Dawkins, one of the "Four Horsemen" of New Atheism, said that he just wants people to understand that it happens in nature but doesn't want people to live by the idea of natural selection or something to that effect. In other words, he wants people to understand evolution but not "believe" it... i.e. in the sense that he doesn't want people to live by it (I disagree with Dawkins, but more on that later).
Speaking of that, it reminds me of a comment I posted yesterday here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25412712
I know that if one really believes in evolution, there is absolutely no reason to "conserve a species". It makes absolutely no sense. Species come and go. Whatever species remain will evolve to acquire characteristics suitable for whatever changes happen... or perish. So why does everyone believe in conservation and in evolution? Because they don't. But what if they believed in Noah's arc? It would be terrible if one of the species that Noah himself picked to be on a boat were to go extinct because humans did something, wouldn't it? That is exactly the reaction you see from all these westerners who allegedly "believe" in evolution.
I mean people can make use of certain rhetoric for status, or political gains or economic gains, but to actually believe those is a different matter altogether. I think westerners believe in many dogmas of Christianity, no matter how much they deny it or pretend that they are above it. I, as a non-Christian non-westerner who grew up mostly outside of the reach of westerners, see it in many aspects of how they actually live. The things that they actually believe in comes from Christianity. The things they pretend believe in comes from corporate and political PR material that they're exposed to... and some of it they do believe, as long as it doesn't contradict with Christianity.
The reason to conserve a species is because a biodiverse ecology is healthier. There is more competition so any organism (such as a disease-causing bacteria) is less able to cause a pandemic. Monocultures are susceptible to all sorts of problems that diverse ecologies are not.
How this interplays with evolution is that humans are in the position of unintentionally changing the environment drastically so that many species are now 'unfit.' This is because evolution is descriptive, not prescriptive. It doesn't tell you anything is good or bad about 'fitness.' Fitness always refers to an environment. Given another environment, something else would be more fit to survive.
Conservation relies on an understanding of human power over the environment and a desire to maintain an environment that doesn't succumb to the same problems we see with monocultures.
Healthier for who or what or to what end? Whatever changes (because of humans or otherwise), some individuals of a species may evolve to fit better to that... or they'll perish and something else will happen there. Worst case, it will go back to how things were 4 billion years ago.
>There is more competition so any organism (such as a disease-causing bacteria) is less able to cause a pandemic.
And humans are special why? Disease-causing is very human-centered... because of course we are special because God created us in his image. You may deny that because you "believe in evolution"... but I'm arguing is your beliefs make more sense if I go with the assumption that you belive in the Christian dogma and do not believe in evolution AT ALL. You may use your understanding of evolution to justify your Christian beliefs while simultaneously denying that you believe in Christianity... but from the outside, I see right through you.
If you believed that we are not special and that bacteria is running the world as much as we think we are, there is no need to favor humans over disease-causing bacteria.
>How this interplays with evolution is that humans are in the position of unintentionally changing the environment drastically so that many species are now 'unfit.'
>Conservation relies on an understanding of human power over the environment and a desire to maintain an environment that doesn't succumb to the same problems we see with monocultures.
If you believed in evolution, you'd see that humans are just as much part of nauture as anything else. It's your Christian dogma that leads you to believe that the world was created with a certain intent and humans are ruining it (by going against God's will, like Adam did with the fruit).
Again, in absence of Christian dogma, and with knowledge of evolution, you would not see the world as you do now.
Healthier for humans.
> And humans are special why?
Because I am human.
> but from the outside, I see right through you.
You're actually reading something into this that isn't there. I want a world that's good for humans because I'm human and my genes make me want a world that is good for me and my offspring.
> there is no need to favor humans over disease-causing bacteria.
its not a need, its a value.
> Again, in absence of Christian dogma, and with knowledge of evolution, you would not see the world as you do now.
I'd still have a genetic drive for self preservation and a gene based desire to live in an environment that was better for me.
Yet, this idea would not fly in the west. I know other countries where this would be preferred. The western governments put pressure on those poorer governments to "conserve" those species. The only reason this would be unacceptable to Christians is the Noah's arc story. Yet westerners would justify it with completely unsubstantiated "oh there are other imbalances that we can't forsee", at best.
That's just a start. A human-centric approach would see little value in other ecosystems which evolved with humans completely outside of the picture and have nothing to do with humans. Humans are a part of very specific parts of very specific ecosystems. Most of others have nothing to do with humans and at best are a nuisance and potential disease risk, at worst are directly detrimental. It can be argued that some of them may be of medicinal value but it can also be argued that they could be breeding ground for future pandemics.
Yet, even talking about this to westerners who are otherwise "believers of evolution" and "anti-Christianity" will hit deep sentiments and they'll be seen grasping at straws to justify their position... which could be anything... any position is OK as long as it is pro saving all the species that Noah intended to save.
Thats not true, apex predators perform a valuable service by keeping the prey populations in check. Without them, humans would have to go hunt which is additional labor. Also its clear that humans wouldn't be able to hunt the same populations in the same amounts in the same way, which would have effects on the prey population, which would affect the rest of the ecosystem.
> Yet, this idea would not fly in the west.
Any ecologist could explain the above, it has nothing to do with the west.
> Yet westerners would justify it with completely unsubstantiated "oh there are other imbalances that we can't forsee", at best.
This is also a useful heuristic that is borne out of experience when we intervened in the ecosystem and discovered second order unintended consequences that no one could have foreseen. However in the case you mentioned, there are easily identifiable negative consequences that make it unnecessary to rely on the "least affect possible" heuristic.
> That's just a start. A human-centric approach would see little value in other ecosystems which evolved with humans completely outside of the picture and have nothing to do with humans.
There are none, at least not on Earth.
> Humans are a part of very specific parts of very specific ecosystems. Most of others have nothing to do with humans and at best are a nuisance and potential disease risk, at worst are directly detrimental.
This is incorrect. They provide a check on disease by encouraging competitor organisms through biodiversity. They provide a future stock of biological goods and biological inputs for industrial goods that will be used when discovered to be useful. They also interact with our ecosystem because all the ecosystems are connected and make one planet-Earth-sized ecosystem.
> It can be argued that some of them may be of medicinal value but it can also be argued that they could be breeding ground for future pandemics.
They are however the other organisms are busy evolving responses to these potential pandemic-causing organisms and that both keeps them in check and allows us to use those organisms to respond to the pandemics when they (inevitably) arise. Pandemics and plagues are more prevalent with less biodiversity because there is less competition once an organism evolves a means to take advantage of a vulnerability.
> Yet, even talking about this to westerners who are otherwise "believers of evolution" and "anti-Christianity" will hit deep sentiments and they'll be seen grasping at straws to justify their position... which could be anything... any position is OK as long as it is pro saving all the species that Noah intended to save.
You're pursuing this pet idea of yours to the exclusion of the facts and values of the people who address these ideas regularly.
I'm pursuing this idea because it has wide-ranging applications. It explains why otherwise "rational" intelligent westerners make no sense a lot of the time. It is very easily explained if I just refer to the Bible.
>apex predators perform a valuable service by keeping the prey populations in check.
Even that is not true. A apex-predator-less ecosystem can function just as well, albeit differently. Look up bottom-up trophic cascade.
>Without them, humans would have to go hunt which is additional labor.
Not necessarily. Bottom-up trophic cascade takes care of that. However, hunting will be more available, reducing reliance on industrial food farming.
>Also its clear that humans wouldn't be able to hunt the same populations in the same amounts in the same way, which would have effects on the prey population, which would affect the rest of the ecosystem.
There is no need to copy a particular behavior. The species in the environment can epigenetically change to adapt to various predation patterns or lack thereof.
>Any ecologist could explain the above, it has nothing to do with the west.
A Chinese or a Japanese or an Indian or an African can in fact say the same thing, because they most likely studied the same things written by western academics. However, they are not so strictly married to those ideas, unless of course, they have been brought up as Christians.
For example, the ideas behind animal cognition and intelligence have been heavily suppressed in the west because animals are not supposed to have a "soul". They are supposed to be mindless automatons. This is rarely the case with non-western scientists.
>There are none, at least not on Earth.
Sure, in a world where God created Adam and Eve and other animals to accompany them. In the real world, humans co-evolved with very specific eco-systems and have nothing to do with most of the rest of it.
>They provide a check on disease by encouraging competitor organisms through biodiversity. They provide a future stock of biological goods and biological inputs for industrial goods that will be used when discovered to be useful. They also interact with our ecosystem because all the ecosystems are connected and make one planet-Earth-sized ecosystem.
That's a huge leap of faith. Most other animals, which are not Christians, attack other predators which are their competitors all the time. They would happily get rid of them if they had the means. In fact, Europe got rid of a lot of predators before Christianity spread. The rest of the world did too, before the west spread Christianity to them, either as the religion as a part of the imperial era or as the education that came out from it spread to universities everywhere.
>They are however the other organisms are busy evolving responses to these potential pandemic-causing organisms and that both keeps them in check and allows us to use those organisms to respond to the pandemics when they (inevitably) arise. Pandemics and plagues are more prevalent with less biodiversity because there is less competition once an organism evolves a means to take advantage of a vulnerability.
Biodiversity of what? Bacteria and viruses? Or mammals? If we didn't have pangolins, some of which are endangered btw, we'd probably not have COVID-19.
That assumes they aren't making sense and that it needs to be explained. That hasn't been demonstrated.
> Even that is not true. A apex-predator-less ecosystem can function just as well, albeit differently. Look up bottom-up trophic cascade.
The existence of other ways of controlling population doesn't mean that those other ways are the only way. Not all food chains are controlled by bottom-up trophic cascade. some are controlled by apex predators and removing apex predators changes the ecosystem, sometimes in ways that result in collapse.
> Not necessarily. Bottom-up trophic cascade takes care of that.
You're shifting your explanation. Earlier you said that humans could replace apex predators. When I pointed out the problems with that, now you say it can be controlled with bottom up trophic cascade. Is it possible you just don't understand this issue as well as you think?
> However, hunting will be more available, reducing reliance on industrial food farming.
Not if humans aren't able to replace the apex predators functionally. Not if the volume of food produced is different. Industrial food production is less subject to seasonal variations. Have you considered that?
> There is no need to copy a particular behavior. The species in the environment can epigenetically change to adapt to various predation patterns or lack thereof.
Thats basically nonsensical and doesn't respond to my point. Humans wouldn't replace the apex predator therefore the ecosystem would change.
> In the real world, humans co-evolved with very specific eco-systems and have nothing to do with most of the rest of it.
In the real world, the ecosystems are interdependent on other ecosystems and no barriers can be drawn except by choice.
> That's a huge leap of faith.
Not at all.
> They would happily get rid of them if they had the means.
Of course they would, animals have no concept of biodiversity. That doesn't impact on the well-established thesis that biodiversity is healthy and ecosystems with fewer species are more vulnerable to disease and catastrophe.
> Biodiversity of what? Bacteria and viruses? Or mammals? If we didn't have pangolins, some of which are endangered btw, we'd probably not have COVID-19.
Biodiversity of everything. The pangolin theory is interesting but its equally likely that if humans hadn't been destroying species at an astonishing rate over the last 50 years we'd likely also not have COVID-19.
Oh, it has been demonstrated to me over and over again. Unfortunately, you may be too much in it to see it. I am in the position to observe from the outside.
>The existence of other ways of controlling population doesn't mean that those other ways are the only way.
Read this part of your comment again, but slowly.
>Not all food chains are controlled by bottom-up trophic cascade.
And where did I imply that it is?
>some are controlled by apex predators and removing apex predators changes the ecosystem, sometimes in ways that result in collapse.
Not really. The very same ecosystem can adapt to changes in predator population or extermination of predator population altogether.
>You're shifting your explanation. Earlier you said that humans could replace apex predators. When I pointed out the problems with that, now you say it can be controlled with bottom up trophic cascade. Is it possible you just don't understand this issue as well as you think?
Or maybe I understand it thoroughly, much more than your limited religious beliefs allow for. The ecosystem can be regulated with or without apex predators. If we remove apex predators, it will still be regulated automatically. We can choose to hunt if we so desire, and it will work differently but it will still work and work well.
>In the real world, the ecosystems are interdependent on other ecosystems and no barriers can be drawn except by choice.
Ever heard of terrariums? Sure, ecosystems may be related because they're open systems. But they don't have to be.
>That doesn't impact on the well-established thesis
What is interesting is that all these "well established" theses only go so far as to comply with Christianity, never further.
>if humans hadn't been destroying species at an astonishing rate over the last 50 years we'd likely also not have COVID-19
I know, right? The children of Adam and Eve continue to disrupt the harmony of Gods creation, so many thousand years later. When will we learn?
Except coronaviruses have been infecting mammals almost as long as mammals have been around.
So I tried to read the tripe, but the arguments are not persuasive unless you already believe what they are trying to convince you of.
Closely related is the "motte and bailey" tactic: depending on the situation you sometimes use the word in an milder sense (new meaning of racist, "we are all a little bit racist", it's just unconscious biases or beliefs about any difference between races), but when people aren't looking you switch definitions (old definition, worst possible thing, "some races must be subjugated and kept away from our social circles as they are subhuman and incapable of participation by their nature and will poison our bloodline").
Indeed many critics of the new social justice movements would have this as the main argument: that SJ uses equivocation in this way as the rule, not the exception.
You might want words to be narrowly defined and used, but that isn't how language works.
This is how Google now ended up being called "white supremacist" for firing a black AI ethicist (it was retweeted by a director of AI at Nvidia).
You can say (with a straight face?) that's just how language evolves, but I would find that deeply cynical.
What the gp describes only works if you are tolerant of other people's errors to some extent. You can't let a few things like you describe derail you. Remember your own beliefs, it may be the case that you are right and the inaccuracy you discovered is a linchpin in their incorrect system of ideas. Or it might be some little piece of information that is accepted as a truism in their bubble so people throw it around when it seems appropriate, but its not an essential part of their argument.
The main thing is that you want to understand the author's perspective. why did they consider the bell curve to be overtly racist? perhaps they are defining racism differently than you (this is almost certainly the case [0]).
It does you no good to read books by people you disagree with in order to understand them better if you're gonna get derailed when they say something that seems obviously false to you.
[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/21/against-murderism/
The thing is, you can try to project something sensible onto them, ie steelman them, but you will end up with something the authors would disagree with.
You may just as well say you should read Scientology, and you will surely find common points to agree on etc. I mean, it's perhaps still useful to try that, I've read some Scientology materials myself and left with more knowledge about the specifics of Scientology, but I didn't get closer to believing it. Perhaps I can empathize with why it can hook people, we could call that understanding in a sense.
I agree with this. However you have then arrived at the basic truth that underlies the distorted version you were originally exposed to. So then you can discuss the issue with the person using a set of shared assumptions and perhaps bring them around to the steel manned version. Now you have changed their mind. If they then say "what about this <more preferred, less supportable version> that I started out with" they are more open to your summarized dismissal "that doesn't work because of w, x, y, and z"
> The more I read such works
You're not justified in labeling a work as this kind of work until the process here has been done. You may have been exposed to a weaker version and dismissed that because of fallacies, while a stronger version exists. You can't dismiss the stronger version without examination merely because it reaches the same conclusions as the weaker version you were exposed to.
> You may just as well say you should read Scientology, and you will surely find common points to agree on etc. I mean, it's perhaps still useful to try that, I've read some Scientology materials myself and left with more knowledge about the specifics of Scientology, but I didn't get closer to believing it. Perhaps I can empathize with why it can hook people, we could call that understanding in a sense.
I think my independent study of scientology was fruitful for my understanding of how someone becomes possessed by ideology. Studying scientology under the supervision of scientologists is dangerous because they prevent you from critically examining the ideas.
I don't think the author was born thinking those complex thoughts, so clearly they were persuaded by something that didn't rely on previous belief. What could that be? Why isn't that persuasive to you? What sort of person does it persuade and why? Are there other arguments that could persuade you of the same thing? Or of something similar?
Intellectual exchange requires constructing the steel man argument of your counterpart, as impossible as it may seem at times. Underneath, we're all humans, longing for food, shelter, companionship, and stability.
Very often the answer is mundane; 'It's what my parents taught me.' Particularly in the most contentious cases, like religion and politics. It seems like 'born thinking it' vs 'was persuaded' is a false dichotomy, unless you count being steeped in a culture as a child to be a form of persuasion.
Statistical aggregates make this worse. You can argue that on average X is more than Y, or you can cherrypick all the examples where Y is greater than X to make your point.
That said, the bar should be very high for calling other peoples beliefs as such. I disagree with lots of people on lots of things, but one of the things I've learned is that by approaching topics with such a judgemental, holier-than-though attitude, one puts on blinders to truly understanding a persons position, and more importantly, how they got there. The power of empathy is strong in giving the brain more information to work with, but the power of harsh judgement is that it stifles the flow of information prematurely.
That's the most important part, isn't it? Beliefs of humans are path-dependent. Nobody can perfectly rationally re-evaluate all evidence they've encountered and compute a belief to hold. We always start with a belief, and adjust it over time. Some more eagerly than others, some more correctly than others, but it's always an additive shift. Integration of evidence, if you like. That's why when I see someone believing something that's clearly (to me) absurd, I'm mostly interested in how did they get there - something must have convinced them, and I found it useful to discover what it was, because often it's a piece of real evidence I haven't encountered before.
Thats such simple yet profound statement to me. Thank you for the response, it has definitely given me something to ponder. Ugg. Now I'm imagine companies/govs doing path dependent profiling of people for their minority report-esque systems.
People don't like, a lot of things, they don't call them delusional. We call things delusional because they are, in fact, delusional. What makes it dangerous is that people deeply believe that their delusions are "truth". Belief to the point of fundamentalism, where they will kill non-believers in their delusions.
I think that is a fallacy. Just because some standpoint is in between two other standpoints, does not make it correct. Each side might look at some facts from a different perspective and might be correct but at the same time contradicting (at least at the first glance), but the 'average' could still be wrong.
I think the idea that there only exists a single spectrum sorted into sides is itself a sort of meta echo chamber shared by people in echo chambers even as they disagree about everything else. In modern politics, even the idea that the opposed party holds opposite views (versus just opposed) is a meta echo chamber idea. In many left/right topics, the disagreement isn't 'pro/anti', but often more fundamental.
Some examples: While conservatives might be anti-abortion, liberals aren't pro abortion, they're pro-choice and that's not just a rhetorical device. While liberals are anti-racism and see conservatives as pro-racism, a conservative rejects the idea out of hand because of a difference in definitions. A third, more nuanced view might even see the average conservative as non-racist (as opposed to anti-racist) which many would still argue is not enough, but it's not 'the opposite' at all.
I don't think recommendations need to necessarily go to the extremes, but I don't think 'a shade to the left' is enough either, because without understanding the fundamental differences, you have a you-can't-get-there-from-here problem.
What if due to their isolation and the lack of diversity in rural areas actually leads to outcomes where certain parts of our country have more racist beliefs than people who grew up surrounded by people of all different colors and religions? Why do we have to keep ignoring studies and evidence in order to ascribe values to conservatives they never demonstrate? What if this isn't a both sides issue, and one side is definitely more wrong? Hint, the side marching with Neo Nazis chanting "The Jews Will Not Replace Us" is the side which is wrong here.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/06/racia...
Data is not the reason you are in a bubble. Data is your excuse. Your view doesn’t gravitate toward data. You gravitate toward data that supports your view. When you find it, I’m rather convinced you’re not particularly critical about it. You seem to be trying to use that data as a club rather than as a tool to fix problems.
Imagine being a conservative who doesn't hold any of those views being told they are essentially a Neo Nazi; or a liberal who is compared with the most violent so-called member of Antifa. My dad is conservative, but doesn't believe any of the things your family members believe, even the bit about welfare queens. This is ironic, because my mother (divorced from my father) used every trick in the book to get money from the government and did it quite well. She did it because she realized it meant she didn't have to work. She claims (to this day) that she did it because she wanted to be home for me and my siblings, but let's just say all four of us will tell you that's a laugh. She was absolutely a welfare queen. Despite that, and although I can certainly find numbers somewhere to back up such a claim, I do not believe this is the case for a meaningful number of welfare recipients. (I do, however, recognize that such people exist.)
(FWIW, my mom—no longer able to claim a lot of the welfare stuff due in large part to her children all becoming adults—hit me up for money. I cut her a check to bail her out of her immediate problems and give her a little runway. I made the 'one-time-thing' part very clear. I also made it conditional on her getting a job. She's just... a much happier person now and is more-or-less supporting herself just fine.)
This is the core of how these bubbles formed:
1. Group all people who disagree with certain ways of thinking in one group. (These ways of thinking need not be at all related.)
2. Assign all people in that group the qualities of the worst elements in that group.
The non-monsters in each group are alienated from each other. They can't ever convince each other of their way of thinking or find a reasonable compromise because each group is convinced they already know what every individual in the other group thinks. It is impossible to disclaim the monsters in your group because you didn't make the group, the other guys made the group. This thinking isn't even completely wrong, since being in a bubble means you're expected to think a certain way.
It's not an effective means of change. It's really quite dehumanizing to everyone involved. It concentrates power at the expense of individuals and allows a handful of people to determine what is proper discourse. This framing colors not only every view, but also every interaction individuals between these bubbles have with each other.
Membership in a such a bubble is obvious from the outside. There are frequent accusations that you belong in the other bubble. There are extreme statements that aren't born out by experience or facts. There are house of cards based sometimes on solid foundations. There are witch hunts for any type of heresy to figure out who to exclude next. The wagons get circle at even a whiff of conflict. Any thought it doesn't recognize as belonging to it immediately gets the label "that other bubble." It honestly must be both exciting and exhausting to be in one.
Popping that bubble I think is an ethical mandate, but it's one that I think people need to do for themselves. Even though the bubble I mostly agree with is right about the problems, and mostly right about solutions, it's not right about everything. It's frequently wrong about people outside itself (myself included) and it's also very very wrong in its approach.
As I said in the beginning, I can't convince you you're in a bubble. I know that. It's something that everyone has to consider for themselves.
Edit: Removed duplicated paragraph.
* Conservatives are mostly from rural areas
* Rural areas are 90% white
* In group / out group dynamics are determined largely by upbringing
* Rural white folk have far less opportunity to have PoC in their in-groups
* Out-group vs in-group is a major factor in discrimination and bias
I spent the first 18 years of my life surrounded by other white Christians and had a completely different experience. It's still not hard for me to accept that happens. What's hard for me to accept is the complete lack of nuance in your reasoning. There's really no room left for discussion after you're through painting a picture, but that picture does not jibe with reality. That's aside from the siege mentality that isn't supported even by the picture but goes along with it.
> From my "outside" perspective, you're obviously stuck in a bubble in which people must go out of their way to pretend both sides of every issue are equally valid.
"Both sides." "Valid." You're framing the argument in terms of your bubble. It's not true, by the way, that I think every argument is equally valid. There's plenty enough bullshit in the world.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281664414_The_Relat...
> Numerous studies suggest that political conservatism significantly correlates with modern racist attitudes. The current findings are consistent with previous studies.
I think part of the problem with just swinging to the absolute other end is, unless you're just interested in psychology, reading the "other side" is only of real value if you're reading quality, or at least good arguments made in good faith.
At the extremes there seems to be a much higher tendency for the authors themselves to be deep in the echo chambers of their respective ideologies, as well as a higher likelyhood that its target audience is more forgiving of poor content as long as it hits close enough to the mark. Blindly selecting content by a strict point of view would seem to result in lower value overall.
Not to say there isn't good reading out there in the extremes, but the level of chaff to sort through to find a decent seed is just too damn high.
The value is ultimately in finding good content and not just an opposing point of view. Whenever I can find both at the same time, those are the real keepers.
However, there is one crucial prerequisite - someone needs to have an open mind, and courage to at least doubt one's own point of view. Compare and contrast with Change my View by Steven Crowder, which is full of fake openness + trolling, not genuine curiosity.
Now whether the books it spits out are even going to help you break out of your worldview, who knows, but I'm sure reading Shakespeare is going to loosen up a fascist to other ideas at least a little bit.
I think looking at extremes is the most realistic path. Purportedly balanced sources are dangerous because their bias is subtle; extreme sources typically have very clear bias that is easy to keep in mind as you. You can read many extreme sources and sort of take the intersection of what they show you to guess at some minimal amount of what must be really true.
Does your approach not gloss over the nuance? Or are you able to surface the complexities of a given topic simply by examining the extremes?
For example, I read many conflicting predictions concerning the last US election, saw that I could not distinguish bad predictions from good ones, and concluded that I have to remain unconvinced. I was vindicated by it being a very tight race. This doesn't always happen.
On the other hand, I read the recent Texas filing [0] and found that I could confidently argue against it, and the best opposing arguments I could find did not convince me. To my SO, I confidently voiced the prediction that this lawsuit will fail, and articulated why the probability argument in the attached Cicchetti Declaration is misguided. This is arguably a very easy task, so this correct prediction does me little credit, but I think that's the point: even if I only become convinced of things which are obvious, it is important to not accidentally become convinced of things which are not obvious.
[0] https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163048/2020...
The votes would need to be very precisely distributed, though.
Sure, with a geographically optimum shift of votes to maximally leverage the anti-democratic nature of the electoral college, it would take about ~125k votes (37 EVs need flipped, ~40k gets PA for 20, ~31.5k gets GA for 16, and ~3.5k gets ME-1 for 1; at least I think that's the lowest-vote-change scenario, and assumes reversals of votes where every change reduces the margin by 2.)
Of course, that would also be by far the biggest popular vote loss by an electoral college winner since the election of 1824, which had four candidates clearing over 10% of the vote, and the only electoral college defeat of the majority (not merely plurality) winner of the popular vote in US history.
What was the minimum number of votes across the minimum number of states needed for him to win in 2020? Again, nobody has actually provided a reason this vote was close - it wasn’t close at all, it was a humiliating rejection, especially for an incumbent.
I don't know the exact number, but afaik less than 1 million. Compared to the size of the electorate, a few hundred thousand votes here or there is really not that much. It only seems so to Americans because they have historically low participation and high polarisation.
Also, turnout set a 50 year high in percentage of eligible population to vote.
The only people who think this election was “close” are the same ones who keep saying that shocking new evidence will be released tomorrow by Giuliani, but only if I send in a check to the committee to save America.
Losing as an incumbent is humiliating, doubly so when you get rejected by so much of your own party. Trump’s loss was a humiliation, particularly because it was because he was such an incompetent president.
It could also likely be that some states were small margins, and some districts even smaller. Overall, though, I agree with you.
Maybe you were just enjoying reading shitposts? Nothing wrong with that, everyone has their version of tabloids they enjoy, but these are mostly barely thought through hot takes posted to get a reaction (and surfaced because they were successful at it). There's no reason to think their intersection is going to be anywhere near something "true" (let alone usefully true).
I can list plenty of subreddits with worthwhile political discussion, but none of that matters if a persons idea of “balanced” is to find the dregs of fringe and extreme political movements and use them as the basis of said balance. I’d wager that those subreddits represent less than 10% of the views of most Americans.
The hard part is that reddit is majority liberal, so it's very very hard to find a good balance.
Any random non-political subreddit is going to be liberal slanted. In order to find a conservative slant you have to go specifically to a political conservative subreddit.
Center left: /r/neoliberal
Right: /r/neoconnwo
Center right: /r/tuesday
Neutral: /r/neutralpolitics /r/geopolitics /r/politicalfactchecking /r/truepolitics
A spectrum of subreddits across ideological views, all with discussions you may actually learn something from. You’ll notice that none of those subreddits have been suspended because their members and moderators are repeatedly calling for violence against their political opponents, nor are they just recruiting boards for Stormfront. Again, finding the fringe conspiracy theorists repeatedly calling for violence doesn’t actually give you a well informed or balanced perspective.
I haven't tried anything outside of US, China (these two being the two major geopolitical players), and Russia (because I am from there and understand the language). I would love to expand that list, but my time is limited.
Another factor is that reading American commentary is entertaining because I live here and am immersed in the culture. The same goes for Russia. I haven't been able to make this work with China: there is a mass of cultural material that I'm not "in" on, so it feels much more like work.
Tongue in cheek, but I bring this up to point out that while it might be good to expand one's knowledge, it can become a virtue. When that happens, we're all condemned because it'll never be broad enough.
What do you hope to gain out of going to the effort of consuming media like this? Why not just go on an information diet altogether?
As for why I want to know what happens in the world and particularly where I live (i.e. North America), it is because those events affect me. If I were on an information diet, then I would probably miss, for example, the recent passing of S.386 [0] by the US Senate, which is intimately relevant to me as my long-term goal is to immigrate to the US.
[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/386...
1. Being able to hold conversations with people from all political persuasions (eg. Knowing how to reach agreement on things and knowing what pushes their buttons) 2. Entertainment
If I am conservative I won’t be open to be shown the most leftist content, and viceversa, while instead I might be open to be shown more balanced views that might gradually carry me out of my echo chamber instead of reinforcing it.
edit: this an OT comment more related to the echo chamber topic than the submission itself. Interesting project, OP.