Balanced sources tend to give you what the extremes don't, which is nuance.

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?

It does often gloss over the nuance. I ultimately try to estimate how bad I am at assessing the veracity of arguments concerning the topic at hand, which I think is most valuable.

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...

I don’t understand the basis by which you think this election was “tight”.

The number of overall votes it would take to change the outcome of the election, compared to the total size of the electorate, is small.

The votes would need to be very precisely distributed, though.

> The number of overall votes it would take to change the outcome of the election, compared to the total size of the electorate, is small.

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.

Donald Trump won 2016 because he had a 70k vote majority across three states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

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.

> What was the minimum number of votes across the minimum number of states needed for him to win in 2020?

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.

So he won by 70k in a “landslide”, but losing by 7 million in the popular vote, and 1 million in minimum votes an election where 80 million is “close”.

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.

Either op means that going into it, a lof of America was not firm in their predictions - people were firm last time, and a of them were wrong, so were weary to do it again.

It could also likely be that some states were small margins, and some districts even smaller. Overall, though, I agree with you.

You may think it a very easy task, but it is one that a large proportion of our elected officials failed, or possibly pretended to fail for their own political gain.

My experience is surely anecdotal, but I feel your POV applies more to open minded people, while close minded people are more inclined to feel threatened by opposite perspectives.

Sometimes those opposite perspectives really are threatening, though.

True enough. And the response that I think should appeal even to the close-minded: those perspectives don’t go away just because you’re not exposed to them, and you won’t understand enough to push back if you never study then.

> on Reddit I was simultaneously subbed to /r/The_Donald, /r/politics, /r/ChapoTrapHouse, /r/Libertarian, etc

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).

^ A person studying their daily bowel movements for political commentary would be better informed than someone who read those subreddits looking for accurate political news, and they’d have a more honest assessment about the worth of their news sources.

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.

Would you mind sharing those subreddits with constructive political discussions?

/r/NeutralPolitics tries pretty hard.

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.

Left: /r/progressives

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.

Aren't you just subscribing to an USA bubble now? Is there a way to add e.g. chinese, indian or islamic reddits to the mix?

That's true. I should add /r/Sino to that list. I also subscribe to ChinaTalk, but I'm not sure how valuable a it is for really gauging what goes on in that part of the net. Unfortunately, I can't read Chinese, so I have to trust someone to translate and aggregate that content in the end.

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.

Aren't you just subscribing to the geopolitical bubble now? Is there a way to add quilting, farming, and spelunking?

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.

That's an interesting idea! I could see it being good training for simultaneously holding two opposing thoughts in your head at any given time.

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?

I think it is valuable to read a hundred convincingly-written arguments in favor of one point of view, become convinced, and then read a hundred opposing arguments and again become convinced. This maintains my awareness of the fact that I'm a terrible judge of veracity of arguments. Since I want to know what happens in the world, I must be exposed to arguments, so I think it's very important to be viscerally aware that I'm an idiot and should use a lot of care.

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...

That’s very perceptive. Have you been surprised at all, after reading both arguments, which side of the fence you wind up on?

This seems to presume that these points of view you’re talking about have no objective truth value, and that the only worthwhile exercise is constructing “convincingly-written” rhetoric to support one side or another.

I don't take that from the gp at all. My perspective is that he seems to be saying you're not going to understand a position on an issue until you internalize it "as if" it was your own belief. By internalizing one belief and then another that contradicts it, you can truly compare them on the merits and perhaps become aware of the objective reality that they both share.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesis

I consume media the sane way as OP, here are my answers:

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