Yep. I had this conversation with my daughter the other day. She was like "But ... they just think the same thing about what you're saying". I was like "Totally, the only difference is that I'm right, and they're wrong". She was like "how do you know?". That lead to a much longer session of reviewing types of biases and fallacies, the scientific method and various other critical thinking tools I've developed over the years, but whoever is on the "other side" is having the same conversation with their kids, and showing them tools and resources they've developed over the years to decide what information to trust and, to the kid, it's just as convincing!!

This was one of the videos we looked at, I think it's totally on point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvk2PQNcg8w

Lol exactly. This is why I try to remind myself to pay attention to how I and others may be feeling underneath, and have even dedicated my professional life to it, because I have honed very strong rationalizing skills.

I find often the people who disagree with me the strongest can also go toe-to-toe with me in finding stories and evidence that confirms our beliefs and if I remember (and have the courage), I try to go deeper to talk about how I'm feeling afraid of this, this, and this, angry about this and this, ashamed of this, and so on, and try to imagine how they might be feeling across those contexts, and more often than not, realize we're both two humans trying our best. But goodness I can avoid going there sometimes, and if I do get there, it can be after a long long discussion with someone, and sometimes one or both of us gives up before we get to that point.

What I find rampant these days is the rather extreme way of thinking “If you are not with me, you are against me.” And I think social media amplifies this, not only by algorithms, but also because text doesn’t provide good context (intonation, stance, emotional transference) , I mean we literally read other people’s thought in our own head, also those whose thoughts we are not congruent with.

HNs rules are great in this sense, to continuously seek out curious conversations instead of the rather solipsist tendency to soapbox.

Now with politics and politicians this a much harder pill to swallow, because their literal job these days is to stand on a soapbox, and we as the public have gotten rather used to it, and voting in those who do the soapbox act the best. This is also because in general it’s hard to choose politicians beyond the local who we can relate to, and be invested in beyond retoric.

I agree that much of the design of social media can contribute to this.

As much as I love this:

> HNs rules are great in this sense, to continuously seek out curious conversations instead of the rather solipsist tendency to soapbox.

I also just thought how HN may contribute to this through design. I'm replying to your post right now and I can only see your post on my screen. While I can click "parent" in the menu to see the chain of replies or "context" to see your post in the context of all the replies, I'm not able to see both a reply box and the context before your post on the same page.

So, it requires me to either keep in working memory what the parent said, and what the grandparent said and great grandparent, or maybe to have a multitabbed approach. Conversely, something like Discourse allows me to scroll up and down to see the previous posts while maintaining a compose window open.

Maybe this isn't the place for such a comment, I guess I just felt frustrated in another thread and worried I'd give a reply that either repeated what someone said before or didn't encapsulate the conversation.

I think these little details really matter in communication and how we often overlook them or discount them.

I agree, what seem like small design decisions can have great impact. I wonder if studies are being done on this. Something like About Face on interaction design, but then specifically on effective communication and discourse.

Ah, I imagine there are, as I remember back in 2006 or so at college, people started studying impacts of chats and such, however, I'm not specifically familiar with any research on it. If you come across it, I'd love to hear of it! Or if you do research and want some ideas / wanna partner on something, I'm also open to that. I don't have professional research background yet have worked on emotions and communications for almost 10 years now, and studied intercultural communication in college after switching from electrical engineering, so I'm quite fascinated by the intersection of computer-mediated communication and how it impacts us emotionally.

edit: Also, I'm not sure what you meant by "About Face," will you explain it more?

edit2: I think you meant this: https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/about-face-essenti...

“The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20 percent traitor.”

— Ronald Reagan

"but whoever is on the "other side" is having the same conversation with their kids, and showing them tools and resources they've developed over the years to decide what information to trust and, to the kid, it's just as convincing!!"

I wish. And sometimes they do.

But there are lots and lots of people who have various religious/ideological dogmas. They do not show their kid the scientific method - they preach their truth to them. Because they feel they are right.

It has helped me to realize that most of politics is preference, and preference rarely need be informed by the scientific method, especially when most of our daily choices are preference based.

E.g. who do I love, what should I wear/watch/eat, where should I spend my money, etc.

Our culture has now taught a few generations that people get to decide their own truth, and they conflate preference for truth, and now we are witnessing what this means…

"E.g. who do I love, what should I wear/watch/eat, where should I spend my money, etc."

Ok, my feelings of love are not guided by a scientific method (except analyzing and reflect on what I feel).

But by deciding what to wear, eat, watch etc. I do apply the scientific method. Meaning I test out systematically, what works best for me. And I try to teach this to my children.

The scientific method applied to preferences is probably not the scientific method (in regards to control experiments (unless you have clones and access to the multi verse:)))

The very basic idea of the scientific method as I learned it, is: testing ideas by experiment.

If it looks cold outside, but not too cold - I have the idea that a medium warm jacket of mine is enough. And then outside I see if it was adequate or not and next time under similar conditions I change accordingly, or go back to the house that instant.

Sounds like common sense and it is. But not everyone is doing it.

I seriously got shocked by people telling me, they walk in shoes hurting them, but they did so because of style. This sounds like insanity to me, even though I know in their specific setting it makes some sense - as style is important in their circles. But that just means those circles are far from science and rationality, if it leads to people wearing clothes not adequate for the weather and being cold and uncomfortable.

“ I seriously got shocked by people telling me, they walk in shoes hurting them, but they did so because of style.”

Determining what to optimize for is basically what preference is. Some prefer attractiveness and aesthetics over comfort, and in most cases there is no option that optimizes all variables due to complex cross talk…

After you choose which subjective preference to optimize for, you can definitely employ the scientific method to try to parse that further, but that comes after the preference:)

"After you choose which subjective preference to optimize for, you can definitely employ the scientific method to try to parse that further, but that comes after the preference:) "

I think I can apply the scientific method also to preferences. Meaning if it really makes me happy, to be accepted in certain circles where the conditions are bad shoes, then so be it.

But personally I decided years ago, that this is not the case for me.

Actually, wanting to be comfortable all the time is irrational. You should intentionally make yourself uncomfortable occasionally in order to avoid becoming too "precious". Hypothermia is an old friend of mine.

https://davidgoggins.com/book/

Sure, did I mention, that I like wintercamping and just done so recently?

And people usually look at me strangely when I wear just a light jacket, when they look like Inuit.

But I would never intentionally wear shoes that do not fit right. There is no benefit in that - but it rather can mess up your whole body.

I don't think it's necessarily about them being right or wrong in the scientific sense. It's the communal disgrace that comes with having raised an apostate child. Being factually correct or incorrect is subordinate to communal standing.

This is basically a less-polished exposition of GGP Grey's excellent video [1], which he also mentions in the talk

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

See also The Toxoplasma Of Rage: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage... and You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

This happens because there's a lot of cultural bias towards being centrist, being perceived as the reasonable middle. People like that a lot, it feels good, so whenever such people try to describe political disputes it's tempting to try and describe both parties as the same when arguably they're not.

This Substack article is a good case in point. It makes it sound like there's two sides, both demanding censorship, and Substack standing in the reasonable middle. But in reality they're only describing one side. They say:

"In the online Thunderdome, it is imperative that you are not seen to engage with ideas from the wrong group; on the contrary, you are expected to marshall whatever power is at your disposal – be it cultural, political, or technological – to silence their arguments"

Are both sides here trying to silence the other?

No. One side is and we've seen that a lot, hence why this post exists and that's partly why Substack has taken off. But the most "extreme" view promoted by sceptical Substackers on vaccines is that mandates are immoral and people should be free to decide, for various reasons. They aren't arguing that people promoting vaccines should be forcibly censored. At least I've never seen any such arguments, not even in comments.

"It’s [always] the other side who shuts down criticism because they know they can’t win the argument."

Is it? Again, people flagging red alerts over problematic COVID policies or data aren't trying to shut down criticism of themselves, in fact they routinely highlight and engage with it by writing long responses to people who disagree with them (knowing full well they'll never get a response).

In reality, one side here speaks but never listens whilst simultaneously working hard to ensure nobody is allowed to disagree with them. And the other side does not.

So whilst I applaud Substack's take, their framing of it is curious and maybe doesn't bode well. They aren't sitting in the middle here because there is no middle. There's one group that wants to wipe the others out completely and will use any tactics available to do so, and then there's Substack that's sheltering those people from the storm.

This seems to be the public perception: only one side demands censorship. This isn't quite true and only shows you how well one side is at publicizing that they're being censored, which, ironically, means they're censored -less-.

Palestinian accounts on facebook have been deleted for years when they were trying to report on occupation. Facebook also deleted all the accounts of Nicaraguan socialists trying to counter the Western narratives about their election. Anything on social media that is anti-imperialist, especially when it comes from the actual global south, has been silenced, and also silently silenced - because it' not part of the mainstream discourse, so people often don't realize it's gone because they never knew it was there to begin with. It was easy to quietly sweep under the rug.

The new right isn't so easy to quietly sweep under the rug, because it's loud and it's next door to many people in the West, so you notice when the posts are gone, people yell about it and call wolf - which means they have the voice to yell, and the power to cry wolf.

It's an old (very, very old) insight that rules for censorship are made with the the excesses of the right as legitimation for it, and then used against the left. Which is why, on the left, it would be pragmatically and strategically smart to stop clamoring for the censorship of the right. We're just handing the agents of control the tools to silence us with.

Well, I was using vaccines as an example because it's mentioned in the article (which appears to be prompted by some flak from the Guardian).

I don't know about Palestinians and Nicaraguan socialists. Are they demanding that their critics be silenced? I doubt they're in any position to even imagine demanding that.

"It's an old (very, very old) insight that rules for censorship are made with the excesses of the right as legitimation for it, and then used against the left."

Maybe it's old because it's no longer true? I'm approaching middle age now, and the best examples of right wing censorship I can think of are all related to sexual morals and porn. But at least in the UK left wing parties usually support censoring that stuff too, e.g. here's an old article about the current head of the UK Labour Party being concerned about internet porn and other Labour party figures supporting the idea of internet censorship:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2169509/Internet-po...

If the left has ever been the side of free speech it must have been some time before I was born. I suspect the reality is that the people who want censorship are typically those in power or most aligned with power, and that swings back and forth over time.

> the best examples of right wing censorship I can think of are all related to sexual morals and porn

While those topics do come up for censorship here in the US, some people are also demanding to remove topics related to race and other interpretations of history, and sometimes for curse words.

For example, two trending topics in the US today are Dan Bongino getting kicked off YouTube and the book Maus being restricted/removed/relegated in a school district in Tennessee, and people complaining from both sides of being censored.

I am not sure about your reasoning. Parent is talking about vaccine opposers, while you are talking about Nicaraguan socialists and Palestinians.

Could we really draw such lines?

Parent seemed to not be talking about vaccines, but that censorship only was being applied to one "side."

So this comment was intentionally describing issues that are from different sides to point out that (A) it doesn't only happen to the "right," and (B) the fact that we hear about it so much from the "right" might actually be because they're censored less. Then (C) they describe that this is potentially even an intentional pattern used by more middle-leaning "left" to justify censorship against the "right" and then leverage against their own, more radical, side.

Not necessarily defending the idea, but comment seemed relevant to the parent, to me.

Absolutely. This is "leftist bullies" and "white genocide" and "reverse racism" all wrapped up with a bow on it.

There's already a term: "both sidesism". It's the perfect term.

But I'll tell you what: when the Blues Brothers and New York rioters in Seinfeld were chasing down Nazis, that shit was NOT controversial.