iiandyiiii is correct. Everyone has grievances, some of which genuinely surprise me. (My usual response is, “Just grow up.”) Fortunately, my major grievances are (1) I don’t want an unnecessary new sidewalk built in my front yard, and (2) I don’t really like my BIL. Nobody has yet figured out how to commercialize those yet, I guess. Maybe someone is working on it.
I find very little polarization IRL. It’s mainly in forums, twitter, social networks. It’s totally rotten and terribly soured on The Straight Dope forum, for instance.
I talk to many, and everyone I talk to seems pretty rational when it comes to the issues of the day. Then I come here to see the leftist crazy bullshit, that I then share with others IRL to get a laugh. That’s really all the Straight Dope forums are worth, a good laugh at the bullshit tossed around here.
The Dope is already fairly leveled headed compared to most other forums. Plenty of other forums are less rational or less capable of steel-manning.
I do agree with this to an extent. The Internet does a lot to amplify extreme views. It’s often less a conversation than competing screeds.
I remember during Covid that I was disappointed it was politicized at all. But IRL I really didn’t see that. There were varying efforts made, everything that happened I more or less expected do to human nature. But I didn’t really see the stark political divide IRL that I constantly hear paraded on the Internet.
And yet, in practice, it happens constantly. In fact there’s a second-order version of the effect, where:
- Person A has horrible belief X and reasonable belief Y
- Person B shares reasonable belief Y.
- Person C calls B a Nazi because he agreed with A on Y
Why does this happen? It seems to be a kind of purity test applied to the opposition. It’s not enough for your own group to be absolutely pure. You must also exclude anyone that shares beliefs with those that are impure. And probably those that share beliefs with those that share belies with those that are impure, etc.
That’s another reason polarization is bad: it doesn’t just exclude old ideas that have been deemed bad; it excludes new ones as well that go against the established ones. Extremists everywhere on the political spectrum are reactionary.
That suggests to me at least that you’re already hanging out with a group near one pole as it were. So just as much if not more of a bubble than the one you accuse this place of being. I walk into the local grocery story and see some people doing open carry with a MAGA hat and see them sneering at a woman wearing a hajib leading two kids around. What said person was muttering under their breath should not be repeated.
So if you don’t see it happen IRL, but only on the internet, well, says more about your choices than this place.
I’m probably insulting everyone who posts on BBQ pit here. I’m starting to get the feeling that there’s the real world and there’s the internet. Where the trolls are battling the other trolls.
Of course there are RL examples but I think the media is blowing these way out of proportion.
You’re being dismissive of his experience.
And I thought I was so careful to avoid putting any judgement on their values.
However, given their blanket statement again:
I feel my analysis is valid. If “everyone” they speak to is rational, when my experiential evidence is quite to the contrary, then it suggests that their everyone is instead a more homogenous population than is my experience. And I suggested it may well be self-selecting. Their statement about this board is equally singularly focused, because AFAIK Cafe Society and FQ are far busier forums than P&E ever is. So, yeah, not exactly the main focus of this place unless you chose them to be.
Suggesting that people tend to self-segregate, and/or that there’s a tendency to be less than forthcoming, in the name of relationships, harmony, accord, and diplomacy IRL doesn’t seem to me to be much like wild speculation or dismissiveness.
Unless you actually have data, baseless accusations that others’ observations are bubble based are in fact baseless.
I was responding to @tullsterx’s assertation that:
IE they’re describing this place as a bubble, even if they didn’t use the term. They also added a value judgement, ie “crazy” which I was careful to avoid. I think your concern is entirely misplaced.
But that isn’t what I did.
“The race isn’t always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but both are good places to put your money.”
I can’t promise you that each and every single one of the congregants sitting near my brother at Synagogue is Jewish, but it’s pretty likely.
Similarly, we do tend to seek out people who are like us, rather than different from us – even more strongly on the yardsticks that are of greatest importance to us:
And there are many areas of the country where there is virtually no diversity of thought or opinion, or it may be in numbers so vanishingly small that those possessed of a different opinion may feel extremely uncomfortable being open about it.
I interact with far fewer Canadian, British, French, Australian, and South African residents IRL than I do on this message board.
"Government overreach! Using your taxes to put in sidewalks you don’t want and don’t need, so welfare mothers and thieves can more easily access your house! Vote For ME, I’m the only one who can stop it!’
– 'scuse me while I go wash my typing hands out with soap.
(Might take me a little longer to come up with something about the BIL. Is he by any chance from a different ethnic group or financial level or education than you are?)
True.
If, however, somebody wants to seriously study why current-day people who weren’t Nazis before are behaving like them now: I’m in favor of that.
We have the data that the person in question thinks that everything on the Dope is laughable “leftish crazy bullshit”; and that everyone they talk to IRL agrees with this.
There’s definitely diversity of thought and opinion around here, and a fair number of people on multiple sides who aren’t afraid to express it.
But because this is true, I know people who would indeed think the Dope is laughable crazy bullshit; and people who agree with most of what we’re saying here; and people who agree with some parts of it and not others; and an occasional person who thinks much of it is too far to the right to bother with. If I only talked with one set of those people; and/or if I lived somewhere that didn’t have that diversity or where those of some of those opinions were afraid to say so – yeah, I’d be in a bubble.
I think you are overly focusing on @Velocity’s ill chosen example of Nazis. IMO he’s not suggesting Nazi’s need more analysis today in 2024. That’s you imputing he wants that. IMO YMMV.
Clearly the reason you don’t see polarization is that you live in a community of highly polarized rightists where the gradations of opinion amongst your IRL group ranges from moderate right to wacky right.
Otherwise you would not have written what you wrote.
You’ve inadvertently proven the point you attempted to dispel.
No, I am simply responding to his lament that:
This absolutely should get backlash. I’m not suggesting that “Let’s try to understand Nazis better” is at all an endorsement of Nazis. Not at all.
If you want to say “I need to understand Nazis better”, I’d wonder how you missed the past 90 or so years of abundant history and scholarship on the topic, but I’d enthusiastically support you sitting down with a stack of books to complete whatever knowledge you feel is missing. Wouldn’t criticize this at all in the slightest.
On the other hand, if you want to say “Let’s understand Nazis better”, this is way too close to legitimizing them and giving them another bite at the apple, another shot at a platform they’ve proven they don’t deserve. I would suggest this isn’t merely an “ill-chosen example” as you put it. This examplifies the pathological attitude that I’m talking about, that we can’t simply dismiss demonstrably wrong ideas with prejudice. We don’t have to hear out the Nazis forever!
That’s what it’s here for.
I would say your assertion that Y is a reasonable belief is likely denied by C. Whether due to the fallacy of association or substantive disagreement, who knows. But it is unrealistic for C to say, “B is a Nazi because he holds a reasonable belief,” unless of course C is a Nazi.
~Max
There are (at least) two things that might happen:
- C says belief Y is unreasonable, solely because A holds it, and excludes B on that basis
- C is actually totally indifferent to whether Y is unreasonable and focuses solely on the fact that A and B share a belief.
Of course, the second one doesn’t happen universally. No one is quite dumb enough to think that because A and B both breathe oxygen, then they must share other beliefs. So the belief has to be at least a little controversial. But controversial is not the same as unreasonable, or at least it isn’t for unpolarized people.
I think there’s lots more room for nuance. I have yet to meet a person who would admit that solely because reprehensible A has belief Y, belief in Y is unreasonable. I think it’s more likely that there is a history of people believing X applying Y, resulting in applied X. This gives evidence for the inductive leap, all Y are X. Giving,
all Y are X
all B are Y
therefore all B are X
not solely based on A.
~Max