volkris @volkris@qoto.org
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
I don't know why anybody takes #BernieSanders seriously. He's been completely out of touch with reality for years.
Right now he is complaining about the shutdown of government that he's been voting for. Has anybody told him how his votes work? Does he care what's happening in reality?
It's like his handlers just stand him up so he can spout rhetoric that they benefit from.
The state of #USPolitics...
Being opposed to kingship remains an easy test to pass.
The issue is not being opposed to kingship. The issue is that people can't agree about the facts of what is happening on a day-to-day basis, so they can't agree on whether there is a king.
Everybody is opposed to kingship. Arguing about that is pointless. Or worse, it's used to promote bad things.
The disagreement is in who is being a king, factually.
@cdarwin It's not up to Trump.
Senators are holding up progress on funding, not Trump.
Wrong branch of government.
More importantly, stop reelecting the same ineffective representatives to Congress.
The rest of this is just an act of going out and having a party. If you go and reelect the same folks who have failed us in Congress, none of this matters.
@everton137 other way around: it's relatively decentralized because it doesn't centralize around instances.
BlueSky decentralizes down to the users, and that fosters an attitude that makes it more attractive than having to rely on the dictates of the people running the instances.
No, Trump is not in utter panic. He doesn't even really know what's going on in the world, so why would he be?
The people surrounding Trump wouldn't tell him what's going on if it would put him into a panic.
That kind of report is just echo chamber talk. It is as divorced from reality as Trump is.
DC #NoKings speaker being broadcast on #C-SPAN:
They say we are living in an echo chamber, but [goes on to say a bunch of ignorant stuff proving that he is living in an echo chamber]
This is why the whole event is so silly. It is an expression of the echo chamber, really proving the point and buttressing the arguments of their opposition. They are playing into the hands of their opposition.
@chad What lies have you heard them spreading?
And what data do you have about how popular the movement is?
From what I've heard Republicans aren't so much lying as just ignoring it.
The answer is that people have completely different sets of beliefs of what is actually happening in the world as they believe whatever stories are circulating in their own echo chambers.
For example, in this case a whole lot of people believe that it's not still continuing. Their sources of news simply report that it's not continuing, so they believe it.
This is a common pattern these days. They (whoever "they" are) simply operate with a set of information that doesn't quite match with reality, but given that set of information, it makes sense.
It's quite a feat for somebody to seriously suggest that America is indistinguishable from Russian and Saudi oligarchies.
That's a special kind of echo chamber.
#NoKings protests are a tremendous example of strawman argument that will probably be counterproductive but take a tremendous amount of social resources to engage in.
A whole lot of people yelling no kings! while their opponents simply say, yeah, right, no kings... we agree, so what are you on about?
That pointless interaction has already been showing up in media, substantial messages being lost in the straw man.
It's a symptom of people being locked in their echo chambers. It's sad, it's pathetic.
@marathon Well the problem is that they pay attention to politics AS sport, treating serious questions of governance as if it was a mere football game with lineups to set among two teams before the two teams competed when that's not at all how the government is structured.
You know, when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail? And it's going to make it pretty ineffective trying to drive in that screw with that hammer.
That's a huge reason why the US government is so messed up right now, so many voters voting as if everything is two football teams going at each other when that's not how any of this actually works.
The commentators that shape significant swaths of American thought present current events as if they were football games, which is unsurprising because so many of those commentators come from that world, and it's really messing up American understanding of the world they're living in. And then they vote based on that misunderstanding.
PS, It's also interesting to notice conservative speakers repeating the conclusion that Putin has gone crazy, literally.
So many conservatives conclude that his actions reflect mental illness because they don't make sense, when really that's a symptom of their understanding of the world being wrong. But instead of considering that Russia might be more complicated than Putin, they conclude that it is indeed all about Putin, but he's the crazy one when the news doesn't align with the Putin-centric worldview.
@mattjhayes careful about promoting a solution in search of a problem, though.
Don't overlook the possibility that Fediverse simply might not give users what they want, and that's why users aren't adopting it.
A lot of people get so focused on promoting the tool that they fail to notice that the tool really needs to be improved for it to be useful.
@marathon I really don't think it's that puzzling. It's part of the cognitively lazy pattern of simplifying things down to a single icon instead of having to grapple with a complex world.
Keep in mind, also, that major figures in US media these days have backgrounds in sports reporting, for some reason, so they basically promote that sort of pattern, giving people permission to reduce a complex world into the personal icons.
People will be lazy if you allow them, and at this point the culture is actually pushing them to be lazy.
The Western obsession with Russia's president comes out of lazy people trying to make sense of a complex world.
@europesays That's just stupid.
The one does not imply the other.
Yeah Trump is a moron, that doesn't mean he's a king, or that people declaring him to be a king and then yelling about the declaration that they just made have any particular point... No that's just a mess, this is just stupid..
#BBC, talking about the meeting with the Ukrainian president: Everyone knows #Trump likes to plays cards close to the vest.
Yeah but never forget he likes to hold his cards close to his vest while he's actually playing checkers and his opponents are playing chess.
The guy never has any idea about what's going on around him, and we need to emphasize that constantly to fight back against the conspiracy theories, and his own supporters.
@Dhmspector We hired a reality TV shock jock to be president.
Well, it stinks, but we got what we elected.
Yay democracy I guess.
@nethenekhthon except that broad swaths of the federal government continue to operate.
volkris
boosted
#Hannity, ad libbing and having his normal problems stacking idioms meaningfully: "this is the mother vein, this is the secret sauce" The guy really doesn't seem to know what common phrases mean, but uses them anyway, a trait shared with #Trump. Interestingly #AI -like, though. #USPolitics
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
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