[qznc]

> This is the problem with America today, the technology that was supposed to bring us together actually isolated us into echo chambers and drove us further apart.

Everybody knows where the other echo chamber is. As a democrat, you are free to watch Fox or read Breitbart. The hard thing is to read it open minded. The average democrat HN visitor probably looks there and stops after two sentences. Then leaves ranting about the bullshit there.

The crux is that this the same in reverse. If a Trump supporter watches CNN, he stops after two sentences. Then leaves ranting about the bullshit there.

I have no idea how to fix this.

[notacoward]

> Everybody knows where the other echo chamber is.

Brilliant. Thank you for that excellent summation, and no, I'm not being the least bit sarcastic. That's awesome.

> I have no idea how to fix this.

Neither do I, really, but let's not jump to the solution before we're done with the diagnosis. Here's an idea: critical thinking is overtaught. Yes, over. I know the common belief is that there's not enough critical thinking out there. I've said it myself many times, but it's a bit of a "little knowledge is dangerous" kind of thing. I see a lot of people, especially in tech, who know just enough critical thinking to pick apart someone else's argument, find its logical flaws, name its fallacies, then dismiss the whole thing. What they never did - what they've never been taught to do - is listen. Yes, it's a skill, and thus learnable. Very little of what people say is completely right or completely wrong. None of it comes without context. Take the OP, for example. There's sure a lot of Bernie butthurt there, but it's there for a reason and there are other nuggets of truth to be gleaned from it as well. Even the most deplorable Trump supporter has something to teach us, though perhaps unintentionally. Critical thinking is awesome, but sometimes we need to put off the critique of falsehood until we've looked for some truth.

[mannykannot]

Listening to the other side is part of critical thinking, so I do not see how a lack of it may result from overteaching critical thinking. It might be a result of superficially teaching critical thinking, which could result in people being able to name fallacies but not be able to see them.

[notacoward]

Where did you get the idea that listening - really listening, not just mining for quotes you can refute - is part of critical thinking? Where is it taught that way? Where is it practiced that way? They're both valuable and important skills, but they're pretty much independent of one another and too rarely both present in the same person.

[mannykannot]

Ha! - if you are suggesting that I mined your post for something to refute, I would argue that you presented that point as being central to your reply to the second quote that you picked from Qznc's post (and I also think it was central to that reply, so I don't think I am taking it out of context.)

I actually went so far as to do a little search into how others defined critical thinking, and they uniformly included being informed and fact-based. It seems unlikely to me that one can participate informedly in a debate without having really listened to the other participants.

Given how prevalent and easily accessible that view of critical thinking is, I am curious as to what informed your apparent view that this is not part of critical thinking.

[notacoward]

> if you are suggesting

I am doing no such thing. There was nothing in what I said to suggest that it was directed at you specifically. This would be a very bad time to construct a strawman.

> hey uniformly included being informed and fact-based

"Informed and fact-based" is not the same as listening to one's opponent. I wasn't talking about what tools can be used to rebut another's argument; I was - pretty clearly - talking about listening to it before the rebuttal starts. You've pretty much just proven my point.

[mannykannot]

If I had unconditionally stated that you had suggested that, you might have a small point, but I think it is a plausible possible reading and that there's nothing wrong with getting it out of the way, one way or another.

Your response to my position misses my point. You questioned where I got the idea that critical thinking encompasses listening, and what you wrote or thought you were saying up to that point is immaterial to that question. You distinguish between an initial time of listening and a subsequent time of rebuttal, but listening itself involves thinking, whereby one understands and evaluates the information, and it is from that that any rebuttal begins.

BTW I agree with much of what you have written recently about the election, especially your point that Bernie also lost, and with regard to the idea that markets are the solution to everything.

[delegate]

> I have no idea how to fix this.

I think this is the responsibility of "the media". They should be the ones looking at the "truth" from all sides and presenting a equidistant picture.

It's just that we don't have "media" anymore, they're all just tools for delivering advertising.

Media has moved to the Internet - "social media" which doesn't yet have a clearly defined role/goal in society.

It has an impact allright, but not necessarily intended, it just kind of happened by itself.

Now the responsibility is on these Internet companies to implement the proper information dissemination algorithms, otherwise we might end up with civil wars all over the world.

For example, if you follow a "democrat" leader, Facebook should force you to follow a "republican" leader too.

In general, whenever there's something divisive, these tools should "push" opposing views to you as well, in order to avoid the formation of "echo chambers".

[smoyer]

One of my (current) favorite quotes:

"And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore."

- Kurt Vonnegut

[drusepth]

>I have no idea how to fix this.

I don't either, but I'd love to get some brainstorming started.

Some naive solutions (and, please, feel free to point out why each of them won't work -- any maybe what you'd change to get closer to a solution!):

1. News "aggregator" sites that pull from both sides of the spectrum -- though people would probably just pick and choose which articles they read and which they raged over (assuming they didn't just revert back to CNN/Fox immediately)

2. Some neutralizing layer on top of all news sites that pulls out glittering generalities, biased phrasing, etc -- though you'd still have the issue of which stories are being reported on, and those "neutered" articles could easily be less interesting to read (and of course this would be difficult to get right, but I don't think difficulty to implement should be a barrier to trying something)

3. Some gamification of understanding and debate, that rewards people for taking the time to read posts from the other side and thoughtfully sharing their opinions on why they agree/disagree, or pairs people up with someone in private to have a discussion over it (just saw something on HN the other day for this), or something else to facilitate seeing things from someone else's POV

4. A more traditional game (as in, actually a game) that mirrors the real world (in the same way the Stock Market Game mirrors stock market prices) in which you play as someone with a different point of view (e.g. you're given a fictional character and role-play as them) and try to make compromises with other players to achieve peace in an evolving fictional world

One other question is this: how do we get people to want to escape their echo chambers? Many people enjoy or are just fine being surrounded by people that agree with them. Lots of people actually go out of their way to remove those who disagree with them (as is popular on e.g. Facebook and G+ right now). How do we convince people that, yes, sometimes it's good to hear dissenting ideas?

I see so many people upset right now, and it's clear there's a myriad of deep-set problems at work that can't be fixed with a simple bandaid solution. It's frustrating when you see a problem like this and have no idea how to fix it.

[donw]

> 1. News "aggregator" sites that pull from both sides of the spectrum -- though people would probably just pick and choose which articles they read and which they raged over (assuming they didn't just revert back to CNN/Fox immediately)

The million-dollar questions are: How do you combat the addictive effects of anger (it is a very addictive emotion), and the human predisposition towards tribal conflict (e.g., the us vs them dynamic)?

If we had a good answer to those questions, then we could craft a media environment that, while still biased, presented a good sampling of viewpoints[1].

After which, we would need to figure out how can that be made economically sustainable?

I would be very interested to tackle those problems, but fear the economics.

[1] Right now, most media outlets present "the other side" solely as a strawman/weakman argument to be knocked down.

[qznc]

Gamification reminds me of prediction markets, though I don't believe this is something for the masses.

For this election the prediction markets were just as wrong as the polls and pundits. (Thanks to everybody who bet against Trump, you gave me great odds ;)

[russelluresti]

I see a lot of people blaming the technologies, and I think that's a problem.

The technology is just a tool. Tools that we choose how and when to use.

If an echo chamber exists, it's only because we, as individuals, create it. We like and comments on posts on Facebook that agree with our existing opinions and we unfollow the people who have different opinions. Our own actions create the echo chamber.

We also get our news from one or two sources, and we avoid the sources that lean the other way. Not all media has a liberal bias - there are many media outlets with conservative views, we just choose not to read them.

The tools aren't to blame - we are. The result we see and the America we live in are direct consequences of our actions. To rid ourselves of the echo chamber, we have to change our own actions. We have to specifically search out information that challenges our beliefs. We have to interact with people who have different values.

[fixxer]

I voted for Trump. The majority of my media is CNN, NPR, and occasionally progressive radio (when I'm trying to figure out what narratives are important to the left).

I do not listen/watch/read Breitbart, Alex Jones, Fox News, Drudge. I don't consider Fox to be a "conservative news outlet" either; I put them in the establishment propaganda bucket.

[cwisecarver]

The problem is that the "other echo chamber" isn't making arguments that are based on facts, not true facts at least. You can't have an argument with a climate change denier. It's unpossible. If we can't agree on a common set of facts then there's nothing else to talk about.

The way to fix it is to force anyone that broadcasts a video signal over cable or the airwaves or the internet to have a few hours a night of commercial free news. If they publish something that's patently not true then the government should revoke their license to broadcast on every medium. The only problem with that is that it would be very easy to get state run media in that situation.

[dev360]

I recently switched to Wall Street journal and I have been impressed by their reporting on politics. I felt like they reported objectively on this election, at least to the point where a bias was not distinguishable.

Their tech news are also really good - you end up reading lots of stories that will be on the front page of HN throughout the day.

[travmatt]

Business journalism typically comes with less partisanship when it comes to reporting politics. But my partisan, naive assumption would be that they cover subjects like TPP, the DAPL, and social security privatization from a very biased point of view.

[nogbit]

That is true, and the card to play against that scenario is reading something like the Economist.

[antisthenes]

"Politics may come and go, but Greed goes on forever."

[dev360]

Yes you are probably correct there.

[donw]

This is why I read both, although it gets painful at times, and that goes for both sides.

If you can not understand somebody, if you can not speak and understand their language, if you can not use words they way they do, then you have no chance of communicating with them.

[nogbit]

This has been fixed many times over in history...start you own news/media outlet. It's much easier these days.

It's super easy to be open minded about it once you realize it's all bullshit everywhere.

[wiz21c]

Thanks for reminding the obvious. That's very helpful nowadays.