[kopo]

Very interesting. I have had this feeling watching political news/gamergate/comicgate/damore etc.

Too much energy gets expended trying to convince/shame/punish the other side. None of it imho has produced outcomes or increased understanding.

When dealing with unknown unknowns/ambiguity etc why not just split the groups, let them go do their thing on two separate islands, like running two parallel jobs based on contradictory assumptions and let the best job win.

How do we split without causing a mess is the big question? We maybe in an overly connected state atm or certain issues require disconnection and echo chambers.

Thought experiment (slightly ridiculous and loaded but use your imagination here) - there is a lot of talk about splitting up Google for example. What if Google is split on an issue like unconscious bias training. Those who support it produce one search engine and those who don't (damore camp) produce another. Don't we get better information over all?

Right now when I read a "this is how you need to think" article on CNN, I shake my head and go look at what Fox has to say. And when Fox is fawning over Trump I go the other way.

[citrablue]

> Too much energy gets expended trying to convince/shame/punish the other side. None of it imho has produced outcomes or increased understanding.

I find a better fit to take the (somewhat cynical) approach that each side is trying to increase "vendor lock-in" for their own side. Media coverage of politics makes much more sense when I assume each side is only talking to people who already support them.

[SmirkingRevenge]

Parallel jobs are great (the map step)... but you generally need a reduce step as well.

If you at all try to be a neutral player in a partisan world, you quickly notice that each faction does a curious filter before the reduce. Its a filter that keeps the worst arguments/conclusions of the opposition and discards the best, before they can be compared. And for the in-group, it keeps the best and discards the worst.

Only after that, is there a (metaphorical) reduce. And lo and behold (drum roll...) their own ideology wins! How comforting and reassuring! You were right all along!

But the major league, all-star team is playing against a team from the t-ball league (relatively speaking).

[logfromblammo]

From an advertiser analysis of both wings, it seems like the only thing both liberal-biased and conservative-biased television news consumers can agree on is discreetly mail-ordered boner pills.

I can't stomach too much of either CNN or Fox News. I can take just a bit more of MSNBC. But I really miss unbiased, fact-based journalism, without all the relentless subtext and agenda-pushing, without the editorializing. But I'm also not willing to pay for it, so I really can't blame anyone else for its absence.

That doesn't mean I can't complain about all the blatant, rampant editorial bias. It is polarizing the audience, likely by design, so as to better target the advertisements that pay for it all. Echo chambers are great for advertising niche products to niche audiences.

[symplee]

When dealing with unknown unknowns/ambiguity etc why not just split the groups, let them go do their thing on two separate islands, like running two parallel jobs based on contradictory assumptions and let the best job win.

The problem, currently, is that the winning ideology is enforced on all islands. The stakes wouldn't be so high if the other islands had no influence on your island.

This is part of the rationale for keeping decisions at as local a level as possible (and avoiding one-size-fits-all policies.)

[Arbalest]

I've had a similar thought experiment before, where basically you let people of different political leanings go to their own countries with their like minded ilk. Two problems arise:

1. People tend to hold complex combinations of views which may not completely align with everyone else. How many partitions do you need in order to make this work?

2. Mobility remains an issue. People simply don't have the resources to get up and go to something they actually support and build it up.

[TangoTrotFox]

I've also had similar thought experiments here. But take it a step further. It's probably safe to say that the current biggest divide in society is in political ideology. Let's just call this left/right, though that's far from precise. Imagine we placed all 'left' individuals in one US, and all 'right' individuals in another completely identical (in terms of physical resources, preexisting infrastructure, etc) US. And migration between these two nations was freely and instantly allowed, but only if you absolutely abided the initial ideological split. How long would it take before these two nations then had their own internal splits with people dividing themselves among some new subissue?

Of course you hit on this with #1, but I think the answer is that there is no limit to the number of partitions. In other words that division is itself inevitable. So rather than trying to ideologically homogenize ourselves, I think it's more important to for people to embrace diversity of views as opposed to attack everything that doesn't conform to, what to them, seems self evident. Because for 'the other side', their views are likely seen as identically self evident. When sides remain incapable of doing anything except working to antagonize the other, in the end the only way things would be resolved is by force of arms which is certainly something almost nobody wants.