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Comment by mystikal | Hacker News Reader

In my experience, because they only see in black and white, polarized people see anybody that isn't polarized as belonging to the other pole. It gets boring after a while.

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So true. Half of my facebook friends think I'm a flaming liberal. The other half think I'm a flaming conservative. This is because I dare to challenge their silly meme posters that lie about and defame the "opposition". They don't seem to notice that I challenge the BS on both sides. They only know that correcting falsehoods that align with their pet belief is proof you're in the enemy camp.

Likewise, they think it's impossible to concede any point made by the enemy, no matter how obviously true, without being entirely aligned with them.

It's a pain in the ass, for sure. On the other hand, it's a good filter for finding people you want to be close to and finding people you want to avoid at all costs, that is unless you want to be punished with tedious drama. At least for me, many of my family members fall into the latter category... which is tricky to negotiate...

Hmm, I think that makes that person polarizing if they are viewed in such a light. Being depolarizing would by definition mean that person is able to have polarized people see them in a non-polarizing light, would it not?

Oh yeah, I was conflating depolarizing with not polarized. Good point. Yes, by definition, if you are depolarizing, none of the polarized people will see you as polarized, at least in time. On the other hand, I still believe there are lots of people that cannot listen to anything that isn't what they believe (pick any hot button topic) - like it's really impossible to depolarize them.

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