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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

> They're all symbols of the most extreme cases, and we latch on to them because they're recognizable, inflammatory, and get us riled up to want to do something

Having moved from Australia to the US then Canada and having spent over and month in more than 50 countries around the world, I can tell you the US does this more (better?) than other countries.

The entire US system and political discourse is setup as right/wrong, black/white, right/left, and leaves no room for discussion.

In America you're either pro-life or pro-choice, pro-guns or anti-guns, etc. etc. There is no middle ground, no room for a discussion and certainly you can bet your bottom dollar nobody would ever listen to someone from the other side and perhaps learn something.

Happily, in my experience other countries are not nearly as bad as this, and I hope like hell we don't follow suit like we have with too many other bad habits of the US.

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you can bet your bottom dollar nobody would ever listen to someone from the other side and perhaps learn something.

One problem with listening to the other side is that most people are so ridiculously misinformed about issues (on all sides), that listening to the average person of the other side is unlikely to make you learn something. You have to actively seek out the smartest people from the other side and listen to them, and that's a lot of work.

> You have to actively seek out the smartest people from the other side and listen to them, and that's a lot of work.

Partly because the smartest people on the other side aren't the ones that the average person on the other side is listening to. They're lost in the noise, even for people on their own side.

I think there's truth to that; however, I wonder if there can also sometimes be a sort of "immune system" that protects people in a sub-culture from the bad parts of the group.

For example, when I move, I ask people at my old church if they recommend any churches in the new city. So I naturally end up insulated from any crazy churches that are there. On the other hand, someone who isn't already plugged into the "Christian network" is much more likely to be exposed to the crazy parts of the community.

That's because most people religiously put faith in dumb news outlets of USA and keeps repeating the same arguments without trying to fully understand them. They have gotten accustomed to outsourcing critical thinking process to news orgs.

>One problem with listening to the other side is that most people are so ridiculously misinformed about issues (on all sides), that listening to the average person of the other side is unlikely to make you learn something.

That's the very mindset that prevents people from listening to other sides.

Instead of focusing on the "misinformation" of those on the other side on a matter (which could even be misinformation on one's own side attributed to the "enemy"), it's best to try to understand their point of view.

Especially on issues where there's no hard and fast right and wrong (as is the case in hard sciences), but are more a matter of moral values, culture, personal experiences, etc.

That's the very mindset that prevents people from listening to other sides.

I don't think it is, and I have a personal example to "prove" my point.

Personally, I'm a pacifist. The average non-pacifist knows nothing about things like middle eastern geopolitics or nuclear weapons policy. If I want to understand these topics better in ways that challenge my pacifism, I should be reading/listening to experts like David Petraeus or John Bolton, not my mom. My mom shares a wordview with Petraeus and Bolton, but she's simply not as educated or influential as these people and so is unable to give me the best arguments to challenge my beliefs.

I try to listen to the "average person" (family member, next door, colleague) of the "other side" mostly not because I want to learn more about the merits of the other position but rather as a way to better understand human nature, which in turn might also have the side effect of making me change my mind about that (or other unrelated) topics.

I'd listen to "experts" such as Petraeus less -- their salaries depend upon them not understanding a lot of things.

Now, your mother or some random person X might not be able to eloquently compare the merits of pacifism vs realpolitik, but tons of average persons have good arguments, grounded in reality.

Even more so if those persons are not in some US state that had no contact with war and global politics since forever (aside from some local poor people getting into the army), but e.g. from countries that had actual first hand experience with neighborhood countries, foreign invasions, etc, and have a pragmatic understanding about those things.

The smartest people on the "other side" might not even be people you want to listen to. Are they arguing in good faith? Are they subject to conflicts of interest? Do they represent a special interest, or an ideology?

Then, for some, you are dealing with an "other side" that represents an existential threat. Do you listen to seemingly-rational statements from someone who, at turns, has suggested it would be better for you or people like you to starve, or be killed, or be thrown in jail? If character speaks to the intention of an act, can an act that seems righteous still be trusted?

Do you see how this can become complicated very quickly?

Exactly. As an example, I'm transgender. While most feminists are very supportive of trans rights, there's a tiny minority, the TERFs, which see gender identity as a radical ideology and trans women as men appropriating femininity and invading women's spaces. I spent months debating in good faith with TERFs on the internet, and it did a number on me. They're quite articulate, but they don't argue in good faith - they bully, they dehumanize, they aren't willing to be convinced or see the human behind the text. And I can't debate in good faith either - I know I'm a girl, I needed hormones and transition to keep myself from suicide, I can't change my view at all! So it became a war of words.

So many of these conflicts have smoldered for decades and they're now coming to a head. Maybe the US isn't so backwards in its discourse, we might just be the front line of an ugly but inevitable war.

> The entire US system and political discourse is setup as right/wrong, black/white, right/left, and leaves no room for discussion.

While the US system is more polarized (and more bimodal) than lots of other modern democracies (largely as a consequence of the electoral system), and the mass-media-mediated public discourse further exaggerates that (Red v. Blue provides a simple, compelling overarching narrative framework), there's actually plenty of nuance and room for discussion, both on a common-citizen level (though you need to talk to people who are more wary of, and often require a better pre-existing relationship before, talking about politics to see it, because those people are tired of getting hit over the head with the orthodoxy on either side) and on an elite level (largely outside of casual public view, both because the participants don't really relish war with the ideologues and because the media isn't interested in nuance.)

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