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Comment by frogpelt | Hacker News Reader

There's an overwhelming tendency now to boil down all opinions to either "right side of history" or "wrong side of history", "anti-science" or "pro-science". This is especially true on social media, YouTube. etc.

Out in the real world there is so much nuance. There are actually black people who don't agree with BLM. There are intellectual people who don't think they need the vaccine. There are Democrats who are pro-life. There are Republicans who support gay marriage. There are bunch of undecided people on a bunch of topics.

We are not all on one side or the other. There is so much middle ground. I still believe most people are in the vast expanse of middle ground.

It just doesn't look that way on the Internet.

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This is so spot on. I have seen countless of times in forums how if someone voices concern about a vaccine they are immediately called "Trump supporter", even though they might not even be from the US. Especially in US though it seems that in people's minds there's just 2 types of people, one are allies and the other are enemies. Allies all have the exact same beliefs, and enemies exactly the opposite. Therefore if someone has a belief that doesn't agree with mine it means they must also hold all the other beliefs and must be of the enemy group. I think it's more than ridiculous. And you also can't hold a belief that's in between the other beliefs, this immediately means you are the enemy.

Ironically it was the liberals I most associated with opposition to vaccines in the recent past. In 2020 everything just became so much more polarized.

And this is a dogshit simplistic way to view the world that leads to our. Social media and all of this tribalism makes all American dumber. It's removing our ability to understand and appreciate nuance and learning how to get along with those who think differently.

And it's happening at pace in part because the polarization drives "engagement" which means $$

And imagine a country which legislates "two parties" in myriad ways, lecturing and sanctioning the rest of the world on what "democracy" means.

There's something in human nature such that when we learn something that we don't like about someone else, we wish to think them even worse, perhaps to feel justified in our own hatred.

I like the way C. S. Lewis wrote it:

> The real test is this. Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, "Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that," or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black.

Frogpelt has an understanding that so many lack. I wish there was some way for this middle ground to speak and make itself now.

This "tribal" devolution of everything to two sides on an issue with interlocking viewpoints on all subjects is a major problem in our current climate.

I agree the nuance of this situation is lost when there are so many people who do not see the nuance to begin with.

A culture that cannot understand nuance is a culture more likely to go to war. To see others as "other", not seeking common ground, but seeing things that differ as reasons to hate

That nuance is the same reason the people complain about the Democratic Party having poor messaging.

The masses don't spread nuanced messages. Instead, the simpler & more emotion-based a message is, the more likely it'll go viral.

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