Right, and as long as the hive mentality rules you're okay. As a whole it's a nice place to go for the latest news and info, it's just you'll rarely get objective feedback is all. It is the internet after all I guess though.
As much as objective discussion is a laudable
goal, I'm not sure it is a feasible
reality. And it gets especially murky as we migrate away from topics like "will policy X do Y and Z to these metrics" and to "is policy W morally just and right". One person's compromise can be another's appeasement. Especially as the stakes increase for certain groups by policies that are meant to slowly exclude them from existing in the public sphere.
I'll admit, my thinking on this has been shaped by Nietzsche, who argued that because of how we process reality, and have to shape our description of it with words, we really don't have a way to be truly objective or truthful per se. We instead have
consensus. An agreement on what is truth and what is objective. He doesn't deny that there
is an objective reality, but that we as a species are separated from it by our specific experiences, senses, and attempts to describe the two. So in that sense, what is true, factual and objective, is as much social contract as it is evidence-based.
And if I'm honest, I find it explains a lot of the current moment, and how we got here. We are seeing the consensus fracture in real time, and new social groups form based on a consensus between them. Groups that aren't defined by geography, but by their personal experience and upbringing.
But yes, there is a sort of brutality of the mob inherent in letting people anonymously upvote/downvote posts/comments. It is why I always stick to certain communities that are more focused on specific topics to avoid the "unwashed masses" as it were. And even then, it's not been smooth sailing. But it's not like Twitter is
better, just
different. I left because of the harassment campaigns that took place there aimed at minorities. But if you weren't in the right circles, it's possible you wouldn't see it, making the place seem cleaner than it actually was.
This is what I mean. I don't mind voices from either side that aren't hyperpartisan (even Obama would privately meet with them to get their perspective on issues from time to time), while we don't see them here in our tiny corner of the internet there are rational Republicans who just happen to have a different viewpoint and aren't totally nutso MAGA but they are totally drowned out. So we have no real middle of the road feedback.
This feels more like norms than anything else. It's not so much a lack of partisanship I see in this description, but rather the remnants of mutual respect required to maintain the consensus that holds together the fabric of a society with diverse views. But again, those things erode as the stakes increase. But the sort of fracture we are seeing
is not new. And it's being actively fed.
But I'm still left wondering what such a discussion would even look like in this environment.
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