notes-politics-problemsWithDiscourse

todo. This page is for notes on how and why discourse, particularly political discourse, is problematic

• the typical, accepted way of phrasing many facts are actually just approximations of a more complex true fact
• it can be hard to phrase something correctly even if you have a fairly stable idea of the thing that you want to express
• to properly discuss something, it takes too long, because you have to reply to each point of your opponent
• to properly discuss something, it takes too long, because you have to be willing to learn about everything yourself rather than relying on external authority, at least when your opponent alleges that the external authorities are objectively wrong and they can prove it
• to properly discuss something, it takes too long, because you have to be willing to spend a ton of time on definitions and on metadiscussions about what is and isnt rational discussion
• there are psychological difficulties in being objective in political discussion
  • http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/?page=full
  • http://www.owl232.net/irrationality.htm
• there are sociological difficulties in being blunt in political discussion, because if you say something that sounds at first like something evil but which means something innocent when it is property understood, and if this is repeated to others, they will consider you evil. To avoid this, you have to constantly argue about wording.
• there are economic/sociological difficulties in political discussion in that 'soundbites' of what you say are sure to be repeated more widely than the full content
• there are political difficulties in political discussion in that politicians have an incentive to galvanize their base and to avoid offending potential voters, rather than contributing to rational discourse
• there are political difficulties in political discussion in that politicians have an incentive to use language that is simple rather than precise
• there are political difficulties in political discussion in that politicians have an incentive to mischaracterize what others have said

when i say 'it takes too long' i don't mean 2 hours instead of 1, i mean 2 years instead of two hours. Ie. an amount that is truly unaffordable for a person with a job.

See also [1],

Possibly related issues:

• Some think that most violence in the world is motivated by personal morality
• [notes-politics-onlineShaming]

Links and quotes:

• "The general quality of discourse on any thread seems to drop hugely whenever politics comes up." [2]
• "Our "political brains" are complicated, messy things, tied into tribal instincts, personal identity, and all sorts of other messy things that make it difficult." [3]
• "there's this other series of questions about the world, where we really don't answer with reference to specific knowledge. They seem primarily to serve as litmus tests for measuring group identity... contradicting someone who is really just talking about their identity just makes everyone upset." [4]
• "I study risk perception and science communication....the single most consequential insight you can learn from empirical research in these fields if your goal is to promote constructive public engagement with climate science in American society...: What people “believe” about global warming doesn’t reflect what they know; it expresses who they are.... if you want to promote constructive public engagement with the best available evidence, you have to change the meaning of the climate change. You have to disentangle positions on it from opposing cultural identities, so that people aren't put to a choice between freely appraising the evidence and being loyal to their defining commitments." [5]
• anecdote: this guy presents a history of some particular forum that e thinks has devolved: https://medium.com/@LongTimeLurker1stTimePoster/the-av-club-comment-section-community-clique-or-cesspool-f9c2e3295786#.wata50dkt

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http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-04-07 notes that those who talk a lot are overrepresented in discourse and therefore often mistaken as typical representatives of a group. He hypothesizes that this is correlated with being crazy and mean, and that this dynamic falsely gives you a bad impression of groups other than your own.