The intellectual dark web

[DiracSpike]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

Actor tweets that Ben Shapiro is a nice guy. immediately has to apologize and pull it back.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/variety....202878370/amp/

Insanity.

Shows where the discourse is these days. Duplass suggests listening to Shapiro to try and understand a different perspective and then has to come out saying he opposes the usual laundry list of -isms and -phobias, as if Shapiro endorses any of those things.

It really is a shame because I go to Shapiro to get honest analysis on what Trump is doing, even though he's a staunch republican he'll at least call balls and strikes on Trump unlike most conservative commenters. If people here listened to him I think they'd find that Shapiro's criticisms of Trump echo what you see in the American politics thread, minus of the over the top rhetoric. He frequently critiques the tariffs, international relations, and Trumps personal conduct. After Charlottesville Shapiro spent twenty minutes blasting Trumps handling of the affair and the "both sides many sides comment".

[GirlySports]

Vox has doubled down

Here’s why Duplass was right to take back his praise.

more insanity

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Vox always doubles down. Although this self-aggrandizing line is particularly funny.

It falls on me, sadly, to explain why.

No it doesn't. No one was waiting to hear what Zack Beauchamp thought about this. Had you not written this article, the world would not have noticed.

What a tool.

[PepsiFree]

I disagree with Duplass’ original take on Shapiro, but him apologising for it is more embarrassing that.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

I disagree with Duplass’ original take on Shapiro, but him apologising for it is more embarrassing that.

The line "genuine person who once helped me for no other reason than to be nice." is an interesting one. Viewpoints aside, I wonder what Shapiro helped Duplass with?

[DiracSpike]

He mentioned on his show yesterday that Duplass reached out to him in the wake of the Florida shootings to try and understand a different perspective on gun control. Basically someone who lives in a bit of a bubble of Hollywood trying to understand what the other half of the country was thinking, something the US desperately needs more of. Shapiro then said they had a long conversation and seemed to hit it off, both guys still seem to have high opinions of the other.

It's funny because I listened to Shapiro during those days for the same reason, I really don't understand the obsession with guns in the USA or agree with Shapiro on the topic but it's nice to hear some intelligent dialogue for once.

[icecube]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

Vox has doubled down

Here’s why Duplass was right to take back his praise.

more insanity

What's insane about it? Lays out pretty clearly how Ben Shapiro is an actual piece of ####. Ben Shapiro is a piece of ####. Let's not forget that fact. He's a piece of ####.

[DiracSpike]

Who had icecube in the pool? Contact me to collect your money.

[icecube]

Let's have a "nuanced" conversation about how Ben Shapiro might not be 100 percent turd because he was nice to some guy that one time. Is that better?

[dobbles]

Duplass was one of Dave Rubin's token liberals that he had on his show just to whine about how the regressive left has ruined the world. So it's not surprising he had the relationship with Shapiro who is part of that whole scene.

[Red Slinger]

Originally Posted by icecube

Let's have a "nuanced" conversation about how Ben Shapiro might not be 100 percent turd because he was nice to some guy that one time. Is that better?

I don't agree with most of what Ben Shapiro has to say but I do like to listen to him because he listens to other peoples opinions, even if he doesn't agree, and he seems to come by his opinions from his own honest reflections rather than the political echo-chamber.

Comments like yours help to drive a wedge between people and push both groups to extremes, rather than bring people together. I suspect that your motives are directly opposite of this however. We all need to force ourselves out of our bubbles.

[CliffFletcher]

The specifics of this latest outrage flareup are less interesting to me than where social media is taking us. It has radically transformed public discourse in a couple ways:

* Our nervous systems are now connected to tens of millions of other people. No longer do we go through intermediaries like newspapers to understand what people we don't know are saying and feeling - we get it direct, and we get it from vast numbers of people.

* Anxiety over our rapidly changing economic and social landscape has caused people to withdraw into tribes. And we increasingly define ourselves and our tribe by who we're against, rather than shared interests or activities.

So it has come to matter very much to us what hundreds or thousands of strangers think of us, and as a consequence we've become hyper-sensitive to being associated with the Other Tribe. The way we behave, and the language we use ("toxic"), show that we treat people in the Other Tribe as contagious. Like they carry some kind of taint that can be passed on simply by associating with them in any way.

There's a bunch of other stuff going on around sacred values and a desperate longing for the kind of certitude, piety, and conformity that religion used to provide. For a growing number of people, especially in the Brahmin class, the liberal values of tolerance, diversity, and "do what you like so long as it doesn't harm others" have proven an insufficient principle of social organization.

So where does that leave us going forward? How much further can this ferocious partisanship, the policing of speech and association, go before it crystalizes into something inimical to democracy?

Maybe we'll grow thicker skins and become inured to outrage culture. Maybe people will stop panicking when 400 of their 10,000 followers are upset by something. Maybe we'll manage to get our heads around how incredibly large our social networks are today, and that we can't let the angriest and least tolerant 5 per cent of people dictate our behaviour.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Red Slinger

I don't agree with most of what Ben Shapiro has to say but I do like to listen to him because he listens to other peoples opinions, even if he doesn't agree, and he seems to come by his opinions from his own honest reflections rather than the political echo-chamber.

Comments like yours help to drive a wedge between people and push both groups to extremes, rather than bring people together. I suspect that your motives are directly opposite of this however. We all need to force ourselves out of our bubbles.

I agree and disagree. I think Shapiro is a total poop chute, but our criticism does need to be more than that. I think the Vox article (despite being a little preachy and triggering a few itself) does at least a decent job of explaining the why behind Shapiro’s fecal-like reputation.

That doesn’t mean that Duplass should feel the need to apologise for his opinion. But context and perspective would’ve been helpful across the board. Whatever he is, Shapiro mixes in some genuinely poor and outright hateful opinions with those grounded in some intellect.

[RichKlit]

SMH so Ben Shapiro is stupid and a pos? Where does it stop? Who is so virtuous and pure to live up to whatever imagined standards today brings? I don’t think any of you live up to the standards your holding certain other people to. As the old saying goes, those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Keep your backyard clean before criticizing someone else’s.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by dobbles

Duplass was one of Dave Rubin's token liberals that he had on his show just to whine about how the regressive left has ruined the world. So it's not surprising he had the relationship with Shapiro who is part of that whole scene.

Duplass first contacted Crowder and was on his show, then Rubin. Looks like he's trying to find himself somewhere.

[Red Slinger]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

The specifics of this latest outrage flareup are less interesting to me than where social media is taking us. It has radically transformed public discourse in a couple ways:

<snip>

* Anxiety over our rapidly changing economic and social landscape has caused people to withdraw into tribes. And we increasingly define ourselves and our tribe by who we're against, rather than shared interests or activities.

So it has come to matter very much to us what hundreds or thousands of strangers think of us, and as a consequence we've become hyper-sensitive to being associated with the Other Tribe. The way we behave, and the language we use ("toxic"), show that we treat people in the Other Tribe as contagious. Like they carry some kind of taint that can be passed on simply by associating with them in any way.

<snip>

So where does that leave us going forward? How much further can this ferocious partisanship, the policing of speech and association, go before it crystalizes into something inimical to democracy?

Maybe we'll grow thicker skins and become inured to outrage culture. Maybe people will stop panicking when 400 of their 10,000 followers are upset by something. Maybe we'll manage to get our heads around how incredibly large our social networks are today, and that we can't let the angriest and least tolerant 5 per cent of people dictate our behaviour.

You seem to be starting with the premise that tribalism is a new phenomenon. I think there is sufficient historic and anthropological evidence that tribalism is hard-wired into our evolved humanness. Tribes have existed from the dawn of humanity. The difference we see now is the form that the tribalism takes and the means by which we can invite others into the tribe and communicate within our tribe. It seems to me that we humans always crave an enemy be it a different tribe across the valley, a different race, a different religious group or a different political philosophy. Hell, I think the reason most of us are even here discussing this is because we are part of the Flames tribe and dangnabit we hate the Oilers. Not to get too tangential but one of the positive and most powerful functions of sports teams is to provide a tribe, and in turn, to satisfy our natural need for an enemy.

That said, evolution away from this is very possible but evolution typically requires outside forces (climate, geography, terrain, predators, etc) to act on us over thousands or millions of years. So, I suspect that we're SOL in the short term in this regard.

I don't know what the answer is to the issues you've presented but I believe that tribalism must be factored in. If a common enemy (eg. Russia, Islamism, Nazis, etc.) doesn't organically present itself in a way that we can all (Western Democracies) rally against I fear that the we are headed towards a Left vs. Right conflict which will ultimately lead to a completely different political and social landscape (eg. Gilead from "Handmaids Tale").

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by RichKlit

SMH so Ben Shapiro is stupid and a pos? Where does it stop? Who is so virtuous and pure to live up to whatever imagined standards today brings? I don’t think any of you live up to the standards your holding certain other people to. As the old saying goes, those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Keep your backyard clean before criticizing someone else’s.

Harder said than done. The militant gays all come over to my house and hang out in the backyard after they’re done being converted by University English classes. Makes it very hard to keep clean.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Red Slinger

You seem to be starting with the premise that tribalism is a new phenomenon. I think there is sufficient historic and anthropological evidence that tribalism is hard-wired into our evolved humanness. Tribes have existed from the dawn of humanity. The difference we see now is the form that the tribalism takes and the means by which we can invite others into the tribe and communicate within our tribe.

True. But that's proven to be a dramatic difference. To the point where it's making public dialog about important issues almost impossible.

And the key thing is we're not splitting 50/50 into two tribes. Social media magnifies the most partisan and angry voices until they dominate all dialogue. I think we're in a 15/70/15 society that a lot of people think is a 50/50 society. The people who design the social media we use come right out and admit that their tools do exactly this - fuel conflict by amplifying the most outrageous and outraged.

The expansion of communication has happened so fast and so dramatically that we're still in shock from it. We've lost the ability to put numbers into context. A person hears outrage from hundreds of people on a social media platform and reacts the same way he'd react to hundreds of his neighbours in meatspace being outraged about it, failing to consider that if you have a platform that reaches 100k people, then 500 people are nothing. 5k are barely worth taking notice of.

We can't continue to let the outraged and ultra-partisan dominate our public dialogue. Moderates need to find a voice commensurate with their numbers.

[RichKlit]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Harder said than done. The militant gays all come over to my house and hang out in the backyard after they’re done being converted by University English classes. Makes it very hard to keep clean.

Why aren’t they cleaning up after themselves? No respect for Mother Earth I guess? Environmental terrorists? Alt left eco terrorists probably.

[Red Slinger]

To Cliff:

I think that's all true. Unfortunately, history suggests that we tend to lean towards the extremes. Even after WWII we had the Cold War and it was us vs. them. Realistically, I don't think we'll ever get away from the extreme voices also being the loudest. Those in the middle often fall into several camps: they don't understand, they don't care, they're too busy with their lives and/or they get shouted down. From a purely pragmatic standpoint expecting the moderates to make their voices heard is unlikely. However, those that do speak up should continue to do so.

None of this addresses the root cause unfortunately.