
How do we end the divisive mindset? - christofosho
Society today is wrought with divisiveness. It&#x27;s shown in the rhetoric that the media uses, and is ever present in our own thoughts and conversation. Even applications such as Facebook cater to this divisiveness with their content bubbles, supporting our confirmation bias and failing to properly educate us in critical thinking and analysis. I want to know what the community at HN thinks we can do to help end the divisive rhetoric and &quot;information combat&quot; that is occurring.
======
throwawaycopy
Throw your smartphone in a lake, quit social media, stop reading the news,
move to a mixed-race neighborhood and then join a bowling league.

You might only just need to go outside and walk around talking to people about
their interests.

The world is a wonderful place when you're not being frightened and primed to
make unnecessary consumer purchase s.

Absolutely stop thinking there is some technical solution to these problems.

------
oblib
Great question. Here's what I think...

It's a lot easier on the personal level than at the societal level.

The big hurdle for society to leap over is the profit to made off of promoting
division by reinforcing people's fears. The leaches that sell fear based hate
and political division have a constitutional right to spew and there's not a
lot we can do to change that, nor should we try.

We can, however, influence people's desire to seek it out by using targeted
media campaigns to counter the divisive messages they produce with those that
invite cooperation.

The hurdle to do that effectively is the cost of the effort. "We" don't own a
big media outlet, or have the budget to produce quality content and distribute
it. To be fair, this is being done to the extent it can be with current
resources available to those who are working on it, but not in a focused way.
There are media sources that do work on producing unbiased content but not
really unity by looking for and exposing common ground.

Since before the elections last year, on a personal level, when I have
interacted with either "Liberals" or "Conservatives" I have purposely tried to
find and expose common ground and there's actually a lot there.

As an example, when I talked to Trump voters about "the wall" it was easy to
find common ground by pointing out the expense and ineffectiveness of a wall
in comparison to enforcing existing regulations and reducing incentives for
illegal immigration, and for making legal immigration easier for seasonal and
temporary workers, which all my "liberal" friends would support.

When I pointed out that "Big Corporations" have an obligation to help maintain
and improve the communities they sell their products in they agree with that.
We all agreed that government waste is out of control and needs to be reeled
in.

So, there is common ground and a lot of it, but no money and little effort is
being spent on cultivating it.

~~~
christofosho
Thank you for the response. I do agree that money is a large component to this
situation. I also do think some people actively discuss the existence of this
divisiveness. So then, is the problem a lack of discussion around methodology
and how to implement solutions? You mentioned that the effort is the largest
cost in deploying positive solutions. Specifically, those solutions would be
used to educate individuals on what divisiveness looks like and how to combat
it. How to recognise bias.

I do think you are right, and that we need more resources supporting the
efforts to bring us together instead of pulling us apart.

------
gumby
Is it any different from how it was before? Perhaps the same diversity of
opinion was always there, but some people simply didn't have a voice -- and
now they do.

I don't know if I even believe this hypothesis, but I haven't seen any
systematic study to prove/disprove it. Simply many assertions that people are
more divisive.

~~~
christofosho
Thank you for the response. My original post wasn't meant to specify that the
climate is /more/ divisive, but to ask the community what kind of ideas we can
implement to make the community /less/ divisive.

Also, a friend recently sent me this article which might support the idea that
climate has indeed become more divisive, even if this wasn't my original
post's reasoning.[1]

1\. [http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/how-big-data-
broke...](http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/how-big-data-broke-
american-politics-n732901)

------
skybrian
I'm not sure, but within the context of social media, I think fewer memes and
more actual conversations would help.

------
Viralsneezer
I think the question really is: can the tech community come up with do-able
ideas that can a) reach the population at large, b) use crowdsourcing and
artificial intelligence to identify and tag/mark fake news and unfounded
opinions c) possibly use blockchain for tagging/marking crowd-classified
news....So that fake news, divisive propaganda, trolling, etc. are quickly
identified and indelibly marked as such....This will not entirely solve the
problem (artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity), but it
should contribute towards reducing its effects

------
spcelzrd
Censorship. I know this doesn't fit with the techno libertarian mindset, but I
think it's a viable solution.

Let's say I'm about to share an article that claims the holocaust never
happened. (This might be illegal in certain places, but let's say it's legal
in your country). The platform could warn me that this is not factually
accurate. It could flag my post for others as not accurate. Or it could
prohibit the share.

------
mvpu
By spreading truth and facts. The anti Trump media and anti media Trump are
destroying the core fabric of news consumption in this country and that's
what's causing the divisiveness and hatred.

Stop hatred. Spread the facts. Learn the facts.

~~~
partisan
What is the truth anymore? Who do you trust to provide the truth?

~~~
mvpu
Truth = Unquestionable facts. Independent organizations like fact check.org.

