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Comment by zadkey | Hacker News Reader

If they are really educated, that means knowing both sides of the story, not just what the echo chamber feeds you.

"In other words, the more you pay attention to political media, the less likely you are to understand the true beliefs of your political opponents."

Paying attention to political media does not make you educated.

I would think that for most people "paying attention to political media" means hearing stuff from one side's point of view repeatedly.

"First Things" https://www.firstthings.com provides an authentic and sympathetic view into conservative thought. Regrettably, Fox News appears to have more influence, and in the handful of hours I've spent with that it was an abyss of greed and hatred.

No, in this context educated means having a higher level of degree (high school, BS, MS, PHD). I'd argue that that only increases your experience of knowing both sides of the story if your focus is a subject such as Political Science. Having a degree in mathematics or chemistry would not affect your political knowledge at all. While having a degree in a subject such as gender studies or sociology would probably just expose you to a high degree of far-left opinions.

Also knowing that there is more to it, than two sides.

And yet, in America at least, there's only two parties representing those beliefs, so by being aligning to either side you're stuck voting for both the bad and the good.

>And yet, in America at least, there's only two parties representing those beliefs

There's still a diversity of opinions within those parties and you get to vote for those during the primaries. You can't say that Sanders is the same as Clinton, or Trump is the same as JEB.

There also seems to be a deep American belief that there are exactly two sides to an issue. And if you find one of them wrong then the other is right automatically.

Yup, and in debates they even prop them up as a pair of talking heads, giving them the veneer of equal weight, no matter the merits or general agreement.

And very often both sides are equally wrong. And two times wrong doesn't make anything right.

But it does make an easily televised fight.

That's the so-called Aristotlean viewpoint, which has been common in Western thought for thousands of years. Brought to a peak in British and American politics.

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