How to conquer American political divide? | Hacker News Reader

How to conquer American political divide?

1 pointliammaher7 comments

Many argue that the right/left political divide is particularly pronounced at the moment in the United States - perhaps too much so.

I'm not for a moment suggesting that this problem should be "solved" per se - a healthy political divide is necessary for the exchange and development of ideas. But I wonder if there's a way to render it more effective, and at least mitigate the seemingly visceral divide in American society. Any ideas on how the internet could help in this realm (for once)?

What about a website where ordinary citizens of opposing views get matched up, and are forced to have a video call with one another on a particular issue e.g. abortion. I presume a video call with a stranger would somewhat encourage "listening" and general "politeness", more so than on Twitter/Facebook.

Maybe you could record the calls and post them for others to watch.

Any thoughts on this topic?

Get neighbors connecting to (and yes, actually talking to) each other, preferably face to face. They are likely to agree on the important issues that actually affect lives and that helps render the emotions on the horseshit less urgently toxic.

"Local" seems to be the antithesis of "the internet" but thats a marketing fallacy; I think. There's still a place for the local bulletin board that is conspicuously missing from the world right now. All credit to Craigslist, but it isn't enough.

interesting, the face-to-face sounds great, only problem is scalability

Gregory Batson's theory was groups stay together despite all kinds of difference amongst members because of shared Rituals. A sort of irrational, repatitive activity, that the whole chimp troupe can perform irrespective of differences in intelligence, knowledge levels, personality traits, needs and priorities.

So look into how Rituals are constructed.

Create an app to analyze closed caption text to identify logical fallacies and display same on the screen as the talking heads talk or highlights them on text websites. Pretty quickly realize everything they say is BS.

Until you figure out how to motivate people to turn out and vote for boring candidates, the system is going to cater to crazy.

They should try to break the two party system. Voting in America is like trying to wash your hands in a British bathroom.

what does that mean ahaha

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