Comment by akira2501 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by akira2501 | Hacker News Reader

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> is a major contributor to America's polarization issues.

To what extent is this an actual "issue?" What are we sacrificing for having a plethora of divergent ideas?

> Since Americans don't have a public broadcaster that they all have a stake in as taxpayers

I would really prefer not to have one, and in the era of the internet inside of a nation with a strong first amendment that these other countries do not enjoy, I'm not sure what it could possibly add.

> Americans pick and choose which news sources they listen to

Freedom of choice is wonderful, but what you are missing is that several media ownership rules were rescinded in the 1990s. There used to be _more_ choice. Strangely, that actually _reduced_ the "issue" of polarization.

> which inevitably leads people to listen to news that confirms their personal biases.

Then that probably isn't news. It's an opinion piece masquerading under a news masthead. I'm not sure how true news, that is factual information told by someone who's only interest is informing the public, creates bias.

> Americans are allergic to such things as "state run propaganda".

I contributed to NPR, right up until I felt they were veering into "state run propaganda." If they truly covered the news, I might donate again. It's a market, they should serve it, and not seek to survive as a tax driven entity answerable to a federal congress. I'm sure that would just make things worse.

> To what extent is this an actual "issue?" What are we sacrificing for having a plethora of divergent ideas?

There's nothing wrong with divergent ideas per se, but divergent ideas themselves don't really do anything. You and I probably have different ideas about something. And we can leave it at that and both go on with our lives, never interacting and learning about another idea than our own.

In the best case, nothing is gained by this, and that's OK and probably even describes the majority of interactions we will ever have with distinct people. But the "value" of divergent ideas is when they converge back together and generate brand new ideas their neither party would have on their own.

But, in the worst case we continue to diverge in our own ideas, only ever converging with people with the same ideas, building "echo chambers" that separate us from anything new and "in-groups" and "out-groups" that further divide us.

And this seems to be the problem with American politics, and bleeding into American society in general. Everything's a partisan issue and everything's on the extremes, so you're either a left-extremist, a right-extremist, or you're not even part of the conversation. If something isn't promoting our ideas, isn't serving us and shouldn't be supported.

So, what we seem to be sacrificing for having these divergent ideas is having any meaningful conversations that can create new ways forward. Which certainly does seem to be creating a lot of issues.

But for what it's worth, considering how our federal congress behaves these days, I'm inclinded to agree that a tax funded public broadcaster would probably not really be in our best interest.

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