observation

Have big hopes for this fascinating area! :-)

Bring on Ghost in the Shell!

I like your idea. Like John I doubt such a thing exists.

Maybe a Babel Fish, only for politics instead of language.

The question might be: do we really want to understand each other? Or straight to fisticuffs?

I don't regard myself as especially enlightened, I think that's another kind of trap, I think most of us just zone in and out of consciousness and 90% of this belongs to the lizard brain.

I suspect most moderators conflate centrism with non-bias or neutrality - but the real reason why the job is so difficult is precisely because sometimes the extremists are correct. Simply reining in the excesses of the left and right isn't enough.

I've said before: if a delay of several seconds was inserted into submissions to politically sensitive topics, that would help reduce # of death threats, name calling.

If it's any consolation the Internet has proven people have big mouths and fundamentally just can not be bothered to obtain genuine pitchforks.

I was looking through /r/all yesterday, it's impressive how partisan it has become.

In my view the single biggest job in Silicon Valley that nobody is taking seriously is the role of moderation. It's nearly impossible to do properly and yet there doesn't appear to be another choice.

Other civil/intellectual communities I've found interesting or useful include:

slatestarcodex.com

kk.org/cooltools/

reddit.com/r/audiodrama

It seems easier to find good narrowly defined communities than ones with broad reach. This is probably because of politics - it acts as a synaptic damper no matter how high your IQ is.

Good news, as anybody listening to gastropod will know!

https://gastropod.com/the-birds-and-the-bugs/

That's not really the problem though is it?

The threat is becoming another pondskipper on the ocean of human experience.

When you know 40-something people who've spent their entire existence revolving around popular culture, you know somebody with no opinions or ideas or feelings the box on the wall didn't package and deliver to them.

It's important to be able to relate to other people, but when so many people are consumed by something, religion, politics, 'popular culture', then I think it is fair to wonder why you'd want to relate to that, they look a lot like dead ends.

Hey, I think you're doing a good job. 4 lake trout beats any number of upvotes!

It's best to avoid the topic or we'll be encountering Scott and Daniel.

I miss the days when nobody used their real name online and certainly didn't attach photos of their face to it.

Most of us would be better off if we went back to those days, I expect a lot of HN users already don't have social media profiles.

I don't see this kind of thing in European countries, nowhere close to this level. It's clearly a moral panic.

That literally and metaphorically doesn't add up.

*

I reiterate a former reply to this exact article.

I am unbribed. I suspect this is an example of Troll Science for economists.

1. The question becomes: if it is economical then why isn't it the case from the start. Why do nations exist? Why do they have borders?

What of the question posed by a famous economist: why do corporations exist? Why not a market filled with nothing but traders? The answer isn't obvious but there is an answer. Perhaps free movement has similar invisible overheads that are being conveniently ignored.

2. Ignoring what I've said above for a moment. Let us suppose that free movement made us richer. Then nations would be competing, offering incentives to all.

They do not. Only to a tiny percentage of the population with obviously valuable skills or assets. That implies that there is a very high price before externalities are sufficiently alleviated. It at least means governments think that is so for whatever reason.

3. Within nations we have rich and poor zipcodes. It is true that workers from poor neighbourhoods travel to richer ones for work, it is basic time/money arbitrage. Yet few people think of installing poorer workers in richer neighbourhoods as a means to improve the economy. Why is that?

I'm researching the construction of my house, framing to finishing, and the handbook made me think of the higher level side affects of material choice, shape, I had not fully considered before.

I also strongly recommend "Home Comforts" by Cheryl Mendelson. It is about the home as a series of systems, I thought there was a lot of value in it, there were a lot of subtle ideas you wouldn't normally think about but which ultimately make your life easier. It is nice seeing all the little pieces fit together. I know Sam Altman/sama recommends Stewart Brand's book on changing architecture as a general pattern for systems but I think the Home Comforts book curiously beats the pants off it.

This is why I'm part of Reddit's Buyitforlife cult.

I think you would be interested in Biophilic Design.

https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/report/14-patterns/

I did something a little more drastic. I have a electronic timer device on my plug socket for the internet router.

So much easier than screwing around with software.

Data:

https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/...

http://www.socialmatter.net/ is an example of that.

Obviously it doesn't have the same reach but eventually I imagine something like this will be a future NPR for the right.

No Agenda is popular and generally well received on HN, it leans center right in my opinion.

I expect truckers run into the same problem I do.

It's difficult to have enough good content, it takes time and energy to discover the good podcasts and some percent of serendipity is required to keep it interesting.

I feel that when I read old textbooks, even the children's ones.

People have gotten less coherent, I don't know why, but I suspect it is so.

This is where the rightist points out that most positive examples historically had ethnically homogeneous populations and that those populations with growing minorities also are developing integration problems that are usually blamed, perhaps scapegoated, on social welfare policy.

Do you have a deconstruction of that?

Do you mean you don't agree or that you don't see what I meant?

It's not a value judgment. It is a fact. Plenty of polls, references and other evidence exists. Or ask any Turk.

> References? In my personal experience that's far for accurate. If anything they are an extremely nationalistic country.

Turkey is a nation that is even more nationalistic and they have very serious trust issues with their fellow citizens.

European countries are much smaller than the USA. I realize that within the USA there exist differences but I think your population centers are far larger than ours. Europe has a larger population but it is very dense with small, medium and then rarer large communities (similar to Japan I think). The USA appears to me (this could be quite wrong) to have large, very large and then sparse communities.

I wish I could summon up a one of those nice charts on this subject from gapminder! That would show immediately if there's something to it.

It could also be simply that the American media and intellectual class are unusually neurotic and there similar issues exist everywhere but the local reporting in my country doesn't emphasize it as much.

It could be kin selection. In the past people lived closer to and interacted more with people of similar genetic ancestry.

The real question is why wouldn't civic qualities decline.

You can look at this on an economic lens - people don't need to depend on familial relations as much because of money.

You can look at this with a racial/ethnic lens - more genetic variance reduces cooperative behaviours (see Charles Murray).

Then there's the libertarian version you've heard above.

Then there's the social lens - people have become atomized by individualism in their manners, social conditioning etc.

I like to think there's a non-relativistic way in which all of them are true, sometimes some of them more at certain times than others, but that they are models of the same phenomena.

Should we genetically manipulate ourselves to increase our pro-social behaviours? It seems clear that if society flies apart then all the critiques I've mentioned will be true simultaneously, I do not see how that can plausibly be positive. What about genetic intervention?

Oddly enough anonymously polled edgelords from 4chan aren't centrists.

This is a terrible way to conduct research.

Antifa's name and flag come from 1930s Germany, a group called Antifaschistische Aktion, a communist paramilitary organization patterned on the Bolsheviks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifaschistische_Aktion

So they are affiliated with groups that killed millions, just as neo-nazis are ideologically related to the original version.

Could get hit by anti-trust. IANAL of course.