If you really need to be given proof for the major influence governments have on public opinion then you must have been living under a rock for the past couple decades.

If you need a place to start I would read Manufactoring Consent by Noam Chomsky. — Tzeentch

And anyone who seems to JUST read Noam Chomsky will only have that perspective and regurgitating only his ideas.

I was waiting for you to name-drop him, as this inability to understand what I'm talking about is common among those who don't read much more than his writings.

You are still just saying the same thing over and over. Where's your actual argument, where's the theory behind your words? What's the reasoning? You're just saying that everyone who does not say what you say is living under a rock. What about the rest of contemporary philosophy? Have you forgotten about that? Have you forgotten about how online media have fractured the core thesis of his book as it's based around an outdated dominance in media? Ignoring writers like, Jürgen Habermas, Byung-Chul Han, Shoshana Zuboff, Slavoj Žižek, Evgeny Morozov, Geert Lovink who are all talking about what I'm talking about here; and how the power has shifted from governments to corporations, that governments aren't powerful enough to manufacture anything that corporations and the market aren't better at.

If there's anyone who's been living under a rock in here...

As long as children get exposed to the chaos of social media and online discourses, the fractured experience of life throws them in all sorts of directions. Scientific research on the behavioral and psychological damage that children get from modern online life is too slow to catch what's going on, chat-bots being just one of many areas showing.

For starters, I think that smart phones and online gaming should be banned for children up to 15 years of age until research have conclusions to build legislations on.

The intellectually sloppy parents who just throw an iPad into the hands of their children aren't equipped to understand the consequences and since everyone is doing it, children will just pressure parents into compliance if they didn't expose them to the technology. Laws against this would fix this, at least temporary.

After a careful examination, I managed to find two words to disagree with - "they can't." They can do a great deal more than they are doing. Instead of sowing division and conflict and xenophobia, they could help poor countries adapt somewhat; instead of subsidising oil, they could subsidise renewables; instead of pretending that endless growth is possible, they could start managing the economy to be fair and stable instead of expanding and exploiting. And so on. It's going to be bad, but there's no reason in that, to go on making it worse. — unenlightened

I'm not talking about the now, but the future in which it's too late to do anything. At that time, "they can't". They can't do anything to help millions of refugees that simply can't do anything but to enter the nation. Where are they going? How are they sustained? How do the food get distributed? Imagine a nation with 20 million inhabitants and they get 2 million refugees storming in. It's going to throw the economic and resource balance out the window. Not only will these 2 million refugees starve, but the rest of the nation will be thrown into chaos trying to solve the problem.

Nations today can't even handle a few thousands refugees coming at once without creating both political and societal turmoil. How do the world handle billions of people relocated from uninhabitable locations?

It's this that I mean governments can't solve. We can solve things now, but when the tipping point happens, we won't be able to without fundamentally throw the world into chaos. It's not the climate change itself that will be the greatest issue, it's the delicate balance of the current world order.

If you find it difficult to believe that government elites conspire against the common people, I don't know what to tell you. Open your eyes? — Tzeentch

This is conspiracy theory stuff and rhetoric. That top people try to wield power is true, but you have no proof of unlimited power in doing so. If you think the public and the free market companies, especially the largest corporations on the planet are more innocent in producing our modern living conditions you aren't paying attention. State actors primarily try to influence elections, or they're targeting what they consider enemies. Western democracies have too much freedom among the people to be steered like that; what is steering them is the sum of our culture and that culture is consumerism. Governments aren't controlling consumption, it's corporations and the free market that does. It's not actual political ideology that actually drives people, even in online debates, what people believe is political discussions are usually different value systems being promoted and those value systems do not come from political leaders, they come from manifested perspectives on life.

A racist, homophobic conservative from an industrial town in the middle US do not hold those values because of political leaders forming those narrative, they hold them because of their surrounding culture and the dissonance between values when they grew up in clash with the values they meet in modern life. It happens in every generation, but in our modern world, all these values clash online and they've been entangled in the algorithms of social media, formed by business strategies that focus on manipulation of the customers.

You're only repeating yourself over and over saying that "it's the government". It's nothing more than conspiratorial parroting and regurgitating some narrative you believe is true. Where's your argument for it? And I'm not talking about linking to some dislocated events of state actors trying to do something specific because specific events does not form the foundation of an entire culture and a foundation for the modern condition. You're not arguing philosophically, you're doing a reddit post.

And to escape the meaningless graphs for a moment, a short report on India, and how poor people are affected. Human, and animal impact. — unenlightened

This is why we will see millions, if not billions of people going to seek refuge somewhere else. And this time there's no "go back to your country" if there's literally nothing to go back to.

I think people miss the fact, or they're too stupid to understand it, that the cascading consequences of what's happening won't just be some higher waters and some heat waves in the summer or more storms, but a total change of how people live. The relocation of people, by their own or through government means will transform the entire world.

And even if the wealthy world ignores the poor people of the world there will be people in more wealthy locations that will be feeling the burn as well. When this happens, things will be felt much more.

I'm predicting there will be wars because of this. People who are so desperate that they have nothing to do but to fight for a place to exist in, will do so. It's extremely naive to think that people will just remain in the heat and take it until they die. No, people will be pushed to the point that killing others in order to save their family and people will be a no-brainer.

I mean, if you had the option to see your friends and family die off because of living conditions falling to unsustainable levels, or invade somewhere else in order to survive... what are you going to do?

Governments of the world won't help people, they can't. If they can't sustain the normal levels of refugees due to current conflicts in the world, how would they ever be able to handle the extreme amount of refugees that climate change will bring about?

Oh, I disagree with that definition of post-truth. — Tzeentch

Why? It's literally the most common interpretation of it:

""Oxford Dictionaries popularly defines it as "relating to and denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.""

And I'm describing the circumstances here. If you're trying to redefine interpretations in order to validate your own argument, you're pretty much playing into the same behavior as post-truth society generates. What's the point of even discussing then if you transform definitions to fit your narrative?

People in general do not become delusional voluntarily. Some outside force is necessary, like a corrupt government elite that feeds them propaganda, and uses censorship to block off all roads to the truth. — Tzeentch

Who said anything about it being voluntarily? It's like you invent things that haven't been said or don't understand what I'm writing? I've already done an extensive breakdown on why it happened and none of it pointed to it as being voluntarily.

Since the end of the Cold War, western governments (with the US at the helm) have dominated the information landscape and abused that position to influence their population in a way that can only aptly be described as 'brainwashing'. — Tzeentch

Conspiratorial nonsense. What has dominated any form of brainwashed values since the 80s is the market. Have you done any form of analysis on any of this, at all? We're literally living in a Baudrillardian simulacra of free market constructs forming life narratives that are actively killing us. One of the biggest sources of self-harm in any form is how the identity of the person, the individual does not fit into the narrative they've been taught to believe. Nothing of that comes from any state actor, it comes from society's love of the neoliberal market which fuels the individualistic value system that everyone in western democracies live by today.

This idea that western governments is in control, especially US government, is literally giving them too much credit. They're not that smart. You're describing an X-Files storyline, not reality. Politicians in the US are interested in power and money, but most of them are too stupid to have any grand plan. Even the fascist type politicians like Trump don't have a grand plan, they misuse their power and to the danger of the public, but there's no deep state bullshit going on.

If you look at citizens in any western democracy, what are the things that research points towards being detrimental to their life and health? The thing that's killing us is stress and unreasonable expectations on life. It's unfulfilled dreams and skewed perspectives on wealth. NONE of that has anything to do with the government, it has to do with how the free market conditioned us into certain life values that does not mesh with what is good for us as animal human beings.

Being blind to what actually brainwashed us, blaming the government for brainwashing us instead, leads to the fundamental question... brainwashed us into what? What exactly has the government "programmed us into"? Raegan only gave the market the keys to the kingdom, he didn't orchestrate the world we live in.

And seen as large cap tech corps have so much power that politicians don't know how to handle them, who do you really think have the power to brainwash us? The market (with its tech companies) or any government?

Communist regimes functioned in exactly the same way, essentially holding a monopoly on information within the totalitarian state. — Tzeentch

This is not the same as post-truth.

Today, that western/elite domination of media has been broken, hence we notice something is terribly wrong and call it 'post-truth'. But we have been living in this 'post-truth' reality since 1991 onward, and it started perhaps even before that. — Tzeentch

You're confused as to who has power over the media. And you seem to haven't taken part in much of contemporary philosophy that is actively analyzing the relation between media and society. Ignoring the largest contributor to our modern world, social media. The elite do not have that much control over those channels, they're driven by income that formed the algorithms and those algorithms focus on conflict and negativity promoting influencers of the sort. The chaos of these voices aren't controlled by an elite, it's the system itself perpetuating the chaos as it drives sales in the attention economy. People at the top each money on this engagement, they don't care about a narrative, they care about the money.

The difference is that now large amounts of people are able to tell something's wrong, which they simply couldn't before due to the totality of the propaganda system. — Tzeentch

What propaganda are you talking about? You're so vague and sloppily broad that you end up with such large brush strokes that it becomes platitude nonsense.

Your arguments basically just boils down to "government bad", "government tell propaganda", "people brainwashed". There's zero substance of theory.

Surely you are aware of the questionable relationship history's various collectivist projects had with the truth? Hell, it was the commies who formed the OG post-truth societies. — Tzeentch

If you actually read and understand me first you would understand that I argue that post-truth is a problem within the public itself and their relation to truth and how to evaluate who's honest and who's a liar. Communist regimes used and use state violence methods to craft narratives that the public follow by force or indoctrination, it's not the same thing as what post-truth is about.

On the subject of how individualism fostered the post-truth society, it also increased the Dunning-Kruger effect among all people. The more individualistic people are, the more confident in being right individuals become and the less able they are to spot the blind spots in their knowledge.

Unlike you , I make no moral judgements of individualism or neoliberalism as an ‘unrealistic’, ‘unbalanced’ , ‘regressive’ value system. I think all such value systems work for their adherents, but each works in a different way , and it’s the clashes between incommensurate systems that causes the problems we’re seeing today with political polarization. I suggest that it is not cognitive dissonance that is causing the anger among social conservatives, but the justified sense that they are being talked down to by people like you who believe they have some superior moral or objective vantage and try to shove it down their throats. I am a progressive , but I dont claim that my perspective is morally or objectively superior to other ways of thinking. — Joshs

In what way is what I said a moral judgement? It's a direct observation and I think you are looking too much into the specifics of the symptomatic psychology of conservative voters and not at what is causing the general social reactions in society as a whole. The individualistic values I'm talking about is the overarching ideals for almost all western democracies today, it's built into how society functions and is structured today much more than before. It affects everything in life, it's not a value system of choosing as you describe it. I'm talking about a sociological undercurrent that fuels modern culture. It's a holistic perspective that everyone is involved with and the cognitive dissonance is everywhere; you, me, everyone around us. It's just that it affects some more than others and the consequences show up in different ways. You're looking at the direct symptoms at the end of the chain, the behaviors within the polarization itself. There's no morality to this explanation, I'm pointing at what values that drive society today as a whole, the fundamentals, not ideology. It doesn't matter if you are on the left, right or center, individualism is the undercurrent of modern life in western democracies and everything is trickling down from those values.

But I don’t believe that their anger is directed at the “ narrative they were programmed to believe” if by this you are referring to that traditionalist worldview and its associated values. — Joshs

As I'm saying "western democracies" I'm not talking about the US specifically. This is a global problem.

I'm saying that individualism and neoliberalism is not so much an ideological stance but a form of values and ideals which have replaced a more balanced and collectively inclusive perspective on life. This, in turn produces polarized groups when the inflated expectations of life clash with reality and thus produce a reaction in the form of blame that these groups gather around. It exists everywhere, among all polarized groups, but is generally pushing conflict-driven behaviors among those with more conservative world views as they not only have to face a reality different to expectations, but also the reality of historical progression. It's why the anger and violence often is initiated by the conservative minded individuals and groups, as they have the traditional pressures of fighting against the tides of time, and now also against the inflated ego they formed out of individualism.

But the problems exist throughout all groups and all groups help perpetuate the polarizing consequences. Even within larger polarized groups there are further polarization.

What constitutes "post-truth" however, is the inability to break free from any form of radicalization because people have lost the ability to spot what is an actual truth. So they gather around individuals who perpetuate the narrative they emotionally feel gives them comfort against the reality that formed their cognitive dissonance.

Economic problems and class differences are just among the things in reality that clash with those inflated expectations and the emotional distress paralyzes people into comfort zones rather than the work that needs to be done to fix a problem (mainly because they've never learned to collectively fix a problem in society themselves).

the polarization is due to economic pressures, not ideology. — baker

A vast simplification of a complex problem. Polarization forms out of many different reasons. Economical inequality is one, but not everything.

We can't ignore how individualism and neoliberalism combined disconnected people from each other. The formation of individuals who were brought up into believing they were the protagonists in contemporary history, that they, if they want, could be whatever they chose to be; a movie star? A successful business owner? The next president?

The cognitive dissonance facing adult life or older people realizing they never became anything they thought they would be transforms into anger and disappointment towards the narrative they were programmed to believe. This anger and disappointment therefor gets aimed at whatever is available to be blamed. Clustering in radicalized gatherings around a similar aim; "that group is to blame", "this ideology is to blame".

The hate from these people then meets the reaction of the groups they hate, defending themselves. And society spirals down into the consequences of these sides triggering each other.

While who's at fault is obvious in the direct confrontation and conflict, the underlying mechanisms that created the polarization in the first place is an overall cultural issue.

While authoritarian states propagate the authoritarian leader's ideas and emotion down through the people, either by force or brainwashing, the western democracies have been blind to the psychological consequences of the delusional narrative that everyone can individually become whatever they want and that the ego is preferred over the group.

As in pretty much all systems in reality, balance prevails over the extreme. While societies have tried extreme collectivism, it only led to the destruction of the self and the violence against individual thought and agency in life. But the extreme individualism has divided and alienated us from each other to the point of not only extreme polarization, but an epidemic rise of depression and loneliness throughout almost all western democracies.

None of this can be helped by just balancing the economy. It's part of it, especially leveling out class differences and intersect different classes to bridge over polarized distances. But at its core, western democracies need to form a better set of values that better reflect positive human nature and sociological structures.

Counter the addictive online algorithms, promote collective events and culture in society, cater to individual's strengths but don't ignore their weaknesses, help people find realistic life goals rather than inflating their childish ego delusions.

The biggest mistake that is being made is that people believe that the solution comes from somewhere else, some political party or leader who's gonna fix everything, some "parent figure" who's gonna swoop in and take care of it all. No, the change has to come from the people. Promote more positive collective things in society, decrease the use of social media online (until there's a system that does not rely on predatory algorithms), stop inflating the ego of children growing up, focus on what you can do, not unrealistic dreams and so on.

Continuing living in the same way just perpetuates the society we've arrived at. Blaming the top just ignores the participation that all have in society and it is society that places people at the top, either with money or by vote, so the change needs to happen in society, among the people first, not top down.

Not at all. It's natural for people to take sides, it's a necessity of survival to do so, and survival takes precedence over everything else. But maladapted idealists don't see this. — baker

Not sure I follow your train of thought from what I wrote?

The point I was making is that defining post-truth as merely the means that people use to control a narrative is not really correct. The behavior of people has been the same throughout history, but times with low post-truth tendencies have more to do with the public's ability to see through such behaviors and form a consensus around what is actual, rather than fictional.

In our modern post-truth era, society is eroding this ability to such a degree that it's becoming increasingly impossible to stand up for what's actual, due to an increasing inability for people to understand what is a fact and what isn't, what is a rationally reasoned argument and what isn't.

Post-truth is therefor not so much about the liars, but a time in which the public don't know how to spot truth.

For example, let's stop the ongoing trend of nose jobs. The regret rate among patients is at an average 16.4%. Since this leads to mental health issues such as "Body Dysmorphic Disorder", depression, anxiety and "Post-Surgical Dissatisfaction" with many returning for correction that only deepens the problems, I suggest that we should ban nose jobs in society.

Why isn't this an equal issue in society seen as how many go through with it? Why aren't we looking into these mental health issues? Why is it that transgender people gets this much critique? Why is it that the dissatisfaction rate or regret gets unproportionally large empirical room compared to almost all other treatments? Why is the satisfaction rate and the mental health improvements among transgender children ignored or overlooked while the extremely low regret rate gets all the attention? The critical examination has only concluded the lack of extensive long term data. It's not at all enough for the kinds of conclusions you make. Especially seen as the data so far points in the other direction.

This specific sub-topic started with the fact of the general public's inability to make reasonable conclusions based on their lacking ability of statistical understanding. The interpretations of statistical data leads to the conclusions they want to make, primarily because it is focused in on specific numbers, not within context or with surrounding factors taken into consideration. In this case, the lack of long term data in research becomes empirical evidence for why children shouldn't get treatment. Even though we have observations of declining mental health among children who didn't get treatment. The regret rate among the group going through treatment is around 1%. A 0% rate is statistically impossible, but 1% is remarkably low in statistics. If you focus in on the 1% and get their regret voiced out, you can make a good case against treatment through emotionally loaded arguments, but it would be a skewed argument that do not portray the general reality of transgenders situation.

This is probably the most highly-esteemed platform for investigative journalism in the Netherlands. — Tzeentch

The documentary is takes a critical look at the treatments, primarily focused on the Dutch treatements. It doesn't lead to the generalize conclusions you are making. The problem is that things like this becomes a foundation for conclusions that doesn't correlate with the specifics of the criticism.

Yet there is still a screening for adults who seek to transition. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes, and why do you think that is? Why do people who want a nose job get none such treatment but adults who want to transition need to go through years of investigation? Any other decision an adult makes about their bodies require much less investigation. Shouldn't people who do plastic surgery also go through a psychological investigation about their self-image, seen as this is a very existing problem in society? It needs to go in one or the other direction, make screenings of everyone looking for any changes to their bodies, or don't treat some different than others. Which way do you suggest?

Yes, and gender identity is the subject here not biological sex. We're moving past transsexualism (now often considered an outdated term) into transgenderism. Or are we going to insist that those seeking to transition possess the correct biological markers before allowing them access to HRT? — BitconnectCarlos

Non-binary can rely on an underlying bias towards a certain sex, but it's not equally common they do transitions. The foundation for transitioning is still based on the same experience of either alignment or not.

Proper investigation into what? That they're "really" transgender? That they were "really" born in the wrong body? The medical community creates the criteria. Do we allow a child to transition if their parents say no? — BitconnectCarlos

The investigation is both medical and psychological. Most children have some confusion about their gender, it's part of growing up. Investigation is about trying to differentiate if this is such common confusion or being a more fundamental case of transgenderism. I'm not sure what makes you think children are put into transitioning just haphazardly.

What criteria do you suggest we follow other than the most up to date research?

On education, agreed. Let's call that the carrot. Your opinions on the stick?

As to education, I have direct experience with the USA version, indirect with the "British" system. The general verdict seems to be that the British, though not itself perfect, is wa-ay better than the US. Best in my opinion, would be a lot of British, tempered with some American. What do you say? — tim wood

The Finish school is considered best in the world. They generally excel at national tests. And in Sweden you get paid to go to school.

However, I'm in the strong opinion that education should be even more of a financial focus for tax funding and support. Teachers should be paid more, but also have more demand on them to reach a certain level of quality as teachers. Classes need to be smaller in size overall in order to structure education to support the differences between children's learning capability and psychological leaning (some are better at math at certain ages, some are better at language and so on). There should be a greater push to support education in poor regions and education needs to be mandatory for all children.

I'm less fond of sticks as they usually just create villains when a problem have been stricken away with that stick. But I would have laws and regulations demand that constant factually wrong statements in politics, especially to the public during campaigning will lead to the dismissal of that politician from politics. It would incentivize politicians to structure their politics around actual facts and truth rather than manipulation of the publics opinions to support their agendas.

I can't see how such regulations and laws against politicians would have negative effects. The only thing to keep an eye on is so that politicians then don't put money into research institutes to "produce facts" through research papers that conclude something that aligns with their politics. But putting a long prison sentence onto such corruption and strict observation of the money, where it comes from and its use would spot it easier and the blowback would be too severe for politicians to attempt it.

Open a new thread if you want to continue discussing. — Tzeentch

It's related to Trump's stance and the conservative narrative that will become more common in the next four years. People like you will continue to spread further bs and be part of that transphobic movement. Your ignorance here is the proof enough.

Not really. I don't hate or fear trans people - I support any adult's right to choose. — Tzeentch

Your rhetoric and reasoning suggests otherwise.

However, when you start blaming a society that's bending over backwards to accomodate trans people, I am not going to sugar coat things. — Tzeentch

Suger coat what? An argument you still haven't supported with anything other than that you think this is how it is? Who's really coming off as delusional?

When this thing that on the surface looks like it would destroy your mental health starts actually destroying people's mental health, how is that in any way surprising? — Tzeentch

Can I see some research and statistics on this destroying people's mental health or are you just gonna continue pointing out things you have no support behind?

This is your emotions speaking, and since it's an argument out of emotion, it is transphobic. Just like if someone wants to limit freedoms for homosexuals based on nothing more than they're "not gonna suger coat truths about how society accommodates homosexuals too much". Just like a racist cannot just say they aren't racists and then they're not, it's the behavior, rhetoric and conclusions made that defines who someone is.

If you have nothing but unsubstantiated causation without evidence statements and pathologizing remarks about transgender people, then that is simply transphobia.

And why not let a neutral analytical system (GPT-o1) review what you wrote and see what it finds when I ask it "How accurate is this text?"

Conclusion

The text contains several inaccuracies and misconceptions about transgender individuals and the effects of gender-affirming care. Current research supports that acceptance and appropriate medical treatment generally lead to positive mental health outcomes for transgender people. It's important to approach this topic with empathy and rely on evidence-based information to foster understanding and support. — GPT-o1

So, basically you're just pushing the same unsubstantiated ideas that can be found in conservative ideologies.

I straightforwardly mistrust those statistics — Tzeentch

How convenient it must be to just ignore what doesn't fit your opinions.

I'm simply taking issue with blaming high suicide rates on "society" when that society is doing everything it can to be accomodating, while people are subjecting themselves to these kinds of procedures. — Tzeentch

What you might not understand is that you are exposed to an observation of society through media. I absolutely doubt that you actually talk to or have insight into the perspective of transgender people and their experiences in society. Just because Disney+ makes shows with lots of LGBTQ+ characters in it, does not mean that society is doing everything it can to accommodate. Most of society consist of people like you, just like people during the 80s and 90s who believed whatever emotional nonsens they could think of and criticized society for accommodating gay people and that this would lead to mental health issues for these people.

This happens every time there's a societal shift into acceptance of previously stigmatized groups.
It starts out with raging hate, public outcries against the groups, then it transitions to official channels being more inclusive, while the public slowly change into what we see many do now; people who say similar things like "they can do whatever they want but not close to me", while later it goes into a false form of defense of these people, a stage in which the societal norm is to accept the group and in doing this, the previous anti-people will do what you do now, talk like you care about them, but still retain the same false claims and judgements as before. The dissonance becomes so obvious.

They’re not liars or delusional. The claim is that what is delusional is the belief that you can change sexes. I’ve seen no convincing evidence to counter that argument— but I’m open to hearing one. — Mikie

Gender identity and medical sex are two different things. But even so, if you check the Sapolsky video you can see how even medical sex is more complex than just what you have between your legs. Anyone who boils this down to purely their culturally biased ideas about gender and sex and who ignores the vast amount of research on this subject is clearly not engaging with it honestly. Putting the conclusion of "delusion" before the cart of actually doing the argument.

For instance, what Sapolsky talks about is that areas like the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc) and the amygdala shows a size and neuron density of the BSTc in transgender women have been found to resemble those of cisgender women. There are actual differences to our brain that has to do with our brain in relation to our bodies and in transgender people it's found that even if the chromosomes and organs align, their brain have conflicting functions, meaning, the brain and body have different perceptions of what sex it actually is. The XX and XY chromosomes direct the development, but since male and females are more similar than not, people fall on a form of gradient between the two, heavily influenced by the chromosomes.

If someone develops a brain that comes in conflict with the body's perception of its sex, is it delusional that the brain, which regulates emotions and is the seat of our consciousness is drawn to wanting a correction to get rid of the resulting dysmorphia?

What I see is, especially in relation to the topic within the election and conservative media is the same old dusty story of them looking at this as they did on homosexuality when it became more commonly accepted in society, and they believed this was a delusion that would corrupt children and societal values. All while none of them actually engaged with either research on the subject or ever even engaged with the gay community in a way of attempting to understand it.

What is more delusional, people who make absolutist conclusions without research backing it up, or people who follow what the research suggests and talk to the people it affects?

Both. Education for the ignorant (which includes all of us), and appropriate penalties for liars. "Appropriate" meaning penalties that will strongly disincentivize lying. — tim wood

Free education for all that is of equal quality for all. Media literacy as a major part of all education, not just interwoven in minor ways. All of this includes higher education as well, like nations who even incentivize students with funding for it.

There are many things that can be done, but such a large education reform makes the most difference fundamentally. It's not just about getting people past post-truth. Such a reform would generate more educated people working on solving complex problems as well as more educated people taking the place of manipulators and liars who scheme their way to the top. Why chose a maniac like Trump if the pool of educated and functioning politicians is larger? Why implement politics that cater to billionaires if there's educated people with philosophically sound political visions to market to voters?

Overall, a reform that makes education of the best quality available to every single individual in a nation, is the absolute best way to improve any nation and any society.

what is clearly a delusion — Tzeentch

I'm not surprised to see the usual transphobic reactions as soon as the topic is raised. It's not a delusion, especially when the neurological research on the topic shows there are physiological differences in transgender people's brains showing attributes that misaligns with their medical sex. But I'm not surprised that your knee jerk reaction ignored that material I provided.

Some people are always going to refuse to accept what is in their view clearly a lie (and a harmful one, at that), and such is their right. — Tzeentch

Please provide the evidence for this lie and a solid argument on who benefits from it.

What happens when youthful beauty fades, biological realities set in and people realize they have mutilated their own bodies, sterilized themselves, committed themselves to a life-time of medication on the basis of a fantasy that can never be realized? People get suicidal. — Tzeentch

This is how you prove that you've not read a thing about the topic.

It's extremely sad, but unsurprising. — Tzeentch

The only thing that is extremely sad and unsurprising is how people like you come to these conclusions without having a anything else than an emotional knee jerk reaction to the topic; calling transgender people liars and delusional, ignoring the research and have zero ability to understand statistics on the subject.

It's basically just transphobia. The new fad among people who need an outlet to blame problems on. As it was with black people, homosexuals, jews, and so on. We're seeing the same kind of behavior against transgender people; calling them delusional and liars, purring them through the same kind of treatments. All while scientists are finding evidence that the phenomena isn't at all a construct, but has physiological attributes and signifiers.

I mean, the echos of old talk is telling:

"What these people really want, hidden behind obscure legal phrases, is the legal right to propose to our children that their way is acceptable."

"“I know that homosexuals (transgender people) cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children.”" — Anita Bryant, 1970

“Homosexuality (transsexualism) is abnormal, a perversion, and a disease.”

"The homosexual (transsexual) movement threatens the very foundation of our society." — Jesse Helms, 1994

“The risk of children being influenced into homosexuality (transsexuality) is unacceptably high.” — Mary Whitehouse, 1980s

“There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war… for the soul of America.” — Pat Buchanan, 1992

“The gay (transsexual) agenda is destroying the moral fabric of this country.” — Paul Cameron, 1989

“The institution of marriage and family is being attacked by those who want to redefine these foundational concepts.” — James Dobson, 2004

"The ERA would lead to unisex bathrooms and homosexual marriages… society is meant to keep men and women in different roles.” — Phyllis Schlafly, 1970

I mean, we could go on, but historically we're just witnessing the echoes of past behaviors.... again.

Maybe part of this modern rise of the old racist, homophobic and misogynic behaviors is because the conservatives are running out of people to blame? Since history has gone through its hate against most groups in society already, and they are once again losing their transphobic stance, it starts to become a sort of "then, let's hate everything then".

Going to be interesting to see what the next group these people will hate and put blame on.

Why should an adult even need to go through a medical screening (to determine whether s/he is "really" trans) to be prescribed HRT when gender is a social phenomenon? — BitconnectCarlos

The investigation is primarily for children, not adults. Adults have to rather go through dealing with a long line of other adult assholes who question their agency as human beings.

Especially with the idea of "non-binary" today -- are we going to now claim a scientific/medical basis for that? What biological markers would determine that? Absurdity. — BitconnectCarlos

Non-binary has to do with gender identity, not biological sex.

Let adults live their own lives, but it is criminal in my opinion to permit children to sterilize themselves (and set them on a life path of marginalization) when any decent society acknowledges the need to place rules on children and make decisions for them. — BitconnectCarlos

This is not what's going on. That is a conservative-held and marketed narrative that skews how these processes are actually done. The investigation into transsexuality in children is not just saying yes or no. There are both medical and psychological evaluations, very extensive. On top of that the statistics on regret among surgery sex change is around 1%. Compare that to knee replacements and nose-jobs where the regret rates are much higher but there's no evaluation before. Conclusion on that is that parents and doctors aren't just letting kids do anything without proper investigation.

As I've said, the "increase" can simply be that modern society understands and listen to transgender people much better and it enables more to open up about their situation, compare to before when sometimes there were even the risk of violence against them by both family and their social sphere.

A child can still take steps to transition without HRT and surgeries. — BitconnectCarlos

Depends on the situation. Many still hold on until they grown past puberty. But for many who are really medically confirmable, such puberty without hormon treatment can be extremely distressful. Among transgender children, thoughts of suicide exist in around half the group and almost a quarter have made attempts. The reason for it primarily links to how they're treated by family and people around them, while the lack of help and gender-affirming care are also factors.

Bottom line, while there is a ratio of detransitioning, the regret-ratio is much lower than the harm caused by the lack of support these children get. And that support is not in the way of talking them out of it, but rather in support of their gender identity. A big problem is the time it takes for a proper investigation, in which hormone therapy comes into play too late. It's also not common they get this therapy without being diagnosed with gender dysmorphia.

So calling it "criminal" in the way you did is not a proper way to deal with this topic. The only criminal thing is the high suicide rates among LGBTQ+ due to the still existing stigma and behavior against them. A behavior that will just become worse with Trump and Musk at the helm spewing their bullshit to mindless zealots.

Nearly 30% of Gen Z identifies as LGBTQ+. Aside from this, the number of minors seeking gender affirming care nearly tripled between 2017 and 2021 from 15,000 to 42,000 and the trend has continued. — BitconnectCarlos

How do you know that this isn't a natural number? On which basis are you making the argument and at which percentage do you know is the "correct percentage" for society?

It's culture and society that has educated you into certain classifications and categorical ideas. If people are to classify the "natural" percentage among the human species, then how do you classify this? Seen as it may be affected by herd tribe sizes and procreation habits over time, changing sociological dynamics.

Until you have a measure stick, you can't know what the actual percentage is. What kind of measuring stick do you have?

My main concern is with child transition though. We can't be asking children to determine their gender and then load them up with sterilizing hormones and permanent & quite painful surgeries. They simply don't have the mental capacity to make those sorts of decisions: How is it that children cannot buy alcohol or weed, yet they can apparently consent to permanently altering their bodies and destroying their fertility? — BitconnectCarlos

This recommendation for being careful I can agree with. However, it's not just asking them what they think that determine things. In most cases there's a long investigation before determining if it's a sociological confusion or actual. There's an idea that children merely say they want to change sex and doctors pull out the tools, that's not how these things go.

There's also actual physiological aspects of gender that puts things into further perspective:

...would have this part of the brain the size, not the sex they were born with, but with the sex they insisted they always actually were — Robert Sapolsky

The problem is that the pushback from adults stuck in traditional thinking makes it harder for actual investigation to take place and once again a stigma that often makes these children grow up in agony and social confusion because no proper investigation was done as it gets stuck in outdated morals and stigma.

transgender life is inherently difficult and expensive and painful. — BitconnectCarlos

Only for those who live in areas that don't accept or don't fully commit to accept their existence. It's actually the opposite for many who transitioned and getting what they need, they have much better mental and physical health. The one's in pain, especially not getting subscriptions they need, live in areas with transphobes running the ship. The usual shit.

More sinister is the idea, floating around in some radical circles, that we have no essential gender identity and it's entirely up to the individual (including the child) to self-define. Nature apparently gives us nothing; we are our own Gods. That scares me. — BitconnectCarlos

This is the normal simplification that's going around. There are physical indicators (like in the Sapolsky lecture) making some cases actual physical and medical in nature. But the core problem that people, for some reason, never understands about gender science and philosophy, is that there's a difference between medical sex and gender. Gender is a construct that society has made up rules and culture around.

Most behavioral differences between women and men are superficial, programmed by culture and social norms rather than incorporated in our chromosomes and genes. Most of the genetical and biological differences have to do with certain hormonal behavior differences, chemical differences, but very little actually affect identity to the point it is a fundamental difference. Most notable difference is mainly muscle mass and seen as sexual orientation doesn't seem to correlate that much with some basic sex, not even that is inherent to the biological sex.

While it's important that society and culture adapts to new knowledge about ourselves as humans, it's important that this is done without harming people. But so far, the foundation on which people make decisions and definitions about others seem to be primarily made up by people not educated or knowledgeable on the subject, rather than following the actual research and science being done, and in so hurts far more than believing they protect. Not only does the science show that most opinions are just culturally programmed, the discourse itself surrounding the sciences and research shows to be culturally affected and limiting the ability for people to understand the conclusions being done by people who actually study these subjects. The bottom line is that most people in society do not actually know what they're talking about, but they sure have strong opinions anyway.

Given the number of kids identifying as LGBT and choosing to sterilize themselves and undergo surgeries — BitconnectCarlos

There's however a great deal of statistical shifts due to the very fact that with an increasing tolerance towards a group that previously were stigmatized, more people feel secure in opening up about who they are.

It was the same during the 80s and 90s, as society started to believe that there was a sudden increase in homosexuality, when in fact, the higher tolerance and raising inclusion of homosexuality in society meant that people could open up more about their homosexuality. So the statistical numbers went up based on the hidden statistics that were invisible due to stigma.

This is why I don't think the public is able to understand statistics correctly and make accurate assessments about reality. Because it's not just math correlating with society on a 1 to 1 alignment, but many factors that need to be incorporated in order to actually know if something has changed or if it's affected by other factors.

Many researchers have basically concluded that a large portion of the perceptive increase is because the number of people were always there, hidden under years of traumatic and violent suppression of their sense of self, in which they could never tell anyone what they felt. The agony of not being able to tell anyone and not being able to live aligned with who they are.

In my perspective, all I see that's happening right now is that transsexual people are the new black people, the new homosexuals, the new hated group that society can use in their ill-constructed and uneducated reasoning about a world and society falling into ruin.

It's once again the herd mentality and echo chambers of the public believing they understand statistics, biology, psychology and history when in fact they don't, and only push themselves into lesser and lesser ability to interpret the world through a functioning empathy.

The way that I think we need to deal with the definition of "post-truth" is that it's not about the perpetrators of lies, manipulations, deception, disinformation or misinformation etc. It is rather about the inability to decipher them as doing such. It's mainly about how society and culture erodes a collective understanding and consensus of "truth", of "facts" and how we rationally reason in order to arrive at them.

What it means to live in a post-truth world is therefor not about the liars at the top, but rather that when truth loses meaning among the people, the liars at the top are able to gain power. They are the consequence and symptom of post-truth culture, and as such we won't get rid of them by treating the symptom itself...

...we need to treat the sickness.

Which is why it is so important not to overestimate the scope of our empirical "knowledge". What is real now might not cover what is real tomorrow. — Pantagruel

But that isn't a foundation for "anything goes". Science is a process, not a statement. It's the process of knowledge; what we know at this moment going into the next. The next moment we will know something else, something further and built upon yesterday's knowledge. But we are still using this knowledge to build, engineer and have agency in our reality. The fluid nature of science does not mean it is rendered irrelevant or lacking; it is the best tool we have against the chaos of human nature and our limits in knowledge. I'm merely pointing out the limits of our relation to the answers, that some answers require a drastic change in perception in order to know where to look and where to conduct the further research.

As I said:

politicians and demagogues are only as powerful as the people let them. — Christoffer

If the people succumbs to such terrors and suffering that things are on the brink of collapse... then collapse, and overthrow the government. My point is that there's a limit as to how much a government can wield its power against the people, at some point, the people fights back. Either it starts earlier, demonstrations and movements that put pressure on the government. I mean there's MILLIONS of people who could march on the streets. With enough bad stuff happening, what's the loss?
Yeah, the loss could be state violence, but that would only lead to a pushback with other means.

Must I remind that this happens in many regions and times in history? The apathetic and lazy will only be so as long as the status quo doesn't change. If the situation change so much it removes the security and wellbeing of the people, then what's the government gonna do against millions of citizens taking action against such policy?

And since the actual majority who voted on Trump seems to do it without buying into his fascist tendencies, they too will not accept what he does. When looking at it from this perspective, only the christo-fascists and christian fundamentalists are loyal to him. And they are a minority.

I wonder too about time, whether time at micro-scales is even a well-defined property. — Pantagruel

You got the Planck scale in which spacetime breaks down. But relativity is tricky on our perception and the well-defined becomes abstract concepts for that perception. By verification we know something is objective and tapping into that for inventions and engineering, it further verifies that our theories are correct. But it doesn't help for our perception and understanding as human beings...

We lack enough comprehension to fully grasp the implications of what we objectively know. And therefor we lack in the instinct which guides us towards further knowledge.

Bunge has some other remarkable observations, that energy is the only "universal physical property," for example. But what I like most is his conclusion that "the general concept of energy is so general that it belongs in metaphysics." Because it is so big that it overflows our scientific conceptions of it. — Pantagruel

Maybe a side note, but...

What usually comes to mind for me about energy is how scale influence the perception of entropy. We often think of an explosion as this violent distribution of energy, this extremely rapid dispersion and release of energy from it's matter-trapped form into heat and kinetics.

However... when you look at an even larger explosion, like that of a nuclear bomb, the perception of its scale is like watching a liquid slowly flowing through another medium, even if a nuclear bomb is many times more destructive than a regular small scale explosion.

If you then scale things up. The sun.

If you then scale things up...

The dispersion of energy, the entropic process of our entire universe is a form of explosion. Even if scientists aren't really looking at the Big Bang as an actual explosion, I can't get the concept out of my head that it wasn't an explosion, but rather... the entire universe acts as an explosion.

On this scale, just like a mushroom cloud feels like a slow process, our perception of the explosion is so limited that we aren't even looking at it as an explosion. Or fully understand the implication of it as an entropic process of dispersing energy until that energy settles into its most entropic end time; the heat death of the universe.

In what medium did it explode?

Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today released the following statement in response to the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. — Banno

Watch the video I posted, he references it.

If you have further comments related to Lio's banning, say them. — fdrake

I'm not interested in discussing it with them at all, I just remarked that the decision to ban him has nothing to do with the forum being left-leaning or censorship as is being implied. But rather that he showed a failure to behave respectfully.

Here's a good take on the failures of the democrats.



As mentioned, the biggest problem with the democrats is catering to right wing voters just granting them a miniscule increase in voters, rather than forming a strong left narrative around things that a majority actually wants.

Most usually just talk about Trump and his people being stupid, but when it comes to marketing and forming a cohesive and strong marketing narrative to campaign on, the democrats are fucking amateurs.

The democratic party needs a total changeover. Take these four years and get rid of the centrist stupid people, find a candidate who's charismatic and gathered around just basic left leaning politics in economy and welfare. Produce a STRONG narrative in marketing with slogans that are quotable and that resonate with the voters who don't understand policy or politics in general.

It's like, minor parts of the democratic party that agree with this should just do a hostile takeover and put all the old demented idiots in retirement homes... except for Bernie. :sweat:

Lionino had a way of highlighting a left-leaning bias on the forum. — Leontiskos

Is it left-leaning to ban homophobia, transphobia and racism?

It's remarkable that being respectful in not promoting or doing such is considered "left-leaning". What does that make the right and conservatives? If you reduce actual living human beings down to categories of ideology and "agendas", then how is that different from when other certain historical movements did the same?

The proof is in the pudding, and if the pudding smells bad then throwing it away is not a political leaning, it's just basic human decency.

Politicians have tended to elected by their electioneering practices. They don't get elected by proposing well thought out policies. They get elected by dumbing it down - distilling it to sound-bites that are directionally congruent with policy choices, while spun to be appealing. So (for most), the voting choice is based on the superficial. The problem: this has created the opportunity for a man to run entirely on the superficial - honing the message to make it more appealing.

The proper solution would be for the population to delve more deeply, to try to understand the impact of what is said - to demand more detailed policy positions, and also to understand that even the best policies will also have some negative consequences. The problem is, this isn't going to happen. People don't take the time, or they lack the skills, to understand. We will perpetually be at risk of being victimized by demagogues. — Relativist

What you describe is our current post-truth environment. Above your post I've mentioned a few strategies to mitigate it.

The thing that is important to remember is that politicians and demagogues are only as powerful as the people let them. Even in states of high authoritarianism. What post-truth is doing is slowly eroding society into being more subservient to populists and demagogues, so fighting against post-truth is the way to heal back society into being more able and willing to put leaders under more scrutiny.

Movements can be run to fill the gaps that leaders don't take responsibility for. The key is for the people who haven't yet fallen into post-truth mentalities to organize and collaborate and install mitigation strategies against further erosion of knowledge.

Simply, get creative and organize, instead of waiting for someone to swoop in as some savior, there won't be one.

How do you propose to "/dismantle/ an ideology or behavior" without reaching people?

You can write a book where you "/dismantle/ an ideology or behavior" all you want, but if people don't read your book or don't heed it, how have you accomplished anything? — baker

Ok, now I get what you were asking. And it's the problem. If anything, it's a problem in society that I think should get more attention.

One strategy is marketing.
The only problem is that the reach of marketing as an educational form for the masses is very expensive as it needs funding that will never have any money-based ROI. We can argue that the ROI is rather that society will function better, but even the governments might not have the interest in it since much of their current policies and communication is now dependent on post-truth rhetoric while facts are only so good as those who can promote their own party.

Such marketing is sometimes done by organisations that work to mitigate and inform about disinformation and misinformation. But their reach is so limited that they drown in the current attention economy. So it would need billions in funding to reach large and wide and it needs to keep going for years in order to become part of societal norms.

Another is laws and regulations.
Stronger enforcements on social media platforms to mitigate spread of disinformation and misinformation. To mark not only disinformation, but also statements and info that are factual. It's also possible to criminalize participation in the spread of disinformation and misinformation; meaning, virally shared clips will charge everyone who spreads it, not just the initial source. If a 100 000 people spread it, they can be charged a fine. This would incentivize to better check what it is you are sharing and make sure viral clips, especially marked as factual or official, gets promoted. We can also enforce algorithms to not promote conflict language, as this has been used for algorithms as conflict language drives engagement. Promote level-headed discussions over conflict, even if it doesn't drive engagement as much; as well as promote people who generally has a better ability to form proper arguments (AI can analyze and form such an algorithm easily today).

That's just what I can think of, but there are so many laws and regulations that can be put into place that promote both verified information and better civil discussions, which helps form a better attitude and behavior around the concept of discussions that are civil and fact based. Flipping the current status quo of the worst shit being put at the top of the page and the better people and arguments being almost invisible.

Just think about this forum, there's no algorithm that promote certain language over others. Imagine if mostly the people who're referenced in the "Bannings" thread were the posts that dominated the front page and how that would affect the general language of others and how they treat arguments. It might be that we don't even need algorithms for promoting good behavior, ban promoting algorithms altogether and we will still get a better atmosphere on social media.

Another strategy is also a simple reform to education.
While schools under a good educational systems generally have critical thinking and media literacy built into parts of all parts of education, there may be a need to include critical thinking, media literacy and epistemology as a fundamental and large part of education overall. Education hasn't really kept up the pace with the rise of post-truth behavior, and so we need a much larger focus on forming a good protection against manipulation, propaganda, disinformation and misinformation, while forming an automatic response to statements that steers the person to fact check more often and not accept things at face value or just because the speaker is charismatic.

Failure of in education has also been attributed to why so many fall for leaders like Trump. But I want to take it further and improve even for those who get a good education. It needs to be even more focused on understanding all of this than just having fractions of such information spread out within existing curriculums.

---

I could go on, but the problem isn't that there is a lack of ideas, strategies or work that can be put into figuring things out, it's that there's not much push on figuring this out on a large scale, even thought this problem is on a global scale.

People are stuck within the post-truth behaviors, which means even the discussions on how to do this falls within similar bad faith arguments and ends up in irrelevant dismantling definitions among non-experts with the power to decide what to implement or not, and things stall and ends up not happening.

It kind of falls on those who can do this out of the will alone. Those who can start a non-profit to help work with this. But much of the funding for world scale changes is in the ten digits. No one will care until things collapse and people are forced to rebuild.

But we still need to do something.

Philosophers should know better than to try to reach people through arguments.

Most people respond to (perceived) status, not to arguments. Respect for power is paramount.

(This is true even in academia. Just imagine a student majoring in philosophy daring to disagree on a claim made by her professor in a lecture. This amounts to risking failing the exam.) — baker

I'm not sure how what you say connects to what I said there? What I'm saying is that the way to defeat populism and post-truth degrading of the importance of facts is to return back the status of truth and facts as the highest value and something to care for, not to misuse. Post-truth ideologies use bad faith arguments to reduce facts and truth down to imaginary relativities, making any statement that is actually based on facts into equal to a statement based on nothing but a made up foundation or misunderstanding of a source.

This isn't about reaching people, it's about dismantling an ideology or behavior that is the driving force behind the inability of people to gather around truth and facts about the world. Without that, society has nothing to build on and we erode any form of ability to have justice, health, economy, security or knowledge overall.

One example of this is how some would respond to a factual statement with "facts are just something that enough people agreed upon", not as a definition, but as an argument for why we shouldn't trust a fact. And this type of reasoning is done without any form of nuance with respect to evaluating the initial facts first or understand that consensus-formed conclusions made by experts in a field still is the most optimal way for how we humans form a body of knowledge and what we define as a scientific fact used to further build knowledge.

It's used as blanket statements, mostly by people deep into echo chambers, to dismiss any factually based reasoning. In essence, it is a constantly repeating weapon to shoot down anything that is a threat to their made up delusions about the world.

This has become the kind of behavior that feeds the post-truth society. In which experts are lowered to the same level as amateurs and no one either listens to actual facts, or has any ability to collaborate with other in the pursuit of actual truth. It's a breeding ground for conspiracy theories and an inability to see through lies of charismatic people.

When Trump blames the bad economy on Biden, that's a false statement that ignores the global reasons for inflation and the work Biden's government has put in to mitigate it. But the bulk of his voters (not the evangelical christo-fascists, but the seemingly normal voters) voted because of the economy, because they wanted Trump to fix "the economy that Biden destroyed". It doesn't matter if experts point out that this is a faulty narrative, it doesn't matter if they try to inform; the people do not value expert's input anymore because they have, through the constant erosion of definitions, lost their ability to spot when something is true, something is an actual fact, or how to check if something is.

It's basically a lynching of the concept of truth, facts, rational reasoning and scientific methods, all in favor of the masses sense of individualism forming an arrogance by making their ego feel like the protagonist who knows better than everyone else, rejecting any ideas that do not fit their world view by bad faith grinding down the defining elements of knowledge into absolute noise.

This has to stop.

The majority respond to populist, easy answers. They're not going to understand or want to hear complicated proposals that aren't going to give them everything they want. So the side that gives them what they want is the side that is going to win.

A bit of pragmatism over principle shouldn't be ignored. — Michael

The reason more and more respond to populism is due to the consequences of the rising post-truth environment. By aligning with what further enforces it, we're only digging that grave further.

We're not getting anywhere by using the tools that created this mess in the first place. We're only going to create more fact-resistant people who have no clue how to find out what's actually going on and the disdain for politics and people in power will only increase until there's nothing left.

It's absolutely the wrong path to lower yourself to their level. We need to get back to valuing truth, facts, science, research, proper journalism and rational reasoning over got damn reality television.

Can't you see what the actual consequences are for what you're proposing? How it's just further polarizing and feeding into the problems that is the foundation for the global rise of populist extremists?

You speak of pragmatism, but this is like saying that because they are extremists, we should be extremists. To be blunt, it's childish logic. And missing that upholding and elevating truth and facts back to its higher valued position as a foundation of society isn't a principles... it's defending the core of a functioning society. It's the foundations and pillars of a free society.

Your argument is unfortunately part of the problem. Keep lowering the bar until all we have are populists on each side, nothing gets done and people are left in a hell in which no one is able to find a trustworthy source of information for any actual truth.

Sorry, but in my opinion, that is an appalling scenario and I don't feel like people are really thinking things through enough when reacting to the rise of people like Trump.

You don't have to be a damn populist yourself to fight back against populism and fascism, you need to shout the truth as it is, in a raging fire! No one is doing this! And that's the problem. Everyone is catering to the manipulation of the stupid, everyone tries to trick people into a certain vote. Just tell the damn truth and make policies that actually help people and stop being afraid of the fascist monsters.

Just do the damn work instead of empty fluff talk, that's the democrats needed to fight the right.

What you are promoting is basically equivalent of carpet bombing the whole society just to win. Winning isn't enough, there need to be something left that wins.

Populism is fine, just so long as it's good policies. — Michael

I reject this on the basis that it's short sighted for short term effects. Because in the long term it's eroding society. Going low does not mean just catering to post-truth narratives and populism, going low can be political strategies in the halls of power that sabotage right wing policies.

But going "low" can also mean speaking the damn truth, not twisting and turning to try and cater to everyone. But straight up call out the consequences of right wing politics. Tell the people straight what the consequences are and what the democrats will do to stop it. It's not really "low", but it's saying the hard truth straight in a way that's not trying to compromise itself to death.

The democrats have nothing but meaningless fluff in their speeches and communication to the people. There's nothing to hang onto. Like, stop bullshitting and just say straight "we're gonna make healthcare free for all! Into the best healthcare in the world" and dare to actually make that into policy.

Why is the choice to go actual dirty the first strategy when failing to fight back against the dirty? Maybe they should try to actually go higher rather than just talk like they do.

They're not going higher, they never really did.

That just erodes truth more into the post-truth environment that makes people unable to know what is true and facts. We've already seen what catering to populist rhetoric to counter populists is doing to society... giving birth to more populists.

Fighting fire with fire needs to stop. There has to be a movement that rejects post-truth ideologies.

The likely outcome is that the administration will have meager results in advancing it's policies simply because of Trump himself. The last year of the previous administration is in my view telling about what Trump II administration will be. First of all, Trump will likely appoint yes-men and then get unsatisfied with their inability to get things done. Hence the Trump administration can continue to be a place where people go in and out. I assume Trump has lost his love affair with appointing military personnel into positions. — ssu

This time around he's surrounded not by yes-men, but by people of similar or worse ideologies. And the reason things didn't get done last time around was that the rest of the government could block his worst policies. This time, the house and senate are aligned with Trump and he's already been blessed by the supreme court that a president can do whatever he wants without legal repercussions.

Trump was weakened last time because he didn't have the same support around him as he does now. And he were going into a new election trying to appeal to voters he had lost. So he toned down his worst behavior.

What do you think will happen now that he does not have a new term after these four years? When he's aiming to replace the permanent staff in the white house (which requires policy change)?

He has nothing to lose and also almost no one standing in his way, as well as a hold on the supreme court that's going to back him up if he crosses the line.

It's nowhere near how it was the last time he was in office and I don't think people have really and fully understood this.

I'd wish that he's just gonna clown around and be embarrassing, but I fear he's become far more of a proper fascist these recent years as the world overall has adopted similar tendencies.

Just as people underestimated this election result, I don't think it's a good idea to just adopt a new set of coping mechanisms and arguments in which we ignore the possible consequences of these four upcoming years.

And perhaps the media simply won't give him the attention that he desires. — ssu

That won't happen... at all. American media is a market driven reality TV trash pile. It needs a reform into actual news. The problem with media, but primarily how media is in the US, is that they're desperately trying to compete with YouTube, social media and other online outlets. In doing so they've doubled down on the emotional, opinion driven bullshit and abandoned much of the investigative and critical force that were on the side of the people. They are only critical from an ideological perspective or market driven perspective, while trying to entertain in order to keep the attention of people.

What we need is organized, neutral and fact oriented media on YouTube. And while many have a presence there, I'm talking about big media channels that are respected and trusted by verifiable means. Something that fundamentally competes against traditional media, not in attention, but in quality that gains viewers long term.

But we also need to see the Democrats reform themselves. Get rid of the Clinton ties, put actual progressive politics into the forefront in order to exist FOR something and not just be the unmoving centrist "whateverist" that tries to win the votes of everyone.

If you try to please everyone you will please no one.

The Democrats need to be more left in their economics. They need to fight for free health care, need to be progressive in human rights, to help the middle class workers and don't ignore the homeless and opioid epidemic by just ignoring it. They need to be the party that help and enrich the majority of people and pushing back against the billionaire elits.

And they need to dare lose on those terms. Because this catering to the right wing voters to gain votes only seem to have gained around 5%. Compare that to how much voters on the left that they've lost due to abandoning more left-leaning policies.

The problem with Biden wasn't his age or anything, it's that he's an outspoken centrist. He rejects the more progressive left, he wanted to get into office in order "for the progressives not to destroy the democratic party".

But that's a fools errand.

There's nothing in the center but mediocrity. You don't have to be a political extremist to move society in a direction, you just need to have some direction.

If Trump and the republicans have fallen so far to the right they're basically becoming right wing fascists or christo-fascists, then the democrats can't solve that by also moving more to the right, they need to step more to the left. At least one step to the left of centrists.

When listening to someone like Bernie-Sanders, it's exactly the kind of left politics that the democrats need. The problem is that people are so politically illiterate that all they do is regurgitating influencer rhetoric against the kind of socialism he proposes, and in so labeling him as some kind of extremist. He's more in-line with the right wing politics in Scandinavia than anywhere near any communist socialist extremists. Any time that he speaks to actual people about their real world problems, it's like they get confused because of how rational his arguments and ideas are for actual working people.

On top of that, the democrats are so fucking bad at marketing. They're basically rich people trying to appeal to workers.



The democrats need to rid themselves of charlatans of left politics and actually have someone with more left leaning politics. There's a lot of people who want that kind of pushback that actually counters republicans... not just trying to get their voters.

On the other hand, there is a plethora of venomous far right keyboard warriors on the internet. — Jamal

I find it interesting that some people's defense of racist, homophobic, transphobic and fascist opinions and posts usually comes in the form of defending it for being conservative, right wing opinions.

Either conservatives and right wing people are really just all of the above, or they're so politically and ideologically confused that they can't see the difference between that and true conservative and right wing politics.

Beyond the historical extreme outliers of right wing ideologs, I thought conservative and right wing views were mostly about pro-capitalist, pro-market, family values, keep traditions type of an ideology. So, either right wing conservatives have collectively become totally delusional and there's almost no actual conservative right wingers left, or they've all just become racist, homophobic, transphobic fascists?

Why do conservative right wingers let themselves be represented by immoral haters and fascists? It's like having a large dinner with friends and one is just screaming racist remarks over and over and when someone wants him silenced, everyone is just, "just let him be, he's a friend too".

I wish the real conservative right wingers could just get their moral compass straightened out and distance themselves from this stuff.

But whatever, glad another is gone. Good job cleaning up.

I will note that the Trump phenomenon has normalised mendacity. — Wayfarer

In a post-truth society, the public have stopped pursuing truth, stopped listening to experts and scientists. Rather they let themselves follow whatever is emotionally satisfying, be it their own opinion or someone else's opinion.

Liars, scammers and manipulators have always existed, but the public have generally been able to arrive at the truth together, fighting back at the ones trying to scam their ways into power.

But in a post-truth society the public is in an intellectual disarray. They aren't able to organize around a truth or around some facts and thus will fail to keep demagogues and authoritarian grifters away.

This is why Trump is elected. The noise of post-truth society let's people like Trump do whatever they want and people will never be able to align around what they think about him. Only the ones who sees him for what he is are able to, but as we're seeing globally, more and more people are unable to do this.

It's one of the reasons why I am so focused on research, scientific methods and such in other arguments on this forum. Because people have lost touch with what rational reasoning really is. Whenever I see someone, in their argument, target scientists and their research with a vague concept of science changing all the time, and therefor "scientific research and findings can't be trusted", I know that I'm dealing with someone who has succumbed to the post-truth world.

It blocks any ability to progress ideas, to have proper discussions. Facts and truth are called into question so often that any attempt to form actual knowledge is futile.

The challenge, globally, is how we get rid of this post-truth bullshit. How research, experts, proper discussions, scientific methods and facts return back to normalcy and popularity again.

Instead of teaching people that all their opinions matters, teach them that facts and truth matters and their opinions are worthless without them. Make it embarrassing again to utter stupidity. Something that people look down on enough so that it hurts sociologically.

This inclusion bullshit of everyone's opinion mattering has shaped everyone into their own little expert who knows everything about everything.

It needs to stop, because this is what fuels the post-truth world that grifters like Trump feeds on. They won't disappear as symptoms until the root cause is treated.

How? I have no clue, but it's up to society to solve this. It's this that needs to happen. Everything else is just barking up the wrong tree.