Arguments, personalities, and positions.
Diversity exists.
Not just in skin color, or language, or position. Diversity exists in the process by which positions are reached. There is a fairly robust correlation between Meyer Briggs personality types (yes, I know that these are of limited use in psychology) and political affiliation.
But essentially, what it boils down to is that each person is susceptible to a certain type of persuasion, and that what type of persuasion we are each susceptible to has a great deal to do with what our eventual positions will be, and does make most debate quite shockingly pointless.
In the context of American politics, one example of this is this: My sister-in-law once commented that the liberals she knew always assumed that everyone agreed with them, and just felt free to talk about how horrible Sarah Palin was (this was during the 2008 election cycle), whereas the conservatives always assumed disagreement and continued arguing their point. I can see that. Particularly among the "intelligentsia"... That's something that gets lost too, that there are many different archetypes of democratic and republican voter. Engineers vote republican. Scientists vote democrat. Blue collar joes vote republican, welfarites vote democrat. There are a huge number of person-types, and EACH ONE comes with a dramatic political leaning.
Because each different type of person has a particular type of argument that they find persuasive. and each type of person is exposed to metric shit tons of the precise type of argument that will work on them.
Which leads to a lot of problems, because when disagreements happen, each of us, by default, presents the type of argument that *we* find persuasive. But that's doomed to fail, because if that type of argument were going to work, the other person would ALREADY AGREE. If facebook memes were persuasive to everybody, we'd all be voting sanders. If statistical analysis were persuasive to everybody, we'd all be voting Paul.
And that's the problem with modern political discourse. People offer biblical analysis to people that want appeals to privilege, statistical analysis to people that want biblical analysis, appeals to privilege to people that want memes, etcetera, and the archetypes polarize, because we all keep hearing unpersuasive arguments from those that disagree, and persuasive arguments from those we already agreed with.
Is there a way around this? I don't know. I can say that I can think of precisely *one* person that is capable of offering arguments off-type (I am looking at YOU prester_scott), and that my position has modified based on that conversation, but the VAST majority of conversations are merely frustrating for all parties, as each party presents data that convinced *them*, but is virtually meaningless to the other party.
Not just in skin color, or language, or position. Diversity exists in the process by which positions are reached. There is a fairly robust correlation between Meyer Briggs personality types (yes, I know that these are of limited use in psychology) and political affiliation.
But essentially, what it boils down to is that each person is susceptible to a certain type of persuasion, and that what type of persuasion we are each susceptible to has a great deal to do with what our eventual positions will be, and does make most debate quite shockingly pointless.
In the context of American politics, one example of this is this: My sister-in-law once commented that the liberals she knew always assumed that everyone agreed with them, and just felt free to talk about how horrible Sarah Palin was (this was during the 2008 election cycle), whereas the conservatives always assumed disagreement and continued arguing their point. I can see that. Particularly among the "intelligentsia"... That's something that gets lost too, that there are many different archetypes of democratic and republican voter. Engineers vote republican. Scientists vote democrat. Blue collar joes vote republican, welfarites vote democrat. There are a huge number of person-types, and EACH ONE comes with a dramatic political leaning.
Because each different type of person has a particular type of argument that they find persuasive. and each type of person is exposed to metric shit tons of the precise type of argument that will work on them.
Which leads to a lot of problems, because when disagreements happen, each of us, by default, presents the type of argument that *we* find persuasive. But that's doomed to fail, because if that type of argument were going to work, the other person would ALREADY AGREE. If facebook memes were persuasive to everybody, we'd all be voting sanders. If statistical analysis were persuasive to everybody, we'd all be voting Paul.
And that's the problem with modern political discourse. People offer biblical analysis to people that want appeals to privilege, statistical analysis to people that want biblical analysis, appeals to privilege to people that want memes, etcetera, and the archetypes polarize, because we all keep hearing unpersuasive arguments from those that disagree, and persuasive arguments from those we already agreed with.
Is there a way around this? I don't know. I can say that I can think of precisely *one* person that is capable of offering arguments off-type (I am looking at YOU prester_scott), and that my position has modified based on that conversation, but the VAST majority of conversations are merely frustrating for all parties, as each party presents data that convinced *them*, but is virtually meaningless to the other party.