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posted by janrinok on Sunday January 16 2022, @10:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the By-the-inch,-it's-a-cinch-but-a-mile-takes-a-while dept.

We've previously discussed ( https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=21/12/11/1847236 ) how it becomes impossible to reverse the polarization of a community once their differences become too great, and how that plays out both here at SN and in the wider world. Science Blog has a piece ( https://scienceblog.com/527745/computer-model-seeks-to-explain-the-spread-of-misinformation-and-suggest-counter-measures/ ) about a PLOS paper titled "Cognitive cascades: How to model (and potentially counter) the spread of fake news" ( https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0261811 ) which uses an interesting computer model to explore how this actually happens.

The model demonstrated that if the new information is too much at odds with a person's existing belief, it will be ignored. Furthermore, if that belief is connected with the person's identity, their current belief will be strengthened as a defense against cognitive dissonance. Interestingly, though, a succession of new information that gradually nudge the person to adjust their beliefs can, over time, cause the person to adopt a belief that is very different from the one they started with. This sounds like how psy-ops manipulate targets to accept extreme views.

What was the gradual change of ideas that have led national political parties to be ever more different from one another, and who fed them those messages?


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  • (Score: 2, Disagree) by DrkShadow on Sunday January 16 2022, @01:48PM (7 children)

    by DrkShadow (1404) on Sunday January 16 2022, @01:48PM (#1213119)

    Interesting take/feedback.

    ---
    One of the things that gets me: over time, the Democratic party became more republican (big-gov) than the republicans. (Decent reference: https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html [livescience.com] -- though I read more about the shift / stay-the-same / 1990's in school than I am at this link.)

    In the past, as we know, the Democrats were more for small government, and the republicans were for centralization and control. That hasn't necessarily changed for the republicans - the attempt to acquire (own) the vaccine, the banking breaks, the business-oriented goals.. all republicans in the past and present. However, the democratic party shifted around them to become more-republican-than-the-republicans, in their attempt to win the west -- at the time, republican viewpoints of personal freedoms, equal rights, safety-net, etc that were adopted by the Democrats.

    Ok.

    What that means to me is that Republicans have been basically the same for the life of the United States (pandering to the same core group?) while the Democrats have changed with the "popular thing". I would argue that both have their good-merit (We have our core principles! Times change and people change, so change with them!) so I can't necessarily fault either party, but ... maybe they've both settled in basically the same spot. And so, they've become the Republicrats. (Maybe this will change some more, and the democrats will change with them and there will again be a natural difference between the parties.)

    Just a recently-old dude rambling on. Feel free to ignore this comment. :-)

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 16 2022, @04:04PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 16 2022, @04:04PM (#1213149)

    Democrats were more for small government

    That part, at least is laughably wrong. The Dems have always been for more big government.

    republicans were for centralization and control

    Another knee-slapper. The Republicans were always much more supportive of the 10th Amendment than the Democrats ever were.

    One of the main differences was the Democrats long history as the party of slavery and segregation. Remember just the other day when Biden asked if the people wanted to be George Wallace, Bull Connor and Jefferson Davis? Note that all of them were Democrats. Joe Biden used to heap praise on George Wallace (ref [newsweek.com]).

    It's worth remembering, with the Martin Luther King holiday tomorrow, that MLK was a Republican.

    • (Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 16 2022, @07:16PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 16 2022, @07:16PM (#1213208)

      > It's worth remembering, with the Martin Luther King holiday tomorrow, that MLK was a Republican.

      It's also worth remembering that the parties "switched" at some point in past, causing no end of confusion to right-wing blowhards from that date on. So confusing for them.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 16 2022, @07:47PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 16 2022, @07:47PM (#1213220)

        "I don't think the Republican party is a party full of the almighty God nor is the Democratic party. They both have weaknesses ... And I'm not inextricably bound to either party."[380] King did praise Democratic Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois as being the "greatest of all senators" because of his fierce advocacy for civil rights causes over the years."

        wikipedia

        So he wasn't much affiliated with R or D, just more FUD from Republicans that don't want to be the party of racist fascists. Well, they don't want to admit to it anyway, though surely some truly don't like the racist fascism.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 17 2022, @04:22PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 17 2022, @04:22PM (#1213404)

        Why is that nonsense moderated as 'informative'? It's a crock of shit, it always has been a crock of shit. "We'll have those niggers voting for us for the next 200 years." There was no switcheroo, the Dems were using blacks then, and they are using blacks now. It's far past time people woke up and understood that Dems don't care for anyone, they care about POWER!

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 17 2022, @11:06PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 17 2022, @11:06PM (#1213489)

          Viciously allowing gay marriage, equality, voting rights. Those bastards!

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 19 2022, @05:57AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 19 2022, @05:57AM (#1213789)

            "We'll have those niggers queers voting for us for the next 200 years."

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 17 2022, @06:27AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 17 2022, @06:27AM (#1213341)

    What that means to me is that Republicans have been basically the same for the life of the United States

    Um, are we Jaywalking tonight? The Republican party did not exist before 1854, its first national candidate was Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps you refer to the Whigs? (Oh, the United States have "lived" since 1789, with the ratification of the Constitution.)