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Are We Losing Our Political Sanity?
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Wintermoot
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  • This article from Psyche suggests that for people to flourish and be excellent, they need to be good at reasoning (which Aristotle believed was the distinctive feature of humanity). Further, according to the article, our reasoning is best when we are social: externalizing our ideas, exchanging ideas with others, and evaluating what they say. We are biased toward our own reasoning, but pretty good at evaluating the reasoning of others. Then a particular line stood out to me:

    Indeed, a large body of social scientific research suggests that groups of likeminded individuals, no matter how smart or educated they are, often reason very poorly, especially if they have affective ties to one another.

    I immediately thought of modern politics, where people are self-segregating based on their ideology, both online and offline. When we're confronted with someone who believes differently, we tend to reject them, ostracize (cancel) them, and mock them rather than exchange ideas and attempt to reason with them. And then I thought about how unhinged politics have become in the last decade...could this be why? Could we literally be losing our political sanity because we live in echo chambers? If you look at the things that are happening, you can't help but think that it's kinda...insane.

    As it turns out, the rest of the article went in that direction too. But what do you guys think? Are we losing our political sanity?
    2 people like this post: Red Mones, Imaginative Kane


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    Wintermoot
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