Comments on: Ambigram http://jonathanstray.com/ambigram Information, Culture, and Belief Mon, 30 Jan 2012 04:23:54 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 By: Jeff Hill http://jonathanstray.com/ambigram/comment-page-1#comment-86 Jeff Hill Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:51:30 +0000 http://jonathanstray.com/?p=92#comment-86 Is it possible to communicate without a common experience or at least some sort of common cognitive framework? The real problem isn't that people disagree, or even that it's hard to communicate... it's that facts have been made irrelevant to the discussion in the public sphere. If the facts don't matter what's the point of debate? If politics are nothing more than an expression of personal identity then demographics are all that matter. My party, right or wrong, seems like a recipe for civil war. I'd like to know if other political bodies have wandered into this sort of stable yet deeply polarized situation in the past, how they got there and how (if) they got out. It certainly seems like Europe isn't as deeply divided as the United States is today, but it would be interesting to see some studies on the sociology of that. http://www.theonion.com/content/news/report_60_million_people_youd http://bumperstickers.cafepress.com/item/democrat-reality-has-a-liberal-bias-bumper/104094027 http://www.amazon.com/True-Enough-Learning-Post-Fact-Society/dp/0470050101 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226467716 Is it possible to communicate without a common experience or at least some sort of common cognitive framework? The real problem isn’t that people disagree, or even that it’s hard to communicate… it’s that facts have been made irrelevant to the discussion in the public sphere. If the facts don’t matter what’s the point of debate? If politics are nothing more than an expression of personal identity then demographics are all that matter. My party, right or wrong, seems like a recipe for civil war.

I’d like to know if other political bodies have wandered into this sort of stable yet deeply polarized situation in the past, how they got there and how (if) they got out. It certainly seems like Europe isn’t as deeply divided as the United States is today, but it would be interesting to see some studies on the sociology of that.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/report_60_million_people_youd

http://bumperstickers.cafepress.com/item/democrat-reality-has-a-liberal-bias-bumper/104094027

http://www.amazon.com/True-Enough-Learning-Post-Fact-Society/dp/0470050101

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226467716

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