Lemmy as a whole is an echo chamber too. Look at how things blew up in this post. This is an extreme scenario, not every conservative cares about project 2025. I have conservative family and coworkers who are conservative because they hate change and want to live in the “good old days”, not because they worship trump or are nazis… And yet everyone here thinks “all conservatives are evil”.
Nah, that’s ancient. Racial segregation, like with the Jim Crow laws, will probably do fine for a start. Maybe also take back women’s voting rights. Needless to say that homosexuality gets banned as well again. I mean, it’s a rather modern phenomenon that it has been legalized at all. /s
You guys are thinking way too extreme once again. My grandfather voted conservative his entire life and yet was friends with the blacks and columbians next door. He was the first in his town to let his wife drive a car.
Why was he conservative then you ask? Because he was raised religious and he felt like liberals were attacking his religion. That’s it. Now granted this was in Canada, before Trump and project 2025, but conservatism is an idea, not a party in one country.
I don’t say that each and every single conservative is an evil asshole who wants to let certain groups of people suffer. But even if the individual reasons for voting conservatives seems innocent, it’s not as innocent what such a party could ultimately do (or actually did in the past).
Even though his only motivation might have been that he saw his religion threatened, voting conservatives still shows a lack of critical thought in my opinion. What about the other goals the conservatives pursued back then and today? Voting them will give them the power to achieve those. Sure, maybe his religion will be protected that way. But what about all of the suffering the other goals will (or did) cause?
It’s a decision to make of what’s worse on the greater scale. Picking a party just because of one point on their agenda with which someone can identify, but ignoring the rest, seems like a short-sighted and potentially very harmful idea to me, which might – in the long run – even be detrimental to the one who voted for such a party.
It feels like voting for a party which will bring doom and damnation over the whole world, but at least you get to pet a puppy once a week.
It’s not a lack or critical thinking. He was working all day, then cooking for the family, then barely had an hour or two to himself. In a primarly conservative town, without internet, and about 3 channels on TV, how do you expect him to learn or care about politics? He voted conservative like everyone else and moved on.
Also keep in mind that most conservative parties in the world aren’t like the US, they don’t want to “bring doom and damnation over the world”.
So it’s not a lack of critical thinking, but not being able to take the time to critically think about one’s decision is not a lack of critical thinking?
I don’t think it’s responsible to vote for a party if one is not able to critically think about their choice. Then he maybe shouldn’t have voted at all, if there was really no time to think a bit about it. And it really doesn’t take that much. However, the limiting the available information is indeed a problem to form such critical thoughts. Still, making a choice despite knowing one is not able to form a well-informed opinion, is again a sign of a lack of critical thinking to me.
No, of course they don’t want to. They just do.
My wording was a figure of speech of course, but still, in my experience and from what I can tell, conservative parties have been more detrimental to the progress and benefit of a society as a whole than being beneficial.
My dude educating yourself about politics in a tiny town in the 60s isn’t as easy as it sounds. “Taking the time to educate ourselves” nowadays might take a 15m google search, but back then I don’t even know how they’d do it. There was one news channel on TV which was obviously biased one way, so that wouldn’t be enough and we had no library. And as I said people had more important things to do.
You might disagree, but I think he was right in prioritizing bringing food to the table, helping the town and getting the money to put my father through college. In the end, he did way more good for way more people than his one vote would have.
Getting banned for different views (assuming they were presented in a civilized manner) creates echo chambers. Surpressing other opinions will uniform thinking and perception. That enforces echo chambers.
Sure, Lemmy leans a lot more to the left due to it’s user base. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an echo chamber as a whole. You can easily evade snowballing effects here by sorting your posts differently, e.g., scaled. There is no algorithm which tries to keep you on the platform by serving you stuff you like and hiding stuff you don’t like. Thereby again, defying what’s typical for echo chambers.
You can voice your views and opinions and sometimes surely get downvoted to hell for that. But as long as it doesn’t break any “be nice” rules it’s usually going to be still visible and seen by others. People might disagree, but you are not surpressed. Thereby again, not an echo chamber.
It becomes problematic though if specific instances or communities ban you for having a different (harmless and civilised expressed) opinion. That will indeed create echo chambers as only that is allowed which is similar to the common tone.
And admittedly, having a user base which is dominated by politically left leaning users, seems not to be helpful in terms of diverse political discussions (although I don’t see how conservatives have ever been objectively or ethically right about something :p ), but from my experience this hasn’t become a problem here, since even left folks love to shoot each other in the feet and have diverse and deep (often fruitful) discussions.
It isn’t as big as some other places, yes, but to say it isn’t one doesn’t really sound true either.
an echo chamber is an environment or ecosystem
in which participants encounter beliefs that amplify or reinforce their preexisting beliefs
In the months I’ve been on lemmy, not once have I encountered a right-wing post, yet I see left-wing posts multiple times a day. By definition, how is it not an echo chamber? I suppose lemmy as a whole might not be, but the resulting lemmy I browse sure is.
That may depend on the instance you’re on and the communities others from your instance susbscribed to as well those you subscribed to.
Also, sorting matters a lot. If you go by popular post, i.e. hot or top, it’s not surprising to see many rather left-leaning posts as it’s the result of a majority of like-minded people. In that case you’re absolutely right and make a good point. If you then change to scaled for example you may encounter more diverse posts. I saw a bunch of pro-NRA posts just yesterday by changing the sorting.
But that are the posts. In the comments that picture may become different. It’s not as rare to me to encounter opposing views and sometimes clearly stuff which I wouldn’t categorise as politically left.
Lemmy as a whole is an echo chamber too. Look at how things blew up in this post. This is an extreme scenario, not every conservative cares about project 2025. I have conservative family and coworkers who are conservative because they hate change and want to live in the “good old days”, not because they worship trump or are nazis… And yet everyone here thinks “all conservatives are evil”.
So they want slavery back? Or was it something else?
Nah, that’s ancient. Racial segregation, like with the Jim Crow laws, will probably do fine for a start. Maybe also take back women’s voting rights. Needless to say that homosexuality gets banned as well again. I mean, it’s a rather modern phenomenon that it has been legalized at all. /s
You guys are thinking way too extreme once again. My grandfather voted conservative his entire life and yet was friends with the blacks and columbians next door. He was the first in his town to let his wife drive a car.
Why was he conservative then you ask? Because he was raised religious and he felt like liberals were attacking his religion. That’s it. Now granted this was in Canada, before Trump and project 2025, but conservatism is an idea, not a party in one country.
Your grandfather is a useful idiot who will be all surprised Pikachu face when they start packing the undesirables into trains
I don’t say that each and every single conservative is an evil asshole who wants to let certain groups of people suffer. But even if the individual reasons for voting conservatives seems innocent, it’s not as innocent what such a party could ultimately do (or actually did in the past).
Even though his only motivation might have been that he saw his religion threatened, voting conservatives still shows a lack of critical thought in my opinion. What about the other goals the conservatives pursued back then and today? Voting them will give them the power to achieve those. Sure, maybe his religion will be protected that way. But what about all of the suffering the other goals will (or did) cause?
It’s a decision to make of what’s worse on the greater scale. Picking a party just because of one point on their agenda with which someone can identify, but ignoring the rest, seems like a short-sighted and potentially very harmful idea to me, which might – in the long run – even be detrimental to the one who voted for such a party.
It feels like voting for a party which will bring doom and damnation over the whole world, but at least you get to pet a puppy once a week.
It’s not a lack or critical thinking. He was working all day, then cooking for the family, then barely had an hour or two to himself. In a primarly conservative town, without internet, and about 3 channels on TV, how do you expect him to learn or care about politics? He voted conservative like everyone else and moved on.
Also keep in mind that most conservative parties in the world aren’t like the US, they don’t want to “bring doom and damnation over the world”.
So it’s not a lack of critical thinking, but not being able to take the time to critically think about one’s decision is not a lack of critical thinking?
I don’t think it’s responsible to vote for a party if one is not able to critically think about their choice. Then he maybe shouldn’t have voted at all, if there was really no time to think a bit about it. And it really doesn’t take that much. However, the limiting the available information is indeed a problem to form such critical thoughts. Still, making a choice despite knowing one is not able to form a well-informed opinion, is again a sign of a lack of critical thinking to me.
No, of course they don’t want to. They just do.
My wording was a figure of speech of course, but still, in my experience and from what I can tell, conservative parties have been more detrimental to the progress and benefit of a society as a whole than being beneficial.
Didn’t take the time to educate himself, thinks his religion is more important than helping others, voted like a lemming.
Yea a lack of critical thinking went into these actions and into your defence of them.
My dude educating yourself about politics in a tiny town in the 60s isn’t as easy as it sounds. “Taking the time to educate ourselves” nowadays might take a 15m google search, but back then I don’t even know how they’d do it. There was one news channel on TV which was obviously biased one way, so that wouldn’t be enough and we had no library. And as I said people had more important things to do.
You might disagree, but I think he was right in prioritizing bringing food to the table, helping the town and getting the money to put my father through college. In the end, he did way more good for way more people than his one vote would have.
Getting banned for different views (assuming they were presented in a civilized manner) creates echo chambers. Surpressing other opinions will uniform thinking and perception. That enforces echo chambers.
Sure, Lemmy leans a lot more to the left due to it’s user base. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an echo chamber as a whole. You can easily evade snowballing effects here by sorting your posts differently, e.g., scaled. There is no algorithm which tries to keep you on the platform by serving you stuff you like and hiding stuff you don’t like. Thereby again, defying what’s typical for echo chambers.
You can voice your views and opinions and sometimes surely get downvoted to hell for that. But as long as it doesn’t break any “be nice” rules it’s usually going to be still visible and seen by others. People might disagree, but you are not surpressed. Thereby again, not an echo chamber.
It becomes problematic though if specific instances or communities ban you for having a different (harmless and civilised expressed) opinion. That will indeed create echo chambers as only that is allowed which is similar to the common tone.
And admittedly, having a user base which is dominated by politically left leaning users, seems not to be helpful in terms of diverse political discussions (although I don’t see how conservatives have ever been objectively or ethically right about something :p ), but from my experience this hasn’t become a problem here, since even left folks love to shoot each other in the feet and have diverse and deep (often fruitful) discussions.
It isn’t as big as some other places, yes, but to say it isn’t one doesn’t really sound true either.
In the months I’ve been on lemmy, not once have I encountered a right-wing post, yet I see left-wing posts multiple times a day. By definition, how is it not an echo chamber? I suppose lemmy as a whole might not be, but the resulting lemmy I browse sure is.
That may depend on the instance you’re on and the communities others from your instance susbscribed to as well those you subscribed to.
Also, sorting matters a lot. If you go by popular post, i.e. hot or top, it’s not surprising to see many rather left-leaning posts as it’s the result of a majority of like-minded people. In that case you’re absolutely right and make a good point. If you then change to scaled for example you may encounter more diverse posts. I saw a bunch of pro-NRA posts just yesterday by changing the sorting.
But that are the posts. In the comments that picture may become different. It’s not as rare to me to encounter opposing views and sometimes clearly stuff which I wouldn’t categorise as politically left.