What are some practical actions that we can take to resist these sweeping changes?
Democracies globally are facing a similar problem, which is an abuse of a core democractic principle: Free speech.
Free speech is often valued in and of itself. However, free speech in itself is only a tool that serves a greater purpose, which is to enable the search for truth. Free speech is the goal of exchanging ideas between peoples, to foster competition in thought so that collectively we can understand our shared reality.
If such a market place were to become inefficient, or if such a market place were to resolve itself to serve the most attention grabbing takes, we would see much of what the media carries.
THIS ISNT the problem you face! This is the problem we discuss!
The problem is when someone combines the media with a political party. The media itself has no recourse but to play the game of advertizing to survive.
But once it is in service of an entity, then you can create your own justifications for war, and then declare victory yourselves.
This makes the most mercenary of politics the most succesful. It is the natural recourse of people who want to win at all costs. It is far more efficient than doing economic research to understand the pros and cons of a decision.
We can solve the problems we all mutuall face. There is more to life than our polarization.
However, if we are pulled between two magnets, and our goal is to not be pulled apart - then the magnets need to be addresed.
The societies that exist have something that allows them to continue to exist. Free speech can allow a society to seek truth and being aligned with reality can be important in the survival of a society. But so can cohesion while being "wrong".
There's a lot of information floating around and there's a lot of play between truth seeking free speech and cohesion signaling going on. Esp. as noise has been added to all signals including the scientific channels both via corporations and via well meaning ideologues.
I'm sure this is naive but I assume most of us would just love to be able to filter the signal from the noise in places that are relevant to us and be able to ensure low malfeasance in the places that aren't.
Holmes was suprisingly nihilistic, and I feel his formation of the search and competition for truth held now idealized beliefs of human behavior.
He accepted that people woudl be driven by their passions and biases, including things like a desire to create cohesion. That this was also something traded as a value and motivating force.
I generally agree, but I also think this was a natural and probably unavoidable result of having many different sources of “news”.
Prior to the internet, pretty much all news in the US came from ~5 TV networks and 1 or 2 newspapers (per city). It wasn’t practical for any of those sources to align exclusively with either political party because then they would be alienating ~half of their potential customers.
Today, there are far, far more sources to choose from. People self select those sources that they agree with. In the “old days” the news was more middle of the road politically, but that’s largely gone now. This is a major source of polarization IMO.
Unless you know someone else is going to be doing this, or you know this doesnt interest you - then see how far this makes sense to you.
I did my soul searching the day Trump won. I had a 0% chance for that occurence, and my prediction was wrong.
I relooked at everything I believed, because I had made a high confidence prediction on how the world worked, and I had made the wrong call. If this was a massive stock play, I would have been broke.
My revised position made me stop asking why Harris lost, but instead focused on how Trump ran in 2016 in the first place.
I felt it forced me to take my thinking seriously, and my assumptions seriously. Perhaps it matters and will help you too.
Who exactly holds the magnets here? Is it even knowable or is it even necessary to know to address the problem? I agree regarding media but how do you get your information at national scale then? The world seems way more complex than what it once was, the interdependence feels more like grappling moves as we approach a malthusian crunch.
Seems there is a market place for truth . Truth has become ware and has price (which is not same as cost). All else follows..
One of my other conclusions is that, with gen AI, the old assumptions of truth are gone.
Instead we're at the dawn of something like the fiat money revolution, in analogy terms. Like the value of a idea isnt about how its based on fact, but on the relation between the person sharing it, and the person paying attention to it.
Im hoping someone makes a blog post about this.
Also - this used to be hacker news. As in who gives a shit about what is, its about what needs to change.
Think of it this way - this is just a puzzle that needs to be cracked. Take it as a job application problem, and see how it can be dissected over the weekend.
Come up with some theories, then go see if you can disprove them.
Fixing anything, comes from defining the right problem anyway.
Maybe AI agents will be able to help identity bad reporting in the press and hold them more accountable. A sort of epistemic anti-virus.
American right-wing propaganda personalities and media outlets drive the negative sentiment to a large degree. They radicalize their audiences against traditional media institutions, and they do it very, very well. Sometimes there are kernels of truth to their criticisms. Mostly they are wildly exaggerated, or even totally fabricated. It sucks we can't have nice things, but it is what it is. Free speech is free speech.
But it won't really get better unless all that propaganda is successfully countered, even if you magically figured out how to build a perfect mainstream media.
Where things get really dangerous is when demagogues come along and join in, like Trump.
On the list of things to look for to tell if you're dealing with a rising authoritarian movement, near the top are sustained attacks on the press. Enemy of the people, Trump calls them. Zuckerberg gets threatened with life in prison. He encourages supporters to menace and attack reporters at rallies. The list goes on.
These all become the pretext for drastic anti-constitutional attacks on the free press, and we're seeing that take shape already in Trump 2.0.
Honestly though, I'm in the same situation and I don't know.
I did just start paid subscriptions to several media outlets that have been doing good reporting on the situation (Guardian, Verge). I unsubscribed to the Washington Post after they pulled their Harris endorsement (which was appalling), but their coverage since feels relatively thorough and they are well placed to report on all this so far, so I resubscribed. I already support PBS. I'll probably donate to Pro Publica next.
I expect media outlets will be under rapidly increasing pressure, so supporting them financially feels important and positive.
I've also have a standing donation to the NAACP legal defense fund from his first administration that I've just kept running.
So... money I guess?
I really hope so too. My pessimist side fears that the powerful are observing the US, seeing that it works there and will do the same thing here.
The parties turn on people who show up to do the work. There is a remarkable amount people can achieve if they show up as people who are willing to learn, do the work, and have their own eyes and ears open.
From my perspective, Trump voters distrust and dislike the old media so much, a newspaper telling them they shouldn't vote for Trump would only strengthen their resolve.
Yeah, same. Since the Brexit a lot of populist parties in the EU don't want to leave the EU anymore (only reform it). Let's hope that this is another warning that the destructive populist path doesn't lead anywhere good.
(And I hope that the UK will join the EU again, they are close friends.)
I did just start paid subscriptions to several media outlets that have been doing good reporting on the situation (Guardian, Verge).
Yeah, independent, non-clickbait news is very important in these times. We recently renewed our newspaper subscription for three years.
When you are in the EU (or really anywhere non-US anyway), it's probably a good moment to start moving your data out of the US and away from US companies. So far Trump has done exactly what he promised, so a large trade war or, even worse, a war over Greenland is possible. Since pretty much anything is fair game now, blackmailing the EU using its dependency on US tech companies is not far-fetched anymore.
Get your data out and reduce your dependency on US tech.
As a Brit, so do I. However, despite all of the evidence showing it will be massively beneficial, we won't. Not fully, imho, for a good while. Best I'm hoping for is closer ties in a customs union, but that requires compromise I don't think will happen.
The best thing I can think of is to make the EU a strong, powerful, wealthy democracy that can defend itself from invasion and try to encourage other democracies around the world.
Which means we have a lot of work ahead, to put it mildly.
It's 2025. You can drive across most European countries in a day (a long day, in some cases, but still).
If Europe wants to stick to the borders a bunch of kings and princes hashed out in blood a hundred+ years ago it can, for the moment, but if we do, there's a decent chance it will just be crushed by the next global superpower (US, China, or weirdly enough maybe Russia considering how much influence they have over many US politicians now).
I love Europe. I was proud to become an EU citizen and my favourite scarf is an EU flag. I think it's an amazing place full of amazing countries and people. And it still can be! But for it to continue to exist, we MUST work together. Militarily, economically, and even practically (why is it so hard to book train tickets across 3 countries again?)
I know it stings, but the reality is the wolves are at the gates. Democracy has its back against the wall and we need a force that can fight back. Or government of the people, by the people, for the people, will soon perish from the Earth.
In the current form federal EU would be someting like having an unelected powerful executive branch, and a semi-elected weak legistlative branch. Furthermore the populace has very little idea about what is happening in the EU and who to hold accountable, partly because the media doesn't cover it, and partly because the processes are extremely convoluted and quite opaque.
Such "democratic centralism" bureaucracy probably would have benefits like more stability for long term strategy, swift execution of policies and coordinated action, but it's also very prone to corruption and elite capture.
This is a global phenomenon. It’s part grassroots, driven by discontent with sclerotic establishment parties that are not solving problems, but also being driven by propaganda from authoritarian countries like Russia and China. The latter is opportunistic.
Personally, I am working on replacing any American made products or services I use myself or through my job. Both as an act of protest and in preparation for the upcoming economic war they plan to wage.
There's a reason that Germany's current main center-right parties were both born after the war.
Greens just went through a stupid political scandal in Berlin where the leftist radical wing tried to frame a realo candidate for sexual harassment. SPD goes to this election with the worst chancellor in history. CDU lost its mind and voted together with AFD. FDP is serving a few special interests groups. Die Linke are borderline irrelevant.
We are in a strange situation where we have strong presence on populist left and right, but no decent political force in the center to contain them.
Ironically enough, this very much sounds like the "let's re-write and everything will be better" fallacy encountered in software engineering.
That aside, what you are wishing for is a war and/or revolution where the pillars of society have been shattered to pieces, the old incumbents removed/killed/retired, and where a new political landscape is built upon the ruins and ashes of what has been.
Be careful what you wish for..
Be careful what you wish for. If AfD would grab the power (unlikely at this point), it'll weaken Germany nationally and internationally like the US is being weakened now.
Meanwhile, increasing my focus on my immediate community and sharing my creativity are fulfilling activities within my power.
