IIUC, this was a finding when they ran the Polis experiments in Taiwan: when you map the arguments of the different sides, there are actually large areas of agreement. In other words, the median person who disagrees with you is a "potential common ground" guy, not a "planet Zargon" guy.

What I don't understand about Polis though is who is creating these less biased polls full of unbiased positions that people can vote on? It takes a lot of intelligence and wisdom to even formulate a question that isn't tainted by layers and layers of political innuendo. You can't just put something like "Do you believe in the rights of the unborn child?" into a system like this and expect quality outcomes.

I guess the theory is that you put the entire spectrum of positions on the line which allows fully biased positions on each end to exist. Then biased people on both ends will vote on slightly less and less biased positions that they still agree with and you'll see the true shared positions. But I still think that if you don't have a perfectly equal number of positions to vote on for each side you'll end up with the same problem we already have in society, people are being given biased questions not necessarily by strength but by amount. Therefore they will subconsciously and consciously conclude that the world wants them to be more towards the position that had more questions presented.

Many (most?) issues don't fit on a single dimension. Using your example, people hold positions that include "Absolutely!", "Yes, but also the rights of the mother.", "Yes, but I won't impose my beliefs on others.", "No, but I don't think people who feel otherwise should be forced to pay for abortions through taxes.", and many others.

In addition to the problem with biased questions you note, there are often built in assumptions that make yes or no responses impossible.

it's far worse than that, people don't even agree on the definition of words. In this example what a 'child' is.

I find that the median person who disagrees with me, actually agrees with me, but I accidentally triggered their social media PTSD and they flagged me as an enemy because I didnt slavishly polish their preferred set of boots.

That too is a major problem, in theory you could be posing fine questions but they are already politically or socially tainted so it's game over before it even started, you will get zero actual new thought from the person you asked.

Trouble is, the "large areas of agreement" can be pretty superficial. You can probably find broad agreement across the entire political spectrum about "cutting government waste", but it turns out that who is tasked with doing this and the low level details of what gets cut matter a lot more than the basic principle.

> how's it work out when people believe in "alternative facts"?

People are free to believe what they want but when a platform is overrun with bots spewing this 24/7 (reddit, for example) we are giving a platform to those lies/falsehoods.

IMO that is the issue, we should make it difficult for those lies to spread, but the incentives are not aligned with engagement. If the platform provides measures to disincentivise spam, hate spread with low-effort there will be less of it. Just like spam. And less people tricked because of it.

> Interesting, but how's it work out when people believe in "alternative facts"?

I think the first step is always to separate a fact (I.e., X happened), from why did X happen. Afterwards, you move towards the steps that could prevent X from happening, or reactive protocols to X that minimize the chance of conspiracy theories, etc.

Of course it will not work with all, but, in my opinion, with enough of “alternative facts” lovers that it will be sufficient.

I go over the four ways to disagree with someone on my blog, but the question is, when is it material? If I think the sun revolves around the Earth, unless I'm the navigator of the ship you're on, and my wrong beliefs are going to ship wreck all of us, how does it affect you?

There's a cognitive cost in the readers mind to have to deal with the fact that someone out in the world has that belief. To me it updates my mind and mental model of the people in the world. So to me I think its material as soon as its recorded and perceived by another mind

I don't understand "why did X happen?" presupposes X happened. We seem to be at the level of X pretty obviously did not happen but people believe it did.

Ah, I see what you mean. I my personal experience, those that believe in “alternative facts” typically believe in different narratives around the same thing and confuse the narrative with the fact.

For things that did not happen? Yeah. I am not sure there is something that can be done beyond pointing out inconsistencies in their reasoning and proves. However, typically, those things are about believes that mascaras as rational reasoning, and there is nothing you can do about beliefs.

Remember, after WW2 there were people in Germany who did not believe the Allies that Hitler and Co did terrible things.