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A 2020 Cato national survey found that self-censorship is on the rise in the United States. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive.

Additionally, nearly a third (32%) of employed Americans say they are worried about missing out on career opportunities or losing their job if their political opinions became known. (These results are particularly notable since most personal campaign contributions to political candidates are public knowledge and can easily be found online.)

But when Armani Salado, the author of the fantasy book The Old Universe and co-founder of a multi-media company called Forbidden Origins, tweeted a question, asking everyone what radicalized them, many answered it and allowed the internet to have an honest discussion on a sensitive topic that's becoming increasingly avoided.

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Loverboy
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

In the end it costs America more anyway, I don't see why they don't just give people free healthcare.

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    C. Thi Nguyen, who is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah, however, warns that radical polarization within a society fails to get its members to the heart of the issues they're facing.

    And he thinks that echo chambers, which occur when insiders come to distrust everybody on the outside, are the real problem.

    "Echo chambers isolate their members, not by cutting off their lines of communication to the world, but by changing whom they trust," Nguyen wrote. "And echo chambers aren’t just on the right. I’ve seen echo chambers on the left, but also on parenting forums, nutritional forums, and even around exercise methods."

    #3

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    Jason K
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    As a parent of a special need child, New Jersey school systems offer speech, occupational, and physical therapies as a part of their school day. They have dedicated ABA classrooms with very low teacher/student ratio (my son's is currently 2/5. A lot of the anger at US services is out of ignorance, including parents not knowing what is actually available for their own children, which is obviously sad.

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    #5

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    Awesome At Being Autistic
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Didn't you know that it's a sin to be poor in America? All good religious people should shun the poor, it's what Jesus would want. /s

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    According to legal scholar and behavioral economist Cass Sunstein, the main cause of polarization is that internet technologies have created a world where people don't often encounter the other side anymore.

    "Many people get their news from social media feeds. Their feeds get filled up with people like them - who usually share their political views," Nguyen explained.

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    Loverboy
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    It's both funny and depressing watching people so utterly destroyed and dependent on this broken system defend it.

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    #7

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    Loverboy
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    His wife and child are fine, thank f**k. I hope those nurses never have to experience that fear and pain, racist piece of shits.

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    "What’s going on, in my view, isn’t just a bubble. It’s not that people’s social media feeds are arranged so they don’t run across any scientific arguments; it’s that they’ve come to systematically distrust the institutions of science," Nguyen said. "Echo chamber members have been prepared to face contrary evidence. Their echo-chambered worldview has been arranged to dismiss that evidence at its source."

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    "They’re not totally irrational, either. In the era of scientific specialization, people must trust doctors, statisticians, biologists, chemists, physicists, nuclear engineers, and aeronautical engineers, just to go about their day. And they can’t always check with perfect accuracy whether they have put their trust in the right place."

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    Loverboy
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    1 year ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    The Vietnam War was not justified and just resulted in more deaths. There was no "Domino effect" in Asia like they thought there would be. Millions dead, for f***s sake. Edit: Yeah idfk how I made that mistake but thank you

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    #10

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    v
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Look, through an honest lens, at the treatment of various peoples through the roughly 250 life of the U.S. and it quickly becomes evident that what America says it stands for doesn't really ring true. In the literal founding document of the country it says that it is a self-evident truth that all men are created equal and the country has not, at any point in its history, been able to live by that simple and self-evident truth.

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    #12

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    Loverboy
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    For profit prisons are the shittiest thing ever, and the healthcare system is just as broken. Don't want to lose everything to pay for the treatment of a life threatening condition or injury you can't control? Guess you're f****d

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    A new UCL study found that people who hold radical political views – at either end of the political spectrum – aren’t as good as moderates at knowing when they’re wrong.

    “We were trying to clarify whether people who hold radical political beliefs are generally overconfident in their stated beliefs, or if it boils down to differences in metacognition, which is the ability we have to recognize when we might be wrong,” said the lead author if the study, Dr. Steve Fleming (Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology).

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    Brenda
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Hubby had a heart attack in December 2021, then a stroke in October 2022. We had just about paid off my cancer treatments. I fear we'll never get out from under this

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    #15

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    Gina Babe
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    I was forced to live in a hotel at one point, ironically, is more expensive than an apartment but it's the payment plan

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    #16

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    Cappuccino
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    AH YES COME TO THE USA WHERE FREEDOM IS EVERYTHING. FREE SPEECH FOR ALL!! WITH OUR COMPANIES RESONABLE PAY!!!! AND OF COURSE WE ACCEPT EVERYONE FROM ALL RELIGIONS, ETHNICITY AND GENDER!!! WE LOVE OUR FREEDOM HERE IN THE USA 🇺🇸!!!! Yeah right…

    Leigh
    Community Member
    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    My friend sat in a tree for a month trying to stop the university of Berkeley from cutting down old growth trees to expand a parking lot. He spent a month in jail and the trees died.

    René Sauer
    Community Member
    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Protest for what you believe in is all good and stuff, but why pull your four year old into it? Unable to find a babysitter?

    Glenn Cuneo
    Community Member
    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Well they f's around and found out. We actually have more trees now than 100 years ago: it's called managed forestry.

    Lisa Zehr
    Community Member
    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Right... because they all practiced that and not stripping entire areas of trees because it's cheaper than actual managed forestry. This looks to be back in the 70s. They just took everything and let the wildlife in the area die.

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    For the study, 381 people (in addition to 417 people in a second experiment that replicated the findings) initially completed a survey gauging their political beliefs and attitudes towards alternative world views. People on both the far left and far right of the political spectrum tended to have more radical views, involving authoritarianism and dogmatic intolerance for opposing views.

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    #19

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    Loverboy
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    "Essential" apparently doesn't mean enough to pay us a living wage.

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    The participants then completed a simple perceptual task requiring them to look at two sets of dots and judge which one had more dots. They were then asked to rate how confident they were in making their choice and were incentivized to judge their confidence accurately with a monetary reward.

    The experiment was designed to test people on a task completely unrelated to politics, to hone in on cognitive processes without any political motivations.

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    #20

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    Loverboy
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    It's like one moment you're sipping fine wine and the next you're drinking river water.

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    #21

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    Loverboy
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    The rich will always be favored. Rich people like to say "Money doesn't buy happiness." but b***h poverty doesn't buy anything.

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    #22

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    Loverboy
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    People who were born rich have no concept of money or struggle, what it takes to get overcome that struggle.

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    People with more radical beliefs performed similarly on the task to moderates, but they tended to give higher confidence ratings when they had made incorrect choices than moderates did. Radicals’ confidence in correct answers was similar to that of moderates.

    A second stage of the study assessed how participants took in new evidence. After making a judgment on the dots task, participants were shown another set of dots as ‘bonus’ information about the correct answer, before making their confidence judgment. If they had made an incorrect choice, the next set of dots should have weakened their confidence in their choice – which it did for moderates, but not as much for people with radical political views.

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    #23

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    Sasha Kuleshov
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    "You have money? Good, after this you'll have none" - A health insurance company ._.

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    #24

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    Geoffrey Scott
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    I went around and around with a former cop, who retired and worked with me at his 2nd career. I asked did he (Floyd ) deserve to die for allegedly passing a fake $20? "No"..., and the cop that choked him dead was a training officer? "Yes".., and in your training, were you advised that if you held someone in that hold for too long you risked killing them? (eyes down) "Yes"

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    #25

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    Loverboy
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    That orange f**k and his followers are to blame for a lot of that, though.

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    #26

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    Sandy D
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    You say "this cannot be reformed". So, if you can't reform a country's problems, exactly what are you suggesting?

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    “An important point is that our findings held true among participants with radical views at either end of the political spectrum – radicalism appears to reflect a cognitive style that transcends political inclinations,” co-author of the study, Professor Ray Dolan (Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging and Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry & Ageing Research), said.

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    While it's admirable to stand up for your beliefs, it's important to empathize with others too, at least if we want to fix our problems (of which we have many).

    #27

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    Lori T Wisconsin
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    In the US legal system the victim is often accused of causing the rape. She dressed or acted improperly, etc. Nobody has the right to touch a single hair on your head without permission.

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    #28

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    Sonja
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    True socialism is horrible though! It's just as bad as true capitalism. None of both works in its pure form. We need both at the same time, one regulating the other. If it's done right, you get Denmark. And they're much further forward on the road to a truly great place to live in for every citizen than any other country even though they to have still some way to go. Vut if we want a fair and great society to live in, we need to stop thinking in extremes. We need to stop looking for the perfect system. We need pragmatism and the willingness to look at reality and what brings the best results in every situation. If the best solution comes from capitalism, it has to be used, if in the next situation the best solution comes from socialism, then so be it. And I promise you, in most situations you'll need a little bit of both

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    #29

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    Loverboy
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    The Tories is the conservative party in the UK. Guess conservatives suck just as much anywhere you go.

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    #30

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    Sasha Kuleshov
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Millions of unoccupied houses and millions of homeless people don't make sense :I

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    #31

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    Geoffrey Scott
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    BOTH our daughters were WIC kids, I worked full time plus LOTS of overtime and still qualified.

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    #34

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    René Sauer
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Wait, is this person saying they were 23 when they first heard of the holocaust? They were born 1945, So it was still a pretty fresh event o.O

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    #35

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    Loverboy
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Bernie would make a better president than anyone else could at this moment. I genuinely don't understand how stupid you have to be to think he's bad.

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    #37

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    #38

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    #39

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    Magnion
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    1 year ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    I had a really nice red hat that I liked before Trump. He ruined it.

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    #40

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    Jeff Gabrisl
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    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    I'm curious about how Obama betrayed us all... He took a struggling country and made the economy better. When Trump came into office, the economy was doing great, but not because he did anything, he was just elected,and riding on Obama's coattails. It only took 4 years to get us back into a recession, but at least the rich are paying less taxes, and insurance is more expensive than ever for people who don't get it from work.

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