I love what you wrote here, a well written and fascinating take!
One thing though, do french people actually read several different newspapers on different sides? My preconceived notion is that they still just pick one to get their main source of news, even though they might be aware of the others.
And a second thought. If we can agree that there is sometimes truth to be found in what happened, what convinces you that summing up falsehoods from the left and falsehoods from the right will equate to the truth? (I've heard from some people that they "read all sides" but I haven't noticed their perspective being better in any obvious ways)
For example: vaccines don't have side effects, don't worry about it, and we need to get everyone vaccinated so we should force them (left) VS vaccines are alright but seems like they're dangerous and fuck the government so they shouldn't force people to do that (right).
The sum of the two doesn't really teach you the truth, but highlights the direct contradictions while giving you the impression that you have to pick one side of another (the US is super bipartisan, not like France which at least has several different parties with different opinions).
The truth here is: vaccines reduce likelihood of bad symptoms, gestation time and viral load, which in turn reduces chances of spreading and therefore chance of mutation which is a feared unknown (hello Omicron), some vaccines do seem to cause issues with younger folks (20-29 years old can get myocarditis) so we should be careful, but all in all, we don't have a better way to fix this situation than getting a lot of folks vaccinated.
Hey Matt, I'm making my way through understanding this space and am struggling with the morality of it all, so I have a question for you: would you say that the trustless peer-to-peer world is a better future than today?
I'm asking given the realities of decentralized networks: it's currently slower, more expensive and harder to do transactions using peer to peer systems (and it's a bit tough to imagine it'll ever be as fast/simple/reliable as a centralized one because of the requirement to have consensus of nodes). And also given the realities of ETH contracts: they are agreements written in code (certainly mostly by people who don't have any background or formal education in writing laws or agreements, in comparison with lawyers)
I don't know much about this, but "Democracy has never been a safe space" seems to be the key: that healthy disagreement, debate and compromises are not easy, not comfortable, and well... not the ideal (in the literal sense), but is necessary, because we should respect the other side, continue to assume they're not evil, and find some damn compromises.
(at the time of the creation of the US's declaration of independence, there were big ideological differences between the north and south of the US, but folks like John Adams understood that compromising was better than being divided, so the north said: ok for slavery and other stuff, but you gotta sign to be in this together, and we'll work on it. I would recommend John Adams' biography by David McCullough for a good account of how politics back then was basically the same garbage fire as today, except the early presidents were educated and smart, and recognized that partisanship was a bad idea).
It might be that we've all become a bit tired from shouting the same things without seeing much progress. As if the left burned out from trying to convince people of the values of science, of socialism, or helping the less fortunate and so, as a result, is now playing the game of forcing the hand, almost apathetically.
One thing though, do french people actually read several different newspapers on different sides? My preconceived notion is that they still just pick one to get their main source of news, even though they might be aware of the others.
And a second thought. If we can agree that there is sometimes truth to be found in what happened, what convinces you that summing up falsehoods from the left and falsehoods from the right will equate to the truth? (I've heard from some people that they "read all sides" but I haven't noticed their perspective being better in any obvious ways)
For example: vaccines don't have side effects, don't worry about it, and we need to get everyone vaccinated so we should force them (left) VS vaccines are alright but seems like they're dangerous and fuck the government so they shouldn't force people to do that (right). The sum of the two doesn't really teach you the truth, but highlights the direct contradictions while giving you the impression that you have to pick one side of another (the US is super bipartisan, not like France which at least has several different parties with different opinions).
The truth here is: vaccines reduce likelihood of bad symptoms, gestation time and viral load, which in turn reduces chances of spreading and therefore chance of mutation which is a feared unknown (hello Omicron), some vaccines do seem to cause issues with younger folks (20-29 years old can get myocarditis) so we should be careful, but all in all, we don't have a better way to fix this situation than getting a lot of folks vaccinated.