I am not going to get into a Diva Off with Literate Dog...it would not be pretty and it would not end well...It is a good idea to only have one Diva per thread, and since LiterateDog got here first I accept that he has the "elder" claim here
Thus I will not turn to sarcasm, and other forms of witty rejoinders...even though part of me wants to
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But seriously Mookie I would look at this from a different perspective. If you no longer believe the "other side" is on the level, it is quite easy to OTHERize.
Furthermore there is another possible harm / problem besides OTHERizing...for example you may pre-emptively decide it is not even worth trying to see something from a different viewpoint, it is not worth venturing outside your comfort zone and learning more viewpoints that did not come naturally to you. What I am trying to describe is a "stay in your own lane" mindset that can be quite insidious for it stops all forms of creativity and feeling at ease, and destroys a growth and rebirth mindset.
Aka with the Russians it is not about "winning an argument" it is not about wins or losses, it is about changing the game theory and what is considered possible in people's minds.
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Now you do not need Russia trolls to do this, real life Americans and strongly held beliefs is all you need in order to Trolls. And this same effect can occur with people who are not trolls but instead just passionate believers.
But seriously Mookie do you think the Russia trolls are helping?
And even if there is only 1% of the trolls are Russians and the rest of the culture war is real life humans, do you expect the person at the computer to know that 99 people out of 100 are real and only 1 are just trolls trying to impassion them in some way, trying to influencing their attention, to capture it, or inflame strong emotions.
And what if its 20%, do you expect people to know its 20%.
Aka you are now dealing with one of the main problems of humans, we have many problems, the 7 flaws of memory, the ability for emotions to influence our perceptions, but even if we are not emotional we just stink with judging relative size of numbers, percents, statistics...in other words the human brain just sucks at this stuff and that is without someone trying to be a virus.
But I can also argue this the other way, human culture is part of our extended phenotype and thus human culture is part of humanity as much as our DNA, yet it is also a virus where the culture is modifying the person, and we modify the culture.
Here let me link you a good youtube clip where a developmental psychologist stops his conversation about ADHD, and the brain stuff with ADHD involving self regulation and he explains the Richard Dawkins Extended Phenotype insight from The Selfish Gene (1976 and he later elaborates in another book a 2nd book 6 years later in 1982 The Extended Phenotype) and how the extended phenotype idea has dramatically altered not just evolutionary insights, but also psychology, anthropology, and so on.
https://youtu.be/QZpF2_IelWo?t=1441