Newsletter #112 — May 7, 2023
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
- Large-scale networking
A Partnership for Peace — Search For Common Ground and the Preemptive Love Coalition are merging! This strategic merger will amplify the impact of both organizations as they pursue a shared vision of advancing global peace. - De-Escalation Strategies
New Study: A Promising Method to Build Trust in Information and Reduce Partisan Animosity — A new method significantly reduced feelings of hostility between political party members to a level that resembles the political climate of the 1980s, when Republicans and Democrats got along. - Constructive Communication
Leveraging solutions journalism for revenue growth — If media organizations produce solutions journalism, will they generate more revenue? The answer is YES (with caveats). - Effective Communication Strategies
Can Spanish and English speakers thrive in the same city? — In Emporia, KS a small group of residents is working to make the community more cohesive and welcoming to Spanish-speakers and immigrants by practicing Spanish together. But is that enough? - Effective Problem-Solving Efforts
Divided Community Project — DCP provides dispute resolution and systems-design expertise to help local community and university leaders enhance community resiliency and prepare for and respond to events that polarize their communities. - Communication Obstacles
Can ChatGPT Boost Your Civic Engagement? — Here's a cautionary story about ChatGPT--it gets somethings right, but surprisingly, seems to make other things up! (No surprise, actually, there are plenty of fake facts on the web for it to choose from.) - Saving Democracy
US politics isn't broken. It's fixed — Katherine Gehl says the U.S. political system is working as designed. Yet we can make it better with voting innovations that give voters more choice while encouraging politicians to work harder toward solving contemporary problems - De-Escalation Strategies
Moving Beyond Partisan Polarization: Some First Steps — From Essential Partners: Five steps you can follow (with detailed questions for each) to have illuminating conversations with yourself, allies, and others to reduce polarization.
Beyond Intractability in Context
From around the web, more insight into the nature of our conflict problems, limits of business-as-usual thinking, and things people are doing to try to make things better.
- Countering Misinformation
Your political rivals aren’t as bad as you think. Our misunderstandings amplify hostility. — From Kansas, evidence that our conflicts are more the result of misunderstandings and less the result of deep-rooted disagreements. - Saving Democracy
In ‘ordinary man,’ a certain greatness emerges of Gerald Ford — A profile of Gerald Ford, a President who came close to personifying what we look for and political leaders and public servants. - Constructive Communication
The Free Speech Case for Section 230 — A primer on the many important issues swirling around "Section 230" of the Communications Decency Act and the implications that this has for efforts to control the downsides of social media. - Developing a Unifying Vision
Politics Can’t Fix What Ails Us — A timely reminder that many problems do not have political solutions and a call for developing our problem-solving capabilities in other areas. - Developing a Unifying Vision
Divided over Liberty and Equality — I thoughtful look at the tension that now exists between the goals of liberty and equality and an explanation of how this didn't used to be the case. - Effective Problem Assessment
A Paper That Says Science Should Be Impartial Was Rejected by Major Journals. You Can’t Make This Up. — An alarming article about the degree to which the pursuit of objective science is being abandoned by progressives. - Effective Problem-Solving Efforts
The Renewable Energy Revolution Has a Power Line Problem — A reminder of the importance of comprehensive problem-solving efforts and the fact that failure to address some aspects of a problem can make successful efforts to address other aspects meaningless. - Superpower Conflict
Russian ‘Ghost Ships’ Are Turning the Seabed Into a Future Battlefield — More reason to think that superpower tensions are rising to alarming levels. The time has come to dust off and advance Cold War-era ideas for reducing tensions. - Social Complexity
The Costs of Brexit Are Undeniable Now — An update on what happens when legitimate populist grievances lead to policies that fail to achieve their desired real-world results. - Effective Problem-Solving Efforts
Lina Khan: We Must Regulate A.I. Here’s How. — Amid all of the concern about the social impact of the coming AI revolution, specific proposals for regulatory changes that would limit problems while also helping us take advantage of the new technology. - Constructive Communication
Overuse of ‘existential threat’ is a crisis of existential proportions — An exploration of the threat posed by our tendency to overstate threats (in order to grab attention and build support). - Effective Communication Strategies
What Readers Really Think About Gender — An interesting alternative to face-to-face dialogue -- a journalist who promotes mutual understanding by soliciting and then sharing thoughtful reader views on controversial issues. - Concentrated Power
What the Supreme Court Does in the Shadows — A look at the disturbing ways in which the Supreme Court's "shadow docket" is undermining public trust in the rule of law. - Social Complexity
AI, Technology, and Equality — From Francis Fukuyama, thought-provoking reflections on the complex way in which advancing information technologies (including AI) have been and are likely to influence society. - Social Complexity
No Labels May Re-Elect Donald Trump — An update on the difficulties and dangers associated with trying to mount a more moderate, compromise-oriented political candidacy.
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