I am not entirely sure of that. Since the late 1990s, on mailing lists such as silk and many others, and on social media, I’ve met many many people that I grew to trust with professional secrets, and later even with my kids on occasion when we finally met sometimes two decades after first interacting online.
Twitter, cesspool of hate and nonsense (such as celebrity tech CEOs who are anti vaccine lunatics for instance) though it is, has enough credentialed historians, scientists, mathematicians and so on still persisting with it that it is still intellectually rewarding to stay on instead of deleting X. —srs From: Silklist <[email protected]> on behalf of Jo Pattabiraman via Silklist <[email protected]> Date: Wednesday, 29 October 2025 at 12:50 PM To: Intelligent conversation <[email protected]> Cc: Jo Pattabiraman <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Silk] Study says polarization in society increases as social circle increases Just to build on that, the rise of devices and social media means that we might be less likely to engage with people randomly. For example, I was waiting to pick up my rental car and fell into a conversation with a gentleman from Alabama as we jointly excoriated the rental car company. I had never met anyone from Alabama and it was an eye-opener for me. Memes and reels are replacing conversations and cutting off human interaction. Social media is a true evil and I can’t believe we let it gain steam on our watch. Jo On Wed, Oct 29, 2025 at 2:27 AM Sean Doyle via Silklist <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Warning - this migh be too US-centric. Hopefully the paper becomes available to look at it more closely - so I might be misjudging it entirely. Explanations of social change need to make sense at different levels and scales. The summary of the paper mentions the friend network of individuals and a possible technical introduction of the cell phone to explain polarization. But at a broader scale - there is a huge increase in media concentration and income disparity over the last few decades. When I was an undergraduate I could go into several news outlets and bookstores and get foreign newspapers. Now the news outlets are gone. Most of the bookstores are gone. So - I don't know that focusing on individual decisions about the number of friends is the best way to characterize the change. I can buy the argument that people are self-selecting friends that have similar views. Older social networks (church, clubs) get less attention because people are focused on work. To the degree that social networks replace some of these connections they can algorithmically enhance these polarized groupings. But surely the predatory behavior of the social media companies is a large causal factor here. On Tue, Oct 28, 2025 at 1:47 PM Suresh Ramasubramanian via Silklist <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: At least with politics these days, you can find yourself suddenly no longer on speaking terms with friends - or so estranged from a formerly dear and close relative you cut off all ties with them. Paradoxical and illogical but unfortunately not unknown --srs ________________________________ From: Silklist <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> on behalf of Keith Adam via Silklist <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2025 10:33:25 PM To: Intelligent conversation <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Cc: Keith Adam <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [Silk] Study says polarization in society increases as social circle increases I was first of all reminded of this episode of In Our Time from earlier on the year on Civility: talking with those who disagree with you. BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Civility: talking with those who disagree with you<https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002f9f4> I too am unconvinced. The argument seems to be that the more close friends we have, the more polarised we can be, because we can then lose the close friends we disagree with. But then they are not close friends, no? A bit paradoxical. I do want to focus on this statement though. "More and more people are clearly aligning themselves with one political camp rather than holding a mixture of liberal and conservative views," explains Hofer. The phenomenon, I think, is more one of taking each issue or subject and aligning it in to one of the two camps that seem to be coalescing in a lot of societies. That is what I find most intriguing. I find it is now the case that if I gauge a new acquaintances position on a couple of touchstone subjects I can make a pretty good guess on their position on a few dozen more. It was a fun game to play for a while but now one that depresses me. Ten years ago the need to address anthropogenic climate change was pretty much accepted by most people. So, while we may have held different views on say, whether to continue membership in the EU or not, we could agree on the need for action in climate change. Now, I find that is very often no longer the case. Polling in the UK would seem to bear this out: What do Reform UK voters believe on climate change? | YouGov<https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/50971-what-do-reform-uk-voters-believe-on-climate-change> I don’t know how a sociology study could be set up to test it, but I think it is the polarisation of subjects that counts, not the number of connections. I would be interested to hear proposals for how it could be tested. * Keith From: Silklist <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of Suresh Ramasubramanian via Silklist Sent: 28 October 2025 10:27 To: Intelligent conversation <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Cc: Suresh Ramasubramanian <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [Silk] Study says polarization in society increases as social circle increases There is of course the Dunbar number - where the trust starts to break down in a group past a certain size. So too would increase the chance of fights or polarizations of opinion as different cliques gather in a group? From: Silklist <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> on behalf of Kiran K Karthikeyan via Silklist <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Tuesday, 28 October 2025 at 3:55 PM To: Intelligent conversation <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Cc: Kiran K Karthikeyan <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [Silk] Study says polarization in society increases as social circle increases +1 It doesn’t strike me as counterintuitive. When our social environment becomes more insular, polarization tends to rise. Denser and more homogeneous networks limit exposure to opposing views, especially when new closeness forms within the same tribe rather than across boundaries. The full paper is not accessible, so it is unclear how “close friends” were defined (communication frequency, IRL contact, or emotional intimacy) making it difficult to assess causation or correlation. Still, the idea fits evolutionary logic: our social brains evolved to seek cohesion within the familiar rather than balance across different. Would the incel or body positivity subcultures exist without the internet? Kiran On Tue, 28 Oct 2025 at 13:34, Charles Haynes via Silklist <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I read the article but haven't read the actual study yet. Nothing in the article indicates causation, only correlation. So you have the standard problem with correlation - which way does causality run and is there a missing common cause? — Charles On Tue, 28 Oct 2025 at 11:07, Udhay Shankar N via Silklist <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Somewhat counter-intuitive conclusion, which I am not sure I entirely buy. Thoughts? https://phys.org/news/2025-10-friends-division-social-circles-fuel.html Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com<http://pobox.com>)) ((www.digeratus.com<http://www.digeratus.com>)) -- Silklist mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist -- Silklist mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist -- Silklist mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist -- Silklist mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist
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