Thank you for the long comment (I guess we both choose to write in English). It should come as no surprise that I agree with you, and propose an interesting subject for economic research: “Public choice dynamics of public opinion”:

Which points of view are more likely to be reported than others (I think you’ve already given the answer) thereby strengthening certain positions? Also: The dynamic between the need to grasp complex issues, and the necessity of keeping it simple.

Maybe it has already been done?

I sometimes feel the same way. I don’t read the rigthwing anti-islam blogs like uriasposten, just like I rarely read liberator anymore. You kinda know what they’ll say about just about anything and well, why bother?

The problem is that the people who would probably gain most from following your advice, are unfortunately also the people who benefit from the current debating culture, making change very hard to implement. Even if all you do is listen these days, you don’t get to hear a lot of different voices. You hear the same voices over and over again.

On the supply side, the medias prefer “somewhat extreme” and “wellknown debaters” to “moderates” and “average joes”. It’s always better to have two interviews with people disagreeing than it is to have two interviews where you don’t quite know what the end result of a debate might look like. Confusion is a killer. Another problem on the supply side, on a different part of the supply chain, is that an “average muslim”, just like an “average” whatever, don’t have a lot of incentives to speak out. Why would (s)he? Maybe in generel things would be better if (s)he did, but why should _I_ do it? Why not someone else?

On the demand side: Many people for obvious reasons like to keep things simple and don’t much like to have to deal with a 100 different sorts of Moslems, or socialism, or whatever. It’s a lot easier to think in boxes. It’s hard to change the shapes and sizes of the boxes already in use. By going to Iran you did. There’s a long way to Iran…

You know all this of course, consider it repetition to the reader who might not be aware of it. It has some consequenses though: Your advice is a good one, but given the way things are at the moment, do not expect a lot of people to turn into nuanced, staunch individualists anytime soon. Add more layers of institutional tyranny of the status quo to the above, and you’ll expect nothing to change anytime soon.

- Nice to see that you’ve started blogging again by the way (about subjects in which I am somewhat interested, that is).