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Comment by atemerev | Hacker News Reader

Right. But are you comfortable with the fact that not all hackers will be on the same political side?

I wouldn't go as far as voting for Trump, but I am one of those crazy ultra-libertarians you occasionally encounter (I support tax cuts AND free migration). There are some well-educated people, even some with PhDs, who actually _did_ vote for Trump (I know a few), and most certainly, there are many Trump supporters right here on HN. Will you be comfortable with that, enabling political discourse?

Everyone wants to change the world, but not everyone is sharing your direction of change.

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I don't really care what this <political figure> or <this party> means about an issue, I enjoy the discussions here on HN as they often present well-presented arguments from multiple positions, without appealing to authority or what side in politics means what.

On the other side I do like discussing topics with people with opposite ideologies. Some of the most interesting discussions I've had started with something like "Imagine that machines continue automating jobs and in the future there is only 10-20% of jobs today. What would you do with the rest of the people?".

Edit: I normally take the opposing side of the person that gives the argument just to explore the topic in-depth, so probably people from the left thing that I'm from the right and the reverse as well.

While I agree with what you're saying, allowing politics tends to mean EVERY thread gets a discussion of politics over time.

I've watched a lot of forums gain the axe grinders who don't debate, they fight. Over time, it's simply people yelling at straw men.

I don't come hear to get lectured, and that's what most political discussions and articles really are. I come here because of the creative techy vibe and relevance to things to which I can actually make meaningful contributions. I have a dozen other places to read impassioned rants about the issues and hot buttons of the day. I don't respect nor value those sites because they're junk food. Politics is where celebrity gossip meets sports.

I often read hacker news articles and threads from ten years ago and find value. Go find a political argument that old that isn't as quaint as the things we wrote in our high school yearbook.

Keep hacker news focused on what it does well. Don't create division.

The one problem I see with most people discussing things with "the other side" is that they don't genuinely care, nor would be ever swayed by what the other person says. It's just a game of "gotcha" most of the time and thus unproductive.

Some people are so anti-Republican or anti-Democrat that you might as well be trying to convince a Jihadi to eat bacon or a Catholic to abort a pregnancy or a Baptist to star in gay porn -- or a Mormon to play blackjack -- or an Atheist to become a Buddhist monk. Online forums (and newspaper comment sections) have created such a political balkanization as to make participating nothing more than sadomasochistic entertainment.

I used to care about those sorts of discussions with the "other side," but I've found that the level of discourse has devolved into to some variation of "Trump wants to send people to the gas chambers and destroy the planet" or "Hillary hires hitmen and Bill took a payoff from the Russians." Or, often it's "America is horrible and should be boycotted" -- or some other hyperbolic rant based on an anecdotal news item about a brown person at an airport.

I've got no use for it. I vote, encourage my like minded friends to vote and that's about it. Occasionally, I'll get sucked into a political discussion on Hacker News, but pretty much instantly regret it. I'm ok with the "crowd" disagreeing with my politics -- but I definitely don't relish getting into intense political debates with people here that I'd probably like to call my friends in real life.

Maybe it's my age (I just turned 40,) but I feel like engaging with deep economics and political discussions with those under 25 to be bordering on pointless. There are exceptions obviously, but when a 19 year old college sophomore wants to tell me about business unit economics, tax policy or building permits -- I'm pretty closed minded simply because they're generally citing other people's ideas rather than ideas based on actual experience or original thought grounded in experience. But that's ok. Views change as we begin to see the world for what it is rather than as what we want it to be. Everyone has the right to be wrong -- even me, as rare as that is. ;)

I'll leave you with a quote that is attributed to many people but this version came from Anselme Batbie, a 19th century French politician..

Celui qui n’est pas républicain à vingt ans fait douter de la générosité de son âme; mais celui qui, après trente ans, persévère, fait douter de la rectitude de son esprit.

That is exactly why I only have these kind of discussions face to face and with people I trust. More than trust, maybe I'd say I'm comfortable with. Anonymity is great for some things but not for having a conversation about politics.

And my reason to talk about these topics is to learn and understand them better! Many times the other person might not have a formed opinion (so we both "learn" or at least share what we know), the person knows about the topic (I learn) or that person has a one-sided view of the topic and just wants to play politics (run!). Always with a super-skeptic point of view of course, so my learning is NOT what they are explaining/teaching but still related to it. And after talking about it we can accept we have different points of view and still being friends.

I don't feel identified in your extreme examples so I'll put one of my own. I'm a strong atheist but I'm probably quite knowledgeable about several religions after years reading. First (when I was a teenager) I was kind of what you describe, trying to find flaws and argue about it. Then I started to ask myself, "wait why so many people believe?" which also led into being interested in psychology.

Now I have a quite decent picture about Japanese and east Asian cultures and religions and Spanish and Western ones. This allows me to understand why there's basically no vegans in Asia, why they overwork so much, family and relationships, etc. In turn this allows me to have more meaningful conversations and keep broadening what I know. The opposite would be those people who go to Japan and stick their chopstick in their meat (;

> ...you might as well be trying to convince...

The bar is much lower right now. People aren't even treating each other with due respect in a political context.

I consider it a first step to productive cultural dialog when I can come across as a decent person with reasonably derived opinions, even if they are honestly mistaken ones from many perspectives.

When we withdraw politics and other subjects from polite dialog, we are saying there is no hope for productive civil disagreement, which doesn't bode well for progress or lasting peace.

> or an Atheist to become a Buddhist monk

I know an atheist who became a Buddhist monk. He's still an atheist, as Buddhism doesn't require anybody to believe in God (or a god).

There's nothing much to do. UBI is economically impossible with current population levels.

Usually, in times of global economic transitions such as this one, a world war happens. There are no unemployed in wartime.

Why do you think UBI is economically impossible? Studies I've seen point in the opposite direction (though they haven't been tested in really so far)

Modern pension / retirement plans are barely possible and probably will be significantly downsized.

UBI will require 20-30x more resources, which firmly put it in the realm of fantasies.

(I'm not saying anything about moral aspects of UBI. Just that it is impossible to actually implement, at least with modern population levels).

That's mostly a function of taxation though, isn't it? I agree that UBI won't be possible with the current system of mainly taxing workers and reducing the taxation of everyone else (common trend in most western countries), but that's not a given or do you think we won't be able to change that?

It is impossible even with taxing everybody 100% and redistributing everything.

"Mainly taxing workers" provides the bulk of taxation revenues not because it is the easiest thing politically — it is because of where the money is. The money is in the middle class. The rich are too few, and the poor are too poor.

We all have plenty of opposing views on non-political matters, many of them quite polarizing, so I don't see why discussing opposing political views would be inherently more problematic or difficult.

Most other views are amendable to facts. Politics, by a) dealing with the most complex and messy aspect of reality, which is human interaction, and b) being very strongly based off opinions and status games, inherently invites bad discussions.

Agreed, but I don't think that's a good reason to avoid those sorts of discussions. HN has a much stronger tradition of moderation than most other sites, and while I wouldn't expect discussions involving politics to be perfect, I would still expect bad actors to be downvoted into oblivion.

While on paper your objection stands, I feel that in practice things are different. This I derive from observing and participating in such threads.

The problem is politics is so opinion and status-based that it crosses this magical threshold where even otherwise level-headed people just lose it. It's toxic beyond what even HN's regular moderation mechanisms can handle. The other thing is, it's easy for politics to drown all other topics - political issues speak well to our "someone is wrong on the Internet" instincts, and there's always something outrage-inducing to be posted.

While I personally don't mind an occasional political discussion (and I like when it's not political per se, but more e.g. economical or military-strategy type, in which people post many interesting facts and ways of reasoning I haven't seen before), I wouldn't like those topics to keep dominating the front page (happened a few times in the past).

How does that relate with the blog post?

Leaving politics aside allows e.g. me to collaborate productively with e.g. ultra-left socialist bicycle-driving UBI-supporting people. If we leave politics aside, we can agree to disagree and still work together on something useful. If we will discuss politics, our time will be spend in unproductive discussion without actually changing the world in any direction.

> ultra-left socialist bicycle-driving UBI-supporting people

I think that's the problem right there. I suspect you didn't intend it to sound that way, but that part of your statement comes across as dismissive and condescending.

I point that out only to suggest that there's no reason why people with different political views can't work together, as long as they respect each others' views and don't discuss them in a demeaning way. I don't think that necessarily means you're "putting politics aside", and in fact I think that can be harmful in some cases.

I am not saying this in any diminutive context. For some of my friends, all these are the points of pride.

I think for many people political views are quite tightly bound up with their sense of identity and therefore in practice political debates tend to end up being quite personal and negative. I tend to avoid politics except with very close friends for that reason and therefore agree with atemerov that working relationships should be preserved.

Exactly this! My political views may be on the extreme side, but I want to work with all kinds of people regardless of their political views, because it is humanizing and there is so much common ground. If ignoring a subject allows that it seems worth it to me.

> If we will discuss politics, our time will be spend in unproductive discussion without actually changing the world in any direction."

If I shared this belief, I don't think I could support democracy.

What does one have to do with the other?

Supporting democracy means you vote to the best of your knowledge, not that you have to engage in what usually are unproductive conversations with strangers.

> Will you be comfortable with that, enabling political discourse?

Yes we should if the alternative is singing "la la la can't hear you" and pretending we were all of the same opinion when in fact we aren't.

Have you seen how the poli discussion goes usually around here? Endless circlejerk where every voice out pf the choir is downvoted to oblivion

Truth is this place majority comes from a verry narrow social bracket, and thus has a very narrow mindset and as such a very small set of ideas keep resonatin

I have seen enough heated discussions and diverse opinions on here that I can't share that.

(To clarify: I think it's important but to stop discussing and acknowledge which other views exist and are widespread and why they are. That doesn't mean I share all views or think they are all equally valid. I personally think Trump was the worst that could happen and the climate action was once again proof of that.)

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