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Comment by moduspol | Hacker News Reader

I lean conservative, but to be honest, I assign only a small portion of the blame to social media giants. Their office areas and leadership certainly lean left-wing, but I don't think that's the main issue.

I think the biggest contributor is just that left-leaning people are more likely to be offended by right-leaning views. As a result, even an entirely neutral algorithm focused on retention / user satisfaction will be more careful about showing right-leaning views to users who aren't obviously right-leaning. To me, it's tough to call that censorship.

As a result, I see the issue more as a symptom of the real problem, but that's a lot tougher to solve.

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Conservatives do seem to see themselves as people who don’t get offended.

I wonder what causes that.

There seems to be an idea that the things that offend them are, like, “naturally” abhorrent, so it’s not offense so much as, like... digust in satanic things, virtue in “common sense”, etc. There’s a whole language to talk about things that carefully avoids the concept of “being offended”.

As a conservative: What causes it is that you basically have to retreat completely from society to avoid seeing opposing views.

I'd have to avoid all the late night shows, most newspapers and TV news stations, and most social media. It doesn't take long to get inoculated. As a left-leaning person, it's much easier to see almost exclusively your own ideas being reinforced.

> There seems to be an idea that the things that offend them are, like, “naturally” abhorrent, so it’s not offense so much as, like... digust in satanic things, virtue in “common sense”, etc. There’s a whole language to talk about things that carefully avoids the concept of “being offended”.

I'm sure that's a debate to be had--but to apply most applicably to this discussion, I mean "sufficiently offended to leave a website, stop watching a video, block something, report something, or otherwise feel like you've had a negative experience." The kind of things social media algorithms will pick up on.

I think you’re misunderstanding what it’s like to lean left.

You used the word “exclusively”... “As a left-leaning person, it's much easier to see almost exclusively your own ideas.”

I think you’re making a strange assumption here: some of my conservative ideas are almost universally rejected by the media around me, therefore many liberals must feel all of their ideas are universally accepted by the media.

That’s not true though. For example some liberals feel that capitalism is immoral. That idea is almost universally rejected in the media, and by most Americans.

I think your point—that some ideas which are important to you are being suppressed—is important to raise. I care about those ideas and seek them out. (Although I’m conservative in many ways)

But I think you really weaken your position in the debate by tacking on strong claims about how enfranchised leftists must feel in the media.

The people who feel comfortable with the media are really neither left or right. They are people who feel comfortable with the status quo, who feel most happy when everyone agrees and actively move away from discord. Non-ideologues. These people are neither left nor right.

I'd say that to be offended by something you have to believe that things ought not to be that way and the fact that they are can only be a personal attack on you carried out by some evil forces. This is not too rational, so yes, most conservatives do not get offended. (Another reason could be that idea of loving thy neighbor as he is, not as you believe he should be.)

That's flat out false; conservatives get offended all the time. Remember the "War on Christmas"?

Definitely. Generating outrage is the bread and butter of outlets like Fox News, talk radio, etc. Sadly many left-leaning outlets seem to be pursuing the same model, because clicks.

> This is not too rational, so yes, most conservatives do not get offended.

https://www.google.com/search?q=obama+arugula

https://www.google.com/search?q=obama+tan+suit

https://www.google.com/search?q=obama+dijon+mustard

https://www.google.com/search?q=obama+feet+desk

Yeah, spare me.

Please keep this sort of political flamewar off HN, regardless of how annoying another comment is.

Most parsimonious explanation; conservative adherence to old fashioned liberalism (aka "I disagree with what you say, but fight for your right to say it" kinds of sentiments), which is no longer really a part of the left.

That's provably false; see the NFL players protesting before games for a pretty good example.

>I think the biggest contributor is just that left-leaning people are more likely to be offended by right-leaning views.

This theory only makes sense if there's an asymmetry between left offended at right and right offended at left. I don't think that's true. At least I don't think its true in the direction of left-more-offended-at-right. A large fraction of right-wing media seems built around selling a feeling of indignation and contempt (Ann Coulter, Bill o', any Murdoch publication etc). I've seen "liberal" used as a sneer by conservatives, but never in the opposite direction.

Well, we can debate the meaning of "offended," but for the purposes of this discussion, I mean "causing the user to react in a way perceived as negative for the end user experience and reflecting poorly in engagement metrics."

As a conservative, it's tough to avoid seeing opposing points of view. You'd have to avoid all late night shows, nearly all TV stations and newspapers, and most social media. We're quite accustomed to seeing opposing views and if it actually bothered us seeing them, we'd be frustrated virtually all the time.

Left-leaning people can quite easily participate in society without seeing opposing views. You can openly discuss even political activism at work without issue. Avoid Fox News and Breitbart and you're unlikely to see anything much different than what you already believe.

Maybe "offended" isn't the right word, but I do think it's a contributing factor.

You do realize how regional this is right? I'm liberal and in a very red area. I have the exact opposite experience.

Then I guess you're choosing to watch Fox News, read Breitbart, avoid any political discussion on here or Reddit, watch no late night or comedy TV shows, and work at a remarkably conservative workplace (especially for tech). Maybe you're choosing to read a more conservative local newspaper?

Very little of this is regional because most media consumed is not regional, and most reporters and editors lean left.

> I think the biggest contributor is just that left-leaning people are more likely to be offended by right-leaning views.

More likely to have empathy is another way to phrase that.

You can be super emphatic an right wing, how do you think someone becomes a populist nationalist. Besides from a European perspective even someone like Obama or even more obviously Hillary (based on the amount of war mongering she has done alone) is center or ultra right.

> You can be super emphatic an right wing, how do you think someone becomes a populist nationalist.

At the bottom? Fear of the other; in the United States, fear of the other rooted particularly in racism. Because it's not "nationalism" here--a disease by itself, but a controllable one. It's white supremacism, given nicer clothes by calling it "white nationalism" for some godforsaken reason, peddled by leaders who want the bottom to vote their way. It's not like it's news. Lee Atwater pegged this whole disgraceful thing decades ago. To legitimize and get boots on the ground for economically regressive policies, the right wing of the United States leveraged this racially-motivated insecurity; now the racist tiger has eaten them and they are so very surprised that the racist tiger was racist all along.

At the top? They're the ones doing the peddling. Some is surely true-believer racism. Some is also surely cynicism--because the bottom will eat it up and there's your leash to drag them where you want. It isn't exactly complex.

(And, no, Obama and Clinton are not "ultra right" from a European perspective; that's the sort of mendacious both-sidesing I expect out of actually far right speakers, though. Obama and Clinton would be generically center- to center-right politicians on a Europe-calibrated axis. The modern Republican Party is more like Ukip.)

Nationalism and white supremacism are not the same thing at all. Equating them and needlessly injecting race into it is bog standard Russian divisive propaganda.

In America, they are. Both are historical and current disasters; the icing on the cake of American white supremacism fueling American nationalism is extra gross, though.

I do want to compliment you for the rhetorical twirl of trying to co-opt reality with the Russian specter, though. It's bold. Projecting...but very bold.

Please try to rephrase that by actually saying something. I'm genuinely curious why you think that absurd equality is so obvious it requires no evidence.

My example would be prolifers, that requires pretty deep empathy for the unborn to override the natural empathy for the mothers.

Except prolifers don't care at all about the unborn; only about erroding the rights of women. This is why you don't see any of them campaigning to reduce miscarriages or enable better prenatal care.

41% of women are pro-life, to think they are only driven by the motivation to erode their own rights is far too simplistic.

Broad characterization of the opposing side as evil, morally bankrupt, racist, sexist, fascist, communist, or other negative traits is why our politics are so toxic.

[citation needed]

Instead of "but both sides" and a false appeal for civility, you could read some accounts of people involved with the movement.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/10/how-i-l...

It's not a false appeal, I genuinely believe the hasty generalization of the opposing side cheapens the argument for prochoice.

That article was a good personal account which could definitely change minds.

"Besides from a European perspective even someone like Obama or even more obviously Hillary (based on the amount of war mongering she has done alone) is center or ultra right."

All things are relative. Given that description of Obama or Clinton, what would you classify those who ran as Republicans in the last election?

By some measures, Clinton campaigned (slightly) to the right of Trump in the run-up to the general election: https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016

For the primaries, using similar measures at least, the Republicans all more or less clumped together to the right of Clinton.

That article makes claims that are just not true. "Trump supported a decent minimum wage from the start, wants free education in state universities, has supported universal health care, consistently opposed the Transpacific Partnership Agreement and wants more bank regulation."

He very clearly is not in favor of free education, he is very clearly not in favor of raising the minimum wage, he very clearly is not in favor of universal health care, and very clearly is not in favor of more bank regulation.

So I find the claims that Clinton was more to the right of Trump quite dubious.

I think Trump has taken almost every conceivable position on every issue, so the claims in the article were presumably true for some particular moment of time.

“More capable of selective application of empathy” is how I’d describe it usually, but that’s neither here nor there.

Everyone applies "selective empathy". People on the left in the US care very little about employees of coal miners, oil companies, etc because of larger environmental concerns.

In every case, there is some "more important cause" that someone prioritizes that makes it look like they don't have empathy.

Is that why Obama created a job retraining program for them? Because he cares very little for them? Or is it actually because he cares for them MORE than conservatives who want to lead them even further down the path of dependence on a dying industry.

This is the same sort of confusion that leads to ideas like "Blue Lives Matter." A life isn't inherently blue. A person isn't inherently a coal miner.

I think you will find a lot of leftists caring deeply about the lives of people who are currently working in coal mines or in a police force, and concluding that the best answer for them is found in different employment.

It is no lack of empathy to the life of a coal miner to say that coal should stop being mined any more than it is a lack of empathy to the life of a soldier to say that a war should end.

It's a lack of empathy when they vote to end coal miner jobs without having job replacement though (which is exactly what Hillary promised for example).

It's the same with people on the right with this immigration issue. They care about immigrants, but they care about rigid immigration policies to prevent "free-riders" even more. That's why you will find very few right-leaning people against legal immigrants as opposed to the many against illegal immigrants.

"People on the left in the US care very little about employees of coal miners, oil companies, etc because of larger environmental concerns."

That's a terrible way to put it.

> People on the left in the US care very little about employees of coal miners, oil companies, etc because of larger environmental concerns.

Or to be more honest, they think white rural Americans dying of drug overdoses is funny. I mean these stupid rednecks deserve it right? Fewer white births than deaths in many states? (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/white-minority-populat...) It's about fucking time!

Now I'm being a bit unfair to the left here partly because I'm more pissed at them, as I'm a liberal who would have thought this was "my team" just a few years ago. Of course there are people that would say all that and probably worse regardless of their politics. But something seems very wrong. IMO it's been a long time since this large of a number of people on either side truly think their political opposition ought to be killed. I've seen people on the left say Trump voters should be shot, he should be assassinated, etc., and I've seen similar shit coming out of the right as well. Not even on the internet; I have heard this things IRL. Maybe modern society/technology has done something really fucked to our empathy? I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure it hasn't been like this as long as I've been alive.

If you're looking to troll, "more likely to be offended by rationality" is another way to phrase it.

That's implying that conservative arguments are inherently more rational, which simply isn't the case. They have their own sources of argument that many would consider less rational. Religion, for one. Junk science, for another.

whoosh

The data backs you up on that, with Democrats ranking empathy much higher when making arguments.

That fact almost proves the point OP was making though, when your argument is emotion based offense at hostile views comes naturally.

Of course it does. That's why I just rephrased it for him in a way that isn't right-wing propaganda to maybe open his eyes.

"liberals are easily offended" is just right wing spin of the clear fact that the left have always cared more about real people.

But now you're trying to make it seem like conservatives tend to more apply logic in their arguments. Considering a lot of their arguments come from religion, I can't agree with that.

But attacking people on the basis of their faith (which is not a protected status at all) is a perfectly logical and reasonable way to engage in public discourse.

Religion is one of the earliest protected classes. So early its enshrined directly in the constitution.

I'm not attacking anyone. I'm calling out that faith based arguments are not made from a place of logic and reason.

Faith is like a blueprint, codifying rules in an effort to maintain a stable society.

Some of these rules, IMHO, are absurd, but many you'd come to the same conclusion without faith as with it.

But again, to claim that "The Bible said so" is a logical argument is absurd on it's face. Yet, that's what you see many conservatives leaning on

Yes, it's a bit of a mental shortcut that doesn't advance the argument much.

They mostly agree with their understanding of the Bible, so extend the benefit of the doubt to issues they don't yet understand.

Similar to supporting a policy because your favorite politician supports it.

Every time I've dug into some divisive issue I see core rational arguments on both sides along with these faith based cop outs or short sighted emotional appeals.

Ah, that famous empathy that only left-wing people seem to have :)

https://stackoverflow.com/users/478521/mikhail-edoshin

From Russia eh?

Yep.

All: attacking another user based on their nationality is totally not ok here, and we ban accounts that do it. We've banned this one.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Your username is kind of interesting in light of your comment here. It kind of argues against your point...

>Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

I'm sure you meant to phrase it differently but in its current form, your comment comes across as more snarky than substantive or civil.

The one they were responding to wasn't that civil itself.

"I think the biggest contributor is just that left-leaning people are more likely to be offended by right-leaning views"

Considering "right leaning views" includes things like women should not have reproductive control over their bodies, trans people should not be able to use the bathroom they feel comfortable with, and gay people shouldn't be married, and people should have their children yanked away from them at the border, yes, I can very much see why they would be offended by that.

You're not getting a lot of people being offended by the nuances of tax policy, for instance.

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