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Comment by gorpovitch | Hacker News Reader

I'm tired to read articles written inside "Opinions" sections.(not that I necessarily disagree with it, you guys are explaining how this article is right or wrong better than me).

I would really like (not intended at HN, it's a general crisis in my life) to read more articles about politics that are neutral and factually oriented. It seems like 90% of the political content I read twists facts and build cheap, cherry-picked arguments to push for their opinions without any scientifical / logical humility (Discussing hypotheses, advancing honest counter arguments...). I am yet to find political writers / journalists raising questions without already knowing the answers to them. Real thinking instead of outrage porn (as another commenter wrote ; I like that expression)

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Would love to see that as well. Unfortunately outrage generates a lot more clicks and social media engagement.

And politics are increasingly becoming intertwined with identity, which makes it even less cogent.

From Paul Graham's essay about this:

Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions.

...I think what religion and politics have in common is that they become part of people's identity, and people can never have a fruitful argument about something that's part of their identity. By definition they're partisan.

http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

> articles about politics that are neutral

That literally isn't a possibility.

There is no canonical neutral in politics. “Neutral” is just code for “stuff I agree with”. You don’t really want neutral content, you just want content that validates your existing beliefs.

The article lists a bunch of facts and numbers, why do you consider it “non-factual”?

They probably meant that they want factual content that either leaves out the narrative completely or equally covers all sides of the story with equal regard. I.e., content that focuses on facts and supplements it with narrative when needed. As opposed to the majority of the current political content, where the narrative takes the first and foremost place (usually very one-sided narrative too), and then facts just act as a supplement for the narrative (i.e, facts end up buried deep inside the article somewhere or just straight up linked somewhere without even being directly mentioned).

Where does the buck end, though? What if people demand you cover evidence of a flat Earth whenever you talk about the planet? Or climate change denial when talking about record-breaking heatwaves?

Avoiding politicized content is impossible because anything can be politicized. As the above poster here put it, neutral articles effectively means articles whose politics you agree with and/or articles that reinforce the status quo.

Now we can argue about intellectually dishonest articles and ones that bury the lede, but the article in the OP does back up the assertion with data.

I'd settle for "arguments which steelman their opponents" (at least, within the Overton window).

You can't have a genuinely neutral political take, obviously, but you can have one which makes a best-effort to honestly understand, present and address the strongest opposing arguments.

The vast, vast majority of political ink spilled these days is just worthless cherry-picking bias-confirming ingroup-good-outgroup-bad let's-all-dunk-on-each-other dreck.

Politics is a mind-killer

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-i...

I think you're missing the point of that article a bit.

Yeah, wouldn't that be a breath of fresh air. I think "humility" is the key word. It's rare the person who goes into a discussion with an open mind not thinking they are so smart they know the right side of every subject before they even explore it in depth. How refreshing would it be for a politician (our supposed leaders) to be intellectually honest versus just taking a side that leads to greater power for their party.

Opinion articles should be tagged with [Opinion] or similar when submitted.

> more articles about politics that are neutral and factually oriented.

I'm a fan of Shields and Brooks. Mark Shields leans left and David Brooks leans right, but they're balanced and good at sticking to the facts.

Transcripts, podcast, and video available: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/tag/shields-and-brooks

Humans have no incentive currently to be neutral, articles will have to be written by an AI to be neutral it seems.

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