The Two Kinds of Moderate | Hacker News Reader

The Two Kinds of Moderate

paulgraham.com

165 pointsurs365 comments

I like this part: “The defining quality of an ideologue, whether on the left or the right, is to acquire one's opinions in bulk.”

I think another way to slice this is, if you think of the Overton window shifting along the axis of time, the “accidental moderate” does not shift their opinion by the same factor as the ends of the window shift. The “accidental moderate”, in fact, shifts their opinion independent of the shifts of the window.

I just don’t know 100% if I’d use the term moderate as the it’s not necessarily true that all views will equally weight a view left of center with a view right of center (or vice-versa), and moderate could be perceived as synonymous with “average.”

Additionally, by even defining two types of moderate, there is a sense that the word “moderate” means something already. I don’t know, I feel like there could be a better word, maybe if you think of it as a graph there’s a graph-related term, but it’s not coming to mind!

> I think another way to slice this is, if you think of the Overton window shifting along the axis of time, the “accidental moderate” does not shift their opinion by the same factor as the ends of the window shift.

You can see this with the Republicans who turned into Democrats once the Republicans shifted far enough right that there were no more Rockefeller Republicans and Bill Clinton ran as a Democrat. If you're an accidental moderate, you run the risk of involuntarily changing party affiliation.

> I just don’t know 100% if I’d use the term moderate as the it’s not necessarily true that all views will equally weight a view left of center with a view right of center (or vice-versa), and moderate could be perceived as synonymous with “average.”

"Moderate" means "restrained" or "mild" as opposed to "extreme" or "severe" and has nothing to do with splitting the difference between whatever you think the extremes are. As a side note, a lot of people seem to not really know where the extremes actually are, and falsely attribute ideas to people. Deliberately splitting the difference is a tactic, something done to avoid seriously offending any part of the audience in order to keep viewership and readership numbers high. It also does horrible things to the facts when one side is right and one side is wrong and the news feels the need to pretend everyone has an equal claim to being correct.

> You can see this with the Republicans who turned into Democrats once the Republicans shifted far enough right that there were no more Rockefeller Republicans and Bill Clinton ran as a Democrat. If you're an accidental moderate, you run the risk of involuntarily changing party affiliation.

I think this is interesting because it's been exactly the opposite for me and many of the people I know. At some point over the past ten or fifteen years, the Democrats switched their focus to the point that we've unintentionally found ourselves being Republican now. I.e. the midwest Trump vote.

In what way do you think the Democrats have switched focus?

The white working class part of their coalition, which tends to more socially conservative, are not a focus of the party anymore. It used to be a bedrock part of their strategy in the Midwest. At least that is the perception - forget for a moment if a) it’s actually true, that they’ve dropped focus, or b) that voting block was ever a permanent part of that party’s coalition or merely on borrowed time.

This is part of a generalized development in Western politics though - it even explains why Brexit and Boris Johnson won in the UK. The "left" is now explicitly the party of managerial, globalizing crony capitalism, pushing for maximum openness and free mobility for all factors of production - not of the working classes with their petty, localized concerns, or of traditional "business" classes with their long-time appreciation for economic diversification and the value of free markets. Some people might want to map this to ethnic stereotypes of some sort, or posit that it's the outcome of some kind of intentional conspiracy, and of course this would be quite incorrect. Nonetheless the shift was very real.

Your position is that the UK Labour party, led by life long socialist and eurosceptic Jeremy Corbyn, who's manifesto proposed nationalising several industries, is "explicity the party of globalizing crony capitalism"?

In a strong field this might be the weakest political take I've read in the last month.

Jeremy Corbyn is only one player out of many in the British Labor Party. He's a pretty divisive figure for other reasons, and many Labor supporters are even starting to acknowledge this.

In fact, if anything positive can be said about the shift towards favoring globalizing crony capitalism, is that it happens to be somewhat less divisive than the old-fashioned Marxist alternative that Corbyn favors. As strange as it may seem, this was very much a shift towards intentional moderation.

The shift from Blair/Brown to Corbyn was a shift towards intentional moderation?

Increased focus on racial and sexual minorities to the exclusion of working-class interests (which has been going on for decades), spilling over into outright contempt of lower- and middle- class whites (which has mostly become prominent in the past 10-15 years).

You've got that all wrong. The former didn't happen and didn't spill over into the latter, the Democratic Party abandoned working class interests (not just “white working class”) pretty sharply after Clinton's election. It didn't really accelerate on the other fronts, it just didn't back off of them as hard because racial/sexual/etc. equality is compatible with the center-right neoliberal capitalist economics that became the focus of the new dominant faction of the Party.

OTOH, there's evidence that that faction of the party is losing dominance to one focussed on working class interests again.

> Increased focus on racial and sexual minorities to the exclusion of working-class interests

Are these actually in conflict? Are they also not part of the working class? What sort of policies do you think should have been enacted against this?

Not being from the US I don't know how Democrats view this, but in general, yes, it seems to me they are somewhat in conflict. Diversity activism tends to pit working class members against each other. Meanwhile, the rich don't have to care either way, except to occasionally be seen as backing the more popular view.

There's only so much time, attention, and energy. If your focus is on, say, trans rights, you're not spending that time focusing on working-class economics.

And even if you can do it all, there's only so much attention the voters have. If all they hear about you is on trans rights, they don't perceive you doing anything about their economic problems.

The Democrats' central message used to be "we care about the working people". Now their central message is "we care about illegal immigrants, minorities, and trans people". If your biggest problem is that you have no money because you have no job, that doesn't resonate.

More: As the Democrats become dominated by the coastal elites, the party has too many people leading it who don't even know about the working-class problems in the middle of the country.

The population of the United States is dominated by the coasts. The GDP of the United States is dominated by the coasts. The tax base of the United States is dominated by the coasts.

You’ve perfectly summarized the OP’s final point.

Are you saying that as the Democrats became distanced from working-class issues, the republicans got closer to working-class issues?

Could you explain that in terms of the policy that they adopted or is it a response to Dems adopting minority rights issues?

What I mean to say is that if they are both bad in the same way on working class issues, what is it about minority rights that would make you vote R?

Genuinely trying to understand here...not trolling.

> Are you saying that as the Democrats became distanced from working-class issues, the republicans got closer to working-class issues?

I don't know that the Republican actually got closer to working-class issues. In the last election, though, they at least got to the point of talking about such issues, in the same election that the Democrats didn't bother to do so.

So if I were a working-class minority person, whose major pain point was economics, in the last election I still might vote Republican, because they at least were talking about the thing I cared most about, even if the Democrats were talking about my secondary issue.

R said that they will bring back working class jobs and give them something to be proud of. R also said that they will limit low skill immigration which will help reduce competition for working class jobs. R said that they will reduce taxes for working class people (and they even increased taxes for better paid workers, so it is not like they just reduced it overall).

All of these are typical leftist talking points, Democrats just left those votes on the table and R just swooped in and took them.

> If your focus is on, say, trans rights, you're not spending that time focusing on working-class economics.

This is a bizarre statement since most trans people I know are either working class, precariat, or working poor. The trans rights they want beyond extremely basic anti-discrimination protection are things like easier access to university and universal health care. These are things that benefit all workers, not just trans people. (Three of the Google employees fired for union organizing were trans! Don't try to feed me some line that there's some conflict between trans rights and workers' rights. The claim is just some shit-stirring by capital for its own ends.)

It is also a bizarre statement given the indifference or even slight hostility to trans rights by DNC frontrunners (Biden, and previously Clinton). The DNC doesn't care about trans people, and trans people know it. To the extent they support the party, they do so uneasily, outside the DNC, and for largely economic reasons.

Time spent on anti-descrimination policies is inherently time not spent on economic issues. There will always be policy focus opportunity cost. I can totally understand why working class people in the heartland who have never met any LGBT person, let alone someone trans or someone non-binary, would think that focusing on equality efforts for them is not a high priority issue and that legislators should focus on economic issues affecting many more people. People mostly care about what is affecting them and people they know.

> Time spent on anti-descrimination policies is inherently time not spent on economic issues.

Can you give anything close to a concrete example of this?

Even ignoring the indivisibility of the economic and social spheres (ask a black person if the CRA was an "economic issue" - ask a trans person if whether they can safely pee at work is an "economic issue"), and that it's not a zero-sum game (for example, the heightened scrutiny required by transphobia tends to cost more resources), I can't imagine there's enough meaningful work to "saturate" 100% of some candidate's time with economic issues. And as mentioned, the people who are furthest left and most vocal on economic issues are often the people furthest left and most vocal on civil rights. Conversely, people who spend a lot of time talking about how social issues should not be such a big deal (Peter Thiel, for instance - Paul Graham also, albeit with a much smaller platform) are the same who lean right economically.

How many examples do you need to see this is a false dichotomy? How many examples did you see to convince yourself it was a dichotomy at all?

> I can totally understand why working class people in the heartland who have never met any LGBT person, let alone someone trans or someone non-binary

I am not sure you know what those words mean ("any ... T person, let alone someone trans" is nonsense), but also, we're talking about people who live in Nebraska or Ohio, not hermits. We are long past any plausibly deniability to not even know a gay person - if you don't know any, it's because you're actively trying to avoid them.

> Can you give anything close to a concrete example of this?

Sure, although I feel like your response is largely due to an uncharitable reading of my post. Whether someone can use a specific bathroom has an impact on a tiny percentage of the US population; pretty much only trans or non-binary people. Sure it's still economic in some contexts and it was incorrect for me to insinuate that it was totally social, but it is not economic or social policy that affects the vast majority of the population. Tax policy, immigration, trade policy, regulation, worker education, general schooling, government grants and investment, etc matter to far more people. Time spent on niche issues is going to appeal to fewer people by definition, and I could see people getting angry that legislative time is being spent in this manner while broader economic issues appealing to more people remain unsolved. Personally I feel that supporting those communities is morally important, but I understand why other people believe it takes a lower priority relative to economic issues affecting them personally.

> I can't imagine there's enough meaningful work to "saturate" 100% of some candidate's time with economic issue

People are clearly signaling through their voting that grossly insufficient time is being spent on economic issues. Key problems remain unsolved.

> I am not sure you know what those words mean ("any ... T person, let alone someone trans" is nonsense)

That statement implies I am referring to lesbian, gay, or bi people. I don't see what is unclear about that based on my wording. The concept of being trans is more of a logical leap for a straight person than the concept of being bi, gay, or lesbian for pretty obvious reasons. I don't think this requires further explanation.

> We are long past any plausibly deniability to not even know a gay person

You have very clearly not been to large swaths of the United States. Many, many, many people have never met an openly LGBT person. Even more are not friends with one in a close enough manner to have the types of honest, informative discussions to cut through popular misconceptions.

> if you don't know any, it's because you're actively trying to avoid them.

Yes, a large number of people intentionally self segregate into communities where other people are like them. They still get to vote.

> > Can you give anything close to a concrete example of this?

> Sure, [a bunch of broad non-specific examples]

OK.

> You have very clearly not been to large swaths of the United States.

Grew up in WI, close family / friends in MI, MN, NE, IA, and IL, dated a boy from TN and a girl from WV, but sure, tell me how there's no gays in the midwest.

Bathroom example is a specific example; there was a huge uproar about bathroom rights in North Carolina I want to say about 5 years ago, and it resulted in national media attention and subsequent legislative attention in many states. Further you didn't contradict anything else I said or any of the other basic claims I've been making. Sorry political reality and the concept of self-interest make you unhappy.

> Grew up in WI, close family / friends in MI, MN, NE, IA, and IL, dated a boy from TN and a girl from WV, but sure, tell me how there's no gays in the midwest.

Last I checked there were more than 8 states in the United States. Further, your response doesn't invalidate what I said in any way. You are an n of 1 and we are talking about tens of millions of people in there states. Just because you met a LGBT from a state doesn't mean that everyone else from that state met them or any other LGBT. Please point out where I said there were no gays in the Midwest.

> there was a huge uproar about bathroom rights in North Carolina

So because the republicans passed a law positively discriminating against trans people (and doing a bunch of other weird shit - this was not a well-planned bill), and people are sick of the social issues, they... voted republican?

Not to mention the economic fallout of HB2 was brutal - despite its short life it cost the state thousands of jobs and millions of dollars.

Again we see things aren't really in tension - the democratic position was less political work, greater economic benefit, and justice. The "political reality" is that republicans started a fight by stripping rights, then got to play a fake victim.

> it resulted in national media attention and subsequent legislative attention in many states.

That attention was primarily passing more transphobic legislation. What were we supposed to do? "Well, I guess you can keep taking our rights away one by one, because the economic issues are more important!"

There's no more productive conversation to be had concerning your views on sexuality in some mysterious, isolationist states. They're simply unmoored from reality.

Democrat [poltiicians] represent the ruling class just as much as Republican [politicians] do (evidenced by the fact that except for a few exceptions such as Bernie Sanders they go about fundraising in the same way: primarily from large donors). Given that, taking a more moderate stance regarding minorities is one of the few ways to differentiate themselves in a way that looks good to their base. In their ideal world 5 CEOs still own 95% of the country's wealth, but 3 of them are black, and maybe one's a lesbian.

> At some point over the past ten or fifteen years, the Democrats switched their focus

Clinton was elected on explicit Third Way positions nearly 30 years ago. If you think something changed in the past 10-15, you're falling for GOP propaganda. What you're noticing is the democrats finding a new base a decade after losing their working class supporters, through a combination of Third Way politics, the Republican Southern Strategy. The GOP saw this coming and stoked / capitulated to increasing racist elements of the party during Obama's presidency. This is the only major change in the past decade.

(Well, the democrats aren't really that smart - it's not so much they're finding a new base as they're left with the ones the new GOP ideology intentionally excludes. As a party, they are doing a terrible job mobilizing this!)

I think Southern racism has very little to do with the Republican shift in the Midwest. We've had heavy hispanic immigration for twenty years and they've all been fairly well integrated.

I would guess what actually happened to the older people I know is that they grew up in union jobs at factories that got sent to Mexico after NAFTA went through.

Unions lean heavy Democrat. When the union fails you, I think that leads fairly directly to losing faith in the Democratic party.

Further, the insistence by many within the party that the only reason someone would want to leave the Democratic party is that they're racists really doesn't do them any favors.

> If you think something changed in the past 10-15, you're falling for GOP propaganda.

You think that Democrats have not moved in the past 10-15 years? You think that the idea that they have is merely Republican propaganda? I think you haven't been paying attention.

Or maybe you were paying too much attention. 15 years ago, AOC wasn't even old enough to vote. Were there Democrats in the House who held the same positions 15 years ago? Perhaps so. They didn't have the press attention that AOC gets, though. So they may have been there, but in the eyes of the public they weren't "the position" of the Democrats. Instead, they were fringe.

Now AOC gets as much press coverage as Nancy Pelosi (maybe more, before impeachment). To the average person, AOC and people like her now represent the Democratic Party. That's a massive shift, at least in perceptions, if not in actual position.

And I think the actual position has shifted, too. There are considerably more of the farther-left people like AOC, both in congress and running for president. The median Democratic officeholder position has shifted left. (Or so I strongly suspect. I assert it without statistical evidence.)

I'm trying to understand how you see Republican positions changing over time as well. From the perspective of policy or cultural issues. If I grant your point about how the last 15 years has seen a resurgent left, something that I'm stoked about, could you explain a little about how you've seen the republicans change over 10 to 20 years?

Republicans just lowered taxes for the working class and increased it for the management class. How is that typical capitalist right wing? It was basically tailor made to hurt the coastal elites since only there do a significant number earn enough to get the extra taxes.

Honestly? I see Republicans unable to explain their own positions, perhaps because they don't understand it themselves. I see them stumbling around, too often not operating on principle or thought, and sometimes stumbling into saying things that manage to win an election.

It's unfair to say that that's all Republicans. But it's some of them, and it fits the one that collects all the press at the moment...

Your entire post is about AOC, who has spent less than two years in office. My statement was about the (non-)events in the democratic party 25-30 and 10-15 years ago. The "AOC as a bogeyman" talking points are a transparent attempt to derail the discussion along the lines the GOP wants.

I agree we've seen a shift in the democratic party - not yet in its leadership - in the past 2-4 years (beginning with Sanders, its first major electoral effects in the 2018 midterms). What does that have to do with what happened 10-15 years ago?

What did happen 10-15 years ago is Obama's election. Obama's politics do not place him in the left of the democratic party, and in some areas he's firmly in the right part.

So what's the objection to what happened 10-15 years ago, but not 30 years ago? To put it more bluntly - What's the biggest difference between Obama and Bill Clinton? One hint: it's not any political policy.

And why, if the objection is supposed to be about support for the working class, is what's happening in the past 2-4 not good? The return to labor rights as a central plank of the party should be drawing people back if that's the reason they left, but apparently it's not.

True, the topic of AOC runs through my post, but that's not what it's about. It's about the change in the position of the average/median Democratic politician.

And I'd say the change has happened at least somewhat in the Democratic leadership - in many of the presidential candidates, even if not in the House and Senate leadership.

And I'd argue that this change was going on before, but you didn't see it, because of Obama. He, in one person, was the face of the Democratic party, and that hid what was going on underneath. As you say, Obama was not on the left, and because he was the public symbol of the party, it was easy to not see the left growing.

Was Obama to the left of Clinton? I could accept "no" as the answer. But was the median Democratic politician during Obama to the left of the median Democratic politician during Clinton? To me, it appears that the answer is "yes".

I don't think that abandoning the working class is something that just happened in the last 2-4 years. I could even argue that it happened under Clinton, but he had the political savvy to hide it. It was probably there, and growing, under Obama. It became glaringly apparent under Hillary, when she had no interest in even talking about the working class, and Trump did. That's what changed in the last 2-4 (let's call it 3) years - Trump stole what the Democrats thought was "their" issue, so solidly "theirs" that it didn't even need to be mentioned.

Political polarization has increased so this is happening on both sides, people moving towards democrats and republicans.

This political perspective is completely incoherent. Democrats have shifted rightward since WWII, along with every other political group in the country. Former Democrats who become Republicans because they feel the party has shifted out from under them are creating excuses to mask their own changing opinions.

> Former Democrats who become Republicans because they feel the party has shifted out from under them are creating excuses to mask their own changing opinions.

To me, this is the incoherent view. Of course the voter base has changing opinions. It's completely to be expected that over the course of decades political alliances will shift.

The entire point of what I said is that the political opinions of the Democratic party moved in a direction that did not match that of my general demographic. Now that opinions have shifted, we find that our interests are better served by Republican talking points than by Democratic ones. So we vote red.

People like to bemoan the fact that America has a two party system, while many other places have a parliamentary system with many parties. The fact is America just handles its coalition building at an earlier step. There is no single "prototypical" Republican or Democrat. There are many factions throughout the country that weigh the political winds and throw their weight behind the group they see as most likely to benefit their own particular concerns.

None of this should be nearly so divisive a topic as it clearly is. The post I replied to noted that there were a bunch of "Rockefeller Republicans" who shifted and become Democrats.

I replied that a similar thing had happened around me, only in the opposite direction. Blue collar Democrats from the 70s-00s, found that after the financial crisis, the political winds pointed them to the Republican party.

> The entire point of what I said is that the political opinions of the Democratic party moved in a direction that did not match that of my general demographic. Now that opinions have shifted, we find that our interests are better served by Republican talking points than by Democratic ones.

I agree that the Democratic platform has moved, but it moved rightwards. The Republican platform has also moved (considerably more) rightwards. If your political positions were once aligned with the Democrats but are now better aligned with Republicans, your personal opinions have necessarily moved dramatically rightwards, and your new alignment has nothing to do with the shift of the parties.

Political opinions aren't a straight line, as much as we like to pretend it is.

Obviously not, but it is possible to make accurate macro-scale generalizations.

Perhaps 'accidental moderate'='independent' and 'intentional moderate'='centrist'?

"Intentional moderate" = High Broderism, or at least the popular understanding of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_S._Broder

http://pressthink.org/2010/06/clowns-to-the-left-of-me-joker...

The above has this quote, which sums it up nicely:

> Journalists associate the middle with truth, when there may be no reason to… Writing the news so that it lands somewhere near the “halfway point between the best and the worst that might be said about someone” is not a truthtelling impulse at all, but a refuge-seeking one, and it’s possible that this ritual will distort a given story.

I think this is a good summary of why meeting in the middle is a poor excuse for balance. The average isn't the ideal middle, as almost nothing fits the average.

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/on-average/

Exactly. This is especially true in the context of contemporary US Politics, where the average between the Democrats and Republicans is way right of the political center.

In any case, I guess it all comes down to this:

“A good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied”

-Larry David

On average, humans have one breast and one testicle.

> I like this part: “The defining quality of an ideologue, whether on the left or the right, is to acquire one's opinions in bulk.”

I can think of one possibly valid reason to do that: When you first begin to accept the foundational beliefs of some ideological group, you initially haven't had time to think through the logical implications of those beliefs. Tentatively adopting that group's set of secondary beliefs could make sense while until you have time to think things through yourself.

>The defining quality of an ideologue, whether on the left or the right, is to acquire one's opinions in bulk

It's not true. An ideologue has committed to a single idea or system of ideas.

Acquiring in bulk and picking and choosing is the antithesis of an ideologue.

yes, the terminology is certainly confusing. "accidental moderate" seems intentionally "moderate on average", as in some reversion to the mean kind of claim, but is opposed to an "intentional moderate", who seems to fall into moderation by default.

what's left unsaid, but i find more thought-provoking, is the notion that, as with the fringe ideologues, you can safely ignore the "intentional moderate" since they don't add to the conversation (because they don't think deeply about politics).

intellectual independence seems integral to why his "most impressive people" are impressive in the first place--they delve deeper into questions/challenges to form their opinions rather than adopting them wholesale from others.

Right and left are arbitrary constructs necessitated by a first past the post voting system. Change the electoral system and you will see much more diverse and meaningful party affiliation.

>The effect of a system based on plurality voting is that the larger parties, and parties with more geographically concentrated support, gain a disproportionately large share of seats, while smaller parties with more evenly distributed support are left with a disproportionately small share.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

This is not accurate.

Yes, many election systems result in more parties than FPTP. But left and right still have salience within those.

In fact, you can look at how each politician votes (without explicitly coding votes as left or right). This itself forms a space equal to the number of votes taken. But that vote space can be projected into a much lower dimensional space that captures most of the information about the vote space. If you go so far as to collapse it into a one dimensional space, that corresponds to the traditional left/right axis, and this holds through both history and internationally. The second issue is a bit more varied, but most of the time the left/right axis dominates whatever that second dimension is. Look up DW-NOMINATE for more info.

DW-NOMINATE was developed by US political scientists to study the US House and Senate. Higher dimensionality is present internationally, and I believe that attempting to reduce those dynamics to a left/right spectrum limits our understanding of politics.

>Poole and Rosenthal note in Chapter 11 of Ideology and Congress that most of these analyses produce the finding that roll call voting is organized by only few dimensions (usually two): "These findings suggest that the need to form parliamentary majorities limits dimensionality."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOMINATE_%28scaling_method%29

Static parliamentary majorities are not necessary in a presidential system.

I think this 2D representation is definitely better. The two axes are Social (Authoritarian -> Libertarian) and Economic (Left -> Right) https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2

This can also be predicted in terms of realpolitik. If the power of nations tends to consolidate along predictable lines, then the political question at any moment is reduced to a left-right "rate of reform" along each axis, with the furthest right positions being near-zero rates of change, but all viable positions serving the purpose of ensuring power for the stakeholders. This makes the right tend to automatically converge onto a mythologized moment in the past where their power is greatest - rights of kings, supremacy myths, and so on, while the left goes in a spectrum of directions but must ultimately form a singular coalition in order to gain power. Thus the prevailing tendency of left-right politics is also one of leaps forward from the left and gradual slides back from the right as the coalition breaks down. The new consensus is different from the old, but it's also typically not the most ideologically left one, since it emerges to compromise with the present realities, and the more radical you go, the more it resembles blood-in-the-streets revolution, which is a huge roll of the dice.

The developed world as a whole seems to be approaching one of those "great leap" moments today as more and more issues have fallen into partisan extremism, motivating the search for a new consensus.

Sure there may still be a right left axis, but it wouldn't be condensed into the "main" axis, and people and candidates would form a nice bell curve rather than one with two humps.

Very true.

In the absence of first past the post voting (and its tendency to force people into parties to avoid losing to people who do [1], and for those parties to coalesce into two dominant, equally balance parties), there is still a polarity of, say, liberal and conservative. At least in the original meanings of the terms, which has to do with whether you go toward new things or prefer traditions.

But under FPTP, right vs left encompasses a lot more than that.

And more importantly, FPTP doesn't allow for middle ground. If you are in the middle, you can't get elected, because neither party would nominate you.

If we had a electoral system that tended to elect the first choice of the median voter, things would be dramatically different. Yes there would be people on the extremes, but most people -- those elected, as well as regular citizens -- would tend be "accidental moderates."

And more importantly, FPTP doesn't allow for middle ground. If you are in the middle, you can't get elected, because neither party would nominate you.

I'm not sure that's true, at least in the UK, when one of the established two parties moves to the centre ground they tend to win. Moving away from the centre ground is how they lose.

The typical pattern is starting at the edge during the primary then shifting to the center during the general. Making it back to the center is indeed a good path toward success, but makes commitments during the primary much less credible and give the impression that the candidate is just saying what will get them elected. Overall this is terrible for voter trust in elected officials.

> [FPTP voting causes] those parties to coalesce into two dominant, equally balance parties

California has FPTP voting and is completely dominated by Democrats who have a super majority in the legislature and the Governorship, and can pass any legislation they want without a single Republican vote or amendment. That's been the case (with a brief stint by Arnold) for multiple decades.

Tell me again how FPTP voting necessarily results in two equally balanced parties? I'm not seeing it.

> Interestingly, this is strong evidence that Califorinia Democrats have no desire to implement universal health care

Universal healthcare can't work on a state level because of the free rider problem: people from red states could go to California for free healthcare anytime, while never paying taxes into the system. Californians would end up paying for healthcare for the entire US, which is unsustainable.

It works in Canada because Canada doesn't let sick Americans immigrate. But as a US state, California has no power to keep out sick red staters.

> California has no power to keep out sick red staters

How does Massachusetts manage it then? They don't have the power to keep out those "sick red staters", and yet the entire state has healthcare (by law).

Sounds like special-pleading to me. If a wealthy Blue state like Massachusetts can do it, then California can do it. I expect more from my representatives, not "sick Republicans in other states are stopping us!"

How do you think Massachusetts healthcare laws differ from California? They both have Obamacare which most people would say is not the same as universal healthcare.

Massachusetts has the lowest rates of uninsured residents in the United States at 2.8% [0]

California is 2.6x higher at 7.8% [1], is not improving, and is a much bigger state numerically, so we're talking about ~3 million uninsured people. Prior to Obamacare, California was at a dismal 16%. And note: CA had Dem supermajority rule for years prior to Obamacare's implementation, and can easily pass the healthcare legislation it's constituents want and deserve. They, unlike Massachusetts, have chosen not to.

Massachusetts has less uninsured because they go beyond the bare minimum provided by Obamacare. California Democrats can, and should, do more.

[0] https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2019/08/20/uninsured-rates...

[1] https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/articl...

How specifically do the Massachusetts laws differ?

Remember Massachusetts' median income is around 30% higher than California, so it's possible even with identical governance the state with higher median income would have better outcomes.

> California has FPTP voting and is completely dominated by Democrats

That's a fairly recent phenomenon (California was a Republican stronghold in Presodential elections until 1992, and longer for state executive elections.) And the tendency toward balance that is asserted for FPTP is national; subordinate jurisdictions aren't expected to follow it even by people who adhere to the theory.

> who have a super majority in the legislature and the Governorship, and can pass any legislation they want without a single Republican vote or amendment. That's been the case (with a brief stint by Arnold) for multiple decades.

No, it hasn't; Democrats have only had supermajorities since 2012, and Gray Davis (1999-2003) was the only Democratic governor between Jerry Brown (term ended in 1983) and Jerry Brown (term starting in 2011.)

> And more importantly, FPTP doesn't allow for middle ground. If you are in the middle, you can't get elected, because neither party would nominate you.

Median voter theorem claims a mathematical proof of the opposite, that FPTP has both camps having a dominant strategy of appeal to the median voter. Both your assertion and median voter theorem fail in practice; the latter because it ignores issues of salience, distribution of views (unimodal vs. multimodal), turnout and mobilization effects, etc., and yours because, well, it ignores much of the same things, but assumes different generalities about them consistently hold.

> If we had a electoral system that tended to elect the first choice of the median voter, things would be dramatically different.

Actually, the vast majority of US voters, even those that self-identity as independents, are highly partisan — the median voter is probably a reasonably strong partisan of whatever party has the current turnout advantage, which is essentially what FPTP elects.

Right and left are arbitrary constructs necessitated by a first past the post voting system. Change the electoral system and you will see much more diverse and meaningful party affiliation.

Diverse, yes. Meaningful, maybe. Look at Israel right now. 17 parties with seats in the Knesset, none with over 30%, and, after two elections, still no agreement on Prime Minister. Third election coming up.

> after two elections, still no agreement on Prime Minister. Third election coming up.

Parlamentary systems without the option to call re-elections is an attractive alternative. The politicians just can't keep asking people's opinion until they get the answer they want.

Then there will have to be compromises, and even the smaller parties can get some of their important causes through.

I agree, calling for "new elections" is a cop-out

Have an elected parliament sit for at least two years, maybe four, will go some way in making them work out their differences.

Smaller parties have gotten plenty in Israel, sometimes to the point that supporters of the larger parties feel they have less voice than whichever small party holds the balance of power at that moment.

Or, as in the current situation, there is simply no agreement, and they go months without a government. It's not clear that an inability to call re-elections would improve Israel's situation; they could be stuck for years with no government.

The situation in Israel only exists because there are multiple layers of opposition at play, the "moderates" are hardly different politically than the conservatives, they just dislike it's leader, where they are unwilling to form a coalition with any of the arab parties in order to form a government.

I agree that parliamentary systems make it difficult to form a government, but I disagree that those 30 parties are less meaningful than major parties in the US or UK. Each one represents a unique community within Israel, reflecting the diversity and disunity of the nation itself.

Also I would argue Netanyahu failing to form a government two times is a good sign for Israel. That man is divisive and harmful.

> Right and left are arbitrary constructs necessitated by a first past the post voting system.

Most European countries have proportional voting systems, yet can anyway fairly well be characterized by the left-right political axis.

But not as tightly coupled as in FPTP systems. There's a greater variety of platforms under proportional representation. European countries have Christian democratic parties, which are mildly socially conservative coupled with mildly economically liberal. They have Liberal parties that actually win seats, which would be roughly equivalent to being mildly libertarian in an American sense. They have far right nativist populist parties that are xenophobic yet are pro-social safety net. They have more single issue groups like animal rights parties, and stronger green parties. They also have populist movements that attempt to appeal to the politically apathetic by being post-partisan, such as the 5 Star Movement in Italy.

Overall their adherence to the left-right dichotomy is less rigid than in the U.S.

Eh this essay is a bit off to me. The issue with modern US politics, or our politics in general I guess, is the tendency for two groups to emerge, one of which everyone generally has to belong to somehow.

Most people are pretty rational about most issues when you discuss them individually, but you end up with a few ''foundational''-- and unquestionable --ideas that people have to fall exactly on one side or the other. I won't name any specifically but I think everyone knows some of these immediately. So you have individually rational persons who have to congregate on either one side or the other, and these issues end up being the deciding factor of which group you must join, dividing many people who otherwise agree on a lot of stuff, perhaps without even realizing it..

It's pretty similar to religious fracturing to me now that I think about it. Groups who agree on everything except one or two ideas and that makes all the difference.

Very rare are the persons who fall heavily to one side of everything.

>the far right and far left are roughly equally wrong.

I don't think you can reduce political arguments to who is "right" and who is "wrong". Politics and moral questions are not mathematical problems. We fundamentally don't all agree on what the final outcome (of a society, of life) should be. Maybe 99% of us can agree with something like "happiness" or "peace", but those are way too vague and the devil's in the details.

Eventually this ends up with a million people dead and everyone saying "well that was probably bad, maybe we should have tried to prevent that".

Just because we cannot guarantee certainty or outcomes doesn't absolve us from the moral responsibility to try.

Ok, but this is not what I was getting at.

When PG says that the left and right are equally "wrong", he's suggesting that they are both trying to arrive at THE solution, but just taking different paths. I don't think this is fundamentally true and if you view political struggle from this perspective you're going to miss the full picture.

It is indeed true - the extreme left and right (along with the religious extremists of any religion) all believe that they have the One True Solution, and have historically been ready to murder millions who they believe stood in the way.

So yes, both the extreme left and the extreme right are not only wrong, but morally repugnant.

The whole point of classical political liberalism is of how to get multiple incompatible ideas of what is the good life (broadly understood) to coexist peacefully. Without it there is only tyranny or chaos.

> Just because we cannot guarantee certainty or outcomes doesn't absolve us from the moral responsibility to try.

I think the point is that different people will try different things, often opposing each other.

That's a pretty big simplification of politics over the last century and a half.

For example, let me grant you that Nazi Germany and the Soviets were equally bad for the sake of this question, would that mean that we and our allies were moderate? Do the proxy wars that we fought/are fighting all over the world factor into an ideological spectrum?

The reason that I'm asking a question instead of just going all "what about-ism" is I really would like top understand why people think the way they do. Not trying to start an argument.

1. Just because we don't agree on the answer doesn't mean that there is no correct answer. If there are no correct or incorrect policies then there is no need to vote.

2. There is strong agreement on lots of things:

95 percent disapprove of people using cell phones in movie theaters. (Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel Poll, 2014)

97 percent believe there should be laws against texting while driving. (The New York Times/CBS News Poll, 2009)

96 percent have a positive impression of small business. (Gallup Poll, 2016)

95 percent believe employers should not be able to access the DNA of their employees without permission. (Time/CNN/Yankelovich Partners Poll, 1998)

95 percent support laws against money laundering involving terrorism. (Washington Post Poll, 2001)

95 percent think doctors should be licensed. (Private Initiatives & Public Values, 1981)

95 percent would support going to war if the United States were invaded. (Harris Survey, 1971)

96 percent oppose legalizing crystal meth. (CNN/ORC International Poll, 2014)

95 percent are satisfied with their friends. (Associated Press/Media General Poll, 1984)

95 percent say that “if a pill were available that made you twice as good looking as you are now, but only half as smart,” they would not take it. (Men’s Health Work Survey, 2000)

98 percent believe adults should watch swimmers rather than reading or talking on the phone. (American Red Cross Water Safety Poll, 2013)

99 percent think it’s wrong for employees to steal expensive equipment from their workplace. (NBC News Poll, 1995)

95 percent think it’s wrong to pay someone to do a term paper for you. (NBC News Poll, 1995)

98 percent would like to see a decline in hunger in the world. (Harris Survey, 1983)

97 percent would like to see a decline in terrorism and violence. (Harris Survey, 1983)

98% would like to see an end to high unemployment. (Harris Survey, 1982)

95 percent would like to see an end to all wars. (Harris Survey, 1981)

95 percent would like to see a decline in prejudice. (Harris Survey, 1977)

95 percent don’t believe Magic 8 Balls can predict the future. (Shell Poll, 1998)

96 percent think the Olympics are a great sports competition. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution Poll, 1996)

(source How To Monroe 2019, by way of https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-win-an-election/)

> If there are no correct or incorrect policies then there is no need to vote.

If there were correct or incorrect policies, there wouldn't be any need to vote. If politics was a science or a math, we wouldn't need to vote. We be able to test or prove the correct answer. The reason we vote is precisely because there is no correct answer in politics.

There is a why science and math doesn't work by consensus or a vote.

>If politics was a science or a math, we wouldn't need to vote.

There are all kinds of questions with best practices, right and wrong answers. There are better and worse ways to aggregate agricultural statistics, for instance. And we don't think of that in terms of a left and right, it's just something that's administered by a department. And no one thinks that that's because of single-minded ideological extremism that only permits one view, or that the approach needs to be replaced with a polarized one stretched between two competing ideologies in order to represent healthy discourse.

There are a range of views where there are right answers, things are polarized that shouldn't be-- climate change for instance, where the debate has been hurt by moderates insisting on a need to treat all sides as equally legitimate. And moderates have absolutely no underlying theory about what makes those examples different. Those examples entirely defeat the concept of moderation as an overarching political principle.

That's the real problem with moderation- it's expressed as an aspirational principle that's independent of any on the ground engagement with arguments or facts. It's not something that is arrived at on a case by case basis from examination of facts, which to my mind would be the valid reason for arriving at moderation, or any political belief. If someone said we should replace all agricultural data with randomly generated numbers, that could polarize agricultural statistics, and then moderates would enter that debate chiding both sides as extremes that need to listen to each other.

> There are all kinds of questions with best practices, right and wrong answers.

Best practices doesn't mean right or wrong answers. Also, most of the questions in politics is about values and perspective and biases and self interest. These don't have any right or wrong answers.

> There are better and worse ways to aggregate agricultural statistics, for instance. And we don't think of that in terms of a left and right

What does agricultural statistics have anything to do with voting? Besides agricultural statistics, like all statistics, can be skewed, manipulated and cherrypicked when it comes to politics. And the same statistic can be viewed differently by different people.

> There are a range of views where there are right answers, things are polarized that shouldn't be-- climate change for instance

This has to be the most naive point any could make. And the only people who believe like you do in black or white are the "single-minded ideological" extremists that you probably rail on about. Ignoring the fact that climate science is in its infant stage and we have yet to find a single acceptable model of climate modeling and we are constantly being told that previous climate predictions were too optimistic or pessimistic every other day. Ignoing all that, lets assume climate science is a mature and trustable science. So what is the solution for climate change? Should we just kill off 7 billion people? Should we shut down the internet? So we end global trade?

> where the debate has been hurt by moderates insisting on a need to treat all sides as equally legitimate.

No. The debate has been hurt by ideological extremists like yourself who have a messianic belief that they will save humanity. Unfortunately for people like you, there are actual grown ups who don't listen to 16 year teen girls for scientific and geopolitical information.

> That's the real problem with moderation

The real problem of moderation and looking at all sides and facts is that it prevents extremist ideologues from taking control.

It's strange how climate change extremists ( on both sides ) always bring something that has nothing to do with climate science into the discussion. "There is a why science and math doesn't work by consensus or a vote.". What does that have to do with your comment?

To quote the comedian Chris Rock (from his "Never Scared"):

"Anyone that makes up they mind before they hear the issue is a fucking fool, OK? Everybody… No, everybody’s so busy wanting to be down with a gang – “I’m a conservative, I’m a liberal.” It’s bullshit. Be a fucking person. Listen. Let it swirl around yo head. Then form yo opinion. No normal, decent person is one thing, OK? I got some shit I’m conservative about, I got some shit I’m liberal about. Crime, I’m conservative. Prostitution, I’m liberal. "

Yep. Relatedly, reminds me of a quote from Skin in the Game (Nassim Taleb):

"I am, at the Fed level, libertarian;

at the state level, Republican;

at the local level, Democrat;

and at the family and friends level, a socialist.

If that saying doesn’t convince you of the fatuousness of left vs. right labels, nothing will."

"If that saying doesn’t convince you of the fatuousness of left vs. right labels"

It reminds me of how fatuous Nassim Taleb can be, certainly. That quote basically deletes any historical context and actual belief held by those groups. It reduces the actual differences that they have to a bumper sticker level of depth.

Not trying to be insulting or anything, I just don't find it that helpful, and I'm also not particularly a fan of Taleb.

> Whereas an accidental moderate's opinions will be scattered over a broad range, but will, like those of the intentional moderate, average to about 50.

I think this describes my own political opinion to a tee. I agree with some stuff on the left, some stuff on the right and the moderate/centrist opinion on some others, and it probably equals out as centrist.

Still, I'm not sure I'd say this is a rare thing by any means. Indeed, I suspect a large percentage (maybe even majority) of the population has beliefs from all sides/corners of the political spectrum.

It's just that the current voting system in places like the US and UK encourages everyone to band with 'one side or the other', and groups a bunch of people/groups that likely disagree in many cases together as one party.

Plus given most people's mixtures of said beliefs are different to others, your average politician/party ends up having to appeal to a certain 'tribe' in order to get elected, since the percentage of people who 100% agree with a certain mix of beliefs is too small to get anyone a majority.

This describes my own views perfectly as well.

WRT. the perceived amount of "accidental moderates" being small, I don't think it's just because of voting systems. I see two other factors.

1) When you speak up on some issue, people tend to immediately pigeonhole you into a drawer with a political affiliation label on it. I've been called an illuminati NWO supporter by some, a Marxist by others, roughly in the same time, just because I voiced my opinion on two different topics.

2) "Accidental moderates" are not a uniform group. I'll bet that you and I have plenty of differences of opinion - on one issue, I'll be leaning left and you'll be leaning right, on another issue, it'll be the reverse. So once someone wants to leverage group support for one of their positions, they essentially have to sign up with one of the extreme, well-defined groups, that support that particular position. And while internally, they're still an "accidental moderate", to the outside, they just look like another partisan.

I agree with your general take, but I want to expand on what I think you were getting at with (1) some. Polarizing issues is a very real phenomenon where by disagreeing on one issue your positions on other, entirely unrelated positions is assumed. I've had people assume I was pro private-prisons because of my view of tax rates, or assume I was against marijuana legalization because of my views on second amendment rights.

The problem with polarizing issues is that it acts to reinforce the tribal mentality. The truth is that most people have relatively complex opinions when they get to genuinely think about them and they almost never fit in clean political tribes. Yet it's to the benefit of a given group to try and lump-sum everyone in or out of it.

I suspect the right/left, conservative/liberal divide is more driven by the media than the voters.

People tend to believe whatever they hear.

It is so peculiar that anyone believes the United States possesses a "far left" as a force in politics. This requires one to ignore political science and ideology, not to mention the practical politics of the rest of the world, and simply place people on a continuum and draw a line near some perceived median.

I think drawing a line near the median is really the only thing that makes sense. These concepts are relative by nature. Generally, when speaking of how far to the right or left someone is in the US, I think of it as relative to other americans, not to the rest of the world, and especially not relative to some absolute concept of right and left (which falls apart quickly if you give it some thought, as norms change over time)

> These concepts are relative by nature.

Okay, the concepts are relative by nature (arguments about the two-dimensional nature of the left-right axis notwithstanding). In that case, place the concepts (or perhaps the individual ideologies that bundle the concepts) on a distribution and draw a line near the perceived median. That's the sort of thing you see in some poly-sci texts, and it makes sense.

My point was that it is a mistake to place people on a left-right distribution based on their positions and call the people in, for example, the first quartile the "far left."

> I think of it as relative to other americans, not to the rest of the world, and especially not relative to some absolute concept of right and left

The problem is, applied universally this approach of quantifying things would make it appear as though every place possesses the same diversity of political thought, whether you're talking about Europe, the United States, or North Korea. This is simply not the truth.

edit: another problem is that it can cause people whose views are much closer together than, for example, socialists vs fascists, to view each other as being on opposite ends of an ideological spectrum and combatants in a bitter ideological struggle, even though that's objectively ridiculous. Remind you of anyplace?

They are locked in a desperate struggle, though- the struggle for votes.

They're competing for the same resource. That's why they're hostile towards each other. Actual political differences are icing on the cake.

Having the tyrants fight each other in a battle they cannot win is good everyday politicking. Would you prefer they work together? It's an order of managed conflicts, not a descriptive, scientific system of unified political positions.

A lot of political science is not really relative. I mean, you can understand the Democrats' and Republicans' positions as relative to each other or even to themselves since they're both always changing, but a reactionary position is by definition more conservative than a progressive position.

Calling the median between today's US Democrats and Republicans "moderate" or "centrist" is not really indicative of any political theory.

I really think the problem is Democrat and Republican are too closely thought of as "left" and "right" or "liberal" and "conservative", however, the parties are distinct from the political theory.

Both the moderate left and right are exposed to the extremes of the other side in political echo chambers where strawmen, boogey monsters and real life crazies are presented as the 'far' left and right.

There are plenty of terrible political ideas and actions that die on the vine and they end up collated into messy echo chambers. Mentioning those terrible ideas seems too much for polite company so you have to go looking to find any.

> Whereas an accidental moderate's opinions will be scattered over a broad range, but will, like those of the intentional moderate, average to about 50.

This is only the case if left and right are equally right and wrong, which is unlikely to be the case. The average place of an accidental moderate could be anywhere, even to the left of the left or the right of right right.

You are not a moderate if you are “left of the left” or “right of the right”.

No, but his definition of "moderate" isn't anything to do with those, it's just "thinks for themselves instead of taking on a group of positions" - which can land you anywhere, potentially.

It's not about whether they are equally right and wrong, but if they are equally far from the median or average viewpoint.

And I'd say it is very likely that they are. Almost by definition, in the sense that right and left are relative terms.

That being the case, I think PG is correct that accidental moderates should tend to average in the middle. In general.

I don't think it works out that way. Thinking about politics as a single left/right continuum might make it seem like it would, but

* measuring distance to know how "far" they are is hard, so hard to say how far any given position is from the "median or average" viewpoint * hard also to measure not just the distance, but how common such a position is, which you'd need to do as well * harder still to do this over many different positions * harder still when you realise that, of course, the left/right thing is an incredibly simplified (although sometimes useful) way of looking at a complicated set of topics

For any individual "moderate" it seems very unlikely that they will end up "in the middle" even across a range of political topics.

For an aggregate of all "moderates", then it'll end up somewhere, but no reason to assume that it will be in the middle of things (even if you could determine where such a middle even was).

Sure. A more mathematical description would be "standard deviation of beliefs across numerous issues predicts thinking for oneself"

Of course, thinking for oneself might not correlate with being correct. I can think of numerous issues where those who challenge the status quo are more likely to be wrong (e.g. medicine).

That sounds entirely reasonable, but was not at all what he said in the statement I quoted.

Good thing this article has been posted.

We’ve been short of billionaires willing to share their opinions about why we should consider the incredible increase in concentrated wealth and the resurgence of monopoly business practices as “moderate” while the idea that maybe we should, you know, consider doing something to stop that, as “extreme” and “far left”.

There’s a couple tells in the article. But here’s a pretty clear one:

> Nearly all the most impressive people I know are accidental moderates

You can just map “impressive” to “rich” and “accidental moderate” to “uninterested in increased taxation or regulation in their own life despite their otherwise disparate political views” and the whole thing comes into focus pretty clearly.

There are plenty of impressive folks who aren't especially rich. And plenty of rich folks who support increased taxation or regulation, especially as a means of keeping competitors at bay and securing their own monopoly business practices.

Curious: why not take the words at face value rather than redefining them in a way that annoys you?

Isn't it possible that by posing a question that supposes the post you're questioning redefines something, you've created a case of the negative type of redefinition you're implying is happening?

In case you didn't read the top comment, the redefining was in the text and quite literal, not something that had to be supposed or inferred:

> You can just map “impressive” to “rich” and “accidental moderate” to “uninterested in increased taxation or regulation in their own life despite their otherwise disparate political views” and the whole thing comes into focus pretty clearly.

If there's no difference between interpreting or critically analysing what someone says, and redefinition, I can see where you're coming from.

I do see a difference, and the piece I quoted seems to me to be the latter: redefinition.

I say that, in part, because substituting those meanings changes the perceived message of the piece. If the rest of the essay reasonably supported that reading, I might well agree that this was interpretation, analysis, or even clarification. However, it seems as though the original comment is working backward from pg's identity to decide what opinions it's possible for him to have, in the commenter's view, and then covering the message of the essay (whatever you think of it) with one of the commenter's pg-possible opinions.

Personally, I'd prefer that commenters of this view argue against the essay directly, since I think there are a lot of things to say in that regard.

If you believe reading meaning into a text is redefinition - saying a text is trying to redefine things when the text doesn't use that precise word, is also redefinition.

"Reading meaning into a text" is pretty much the definition of redefinition. You don't "read meaning into" anything as a part of a honest analysis.

> "Reading meaning into a text" is pretty much the definition of redefinition.

What changes about the definition of "impressive" if I think someone uses that word to refer exclusively to rich people?

The definition of "impressive" does not change, it's you who believes the author didn't use the correct word, based on reasons that have nothing to do with the article.

Since neither one of us can read the author's mind, it's not a productive avenue of discussion. A text should always be taken at face value. Otherwise, we'll be no longer discussing the text, but each other's imagination.

> The definition of "impressive" does not change,

Ok so for redefinition to happen, a definition needs to change.

> it's you who believes the author didn't use the correct word, based on reasons that have nothing to do with the article.

> Since neither one of us can read the author's mind, it's not a productive avenue of discussion. A text should always be taken at face value. Otherwise, we'll be no longer discussing the text, but each other's imagination.

I'm confused now because you seem to be saying I think the author didn't use the correct word - but I never said that in my text, so you haven't taken my text at face value.

Yes let’s always take texts at face value, regardless of context.

There’s no reason to point out that your relative who says everyone in his life is conspiring against him is addicted to meth.

There is no reason to notice when an essay opposing increased mall security was written by someone who’s been convicted of shoplifting dozens of times.

And we must never point out that a person advocating for the political status quo, and against shaking up the established order, has accumulated billions of dollars in private wealth.

In those situations, it's appropriate to point out potential biases or agenda from the author, but it is not appropriate to reinterpret their words based on a mental model one has of the author.

That model is likely to be flawed and incomplete, but even worse, it makes the text subjective. Two people, reading the same text, won't agree what it said. That prevents honest discussion.

There's no such thing as an objective reading of a text. All readings are subjective.

All models are incomplete - that's why they're models.

And interestingly, CPLX seems to be doing exactly what the article talked about. PG said something, and CPLX wouldn't listen to what it actually said, because it came from one of those rich people, and they couldn't possibly have anything honest and true to say. This is CPLX not actually considering PG's opinion for what it is, but for how it fits in CPLX's already-existing framework.

I mean I think he’s being honest. He’s saying that he is looking at a system in which he’s literally amassed billions of dollars and doesn’t see any reason for sudden changes. He’s just not interested in exploring how those two facts interact.

What I am hopefully pointing out is that he could be doing a better job of trying to understand why people who are literally living in misery and despair might be seeking more radical change. The fact that some of his decisions may have directly let to the misery of some of those people makes this conversation complicated.

It’s relevant that the greatest political problem in society right now is people hoarding vast amounts of resources, and that he’s literally doing that. Of course he doesn’t have to agree that this is in fact the greatest problem today, but he could at least note that many of the people he’s supposedly analyzing do believe this.

He’s almost certainly capable of having a more nuanced discussion that recognizes his own position and perspective, but is choosing not to do that. This isn’t an academic treatise it’s a personal essay about his own subjective impressions, and he’s leaving out the most important aspect of his own lived experience.

You might even call that omission intentional

> The fact that some of his decisions may have directly let to the misery of some of those people makes this conversation complicated.

I'd like to see how you think that PG's decisions directly lead to the misery of those living in misery and despair. In the absence of a logical flow of cause and effect, I'm going to assume that you're blowing ideological smoke.

> It’s relevant that the greatest political problem in society right now is people hoarding vast amounts of resources...

I seriously question whether that's the greatest political problem in society right now.

I understand the concept of intentional moderate as he explains it, but I honestly have never met anyone who formulates their beliefs that way, who deliberately tries to find a middle point on the spectrum regardless of the specific details. Of course that could be my social circle, which is why it would be a lot more constructive if Graham had given a bit of concrete example on this. Especially given that just about everyone on any side of the political landscape will assert that they do in fact think about each issue independently. I doubt many people would say, "I believe this because it's a conservative belief and I am conservative so I must believe it". No, they will say, and believe, that they have formed their own opinions, and they just happen to align pretty much exclusively with conservative (or liberal) ideology.

I know a lot of people that proudly says that virtue is in the middle. They think that the middle is a definite entity and extremes are caused by some flaw in character or interests.

I'm usually uncomfortable talking politics because I have "radical" ideas from both sides. I believe in public healthcare and education for good reasons, mostly experience and observation. For most everything else I could be defined as libertarian. I'm also pretty skeptic of decentralized power: municipalities tend to create idiotic regulation and pork barrel politics, I'd rather have laws passed by national parliament.

So I can tell you exactly where a conversation with intentional moderates go astray, wheter they call it that to themselves or not.

I'm intrigued by how this analysis fits in with increasingly 'tribal/team politics' - do intentional moderates try to appease every team?

Thinking out loud, I think this piece misses that aspect of team-seeking behavior. I know people who will recognise a good point against their side but will strive to ignore it because it works against their sense of loyalty to the team. I increasingly believe there are relatively few people who don't want/need that sense of identity.

[edit: the article doesn't really talk about sense of belonging, which I think is inherent in a lot of this discussion]

Indeed. I think a more useful definition is someone who does not exclude either side, from the set of people whose needs politics should address. Let's call that an 'ethical moderate'.

Left and right could be thought of as differing in whose behavior they think needs to change, to improve the world: the wealthy and connected, or the poor and disconnected. The more hardline you are, the more you think that that behavior doesn't just need to change, but is reprehensible and deserving of exclusion from consideration.

So you can be an 'ethical moderate' without necessarily holding centrist opinions. It may be that this means it should be named something else, but I think it's a useful way of thinking.

Well, not holding position X merely because X is the [conservative | liberal | Democratic | Republican | left | right] position might be considered "moderate", in one sense of the word. Holding position X purely because tribe Y holds it makes you a committed (ie, not moderate) member of tribe Y.

Great example of this going around in the British press today: https://twitter.com/alexvtunzelmann/status/12103404251244584...

The small child at the top with the horn and red jacket is framed as Good, despite embarking on an illegal foxhunt at the end of which a fox will be killed with dogs. The "lawyer killing a fox with a baseball bat after it attacked his chickens" story immediately below is framed as Bad.

As the tweet says, you have to know the team loyalties for this framing to make any sense.

(The Telegraph is of course not any kind of moderate)

People can be true to a team and end up chauvinist; or they can be true to an idea and end up ideologues.

The point about extremists getting their opinions in bulk is a solid one. I'm not so sure intentional moderates is a well-defined category. It's what most "balanced" media strive for, but it's more like rubber banding in a video game race - the media have incentives to ensure an exciting, tight race, it improves their viewership, so they try to find the dead centre.

I think what PG calls intentional moderates are simply not that interested. Also, I think accidental moderates can end up fairly extreme in the end, because tribalism is ultimately a very strong draw and critical thinking is tiring.

He's conflating "think for yourself" with "averages to 50". Sure, it's silly to think one side is absolutely right, but it's also silly to think that the "average" rightness is right in the middle between the two sides (even if you grant the use of a linear model).

> but it's also silly to think that the "average" rightness is right in the middle between the two sides (even if you grant the use of a linear model).

Thank you for this. He has that post where he talks about "What you can't say" [1]. His basic premise is that it's naive to think that you'd believe the same things you do now by default if you lived in a different time period.

The posted article above seems pretty contradictory to me. Its notion of what is "moderate" is essentially anchored to the environment where a person lives. Would moderation be a virtue in an authoritarian country?

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

It never occurred to me that people would tailor their political views to try and be "moderate". The whole idea feels kind of dirty to me, your political views should be your honest opinion.

I don’t know that I’d call myself a moderate, but my honest opinion is that many strongly held views disturb me precisely because they tend to be so strongly held by those who seem to hold them, rather than being wrong in themselves, or because they require their adherents to brook no opposition. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, and I believe that people who say they have all the answers can safely be assumed to be wrong about a great many things, and strong political ideologies are, in essence, claims to have all the answers.

I’m open to a lot of ideas, and I’d be perfectly happy to experiment with policies that are way outside the Overton window, but I think what feels dirty to me is holding political opinions so strongly that it makes our fellow humans the bad guys.

> I’d be perfectly happy to experiment with policies that are way outside the Overton window

I am curious, what are some examples?

Not OP, but as a thought experiment, I tried to think of some things that are un-discussable because of one side or the other.

Maybe universal healthcare, completely gov't paid? That's socialism to the right -- can't try that.

On the other side, maybe ending hate crime legislation? Or striking down Roe v. Wade, and letting each state be their own experimental ground? Ending minimum wage?

A party of the right nationalising a business, considering it, talking openly about it. It was the UK Conservative party who nationalised Rolls Royce, almost immediately sold off cars, and kept Aero Engines a while. Otherwise they'd no longer exist as the RB211 engine had broken them.

Larger government. State ownership does not guarantee incompetent or inefficient. The right used to believe in many of the things that have become unthinkable. The Tories also wanted to improve services, built social housing, added libraries and social care. Pre war UK used to permit the various cities around the UK to form municipal corporations. They were used for power generation, water, rail and tramways among other things, and mostly worked very well indeed -- with the city getting service and income, but being quite hands off from the modern perception of centralised control. See also the various towns and cities that have put in their own broadband, far better than the private sector offer, in more recent years...

Clean Air Act UK was brought in by the Conservatives in 1956. The right used to be much more amenable to environmental and health regulation. Well regulation in general. Now they avoid, neuter and talk down regulation, and slim down the bodies who once oversaw said regulation.

Specific, I think, to the UK, the astonishing degree of centralisation brought in since 1974. Nearly all of it under the Tories. Yet Labour is perceived as the party of state control. Neither party talks of giving real power back to the regions and cities, they both mostly talk against it.

There's other examples on the left, and probably similar examples the other side of the Atlantic.

People tailor their political views to fit the groups preferences on either the right or left, so why not in the middle? It's a matter of wanting to please people and fit in, either within their political tribe or, for "intentional moderates", it's a matter of wanting to fit in everywhere, which is pretty futile unless you say different things to different people.

I can imagine earnest reasons for being intentionally moderate. Wanting to be a mediator, trying to fight back against extremism and partisanship from both sides.

> For some reason the far right tend to ignore moderates rather than despise them as backsliders. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it means that the far right is less ideological than the far left. Or perhaps that they are more confident, or more resigned, or simply more disorganized. I just don't know.

This is a typical complaint by the so called moderates who feel unappreciated by the left (whatever that is). But I yet to see an example of the far left who has any meaningful policy impact. All I see is a lot of whining about college campuses. Perhaps the far left in the US political landscape is Bernie who by most measures would be a moderate in other industrial nations. I don't know, but I have a hard time following what PG is trying to say here.

It really is a bizarre setup, I think it's mostly generated by the reality-distorting effect of the ubiquitous "far-right opinion" programming on radio and Fox News and now online. The far left is supposedly in control of everything despite only controlling a handful of seats of power in the past century.

It's a common trope, e.g. a few years ago the GOP argued it couldn't pass any laws (despite controlling the Executive, Judiciary, & both chambers of Congress) because of the obstruction of the left. Or see various conspiracies that involve a weak, stupid, inept, and foolish government conducting a vast, brilliant, collaborative coverup of the most sophisticated technology on earth.

The far left in the United States mostly doesn't exist.

The corporatist center-left has given up on meaningful economic policy change and mostly just panders on abortion, gay marriage, and gender identity.

Yeah, what left in the US? They have no idea what "left" is...

The "extreme" left in the US system maps (policy-wise) almost exactly to center-right in most other western democracies. Talking about viable politicians not twitter creatures by the way.

This was true 10 years ago, but the US finally has a few genuinely left politicians (firmly center-left outside the US), and many European democracies drifted to the right (liberals to differentiate from 15 years of neoliberal center-left parties, center-right to head off the far right).

Er, how's that? To name some examples, many other western democracies compared to the US have the following set of policies, which would make for a far-right policy platform in the US:

* More restrictions on abortion

* Lower corporate taxes

* No birthright citizenship for children of foreigners

* School vouchers

* Mandatory military service

* Laws outlawing face coverings

* Less business regulation than the US

The American conservative think tank Heritage Foundation publishes an Index of Economic Freedom, which compares economic policies by country. The United States is ranked 12th, and is thus considered less economically conservative by economic conservatives than New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Ireland, the UK, Canada, and Iceland. Within one point of the United States there are also the Netherlands, Denmark, Estonia, Georgia, and Luxembourg. (https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking/)

Sadly this is true. A big pillar of the left politics is labor unions and profit sharing, which is totally absent in the US discourse. Instead, we just hear about safe spaces and bathrooms.

> Accidental moderates end up in the middle, on average, because they make up their own minds about each question, and the far right and far left are roughly equally wrong.

I don't think I can take seriously an essay that so flatly and flippantly claims this as fact.

It seems kind of a reductionist view of political association.

A multi-dimensional (at least 2 axis) model [1] would probably be more enlightening in terms of why high profile personalities view things that seem "accidentally moderate".

Example: Sanders disagreed with Beto's gun buyback citing both the constitutionality and the fact that the only way to round up the guns would be invasive police searches which could lead to a despotic act, despite the potential for reduced gun violence. This viewpoint is both shared by hard left and hard right.

[1] https://www.politicalcompass.org

I know that the dictum to keep politics off of HN has been a dead letter for some time- especially since tech has become overtly non-apolitical in the last few years- but it's still funny to see pg himself breaking that rule.

How is he breaking it?

This is an essay on politics.

It goes to show that people in tech are acknowledging more that the industry is not apolitical and has a very real social and political effect on the world at large, and are so dropping the pretense of lacking political interest. That and like the rest of the world, the tech industry has become increasingly politically polarized over the last half decade.

To be fair to PG, perhaps, someone else shared his post on HN so he didn't break any rules. On a different note, I guess in the age of Facebook, it's not possible for tech to remain silent on politics whether we like it or not.

This is exactly the reason I asked the question. PG didn't post this on HN.

Agreed! But I believe the admins are ignoring their own rules by allowing the link to remain on the front page.

I think you have conflated PGs blog with HN. They are firmly separate entities

The original post was edited completely to make my previous post read as nonsense

I would argue that politics is ok to talk about if you are talking about in in the meta sense, as he is.

If people were all "accidental moderates," there would be no need to keep politics off HN. The problem is that people pick one of two tribes, and discussions get ugly. If people weren't tribal like that, less of a problem, it's just a bunch of people with opinions all over the place.

All politics is meta.

Eking out a decision from the great power jumble requires self-awareness about the forces that gyre and gimble therein.

Not all politics is tribal.

PG explicitly establishes two different cohorts, each with its own way of thinking, from the outset. His argument reifies tribalism.

"all politics is meta"

That doesn't make sense, or you just don't understand my usage

You're saying talking about politics is somehow different than talking about issues. Your "usage" creates this magical escape route where you somehow consider it apolitical (or more acceptable) to comment on political discourse itself. I disagree.

Talking about issues is inherently a conversation about politics itself, insofar as the power dynamics involved in making decisions don't magically disappear when we don our academic or self-referential hats. And talking about politics inherently touches the base issues that underpin the discussion, otherwise there is no objective way to judge right and wrong, strong and weak.

All politics satisfies both conditions. All politics is about issues, and all politics is meta.

In other words, your "usage" is not really meaningful.

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

> anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity

The article is more about phycology than politics, IMO.

'pg posted on his own site and did not submit it here. What someone posts on their own site is clearly up to them, and definitely not bound by another site’s discussion guidelines.

> the far right and far left are roughly equally wrong

Graham's sleights of hand used to be better hidden.

The "far left" and "far right" are not fixed points in ideological space (even within a single country).

I agree and I would go even further.

Ideas don't exist in continuous space.

What annoys me most about this kind of position that I haven't seen addressed enough is the assumption that politics is some kind of grocery basket of personal taste where positions on issues are all independent opinions.

Anyone who thinks about politics seriously and argues politics with people needs to base their opinions on something besides personal preference. This means trying to develop moral and logical principles and goals on which to base positions. When people do this, opinions on many topics will be highly correlated.

PG mentions in footnote 2 that " the far right tend to ignore moderates rather than despise them as backsliders. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it means that the far right is less ideological than the far left. Or perhaps that they are more confident, or more resigned, or simply more disorganized"

This is not the case. The far-right police doctrinal purity very well, actually. They have built multiple pipelines for taking ideas that were once extreme and moving them to the moderates, who they then push to adopt these ideas lest the be called out as "Republican in name only (RINO)" or whatever the du jour insults are.

I don't know about the current state of things, but the far right used bank robberies to finance operations across multiple fronts back in the 90's. They used the proceeds to fund groups in different regions.

The far right is dangerous in a way that "the left" hasn't been since the 1960's.

I think its telling that PG's really concerned with ideologies that are a threat to his financial/class interests, thereby validating a point maid be leftist critiques of wealthy people like PG. So, way to prove their point, PG-man.

The history of the far right is really interesting and I would recommend it as a field of reading for anyone interested in American history.

Group thinking should of course always be questioned, but I do not believe it is useful to equate any form of moderation with cowardice. Especially in the modern political climate.

http://www.thirteenvirtues.com/ https://www.quotes.net/mquote/770097

Cunning is more like it. Playing both sides against the middle.

There is some great theory around moderation which goes far beyond this piece. David Lakoff's book "Don't Think of an Elephant" is a classic.

Moderation is rarely a choice. There's an old expression, "The only thing in the middle of the road is roadkill." It's not saying that moderates are extinct or undesirable. Rather, left and right political views mostly come from a history of life experiences that drives people either towards empathy for strangers or towards fear of strangers. The combination of these worldviews and the human desire for having a community or clan drives people into parties in opposition to each other.

For most moderates, their experiences instead drive them to prefer either worldview depending upon which issue is being considered. Their experiences are not totally based on seeking safety or showing empathy. They are not middle of the road on most issues, but have a diverse set of opinions. Their opinions are diverse enough to not feel fully accepted into either party and to adjust their own views into alignment, unless their country has a middle party. This seems to be what Graham calls deliberate moderates.

There are also moderates who become moderate because nuance is important to smart policy. Fully left or right ideas both tend to overshoot evidence-based decision-making. I believe this is what Graham refers to as accidental moderates. However, the roadkill metaphor still applies because even accidental moderates still have life experiences that lead them to a worldview as well as the human desire to belong to a group. Even those who apply past policy-based evidence to develop a nuanced view will have a human desire to try to fit themselves somewhere into the partisan political landscape of their environment. It's not easy being the odd one who doesn't fit.

Consider https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin... for another take on political centrism/general tribalism. A bit (err, quite a lot) lengthier but it gets to some interesting ideas about the inevitability of tribes. Stephenson's Seveneves also comes to mind as a book-long meditation on the same topic.

There is a significant qualitative difference between ideologues (left or right) and, to use Graham's terminology, 'accidental moderates' or the 'intentional' ones.

Ideologues assume that there is a single version / source of the truth whether it is a religious text, or a secular one (Marx, Hayek, etc). 'Intentional moderates' are not monist (as are idealogues), but to the contrary triangulate. If anything, intentional moderates reject the notion that there is an objective position.

Accidental moderates - idealised - are actually just being reasonable and weighing different considerations, thus arriving at a considered position.

Intentional moderates may not necessarily be cowards. To take an exampe: most people are ignorant of economics and so their position on, say, the interest rate is not an informed one.

Intentional moderates use a centrist heuristic in the belief that the reasonable answer is somewhere between the two extremes. There is nothing wrong with this; one cannot expect voters to be experts or even well informed on all the posible issues of government.

It just can't be the case that this kind of content, which would never ordinarily survive on the front page if written by someone else, has a place here simply because Paul Graham wrote it. I say this as a moderate, of the accidental variety, myself! But if this would get shot down if it appeared in The Atlantic or The New Republic --- and it would, and should --- it shouldn't get a pass just because Harj Taggar and Patrick Collison reviewed it.

strong agree.

This isn't a nuanced or deeply explored post on the topic of moderates. Same as the previous post that was on here this week or last. Name brand carries a lot.

The fact that the argument is not complex does not mean it is not deeply explored.

Yeah. The fact that it is not deeply explored does, though.

The PG quote that leads the essay on the topic of PG's extra-curricular rangings ("Dabblers and Blowhards") seems apposite:

'I actually worry a lot that as I get "popular" I'll be able to get away with saying stupider stuff than I would have dared say before. This sort of thing happens to a lot of people, and I would really like to avoid it'

https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

Edit: the essay itself seems... not very perceptive. Notably, putting things on a continuum between far left and far right and imagining that everything is somehow a process of picking out options on this continuum seems amazingly reductive.

Further, the dig on "intentional moderates" also seems to miss the point that many intentional moderates might well be seeking to function politically - so picking out moderate positions in the range of public opinion might be a case of keeping your powder dry and being effective, not compulsively trying to be a moderate because it's nifty. This was very much the case with the way Obama analyzed his own politics (turning the huge ship, very slowly). Not saying I agree with that but the assessment of "intentional moderates" really feels like a cartoon.

I want to be careful not to criticize the post on its own terms. Paul Graham should totally write things like this on his own site! It sucks having to be careful about what you because of what other people will do with it, and the weird debates you'll be forced into as a result.

I'm just saying, to the extent this post is political, it's political in a totally routine way that doesn't clear the "interestingness" bar for this site, other than that Paul Graham wrote it. It doesn't belong on the HN front page.

I don't understand this. if you don't want people to engage with your ideas then don't publish them; there's a very well known medium for this kind of expression/exercise called a private journal. the obviousness of this fact proves that published ideas are intended to be engaged with.

Clearly, posting something to your own site isn't by itself a request to start a debate about it on Hacker News.

Sure okay but you do expect someone somewhere to debate you on it. That the forum ends up being hackernews isn't really significant to me visavis your opinion that some published writing could be free from debate.

> It sucks having to be careful about what you because of what other people will do with it, and the weird debates you'll be forced into as a result.

I have just the tiniest sliver of Paul Graham's innate valence with HN, but it's enough to make me pretty empathetic about this problem: there is a pretty strong chance that if I blog something relatively superficial (just because it's on my mind), someone will submit it here. A throwaway I wrote about Javascript Cryptography has been on the front page here something like 5 times, and I've felt like I had to apologize for it each time. It is not a great feeling, and I "blog" less than I'd like to as a result, and, again, I'm not Paul Graham, where literally the simplest thing I could possibly blog about politics ("there is a difference between both-sidesism and moderation") generates a huge front-page thread.

i'm not being obtuse but why don't you simply unpublish the post? whatever the reason is (whatever the tangible/intangible benefits conferred upon you for having it remain up) obligates you in direct proportion.

i write math notes for myself that i only publish to a public github repo. the repo is public because it lends me some credibility to have it on display that i study math. if there's an error in them and someone chances upon them and internalizes that error then i am (to a small extent) culpable.

I don't own the post anymore and can't unpublish it. But even if I could: it's annoying that I can't just post my shitty first drafts of things to some random website and not have them get periodically featured on a huge, busy community. That's what blogs are for. I have a backlog of blog posts, about a dozen entries long, none of which are published because I don't feel prepared to defend them here. I guess you can say "good, you have a personal journal". I don't feel great about that.

(And, for the nth time, I have just a teeny tiny sample of the problem Paul Graham has! It's not like what I write is all that popular. Paul Graham has a rabid fan base here.)

i'm giving you the benefit of the doubt since you generally style yourself as voice of reason on hn.

that being said you're not addressing my challenge, that this thing

>That's what blogs are for.

isn't actually the case.

take for example your characterization of this kind of miscellany

>shitty first drafts of things

can you name another medium/form/forum where authors publish "shitty first drafts"? why is blogging different? because it is ephemeral and has 0 mass by virtue of being digital?

on the contrary take something like twitter, for example, and compare its relative weight, ephemerality, inchoateness to your blog posts; tweets are very much fair game for all any kind of engagement.

Sure: Twitter, and Hacker News comments. Two places I write a lot (one of which Paul Graham uses as well). What's annoying is that putting something in a better medium --- blog posts are better than both Twitter and HN comments for a number of reasons --- they're elevated in this weird way to the front page of HN.

>they're elevated in this weird way to the front page of HN

you could also publish anonymously. you have a choice. so does he.

Did you just take me to task for not directly responding to a point you made earlier and then, after I took the time to generate that response for you, pretend that hadn't happened at all? Are you conversing with me or just using me as an opportunity to riff for the thread? I doubt anyone's really reading this far down other than you and I.

no?

here's your partial response

>I don't own the post anymore and can't unpublish it. But even if I could: it's annoying that I can't just post my shitty first drafts of things to some random website and not have them get periodically featured on a huge, busy community. That's what blogs are for.

the first sentence does directly address it (choice) wrt to you and your blog (not pg's which he owns).

but the last sentence

>That's what blogs are for.

even according to you

>But even if I could

is the crux of what's at issue. and this you have not addressed anywhere that i can see

When you have a foundational role in hacker news and post a lengthy exposition of your views on a continually contentious topic I would think a reasonable individual would expect engagement. Most importantly the individual themselves is more than capable of making that concept clear himself if he so chooses. We don't need to speak up for him.

Empathy for Paul Graham's predicament is the topic of this branch of the subthread, but it wasn't the point I made at the top of the thread, which is that regardless of whether Graham wants this post on the front page of HN, it doesn't belong here.

But whether or not it belongs here is just your opinion. People have reposted plenty of stuff from your site here that I thought “doesn’t clear the bar”, but everyone else disagreed. And while you are no Paul Graham, you’re a big enough member of the community to get support/upvotes just because of your name.

Very few people posting things publicly request people to start a debate about it.

Is your issue more that pg is a public enough figure that he can't not get attention for things he posts? Or is it that the attention he gets is likely to occur in a forum he views regularly and has an attachment to?

Lots of similar thinkpieces get posted on HN every day that people have all sorts of debates about without being invited to do so. And most figures with the wealth and visibility of pg can't really publicly post things without a group somewhere arguing over its content. A downside of having that level of fame I suppose.

> Paul Graham should totally write things like this on his own site!

He sure can, but having a platform and competence in one area doesn't mean your skill applies to another. This whole article is a fascinating example of the Dunning–Kruger effect.

The idea, of two kinds of moderates is interesting. The framing is, at best weak and at worst very flawed, shallow and a gross oversimplification.

The shots at the left, at marxists, are palatable. At no point does this article take a genuinely "moderate" stance on the current political climate. Rather it takes an insidious right leaning view.

This comment is exactly what I mean about the post being off-topic for the site.

To quote the article:

> and the far right and far left are roughly equally wrong.

So everyone is right some of the time?

> Moderates are sometimes derided as cowards, particularly by the extreme left.

I can name half a dozen right leaning issues that would get me thrown out of a gathering if I expressed my views, maybe even threatened with physical harm.

> If I knew a ... people in the entertainment business, ... Being on the far left or far right doesn't affect how ... how well you sing.

Is followed up with...

> You could be mindlessly doctrinaire in your politics and still be a good mathematician. In the 20th century, a lot of very smart people were Marxists — just no one who was smart about the subjects Marxism involves.

Holly crap this is the most ignorant thing I have read in a long time. There was large attraction to Marxism after the Great Depression. Not only did smart people take it up but droves of them in the "entertainment" industry. Is he completely unaware of the House Unamerican Activities Committee and the blacklisting?

> It's possible in theory for one side to be entirely right and the other to be entirely wrong. Indeed, ideologues must always believe this is the case. But historically it rarely has been.

Both extremes have been bad "historically" but it ignores the common theme of totalitarianism as an overriding ideology.

> For some reason the far right tend to ignore moderates rather than despise them as backsliders. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it means that the far right is less ideological than the far left.

Again, House Un-American Activities Committee ... And just about every issue the US far right champions today. In fact the far right base could be grouped into a few "single issue items" (guns, taxes, abortion)

> But if the ideas you use in your work intersect with the politics of your time, you have two choices: be an accidental moderate, or be mediocre.

This whole article is mediocre, it is a right leaning assessment and bent on politics. Shades of Ben Carson, pyramids as grain storage.

> Rather it takes an insidious right leaning view

I mean, if you want to talk about partisan accusations...

Just because someone doesn't buy into your views doesn't mean they're secretly scheming to reinforce the other side. Someone can be the same side of the aisle as you _and also_ still disagree with you.

I got 2 angles on this essay:

1) As far as I am concerned, it just shows PG's colors where he stands on the spectrum, and that is: Useful on its own. It also appears to refute its own point.

2) The accidental moderate serves a different purpose: it diffuses the left vs right as being black and white set in stone. The worst thing in a political discussion is saying "you are X on political spectrum" (or any name calling) and ignore whatever the other person has to say. It is akin to being Republican or Democrat (or any other 2 political parties) without considering the candidates or viewpoints they expressed.

That being said before I opened the essay I expected it to be about the act of (self-)moderation, so I was disappointed.

There are two kinds of people in the world. Nuanced people that I personally know, and some strawman that I just made up.

I agree the content is not terribly profound.

> I say this as a moderate, of the accidental variety, myself!

I had to laugh. As you are a reasonably prolific contributor here, I've seen dozens if not hundreds of your comments. It's gotten to the point I can reliably tell when it's a tptacek comment before I even read the byline. And it's not because you have stances on both sides of the political aisle.

Paul Graham isn't 50% of the way between American Democrat and American Republican either; he's using "moderate" in an idiosyncratically modern American way. The fact that we'd have to hash this out on the thread is just another good illustration of why this post doesn't belong here.

Do you know where PG stands in the Nolan diagram?

IMO - having been around these parts for some time - PG is fairly centrist on social justice re non-class-based identities, and extremely individualist, to the point of injustice blindness, on economics. You'd almost have to be, to be a VC and sleep at night.

Well let's not conflate front-page and "getting shot-down." Something can be both.

Also, one reason this is getting shot down less hard than the atlantic is that it's a simple point being made in <60 seconds of reading. The atlantic would take >10 pages to do so.

This thought would be even more viable as a tweet.

The opposite is true: a 10 page inquiry into what it means to be a moderate with citations and sources might not get voted up, but it'd clear the on-topic bar; that's the kind of "intellectually interesting" stuff that is the reason the site doesn't simply ban politics altogether.

Much more importantly though is what the content does to/with the community. Unless there's something truly remarkable about it, political content on HN generates terrible threads. Unlike embedded JIT compilers or linear algebra books, virtually everybody on HN can summon a strong opinion about routine political content, and a huge fraction of those opinions will piss someone else off. It's not a new phenomenon; it's why "politics and religion" is a cliche about what's out of bounds for civilized conversation.

Some political content is worth the thread drama. But this obviously doesn't clear that bar (and, again, I'm not suggesting Paul Graham thinks it does; he didn't submit it).

Why not?

If the Atlantic is so damn smart, why don't I give a shit about their forum? And why don't you?

Maybe PG's essays wouldn't survive on the front page (all glory be to the masses who bestow their wisdom on us by voting!) if they were written by someone else. But they weren't written by someone else.

"Guys! You guys are voting all wrong!" feels lame. Sorry?

You've been here since 2010 and know the answer to your own question.

Obviously Paul Graham's essays have been hugely influential here, and it's going to be front-page news on HN whenever he publishes a new one, even if it's not world-shaking in content. I really don't see why this should be surprising at all, or why this deserves a comment complaining about it. Some things are notable to a certain audience just because of who wrote them, and that's just the way it is.

Why it should? How that wouldn't be censorship? and if so how you justify it?

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

The burden on you is to explain why it would be “censorship,” a word with a specific meaning that does not have any relevance in this context.

Are you saying this post is being artificially maintained on the front page by moderator intervention?

edit: sincere q, I have no idea how these things are handled

No.

In that case, in my defense, I don’t have the option of downvoting anything, even comments! So I’d do my part but I don’t have that tool

I think it is interesting because it's presenting a dichotomy which to me is at least a new nugget of thought. As others have pointed out, it's relatively shallow but that by itself isn't inherently bad. I do have bias towards PG, but I also like to think that if this was written in WaPo or The Atlantic that I'd also still give it a fair shot (but, humans are also pretty bad at bias).

I agree but I differ. The substance is light, sure. But I think if people vote it here then it merits being here.

There are many posts that get on the front page which have even less merit from your POV. Posts about health or about management, many of the above with arguably unsubstantiated titles. If those make it here and get discussed I don’t see why this one deserves an exceptional consideration.

I can hardly call myself left or right or moderate or up or down or whatever, because my ideas are difference from other people's ideas (although some are same, they aren't what can be simply called as left/right and so on). Left/right is not describing all of the issues anyways, I think, and many things are just not as simple as one way or other, anyways. Even then, some people whose ideas may be generally called left/right may not agree with everything anyways.

But I suppose they may be correct that such independent ideas may be considered as moderates by these measurements, and may also be correct that a lot of people hate them for it.

They say that on a scale from 0 to 100 your opinion might be any number, on average 50 but may be anything. I think that is not good enough because your ideas might not match the range like that so well, I think.

> and the far right and far left are roughly equally wrong.

This is a flat assertion with no evidential backing whatsoever solely meant to make the sayer feel better about not challenging incorrect beliefs.

If history is a guide, the middle are very rarely on the correct side of a divisive issue when all the dust settles.

> Intentional moderates are similar to those on the far left and the far right in that their opinions are, in a sense, not their own. The defining quality of an ideologue, whether on the left or the right, is to acquire one's opinions in bulk.

Well, no, not at all. People on the left and on the right tend to have a worldview and attitude that is the foundation of their stances on issues. It is not a coincidence that support for welfare spending, tolerance of theft, illegal immigration, fat acceptance, and decrying of objective standards in education all come from the same side.

Why do the policy packages vary so much from country to country?

They don't. Edit: Not in the sense that they're scrambled up. Party lines can be drawn differently, specific policies can be different. In the same sense, policies differ at different times in history, too. Edit II: I note your question presumes there are universal far right and far left attractors -- that's not anything I meant to imply.

Ideologies are more multipolar than that.

Oh I'm well aware :-)

It'd be a stretch to say political opinions are for the most part a result of internal reasoning and self-formed world view, rather than indoctrination by a social group that suffers hard from confirmation bias. People are, overall, NOT good at thinking critically, and tend to accept the paradigm to which they have to most exposure. They tend not to reach outside of their bubble for clues about what could be wrong with their paradigm. It's more work.

It's not reasoning, it's basic values. People are made differently. That's why there are political differences between men and women, weightlifters and runners, straight men and gays, and dynamic typing and static typing fans. And you can trace the common reasoning in the baskets of political views. This isn't like some difference between communists and people who would be communists if it weren't for Econ 101. It's differences in regard to questions like whether you're willing to accept that some people will have a worse lot in life. And is moderation in the pursuit of justice a virtue or not?

The moderates are the people whose opinions are most formed from indoctrination.

Basic values come from the world around you, from your parents, from everyone around you that you interact with as you grow up. You aren't born a runner. Kids are formed into people. Most often they turn into people with similar basic values and in turn, political opinions. There are a lot of ways values can be applied. It's only for for the most part that people don't deviate in their application because they aren't thinking that hard, just imitating others and being a conduit for preformed ideas.

Basic values are also heritable and founded in biology, as shown in twin studies and observations that other species have a sense of fairness.

I'd say we're both right to the extent that nature and nurture both play a role.

I got a bit confused by the terms, but it just landed. The intentional moderate has the intention to be moderate on all issues whereas the accidental ends up in a the center when you consider the whole range of issues.

Somewhere in there maybe is a different idea about 'tolerance'. The first might have a 'Live and let live'-position. The other actually believes plurality of lifestyles is a good thing. Somewhere along those lines ;)

Ah yes, the old "No one thinks for themselves except people like me" argument.

> openly being an accidental moderate requires the most courage of all

If he thinks that having middle-of-the-road opinions requires the most courage of them all, he has had an extraordinarily easily life in which he is used to be hailed as brilliant. It seems as though due to his comfortable position in life he has never faced any significant opposition to anything he's said, anything he's done, or anything he is.

I might be wrong, and I respect the opinions of "accidental moderates" who are acting in good faith, but I cannot imagine how you'd come to the conclusion that holding moderate viewpoints requires any real courage at all.

> Nearly all the most impressive people I know are accidental moderates

"I am only impressed with people exactly like me."

Someone needs to write a similar pithy thinkpiece about how people who experience a lot of success should stick to what they know and not assume it gives them valid insight into other parts of life.

I always assume most people hold moderate viewpoints and the people with extreme viewpoints just tend to be the loudest. At least that seems to be the case with most people I meet anyway.

And people with extreme viewpoints usually feel that way because they have some very strong belief system, like the idea that human life should take precedence over private property, or the idea that taxation is theft. If you start with one of those assumptions, then it pushes you pretty strongly to one pole or another.

Often times people like that do think for themselves. They just think differently than you do.

But the social pressure from the vocal minorities - especially when amplified by social media - pushes other people towards those extremes out of fear of being ostracized.

I've generally found most people don't generally care at all until they or someone they care about is impacted, then their care is largely dictated by the nature of the impact with existing political views only being partially factored in. One reason why getting to know members of a minority group can stop a person from being inherently biased against that group.

More important than how loud people are or what viewpoints they publicly claim to have is how they vote. Take a look at who has been getting elected to congress in the US recently: https://xkcd.com/1127/

Now, more than ever in our lifetimes, a lower percentage of congress is moderate. Center-right Republicans (the conservative party) have almost vanished. This isn't about a lack of choice either, because we've seen a bunch of long time incumbent congressmen lose to to people further from the center, like when Republican Bob Bennett finished 3rd in a Utah primary election to 2 far right tea party candidates.

If most people held moderate viewpoints, like you assume, then congress would be getting more moderate, no?

My takeaway from this comment is that you didn't really read what he wrote. An accidental moderate, by his definition, could hold zero moderate opinions. E.g. it is possible all of their opinions are 0 or 100 on a left/right spectrum. It requires courage because they cannot join any tribe, because enough of those opinions would be heretical to a given tribe to prevent acceptance.

Tons of people out there "can't join any tribe" because their belief systems are sufficiently different than those of people around them, and the way this is written suggests that it's almost a novel idea to Paul Graham.

Has anyone cornered him and beaten him up for having moderate beliefs?

And having beliefs across the political spectrum hardly makes him novel. I'm probably a classic left leaning liberal. I'm in favor of universal healthcare. But I don't think gun control will solve all our problems, I'm okay with lower corporate taxes, but believe in greater wealth distribution. I think identity politics has gone too far. But I refuse to vote for Republicans because to an elect a Republican means to give more power to their voting bloc, and I don't like their policies.

Do I need to invent a special term for myself? No. I'm a complicated individual. Everyone else is one, too. It's easy to assume you're the only one thinking for yourself, but it's more likely that you just fail to understand others are as complicated as you are.

Also, I do believe he was implying that while his beliefs fall across the spectrum, they generally tend towards the center.

> And having beliefs across the political spectrum hardly makes him novel.

Clearly you're not on Twitter.

Every day I see people deriding moderates for being moderates. So this post is an attempt to de-conflate people who don't subscribe to one of the parties and people who just want to be as inoffensive as possible.

> Has anyone cornered him and beaten him up for having moderate beliefs?

Going again to the 'not actually reading the article' point, he has sneakily defined a moderate as someone potentially only holding extremest beliefs and probably as likely to be beaten up as anyone else.

An extremist moderate, say.

> I'm in favor of ... but I refuse to vote for Republicans

There are good and bad people in every part of the spectrum. If you think only the Republicans are dangerous to elect you are either talking about the very-short-term of one election cycle or you are not thinking for yourself.

A good check of if you are thinking for yourself is not feeling comfortable accepting or rejecting either side, or becoming almost a single issue voter (because nobody has time to be across more than one or two issues).

I have a Republican in my district who I quite like but cannot vote for because congresspeople aren't able to vote for themselves, but with the rest of their party. The Republican party consistently votes against, and does damage to, many things I hold dear, so voting democrat is the lesser evil unless the democratic candidate is corrupt or inept.

> There are good and bad people in every part of the spectrum. If you think only the Republicans are dangerous to elect you are either talking about the very-short-term of one election cycle or you are not thinking for yourself.

You see, that's funny because having read the article, the above nicely nails the views an extreme moderate would hold.

If you don't vote mostly with the rest of the republicans you can't really be one. For one you will lose the financial support of the republican machine and for two you will lose primaries to your more "right" thinking brethren.

The Republican party as a block

- Wants to turn immigration from a constant source of innovation and vitality that has benefited our nation to a dead highway with a gulag for brown people and their children that want to live here so bad they are willing to sneak in even after the white people told them they weren't wanted.

- Wants to do nothing about the environmental impact of human beings because its more profitable to do nothing right up until its disastrous. Basically fuck the grand kids I want to be rich now.

- Wants to do nothing about health care until it becomes a rolling disaster for the bottom 50% while insuring that the reliably right voting blue hairs are taken care of.

None of these are inherently liberal or conservative positions. The fact that its framed as such is a testament to the truly bizarre world we inhabit. In the context of the extremist positions taken by the current Republican party the only safe bet is to decrease their power.

> Wants to turn immigration from a constant source of innovation and vitality that has benefited our nation to a dead highway with a gulag for brown people and their children that want to live here so bad they are willing to sneak in even after the white people told them they weren't wanted.

But pointing out the obvious - that clearly isn't a conclusion you've come to by listening to Republicans. For example, if you look at Republican propaganda [0] they agree that immigration is a valuable source of potential innovation and vitality - the bit about prioritising high skill migrants.

That isn't an 'I've seriously thought about their position and weighed up what they said and then decided I don't like the platform' style opinion. It is a 'I've listened carefully to my people and know their talking points' style opinion. It would be a struggle to label it as moderate in any sense of the word.

[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-do...

>Has anyone cornered him and beaten him up for having moderate beliefs?

The question would be has anyone beaten him up for having conservative or liberal beliefs when in a group who has the opposite.

But then I wonder about this judgment in general. How political groups are generally getting beaten up for their political opinions. Back in my college days I use to try supporting some really out there views as experiments in taking human stances to their natural conclusions, and while I did have a few professors sit me down and have a talk to determine if I was being serious, I was never beaten up for any of them. The entire metric of if people use physical violence against you is partially dependent upon a person's ability to know when they are crossing a line or not, much like how I stopped this behavior after college because it would get me fired.

>Do I need to invent a special term for myself? No. yes. Unless you don't want to ever convince anyone of any of your views.

You haven't understood the "intentional moderate". Contrarianism is a shortcut to the respect owed to skeptics. The purpose of the intentional moderate is to portray themselves as just like you: "a complicated individual". But unlike you they really aren't. Its a ruse. There is no substantive reason for their disagreements such as "I don't like their policies."

There's enough of this out there that if you self describe as "moderate", people might be classifying you as an affable idiot with no real views. Personally I like the more modern term "radical centerist".

I think in the context of the current presidential race, Amy Klobuchar could be closest to described as an intentional moderate. Namely someone who focuses on simply just changing laws at the cost of any sort of deeper ideological belief, at least with regards to how she frames her view point rather than by defending her proposals within their own merit she focuses on the compromise aspect.

Biden on the other hand is clearly a traditional liberal, not a social democrat, socialist, or progressive. At the same time, George H.W. Bush, or even Mitt Romney, are also a liberals in the same sense, with both politicians being pulled in different directions because of where their party currently stands. This sort of view point isn't moderate in any sense of the word, a liberal, who believes in free markets and has a globalist world view is a unified political theory for how things should be done.

However, a person who is an accidental moderate themselves, who never developed their own or latched onto any unified broad political theory, would tend to support candidates like the above because the American political system tends towards liberal capitalism as being the political center.

I don't think intentional moderates ever run in any party. The point is to give off an impression not to do actual work. At worst some politicians understand "talk less, smile more, don't let them know what you're against or what you're for". I guess you could call this "superficial intentional moderation".

Agreed. People with extreme viewpoints (in either direction, whether you want to abolish private property or create a white ethno-state) face a lot of social sanction -- and very often financial penalties -- from the vast majority of people who just want to keep propping this status quo. Holding onto those extreme views risks losing a lot more than the extremely well-represented and appreciated middle.

As for a pithy thinkpiece about successful people writing outside their expertise, someone already did, nearly 15 years ago...

https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

Excellent reply, thank you for writing it, and for bringing more light to Maciej.

>If he thinks that having middle-of-the-road opinions requires the most courage of them all, he has had an extraordinarily easily life in which he is used to be hailed as brilliant. It seems as though due to his comfortable position in life he has never faced any significant opposition to anything he's said, anything he's done, or anything he is.

When you break this down into social groups, being moderate generally results in a person being able to pass in multiple groups if they are willing to be quiet and tolerate it, but not being able to join in any groups. And as for that passing, that holds true of most people in most groups. It is the lack of having a group to belong too that is harder than having such a group.

I guess the question then remains as to why such people don't form their own group, but I think that ends up being that they are as incompatible with someone else who is incompatible with established groups as they are incompatible with established groups.

Think of it this way. Imagine people's opinions super simplified into an array of 3 dozen boolean values, each representing one of the 3 dozen most charged political issues (even if it isn't charged for most people if it is really charged for some people it can average out as being charged enough to count). Arbitrarily pick 0 or 1 to represent one of the two party views within the US (places with multiple parties are harder to represent, but they may also have far less of this problem to begin with). Now calculate the distance people are based on how many are the same or different. Someone who is mostly a 0 with only 3 or so 1s is going to only be a distance of ~3 away from one of the main groups. But someone who is randomly assigned half and half is going to be a distance of ~18 from either group. But two people who are randomly assigned half and half are also going to be a distance of ~18 from each other, despite both of them being moderates.

Now in reality you will find some clustering beyond just the existing division (such a group that may tend towards socially conservative and socially liberal), but the overall all point of difficulty, and thus courage, can be understood as the calculation of a difference from other people in this simple model, and in such a case, being moderate has higher distance.

Edit: I would like to add that courage does feel like a bad choice of words to me. As someone who is often moderate (more undecided on issues because I see either stance resulting in extreme conclusions that I don't like), I don't do it because of any sense of bravery. I hold the views I do because they are the views I have. The extent I may espouse them might count a bravery, but in general I'm careful enough at reading the context and, when online, remaining anonymous I still wouldn't see it an act of courage (though what I am envision as courageous acting may be crossing that thin line into foolishness). I would much prefer calling it more difficult, but not an act of courage.

As an accidental moderate myself, it does take courage. You don't belong on the right or the left. I'm too liberal for conservatives, and too conservative for liberals. I'm not even part of my parent's political or religious tribe. An accidental moderate means being tribeless.

It doesn't surprise me that those kinds of people would be more impressive, since anyone who describes themselves as right or left, democrat or republican, liberal or conservative, inherits their opinions instead of choosing them one-by-one on the basis of merits. I mean accidental moderates are pretty much the only adults in the room, and everyone else are child-like in their beliefs. Why should it surprise anyone that the adults accomplish more impressive things?

EDIT I should add that I think everyone is really some level of accidental moderate, because there are not too many pure ideologues and not too many pure free-thinkers out there. But I think it is fair to say that the average person on the street is mostly not free-thinking about tribal things like politics or religion. And I'm sure I'm not fully-free thinking either.

I'd love to hear what your liberal and conservative leanings are and why they make you so brave.

I don't hold any extreme beliefs (I think) but that's probably what an extremist would say. I do hold beliefs that would make me unpopular on either the left or the right.

It takes more courage to not fit in, as any teenager can attest.

I really hope this post is satire

Enlighten me if you think I'm wrong.

> I cannot imagine how you'd come to the conclusion that holding moderate viewpoints requires any real courage at all.

Expressing moderate opinions on the internet will cause a lot of people of accusing you of being a "fence-sitter" or siding with "the enemy", as well as accusations that you are a coward by people who are agitated that the opinions they hold in such high regard are not shared and are even challenged. It is inviting vitriol from people highly polarized on either side.

Expressing liberal or conservative opinions will also get you a ton of accusations of being a communist or a fascist, that's how the internet works.

Yes, and if you think posting something people are going to disagree with on Twitter takes a great deal of courage, you are probably not used to holding any very controversial beliefs at all.

I think the things you think are controversial are not the things that others consider controversial, and you should be aware of any bubbles you might be in. Anything that puts your job, employability, and social standing on the line takes a non-negligible amount of courage - let's not move the goal post by trying to classify what is "great courage" or not.

>Ah yes, the old "No one thinks for themselves except people like me" argument.

This is almost everything that PG writes.

You mean intentional moderates? The ones trying to find the middle point and attempting to appease both sides, essentially.

But accidental moderates aren't doing that and end up with positions across the whole spectrum. As such they're fully exposed to the slings and arrows from both tribes. It's easier and safer to be nestled inside a tribe than to be navigating outside of them. Which requires more courage than either selecting a tribe or trying to appease them.

I can't see how PG is incorrect about that, though I think using the term "moderate" makes it unclear and easy to misinterpret.

100% agree with everything you've written here. I'd also add that there is absolutely no such thing as an accidental moderate in a way that warrants any sort of prideful thinking.

Additionally, there are political world views that are often described as moderate, but are legitimately their own political world view. Namely, in the US political system, the democrats are a big tent party of liberals and social democrats with clear ideological differences between the new democratic caucus and the progressive caucus. Those liberals are not moderate, they're liberals which are much closer in line to conservatives ideologically as they both support free market capitalism.

Anyone who is an "accidental moderate" in a truer sense of the word has never spent any time thinking about politics in any sort of unified sort of way. Politicians should have a both a unified theory of change and a broader political framework for which they rationalize their decisions. While many people describe the Clinton's or Obama as being moderates, they are not moderates, they are liberals, which just happens to be it's own fully unified political theory to the right of socialism and social democrats and to the left of conservatism, nationalism, and fascism.

pg has written some good essays. Unfortunately this isn't one of them.

As is increasingly the case, the core of pg's argument is a variant of the Appeal to Authority: the "impressive people" that pg personally knows. And there is also an Ad Hominem; one doesn't want to be anything like the nasty people who are continually mean to him online.

It is certain that pg does know some very impressive people, and that he attracts a lot of attention from Twitter leftists looking to score cheap points.

However, this argument is vague and dependent on faulty assumptions. Not only can it be easily dismissed, it probably proves the opposite of what he intends.

I think we can assume those impressive people are likely all drawn from the small coterie of technology startup founders and investors. From this and other essays, it's become clear that pg believes that success at becoming a startup founder (just like pg) is almost identical with being an impressive person.

But it's well-known that this group already comes from a relatively narrow slice of humanity. Upper-middle-class or upper-class, likely white, likely gone to a university in America. It would not be surprising if their opinions were roughly in alignment.

Even so, the "impressive people" have not taken public stands that we can verify. We only have pg's assessment of their stances as being roughly centered around a mean, and we only have pg's assessment of where the mean is. (It's rare indeed for someone to self-identify as an extremist!)

This is an informal essay, so perhaps asking for even one example is too much rigor. And, as pg often reminds us, his friends have all kinds of interesting opinions they can't reveal in public any more, due to political correctness. Luckily we have pg who valiantly is willing to stand up in public and allude to a large number of people who agree with him, but are just off-camera.

Anyway, since we are left to merely imagine, let's also imagine that we asked pg's interlocutors about other topics. What would their opinions be on, say, technology startups and business? They'd probably say they were good for the world, and good as a career path. There might be a relatively univocal assessment of taxes as being too high, the barriers to founding businesses as too onerous, and that some ideas popular outside the tech industry (like mandated key escrow, or fact-checking social media posts) are all ludicrous and counterproductive. All defensible opinions, but my point is, we can imagine them all being in close agreement on issues relating to their industry.

So let's take pg at his word that if we have a cohort of people who have self-selected an industry and risen to success, their opinions about that industry are both informed and in close agreement, and their other opinions might be defensible, but randomly scattered around a mean. Is this really that surprising?

pg wants us to believe that the relative moderation of his impressive friends proves something. That not only is moderation a virtue, but the virtuous are moderate.

But accidentally, he may be revealing that technology startup success is more random than he thinks. That it selects for people with some narrow range of skills, but success is awarded with a high degree of randomness.

And since there is no reason for this cohort to be in alignment on any other matter, they are more or less randomly scattered around the median opinion of an upper-class American university technology student.

...

PS: pg started his career as an essayist with "Beating the Averages", and now he asserts that being average is actually good!?

Okay, maybe that's a cheap shot, but we're all looking to justify ourselves and be loved, I guess, and as we pass through different stages of life that doesn't change. pg used to write about the hidden virtues of high school nerds, minority programming languages, and young founders who weren't from California. I found it easier to be a fan. Today he mostly writes about the hidden virtues of the Silicon Valley elite. While that might actually have some merit, it's a bit of a harder sell.

> For some reason the far right tend to ignore moderates rather than despise them as backsliders.

IME the far right despises them as dupes of their favoured conspiracy theory.

It occured to me that two people moderate on average could have polar opposite views, and I wonder how my views might line up, as well as how homogenous Paul Graham's network of accidental moderates are.

Having polar opposites that are both "in the middle" seems to be a clear illustration of why the left vs right analogy is lacking.

I don't think this work is particularly insightful.

I think most people in America aren't accidental moderates or "intentional moderates" or hardcore liberals/conservatives. I think most of them have limited opinions or investment in politics. Their experience is more akin to their patronage for a sports team than a system. They repeat things important figures for their side say and some of them can be bothered to vote depending on how much their side has stirred them up recently but they don't actually care much.

For those that do care. The people that Graham is liable to label intentional moderates are most apt to have as rich an opinion as accidental ones. Not expressing strong positions in public in America is how you avoid having to hear other people's strong opinions that you don't much care to hear.

In America it's not courageous to hold strong opinions from both sides of the aisle especially as a rich person. Most people will experience zero downsides. For those public figures that do they start off so much better off than most of us that their maximum downside is still much better off than most of us.

The famous MLK speech on moderates: http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.h...

> First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

This is the problem with the "intentional" moderates: their position isn't a coherent one, it's instead pure unwillingness to engage. I understand people being conflict-averse, but it can lead to being backed into a corner by the people who are not afraid of conflict.

It may be an unpopular view, but I disliked this quote ever since I saw it. There is value in order. In particular, there is value in order over justice, when justice is pursued with scorched earth tactics that risk leaving everyone worse off, even those that were meant to be helped.

To use a perhaps extreme example: there's lots of injustice happening right now in China, and not a lot can be done directly to fix it. Are the people seeking justice willing to risk a nuclear war with China just to force changes? Would that help anything?

I worry about this, because I see that quote (along with an abuse of Popper's paradox of tolerance) thrown around a lot these days, by people who I don't at all trust to be of good will. The times we're living in are of great potential, but they're also incredibly fragile. Too much pressure, too much disruption, and the civilization may break down - which means not just rolling back a good thousand years of progress, but also leaving the next hundred or thousand generations stuck in these conditions on a thoroughly broken planet. You can't just reboot a technological civilization. Which makes me think that there is a solid argument to be made for minding the order, and not jumping to extreme action in pursuit of justice.

EDIT: I suppose this may be the "accidental moderate's" answer to the complaint about "intentional moderates". It's not about unwillingness to commit, or being extremely conflict-averse, or trying to appeal to all sides of the issue. It's about refusing to engage in actions - or call to actions - that lead to too much of collateral damage.

> To use a perhaps extreme example: there's lots of injustice happening right now in China, and not a lot can be done directly to fix it.

Well, that's fundamentally the tradeoff that China (and quite a lot of the other Asian states e.g. Singapore) have made; their ruling class picked stability over freedom, and hoped that the economic growth would keep everyone happy while at the same time preventing organisation outside the party.

I agree that needlessly destabilising situations is bad, but also that very large injustices can persist in the name of stability. It's not a simple problem.

Yes, and I'm not totally comfortable with their trade-offs. I feel they're on the side of "too much order, too little justice". So this already establishes a ceiling along some dimensions.

> I agree that needlessly destabilising situations is bad, but also that very large injustices can persist in the name of stability. It's not a simple problem.

My point exactly. And I bring this up because I see the MLK quote you pasted, along with Popper, used to rally people to actions seemingly promoting justice, but in practice just turning people against one another, and overall making things worse. I don't like seeing either of the quotes being used as a glorified "if you're not with us, you're against us" line by people extreme in their views.

'too much order, too little justice' is never a conclusion that is made by the people in charge

You seem to have missed his point, though, that calls for moderation and tolerance from an oppressing party are often just a means to defend an unjust status quo, and by extension, unjust power. I'm sure there are plenty of Chinese who wish Uighurs and Hong Kong protestors would just calm down and understand that civil order is more important than "justice." But doing so will never work out well for those aggrieved parties.

To use another example more directly relevant to MLK, if African Americans had to wait until it was convenient and comfortable for the white establishment to tolerate and accept them as equals, and the civil rights movement only ever worked within the bounds of the law, they would still be picking cotton. Maintaining order for its own sake without regard for the justness of the society being defended is tantamount to fascism.

I get that point very much ($deity knows I had it explained to me a lot in other discussions). You present very good examples.

But the point I can't ever seem to get across is this - action is meaningfully different than inaction, regardless of what is the status quo. It's the action part that's risky. Action has a price, and it's worth considering how high it is in a given case, before jumping to keyboards or bayonets.

> I'm sure there are plenty of Chinese who wish Uighurs and Hong Kong protestors would just calm down and understand that civil order is more important than "justice."

I think there's also plenty of Chinese who wish their own government backed down and let Hong Kong go its own way. And as a westerner, while my heart is with Hong Kong on this one, every time someone proposes that maybe the US should get involved I start wishing either of the sides involved just gave up, because quite frankly, none of this is worth the price of a nuclear war.

> To use another example more directly relevant to MLK (...) [if] the civil rights movement only ever worked within the bounds of the law

By "order", I don't mean "the law" (and I don't think MLK meant it either). In the MLK era, the Civil Rights Movement achieved their goals without plunging the country into a civil war. They've treaded the line between justice and order well.

The point I'm trying to get across is that there are situations that are less like civil rights movement, and more like asking US to threaten China with nukes to get them to back off on HK. That the potential collateral damage may outweigh the gains. That doesn't mean abandoning pursuit of justice - only being mindful of the importance of preserving some order when deciding what to.

Because, once the dust settles and the justice has been won, it would sure be nice if there were people left to enjoy that justice.

I don't think many would deny "action" is or might be "risky." However, you'd have to show that "inaction" is not for your argument to make sense.

>It's the action part that's risky. Action has a price, and it's worth considering how high it is in a given case, before jumping to keyboards or bayonets.

I agree completely. I don't think most would disagree with this.

>The point I'm trying to get across is that there are situations that are less like civil rights movement, and more like asking US to threaten China with nukes to get them to back off on HK.

I think you're conflating your fears about a specific, and in my opinion unlikely, doomsday scenario into a general slippery slope argument against the dangers of disruptive justice. Most such movements don't even have a theoretical capacity to pose an existential threat to civilization, so in most cases, the risk is arguably worth the reward.

> I think you're conflating your fears about a specific, and in my opinion unlikely, doomsday scenario into a general slippery slope argument against the dangers of disruptive justice.

Yes, I kept repeating the one example I used, but I worry about all issues that could plausibly lead to a civilization-ending war. Of which there are many, including all kinds of problems created by worsening state of the planet's climate. But I also worry about things that could lead to local wars (including civil wars), and history says that regular politics, even identity politics, can find a way to turn into bloodshed.

There is already bloodshed, but right now it just happens to not be yours.

The point of MLK’s quote, in my opinion, is that moderates can always find reasons to maintain status quo especially when the issues at hand are not deemed personally impactful. People are being harmed, but because they are not me or look like me it’s not worth risking potential upset.

> There is already bloodshed, but right now it just happens to not be yours.

No, there isn't. At least not in the examples mentioned.

What you mention is one point of MLK's quote, but my point is different: not everyone who doesn't want to join the fight against status quo is such moderate without a personal stake in the outcome. Some are people who very much care, and have a stake, but decline involvement because they see the proposed means to involve too much collateral damage; the cure to be worse than the poison.

There is no ambiguity about who MLK was talking about so it’s not a direct analogy. Until we talk about specific actions and potential consequences this discussion is so vague as to be meaningless.

Many of the current fights for social justice in the US face the same indifference as the last century’s civil rights movement. People who stand to lose nothing simply can’t be bothered.

This gets really messy.

People are being harmed. There are people (let's be charitable and assume that the set does not include TeMPOral) who want to do nothing, because they aren't among the people being harmed.

Then there's a second set of people (let's be charitable and assume that the second set does include TeMPOral) who see the harm, and care about the harm, but are unsure how far to go toward fixing it, because the wrong action (or too much of the right action) can do more harm than good, even to the people you are trying to help.

And then you have the problem that the first set of people are trying to sound very much like the second set of people (and maybe even to convince themselves that they are the second set of people).

Thank you. That's exactly what I meant.

Your example sucks. A nuclear war would be unjust, too.

Rhetorically, it seems like the reason MLK discussed white moderates was because he knew they would be the first white people to warmly accept black civil rights, put justice above order, fight for tense peace, and accept an accelerated timeline for freedom.

The same principle is why you can say "I expected more from you" to friend or family member and that simple comment spurs an improvement in behavior. They actually care, a little bit at least. We don't eloquently express our lofty expectations when it comes to our enemies. Only our friends, allies, and teammates.

As a British moderate conservative, the differences between US and UK (arguably European) politics are fascinating. What moderate means is so different. For reference I’m a lifelong conservative voter that grew up under Maggie Thatcher.

We do have a middle of the road Liberal Democrat party, but to my mind they maintain their position in the middle ground by dodging the hard issues. They are intentional moderates in that respect and I just don’t trust them to tackle really tough issues effectively. So I’m a moderate conservative because the Conservative party is generally an effective party of government that often leans moderate for practical political reasons. Often enough that I’m ok with it, cripplingly badly thought out referendums aside.

Looking at the US political landscape there’s no question in the 80s I would have been a Reagan Republican, but gradually over the last few decades my respect for Republicanism has collapsed. It’s turned itself into a radical ideology that doesn’t even seem conservative, or concerned at all with things conservatives everywhere usually obsess over. The democrats have recently lurched left in response though, so while I found myself, to my own bemusement, generally cheering on Democratic candidates and presidents in the last few decades, now I’m worried they’re ‘doing a Corbyn’ and indulging in outlandish and fantastical economic policy positions that are always a temptation for the left. That leaves me in the wilderness in US political terms.

So I can’t support the Republicans because they are immoral jerks who are selling out democracy, undermining the rule of law and sold out on their international security position for partisan posturing long before Trump showed up. And I can’t support the Democrats any more because they are indulging in crazy leftist economic fantasies.

As a British former moderate conservative who's abandoned the party, though in truth I feel the party has abandoned me, I see a UK conservative party that has followed a very, very similar transition. Moderate conservatism has just been kicked out of the party. It's now a radical ideology captured by libertarian think tanks in American image -- and several of them funded by the US. The conservative party is now the ERG party or Way Forward party.

There is no space in the party for a Dominic Raab, Ken Clarke or Michael Heseltine, or One Nation policies -- once the bastion and bedrock of post-war conservatism, or even being in favour of a mild exit deal with the EU. Just dogmatic pursuit of blind, disproven policies for the benefit of a tiny minority such as the joke of austerity, closure and gutting of services many former Conservatives actually built and developed in former decades. For all her dogma on the Poll Tax, Thatcher could listen and understood the scientific advice, privatisation of many services that were eventually sold off were, to her, beyond the pale. She had her limits too, she did not and could not understand society, and people within it.

Thatcher's first set of ministers contained Whitelaw, Lord Carrington -- possibly the last high ranking UK politician of any party with an innate sense of ethics and standards, Heseltine, Pym, Prior and many others I forget, who wouldn't be welcome in today's party, let alone get a ministry. Plenty to bring some balance to cabinet, to moderate the extremism of the mad monk who invented Thatcherism -- Keith Joseph. Of course Joseph was the creator of one of those first extreme libertarian think tanks, the Institute of Policy Studies.

One Nation Conservatism, and moderate conservatism is dead. There's a radical party that uses the same name. They even adopted a bunch of US Republican voter suppression tactics in this election, page 48 of the manifesto. Promoting the suppression of democracy as policy aim! Gerrymandering constituency boundaries, picture ID to vote in a country that requires no ID -- knowing full well that hits the poor and minorities hardest (Who might well not be inclined to vote Tory), politicising the Judiciary. No, the Conservative party of yore no longer exists.

Before long we'll be back to buying votes.

I think we’re heading in that direction, but it’s such a recent shift in direction that hopefully it’s just a contingent reaction to the outcome of the referendum. I’m a remainer, but I think once we’re out if the E.U. the party will re-centre itself on its basic priorities.

Mistakes always happen in politics, if you’re not making mistakes you can’t be doing anything worthwhile. Austerity went too far, but fundamentally had to be done. Leaving the EU Is a mistake, but given the referendum the party had to commit itself to delivering what it promised. That’s my take anyway.

Not so recent, it's been a steady transition since the silliness under Major with the rebels over Maastricht. Labour were almost as split at the time.

My problem is they've become a party of international finance, hedge funds and so on. No longer is a conservative MP or Lord the former exec of a successful FTSE company, or something in the city, which of course is now mainly US. The policies benefit international finance not Britain and the British, candidates are selected accordingly. Rees Mogg being perfect example.

I can imagine a Churchill, Macmillan, Heath or even Heseltine or Thatcher putting through the environmental parts of Labour's manifesto -- that's good One Nation Conservatism without the parts remaking capitalism. No one since though. Thatcher fully believed the science, and made a UN speech in 89, and many others, calling for world climate action way beyond anything that's actually happened. Churchill did so much to create the European Court of Human rights and Convention.

The referendum campaign basically promised no deal was not possible, so yes they should deliver what was promised. Though allowing a referendum without supermajority so we're forever stuck at 50:50 was madness. Austerity was dogma from day one -- no one overspent, it was a global banking bubble, but gave an excuse to push libertarian shrinking of government. Yet QE was full on Keynes, just this time for the benefit of international finance, not the country. Every event kicks the fringe to the centre, and remakes the party a little further off centre.

That's my take. Internet politics is of course mostly futile, have a peaceful and prosperous New Year. :)

IMO, in the US the "coservative" movement is misnamed. It seeks not to conserve, but make radical change to both government (shrink it significantly) and culture (change mainstream values, cultural output). They're trying to push for extraordinary change and are willing to take extraordinary measures to get there.

Ironically, the closest thing we have to "true" conservatives here are self-fashioned centrists, who generally are interested in preserving the status quo, making small changes in one direction or another depending on how society is going, being generally vigilant against too much change.

That's the Reagan/Thatcher monetarism/neoliberal transition. Prior to that the conservative parties generally were small c conservative, seeking to preserve the status quo, make small adjustments with evidence, and make no change for change's sake.

It's a view that has almost completely ceased to exist among the conservative parties of the world.

Well, the conservatives want to conserve, not the current status quo, but the status quo of, say, 1950. To get there from here, we'd need to make some drastic changes to the current status quo.

And that's not inherently an insane approach. If we've been going in the wrong direction for the last 70 years, the most useful move is to go back to where we were.

Now, in practice, it's not that simple. You can't just go back. You don't even want to just go back; parts of 1950 we do not want to return to. And you don't have the people you had 70 years ago, or the expectations, or even the societal values.

But I think this explains why a conservative could want to radically shrink (or, rather, de-grow) government, and still legitimately remain a conservative.

”Well, the conservatives want to conserve, not the current status quo, but the status quo of, say, 1950. To get there from here, we'd need to make some drastic changes to the current status quo.”

They don’t want that. Otherwise they would support tax increases and lower salaries for CEOs. They want to go back to a mythical past that never existed the same way they are Reaganites that would call the real Reagan a RINO.

Of course. They want the 1950s, not as they were, but as they imagine them. In the same way, the liberals want, say, Sweden, not as it is, but as they imagine it.

Off topic: Can you explain to me (a US person who doesn't understand UK politics) why the Liberal Democrats did so poorly in the last election? In my limited understanding, it seems to have been tailor-made for them to do well, with both the Conservatives and Labour looking extreme.

Three major reasons in combination.

Their new leader performed particularly poorly in electioneering, and associated with this they nailed their election colours to "Bollocks to Brexit", and repealing article 50 legislation. i.e. Under us, Brexit is not happening, regardless of referendum, calls for second referendum or rerun with more honest campaign rules or what have you. Last, I think (I'm guessing) there was a good degree of everyone being beyond sick of this, and vote Tory so we're out and it's over and done with. Of course leaving is just the start of a 10x longer period of trying to negotiate with everyone, and make things like import/export work again, preserve NI peace etc... Brexit will continue to be the story of the coming decade -- all of it. Our famously resilient and politically neutral civil service is already deeply damaged by it.

Minor reasons are a lot of very amateur hour election leaflets with faked graphs, pretend newspapers that made them look like the Liberals in the 1970s once again -- intellectual, worthy, and utterly irrelevant. They also split the anti vote in more than one constituency.

US politics has devolved into a series of ideological purity tests. Neither the bigoted, dated ideas of the GOP or the magical, fairy dust ideas of the progressive Dems have anything to do with actually solving problems. Most US voters are forced to hold their noses and vote for the lesser of two evils.

I have to say... the only political candidate trying to solve problems pragmatically is Andrew Yang - and that's why he's my guy.

Even if you think his solutions are horrible, you have to admit he's bringing new ideas to the table and focused on measuring the right metrics and solving problems.

UBI might seem like a pipe-dream but when you break it down it's way more realistic than "amazing government jobs for everyone" or "break up the big companies into little pieces."

The economy is shifting due to automation and the exploitation of workers through the on-demand gig economy. We need major changes and big ideas. I want someone who innovates and uses data to back up his political stances - so Yang has my vote.

I completely agree with you on Andrew Yang. I don’t think UBI works in practice but he is the only candidate realistically talking about underlying problems instead of just symptoms.

I’d probably go for Yang too, but it would be a near impossibility for him to win the nomination. I’d love to see him as a VP pick but he doesn’t really bring the “votes” that a typical VP candidate would. At the very least, I hope he’s offered some type of cabinet position (ideally heading up a new Department of Technology).

> So I can’t support the Republicans because they are immoral jerks who are selling out democracy, undermining the rule of law and sold out on their international security position for partisan posturing long before Trump showed up. And I can’t support the Democrats any more because they are indulging in crazy leftist economic fantasies.

Bang-on 100% accurate. It's a bunch of immoral jerks versus a bunch of fantastical hooey.

Add to that a difference in rhetorical style: Republicans skirmish aggressively and keep their commentary "on message," while Democrats tend to virtue signal and use identity politics to galvanize their followers.

Where the median is depends where the extremes are. Overton window I think is the fitting term here. The Overton window in the US might be shifted such that in other countries a moderate here might be perceived to be quite right wing there.

Chomsky put it well when describing this phenomenon:

--- The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. ---

> I'm not sure why. Perhaps it means that the far right is less ideological than the far left

I think it is because left opinions, even in mainstream media and social discourse do not get the immediate push-back and derision, but are treated more of like confusion or maybe immaturity. Say, if we see someone waving the Soviet flag in the streets at a protest we just sort of shrug at it instead of have a visceral reaction to it.

I'm not convinced there are any intentional moderates. Isn't this just one big straw man? Noticeable lack of specifics, not even historical figures. Honestly it comes off like "I met a guy, didn't like him, I think this is why".

I think there's definitely something to the idea, but I wouldn't carve up the world into These People and Those People. If anything, we're more like calico cats and we all exhibit both behaviors simultaneously. Yes, I think the Overton windows "centers" some of our views, but I can't consciously tell you which ones without thinking about it first.

>I'm not convinced there are any intentional moderates.

Well, I know tons of those. People in journalism, and other high profile public related posts, are often such. They don't want to offend any side, and reap the benefits of both. Some politicians are also like that. I know people in media personally who have more extreme positions in private talks, but their public opinions are carefully calculated to advance their career.

>Noticeable lack of specifics, not even historical figures. Honestly it comes off like "I met a guy, didn't like him, I think this is why"

Why do people on HN think everything is a big science paper? The post is observations about society, from someone who has lived in one for 5+ decades and paid some attention. It's not some sociology paper or nation-wide poll results. It's like people can't think without polls and figures, or have relegated their opinions to the "experts" and their stats...

While "I met a guy, didn't like him, I think this is why" is a bit too dismissive, your dismissal of a desire for factual data is disturbing.

One person's experience, no matter how broad for an individual, is still just one individual's anecdotal experience. This is true even if they have a sharp mind, decades of experience, and the best credentials.

The principles of fact checking and bias analysis should not be relegated solely to academia.

>While "I met a guy, didn't like him, I think this is why" is a bit too dismissive, your dismissal of a desire for factual data is disturbing.

I find the over-reliance on second hand ("factual") data, charts and figures, disturbing.

People have to learn to observe, think, and understand themselves.

Not just passively consume pre-made charts and statistics (which are the easiest thing to manipulate). And learning how to spot BS statistical claims wont help when the raw data can be themselves cherry-picked, manipulated, and diced in tons of ways.

Not to mention that live experience is 360 (if one tries), where data will always paint less than the whole picture. One could arrange for great "official" charts and figures for every country -- and most countries do. Unless one gets on the field and talk to the people on the street and the workplace, and try to check the reality in various situations, they can have a totally BS picture painted for them by the statistics and "factual data".

>One person's experience, no matter how broad for an individual, is still just one individual's anecdotal experience.

Well, you're not 10000 people. You're just one, like everyone else is. In the end, whatever you're fed or read or watch, you have to make up your mind for yourself.

>The principles of fact checking and bias analysis should not be relegated solely to academia.

Nor should fact checking and bias analysis start and begin with data people are handed down from official or other sources. Those can range from perfectly accurate to badly compiled to totally and mischievously misleading (for saving face, incompetence, for profit, etc).

If you lived in USSR, would you trust the official data, or you would try to balance things and do direct observation?

You shouldn't blindly trust "facts" and "figures" anywhere else either...

You keep saying charts and figures. Repeatedly, ad nauseum. As if that's what I was getting at. Quit talking about them, that's not relevant to this discussion.

Comparing two data points will always yield better results than having just one. Data points don't have to be literal points on a graph. They can be discussions with people.

Study historiography or journalism.

You know, it's possible that Paul Graham might have had discussions with people, rather than just his own one-life anecdotal data...

No shit. Ever heard the phrase "trust, but verify?"

>You keep saying charts and figures. Repeatedly, ad nauseum.

Actually I've said the exact phrase twice in this subthread. And considering its the main subject of the subthread (whether those IMO are enough/mandatory or not) it's not really surprising.

Perhaps you don't want like to hear it, so you're extra annoyed anytime I mention it, which makes you overcount? Maybe you need some charts and figures of how many times I said that expression.

>Comparing two data points will always yield better results than having just one.

Which is neither here nor there. A single person could collect 1000s of data points by observation, talking to different people, etc.

You don't need a team to do that, or some official citation.

There could be bias in said person? Sure. Same way the team/paper could have bias, be non-reproducible crap, be written to make some government body look good, be written to make someone money, etc.

It's almost as is critical thinking by the person receiving the single person's anecdote or the, can I say it, charts and figures, is still required.

>Study historiography or journalism.

Oh, the irony.

PG's essay isn't presenting itself as a scientific work presenting a theory. It's just one man's opinion. But 'arh68 above seems to be interpreting it as if it was such a scientific work.

> someone who has lived in one for 5+ decades

Graham's sale of Viaweb essentially exits him from the society most of us live in; he achieves a level of wealth that lets him ignore most aspects or truths he finds inconvenient (good or bad, small or large). As he's now writing in absentia for over 20 years, I don't think we should assume he knows anything about how the world works for most people today.

> and paid some attention

Extremely questionable based on his other essays.

>Graham's sale of Viaweb essentially exits him from the society most of us live in

Sure. On the other hand, it gives him access to a part of society most of us don't live in.

Well, it is christmas, so I am at home with family and relatives with many different opinions and life experiences and to navigate that jungle I have to confess, yes, the last few days I was an intentional moderate. Also at work.

What about situational political preference?

Star Trek economy is all well and good and I think it is the eventual outcome, but in a specific time and place, with specific people and their baggage, the immediate best way forward may be something other than what I would prefer.

Didn't Marx say politics went through stages? Feudalism to capitalism to socialism or something? He might have had a really valid point on this. We can't jump from primitive barter economies to interstellar travel.

Besides, even though I like certain ideologies, I can't help but see the practical on the ground results of faulty, corruptible humans trying to implement them and it seldom turns out for the good from what I've observed. I have to imagine we will get there over time, perhaps with non human AI at the helm.

Ron's first law: all extreme positions are wrong.

I find it disappointing so many HN comments don't understand this post has nothing to do with politics really. It's general to any set of tribal belief set A and B.

Besides "buying in bulk" there's also a question of "first principles" vs "empirical."

Republican/Democrat is more of "buying in bulk" these days as partisanship has aligned more with polarization.

On the other hand, consider Libertarian/Communist. Those both make policy arguments from first principles. They aren't so much buying policies in bulk as generating policies from a set of axioms. Many "intentional moderates" take it as axiomatic that the truth always lies in the middle, and thus are also generating policies.

Why is an article about someone praising how smart and brave their own politics are, on the front page of HN? Definitely not what I come here to read.

“Or more precisely, you have to be independent-minded about the ideas you work with. You could be mindlessly doctrinaire in your politics and still be a good mathematician. In the 20th century, a lot of very smart people were Marxists — just no one who was smart about the subjects Marxism involves”

I’m wondering if all the science heroes from that era were pro-Eugenics from a science or political position.

Radical centrism, or else!!

While I am what he calls an "accidental moderate", there is an argument to be made for the intentional moderate stance. If you think the damage from your error is proporational to the square (or some higher exponent) of the actual error, then an intentional moderate will have far fewer (perhaps no) fatal errors. They may choose 50 when they should have chosen 30, but they won't choose 100 when they should have chosen 10. If the damage from the one is like (50-30)^2=400, and the damage from the other is (100-10)^2=8100, then you can have a lot of modest, intentional moderate errors that don't add up to the damage of the one thing an accidental moderate is really, really wrong about.

As usual, there is a relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1170/

Again, I myself am mostly an accidental moderate. But I think he's underselling the case for intentional moderates.

There are two types of "accidental" moderates in America. Rich fiscal conservatives who are socially liberal but don't want to pay their fair share ("libertarians") and the blue collar union workers who are socially conservative for religious reasons.

There is no far left in America, the "leftist" candidate is campaigning on radical ideas like universal health care and free public education, things that every other first world country already provides.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_univers...

https://www.worldpolicycenter.org/policies/is-beginning-seco...

Neoliberals like PG love to pretend that their ideology - neoliberal capitalism - is not actually an ideology. It is ideological framework, just as much as Marxism.

The notion that neoliberals are above the fray of ideology and independently minded, might be comforting to them, but it's a lie. Across the globe, PG and his ilk fit squarely in the various right and centre-right parties.

What a delightfully garbage take!

Also:

“The defining quality of an ideologue, whether on the left or the right, is to acquire one's opinions in bulk. You don't get to pick and choose.”

PG has clearly never encountered two leftists in the same room together. We argue on critical issues more than a thanksgiving dinner table.

i'll never understand people's preoccupation with other people's ideas on things it is known those people are not experts on.

paul graham has a phd in computer science. he is a successful startup founder and vc. that is the extent of what i'm interested in his opinion on.

if a famous political theorist started opining on the organization of software or product/market fit or angel investing how many people here would take them seriously?

>>paul graham has a phd in computer science. he is a successful startup founder and vc. that is the extent of what i'm interested in his opinion on.

Smart people are much more likely to believe that they have intelligent and well-informed opinions on areas outside their expertise. PG himself is no exception.

of course but why is that other people indulge them (or even are taken in)

intelligence is correlated with (and arguably defined by) insight, so that's a reasonable, if fallible, belief.

intelligence doesn't guarantee insights in areas outside expertise, but it's certainly more promising in that regard.

what's baffling are the high expectations in the populace for the general opinions of famous but not demonstrably intelligent people, e.g., many actors, tv personalities, singers, etc. (comedians are a notable exception, as insight is integral to their craft).

I enjoy pg's essays but must say this one strikes me as unusually trite. For context I would be one of his 'accidental moderates' who has since moved far to the left - though not universally, and despite my tongue-in-cheek bio I'm not a Marxist.

[2] For some reason the far right tend to ignore moderates rather than despise them as backsliders. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it means that the far right is less ideological than the far left. Or perhaps that they are more confident, or more resigned, or simply more disorganized. I just don't know.

As a long-time student of the far right I can answer this easily: they do despise moderates, but being fascist, they plan to rule over them and figure (with some basis in fact) that the moderate middle will just go along with their program because it's expedient to do so.

As this treats of loaded topics I might as well clarify my own understanding by saying that I think the far left is characterized by its antipathy to property rights (and arguably individual rights in general depending on the particular dogma they adhere to) while the far right is characterized by its antipathy to human rights (and arguably the existence of distinct populations in general depending on the particular dogma they adhere to).

It's strange that if you're going to write this type of essay, it might behoove you to define right and left in your own words so the audience has a baseline for what you're really talking about.

Otherwise you're just saying "I'm right and everyone else is totally clueless. If you don't pick any side you actually have the most ~ ~ enlightened ~ ~ opinion."

I expect nothing less from PG but it's hilarious to see him just blandly admit how intellectually out of depth he is. He's basically ignored the most rudimentary topics in political science and just flat out spread his academic ignorance for the world to see.

Tl;dr: Everything in moderation, including moderation.

First time I only got two paragraphs into a PG post.

This is a very American perspective, occasionally a bit flippant (dismissing 100+ years of Marx-influenced intellectuals in politics and economics as “not smart” is definitely not smart, particularly after 2008) and overall mediocre.

There is a lot of stereotyping, and it doesn’t account for the interest axis, i.e. the fact that a lot of very smart people simply do not care for organised politics in any way, shape, or form.

More importantly, it lacks knowledge of consensus mechanics beyond Overton, which is why it struggles to get to grip with the right side of the spectrum - which is, historically speaking, the most consistently successful side, at least in the short or medium term when any new political issue arises. Dismissing that as “I don’t know” shows embarrassingly poor subject knowledge.

So uhm, this piece could have been written by a 16-year-old trying to move his brain for the first time. That it comes from a much older and experienced person, somebody who holds a number of smart positions on other topics, to me is a signal that such person has done very little effort to actually study this particular field in depth.

Maybe it’s an attempt at showing that one can be not-smart about certain topics? If that were the case, I don’t think we really need it - Twitter and Facebook remind us every hour of every day that it is indeed the case.

It's PG's habit of using his own arbitrary measures of intelligence as a proxy for worthiness, and where these measures of intelligence are usually a function of the ability to make money.

> OP: In the 20th century, a lot of very smart people were Marxists — just no one who was smart about the subjects Marxism involves.

In 40 years, the USSR, whose economy was about the size of Brazil's in 1917, and who waged a civil war and repelled two waves of invasions (the first of which included an invasion by the USA after WWI) - this country under Stalin had enormous economic growth, to where it could repel an invasion by continental Europe, then launch the first satellite, man on space, moon probe and whatnot. For a country that Lenin considered to be in a holding action waiting for revolution in the west. I find that impressive.

The western anti-Marxists went through an array of nonsense in the 20th century - "The End of History", the idea that Keynesian or monetarist or whatever remedies would smooth out the business cycle.

Marx predicted worsening economic crises like in 2000 or 2008, with accompanying unemployment, overproduction and a falling of profits. Lenin predicted an unquenchable and self-destructive drive for imperialism.

The best argument for Marxism isn't the USSR - it's China. They've actually managed to turn into a modern, mostly-developed country, though the process is most likely far from complete. The USSR was a dismal failure by comparison.

BTW, they're even launching their own space satelites, men in space, moon probes and whatnot lately.

But the way China turned into a modern, mostly-developed country was to turn away from what Marxism said about how to run an economy, and turn back at least part of the way to capitalism. What they kept from Marxism (or at least the Soviet Union) is the one-party dictatorship. So not that great an argument for Marxism after all.

Hey, I never said that this would be a great argument; I just think that it's the best available one.

> he first of which included an invasion by the USA after WWI

I'm not familiar with this event?

> this country under Stalin had enormous economic growth

Ironically this is the same argument used by capitalists and colonialists when they claim that a huge body count or deliberate famine was "worth it".

Probably this?

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/fact-america-actu...

Here’s an alternate take on your paragraph:

So uhm, this piece could have been written by a 16-year-old trying to move his brain for the first time. That it comes from a [billionaire founder of a private equity firm with a large platform], somebody who holds a number of smart positions on other topics, to me is a signal that such person [is engaged in an intentional effort to influence public opinion].

If it is, it’s a poor effort - if anything because it’s absolutely not original. You can see the array of similar sources posted in this thread as proof... when you are rehashing something that even Chris Rock has said, you are not influencing anything - unless the attempt was to keep the debate fundamentally frozen in place, which does not need help.

I don't think 2008 validates Marx. OK, he predicted worsening economic crises. So have a number of others, many of whom are not even close to Marxists. Does 2008 validate them, too? If not, why not? And if 2008 validates such contradictory positions, then being validated by 2008 doesn't mean very much.

The progressive dissociation of financial markets from real economic activity was the primary cause of 2008 - it’s the existence of credit derivatives that made it possible to crash the world economy. That’s very much a marxist prediction come true.

"and the far right and far left are roughly equally wrong"

I disagree with this in the strongest terms.

I realize that the people on this site lean right, and arguing politics isn't really cricket, so I won't go into to why.

The "center" is a political ideology that pretends that it's something else.

Also, being good at one thing doesn't make someone's opinion about everything else important.

tough crowd.

In context:

> Accidental moderates end up in the middle, on average, because they make up their own minds about each question, and the far right and far left are roughly equally wrong.

I disagree as well, but it could be revised to:

> and the [accidental moderate believes that] far right and far left are roughly equally wrong.

This would make the definition somewhat more sensible, though I'd still disagree with it.

I wasn't able to turn up demographics for the site, so I can't outright disagree with you on the political leanings of HN, but I'm curious to know what they are.

In our current political system the accidental moderate seems left out. How do they choose the right candidate when the campaign system is wholly based on ideology? Sure, accidental moderates may have great opinions, but how does one put those in action in the current political climate within a political framework. They would seem to be best living outside the system, with no label defining the political affiliation or ideology, while the moderate is free to be wooed by the right or left choice of any given election.

> How do they choose the right candidate when the campaign system is wholly based on ideology?

They don't. Perhaps that is why the voter turnout is so low everywhere.

For instance, myself, I cannot in good conscience support any of the political parties that exist in my country. I agree with each of them on few points, and strongly disagree on most.

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