Ask HN: Do we have a political double standard?

> "This political thread has been on the front page since yesterday: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate..."

Probably has more to do with all the SVers being in California than any double standard.

> "We know the best way to get to the bottom of an argument is to let the HN crowd have at it."

We do? I think that rather overestimates HN's expertise outside the technology field, as amply demonstrated whenever any medical topics come up.

> "I have a dream..."

Launch your own site to do it in; this is HN. The person who is most famous for saying "I have a dream..." worked his tail off to make his dream come true.

Who is “we” ? Imho HN isnt homogeneous or representative enough to constitute a “we” unless referring to YC companies. Its fit for certain kinds of discussion but pretty bad for others. I self censor my account heavily here, and in fact often delete my comments that are voted down, in order not to attract negativity. Despite that, my account is rate limited

>we're distracted from perhaps one of the most significant political events, arguably in our lifetimes

What is this highly significant political event you talk of? I read your text several times, but couldn't find where you said what it actually is. Could you spell it out? (I don't read/watch much news lately, maybe I should know.)

I presume, impeachment.

To address the original question:

SB50 is something that people have strong opinions on, but the opinions are at least somewhat connected to data, experience, and reason. It is therefore possible for HN to have a reasoned discussion about it. And, reading the comments on the SB50 article, HN did that fairly well.

HN is very unlikely to have a good discussion about impeachment. It would turn into a flame-filled partisan shouting match. HN is right to steer clear of that topic.

But SB50? HN covers stuff about the livability of cities somewhat regularly. We care about that kind of stuff because a lot of us live in cities. SB50 is at least somewhat related to that kind of topic.

> Do we have a political double standard?

Yes, of course. Tech communities are biased to one direction. Not really a bad thing, and its not really a big deal in this case either.

I kinda agree although it may not be popular. The caliber of discussion on these threads drops hard, and things that are discouraged on any other threads are rampant.

> The caliber of discussion on these threads drops hard, and things that are discouraged on any other thread are rampant.

Thanks for pointing out this problem.

Is this something that might get better in time? For example, downvotes catching up with those who can't participate in a productive discussion.

People's views on politics (I am no exception) are often so deeply rooted in emotion that political topics often hit people more in the lizard brain and brings out the, um, "discouraged comments", than it encourages actual, polite discussion.

> People's views on politics (I am no exception) are often so deeply rooted in emotion that political topics often hit people more in the lizard brain and brings out the, um, "discouraged comments"

Yes, we'll said.

What has worked to solve this in the past? Is there any precedent for getting back to a productive discussion? Can't we act in a way to proactively cool emotions and identify the root issues?

We have, on occasion, had discussions of carefully-chosen hot-button topics, with a warning from dang at the beginning to keep it under control, and careful monitoring from the mods thereafter. They don't do it often, though - only when they think the value of the discussion has a chance to outweigh the risk of a flame-fest.

I dont really think so unfortunately. This is more of a general internet issue as opposed to an HN specific one. Of course, especially bad stuff tends to eventually get flagged and HN moderation is generally good at keeping things under control, but many of these threads seem to attract people with a specific view (not calling anyone out in particular, different threads will attract different groups and create echo chambers, as does anywhere in the internet) who will mass downvote what they oppose andunkike other threads, wll constructed comments cant wind up greyed out at the bottom and highly disingenuous ones at the top. I suppose the worst of these threads deal with things that may not neccesarily against the rules, but lower the quality regardless. It's not uncommon to see seemingly suspicious unsourced claims and stats upvoted if they confirm existing biases, for example, while this seems to be less common in other types of threads

> upvoted if they confirm existing biases

Yes, though I also appreciate when people recognize and call out these biases. That has helped me understand the phenomena of physiological biases. And HN is the only place I can think of where people actually recognize this sort of thing.

HN does tend to correct such things... in the small. The corrective mechanisms seem to get overwhelmed when the volume of garbage is too high. People don't have the time and the energy to wade through it all and try to clean it up, so the garbage accumulates. This is true both of the members and the moderators.

So HN tries to avoid topics that are too hot-button politically. I like to think that we do better at having a reasoned discussion on difficult topics than other places do, but we have our limits.

My take.

The 1% in California has never been that concerned about the high price of housing. They can afford it.

If they really cared (e.g. they perceived it hurt their business) they would have used market mechanisms and moved their business out.

What makes the SB50 result predictable is that ordinary homeowners benefit from the situation. (e.g. they can someday rent out or sell their house at an inflated price while paying low property taxes.) Homeowners vote more than renters, and importantly, the people who might move to CA if housing were more available don't vote.

Another way of thinking about it is that CA is crazy crowded anyway. I'm thinking of a neighborhood in Santa Monica where people live in pretty little single family homes with pretty little yards, well tended gardens.

In a place like that, people are very affected by what their neighbors are doing and they don't want more.

CA's style of development is also expensive economically and environmentally. If you do build more housing, it will need more infrastructure, and at American rates for building infrastructure it is hard to come out ahead.

I think you missed the point of the post...

I responded to the "content" level but not the "process" level quite deliberately.

Also I think the poster missed the point of the post as well, that is, did not formulate the problem with any coherence, did not have a developed enough "mental model" of the problem to formulate it well, and in some ways the community doesn't have the shared reality to discuss the problem.

The poster left a square kilometer to paint and I had time to cover maybe 0.5 sq meters so I got stuck in the weeds.

If anyone wants to discuss this stuff seriously, the material in this course is helpful:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw4-Fp0S2dJZkPN8HTrQ5...