A common reason for this is of course, if conservative leaders are promoting these ideologies then most people will infer that you as a supporter also agree with those ideologies.
Engaging with political debate on Twitter is a terrible idea no matter what your ideology, no matter how mainstream your opinions.
I would lean against posting your political opinions on the internet, and instead step away from the computer and you know, spend time with friends. Get some fresh air and exercise. If you want to have some political influence showing up in person is, I don't know, at least a million times more effective than posting internet opinions.
It seems to work well, I get along with all sorts of people with wildly different, often cooky, views. In my opinion that's more important than signaling my political leanings.
There is, however, a tendency to take extreme positions and that needs to be fought. We must always debate in good faith - and ensure ourselves that we are doing so in good faith - that we listened, that our opinions are based on objective truths, and that we are willing to change our opinions when confronted by evidence against them.
And that is the problem here: politics is more about emotions than intellect. And participating in it means you have to be emotionally intelligent.
So don’t be involved until you’re emotionally intuned with your colleagues.
(I often take the opposite side of my colleagues because that is the only way I can emotionally understand them. Also because I think being emotional over technical issues is foolish.)
> And participating in it means you have to be emotionally intelligent.
Not necessarily, but a certain amount of tact is always required to live in society.
> So don’t be involved until you’re emotionally intuned with your colleagues.
One expedient I use myself (as someone who is blind to a number of social cues most people can immediately identify) is to make people aware of that. People are often understanding if you give them the chance.
You answered your own question.
I think about it this way: co-operation depends on trust and shared values, the lack of which hinders or prevents this.
Every one of us is a bag of values, and some of these will often intersect with some of those we work with. Since team work is an active act of co-operation, it makes more sense for me to actively share those values that are broadly in agreement with those that will improve the work relationship.
So yes, they are somewhat separate, and IMO they can shift quite wildly, given the same set of core values.
Work is something that should in theory unite us as we work on a mission together in exchange for compensation.
I get that external factors affect people different (I know I deal with my own shit), but I wish work would be an outlet away from those things to focus on something all together.
I'm not saying I want to write a workplace manifesto like James Damore. I just want to be able to express my opinions outside of work and not have that influence hiring decisions.
I learned to use the Bernard Meltzer criteria: "Before you speak ask yourself if what you are going to say is true, is kind, is necessary, is helpful. If the answer is no, maybe what you are about to say should be left unsaid."
[1] https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideol...
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780121744502/studies-in-...
He certainly didn't alienate half of all people, that's a wild overestimate, but Google tolerates extremely disruptive behavior from certain types of employees to the extent that it will give in to nearly any demand no matter how unreasonable.
He definitely didn't say anything untrue or even unkind. And he was responding to an explicit request for feedback, so it wasn't unnecessary or unhelpful either. So the Meltzer criteria seems pretty useless there.
Sharing opinions does reduce cognitive noise, but it also promotes and enforces cognitive bias. Which is a fair trade you might think, and in many practical domains it is. But under democratic system, we already have instruments to reduce noise. We have polls and elections. Democracy is well suited to mitigate cognitive noise.
But not bias. Imagine 100 people. 10 of them are experts in some particular field. The rest is completely clueless. Now let's hold a poll on some binary question from that field. Of 10 experts, let's say only 8 get the answer right because of the noise, let's call it a 20% noise. Of 90 non-experts, however since they all answer fully noisy anyway, roughly 45 will vote right statistically. The vote is the 53 vs 47 in favor of the right answer.
Now let's say, there is a bias that skews the result 10% towards the wrong call. In an expert community, this is not a big deal. 9 out of 10 experts will get the answer right. But among the general population, this would account for 9 votes in the wrong direction. The votes are now 45 vs 55, and the wrong decision is taken.
TL&DR Democracy is statistically more vulnerable to cognitive bias than to cognitive noise. And sharing opinions reduces noise but promotes bias.
It was like being immersed in a dunk tank of elementary school children but most of them had college degrees yet no common sense or world wisdom.
If you organized an event which was “insufficiently diverse” they would gang up on you on twitter and lynch you publicly.
I truly feel the shrillness has eased off. I think as people got older, and the political landscape changed I see a lot less of it.
I feel a lot more comfortable having based opinions publicly, the army of children seem to be much quieter now.
Before - the fear was palpable. I didn’t feel comfortable following conservatives because morons on twitter would literally comb through your likes and follows and “out you” for not being liberal.
It was so unbelievably childish and pervasive that you could literally feel it.
I think it’s nowhere near as bad as it used to be. I remember just how bad it was, especially in 2016. I think it became a parody of itself during the trump administration and my hope is a lot of people grew out of it.
Again mirroring your experience, it’s nowhere near as bad as it used to be. My opinion is this decline is tied to "once it can be named, it can be damned." Once people started calling out "wokeness" and laughing, general online leftism lost some of its power. Things as simple as retorting with "CURRENT THING, pronouns in profile" with a laughing emoji have proven powerful on Twitter. You can also see the visceral reaction from being called out. The only ones hurt by using the word "woke" are those who are "woke" themselves. It's an easily identifiable defense mechanism.
Then there are mobs. If you'll get even remotely popular there's a non-zero chance you'll end up getting stalked by some weirdos from twitter/4chan. Lots of these people have close to infinite free time, no moral compass whatsoever, nothing better to do and possibly a mental illness that makes them obsess over certain topics. They will spread misinformation about you all over the internet or will try to get you fired from your current job over something you wrote 7 years ago. If you use your real name they'll quickly find out whatever they can about you and use that to harass you or your family.
Personally, I refrain as much as possible from posting about anything political on the internet, real name or not. It's a huge waste of time that adds nothing positive to a daily life.
> I used to identify with the left but now I lean conservative
Elon Musk claims this too, but posts all kinds of nonsense. He can get away with it, you can't. Assuming that you are a sane user of the internet however, you should be alright.
Another place where we had significant reach to a large audience we actively curated anti-conservative content.
"Does anyone else feel like they are judged for their minority opinion" is an interesting concept in a community full of like-minded individuals.
Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?
Con: LOL no...no not those views
Me: So....deregulation?
Con: Haha no not those views either
Me: Which views, exactly?
Con: Oh, you know the ones
Anyone is allowed to respond as long as they post thoughtful, substantive, respectful comments. The problem with your comment wasn't your political position, it was the flamebait and snark.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: on closer look, your account has been using HN so completely for ideological battle and flamewar that I think we have to ban it until we get some indication that you want to use the site as intended.
Accounts aren't allowed to use HN primarily for ideological battle*, regardless of what they're battling for or against, It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
* There are past explanations of this point at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...