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Comment by flir | Hacker News Reader

Reason's pretty niche, of course, and the first nine paras there are about an agent. A perspective closer to the centre of society:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/08/stop-m...

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Dunno, Rosenfield's take seems a lot more reasonable than the pandering Guardian article that also infantilizes the reader by saying they are just moaning about sensitivity editors while using new words like "cisgender" that 90% of society doesn't even know.

The Guardian might be closer to your views. Fine. But why try to appeal to some notion of the center of society instead of just posting the link? I'd wager outside of HN and Twitter, the Guardian article is obnoxious and trite.

As someone who reads both Reason and the Guardian (I like to hear different perspectives), it's a bit silly to say the Guardian is close to the center. It's clearly and proudly on the left. Afaik, it's one of the most left-leaning major English language newspapers.

I reckon Granuiad's less left than Libertarianism is right. Certainly more people vote centre-left than vote Libertarian. Ymmv.

Maybe? It's hard to judge, especially since Libertarianism is a bit of a weird animal that doesn't map cleanly to the right--it tends to have more in common with the left on social issues, though identity politics is a big exception. I wouldn't say Reason or the Guardian provide anything close to a centrist perspective.

I wouldn't even call Guardian center-left. Center-left is like the furthest right it goes. The average article is well left of center-left.

They were pretty anti-Corbyn when he was in charge. That's one reason I peg them as centre-left. And they're currently cheerleading the centre-left version of Labour that's polling at 50% - that's why I reckon they're closer to the centre of politics (as measured by support) than Reason is.

Real left-leaning English newspapers haven't been tried, or something like that...

But yes, to say that somebody is a "Guardian reader" is say they are somewhere in the left to center-left part of the spectrum.

All the real left-leaning English newspapers are read exclusively by true Scotsmen.

Isn't Reason, niche as it might be, closer to the center of society than The Guardian, which is somewhat closer to the left side of society?

At least according to AllSides, while The Guardian leans left a bit more than Reason leans right, it's not too much different. Guardian[1] has -2.4 out of -6, while Reason[2] is 1.8 out of +6.

From what articles I've seen from Reason, they seemed to clearly lean right to me, that's why your comment came across as odd, albeit technically correct (it is slightly closer to center than the Guardian). Your comment suggested to me that they are a lot more in the middle than that, though.

[1]: https://www.allsides.com/news-source/guardian

[2]: https://www.allsides.com/news-source/reason

Technically correct is the best kind of correct! Anyway, it sort of depends on the definition of "left" and "right"; not sure how allsides.com defines them. Reason seems to be "libertarian", which is a mix of positions one might call [maybe even rather far-]left and [rather far-]right, and one might perhaps say that "the average" of these positions (if you could take a scalar average in a vector space, which of course what allsides.com does by necessity and so are we in this conversation) is "center." The Guardian is seemingly "left" in most ways according to typical current definitions.

Political opinion is a phase space with so many dimensions we're really on a hiding to nothing even discussing it. (And for added complexity, that link I gave was to Comment Is Free).

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