Hacker News Reader

Comment by brightball | Hacker News Reader

This is actually one of the big no-nos of social gatherings in general in the US too.

You don't talk about politics, religion or money. There's no point. It's a no win situation because you're only going to make somebody angry, never change anyone's mind and everyone else in the room will be uncomfortable and/or leave because they just showed up to see everybody, share food, find out how life and family is going and have a good time.

This is also one of the main reasons that it's so easy to talk about sports.

View on HN

I've found this is a generational thing in my social circles. The older generations have a philosophy of "you don't talk about politics, religion, or money" and, the younger generations, that's all they talk about.

I’m probably in between “the younger generations” and “the older generations” at this point in my life. One of the interesting observations I’ve made hanging around younger people is that they do seem to talk about politics quite a bit, but in a homogenous way. With older people, I know a number of right-leaning and left-leaning people and they don’t talk about politics with each other because they’ll just end up pissed off with each other. With younger people it seems they tend to form social circles that are very politically aligned, so no one’s going to get angry talking about politics. (Compared to, say, forming social circles around a baseball team or something like that)

Yes. In the younger circles, it seems like there's a very brief period of telegraphing your "tribe", and once you detect the matching cues you can assume you know pretty much everything about the other's point of view. To the point that there's no reason to discuss anything, you may as well both hold up a preprinted sheet listing out everything the "good" side believes.

Occasionally people will push on the extreme edges of that accepted area, maybe even commiserate on how some things are taken too far, but without ever really challenging the basic belief or seeking to find where the edge of reasonableness might be.

It's not horrible, and I'm just an old fogey whinging here. It just gets under my skin when I hear for the hundredth time a group of kids talking about stuff that I basically agree with, but taking it to the extreme without an ounce of self-awareness that they've crossed into the zone of ridiculousness.

In a way it's because I'm the same, I want "my side" to be more rigorous and intellectually honest than the "sheep on the other side", and it's uncomfortable to realize that the people who largely agree with me on the topics are so sloppy at how they got there. If something else becomes fashionable, they'll just adopt that instead. And if some question comes up, it'll be decided by what feels most in line with what they've already agreed to believe, regardless of the actual merits.

I guess I'll just worry about keeping them off my lawn.

> In a way it's because I'm the same, I want "my side" to be more rigorous and intellectually honest than the "sheep on the other side"

Man… I’ll preface this by saying I’m Canadian and that in Canada 80% of firearms deaths are intentionally self-inflicted. It’s a piece of important colour for what I’m about to say next.

I am a very left-leaning firearm owner in Canada and your comment perfectly describes my frustration. I have a few friends who will engage in a healthy discussion on the topic, but so so often it just turns into thought-terminating cliches and memes. And on the other side of it, many of the people I run into at the range are full of right-wing thought-terminating cliches, memes, and conspiracy theories. Urgh. Oh well, at least I can go out to the farm and put holes in boxes in peace!

> In the younger circles, it seems like there's a very brief period of telegraphing your "tribe", and once you detect the matching cues you can assume you know pretty much everything about the other's point of view

This is just a sign of a lack of sophistication, afaik it isn't purely generational

A couple weeks ago someone said to me that lying was a "violation of the first amendment" and I asked them "what's in the first amendment?" just to hear some dumbfounded response

A bunch of voters in this country are only functionally literate and it's depressing

This is so relatable. It also makes me reflect on how annoying I must have sounded at 25!

This is my experience as well.

> the younger generations, that's all they talk about

There's something to this, I think. For younger generations, politics has become an identity and seems to influence a significant majority of their life - including who they associate with, etc.

I enjoy the sport of the debate - but am very careful not to "get into it" with people who do not initiate that conversation on their own. Not everyone can have a debate and walk away at the end not thinking less of the other person.

My big issue with arguing about politics is that the vast majority of people seem to have no interest in an actual debate; they just want to rant about their positions regardless of what the other party says. This leads to extremely boring conversations.

I have a few close friends that I actually enjoy debating with because they will listen to arguments with an open mind and often make thoughtful arguments that cause me to reevaluate.

If someone I don't know well asks if I'm interested in anything politics related my answer is now a hard no, even though I actually do follow politics quite a lot. Those conversations practially always end up feeling like a waste of time, IME.

Keep Your Identity Small (2009) http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html (see also https://hn.algolia.com/?q=keep+your+identity )

> I finally realized today why politics and religion yield such uniquely useless discussions.

> As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums?

---

Also https://pbfcomics.com/comics/deeply-held-beliefs/

> online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript

Isn't it a law that all programming language discussions eventually devolve into religious arguments?

I can't imagine Javascript is somehow immune.

Paul Graham wrote this in 2009.

Nowadays? I believe that quite a few homicides could be traced to have started with discussions about baking, beer brewing, or cooking.

People are fucking opinionated about everything nowadays.

A huge part of youth identity in the US use to be from the music business.

I mean we use to even have goth bars, punk bars. Imagine a bar in 2023 that only caters to people who like industrial or punk music. It sounds absolutely ridiculous.

The music business though was also highly connected to all other art forms in terms of the visual arts, fashion, literature.

With the change in the importance of music it basically devalued nearly all art forms compared to what use to be.

It seems like politics stepped in to fill this void for the youth. It is such a boring and disappointing development.

It is also not good for politics either to have competing factions who at 20 believe what they believe with near religious fervor.

> The older generations have a philosophy of "you don't talk about politics, religion, or money" and, the younger generations, that's all they talk about.

Boy, I wish that were the case where I work. I'm an older developer, working closely with an ancient developer. He insists on talking politics at work. Since I prefer to get along with my coworkers, I won't talk politics with them. This guy just won't catch a hint, though. It makes conversations with him difficult as he keeps trying to engage me in these topics and I keep trying to change the subject.

Tip: put on headphones :)

maybe it's learned behavior?

> There's no point. It's a no win situation because you're only going to make somebody angry, never change anyone's mind and everyone else in the room will be uncomfortable and/or leave because they just showed up to see everybody, share food, find out how life and family is going and have a good time.

Total strangers will absolutely talk about all of that and more if they pass the vibe check regardless if they disagree. You don't have to agree to get along and have fun. The way someone carries themselves is precisely what makes them unique and interesting and its a vital skill to have. Bars are the tried and true institution for developing this. Go to any bar after midnight on a weeknight when the regulars are the majority instead. Nobody is talking about sports at that hour, and the friendships made are all the stronger for it. For those that can hang, that's a win.

Total strangers is key here.

Family gatherings or groups of friends have a risk associated with those conversations. Strangers don't. You don't have anything to lose with people you don't know.

The new people don't suddenly become agreeable doormats when they turn into a regular. They become friends. That's why they're friends (the honesty).

It's a sad state of social dysfunction that so many people are so afraid of disagreement. That aversion is the source of all the conflict because white lies only paint you into a corner.

Actual friends don’t care. I wouldn’t mind an extremely disagreeable drunk argument about some hard political stuff with friends. Would just write it off the next day.

Cutting people out of your lives too quickly leaves you with just boring agreeable people.

I have no issue with disagreement. I know a lot of people who get heated though.

Not everyone can handle it.

I dunno, I find that people are can be relatively open to talking about 'bigger' issues so long as it's framed in a way that departs from the normal polarizing frameworks we're used to engaging in.

Talking about politics in the sense of current party issues is either boring or divisive depending on the group. But talking about voting systems and social choice theory can turn out well, especially if you frame it around something that doesn't look like governance in a traditional state. E.g. "The recent Colorado river water deal was kind of undemocratic. But what would be a fair, democratic and reasonable way to make decisions around that kind of resource problem?"

"Which religion is right?" is a bad conversation starter, but nerdy people enjoy a question that departs from normal identifications, like "Judaism, Islam and sometimes Buddhism care a lot about engaging with religious texts in their original language, but Christianity cares a lot less. Does faith come with an intuition about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?" People aren't precommitted to a camp in an emotional way, aren't offended by disagreement, and are willing to think about something new.

Heh, in the Catholic Church this could jump you right into a current vicious divide between regressive “Latinists” who want to undo all of Vatican 2 (most relevantly, the change from holding mass in Latin to holding it in the local language), and the pope and actual church.

... but even if you're an old-school Catholic who wants Latin mass, is that consistent with a strong version of Sapir-Whorf given that the new testament was written in Koine Greek and Jesus and the disciples spoke Aramaic? I.e. if language limits which concepts you can hold, Latin may not be able to communicate same understandings as intended by the authors of the gospels?

These arguments are rarely about who's objectively right, but rather an ideological justification for a power struggle. Undoing "Vatican II" is largely about repositioning Catholic attention towards the wealthy end of the social spectrum, to make it easier to wield hard, temporal power; Latin mass is just one of the ideological wedges used to support that effort.

The Sapir-Whorf stuff has almost nothing to do with why some traditionalist Catholics prefer the traditional Latin Mass. (Also, the language spoken is not the only difference between the TLM and the post-Vatican II mass.)

I don't think you'd get informed takes on Sapir-Whorf, but people who already have opinions on Latin Mass and not linguistics might assume that you were referring to that topic.

Yeah but if your conversational partner wants to express an opinion without understanding the question, and who doesn't have the intellectual curiosity to ask about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis then they encounter it, maybe you already weren't going to have a good conversation irrespective of the topic.

I found myself on occasions passionately arguing in a bar for some point diametrally opposed to my convictions just to have a good time with folks that are good people but probably wouldn't tolerate someone thinking differently from them on politics.

Its verrry common over the last decade to either be completely unaware of or completely disregard that no-no, in the US

and it has predictable results

Reply on news.ycombinator.com