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Comment by irrational | Hacker News Reader

I too was wondering where these people are that discuss the morality of their car choices with each other.

Internet discussions on divisive topics always contain morality/finger pointing. Goes for HN too. So I'm incredulous of your surprise seeing you've been around the internet for at least 7 years. For cars it's vehicle size or technology. For food it's animal or plant. There will always be a discussion and sometimes morality can't stay out of it.

Also GP moved the goal posts a bit, why "IRL"? Is our discussion here worthless or not representative because we're not "IRL"? Yes, I do have such discussions of morality of choices in real life too. It's easier to have them on the internet because separating from your identity helps make whatever case you want to make. IRL is harder because you can't just close the tab and pretend it never happened so if you have some convictions you have to really stand by them.

Am I to understand that you never, ever discuss the morality of things with anyone? Or just not cars? Not even in principle?

I specified IRL because that's what I'm curious about. You spoke about motorists in general, so you must have spoken with enough of them to have formed the opinion that they respond to your questioning in such a manner. I move in very different social circles, some people I know cycle to work not for the environment but to save money, so the thought of living, breathing humans speaking the way you described comes across as strange to me.

I worked very closely with the people who wrote the related regulation (and a lot more) and contributed to that at EU level for years and years. Yes, certainly such debates came up a lot. As for action, the people I know cycled or took the train to set an example or because they liked it. I actually don't know a single person who does this to save money but this may be a factor of the bubble I live in.

Closer to home I have the same experience. It's not limited to driving. People are always looking to justify their choice and cherry pick the arguments for it. You name it, there will be an objectively correct argument to support it. You don't need to be pro-environment to claim you are. One neighbor who owns 2 Teslas couldn't give a damn about the environment but that's not stopping him from bragging to everyone who will listen that that's why he bought the cars. Another one has a PHEV that is never driven electric, same story. And another one constantly talks about the health and environmental benefits of cycling while his bike is a permanent fixture of the living room wall. Virtue signaling can come as an afterthought.

But most of these discussions were internet discussions though, just because its so easy to take part in a lot of them. For years on most sites (HN included) posts on ICE/BEV would surface the same discussions with each "side" pumping up the arguments that supported their views while trying to downplay the others' arguments even at the cost of hypocrisy.

Thanks, I understand where you're coming from better now. It's sort of the opposite with me, I move in circles where I sometimes have to be careful about even being slightly positive about EVs since so many are rabidly against them.

I've been around the Internet for about 35 years and the WWW for about 28 years, but I've never ran across a discussion of people talking about the morality of car choices. Apparently I've been visiting the wrong forums.

Either you're reading too much into this and hanging on the word "morality" (which mind you, I haven't actually used or suggested in my original comment) just to be super pedantic, or you've actually never read the comment section on car articles on sites like HN, Reddit, or ArsTechnica just to name some more popular ones.

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