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Comment by ryaniscool | Hacker News Reader

I consider this type of thinking to be a form of tribalism because you're essentially saying there are two tribes. Each tribe has specific values.

A person's values are not a dichotomy (i.e. republican or democrat). You simply cannot put people into two buckets that define their overarching moral compass.

A person can be transphobic but support abortion so they have always voted Democrat...or hate everything about Republican values except they got burned by Obamacare so they vote Republican. There is virtually an infinite level of nuance that can be a deciding factor in why someone votes for someone.

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> person can be transphobic but support abortion so they have always voted Democrat

The term you're looking for is political coherence, i.e. the degree to which you can predict a person's views based on knowing their view on one issue. Political elites tend to be highly coherent. If you know a Congressperson's views on guns, you probably know them on abortion and corporate taxes.

In the real world, however, votes tend not to be politically coherent. Instead, what we see in a hyperpartisan polity, is that a diverse set of views collapses after an issue achieves partisan identity status. Talking about a thing through a partisan lens is what causes the partisan collapse. Hence the effects of mass and then social media on the quality of our discussions.

(And I agree with OP that the author's "I'm above politics" stance is naively immature.)

> Political elites tend to be highly coherent

Coherence might not the word you're looking for. The policies of political parties and groups are born out of historical circumstances and the diverse coalitions they represent. Political elites are "coherent" in the sense that you can expect them to consistently follow the party line, and thus infer all of their views just by knowing one of their views.

The party line, i.e. platform of the Democratic and Republican parties, or any other large political party in the world, is, by itself, nothing coherent though. Many of their policies and claims do not make any more sense besides each other than they would make against each other. Realignments on issues are pretty common across the world. What is left-wing in one part of the world at one point of time might be rightist across space and time.

This is a difference in the subject of coherence.

Logical coherence refers to the variation and predictive power of the reasoning.

Coherence can also be used to describe the variability and predictability of positions or states themselves.

If you measure the characteristics of some photons in a coherent laser, you know what the other photons are doing. They are predictable using a model.

Logic is a poor predictive model for politics. Tribe identification is a strong predictive model for politics

> Coherence might not the word you're looking for

Ideological and political coherence are the terms of art [1].

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8827732/

> In the real world, however, votes tend not to be politically coherent. Instead, what we see in a hyperpartisan polity, is that a diverse set of views collapses after an issue achieves partisan identity status. Talking about a thing through a partisan lens is what causes the partisan collapse. Hence the effects of mass and then social media on the quality of our discussions.

nailed it imo

not above politics, just think productive discussion can't happen if people don't know why they support things beyond "the tribe supports it"

or acknowledge when a belief is tribal vs reason-based

> transphobic but support abortion so they have always voted Democrat

This is the NYT if you want a high-profile example of this existing in the real world.

I worked with a guy who was a goldmine of odd but sincerely held political opinions that subverted the usual narratives. He was (I guess still is) gay but believed that trans people shouldn't serve in the military because he saw that they didn't get the treatment they needed. He wanted everyone to have guns as a protection against crooked cops-- he was from a small town. He was against single-payer healthcare because he thought the government would use it as a political weapon. He was was in theory anti-union because he thought union benefits should just be turned into labor protections for everyone instead of just being for union jobs and supported them only as a stopgap. He was pro-solar/wind and had an electric car not for any environmental reason but because he didn't want to be reliant on the greedy power company.

i mean, his views don't sound too odd. he sounds like a communist who's got a dim view of reform or socialism as a means to communism.

To me that just sounds like someone who arrives at his political views by thinking rather than blindly adopting whatever his peers believe. It's only odd because it's (sadly) rare these days.

Yea, holy hell... someone with _nuance_ in their views? Blasphemy!

I will admit that this is not only accurate, but also a sad commentary on the current state of things. I know I am now actively avoiding any political discussions ( I mean, realistically, I should have before, but I do hold some opinions I wish to inflict upon others ) for very pragmatic reasons. We are semi-officially in soviet state regime, where your speech can mean your family is excluded from society. It didn't start with Trump or even with Covid, but it is absolutely enraging to see this become not only a default, but encouraged aspect of this society.

Realpolitiks...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik

> He was was in theory anti-union because he thought union benefits should just be turned into labor protections for everyone

Uh, hmm. So weaker unions result in labor protections for everyone? I gotta say, doesn't seem like that's really how the U.S. is playing out. If weekends off and an 8-hour workday didn't exist they certainly wouldn't be argued for now.

US has very strong unions, you don't have anything close to SAG-AFTRA in Europe since such strong unions are illegal. European unions are just big, but their are reigned in by laws much more.

So yeah I think weakening the protections unions from workers in USA enjoys would lead to more people joining them, since there is less risk in doing so. Most people don't wanna work in an industry dominated by something like the screen actors guild.

You're acting as if people are saying "democrat good, republican bad" as the meaning for associating values with who someone voted for, but missing the part that you can easily associate that someone has poor values if they voted for Trump.

Sure, you need to go a bit deeper if someone didn't vote for Trump to know their values, but voting for someone who ran on a platform of mass deportations, retaliation against his enemies, obvious idiotic economic policy, homophobia and transphobia, and racism, makes you a kind of shit person, and it's not really necessary to go any deeper to know their values don't match yours.

So you're saying >50% of the USA population are objectively shit people? If you're a member of the other 50%, you aren't automatically shit but you still could be?

Seems bleak dude. Also, consider that conservative media has indoctrinated people to think like you do...except in the opposite direction. i.e. if you voted for Kamala or Biden, you're the enemy.

Where are you getting >50% of the population from?

He did not even get 50% of the votes cast for president. More people in the USA opted out of voting for him than to vote for him.

MAGA isn't 50% of the population. Voter turnout was 63.7% for 2024, so I'm saying that ~32% of the USA population are objectively shit people, in the same way that Germans who supported Hitler were objectively shit people.

If you can't see that disappearing people without due process is wrong, you don't have good values. If you can't see that pardoning conmen, and insurrectionists is wrong, you don't have good values. If you can't see the use of Venezuelan prisons and Guantanamo Bay as extralegal black sites as wrong, you don't have good values. If you can't see that a president illegally ignoring the courts and congress is wrong, you don't have good values.

You could say that some of the other stuff that's happening is just an extension of the culture war, and that it's a matter of interpretation of whether it's wrong or not (DEI hate, transgender issues, abortion rights, etc). I don't agree, but those topics are harder to give a black and white answer on whether it's wrong or right.

Clear violations of the constitution, ignoring basic human rights, and doing straight up crime are black and white issues, and in general, most Trump voters support these things, and these are things he campaigned on, so even if they disagree with them now, they voted to allow it to happen.

Even if true, the point OP was making that you are dismissing their political stance for no other reason than your disagreement with it. It does not make for a useful, productive.. or any kind of conversation that results in some sort of mutually agreeable state.

Yeah, it's OK to disagree with people who agree with a political stance that involves depriving people of their rights, to the point of sending people to violent work camps and refusing to bring people back even when it's found that they're innocent. This isn't the kind of situation we "meet in the middle".

I'm not tolerant of intolerance, I'm not OK with hate, and you shouldn't be either.

I truly do wish we could move a little past bumper sticker conversations, because it is HN. The guidelines of the site do expect more from all of us when we post. Still, allow me to address what you wrote.

<< This isn't the kind of situation we "meet in the middle".

Then we are out of words and are unable to communicate further. What does that accomplish? What do you think happens when people stop talking? I would like you to think this through before reflexively answering. On this forum, I semi-consistently argue for at least trying to reach out to the other party before talking stops.

<< I'm not tolerant of intolerance,

In very simple terms, you are just intolerant. You just gave yourself a permission to hate ( because your hate is so totally different from their kind of hate ). On the off-chance sarcasm was not obvious, it is not some sort of neat trick or get out of jail card, because there is some level of social permission for this.

<< it's OK to disagree with people who agree with a political stance that involves depriving people of their rights, to the point of sending people to violent work camps and refusing to bring people back even when it's found that they're innocent.

Friend, it is always ok to disagree. There is no need to qualify it. Unless I am not reading your post right, let me ask you a simple question:

'When is it not ok to disagree?'

> because your hate is so totally different from their kind of hate

I just want to suggest that there may be a difference between hating a person for something they were born with, or for an uncontrollable feature of a person, compared to hating someone for explicit choices they have made.

Not saying that hating people for any reason is necessarily okay, but I think an argument can be made that there is a difference between those two cases of hatred.

And what if the person if mentally on the severely disabled end of the spectrum? They still made a choice based on your distinction and it is hardly a given that they were born with it. As always, the drawing lines makes the difference ( and naturally adds a focus on people drawing the lines ).

FWIW, I do get what you are trying to say, but I am not sure you considered the other side of the equation.

Autism isn't an excuse for hate, and folks on the spectrum don't like this argument, because it portrays them as being unable to have any control over their thought.

> In very simple terms, you are just intolerant. You just gave yourself a permission to hate ( because your hate is so totally different from their kind of hate ). On the off-chance sarcasm was not obvious, it is not some sort of neat trick or get out of jail card, because there is some level of social permission for this.

Yeah, I'm OK hating people who want to imprison/kill people for being born a particular way. You can change the way you think, they can't change the way they were born.

> Friend,

You're not my friend.

> Then we are out of words and are unable to communicate further. What does that accomplish?

We don't need to debate concepts like "should we send people to labor camps, without due process". Engaging people who think this way simply helps spread their ideas, and their ideas are a cancer.

Saying this community is debating these things because we believe in curiosity is just an excuse to allow fascists in our midsts without feeling guilt about it. If you have a bar and let nazis hang out, you're a nazi bar.

> 'When is it not ok to disagree?'

If your disagreement is about whether someone should be allowed to exist because of the way they were born, then it's not OK to disagree.

I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't exist. I'm suggesting that we, as a community, shouldn't allow you to participate in debate, because it simply helps spread your hate, and it makes the community as a whole worse to allow you to participate.

<< You're not my friend.

Shame, I personally have no ill-will towards you.

<< I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't exist. I'm suggesting that we, as a community, shouldn't allow you to participate in debate, because it simply helps spread your hate, and it makes the community as a whole worse to allow you to participate.

I suppose it is helpful that you are so open about it, but, ngl, you are making a solid argument to not bother. Not exactly a recipe for kumbaya future, I must say.

<< If you have a bar and let nazis hang out, you're a nazi bar.

I will ask the question in good faith, because I saw this phrase pop up before followed by rather complete lack of understanding of what some words actually mean. Can you define what a nazi is?

<< If your disagreement is about whether someone should be allowed to exist because of the way they were born, then it's not OK to disagree.

Mkay. Lets test that definition a little. Must aborted fetuses be allowed to exist? Yes, I am setting you up a little bit, but I am now genuinely curious if you are gonna go for born part or attempt to dismantle the argument in a different way.

> Also, consider that conservative media has indoctrinated people to think like you do...except in the opposite direction.

I came to similar conclusion by reading conservative media. NOT by reading mainstream media that forever excuse, rationalize and sanitize what is going on among conservatives.

Also, note that he did not just said "they are enemy". He listed actual positions these people demonstrably have. All you have to do is to ... listen to what they say. Oh, and I also tell you some stuff they want for gender relations: they want women completely dependent on men economically, spousal abuse to be an accepted price for keeping families together.

The person you are responded to described really existing value differences. Musks "empathy is weakness" is not some kind of outlier claim, it is something conservatives were pushing on for years already. Especially in its far right circles. Likewise the Trumps "truth does not matter" philosophy.

You could also say that someone who voted for the illegal importation of millions of criminals and murderers, targeted conservatives, used law fare to try and imprison a former president, committed astronomical financial fraud and persons responsible for the deaths caused by these criminal aliens is a shit person who needs to serve the remainder of his pathetic life in prison.

Tribalism is just bad sociology, that's where the nuance is missing.

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