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Comment by psunavy03 | Hacker News Reader

There's also a whole lot of people who point out the middle ground fallacy just so they can avoid examining their own beliefs. No, the correct answer is not always exactly between the two sides. But no, that doesn't mean that one side or the other has a monopoly on recognizing the best way to handle things.

Centrism and objectivity aren't reflexively seeking "the middle," just refusing to buy into either tribe's propaganda and FUD.

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My opinion as well. I'm a centrist solely because no party seems to fully define me. It doesn't mean I think we need a split-down-the-middle solution for every problem. Sometimes you need to lean far to one side or another to make things work. That's... fine? Why do people seem to get so upset about this. I swear this sentiment is treated like you're a terrorist for saying it, but I've also never met a single person who can look at any political party and say it represents all of their ideals.

Having talked to many, many, many self-proclaimed centrists. A lot of them are either left- or right-wing moderates who don't want to claim a camp. Primarily because both sides are so polarized these days.

Did you know Elon Musk considers himself center left? Some people think he's a right wing nutjob. Plenty of right wingers think he's a leftist still.

It's because he's a libertarian. He's on a totally different axis of the graph.

A lot of the "centrists" that I know are economically right and socially left. Like the old joke, "I can't be a Democrat because I want to spend my own money. I can't be a Republican because of what I want to spend my money on!"

How do you assign left vs right in this case?

I think pretending like people can be divvied up in one direction or the other is part of the problem. Political sides arent so clear cut.

> Did you know Elon Musk considers himself center left?

Socialist, even: https://yellowhammernews.com/spacexs-elon-musk-im-a-socialis...

And the actual tweet: https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1008013111058526209

His views have shifted somewhat, so I'm not 100% sure if he's still asserted support to these views recently.

> Centrism and objectivity aren't reflexively seeking "the middle," just refusing to buy into either tribe's propaganda and FUD.

Why do you assume there are only two sides/tribes to begin with ? Centrism isn't in the middle of two tribes, it's a tribe in itself

Centrism can work reasonably well when left and right have significant overlap, as was the case in US historically for most of its existence. That overlap then tends to have policies that both sides think are good, which, while far from a perfect filter, still manages to remove a lot of really bad ideas.

But when parties are so far apart that there's a gaping gulf between them, centrism becomes less about specific policies and more about "can we all get along?".

The term centrist to me implies an alignment with both parties, which I see as very different from objectivity which is inherently apolitical.

> Centrism and objectivity aren't reflexively seeking "the middle," just refusing to buy into either tribe's propaganda and FUD.

Centrism and objectivity are entirely unrelated, and, yes, centrism is just reflexively seeking the middle (actually, usually its sitting very firmly on one side, most commonly the Right but occasionally the Left, while obsessively trying to sell oneself as being in the middle, but...)

Uh, maybe, but if you're already thinking about things as "just refusing to buy into either tribe's propaganda and FUD." then you're pretty clearly not actually objectively considering reality.

The "middle" becomes VERY skewed when you include complete lunatics like Alex Jones.

I genuinely don't understand why this got down voted. Are there a lot of Alex Jones fans on hackernews?

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