Ask HN: Is HN crowd a left-leaning? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is HN crowd a left-leaning?

7 pointseimrine19 comments

Observing some discussion about HN on my native language, I realize that from their opinion we are incredibly left-leaning but the only difference from other resources is that our leftists are not so bold as on other webforums but at least capable to explain their position before flagging/downvoting any non-leftist opponent.

I do not agree with them but on that very old Linux forum it is kind of consensus. How do you recognize yourself on HN and on another webforums from the political spectrum point of view?

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There are a higher proportion here of persons who think scientifically. There is no automatic intersection between that and politics; any intersection must be forced. But when it is forced, it will be found that scientific modes of thought are not so much Left as anti-Right. The rest is what the stakes are imagined to be.

Compared to other places, I’ve found HN to be pretty balanced politically.

Of course the guidelines point out that politics are generally off topic, which avoids a lot of tribalism around it.

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

Politics is about framing, posturing and perception. Engineers tend to focus on data, science and part of our job is testing a hypothesis, reviewing results and shifting a solution.

A lot of software engineers make a lot of money in the US from very right/center leaning companies. Its hard to have an honest opinion on political topics like AI data centers, government funding towards AI/tech companies, etc. when some element of those are tied to your career. Even indirectly - funding up across the industry helps everyone out in the industry (same can be said for layoffs, it impacts the industry too).

A corollary might be commercial airline pilots. It might be hard for them to be environmentalists because of the pollution jets create, but they might love aviation so much that they are blinded to the detrimental things their career may contribute to the environment. Engineers loving programming and computing so much that they turn a blind eye towards massive build outs of data centers.

Its called cognitive dissonance.

Not really. This is a forum by venture capitalists for their current and future workers, which is pretty firmly center-right.

Probably has something to do with smart technical people being attracted to free software, and then OSS, and then copyleft. the idea of writing code under gpl feels pretty left to me.

It is left, but it's also dead, relatively speaking. Everyone who's still writing free software is using MIT to make their code as widely used as possible (which often isn't very wide).

linux is gpl, not dead

Side question, What's the origin of left and right as political terms.

Good question.

When facing the podium from the floor of the the US Senate, there is an aisle down the middle of the auditorium and the Democrats' seats are to the left of the aisle and the Republicans are to the right.

No, the terms originated with the French Revolution, and are based on the political divisions the French National Assembly. Presumably the US Senate is based on this, but the concept and terminology didn't originate within American politics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_political_s...

Good to post the additional info.

I realize that the US is not the only one. But this is how our political parties line up.

I would say that "leftists" are more like extremists that almost all Republicans will distrust more so than regular Democrats, and "right wingers" are the opposite.

Things have always been better when most seats have been occupied by moderates, during times when extremists don't have a place at the table.

Yes it is very old indeed. The word for left is the same one as "sinister" in Romance languages too.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/sinister

Depends on what you mean by right wing and left wing, but: Not really, I’d say it’s more neoliberal. That is to say, broadly, more liberal/open-minded on social issues, and more pro-market on economic ones. However I do think there is an increasingly noticeable dislike of tech-for-tech’s sake, which often gets formulated as populism, and that tracks pretty much with the industry as a whole over the last decade or two.

I'm curious about the details: What is the definition of Left Wing you observed? (Or collection of traits). It is a term which means something different to different people. I'm also curious what your native language and country is, due to your use of this in contrast.

edit: Because it's so prevalent in the global news, I will mention this. May or may not be relevant depending on the specifics of what you've noticed: The current US president is an existential threat to our Republic. The most corrupt one in history, and an authoritarian. It is difficult to reconcile being a patriot and maintain a coherent set of ethics while not shifting left until this is resolved. There is a large portion of people who while may not normally align as leftists/liberals, but perceive this threat, as it's not a subtle one.

I think hn is still heavily influenced by Silicon Valley, so your guess is absolutely correct.

HN is left-leaning only from the far-right POV. Liberals are considered right wing everywhere in the world besides the US. There's no real left there and there's no real left here too.

>HN is left-leaning only from the far-right POV.

Or HN is right-leaning only from the far-left POV.

>Liberals are considered right wing everywhere in the world besides the US.

This is false.

>There's no real left there and there's no real left here too.

There are US parties that support open borders, DEI/wokeism, etc. Those are "real left."

> There are US parties that support open borders, DEI/wokeism,

There really aren't. Nobody supports "open borders". That's just a Fox News lie.

People do support diversity, equity, and inclusion, but Fox News' version of "wokeism" is similarly a deranged right-wing nightmare.

>There really aren't. Nobody supports "open borders".

There really are. Democratic Socialist of America do.

>That's just a Fox News lie.

Or a truth.

>People do support diversity, equity, and inclusion, but Fox News' version of "wokeism" is similarly a deranged right-wing nightmare.

"Wokeism" is a nightmare and the followers are deranged.

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