Comment by freeli | Hacker News Reader

Comment by freeli | Hacker News Reader

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Nothing any country/government does will be unequivocally worthy of praise. That's a goal too far.

My point is that proposed discussions about US policy that point to something that some HN user has decided is worthy of praise never seem to get traction here, while discussions that are objectively critical of the US seem to proliferate (with no substantive discussion in opposition in the comments section).

That's the real issue. Humans do not engage in productive discussion if everyone holds the same opinions. Find me a set of conservative opinions that has resulted in substantive engagement here and I'll be happy to update my priors. Until then, what I see in the political threads here is an echo chamber, with the (conservative) opposition either downvoted or reluctant to post. I can't tell you why others don't post, but I can tell you why I don't (and I'm not even a conservative):

1) I don't think HN should be a forum for political discussions in the first place; and

2) I'd probably just get downvoted anyway since the progressive bias here is so strong.

I agree also that HN shouldn't be a forum for political discussions, but I think that the political nature of technology, and the political nature of the decisions/choices made by the companies driving technology, should not be avoided/silenced.

I do remember of slightly better times, but the governments were also of a quite different substance.

It's funny and maybe it's my European-bias, because I'd label myself rather a progressive (coming from a very, very conservative background). But I don't perceive the HN vibe to be progressive at all, neither conservative. It's of a different kind.

I agree with you that the HN political slant I see defies single labels. On the one hand, there is a significant civil-liberty lean (personal privacy and gun rights, for example) which is not generally associated with (US) "progressivism".

On the other hand, automatic disdain for the hegemony is a pretty progressive lean.

This is why summarily labeling folks as "nazis", "racists", "genocide supporters", etc. doesn't advance the conversation; it shuts it down, and my feeling is that's why we're seeing the types of political threads we see on HN (that are dominated by like-minded individuals ranting against whatever cause they happen to espouse).

IMO, this siloing is not a sign of a healthy community. My preference would be to get back to more technical discussions and try to avoid discussion of politics insofar as that's possible.

But I don't speak for anyone else and can only control how I engage in discussion here. I choose to disengage in political threads. That other (non-HN-mainstream) voices do as well is probably one of the reasons why the self-reinforcing echo chambers exist in the first place.

That's my objection to political discussions on HN.

I've been around for awhile and anecdotally notice the same. There is actually a really good example just above where someone says this in their comment:

"US is basically tech-Hitler".

Now there might be a small amount of truth to this in it's own way, but this is a pretty blanketed Reddit-like statement and ultimately not a very high quality comment. This comment isn't fading at all, but other higher quality comments that I would consider progressing the conversation are fading away.

I've always thought it would be a fun project to run analytics on comments and sentiment here on HN over the years. I anecdotally noticed a convervative/progressive 50/50-ish split around the mid 2010s, and that's moved to a more left of center split in the mid-2020s. But I also have my biases so I really can't come to a conclusion without seeing the actual data.

>This is why summarily labeling folks as "nazis", "racists", "genocide supporters", etc. doesn't advance the conversation; it shuts it down, and my feeling is that's why we're seeing the types of political threads we see on HN

We're all tired of fighting for survival, and under no circumstances will we stop calling a spade a spade. Beating around the bush is how we got here in the first place.

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