The Two Kinds of Moderate • Hacker News Board

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#101

Post by bovermyer » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 6:42 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #94

bovermyer wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep saying charts and figures. Repeatedly, ad nauseum. As if that's what I was getting at. Quit talking about them, that's not relevant to this discussion. Comparing two data points will always yield better results than having just one. Data points don't have to be literal points on a graph. They can be discussions with people. Study historiography or journalism.

You know, it's possible that Paul Graham might have had discussions with people, rather than just his own one-life anecdotal data...

No shit. Ever heard the phrase "trust, but verify?"

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#102

Post by apu » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

> the far right and far left are roughly equally wrong

Graham's sleights of hand used to be better hidden.

The "far left" and "far right" are not fixed points in ideological space (even within a single country).

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#103

Post by AnimalMuppet » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

spamizbad wrote: post #37

simonh wrote: post #16

As a British moderate conservative, the differences between US and UK (arguably European) politics are fascinating. What moderate means is so different. For reference I’m a lifelong conservative voter that grew up under Maggie Thatcher. We do have a middle of the road Liberal Democrat party, but to my mind they maintain their position in the middle ground by dodging the hard issues. They are intentional moderates in…

IMO, in the US the "coservative" movement is misnamed. It seeks not to conserve, but make radical change to both government (shrink it significantly) and culture (change mainstream values, cultural output). They're trying to push for extraordinary change and are willing to take extraordinary measures to get there. Ironically, the closest thing we have to "true" conservatives here are self-fashioned centrists, who gen…

Well, the conservatives want to conserve, not the current status quo, but the status quo of, say, 1950. To get there from here, we'd need to make some drastic changes to the current status quo.

And that's not inherently an insane approach. If we've been going in the wrong direction for the last 70 years, the most useful move is to go back to where we were.

Now, in practice, it's not that simple. You can't just go back. You don't even want to just go back; parts of 1950 we do not want to return to. And you don't have the people you had 70 years ago, or the expectations, or even the societal values.

But I think this explains why a conservative could want to radically shrink (or, rather, de-grow) government, and still legitimately remain a conservative.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#104

Post by guelo » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #23

msla wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think another way to slice this is, if you think of the Overton window shifting along the axis of time, the “accidental moderate” does not shift their opinion by the same factor as the ends of the window shift. You can see this with the Republicans who turned into Democrats once the Republicans shifted far enough right that there were no more Rockefeller Republicans and Bill Clinton ran as a Democrat. If you're a…

> You can see this with the Republicans who turned into Democrats once the Republicans shifted far enough right that there were no more Rockefeller Republicans and Bill Clinton ran as a Democrat. If you're an accidental moderate, you run the risk of involuntarily changing party affiliation. I think this is interesting because it's been exactly the opposite for me and many of the people I know. At some point over the…

Political polarization has increased so this is happening on both sides, people moving towards democrats and republicans.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#105

Post by scarmig » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 6:55 PM UTC

CameronNemo wrote: post #99

Right and left are arbitrary constructs necessitated by a first past the post voting system. Change the electoral system and you will see much more diverse and meaningful party affiliation. >The effect of a system based on plurality voting is that the larger parties, and parties with more geographically concentrated support, gain a disproportionately large share of seats, while smaller parties with more evenly distri…

This is not accurate.

Yes, many election systems result in more parties than FPTP. But left and right still have salience within those.

In fact, you can look at how each politician votes (without explicitly coding votes as left or right). This itself forms a space equal to the number of votes taken. But that vote space can be projected into a much lower dimensional space that captures most of the information about the vote space. If you go so far as to collapse it into a one dimensional space, that corresponds to the traditional left/right axis, and this holds through both history and internationally. The second issue is a bit more varied, but most of the time the left/right axis dominates whatever that second dimension is. Look up DW-NOMINATE for more info.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#106

Post by alphabettsy » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 6:57 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #95

alphabettsy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is already bloodshed, but right now it just happens to not be yours. The point of MLK’s quote, in my opinion, is that moderates can always find reasons to maintain status quo especially when the issues at hand are not deemed personally impactful. People are being harmed, but because they are not me or look like me it’s not worth risking potential upset.

> There is already bloodshed, but right now it just happens to not be yours. No, there isn't. At least not in the examples mentioned. What you mention is one point of MLK's quote, but my point is different: not everyone who doesn't want to join the fight against status quo is such moderate without a personal stake in the outcome. Some are people who very much care, and have a stake, but decline involvement because th…

There is no ambiguity about who MLK was talking about so it’s not a direct analogy. Until we talk about specific actions and potential consequences this discussion is so vague as to be meaningless.

Many of the current fights for social justice in the US face the same indifference as the last century’s civil rights movement. People who stand to lose nothing simply can’t be bothered.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#107

Post by taneq » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 6:58 PM UTC

It never occurred to me that people would tailor their political views to try and be "moderate". The whole idea feels kind of dirty to me, your political views should be your honest opinion.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#108

Post by youdontknowtho » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 6:59 PM UTC

"and the far right and far left are roughly equally wrong"

I disagree with this in the strongest terms.

I realize that the people on this site lean right, and arguing politics isn't really cricket, so I won't go into to why.

The "center" is a political ideology that pretends that it's something else.

Also, being good at one thing doesn't make someone's opinion about everything else important.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#109

Post by asdfman123 » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

Ah yes, the old "No one thinks for themselves except people like me" argument.

> openly being an accidental moderate requires the most courage of all

If he thinks that having middle-of-the-road opinions requires the most courage of them all, he has had an extraordinarily easily life in which he is used to be hailed as brilliant. It seems as though due to his comfortable position in life he has never faced any significant opposition to anything he's said, anything he's done, or anything he is.

I might be wrong, and I respect the opinions of "accidental moderates" who are acting in good faith, but I cannot imagine how you'd come to the conclusion that holding moderate viewpoints requires any real courage at all.

> Nearly all the most impressive people I know are accidental moderates

"I am only impressed with people exactly like me."

Someone needs to write a similar pithy thinkpiece about how people who experience a lot of success should stick to what they know and not assume it gives them valid insight into other parts of life.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#110

Post by CalChris » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #93

pjc50 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Increased focus on racial and sexual minorities to the exclusion of working-class interests Are these actually in conflict? Are they also not part of the working class? What sort of policies do you think should have been enacted against this?

There's only so much time, attention, and energy. If your focus is on, say, trans rights, you're not spending that time focusing on working-class economics. And even if you can do it all, there's only so much attention the voters have. If all they hear about you is on trans rights, they don't perceive you doing anything about their economic problems. The Democrats' central message used to be "we care about the workin…

The population of the United States is dominated by the coasts. The GDP of the United States is dominated by the coasts. The tax base of the United States is dominated by the coasts.