181–190 of 382 posts
I know that the dictum to keep politics off of HN has been a dead letter for some time- especially since tech has become overtly non-apolitical in the last few years- but it's still funny to see pg himself breaking that rule.
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 signifi…
I always assume most people hold moderate viewpoints and the people with extreme viewpoints just tend to be the loudest. At least that seems to be the case with most people I meet anyway.
This is a very American perspective, occasionally a bit flippant (dismissing 100+ years of Marx-influenced intellectuals in politics and economics as “not smart” is definitely not smart, particularly after 2008) and overall mediocre. There is a lot of stereotyping, and it doesn’t account for the interest axis, i.e. the fact that a lot of very smart people simply do not care for organised politics in any way, shape, o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> OP: In the 20th century, a lot of very smart people were Marxists — just no one who was smart about the subjects Marxism involves. In 40 years, the USSR, whose economy was about the size of Brazil's in 1917, and who waged a civil war and repelled two waves of invasions (the first of which included an invasion by the USA after WWI) - this country under Stalin had enormous economic growth, to where it could repel an…
The best argument for Marxism isn't the USSR - it's China. They've actually managed to turn into a modern, mostly-developed country, though the process is most likely far from complete. The USSR was a dismal failure by comparison. BTW, they're even launching their own space satelites, men in space, moon probes and whatnot lately.
As usual, there is a relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1170/
Again, I myself am mostly an accidental moderate. But I think he's underselling the case for intentional moderates.
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 signifi…
When you break this down into social groups, being moderate generally results in a person being able to pass in multiple groups if they are willing to be quiet and tolerate it, but not being able to join in any groups. And as for that passing, that holds true of most people in most groups. It is the lack of having a group to belong too that is harder than having such a group.
I guess the question then remains as to why such people don't form their own group, but I think that ends up being that they are as incompatible with someone else who is incompatible with established groups as they are incompatible with established groups.
Think of it this way. Imagine people's opinions super simplified into an array of 3 dozen boolean values, each representing one of the 3 dozen most charged political issues (even if it isn't charged for most people if it is really charged for some people it can average out as being charged enough to count). Arbitrarily pick 0 or 1 to represent one of the two party views within the US (places with multiple parties are harder to represent, but they may also have far less of this problem to begin with). Now calculate the distance people are based on how many are the same or different. Someone who is mostly a 0 with only 3 or so 1s is going to only be a distance of ~3 away from one of the main groups. But someone who is randomly assigned half and half is going to be a distance of ~18 from either group. But two people who are randomly assigned half and half are also going to be a distance of ~18 from each other, despite both of them being moderates.
Now in reality you will find some clustering beyond just the existing division (such a group that may tend towards socially conservative and socially liberal), but the overall all point of difficulty, and thus courage, can be understood as the calculation of a difference from other people in this simple model, and in such a case, being moderate has higher distance.
Edit: I would like to add that courage does feel like a bad choice of words to me. As someone who is often moderate (more undecided on issues because I see either stance resulting in extreme conclusions that I don't like), I don't do it because of any sense of bravery. I hold the views I do because they are the views I have. The extent I may espouse them might count a bravery, but in general I'm careful enough at reading the context and, when online, remaining anonymous I still wouldn't see it an act of courage (though what I am envision as courageous acting may be crossing that thin line into foolishness). I would much prefer calling it more difficult, but not an act of courage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My takeaway from this comment is that you didn't really read what he wrote. An accidental moderate, by his definition, could hold zero moderate opinions. E.g. it is possible all of their opinions are 0 or 100 on a left/right spectrum. It requires courage because they cannot join any tribe, because enough of those opinions would be heretical to a given tribe to prevent acceptance.
Tons of people out there "can't join any tribe" because their belief systems are sufficiently different than those of people around them, and the way this is written suggests that it's almost a novel idea to Paul Graham. Has anyone cornered him and beaten him up for having moderate beliefs? And having beliefs across the political spectrum hardly makes him novel. I'm probably a classic left leaning liberal. I'm in fav…
Going again to the 'not actually reading the article' point, he has sneakily defined a moderate as someone potentially only holding extremest beliefs and probably as likely to be beaten up as anyone else.
An extremist moderate, say.
> I'm in favor of ... but I refuse to vote for Republicans
There are good and bad people in every part of the spectrum. If you think only the Republicans are dangerous to elect you are either talking about the very-short-term of one election cycle or you are not thinking for yourself.
A good check of if you are thinking for yourself is not feeling comfortable accepting or rejecting either side, or becoming almost a single issue voter (because nobody has time to be across more than one or two issues).
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 signifi…
Agreed. People with extreme viewpoints (in either direction, whether you want to abolish private property or create a white ethno-state) face a lot of social sanction -- and very often financial penalties -- from the vast majority of people who just want to keep propping this status quo. Holding onto those extreme views risks losing a lot more than the extremely well-represented and appreciated middle. As for a pithy…
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Here's a working theory I'd love to discuss:
Having friends all over the political spectrum, I think some policy topics reveal differences in how most left-leaning / right-leaning people understand human nature.
My conservative friends generally hold that humans tend towards laziness and greed, and that any social policy which fails to consider that will fail before long. E.g., Marxism, UBI, or universal healthcare. From their perspective, liberals who advocate such policies are being stupid, short-sighted, and will ultimately cause more harm in the long-run. They see liberals as wanting to run experiments whose outcomes are predictably bad.
My liberal friends hold that because conservative policies accept the worse aspects of human nature as inevitable, they end up cementing the status quo, which is unacceptably bad. E.g., feudalism, Citizens United, etc. They see conservatives' unwillingness to change as (at best) heartless or (at worse) an evil self-serving power-grab.
In the end, each side finds the other's stated policy justifications so unbelievable, they conclude those public justifications are a just smokescreen for secret, nefarious purposes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Are you saying that as the Democrats became distanced from working-class issues, the republicans got closer to working-class issues? Could you explain that in terms of the policy that they adopted or is it a response to Dems adopting minority rights issues? What I mean to say is that if they are both bad in the same way on working class issues, what is it about minority rights that would make you vote R? Genuinely tr…
I don't know that the Republican actually got closer to working-class issues. In the last election, though, they at least got to the point of talking about such issues, in the same election that the Democrats didn't bother to do so.
So if I were a working-class minority person, whose major pain point was economics, in the last election I still might vote Republican, because they at least were talking about the thing I cared most about, even if the Democrats were talking about my secondary issue.