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The Two Kinds of Moderate

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#321

Post by michaelmrose »

I don't think this work is particularly insightful.

I think most people in America aren't accidental moderates or "intentional moderates" or hardcore liberals/conservatives. I think most of them have limited opinions or investment in politics. Their experience is more akin to their patronage for a sports team than a system. They repeat things important figures for their side say and some of them can be bothered to vote depending on how much their side has stirred them up recently but they don't actually care much.

For those that do care. The people that Graham is liable to label intentional moderates are most apt to have as rich an opinion as accidental ones. Not expressing strong positions in public in America is how you avoid having to hear other people's strong opinions that you don't much care to hear.

In America it's not courageous to hold strong opinions from both sides of the aisle especially as a rich person. Most people will experience zero downsides. For those public figures that do they start off so much better off than most of us that their maximum downside is still much better off than most of us.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#322

Post by barrkel »

hnhg wrote: post #5

I'm intrigued by how this analysis fits in with increasingly 'tribal/team politics' - do intentional moderates try to appease every team? Thinking out loud, I think this piece misses that aspect of team-seeking behavior. I know people who will recognise a good point against their side but will strive to ignore it because it works against their sense of loyalty to the team. I increasingly believe there are relatively…

People can be true to a team and end up chauvinist; or they can be true to an idea and end up ideologues.

The point about extremists getting their opinions in bulk is a solid one. I'm not so sure intentional moderates is a well-defined category. It's what most "balanced" media strive for, but it's more like rubber banding in a video game race - the media have incentives to ensure an exciting, tight race, it improves their viewership, so they try to find the dead centre.

I think what PG calls intentional moderates are simply not that interested. Also, I think accidental moderates can end up fairly extreme in the end, because tribalism is ultimately a very strong draw and critical thinking is tiring.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#323

Post by undefined1 »

somberi wrote: post #17

To quote the comedian Chris Rock (from his "Never Scared"): "Anyone that makes up they mind before they hear the issue is a fucking fool, OK? Everybody… No, everybody’s so busy wanting to be down with a gang – “I’m a conservative, I’m a liberal.” It’s bullshit. Be a fucking person. Listen. Let it swirl around yo head. Then form yo opinion. No normal, decent person is one thing, OK? I got some shit I’m conservative ab…

Yep. Relatedly, reminds me of a quote from Skin in the Game (Nassim Taleb):

"I am, at the Fed level, libertarian;

at the state level, Republican;

at the local level, Democrat;

and at the family and friends level, a socialist.

If that saying doesn’t convince you of the fatuousness of left vs. right labels, nothing will."

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#324

Post by AnimalMuppet »

CPLX wrote: post #270
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And interestingly, CPLX seems to be doing exactly what the article talked about. PG said something, and CPLX wouldn't listen to what it actually said , because it came from one of those rich people, and they couldn't possibly have anything honest and true to say. This is CPLX not actually considering PG's opinion for what it is, but for how it fits in CPLX's already-existing framework.

I mean I think he’s being honest. He’s saying that he is looking at a system in which he’s literally amassed billions of dollars and doesn’t see any reason for sudden changes. He’s just not interested in exploring how those two facts interact. What I am hopefully pointing out is that he could be doing a better job of trying to understand why people who are literally living in misery and despair might be seeking more…

> The fact that some of his decisions may have directly let to the misery of some of those people makes this conversation complicated.

I'd like to see how you think that PG's decisions directly lead to the misery of those living in misery and despair. In the absence of a logical flow of cause and effect, I'm going to assume that you're blowing ideological smoke.

> It’s relevant that the greatest political problem in society right now is people hoarding vast amounts of resources...

I seriously question whether that's the greatest political problem in society right now.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#325

Post by clairity »

enraged_camel wrote: post #286
throwlaplace wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'll never understand people's preoccupation with other people's ideas on things it is known those people are not experts on. paul graham has a phd in computer science. he is a successful startup founder and vc. that is the extent of what i'm interested in his opinion on. if a famous political theorist started opining on the organization of software or product/market fit or angel investing how many people here would…

>>paul graham has a phd in computer science. he is a successful startup founder and vc. that is the extent of what i'm interested in his opinion on. Smart people are much more likely to believe that they have intelligent and well-informed opinions on areas outside their expertise. PG himself is no exception.

intelligence is correlated with (and arguably defined by) insight, so that's a reasonable, if fallible, belief.

intelligence doesn't guarantee insights in areas outside expertise, but it's certainly more promising in that regard.

what's baffling are the high expectations in the populace for the general opinions of famous but not demonstrably intelligent people, e.g., many actors, tv personalities, singers, etc. (comedians are a notable exception, as insight is integral to their craft).

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#326

Post by robbrown451 »

totalZero wrote: post #240
robbrown451 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that politics is ok to talk about if you are talking about in in the meta sense, as he is. If people were all "accidental moderates," there would be no need to keep politics off HN. The problem is that people pick one of two tribes, and discussions get ugly. If people weren't tribal like that, less of a problem, it's just a bunch of people with opinions all over the place.

All politics is meta. Eking out a decision from the great power jumble requires self-awareness about the forces that gyre and gimble therein. Not all politics is tribal. PG explicitly establishes two different cohorts, each with its own way of thinking, from the outset. His argument reifies tribalism.

"all politics is meta"

That doesn't make sense, or you just don't understand my usage

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#327

Post by clairity »

urs wrote: post #3

I like this part: “The defining quality of an ideologue, whether on the left or the right, is to acquire one's opinions in bulk.” 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. The “accidental moderate”, in fact, shifts their opinion independent of the s…

yes, the terminology is certainly confusing. "accidental moderate" seems intentionally "moderate on average", as in some reversion to the mean kind of claim, but is opposed to an "intentional moderate", who seems to fall into moderation by default.

what's left unsaid, but i find more thought-provoking, is the notion that, as with the fringe ideologues, you can safely ignore the "intentional moderate" since they don't add to the conversation (because they don't think deeply about politics).

intellectual independence seems integral to why his "most impressive people" are impressive in the first place--they delve deeper into questions/challenges to form their opinions rather than adopting them wholesale from others.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#328

Post by war1025 »

sagichmal wrote: post #196
war1025 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This political perspective is completely incoherent. Democrats have shifted rightward since WWII, along with every other political group in the country. Former Democrats who become Republicans because they feel the party has shifted out from under them are creating excuses to mask their own changing opinions.

> Former Democrats who become Republicans because they feel the party has shifted out from under them are creating excuses to mask their own changing opinions.

To me, this is the incoherent view. Of course the voter base has changing opinions. It's completely to be expected that over the course of decades political alliances will shift.

The entire point of what I said is that the political opinions of the Democratic party moved in a direction that did not match that of my general demographic. Now that opinions have shifted, we find that our interests are better served by Republican talking points than by Democratic ones. So we vote red.

People like to bemoan the fact that America has a two party system, while many other places have a parliamentary system with many parties. The fact is America just handles its coalition building at an earlier step. There is no single "prototypical" Republican or Democrat. There are many factions throughout the country that weigh the political winds and throw their weight behind the group they see as most likely to benefit their own particular concerns.

None of this should be nearly so divisive a topic as it clearly is. The post I replied to noted that there were a bunch of "Rockefeller Republicans" who shifted and become Democrats.

I replied that a similar thing had happened around me, only in the opposite direction. Blue collar Democrats from the 70s-00s, found that after the financial crisis, the political winds pointed them to the Republican party.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#329

Post by TeMPOraL »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #165
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.

This gets really messy. People are being harmed. There are people (let's be charitable and assume that the set does not include TeMPOral) who want to do nothing, because they aren't among the people being harmed. Then there's a second set of people (let's be charitable and assume that the second set does include TeMPOral) who see the harm, and care about the harm, but are unsure how far to go toward fixing it, becaus…

Thank you. That's exactly what I meant.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#330

Post by morelisp »

Thriptic wrote: post #306
morelisp wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your focus is on, say, trans rights, you're not spending that time focusing on working-class economics. This is a bizarre statement since most trans people I know are either working class, precariat, or working poor. The trans rights they want beyond extremely basic anti-discrimination protection are things like easier access to university and universal health care. These are things that benefit all workers, not…

Time spent on anti-descrimination policies is inherently time not spent on economic issues. There will always be policy focus opportunity cost. I can totally understand why working class people in the heartland who have never met any LGBT person, let alone someone trans or someone non-binary, would think that focusing on equality efforts for them is not a high priority issue and that legislators should focus on econo…

> Time spent on anti-descrimination policies is inherently time not spent on economic issues.

Can you give anything close to a concrete example of this?

Even ignoring the indivisibility of the economic and social spheres (ask a black person if the CRA was an "economic issue" - ask a trans person if whether they can safely pee at work is an "economic issue"), and that it's not a zero-sum game (for example, the heightened scrutiny required by transphobia tends to cost more resources), I can't imagine there's enough meaningful work to "saturate" 100% of some candidate's time with economic issues. And as mentioned, the people who are furthest left and most vocal on economic issues are often the people furthest left and most vocal on civil rights. Conversely, people who spend a lot of time talking about how social issues should not be such a big deal (Peter Thiel, for instance - Paul Graham also, albeit with a much smaller platform) are the same who lean right economically.

How many examples do you need to see this is a false dichotomy? How many examples did you see to convince yourself it was a dichotomy at all?

> I can totally understand why working class people in the heartland who have never met any LGBT person, let alone someone trans or someone non-binary

I am not sure you know what those words mean ("any ... T person, let alone someone trans" is nonsense), but also, we're talking about people who live in Nebraska or Ohio, not hermits. We are long past any plausibly deniability to not even know a gay person - if you don't know any, it's because you're actively trying to avoid them.

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