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The Two Kinds of Moderate

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#371

Post by hindsightbias »

yongjik wrote: post #215
hindsightbias wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_senior_thesis What more does a moderate need to know?

> In 1969, $(person) wrote a 92-page senior thesis ... A real moderate would be immediately suspicious, regardless of political stance, of any claim that a thesis paper written 50 years ago was somehow relevant to the same person's current political position. Besides, I thought colleges were supposed to be a bastion of free ideas where people could say controversial opinions?

What’s a real moderate? An on-purpose one or an accidental one?

My take on PG’s point is that the vast majority of moderates are on-purpose, and those people are not going to be curious.

An accidental one isn’t going to be a real moderate, except occasionally. Otherwise they’d be on-purpose.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#372

Post by sagichmal »

war1025 wrote: post #368
sagichmal wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I agree that the Democratic platform has moved, but it moved rightwards. The Republican platform has also moved (considerably mo…

Political opinions aren't a straight line, as much as we like to pretend it is.

Obviously not, but it is possible to make accurate macro-scale generalizations.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#373

Post by namirez »

jpitz wrote: post #369
namirez wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair to PG, perhaps, someone else shared his post on HN so he didn't break any rules. On a different note, I guess in the age of Facebook, it's not possible for tech to remain silent on politics whether we like it or not.

This is exactly the reason I asked the question. PG didn't post this on HN.

Agreed! But I believe the admins are ignoring their own rules by allowing the link to remain on the front page.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#374

Post by morelisp »

Thriptic wrote: post #367
morelisp wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Can you give anything close to a concrete example of this? > Sure, [a bunch of broad non-specific examples] OK. > You have very clearly not been to large swaths of the United States. Grew up in WI, close family / friends in MI, MN, NE, IA, and IL, dated a boy from TN and a girl from WV, but sure, tell me how there's no gays in the midwest.

Bathroom example is a specific example; there was a huge uproar about bathroom rights in North Carolina I want to say about 5 years ago, and it resulted in national media attention and subsequent legislative attention in many states. Further you didn't contradict anything else I said or any of the other basic claims I've been making. Sorry political reality and the concept of self-interest make you unhappy. > Grew up…

> there was a huge uproar about bathroom rights in North Carolina

So because the republicans passed a law positively discriminating against trans people (and doing a bunch of other weird shit - this was not a well-planned bill), and people are sick of the social issues, they... voted republican?

Not to mention the economic fallout of HB2 was brutal - despite its short life it cost the state thousands of jobs and millions of dollars.

Again we see things aren't really in tension - the democratic position was less political work, greater economic benefit, and justice. The "political reality" is that republicans started a fight by stripping rights, then got to play a fake victim.

> it resulted in national media attention and subsequent legislative attention in many states.

That attention was primarily passing more transphobic legislation. What were we supposed to do? "Well, I guess you can keep taking our rights away one by one, because the economic issues are more important!"

There's no more productive conversation to be had concerning your views on sexuality in some mysterious, isolationist states. They're simply unmoored from reality.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#375

Post by elfexec »

glenstein wrote: post #365
elfexec wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there are no correct or incorrect policies then there is no need to vote. If there were correct or incorrect policies, there wouldn't be any need to vote. If politics was a science or a math, we wouldn't need to vote. We be able to test or prove the correct answer. The reason we vote is precisely because there is no correct answer in politics. There is a why science and math doesn't work by consensus or a vote.

>If politics was a science or a math, we wouldn't need to vote. There are all kinds of questions with best practices, right and wrong answers. There are better and worse ways to aggregate agricultural statistics, for instance. And we don't think of that in terms of a left and right, it's just something that's administered by a department. And no one thinks that that's because of single-minded ideological extremism th…

> There are all kinds of questions with best practices, right and wrong answers.

Best practices doesn't mean right or wrong answers. Also, most of the questions in politics is about values and perspective and biases and self interest. These don't have any right or wrong answers.

> There are better and worse ways to aggregate agricultural statistics, for instance. And we don't think of that in terms of a left and right

What does agricultural statistics have anything to do with voting? Besides agricultural statistics, like all statistics, can be skewed, manipulated and cherrypicked when it comes to politics. And the same statistic can be viewed differently by different people.

> There are a range of views where there are right answers, things are polarized that shouldn't be-- climate change for instance

This has to be the most naive point any could make. And the only people who believe like you do in black or white are the "single-minded ideological" extremists that you probably rail on about. Ignoring the fact that climate science is in its infant stage and we have yet to find a single acceptable model of climate modeling and we are constantly being told that previous climate predictions were too optimistic or pessimistic every other day. Ignoing all that, lets assume climate science is a mature and trustable science. So what is the solution for climate change? Should we just kill off 7 billion people? Should we shut down the internet? So we end global trade?

> where the debate has been hurt by moderates insisting on a need to treat all sides as equally legitimate.

No. The debate has been hurt by ideological extremists like yourself who have a messianic belief that they will save humanity. Unfortunately for people like you, there are actual grown ups who don't listen to 16 year teen girls for scientific and geopolitical information.

> That's the real problem with moderation

The real problem of moderation and looking at all sides and facts is that it prevents extremist ideologues from taking control.

It's strange how climate change extremists ( on both sides ) always bring something that has nothing to do with climate science into the discussion. "There is a why science and math doesn't work by consensus or a vote.". What does that have to do with your comment?

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#376

Post by smolder »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #296
smolder wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be a stretch to say political opinions are for the most part a result of internal reasoning and self-formed world view, rather than indoctrination by a social group that suffers hard from confirmation bias. People are, overall, NOT good at thinking critically, and tend to accept the paradigm to which they have to most exposure. They tend not to reach outside of their bubble for clues about what could be wrong wi…

It's not reasoning, it's basic values. People are made differently. That's why there are political differences between men and women, weightlifters and runners, straight men and gays, and dynamic typing and static typing fans. And you can trace the common reasoning in the baskets of political views. This isn't like some difference between communists and people who would be communists if it weren't for Econ 101. It's…

Basic values come from the world around you, from your parents, from everyone around you that you interact with as you grow up. You aren't born a runner. Kids are formed into people. Most often they turn into people with similar basic values and in turn, political opinions. There are a lot of ways values can be applied. It's only for for the most part that people don't deviate in their application because they aren't thinking that hard, just imitating others and being a conduit for preformed ideas.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#377

Post by eloff »

m_ke wrote: post #214
slashdev wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an accidental moderate myself, it does take courage. You don't belong on the right or the left. I'm too liberal for conservatives, and too conservative for liberals. I'm not even part of my parent's political or religious tribe. An accidental moderate means being tribeless. It doesn't surprise me that those kinds of people would be more impressive, since anyone who describes themselves as right or left, democrat o…

I'd love to hear what your liberal and conservative leanings are and why they make you so brave.

I don't hold any extreme beliefs (I think) but that's probably what an extremist would say. I do hold beliefs that would make me unpopular on either the left or the right.

It takes more courage to not fit in, as any teenager can attest.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#378

Post by zzo38computer »

I can hardly call myself left or right or moderate or up or down or whatever, because my ideas are difference from other people's ideas (although some are same, they aren't what can be simply called as left/right and so on). Left/right is not describing all of the issues anyways, I think, and many things are just not as simple as one way or other, anyways. Even then, some people whose ideas may be generally called left/right may not agree with everything anyways.

But I suppose they may be correct that such independent ideas may be considered as moderates by these measurements, and may also be correct that a lot of people hate them for it.

They say that on a scale from 0 to 100 your opinion might be any number, on average 50 but may be anything. I think that is not good enough because your ideas might not match the range like that so well, I think.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#379

Post by SamReidHughes »

smolder wrote: post #376
SamReidHughes wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not reasoning, it's basic values. People are made differently. That's why there are political differences between men and women, weightlifters and runners, straight men and gays, and dynamic typing and static typing fans. And you can trace the common reasoning in the baskets of political views. This isn't like some difference between communists and people who would be communists if it weren't for Econ 101. It's…

Basic values come from the world around you, from your parents, from everyone around you that you interact with as you grow up. You aren't born a runner. Kids are formed into people. Most often they turn into people with similar basic values and in turn, political opinions. There are a lot of ways values can be applied. It's only for for the most part that people don't deviate in their application because they aren't…

Basic values are also heritable and founded in biology, as shown in twin studies and observations that other species have a sense of fairness.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#380

Post by youdontknowtho »

undefined1 wrote: post #323
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."

"If that saying doesn’t convince you of the fatuousness of left vs. right labels"

It reminds me of how fatuous Nassim Taleb can be, certainly. That quote basically deletes any historical context and actual belief held by those groups. It reduces the actual differences that they have to a bumper sticker level of depth.

Not trying to be insulting or anything, I just don't find it that helpful, and I'm also not particularly a fan of Taleb.

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