Side question, What's the origin of left and right as political terms.
Ask HN: Is HN crowd a left-leaning?
11–20 of 24 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is HN crowd a left-leaning?
#12Side question, What's the origin of left and right as political terms.
Good question.
When facing the podium from the floor of the the US Senate, there is an aisle down the middle of the auditorium and the Democrats' seats are to the left of the aisle and the Republicans are to the right.
Re: Ask HN: Is HN crowd a left-leaning?
#13Side question, What's the origin of left and right as political terms.
Good question. When facing the podium from the floor of the the US Senate, there is an aisle down the middle of the auditorium and the Democrats' seats are to the left of the aisle and the Republicans are to the right.
No, the terms originated with the French Revolution, and are based on the political divisions the French National Assembly. Presumably the US Senate is based on this, but the concept and terminology didn't originate within American politics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_political_s...
Re: Ask HN: Is HN crowd a left-leaning?
#14Probably has something to do with smart technical people being attracted to free software, and then OSS, and then copyleft. the idea of writing code under gpl feels pretty left to me.
Re: Ask HN: Is HN crowd a left-leaning?
#15HN is left-leaning only from the far-right POV. Liberals are considered right wing everywhere in the world besides the US. There's no real left there and there's no real left here too.
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Re: Ask HN: Is HN crowd a left-leaning?
#16There are a higher proportion here of persons who think scientifically. There is no automatic intersection between that and politics; any intersection must be forced. But when it is forced, it will be found that scientific modes of thought are not so much Left as anti-Right. The rest is what the stakes are imagined to be.
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Re: Ask HN: Is HN crowd a left-leaning?
#17Politics is about framing, posturing and perception. Engineers tend to focus on data, science and part of our job is testing a hypothesis, reviewing results and shifting a solution. A lot of software engineers make a lot of money in the US from very right/center leaning companies. Its hard to have an honest opinion on political topics like AI data centers, government funding towards AI/tech companies, etc. when some…
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Re: Ask HN: Is HN crowd a left-leaning?
#18HN is left-leaning only from the far-right POV. Liberals are considered right wing everywhere in the world besides the US. There's no real left there and there's no real left here too.
>HN is left-leaning only from the far-right POV.
Or HN is right-leaning only from the far-left POV.
>Liberals are considered right wing everywhere in the world besides the US.
This is false.
>There's no real left there and there's no real left here too.
There are US parties that support open borders, DEI/wokeism, etc. Those are "real left."
Re: Ask HN: Is HN crowd a left-leaning?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good question. When facing the podium from the floor of the the US Senate, there is an aisle down the middle of the auditorium and the Democrats' seats are to the left of the aisle and the Republicans are to the right.
No, the terms originated with the French Revolution, and are based on the political divisions the French National Assembly. Presumably the US Senate is based on this, but the concept and terminology didn't originate within American politics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_political_s...
Good to post the additional info.
I realize that the US is not the only one. But this is how our political parties line up.
I would say that "leftists" are more like extremists that almost all Republicans will distrust more so than regular Democrats, and "right wingers" are the opposite.
Things have always been better when most seats have been occupied by moderates, during times when extremists don't have a place at the table.
Re: Ask HN: Is HN crowd a left-leaning?
#20Probably has something to do with smart technical people being attracted to free software, and then OSS, and then copyleft. the idea of writing code under gpl feels pretty left to me.
It is left, but it's also dead, relatively speaking. Everyone who's still writing free software is using MIT to make their code as widely used as possible (which often isn't very wide).