And when people do talk about politics it's exactly the kind of hot takes you'd expect from people who think they're very smart (and probably are when it comes to choosing a database) but are completely uninformed about the current topic and only capable of parroting referred opinions, or making statements they expect the group to agree with. Nobody comes out of the conversation smarter than they went in.
Honestly, I think it's better that we do keep conversation here to shiny technology. If you want to talk politics, go and find a group of people who know what they're talking about. That way you might learn something.
Problem: Everything is political. Pretending not to talk about politics, is mostly just supporting a certain kind of politics (the one that you get by default if you avoid talking about politics).
It’s that I know the day-to-day headlines from DC are mostly noise, and do not inform in the same way that ESPN talking head analysts do not inform about football.
To understand the state of American politics and of the world, I have news sources I trust. Hacker News will never be one of them. Neither will Reddit. Nor will Facebook.
I don’t want HN to turn into another outrage-bait pseudo-news commentary site. Look at the front page of Reddit (it’s atrociously bad) to see how far this forum could fall.
I flagged this article. If you want to talk about daily political news with other internet people, there are myriad options: WSJ, NYT, and Washington Post all have comment sections. Reddit and Facebook and Twitter and BlueSky and Instagram and Threads all have comment sections. YouTube has comments. Blogs have comments.
Why do people insist that keeping HN free of politics is tantamount to being blissfully ignorant of world affairs? And why do people insist on turning HN into Reddit v2?
Most people do the same thing with shiny technology topics too.
But you’re right. It seems to be a better place than the alternatives, but heck, I learn rarely from comments compared how often I did 10 years ago on a - back then - small subreddit. Most comments can be inferred just from headlines, not even from the articles.
When it comes to tech topics this is an insiders discussion. When it comes to political topics, 99% of people in HN threads have close to zero insights, and circle around publicly known information. Big difference.
It is very dangerous to expect deep insights on every aspect of human life from a HN thread, regardless of how well educated and well meaning average HN commenters are.
That's not even close to what I said. You should absolutely talk about these things, but you should find knowledgeable people who will challenge you and help you to grow. HN isn't the place for that, when it comes to topics outside of tech.
How do you determine that people are knowledgeable and are going to help you grow? How do you verify they’re “knowledgeable”?
Hacker news should not become strictly or dominated by political discussion, but given AI and its impact on society amongst many other technologies like social media, which are intertwined within political discussion these days, some of the “knowledgeable“ people and particularly those whose careers have been impacted by AI are right here on hacker news.
> How do you determine that people are knowledgeable and are going to help you grow? How do you verify they’re “knowledgeable”?
How do we do this with tech topics? We rely on our expert knowledge to evaluate the claims of others. If someone is seriously asking this question about political discussion on HN that means they're not at the point where they're ready to have political discussions that are anything more than just saying "hey did you read that mainstream news article?" "yeah".
If you know even a modicum of politics or political theory it's almost trivial to prove, disprove, or add color to what's being said in these threads. If you want a really simple way to do this hop onto one of the big prediction markets like Polymarket or Kalshi. You can probably disprove a solid 15% of top-ranked commenters just by doing that.
If you want to use more brainpower, hop over to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and read one of their long articles. In particular they have a great set of articles on US policy thinking around China right now. It's pretty saddening to read HN commentary on China and compare it to CEIP's readings.
The conclusion I've come to on this site is that the incentives around participating on a public internet site, like HN, Reddit, Facebook, etc are such that they attract a crowd of people who are more interested in talking than listening or understanding. There's a subset of them who really enjoy debating but without being grounded in fact or consequence from misprediction it turns largely into verbal sparring games. There's also little difference between these sites because from what I can tell it's the same set of people attracted to all of the same sites.
you want to use more brainpower, hop over to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and read one of their long articles. In particular they have a great set of articles on US policy thinking around China right now. It's pretty saddening to read HN commentary on China and compare it to CEIP's readings.
Why do you think, an US centric, vaguely leftist think tank focused on US politics with seat in Washington, financed by American donors, initiates the use of brainpower and understanding? More than any other media, that is. There is such a thing as the rest of the world (95% of the world population) who may be more incentivised to ask honest questions on HN than reading yet another U. S. publication that regards them as a remark in the margins, as demonstrated by the CEIP front page https://carnegieendowment.org/?lang=en
CEIP is just one think tank. There are plenty of others there. I frequently read CEPR [1] for a more EU perspective or JIIA [2] for a more Japanese perspective. I just referenced CEIP because it probably most neatly represents the dominant HN perspective.
> Why do you think, an US centric, vaguely leftist think tank focused on US politics with seat in Washington, financed by American donors, initiates the use of brainpower and understanding?
Incentives. Do you really think that internet commenters are going to produce better research than folks paid to research things and provide insights to decision makers? Everyone has a bias. Having a bias doesn't stop you from doing deep analysis. The CCP traces its ideological origins from Marx-Leninism and still uses that to develop their policy positions. It's a very different perspective than US policy which traces its philosophy back to the European Enlightenment, but that doesn't mean their analysis is any less rigorous.
CEPR is yet another leftist (less vaguely than CEIP) U. S. American think tank with the same attributes as CEIP (donors, location etc.) So, more U. S. centrism with a heavy focus on Vox News. Might just as well read Vox.
JIIA is the only one of your examples, covering worldwide topics right there on the front page, even Africa. Promoting research.
So far, your selection confirms only one of your statements: bias. Everyone has them. Do you really think, the first two of your choices would engage in"deep analysis" on topics contrary to the political agenda of their donors and hence their incentives?
I'll hold that I get more varied opinions and links to sources on HN than from strictly conforming U. S. publications, but thanks for introducing me to JIIA - which, you know, verifies the first part of this sentence.
The philosophical roots of states is not on topic here, so I'll skip that.
If you think bias disqualifies analysis then you'll probably only be happy reading news that politically agrees with you. If that's your bar, well, social media is for you.
> And when people do talk about politics it's exactly the kind of hot takes you'd expect from people who think they're very smart (and probably are when it comes to choosing a database) but are completely uninformed about the current topic and only capable of parroting referred opinions,
A-MEN.
Ton of takes by armchair enthusiasts who think they have the ability call a spade a spade because they're grandmother told them they were a genius after restarting her computer.
I swear to god, DHH has to got to be the best example of this. His blog piece about free speech is so funny in retrospect it's hard for me to read and believe he takes himself seriously.
But LLMs are great piece of technology and closest analogue to the AGI in past 30 years! It's truly a gamechanging future technology.
... And, incidentally, knowing that my value judgements are as broken and human tangential as Borg transwarp control computers, I know that it's a massive bubble that is going to financially ruin absolutely everybody.
I don't hate people who voted for Trump. I sympathize with or outright agree with most conservative grievances (but not their expressions of those grievances).
Supporting Trump, in the general sense, is not the same thing. E.g. "a lot", as you say, implies "majority" or at least more than one or two things, which, of the dozens of (meaningful) things Trump has done, is about how many I'd peg as "theoretically defensible" (for example: Immigration control and getting jobs back to America, both of which I agree with; but obviously not in practice due to his counter-productive/performative/un-American implementations). The rest fall pretty clearly into the category of "materially hurting my home country and my community".
For example: Obliterating discourse, disrespecting rule of law, disrespecting the constitution, disrespecting rights and American principles, encouraging petty hatred and childish mockery, threatening to deport American citizens, calling every crime that might have been committed by a liberal "domestic terrorism", threatening via policy announced on Twitter to imprison my wife (who is a government worker) for the apparent crime of merely attempting to find a legal way to support our local legal immigrant(s) jailed by ICE for months for past non-violent non-drug-related crimes they have already finished serving for, which didn't even include jail time. The hysterical debasement of the amazing country my family has loved and served for hundreds of years.
Just off the top of my head.
There is no "I agree with some of it", or, "on average". It's moot, is what I mean. Yes, "honest discussion" is depressingly rare, but even truer: Focusing on the common person who isn't good at dispassionate political discourse is itself dishonest, when what's happening is hell.
1. Blatantly violating the 14th Amendment by signing an executive order that ends birthright citizenship, potentially stripping tens of millions of Americans of their citizenship.
2. Sending the military onto the streets of major cities, in a fundamental break from the centuries-old principle that the military does not police American citizens.
3. Tolerating open corruption by senior officials, such as the border czar Tom Homan accepting a $50,000 bribe.
4. Openly calling for the Justice Department to go after his political enemies, and firing people who refuse to do so.
5. Appointing dangerous and unqualified people like RFK Jr. and Kash Patel to head agencies whose missions they oppose. RFK Jr. is out there making wild claims about autism and vaccines.
6. Trump trying to overturn the 2020 Presidential election results, including calling up the Georgia Secretary of State and demanding that he add 11,000 votes to Trump's total, in order to flip the state in Trump's favor, while threatening to criminally prosecute the Secretary of State if he refuses to change the election result.
7. Trump repeatedly threatening that he will annex Canada, and refusing to rule out the use of military force.
I could go on and on, but I think the above is enough to make the point. This is not just another administration that you can have this or that view about. This is the downfall of the American political system. RIP, 1787 - 2025.
With all of this, you should be sheepish about saying you support Trump.
It's all about trade-offs. Sadly the package deals keep getting worse and even if you refuse to buy, one shows up at your doorstep and they charge you anyways. The parties exist more to oppose each other than to identify and address issues. They serve their donors more than their electorate and sew discontent amongst the populace to distract from the role of capital in the current system. I think it's unrealistic to say you "support everything Trump does" just as it is to say you "do not support anything Trump does". The trend of extreme polarization has allowed them to continually worsen the package deals offered because they know that for a lot of people, it's all or nothing.
If you say you support someone who is fundamentally ripping out the American democratic political system, root and branch, then that's what you support. That's central to the "package deal."
There's no, "Well, I don't like that he's ending the entire system of rule of law and respect for the results of elections, but I like policy X."
There definitely is: "I disagree with X (and maybe A, B, and C too), but I agree with Y." You may not feel that's reasonable or that the negative impacts of X far outweigh the positive effects of Y, but it's possible for people to arrive at this conclusion due to having limited choices and specific interests.
Maybe you want to buy a sports car, but the dealer only has one coupe and it has a sunroof (that you don't want). You can go look at other dealerships for one with the package you like, but in a world where there is only one dealership you have to take what they give you. Lots of people will end up buying that coupe with a sunroof to take to the track. Especially if they approach their decision from a "I want a sports car" perspective and the other option is a minivan.
It's just a decision making analogy. If you want better decisions that produce solutions that are a better fit for the problem then it makes sense to offer more choices of increased variety.
If the situation is as dire as you feel, then I certainly hope that someone mounts an opposition to Trump because that's how we all win... a better alternative that most people recognize as such. Where and why are they hiding the alternatives?
I know what an analogy is. It's just that your analogy is absurd.
We're talking about someone who is obliterating the American democratic political system, and you're basically saying, "Well, there are pros and cons with any package deal, just like when you buy a sports car." These aren't little pros and cons with some trifling issue. This is the continued existence of the United States as a democracy.
>obliterating the American democratic political system
What I think is absurd is people keep writing these things as if they are facts, when a majority of this country doesn't agree. And any amount of anecdotal or skewed headlines won't change minds.
The fact that a majority (a slim plurality, actually) of the country voted for someone who is ripping up the Constitution is a real problem. It doesn't mean that he's not ripping up the Constitution.
> anecdotal or skewed headlines
How are any of my examples above anecdotal or skewed? Did Trump issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship as enshrined in the 14th Amendment or not? Just one action like that would be an incredible break with the American political tradition, but he's done dozens of things that are just as bad or worse.
I don't know what "my approach" is. I'm describing reality as it is. I don't know how or if the American political system will overcome Trump and survive, but that system is facing extinction right now.
People are absurd... a majority of them got together and elected Trump in the first place. Lots of those people never considered any other option. A lot of times the reasoning goes: "Abortion is bad. I vote Republican." or even "I don't like that guy's face. I vote Democrat." People 100% make decisions and affect outcomes based on things that others consider trifling. Most people are not up late racking their brains over some Machiavellian scheme; they're like, "Nah, I want the sports car tho, minivans suck".
I agree that there's still no good option, and that's stupendously frustrating, but even the frustrating status quo is obviously better than outright attacks on America's principles, culture, laws, most citizens, etc. Trump isn't "shaking things up". He's destroying them.
I agree w/ you, but the people elected Trump; It's not Trump that worries me, it's the weakness of his opposition. So long as he continues to stand largely unopposed he will continue to break things.
That is a radical way of thinking, nobody I know IRL talks or thinks this way. The idea that you have to support everything that some group says or you are out is complete BS.
I've seen this over and over again, it's similar to "If you're not with us, you're against us" but on every topic.
Do you think it's reasonable to support someone who tried to strip tens of millions of Americans of their citizenship by executive order, in blatant violation of the 14th Amendment?
How about supporting someone who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election by every means at his disposal?
This is actually a clear case where you have to take a stand. "Well, I like some other things he's done" is not a valid answer here.
