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> I am in a bubble where I mostly talk to college educated people and people who have educated themselves in a similar tradition or are well-read. Perhaps it is

> I am in a bubble where I mostly talk to college educated people and people who have educated themselves in a similar tradition or are well-read. Perhaps it is snobbish of me, but I am mostly okay with that bubble for discussion forums. > Conditioning on that type of person, who make up most people on HN, Reddit, and Twitter, HN seems like it is in a right-leaning bubble. If most of the people you talk to are college educated people who live in a city than you most definitely exist in a bubble. Remember 47% of the country voted for Trump(I doubt Hacker news came anywhere near this number). Of your friends how many voted for Trump? As an example I'm a college graduate in his 30's who lives in the city. 0% of the 20 people I talk to most often voted for Trump, and maybe 4% of the the extended 200 people I know, voted for trump. And of that 4%, 3/4ths voted for him begrudgingly. And I live in a southern state that voted for Trump. So when you look at hacker news and encounter opinions that are different than your own it might seem like Hacker News exists in a bubble, but I think it's far more likely your life exists in a bubble that's stronger than hacker news. > Your assessment of the median voter is being super distorted by the geographic layout of the US, btw. The median voter did not vote for a republican senator. The median senate voter would have voted for a Republican but that's mostly because California and New York didn't have senate races this year.

whimsicalism 6y ago
> you most definitely exist in a bubble Why am I getting so many comments like this - I am pretty explicitly stating that I am aware that I am in a "bubble", my social circle isn't perfectly representative of America. That said, I think that restricting the forums I frequent to one's with primarily people who are well educated is a defensible practice. My claim is this: among the sort of forums where people are actually having discussions about Timnit Gebru's firings (ie. highly educated crowds of people who pay attention to the goings ons in AI ethics, Google, etc.), HN skews right-leaning. All this talk about the "median American" is irrelevant to what I'm talking about because I don't really care to be in a discussion forum with the "median American", particularly post-Thanksgiving.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  > My claim is this: among the sort of forums where people are actually having discussions about Timnit Gebru's firings (ie. highly educated crowds of people who pay attention to the goings ons in AI ethics, Google, etc.), HN skews right-leaning. There are two groups of people who are interested in this firing. People who are very interested in race and race relations. These people skew extremely left wing. And people who are interested in technology, ai and machine learning who are probably center left. The machine learning subreddit and hacker news are both part of this second group and only look like it's skews right leaning because the other discussion skew so far left leaning.

whimsicalism 6y ago

> you most definitely exist in a bubble Why am I getting so many comments like this - I am pretty explicitly stating that I am aware that I am in a "bubble", my social circle isn't perfectly representative of America. That said, I think that restricting the forums I frequent to one's with primarily people who are well educated is a defensible practice. My claim is this: among the sort of forums where people are actually having discussions about Timnit Gebru's firings (ie. highly educated crowds of people who pay attention to the goings ons in AI ethics, Google, etc.), HN skews right-leaning. All this talk about the "median American" is irrelevant to what I'm talking about because I don't really care to be in a discussion forum with the "median American", particularly post-Thanksgiving.

JamesBarney 6y ago
> My claim is this: among the sort of forums where people are actually having discussions about Timnit Gebru's firings (ie. highly educated crowds of people who pay attention to the goings ons in AI ethics, Google, etc.), HN skews right-leaning. There are two groups of people who are interested in this firing. People who are very interested in race and race relations. These people skew extremely left wing. And people who are interested in technology, ai and machine learning who are probably center left. The machine learning subreddit and hacker news are both part of this second group and only look like it's skews right leaning because the other discussion skew so far left leaning.