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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

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.

immibis 1y ago
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).
- mlrtime 1y ago
  Disagree, not everything is political unless you make it so. Otherwise we should fork this to political discussions only.
- Esophagus4 1y ago
  I don’t think it’s that I’m avoiding 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?
ruszki 1y ago
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.
- smugglerFlynn 1y ago
  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.
mexicocitinluez 1y ago
> 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.
mlrtime 1y ago
1000%. Don't talk about Religion, Politics or Sex. It's a great way to fight and divide and we will NEVER agree.
- esperent 1y ago
  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.
  - cudgy 1y ago
    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.
    - Karrot_Kream 1y ago
      > 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.

immibis 1y ago

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).

mlrtime 1y ago
Disagree, not everything is political unless you make it so. Otherwise we should fork this to political discussions only.
Esophagus4 1y ago
I don’t think it’s that I’m avoiding 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?

ruszki 1y ago

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.

smugglerFlynn 1y ago
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.

mexicocitinluez 1y ago

> 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.

mlrtime 1y ago

1000%. Don't talk about Religion, Politics or Sex. It's a great way to fight and divide and we will NEVER agree.

esperent 1y ago
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.
- cudgy 1y ago
  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.
  - Karrot_Kream 1y ago
    > 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.