Politics is the mind killer.

A near-total ban on the whole thing is easier to implement and enforce than trying to make online discussions of politics not suck, when their natural state seems to be to suck big time.

Is it impossible to maintain a civilized discussion of hot topic political issues? No. But it's not a solved problem, or anywhere near. I respect the "keep the incendiary stuff off the front page" policy.

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ryandrake 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"No Politics on the front page" is itself a highly politically charged policy: One that favors the status quo and favors hiding wrongdoing. I wish HN users who want "no politics" would admit that they are just asking for a different kind of political bias from the site.

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ThrowawayR2 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That seems analogous to the "atheism is a religion" fallacy. No, not wanting to see politics in one very specific location is clearly not a political stance.

	▲	ryandrake 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Where does "politics" end, then? What about articles pointing out a tech company's ethical wrongdoing? Or about their legal troubles? How about the technology behind war fighting drones? Or software's role in mass surveillance, war crimes and ethnic cleansing? Are these all off limits because they are inherently political? By banning these and similar topics, HN's purpose becomes more and more about whitewashing the industry and less and less about honest discussion.

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ACCount37 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wish HN users who want HN to be about politics would be honest about simply wanting HN to be a political echo chamber of their preferred flavor, instead of hiding behind the flimsy excuses like "everything is political actually".

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jackyinger 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don’t think people actually want yet another echo chamber. Anyone who has been exercising even a modicum of critical thinking sees where echo chambers lead.

I think a forum where bad faith polarizers are downvoted and good faith open minded discussion is rewarded would go a long ways.

	▲	ACCount37 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Do you understand the magnitude of the thing are you asking for? Trying to maintain a civilized discussion about modern politics is like walking a tightrope. You can say "anyone who knows what a tightrope is sees that falling off it would be bad", and it's true, but, does saying that mean that you'll avoid the fall? The failure mode is extremely obvious but not at all easy to avoid. If you don't have an intuition of "partisan politics are inherently corrosive to human minds", I suggest you get one. It's not impossible to have a civilized discussion of politics, but it is unlikely and unnatural and unstable. It's very, very, very hard to set up and maintain an environment like this in practice.

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fzeroracer 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Does your same argument not also apply to people who want HN to be 'non-political'? Since just from your post history recently I can see that you've leapt into some particularly political posts of your own [1] [2]. I'm particularly open about what I believe and post in, but usually people that say they want something non-political actually indicates that they precisely want an echo chamber.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46614467

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46419993

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AlexandrB 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I wish HN users who want "no politics" would admit that they are just asking for a different kind of political bias from the site.

I won't admit that, because it's not true. You saying that it's true doesn't make it so.

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fpesce 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wonder if the push for "no politics" is actually a consistent principle, or if it's just a reaction to how much the current news cycle challenges the community's comfort zone.

Someone should look at the flagging rates for political threads from 2012, 2018, and today. It would show whether our definition of a "distraction" is based on content quality, or if the appetite for "apoliticism" fluctuates depending on which side of the aisle holds the megaphone.

Has anyone done a sentiment analysis on flagging patterns versus administrative shifts? I suspect the "politics is a mind-killer" argument is a lot more popular when the headlines don't align with the reader's own worldview.

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jackyinger 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It seems to me you think of politics as being the politics of the sensationalist 24 hour news cycle. Sure, that is a mind killer.

But I encourage you to take a look at politics as a broader thing. Read some academic, foundational political philosophy works. Politics in its broad sense is inescapable. Better to know it and be an active participant than to leave it up to others.

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ACCount37 4 hours ago | parent [-]

You start by allowing "politics as a broader thing", flash forward a year, then you notice that at any given time, at least 20% of the frontpage is occupied by people screeching their throats raw with some incendiary hyper-partisan rhetoric.

The failure mode is rather obvious, and also extremely hard to avoid in practice.

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jackyinger 3 hours ago | parent [-]

You’ll note I never suggested that hackernews was the forum for this.

If that failure mode is inevitable in hackernews culture, what does that say about the quality of the technical & business content?

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ACCount37 3 hours ago | parent [-]

"If putting rat poison in the burgers would cause people to die, what does this say about the quality of the burgers?"

Very little.

I've been told most hackers are humans - not machines or some kind of alien species. So I fully expect hackers to have the flaws people tend to do.

Partisan politics have a nasty habit of capitalizing on human flaws, and bringing out the worst in people who engage deeply in them. Which, in online communities, can have a self-reinforcing effect.

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jackyinger 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I’m not talking about partisan politics.

Do some reading about political philosophy and you’ll see how terribly shallow partisan politics is, and how deep the foundations of politics are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_philosophy

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ACCount37 2 hours ago | parent [-]

And yet we are talking about partisan politics. Because it's the lowest common denominator of politics. Because it's the failure mode.

You can say "not all politics are actively toxic to human minds" and point at 18th century philosophical works all day long, but we both know that 18th century philosophical works were never the concern.

	▲	jackyinger an hour ago \| parent [-]
		You are persistently referring to partisan politics in your comments. I am not. I have repeatedly distanced myself from partisan politics in this discussion. I believe I have not made a single statement supporting partisan politics, much less a particular party, in this entire discussion. If you disagree, perhaps you can quote an example.

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fzeroracer 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A 'near-total ban' would involve basically banning the entire site of HN, and also tends to expose the inherent hypocrisy in any platform attempting to be 'non-political'.

For example, HN had massive threads years ago dedicated to glazing everything Elon Musk did. Now, conveniently, any discussion of Elon Musk, Grok etc is now flagged and considered political as the winds have changed to be largely negative. Same goes for a lot of stuff people took for granted in tech, because now that stuff was made part of the system that makes our lives worse.

	▲	Imustaskforhelp 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Tech and finance have wedded to each other and finance has lobbied for politics so hard. So I don't think that tech and politics can be seperated from each other and this shows why. Earlier, I don't think that appreciating Elon Musk was considered political for the most part (well I read his biography and I thought he was just interesting guy) but his recent acts on twitter (I refuse to call it X) etc. just show how bubbly even I or people who read his biography were. After some new reports on him, I feel much more in disdain of man than not. My cousin still glazes Elon tho. I feel like there is some dunning kruger effect at play here. I read his biography -> I feel smart -> I say Elon's smart previously on HN -> elon acts dumb as mouse with ketamine fueled addiction -> but I supported Elon earlier -> most people don't want internal contradictions so they will try to justify it -> Gets into glazing elon -> Flags people who give genuine criticism of the guy now -> gets to the far alt right I feel like the problem is more so the extremism. There are some real issues happening in the world and news is covering it but some hackernews users definitely flag anything that they find not fitting in their world order. I just want to say that its okay to have internal contradiction because we are all human and we can evaluate people wrongly. Doesn't mean we have to stick with that. I remember watching pirates of silicon valley when I was in middle school (it was in a pendrive connected to TV so whenever satellite connection got lost, I used to watch it), I even went ahead in school and gave a speech on steve jobs, next and everything so much so that the teacher (he was a teacher for such extra activities started calling me steve jobs) Anyways, my point is that it was only later in life where I realized that althoguh steve jobs was a good businessman, how valuable steve wozniak and other underrated people are and how ethically questionable xerox's decision was and his personal life too... I just want to say that there is a nuance about steve jobs as well, he was pretty rude to his employees. Like I feel like there is just nuance to the whole situation that people forget in HN