Comment by keiferski

Arguing with leftists all the time is the sure sign that you're a leftist.

(seriously, this is a significant asymmetry between the two that has been there for at least a century. There isn't one lockstep leftism, there's thousands of micro factions arguing about most things)

It's only a good sign if they're able to speak out, and aren't terrified of expressing their dissent in public.

Both the left and the right seem captured by a small minority of radicals, using social media echo chambers/purity spirals to shut down often-quite-reasonable disagreement. And we're clearly past the point at which we can just ignore 'social media politics', given how much it seems to have led to the current state of things in the US.

At the risk of sounding pessimistic, and as someone who also identifies himself as leftist: If the end result is voting between black/white binary choices, and that act of voting is itself one of the most important self-expression, does the fact that I disagree with them in a few points matter?

This essay feels shallow and dismissive to me. The sentiment is that you can't be a smart, independent thinker whilst going too far left or right. As with many of his essays, my take is that PG - who lives a highly privileged life - is basing this opinion on the caricature of reality that he gleans from the media and internet forums. It's easy to think what he thinks when the only representation you see of the far left is mindless "woke"ism.

Firstly, does he think that Marx was dumb? And leading left-wing figures like AOC, Sanders, Varoufakis, Zinn, or Zizek? No, for all you might disagree with them, they're smart and independent. They did not acquire their opinions in bulk. I even admit that right-wing figures like Shapiro, Bannon etc... are smart and independent, even though I think they're snakes.

Secondly, the essay overstates the degree of uniformity within the far left and right. Have you not seen the animosity between anarchists and Trotskyites? They only agree insofar as believing we can do better than capitalism. And those on the far right who have a global free market ideology will be at odds with those who want to restrict movement and apply protectionist tariffs.

[EDITED TO ADD] Thirdly, he presupposes that the distinction between right and left is purely one of logical competence. This is captured by him saying "both sides are equally wrong". But personal values also drive the polarisation. Those on the right tend to highly value tradition, loyalty, and family. Those on the left tend to highly value universal welfare and the environment. It's not really possible to label these "right" or "wrong", they are expressions of our fundamental desires for ourselves and the world. If you start from different axioms, you'll tend to get different corollaries even if perfect logic is applied.

Sure, but to be fair, we’re talking about political discussions and not strictly voting behavior. It seems like a given to me that most voting behavior is only a vague approximation of what people actually think and want.

This is such a great contrast:

> But they vote a straight blue ticket because that's what they learned to do back in the 1960s.

and

> but still votes red because she was raised in a religious household and came of age during the peak of the right's lean toward peddling to christians.

There's no explanation for why the old man votes "blue" other than he learned it in the 60s. OTOH, the woman votes "red" because "she was raised in a religious household" and started voting when The Right was "peddling to christians".

"peddling" -- that's a pretty negative term.

I don't know if it's ironic or demonstrative that an article about how difficult it can be to have political conversations produces a comment thread with such biased viewpoints.

Funny that you say pragmatic, because that’s exactly the word I tend to use when describing my own political beliefs. The best that I have come up with is “pragmatic with a propensity for…” and a few sub-categories that more accurately define what I’d like to see politically happen.

For example - preventionism. It seems to me that many issues could be avoided or eliminated entirely if we tried to prevent them from happening in the first place, rather than choosing between two actions, both with unavoidable negative consequences.

Another is aesthetics. For some reason, the simple desire to make public spaces more beautiful is not really a policy position adopted by any political group, at least in a primary way.

And so maybe the solution is an issue-based political system in which votes and resources go toward specific issues and not parties. (Or work toward eliminating those issues in the first place.)

PG has two different terms for it in his essay: unintentional moderates vs intentional moderates

https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html

That's what represents the two circled areas in the graph, though I realize if people don't have that context it could be confusing

added an explanation to clear things up

fwiw, I don't think that's arrogant, I've met plenty of high schoolers that understand this concept

> saying that independent thought leads to one being "moderate" in the way that most people think of that word, is straight up wrong

Agreed. Independent thought usually leads to one being moderate when that person is already living a comfortable life.

You're correct. Most people's views (i.e. moderates) are ideologically inconsistent with party-line. The loud X/bsky types refuse to decouple, and will double down even if the facts are wrong. Mind you on social media blue-tribe is much further left than the Democratic party.

The technical terms for the first few in that list are sexism, ageism and racism. While it is true people do that, it is considered a bad idea because it doesn't capture reality in a productive and meaningful way. And doesn't seem relevant to keiferski's comment.

The aim should be that people have to voluntarily associate with their tribe. It might be the hermit tribe where all the hermits sign up to be alone together.

Right but that’s because there are more micro interests on the left. It’s still tribal though. If I start to bring up deregulation of building housing, there will be a strong immediate backlash by certain factions on the left. I see it more that there is little room for discussion, within these different groups there are only binary options and if you are with them on all talking points, well you are the enemy.