[drzaiusapelord]

Great comment. Way too much of HN is invested in "nanny state bad and corrupt" justified with FUD-like narratives. There's always this low-simmering culture war here. And really, air travel radiation is the hill these types of people want to die on?

The problem with conservative forums like HN is eventually you get on this treadmill of "and so and so isn't so bad" be it alcohol, smoking, Hitler, etc that's a mix of ignorant and purposely dishonest to push agendas. This takes people down some strange and often ignorant and hateful roads, which then helps craft their personalities and core beliefs into something very negative.

The reality is, alcohol is pretty toxic and a health organization really shouldn't recommend a daily allowance of it. I think the cognitive dissonance with people who want to be "right with the science" but also want to drink needs to come out somehow and it often comes out, at least with health issues, with these overly-broad and just weird attacks on groups like the CDC or WHO or whatever. Instead, these people could just admit that "Yes, I do this very unhealthy thing for pleasure and its as unhealthy as the experts say it is." Instead, they'd rather nitpick at random things and reach an irrational conclusion than accept the truth of it all.

On the healthcare end it works the other way like "Here's some unwarranted nitpicking about vaccines," that terminates to a crazed anti-vaxxer position. Its the same kind of dishonesty and leads to the same types of irrational conclusions.

For a lot of people, not only is this how they often think, its the default mode of how they think. They sling mud, project, and attack at any perceived slight against their personal beliefs and the culture war they're always fighting. Its a sign of an emotionally immature mind and these people are everywhere and they build powerful echo chambers. When we see them die of covid as they post facebook memes denying its existence, we then know the fruits of this kind of mental labor. Its dishonestly all the way down.

[ifyoubuildit]

> The problem with conservative forums like HN

Not terribly on topic, but I've been lurking here for more than a decade, and today I learned that it's a conservative forum. And on top of that, it has the same problems inherent to conservative forums (fora?). Weird.

[timpattinson]

While i wouldn't agree that HN is a conservative forum, there is certainly a lot more conservative-leaning material posted here than similar tech-focused forums.

See any thread about California, Texas, diversity & affirmative action, COVID, etc.

[cleansingfire]

This thread was diverted from questioning alcohol as a poison in "any amount " to culture war. This is the borderline astroturfing that destroys communities. Turn every discussion into a political one. I no longer read Slashdot knowing I'll find commenters with more insight than the OP, because they're buried in fragile outrage. Sorry I'm making it worse, just this thread, which should be a few references on each point, became panic and FUD disorientingly fast.

[Brian_K_White]

The pattern only overlaps with conservative on the topics of regulation, maybe taxes, definitely affirmative action.

Everything you said but it's not about conservatism in general or most of the rest of the current conservative platform.

It's just anything that annoys a tech bro who never had a problem in life except that it's a crime that his copycat app was taken down and some girl got a job he thought the world owed him, or he succeeded and believes he did it all himself and doesn't owe anyone else anything.

I mean, it is a large overlap. You could describe both this and the coservative platform as "whatever rationalization works to justify being selfish"

But for instance, I bet almost none of these "conservatives" have a moral or religious objection to sex outside of marriage, sex outside of their race/ethnicity/religion, definitely aren't down at the soup kitchen every wednesday to feed the hungry, never turned the other cheek in their lives, will happily ridicule "preppers" even while researching about data islands...

I think I'm not really articulating my point all that well but hopefully you do still get what I mean despite my weak examples.

[N1H1L]

> Not terribly on topic, but I've been lurking here for more than a decade, and today I learned that it's a conservative forum

Me too.

[01100011]

I understand that the commentary on HN can sometimes be frustrating, but many topics are nuanced and worthy of discussion. If you are looking for a forum which converges on one version of the truth and does nothing but repeat that version of the truth to itself, well, maybe try another discussion forum. If you are not interested in participating in those discussions, it's fine to just keep scrolling or collapse the thread entirely.