zlacker

Yes, I generally think that the conversations here stay on the relevant technical topic and treat political explanations as just more evidence into an investigation instead of the end-goal. I don't want a board focused on politics, I certainly don't find this kind of civil discussion in reddit.

I also don't think that the hacker spirit responds well to barriers of thought and discussion.

It's just an anecdote, but I know my views have been greatly affected in part by hacker news. I was once a staunch libertarian, but reading a lot about universal basic income and other approaches people have offered to income inequality and social issues, while talking about the technology trends first and foremost, have convinced me to broaden my beliefs.

There is something about having a stated goal outside of political points scoring that helps everyone see themselves as part of the same team. I've always felt hacker news is largely about understanding things related to technology - trends, weird bugs, how startups work, etc. With that as our main focus we can defer to each other and learn from each other. When the main force is to debate the other side there is no room for concessions or finding common ground.

What I want in a community, is for people of all different views and backgrounds to think about a topic with the end goal of solving some problem. Hacker news isn't perfect there but it's close.

>>mattne+(OP)
The basic income discussions are pretty pointless though. There is just a group of people who think we should have it and another who think it's a pointless thought experiment because it the economy is about an order of magnitude short of the output required for the numbers being proposed.

>>huevin+m5
That's not pointless, those could be really good points! Maybe UBI is something we have to throw out for now, maybe it can be implemented in a way to get around those challenges.

>>mattne+y6
But it's the same points over and over again. Every single time something about minimum wage or job automation shows up someone brings out the UBI horse to beat some more.

>>huevin+og
Those might just be today's lucky 10,000[0] who haven't seen the discussion up to that point, and a small price to pay for being able to discuss it at all.

I know I just learned something from this meta discussion, about the argument that the economy can't support UBI based on GDP numbers, and I'm eager to go read more. Most arguments I have seen say it won't work because of moral hazards and I haven't seen an argument that says it flat out can't be done, because there are so many different approaches and different ways it could play out.

[0]https://xkcd.com/1053/

>>huevin+og
It is possible, if not probable, that each of those times you thought someone was beating the horse some more, at least one other person reading was unaware of and interested in the discussion. It may seem to you like all the stuff discussed here is common knowledge, but most of it really isn't, and this community grows all the time.

>>huevin+og
Maybe a way to flag topics to hide similar ones from yourself would be helpful, but applying this more generally to the entire community doesn't sit well with me.

>>AsyncA+vl
Agree. If topics and comments are going to be hidden because they're "political", there should be a way to view and upvote these if you want to "opt-in".

>>reflex+fm
There is. Set "showdead" to "yes" in your profile. You can "vouch" for comments made by banned users.

>>AsyncA+vl
That's what "hide" does for a submission, though you have to do that on per-submission basis.