zlacker

> It often feels like there is one prevailing slant on this site

When people talk about "the average HN reader", or the "prevailing slant", I'm always curious what they mean.

For me, it's always felt more like a back-and-forth struggle between radical liberals and hardline libertarians. That's always been the general nature of pretty much every tech-oriented forum historically (e.g. HN, Reddit, Slashdot, Usenet, etc). When Mike Judge was once asked about the core insight behind his "Silicon Valley" TV show, he cited his belief that the tech ethos is a conflict between liberal and libertarian values.

As a pragmatist who just likes to read about tech, I find both sides annoying.

>>SteveP+(OP)
Still, technologically minded liberals/libertarians, for all their differences, are not the only viewpoints, and even if there's disagreement along that axis it can still lead to a bubble. I doubt you'd see many people on HN advocating for a fundamentally Christian America, for instance.

>>bbctol+j3
Yes, liberal-libertarian is only one axis and this axis is different to the Democrat-Republican one. Both liberals and libertarians are socially liberal, as you imply.

>>SteveP+(OP)
I'm also curious as to what the mean (or median) HN political viewpoint would be, and which is the majority/minority viewpoint.

Personally, I tend towards liberal politics. I interperent this statement as "Liberal politics dominates HN, and conservative politics is a minority that gets downvoted"

Even assuming that's accurate, I tend to find more conservative viewpoints on this forum, compared to other forums I browse, and I find those conservative viewpoints better argued, and more likely to affect my view.