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bruce511today at 7:25 AM1 replyview on HN

My thesis is that no-one understands. So there's no political orientation.

Your suggestion suggests that a little bit of technical education would change political allegiance. Alas that is incorrect. Politics is about worldview (me and mine versus you and yours) and a world view cannot be changed by something as mundane as education.

Each person has both a self-centered side, and a community-centered side. For some it's mostly self centered. For others mostly community centered. Politics is about finding out which side the population has swung to.


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somenameformetoday at 7:58 AM

A bit of a tangent, but I don't think it's really fair to say it's about self vs community. I think the main reason that people start to lean in a different direction as they age is because you start to see cracks in the ideals you held when younger. The internet is a good example. Many of us lived through the birth of the mainstreaming of the internet. And our perspectives of what the future held at that moment was generally just exceptionally naive. For those who are a bit younger, a similar phenomena played out with the rise of social media as well.

And as you see how reality and society tend to 'really' work, wisdom in other words, it tends to result in a shifting perspective on the ideal way forward for society. I'm certainly much more socially minded than when I was younger now. And I also think that's fairly typical - like most young people I was completely self absorbed which makes 'real' social mindedness quite uncommon. Yet my political leaning is gradually shifting ever more towards the 'self centered' orientation, in your terminology.

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