The downvotes on your own comment may be because one of the HN guidelines discourages commenting about voting patterns.

And I thought the fact that the downvote was there as soon as I posted was the remarkable bit, not that I was downvoted at all.

Saying this during an era that looks like it will be partly remembered as when the american binary political divide ended seems very odd to me. American society is largely and increasingly not well modeled by 2 clusters of opinion.

American society is largely and increasingly not well modeled by 2 clusters of opinion.

I've seen studies and polls indicating that there are two diverging clusters of opinions and positions, with the left part moving further left, and the right clump moving more slowly right.

There is a big part of online society for whom such jingoistic tribalism is thought of as some sort of virtuous, intellectually worthy exercise. I find this highly disturbing. If one is interested in finding the truth, then self doubt and the willingness to ask questions is paramount! It's precisely that "you're either with us, or against us" mentality which is a hallmark of the tyrants and the enemies of reason. It's precisely that mindset that burned witches and imprisoned Galileo.

It's precisely that mindset that gives rise to ideological reasoning.

EDIT: Wow, someone downvoted me literally ~2 seconds after I posted. Good work, Quickdraw!

It seems like some group of activists has tried to come in to Hacker News and use it to push their agenda. I, for one, do not appreciate their attempts to push their agenda by creating fear of being labeled an "-ist."

   >>> It seems like some group of activists has tried to come in to Hacker News and use it to push their agenda. I, for one, do not appreciate their attempts to push their agenda by creating fear of being labeled an "-ist." 

I've been around here since 2007, and I'm even on the leaderboard. There has indeed been a sharp change around here, starting slowly in 2014 and more quickly starting in 2016. This sort of outrage-mongering and "you're with us or you're against us, or we'll smear you" anti-intellectual mentality on HN is something new that's come in from outside.

It is correct in this case, but in other contexts, it is also a common bit of fallacious reasoning, used to draw false equivalences.

Edit: not to say that pointing out that "both sides" have some sort of mistake is never valid, it's just that almost every time I see the argument it's from someone akin to a flat earther, or climate change denier, or an anti-evolutionist, who really doesn't have the facts on their side. And it's incredibly frustrating that they just expect me to respect their opinions just as much as I would respect someone who's talking points hadn't been debunked over and over already.

So it isn't true for anyone (in this universe, anyway).

Even the idea that politics involves "2 sides" or that this is a useful way to model things is an obvious ideological statement.

Pointing this out gets old, at this point jokes about how someone always says this and betrays their complete misunderstanding of the entire concept is old. And since you know this ideology and you know what works and what doesn't when trying to get someone to confront un-examined ideological commitments ... you just downvote and move on.