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Comment by someothherguyy | Hacker News Reader

what is the purity spiral and why is it left wing?

it seems like a group of issues that the general public might be concerned about

>what is the purity spiral and why is it left wing?

People trying to 1-up each other leading to the beliefs of a group being more polarized[1]. The naming doesn't imply it's a partisan phenomenon, any more than "right wing politician" implies politicians are a right wing phenomenon

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...

i know what a purity spiral is. i was asking what this one is about and why the comment implied it is partisan

The datacenter opposition is definitely partisan, even if you can find some overlap in supporters

https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20260905_USC...

I would think that Elon Musk being Trump's lapdog while owning so much AI compute that he rents it out might have something to do with it.

There is probably a lot of overlapping factors, for example I would think that the general dislike of genAI in the art/creative scene (which skews left) would play a role.

Independents are only about 7pts off there from Dems,

Are we just going to ignore the 30+% difference between democrats and republicans?

The ~32 pts between Independents and Republicans is pretty telling.

The Republicans and GOP are far off the mark from Dems and Independents, aka they are drifiting further from the center.

...or that many "independents" are just left wingers that want to avoid the democratic brand. See also: the fact that all "independent" senators caucus with the democrats

[delayed]

Purely anecdotal from my point of view. The folks I see being very anti-AI are also the more left-wing folks in my bubble, who I know have gone down some of the purity spirals we've had before.

I don't know many right-wing folks. Most of the ones I do know are dealing with different issues and don't really give a toss about AI one way or the other.

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