Holding both those positions would be hypocritical all right, but are you sure it's the same people commenting/voting in both cases? I don't think there's a strong consensus on Hacker News. Even something like the time of day an article is posted might get different engagement depending on who is active in which time zones.
Based on my own experience and reading, I do think there's a general consensus on this site but I could certainly be wrong about that. I'm less concerned about hypocrisy per se, it's more that the arguments that are used, even if by a minority, seem to apply in only circumstances in which China releases open-weight models.
I am aligned with your viewpoint as well. And I've repeatedly argued it. If China were to take the lead the US can then just release open-weight models. Folks say having the lead doesn't matter because China releases cheaper open-weight models. We can just let them take the lead and then do it back to them.
The problem isn’t that people on HN have a bias, I feel it’s pretty balanced. The problem is that when there are any sides, they spend the top 100 comments rehashing the same arguments, often over a political bugbear or web design faux pas.
That pattern became a lot more obvious when there are five new front page AI posts a day.
It's not even about sides, if for the last few hundred days you read a few AI related threads a day, then you notice that almost all arguments are rehashed, literally it's the same thing repeated using different words for 80%+ of comments on almost every AI thread. I started skipping most of it because there is genuinely nothing new or interesting added to these discussions.
This is a problem with any upvote/downvote based site, in my experience. It only takes a couple people who are highly engaged and who have a lot of free time to refresh the comment section and downvote everyone who disagrees with them.
Some times I’ll write a polite and well-sourced comment correcting some misinformation here and the comment will go to -2 or -3 when I check back in 10 minutes. Information that goes against the angry narrative du jour is often not welcome. Later, as calmer heads read the article and peruse the comments the downvotes start to get balanced out and the comment might rise, but some times the first wave downvoters are aggressive enough to get the comment downvoted into gray text before it has a chance to be seen.
In my experience with other communities, it only takes 3-5 people with a lot of free time to crush conversations they don't like. On a fast moving comment section a wrongthink comment can be buried into the bottom half of the comments with only a few early downvotes.
This comment isn't applicable to me, and if you believed that it applied, you'd have to add it to the OP as well since they feel strongly about Meta[1], they notice data points about Meta's behavior, and they overweight their bias against Meta[1] relative to others. Same with China "leading" and open-source/open-weight models and any time someone says China's strategy is better.
You can repeat this for any online argument or any topic.
It's not that Dang is wrong, however. It's that posting it in response to my comment(s) alone is hypocritical and pointless. Whereas Dang who is more responsible for the entire community is right to speak about it more generally. The message matters but so does the messenger, in this case.
[1] I don't use any Meta products (I don't even click on links), think social media should probably be outright banned, and Meta very likely should have been sued into the ground for the effects that their platform seems to have not just on children and young adults but also on our political system.
There are diverse viewpoints. However there are some topics and threads where it becomes obvious that the comments are going to tilt toward one viewpoint. Participating in those threads with a different opinion will get your comments downvoted to -2 within minutes even if it’s well-written and factually sound.
After this happens a couple times you learn not to engage with those threads because it only takes a few zealous downvoters to bury anything you write. So the illusion of consensus persists.
Concrete example: There was that fake (AI hallucinated) report that Meta spent $2B lobbying on something that was popular here months ago. I actually read the repo and report and noticed the AI hallucination, as well as pointed out that $2B in lobbying spend by a single company was not plausible or supported by any evidence. It didn’t matter how I wrote it, it would risk getting downvotes and angry replies about “How dare you defend Meta!” Some people are here for the anger and to feel revenge against the enemies they think they know (like the US) and will cheer on anything that goes against those enemies, regardless of the other facts surrounding it. Factually accuracy often takes a back seat to pushing agendas.