Show HN: Race to the Bottom

5/15/2026 at 3:55:26 AM

The framing of some of these is interesting. Not a criticism, just an observation.

I think many trigger a visceral negative reaction, like animal testing, but most of these can be broken up into sub-parts that are both obviously good and obviously bad at the same time. Animal testing of cosmetics: bad, animal testing of the safety of a new drug that millions of humans will take: probably good. Chemical manufacturing that produces plastic packaging for things that could use paper packaging: not great, chemical manufacturing for chemicals used in healthcare, probably good. To be clear, these are nuanced topics and I'm not interested in debating them here, just providing illustrative examples.

I realise this isn't really the point of this experiment, but it does go to show how much the framing matters. This is part of why surveys can produce radically different results depending on how you write the questions.

by danpalmer

5/15/2026 at 4:25:46 AM

Couldn't have said it better, felt the same way about it.

Another example is military and defense, or pharmaceuticals. Some rather beneficial and even necessary aspects to both, yet some disagreeable things to either as well.

by jdthedisciple

5/15/2026 at 5:15:36 AM

If this was framed as things you'd eliminate from society tomorrow, maybe pharma would fair better

by breppp

5/15/2026 at 3:58:29 AM

In fact to go further, even just the inclusion of an item on a "race to the bottom" page implies negativity. In isolation, "cheap food" is a pretty positive thing, the emphasis may be on "food" and we all need that. But in this context it may imply the emphasis is on "cheap" and further imply bad, and most would agree that food quality is important so might downvote it, even though the concept is pretty good.

Similarly, "Wind farms" (negative connotations) vs "Wind power" (positive connotations).

by danpalmer

5/15/2026 at 1:43:04 AM

An interesting experiment could be re-wording some of these and seeing how different the rankings are.

So have an alternate card titled "Promoting your country" rather than "Propaganda" or "Personal Safety" rather than "Firearms".

Some of these cards definitely present biases that could prime someone to vote a certain way such as "Exploitative Gig Economy" is clearly biased. I would strongly guess if certain cards were worded more positively, they wouldn't be ranked as poorly.

"Advertising" -> "Promoting your product"

Or some of them are so broad it's difficult to disambiguate the good from the bad like "Telemarketing", "Advertising", or "Pharmaceuticals". Some of it is awful while other parts are between great and ok.

---

Another interesting dynamic I was thinking of as I was answering was the axis of "Personal Responsibility" to "Social Responsibility".

It gauges how the crowd thinks of harm. For instance, Environmental Pollution is bad because it harms everyone and no one _chooses_ to be polluted on necessarily while something like Sugary Drinks is largely a personal choice that affects no one else.

Maybe another axis of "Protection" to "Liberty" where something is a personal choice but could be seen as bad because it is addictive or otherwise tries to trap the person.

So Adult Platform would be fairly squarely in Liberty/Personal while something like Online Gambling would be Protection/Social.

by madamelic

5/15/2026 at 5:48:43 AM

It's not advertising, it's "product discovery services".

I'm actually a little amazed that marketers have branded their job so poorly.

by 0xDEAFBEAD

5/15/2026 at 3:48:48 AM

I thought this was good but then the questions never stopped, not a progress bar in sight, eventually when I clicked the ranking list, I didn’t care because it wasn’t based on my opinions instead I’m assuming based on all votes.

I really thought the author did something here.

by adithyassekhar

5/15/2026 at 8:13:12 AM

The context or description shown for each "industry" is a massive injection of bias.

For example, Cannabis is "Cannabis cultivation, dispensaries, and marijuana-related businesses", while Sugary Food & Beverage are "Products associated with obesity, diabetes, and health concerns". So if you think there is also a positive side to sugar, the context makes it clear you are voting for the negative side. But the negative sides of Cannabis are left out of the context, so you're more likely to be neutral or positive about it.

Another example is Environmental Polluters, which are "Industries with major pollution, emissions, or environmental damage". And you also have Chemical Manufacturing, which is "Industrial chemical production and hazardous material processing". But there is no such thing as a "pollution and hazards" industry. So what are we voting for as "worst" here? Nitrogen and Cement? Industry in general?

And the rankings are just an ordered list, completely opaque. With all the overlap between the options, there has to be something actually interesting to do with the data.

by hjkl0

5/15/2026 at 8:28:06 AM

It just occurred to me there's an even bigger missed opportunity with the rankings. Because every "survey question" is a 1 to 1 comparison between two concepts, the most interesting thing would be to see how different concepts stand up to each other. And perhaps also how consistent people are throughout their answers, and maybe how that correlates to trends in their choices.

by hjkl0

5/15/2026 at 5:49:23 AM

A bit shocking to see how low people rate factory farming, place 34. Arguably the worst thing happening on this planet right now, the only thing is: not to humans, but to other sentient beings.

by lobofta

5/15/2026 at 7:25:55 AM

As many have correctly pointed out: A reasonable person cannot pass blanket judgement on many of the entries shown.

This also highlights a major flaw with voting and political campaigning in democracies:

Undifferentiated blanket judgements based on biased framing, polarizing society artificially into totally unnecessary camps of opposition.

by jdthedisciple

5/15/2026 at 4:37:48 AM

This is just bias confirmation theater for a certain worldview.

by nihonde

5/15/2026 at 7:19:51 AM

The front page mentions that the intention is to capture the public opinion. I felt that looking at the rankings didn't really meaningfully give me any useful information about a broad consensus on any of the topics. As many have mentioned, there are many nuances to a lot of the options.

Perhaps adding a text input after the selection to ask a user to describe their position on the topic and having that broadly shared would help towards that goal?

The rankings page doesn't give me any sense either of how my opinion broadly tracks against the "public opinion". This would fundamentally change the flow you have going but presenting the options and then asking the user to manually tier list them would allow for that side by side comparison.

by readonkeyless

5/15/2026 at 1:24:36 AM

Interesting idea -- ran through it for a few minutes and thought the leaderboard was informative. Definitely could expand this!

by Torgin

5/15/2026 at 1:40:13 AM

Text sizes for the subtitles are very small on mobile. The thin font doesn’t help either.

by pimlottc

5/15/2026 at 1:59:33 AM

They're very small on desktop as well.

by DylanSp

5/15/2026 at 1:54:44 AM

Would be cool if it ran until you had an intransitive preference. A is worse than B, which is worse than C, which is worse than A.

I thought the point was to show how ranking industries based on "evil vibes" is subjective.

by jjmarr

5/15/2026 at 5:48:17 AM

I'm not sure what this is supposed to be measuring. The data is also probably really sparse -- no idea how alcohol is at 47 at the time of me writing this, it is incredibly destructive on a societal level.

by cityofdelusion

5/15/2026 at 3:51:13 AM

Some of the options make no sense at all.

by macrocosmos

5/15/2026 at 3:40:11 AM

worthwhile to give a sense of how many times to click in order to get through to all the categories.. like a completion bar. have a feeling that i haven't seen all but have seen 'cryptocurrencies and prediction markets' like 4x

by mli3w

5/14/2026 at 2:47:50 PM

What an interesting idea! Quick question: Do you store user data in any way or each "start" resets previous choices? What`s your plan for this? A public platform? Maybe connection to a specific purpose? I can see attaching non profits links to some causes might help some.

Also curious to see diff per region/state and maybe as some further vision connection of it to a specific regional stats regarding the topic.

by DaryaHr

5/14/2026 at 3:28:07 PM

Thanks, sadly it didn't pick-up on HN The diff per region/state would be fantastic! The stats are shared, nothing "per user". At first I just wanted to see if it would trigger some interest. There's a huge room for improvements, your suggestions are great

by maxwellito

5/15/2026 at 12:17:35 AM

This is fantastic! The voting statistics of the community would have been very interesting. I have emailed the moderators to see if they would consider giving this post a second chance at /pool.

by susam

5/15/2026 at 7:20:22 AM

This needs like a "both of these things are good" button.

by donatj

5/15/2026 at 1:43:54 AM

Social media is ranked worse right now than Oil&Gas and Weapons - what?

by somewhatgoated

5/15/2026 at 5:18:17 AM

Different people have different views. I agree re: oil and gas (it could literally kill us all) but I don't mind responsible firearm ownership and obviously someone has to build the guns if you want to hunt, go do some target practice at the range, etc.

by CalRobert

5/15/2026 at 1:49:38 AM

Based on the recent comments I've seen around here, selecting whether "Social Media" or "Private Prisons" are worse for society is somehow, inexplicably, a tough decision.

Many of the options here are also confusing. "Pharmaceuticals" as one of the options among other generally-considered bad things? Pharmaceuticals have saved millions of lives. Am I supposed to assume we're talking about the opiate crisis specifically or something?

by akersten

5/15/2026 at 2:25:13 AM

Some of these tripped me up as well.

Oil & Gas are necessary for a country's survival. Good!

The Oil & Gas Industry operate political lobbying and climate change disinformation campaigns. Bad :(

So, which of the two should I consider in my rankings? Both? Neither?

by dlivingston

5/15/2026 at 2:00:38 AM

Yea, the last 2 are good things, not bad things.

by x3n0ph3n3

5/15/2026 at 5:59:53 AM

I wish this had a "I don't mind either of these".

by riffraff

5/15/2026 at 1:58:46 AM

What technology isn't surveillance technology these days?

by david_shi

5/15/2026 at 2:50:37 AM

Does it ever end? I got bored before seeing the "leaderboards" or whatever.

Also, some of these things are definitely not like the others.

by antisthenes

5/15/2026 at 4:02:03 AM

Am I the only one who is bothered by “Choose the worst” with only two options? It should be “Choose the worse”.

by JackFr

5/15/2026 at 1:25:26 AM

The cool thing here is that when you look at the whole list it’s just a snapshot of the economy

by AndrewKemendo

5/15/2026 at 3:55:07 AM

The absolutely terrible rankings made me lose a bit of faith in humanity.

by codemog

5/15/2026 at 4:02:20 AM

Agree, I was very surprised to see oil and coal all the way at 20s!

by Klaster_1

5/15/2026 at 1:30:40 AM

Really didn't fancy this work.

You just have context-free character strings to work with here.

And then I peeked at the leader board and *really* didn't care for the things ranked best at all.

by smitty1e

5/15/2026 at 1:48:40 AM

I don't like this candidate list at all because it obviously reflects the author's beliefs on what viable candidates are. There are many entries there that do not belong in such a list. There also are many other things that could've been viable candidates, but aren't in the list, e.g. moneyprinting, inflation above 1%, health insurance preapprovals and denials, etc.

by OutOfHere

5/15/2026 at 1:32:08 AM

Rankings not all consistent:

  - private military 6 but defense 39;
  - surveillance tech 7, data brokers 9, but facial recognition 14, social media 17, advertising 34;
  - polluters 3 but coal 26, oil 30, mining 37;
  - scam 5 but clickbait 15, MLMs 18;
  - influencers 22 but ads 34 (influencers *are* ads);

Though some are: e.g.,

  - lobbying / disinformation are close (1,2);
  - escorts, adult platforms, dating, adult content all 47-50 (nice!)

by jsrozner

5/15/2026 at 1:45:51 AM

my take on that:

- private military is different from (and not necessary for) defence. A country having an army for defence is bad but kinda necessary. A country hiring mercenaries is not necessary.

- you can have e.g. social media without surveillance tech, and the harm comes mostly from the surveillance tech. Likewise for the others. Facial recognition opens my phone, I'm fine with that. Surveillance tech is always bad.

- same for the resources industry; they could create a mine that doesn't pollute and cleans up after itself when done. Mining itself isn't necessarily harmful (and we need the resources). It's the pollution that does the harm.

- kinda same for scams - the thing we hate is the scam. The others could do this without the scam, but they choose not to which is why we hate them.

- influencers are a particularly annoying form of advertising, so I get why they're ranked differently. It would be interesting if all forms of advertising were ranked so we could really see what annoys people.

totally agree that the sex industry at the bottom is good :)

by marcus_holmes

5/15/2026 at 3:53:42 AM

How is a country having an army for defense bad?

by macrocosmos

5/15/2026 at 4:36:13 AM

Well in an ideal world we wouldn't need armies, or defence, right?

by marcus_holmes

5/15/2026 at 4:38:41 AM

I’m speaking of reality. How is a country having an army for defense a bad thing in the existence we currently find ourselves?

by macrocosmos

5/15/2026 at 6:42:00 AM

It's an interesting question.

Could we save ourselves the cost of a military, and put that money to better use, without actually endangering the lives of our citizens?

I would suggest, certainly in the case of the USA, that the answer is "yes". The USA's military budget is larger than most of the rest of world's combined. Yet the USA is not in any danger of being invaded. This massive, massive, military force is entirely about projecting force elsewhere, diplomacy by other means. It's not "defence".

The USA has huge social welfare problems. Hundreds of thousands of homeless people, for example. If the USA chose to, it could redirect even a small part of the military budget to building social housing, and (imho) the world would be a better place.

So while I agree that having a military for defence (and purely for defence) is probably not a bad thing, that's not the purpose that most countries have a military for. Hegseth aside, most anglosphere countries have a Department of Defence that has never had to defend anything [0], but has been at war for most of the last 50 years. I think this is bad.

[0] Falklands war is a little bit dubious; technically a defence of a UK protectorate. But colonialism, etc.

by marcus_holmes