[HN Gopher] I can tolerate anything except the outgroup (2014)
___________________________________________________________________
I can tolerate anything except the outgroup (2014)
Author : nonethewiser
Score : 176 points
Date : 2023-09-06 15:39 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (slatestarcodex.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (slatestarcodex.com)
| kypro wrote:
| This is one of the few things I like being autistic for - I don't
| think I'm socially capable of having out-groups.
|
| I have racist friends, sexist friends, homophobic friends, but
| also antifa friends, feminist friends, homosexual friends. I get
| on with them all just the same... I don't even like labelling
| them as such because it's weird to categorise them in those
| terms. I might disagree with them on things, but I don't dislike
| them or have any negative emotional feelings towards them as
| people.
|
| If I have an out-group it's probably intolerant people. And again
| it's not that I dislike them, but I've lost several friends who
| won't tolerate me defending "intolerant" people. But there's not
| much I can do about that. I get on with everyone who wants to get
| on with me.
|
| Being highly tolerant is socially difficult which is probably why
| more socially-abled people seek groups and are susceptible to
| group think. How do you get someone who believes women shouldn't
| have the right to vote to hang out with a feminist? This is an
| issue I have in my life constantly. Everyone I like hates each
| other. To some extent our societies probably depend on group
| think and intolerance - otherwise why form a society at all?
| Unless your bound by some shared ingroup beliefs forming a
| society makes no sense. And if you're born into that society if
| you know what's good for you you'll want to adopt those beliefs!
|
| It would be a weird world if we were highly tolerant, i think...
| I question if my tolerance is moral often. To be highly moral you
| probably need to have good intolerances which I'm not capable of.
| If we were all like me the world would probably be a worse place.
| I would have been fine with the Nazi's. I disagree with them and
| I'm glad they lost the war, but I don't hate them enough to fight
| against their views. I'd rather we try to find a way to all get
| along.
|
| My inability to form out-groups is why I don't vote anymore
| because as much as people don't like others, embracing tolerance
| is probably the only way to ensure people will fight and disagree
| more.
| Given_47 wrote:
| > I question if my tolerance is moral often. To be highly moral
| you probably need to have good intolerances which I'm not
| capable of.
|
| Don't forget the incredible subjectivity of morality. And
| defining the intolerable things that would constitute a "highly
| moral" person is extremely tricky because one could easily
| argue that tolerance is innately tied to morality.
|
| I would love to learn more about philosophy because I'm unsure
| how the answer isn't always "I don't know." Though maybe it is.
| The more I think about these things, the more I understand the
| underlying nuances, but invariably walk away thinking "I don't
| know." It's frustrating but fun
| Aloha wrote:
| I'm much like you, but its not just merely intolerant people
| (everyone is intolerant, racist, has some measure of bias), its
| only really highly intolerant people which I exclude.
|
| The post 2012 era of people maximalist positions on every
| conceivable issue also makes it really have to have reasonable
| discussions with about difficult topics.
|
| Trump made some of this harder, if for no other reason the
| people who I might have an ideological or philosophical
| disagreement with, simply wouldn't shut up about it.
|
| I do vote however, I vote for the things I find desirable and
| people I find honorable. Being gay has made me very well aware
| of the fact that I cant ignore politics, I must be active and
| encourage others to do so.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| A lot of these definitions and groupings are highly artificial
| and more-often-than-not, mostly manufactured by media interests -
| who certainly understand that controversy drives engagement, as
| well as the economic necessity to have a loyal partisan base of
| subscribers and followers in the internet media age, and that one
| way to do that is to cultivate anger and distrust of social out-
| groups. One conclusion of this view is that Americans get served
| at least as much manuipulative propaganda as Soviet citizens did,
| and possibly a good deal more effectively as it goes through many
| different channels, instead of coming purely from the state
| organs of information.
|
| Getting an alternative view is rather difficult, but there are
| some tactics that are used by researchers in fields like
| economics and ecology to get a good sample of their populations.
| For example, one approach is the 'straight line transect' - i.e.
| draw a straight line from, say, San Francisco to Boston and
| sample people's views and opinions from every
| community/individual who lives within 100 miles perpendicular to
| that transect. Then compare that to a Seattle-Los Angeles
| transect and a New York-Miami transect.
|
| This woould, I think, reveal that most people have many common
| concerns: job satisfaction, housing/energy/food costs, crime and
| safety, good educational systems, clean air/water/food issues,
| etc. These topics are often ignored by the media and politicians
| because they don't drive the kind of divisiveness and negative
| engagement that they find beneficial.
|
| One interesting question is just how much of the button-pushing
| emotional-response-driving controversial material is the product
| of deliberately engineered mass manipulations strategies run by a
| shady cabal of some sort, and how much just arises naturally and
| is then exploited by media and political figures?
| bawolff wrote:
| Fascinating article, i'll have to think about it.
|
| One thing that stood out to me:
|
| > When a friend of mine heard Eich got fired, she didn't see
| anything wrong with it. "I can tolerate anything except
| intolerance," she said.
|
| > "Intolerance" is starting to look like another one of those
| words like "white" and "American".
|
| > "I can tolerate anything except the outgroup." Doesn't sound
| quite so noble now, does it?
|
| But if instead you phrase it as "i can tolerate anyone except
| those who attack my in group", it is perhaps not noble but much
| more understandable, as everyone protects their own.
| plagiarist wrote:
| [flagged]
| dustincoates wrote:
| There's an entire section in TFA before the quote that
| explains why it's relevant (it's not what you are assuming
| here).
| zogrodea wrote:
| Would you mind explaining what TFA means, as I've seen that
| acronym quite a bit here? "The f-g article"?
| jfengel wrote:
| Precisely.
|
| Sometimes you'll hear it expanded as "The Fine Article"
| or just "The Article".
|
| Often, it really does mean just "the article". People use
| the acronym without expanding it out or thinking too
| deeply about it. At one point, decades ago, it may have
| connoted some kind of hostility (e.g. "If you had read
| the f---ing article..."), and it's still meant that way
| in "RTFA" (read the f---ing article, meaning "that was
| already answered, so you clearly haven't read the thing
| that we're supposed to be discussing")
|
| But now, it's mostly just a kind of in-joke, and TFA
| means nothing more than "the article", with the F
| entirely silent.
| zogrodea wrote:
| Thank you for the answer. Had encountered the acronym
| about the manual before, but this one is a first.
| bawolff wrote:
| The friendly article, if you don't like curse words.
| zogrodea wrote:
| Appreciate the answer and alternative acronym-expansion.
| Thanks.
| rovolo wrote:
| Yeah, this line of argument is a perfect example of the "Motte
| and Bailey" fallacy. The structure of this argument works just
| as well if you replace "intolerance" with "segregationist" or
| "misogynist". The only takeaway I have from this argument is
| "it's easier to condemn things which you disagree with". There
| isn't any discussion of whether the intolerant action is
| actually intolerant or harmful.
|
| ---
|
| Digression, this is a pretty audacious way to minimize
| Apartheid.
|
| > South African whites and South African blacks ... So what
| makes an outgroup? Proximity plus small differences.
|
| Every single human conflict can be described as "small
| differences" because humans are very similar to each other.
| Also, it's harder to be in conflict with people far away from
| you.
| vkou wrote:
| > There isn't any discussion of whether the intolerant action
| is actually intolerant or harmful.
|
| People towards the upper side of a social hierarchy, who are
| not seriously discriminated against tend to find it very easy
| to discuss discrimination in the abstract, as a kind of
| intellectual game of chess.
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| Yeah I'm not sure why "small" had to make it in that
| argument. I guess it's to say that the differences _may_ be
| small because large differences, regardless of proximity, is
| obviously a source of conflict?
| consilient wrote:
| > Every single human conflict can be described as "small
| differences" because humans are very similar to each other.
|
| He's obviously talking about differences which are small _by
| human standards_. The rest of the paragraph:
|
| > If you want to know who someone in former Yugoslavia hates,
| don't look at the Indonesians or the Zulus or the Tibetans or
| anyone else distant and exotic. Find the Yugoslavian
| ethnicity that lives closely intermingled with them and is
| most conspicuously similar to them, and chances are you'll
| find the one who they have eight hundred years of seething
| hatred toward.
| rovolo wrote:
| How were the differences between the colonial SA Afrikaners
| and the local SA Zulu smaller than the differences between
| the Yugoslavs and the Zulu, other than proximity?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > > "I can tolerate anything except the outgroup." Doesn't
| sound quite so noble now, does it?
|
| > But if instead you phrase it as "i can tolerate anyone except
| those who attack my in group", it is perhaps not noble but much
| more understandable, as everyone protects their own.
|
| But that's not the same thing. The outgroup is the group that
| is _attacked by_ the ingroup, not the group that attacks the
| ingroup.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| Eich was attacking the ingroup though. He worked to remove
| rights from gay people in the state of California.
| bawolff wrote:
| Everyone always thinks the other side "attacked" first. As
| the saying goes, it takes two to tango.
| neaden wrote:
| I mean, this is obviously untrue. To take the example of
| homosexuals and homophobia, in what way did homosexual
| people "attack" first or how are they one of the two
| tangoing.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The question isn't "did both sides attack" it is "do
| people on both sides feel attacked." I'm sure there are
| plenty of Russian's who feel attacked by the Ukraine;
| that doesn't mean the Ukraine started the current war.
|
| Consider this mindset (to be clear, not _my_ mindset):
|
| 1. The US is, and always has been a Christian nation
|
| 2. Homosexuality is unchristian
|
| 3. For the past 60 years, anti-christian liberals have
| been trying to (and in large part succeeding) in
| legalizing many sinful behaviors, at least one of which
| is tantamount to murder (i.e. abortion)
|
| 4. Following the legalization of the sinful behaviors
| comes normalization via indoctrination in schools
|
| From this mindset, it's easy to see how e.g. legalization
| of homosexual behaviors (and then of homosexual marriage)
| is seen as an attack.
|
| As far as attacking _first_ , well that's simple: all
| those people who attacked, beat, or killed homosexuals
| were isolated incidents and e.g. the raid on Stonewall
| Inn was just the cops doing their job (these people were
| breaking the law, after all).
|
| See e.g.: https://source.wustl.edu/2021/08/cultural-
| backlash-is-lgbtq-...
| mistermann wrote:
| [delayed]
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| > "i can tolerate anyone except those who attack my in group"
|
| Yeah, this essay is misleading about why Eich was so disliked.
| Eich wasn't just homophobic, he actually worked to help
| eliminate rights for gay people in the state of California by
| donating money to the corresponding political campaign.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> he actually worked to help eliminate rights for gay people
| in the state of California by donating money to the
| corresponding political campaign_
|
| Note that 52% of California voters also worked to help
| eliminate rights for gay people in the state, by voting for
| Proposition 8. As strange as it seems now, this was a very
| common position in 2008.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Note that 52% of California voters also worked to help
| eliminate rights for gay people in the state, by voting for
| Proposition 8.
|
| Yes, and those that publicly and proudly done so and were
| unrepentant about it would have been problematic for the
| role for the same reason as Eich (and, in most cases, for
| lots of other reasons, some more significant, as well.)
| "The rule you propose would also rule out lots of people
| who would never have been under consideration for the role"
| is, here, a valid observation, but not any kind of
| counterargument.
| glitchc wrote:
| Except those people may be overestimating (kindly) or
| pretending (unkindly) the harm they suffer from those attacks.
| To consider a defensive action as ethically sound, the defender
| must show real harm. Otherwise it's vulnerable to abuse and
| opens up lines of reasoning along the following statement (with
| gay and straight flipped around): "As a gay person, I hate
| straight people as they threaten my sexuality/orientation/way
| of life."
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Even this is difficult. There is a case to be made that Trump
| being president for 4 years caused predictable actual harm to
| some people. Does this mean that considering anybody who
| voted for Trump (and especially those who voted for him in
| 2020) is a legitimate target for hate?
|
| This is a non-hypothetical because I have heard this exact
| argument advanced without irony.
| SamBam wrote:
| > The Blue Tribe is most classically typified by liberal
| political beliefs, vague agnosticism, supporting gay rights,
| thinking guns are barbaric, eating arugula, drinking fancy
| bottled water, driving Priuses, [etc. etc etc.]
|
| I'm so confused as to where poorer people of color fit into all
| of this. This seems to highlight Scott's small social circle if
| all the members of the "non-Red Tribe" are white yuppie coastal
| elites.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| >I'm so confused as to where poorer people of color fit into
| all of this.
|
| They're told to vote blue or they ain't black
| Ensorceled wrote:
| The article is discussing, at length, the author's view what
| constitutes the "blue tribe's" outgroup. Poor people of colour
| wouldn't, pretty much by his definition. be part of that
| outgroup.
|
| > This seems to highlight Scott's small social circle if all
| the members of the "non-Red Tribe" are white yuppie coastal
| elites.
|
| This is an uncharitable reading of text. I mean, you may be
| correct, but it isn't supported by the goal of the essay.
| basch wrote:
| Quite honestly, probably another tribe. One that is more
| closely aligned with red and gray on distrust of government.
| And likely even more than one tribe.
|
| Although the tribes have pretty diverse subtribes. Red has a
| very poor temporarily embarrassed millionaire quite separate
| from the actual owners. They still align with some of the same
| tribal calls and signaling.
| munificent wrote:
| My experience is that rural Southern Black people are similar
| to stereotypical white "Red tribe" people except on the
| question of race.
|
| Also, there is a _lot_ more mingling between white and Black
| poor people than a typical "coastal elite" would expect who
| never spent time in the South.
|
| I grew up around racist people who all had friends of the other
| race. They just consider their friends an exception to their
| general dislike of the other race.
|
| The thing I heard _all the time_ growing up was "I don't hate
| black people, I just hate _N-word_ s." The idea is that it's
| not the _race_ that a racist person has a problem with, just
| the cultural practices (laziness, lack of class, etc.) they
| associate with people of that race. A member of that race who
| rises above those associations is welcomed with open arms. Of
| course, they are oblivious to the idea that _associating those
| cultural practices with a race_ is the racist part. But it
| makes it very easy for them to be racist and have friends of
| the other race without feeling any dissonance.
|
| It cuts both ways too. I also had Black friends growing up that
| had no problem being friends with me or other white kids but
| wouldn't hesitate to disparage "crackers" as a whole if they
| were in a safe enough space to do so without being harmed.
|
| I don't know what groups poor urban people of color end up
| feeling affinity to.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > "I don't hate black people, I just hate N-words."
|
| I have heard this exact phrase (well without the euphemism)
| come out of _many_ people 's mouth in the Midwest.
| fallingknife wrote:
| [flagged]
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > The left is viciously classist
|
| ???
|
| Isn't this a caricature too? In what way are socialist
| beliefs, which generally push for more unions and worker
| power, "viciously classist"? "Eat the rich" is a "blue" meme,
| not a "red" one.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I have never heard "eat the rich" or any of the associated
| rhetoric from anybody lower class. It's classic struggling
| upper class making 100k in a super HCOL and living paycheck
| to paycheck with student loans. Core blue demographic.
| There's a reason why Democrats want to bail out student
| loans borrowers, but not actual poor people in debt.
| pauldenton wrote:
| [flagged]
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| I'm not so sure, it's well covered that trust of police is
| low because of corruption like Burke's history of sponsoring
| unconstitutional black sites for torturing suspects. And I
| think the history of redlining and corruption when it comes
| to investment in education and infrastructure is well
| known... what would be controversial to say?
| justinluther wrote:
| The main condition that you're talking about is having a high
| population. Chicago has a lot of murders because it has a lot
| of people. The murder rate per capita is a little above 2x
| the national average, but not an outlier by any means.
|
| Chicago is #28 on the national ranking of murder cities:
| https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/murder-map-deadliest-u-s-
| ci...
|
| It is ranked right in between Chattanooga and Buffalo.
| pauldenton wrote:
| I guess I got caught in the narrative. I still remember
| Spike Lee's movie Chiraq. from 2003-2012. During that nine-
| year period, 4,265 citizens were killed in Chicago, which
| is nearly the number of U.S. soldiers who were killed in
| Iraq. The idea you have as much risk being shot as an
| American citizen in the war zone of Iraq as you would
| walking the streets of the south side of Chicago.
|
| The risk of a man 18 to 29 years old dying in a shooting in
| the most violent ZIP code in Chicago -- 60624, a swath of
| the West Side that includes Garfield Park -- was higher
| than the death rate for U.S. soldiers in the Afghanistan
| war or for soldiers in an Army combat brigade that fought
| in Iraq, according to a study in the medical journal JAMA
| Network Open. Among men 18 to 29, the annual rate of
| firearm homicides in that ZIP code was 1,277 per 100,000
| people in 2021 and 2022, the study found, compared with an
| annual death rate for U.S. troops in a heavily engaged
| combat brigade in Iraq of 675 per 100,000. The most violent
| ZIP codes in Philadelphia surpassed the risk of combat
| death by military service members, too, but the death rate
| there was lower than in Chicago, the study found. New York
| and Los Angeles didn't have any areas that were so deadly.
| plagiarist wrote:
| It is always Chicago, because of right-wing echo chamber.
| One would think an honest economic study would try to
| control a bit for being mere miles from Indiana. And yet it
| is always Chicago.
| bombcar wrote:
| That may be true for some definition of Chicago, but no
| other city I know of has websites dedicated to the murders
| of its inhabitants. https://heyjackass.com
|
| And even that shows there's lots of "barely murdering at
| all" parts of the city that bring the averages down into
| line.
| [deleted]
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Having grown up a poor POC, a different tribe. Each POC group
| also will have its own set of social and political mores. For
| example, many POC who fled from Communist countries will vote
| for anti-Communist rhetoric. Many poorer POCs also tend to be
| more okay with anti-feminist or anti-LGBT stances. On the other
| hand, recent immigrant POCs often dislike groups that
| stereotype them or are anti-immigration as they obviously feel
| solidarity towards recent immigrants.
| iskander wrote:
| Scott's political ontology seems intrinsically limited to white
| middle class. It doesn't really make sense in poorer parts of
| America and really falls apart once you start trying to
| correlate belief systems in non-white communities.
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| check others of his top listed..
|
| i had a good laugh-through-tears reading "Any human with above
| room temperature IQ can design a utopia"
|
| in this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
| moloch/
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| The thing is, there's already a set of concepts that unpack this
| issue: it's called intersectionality. Intersectionality is the
| idea that we have overlapping sets of privilege. For example,
| while I might be a straight, heteronormative man, I'm also a
| dark-skinned POC who grew up poor. So while I benefit from not
| being singled out, harassed, or hurt for my choice of gender
| expression or who I date (somewhat, people often disapprove of
| interracial dating with darker folks, and it's come up a lot in
| my life) I can get treated badly due to how I look and the
| stereotypes around what people like me do. We all benefit from
| and are hurt by a combination of our privileges and the negative
| stereotypes surrounding us, and it helps define our experiences.
|
| Intersectionality is complicated, but ingroups and outgroups are
| a lot more fun. Humans tend to be wired into finding tribes and a
| lot of people use social media to find their tribe and,
| regrettably, find outgroups to isolate from and criticize. An
| interesting manifestation of this is watching white LGBT spaces
| debate Islam. There's generally an _obvious_ outgroup effect in
| those discussions and it definitely adds a temperature to the
| discussion that I think wouldn 't be present if Islamic POCs were
| considered more part of those ingroups.
| codetrotter wrote:
| > people use social media to find their tribe and, regrettably,
| find outgroups to isolate from and criticize
|
| Yeah some people are very ridiculous in this way.
|
| The other day someone responded to one of my TikTok videos with
| a video of his own.
|
| He apparently had some sort of problem with the fact that I
| enjoyed something, that he enjoyed too, but which he thought I
| was too enthusiastic about.
|
| In his video he told me that I need to go outside and
| experience the real world, instead of thinking my hobby was
| important.
|
| As you can tell I am annoyed by this. Otherwise I would not be
| talking about it now.
|
| Anyway. If he had taken time to visit my profile, instead of
| going off telling me his opinions based off of one video he
| saw. He'd have found that I am already spending a lot of time
| outside. He'd have seen that I am traveling, visiting
| countries, experiencing the world.
|
| What an annoying moron that guy was.
|
| I didn't respond to him, because I won't give him the
| satisfaction of knowing that his rude expressions affected me
| in any way. But I wish he'd just stay away from social media in
| the first place, instead of coming there to shit on one of my
| videos.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| This essay falls into the same trap I see among a lot of my
| liberal (as opposed to socialist) peers: it assumes tolerance is
| something admirable, desirable, or fundamentally good. That's how
| you fall into the "tolerance of intolerance" paradoxical rabbit
| hole, and IMO, it's largely performative.
|
| My stance on the subject, in contrast, is that tolerance isn't
| good enough. I'm not "tolerant" of gay people, as that suggests
| that their sexual orientation should disqualify them from my in-
| group, but that I would tolerate them anyway. No, I just don't
| see sexual orientation as a qualification for my peer group. Same
| goes for any other immutable characteristic of someone's
| existence. People, tabula rasa, are people, and that qualifies
| them for my respect.
|
| But of course, people by the time I'm interacting with them are
| not blank slates. They have opinions, stances, and world views
| that they have acquired and incorporated into their identities,
| which they then act on to form histories. These perfectly mutable
| facets of their existence are entirely open to judgement. I'm
| tolerant of the merely tolerant, not because it's some
| unqualified good, but because it's just not bad enough to warrant
| exclusion from my inclusive-by-default in-group. People willing
| to openly state their bigotry towards people I consider my peers
| disqualify themselves from my respect. People willing to act on
| those bigoted beliefs cross the line into "evil".
|
| In my opinion, this forms a far more consistent world view
| compared to the "tolerance is an unqualified good" stance.
| sqeaky wrote:
| You just described yourself as tolerant. Tolerance in this
| context isn't the casual use, rather it means that you don't
| treat people differently for those immutable characteristics,
| however you get there.
|
| I don't think I agree with tolerance being performative. I
| currently live in the Midwest and deal with many people who do
| foul things because of their intolerance. People here disown
| gay sons and daughters, then try to commiserate with me about
| how hard their life is when they fucked someone's life who
| wasn't hurting anyone. These people are clearly intolerant in
| the way these "performative" liberals want to end societally.
|
| Signaling to others, via things like pride flags, indicates
| that in some context, they will be "tolerated". For being black
| or gay, at PayPal offices you won't be attacked, fired, denied
| financial services, but at Farm Credit you very will might be.
| Simply waving flags is imperfect, but some signal is better
| than none, I had to work at farm credit to see the racism first
| hand (and quit because of it). While my peers at PayPal have
| mechanisms to defend themselves and their peers from issues
| around this even thought it is imperfect.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| The essay above was all about how there's no virtue in
| tolerating those that you have no issue with. That requires
| that a given individuals belief system includes two
| overlapping sets of people, between those that you have no
| issue with, and those that you treat with basic dignity. The
| difference between those two sets are the people you merely
| tolerate.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| There's a few holes in that. First, you've got sexual
| orientation as an immutable characteristic. From some queer
| people I know saying that they had experiences which changed
| their mind or that there was some choice (that "lived
| experience" people go on about, as well as some of my own) to
| the quite obvious political stratagem of saying someone was
| "born that way" as a way to deflect blame (which never really
| held much water; a group willing to accept Original Sin as a
| concept would find Born That Way to be little more than a
| speedbump).
|
| And then you bring in _tabula rasa_ , which itself contradicts
| "born that way." But sure, let's just ignore that paradox. Can
| we think of other born characteristics we might not find
| appealing? Quite a lot of personality disorders appear to arise
| from genetics, and yet you might find someone with Borderline
| Personality Disorder less than optimal company. Must you
| tolerate that?
|
| Consistency, if anything, is a poor metric when it comes to
| anything as complex as people. "Destroy anyone not of my ethnic
| group" is consistent and simple. Do not fall in love with
| either.
|
| If anything, the concept of tolerance itself is a trap,
| creating dividing lines everywhere. Worse yet, it allows
| someone to feel "just." This is perhaps one of the more
| dangerous emotions one can experience and consider as moral. A
| person who thinks of themselves as just is "justfied." Examine
| the words associated with "justified," even the television
| show. Consider the history of those who thought of themselves
| as justified. I feel just, I may then relent on my self-
| examination. It's a way to sidestep the endless labor of
| wondering, "Am I doing something right?" Observing, thinking,
| considering: these are all weights that humans quite naturally
| want to put down.
|
| How easy, how self-satisfying it is to say "Punch that Nazi!"
| And of course you first must _judge_ that person to be a Nazi,
| but even before that you 're twiddling your definitions, making
| them expansive enough to pin that label on someone, all for the
| simple joy of feeling like it is okay to hit someone, that they
| are evil and deserving. The ecstasy of self-righteousness ought
| to be Schedule I.
|
| Give me uncertainty and doubt. Dispel that self-assurance.
| Going around deciding whom to tolerate invites judgment, as if
| one were all-knowing and infallible. We are not.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Sexual orientation being immutable or not really isn't that
| big a deal. Not hating people because of their immutable
| characteristics was chosen as relatively uncontroversial
| manifestation of my axiomatic belief of innocence by default.
| People are good, unless they do something bad. Probably
| should have phrased it as the more accurate "non-harmful"
| characteristics, in hindsight.
|
| Once your philosophy is consistent, there's little room for
| philosophical debate. Faced with someone with the philosophy
| of "Destroy anyone not of my ethnic group", the course of
| action isn't to debate philosophy with them. It's to shoot
| them. That's why it's important to have a consistent
| ideology: So you know when the time for words has ended. At
| that point, "Punch that Nazi" is a good start.
| jstanley wrote:
| From the essay:
|
| > The Emperor summons before him Bodhidharma and asks: "Master,
| I have been tolerant of innumerable gays, lesbians, bisexuals,
| asexuals, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, transgender people, and
| Jews. How many Virtue Points have I earned for my meritorious
| deeds?"
|
| > Bodhidharma answers: "None at all".
|
| > The Emperor, somewhat put out, demands to know why.
|
| > Bodhidharma asks: "Well, what do you think of gay people?"
|
| > The Emperor answers: "What do you think I am, some kind of
| homophobic bigot? Of course I have nothing against gay people!"
|
| > And Bodhidharma answers: "Thus do you gain no merit by
| tolerating them!"
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| My point was that you gain no merit for tolerating them even
| if you did have something against them. Tolerance is not a
| virtue. There is virtue in having nothing against as many
| people as you can.
| JackFr wrote:
| > People willing to openly state their bigotry towards people I
| consider my peers disqualify themselves from my respect.
|
| That is to say, people with whom you disagree.
| bittercynic wrote:
| Openly expressed bigotry seems like a special type of
| disagreement to me.
| zogrodea wrote:
| Some will argue that "bigotry" has suffered from concept
| creep though. People will readily call me one for saying I
| believe gender is immutable or that I believe intercourse
| with the same gender is a sin, but I'm not wishing any harm
| to those who disagree.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| > I'm not wishing any harm
|
| I just wanted to note the progression from "disqualify
| themselves from my respect" to "wishing harm".
|
| What is your definition of bigotry?
| zogrodea wrote:
| (Clarifying, because you brought up disrespect, that I
| don't believe in disrespecting them for their beliefs;
| they are just humans like you and me with their own
| struggles.)
|
| I don't use the word "bigot" because of the flimsy usage
| I've observed from others. Enough people use it to mean
| express anger/dislike (like how someone uses "ouch" to
| express pain) that I don't associate it with semantic
| content.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Bigotry is prejudice, as in, judgement without (yet) having
| facts, or even in spite of them. That's not simple
| disagreement, it's willful and obstinate ignorance. I agree
| it's not worthy of respect.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| While I get the rest of it, I don't follow on using
| immutability as the test of what you are non-judgmental
| towards. People can have immutable qualities that are
| completely incompatible with any form of social contract. I'm
| thinking violent behavior attributed to various mental
| disorders. Disorder being applied not as a judgment, but simply
| to indicate it doesn't allow them to have what they consider a
| fulfilling life, what with the rest of us commiting them
| involuntarily. There may or may not be medications or
| treatments that might modify those situations. If there are,
| then we are asking them to modify their natural state to be
| accepted. I think in that specific case and perhaps others it
| is reasonable of me to demand that of my in-group. I don't want
| to get stabbed because they were instructed by a command
| delusion. I know the medicine and treatments are not ideal. And
| if they fail to comply with treatment, or it doesn't work, I
| reserve the right to judge them for their nature.
|
| The parallels for orientation are clearly there, and given
| enough clockwork orange type abuse, I'm sure you could make me
| attracted or repelled by just about anything, but I don't
| choose to judge people with sexual orientations that differ
| from mine, not because it is their immutable state, but because
| there are no valid arguments for it harming me or society at
| large. Population seems to be managing itself. If it was
| runaway, I might judge people who engaged in behavior that
| might add to the population, and if there was barely a breeding
| population of us left, I might judge those who didn't.
| fallingknife wrote:
| You could have saved a lot of words by just writing "there are
| good people and bad people, and I, of course, am one of the
| good people." Have you really never considered the implications
| of the fact that your bad people also think they are the good
| people?
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Other people believing in different ethical frameworks only
| matters if you think other people can't be wrong. I fully
| acknowledge that just about everybody says that they aren't
| evil. Yet there are still plenty of people doing evil things.
|
| That leaves three possibilities: Either people are lying
| about thinking their actions are good (I like to think this
| is rare, as I have a generally positive view of people), I'm
| wrong about what is good and what is evil, or they're wrong
| about what is good and what is evil.
|
| I like to think that the fact that my beliefs are based on an
| axiomatic framework of suffering bad, free will good, and
| innocence by default makes them more likely to be correct
| than a knee-jerk disgust response of "gay people are icky",
| but maybe I'm biased.
|
| Regardless, between the latter two possibilities, in terms of
| praxis there is little difference. When two people hold
| fundamentally contradictory axiomatic beliefs, I fully expect
| both the fight to protect them and theirs. I don't fault them
| for choosing to fight. I fault them for the beliefs they're
| fighting for.
| erulabs wrote:
| I think the point being made is that there is a limit to
| tolerance and what might be called multicultural or post
| modernism. I took the original comments point to be: all
| humans deserve respect intrinsically, but evil does exist and
| should not be tolerated. Yes, evil doers think they're good.
| Is there a way to objectively judge this? No. This is the
| classical liberal dilemma re military action.
|
| Let's be tolerant of everyone except those who belong to
| groups explicitly making the world worse. Is that a
| subjective measure? Yes. Does that mean we shouldn't, to use
| a modern phrase, "punch Nazis"? No, punch away.
|
| Everyone has the moral authority and responsibility to act to
| reduce suffering.
| fallingknife wrote:
| If everyone has the moral authority, then you realize that
| your enemies think the same way, right? And you realize
| that you have just given them license to punch you too,
| right?
|
| How can you believe that other people can err in their
| judgement of themselves and others and at the same time
| assume that you are immune to the same error? It's
| completely ridiculous.
| erulabs wrote:
| Oh but that's the entire point! I do not assume I'm
| immune to the same error - in fact introspecting on this
| continuously is absolutely vital.
|
| What I'm arguing against is inaction in the face of
| uncertainty.
|
| The phrase "punch nazis" polluted my point. Violence
| against the violent is justifiable. Yes, my enemies can
| think the same way; this is why armed conflict exists in
| our world, and why being blanket "anti-war" or "anti-
| violence" for that matter is unfortunately naive.
|
| It's not idealism, its pragmatism.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Alright. Imagine a non-violent Nazi. They're not punching
| anyone.
|
| Your natural move is to claim (their) speech as harmful.
| This inevitably descends into "My violence is merely
| political speech, but their political speech is
| violence," inverting the meaning of things.
| neaden wrote:
| You can't be a non-violent Nazi, violence and the idea
| that racial groups are constantly at war with each other
| is an inherent part of the ideology. There is at best a
| Nazi who due to the circumstances around them is not
| choosing to engage in violence yet.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| I fully expect my enemies to do worse than punch me. The
| purpose of having a coherent philosophy is understanding
| who I have irreconcilable differences with (such as
| Nazis) and deciding whether the appropriate course of
| action is to ignore them or to fight them. In the case of
| Nazis, they pose a substantial threat to innocents, so
| the correct answer is to fight them.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| Nazis are not monsters, they're people just like you. Their
| existence does not cause suffering per se, and punching a
| Nazi does not reduce suffering, it increases it. If you
| think a particular worldview is inherently evil you're not
| going to eradicate it by dehumanizing those who adhere to
| it and advocating for violence against them. The only way
| to achieve that is to get them to understand that they're
| wrong, and to do that you need to engage with them as human
| beings.
|
| Needless to say, tolerating Nazis does not mean tolerating
| all actions inspired by Nazism.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| If you choose to uphold an ideology, then you are taking
| responsibility for its consequences. Nazism is inherently
| violent, so resisting it is merely defending the
| innocent. After that it boils down to tactics: Punching a
| Nazi is a somewhat ineffective strategy, but it does tend
| to drive them out of the public sphere where they can
| gain legitimacy and the power to enact their evil. More
| permanent solutions are better.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| I'm unclear on what your point is. It sounds like we're
| more or less in agreement. Unless you're saying Nazis
| should be executed for being Nazis.
| neaden wrote:
| "you're not going to eradicate it by dehumanizing those
| who adhere to it and advocating for violence against
| them. The only way to achieve that is to get them to
| understand that they're wrong" I think you need to read a
| history book on WW2, because that is definitely not what
| happened to get rid of Nazism.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| Yet there are still Nazis.
| mbg721 wrote:
| In any meaningful sense?? Yeah, there are some edgy
| attention-seekers, but no, there are no longer real
| threatening Nazis.
| jonhendry18 wrote:
| No? Not the guy who shot up a mall in May?
|
| "Texas mall shooting: gunman expressed interest in neo-
| Nazi views - report"
|
| Or the guy who shot up a dollar store
|
| Or "Neo-Nazi Marine Plotted Mass Murder, Rape Campaigns
| with Group, Feds Say While tasked with protecting the
| nation, Matthew Belanger was plotting a killing spree
| against minorities and to rape "white women to increase
| the production of white children," according to federal
| prosecutors"
|
| Weird that you apparently feel compelled to downplay the
| threat.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| If they're not threatening then there's no point in
| punching them, beyond perhaps satisfying one's own
| violent urges.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup (2014)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25725150 - Jan 2021 (44
| comments)
|
| _I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup (2014)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20183001 - June 2019 (169
| comments)
|
| _I can tolerate anything except the outgroup (2014)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18946217 - Jan 2019 (1
| comment)
|
| _I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup (2014)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13248993 - Dec 2016 (2
| comments)
|
| _I can tolerate anything except the outgroup (2014)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9948575 - July 2015 (9
| comments)
| golemotron wrote:
| This essay is timeless.
| shwaj wrote:
| Without negating the observation of timelessness, it jumped out
| at me how Russell Brand is now on the "conservative" end of the
| spectrum (both how he is painted by media, as well as revealed
| by polls of his audience on a variety of topics), all without a
| drastic change in his own beliefs/philosophy.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I would classify Brand more as counter-culture liberal than a
| conservative. He's still very much a liberal in terms of his
| views, he just hasnt reduced himself to partisan tribalism.
| Im sure I disagree with him on many things and from different
| directions but I think its commendable that he doesnt
| subscribe to a mold.
| hnhg wrote:
| Another explanation is that he is just one of the many,
| many grifters out there.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I would qualify Russel Brand as a contrarian. And, in my
| (perhaps personal consistency) defence, I never liked Russel
| Brand, he always seemed to "hippy" and not at pragmatic
| enough for my liking.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| A north carolina segregationist who graduated college in say
| 1940 saw their political stance go from moderate & mainstream
| to fringe in their own lifetime. The fact that social-
| political culture norms shift isn't a very interesting or
| useful statement about the people it shifts around.
| concordDance wrote:
| > The fact that social-political culture norms shift isn't
| a very interesting
|
| It's a fascinating fact people should dwell on more imo.
| Understanding how moral fashions change and why would be
| great.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The rest of that sentence is important don't cut it out!
| It's not an interesting observation about the
| individuals; it certainly is about the cultures though.
|
| Sociologists and historians both spend tremendous amounts
| of time on this, some devote their enter careers to small
| facets of this single dynamic.
| shwaj wrote:
| Maybe not when it shifts in a lifetime, but I beg to differ
| when it shifts in less than 10 years. It was also not meant
| to be an interesting statement about the person, rather the
| shift itself.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Then make the statement. You're implying it and then
| expecting us to do the work for you.
| dralley wrote:
| Ahem? https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.i
| t%2Fm...
|
| It's not surprising that he gets painted as conservative when
| he promotes Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones and Jordan Peterson
| while spreading conspiracy theories about Fauci, Obama, Biden
| etc.
| concordDance wrote:
| One thing that annoys me is this tendency to judge people
| by their associations rather than their actual beliefs.
|
| Liking some things people do or say doesn't mean you
| completely agree with them.
| nomel wrote:
| > spreading conspiracy theories
|
| Do you have some specific examples? I see clickbait
| thumbnails, but the contents are, generally, well cited.
| chownie wrote:
| Perhaps his views haven't changed but he's definitely
| broadcasting different a different set since 2020. He's not
| particularly right wing but he's definitely most palatable to
| the Conservative in the American Republican sense for a
| reason.
|
| I think it's because his bread and butter content moved from
| socialist philosophy to rugged individualism and anti-vaxxer
| rhetoric.
|
| Not that I particularly blame him, it's probably a fairly
| easy trade-up now in 2023. Why would he retain his smaller
| collectivist left wing audience, given he's managed a 2700%
| increase in online viewership by talking about vaccine
| mandates and how to circumvent them?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Same with Bill Maher.
| flangola7 wrote:
| Maher is just a contrarian kook, always has been. His
| criticism of Bush was convenient and not the product of a
| serious moral framework.
| slothtrop wrote:
| He's been very consistent in his views and by all the
| counts remains a quasi left-libertarian.
| networkchad wrote:
| [dead]
| guyzero wrote:
| Yes because the universe will end before most people finish
| reading it.
|
| The only thing Scott Alexander seems to not tolerate is an
| editor.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Timeless, yes. But I must have first read it in 2016 because
| the example I have in my mind are the people who cheered
| Justice Antonin Scalia's death but questioned the instinct to
| cheer the death of Osama Bin Laden.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| I think there were a lot of people that cheered the deaths of
| both, myself included.
|
| I don't know anybody that didn't cheer the death of OBL
| actually. I did see some morons on Twitter/X try though, but
| they were pretty fringe even among the left.
| siofgnionio wrote:
| [dead]
| naveen99 wrote:
| My 5 year old learned to tolerate onions in his food. Plenty of
| low level intolerance can be squashed with simple guided
| exposure.
| louzell wrote:
| > There are certain theories of dark matter where it barely
| interacts with the regular world at all, such that we could have
| a dark matter planet exactly co-incident with Earth and never
| know. Maybe dark matter people are walking all around us and
| through us, maybe my house is in the Times Square of a great dark
| matter city, maybe a few meters away from me a dark matter
| blogger is writing on his dark matter computer about how weird it
| would be if there was a light matter person he couldn't see right
| next to him.
|
| > This is sort of how I feel about conservatives.
|
| Please excuse a touch of extremely relevant self-promo. I am
| building a site to address exactly this. I'm calling it
| RedMeetBlue, pairing folks from the light and dark matter worlds
| for one-on-one chats. Link in profile. If you are interested in
| this experiment, or want to participate, I'd love to hear from
| you.
| nkingsy wrote:
| why does the red person have a mask on? Fringey for everyone at
| this point but I doubt it will encourage red people to join.
| Wasn't exactly their cup of tea.
| louzell wrote:
| Noted and good call, I'll take that out of the art.
| neaden wrote:
| "And I don't have a single one of those people in my social
| circle. It's not because I'm deliberately avoiding them; I'm
| pretty live-and-let-live politically, I wouldn't ostracize
| someone just for some weird beliefs. And yet, even though I
| probably know about a hundred fifty people, I am pretty confident
| that not one of them is creationist." I'm guessing this is just
| because it's never come up. Maybe it's because I live in the
| midwest or something but I know a number of creationists,
| republicans, people against gay marriage etc. and interact with
| them. While my social circle is certainly influenced by my more
| liberal politics when there are so many people around I don't see
| how you can't interact with them as friends, neighbors, coworkers
| etc. But unless you specifically talk about issues like
| creationism with them it can easily not come up, we tend to
| assume people share our politics/opinions unless proven
| otherwise.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I know a surprising number of creationists in urban Seattle.
| They hide in plain sight because everyone simply assumes they
| don't exist, and the people that are creationist never say
| anything unsolicited that would indicate it. It is like the
| opposite of the meme about vegans, CrossFit, et al.
|
| You see a similar pattern with gun owners, which every
| statistic suggests exist in vast numbers even in neighborhoods
| with politics strongly aligned with anti-gun activists, but
| almost no one ever publicly admits to owning one. Like with
| creationism, being a member of this group isn't nearly as much
| of an affectation of political alignment as people assume.
|
| There are many polite fictions like this in society.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > ... almost no one ever publicly admits to owning one.
|
| Does having an NRA sticker on your pickup's bumper count? I
| see those all the time.
| mistermann wrote:
| > There are many polite fictions like this in society.
|
| Which is deliciously ironic considering how much non-theists
| enjoy mocking theists "for their 'irrational' thinking".
| zdragnar wrote:
| Hell, two jobs ago I wouldn't even admit to being religious,
| let alone creationist. Most places aren't like that,
| fortunately.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Location is huge here, and then social circles within that
| location. Midwest is a world apart from the East Bay.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I'm sure the polls near him would also show quite a few
| creationists, but unfortunately, we know people lie on these
| polls: https://www.prri.org/academic/study-know-last-sunday-
| finds-a...
|
| There's no great way to know the "real" rate of creationists,
| when apparently people change their stated beliefs for social
| reasons.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| The rate of creationists would also heavily depend on how the
| question is phrased, because there's not one "creationism"
| but several, sometimes incompatible, ideologies. Compare
| these questions:
|
| > Do you believe that a supernatural force created the
| universe?
|
| > Do believe that God created the earth 6000-10000 years ago?
|
| The first is much broader and would also probably include the
| origin stories of many non-Abrahamic religions. The second is
| referring to a specific school of Christian "young earth"
| creationism.
| Ilverin wrote:
| A) at the time this was written, Scott lived in the Midwest B)
| Scott worked at a hospital at the time, which selects a bit
| against those who are creationists. In my opinion, probably 40%
| of the nurses in such a hospital would be creationist, but
| maybe Scott disagrees with me about that assessment C) in terms
| of socialization outside of work, Scott is not an extrovert, so
| I can imagine arbitrary levels of selection and that it is
| plausible he did have 0 creationist social acquaintances (maybe
| the quote is only even talking about his social acquaintances,
| not his work ones)
| bombcar wrote:
| I would suspect that as an introvert he just doesn't realize
| what his social circle really holds, even lightly.
|
| Lots of it doesn't come up, and the "higher in the US
| money/power structure you get the more you learn to be
| quiet".
|
| Another is to remember that many people may be technically
| creationists (the protestant church they go to is young-
| earth) but they just don't ever think about it at all.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| San Francisco and the Midwest probably have wildly different
| base rates of creationist beliefs.
| [deleted]
| hospitalJail wrote:
| San Fran is a city, midwest is a region.
|
| If you took San Fran and Chicago, metro Detroit, Minneapolis,
| they would probably be similar.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Not to mention San Francisco and the very-nearby Central
| Valley are likely quite different.
| neaden wrote:
| In the article Scott says he lives in a Republican district
| in a state with a Republican Governor, so he wasn't in San
| Francisco at the time he wrote this. I live in a Democrat
| district in a state with a Democrat governor so I can't
| imagine the political demographics of where we live are that
| divergent.
| adrusi wrote:
| I'm quite nearby to Scott in social space, and no, I don't
| think it's just "never come up." It's a very highly selected
| scene.
| lolinder wrote:
| Are you quite near to where he was in 2014? He said in the
| article that he lived (at time of writing) in a pretty
| conservative area:
|
| > I live in a Republican congressional district in a state
| with a Republican governor. The conservatives are definitely
| out there. They drive on the same roads as I do, live in the
| same neighborhoods. But they might as well be made of dark
| matter. I never meet them.
|
| I agree with OP that it's much more likely that he did meet
| them, just in contexts where it doesn't come up.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| I think that was because he was doing his residency in a
| place where he would not normally choose to live.
|
| As typical, during that time he was probably so overworked
| he didn't really interact with any of the locals until his
| time was up and he moved back out to a self-selected
| community.
| mistermann wrote:
| Culture war topics being literally banned on /r/ssc combined
| with that community's imperfect ability in "keeping it
| together" when some conversation does sneak in leads me to
| believe that it would be extremely easy to be never found out
| if you were among them.
| j7ake wrote:
| A broader definition of blue vs red that generalises to other
| western counties would be pro globalisation (eg pro immigration,
| free trade) vs pro national/local focus (eg pro self reliance).
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Isn't globalization and free trade questioned a lot even in the
| blue tribe today, what with sanctions against russia and china,
| with self reliance like producing your own chips, being highly
| priced, worth billions in subsidies?
| plagiarist wrote:
| Globalization and free trade should be completely rejected by
| left-leaning people. I guess unless imports coming from
| countries where human rights an economic externality are
| either taxed to death or banned.
| binary132 wrote:
| Both the GOP and Democrat parties are, in practice, dominated
| by free-trade liberal interventionist capitalists. The actual
| policy differences between the parties around those subjects
| are basically a matter of finetuning.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I disagree. You're talking about neoliberal versus xenophobic
| conservative but even then, mainstream conservative politicians
| love free markets spoitting cheap labor and illegal
| immigration.
|
| And then you have a particular left wing contingent that
| understands the issues with unlimited export of labor to lower
| income countries, which is why unions and some left-wing
| politicians opposed NAFTA and the trans-pacific partnership.
|
| Trump might be the only Republican leader in recent history to
| explicitly desire a crackdown on global supply chains.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > You're talking about neoliberal versus xenophobic
| conservative
|
| I dont think you are even attempting to be fair towards
| critics of globalism. This sounds like cheerleading and makes
| me think you've never thought through the dynamics of
| globalism.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| It looks like you didn't read my second paragraph.
|
| My point is that few if any Republicans want to do anything
| about the labor impacts if globalism, until signing onto
| chip factory subsidies.
|
| (Well, that and domestic oil production, which contributes
| to destroying the goddamn planet. But I get the idea that
| if we're gonna burn it we might as well burn ours. Unless
| we're playing a long game of exhausting global supplies and
| sitting on a rarer resource.)
|
| Yes, conservative voters are probably more sympathetic to
| domestic production, but so are progressives in some
| instances. Cheap foreign factories and illegal immigration
| drags down wages and weakens unions.
| hash872 wrote:
| >Cheap foreign factories and illegal immigration drags
| down wages and weakens unions
|
| But you can't outlaw foreign competitors from being
| cheaper than you, any more than you can pass a law
| against the tide coming in tomorrow
| chihuahua wrote:
| Aren't import tariffs a means to raising prices of
| foreign competitors?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| You can demand domestic companies and importers document
| and attest to domestic standards of living and welfare
| (health plans, etc). You can tariff items which are made
| by slave/subpoverty labor. You can subsidize critical
| industries.
|
| Or, if the concerns are less about "how bad things are
| there" and more "what about jobs here", we could be
| spinning up more government jobs programs, more free
| college, more welfare here so that it doesn't matter if
| we lose textiles or manufacturing.
| hash872 wrote:
| >You can tariff items which are made by slave/subpoverty
| labor
|
| What are 'normal', middle-class wages in developing
| countries are 'extremely cheap' by US standards. You
| can't really solve that problem unless you tariff
| literally everything.
|
| Subsidizing critical industries- sure, I guess. What's
| the definition of that? Does it include cars? Clothing
| and shoes? Appliances? Vacuum cleaners? I don't think
| anyone's disputing that like military goods need to
| manufactured domestically, but kind of by definition 95%
| of goods are not 'critical'
| slothtrop wrote:
| > mainstream conservative politicians
|
| This is more about the voters. But actually neither side of
| the aisle is completely enamored with immigration.
| pauldenton wrote:
| David Goodhart would break it down to "Somewheres" and
| "Anywheres" The Somewheres attribute a large part of their
| identities to their place of origin or local communities and
| are less likely to move. The Anywheres, on the other hand, form
| an identity based on their life experiences rather than a place
| of origin; they are a highly mobile population usually
| congregated in large urban cities like New York, London, or
| Tokyo. David talks about this in the context of Brexit, but it
| is a split everywhere
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't think it is possible to come up with a definition of
| "blue vs red" that generalizes to other countries.
|
| The fact that our left wing movement in the US is so tiny that
| it somehow got gobbled up into our liberal party makes it very
| difficult to compare to other countries.
| macinjosh wrote:
| "Vote blue no matter who" attitudes can be thanked for this.
| People have been scared into never taking a 3rd party
| seriously. The Republicans are unthinkably bad so it is too
| risky to split the vote on the left. The only option is the
| Democrats. Corporations simply migrated their lobbying
| efforts slightly further over to the left side of Congress
| during the Obama admin. With strategically placed Senators
| like Gilibrand for Wall Street and Manchin for the
| coal/energy industry the corporate oligarchy has pretty good
| control over things now, the actual political desires of the
| electorate be damned. Notice how the democrats are
| politically leading the war/defense efforts now as well,
| something that used to be a more conservative aim.
| plagiarist wrote:
| I think we could more comfortably vote for a third option
| if failing to elect the least bad of two did not result in
| using women as medical equipment and insurrection against
| the federal government.
| cmh89 wrote:
| People aren't scared into not taking 3rd parties seriously,
| our system is just fundamentally designed to only have two
| realistic parties. It's just inherent in a first past the
| post system.
| howinteresting wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| unethical_ban wrote:
| edit: I did not RTFM the entire way and misunderstood.
| Preserved text below.
|
| ===
|
| You might be getting downvoted for bringing up Brandon Eich in
| a conversation unrelated to him or to prop 8 in particular, and
| continuing to do so in every comment. You can make your point
| with the same force by using a general example.
|
| ===
|
| What you're describing is the paradox of tolerance, which I
| don't think is particularly controversial or fringe.
| rovolo wrote:
| From section IX of the article:
|
| > ... Sure enough, if industry or culture or community gets
| Blue enough, Red Tribe members start getting harassed, fired
| from their jobs ( _Brendan Eich_ being the obvious example)
| or otherwise shown the door.
|
| > Think of _Brendan Eich_ as a member of a tiny religious
| minority surrounded by people who hate that minority.
| Suddenly firing him doesn't seem very noble.
|
| > ... When a friend of mine heard _Eich_ got fired, she
| didn't see anything wrong with it. "I can tolerate anything
| except intolerance," she said.
| howinteresting wrote:
| I used Eich because he was cited in the essay:
|
| > Think of Brendan Eich as a member of a tiny religious
| minority surrounded by people who hate that minority.
| Suddenly firing him doesn't seem very noble.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Fair.
|
| I agree that tolerance of intolerance is bad, but you and I
| disagree a bit on moral relativism. Anyway, sorry for not
| reading the entire article.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| That inherently arbitrary logic can be wielded against any
| regulation or ideology. Nearly every policy disadvantages some
| person or group's preferences/freedom to purportedly better
| enable a greater good.
|
| This slippery slope reasoning would not only apply to your
| chosen target of "modern conservatism" but to anything under
| most ideologies and religions. As long as their implementation
| attempts probabilistically/historically led to a form of
| intolerance, suppression, and atrocity. Is Bernie Sanders also
| deserving of our intolerance because of the history of
| intolerance under socialism?
| howinteresting wrote:
| > That inherently arbitrary logic can be wielded against any
| regulation or ideology. Nearly every policy disadvantages
| some person or group's preferences/freedom to purportedly
| better enable a greater good.
|
| And we use evidence to figure out who's right.
|
| I believe very firmly in objective reality and I think moral
| relativism is bad.
|
| > This slippery slope reasoning would not only apply to your
| chosen target of "modern conservatism" but to a wide array of
| most ideologies and religions.
|
| Some ideologies are better about it than others, and it is
| our job on this earth as moral agents to figure that out. But
| once we have figured that out (and modern conservatism is an
| easy example of an ideology that most intelligent people
| think is object-level intolerant) then we can apply this very
| straightforward model to it.
|
| As far as religion goes, yes, most religions tend to be
| pretty high up on the object-level intolerance scale.
|
| > Is Bernie Sanders also deserving of our intolerance because
| of the history of intolerance under socialism?
|
| I don't know, did Bernie Sanders donate money or campaign for
| prop 8 or any other equivalent? I have my issues with Sanders
| but I don't think anything he did rises to that level.
|
| I'm not just applying intolerance to anyone I disagree with.
| For example, there are people who believe that the US should
| be actively trying to reduce its deficit at this time. I
| disagree with them, but I don't think they're object-level
| intolerant. I'm a generally reasonable person. I simply have
| no patience for the sorts of object-level intolerance that
| people like Eich engage in, nor the intolerance^3 that Scott
| is doing here.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| >And we use evidence to figure out who's right. I believe
| very firmly in objective reality and I think moral
| relativism is bad.
|
| Are you saying morality is a physical magnitude that can be
| studied and/or measured? Because if we can't then I don't
| see how objective reality relates to morality. I would
| think morality exists only in the minds of people and is
| therefore not objective, even if it's possible to agree
| that some universals exist.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| You're bouncing back and forth between "all" and "nearly
| all".
|
| Some reasoning applying as criticism to a wide array of most
| ideologies and religions doesn't disprove it. If anything, it
| seems like a positive heuristic.
| alexashka wrote:
| Does your model still hold if we replace 'trans people' with
| 'rapist' or 'pedophile'?
|
| In other words - 'intolerance of pedophiles is bad while
| intolerance of people who are intolerant of pedophiles is
| good.'
|
| Does that sound alright to you?
| nomel wrote:
| How are those things logically comparable? Or is that your
| point, that it's all rooted in morality?
| deadbeeves wrote:
| No reason is given why being intolerant of trans people is
| bad, it's just asserted. If the reason why being intolerant
| of trans people is bad is because trans people are a subset
| of people, then it follows that it's bad to be intolerant
| of any subset of people. If this is not the case then it
| needs to be argued why only certain subsets of people are
| protected from intolerance but not others.
| lend000 wrote:
| Intolerance of ideas and opinions (or people based on those
| opinions) is inherently bad, if it means excluding people from
| a debate or public discourse, or denying them other rights in
| public society (which should be obvious). But if you are
| consistent in your application of said framing, other forms of
| intolerance (like how you pick your social circle) seem morally
| practical. The problem is that almost no human seems to be
| capable of the consistency.
|
| For example, do you invest the same emotional energy being
| intolerant of Brandon Eich as you do toward people who say
| "ACAB"?
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > It is, of course, morally just to be intolerant towards
| intolerance.
|
| This is non-sensical because this morally just thing you
| describe (intolerant of intolerance) should not be tolerated.
| By your definition.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I don't quite agree on the principle. Maybe Eich isn't beyond
| the pale but I think there are very few people who can't
| think of ANY a belief someone would have where they wouldn't
| be willing to associate with them (say, neo-Nazism or
| advocating for a return of chattel slavery). I don't think
| this is necessarily contradictory with the notion of being
| "tolerant" since some of these views would essentially make
| other forms of tolerance impossible if they were adapted by a
| majority. "I'm equally tolerant of minorities and people who
| believe those same minorities should be enslaved" seems like
| a muddled and nonsensical position.
| rightbyte wrote:
| If we can't debate against nazism or slavery and win in the
| eyes of the audience, on democratic terms, I guess it is to
| late to be "intolerant of intolerance" and democracy has
| already failed.
|
| So what if one in a thousand (or whatever the number is)
| want to reinstate slavery?
|
| It seems like a nonsensical position to limit freedom of
| expression of everyone to quench a hypothetical Nazi
| takeover.
| emodendroket wrote:
| As I recall democracy did fail to settle both of these
| questions and instead they were settled by force of arms.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I guess the point I am trying to make is that the "out
| group" would have been abolitionists in the 1700s. I also
| didn't say that a democracy can't fail.
| dbt00 wrote:
| Tolerance is not a moral position, so reasoning about it in
| moral terms is nonsense.
|
| Tolerance is a social compact and it requires mutuality. "My
| preference is to punch you in the face, if you claim to be
| tolerant you must accept that" is obviously foolish, no
| matter how much you dress it up.
| concordDance wrote:
| "Tolerance of intolerance" just kicks the can down the
| road.
|
| A Conservative might argue that Muslims are intolerant and
| thus should not be allowed in the country or that trans
| people are intolerant of people using the correct pronouns
| for them.
|
| You can phrase pretty much any side of a political question
| as being either tolerant or intolerant with a bit of work.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| To be clear, I wasnt the one who framed it in moral terms.
| And you are exactly right - intolerance isnt always bad,
| nor good. Which is another reason why this is non-sensical:
|
| > It is, of course, morally just to be intolerant towards
| intolerance
| howinteresting wrote:
| [flagged]
| mholm wrote:
| The idea you're looking for is the paradox of tolerance, and
| a solution to it is that by engaging in intolerance, one has
| broken a social contract, and thus no longer benefits from
| it, and others can be intolerant to them without violating
| this social contract.
| dimal wrote:
| This kind of thinking leads to wars. Totally "justified" wars.
| golemotron wrote:
| I think the timeless bit is that there is always an out-group.
| It's worthwhile to be aware of yours and whatever subconscious
| position you've taken regarding them.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Thats a good question. Probably, to some extent. I think
| social media has certainly made this worse. Which is
| interesting because this was written in 2014 before this was
| a well understood phenomenon and a familiar narrative (social
| media silos radicalizing people).
| thimkerbell wrote:
| I think expounders are my biggest outgroup. Unfortunately,
| it's pretty big.
| howinteresting wrote:
| [flagged]
| pauldenton wrote:
| Maybe instead of tolerance or intolerance, you should look
| into what Jesus talked about. Loving your enemy. Tolerating
| people is one thing. Loving them is a far greater thing
| ctoth wrote:
| > I've spent basically my entire teenage and adult life
| fine-tuning the definition of my outgroup and becoming ever
| more confident that intolerance of it is just.
|
| And this is how an algorithm feels from inside.
| slothtrop wrote:
| A classic.
| zzzeek wrote:
| [flagged]
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > I tried to read several sections of this garbage post (it
| goes wrong right from the get-go. There are no "virtue points".
| There is human decency).
|
| He is talking about utils and virtue points as philosophical
| constructs.
|
| This entire essay went over your head.
| [deleted]
| siofgnionio wrote:
| Never in the history of the universe has something written by
| Scott Alexander gone over someone's head. Maybe that means he
| writes clearly, or maybe it means he pontificates at great
| length about things everyone else has considered obvious
| since childhood. You be the judge.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I get that you hate the guy, but c'mon.
| brindlejim wrote:
| Curious to know how Scott's ingroup deals with the e/acc
| outgroup, which is all the more "out" for being adjacent to EA.
| Or the gender critical, considering EA/post-rationalism's
| commitment to gender ideology.
| consilient wrote:
| e/acc is an internet meme. The underlying ideological group, to
| the extent that there is one, is the "reactionary
| modernism"/"Californian Ideology"/"New Right"/"neoreactionary"
| cluster.
|
| My impression is that for Scott they're what he calls a
| "fargroup": weird and bad in theory, but not salient enough to
| provoke a real response in practice. The way modern people feel
| about Genghis Khan. But I have very mixed feelings about Scott
| and extremely negative feelings about neoreactionaries, so take
| that with a grain of salt.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| My impression is that they're what scott calls "my dinner
| guests." Seriously I cannot find anything in his writing that
| is incompatible with those movements and beliefs. If one of
| them wanted to get as much "mainstream" acceptance as
| possible they would write carefully about exactly the things
| he writes about, leaving out exactly the things he leaves
| out. I am completely convinced this is his project.
| lsaferite wrote:
| e/acc?
|
| EA?
| reducesuffering wrote:
| EA is effective altruism. A group that spends their $ and
| effort trying to do the most good in the world, and is
| adjacent/overlaps with many of the author's group,
| rationalists. They are pro-technology, but existentially
| concerned about AGI.
|
| e/acc is effective accelerationism. A more recent "spin" on
| EA, more loosely associated moniker, for people who are
| extremely pro technology, more tech = always good, and wish
| to herald in AGI asap. Their "founder", is on record saying
| that it's ok if AGI reigns supreme and humans die, as it
| would be our progeny.[0]
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/AISafetyMemes/status/1683462000360280
| 065...
| lsaferite wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation. It's frustrating when people
| use acronyms and you don't know what they mean. Better to
| always be explicit on the first usage. I'm only marginal at
| following that ideal though.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| > Curious to know how Scott's ingroup deals with... the gender
| critical, considering EA/post-rationalism's commitment to
| gender ideology.
|
| Perhaps you will find one answer here?
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-ma...
|
| As for e/acc, I have no idea what that means.
| brindlejim wrote:
| [flagged]
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| > His comments-section ban on people who engage in so-
| called dead-naming is a good indicator.
|
| I think that if enough people engage in a sort of behavior
| to be mean assholes to others, they wil rightfully get
| banned whether there exists a coordinate system in which
| they are "correct" or not.
| brindlejim wrote:
| I'm not sure what science and "being mean" have to do
| with each other. But I would note that you have not made
| any argument except ad hominem, and raised the specter of
| cancellation, which is typically frowned upon on this
| site.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| "Ad hominem", "cancellation". You keep using those words,
| but I don't think they mean what you think they mean.
| consilient wrote:
| > As for e/acc, I have no idea what that means.
|
| It's just the latest rebranding of Nick Land's
| ideology/performance art/shitposting. "Capital will devour
| human civilization: here's why that's a good thing."
| marsa wrote:
| effective accelerationism apparently
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