4 ms·

So you established a “Socratic baseline”, so to speak. You’ve made it clear that for views that are extremely different from yours, you’re unwilling to tolerate

by dsacco 9y ago

So you established a “Socratic baseline”, so to speak. You’ve made it clear that for views that are extremely different from yours, you’re unwilling to tolerate even a brilliant individual for any amount of productivity. Now can you tell me what amount of difference in views you are willing to tolerate for the sake of working with someone brilliant and productive? If you eat meat and one of the most accomplished physicists in the world is militantly opposed to eating meat, would you work with them? What if they refuse to eat lunch with you if you eat meat? What if their views on abortion are diametrically opposed to yours, and they actively vote against your ideals? What if they believe all human beings with mental defects should be aborted in the womb? In other words, I want you to haggle with your position a bit so I can understand how you react in the more real world scenario, in which an otherwise useful individual’s views are very different, but not cartoonishly different from your own.

charonn0 9y ago
> You’ve made it clear that for views that are extremely different from yours, you’re unwilling to tolerate even a brilliant individual for any amount of productivity. What they actually said was "people who condone or advocate either violence or the denial of rights towards myself or people I care about"
- dsacco 9y ago
  Yes, they are intolerant of those people, regardless of how useful they can otherwise be to society. I think we both understand what the parent was saying, and it seems pretty reasonable to me.
Avshalom 9y ago
Are you so incapable of taking an individual situation on it's merits that you can't even handle to possibility that others might not have set in stone rules or mathematically model-able behaviors? Yes situational ethics is messy, no they are not invalid because they are messy.
- dsacco 9y ago
  I’m sorry, but it’s not clear to me what you’re saying here. Let me restate my point more succinctly: people are generally intolerant of others once those others are sufficiently different from themselves. But they are not typically intolerant of people who are only slightly or moderately in opposition to their views. I would like the parent commenter to consider how much comfortability they are willing to sacrifice in order to get along with someone who is extremely useful. This is a scenario with real world applicability which is not as easy or convenient to say, “I’ll simply not work with them.” I’m not attempting to invalidate their stated position, I’m trying to understand how they react when it becomes messier.
  - perfmode 9y ago
    > people are generally intolerant of others once those others are sufficiently different from themselves Eh. I don’t see how this statement is justified without heavy qualification.
    - dsacco 9y ago
      Fair enough; let’s go with an easy example. Someone wants to kill you, and is actively trying to kill you. Naturally, you don’t want to die, and are actively trying to survive. You two are in rather extreme opposition; are you willing to tolerate their presence? Maybe the word “intolerant” is what you disagree with. I think that word is useful because it forces us to examine situations in which we are reacting as strongly to someone as others react to us. In other words, I think it’s helpful to consider “intolerance” to be a symmetrical position, not an asymmetrical one. If we take this abstraction and pull it back down to reality: many people are sufficiently intolerant of gay people that they actively work against them having particular rights. Gay people are generally intolerant of this view, in that they actively work against that one. Now, personally I believe gay people should have the right to get married. But if I initially consider these conflicting positions as symmetrical disagreement, I force myself to rationally derive which one is the “bad” one. “Intolerant” is therefore a helpful, generalizable placeholder for any given pair of conflicting viewpoints, positions, values, etc.
  - 9y ago

by dsacco 9y ago

charonn0 9y ago

> You’ve made it clear that for views that are extremely different from yours, you’re unwilling to tolerate even a brilliant individual for any amount of productivity. What they actually said was "people who condone or advocate either violence or the denial of rights towards myself or people I care about"

dsacco 9y ago
Yes, they are intolerant of those people, regardless of how useful they can otherwise be to society. I think we both understand what the parent was saying, and it seems pretty reasonable to me.

Avshalom 9y ago

Are you so incapable of taking an individual situation on it's merits that you can't even handle to possibility that others might not have set in stone rules or mathematically model-able behaviors? Yes situational ethics is messy, no they are not invalid because they are messy.

dsacco 9y ago
I’m sorry, but it’s not clear to me what you’re saying here. Let me restate my point more succinctly: people are generally intolerant of others once those others are sufficiently different from themselves. But they are not typically intolerant of people who are only slightly or moderately in opposition to their views. I would like the parent commenter to consider how much comfortability they are willing to sacrifice in order to get along with someone who is extremely useful. This is a scenario with real world applicability which is not as easy or convenient to say, “I’ll simply not work with them.” I’m not attempting to invalidate their stated position, I’m trying to understand how they react when it becomes messier.
- perfmode 9y ago
  > people are generally intolerant of others once those others are sufficiently different from themselves Eh. I don’t see how this statement is justified without heavy qualification.
  - dsacco 9y ago
    Fair enough; let’s go with an easy example. Someone wants to kill you, and is actively trying to kill you. Naturally, you don’t want to die, and are actively trying to survive. You two are in rather extreme opposition; are you willing to tolerate their presence? Maybe the word “intolerant” is what you disagree with. I think that word is useful because it forces us to examine situations in which we are reacting as strongly to someone as others react to us. In other words, I think it’s helpful to consider “intolerance” to be a symmetrical position, not an asymmetrical one. If we take this abstraction and pull it back down to reality: many people are sufficiently intolerant of gay people that they actively work against them having particular rights. Gay people are generally intolerant of this view, in that they actively work against that one. Now, personally I believe gay people should have the right to get married. But if I initially consider these conflicting positions as symmetrical disagreement, I force myself to rationally derive which one is the “bad” one. “Intolerant” is therefore a helpful, generalizable placeholder for any given pair of conflicting viewpoints, positions, values, etc.
- 9y ago