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The argument here is that people like you label anything you don't agree with as "intolerant" and justify social lynching of the ideas based on your likely angr

by dcow 9y ago

The argument here is that people like you label anything you don't agree with as "intolerant" and justify social lynching of the ideas based on your likely angry or frustrated emotional assessment. This didn't start with James, although that's one of the more popular incidents. Disagreeing with operational policies that are based on politically charged ideas that we need to correct for the inequalities in outcomes rather than provide an unbiased and meritocratic foundation of opportunity is not intolerance. It's politics.

s73v3r_ 9y ago
Are you not doing the exact same thing?
- manfredo 9y ago
  No, not at all. Being tolerant of political views means accepting political views from a broad spectrum. This is being co-opted by some to reframe tolerance as being actively intolerant towards disliked views. The latter is intolerance attempting to disguise itself as tolerance. There is no tolerance paradox. For example, people's ability to advocate for the repeal of the 1st Amendment is protected by the 1st Amendment. Allowing people to advocate for the removal of the 1st Amendment, despite being a massively unpopular position (I hope), is an act of tolerance. What is not correct is attempting to claim that it is an act of tolerance to harass or shut down those people advocating for the Amendment's repeal because people believe it would lead to a worse society.
  - WaxProlix 9y ago
    Do you draw the line anywhere? Like, planning murder is illegal right? Openly advocating the destruction of life and property are illegal - why would calling them a political belief change that? Certainly some actions aren't viable political beliefs, no?
    - manfredo 9y ago
      Sure, if somebody is conspiring to commit a crime that isn't protected by the principles of political tolerance (or the law for that matter). However, the fact that people even think to place tolerance of conservative views on the same level as planning homicide is ridiculous. Advocating that country raise the minimum salary for H1Bs, wearing a Trump hat (when your co-workers are wearing Hilary gear), advocating for stronger border enforcement, etc. are nowhere near the levels of abject illegality as plotting a murder. The notion that these are even comparable is testament to how much of an echo chamber tech in Silicon Valley has become.
      - WaxProlix 9y ago
        I don't think they're directly comparable, necessarily. But people are talking in this thread as though finding a 'political view' disgusting and not worthy of public discussion is somehow inherently wrong, and I don't think that's the case. Giving airtime or lending legitimacy to holocaust deniers, ethnostate-supporting white nationalists, anti-science FUD types, etc. is detrimental to society as a whole as well as specifically dangerous to specific groups of people. So, for me the line is a little further over than it is for you. The whole issue is made more complex by Trump's endorsement of (and by, I guess) the modern Nazi movement in America. When you embrace partisan politics and associate yourself with that kind of group, even otherwise 'good' things will be viewed with skepticism. (For the record, I am one of those people who is uncomfortable voicing my political opinions at work; I'd never do it in the workplace, and have received harassment - mild, but very targeted - because of comments I've made here on HN and elsewhere on the internet. So I know what it's like to keep quiet for fear of cultural reprisal :)
        manfredo 9y ago
        > Giving airtime or lending legitimacy to holocaust deniers, ethnostate-supporting white nationalists Pointing to the most extreme end of political spectrum as justification for silencing or ostracizing the people everywhere on that half of the spectrum is both disingenuous and terrible for the political atmosphere. Imagine the reversed situation, someone stated "our company should tolerate liberal views" and I responded by saying, "but what about the mass starvation of the Great Leap Forward, and the genocide perpetrated against the Ukrainians by the USSR?" It would be absurd, which is also how I regard this response. Tolerating conservative views is no more an endorsement of Nazis and the holocaust than tolerating liberal views is an endorsement of the Khmer Rouge, the Holodmor, etc. Silicon Valley would be a better place without this kind of rhetoric. > anti-science FUD types Arguably, this could just as easily be applied to mainstream liberal views on the danger (or lack thereof) of nuclear power, GMOs, etc.
  - s73v3r_ 9y ago
    I disagree; there absolutely is a tolerance paradox. You chose a rather benign example, but one that would be more illustrative would be Nazism. Expressing tolerance of those principles makes them more accepted and mainstream, thus making more accepted and mainstream the intolerance they demonstrate toward nonwhites.
    - manfredo 9y ago
      As quick clarification, if you aren't aware the Nationalist Socialist (AKA, Nazi) Party of America genuinely is a party that is protected by the First Amendment[1]. Conversely attempting to suppress Nazism forcibly didn't work either. Remember, Hitler and other early members of the Nazi party were imprisoned. It didn't stop them. And regardless this is straying from the core point. Of course, advocating the mass extermination of Jews, Roma, or any other group would be grounds for a company to fire employees that make those statements - I did not and do not attempt to state that every piece of speech protected by the 1st Amendment should be allowed in the workplace. Rather, the simple principle is that tolerating a view that some people consider intolerant is not, itself, an act of intolerance. Let me put this in a scenario that is more appropriate to a workplace: * You have two co-workers, A and B. * A thinks that affirmative action (structuring hiring policies such that non white & Asians, and women have greater chance to get offers than non-diverse candidates) is necessary to have a tolerant workplace, and by extension not having these policies is an intolerant situation. * B thinks that discriminating on the basis of sex or race in the hiring process is intolerant. * Both A and B go to HR claiming that the other is making intolerant statements. I would argue that if HR takes action against _either_ employee that would be an act of intolerance. Allowing A to make that statement isn't an act of intolerance against B, nor is B's an act of intolerance against A. Sure, I get that A _believes_ B's viewpoint to be intolerant and vice versa. But the company's decision to allow both statements is not an act of intolerance because of that. This is what I'm getting at by saying "there is no paradox of tolerance" in allowing speech. True, individual speakers may think the other is intolerance. But there is no intolerance in allowing these conflicting views to co-exist. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...
wpietri 9y ago
No, intolerance is a specific term of art here, not just anything lefties don't like. For example, look at the US right's decades-long pursuit of anti-GLBTQ policies. Gay people mostly just want to be left alone to live their lives. the US right wants to use the power of the state to discriminate against them. It went so far in California that Prop 8 specifically rewrote the constitution to strip the right of equal protection from gay people. That is intolerance. Also, "social lynching" is just a ridiculous term. The US has a long history of actual lynching, which is the extrajudicial murder by hanging, mainly carried out by intolerant racists. What you apparently mean by "social lynching" is people exercising their freedoms of speech and association by critcizing or not being around people whose ideas and behaviors they think harmful to other people. As first-amendment champion Ken White, aka Popehat, often points out, freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. "Speech has consequences. Among those consequences are condemnation, vituperation, scorn, ridicule, and pariah status. Those consequences represent other people exercising their free speech rights. That's a feature of the marketplace of ideas, not a bug."
- dcow 9y ago
  You are right. My apologies if I implied this only happens on "the left". There's a lot of context in this thread so I didn't feel the need to caveat. However, "social lynching" is not an absurd term. While everyone has a right to express their opinion and face the consequences thereof, social lynching occurs when people mob together and demand, pressure, or otherwise effectively execute physical consequences for a utterance of speech that is otherwise entirely legal and often totally unrelated to the consequences. Losing your job because a group of people found out you donated to a conservative social/political group is an example of social lynching (in this context). No, they didn't kill the person, but there is a real impact on that person's lively hood and it can often mean the death of a career. I agree that speech is not consequence free, let the assholes be shamed, but when we start to cross realms and impact people's jobs, families, lively hoods, for simply holding other opinions, something else is happening. We're beyond the realm of speech and have entered the wold of actions.
  - telchar 9y ago
cmurf 9y ago
Meritocracy is incompetent. It is trust destroying because it's inherently corrupt. The privileged, the elite, control the metric by which merit is defined and judged. They create a system of self-preservation that excludes others who would dilute their control. There is no such thing as privilege, elitism, without exclusion and inferiority. Meritocracy always leads to the very thing it purports to try and avoid: incompetency. And that is why it is incompetent.
- dcow 9y ago
  I don't necessarily disagree, but I think we need a pretty big overhaul of the way we govern ourselves if we're going to escape it. And the only civil way I can think to do that is to rewrite our constitutions and laws using the guidelines that have been laid out describing how something of that nature is to be done. I don't think it's paralegal corporate enforcement of popular ideologies. I'm willing to entertain a social structure that protects human agency in a world where our traditional means of measuring human value are quickly becoming obsolete, but I think we need a lot more agreement that's the direction we need to head...
- lkerrekfjk 9y ago
  > Meritocracy is incompetent. So is so called "social justice" and diversity quotas. It leads to an environment of nepotism and corruption where people aren't getting jobs because they are competent but because they have a vagina, are brown or they have the right political stance. The irony of your statement is funny, your goal is just replacing an elite by another, not unlike what happened in Soviet Russia.
  - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
    I posted my experience with this on HN before...it was very disheartening: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=16396441&goto=threads%3Fid%3DCaveman_Coder%2316396441 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=16396441&goto=threads%...

by dcow 9y ago

s73v3r_ 9y ago

Are you not doing the exact same thing?

manfredo 9y ago
No, not at all. Being tolerant of political views means accepting political views from a broad spectrum. This is being co-opted by some to reframe tolerance as being actively intolerant towards disliked views. The latter is intolerance attempting to disguise itself as tolerance. There is no tolerance paradox. For example, people's ability to advocate for the repeal of the 1st Amendment is protected by the 1st Amendment. Allowing people to advocate for the removal of the 1st Amendment, despite being a massively unpopular position (I hope), is an act of tolerance. What is not correct is attempting to claim that it is an act of tolerance to harass or shut down those people advocating for the Amendment's repeal because people believe it would lead to a worse society.
- WaxProlix 9y ago
  Do you draw the line anywhere? Like, planning murder is illegal right? Openly advocating the destruction of life and property are illegal - why would calling them a political belief change that? Certainly some actions aren't viable political beliefs, no?
  - manfredo 9y ago
    Sure, if somebody is conspiring to commit a crime that isn't protected by the principles of political tolerance (or the law for that matter). However, the fact that people even think to place tolerance of conservative views on the same level as planning homicide is ridiculous. Advocating that country raise the minimum salary for H1Bs, wearing a Trump hat (when your co-workers are wearing Hilary gear), advocating for stronger border enforcement, etc. are nowhere near the levels of abject illegality as plotting a murder. The notion that these are even comparable is testament to how much of an echo chamber tech in Silicon Valley has become.
    - WaxProlix 9y ago
      I don't think they're directly comparable, necessarily. But people are talking in this thread as though finding a 'political view' disgusting and not worthy of public discussion is somehow inherently wrong, and I don't think that's the case. Giving airtime or lending legitimacy to holocaust deniers, ethnostate-supporting white nationalists, anti-science FUD types, etc. is detrimental to society as a whole as well as specifically dangerous to specific groups of people. So, for me the line is a little further over than it is for you. The whole issue is made more complex by Trump's endorsement of (and by, I guess) the modern Nazi movement in America. When you embrace partisan politics and associate yourself with that kind of group, even otherwise 'good' things will be viewed with skepticism. (For the record, I am one of those people who is uncomfortable voicing my political opinions at work; I'd never do it in the workplace, and have received harassment - mild, but very targeted - because of comments I've made here on HN and elsewhere on the internet. So I know what it's like to keep quiet for fear of cultural reprisal :)
      - manfredo 9y ago
        > Giving airtime or lending legitimacy to holocaust deniers, ethnostate-supporting white nationalists Pointing to the most extreme end of political spectrum as justification for silencing or ostracizing the people everywhere on that half of the spectrum is both disingenuous and terrible for the political atmosphere. Imagine the reversed situation, someone stated "our company should tolerate liberal views" and I responded by saying, "but what about the mass starvation of the Great Leap Forward, and the genocide perpetrated against the Ukrainians by the USSR?" It would be absurd, which is also how I regard this response. Tolerating conservative views is no more an endorsement of Nazis and the holocaust than tolerating liberal views is an endorsement of the Khmer Rouge, the Holodmor, etc. Silicon Valley would be a better place without this kind of rhetoric. > anti-science FUD types Arguably, this could just as easily be applied to mainstream liberal views on the danger (or lack thereof) of nuclear power, GMOs, etc.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  I disagree; there absolutely is a tolerance paradox. You chose a rather benign example, but one that would be more illustrative would be Nazism. Expressing tolerance of those principles makes them more accepted and mainstream, thus making more accepted and mainstream the intolerance they demonstrate toward nonwhites.
  - manfredo 9y ago
    As quick clarification, if you aren't aware the Nationalist Socialist (AKA, Nazi) Party of America genuinely is a party that is protected by the First Amendment[1]. Conversely attempting to suppress Nazism forcibly didn't work either. Remember, Hitler and other early members of the Nazi party were imprisoned. It didn't stop them. And regardless this is straying from the core point. Of course, advocating the mass extermination of Jews, Roma, or any other group would be grounds for a company to fire employees that make those statements - I did not and do not attempt to state that every piece of speech protected by the 1st Amendment should be allowed in the workplace. Rather, the simple principle is that tolerating a view that some people consider intolerant is not, itself, an act of intolerance. Let me put this in a scenario that is more appropriate to a workplace: * You have two co-workers, A and B. * A thinks that affirmative action (structuring hiring policies such that non white & Asians, and women have greater chance to get offers than non-diverse candidates) is necessary to have a tolerant workplace, and by extension not having these policies is an intolerant situation. * B thinks that discriminating on the basis of sex or race in the hiring process is intolerant. * Both A and B go to HR claiming that the other is making intolerant statements. I would argue that if HR takes action against _either_ employee that would be an act of intolerance. Allowing A to make that statement isn't an act of intolerance against B, nor is B's an act of intolerance against A. Sure, I get that A _believes_ B's viewpoint to be intolerant and vice versa. But the company's decision to allow both statements is not an act of intolerance because of that. This is what I'm getting at by saying "there is no paradox of tolerance" in allowing speech. True, individual speakers may think the other is intolerance. But there is no intolerance in allowing these conflicting views to co-exist. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...

wpietri 9y ago

No, intolerance is a specific term of art here, not just anything lefties don't like. For example, look at the US right's decades-long pursuit of anti-GLBTQ policies. Gay people mostly just want to be left alone to live their lives. the US right wants to use the power of the state to discriminate against them. It went so far in California that Prop 8 specifically rewrote the constitution to strip the right of equal protection from gay people. That is intolerance. Also, "social lynching" is just a ridiculous term. The US has a long history of actual lynching, which is the extrajudicial murder by hanging, mainly carried out by intolerant racists. What you apparently mean by "social lynching" is people exercising their freedoms of speech and association by critcizing or not being around people whose ideas and behaviors they think harmful to other people. As first-amendment champion Ken White, aka Popehat, often points out, freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. "Speech has consequences. Among those consequences are condemnation, vituperation, scorn, ridicule, and pariah status. Those consequences represent other people exercising their free speech rights. That's a feature of the marketplace of ideas, not a bug."

dcow 9y ago
You are right. My apologies if I implied this only happens on "the left". There's a lot of context in this thread so I didn't feel the need to caveat. However, "social lynching" is not an absurd term. While everyone has a right to express their opinion and face the consequences thereof, social lynching occurs when people mob together and demand, pressure, or otherwise effectively execute physical consequences for a utterance of speech that is otherwise entirely legal and often totally unrelated to the consequences. Losing your job because a group of people found out you donated to a conservative social/political group is an example of social lynching (in this context). No, they didn't kill the person, but there is a real impact on that person's lively hood and it can often mean the death of a career. I agree that speech is not consequence free, let the assholes be shamed, but when we start to cross realms and impact people's jobs, families, lively hoods, for simply holding other opinions, something else is happening. We're beyond the realm of speech and have entered the wold of actions.
- telchar 9y ago

cmurf 9y ago

Meritocracy is incompetent. It is trust destroying because it's inherently corrupt. The privileged, the elite, control the metric by which merit is defined and judged. They create a system of self-preservation that excludes others who would dilute their control. There is no such thing as privilege, elitism, without exclusion and inferiority. Meritocracy always leads to the very thing it purports to try and avoid: incompetency. And that is why it is incompetent.

dcow 9y ago
I don't necessarily disagree, but I think we need a pretty big overhaul of the way we govern ourselves if we're going to escape it. And the only civil way I can think to do that is to rewrite our constitutions and laws using the guidelines that have been laid out describing how something of that nature is to be done. I don't think it's paralegal corporate enforcement of popular ideologies. I'm willing to entertain a social structure that protects human agency in a world where our traditional means of measuring human value are quickly becoming obsolete, but I think we need a lot more agreement that's the direction we need to head...
lkerrekfjk 9y ago
> Meritocracy is incompetent. So is so called "social justice" and diversity quotas. It leads to an environment of nepotism and corruption where people aren't getting jobs because they are competent but because they have a vagina, are brown or they have the right political stance. The irony of your statement is funny, your goal is just replacing an elite by another, not unlike what happened in Soviet Russia.
- Caveman_Coder 9y ago
  I posted my experience with this on HN before...it was very disheartening: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=16396441&goto=threads%3Fid%3DCaveman_Coder%2316396441 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=16396441&goto=threads%...