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Seems no one understands Popper's Paradox. Lots of talk about it being unfair that a workplace is intolerant of people who are intolerant. There are just some v

• test001only 8y ago
  This exactly. The common playbook now seems to be to hide racism and intolerance under the blanket of conservative and accusing anyone who opposes that to be against free speech and conservatives. These nonnegotiable values do not belong to the left or right, it belongs to the society as a whole.
  • lbsnake7 8y ago
    Who decides these nonnegotiable values? Society as a whole? If half of the country voted for Trump and believes in his values, then half of the society that you are a part of has different nonnegotiable values. So these values are no longer nonnegotiable and are now very much just whatever values the majority holds.
    • test001only 8y ago
      Why do you assume the basic values differ between these two set of people. That is seeing people in black and white. Let us take a nonnegotiable value of not being racist. Are you implying that 50% of the people are racist. Nope - that is certainly not the case. People who voted for Trump might have voted for various other things - there might have been certain issues that they resonated with him, vote for Republican party etc. They might have voted for him despite his flaws.
  • smsm42 8y ago
    No, the common playbook now seems to be to accuse anybody disagreeing with the hard left in racism and intolerance as an attempt to avoid any discussion with them and if possibly, demolish their personality and their life so nobody else would dare to speak up. While posing as "society as a whole" and taking on oneself to define what is nonnegotiable (which curiously seems to be exactly matching the views of whoever is declaring it) and unilaterally deciding that only the views the declarer holds or ones extremely similar to them are even worth discussing, and people not agreeing to them must be unpersoned.
• oriol16 8y ago
  treating people equally, regardless of gender, sexuality, or ethnic origin This is a very vague statement, you can apply to your convenience. You could say Damore broke the principle and justify any penalty against him. I could say you don't follow this civility premise by choosing your partner based on your gender. Every country in the world has "ethno-nationalist views against immigrants", and things work fine.
  • CoolGuySteve 8y ago
    The world would be $78 trillion richer if countries had open borders. So I'm not sure what definition you have for "fine". https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2017/07/13/a-world-of-free-movement-would-be-78-trillion-richer https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2017/07/13/a-world-of...
    • smsm42 8y ago
      This article is bunk. It makes unbased extrapolation from small-volume migration to a mass migration which has completely different set of problems. ObXKCD: https://www.xkcd.com/605/ https://www.xkcd.com/605/
  • zmix 8y ago
    > Every country in the world has "ethno-nationalist views against immigrants", and things work fine. For whom?
    • qwerty11111 8y ago
      Pick any country in Asia.
• bitlax 8y ago
  Modern intersectionality dictates that people be treated very differently based on their gender, sexuality, and ethnic origin.
  • danharaj 8y ago
    This is a bad faith interpretation of intersectionality.
    • bitlax 8y ago
      It's an accurate one, but you're welcome to add any nuance you feel is necessary and let people respond to it.
      • danharaj 8y ago
        Well, for one, intersectionality is about how one describes reality, it is by no means normative and a cursory glance at the wikipedia page indicates as much, with citations if one is so inclined to put any effort at all in thinking critically. But are you?
        • smsm42 8y ago
          > intersectionality is about how one describes reality I am sorry, but this is one of the most useless definitions I've read lately. Almost any human activity and any point of view can be described as "about how one describes reality", from quantum gravity theory to buddhism. And, on top of that, it does not contradict the premise bitlax described above. I am all for thinking critically but if you proclaim that the description above is wrong - and not only just wrong, but so obviously wrong as the wrongness to be obvious to the author, and thus "bad faith" - I think the minimum requirement for you would be to produce a better definition. And "read the wikipedia, it's all there" is not providing a better one.
          • deleted 8y ago
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• tosser00001 8y ago
  "There's no reason anyone has to respect ethno-nationalist views against immigrants." There are plenty of reasons to be against the current immigration regime that don't involve ethno-nationalism but it's nearly impossible to forward any such arguments without being accused of being an ethno-nationalist.
  • whack 8y ago
    It sure doesn't help when our President says Mexican immigrants are "drug dealers and rapists", and wants to cut off immigration from "shithole countries".
    • wemdyjreichert 8y ago
      *hole countries was anecdotal and reported by someone who did disagree very much with Mr. Trump. Just pointing out it's unproven.
      • whack 8y ago
        You'd have to be extremely biased in your sources, to not believe that Trump said some variant of the above. https://www.vox.com/2018/1/12/16885312/trump-shithole-countries-denial https://www.vox.com/2018/1/12/16885312/trump-shithole-countr... Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) told the Post and Courier that his South Carolina colleague Sen. Lindsey Graham, who attended the meeting, told him Trump’s reported comments were “basically accurate.” And Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who also didn’t attend the meeting, told the Washington Post he heard about Trump’s comments before they went public, and they matched the later reports. https://www.vox.com/2018/1/16/16897016/trump-shithole-shithouse-countries https://www.vox.com/2018/1/16/16897016/trump-shithole-shitho... Anonymous Republican sources have pushed the story that Trump in fact used the phrase “shithouse countries.” According to the Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey, Robert Costa, and Ashley Parker, Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and David Perdue (R-GA) told the White House that’s what they remember Trump saying in the meeting. Trump has apparently decided that the controversy is hurting him politically, so his allies are using this minor discrepancy to justify public denials that he said “shithole.”
  • 8y ago
• qwerty11111 8y ago
  I'm assuming you're totally against Asia then? Asian countries have been far more staunch against refugees. Japan for example accepted only 27 refugees in one year while rejecting 7,586 according to the Brookings Institute. South Korea accepted only 94 in one year. Refugees are pretty much shut off from Singapore and China and many other Asian countries. I'm curious why these countries don't receive the same flak for their "ethno-nationalist" views against immigrants. There are no boycotts against buying goods from these countries as they are with Trump hotels. EDIT: I see that you work for Google. Your company is censoring content on behalf of the communist government in China despite their "ethno-nationalist" views against immigrants (not to mention their abysmal human rights record). What's the explanation?
  • mc32 8y ago
    20, 30 years ago many of the same people clamoring for open borders now were speaking against globalization, corporate imperialism, cultural imperialism, but speaking for and on behalf of the cause of American workers who were being swapped out for offshoring, etc. But now the credo is open borders and strong companies which can stand against nation states and dictate values.... It’s as if the political magnetosphere swapped poles.
    • dzdt 8y ago
      Who is clamoring for open borders? I don't know of any prominent examples of political figures who take that position, just examples where their opponents falsely characterise the position as "open borders".
      • mc32 8y ago
        The ptogressive base makes arguments for it. They make arguments against ICE, make arguments agaist enforcing immigration laws, make arguments for “sanctuary cities”. What other country, even poor countries who, for consistency’s sake, should espouse such policy had such policies? Most othet countries I’ve been to the police have the power to deport; depening on case, on the spot. I have known of people who worked abroad who were given hours to arrange for their stuff and get out after staying beyond their visas.
• bko 8y ago
  You should disclose that you are a Google employee in your comment.
  • otterley 8y ago
    Why? There's no potential conflict of interest.
• belorn 8y ago
  People can have opposing views about how to treat people equally, regardless of gender, sexuality, or ethnic origin. A famous historical example is the equality feminism vs difference (diversity) feminism, which is directly opposite views with the exact same goal. One view is that women and men are equal and any difference is so minor as to not be significant, the other asserts the differences and promotes them as being important and of equality worth. The effort to achieve equality are for those two groups opposing efforts where every step forward for one is a step backward for the other. Intolerance against different opinions oppose any dissenting views that shares the same goal but not the strategy to reach it. Equality feminism vs diversity feminism, open source vs free software, and so on.
• simonsarris 8y ago
  Except there are plenty of rational reasons one might want to restrict immigration by country, as even Gwern has gone over before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13859767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13859767 > immigrant outcomes differ by orders of magnitude by country and that this has considerable implications for the immigration debate and that many of the arguments made by the left for illegal immigration & open borders range from ignorant to outright lying with statistics. In 2014 Havard fellow Eugen Dimant did a study on immigration from corrupt countries, with the consistent finding that "Immigration from corruption-ridden countries boosts corruption in the destination country." https://ethics.harvard.edu/blog/crook-crook-he-still-crook-abroad-effect-immigration-destination-country https://ethics.harvard.edu/blog/crook-crook-he-still-crook-a... To put forth either of these as reasons to restrict immigration from one set of countries, and encourage immigration from another, almost always gets you labeled a racist, ethno-nationalist, etc. If you don't believe you will be called that, I invite you to try and discuss them pro/con style (pretending you are fairly convinced) with some of your more liberal coworkers, and see what they say. Just being immigration-skeptic in general now often leads to such charges, which is absurd. The most basic rational reason of all is very simple: If the fundamental mechanic of democracy is that the people vote and these votes matter, then every citizen should have a strong interest in making sure that the criteria for being a citizen is in place to attract good citizens and repel bad ones. Instead, we can barely talk about it.
  • jlebar 8y ago
    > Instead, we can barely talk about it. Is your contention that the main thing about the election of Trump that upset the people in this video that he took a cooly rational stance against some forms of immigration? Banning all Muslims -- including citizens and visa holders -- from entering the country does not seem to be aligned with this position. Saying that a judge was unqualified to do his job because of where his parents were born does not seem to be aligned with this position. Blasting the family of a soldier who died saving others on the basis of their race and religion does not seem to be aligned with this position. If your point is that you're frustrated that Trump has lowered the standards of intellectual dialog in the country, well, join the club, friend.
• r3vo 8y ago
  The problem with this line of thought is that it is used to strongarm people with conventional right wing political views into silence by accusing them of harboring the taboo opinions you listed. You cannot utter even the most platonic of right wing sentiments without the shrieks of frantic lunatics accusing you of being Hitler himself. This idea of taboo subjects is exploited by nefarious far left activists, not for the cause of 'decency' or the preservation of western liberalism, but as a bludgeon to silence all thoughtcrime of the right.
• pacala 8y ago
  It depends on what the meaning of the word "equally" is.
• rphlx 8y ago
  If only it were so simple. What you are proposing seems to require universal acceptance of an authoritarian regime that sets the social rules which are, as you say, "not negotiable". Otherwise in a free society almost everything is negotiable and a precise definition of common decency is not so common, particularly across cultures. Similarly, trying to produce a complete and widely-accepted definition of intolerance is almost certain to elicit plenty of actual intolerance, but not enough to actually compile a complete and widely-accepted definition of intolerance.
• quotemstr 8y ago
  There is no such paradox. Popper is talking about not permitting of force as a mechanism for dispute resolution. The "paradox of tolerance" isn't a paradox at all. It's just a bludgeon people use to suppress free speech. It's ridiculous to claim that a discussion of the proper level of immigration is a threat to discourse generally.
• y3sh 8y ago
  As a conservative who worked at Google: There also is risk is that if a conservative shares a conservative view correlated with intolerant views (but not actually intolerant), they become likely to be lumped in with the intolerant. The hard part about Popper's paradox is defining what is intolerant (outside of the obvious cases cited in the comments here).
  • quotemstr 8y ago
    When accusations of intolerance become effective weapons for silencing one's opponents, everything befomes intolerant. There's no mystery principle here: censorship and intimidation are pure power plays.
• Janeman544 8y ago
  Only if definitions of "tolerance" and "equality" were that simple. Not all people on left are tolerant. As a Hindu I have found that the left is far more intolerant of Pagans that Christian conservatives in USA. Libertarians are easily one of the most tolerant of them all but the left does not like them either. Painting people you don't like as "intolerant" and "deserving of persecution" was precisely how Hitler convinced Germans that it was okay to kill Jews.
• mariodiana 8y ago
  Setting aside the validity of Popper's Paradox, you might actually consider that you're on the wrong end of it: meaning, you're the intolerant one. I'm serious. Because you slander people who hold views opposite to yours and look to silence them once you have taken hold of power. A person can be for immigration enforcement and NOT be an ethno-smethmo whateveryourecallingit. If you don't control your border, you're not a nation.
• smsm42 8y ago
  No, it's not about "intolerant of people who are intolerant". There are actually a lot of people who are actually intolerant which are tolerated much better than a conservative in a liberal environment. Surely, the disagreement may be deeper on fundamentals, but the everyday tolerance would be worse. > There's no reason anyone has to respect ethno-nationalist views against immigrants. There's something called "political Turing test". The essence is that if you can not convincingly describe a position of an opposing side - in a way that they'd agree it is close to what they believe in - then you are not fit to discuss this position intelligently. Unfortunately, from the video is pretty clear almost nobody of those who spoke there would pass this test on anything related to anybody who voted for Trump. Yet they feel fully entitled to deny basic respect to people they didn't even bother to understand. And yet they feel smugly morally superior about it.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• droopybuns 8y ago
  Reason: Narcissist finds it convienient to assume all who disagree with them are ethnonationalists.