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I don't know that it's necessarily so much unpleasant emotions Let me paint a picture: My maternal grandparents are country folk, from Kentucky. My grandfathe

I don't know that it's necessarily so much unpleasant emotions Let me paint a picture: My maternal grandparents are country folk, from Kentucky. My grandfather was an electrical engineer and a sort of whizz kid type. Architected/drafted and built his own house, made youngest highest-ranking naval officer in Coast Guard history, stuff of that sort. Having lived their entire lives together, they are on very different sides of the political spectrum. My grandmother is... unfortunately, a somewhat stereotypical Kentucky old white lady. You can guess her stance on things like immigrants and who she voted for. I love her but I have to try to blank out some of the things she says. My grandfather on the other hand will just say things like "Well, you have to try to see it from their side.", and "Don't you think that's a bit of a generalization?" But God help you if you cross the old man. I've done it once in my life and rarely seen a scarier thing. So (IME), you can have political tolerance separate of your emotional tolerance and emotional experiences. Political tolerance (for me) really boils down to: "Treat others how you want to be treated; Live and let live" which seems to me the most logical/reasonable way to go about it.

rayiner 4y ago
> "... Live and let live" which seems to me the most logical/reasonable way to go about it. Only if you assume we're not a society, and that there's no social benefits to enforcing socially desirable behaviors and suppress socially undesirable ones.
- weard_beard 4y ago
  You assume that there is and of a right aught to be enforcement. Others view that social evolution as up to god. We all cooperate and the least rigid will adopt the best and we’ll all copy one another.
  - ricardobeat 4y ago
    We have 3000+ years of very detailed data on how well that works, and all the “cooperation” that can be achieved…
    - weard_beard 4y ago
      Prisoners dilema. We have 3 billion more to get it right.
- Thursday24 4y ago
  Remove the law, and all that remains is a jungle, where the strong domineer the weak.
  - bitwize 4y ago
    So! Now you would give the Devil the benefit of law?
    - jfk13 4y ago
      For my own safety's sake.
- gavinray 4y ago
  "Live and let live" is based on the hope that everyone adopts that philosophy. Obviously with humans this can never be the case, until we modify our own brains/neurochemistry. IMO, adhere to it so long as the "Non-aggression Principle" holds, once that's breached, do whatever it is you have to do. "Leave me alone and I leave you alone. Poke me with a stick, and..."
  - rayiner 4y ago
    Partly, yes, but it also assumes that "leaving each other alone" results in societally beneficial outcomes. That's not necessarily true. For example, in many Asian countries it's common to call out family and friends on their weight. It's not a "live and let live" approach, but it might explain why Asians tend to be skinny. (I'm reminded of the line from "Everything, Everywhere All at Once," where the mom goes "Wait. You are getting fat. And you never call me even though we have a family plan. And it's free. You only visit when you need something. And you got a tattoo and I don't care if it's supposed to represent our family. You know I hate tattoos.")
    - gavinray 4y ago
      Fair point and great anecdote. Though when I think "interference of my 'let-live'" my mind jumps to things a decent bit worse than family who make some well-meaning remarks that sting. I don't want to turn this into a big political/philosophical thing, but it feels like the line is between suggestions or commentary and forcible policing.
- ghufran_syed 4y ago
  “live and let live” has traditionally described the more tolerant end of the spectrum of possible “social enforcement”, not the absence of such enforcement - the problem is that the group that wants religious rights for society doesn’t want marriage rights for others in society, and the group that wants abortion rights in society doesn’t want gun rights for others in society. And so on. So the question is whether to have a society where we generally allow people to do things we don’t like, as the price of being allowed to do the things we do like, or a society that prevents us doing what we want as the price of preventing others doing things we don’t like. Or, you know, each side trying to get freedom for the things they care about but trying to ban the things they dislike? There is an obvious analogy with religion and religious freedom that I think the US constitution and bill of rights handled very effectively (compared to most other countries) at the “live and let live” end of the spectrum, maybe as a society we might want to see if the same principles might work more broadly?
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    That's a false equivalence. "Pro-life" advocates use a topic that some people find emotive purely for political ends. Gun control advocates object tto avoidable gun massacres in schools, malls, and other public places. They're not remotely comparable. The obvious difference is that if a woman has an abortion it's fundamentally a private matter. The outcome affects a single person. Or two people at most. The outcome is not a line of ambulances and coffins and a traumatised community of teachers, parents, and neighbours. Of course they're framed as if they're equivalent freedoms, because in the US "freedom" is a master-frame that can be used to justify almost anything. And that's the real problem. One group consistently uses deceptive single-issue appeals to emotion to gain and hold political power. If there are no real issues to appeal to, they'll quite happily invent some. They fundamentally don't care what the issue is as long as it's politically useful. The other group actually cares about outcomes - not just in a negative sense of wanting certain things not to happen, but in the positive sense of expanding political access to everyone in the community for the benefit of the entire community. What's missing - in the US particularly - is a political system which makes this fundamental distinction clear and explicit. Democracies have few defences against deceptive framing used for political grift. And that's not a good way to build a better future.
- marmetio 4y ago
  There's a line where you should intervene when others are not letting others live and let live. That's the overall human societal obligation that everyone has to each other. Then there's another line where you build the type of society you want, but only within your own circle of culture or geography or whatever. Live and let live requires assuring the first part, while also not imposing your own version of the second part on people who are not within your circle. The expression has always had nuance. Until now, I had never heard such a simplistic interpretation.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    > There's a line where you should intervene when others are not letting others live and let live. But why should that be the line? Why shouldn't we police each other's behavior to ensure everyone is making better decisions that serve larger societal ends while preserving social peace?
    - marmetio 4y ago
      Maybe I wasn't clear, but that's the second line I described in the second paragraph that I wrote. You can build whatever society you want. But there are also different societies. Some by choice, some not. People can be part of multiple societies at the same time. The trick is to manage the interfaces between societies without imposing yourself on a society you don't belong to. Live and let live.
    - ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
      Because authoritarianism is bad.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      The Counterpoint is that individuals should serve their own ends as long as it preserves social peace. Many object to the idea that Society should extract as much utility value from individuals as possible up until they're breaking point is reached. Furthermore, the breaking point for social peace can be modified and delayed by harsh repression and subjugation, so I don't think it is a suitable limit on suppressing the desires of individuals
- generalizations 4y ago
  > no social benefits to enforcing socially desirable behaviors and suppress socially undesirable ones What universally-agreed-upon moral standard do you think you can base that determination on?
tstrimple 4y ago
> Live and let live This isn't possible when one major political party refuses to allow that to happen. Many conservatives claim to just want to be left alone and then turn around and try to legislate who can marry who, how people live their lives, who is "worthy" of being part of our country, what books are available in libraries. You can't live and let live when you're constantly being attacked for intrinsic traits and being disenfranchised.
- gavinray 4y ago
  > Many conservatives claim to just want to be left alone and then turn around and try to legislate who can marry who, how people live their lives, who is "worthy" of being part of our country, what books are available in libraries. That's not very let-live at all, is it? I don't like to get into politics, but in my very unread and not-up-to-date opinion (I didn't even know some kind of election was happening recently, I care that little) neither end of the political spectrum is a good place to sit. Sitting on an end means you have an agenda and a strong set of ideals. I have my own morals/ethics, but they sort of start and end at the boundaries of my own being. As long as you have people who think that other people ought to behave/think more like them, you'll have conflict. I hold out hope for biohacking advanced enough that we mod ourselves out of this in a few hundred years.
brainchild-adam 4y ago
Thank you for sharing. I might be reading this wrong, but it seems to me from your description that your grandfather simply did not get "ticked off" by the same things as your grandmother. Those topics do not seem to have generated strong emotions in him. But they seem to have done so in your grandmother. What raises strong emotions in people seems to be highly subjective. To what extent you are able to have those stronger emotional responses while at the same time not succumbing to the impulses that go along with them, is what I would argue determines your ability to tolerate the stimuli that generate these emotional responses. Since these responses are physiological, rooted in our survival instincts, they greatly affect our ability to be rational, open, and contextualize. Instead, they move us into increasing levels of black-and-white thinking and fight or flight, first mentally, then physically. Whenever I explore topics that stir up strong (negative) emotions in myself, I find that they are usually tied to this, if I can get deep enough in my exploration. After all, we're just animals trying to survive and procreate, even though we have become very elaborate and ornamental in our pursuit of these goals.
- svnt 4y ago
  You are dismissing a level you are apparently incurious about — that of why certain seemingly irrational responses happen. Using “highly subjective” for something that is much better understood than you are implying is only an indicator of where you’ve chosen to draw your own boundary in pursuit of a constrained cognitive ability. It’s also an indicator of this limit that the two things you’re inaccurately taking as given are intimately linked: emotionality and reproduction. When things get too complex you conversationally reduce humans to emotional animals and end of.
  - brainchild-adam 4y ago
    I am sorry, but your comment is so terse that I find it quite difficult to really understand. I am very interested in learning and growing, though, so maybe you can help me understand what you were trying to say. This is what I got and my associated comments and questions: > You are dismissing a level you are apparently incurious about — that of why certain seemingly irrational responses happen. You seem to be saying: There's something (a) you think I'm incurious about (b) that also is relevant to this discussion. My thoughts: What exactly is this "level" you are referring to? I do have thoughts on "why certain seemingly irrational responses happen", but I'd first be curious to know what you are referring to. > Using “highly subjective” for something that is much better understood than you are implying is only an indicator of where you’ve chosen to draw your own boundary in pursuit of a constrained cognitive ability. You seem to be saying: There is "something" (a) that I qualified as "highly subjective" in my comment ("What raises strong emotions in people"), and (b) that me qualifying it as such is an indicator of a "boundary" (c) which I have drawn (d) in order to "constrain" my "cognitive ability". My thoughts: I am not sure where your argument against my statement is. How is "What raises strong emotions in people" "much better understood" "than you are implying"? What am I implying in your opinion? > It’s also an indicator of this limit that the two things you’re inaccurately taking as given are intimately linked: emotionality and reproduction. When things get too complex you conversationally reduce humans to emotional animals and end of You seem to be saying: (a) I am limited in my cognitive ability, (b) as evidenced by my inability to realize how emotionality and reproduction are linked, (c) the two of which I also "inaccurately tak[e] as given". I also (d) flee from complexity by referring to the fact that we are animals. My thoughts: How am I taking emotionality and reproduction as given, and how so inaccurately? Where do I dispute a link between the two? What are we in your opinion if not animals? Also, I read an undertone of both "you are stupid" and "you are evil" in your comment. Was that intentional or am I misunderstanding you here?

rayiner 4y ago

> "... Live and let live" which seems to me the most logical/reasonable way to go about it. Only if you assume we're not a society, and that there's no social benefits to enforcing socially desirable behaviors and suppress socially undesirable ones.

weard_beard 4y ago
You assume that there is and of a right aught to be enforcement. Others view that social evolution as up to god. We all cooperate and the least rigid will adopt the best and we’ll all copy one another.
- ricardobeat 4y ago
  We have 3000+ years of very detailed data on how well that works, and all the “cooperation” that can be achieved…
  - weard_beard 4y ago
    Prisoners dilema. We have 3 billion more to get it right.
Thursday24 4y ago
Remove the law, and all that remains is a jungle, where the strong domineer the weak.
- bitwize 4y ago
  So! Now you would give the Devil the benefit of law?
  - jfk13 4y ago
    For my own safety's sake.
gavinray 4y ago
"Live and let live" is based on the hope that everyone adopts that philosophy. Obviously with humans this can never be the case, until we modify our own brains/neurochemistry. IMO, adhere to it so long as the "Non-aggression Principle" holds, once that's breached, do whatever it is you have to do. "Leave me alone and I leave you alone. Poke me with a stick, and..."
- rayiner 4y ago
  Partly, yes, but it also assumes that "leaving each other alone" results in societally beneficial outcomes. That's not necessarily true. For example, in many Asian countries it's common to call out family and friends on their weight. It's not a "live and let live" approach, but it might explain why Asians tend to be skinny. (I'm reminded of the line from "Everything, Everywhere All at Once," where the mom goes "Wait. You are getting fat. And you never call me even though we have a family plan. And it's free. You only visit when you need something. And you got a tattoo and I don't care if it's supposed to represent our family. You know I hate tattoos.")
  - gavinray 4y ago
    Fair point and great anecdote. Though when I think "interference of my 'let-live'" my mind jumps to things a decent bit worse than family who make some well-meaning remarks that sting. I don't want to turn this into a big political/philosophical thing, but it feels like the line is between suggestions or commentary and forcible policing.
ghufran_syed 4y ago
“live and let live” has traditionally described the more tolerant end of the spectrum of possible “social enforcement”, not the absence of such enforcement - the problem is that the group that wants religious rights for society doesn’t want marriage rights for others in society, and the group that wants abortion rights in society doesn’t want gun rights for others in society. And so on. So the question is whether to have a society where we generally allow people to do things we don’t like, as the price of being allowed to do the things we do like, or a society that prevents us doing what we want as the price of preventing others doing things we don’t like. Or, you know, each side trying to get freedom for the things they care about but trying to ban the things they dislike? There is an obvious analogy with religion and religious freedom that I think the US constitution and bill of rights handled very effectively (compared to most other countries) at the “live and let live” end of the spectrum, maybe as a society we might want to see if the same principles might work more broadly?
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  That's a false equivalence. "Pro-life" advocates use a topic that some people find emotive purely for political ends. Gun control advocates object tto avoidable gun massacres in schools, malls, and other public places. They're not remotely comparable. The obvious difference is that if a woman has an abortion it's fundamentally a private matter. The outcome affects a single person. Or two people at most. The outcome is not a line of ambulances and coffins and a traumatised community of teachers, parents, and neighbours. Of course they're framed as if they're equivalent freedoms, because in the US "freedom" is a master-frame that can be used to justify almost anything. And that's the real problem. One group consistently uses deceptive single-issue appeals to emotion to gain and hold political power. If there are no real issues to appeal to, they'll quite happily invent some. They fundamentally don't care what the issue is as long as it's politically useful. The other group actually cares about outcomes - not just in a negative sense of wanting certain things not to happen, but in the positive sense of expanding political access to everyone in the community for the benefit of the entire community. What's missing - in the US particularly - is a political system which makes this fundamental distinction clear and explicit. Democracies have few defences against deceptive framing used for political grift. And that's not a good way to build a better future.
marmetio 4y ago
There's a line where you should intervene when others are not letting others live and let live. That's the overall human societal obligation that everyone has to each other. Then there's another line where you build the type of society you want, but only within your own circle of culture or geography or whatever. Live and let live requires assuring the first part, while also not imposing your own version of the second part on people who are not within your circle. The expression has always had nuance. Until now, I had never heard such a simplistic interpretation.
- rayiner 4y ago
  > There's a line where you should intervene when others are not letting others live and let live. But why should that be the line? Why shouldn't we police each other's behavior to ensure everyone is making better decisions that serve larger societal ends while preserving social peace?
  - marmetio 4y ago
    Maybe I wasn't clear, but that's the second line I described in the second paragraph that I wrote. You can build whatever society you want. But there are also different societies. Some by choice, some not. People can be part of multiple societies at the same time. The trick is to manage the interfaces between societies without imposing yourself on a society you don't belong to. Live and let live.
  - ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
    Because authoritarianism is bad.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    The Counterpoint is that individuals should serve their own ends as long as it preserves social peace. Many object to the idea that Society should extract as much utility value from individuals as possible up until they're breaking point is reached. Furthermore, the breaking point for social peace can be modified and delayed by harsh repression and subjugation, so I don't think it is a suitable limit on suppressing the desires of individuals
generalizations 4y ago
> no social benefits to enforcing socially desirable behaviors and suppress socially undesirable ones What universally-agreed-upon moral standard do you think you can base that determination on?

tstrimple 4y ago

> Live and let live This isn't possible when one major political party refuses to allow that to happen. Many conservatives claim to just want to be left alone and then turn around and try to legislate who can marry who, how people live their lives, who is "worthy" of being part of our country, what books are available in libraries. You can't live and let live when you're constantly being attacked for intrinsic traits and being disenfranchised.

gavinray 4y ago
> Many conservatives claim to just want to be left alone and then turn around and try to legislate who can marry who, how people live their lives, who is "worthy" of being part of our country, what books are available in libraries. That's not very let-live at all, is it? I don't like to get into politics, but in my very unread and not-up-to-date opinion (I didn't even know some kind of election was happening recently, I care that little) neither end of the political spectrum is a good place to sit. Sitting on an end means you have an agenda and a strong set of ideals. I have my own morals/ethics, but they sort of start and end at the boundaries of my own being. As long as you have people who think that other people ought to behave/think more like them, you'll have conflict. I hold out hope for biohacking advanced enough that we mod ourselves out of this in a few hundred years.

brainchild-adam 4y ago

Thank you for sharing. I might be reading this wrong, but it seems to me from your description that your grandfather simply did not get "ticked off" by the same things as your grandmother. Those topics do not seem to have generated strong emotions in him. But they seem to have done so in your grandmother. What raises strong emotions in people seems to be highly subjective. To what extent you are able to have those stronger emotional responses while at the same time not succumbing to the impulses that go along with them, is what I would argue determines your ability to tolerate the stimuli that generate these emotional responses. Since these responses are physiological, rooted in our survival instincts, they greatly affect our ability to be rational, open, and contextualize. Instead, they move us into increasing levels of black-and-white thinking and fight or flight, first mentally, then physically. Whenever I explore topics that stir up strong (negative) emotions in myself, I find that they are usually tied to this, if I can get deep enough in my exploration. After all, we're just animals trying to survive and procreate, even though we have become very elaborate and ornamental in our pursuit of these goals.

svnt 4y ago
You are dismissing a level you are apparently incurious about — that of why certain seemingly irrational responses happen. Using “highly subjective” for something that is much better understood than you are implying is only an indicator of where you’ve chosen to draw your own boundary in pursuit of a constrained cognitive ability. It’s also an indicator of this limit that the two things you’re inaccurately taking as given are intimately linked: emotionality and reproduction. When things get too complex you conversationally reduce humans to emotional animals and end of.
- brainchild-adam 4y ago
  I am sorry, but your comment is so terse that I find it quite difficult to really understand. I am very interested in learning and growing, though, so maybe you can help me understand what you were trying to say. This is what I got and my associated comments and questions: > You are dismissing a level you are apparently incurious about — that of why certain seemingly irrational responses happen. You seem to be saying: There's something (a) you think I'm incurious about (b) that also is relevant to this discussion. My thoughts: What exactly is this "level" you are referring to? I do have thoughts on "why certain seemingly irrational responses happen", but I'd first be curious to know what you are referring to. > Using “highly subjective” for something that is much better understood than you are implying is only an indicator of where you’ve chosen to draw your own boundary in pursuit of a constrained cognitive ability. You seem to be saying: There is "something" (a) that I qualified as "highly subjective" in my comment ("What raises strong emotions in people"), and (b) that me qualifying it as such is an indicator of a "boundary" (c) which I have drawn (d) in order to "constrain" my "cognitive ability". My thoughts: I am not sure where your argument against my statement is. How is "What raises strong emotions in people" "much better understood" "than you are implying"? What am I implying in your opinion? > It’s also an indicator of this limit that the two things you’re inaccurately taking as given are intimately linked: emotionality and reproduction. When things get too complex you conversationally reduce humans to emotional animals and end of You seem to be saying: (a) I am limited in my cognitive ability, (b) as evidenced by my inability to realize how emotionality and reproduction are linked, (c) the two of which I also "inaccurately tak[e] as given". I also (d) flee from complexity by referring to the fact that we are animals. My thoughts: How am I taking emotionality and reproduction as given, and how so inaccurately? Where do I dispute a link between the two? What are we in your opinion if not animals? Also, I read an undertone of both "you are stupid" and "you are evil" in your comment. Was that intentional or am I misunderstanding you here?