18 ms·
I can tolerate anything except the outgroup (2014)
- golemotron 3y agoThis essay is timeless.
- shwaj 3y agoWithout 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.
- robertlagrant 3y agoSame with Bill Maher.
- flangola7 3y agoMaher is just a contrarian kook, always has been. His criticism of Bush was convenient and not the product of a serious moral framework.
- lanfeust6 3y agoHe's been very consistent in his views and by all the counts remains a quasi left-libertarian.
- networkchad 3y agoAgreed. However I do give Maher a lot of credit for not being afraid to call out his tribe’s occasional ridiculous hypocrisy. Maybe one only feels that confident as they age and have attained wealth. When you have more to lose (your livelihood) you are going to be more careful with your words and objections. That said I’ve watched Maher for 15 years and look forward to his show coming back after the strike. I say this as someone who probably disagrees with more than half of his hot-takes. I saw his stand up at DPAC a few months ago and loved it. He is a funny guy and very entertaining.
- nonethewiser 3y agoI 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.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoA 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.
- shwaj 3y agoMaybe 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 3y agoThen make the statement. You're implying it and then expecting us to do the work for you.
- concordDance 3y ago> 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 3y agoThe 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.
- dralley 3y agoAhem? https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fmv8dyou5uemb1.png https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%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.
- nomel 3y ago> spreading conspiracy theories Do you have some specific examples? I see clickbait thumbnails, but the contents are, generally, well cited.
- concordDance 3y agoOne 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.
- chownie 3y agoPerhaps 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?
- RealityVoid 3y agoI 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.
- nonethewiser 3y agoTimeless, 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 3y agoI 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.
- Georgelemental 3y agoThere might be a geographical divide. I have heard that animosity to OBL was much stronger on the East Coast (near NYC) versus West Coast.
- jltsiren 3y agoThat sounds weird to me as a European. The main reaction to Osama's death I remember was disappointment. Disappointment in the weakness of the US. Disappointment that they didn't even pretend to be on the right side of history. Disappointment that they just killed Osama rather than capturing him and having him face justice, like Israel did for Eichmann. Disappointment that Obama acted like Putin, while Bush at least managed to capture Saddam.
- refurb 3y agoThe fact you think Osama could have been captured is bizarre. The dude slept with an AK-47 next to his bed. He wasn’t going to be captured alive.
- jltsiren 3y agoI find your idea that capture was impossible bizarre. It would certainly have been difficult, and it could also have been unlikely to succeed. But the fact that capture was not even attempted turned the operation into a show of weakness. Many governments assassinate undesirable people around the world. It doesn't take that much effort. Capturing them alive and bringing them home is much more effective as a show of strength. And having them face a public trial can be an effective way of demonstrating that your actions were justified.
- guyzero 3y agoYes because the universe will end before most people finish reading it. The only thing Scott Alexander seems to not tolerate is an editor.
- neaden 3y ago"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.
- adrusi 3y agoI'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 3y agoAre 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 3y agoI 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.
- deleted 3y ago
- j7ake 3y agoA 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).
- unethical_ban 3y agoI 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.
- slothtrop 3y ago> mainstream conservative politicians This is more about the voters. But actually neither side of the aisle is completely enamored with immigration.
- nonethewiser 3y ago> 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 3y agoIt 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.
- howinteresting 3y ago[flagged]
- nonethewiser 3y ago> 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.
- howinteresting 3y ago[flagged]
- mholm 3y agoThe 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.
- emodendroket 3y agoI 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 3y agoIf 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.
- slothtrop 3y agoA classic.
- bawolff 3y agoFascinating 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 3y agoI have no idea how "intolerance" is remotely coming to overlap "white" or "American" except in the delusions of some fringe lunatics who believe both that Confederate statues must remain up (to protect heritage) and also history about black people must not be taught.
- dustincoates 3y agoThere's an entire section in TFA before the quote that explains why it's relevant (it's not what you are assuming here).
- zogrodea 3y agoWould you mind explaining what TFA means, as I've seen that acronym quite a bit here? "The f-g article"?
- jfengel 3y agoPrecisely. 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.
- SamBam 3y ago> 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.
- pauldenton 3y ago[flagged]
- femiagbabiaka 3y agoI'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 3y agoThe 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-cities/39/ https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/murder-map-deadliest-u-s-ci... It is ranked right in between Chattanooga and Buffalo.
- pauldenton 3y agoI 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.
- naveen99 3y agoMy 5 year old learned to tolerate onions in his food. Plenty of low level intolerance can be squashed with simple guided exposure.
- photochemsyn 3y agoA 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?
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoThis 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.
- fallingknife 3y agoYou 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?
- erulabs 3y agoI 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.
- louzell 3y ago> 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 3y agowhy 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 3y agoNoted and good call, I'll take that out of the art.
- motohagiography 3y agoSo like a trap?
- louzell 3y agoNope, not trying to trap anyone into a conversation they don't want to have. The purpose of the site is to match you with someone politically different. All marketing copy is forthright
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago> light and dark matter worlds What does this phrase mean in this context? I may be misreading, but usually "light" and "dark" are euphemisms for "good" and "evil".
- brindlejim 3y ago[flagged]
- lsaferite 3y agoe/acc? EA?
- reducesuffering 3y agoEA 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/1683462000360280065/photo/1 https://twitter.com/AISafetyMemes/status/1683462000360280065...
- lsaferite 3y agoThanks 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.
- stale2002 3y agoWell, the part you are missing is the humor and hyperbole. e/accs are in favor of technological progress because it has historically done well and they don't believe the science fiction nonsense of skynet killing everyone overnight. You've fallen for the zoomer irony and Twitter memes if you actually think that people are trying to end the world.
- brindlejim 3y agoYes. Marc Andreessen does not subscribe to Nick Land's ideology but calls himself e/acc. It is a label adopted by people who do not take Eliezer's death cult seriously in the substance of its claims, but only in its ability to slow progress.
- zzzeek 3y agoI 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). Social justice really broke all your brains, didn't it. The amount of dense hyperlogical-yet-completely-uninformed handwringing over people simply trying to note and correct for harm against the less powerful. how dare they.
- Ensorceled 3y ago> 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 3y ago[deleted]
- siofgnionio 3y agoNever 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 3y agoI get that you hate the guy, but c'mon.
- consilient 3y agoThe LSD essay went way, way over the heads of half of his comment section.
- Karrot_Kream 3y agoThe 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 3y ago> 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.
- dang 3y agoRelated: I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25725150 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 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 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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9948575 - July 2015 (9 comments)
- kypro 3y agoThis 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.
- Aloha 3y agoI'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.
- svilen_dobrev 3y agocheck 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/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ add-on: and "when time goes to the sea" reminded me of Peace on Earth of Stanislaw Lem, about unchecked technological evolution and where it leads to..
- bjourne 3y agoAs a leftie my opinion is that tolerance is a means to an end and not itself an end. The Allies did not tolerate Julius Streicher's virulent and anti-Semitic Der Stürmer and had him hanged in Nüremberg. Intolerance against assholes is often virtuous.
- cyanydeez 3y agoIt seems the "intolerant left" is a argument aimed at children to try and persuade underinformed children that it's ok to be intolerant.
- gustavus 3y agoI've got to ask then, what is the end tolerance is towards?
- ThrowawayR2 3y agoThe irony of using intolerance of anti-Semitism as a defense of the virtues of intolerance while so many here are trashing the sincerely held religious beliefs of the conservatives[1] should not be lost on us. If "intolerance against assholes is often virtuous", perhaps it the intolerant left as well as the intolerant right that the rest of us should not be tolerating, arf arf. [1] beliefs I do not subscribe to, by the way
- bjourne 3y agoA man takes a dump in the communal pool and is asked to leave. The man comes back the next day and shits again. Story repeats until the man is banned. The man cries about intolerance and censorship. The man gets backed up by internet's peanut gallery. Because oh gosh those darn liberal pool operators are hypocrites that don't even tolerate natural bodily functions!
- bitwize 3y ago[flagged]
- ickelbawd 3y agoI didn’t finish reading the whole thing yet—need dinner first. But maybe the reason they never interact with gun loving, immigrant-hating, uneducated yayhoos is because they’re looking at a statistical amalgamation of individual beliefs. Most republicans won’t fit that mold because they’re a mass of individuals with different beliefs and these lumps of commonality are weak, but natural modalities of a social species. In other words they hate a caricature—an enemy that only really exists in statistics but not in the real world.
- hoosieree 3y agoI only saw one mention of HN's stereotypical in-group (the gray tribe) in this already massive thread, so I suspect the author's conclusion (that it's painful to be honestly critical of your own in-group) is spot-on. Here's an attempt at criticism of the gray tribe. Writing it felt a little uncomfortable, maybe I have one foot in the gray tribe and the other foot somewhere else. If this post doesn't get downvoted to 5% opacity then I wasn't honest enough: 1. We rail about over-complicated systems yet we inevitably make them more complex. 2. We claim to love precision but one of our most important values is "progress". 3. We're just as nepotistic as everyone else but we claim to be a meritocracy. 4. We think we're good problem solvers but we just might be better at making them. 5. We think growth is sustainable.
- mistermann 3y agoOr in long form: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
- mvncleaninst 3y agoHere's how to tell the difference between blue and gray: "latinx", "POC", "intersectionality", "toxic masculinity", "allyship", "lived experience" Or one of those hideous "we believe in..." yard signs you see in NIMBY areas, that's another dead giveaway
- kazinator 3y ago> So when members of the Blue Tribe decide to dedicate their entire life to yelling about how terrible the Red Tribe is, they make sure that instead of saying “the Red Tribe”, they say “America”, or “white people”, or “straight white men”. Right there, a triple sommersault on water skis, using a shark's back as a ramp. While some liberals who preach tolerance and inclusivity may be closet racist and hate that about themselves, they are not literally performing the above substitution. E.g. if a thought like following crosses their mind, they won't fill "white people" into the blank: "I won't walk through an inner-city neighborhood because of all the scary ___________ who live there."