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Comment by sinxoveretothex | Hacker News Reader

Hmm, I thought thinking about my initial question would be enough to see my point from your perspective. Maybe it is.

You were, in your now flagged comment, arguing for stifling (or censoring if you prefer) people who, you believe, hold that kind of opinion.

The point I am making is that morality is only part of it. In practice, it doesn't matter that you're right if you're dead. You say that

> tolerating promotion of oppression doesn't make it go away

I'll answer that arguing with words without understanding the process that allows for people to agree to "fight" with words rather than weapons is even less likely to make bad ideas go away.

This won't convince you, I know, the tone of your replies shows an adversarial reading of my comments. But maybe one day you'll have a more skeptical approach to your own beliefs.

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My now-flagged comment said absolutely nothing about censorship or stifling. It said bad actions shouldn't be tolerated. Again, what is bad isn't up for vote. It can be deduced logically -- see my other posts. Otherwise, why do people not follow the "extremes" in their religious texts?

You seem to hold a revisionist historical view that the civil rights movement was entirely unproductive, even though it was unpopular at the start (again, morality doesn't depend on the majority). Loudly pointing out bad actions works.

The funny thing about that now-flagged comment is that it was up to +5 points before it dropped fast. There must be an unwritten rule against calling out superstitions.

> It said bad actions shouldn't be tolerated.

What do you mean by not tolerating if not stifling? If you look at the Mizzou and Yale things, stifling is exactly the right word: "we're just walking forward", "we can't hear you" and others.

> You seem to hold a revisionist historical view that the civil rights movement was entirely unproductive, even though it was unpopular at the start (again, morality doesn't depend on the majority).

My argument isn't that it didn't work, but that you fail to understand why it worked.

It worked because the arguments were convincing, not inherently because people pointed to something and said "this is stupid".

It has nothing to do with being loud (in the literal sense that I understand you to mean it).

Perhaps a better way to say what I'm trying to is: I think that the reason you arrive at the "right" conclusion is coincidental. The approach is flawed and it does and will lead to nonsense sometimes.

Another way to show what I mean is by counter-example: if someone advocated for, say, racial tolerance because they argued that we can't know who's a Christian based on race, I don't care if we agree on the conclusion, the process is a big problem.

Once again, you're pretending I said things that I didn't actually say. I said that certain bad actions should not be tolerated. Where you get stifling from this, I don't know. In particular, your first post claimed that we shouldn't be intolerant of people implementing (not merely talking about) Biblical punishments on gays, which is what I claimed that our society rightfully would very harshly not tolerate, just as our society wouldn't tolerate government-sanctioned mass lynchings of blacks

Yes you did say actions in that last post. I'm fairly certain your flagged post argued for "coming down hard" on people advocating for certain things rather than doing things. I'm fairly sure, given the tone, that I would still disagree with whatever you mean by "coming down hard"/"not tolerating", but this is getting speculative so I think this is a moot point.

> Biblical punishments on gays

Where does that come from? Was that what Eich wanted?

As far as I know, there was no advocacy for violence (something we do punish but in a due process, legal manner).

Are you arguing that you see no difference between 'death to the sinners' and whatever notion of 'sanctity of marriage' Eich might have espoused?

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