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Comment by st3v3r | Hacker News Reader

One could say that, by letting a known asshole speak, they are not showing a strong intolerance of the practice of assholery.

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not showing a strong intolerance

So everyone needs to show the proper intolerance towards the prescribed things? I'm glad you are coming out and saying that you are engaging in what you think is righteous intolerance.

However, I think taking such a stance misses the point.

Well, pretty much, yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Well, if he can't tolerate you either, then you'll both be fully tolerant!

This is exactly why tolerance as called for in this thread is not a virtue.

The only people I see being tolerant in any of these threads are the ones saying "I find his views disgusting but I think he should speak".

Doing unto others how they would have done to you, had your side not won -- how is that a virtue? That's like taking prisoners and violating the Geneva Convention, because they would have behaved that way to you. Unfortunately, this is the kind of nation the United States has become. (Really, nations, plural, because we've forgotten how to be a loyal opposition and hang together.)

Everyone thinks their side is just. The lesson of history is that one can recognize the truly just and enlightened through their magnanimity. Those who did wrong should be punished. Sure, but going around bullying those who thought wrong? There's something really shortsighted and twisted about that. How isn't that simply McCarthyism through legal socially-enforced means?

>Doing unto others how they would have done to you, had your side not won

This is such an elegant and concise summary.

Otherwise known as an eye for an eye, making the whole world blind.

Why should I be tolerant of people who clearly are not tolerant of others? I mean, we're not talking about some benign disagreement, like whether you like PHP or Ruby. We're talking about someone who has flat out said that slavery should return, and certain classes of people are not deserving of basic human dignity.

I'm sorry, but I see nothing wrong with not being tolerant of those views. Tolerating them sends the message that they are acceptable views that have merit.

In a similar way, letting a known something person speak means they're not intolerant of something. I mean, yeah, you could make that argument, but it sure doesn't seem substantial or useful. That's the point of Xyism at the end: it doesn't have much to do with functional programming , and functional programming is what the conference is explicitly about.

And there is an explicit threat against assholery: perform it and you'll be excluded. Don't and you'll have the same protection any other person has.

It is implicitly not about a very large range of things, namely mostly stuff that isn't functional programming.

"And there is an explicit threat against assholery: perform it and you'll be excluded"

Yet, this guy has performed it. And he's not being excluded.

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