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Saying that most people don't agree with extreme positions is a bit of a tautology, since positions are defined as "extreme" if few people agree with them. There is therefore nothing universal or fundamentally meaningful about this label, and the same position (e.g. support of interracial marriage) may be considered a perfectly normal or a radically extremist position depending on the time and place.

Eh, in some instances you can define extremeness relative to alternatives, not number of believers. Execution as a punishment is more extreme than a fine regardless of how many people favor execution over fines. I would argue that generally a position being extreme results in fewer believers, not that fewer believers results in a position being extreme.

> Execution as a punishment is more extreme than a fine regardless of how many people favor execution over fines.

Not if you are talking about fining or destroying sentient robots. The sentient robot probably has a pretty good back-up system of his mind, so he can just respawn in a different body, his bank account, though, is singular and coupled to the identity that its brain can prove to be. So executing such a robot is not very extreme, it is at most an inconvenience. Taking his money though, is something that has a more lasting impact. At least this is what I made up.

The point I am making is that what is 'extreme' is dependent on context and there is no such thing as intrinsic extremeness.

Reminds me of a concept called Overton window [0]. Just want to mention this describes how people behave, as in a human weakness. Not how people should behave to form optimal opinions / societies.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Agreed. This is how we use the term in political science anyway. Even if an "extreme" opinion becomes majoritary, it remains just as extreme on a supposed "spectrum" of possibles. "More" than "extreme" usually takes you off-spectrum, e.g. anarchy (which is often considered beyond extreme right, at least in Europe) or "hive mind" would fit beyond extreme left ideas of collectivism (a sci-fi concept of unified minds and thinking, like colonies of ants but next level. lol.) Both are off the political spectrum though, can't describe them using the same elements.

Reality is obviously much more "blurry". Most political experts would argue (rightfully so, imho) that most "extreme" views are in fact not "left" or "right" of moderate ones; they sit in a different "plane" so to speak, a third space distinct from left/right (you'd indeed find a lot of right-ish and left-ish ideas mixed in with most "extreme" ideologies; you also find lots of moderate and extreme views in otherwise 'normal' (statistically) parties).

Left/right itself, or moderate/extreme, are also pretty poor and unsubstantial ways to define any idea or anyone, it's a poor man's shortcut to summarize a context, not ideas themselves. Most people today would sit far left of anyone in past history, for instance, while being much more individualistic at the same time.

Reality is complex. The media don't like complex (is media plural? shall I call it something else in pronoun?). Hence, theatric storytelling of the left versus the right, and/or moderates vs. extremes, iced with a general misunderstanding of statistics. I will now refrain from making any conclusion.

> e.g. anarchy (which is often considered beyond extreme right, at least in Europe)

Anarchists are leftists, Ancaps are on the right.

Execution is a good example — there are far more extreme punishments: torture in various forms, punishment of relatives, etc.

A fine is an extreme punishment for crimes like rape, while execution is not. (See the reaction to the Brock Turner sentencing.)

> Eh, in some instances you can define extremeness relative to alternatives, not number of believers.

Relative extremeness, sure, but that makes something more or less extreme, not “extreme” without a comparative.

> Execution as a punishment is more extreme than a fine regardless of how many people favor execution over fines.

But execution for most serious crimes was for a very long time a standard position, not an extreme one, while not executing people was an extreme position (though it's now pretty standard in most of the world, with broad—or indeed any—use of execution being an extreme position.)

> I would argue that generally a position being extreme results in fewer believers, not that fewer believers results in a position being extreme.

If you would argue that, go ahead, but you've provided neither evidence nor much argumentation, just conflation of absolute and relative uses of “extreme”, and your example of capital punishment seems to disprove your thesis.

The issue is the unnaturally fast push towards the extreme left ideas being presented as average/desirable. Most people are caught unprepared, and a subset of people (which is overrepresented in IT) also has an issue with authority and being forced to act a specific way, regardless of the validity of the way.

> I'd like to think the majority of people just want to live and be kind to each other

What you're getting to is the Golden rule in almost all human civilizations: treat others as you would like to be treated. The problem is when this rule broke down because the majority's "would like to be treated" became a hate crime to a small, but vociferous, radical contingent of the population.

> the problem is when this rule broke down

When did this rule break down, in your opinion? When has a society ever fully agreed amongst themselves? There’s certainly not a moment in American history that qualifies, and I doubt you’d find much simultaneous global peace in world history too. It’s never really existed.

There’s actually a fairly compelling argument against the golden rule, often referred to as the platinum rule[0].

The problem with the golden rule is that it assumes everyone wants to be treated the same way, because doesn’t everyone else want to be treated the same way I do? Not necessarily.

0: https://www.inc.com/peter-economy/how-the-platinum-rule-trum...

I'll be honest, I don't find the Platinum Rule at all a compelling argument against the Golden Rule. There are many cases of people in power claiming that their behavior is what the other person "really" wants (such as women "really" want to be treated poorly, or the slaves really prefer subservience as it's their destined station in life). And who am I to be able to speak about what someone else wants? It's a full time job enough to figure out what I claim I want, or want in any given moment vs what I truly desire underneath the socially accepted artifice of what I "should" want or want long term. Trying to presume what others want is pointless, IMHO. But I can do a little presumption and say that for the most part, people are pretty similar, and in those cases where I get it wrong, a mea culpa goes a long way to smooth out the differences. Of course, as much as possible, I will try to customize based on what I think the other party may want, but that is fundamentally based upon my following the Golden Rule, and the Platinum Rule is just a refinement on that, not really a fundamental principle I can base my actions upon.

Of course, much of this may be a distinction without a difference in actual application :)

> such as women "really" want to be treated poorly

This depends how you define “poorly”. Some progressives would say all sex work is harmful to women. Some sex workers who are women would ask how you dare try to rob them of their agency.

It’s not that simple.

> or the slaves really prefer subservience as it's their destined station in life

Again, this depends on how you define “slavery”. To some, all factory workers are slaves in an evil Capitalist machine, subservient to the guy with the capital; all the guy did was start the company, right? But to the factory worker, he might be very happy with the opportunity to work and provide for his family, and for a multitude of reasons might prefer this to whatever else a typical Socialist might believe all people should want to do with their time.

It’s not that simple.

> It’s not that simple.

I agree, which is why I think it's pointless to try to conjecture on what other people want, and jump straight to how I would want to be treated. And of course, even that is tricky, but it's by far a more reliable set of information than guessing the myriad of preferences any given person may have at any given moment. Again, there's still the possibility of getting it wrong, but if I don't know myself as well as anyone possibly could, how can I think that guessing at what others want is going to somehow be more reliable?

So yes, it's not that simple, but the Golden rule is about as simple as you can reliably go on. Anything else seems to me to be bordering on the presumption of omniscience.

You could surely express the golden rule as “A won’t tell B what to identify as and B won’t tell A what words they can and can’t use”. But this requires both A and B to participate.

There is another group C, overlapping with B, people scrutinising your every word waiting for something, anything they can use, out of context, to get you fired. That’s problematic.

"A won't tell B what to identify as and B won't tell A what words they can and can't use".

So:

- Joe won't tell Dani that she can't identify as a she

- Dani won't tell Joe that he should call her "he", not "she"

Do you think these two are really fundamentally equivalent?

If Dani starts calling Joe "she" over Joe's objections, that's totally okay in this schema, right? Deliberately misgendering someone is never harassment?

> If people start talking about the hard issues, but do so respectfully and by making arguments that are sound, we should have clear, rational and reasonable debate. A decision might be made we don't agree with, but as long as the discussion happens, everyone can learn from it and we can agree to disagree and move on.

Ultimately what happens is these issues don't get talked about.

People in the center would rather just have an easy life and not deal with the "cancelling", doxxing, or career consequences that come with having a strong opinion, so don't engage.

That means that the extreme voices on either side end up dominating the conversation.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-comi...

Three other takeaways from Coddling:

1) Context and intent matter

2) It's better not to assume the worst (of the other person's intent)

3) Just because something is uncomfortable or offensive does not categorically make it painful.

--

For those who can't be bothered with the whole book the authors did an article for The Atlantic that was so well received they did the book.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod...

This all sounds perfectly reasonable. I am guessing that people lost their shit at these "bigots".

Did that happen, or was this accepted as reasonable debate points?

> -542 before it was locked. That's incredible.

You're right, I just want to point out for those that aren't aware, this is on stack exchange's meta site. The rules for voting are different, downvotes are more likely than on stack overflow.

> the majority of people just want to live and be kind to each other

Once you realize that people's politics reflect their values and the problems they see in their world (and which side they've bought into), it becomes a lot harder to stigmatize the other side...or even take a side.

Conversely when both left and right are pushed towards extremes (compare this story to Trump), it becomes hard not to stigmatise both.

> politics is fun to talk about but when that one guy and/or girl goes off in the office, everyone wants to change to topic or go back to their desks and code.

I don't think that experience is universal.

we should have clear, rational and reasonable debate

I'm starting to wonder if part of the problem is the way debating is taught in school. Certainly when I was in school debate was taught essentially as a sport, a thing that you could win or lose and with tactics and strategies that you could use to help you defeat your opponent. The point under debate was basically irrelevant, and should be able to 'win' no matter which side you where debating, truth be damned. If you conceded ground to your opponent or admitted that you where wrong about something you'd said, you lost.

Having a clear, rational and reasonable debate was never something that was taught or encouraged.

> People are really really afraid to talk about this particular topic

I don't understand how you can say that when we have this huge HN thread (and it's interesting to see who is being downvoted here) and the huge SE threads spread out across the sites.

Getting banned from HN or some other website is way different than getting fired. I'd talk about this sort of stuff here all day long and shut the fuck up at work about anything political.