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Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

> you no longer have to be tolerated by anyone adhering to it.

The point of tolerance is to tolerate.

Just because you have managed to find an intolerant viewpoint that survives our current memetic filter, does not change the reality that you're the one preaching intolerance, right here.

Hate movements throughout history have been supported by logical-sounding arguments for marginalizing some outgroup. I don't think that stoking rage against backwards political ideas is virulent enough to end in killing fields per se, but even the current increased polarization is not good.

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> The point of tolerance is to tolerate.

I... don't think I agree? I would count un-inhibited self-expression if I were looking for a success metric of tolerance, not tolerance itself. (note: you'd need some other metrics lest THAT go off the rails, to be clear)

The idea that you have to tolerate the intelorant makes the original concept self-defeating; if you instead treat tolerance as a treaty, it's self-reinforcing.

You can interpret "tolerance" differently. I will continue to practice the version where I tolerate you until you are intolerant, at which point we'll have a conversation, and at which point I am morally allowed to no longer tolerate you.

This is rescinding a "right", not requiring action.

> Hate movements throughout history have been supported by logical-sounding arguments for dehumanizing some outgroup

This is a good point and I'll watch out for it. Rescinding tolerance does not have to equate with dehumanization... but yeah, I can see how that often leads there. Seems like an easy way to avoid it is, I could just stop tolerating bigotry, but still extend the compassion and tolerance that I am able to to bigots. Judge behavior rather than people. Which is... well, it's just good practice anyway.

>at which point we'll have a conversation, and at which point I am morally allowed to no longer tolerate you.

Not op, but curious what actions or behavior you think becomes fair game.

This is the best explanation I've seen: https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1...

In answering your question, it's more about reciprocation: if you make it comfortable for people to be who they are, we'll make it comfortable for you to be who you are; or the inverse. Which does have a strong element of "who did it first", but that's resolvable by risking the other person defecting while you cooperate and if they do that, well, doesn't really matter who did it first because it's clear who wasn't up for trying.

Picking out specific actions... I honestly don't know. We had a guy in one my communities get kicked out for doing this thing where he'd hear about someone's story about being a victim, and then retell that story in such a way that a) he was now that kind of victim and b) the original person now wasn't.

> The idea that you have to tolerate the intelorant makes the original concept self-defeating; if you instead treat tolerance as a treaty, it's self-reinforcing.

No, it is actually not. It is self defeating.

The problem with giving "exceptions" for why you are now allowed to treat another person, in a horrible manner, is that humans are great at trying to take advantage of those exceptions.

Basically nobody who is doing horrible things to other people, believes that they are in the wrong. If you give people an excuse, then they will trick themselves into believing that their actions are not wrong, then they will gladly accept this excuse.

The only way to put a stop to this, is to just unilaterally reject certain behaviors, and say that you will not engage in it, even if you believe the other person "deserves" it.

Because if you let people decide that it is ok to do certain things, if the other person "deserves" it, well you are going to see that people will just find people who "deserve" it a whole lot of the time.

This is revealing some interesting things to me.

Seems to me the issue is poor self-examination.

If you feel like you're doing something because someone "deserves" it, you're doing it wrong; examine the what led yourself here to find out what it's really about.

"intolerance of intolerance" leads to lynchings, that sort of behavior needs to be stopped at all cost. USA has mostly gotten over lynchings but still has way too much intolerance, you would be much better off if you were a bit more tolerant and less judgmental over there.

> stopped at all cost

Including the cost of, say, being intolerant of intolerance of intolerance?

AFAIK, one of the major reasons to be intolerant of intolerance is to prevent lynchings.

So we should start twitter mobs to stop the twitter mobs that target people currently? Or what do you mean? The only way to stop it is to teach acceptance and temperance. We didn't stop lynchings by attacking them, we stopped it by teaching people the value of tolerance for even the worst of criminals and giving them due process. It is when you refuse to tolerate criminals that lynchings occur.

This is a pretty good point. Tolerance-as-peace-treaty doesn't apply nearly as reasonably between groups as it does within a group; although that makes sense. Do not abide by the peace treaty, conflict arises; and then it's about how you resolve conflicts between groups.

Stopped at all costs means "do not engage in certain behavior, yourself, even if you think you have a good reason for it".

Even if you think the other person deserves it, because of whatever excuse that you can think of, you still shouldn't act horribly, no matter the nice sounding justification that you can trick yourself into believing.

Humans are really good at tricking themselves into believing that their horrible behavior is justified.

In this specific situation, calling someone else intolerant is just an excuse that people will use to justify their horrible behavior to others.

> If you feel like you're doing something because someone "deserves" it, you're doing it wrong;

I was giving a description of how "intolerance of intolerance" works out in practice.

It doesn't matter if you think these people are doing it wrong.

I do not believe that humans can be trusted to be given such an easy to abuse loophole, that gives them carte-blanche moral authority to act terrible to other human beings (because the the target of the abuse is "intolerant", and therefore deserve it).

It is safer to just say "no. You should not treat people poorly, even if you believe that they are intolerant, or deserve it because of some other quality".

I'm reading "Legal System Very Different From Ours". The first one it talks about is ancient imperial China, where (as the author presents it) the Confucian legal tradition was about teaching virtue.

I'm reminded of a description of "conservative" vs "liberal" wherein it's about risk management versus experimentation.

Right now, if I'm faced with a choice between accommodating people who are doing it wrong, or challenging those people to become more, I'm going with the second option. Then again, this might not result in a viable society; or perhaps just a viable large-scale society.

To put it another way: You can view the loophole as the problem, or you can view the attitude that finds loopholes acceptable to use the problem.

> You should not treat people poorly, even if you believe that they are intolerant,

I can treat people well whom I also do not tolerate. It's just that yeah, usually, those acting intolerant are also acting like assholes.

The problem is that you can turn around every generality you have said to be supportive of what I presume you're against. For example, why wouldn't "un-inhibited self-expression" include someone getting a tattoo of a swastika? (preemptively responding to an argument that said tattoo would diminish more self expression than it itself is: this depends on the makeup of society, tautologically).

> I will continue to practice the version where I tolerate you until you are intolerant, at which point we'll have a conversation, and at which point I am morally allowed to no longer tolerate you

Now apply that to my perspective here. I've judged that you're being intolerant. We're having that conversion, yet you're sticking to your intolerant viewpoint. So this means I no longer need to tolerate you, personally?

> if you instead treat tolerance as a treaty, it's self-reinforcing

Sure, but not in a good way. Framing it as a "treaty" implies a forceful ultimatum if it is broken. What you've actually created is a focal point of going after people that don't conform to your definition of tolerance.

> stop tolerating bigotry, but still extend the compassion and tolerance that I am able to to bigots.

This is another way of looking at it, closer to what I'm saying. Talking about "intolerance" in a vacuum doesn't really account for whether the magnitude is growing or diminishing - some tendency of de-escalation is required for things to settle out

The general consensus, at least around these parts, is that bigoted behavior is unacceptable. What's really under debate is when views (or even more tenuously, associations) are brought up by critics and reacted to as if they were actions. That tendency seems more akin to escalating aggression than resolving differences.

First: https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1...

> getting a tattoo of a swastika

You can totally go get it. I won't welcome you back. You are no longer celebrating other people's self-expression, and so lose our celebration of yours.

> So this means I no longer need to tolerate you, personally?

Hmm... Yeah, seems reasonable. Here's a different approach:

It seems clear that most people are able to mostly tell when something intolerant is happening. So, look up the event chain: is this intolerance in response to intolerance, or is it response to something else?

> some tendency of de-escalation is required for things to settle out

Yes! Pretty sure the answer here is "forgiving tit-for-tat".

> are brought up by critics and reacted to as if they were actions

Which is (generally) really unfortunate :( I'd (generally) like to have tolerant discussions on views, but it's rare that people can do that. Where this generality can break is when the view is extreme enough that it undergoes a state change; as a friend puts it, "advocating genocide is not expressing an opinion"; although for me there's a step before that break that is "are you willing and able to discuss this as if you could be wrong."

That link claims to be about tolerance, yet leads with a picture of someone holding a bat menacingly but wearing a uniform that appeals to your political taste.

Sorry, no, that is not tolerance. Rather it is political violence. Political violence may be justifiable, but needs to be argued for on its own merits - not couched as an exception to "tolerance".

> You can totally go get [a swastika tattoo]. I won't welcome you back.

I was examining your adherence to your statement that "un-inhibited self-expression if I were looking for a success metric of tolerance". You are now saying that you will discourage people from expressing themselves in ways you do not agree with. You can't have it both ways.

Apparently that lofty generality was just serving as a dog whistle, to be ignored for those whom you disagree with. Furthermore, you took my hypothetical and responded directly in terms of me, as if I am some "other" that is personally interested in getting a racist tattoo.

> It seems clear that most people are able to mostly tell when something intolerant is happening

Much of what one political team considers "activism" is perceived as intolerance by the other team, so where does that end up? Setting subjective feelings as a standard practically guarantees herd behavior.

> Yes! Pretty sure the answer here is "forgiving tit-for-tat".

And yet you have continued phrasing things in terms of ultimatums, where your judgment of someone's actions is justification to write them off in a larger way. Even if you yourself deescalate in your own personal interactions, what you've written directly supports escalation.

I stand by my original comment. You, right here, are fanning the flames of intolerance.

Okay, different way to explain it:

Person A says "Let's kill all of Group B"

Person B says "I won't tolerate Person A"

Person C says "I won't tolerate Person B"

Person A is being intolerant. They are breaking the terms of the notional peace treaty; the consequence of that is losing the right to be tolerated.

Person B is OK because Person A has lost the right to be tolerated. They are not breaking the notional treaty.

Person B is not OK because Person B has not lost the right to be tolerated. They are breaking the notional treaty.

As for the rest of what you're saying...

Yeah, I can see how that bat picture is off-putting. I don't always notice those kinds of undercurrents. Thanks for pointing it out!

> discourage people from expressing themselves in ways you do not agree with

You can, if your differentiator is along different axis. See the Person A/B/C example above.

> Furthermore

Thanks for expressing that you're picking this up. That's not something I'm putting down, so I'm not sure where that's coming from.

> perceived as intolerance

Yep. I don't yet have a way to address this en masse, although talking to individuals seems to work.

> Setting subjective feelings as a measure

...That seems appropriate? But you're right about the failure mode. I'd then say the issue isn't using this sensor we've all got, but in directly reacting to the results of that sensor. If your box is showing high CPU usage, and all you do is up the CPU...

> I stand by my original comment.

You do you, and I value that you're expressing what you're picking up. It's not what I'm putting down.

A more relevant example:

Person A: B raped a girl, so B doesn't tolerate women!

Person B: I did not!

Person C: I don't tolerate person B.

Person B's Friends: I don't tolerate person C since they broke the tolerance contract, B hasn't done anything.

Person C's friends: I don't tolerate B's friends since they broke the tolerance contract by not tolerating A.

Does this sound familiar? It was the start of the Tulsa massacre. If you say that "intolerance of intolerance" is a good thing then I take it that you think that the Tulsa massacre was warranted, since they were just intolerant of intolerant people right?

Edit: Or in the case of for example Damore:

Person A: There are inherent differences between group A and group B, so likely not all differences we see between them are due to discrimination.

Person B: I don't tolerate A's intolerance, he is clearly bigoted and thus broke the contract!

Person C: I don't tolerate B's intolerance, A might be misguided but didn't really show intolerance.

A, B and C now starts a verbal war causing several people to get fired on both sides before it calms down.

Your first situation is not identifiable to me as anything like my described situation. I do not see how you could think the two are examples of the same thing. Your narrative also does not appear coherent to me.

The Damore example is much better. I spent a long time going down that rabbit hole, and my conclusion is that he had a number of things that should have been considered and were not, in themselves, problematic, and he also had a number of things to say that were problematic, and he said many (but not all) of those things in ways that were problematic. The ensuing cultural conversation did the usual unfortunate thing, and devolve into black/white tribalism.

This is why I go first for a conversation with the Person As before deciding on courses of action.

Except very few people are saying "Let's kill all of Group B", especially in 2019, at Google, in San Francisco. But sure, if you want to act on your "intolerance" for that specific flavor of intolerance, then please go to eg Indiana and protest the actual KKK.

Rather what "Person A" is likely to have said is something civil that clashes with the dominant political team's reality distortion field. Rather than having to address the substance, those who disagree feign highly personal reactions as if a minority viewpoint is that "kill all" mortal threat, effectively resorting to the age old monkey status games for silencing dissent.

Being intolerant of intolerance is the only way to foster a tolerant society. It's the solution to the Paradox of Tolerance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Linking a wikipedia article isn't an argument

Being intolerant of intolerant actions is what is necessary to maintain a tolerant society. If you tolerate intolerant views, the paradox doesn't arise.

Views lead to actions. You can not draw a line between them and hope people will happily stand on one side of it.

If you allow intolerant views, you normalise intolerance. If you normalise intolerance, you ALSO normalise intolerant acts, and they WILL follow naturally.

This is a justification for exterminatory politics. As a person with views to the right of centre the historical record suggests I would at best end up losing everything I own and probably end up in a re-education camp or dead in the event of a communist revolution. By your logic I would be justified in quite extreme measures to combat communism in the present day.

So you are arguing that people should be punished for thought crimes?

You most certainly can draw a line between actions and views, and fortunately most laws do.

No, I am arguing that everyone can and should do all they can to condemn hatred. That regular people should make sure there are consequences for being a hateful bigot. And that people should not get tricked by "both-sides" bullshit, or empty appeals to "freedom of speech".

Don't be friends with a racist. Make sure they understand their views are not acceptable. Do your part today.

That does not at all seem like the constructive thing to do. Generally speaking, ostracizing groups of people for their beliefs leads to further polarization, and more extreme views.

In my experience, people are seldom racist for the sake of being hateful. Rather than applying an arbitrary label to someone so that you can lazily dismiss them as evil (which is just as bigoted as the bigotry you claim to oppose), it's better to find the underlying cause of the apparent racism, and addressing that concretely instead.

Why are you assuming that one excludes the other?

You don't have to hope for anything. You just wait until they try to carry out the action (paying particular attention to those who have previously expressed views that are likely to lead to it), and physically prevent that.

If you normalize cracking down on views on the basis that they're intolerant, the people who make that determination end up with a lot of unchecked power. In France, for example, you can be jailed for wearing a t-shirt that says "boycott Israel" today - it's hate speech. In Germany, many flags used in Rojava are banned as extremist symbols. And note that despite all these laws, RN and AfD still exist and thrive.

Yeah, no, you can't physically prevent that, not without a perfect panopticon police state.

If you allow intolerance to spread, it WILL, without fail, hurt people. Sometime, immense number of people. This is not theoretical. It happens, again and again, and the only way to prevent it is to oppose intolerance at every stage.

Your abstract ideology of absolutely free speech is not in any way worth the immense pain and suffering that will, inevitably, follow.

On the contrary - you can't prevent intolerance from spreading without a perfect Panopticon police state. That's precisely why Europe is failing at it so badly, despite all their hate speech and extremism laws. Organizations like AfD can dog-whistle in public to avoid crossing legal limits, while still fundamentally communicating the same ideas. You could crack down on that if you had a pervasive surveillance state monitoring all private communication, but they aren't willing to go there.

On the other hand, policing actions is much easier, because the more consequential ones are also the more prominent - you don't need a surveillance state to deal with them, you just need a reaction force.

It was written in 1945. People didn't need to be reminded that the left can be intolerant too, and that the principle of intolerable intolerance you are so keen to apply to the right applies more to your behaviour, because you want to drive the them from civil society, than to the right, because they are merely defending their right to keep their job without apologising for or hiding their opinions.

People regularly quote that Wikipedia article as if it proves something, somehow ignoring the fact that it lists a number of arguments against Popper's conclusion.

Nope. https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1...

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