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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

Having tolerance for speech we don’t agree with does not mean we need to tolerate harassment, eviction, or termination.

You may argue that free speech may lead to intolerant laws and actions - but history suggests the direct opposite: free speech has mostly expanded tolerance.

And it makes sense: we have gay rights as a result of free expression. For the longest time the “offensive” idea being censored was that being gay was ok and not a result of mental illness. Without free speech we wouldn’t have gay marriage.

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Are those not forms of speech?

Also, again, what about speech that only indirectly affects you?

What if my speech is "I do not think gay people deserve the same human rights as straight people, and I want the government to deny them those rights"? I'm not saying it to you, I'm saying it to my elected representative(s) in the government. Should we tolerate that speech?

Additionally, I believe that history supports my position. Generally, increased tolerance seems to correlate with when society stops accepting and starts shaming people with 'bad opinions' (racism, sexism, etc).

I have no doubt that shaming people with bad opinions will make them stop these opinions, at least in public. However I assume that you are the right person to judge 'bad' opinions?

If not you individually, maybe should select certain group of people to represent the people and create rules to enforce bad behavior is stopped?

Maybe we can call this body a government and call the rules laws.

Where did I claim that I was the right person to judge this for all of society? I make these choices for myself by choosing what types of people I associate with, and I am a tiny part of making this decision for society at large by voting.

In my opinion, society is more tolerant when we do not let the intolerant people hijack it to spread intolerance. In other words, intolerance is some of that "bad behavior" that should at least be softly prevented. I am expressing this opinion on this discussion board in the hope that other people will agree with me and maybe even change their minds slightly (or maybe I'll have my mind changed instead!).

There are at least two types of tolerance - for ideas (eg censorship), for people (eg racial conflict). I believe we should accept both sorts of intolerance but to a degree.

For ideas - remove ideas by banning / censorship, or add ideas by promoting 'better' ideas - this seems like a possible avenue to improving society's mental health. The main objection is whoever controls what to ban / allow is given a lot of power, so how do we decide these things.

For people - I think it's fine to be intolerant individually, however our institutions should not be intolerant. For example I can hire a cleaner for my house and refuse certain people. However it should not be possible for a company to refuse certain people as cleaners. I'm not sure how to formalize this into a law though.

Physical or mental violence because of intolerance of people and ideas are bad because I don't want violence on me. However I am not certain how to define mental violence.

I like the idea of promoting better ideas (love instead of hate), but looking around I feel like that has failed recently with Parler, QAnon, etc all being proof.

Maybe the problem is the media (and social media) which is the vast vast majority of where ideas are promoted, and neither is where positive ideas get promoted. I’m not quite sure why that is - must have something to do with human nature.

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