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Comment by howinteresting | Hacker News Reader

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That inherently arbitrary logic can be wielded against any regulation or ideology. Nearly every policy disadvantages some person or group's preferences/freedom to purportedly better enable a greater good.

This slippery slope reasoning would not only apply to your chosen target of "modern conservatism" but to anything under most ideologies and religions. As long as their implementation attempts probabilistically/historically led to a form of intolerance, suppression, and atrocity. Is Bernie Sanders also deserving of our intolerance because of the history of intolerance under socialism?

You’re bouncing back and forth between “all” and “nearly all”.

Some reasoning applying as criticism to a wide array of most ideologies and religions doesn’t disprove it. If anything, it seems like a positive heuristic.

> It is, of course, morally just to be intolerant towards intolerance.

This is non-sensical because this morally just thing you describe (intolerant of intolerance) should not be tolerated. By your definition.

Tolerance is not a moral position, so reasoning about it in moral terms is nonsense.

Tolerance is a social compact and it requires mutuality. "My preference is to punch you in the face, if you claim to be tolerant you must accept that" is obviously foolish, no matter how much you dress it up.

To be clear, I wasnt the one who framed it in moral terms. And you are exactly right - intolerance isnt always bad, nor good. Which is another reason why this is non-sensical:

> It is, of course, morally just to be intolerant towards intolerance

"Tolerance of intolerance" just kicks the can down the road.

A Conservative might argue that Muslims are intolerant and thus should not be allowed in the country or that trans people are intolerant of people using the correct pronouns for them.

You can phrase pretty much any side of a political question as being either tolerant or intolerant with a bit of work.

> You can phrase pretty much any side of a political question as being either tolerant or intolerant with a bit of work.

And we determine who is right and who isn't through the power of reason and evidence.

I don’t quite agree on the principle. Maybe Eich isn’t beyond the pale but I think there are very few people who can’t think of ANY a belief someone would have where they wouldn’t be willing to associate with them (say, neo-Nazism or advocating for a return of chattel slavery). I don’t think this is necessarily contradictory with the notion of being “tolerant” since some of these views would essentially make other forms of tolerance impossible if they were adapted by a majority. “I’m equally tolerant of minorities and people who believe those same minorities should be enslaved” seems like a muddled and nonsensical position.

If we can't debate against nazism or slavery and win in the eyes of the audience, on democratic terms, I guess it is to late to be "intolerant of intolerance" and democracy has already failed.

So what if one in a thousand (or whatever the number is) want to reinstate slavery?

It seems like a nonsensical position to limit freedom of expression of everyone to quench a hypothetical Nazi takeover.

As I recall democracy did fail to settle both of these questions and instead they were settled by force of arms.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that the "out group" would have been abolitionists in the 1700s. I also didn't say that a democracy can't fail.

That kind of depended where you where. In Pennsylvania among the Quakers not necessarily. But antebellum history can easily be viewed as a long, unsuccessful attempt to settle this question democratically at a national level.

> If we can't debate against nazism or slavery and win in the eyes of the audience, on democratic terms, I guess it is to late to be "intolerant of intolerance" and democracy has already failed.

Probably, yes. Democracy is bad at edge cases (Hitler was democratically elected) and undemocratic means must sometimes be used. Deplatforming is pretty mild as far as undemocratic means go.

Such is life.

The idea you're looking for is the paradox of tolerance, and a solution to it is that by engaging in intolerance, one has broken a social contract, and thus no longer benefits from it, and others can be intolerant to them without violating this social contract.

Intolerance of ideas and opinions (or people based on those opinions) is inherently bad, if it means excluding people from a debate or public discourse, or denying them other rights in public society (which should be obvious). But if you are consistent in your application of said framing, other forms of intolerance (like how you pick your social circle) seem morally practical. The problem is that almost no human seems to be capable of the consistency.

For example, do you invest the same emotional energy being intolerant of Brandon Eich as you do toward people who say "ACAB"?

This kind of thinking leads to wars. Totally “justified” wars.

Does your model still hold if we replace 'trans people' with 'rapist' or 'pedophile'?

In other words - 'intolerance of pedophiles is bad while intolerance of people who are intolerant of pedophiles is good.'

Does that sound alright to you?

How are those things logically comparable? Or is that your point, that it's all rooted in morality?

No reason is given why being intolerant of trans people is bad, it's just asserted. If the reason why being intolerant of trans people is bad is because trans people are a subset of people, then it follows that it's bad to be intolerant of any subset of people. If this is not the case then it needs to be argued why only certain subsets of people are protected from intolerance but not others.

I think the timeless bit is that there is always an out-group. It's worthwhile to be aware of yours and whatever subconscious position you've taken regarding them.

Thats a good question. Probably, to some extent. I think social media has certainly made this worse. Which is interesting because this was written in 2014 before this was a well understood phenomenon and a familiar narrative (social media silos radicalizing people).

I think expounders are my biggest outgroup. Unfortunately, it's pretty big.

edit: I did not RTFM the entire way and misunderstood. Preserved text below.

===

You might be getting downvoted for bringing up Brandon Eich in a conversation unrelated to him or to prop 8 in particular, and continuing to do so in every comment. You can make your point with the same force by using a general example.

===

What you're describing is the paradox of tolerance, which I don't think is particularly controversial or fringe.

From section IX of the article:

> ... Sure enough, if industry or culture or community gets Blue enough, Red Tribe members start getting harassed, fired from their jobs (Brendan Eich being the obvious example) or otherwise shown the door.

> Think of Brendan Eich as a member of a tiny religious minority surrounded by people who hate that minority. Suddenly firing him doesn’t seem very noble.

> ... When a friend of mine heard Eich got fired, she didn’t see anything wrong with it. “I can tolerate anything except intolerance,” she said.

I used Eich because he was cited in the essay:

> Think of Brendan Eich as a member of a tiny religious minority surrounded by people who hate that minority. Suddenly firing him doesn’t seem very noble.

Fair.

I agree that tolerance of intolerance is bad, but you and I disagree a bit on moral relativism. Anyway, sorry for not reading the entire article.

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