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Comment by rovolo | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, this line of argument is a perfect example of the "Motte and Bailey" fallacy. The structure of this argument works just as well if you replace "intolerance" with "segregationist" or "misogynist". The only takeaway I have from this argument is "it's easier to condemn things which you disagree with". There isn't any discussion of whether the intolerant action is actually intolerant or harmful.

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Digression, this is a pretty audacious way to minimize Apartheid.

> South African whites and South African blacks ... So what makes an outgroup? Proximity plus small differences.

Every single human conflict can be described as "small differences" because humans are very similar to each other. Also, it's harder to be in conflict with people far away from you.

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> Every single human conflict can be described as "small differences" because humans are very similar to each other.

He's obviously talking about differences which are small by human standards. The rest of the paragraph:

> If you want to know who someone in former Yugoslavia hates, don’t look at the Indonesians or the Zulus or the Tibetans or anyone else distant and exotic. Find the Yugoslavian ethnicity that lives closely intermingled with them and is most conspicuously similar to them, and chances are you’ll find the one who they have eight hundred years of seething hatred toward.

How were the differences between the colonial SA Afrikaners and the local SA Zulu smaller than the differences between the Yugoslavs and the Zulu, other than proximity?

Sure, in the immediate aftermath of colonization colonial SA Afrikaners and Zulu were about as different as you can get. But then they shared (for some definition of "shared") the same plot of land for literally hundreds of years

The relevant outgroups animating Afrikaner nationalism aren't the Zulu (or Xhosa, or Tswana, etc.) as a whole, but rather the rapidly growing black working class on the one hand, and English-speaking elites on the other. Of course Afrikaner society was and had long between hideously racist, but so was the British colonial government. It was the perceived "threat" of racial integration (and the attendant economic competition) driven by English liberals that made race the primary focus of Afrikaner politics.

Of course if you mean smaller differences that weren't in part ultimately caused by proximity, there aren't any, but that's almost tautological.

> The relevant outgroups animating Afrikaner nationalism aren't the Zulu ... It was the perceived "threat" of racial integration driven by English liberals

The article compared "South African whites and South African blacks". It sounds like you're comparing Afrikaners and the English?

The article links "narcissism of small differences" to the wikipedia page which says:

> [It] is the idea that the more a relationship or community shares commonalities, the more likely the people in it are to engage in interpersonal feuds and mutual ridicule because of hypersensitivity to minor differences perceived in each other.

I don't think this even slightly describes the "outgroup conflict" in South Africa. Furthermore, I think that Scott using this as an example minimizes the sources of conflict, e.g. Apartheid, because the rest of the article is solely about outgroup hatred.

I'm comparing Afrikaners to the English and to South African blacks who were integrating into colonial society (among whom the Zulu were likely the largest ethnic group, but certainly not an outright majority). Afrikaner national identity initially formed in opposition to the former and shifted to defining itself against the latter as the country began industrializing.

> There isn't any discussion of whether the intolerant action is actually intolerant or harmful.

People towards the upper side of a social hierarchy, who are not seriously discriminated against tend to find it very easy to discuss discrimination in the abstract, as a kind of intellectual game of chess.

The game's a lot less abstract for the pawns on the board, though.

Yeah I'm not sure why "small" had to make it in that argument. I guess it's to say that the differences _may_ be small because large differences, regardless of proximity, is obviously a source of conflict?

I think that the article is a countervailing idea against the idea of the "paradox of tolerance."

If you accept the paradox of tolerance, then the truly intolerant are the ones you should not tolerate. Taken to its extreme, you can apply the paradox of tolerance to shun anybody that does not conform to ideological purity.

There is a balance to be found between the two extremes.

That's why I think paradox of tolerance should be applied recursively - as in, if in pursuit of the "intolerant" one is causing real collateral damage, then perhaps it's them who are the "intolerant" the society needs to get rid of first.

How much collateral damage? Any non-zero amount? [1]

Or does it only become a problem with it becomes some amount that's disproportionate to the damage that is allegedly avoided, as a consequence of those actions?

[1] If you believe any non-zero amount of damage is inappropriate, could you provide me with a single example of social progress[2] (or hell, any human, legal, or moral system) that was made with zero amount of collateral damage?

[2] Unfortunately, we have in the past, and currently live in a society where people need to scream, and shout, and break things for even the grossest injustices against them to be taken seriously. It's a natural consequence of self-interested democracy.

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