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Comment by smirksirlot | Hacker News Reader

There's something that needs to be said about political beliefs that stomp on the very fiber of my being.

Sure. I would work with these people and execute what I need to do. But knowing what they believe in and the extent of which they would act to remove/restrict rights that I should have ultimately will prevent me from wanting to get to know them, to interact with them beyond a strictly professional capacity.

From experience, that doesn't go well - over time, it gets exhausting. Your company culture gets built up with walls between people because there's no trust.

So yes, having a difference of opinion/belief/diversity is important. But at the same time, there are certain core values that need to be stood for.

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Does it make a difference what the position of the person who's views you disagree with holds? I can sort of understand saying "I don't want to work to make our CEO richer because he will spend the money promoting causes I hate".

But what about co-workers or subordinates? Would you be disturbed because the guy who cleans the floor holds controversial views? Also bear in mind that employees will leave and be replaced with new ones who may be very different people.

Once you get past a certain size of company you're never going to get people who don't disagree on some divisive issue, whether it be gay marriage, gun rights or abortion. The test of your company culture is how well it can deal with that unless you want to start asking people political questions at interview (is these even allowed?).

> he will spend the money promoting causes I hate

> you're never going to get people who don't disagree on some divisive issue

I'm not sure you appreciate how deeply these issues affect the people they're about. It's not just talking points for everybody.

Everyone believes that it 'isn't just a talking point'. Everyone believes that 'some things are clearly subjective, but come on, really, this clearly isn't even worth calling an idea'.

The pity is, no one can agree on what 'it' is. What everyone also has is a different idea about what 'obviously has to stop NOW'.

"You're free to believe whatever you want, as long as in effect it's indistinguishable from believing the same thing as me" is going to get you nowhere, fast.

It's more like "You're free to believe whatever you want, but that freedom doesn't automatically make you not a bigot".

If someone spends their entire life having to justify their existence to the de-facto ruling class, patience for this "all viewpoints are equally valid" stance can run out fast.

It's more like "You're free to believe whatever you want, but that freedom doesn't automatically make you not a bigot".

So many words for 'we won't accept it'! I'm not saying that all beliefs are equally valid. I don't even have a problem with calling people bigots, as long as you're careful to mind the gap between 'speaking' and 'acting'. I am saying that you are not the only one who really, truly, actually believes that they're running out of patience and that 'doing something' is justified.

It doesn't matter how strongly you believe that you're in the right. If you decide that, just this once, it isn't really imposing your beliefs on others then you will have to live the rest of your life in a world where everyone else decides that way too.

(Not to say that you won't have to live that way even if you don't do it. Other people's beliefs will impact you, more or less by definition. On the other hand, it doesn't make for a very convincing justification.)

No, I'm not going to accept oppression, and that doesn't make me the bigot who imposes their beliefs on others. Jesus.

As you wish. Though I have to wonder why we're having this conversation if you don't actually want to talk with me.

You are making the assumption, to my mind entirely unfounded, that there is any "forcing" going on by the correct (why, yes, I went there) side in any of the issues expressed in this thread. As an example, same-sex marriage doesn't affect them unless they choose to marry someone of the same sex.

Nobody's "imposing" anything on anyone. It is the absence of imposition to which you seem bound and determined to protest. Why?

why, yes, I went there

You are, alas, making entirely unfounded assumptions about my personal beliefs. The third sentence of my previous post is the only thing I've said in this thread about that. Elsewise I'm just talking general psychology.

Your personal beliefs are irrelevant. You're asserting that we--people who are, you know, not gay-haters--are infringing on them. We are not.

And by them you mean?

I haven't asserted that you're infringing on anyone in more than a general sense, by the way. Though 'nuh-uh' wouldn't be a particularly convincing response if I had. And I'm not even talking about 'everyone who doesn't hate gays'. Nor am I excluding people who do hate gay people from my criticism. Given that I already believe that you're right and they're wrong (about gay rights, anyway), your posts don't seem to be going anywhere.

Edit: For future reference, "X is right" and "I believe that X is right" convey exactly equivalent information unless you're talking about psychology, which I am and you don't appear to me to be. Saying it really loudly doesn't change the epistemology. Am I misunderstanding you?

Yeah, I do think you are misunderstanding me. Your post says, "If you decide that, just this once, it isn't really imposing your beliefs on others", which is itself an invalid characterization of everything in the thread up to that point. My point is that precisely no-one on the side of the person to whom you were replying is doing that. There is no advocacy of the imposition of belief being performed. There is advocacy for the implementation of policy, but that is not the same thing; nobody's beliefs are even being questioned.

(Claims that the government being permissive on something is an infringement upon those who do not wish to perform that act do not follow logically. Not saying that's what you'd say next, but it's a common enough next step in this conversation so I figured I'd touch on it just-in-case.)

I'm afraid I'm not misunderstanding you. Though I'm not trying to change your mind now either. I'll finish by suggesting you look up the technical definition of 'belief'. I haven't been discussing religion or philosophy.

Back to both sides trying to crush each other under the weight of law, I suppose. No surprises there.

I am well aware of the definition. I reject the idea that you can be imposing on another's beliefs by doing something that has no impact upon them. And I find that characterization inhuman and stupid.

Of course the issues affect people , that's why they have strong views.

However one of the great triumphs of capitalism appears to be getting very different people to work together towards a common goal.

Roughly 25% of my generation has been killed by abortion, yet I still manage to work with many ardent pro-choice people. You have to develop thick skin.

I blame the meme-space that we live in for ideas that I find abhorrent, not the individuals that believe them.

    Roughly 25% of my generation has been killed by abortion

As I understand it, the majority of pregnancies result in abortions:

http://www.emcom.ca/health/abortion.shtml

It's highly probably you hold a belief today that future you will be embarrassed about and that you may feel even stomps on the very fiber of your being.

People change. That's the point. And that's the idea.

And every generation comes along and palms their faces at what abject idiots the previous generation so obviously was. It's a short hop from being with the large, popular group to being inside the gulags of the next mob to come along.

> will prevent me from wanting to get to know them, to interact with them beyond a strictly professional capacity.

And you have thus wasted an opportunity to educate them in the error of their ways.

On some days, I would agree with you.

On other days, I feel like the people we're talking about here never really learn. They only die out. Or become so small in their numbers that they finally feel shame about their idiotic views, so they keep their views to themselves. Because they still won't learn, they will still die with them. Never to experience the love and happiness that is to be received when you change views of yours that hurt people who would never hurt you.

From my experience of working in both large corporations and small start up companies, it's generally frowned upon to even discuss political matters no matter what side of the isle you sit on. The very reasons you cite is the main reason this is something you simply keep to yourself, period.

Likewise, most companies I've worked for don't engage in overtly political events so they don't self select out any candidates based solely on religious or political reasons.

I think that is an aspect of the problem outlined in the article. It's easy enough to keep the discourse at work fairly light when it comes to political issues. But in a world where everyone follows each other on social media it becomes harder to separate. So you find out that the nice pleasant guy you sit next to at lunch has "liked" a ton of neo-nazi groups.

Why would anyone follow their coworkers? I follow people whose opinions I want, and I 'friend' my friends - a few coworkers included, but not 95% of people that I meet in the office daily.

I hold roughly the same opinion and generally try to avoid social networks. But I've certainly worked in places where everyone followed everyone else and it would probably be seen as rude not to.

I agree that I wouldn't want to work with someone who supports prop 8, however there's a world of difference between that and having a different opinion on DRM.

I think it's a safe assumption that we're referring to extremely divisive issues like abortion, marriage equality, civil rights, etc.

Edit: Not to say DRM isn't an important (and potentially divisive?) issue, just not nearly to the same scale.

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