[JoshTriplett]

> Define intolerance

That thing everyone except the intolerant seem to understand remarkably well, and the intolerant spend a lot of time quibbling over the definition of in a desperate attempt to derail their inclusion in it.

Or, more seriously: treating other people as unwelcome or hated or less than human, for reasons other than being hateful and intolerant.

[wycs]

Yes. It is all very obvious. For example, suppose a marginalized group uses the hashtag #killallwhitemen to express the disempowerment they feel from the historical weight of white privilege. This, I think we can all agree, is an expression of righteous outrage through hyperbole, not intolerance. In fact, "white men" in this context does not refer to any person or group of people, rather a self-reenforcing system of oppression and privilege. In this way, we see "#killallwhitemen" is tool of enforcing tolerance in an intolerant society.

Now suppose someone were to make an argument like this:

"We observe sexual dimorphism to some degree in most animals. Thus our prior should be that it is unlikely that women and men are 100% psychologically identical even when controlling for environment. Because of this it would be epistemically incorrect to assume differences in representation in engineering firms can be explained entirely by discrimination."

This argument is clearly reactionary and must be censored, for we know 100% that any difference in preferences, abilities and outcomes between men and women must be explained by environmental effects. To think otherwise would be exclusionary and thus an example of intolerance we must be intolerant of, even in our own thoughts.

The person making this argument should be shunned. Even raising the argument should result in immediate deplatforming and perhaps loss of employability.

Even this notion of a prior in which you allow yourself to assign a probability to reactionary thoughts must fought, for even a very low prior can be overcome with enough sensory experience.

[mlillie]

> can be explained entirely by discrimination

I understand this is hyperbole, but this is the perfect case of how legitimate grievances are derailed by bad actors. Emphasis on the word "entirely".

We don't and can't think in absolutes as a society. Everyone and everything is imperfect to some degree. Women sometimes falsely accuse men of sexual assault. Police officers sometimes kill unarmed black men for good reason. The problem is that these sorts of arguments strip context entirely away—"sometimes" in each case is well under 10%. No one was talking about "entirely" in the first place, so this just morphs a discussion about equality into a much less serious one about human fallibility.

So, sure, those are issues, but let's focus on the 90% of the actual problem at hand. No one is saying sexism and racism are absolutely 100% responsible for everything. But they are extremely significant factors and, more importantly, factors entirely within our control and of our own making.

[stcredzero]

this is the perfect case of how legitimate grievances are derailed by bad actors... The problem is that these sorts of arguments strip context entirely away

If you want to figure out the villains, look for the side that is trying to strip the context away and screeching while holding to absolutes. Beware: villains often use the language of the noblest causes, and sometimes people become villains in the pursuit of noble causes.

[dvtrn]

And sometimes the very people saying we have to get rid of one awful system are the ones sitting behind the controls of another one.

-poorly paraphrased Chomsky

[stcredzero]

Yes. It is all very obvious. For example, suppose a marginalized group uses the hashtag #killallwhitemen to express the disempowerment they feel from the historical weight of white privilege. This, I think we can all agree, is an expression of righteous outrage through hyperbole, not intolerance.

No. MLK's movement wouldn't have willingly allowed something like that. Nor would Gandhi's. Justice is a universal compass, applying to all people, not the convenient and emotionally satisfying direction of the moment. Hate has no place in a true movement of justice. Those who would tell you otherwise are bad actors using the movement for their own ends, usually power.

[tenaciousDaniel]

It will never cease to amaze me that none of that is hyperbole. I've run into so many people who argue those exact two points, without a shred of self-awareness.

[JoshTriplett]

(In case it doesn't go without saying, lest silence be interpreted as agreeing with this response: no, both of these parody arguments are completely ridiculous. Both of these have superficial similarity to useful discussions, but have intentionally turned them into absurdist parody in order to mock actual notions of tolerance.)

[mooseburger]

They both happened. It's an accurate description of the state of discourse.

[skedaddle]

No they didn't. In the two situations he is clearly alluding to

1) the person admitted it was hurtful and unacceptable and that they should not have said it, and the mainstream publisher said they would not have hired her without this understanding

2) the argument the person made before being fired was not simply that there is a non-zero amount of sexual dimorphism in humans, it was concretely that womens' neuroticism, agreeableness, and other feeling-sy tendencies may explain why they are on average worse leaders, underrepresented, underpaid, etc.

[orangecat]

it was concretely that womens' neuroticism, agreeableness, and other feeling-sy tendencies may explain why they are on average worse leaders, underrepresented, underpaid, etc.

Remove "worse leaders" (which was not in Damore's memo), and it's a plausible theory supported by quite a bit of evidence.

[skedaddle]

I'm sorry to say that it was in the memo, in the personality differences section. In any case my point isn't to get into the debate about whether sexist outcomes may actually be valid. I was pointing out that GPs examples of white/male victimization were misrepresented and dishonest.

[mooseburger]

1) Splitting hairs. Swap it for Sarah Jeong if you like. 2) Could quite easily be a true statement, if a controversial and uncomfortable one.

[defen]

> That thing everyone except the intolerant seem to understand remarkably well

I'm not sure I agree with that, since the definition of intolerance is obviously rooted in societal norms. In 1950 the statement "two men should not be allowed to marry each other" would not have been seen as intolerant by almost anyone, regardless of political affiliation or sexuality. It would have been considered practically a tautology - so obviously true that no one even spent any time thinking about it. Today, many people in the USA would consider the statement intolerant. So I think your definition just kicks the can down the road to "how do we define who is tolerant?"

[manfredo]

In my experience, introspective people that constantly doubt and rethink their perception of intolerance are the most tolerant people I've met. Those that have strong conviction in their ideas of intolerance and assume that their said ideas about it are universal tend to be the opposite. And plenty of people quibble over what it means to be "intolerant" not to avoid their own inclusion in the term, but to expand the term to include their own political opponents under the umbrella of intolerance.

[JoshTriplett]

> In my experience, introspective people that constantly doubt and rethink their perception of intolerance are the most tolerant people I've met.

I've found this to be true of many different areas. The more certain you are, the less you're open to continuous learning. Have a well-calibrated idea of your own understanding, and scale your confidence accordingly.

In general, the concept of tolerance and intolerance should be fairly universal; the implementation of tolerance relies on a substantial and growing amount of working social knowledge.

[tunesmith]

Since I don't understand it remarkably well, I must be intolerant? Nice.

[tenaciousDaniel]

The real issue with the parent comment is that it's not sustainable in the end. When they say "everyone but (x) understands this", they are alluding to a sense of shared understanding.

That, to a certain extent, is a culture. In a society with several cultures, alluding to a sense of shared understanding is virtually impossible, because the interpretation is at root a cultural one. There's simply no way to guarantee that what they mean by "intolerant" is exactly what everyone else means.

[msla]

> That thing everyone except the intolerant seem to understand remarkably well

Another example of trying to shut down discussion.

For example, a substantial number of people around the world understand 'tolerance' to mean 'nobody insults my religion' which, of course, means 'nobody depicts homosexual relationships'. Therefore, depicting homosexuality is intolerant, hein?

[JoshTriplett]

> Another example of trying to shut down discussion.

If I were attempting to shut down discussion, I wouldn't have included a more serious version of the definition, in addition to the observation that it's remarkable how often people who want to play rules-lawyer with terms like "intolerant" or "bigot" or "racist" or "sexist" seem primarily interested in carefully excluding their own behavior, or that of groups they consider themselves affiliated with, or in general how often they're speaking from a position as a member of a privileged group.

> For example, a substantial number of people around the world understand 'tolerance' to mean 'nobody insults my religion' which, of course, means 'nobody depicts homosexual relationships'.

Hence tolerating everyone except the intolerant. Membership in one marginalized group does not provide a free pass for intolerance against another, nor does it entitle you to attack another or make another feel unwelcome. You deserve to not be discriminated against or excluded on the basis of your religious beliefs, but not if you're using them to attack other people or deny their rights based on (for instance) gender or orientation. Likewise for cis women intolerant of transwomen, white women intolerant of people of color, LG in LGBTQ+ intolerant of the B and T, and so on.

[msla]

So, if you have Group A and Group B, each claiming the other is doing horrible, offensive things, which group gets deplatformed?

Since I can't legitimately reply yet, consider this a reply:

> any group not specifically defined by their intolerance.

So, would that be Hezbollah or Shas?

[JoshTriplett]

The subset of both groups actually doing the horrible, offensive things. Treating entire groups as a unit rather than as individuals is part of the problem, at least for any group not specifically defined by their intolerance.

[marcus_holmes]

which is all very well, except we're talking about deplatforming entire online communities, not merely individuals.

[JoshTriplett]

Entire communities which are 1) led by people who are themselves causing such problems (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18366322) and 2) utterly failing to deal with any such problems on their platforms.

[happilycentrist]

What's worse, is that the people howling about "intolerance" are engaged in a purity spiral, and demand we be a part of it. It's a circular firing squad, which demands more and more extreme signals of virtue by the day - and those people found insufficiently faithful will be the next week's witches to burn.

It's an ideological death-cult that won't stop eating itself until there are literally only two of them left, facing one another, pointing, and screaming "HERETIC" at the tops of their lungs.

[emerged]

It's a recurring weakness of societies throughout history. There does seem to be strong social push back against it which hopefully implies we are collectively building immunity.

[newsbinator]

> "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobellis_v._Ohio