[nataliste]

fragmede, 2017:

>I’m not sure what’s turned the tide for me, but I now believe there are limits to free speech. It turns out that some ideas are toxic, as in, people get sucked into them, are too stubborn/whatever to admit they were wrong, and become rabid believers of nonsense.

>Witness the adherents to the flat earth society or those that stringently don’t believe we landed on the moon, never [sic] the Googler’s sexist manifesto. Anti-semitic screeds like “the Jews run the banks and this is why you’re poor!” frequently leak into open comment sections of your local news’ website, or YouTube comments.

It's not just Americans. The worst offenders tend to be those that believe that they are immune to it.

[fragmede]

Not wanting people to led to believe in a flat earth, and being able to work with people that believe in a flat earth are two different ideas that I don't believe contract each other, but I'm honored you think my writing is worth reading that much of!

[nataliste]

Is flat earth actually catastrophical for you? It seems like other catastrophized topics are much greater points of passion.

>When Twitter pretends to be powerless to do anything about death/rape threats to women journalists, the light of civilization is dimmed, ever so slightly. When entire classes of people disengage from mainstream discourse because they are being threatened by bodily harm, maybe it is possible that it is disingenuous to pre-conclude that anything possibly resembling censorship will result in a dystopian police state where African Americans are still denied the right to vote.

Would you honestly be willing to work or discuss politely with someone that endorsed the ideas behind James Damore's memo? Your writing (at least as of 2017) suggests not.

[fragmede]

As you've thoughtfully pointed out, that was seven years ago in 2017. The world's changed since then and I've changed with it. Flat Earth is totally not a real issue, but it's a way for me to bring up the fact that unless we're working together as sailors and you're the navigator and the position of the stars above your flat Earth is going to get us stranded, the amount of shared reality we need to have in order to actually work is surprisingly low. At the end of the day we have to coexist, and I realize that I can know that someone read Damore and shares his views and is not in HR, and I can agree to disagree with them and still do things - work, grab a beer, go on trips - with them because the alternative is this loneliness epidemic I keep reading about.