Dear Scott Alexander. I've never heard of you before, but this article was an absolute pleasure to read. At an age where everything is competing for attention, and I end up skimming left and right to compensate, I really enjoyed reading this particular article from start to finish. Thank you for writing it.
And also thank you to the uploader for uploading it here. While the article itself is from 2014, it feels like it's as sorely needed today as ever. I needed to read this right now. Thank you.
Should add (2014) here for context, only noticed after reading and it changes some things.
My ever present thought while reading this was that the "paradox of tolerance" has been more or less already hashed out today and that out-groups can be "out" with valid reason which changes the game a bit here. The real fiery debate comes on the discussion of said validity, which of course is where Red/Blue/Grey disagree. The groups and how they self segregate is interesting, but in the end a sideshow symptom.
Given that date context though, it seems like Scott probably deserves a chance to directly respond to that issue, which I don't read enough of SSC to know if he has but would assume has been approached in some manner, even if not with a full piece.
That said, there were some useful nuggets and concepts in here even though I think the conclusion misses a broader issue of 2020. For the time it was written, I think it covered most common thought on the matter and synthesized well.
Fantastic article, and more relevant than ever.
The trick is to remember you're no less subject to these impulses than "the other side", and then to remind yourself daily.
As a result, every Blue Tribe institution is permanently licensed to take whatever emergency measures are necessary against the Red Tribe, however disturbing they might otherwise seem.
Great article.
My criticism is just that the conclusion ideally would be developed more.
It seems to me that this is a critical structural problem. Do social scientists or anyone else have any idea what to do about it?
In China it seems their solution is apparently to eliminate the outgroup. So people are just officially not allowed to have different worldviews.
Whereas in America we fiercely defend the principal of having fundamentally different worldviews.
Both of those extremes seem to be poor solutions.
This article seems to treat virtue points as inherently meaningful. The in-group is trying to change society in ways I agree with. The outgroup is trying to change society in ways that I disagree with, and may actually endanger people I care about. It's a fundamental conflict of values and ideas, with fairly high stakes. So pardon me (or don't) if I put practical matters higher than intangible virtue.
In a similar vein, but more acutely topical: Neutral vs Conservative: The Eternal Struggle https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...
> "I’m not sure if any of this can be reversed. But I think maybe we should consider to what degree we are in a hole, and if so, to what degree we want to stop digging."
Narrator: "They did not."
This is a badly reasoned and well articulated piece that seeks a presupposed conclusion. This becomes painfully obviously when he realizes that the “blue tribe” he defines is actually engaged in a massive quantity of self-critical behavior, and then twists himself around to try to make it fit into his system. It’s far more likely that this indicates a flawed hypothesis, or at least highly incomplete and naive theory.
He can tolerate anything and then attacks easy targets he doesn't like. So tolerant.
Using the words "neutral" and "conservative" is Orwellian when the author really means "leftist/marxist" and "conservative."
Very different spin, isn't the truth?
Watch the first 3 minutes of this video to see what cultural marxism looks like in elementary school:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO0fijTVcTk
Watch @8:00 to 8:30 to see the female teacher's excuses for experimenting on boys.
This is not just one anecdote, it's a pattern of cultural marxism in the West. (I talked to an Asian elementary teacher who laughed her head off when she heard that "boys and girls are the same in the US.")
Too much of this article made me feel uncomfortably like the author doesn’t understand that the “out group” to an oppressor isn’t the same as the oppressor identified as “out group” by the people they oppress.
> And this isn’t a weird exception. Freud spoke of the narcissism of small differences, saying that “it is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and ridiculing each other”. Nazis and German Jews. Northern Irish Protestants and Northern Irish Catholics. Hutus and Tutsis. South African whites and South African blacks. Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. Anyone in the former Yugoslavia and anyone else in the former Yugoslavia.
I’m not going to pick through every example here, but it’s plain as day there are examples where no reasonable person in this audience would characterize as “engaged in constant feuds and ridiculing each other”.
Imploring people to find grace in fault is one thing, but imploring people to find forgiveness for those who would murder them for who they are is another. And imploring people who don’t find themselves particularly in the middle of such violence to see them as “feuding” is despicable.
I’m sure there’s more nuance in the article but I honestly couldn’t get past this passage. And I’m comfortable with the fact that my tolerance has limits, including not treating nazis and German Jews as somehow morally equivalent in conflict, even rhetorically.
It's adorable to go read old Scott posts and remember when I was as naieve as he is
>Whether or not forgiveness is right is a complicated topic I do not want to get in here.
Seems rather important though?
>But since forgiveness is generally considered a virtue
By the medieval European state religion centered on maximum productivity of the serfs (which is also why suicide is a grave sin, not mentioned in the Bible).
Forgiveness, karma and other concepts were introduced into state religions because it makes your sovereign's life easier, not yours.
This man has written some brilliant articles, and this is not one of them.
Far as I can make sense of his somewhat roundabout reasoning, he's trying to say that if you tolerate everyone "except" some group, you're not really tolerant, because being tolerant is about accepting what you find distasteful.
Except this rather stupidly implies an equivalency between "accepting gay people" and "accepting people who hate gay people."
How fucking hard is this? Accept everyone except the racists and bigots. This isn't quantum mechanics. Nobody's missing out by kicking the nazis off the platform. I don't even remotely buy this argument that I have to accept the far right into my heart or else I'm not truly tolerant.
That's a good article. It starts off with some irrelevant material, but after about three screens it gets down to business.
"So what makes an outgroup? Proximity plus small differences."
Good point.
Thought for today: tolerance is an entitlement. Acceptance is a gift. A society has to have its groups tolerate each other to function well. They don't have to like each other. Insisting on acceptance may break tolerance and force division.
Politically, this created a situation in Congress where the leftmost Republican is to the right of the rightmost Democrat. That's historically unusual in the US.
Poul Anderson had one of his SF characters say "Maybe they is not evil. Maybe they is just enemies."