this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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I have not seen it yet, though I have no doubt that it exists.
I believe that in real life as in the fediverse, hate speech and bigotry of all kinds needs to be very firmly shot down. Immediately downvote and block that shit. It has no place here, or anywhere.
That being said, debating or even engaging with these pricks is worse than pointless because you’ll never change their minds and will only give them a platform.
Won't it make them angrier and more racist, though?
Racist is racist. Fuck them. I have no interest in appeasing these people, and even if I did, it wouldn’t calm them down or make their hatred tolerable. Sexists, racists, homophobes and the lot should be shunned without compromise. As the saying somewhat goes, there should be no tolerance for intolerance.
Only caveat I'd add is to differentiate between A racist/homophobe/misogynist/whatever, and someone who just expressed an ignorant viewpoint. Whether or not there's actual malicious thinking behind things is important in figuring out if you can reason with someone or not.
Quickest example I can give off the top of my head: I'm gay, and one of my best friends is a straight man who, when I met him, had some reasonably-significant issues with his own masculinity, probably stemming from being short and slim and the resulting treatment he'd often get from both women and other men (which also lessened as we got older and out of the early 20s). That occasionally extended to things like worrying that other people would perceive him as gay because of hanging out with a bunch of LGBTQ+ people and women from work, or his slightly defensive reaction when I told him he looked good one day where he had a particularly nice outfit on and had styled his hair well, as if I'd propositioned him. Both things are a little insulting, but he also was never one of the types who views us as basically child-molesting mentally-ill deviants who don't deserve equal rights.
We got closer, enough that he was willing to open up on the subjects, and I was able to explain how that kind of thing looked from my perspective and, in turn, kinda figured out where it was coming from on his end, but it was always from a place where he just didn't understand why what he was saying or doing was wrong or hurtful, not because he intended to cause hurt. And he's significantly better about that sort of thing now in general, because it made him do some introspection, and he got better at doing that for other things as well. And in all fairness, I learned a bit, too; I knew short guys often got made fun of for it, but being average size myself it wasn't something I really had to deal with and I didn't understand just how pervasive and wearing it is, so now I better understand how he might have gotten there in the first place.
Yes, it's really unfortunate when I see people of a given oppressed group start attacking an ally simply because the person hasn't kept up to date on the latest preferred words. I know there is an angry subsegment of people that feel that everyone should spend all their time keeping completely up-to-date on the latest terminology, but it's a really unrealistic and damaging expectation.
There are often people who want to do the right thing and are simply out of date, or not well enough informed. These sorts of people can and should be educated as they generally want to help. When they get canceled for minor transgressions it's not constructive.
The internet has a big problem with people forgetting to read things with nuance, which leads to the behaviour you described. In the past decade, social media has convinced millions of people that all-or-nothing thinking is acceptable (because it causes conflict, and conflict is cash).
@Kupo_Knight posted an article recently that I think is very relevant here:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-kept-gardens-die-by-pacifism
Similar idea: https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1af7007d6376?gi=cd412a4f533d
Tolerance is a peace treaty between society's sub-groups. When one group breaks that treaty it's moral and necessary to respond in kind and not tolerate them.
If a country rolls tanks into your country it's not immoral to respond in kind to defend yourself. Same idea applies to intolerance.
Yudkowsky really is one of those people who's a stopped clock. I wish he'd focus on that sort of stuff more than the mad AI crap.