I like the above a lot, though I’m not sure whether I agree with it. On this specific quote:
Hanania’s twitter repulses me, and I am consciously annoyed every time his blog links to it. (I pay to read his blog.) He has supposedly claimed that his “animals” tweet did not have racist intent. I am not personally willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one, but I think the stakes are low.
I guess, the question here is how valuable a norm against racism is. I dunno, it seems pretty valuable to me. Like imagine he’d killed someone and was on the run. How bad does some random behavior have to be to get one thrown out of the club. My sense is there is a line somewhere.
I guess I also have some sense that irreversible behaviour is especially bad. Breaking good norms (such as tweeting racist things) is especially harmful perhaps.
I don’t really know, I’m trying to figure out norms like everyone else, but the idea that there are no lines that one can cross to lose status—that interesting ideas are all that matters—seems misguided to me.
the idea that there are no lines that one can cross to lose status—that interesting ideas are all that matters—seems misguided to me.
I certainly agree with you about that. Maybe I want to edit my initial comment to make that more apparent.
I do have a red line that falls between murder and the “animals” tweet. I expect that if we tried really hard to figure out our red lines, some of them would be close but some of them would be pretty far off. That’s what I meant to say with the final paragraph:
I think that different people just have highly divergent Overton windows, and will have to agree to disagree, and will occasionally be excluded or alienated from one another’s events.
I was deliberately vague when I said “low stakes” and “material harm”, and I think it’s good that you pointed that out while still keeping it vague (“pretty valuable”). I did think about being specific instead, but an object-level discussion of the costs and benefits of the racism taboo would probably be a derail in this thread, even though they would indeed be crucial (cruxy, I mean) to a lot of the commenters arguing here. It might be pretty clarifying if you or someone else held that discussion in the right (perhaps highly gatekept) place—it could help people update their own Overton windows, or it could just help you understand the psychology of an incorrigible racist, either of which could make for good epistemic lessons.
I like the above a lot, though I’m not sure whether I agree with it. On this specific quote:
I guess, the question here is how valuable a norm against racism is. I dunno, it seems pretty valuable to me. Like imagine he’d killed someone and was on the run. How bad does some random behavior have to be to get one thrown out of the club. My sense is there is a line somewhere.
I guess I also have some sense that irreversible behaviour is especially bad. Breaking good norms (such as tweeting racist things) is especially harmful perhaps.
I don’t really know, I’m trying to figure out norms like everyone else, but the idea that there are no lines that one can cross to lose status—that interesting ideas are all that matters—seems misguided to me.
I certainly agree with you about that. Maybe I want to edit my initial comment to make that more apparent.
I do have a red line that falls between murder and the “animals” tweet. I expect that if we tried really hard to figure out our red lines, some of them would be close but some of them would be pretty far off. That’s what I meant to say with the final paragraph:
I was deliberately vague when I said “low stakes” and “material harm”, and I think it’s good that you pointed that out while still keeping it vague (“pretty valuable”). I did think about being specific instead, but an object-level discussion of the costs and benefits of the racism taboo would probably be a derail in this thread, even though they would indeed be crucial (cruxy, I mean) to a lot of the commenters arguing here. It might be pretty clarifying if you or someone else held that discussion in the right (perhaps highly gatekept) place—it could help people update their own Overton windows, or it could just help you understand the psychology of an incorrigible racist, either of which could make for good epistemic lessons.
I also think Not Just a Mere Political Issue is a helpful post in figuring these things out.