Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority (2016)

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 227 posts

Re: The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority (2016)

#71

Post by pessimizer »

MR4D wrote: post #54
grzm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Not sure why you got downvotes" I suspect because they went straight to an extreme position: not all examples of such behavior are genocide, and leading with that strongly tends to derail conversation. Yes, genocide may be a result of that, but so can a lot of other undesirable behaviors that stop far short of it. If you have a substantive, supporting comment, as you do, please do add it, but leave off the "Not su…

But it’s not inflammatory. The response was “yes it can” which I think is totally valid. In fact, I’d go one step further and say that maybe the problem is that we don’t spend enough time studying how situations lead to genocide, and therefore we kinda suck at preventing it. Just my two cents, but that was my rationale for supporting the paren’t statement.

> studying how situations lead to genocide

Pushy minority situations? The thought isn't very constructive. It's one of those odd positions that accepts the premises of people who do very bad things, but decries their lack of restraint, discipline, or compassion.

Re: The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority (2016)

#72

Post by icebraining »

jacquesm wrote: post #11

What an overlong and rambling article. Over the years I've found the big trick in writing is to know what to leave out. This is hard to get right but TFA could really do with some editing, it would probably be a stronger article at 1/4 the size that it is.

He was on Econtalk last year discussing this topic, it may be easier to digest: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/08/nassim_nicholas_1.h...

Re: The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority (2016)

#73

Post by TomMarius »

jamiepenney wrote: post #64
rothrock wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gödel also believed his refrigerator was emitting poison gas.

Back then, wouldn't it have been? I think they used ammonia as a coolant initially.

Freon, from Wikipedia:

> They are stable, nonflammable, moderately toxic gases or liquids which have typically been used as refrigerants and as aerosol propellants.

Edit: why am I getting downvoted for this...?

Re: The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority (2016)

#74

Post by Parcissons »

rothrock wrote: post #63
raverbashing wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Popper's description of it is popular, it seems Godel realized this as well (as per the article) - while this was after Popper's (1945) I'm not sure Gödel knew about it According to Wikipedia: "On December 5, 1947, Einstein and Morgenstern accompanied Gödel to his U.S. citizenship exam, where they acted as witnesses. Gödel had confided in them that he had discovered an inconsistency in the U.S. Constitution tha…

Gödel also believed his refrigerator was emitting poison gas.

Gödel ruined mathematics -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_...

Deep down its always a hackers mindset, be it law, finance or the sciences- finding the loop-holes and the brittle points - that one stone, the unconquered fortress rests upon, the one rivet holding the unsinkable ship together.

Little wonder is it, that with such guys holding public conversations in cafes- the idea of the mad, evil professor formed in the public mind. After all- they sounded a little bit like terrorists, trying to break the matter of the world appart.

PS: If you are in a field where re-combinatorics of unrelated things helps- slight schizophrenia is a plus.

Re: The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority (2016)

#75

Post by y11132x »

jacquesm wrote: post #11

What an overlong and rambling article. Over the years I've found the big trick in writing is to know what to leave out. This is hard to get right but TFA could really do with some editing, it would probably be a stronger article at 1/4 the size that it is.

It found it very easy to read, but I concede that for leaders in useless HN points it might be hard to grasp.

Re: The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority (2016)

#76

Post by pessimizer »

thriftwy wrote: post #42
grzm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Not sure why you got downvotes" I suspect because they went straight to an extreme position: not all examples of such behavior are genocide, and leading with that strongly tends to derail conversation. Yes, genocide may be a result of that, but so can a lot of other undesirable behaviors that stop far short of it. If you have a substantive, supporting comment, as you do, please do add it, but leave off the "Not su…

Not all examples are genocide, but situation tends to boil up to it quickly. When the minority doesn't like you and you don't like said minority, what would you do? Modern law doesn't have anything that would decrease friction between two groups. I would say that maybe zoning laws do more for that than any other laws. People tend to underestimate how close they are to genocide. "They are just very bad people", they t…

> When the minority doesn't like you

> and you don't like said minority

The first of these factors is not particularly contributory to genocides, or at least the mechanism is mysterious. It reminds me of how people describe US racial problems as "blacks and whites disliking and distrusting each other." A desire for symmetry in genocides is a particularly egregious case, though.

Re: The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority (2016)

#77

Post by tunesmith »

Good grief, who is this yahoo? I get that he's famous but fighting through his tone to find the actual argument is like trying to breathe underwater.

It looks like I found it near the bottom when he's talking about "tolerating intolerance" and Salafism - that the West is slowly committing suicide, by tolerating "intolerant minorities" which will eventually destroy democracy and "destroy our world".

Re: The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority (2016)

#78

Post by plainOldText »

raverbashing wrote: post #44
tchalla wrote: post #39

Paradox of Tolerance : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance > The paradox of tolerance was described by Karl Popper in 1945. The paradox states that if a society is tolerant without limit, their ability to be tolerant will eventually be seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Popper came to the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant o…

While Popper's description of it is popular, it seems Godel realized this as well (as per the article) - while this was after Popper's (1945) I'm not sure Gödel knew about it According to Wikipedia: "On December 5, 1947, Einstein and Morgenstern accompanied Gödel to his U.S. citizenship exam, where they acted as witnesses. Gödel had confided in them that he had discovered an inconsistency in the U.S. Constitution tha…

And then, the story has it that the judge presiding over Gödel's citizenship ceremony remarked how fortunate it was that the U.S. was not a dictatorship, which in turn prompted Gödel to want to explain the inconsistency he found, but Einstein cut him off... and one successful citizenship oath later Gödel became a U.S. citizen.

Re: The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority (2016)

#79

Post by pjc50 »

skybrian wrote: post #69

The basic argument is interesting but has important preconditions: the majority needs to be tolerant (the change doesn't cost them much). In the case of kosher drinks, it's almost completely invisible. When people actually have a preference (such as how a drink tastes) we find that the market provides a lot of variety despite the cost. Consider the shelves of your average convenience store. Applied to religion, chang…

> we find that the market provides a lot of variety despite the cost

You can have anything you like so long as it's manufactured by Coke.

Re: The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority (2016)

#80

Post by dragonwriter »

rectang wrote: post #37

The flip side: An intolerant majority. There are good reasons to avoid leaving whether minorities get civil rights to the whim of the majority, and to instead enshrine such rights in a constitution.

Constitutions aren't magic spells, they still rely on people actively choosing to honor them.
Post reply on HN