Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

Appreciate the heads-up. I think it is a legitimate point despite its unsavory origins. But I agree that its origin makes invoking it a poor choice in low-trust discussion.

I wanted to counter your points by presenting a hypothetical hiring example (one employee from a certain group, and another who votes a particular way), but that gets into an argument over whether certain US government policies are racist, and that's off topic for HN.

As a general rule, I lob complaints at private companies. So I care at lot if Company X is doing ill to society (what I consider ill, at any rate). Whether the government should step in is a separate, and more dangerous, issue to me.

I have a feeling that the majority of the commenters here would not be happy with the results of an armed revolution. You can be snarky on the internet all you want, but guns win wars, and there's a hell of a lot more guns in Texas than California.

Hell, if you want to go down a very concerning rabbit hole, look up youtube videos of people prepping for a communist revolution. There's a lot of mass murder pre-planned for the end of democracy.

It’s also probably the kind of thing you need to know a lot about before you start accusing a religion which represents a sizable fraction of the world, and which has many existing sects and interpretations, of being a causative agent in so many ills. An open and honest discussion is fine, but when one person has a strong position staked out without having done the requisite “homework” it’s not unrealistic that people will draw conclusions about their motives. Someone who has wondered about the relationship between Islam and women’s rights, modesty and so forth, and then taken the time to learn about where Islam vs. local pre-Islamic traditions stand on the issue might draw conclusions as well. Others, who note the intolerance for gay rights throughout much of Africa, in Islamic, Christian, and other religious frameworks might start to suspect that Islam wasn’t the active ingredient. Someone who noted the appalling history of women’s rights in much of Asia regardless of religious context might do the same.

Such a person would almost certainly be wary of engaging in debate, however open and honest, with someone who came to their strong conclusions in the face of such easily available evidence to the contrary. You also have to remember that some people use the framework of an open and honest discussion to proselytize, or rant. The archetypical bigot who “wants a fair debate about immigration” while really just wanting to express their bigotry without getting heat for it is one example. The antisemite who talks in terms of “bankers” and “globalists” is another. It’s unfair, but we all have to share a world with them, and so even when we really want to have an open and honest conversation we have to go that extra mile to prove it in cases like these. Otherwise people who don’t act in good faith can effectively mount a DOS on our time and attention through our goodwill.

Edit: Downvotes in lieu of something to say is something I’m becoming depressingly familiar with here. I can see why some people revert to low-effort posting when it’s going to be met with zero-effort. Oh well, I’m not sure what I expected.

I would argue that there's no reason to put that kind of moral value on an animal's life.

I don't see any reason to believe that minimizing suffering is equivalent to maximizing good, not in the real world where real things happen. Morality must always be tempered by reality. Sometimes suffering of some form must be endured in order to improve a situation.(Example: Your body will induce fever in an attempt to kill off pathogens)

There seems to be an interesting cultural view that it's morally acceptable to butcher cows, but not dogs or cats.(I do think it's admirable that you've attempted to reconcile this) This has baffled me, but I think I've found an explanation for why this may be the case. My suspicion is that the disgust people feel when pets aren't treated with preference over other animals has more to do with the revealing of the character of the owner than it does with assigning the same moral value to a pet as a human. The idea that a person would make a promise to care for and protect someone or something, then callously disregard its suffering is interpreted as a lack of character. Anyone who would do that to an animal might just do it to a person as well.(This same line of reasoning applies to sex with animals as well, or any action that reflects badly on the character of the person performing the action)

Using this perspective, there isn't a contradiction between treating a pet with care vs slaughtering a cow. The dominant view appears to be that animals are primarily utilitarian, in service to humans to the degree that they provide something in return. Many religions take this stance: Christianity treats nature as a fallen garden. Judaism does this as well.(https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/1-Timothy/5/18) I think Hinduism is an exception, though I'm not that familiar with it. The atheistic view of animal suffering tends to put emphasis on the idea that animals share a similar consciousness to humans, and thus when pain is inflicted on an animal, someone is in there feeling it.(Though there is no way to prove this)

I fall into the atheistic category, but I don't see any reason to give non-human animals the same moral value as humans. Why should I when there is so much to be gained by domesticating them? They suffer in the wild, often more so than in human captivity. They can radically decrease the suffering of humans by preventing hunger. Animal domestication provides jobs. Pets provide happiness. I don't see how a primarily utilitarian view of non-human animals can reflect poorly on our character with these things are taken into consideration.