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@Pinboard (yes the pinboard.com guy) has been keeping track of political donations from big tech companies. https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1141838179936243714
What are the chances he has only been tracking donations made to right-wing groups? :') Edit: very high, it seems https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Apinboard%20PAC
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Tolerance isn't considered a virtue because it's easy. Tolerance is a virtue because it's difficult . It requires us to put up with people who may adhere to worldviews we find utterly alien or hold views we find abhorrent. It's easy to come up with an example and find yourself thinking "It's unreasonable to tolerate that!". Instead, consider asking yourself why people a century ago might tolerate views you think of a…
Tolerance of someone who wants to deny your whole existence is not something anyone should ever tolerate. That‘s not a virtue, that‘s madness and potentially suicidal.
For my own part, I exist in a political context where I know that lots of people want to deny my whole existence. And so long as society is willing to keep them to nothing worse than the occasional unkind word, I'm willing to live with that. I prefer it to the endless mission creep that all too easily comes when the ostracism and purges start.
>I think they just overestimated the ability of their employees to respect each other when they hold differing world views. I think this can be quite difficult to do just because of the political views involved. For example, how should a gay man respect a colleague who honestly thinks that homosexuality should be punished with death. In such a case, I would say that even asking the first individual to tolerate, much…
I've seen people at work defend trans hate as a "conservative value". It's fine if people have different opinions on taxes but to reject people's identity like that, especially one held by some of their colleagues, should cross a line and they shouldn't be able to hide behind "conservative values".
Being offended and upset is a personal problem, not a public one. Requiring colleagues to bend over backwards to accommodate your needs should be a matter of politeness, not company policy.
I worked at Google for quite a while, 2005-2013, and even then, the internal political discussion was pretty toxic, but a lot smaller in scope since there are far fewer people. There were definitely groups meant for discussing politics, and loudmouths like me willingly participated in those - however, it was very uncivil. There was a majority view in the company, and if anyone didn't agree with the majority view, the…
Help me out here. Do you mean "internal political" as "Oh man Jimmy is in charge of gmail now!" (just a made up example of internal politics there) or "Can you belive what the POTUS did!?!?!"? If the latter, I'm a bit surprised ... I can't imagine having that kind of conversation at work. That is absolutely a NO GO zone for me at work.
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@Pinboard's politics are... not secret.
The politics of $RICH_GUY_WHO_WORKS_AT_TECH_IN_THE_WEST_COAST are not secret, I was just laughing at the prospect of a seemingly neutral "project" which is just a way of denouncing companies that use their advertisement power to show how leftist they are (because in this day and age they have no other choice) while, at the same time, they give money to those eeeevil conservatives.
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Of course there is a need to discuss politics. It isn't a separate thing that can be divorced from what it's about, i.e. everything. That includes work.
I don't understand this view that "everything is political". How can can a discussion on e.g. C++20 coroutines be political?
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That's the point, you should be able to hold that opinion, but you should not publicly state it openly at work in the first place.
Taking the other side, how do you counter the "So some opinions are okay to state publicly, while others are not?" I think this is the rub... For any given X, you'll find groups of people that are pro-X, and someone anti-X.
Edit: just as a final thought, I've been on both sides of this, I've been silenced and I've silenced other people and honestly they both suck. I hold this view with the believe that some middle ground of things not being okay is the only one that works. If someone thinks that a free for all of ideas works well they are welcome to try it on their social media and at their company and I could be convinced if I could see it work at scale. It's really a practical view more than a philosophical one
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Exactly. I find it quite bizarre when some folks suggest divorcing from politics as if the possibility exists. Everything is political. Even this very conversation is political.
> Everything is political. Math is not political.
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Tolerance for tolerance's sake isn't useful though. The hypothetical Nazi / Hitler example shows up: if Hitler existed today, are we supposed to tolerate his views? Tolerance breaks down because morality kicks in: a good moral person tries to wipe out evil when they see evil. The problem is that we can't agree on what is, and isn't evil. Which is a problem when people increasingly believe the "other side" to be evil.…
Yes, we let literal Nazis March in Skokie. Tolerance except for those one thinks are immoral beyond reason is gives just as much license for, say, an anti-abortion activists who genuinely sees abortion as murder to remove people who support abortion.
We absolutely cannot let evil stand when we identify evil. Otherwise, it marches in and kills many. On the other hand, if we misidentify evil, then innocent people die.
I'm not saying I have a solution. But the idea that "tolerance will save us all" is hopelessly naive. The sad fact is, a large number of people are systematically intolerant.
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Exactly. I find it quite bizarre when some folks suggest divorcing from politics as if the possibility exists. Everything is political. Even this very conversation is political.
> Everything is political. Math is not political.