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

141–150 of 227 posts

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

#141

Post by cmurf »

Democracy is not necessarily the majority. It depends on the reference: eligible voters, or actual voters, as well as the participation rate.

The majority "winner" among all eligible voters in most U.S. elections is the non-voter. Voting is not compulsory, and often there are three or more candidates, therefore the winner is usually only getting a plurality of votes from participants. And compared to the eligible citizens, it's really merely a significant minority producing the result.

If you add in the effect of primary elections, where an even smaller number but highly motivated voters participate, contributes to even less involvement thus less majoritarian democracy. Ergo in a general election, the three or four choices you have on a ballot (other than write in) were determined by a process usually involving less than 15% of the eligible voters. [1]

[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/10/turnout-was-...

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

#142

Post by danieltillett »

chillwaves wrote: post #138
akkat wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's terrible! I can't seem to find a source of the vice president being connected to legislation allowing police to ignore LGBT people being beaten. Can you give me the link to one? Also, what do you mean by camps? Forced orientation changing?

> While running for Congress, Indiana governor Mike Pence called for state funding for "institutions" working to enable people to "change their sexual behavior." https://www.snopes.com/mike-pence-supported-gay-conversion-t...

Not that I think "gay conversion" is effective (maybe at the margins), but as society we do seem to beleive that others sexual orientations can be changed via incarceration.

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

#143

Post by codingdave »

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.

Ironically, your point would be made just as well had you skipped your first sentence.

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

#144

Post by shaki-dora »

> It is not permissible to use “American values” or “Western principles” in treating intolerant Salafism. The West is currently in the process of committing suicide.

This is a far-right diatribe. To see it on HN, where most articles mentioning actual minority rights get flagged into oblivion as “too political” is embarrassing. Just look at the top-level comments: you’ve even got the gay-bashes using this chance to pile on a little, well, gay-bashing.

Nobody is closing their eyes to “salafism”. There is no such thing in the US, at least not as a relevant cultural force. The Muslim community is surrounded and infiltrated by three-letter agencies. Yet mentioning such things, or the President’s fascist dog-whistles gets downvoted to #CCCCCC. I happen to live in a country with about 10x as many Muslims as there are in the US, and I have no trouble finding pork or bacon or any other sort of haram food. And if my Heinz ketchup is kosher, which costs about 1/1,000,000 of a cent (see Wikipedia), I have trouble seeing the injustice.

If you think there’s a dictatorship of political correctness you should look up both “dictatorship” and ”political correctness” in a dictionary. Usually dictatorships come with power, so I’d like to return mine.

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

#145

Post by lifeisstillgood »

This is not really intolerance winning but a standardisation on the most strict.

it's what was missing from things like trans-pacific partnership and other multi-lateral regulatory agreements.

Where there are differences in regulation, pretty much the only sane means of harmonising is to choose the most strict, most onerous regulation, as that will (almost certainly) be a superset of the other regulations (if not you probably are discussing regulation of different things)

At the moment the EU/US seem to be stuck on chlorination of chicken - but one approach to bactericide will be more effective and win out in time.

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

#146

Post by icebraining »

pjc50 wrote: post #62
thriftwy wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Modern law doesn't have anything that would decrease friction between two groups This is where human rights law and anti-hate speech law comes from. Verbal exchanges can make a situation tense, but cutting down the opportunities for escalation allows a peace to be built. It's also necessary to keep weapons out of politics. Anyone forming a political militia is one incident away from being a terrorist group or death…

It's also necessary to keep weapons out of politics.

That's generally impossible, because at least one side always has them, by virtue of controlling the State and its institutions of violence.

"They have their laws, codes, decrees

edicts and ordinances

They have the prisons and the fortresses

(not to mention the juvies)

They have jailers and judges

who are paid good money and are ready for anything"

Brecht -- The Mother (excerpt of a song)

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

#147

Post by goldideas »

slimsag wrote: post #117
mc32 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat related is the phenomenon where if fir example you know you'll have vegetarians and meatatarians, you can get away with serving vegetarian food and for the most part everyone will eat. If on the other hand you serve an omnivorous meal the vegetarians will not eat.

That's a bit silly. Why would a meatatarian eat anything except meat? They would be an omnivore if they did. What you're really saying is that either: a. The meatatarians are actually omnivores, and just mislabeled. b. The meatatarians are _occasionally_ omnivores, out of preference. Bending dietary preferences when there is social pressure ("they served me this food, being morally good to me personally means I shoul…

May I add that a vegetarian may refuse to eat meat for the heath of the planet as well. It takes so much water to raise animals, and they produce so much methane. This is at lease especially true in the US where we eat so much meat, and hardly any of it is wild game

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

#148

Post by makomk »

conanbatt wrote: post #97
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…

> But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. He is meaning that there should be intolera…

Ironically, I usually see Karl Poppler's Paradox of Tolerance used to justify exactly what he's warning against.

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

#149

Post by snomad »

Y_Y wrote: post #101
rothrock wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gödel also believed his refrigerator was emitting poison gas.

That's a bit dismissive. Goedel was correct about making the US a dictatorship. The fact that the amending clause allows unlimited amendment (particularly of the amending clause itself) means a series of malicious amendments could irrevocably change the constitution to that of a dictatorship and forbid returning to a democracy. Now maybe people would just give up on the constitution at that point, but in terms of the…

When we get to that level of a flaw, it is nice to remember that technically our own hollowed constitution is simply an illegal overwrite of the Articles of Confederation.

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

#150

Post by pasquinelli »

codingdave wrote: post #143
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.

Ironically, your point would be made just as well had you skipped your first sentence.

no it wouldn't. kicking off talking about your personal experience with writing and the sense of style you've developed isn't better than kicking off by stating your point. imagine this comment with the, "no it wouldn't", removed. kind of starting in the middle, right?
Post reply on HN