Remember his thesis is “maybe we should be more tolerant of disagreeable ideas”. Everyone seems to be latching on to his one sentence about disparaging gay folks, which i think Sam included for effect to show how seriously he takes this (sam is gay)
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I don't think anyone objects to not engaging with those ideas. It's the part where people try to get people fired and blacklisted from future employment for expressing them that leads to worries about freedom of speech.
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I think it's reasonable for me, as a hiring manager, to not want to hire someone who believes some of my employees are biologically less suited for their job. Don't you?
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Sure. But our criteria for deciding what topics are in-bounds for discussion can’t simply be that a consensus has formed around them. There was a day when the consensus view was that women couldn’t be as effective as CEOs as men. I’m glad that’s changed.
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What views that we currently hold should change over next 50 years? I think we can be confident that some ideas we find offensive today will one day be accepted (and for the better). Most of the offensive ideas wont be, but there’s no way to know the difference before the fact
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Sure. And if the "controversial ideas" are not being used as excuses to block efforts to make the group of people in our community less homogenous, then it's probably not one of the topics I'm talking about.
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I think this definition is a slippery slope. For example, our public transit infrastructure plays a big role in racial segregation in cities. When discussing transit, should it be unacceptable to propose ideas that might exacerbate the problem?
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Would it be inappropriate to say “yes, this proposal increases racial and socioeconomic segregation, but the safety and cost benefits outweigh those problems?”
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I think it would probably be ok if, when you say that, a lot of people got upset and you were inundated with replies. The idea that "sometimes I get attacked when I say this" = "it's impossible to talk about it" is just privilege talking.
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