The paradox of tolerance is this: “Defending tolerance requires to not tolerate the intolerant”. It sounds like a paradox, but I don’t think it is, “tolerance” is just poorly defined.

The Cambridge dictionary defines tolerance as the “willingness to accept behaviour and beliefs that are different from your own, although you might not agree with or approve of them”.

First of, this definition does not differentiate between behaviours that harm others and behaviours that don’t.

Secondly it is not clear what “accepting” means or rather what “not accepting” would entail.

Thirdly, it doesn’t cover racism, which is not about beliefs or behaviour, but identity.

And fourth: It doesn’t differentiate between accepting beliefs and accepting behaviours.

So, here is how I feel about the paradox of tolerance: Fundamentaly, I agree. We do not have to tolerate racism or homophobia etc. Personally, i think we should accept all kinds of beliefs, even that of bigots. We cannot make it a crime to have certain thoughts, only actions/behaviours should be punishable. For actions/behaviours my take is this: as long as it doesn’t harm anyone, it should be tolerated. Any behaviour that harms others, in turn, should not be tolerated.

Here’s the thing though, what do insults have to do with any of this? I will fight physical violence when I see it, be it racially, politically, or otherwise motivated, but why would I need insults for that?

The idea that you can get people to behave the way you want by insulting them doesn’t match my experiences. What usually happens is that it shuts down any kind of conversation, as the other side either disengages, starts insulting you as well, or resorts to physical violence. It also has a negative impact on how that person, and others, perceive you, and interact with you in the future.

I also disagree that insulting others is needed to not be a “doormat”. It is important to be capable of defending yourself, yes. But I have never found it to be necessary, or even useful, to insult others in order to achieve that.

You can analyze and justify them all you want, but insults are just a cheap way to make yourself feel superior to someone else.

I apologize, I did not realize “tankie” was a pejorative. I thought I had seen people on here use that term to refer to themselves, but maybe that was lemmygrad.

Insults only reflect the ugliness of the insulter, not that of the insulted, so I think it is generally best to avoid using them.

That being said, I don’t think that “citizen” has any greater impact than “liberal”. Honestly most people you’d insult using these terms probably self identify as such anyway.

bath towels: weekly

bedding: every 2 or 3 weeks, depending on the season

Zionists support the existence of a jewish state in palestine.

From a quick look at the lyrics, I don’t think the song has anything to do with that.

Olives

Training good models requires lots of training data and computational resources, so the only ones who can afford to train them are big corporations with access to both. And the only objective they have is to increase their profit.

Donating blood plasma is good as it helps people in need. Sure, it sucks that there is a company in the middle making a profit, but not donating is not the solution to that problem, as it hurts the people in need more than the corporation in the middle.

I think its kinda similar to the tipping situation. Yes it sucks that restaurants don’t pay their employees properly and that you have to tip to support the employees. But not tipping hurts the employees rather than the restaurant owner.

In both cases, if we want change, we need to change the legislation.

I did? How do you define corruption?

What an incredible way to miss the point of my comment.

Corruption is an abuse of trust. You cannot abuse trust if nobody trusts you. Its not corrupt to transparently act in your own interest. Acting in your own interest is only corrupt if you claim/are supposed to act in the interest of others.

I also clarified that corruption in corporations is indeed an issue that is recognised and being combatted. Corruption in this case not being corporations acting in their interests, but individuals inside the corporation acting in their interest at the detriment of the corporation as a whole.

I guess you could say that by allowing a business owner to operate a business, a state implicitly grants power to that business owner.

Contrary to a public entity however, noone expects them to use this power in the interest of the people. Instead, the legal framework provided by the state explicitly allows businesses to act in their own interest.

This means that they can’t abuse anyone’s trust because no one expects them to act in their interest anyway.

Public entities are tasked by the people to act in their best interest. If they don’t do that, and instead use the power entrusted to them for their personal gain, that’s corruption.

Business owners only represent themselves. They are free to hire anyone, because they do not have any power that has been entrusted to them by anyone else.

And its not like an administrator of public entities cannot hire a friend, they just have to convincingly make sure that that’s actually in the people’s best interest.

For your 4th paragraph: this can actually qualify as corruption. The CEO is tasked with acting in the shareholders’ best interest. If they hire friends even though someone else would be better suited, that’s corruption. (Of course in the case you described, the CEO would hire a former employee, so they could argue that knowing your performance, you are actually the best fit for the position in their eyes) I have to do regular sensitivity trainings for that kinda stuff at my company. If I encounter an acquaintance during a hiring process, I have to report this conflict of interest, so that someone else may examine my decision. If I don’t, I can get fired and taken to court. This is because, yes, corruption is also possible within a private company.

It is racist in a way. There is no country in which everyone eats cats or dogs. There are also probably not many countries where not a single person has ever eaten a cat or a dog.

“People from China eat cats and dogs” is no more true than “People from the US eat cats and dogs” Sure, the amount of people in China that have eaten cat or dog meat is likely higher than the corresponding amount in the US, but that’s not what these statements mean.

If someone says “People from China eat cats and dogs”, they are very likely to have some racist intent.

It sure is easy to portray your country as successful, clean and beautiful if you don’t allow any free press to contradict you.

Which is fair, I don’t respect extremists either, and I’m not saying everyone deserves your respect. However, society is all about limiting some rights to protect others. Inevitably there will always be different opinions on how to strike that balance. Not all these differences are worth fighting about, often it is much more worthwhile to talk to each other and work out a compromise. And that’s much easier with some level of mutual respect.

Yeah, imagine respecting other people, even if they have different opinions or opposing goals. Wild concept.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Russia#Soviet_Union

You can. However, you need to access the community in question through hexbear, not on the instance of that community.

This only works if that other instance hasn’t blocked hexbear though.

“Croat” is not a slur, just what people from Croatia are called.

I don’t think making fun of Croats for their country’s past is any more insensitive than any other instance of bullying someone for their nationality.

If anything is a sensitive topic its not as much their role in WW2, but rather the much more recent Yugoslav wars, and the still existing tensions between Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks.