Political values are important to point out. Companies create these tech blogs as a recruitment vehicle. You should know if the company you're considering applying to is funding bigotry (or "wholesome family values" if that's your angle).

Like IBM or Facebook?

..who get ripped on HN for every reason possible as well (and rightfully so).

> 'Bigotry'. noun : intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself.

Surely castigating the owner of Chick-fil-A for advocating his personal beliefs is the truest example of bigotry here.

There is no world in which pointing out the political beliefs espoused by a corporation should be considered an example of bigotry.

Of course neither of those things is actually bigotry. This "oh I'm suffering" crap is disgusting. If we actually cared about suffering our freely elected government wouldn't be causing so much of it.

Euphemisms like "advocating for his personal beliefs" wouldn't fly, if say, the owner was donating to organizations that fought to make interracial marriage illegal again.

We'd call that what it is: bigotry.

I love seeing this argument. It's like you people think you can raise any arbitrary instance of hate/intolerance/bigotry onto a criticism-proof pedestal simply by brandishing a dictionary. Like, who are the real bigots: Nazis, or the nasty people who have the gall to disagree with their racist, antisemitic, etc. views? Is the answer not obvious? Does the question send you scuttling back under your dictionary?

I'm fine with a bit of pedantry but ultimately in the real world we need to show a little more intellectual maturity.

You're missing the point. I'm not concerned about the word. I'm concerned about the definition - those quickest to cry bigot are often guilty of acting like one themselves.

Case-in-point: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey being forced to apologise for eating at Chick-fil-A during LGBT Month. What kind of bizarre intolerant nonsense is that?

Another case-in-point: Boston and Chicago mayors claim "Chick-fil-A values are not [our] values" and refuse to let them open branches in those cities.

Absurd.

> I'm not concerned about the word. I'm concerned about the definition

Come again?

It seems like you're the one who's missing the point, anyway. You didn't address anything I wrote in my comment. Par for the course, I guess. Just imagine I wrote the exact same comment again, and reply to that if you feel like it.

The paradox of intolerance[1]: being tolerant of those who are intolerant leads to less tolerance. It is completely right to call out intolerant views and actions and work towards eliminating them.

[1] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Paradox_of_tolerance

The obvious problems with 'the paradox of intolerance' being that anyone who can convince themselves of another's intolerance now has moral license to behave intolerantly to an unspecified degree. Of course, exactly this sort of thing happens all the time; notably, it was used to rationalize Google's firing of James Damore--Damore's memo allegedly contained "dogwhistles" so he deserved being fired, slandered by the media, and mobbed on social media.

If it wasn't problematic it probably wouldn't be called a paradox.

I'm inclined to divide intolerances into two types: intolerances based on what somebody thinks, and intolerance based on what somebody is. I'm further inclined to model intolerances as a directed graph where nodes represent a group of one of those two types, e.g. conservatives and men might be represented by individual nodes of those two types respectively. Edges represent an intolerance, e.g. there would be an edge pointing from Klan members to black people. The former node would be of the first type, the latter of the second.

Where there's a cycle in this graph we are seeing a mutual intolerance of people with different ideas. An example might be people who think the Earth is flat and people who think it is round. Who is right? It's impossible to say without diving into the issues themselves.

    flat earthers <=> round earthers

Because what you think is independent of what you are, nodes of the second type cannot have outgoing edges. Incoming edges represent base intolerances of the sort that have historically been very harmful: racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on. Obviously these edges represent a different type of intolerance because they are based on innate attributes that their targets have no control over. To a liberal person, they are essentially definitionally bad. To an illiberal person, they're fine. Great, even, depending on who you ask.

Note that I'm talking about liberalism in the general definitional sense, not in the modern U.S. politics sense (i.e. "the left").

So, how about this graph taken from real life (the <=> represents two edges, one pointing in each direction):

    anti-racists <=> white racists -> non-whites

Deletion of the rightmost edge (i.e. deletion of white racism) means that we also have to delete 'white racists' or the implied meaning of the graph is paradoxical. It then follows that we have to remove 'anti-racists'. Now we have no intolerance at all—all that's left in the graph is `non-whites`, enjoying their existence without harassment, and all it took was the elimination of racism. You could also remove the 'white racists' node, with similar meaning and identical effect.

However, deletion of 'anti-racists' leaves the racism intact. I'd argue that this form of graph appears in many places where there is an illiberal group intolerant of a type two group and a liberal group locked in mutual intolerance with the illiberal group. The inverse setup doesn't really appear because, as I noted before, edges pointing to type two nodes represent a sort of intolerance that is anathema to liberals.

I'd also argue that there is a strong implication that these sorts of edges are the most important to remove—because, as demonstrated, doing so causes the rest of the graph to collapse. They are the "root cause", if you will, of many webs of interconnected intolerances.

It should be obvious that this model denies the assertion made by many modern American 'conservatives' that intolerances are all equivalent and relative, "the tolerant left", etcetera. I would say the water is most muddied by the fact that our 'left' and 'right' do not map cleanly onto liberal and illiberal. It's easy and sexy—but invalid—to apply the same political label to someone who thinks gay couples should be able to enjoy the same legal benefits as heterosexual married couples, and someone who thinks all white people should be killed.

P.S. Damore is a moron and his pseudoscientific screed was legitimately offensive to his co-workers. That's fine justification for him to be fired from his job at a private company. As for the rest of it, we live in a culture of growing illiberalism and zeal for generating outrage. It's a bummer.

I think you missed the point of my post, which was that this paradox allows anyone to abuse anyone else if the abuser can convince themselves that the abused is really 'intolerant'. As in the Damore case, a certain political group didn't like his message, so they claimed it contained hidden white/male supremacy messages, which was sufficient to justify his termination and abuse (contrary to your ad hominem post-script); the mob patted themselves on the back citing this very paradox.

I think you missed the point of mine. Doesn't matter.

A lot of people made a lot of politicized fuss about the Damore thing, but the simple fact is that his document contained offensive generalizations about women and if I was a woman I would not want to work with him. He's free to say whatever he wants; as I said before, though, this is a fine justification for termination.

A lot of people from all sides of the spectrum made it a political issue, because of course they did. The left said Google didn't act quickly or harshly enough and the right acted like Damore's right to speak freely was being taken from him. I'm not one of those people and I'm not interested in discussing the issue in terms of 'ideologies'. Ultimately, as I've said before, what he did does not have to be viewed through a political lens for it to be a legitimate justification for termination.

edit: I said "if I was a woman I would not want to work with him." Actually I would not want to work with him regardless.

> I think you missed the point of mine.

I may have. It sounded like you were highlighting the paradox itself, while I was intending to highlight the way the paradox lends itself to abuse. Perhaps ironically, your comments about Damore and the memo are exemplary--the memo contains zero offensive generalizations; it's been picked over and no one has produced an 'offensive generalization'--only phrases that allegedly contain offensive hidden messages. And because of those hidden messages, the mob pats itself on the back for helping to suppress Damore's "intolerance" (by the way, the same mob was rationalizing the New York Times hiring Jeong despite her four-year montage of overtly racist tweets). Again, I don't want to focus too much on any one example, because there are so many others and I don't want to steal attention from the broader phenomenon.

> I may have. It sounded like you were highlighting the paradox itself, while I was intending to highlight the way the paradox lends itself to abuse.

My intent was to illustrate that not all intolerances are only relative degrees of the same thing (as claimed in the popular 'conservative' talking point); some are categorically distinct, and in a web of interconnected intolerances the two types that I identified interact in asymmetrical ways.

I mostly just wanted to write down an idea that occurred to me on my walk home from work. I don't expect something that long to play well in an internet forum. It's meant as an interesting abstraction, not an airtight position.

> Perhaps ironically, your comments about Damore and the memo are exemplary--the memo contains zero offensive generalizations; it's been picked over and no one has produced an 'offensive generalization'--only phrases that allegedly contain offensive hidden messages. And because of those hidden messages, the mob pats itself on the back for helping to suppress Damore's "intolerance" (by the way, the same mob was rationalizing the New York Times hiring Jeong despite her four-year montage of overtly racist tweets). Again, I don't want to focus too much on any one example, because there are so many others and I don't want to steal attention from the broader phenomenon.

Have you read this: https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-thoughts-...

It's quite literally the only piece of coverage I've seen of the Damore saga that I mostly agree with. Otherwise I think I've said what I have to say about him and his document. If you want to project politics onto me, I can't stop you, but I don't think it's productive. My opinions on this issue aren't political.

> My intent was to illustrate that not all intolerances are only relative degrees of the same thing

Ah, I see. I agree, though I wasn't espousing the "popular conservative talking point" (which I've never actually heard before), so I'm not quite sure why the conversation took that particular turn.

> Have you read this

I have, but I don't really want to dissect that here and now.

> If you want to project politics onto me

I don't want to, and I don't think I did. :) Sincere apologies if I offended.

Your very own link lists other major philosophers and thinkers (including Thomas Jefferson) who disagree with Karl Popper's conclusion on paradox of intolerance! There is _no_ universally agreed upon answer to the paradox of intolerance; I do not know why people keep pretending that there is.

(I will also observe that, where the article notes: "Popper asserted that to allow freedom of speech to those who would use it to eliminate the very principle upon which they rely is paradoxical.", it clearly applies to those who wish to (quoting from your post) "...call out intolerant views and actions and work towards eliminating them".)

That's very intolerant of you to cry bigot about people who support LGBT rights.

Totally bizarre intolerant nonsense.

No, not really, since his personal beliefs involve advocating for others to suffer.

He suffers nothing by permitting LGBT people to live as they wish.

You should probably not rely on Google's fairly crappy dictionary definitions.

The quoted definition of bigotry as "intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself" is from the New Oxford American Dictionary, from Oxford University Press (the OED people). If that's what Google is using, I don't think I can rely on your definition of "crappy."

Yep, it's a crappy definition that does not reflect current usage. It doesn't even reflect the definition in the OED, if you want to check there. 'Bigotry' is not limited to difference of opinion. Nobody uses it like that, you can take a look at the quoted usage examples here, which are from current publications.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bigotry

Ahh, yes. Always useful to continuously cherry-pick or alter definitions to tailor words that have an objectively negative moral implication to apply to exactly the standards you want.

Just because some publications use the word in that way does not mean the definition of the word should be shifted.

I’m sorry but this is a pointedly stupid comment. I’m doing the exact opposite of cherry-picking - I’m saying the definition is much broader than the inaccurately narrow one posted.

The OED is a historical dictionary; the Oxford Dictionary of English and the New Oxford American Dictionary are explicitly meant to reflect more current usage. At any rate, I think this is getting awfully pedantic; the definition you linked is "obstinate or intolerant devotion to one's own opinions and prejudices," which seems similar enough that I'm not really sure what the point of this argument is. Given that I'm fairly sure the point of this was whether Chick-Fil-A's executives and in-the-company's-name giving exhibits bigotry, by any dictionary anyone's linked to, the answer is "yes."

The point is that the definition posted is narrow and bad. This isn't some obscure technical point, a debate about the proper usage of 'less' and 'fewer' or whether 'literally' literally means what it says in some odd case. All you have to do to convince yourself of its badness is read a newspaper or magazine or listen to a news report. What exactly would 'racial bigotry' mean if the posted thing was the only definition of 'bigotry'?

As to pedantry, you're the one who started arguing this clearly lousy definition is not lousy, brought up the OED, decided the OED is no good, finally acknowledged the existence of a broader definition but then somehow decided that it's, in fact, as good as identical to the narrow bad definition. I'll be the first to acknowledge I have a habit of getting involved in some deeply silly threads but I'm left utterly flummoxed by this Cirque-du Soleil-level display of mental gymnastics.

I just hope the authors of that lousy definition aren't holding your cat hostage.

Bigotry does not just mean 'intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself.' It's a silly definition, not what I want it to mean.

Language does not operate on the basis of what the speaker _wants_ it to mean.

I don't understand what ghost windmill you are tilting at here. At all. It certainly doesn't seem to be anything I've actually said.

I have a pretty personal beef with the idea that language can simply be contorted to supposedly mean whatever someone feels like it should mean, as heading down that road is basically abandoning meaning and communication altogether, and is wholly incoherent.

Yeah but... I didn't say any of that.

> It's a silly definition, not what I want it to mean.

You wrote this intending to say, "I'm saying the dictionary definition is silly, not that bigotry should mean what I want it to mean."

Instead, the sentence says, "The dictionary definition is silly, [because it's] not what I want it to mean."

That's fair, I likely misinterpreted it that way.

No, that was not what he said. He said to keep in mind the opinions of the company owners, which I imagine encourages one to not purchase from them.

I do not see how one can claim a criticism of their engineering follows from his statement.

For those coming to the thread later: the parent comment pointed out a certain fact[1] about the corporate activities of Chick-Fil-A that doesn't directly relate to the contents of the article.

The basis was the observation that such articles are,in essence, a "work-for-us" ads, and in that vein, informing the readers of other, broader actions of a corporation is relevant, especially when it pertains to ethics.

[1]https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chick-fil-a-gay-marriage/

The poster said nothing of the sort.

To make the point more directly for you, I think and I’m guessing the poster thinks we ought not to normalize certain kinds of discriminatory corporate behavior by just looking away and cheerfully admiring their oh-so-efficient tech stack.

I never made any statement conflating views of ownership with technical team skills. That's absurd.

This whole post and thread are an effort to recruit engineers and accumulate good will within the HN community. Pointing out that the company is rotten is extremely important, as is anything else that can undermine the project of manipulating talented, powerful hackers into working on the project of generating profits that power an evil social agenda.