> If you feel like you're doing something because someone "deserves" it, you're doing it wrong;

I was giving a description of how "intolerance of intolerance" works out in practice.

It doesn't matter if you think these people are doing it wrong.

I do not believe that humans can be trusted to be given such an easy to abuse loophole, that gives them carte-blanche moral authority to act terrible to other human beings (because the the target of the abuse is "intolerant", and therefore deserve it).

It is safer to just say "no. You should not treat people poorly, even if you believe that they are intolerant, or deserve it because of some other quality".

I'm reading "Legal System Very Different From Ours". The first one it talks about is ancient imperial China, where (as the author presents it) the Confucian legal tradition was about teaching virtue.

I'm reminded of a description of "conservative" vs "liberal" wherein it's about risk management versus experimentation.

Right now, if I'm faced with a choice between accommodating people who are doing it wrong, or challenging those people to become more, I'm going with the second option. Then again, this might not result in a viable society; or perhaps just a viable large-scale society.

To put it another way: You can view the loophole as the problem, or you can view the attitude that finds loopholes acceptable to use the problem.

> You should not treat people poorly, even if you believe that they are intolerant,

I can treat people well whom I also do not tolerate. It's just that yeah, usually, those acting intolerant are also acting like assholes.

"intolerance of intolerance" leads to lynchings, that sort of behavior needs to be stopped at all cost. USA has mostly gotten over lynchings but still has way too much intolerance, you would be much better off if you were a bit more tolerant and less judgmental over there.

> stopped at all cost

Including the cost of, say, being intolerant of intolerance of intolerance?

AFAIK, one of the major reasons to be intolerant of intolerance is to prevent lynchings.

So we should start twitter mobs to stop the twitter mobs that target people currently? Or what do you mean? The only way to stop it is to teach acceptance and temperance. We didn't stop lynchings by attacking them, we stopped it by teaching people the value of tolerance for even the worst of criminals and giving them due process. It is when you refuse to tolerate criminals that lynchings occur.

This is a pretty good point. Tolerance-as-peace-treaty doesn't apply nearly as reasonably between groups as it does within a group; although that makes sense. Do not abide by the peace treaty, conflict arises; and then it's about how you resolve conflicts between groups.

Stopped at all costs means "do not engage in certain behavior, yourself, even if you think you have a good reason for it".

Even if you think the other person deserves it, because of whatever excuse that you can think of, you still shouldn't act horribly, no matter the nice sounding justification that you can trick yourself into believing.

Humans are really good at tricking themselves into believing that their horrible behavior is justified.

In this specific situation, calling someone else intolerant is just an excuse that people will use to justify their horrible behavior to others.