I have never understood why people add sentences like: "probably a minority" to their arguments. This is something that weakens your stand. Let me explain: If a minority (nerds/D&D-players,etc) gets bullied in school. Is them being a minority: A) a fact that aggrieves the bullying B) a non-relevant fact C) a fact that absolves the bullies from their wrong-doing?

Because it seems like you are implying that it's option C by making this comment.

There's a bit of a discussion here, you can promote either option depending on how you frame your hypothetical which means this particular framing doesn't add to the conversation. Take "medicine" and "side effects on a minority". Suddenly you can consider option C) as a perfectly reasonable one.

The problem is you didn't focus on the real critical issue: why do the ends justify the means? "The ends" for medicine is saving thousands of lives. The ends for bullying is making one person feel better about themselves (maybe?).

This is the question you need to ask when you wonder "should we ban a book".

I am not making a point I am asking why he adds the "minority" remark in passing. I think this is not very relevant. But adding such a remark in passing tells me that the OP does think it is important. This triggers me into investigating why it matters

I objected just to the framing of the example. The question "why would minority change anything in the case of books?" is a good one. And I believe it makes a hell of a difference in this particular case (while it did not in the bullying example). The reason is simple: if a minority being offended is a good enough reason to ban a book then you can see how it could very easily be used to arbitrarily ban any book. Books on global warming, round Earth, on evolution, on religion, or any controversial topic could easily be targeted as there are already large established groups ready to object. Someone will always be offended rightfully or not.

Maybe it's more important to look at the overall impact on society as it is right now, and in the context of where we want it to evolve, rather than what particular individuals may like.

Australia has a case where this is very relevant: most of the aboriginal people of Australia consider the direct mention or depiction of dead people in photographs and videos very disrespectful[1]. Because of that, it's common in Australian TV for almost any program to include warning for native Australian viewers about that.

Imagine if Australia bookstores followed the principle that even if a minority (and in this case, a very important minority as the aboriginal people are the "original owners" of the land) does not like a book, it should not be made available... you wouldn't be allowed to sell any books that contained or even mentioned deceased people.

But now, imagine that the British had not invaded and forcibly taken over Australia, so that the aboriginal people would be the current rules of the country. Now, you would probably expect no bookstores to want to offend their customers, so they would, presumably, avoid selling most books, arguably.

So, yes, I think that whether or not it's a minority that takes a certain stand makes a whole world of difference.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_avoidanc...

You went from someone claiming to find something "utterly repugnant" to a minority "being bullied". There's no necessary relation between the two. Because you don't know if the bullying is real, and if the minorities match. The relationship can easily go the other way around, for example a minority can claim to find gay marriage "utterly repugnant".

Semantics. The real question is: does it matter that it is a minority that "finds gay marriage utterly repugnant"? Because I think it DOESN'T matter. It could have been said by a minority or a majority, you are the one that is implying that it's important that a minority said this. That means that you think that's important. Tell me, how is that important?

Whether it's only a minority that takes a certain view is not just important: it's fundamental to a society's set of morals, which is what the question really is about.

What is a culture if not the rules and customs a large majority of a certain population agrees on?

Some cultures try to accomodate minorities, but there's always a threshold to what's tolerated even in the most open societies. A certain minority may not like something the majority does, but unless there's very little cost for the majority to stop doing that, they won't, even if that offends some groups.

There's no way around this because there will always be groups who take offense in things you may consider completely and utterly harmless (I gave the example of Australia aborigines not being comfortable with talking about or depicting deceased people - obviously a problem in the age of movies and books). A society that tried to acommodate every group's sensibilities would be completely unable to function.

The more distant the groups, the more patently obvious this becomes. If you are not sure what I am talking about you probably should try to learn more about other cultures.

I don't care what society thinks I have my own moral compass that is partly my own and partly shaped by society. I do my best to shape society to my truth and don't care what "the majority" or "the minority" thinks. You make many claims about "society" and what would work or wouldn't. But these are just assumptions. I like experiments. My question remains why is it relevant that a minority asks for the removal of something. 100 years ago slave owners said society would collapse without slaves and that black people were too stupid to do more that physical work. A minority of people from "society" objected to this at first. And slowly the old truths were replaced by new ones. This is happening now as well. You presume many things but you are not talking about the justness or inherent truths. I ask you: Why shouldn't we let books that are implicitly discriminatory fade into obscurity?

> I don't care what society thinks...

Oh my... I suppose you're writing this from prison as if you don't care about what society thinks you certainly must disagree with many laws of that society...

This is a really childish argument and thinking there's an absolute truth is an obvious sign of your lack of understanding of what humanity even means.

There is no absolute truth. Nothing has inherent value, not even life. We only give value to life (and really different values depending on what type of life we're talking about) because we have an obvious interest in keeping our species alive, but this is not inherently good, or an absolute truth in any way.

You now come up with an argument that's drowning in your own culture and the very recent past of your own society and you don't even realize that, thinking there's some kind of absolute truth behind your position. There isn't. You're so deep into your society mindset you're compleetely incapable of thinking outside of that.

You seem to be trying to refer to Sam Harris' Moral Landscape without actually understanding at all what he means.