I call it a fog horn. In this case, I'm not hearing anything though. It may be someone with dissenting viewpoints, however hateful-seeming, or outright illegal behavior. As with most touchy subjects, I find the best path forward is to openly discuss without shutting down voices. I believe no one needs to prove they're _not_ a bigot, but one does need to prove someone else _is_ a bigot. Even that is a WIP stance for me.

> As with most touchy subjects, I find the best path forward is to openly discuss without shutting down voices.

I try to follow this myself, but I do find myself giving exceptions to specific touchy subjects. For example, I don't understand how to approach a touchy subject where open discussion actually drives away people and therefore makes it an echo chamber.

For example if a gay person left a community because people were openly discussing whether or not gay people are pedophiles and advocating for the castration and torture of gay people, and that the advocating for castration and torture of gay people wasn't being shut down, I honestly think that's a totally reasonable behavior on behalf of the gay person. And I honestly would disagree that this created anything even remotely resembling a "forward path" direction.

But, in abstract, I still believe we should openly discuss touchy subject matters. I just find myself constantly running into actual application where I disagree that openly discussing a specific matter actually benefitted anyone, and found myself agreeing that the community would be healthier if specific topics of conversation were shut down.

_most_ touchy subjects. There is no absolute. For some reason, I cannot handle a person speaking about a woman's appearance in the negative in front of her, and it's because I _think_ I am feeling her pain. I have told people to leave my house immediately for things like that. N-bombs, etc. That makes me a hypocrite, but I'm not strong enough to handle certain topics. I, myself, have accidentally said bigoted things and someone of the relevant marginalized community explains to me why it's hateful to say that, and I am so thankful for their words.

I don't know the context; with that said, are you sure you heard "hateful" and not "hurtful"? Hate is contextually charged. I know it's lost a lot of its meaning, but as someone who had a parent for whom english was a second language, I was taught not to misuse words like "hate".

Does it really count as a dog-whistle if it's audible to nearly any living human?

I think you may be overestimating human reasoning skills. I often don't even notice "arguments as soldiers"[0] in the moment, despite my interest in rationality, and that's a very easy way to get unrelated claims squished together like that.

[0] https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/arguments-as-soldiers a topic which I'm thinking about now because a few days ago I noticed half an hour too late that "you need to wear a mask while on public transport in Berlin" has shifted to the side effects of vaccines without me realising.