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Vladimir_M comments on Offense versus harm minimization - Less Wrong
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Another unpleasant implication of the consequentialist attitude towards offense is that societies should be as homogeneous as possible with regards to people's values and beliefs. (And I'm not talking about Aumann-agreement here!) As the diversity of a society increases, the set of statements and acts that can be done in public without offending one group or another necessarily shrinks, which implies an inevitable trade-off between the pain of offense and the pain of people who have their freedom curtailed and are increasingly forced to walk on eggshells. I'll leave the more concrete implications in the context of today's politics as an exercise for the reader.
It also implies that a certain level of isolation between societies is desirable, in direct opposition to the present trends of globalization. What is regular business in one society may well be extremely offensive in another. So, if there's an intense mutual interest and exchange of information between societies, we get the same problem as within a single diverse society. This can be mitigated only by isolating these societies from each other so that their members are not exposed to the painful sight of the offensive alien customs.
All of this seems pretty true to me. There were even studies that showed pretty clearly that ethnically homogenous communities were happier than ethnically mixed ones.
There are lots of good reasons not to actually exclude different people from a society. Immigration's been shown to be a net good for most people involved, and of course uprooting people from a society they've grown accustomed to is harmful. But these only counterbalance the above claim, not disprove it.
I think it's pretty self-evident that anything that brings nudists together with those Arabs who freak out if every inch of a woman isn't covered by a burka is going to be a net loss for both groups.
Point of information: Although women from many ethnic/language groups (including Arabs) will wear burqas, It's mostly Pashtuns who require them to the point of freaking out.
Sounds like you are referring to Robert Putnam's research. I spun his results as a positive here.