the unstated assumption [of tolerance] is that having the right religion does not matter too much, because people not mass-killing each other is more important than believing in the right kind of deity. Now say it too loudly, and religious people will have to oppose this idea, to signal their faith.
Simply put, I disagree that this is an accurate summary of history. People explicitly and publicly argued for toleration on exactly the basis you identified. And it was sometimes implemented. Further, I don't think there is any example in history of the toleration of a community failing because the tolerant were so vocal about it that the intolerant suddenly noticed that the wool was being pulled over their eyes. In short, you've identified the assumption/foundation of tolerance, but this foundation was hardly unstated in the sense I mean.
Simply said, an average heterosexual male would like to have sex with some attractive female, he would like to increase his chances, but he has no idea what is her decision algorithm.
Without agreeing on mechanism, I can certainly agree that some women conceal their desires in order to manipulate others. It probably extends to everyone in her social circle, but examples include expecting free drinks and insincerely saying "Nothing is wrong." when asked. This type of manipulation is bad, and would be much more difficult if the underlying unstated assumptions went away.
So why not make some money teaching it before it all becomes common sense?
It is not inevitable that the changes I desire will ever happen. Further, PUA functions to support the unstated assumptions it seeks to exploit. PUA Bob has beliefs about how women should behave, and he behaves consistent with those beliefs. Bob's behavior tends to reinforce those beliefs in others. That would be true even if the beliefs were not considered "unstated" by society. But because society does consider them unstated (and punishes making them explicit), reinforcing the beliefs includes reinforcing that they should be unstate-able.
20-30 years ago were both these words equally offensive, or if you'd have to choose one of them, would "queer" be somehow less offensive?
Some of this is before my time, and some of it is far back in my memory. Nonetheless, I'd say that "queer" and "faggot" were about equally offensive when they were both slurs. Queer might even have been worse. (~50% + epsilon for those assertions).
And your discussion of when to expect violence is unlikely to measure offensiveness of different phrases. The culture of poverty is more accepting of violence than the culture of wealth. That is, we would expect an equally offensive statement to cause violence from a culture of poverty when we would not expect violence from a culture of wealth. Stereotypical blacks live in a culture of poverty (because they are poor), and stereotypical homosexuals do not (because the stereotype is that they aren't poor).
As I write this, this post is at -3. I don't see what reasoning mistake I made in this specific post, because I use the same reasoning in all the rest of my posts in this conversation.
Can someone help me understand why this comment got different treatment.
You folks probably know how some posters around here, specifically Vladimir_M, often make statements to the effect of:
"There's an opinion on such-and-such topic that's so against the memeplex of Western culture, we can't even discuss it in open-minded, pseudonymous forums like Less Wrong as society would instantly slam the lid on it with either moral panic or ridicule and give the speaker a black mark.
Meanwhile the thought patterns instilled in us by our upbringing would lead us to quickly lose all interest in the censored opinion"
Going by their definition, us blissfully ignorant masses can't even know what exactly those opinions might be, as they would look like basic human decency, the underpinnings of our ethics or some other such sacred cow to us. I might have a few guesses, though, all of them as horrible and sickening as my imagination could produce without overshooting and landing in the realm of comic-book evil:
- Dictatorial rule involving active terror and brutal suppression of deviants having great utility for a society in the long term, by providing security against some great risk or whatever.
- A need for every society to "cull the weak" every once in a while, e.g. exterminating the ~0.5% of its members that rank as weakest against some scale.
- Strict hierarchy in everyday life based on facts from the ansectral environment (men dominating women, fathers having the right of life and death over their children, etc) - Mencius argued in favor of such ruthless practices, e.g. selling children into slavery, in his post on "Pronomianism" and "Antinomianism", stating that all contracts between humans should rather be strict than moral or fair, to make the system stable and predictable; he's quite obsessed with stability and conformity.
- Some public good being created when the higher classes wilfully oppress and humiliate the lower ones in a ceremonial manner
- The bloodshed and lawlessness of periodic large-scale war as a vital "pressure valve" for releasing pent-up unacceptable emotional states and instinctive drives
- Plain ol' unfair discrimination of some group in many cruel, life-ruining ways, likewise as a pressure valve
+: some Luddite crap about dropping to a near-subsistence level in every aspect of civilization and making life a daily struggle for survival
Of course my methodology for coming up with such guesses was flawed and primitive: I simply imagined some of the things that sound the ugliest to me yet have been practiced by unpleasant cultures before in some form. Now, of course, most of us take the absense of these to be utterly crucial to our terminal values. Nevertheless, I hope I have demonstrated to whoever might really have something along these lines (if not necessarily that shocking) on their minds that I'm open to meta-discussion, and very interested how we might engage each other on finding safe yet productive avenues of contact.
Let's do the impossible and think the unthinkable! I must know what those secrets are, no matter how much sleep and comfort I might lose.
P.S. Yeah, Will, I realize that I'm acting roughly in accordance with that one trick you mentioned way back.
P.P.S. Sup Bakkot. U mad? U jelly?
CONCLUSION:
Fuck this Earth, and fuck human biology. I'm not very distressed about anything I saw ITT, but there's still a lot of unpleasant potential things that can only be resolved in one way:
I hereby pledge to get a real goddamn plastic card, not this Visa Electron bullshit the university saddled us with, and donate at least $100 to SIAI until the end of the year. This action will reduce the probability of me and mine having to live with the consequences of most such hidden horrors. Dixi.
Sometimes it's so pleasant to be impulsive.
Amusing observation: even when the comments more or less match my wild suggestions above, I'm still unnerved by them. An awful idea feels harmless if you keep telling yourself that it's just a private delusion, but the moment you know that someone else shares it, matters begin to look much more grave.