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Comment by arjie | Hacker News Reader

Like most of these things, one can bemoan it and say “oh it’s terrible that this is how it is” but I think it’s pretty easy to self-test this to see it’s adaptive for a reason.

Brendan Eich was fired from Mozilla as CTO because of a small donation in favour of Prop 8. Fine?

I think most people here would say yes. In fact people did say that.

I think many people would say they don’t want to have a plumber who opposes (say) trans rights. Or read an author who is anti-gay. Pick some view heretical to your world-view and see if you can stand to encounter people who hold it.

If you require all purity you probably prefer the uni-context.

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It also works both ways. Yes a plumber can be more easily outed as anti-gay and fired, but the same uni-context makes the plumber more likely to be anti-gay and more strongly anti-gay in the first place. Being exposed to anti-gay propaganda all the time will do that. Otherwise you just have people who are like, their church told them it was bad to be gay, but they don't really care about it.

That’s a good point. We can truly create social change much more effectively through the uni-context and much of it is for good.

> Yes a plumber can be more easily outed as anti-gay and fired

Why would I care if I don't notice? I'm paying them to fix my literal plumbing, not to proverbially suck my dick. If they do the job I pay them for, and they're not giving me shit for who I am, why would I want to get them fired?

This uni-context feels like a very silly idea in practice.

If Hitler would fix your plumbing would you give him money, or would you look for another plumber because giving money to Hitler is bad? Now scale that principle down.

But isn’t it actually better for the world if Hitler was to spend all his time fixing plumbing rather than shun people like him from society entirely and give him all the free time and reasons to take action on his vile opinions? After all, a common theory is that if he simply got accepted into art school, the entire world would be different.

Yes, but it's worse for the world if Hitler saves up his plumbing income to fund the Beer Hall Putsch which makes him famous and leads to the Holocaust.

But people can never be "pure" enough and what is acceptable in the uni-context will change over time. If you documented your life within it you will find you will be branded a heretic sooner or later.

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