Do you have a particular example in mind which is generating this whole thread, which you’re willing to gesture at? I was escalating because it’s seemed-to-me from the beginning that this whole class of objection is very obviously statistically unrealistic (once one sets aside its emotional salience), and the arguments you’ve made seem to me not only wrong but obviously wrong (again, once one sets aside emotional salience). In my experience, just continuing at the object level usually doesn’t prove useful in such situations.
If I’m being epistemically generous, I would guess that you have some specific example in mind which is very different from the sort of thing I was imagining when writing the post, and as a result we’ve been talking past each other a lot. For instance, elsewhere in this thread, David Davidson brought up “Many people in countries with more authoritarian governments have to worry about going to prison over having the wrong opinion (like China or the UK).”. I thought the examples in the post made it pretty obvious that that was not the sort of thing I was talking about, but maybe that was not obvious?
My core belief on this topic is that coming out is, in fact, a risky practice in America and world wide. It’s risky to come out about your kinks, your sexual gender orientation, your political beliefs, and your historical affiliations with groups or types of groups that have controversial reputations.
Coming out can be net beneficial under controlled circumstances. Generally, it is better to have a world in which people have the ability to achieve those benefits. That starts by being aware of and working to mitigate those risks. The queer community is an excellent example of a group of people who’ve done that and reaped the rewards.
My central problem with your OP and responses here is that you seem to be rejecting the need for consideration or mitigation of those risks. This flies in the face of the historical experience of queers, apostates, atheists, political, radicals, and other groups who’ve come out in ways that failed to control those risks and suffered for it. By encouraging people to just come out without considering or taking steps to mitigate risks, you encourage them to make themselves vulnerable in ways that may make them more dependent on the rationalist community as the place where you’re seeking to enact this attitude toward coming out.
In my view, there is an enormous volume of historical experience of a wide variety of groups that backs up the profound risks of coming out. These risks include ostracism, exclusion from job opportunities, public humiliation, and physical violence. Again, those risks can be mitigated and the reward for doing so are great. But flat out denying those risks strikes me as foolish when it’s done by an individual, and cult-inducing when it becomes a community norm.
There are stories of people losing their jobs over social media posts—the stories I’ve heard have been about high school teachers getting fired over things like pictures of themselves on Facebook drinking at a party.
Do you have a particular example in mind which is generating this whole thread, which you’re willing to gesture at? I was escalating because it’s seemed-to-me from the beginning that this whole class of objection is very obviously statistically unrealistic (once one sets aside its emotional salience), and the arguments you’ve made seem to me not only wrong but obviously wrong (again, once one sets aside emotional salience). In my experience, just continuing at the object level usually doesn’t prove useful in such situations.
If I’m being epistemically generous, I would guess that you have some specific example in mind which is very different from the sort of thing I was imagining when writing the post, and as a result we’ve been talking past each other a lot. For instance, elsewhere in this thread, David Davidson brought up “Many people in countries with more authoritarian governments have to worry about going to prison over having the wrong opinion (like China or the UK).”. I thought the examples in the post made it pretty obvious that that was not the sort of thing I was talking about, but maybe that was not obvious?
My core belief on this topic is that coming out is, in fact, a risky practice in America and world wide. It’s risky to come out about your kinks, your sexual gender orientation, your political beliefs, and your historical affiliations with groups or types of groups that have controversial reputations.
Coming out can be net beneficial under controlled circumstances. Generally, it is better to have a world in which people have the ability to achieve those benefits. That starts by being aware of and working to mitigate those risks. The queer community is an excellent example of a group of people who’ve done that and reaped the rewards.
My central problem with your OP and responses here is that you seem to be rejecting the need for consideration or mitigation of those risks. This flies in the face of the historical experience of queers, apostates, atheists, political, radicals, and other groups who’ve come out in ways that failed to control those risks and suffered for it. By encouraging people to just come out without considering or taking steps to mitigate risks, you encourage them to make themselves vulnerable in ways that may make them more dependent on the rationalist community as the place where you’re seeking to enact this attitude toward coming out.
In my view, there is an enormous volume of historical experience of a wide variety of groups that backs up the profound risks of coming out. These risks include ostracism, exclusion from job opportunities, public humiliation, and physical violence. Again, those risks can be mitigated and the reward for doing so are great. But flat out denying those risks strikes me as foolish when it’s done by an individual, and cult-inducing when it becomes a community norm.
There are stories of people losing their jobs over social media posts—the stories I’ve heard have been about high school teachers getting fired over things like pictures of themselves on Facebook drinking at a party.