I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup

The landmark on tribalism. Tolerance means kindness to the outgroup - and you earn no virtue tolerating people you already like. Outgroups form from proximity plus small differences (the narcissism of small differences: the Nazis' outgroup was German Jews, not the distant Japanese). Hence the Red/Blue/Grey Tribe taxonomy, the "dark matter" of conservatives Scott never meets (a 1/10^45 bubble), the Osama-vs-Thatcher reactions, evidence that partyism now exceeds racism (IAT, resume studies), and the reading of "American"/"white"/"intolerance" as code words for the outgroup - capped by the self-implicating twist that he had fun writing it, so the Blue Tribe is his outgroup too.

Quality 94 · Landmark. One of the most influential essays in the corpus - "Red Tribe / Blue Tribe" became ubiquitous vocabulary and the piece reshaped how a generation discusses political tribalism. Exceptional craft, scope, and self-aware honesty. Just below Moloch at the very top of the scale.

Claude’s paradigm shift 88 · Major shift. Genuinely paradigm-defining: it gave a huge audience a durable framework (Red/Blue Tribe, partyism, code-words) for political identity that propagated everywhere. Builds more visibly on existing social psychology (in-group/outgroup, narcissism of small differences) than Moloch does, so a notch below it - but still top-band.

Real-world impact 5 · Substantial. 'Red Tribe / Blue Tribe' and 'partyism' entered mainstream political vocabulary, reshaping how a broad public — well beyond rationalist circles — discusses tribalism and polarization. Exceptionally wide cultural-discourse penetration, but it supplies a lens and vocabulary, not concrete material or policy change to ordinary lives, so high-but-not-top RWI.