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This reeks of both-sides-ism and enablement. "Where does it stop?" is the same slippery slope garbage peddled by #HimToo and #BlueLivesMatter acolytes. But eve

This reeks of both-sides-ism and enablement. "Where does it stop?" is the same slippery slope garbage peddled by #HimToo and #BlueLivesMatter acolytes. But even engaging with the question at face value, the answer is very simple, and the author of this piece didn't try very hard if he couldn't find someone who is able to answer it. In fact, the best answer was given by Karl Popper in 1945. > In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance. That's it. Platforms like Gab are themselves intolerant, and we must continue to be intolerant of them.

msla 8y ago
> But even engaging with the question at face value, the answer is very simple If you think that, you're not engaging with the complexity of the problem, and, instead, trying to shut down discussion. This problem is one philosophers and legal scholars have struggled over for millennia, all around the world. If you think you have a simple answer, you're lying, you're unbelievably arrogant, or you don't understand the problem.
froasty 8y ago
For anyone wanting the full quote from Popper's The Open Society: "Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal. Another of the less well-known paradoxes is the paradox of democracy, or more precisely, of majority-rule; i.e. the possibility that the majority may decide that a tyrant should rule. That Plato’s criticism of democracy can be interpreted in the way sketched here, and that the principle of majority-rule may lead to self-contradictions, was first suggested, as far as I know, by Leonard Nelson (cp. note 25 (2) to this chapter). I do not think, however, that Nelson, who, in spite of his passionate humanitarianism and his ardent fight for freedom, adopted much of Plato’s political theory, and especially Plato’s principle of leadership, was aware of the fact that analogous arguments can be raised against all the different particular forms of the theory of sovereignty. All these paradoxes can easily be avoided if we frame our political demands in the way suggested in section ii of this chapter, or perhaps in some such manner as this. We demand a government that rules according to the principles of equalitarianism and protectionism; that tolerates all who are prepared to reciprocate, i.e. who are tolerant; that is controlled by, and accountable to, the public. And we may add that some form of majority vote, together with institutions for keeping the public well informed, is the best, though not infallible, means of controlling such a government. (No infallible means exist.)"
- zacherates 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- manfredo 8y ago
  There is no paradox of tolerance if we're exclusive talking about the tolerance of speech. Even the most abhorrent words are still just words and do not inherently exclude those that disagree with them. /pol/ and Gab are filled with right wing extremists, but the platforms do tolerate left wing extremists as well. The paradox of tolerance only applies when talking about actions. A group that is actively excluding others through discrimination or force may need to be removed to preserve tolerance. Speech does not exclude anyone - if the listener chooses to leave because of it then that is the listener's prerogative (as opposed to, say, being subjected to violence or discrimination).
  - watwut 8y ago
    I think that people in these debates are less interested in whether "words" are ugly and more in political projects pushed by those words. When a guy in synagogue is shooting people, because he happen to believe that they are organizing immigrants to genocide whites, competitive left wing group trying to convince other guys does not make people in synagogue wake up from death. It does not cancel out. You can be simultanously for free speech while accept the reality that words have consequences and words are often said in order to cause those consequences. To make people afraid and dangerous and ready for violence.
    - manfredo 8y ago
      The point is not that the extremism on one end cancels out extremism on the other. The point is, it is possible to tolerate both - there is no paradox of tolerance with respect to speech. As to your second point, the suppression of speech also has dangerous consequences. Plenty of anti-Semitic thought is rooted in the belief of Jewish control of the media. Suppressing speech probably only serves to reinforce this view. The reality is that intolerance of hateful speech rarely makes hate go away. Remember, high ranking Nazi leaders were imprisoned, and Völkischer Beobachter (a prominent Nazi publication) was repeatedly banned and had it's offices raided. It didn't stop the spread of Nationalist Socialism. Some historians believe this suppression only accelerated it's rise. It's like the Streisand effect on a political scale. Aside from instances where the suppression of speech is nearly certain to avoid negative consequences (like specific threats, conspiracy to commit crimes, divulging official secrets or classified information) it is not wise to suppress it. And this doesn't even touch on people attempting to use accusations of hate speech as a political tool (e.g. the "blue lives matter" laws not-so-subtly aimed at suppression of BLM).
tunesmith 8y ago
Define intolerance. That's the whole problem. So being "intolerant of intolerance" is meaningless except as something that signals a different meaning - different lines, different behavior, different standards - to every listener.
- JoshTriplett 8y ago
  > Define intolerance That thing everyone except the intolerant seem to understand remarkably well, and the intolerant spend a lot of time quibbling over the definition of in a desperate attempt to derail their inclusion in it. Or, more seriously: treating other people as unwelcome or hated or less than human, for reasons other than being hateful and intolerant.
  - tunesmith 8y ago
    Since I don't understand it remarkably well, I must be intolerant? Nice.
    - tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
      The real issue with the parent comment is that it's not sustainable in the end. When they say "everyone but (x) understands this", they are alluding to a sense of shared understanding. That, to a certain extent, is a culture. In a society with several cultures, alluding to a sense of shared understanding is virtually impossible, because the interpretation is at root a cultural one. There's simply no way to guarantee that what they mean by "intolerant" is exactly what everyone else means.
  - wycs 8y ago
    Yes. It is all very obvious. For example, suppose a marginalized group uses the hashtag #killallwhitemen to express the disempowerment they feel from the historical weight of white privilege. This, I think we can all agree, is an expression of righteous outrage through hyperbole, not intolerance. In fact, "white men" in this context does not refer to any person or group of people, rather a self-reenforcing system of oppression and privilege. In this way, we see "#killallwhitemen" is tool of enforcing tolerance in an intolerant society. Now suppose someone were to make an argument like this: "We observe sexual dimorphism to some degree in most animals. Thus our prior should be that it is unlikely that women and men are 100% psychologically identical even when controlling for environment. Because of this it would be epistemically incorrect to assume differences in representation in engineering firms can be explained entirely by discrimination." This argument is clearly reactionary and must be censored, for we know 100% that any difference in preferences, abilities and outcomes between men and women must be explained by environmental effects. To think otherwise would be exclusionary and thus an example of intolerance we must be intolerant of, even in our own thoughts. The person making this argument should be shunned. Even raising the argument should result in immediate deplatforming and perhaps loss of employability. Even this notion of a prior in which you allow yourself to assign a probability to reactionary thoughts must fought, for even a very low prior can be overcome with enough sensory experience.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
travisoneill1 8y ago
How is a platform that let's you say anything uncensored intolerant? If your definition of "tolerance" is forced censorship, then I don't think you would do so well in Karl Popper's proposed society.
- tptacek 8y ago
  In actuality, Gab bans users for the same reason Twitter does. For instance, when Paul Nehlen tried to organize harassment of another white nationalist figure, Gab banned him. Part of Gab's sales pitch is that it's a refuge for people whose thoughts are somehow too dangerous for Twitter. But contrary to what Gab wants you to believe, Twitter doesn't ban white nationalists. Richard Spencer has a Twitter account. So does Faith Goldy. For that matter, so does Gab, which has posted openly anti-Semitic comments in the past, and still has a verified checkmark!
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - djsumdog 8y ago
    Gab also banned people who posted anime porn, sending them in flocks to ActivityPub instances.
    - claudiawerner 8y ago
      The users Gab banned were already on such instances by and large, in particular smuglo.li and pawoo.net.
  - hcg 8y ago
    Gab allows much more open racism and spread of those ideas than Twitter does. Really all this says to me is that Twitter should be doing more.
  - pppaul 8y ago
    Faith Goldy is not a white nationalist
roenxi 8y ago
There is a pretty simple resolution to the Paradox of Tolerance - some philosophies can't build communities (eg, a powerful society of anarchists would be overwhelmed by the first organised internal faction to form). Tolerance is one such philosophy - as pointed out by Popper that means tolerating agents trying to undermine core values. My resolution is that people are experiencing cloudy thinking, and using the word 'tolerance' when they mean 'humility'. To have humility is to seriously admit that, while you are ejecting someone from your community, that you might possibly be wrong to do so. A positive community founded on humility would naturally lead to tolerance anyway, because intolerance starts in a firm belief in your own views of the world being correct.
nine_k 8y ago
N. Taleb, "The most intolerant wins": https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict... Looks oddly relevant.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  If you're looking for the most intolerant, then look to the side that makes the accusations, does the screeching, does the un-personing and de-platforming, and either calls for violence against its enemies, enacts it, or tacitly accepts it. If you want to find the tolerant, find those who advocate for free speech and those who want to engage and make their arguments. That's the side which has learned the value of tolerance, because they're on their back foot.
  - nine_k 8y ago
    Exactly.
djsumdog 8y ago
> #HimToo I haven't heard of this specifically, but the #MeToo movement bothers me greatly, because it implies that we suddenly learned you needed consent for sex; like it was some new revelation. If you look at CDC numbers, just as many men are assaulted sexually as women, but yet the #MeToo movement felt very one directional and didn't talk about assault inclusively of all people. The #BelieveWomen campaign actually goes directly against one of the principal tenants of progressive ideology: Innocent until proven guilty (a tenant of #BlackLivesMatter). The point is these issues are COMPLEX! They are not simple. And when they're not simple, you need to be able to discuss them openly, and frankly. Deplatforming totally fucks that up. People who have never been on to Gab assume it's all hate speech and right-wring religious stuff (I mean .. it is .. or was, but most people didn't actually see it for themselves...they just heard about it and hated). A good counter example: the documentary The Red Pill, where a feminist interviews several people in the Men's Rights movement and learns it was nothing like how it was portrayed as. She had an entirely incorrect view of what they themselves stood for because of all those people yelling at their platform. De-platforming increases polarization. I know it's a meme, but we do live in a society. We need to be able to discuss our differences and find a synthesis between the thesis/anthesis to move forward in a way that's as fair as we can be to everyone. When you push people off platforms, there is no longer speech and discussion. There is only "for us or against us." If you are a feminist in every way, but think trans-women should still be men on their birth certificates, then suddenly you're an anti-Trans, TERF, Fascist, Nazi and nothing you said should be listened to because you're wrong. That's the direction we're heading, and that is sad and terrible. Most humans do act in good faith, and are reasonable, and we need to learn to listen again.
- 8note 8y ago
  > I haven't heard of this specifically, but the #MeToo movement bothers me greatly, because it implies that we suddenly learned you needed consent for sex; like it was some new revelation it's true though; it's largely in response to somebody bragging about not getting consent being elected to the highest office of the US. Without it, Hollywood would still be thinking sexual assault is just the norm, and women have to accept it if they want to move their carear forward
stcredzero 8y ago
This reeks of both-sides-ism and enablement. The whole point of Free Speech is to enable all sides of any issue to have their say. That is a fundamental mechanism against totalitarianism. In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance. Sorry, but Karl Popper's idea is just Orwellian nightmare fuel. "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." Tolerance is to live and let live. Oppressing those you disagree with is the very opposite of tolerance. (Even if they are truly horrible people.) If Silicon Valley were tolerant, they'd let Gab live and possibly be a cesspit of horribleness. A society that de-platforms and un-persons everyone and every idea it doesn't like isn't a free society. That's not a free market of ideas. That's totalitarianism through economic hegemony.
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  >Tolerance is to live and let live. This is one reading of tolerance, but there are multiple (as expounded by Popper and Marcuse too, for instance). I don't think considering an idea badly because it's used as fuel is a good thing. A quick counterexample to the idea that tolerance means to allow anything and everything is that if I were to tell you I tolerate your presence, but you begin to make annoying sounds continuously, my tolerance would quickly change to intolerance. Tolerance is a democratic principle, since it relies on the idea that nobody has an absolute claim on the truth, but as critical theorists as early as the 60s pointed out, this democratic idea depends on an informed populace to distinguish ideas as they are - to that end, in society we don't tolerate some views, such as the teaching of creationism in schools. A good essay on this is Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance". Regarding your mention of Orwell, Marcuse made another interesting point; nowadays, the contradiction is hidden within the noun itself, rather than "war is peace", the word "freedom" itself, understood in the context of its ideological use by various proponents (particularly on the libertarian right, I've noticed) already contains the contradiction; the idea it represents is contradictory. Similarly with misleading names and terms. I do not want to live in a society in which tolerance is absolute, and I doubt many people would.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    I don't think considering an idea badly because it's used as fuel is a good thing. An idea that demolishes a foundation idea by melding it with its opposite is a very insidiously bad thing. "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."
dvtrn 8y ago
This reeks of both-sides-ism and enablement It's funny you take this view, as fatigued as I imagine you probably feel about, as you're calling it "both-sides-ism"-I like to imagine there are probably other people out there just as fatigued with watching "both sides" act like neither has some kind of fringe-manifested baggage or serious, fundamental issues that need to be brought to the table and reconciled. Hate to break this to you: there's some ugly problems with how we're talking about issues coming from all over the place. No one is coming to the table here with clean hands, as far as I'm concerned. Some ugly words and tactics being hurled like hand grenades. They're probably not the same, they probably don't exist for the same reasons, nor have the same motivating factors behind them, but there has got to be some kind of decongestant for this idea that polarizing and hurtful speech only comes from one ideological hemisphere. I don't know what it is, but I hope we find one.
- 8note 8y ago
  I for one, only see one side shooting up synagogues, and locking children in cages
  - dvtrn 8y ago
    My entire point, laid bare, QED.
philwelch 8y ago
Actually, platforms that de-platform tolerant platforms like Gab are the real intolerant ones. I'm being (slightly) facetious, but the point is that Popper's argument, or at least this naive interpretation of it, can be used to justify any intolerance. There's no obvious reason you can't use Popper's argument to justify McCarthyism or the Muslim ban or even Japanese internment on the grounds of the alleged intolerance of their intended targets, or the existential threat they posed to liberalized society. In fact, most actual justifications of those things are based on Popper's argument; it's of the same species as "the Constitution is not a suicide pact" or "are you going to convict Jack Bauer?". This is literally how people tried to justify every violation of civil liberties in American history. US judicial precedent around the First Amendment has varied over time. The hoary cliche that "you can't shout fire in a crowded theater" comes from a Supreme Court ruling in 1919, Schenck v. United States, that the First Amendment did not protect advocacy of draft resistance. That ruling was overruled, and the standard set by the court in 1969, in Brandenberg v. Ohio, was "imminent lawless action". And I think that standard meets Popper's bar without the risk of it devolving into totalitarianism for the sake of protecting us from totalitarianism. Which, incidentally, has been the sales pitch of every totalitarian regime ever. The next batch of Nazis are going to get power by telling us they need it to protect us from the Nazis.
int_19h 8y ago
The "paradox" of tolerance is trivially resolved. As stated, it is misleading, because it conflates two very different thing. A tolerant society, to defend itself, only needs to be intolerant of actions of intolerance - e.g. physical assault motivated by some prejudice. It does not need to be intolerant of intolerant speech, however.

msla 8y ago

> But even engaging with the question at face value, the answer is very simple If you think that, you're not engaging with the complexity of the problem, and, instead, trying to shut down discussion. This problem is one philosophers and legal scholars have struggled over for millennia, all around the world. If you think you have a simple answer, you're lying, you're unbelievably arrogant, or you don't understand the problem.

froasty 8y ago

For anyone wanting the full quote from Popper's The Open Society: "Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal. Another of the less well-known paradoxes is the paradox of democracy, or more precisely, of majority-rule; i.e. the possibility that the majority may decide that a tyrant should rule. That Plato’s criticism of democracy can be interpreted in the way sketched here, and that the principle of majority-rule may lead to self-contradictions, was first suggested, as far as I know, by Leonard Nelson (cp. note 25 (2) to this chapter). I do not think, however, that Nelson, who, in spite of his passionate humanitarianism and his ardent fight for freedom, adopted much of Plato’s political theory, and especially Plato’s principle of leadership, was aware of the fact that analogous arguments can be raised against all the different particular forms of the theory of sovereignty. All these paradoxes can easily be avoided if we frame our political demands in the way suggested in section ii of this chapter, or perhaps in some such manner as this. We demand a government that rules according to the principles of equalitarianism and protectionism; that tolerates all who are prepared to reciprocate, i.e. who are tolerant; that is controlled by, and accountable to, the public. And we may add that some form of majority vote, together with institutions for keeping the public well informed, is the best, though not infallible, means of controlling such a government. (No infallible means exist.)"

zacherates 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
manfredo 8y ago
There is no paradox of tolerance if we're exclusive talking about the tolerance of speech. Even the most abhorrent words are still just words and do not inherently exclude those that disagree with them. /pol/ and Gab are filled with right wing extremists, but the platforms do tolerate left wing extremists as well. The paradox of tolerance only applies when talking about actions. A group that is actively excluding others through discrimination or force may need to be removed to preserve tolerance. Speech does not exclude anyone - if the listener chooses to leave because of it then that is the listener's prerogative (as opposed to, say, being subjected to violence or discrimination).
- watwut 8y ago
  I think that people in these debates are less interested in whether "words" are ugly and more in political projects pushed by those words. When a guy in synagogue is shooting people, because he happen to believe that they are organizing immigrants to genocide whites, competitive left wing group trying to convince other guys does not make people in synagogue wake up from death. It does not cancel out. You can be simultanously for free speech while accept the reality that words have consequences and words are often said in order to cause those consequences. To make people afraid and dangerous and ready for violence.
  - manfredo 8y ago
    The point is not that the extremism on one end cancels out extremism on the other. The point is, it is possible to tolerate both - there is no paradox of tolerance with respect to speech. As to your second point, the suppression of speech also has dangerous consequences. Plenty of anti-Semitic thought is rooted in the belief of Jewish control of the media. Suppressing speech probably only serves to reinforce this view. The reality is that intolerance of hateful speech rarely makes hate go away. Remember, high ranking Nazi leaders were imprisoned, and Völkischer Beobachter (a prominent Nazi publication) was repeatedly banned and had it's offices raided. It didn't stop the spread of Nationalist Socialism. Some historians believe this suppression only accelerated it's rise. It's like the Streisand effect on a political scale. Aside from instances where the suppression of speech is nearly certain to avoid negative consequences (like specific threats, conspiracy to commit crimes, divulging official secrets or classified information) it is not wise to suppress it. And this doesn't even touch on people attempting to use accusations of hate speech as a political tool (e.g. the "blue lives matter" laws not-so-subtly aimed at suppression of BLM).

tunesmith 8y ago

Define intolerance. That's the whole problem. So being "intolerant of intolerance" is meaningless except as something that signals a different meaning - different lines, different behavior, different standards - to every listener.

JoshTriplett 8y ago
> Define intolerance That thing everyone except the intolerant seem to understand remarkably well, and the intolerant spend a lot of time quibbling over the definition of in a desperate attempt to derail their inclusion in it. Or, more seriously: treating other people as unwelcome or hated or less than human, for reasons other than being hateful and intolerant.
- tunesmith 8y ago
  Since I don't understand it remarkably well, I must be intolerant? Nice.
  - tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
    The real issue with the parent comment is that it's not sustainable in the end. When they say "everyone but (x) understands this", they are alluding to a sense of shared understanding. That, to a certain extent, is a culture. In a society with several cultures, alluding to a sense of shared understanding is virtually impossible, because the interpretation is at root a cultural one. There's simply no way to guarantee that what they mean by "intolerant" is exactly what everyone else means.
- wycs 8y ago
  Yes. It is all very obvious. For example, suppose a marginalized group uses the hashtag #killallwhitemen to express the disempowerment they feel from the historical weight of white privilege. This, I think we can all agree, is an expression of righteous outrage through hyperbole, not intolerance. In fact, "white men" in this context does not refer to any person or group of people, rather a self-reenforcing system of oppression and privilege. In this way, we see "#killallwhitemen" is tool of enforcing tolerance in an intolerant society. Now suppose someone were to make an argument like this: "We observe sexual dimorphism to some degree in most animals. Thus our prior should be that it is unlikely that women and men are 100% psychologically identical even when controlling for environment. Because of this it would be epistemically incorrect to assume differences in representation in engineering firms can be explained entirely by discrimination." This argument is clearly reactionary and must be censored, for we know 100% that any difference in preferences, abilities and outcomes between men and women must be explained by environmental effects. To think otherwise would be exclusionary and thus an example of intolerance we must be intolerant of, even in our own thoughts. The person making this argument should be shunned. Even raising the argument should result in immediate deplatforming and perhaps loss of employability. Even this notion of a prior in which you allow yourself to assign a probability to reactionary thoughts must fought, for even a very low prior can be overcome with enough sensory experience.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

travisoneill1 8y ago

How is a platform that let's you say anything uncensored intolerant? If your definition of "tolerance" is forced censorship, then I don't think you would do so well in Karl Popper's proposed society.

tptacek 8y ago
In actuality, Gab bans users for the same reason Twitter does. For instance, when Paul Nehlen tried to organize harassment of another white nationalist figure, Gab banned him. Part of Gab's sales pitch is that it's a refuge for people whose thoughts are somehow too dangerous for Twitter. But contrary to what Gab wants you to believe, Twitter doesn't ban white nationalists. Richard Spencer has a Twitter account. So does Faith Goldy. For that matter, so does Gab, which has posted openly anti-Semitic comments in the past, and still has a verified checkmark!
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- djsumdog 8y ago
  Gab also banned people who posted anime porn, sending them in flocks to ActivityPub instances.
  - claudiawerner 8y ago
    The users Gab banned were already on such instances by and large, in particular smuglo.li and pawoo.net.
- hcg 8y ago
  Gab allows much more open racism and spread of those ideas than Twitter does. Really all this says to me is that Twitter should be doing more.
- pppaul 8y ago
  Faith Goldy is not a white nationalist

roenxi 8y ago

There is a pretty simple resolution to the Paradox of Tolerance - some philosophies can't build communities (eg, a powerful society of anarchists would be overwhelmed by the first organised internal faction to form). Tolerance is one such philosophy - as pointed out by Popper that means tolerating agents trying to undermine core values. My resolution is that people are experiencing cloudy thinking, and using the word 'tolerance' when they mean 'humility'. To have humility is to seriously admit that, while you are ejecting someone from your community, that you might possibly be wrong to do so. A positive community founded on humility would naturally lead to tolerance anyway, because intolerance starts in a firm belief in your own views of the world being correct.

nine_k 8y ago

N. Taleb, "The most intolerant wins": https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict... Looks oddly relevant.

stcredzero 8y ago
If you're looking for the most intolerant, then look to the side that makes the accusations, does the screeching, does the un-personing and de-platforming, and either calls for violence against its enemies, enacts it, or tacitly accepts it. If you want to find the tolerant, find those who advocate for free speech and those who want to engage and make their arguments. That's the side which has learned the value of tolerance, because they're on their back foot.
- nine_k 8y ago
  Exactly.

djsumdog 8y ago

> #HimToo I haven't heard of this specifically, but the #MeToo movement bothers me greatly, because it implies that we suddenly learned you needed consent for sex; like it was some new revelation. If you look at CDC numbers, just as many men are assaulted sexually as women, but yet the #MeToo movement felt very one directional and didn't talk about assault inclusively of all people. The #BelieveWomen campaign actually goes directly against one of the principal tenants of progressive ideology: Innocent until proven guilty (a tenant of #BlackLivesMatter). The point is these issues are COMPLEX! They are not simple. And when they're not simple, you need to be able to discuss them openly, and frankly. Deplatforming totally fucks that up. People who have never been on to Gab assume it's all hate speech and right-wring religious stuff (I mean .. it is .. or was, but most people didn't actually see it for themselves...they just heard about it and hated). A good counter example: the documentary The Red Pill, where a feminist interviews several people in the Men's Rights movement and learns it was nothing like how it was portrayed as. She had an entirely incorrect view of what they themselves stood for because of all those people yelling at their platform. De-platforming increases polarization. I know it's a meme, but we do live in a society. We need to be able to discuss our differences and find a synthesis between the thesis/anthesis to move forward in a way that's as fair as we can be to everyone. When you push people off platforms, there is no longer speech and discussion. There is only "for us or against us." If you are a feminist in every way, but think trans-women should still be men on their birth certificates, then suddenly you're an anti-Trans, TERF, Fascist, Nazi and nothing you said should be listened to because you're wrong. That's the direction we're heading, and that is sad and terrible. Most humans do act in good faith, and are reasonable, and we need to learn to listen again.

8note 8y ago
> I haven't heard of this specifically, but the #MeToo movement bothers me greatly, because it implies that we suddenly learned you needed consent for sex; like it was some new revelation it's true though; it's largely in response to somebody bragging about not getting consent being elected to the highest office of the US. Without it, Hollywood would still be thinking sexual assault is just the norm, and women have to accept it if they want to move their carear forward

stcredzero 8y ago

This reeks of both-sides-ism and enablement. The whole point of Free Speech is to enable all sides of any issue to have their say. That is a fundamental mechanism against totalitarianism. In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance. Sorry, but Karl Popper's idea is just Orwellian nightmare fuel. "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." Tolerance is to live and let live. Oppressing those you disagree with is the very opposite of tolerance. (Even if they are truly horrible people.) If Silicon Valley were tolerant, they'd let Gab live and possibly be a cesspit of horribleness. A society that de-platforms and un-persons everyone and every idea it doesn't like isn't a free society. That's not a free market of ideas. That's totalitarianism through economic hegemony.

claudiawerner 8y ago
>Tolerance is to live and let live. This is one reading of tolerance, but there are multiple (as expounded by Popper and Marcuse too, for instance). I don't think considering an idea badly because it's used as fuel is a good thing. A quick counterexample to the idea that tolerance means to allow anything and everything is that if I were to tell you I tolerate your presence, but you begin to make annoying sounds continuously, my tolerance would quickly change to intolerance. Tolerance is a democratic principle, since it relies on the idea that nobody has an absolute claim on the truth, but as critical theorists as early as the 60s pointed out, this democratic idea depends on an informed populace to distinguish ideas as they are - to that end, in society we don't tolerate some views, such as the teaching of creationism in schools. A good essay on this is Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance". Regarding your mention of Orwell, Marcuse made another interesting point; nowadays, the contradiction is hidden within the noun itself, rather than "war is peace", the word "freedom" itself, understood in the context of its ideological use by various proponents (particularly on the libertarian right, I've noticed) already contains the contradiction; the idea it represents is contradictory. Similarly with misleading names and terms. I do not want to live in a society in which tolerance is absolute, and I doubt many people would.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  I don't think considering an idea badly because it's used as fuel is a good thing. An idea that demolishes a foundation idea by melding it with its opposite is a very insidiously bad thing. "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

dvtrn 8y ago

This reeks of both-sides-ism and enablement It's funny you take this view, as fatigued as I imagine you probably feel about, as you're calling it "both-sides-ism"-I like to imagine there are probably other people out there just as fatigued with watching "both sides" act like neither has some kind of fringe-manifested baggage or serious, fundamental issues that need to be brought to the table and reconciled. Hate to break this to you: there's some ugly problems with how we're talking about issues coming from all over the place. No one is coming to the table here with clean hands, as far as I'm concerned. Some ugly words and tactics being hurled like hand grenades. They're probably not the same, they probably don't exist for the same reasons, nor have the same motivating factors behind them, but there has got to be some kind of decongestant for this idea that polarizing and hurtful speech only comes from one ideological hemisphere. I don't know what it is, but I hope we find one.

8note 8y ago
I for one, only see one side shooting up synagogues, and locking children in cages
- dvtrn 8y ago
  My entire point, laid bare, QED.

philwelch 8y ago

Actually, platforms that de-platform tolerant platforms like Gab are the real intolerant ones. I'm being (slightly) facetious, but the point is that Popper's argument, or at least this naive interpretation of it, can be used to justify any intolerance. There's no obvious reason you can't use Popper's argument to justify McCarthyism or the Muslim ban or even Japanese internment on the grounds of the alleged intolerance of their intended targets, or the existential threat they posed to liberalized society. In fact, most actual justifications of those things are based on Popper's argument; it's of the same species as "the Constitution is not a suicide pact" or "are you going to convict Jack Bauer?". This is literally how people tried to justify every violation of civil liberties in American history. US judicial precedent around the First Amendment has varied over time. The hoary cliche that "you can't shout fire in a crowded theater" comes from a Supreme Court ruling in 1919, Schenck v. United States, that the First Amendment did not protect advocacy of draft resistance. That ruling was overruled, and the standard set by the court in 1969, in Brandenberg v. Ohio, was "imminent lawless action". And I think that standard meets Popper's bar without the risk of it devolving into totalitarianism for the sake of protecting us from totalitarianism. Which, incidentally, has been the sales pitch of every totalitarian regime ever. The next batch of Nazis are going to get power by telling us they need it to protect us from the Nazis.

int_19h 8y ago

The "paradox" of tolerance is trivially resolved. As stated, it is misleading, because it conflates two very different thing. A tolerant society, to defend itself, only needs to be intolerant of actions of intolerance - e.g. physical assault motivated by some prejudice. It does not need to be intolerant of intolerant speech, however.