Popper's thought experiment is one of those neat little packaged concepts that people hear about and say "oh, right" and nod along with without really questioni

Popper's thought experiment is one of those neat little packaged concepts that people hear about and say "oh, right" and nod along with without really questioning its fundamental premise. From a practical standpoint, nobody reasonable would say that a society must be always tolerant to everyone, all the time. All tolerance has a limit in the real world. Furthermore, a society can certainly accept a modest level of intolerance before it starts to encounter serious problems. Little examples of intolerance happen every day, in every city and country in the world, and yet we keep shuffling along. Everyone also tends to ignore this part of his quote: "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 unwise." Popper follows this by saying that society must claim the right to suppress intolerance if it becomes a serious danger, but he is arguing against a strawman. Almost everyone would agree with this.