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Karl Popper's the original author of the paradox of tolerance meme. The paradox isn't "you don't have to tolerate intolerant people because they're bad and tol

Karl Popper's the original author of the paradox of tolerance meme. The paradox isn't "you don't have to tolerate intolerant people because they're bad and tolerance is our goal", the paradox is that tolerating people who then proceed to seize power and outlaw all disagreement with them undermines tolerance. Unless there's a credible threat, it's a misuse of the quote. If you're talking about anti-Nazi laws in Germany, fine, but I see the quote trotted out all the time to justify eg twitter banning some alt-right-adjacent nerd for having bad opinions.

shadowgovt 6y ago
I suspect what has changed is that such "alt-right-adjacent nerds" are increasingly seen as credible threats. Nobody paid much attention to what that guy on gab was saying to like-minded folk on gab... Until he grabbed a gun and massacred everyone in a religious building. When the threat evaluation models aren't trusted, the spread on evaluation of "credible threat" increases.
- free_rms 6y ago
  I mean, even a mass shooting like that doesn't trigger the paradox of tolerance. It's a terrible tragedy, and a law enforcement issue, but society as a whole is not less tolerant for it -- we all agree, don't shoot up a synagogue or mosque, that is extremely bad form in our society. The paradox of tolerance would be if we decided to be tolerant of a pro-mosque-shooting political party and they took power and instituted mandatory mosque shootings every Friday. We would have messed up in that case. It's not, "I demand people who disagree with me on less clear-cut issues be silenced because they're bigots, according to me".
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    > we all agree Well, that's the issue, isn't it? Do we all agree? I think a lot of people do. There's a disturbingly large number who do not. And there are corners of the Internet perfectly willing to entertain their fantasies of establishing such a political party. I think whether one should cut that off at the knees by monitoring such sites and, when necessary, squelching the channel or one waits until someone has grabbed a gun to act on the ideation is an intensity slider on paradox of tolerance that reasonable people can disagree on. Given the sliding scale, it's probably a case-by-case issue. Hard to come up with a general principle that's going to universally apply; give an example of something people have been silenced on that they should have been allowed to continue, and there's debate to be had, but on the general principle, both sides can probably agree that there's times to silence and times to not.
    - free_rms 6y ago
      Would you also support banning hip hop albums that talk about shooting cops or other violent crime? Or glam metal albums that glorify satanism? We've been through this before.
      - shadowgovt 6y ago
        I'm not sure how satanism factors into it; let's table that. > Would you also support banning hip hop albums that talk about shooting cops or other violent crime? If we're talking no-platforming, I don't think the question is whether society bans it; I think the question is "Would you compel Wal-Mart to sell hip hop albums that talk about shooting cops or other violent crime?" And I would not. But it's a sliding scale which is, as you've noted, tied to the likelihood of the group in question seizing enough power to concretize their ideas. In the US at least, hip-hop artists aren't an organized political structure intent on overthrowing the US government. White supremacists are another story entirely. It's pretty unambiguous what "blood and soil" or "Jews will not replace us" mean. And a lot of Americans are deeply concerned with the risk that that ideology has its tentacles extremely deeply embedded in one of the two primary parties at the federal level in the US.
        free_rms 6y ago
        I was referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center The conclusion was that parental advisory stickers are cool and will help sell your album, and I'm glad we got there as a society. Incidentally, Wal-mart in particular was on the conservative side of that culture war episode, and they did in fact refuse to sell those albums while also selling entire racks of guns.
        shadowgovt 6y ago
        > Incidentally, Wal-mart in particular was on the conservative side of that culture war episode, and they did in fact refuse to sell those albums Indeed they did. And the US government did not compel them to sell the albums, nor should they have. The albums found their audience in spite of some channels deciding it wasn't a kind of speech they would tolerate on their premises. Similarly, some of the speakers who have been no-platformed will find their audience without a university's help; that doesn't imply the universities should be compelled to help them. And some toxic moderators and editors will continue to be toxic on some other site; that doesn't imply that site must be Wikipedia.

shadowgovt 6y ago

I suspect what has changed is that such "alt-right-adjacent nerds" are increasingly seen as credible threats. Nobody paid much attention to what that guy on gab was saying to like-minded folk on gab... Until he grabbed a gun and massacred everyone in a religious building. When the threat evaluation models aren't trusted, the spread on evaluation of "credible threat" increases.

free_rms 6y ago
I mean, even a mass shooting like that doesn't trigger the paradox of tolerance. It's a terrible tragedy, and a law enforcement issue, but society as a whole is not less tolerant for it -- we all agree, don't shoot up a synagogue or mosque, that is extremely bad form in our society. The paradox of tolerance would be if we decided to be tolerant of a pro-mosque-shooting political party and they took power and instituted mandatory mosque shootings every Friday. We would have messed up in that case. It's not, "I demand people who disagree with me on less clear-cut issues be silenced because they're bigots, according to me".
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  > we all agree Well, that's the issue, isn't it? Do we all agree? I think a lot of people do. There's a disturbingly large number who do not. And there are corners of the Internet perfectly willing to entertain their fantasies of establishing such a political party. I think whether one should cut that off at the knees by monitoring such sites and, when necessary, squelching the channel or one waits until someone has grabbed a gun to act on the ideation is an intensity slider on paradox of tolerance that reasonable people can disagree on. Given the sliding scale, it's probably a case-by-case issue. Hard to come up with a general principle that's going to universally apply; give an example of something people have been silenced on that they should have been allowed to continue, and there's debate to be had, but on the general principle, both sides can probably agree that there's times to silence and times to not.
  - free_rms 6y ago
    Would you also support banning hip hop albums that talk about shooting cops or other violent crime? Or glam metal albums that glorify satanism? We've been through this before.
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      I'm not sure how satanism factors into it; let's table that. > Would you also support banning hip hop albums that talk about shooting cops or other violent crime? If we're talking no-platforming, I don't think the question is whether society bans it; I think the question is "Would you compel Wal-Mart to sell hip hop albums that talk about shooting cops or other violent crime?" And I would not. But it's a sliding scale which is, as you've noted, tied to the likelihood of the group in question seizing enough power to concretize their ideas. In the US at least, hip-hop artists aren't an organized political structure intent on overthrowing the US government. White supremacists are another story entirely. It's pretty unambiguous what "blood and soil" or "Jews will not replace us" mean. And a lot of Americans are deeply concerned with the risk that that ideology has its tentacles extremely deeply embedded in one of the two primary parties at the federal level in the US.
      - free_rms 6y ago
        I was referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center The conclusion was that parental advisory stickers are cool and will help sell your album, and I'm glad we got there as a society. Incidentally, Wal-mart in particular was on the conservative side of that culture war episode, and they did in fact refuse to sell those albums while also selling entire racks of guns.
        shadowgovt 6y ago
        > Incidentally, Wal-mart in particular was on the conservative side of that culture war episode, and they did in fact refuse to sell those albums Indeed they did. And the US government did not compel them to sell the albums, nor should they have. The albums found their audience in spite of some channels deciding it wasn't a kind of speech they would tolerate on their premises. Similarly, some of the speakers who have been no-platformed will find their audience without a university's help; that doesn't imply the universities should be compelled to help them. And some toxic moderators and editors will continue to be toxic on some other site; that doesn't imply that site must be Wikipedia.