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"I find people who don't think exactly like me to be intolerable" is the bread and butter for controlling a population. People look at the past and think to th

"I find people who don't think exactly like me to be intolerable" is the bread and butter for controlling a population. People look at the past and think to themselves "those people in the past were wrong, that's why the one acceptable way to think being enforced with power was immoral, on the other hand, my opinions are right, so the ends justify the means". Intolerance is intolerance, regardless of how morally justified you think it is.

ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
- causi 4y ago
  The paradox of tolerance is an idea. I'm growing increasingly tired of authoritarians citing it as a fundamental law of the universe.
- wikitopian 4y ago
  Intolerance must be understood in its academic sense and not in the politically motivated sense it's typically used today. This is a technically correct point that is always used to justify declaring people you dislike "intolerant" to justify being intolerant.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  It's a kind of "have an open mind but not so much that your brain falls out" situation. Too many people think their brain is going to fall out of even the slightest deviation from their moral code is tolerated these days.
  - teamonkey 4y ago
    Too many people think their brain is going to fall out when someone calls them out on their behaviour.
  - armchairhacker 4y ago
    This is roughly what I’m thinking. We can be intolerant of things which are “obviously” wrong, like hate and other intolerance. We shouldn’t be intolerant of the gray area, where something is controversial but still justified. The fundamental truth is that you are intolerant, because speech leads to action. People like to think of themselves as tolerant and not sensitive, and maybe some people are tolerant to speech which doesn’t lead to action and can take insults for days. But when a majority may hold an opinion you don’t like (e.g. cancel your favorite TV show, or food, or just flat-out kill you and harvest your organs), you want to censor this opinion. You may also want to censor speech when it affects those who aren’t so thick-skinned, like your mom or 5-year-old daughter or the other 75% of the population whose mental health is affected by words. If your laws tolerate enough speech, the bad guys may team together, take over your government and change them - hence, the Paradox of Tolerance. But they may not, and they may also manage to take over your government without tolerance or speech or even teaming up. In an ideal world we’d allow all speech but have no “bad” speech, but in practice we have tape and plywood to prevent speech when the alternative would very clearly, very significantly hurt more people than censoring. I also think there are also exceptions to tolerance in the case of an emergency, with the distinction that it has to be an actual emergency universally (agreed on by logical people), and also temporary unless it’s really, really bad (like everyone dies once we stop). e.g. covid in January-May 2020. If we had a super strict, solid covid lockdown when the virus first broke out, we may have actually eradicated covid. Yeah we’d be violating essential freedoms, we’d have to lock up or possibly execute people who go outside, and may even have to curtail anti-science speech. But with said lockdown we may have actually eradicated covid, IMO that is worth being intolerant of dissent for 3 months. However, covid mandates once we realized covid would become endemic, those are debatable, because a) the emergency is no longer universally agreed, and b) some of those mandates could be argued indefinite. But the other fundamental truth is there’s no right answer. There’s no “do policy X and everything will work out”, hindsight 20/20 but we have no idea the “bad” speech (speech which causes real suffering) of the future will be. There’s no “objectively moral” answer. Ultimately it comes down to, well, your opinion or the opinion of those in power.
- swatcoder 4y ago
  It gets tricky because "society" is an ambiguous word. Is it just a public sphere that needs to observe tolerance or is tolerance something demanded of companies, associations, churches, families, internal thoughts, etc As your demands for tolerance become more pervasive, you invite authoritarian tendrils into increasingly private spaces.
- z3c0 4y ago
  In short, "you can't set the settor." It's a bit like saying "everything is subjective". By asserting such, you're proclaiming subjectivity as objective, breaking the whole statement. For anyone who'd like a deeper dive into the logic behind this, Bertrand Russell's Barber Paradox[1] is a fun one (not to be confused with Lewis Carroll's "Barbershop Paradox.") [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_paradox
- bequanna 4y ago
  What a clever trick! Like magic, anyone who doesn’t agree with you then instantly becomes “intolerant” and dangerous so we shouldn’t allow them to have a voice or power. That line of thinking is nothing but BS mental gymnastics to justify oppressing and silencing the other side.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - ckw 4y ago
    The people downvoting the parent comment evince a stronger view: intolerance of tolerance of intolerance. edit: and arguably intolerance of tolerance of tolerance of intolerance.
- jessaustin 4y ago
  Surely Popper wasn't so sloppy as that? There is an obvious difference between toleration of expression, which "society" certainly should practice, and toleration of more physical actions that in theory could be up for a vote. Somehow I grow suspicious of attempts to obscure that obvious difference...
  - TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
    By the time it's physical actions, it's too late. You have to stop, at the very least, calling for violence, for example.
    - moomin 4y ago
      Yeah, more people should take the time to fully understand https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/what-is-genocide/the-ten-stages-of-genocide/ https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocid... (and be terrified how far we are along with certain minority groups).
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      In fact, if you read the context, that's exactly where Popper drew the line. When a side replies with fists or guns, then you quit being tolerant. Not before. (I'm not sure that he mentioned direct calls for violence one way or the other, so I won't dogmatically claim he put that on either side of the line. But he did not accept ideas - any ideas - as "intolerant".)
      - leaflets2 4y ago
        > where Popper drew the line. When a side replies with fists or guns No, here's his line: > we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal That's before fists and guns, at an earlier stage. It's before the nazis invaded Poland, not after. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance, the Discussion section) Apparently he knew that after, can be too late
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  We must be intolerant of intolerance — even when the intolerant are vulnerable, minority, underprivileged, non-WEIRD, reasonable, articulate, high-status, academic, or whatever. If the only exception to a policy of tolerance are positions of intolerance, then it works pretty ok. Because it isn’t a matter of “free speech,” it is a matter of rejecting intolerance. Intolerant free speech must not be tolerated (with this one exception!)
  - TeeMassive 4y ago
    We will decide what is intolerant, not you.
- californiadreem 4y 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.)"
- TeeMassive 4y ago
  You are conflating free speech and tolerance. Free speech is only a specific form of tolerance dedicated to speech and is not a tolerance of the subject of the speech.
- dleslie 4y ago
  Popper also sets the limit fairly clearly in his description of the paradox, and it's: > 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. So long as whomever you are speaking to is willing to engage in rational argument then Poppler would have you tolerate them, and to be intolerant of those who reject argument and advocate violence.
  - golemotron 4y ago
    The thing Popper misses is that once you rationalize your own intolerance, others will rationalize theirs, missing the nuance of his limit. And, indeed, that has happened. I can't remember ever seeing anyone other than you mention the limit, and that includes quite a few people quoting Popper to justify their intolerance. I'd argue that Popper left his wheelhouse when he formulated this. It was at the moment when WW2 was ending and the Cold War was beginning. Philosophers, like most other people, hardly ever think clearly when their emotions are inflamed by current events. They are best when they stay away from the topical.
    - mensetmanusman 4y ago
      Ergo, tolerance is too broad of a term to be a meaningful part of any rational discussion.
    - dleslie 4y ago
      He's not advocating for a world free of intolerance; in fact, he advocates for the use of intolerance when necessary, and describes when it is necessary. Intolerance can be rational, after all; and intolerance can be moral. FWIW, I am aware of the full quote because I've seen it elsewhere; but then, I used to spend quite a lot of time arguing on the intarwebs.
      - golemotron 4y ago
- bhupy 4y ago
  This gets thrown around frequently as though it's some ironclad rule of nature, but hasn't actually been corroborated by any empirical evidence. In fact, the way that it's phrased, it's essentially unfalsifiable. What is the limiting principle? If I find "backsliding of free expression" a form of intolerance, should we be tolerant of the Paradox of Tolerance? The empirical data is very mixed, to the extent that it's essentially impossible to draw any conclusions that fit into a pithy philosophy like Popper's. At least in America, expression has gotten more free over time, with the overturning of Schenck v United States towards the far more permissive Brandenburg v Ohio and New York Times Co v Sullivan precedents — and American society has gotten more tolerant since the 1960s, not less. Yes, America has problems today, but they're nothing compared to the problems America faced back then. Even comparing data points today, expression is far more restricted in countries like India relative to peer Western democracies (especially the US), and the former is far less tolerant and increasingly more authoritarian (under Modi) than the latter. The Paradox of Tolerance is a really convenient way to shut down any kind of debate because nobody wants to be thought of as intolerant.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    Based on the light grey font, it would seem this style of thinking is not to be tolerated.
- jiscariot 4y ago
  Is Popper's POT drivel the only talking point the anti-free speech people have these days? Every time. Sometimes with the associated cartoon.
  - krapp 4y ago
    Is the only rebuttal the other side has ad hominems and slippery slope fallacies? You can disagree with the Paradox of Tolerance but almost no one who does ever even attempts to do so in good faith.
    - jessaustin 4y ago
      ...almost no one who does can even attempt to do so in good faith. This seems a bit overblown. You can't imagine that someone with radically different experiences than your own could genuinely object to some aspect of this "Paradox"? What dastardly scheme do they advance by pretending to so object?
      - krapp 4y ago
        >You can't imagine that someone with radically different experiences than your own could genuinely object to some aspect of this "Paradox"? I'm sure they can, but most people don't seem to understand it well enough to formulate a coherent argument against it, they only know that they hate it because the politics of their tribe hates it. Like people who object to CRT who obviously have never engaged with the source material beyond a quote or two taken out of context. The poster above it drivel and anyone who brings it up anti free-speech. That isn't an argument it's just shit-talking, and it conveniently ignores the fact that the parameters of "free speech" are very much up for debate here. >What dastardly scheme do they advance by pretending to so object? Mostly - because there's a reason none of this was an issue before 2016 - they want to ensure the spread of right-wing accelerationist propaganda without significant social or legal consequence for themselves. But of course they can't argue for this explicitly in most public spaces, so instead they couch their real politics in arguments like "intolerance of intolerance is itself intolerance" or "sunlight is the best disinfectant."
- thrown_22 4y ago
  I wish people would do more than read the name of that paradox. >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. That people whose philosophy can be summed up as "call everything fascist and punch it" are using Popper as a way to cover their innate totalitarianism is beyond parody.
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- honkdaddy 4y ago
  Most of the time when I see people reference this principle it’s because they’d like a convenient way to hate Christians or republicans while still considering themselves a good person.
- klqac 4y ago
  [flagged]
- immigrantheart 4y ago
  Everything is just power struggle.
- throwawayacc2 4y ago
  I feel like this idea is taken as gospel. I am not sure I buy it. Especially when applied to speech. I feel like there are many unanswered questions or implied assumptions when saying “tolerant exact for the intolerant”. 1. Who decides what is “intolerant behaviour”? 2. What checks and balances do we have to ensure tolerable behaviour is not incorrectly labelled as intolerant. 3. Is intolerant behaviour on a slider or is it a binary? If so, what mechanism do we have in place to ensure the “intolerance of intolerance” is proportional? I suppose going a step forward, we can also ask ourselves why is tolerance a good thing or a societal goal? Is it even a feasible goal? To me it doesn’t seem like society is “tolerant except for the intolerant”. It just seems it’s changing it’s labels for what behaviours are acceptable and what are not. I feel like if you’re really committed to “tolerant except for the intolerant” you need to draw the line at quantifiable harm, like violence or theft. If you don’t and include things like “psychological harm” or “systemic harm” or “hate speech” etc, you open up the system to abuse due to the grey area around labelling. I’m not saying psychological harm doesn’t exist or hate speech doesn’t have a negative effect on people subjected to it. But they are impossible to quantify and even harder to agree on. And that makes for bad concepts to build morality or even worse, law around.
- BTCOG 4y ago
  Tolerance is not acceptance. To tolerate, is to allow something that you do not like. While tolerance is needed, what's really needed is truth and acceptance. I'd rather have someone tell me they don't like me and what for than to be merely tolerated while simultaneously treated like a second rate citizen or talked down upon by simply being just "tolerated." Anyway, I know it's a bit tangent-like here, but tolerance is really not acceptance but to allow something begrudgingly, and so it shouldn't be used as the positive side to intolerance. Not directly replying to you but the entire chain. Otherwise on topic, I see and feel the chilling effects on speech from those big platforms being discussed across America as well. I do not see any of it coming from the US government, though. I see it all coming from citizens wishing to control others' speech all around them, else they will whip out a phone and think they're some sort of vigilante over others' speech or wrongthink. This is tiresome and old already but I'm not comparing this to government level, authoritarian free speech removal. Still, it's having a mass effect on societal attitude, conversation, politeness, and all else, as far as I can tell.
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moomin 4y ago
You really should read the article. There’s real threats to free speech out there, not just people telling you you’re an idiot.
- deleted 4y ago
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- colechristensen 4y ago
  The biggest threat to free speech around the world is the failure to lead by example of the western world, particularly by America. It doesn't matter that we're a few notches better than somewhere else, they see us doing the same things by popular demand so doing a bit more themselves is easy to justify. We're losing the high ground and the argument that nobody else should do the same things we're doing.
  - MrsPeaches 4y ago
    From my skimming, the article linked makes no such claim and I would like to see evidence of what you are claiming. To be clear the article is talking about States suppressing freedom of expression (not the ephemeral Twitter mob). You could make a case that Snowden and Assange are examples of America suppressing freedom expression but I am not sure how helpful it is to conflate woke/anti-woke debates with erosions of press freedoms in states trending towards authoritarianism (e.g. Hungry and Poland as mentioned in TFA).
    - colechristensen 4y ago
      >To be clear the article is talking about States suppressing freedom of expression (not the ephemeral Twitter mob). The point I am trying to make is an intolerant population is really easy to control by an intolerant state. The people in power at the top usually don't actually care very much about the topics of intolerance, but they are a useful tool for building and maintaining power. Intolerance in a population is a weakness exploited by people in power. Fan the flames of that passion and now and then nudge it in a direction which is useful to maintain that power. How do you think Trump got a mob to storm the capital building? People in America are almost begging for authoritarian solutions to their perceived problems with morality. They want the government to force their opinions on everyone. This is true across the political spectrum, and there are plenty of examples of it. Countries don't fall victim to authoritarianism, populations consent and encourage it (and then afterwards get upset with the result when it's too late). Hitler achieved power through popular election, he took what some people wanted, turned it into what many people wanted, and directed it towards his personal goals.
matthewmacleod 4y ago
Intolerance is intolerance The thing is, this sort of truism seems so flat and weak. I'd even say it's the symptom of something worse and increasingly prevalent – skin-deep, black-and-white thinking that ignores the complexity of any interesting issue. It's thought-terminating clichés all the way down. Almost every single member of society draws a line at some point between things they think are acceptable and should be tolerated, and things they think are unacceptable and should not be tolerated. The interesting questions are in figuring out how we build a shared, messy consensus that most of us can live with – one that protects the right of people to speak freely and without fear while protecting the rights of others.
russdill 4y ago
That's a super broad brush. Throwing in the "exactly" makes this particularly overbroad. It's perfectly OK to think that people with certain views are intolerable and that isn't some path to fascism. There are people I don't want to associate with because of views I deem intolerable. I think the necessary addition is "and they need to be stopped".
- colechristensen 4y ago
  To be fair, I am not red-teaming my comments or spending hours agonizing over each word. But to a second point, it should be clear that "exactly" isn't meant in a mathematical sense of "literally every single thought". I don't think the people shouting about social justice and similar morality or other hot political issues want to go to war over whether or not you like poppyseed muffins, there's no reason to take words to their extreme when there isn't a question if a reasonable person would mean something like that. Finally though, I actually do mean exactly. Find me someone passionate about their political and social opinions who is doing the yelling driving this societal problem who does tolerate different opinions on topics they care about. Few and far between. The problem is explicitly that the median person in these yelling groups actually doesn't tolerate any differences of opinions on a wide array of topics.
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- the_optimist 4y ago
  This is semantics with the word ‘tolerance.’ Tolerance means something akin to ‘permissible deviation.’ It doesn’t mean associate, it directly means the thing is permissible and thus isn’t stopped.
- paisawalla 4y ago
  Eliminating the word fascism from discourse, and replacing it with a description of the thoughts and attitudes you find intolerable, would clarify your claims are here. It's not an invitation to argue about those views mind you, but if you had said "whoa, it's totally fine if we don't have racism, sexism, transphobia, islamophobia, etc expressed anywhere in polite mainstream society" then suddenly it becomes clear 1. you expect us all to have about the same definition of those terms (yours), and 2. you expect/condone zealous policing of those boundaries, (because these are by definition intolerable and one does not lightly oppose the intolerable) Taken together, it's pretty clear how good intentions lead to puritanically speech-constrained society. The real tolerance paradox is that even the intoler (-ant/-able) speech must be tolerated.
MrsPeaches 4y ago
Can I just clarify, are you talking about when states do this or when society does this ? The article is (from my reading) quite clearly talking about states that are closing down freedom of expression, not society as a whole. Like, I can say, “The American President is a disaster for the country, all his ideas a trash, he smells funny and should be voted out as soon as possible” and I don’t have to fear the the American Government is coming to get me. In places with reducing freedom of expression this is becoming more dangerous. This is very different to saying something politically controversial and losing my job because a company doesn’t want to go against public opinion.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  I'm saying intolerance in broader society is an incredible weakness that encourages and gives power to intolerance in the state. People are begging for authoritarian solutions to what they view as moral problems in society. If they can't convince people to do "what's right" they want the state to do it by force. It then becomes easy for authoritarians to take power because it's literally what the people are asking for, and then when they are in power it is easy to shape public opinion to be whatever they want. >This is very different to saying something politically controversial and losing my job because a company doesn’t want to go against public opinion. It really isn't. Corporations are taking the place of the state. If you say something controversial and can't get a job as a result and end up in a dire living situation, does it really matter if it was a few corporations or a dictator that made you unemployable?
  - MrsPeaches 4y ago
    > I'm saying intolerance in broader society is an incredible weakness that encourages and gives power to intolerance in the state. What is your evidence for this statement? Could you provide an example? > Corporations are taking the place of the state. Yes. The state’s role is certainly smaller than it was in many western countries (e.g. in the UK) but I don’t know what that has to do with free speech. Yes, it does matter. If I am an asshole who stirs shit up at a company, I probably won’t find work. If I am an asshole (not breaking the law) the state can’t deny me basic services it provides to its citizens just because I am an asshole. Can I just ask though: what period would you consider the golden age of free speech? What is the peak from which we are descending?
immigrantheart 4y ago
Very naive.
dbingham 4y ago
There's a line though. It's called the paradox of intolerance. If we are tolerant of intolerance, then we risk intolerance winning. So we need to be tolerant of different ways of thinking - EXCEPT - for those ways of thinking that seek to take power to oppress others. And that, of course, is where things can get sticky. Because we often differ on what constitutes oppression. There are those who believe that any form of taxation is oppression, while most would agree it is necessary for society to function. There are certain things that we really should all be able to agree constitute oppression however - and top among them is wanting to kill, enslave, or restrict people for nothing more than being who they were born as. Today, many people seem to equate those who are being intolerant of intolerance with those who are actually being intolerant.

ndsipa_pomu 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.

causi 4y ago
The paradox of tolerance is an idea. I'm growing increasingly tired of authoritarians citing it as a fundamental law of the universe.
wikitopian 4y ago
Intolerance must be understood in its academic sense and not in the politically motivated sense it's typically used today. This is a technically correct point that is always used to justify declaring people you dislike "intolerant" to justify being intolerant.
colechristensen 4y ago
It's a kind of "have an open mind but not so much that your brain falls out" situation. Too many people think their brain is going to fall out of even the slightest deviation from their moral code is tolerated these days.
- teamonkey 4y ago
  Too many people think their brain is going to fall out when someone calls them out on their behaviour.
- armchairhacker 4y ago
  This is roughly what I’m thinking. We can be intolerant of things which are “obviously” wrong, like hate and other intolerance. We shouldn’t be intolerant of the gray area, where something is controversial but still justified. The fundamental truth is that you are intolerant, because speech leads to action. People like to think of themselves as tolerant and not sensitive, and maybe some people are tolerant to speech which doesn’t lead to action and can take insults for days. But when a majority may hold an opinion you don’t like (e.g. cancel your favorite TV show, or food, or just flat-out kill you and harvest your organs), you want to censor this opinion. You may also want to censor speech when it affects those who aren’t so thick-skinned, like your mom or 5-year-old daughter or the other 75% of the population whose mental health is affected by words. If your laws tolerate enough speech, the bad guys may team together, take over your government and change them - hence, the Paradox of Tolerance. But they may not, and they may also manage to take over your government without tolerance or speech or even teaming up. In an ideal world we’d allow all speech but have no “bad” speech, but in practice we have tape and plywood to prevent speech when the alternative would very clearly, very significantly hurt more people than censoring. I also think there are also exceptions to tolerance in the case of an emergency, with the distinction that it has to be an actual emergency universally (agreed on by logical people), and also temporary unless it’s really, really bad (like everyone dies once we stop). e.g. covid in January-May 2020. If we had a super strict, solid covid lockdown when the virus first broke out, we may have actually eradicated covid. Yeah we’d be violating essential freedoms, we’d have to lock up or possibly execute people who go outside, and may even have to curtail anti-science speech. But with said lockdown we may have actually eradicated covid, IMO that is worth being intolerant of dissent for 3 months. However, covid mandates once we realized covid would become endemic, those are debatable, because a) the emergency is no longer universally agreed, and b) some of those mandates could be argued indefinite. But the other fundamental truth is there’s no right answer. There’s no “do policy X and everything will work out”, hindsight 20/20 but we have no idea the “bad” speech (speech which causes real suffering) of the future will be. There’s no “objectively moral” answer. Ultimately it comes down to, well, your opinion or the opinion of those in power.
swatcoder 4y ago
It gets tricky because "society" is an ambiguous word. Is it just a public sphere that needs to observe tolerance or is tolerance something demanded of companies, associations, churches, families, internal thoughts, etc As your demands for tolerance become more pervasive, you invite authoritarian tendrils into increasingly private spaces.
z3c0 4y ago
In short, "you can't set the settor." It's a bit like saying "everything is subjective". By asserting such, you're proclaiming subjectivity as objective, breaking the whole statement. For anyone who'd like a deeper dive into the logic behind this, Bertrand Russell's Barber Paradox[1] is a fun one (not to be confused with Lewis Carroll's "Barbershop Paradox.") [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_paradox
bequanna 4y ago
What a clever trick! Like magic, anyone who doesn’t agree with you then instantly becomes “intolerant” and dangerous so we shouldn’t allow them to have a voice or power. That line of thinking is nothing but BS mental gymnastics to justify oppressing and silencing the other side.
- deleted 4y ago
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- ckw 4y ago
  The people downvoting the parent comment evince a stronger view: intolerance of tolerance of intolerance. edit: and arguably intolerance of tolerance of tolerance of intolerance.
jessaustin 4y ago
Surely Popper wasn't so sloppy as that? There is an obvious difference between toleration of expression, which "society" certainly should practice, and toleration of more physical actions that in theory could be up for a vote. Somehow I grow suspicious of attempts to obscure that obvious difference...
- TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
  By the time it's physical actions, it's too late. You have to stop, at the very least, calling for violence, for example.
  - moomin 4y ago
    Yeah, more people should take the time to fully understand https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/what-is-genocide/the-ten-stages-of-genocide/ https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocid... (and be terrified how far we are along with certain minority groups).
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    In fact, if you read the context, that's exactly where Popper drew the line. When a side replies with fists or guns, then you quit being tolerant. Not before. (I'm not sure that he mentioned direct calls for violence one way or the other, so I won't dogmatically claim he put that on either side of the line. But he did not accept ideas - any ideas - as "intolerant".)
    - leaflets2 4y ago
      > where Popper drew the line. When a side replies with fists or guns No, here's his line: > we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal That's before fists and guns, at an earlier stage. It's before the nazis invaded Poland, not after. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance, the Discussion section) Apparently he knew that after, can be too late
dr_dshiv 4y ago
We must be intolerant of intolerance — even when the intolerant are vulnerable, minority, underprivileged, non-WEIRD, reasonable, articulate, high-status, academic, or whatever. If the only exception to a policy of tolerance are positions of intolerance, then it works pretty ok. Because it isn’t a matter of “free speech,” it is a matter of rejecting intolerance. Intolerant free speech must not be tolerated (with this one exception!)
- TeeMassive 4y ago
  We will decide what is intolerant, not you.
californiadreem 4y 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.)"
TeeMassive 4y ago
You are conflating free speech and tolerance. Free speech is only a specific form of tolerance dedicated to speech and is not a tolerance of the subject of the speech.
dleslie 4y ago
Popper also sets the limit fairly clearly in his description of the paradox, and it's: > 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. So long as whomever you are speaking to is willing to engage in rational argument then Poppler would have you tolerate them, and to be intolerant of those who reject argument and advocate violence.
- golemotron 4y ago
  The thing Popper misses is that once you rationalize your own intolerance, others will rationalize theirs, missing the nuance of his limit. And, indeed, that has happened. I can't remember ever seeing anyone other than you mention the limit, and that includes quite a few people quoting Popper to justify their intolerance. I'd argue that Popper left his wheelhouse when he formulated this. It was at the moment when WW2 was ending and the Cold War was beginning. Philosophers, like most other people, hardly ever think clearly when their emotions are inflamed by current events. They are best when they stay away from the topical.
  - mensetmanusman 4y ago
    Ergo, tolerance is too broad of a term to be a meaningful part of any rational discussion.
  - dleslie 4y ago
    He's not advocating for a world free of intolerance; in fact, he advocates for the use of intolerance when necessary, and describes when it is necessary. Intolerance can be rational, after all; and intolerance can be moral. FWIW, I am aware of the full quote because I've seen it elsewhere; but then, I used to spend quite a lot of time arguing on the intarwebs.
    - golemotron 4y ago
bhupy 4y ago
This gets thrown around frequently as though it's some ironclad rule of nature, but hasn't actually been corroborated by any empirical evidence. In fact, the way that it's phrased, it's essentially unfalsifiable. What is the limiting principle? If I find "backsliding of free expression" a form of intolerance, should we be tolerant of the Paradox of Tolerance? The empirical data is very mixed, to the extent that it's essentially impossible to draw any conclusions that fit into a pithy philosophy like Popper's. At least in America, expression has gotten more free over time, with the overturning of Schenck v United States towards the far more permissive Brandenburg v Ohio and New York Times Co v Sullivan precedents — and American society has gotten more tolerant since the 1960s, not less. Yes, America has problems today, but they're nothing compared to the problems America faced back then. Even comparing data points today, expression is far more restricted in countries like India relative to peer Western democracies (especially the US), and the former is far less tolerant and increasingly more authoritarian (under Modi) than the latter. The Paradox of Tolerance is a really convenient way to shut down any kind of debate because nobody wants to be thought of as intolerant.
- mistermann 4y ago
  Based on the light grey font, it would seem this style of thinking is not to be tolerated.
jiscariot 4y ago
Is Popper's POT drivel the only talking point the anti-free speech people have these days? Every time. Sometimes with the associated cartoon.
- krapp 4y ago
  Is the only rebuttal the other side has ad hominems and slippery slope fallacies? You can disagree with the Paradox of Tolerance but almost no one who does ever even attempts to do so in good faith.
  - jessaustin 4y ago
    ...almost no one who does can even attempt to do so in good faith. This seems a bit overblown. You can't imagine that someone with radically different experiences than your own could genuinely object to some aspect of this "Paradox"? What dastardly scheme do they advance by pretending to so object?
    - krapp 4y ago
      >You can't imagine that someone with radically different experiences than your own could genuinely object to some aspect of this "Paradox"? I'm sure they can, but most people don't seem to understand it well enough to formulate a coherent argument against it, they only know that they hate it because the politics of their tribe hates it. Like people who object to CRT who obviously have never engaged with the source material beyond a quote or two taken out of context. The poster above it drivel and anyone who brings it up anti free-speech. That isn't an argument it's just shit-talking, and it conveniently ignores the fact that the parameters of "free speech" are very much up for debate here. >What dastardly scheme do they advance by pretending to so object? Mostly - because there's a reason none of this was an issue before 2016 - they want to ensure the spread of right-wing accelerationist propaganda without significant social or legal consequence for themselves. But of course they can't argue for this explicitly in most public spaces, so instead they couch their real politics in arguments like "intolerance of intolerance is itself intolerance" or "sunlight is the best disinfectant."
thrown_22 4y ago
I wish people would do more than read the name of that paradox. >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. That people whose philosophy can be summed up as "call everything fascist and punch it" are using Popper as a way to cover their innate totalitarianism is beyond parody.
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honkdaddy 4y ago
Most of the time when I see people reference this principle it’s because they’d like a convenient way to hate Christians or republicans while still considering themselves a good person.
klqac 4y ago
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immigrantheart 4y ago
Everything is just power struggle.
throwawayacc2 4y ago
I feel like this idea is taken as gospel. I am not sure I buy it. Especially when applied to speech. I feel like there are many unanswered questions or implied assumptions when saying “tolerant exact for the intolerant”. 1. Who decides what is “intolerant behaviour”? 2. What checks and balances do we have to ensure tolerable behaviour is not incorrectly labelled as intolerant. 3. Is intolerant behaviour on a slider or is it a binary? If so, what mechanism do we have in place to ensure the “intolerance of intolerance” is proportional? I suppose going a step forward, we can also ask ourselves why is tolerance a good thing or a societal goal? Is it even a feasible goal? To me it doesn’t seem like society is “tolerant except for the intolerant”. It just seems it’s changing it’s labels for what behaviours are acceptable and what are not. I feel like if you’re really committed to “tolerant except for the intolerant” you need to draw the line at quantifiable harm, like violence or theft. If you don’t and include things like “psychological harm” or “systemic harm” or “hate speech” etc, you open up the system to abuse due to the grey area around labelling. I’m not saying psychological harm doesn’t exist or hate speech doesn’t have a negative effect on people subjected to it. But they are impossible to quantify and even harder to agree on. And that makes for bad concepts to build morality or even worse, law around.
BTCOG 4y ago
Tolerance is not acceptance. To tolerate, is to allow something that you do not like. While tolerance is needed, what's really needed is truth and acceptance. I'd rather have someone tell me they don't like me and what for than to be merely tolerated while simultaneously treated like a second rate citizen or talked down upon by simply being just "tolerated." Anyway, I know it's a bit tangent-like here, but tolerance is really not acceptance but to allow something begrudgingly, and so it shouldn't be used as the positive side to intolerance. Not directly replying to you but the entire chain. Otherwise on topic, I see and feel the chilling effects on speech from those big platforms being discussed across America as well. I do not see any of it coming from the US government, though. I see it all coming from citizens wishing to control others' speech all around them, else they will whip out a phone and think they're some sort of vigilante over others' speech or wrongthink. This is tiresome and old already but I'm not comparing this to government level, authoritarian free speech removal. Still, it's having a mass effect on societal attitude, conversation, politeness, and all else, as far as I can tell.

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moomin 4y ago

You really should read the article. There’s real threats to free speech out there, not just people telling you you’re an idiot.

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colechristensen 4y ago
The biggest threat to free speech around the world is the failure to lead by example of the western world, particularly by America. It doesn't matter that we're a few notches better than somewhere else, they see us doing the same things by popular demand so doing a bit more themselves is easy to justify. We're losing the high ground and the argument that nobody else should do the same things we're doing.
- MrsPeaches 4y ago
  From my skimming, the article linked makes no such claim and I would like to see evidence of what you are claiming. To be clear the article is talking about States suppressing freedom of expression (not the ephemeral Twitter mob). You could make a case that Snowden and Assange are examples of America suppressing freedom expression but I am not sure how helpful it is to conflate woke/anti-woke debates with erosions of press freedoms in states trending towards authoritarianism (e.g. Hungry and Poland as mentioned in TFA).
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    >To be clear the article is talking about States suppressing freedom of expression (not the ephemeral Twitter mob). The point I am trying to make is an intolerant population is really easy to control by an intolerant state. The people in power at the top usually don't actually care very much about the topics of intolerance, but they are a useful tool for building and maintaining power. Intolerance in a population is a weakness exploited by people in power. Fan the flames of that passion and now and then nudge it in a direction which is useful to maintain that power. How do you think Trump got a mob to storm the capital building? People in America are almost begging for authoritarian solutions to their perceived problems with morality. They want the government to force their opinions on everyone. This is true across the political spectrum, and there are plenty of examples of it. Countries don't fall victim to authoritarianism, populations consent and encourage it (and then afterwards get upset with the result when it's too late). Hitler achieved power through popular election, he took what some people wanted, turned it into what many people wanted, and directed it towards his personal goals.

matthewmacleod 4y ago

Intolerance is intolerance The thing is, this sort of truism seems so flat and weak. I'd even say it's the symptom of something worse and increasingly prevalent – skin-deep, black-and-white thinking that ignores the complexity of any interesting issue. It's thought-terminating clichés all the way down. Almost every single member of society draws a line at some point between things they think are acceptable and should be tolerated, and things they think are unacceptable and should not be tolerated. The interesting questions are in figuring out how we build a shared, messy consensus that most of us can live with – one that protects the right of people to speak freely and without fear while protecting the rights of others.

russdill 4y ago

That's a super broad brush. Throwing in the "exactly" makes this particularly overbroad. It's perfectly OK to think that people with certain views are intolerable and that isn't some path to fascism. There are people I don't want to associate with because of views I deem intolerable. I think the necessary addition is "and they need to be stopped".

colechristensen 4y ago
To be fair, I am not red-teaming my comments or spending hours agonizing over each word. But to a second point, it should be clear that "exactly" isn't meant in a mathematical sense of "literally every single thought". I don't think the people shouting about social justice and similar morality or other hot political issues want to go to war over whether or not you like poppyseed muffins, there's no reason to take words to their extreme when there isn't a question if a reasonable person would mean something like that. Finally though, I actually do mean exactly. Find me someone passionate about their political and social opinions who is doing the yelling driving this societal problem who does tolerate different opinions on topics they care about. Few and far between. The problem is explicitly that the median person in these yelling groups actually doesn't tolerate any differences of opinions on a wide array of topics.
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the_optimist 4y ago
This is semantics with the word ‘tolerance.’ Tolerance means something akin to ‘permissible deviation.’ It doesn’t mean associate, it directly means the thing is permissible and thus isn’t stopped.
paisawalla 4y ago
Eliminating the word fascism from discourse, and replacing it with a description of the thoughts and attitudes you find intolerable, would clarify your claims are here. It's not an invitation to argue about those views mind you, but if you had said "whoa, it's totally fine if we don't have racism, sexism, transphobia, islamophobia, etc expressed anywhere in polite mainstream society" then suddenly it becomes clear 1. you expect us all to have about the same definition of those terms (yours), and 2. you expect/condone zealous policing of those boundaries, (because these are by definition intolerable and one does not lightly oppose the intolerable) Taken together, it's pretty clear how good intentions lead to puritanically speech-constrained society. The real tolerance paradox is that even the intoler (-ant/-able) speech must be tolerated.

MrsPeaches 4y ago

Can I just clarify, are you talking about when states do this or when society does this ? The article is (from my reading) quite clearly talking about states that are closing down freedom of expression, not society as a whole. Like, I can say, “The American President is a disaster for the country, all his ideas a trash, he smells funny and should be voted out as soon as possible” and I don’t have to fear the the American Government is coming to get me. In places with reducing freedom of expression this is becoming more dangerous. This is very different to saying something politically controversial and losing my job because a company doesn’t want to go against public opinion.

colechristensen 4y ago
I'm saying intolerance in broader society is an incredible weakness that encourages and gives power to intolerance in the state. People are begging for authoritarian solutions to what they view as moral problems in society. If they can't convince people to do "what's right" they want the state to do it by force. It then becomes easy for authoritarians to take power because it's literally what the people are asking for, and then when they are in power it is easy to shape public opinion to be whatever they want. >This is very different to saying something politically controversial and losing my job because a company doesn’t want to go against public opinion. It really isn't. Corporations are taking the place of the state. If you say something controversial and can't get a job as a result and end up in a dire living situation, does it really matter if it was a few corporations or a dictator that made you unemployable?
- MrsPeaches 4y ago
  > I'm saying intolerance in broader society is an incredible weakness that encourages and gives power to intolerance in the state. What is your evidence for this statement? Could you provide an example? > Corporations are taking the place of the state. Yes. The state’s role is certainly smaller than it was in many western countries (e.g. in the UK) but I don’t know what that has to do with free speech. Yes, it does matter. If I am an asshole who stirs shit up at a company, I probably won’t find work. If I am an asshole (not breaking the law) the state can’t deny me basic services it provides to its citizens just because I am an asshole. Can I just ask though: what period would you consider the golden age of free speech? What is the peak from which we are descending?

immigrantheart 4y ago

Very naive.

dbingham 4y ago

There's a line though. It's called the paradox of intolerance. If we are tolerant of intolerance, then we risk intolerance winning. So we need to be tolerant of different ways of thinking - EXCEPT - for those ways of thinking that seek to take power to oppress others. And that, of course, is where things can get sticky. Because we often differ on what constitutes oppression. There are those who believe that any form of taxation is oppression, while most would agree it is necessary for society to function. There are certain things that we really should all be able to agree constitute oppression however - and top among them is wanting to kill, enslave, or restrict people for nothing more than being who they were born as. Today, many people seem to equate those who are being intolerant of intolerance with those who are actually being intolerant.