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The Popper quote, I’m guessing: “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intole

by afpx 4y ago

The Popper quote, I’m guessing: “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.” As long as there are more tolerant than intolerant, then everything’s ok, right? Why does a society create intolerance? maybe we should remedy that.

kelseyfrog 4y ago
Society creates intolerance out of a few simple social mechanisms: typification, legitimation, institutionalization, and reification. Let me explain. Typification is the psychological process of simplifying human behavior into causal chains. It is an expression of the desire to deacribe, compress, and explain human actions without an infinite number of edge cases and suffers from the bias variance tradeoff as it is an inherently predictive activity. Legitimation turns the descriptive rules of typified behavior into normative rules of how people ought to behave eg: that person didn't meet my expectations, therefore their behavior is wrong. Instutionalization codifies these normative behavioral rules into social systems eg: justice, educational, scientific, medical, &c. And finally reification externalizes the process entirely and frames it instead as a natural product of facts and reality (either secularly or religiously, or a combination of both). The end result is a subjective internalization of such an externalized reality used to justify legitimation at the individual and/or institutional levels. Intolerance arises as a reaction to the breaking of such behavioral norms in that either specific behaviors or their embodiment in groups of people are incompatible with the internalized norms. Rather than adjust ones norms, the behaviors or people embodying the violated norms are sought to be extinguished. At this point you should have a working model of the process and can begin to imagine what it would look like to throw a spanner into the works. Note: I've purposely skipped over essentialism and some other topics that could be useful in understanding the process well enough to disrupt it, but this comment is already getting too long.

by afpx 4y ago

kelseyfrog 4y ago

Society creates intolerance out of a few simple social mechanisms: typification, legitimation, institutionalization, and reification. Let me explain. Typification is the psychological process of simplifying human behavior into causal chains. It is an expression of the desire to deacribe, compress, and explain human actions without an infinite number of edge cases and suffers from the bias variance tradeoff as it is an inherently predictive activity. Legitimation turns the descriptive rules of typified behavior into normative rules of how people ought to behave eg: that person didn't meet my expectations, therefore their behavior is wrong. Instutionalization codifies these normative behavioral rules into social systems eg: justice, educational, scientific, medical, &c. And finally reification externalizes the process entirely and frames it instead as a natural product of facts and reality (either secularly or religiously, or a combination of both). The end result is a subjective internalization of such an externalized reality used to justify legitimation at the individual and/or institutional levels. Intolerance arises as a reaction to the breaking of such behavioral norms in that either specific behaviors or their embodiment in groups of people are incompatible with the internalized norms. Rather than adjust ones norms, the behaviors or people embodying the violated norms are sought to be extinguished. At this point you should have a working model of the process and can begin to imagine what it would look like to throw a spanner into the works. Note: I've purposely skipped over essentialism and some other topics that could be useful in understanding the process well enough to disrupt it, but this comment is already getting too long.