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do evil games expect evil prizes, thank you Rainer Forst
edit: this is a pedagogical post, not a philosophical one. i actually fully agree with the paradox of tolerance and its conclusion! i just find that it doesn’t work as well as an educational tool for introducing people to the concept. sorry for any confusion :)
It's simple really. A tolerant society cannot exist if intolerant factions are tolerated. Ergo, bash the fash.
Which is exactly what the paradox of tolerance says. So why are you agreeing with OP?
It's way simpler to say that tolerance is a contract and you're not bound by a contract breached by the other party, that description isn't paradoxical in any way
Yes, if you're looking for a simple way to express the concept, that's a good way to do it.
Poppler's formulation isn't meant to be simple. It's meant to be complete.
If I'm teaching an end user how to use the program I wrote, I'm not going to explain the code line by line. But if they ask me why it can't do some random and largely impossible thing that they want, I absolutely need to understand the code in order to explain why that isn't possible.
Understanding Poppler's formulation allows you to address the many ways in which people will try to undermine your simplified version. An example I've used elsewhere in this thread is the idea that "We can't ban Nazis from our platform because then we'd have to ban all forms of political expression. Otherwise we're just playing favourites." It's the "If you censor me then you're the one being intolerant" argument, usually strapped to a slippery slope fallacy about how you'll never stop censoring stuff once you start. And it's very, very effective. Lots of well meaning people who are not Nazis or Nazis sympathizers can still be very easily swayed by this logic.
Poppler cuts through all that. He gives us a clear and definite criteria for what ideas are acceptable and what aren't, and an ironclad justification for why. The theory he lays out is essential knowledge if you ever want to successfully defend the position expressed by "Tolerance is a social contract," or the "Nazi bar" analogy, or any other excellent ways of introducing these ideas.
You don't have to start with Poppler's paradox, but sooner or later you will need it.
i agree with what it says. i just don’t think it’s good as an educational tool for introducing people to the concept.
e: oops sorry for the double comment
Fuck
All my Homies
Is this a meme or a wishlist?
a rare diagnosis of megascripto-itis (patient can only read text written in the Impact font face)
why is there an empty comment here?
bwahahaha
wait uh i mean sorry
thank u for being supportive of my lesbian mom
Exactly, tolerating the intolerant is like trying to have a functional relationship with tooth decay...
Yes. That is the exact conclusion of the paradox of tolerance.
Well... half an egg on my face for not reading it, half-kudos for getting it right anyway!:)))
Thank you for the truth! Sincerely!
i guess my meme was not clear lol. i fully agree with the paradox of tolerance and its conclusion. i just think the paradox as a tool for teaching people about the nuances of tolerance is ineffective in comparison to the social contract.
Just be tolerant with the tolerants while intolerant with the intolerants, like a prisioner dilema strategy
That is, in fact, exactly what Poppler's paradox of tolerance says.
i agree with what it says. i just don’t think it’s good as an educational tool for introducing people to the concept.
I'm not sure what concept you're trying to introduce to people, but if they don't understand the paradox of tolerance then you aren't explaining it very well because it's extremely easy to understand.
tell that to the 9373626 internet arguments i’ve seen misunderstanding it and saying “its a paradox there is no solution” lol
yup! it’s quite simple and i wish the internet wasn’t so primed to cite the paradox posing a problem rather than saying the solution
i see people get confused by the paradox all the time, because they are used to the concept of the logical kind of paradox which has no solution.
but the concept of the social contract is intuitive. easy peasy.
ITT: A lot of people completely failing to understand what the paradox of tolerance means.
precisely! such a consistent breadth of misunderstanding is why i prefer the contract as a method for introducing the concept.
paradox is fine for more advanced discussions, like investigating why the moderate ideal of “unlimited tolerance, always” just leads to more intolerance.
but for people (most!) who are new to it? just use the simpler argument first. there’s no point in shaming them for not “just getting” a more lofty model of understanding, when you can easily switch to the lower level, intuitive language, at least until a foundational understanding is reached.
Less well known [than other paradoxes] 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. Karl Popper, 2 sentences after defining the paradox of tolerance he shows an easy answer to it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
It's more shorthand for the absurdity of tolerating intolerance. It's a paradox of absolute tolerance, not of reality. It's not meant to be unsolvable in practice, only unsolvable within the frameworks of spineless moderates.
It’s a paradox of absolute tolerance
Literally! But I see people drop the “absolute” off the name all the time in conversations that introduce the concept (it’s not even in the Wikipedia title, despite “unlimited” being in the original author’s quote) which understandably scrambles the conversation. At best it leads to misunderstanding that needs to be corrected, at worst it leads to people calling each other nazi simps for not just “getting it.”
That's because seeing it that way is convenient. Any idea can be watered down and used for manipulation, from Marxism to loving your neighbor.
KARL POPPER IN DA HOUSE!!!
right, so if it’s a problem that’s always had an easy answer, why do i hear about the problem all the damn time 😡
name one other example of a “paradox” being used as justification or argument for something. you can’t, because there’s a sense of instability inherent in the term; a proper logical paradox actually has no solution.
so why do we fall back so quickly and consistently to the “paradox” as an explanation for perhaps the single most important concept in ethical philosophy when it comes to community preservation and mitigation of violence?
it’s rhetorically inefficient. no one actually thinks about paradoxes in this fashion, so it doesn’t make for a compelling argument. imagine if queer advocates were like “yeah technically it’s like, totally natural for just males and females to experience mutual attraction, but some don’t. a paradox! 🤯” nobody would buy it. instead we say “sexual orientation, while most common in the male-female reciprocation, is diverse such that male-male and female-female attraction also exist throughout nature.”
likewise: “tolerance is a social contract. violate the contract, society has the right to intervene.” boom. done and dusted. enough of the sophistry. enough of the sophistication olympics. use arguments that convince people, not ones that makes you sound smart.
It's called a paradox because it is unsolveable... if you are a free speech absolutist.
The point he's getting at is that absolute tolerance is not only bad; it's impossible. A society that tolerates absolutely everything - the kind free speech absolutists claim to envision - will inevitably become less and less tolerant over time, because the intolerant members of that society will abuse those freedoms to create more intolerance.
Its framed the way it is because Poppler is essentially responding to those people who invoke the slippery slope to argue that you cannot ever censor anything, because then how do you decide what not to censor? Poppler replies "Here's how."
If it helps you to frame it better, call it the "paradox of absolute tolerance" or the "paradox of perfect tolerance."
totally. thank you for your insight and i fully agree for the record.
but you needed four paragraphs to explain the “paradox”. that is a surefire signifier that is maybe not rhetorically the best fit for the role of convincing people deplatforming nazis is good…
again, i’m criticizing the tool. i’m fully in alignment with what it does, there’s just so many better ways to say it.
No one is telling you that can't say "Tolerance is a social contract." But when you frame that as being in opposition to Poppler's statement, rather than literally being a summation of his ultimate conclusion, all you're doing is spreading misinformation. There are people in this very thread who think that you're outright disagreeing with Poppler's conclusions.
The paradox is necessary, because without it you haven't built out the philosophical underpinnings to support your version of the statement. That doesn't mean that you have to start with the philosophical underpinnings - in many cases, you may not even need to elaborate on them at all - but you do need to understand them in order to defend yourself against common criticisms.
The problem with "Tolerance is a social contract", in absentia of Poppler's groundwork, is that someone will inevitably say "But you are violating the social contract by being intolerant of me. Surely I now have a right to be intolerant of you. Where does it end?" This is more commonly framed as, for example, "We have to allow Nazis on Twitter, because if we start censoring some political speech then we would have to censor all political speech. Otherwise how are we to judge which political speech is acceptable and which isn't?"
This sounds reasonable enough that most people will nod and say "That's a good point actually." But Poppler's framing cuts through those objections. It lays out, with absolute clarity that it is not not only good and necessary to silence intolerance, but that it is, in fact, impossible to create a tolerant space if you do not.
It's not meant to be a teaching tool. It was never originally framed as such. It's a proof; Poppler is showing his work.
thank you for clarifying the point of confusion; I actually posted an edit a few seconds ago
I gotta say, I love the fact I learned this through a comedian, who actually is literate and went through the work of reading and realising the answer is right there
I still fail to understand what your issue is with the paradox? I can't see why it would be easier or more effective to explain a social contract than a paradox. It differs from other reciprocal social contracts, such as trust for example, because a) it's the lack of the commodity itself (tolerance) which dictates whether it should be granted and b) it's not global, i.e. you can remain tolerant of a bigot's queerness while not tolerating their hatred. I think a) makes it a paradox, which sets it apart from other social contracts. So why not call it a paradox? I'm still not getting it.
I don't get it.
Because neither does OP. They're acting as if the paradox of tolerance is framed as an unsolvable problem, but it's not.
Poppler formulates the paradox like this: If you try to create a society that tolerates everything, you'll end up tolerating people who will abuse that freedom to create a society that is deeply intolerant (ie, bigoted, hateful, etc). In other words, if you act as a free speech absolutist, defending the rights of Nazis to be Nazis, they'll use that freedom to create a Nazi society.
Poppler formulates this paradox to push back against free speech absolutism. His argument is that the only logical conclusion is that a perfectly tolerant society must - paradoxically - be intolerant of exactly one thing; intolerance.
He's not saying "Oh no, what a conundrum." He's laying out a simple framework that allows you to determine exactly what it is and is not acceptable to refuse to tolerate.
The paradox forms the perfect counterargument to the slippery slope justifications used for free speech absolutism. Nazis will say "If you censor us, where does it end? Soon you'll be censoring everything. Maybe you're the real fascists because you're trying to take away our rights." Poppler refutes this by drawing a clear, explicit line and saying "This is where it ends. Right here." It shatters their slippery slope argument in one swift stroke.
