Paradox of tolerance
Wiki - The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased 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.
Except if you view tolerance as what it is, a social contract. I'll tolerate you as long as you tolerate me.
Thus I get along great with the religious person that just wishes to practise their religion in peace, and respects my existence as a connoisseur of cock outside of it, but we don't have to put up with the neo-nazis calling for both of our heads.
And so the paradox dissolves.
That's true. But it also requires that both sides have the same definition of tolerance and the same definitions of good an evil.
For instance, what if that religion being practiced believed that homosexuality is a sin, and you did not?
In their eyes they'd be justified in thinking you were intolerant of their god-given righteousness and you'd be justified in thinking that they were being intolerant of the liberty of others.
Maybe they actively roam the streets harassing gay people, maybe they have laws about a death penalty, or maybe they just talk about them as unclean. Where does your tolerance start? Is it only at words and not action? Does that mean hate speech is ok?
The paradox here isn't to do with tolerance and intolerance, but the assertion that either of those things exist as objective view points.
Thinking something someone else dies us wrong or immoral is is not the same as being intolerant.
A religious person thinking homosexuality is a sin and simply looks down on gay people, but otherwise takes no action is being tolerant. They are not being accepting, just tolerating. Someone who actively tries to stop gay people from existing (through laws, conversion therapy, murder, etc.) is intolerant.
The very fact there's now a bunch of comments each defining "tolerance" as something different but with equal fervour sort of proves the point.
Look, I have no answers, but I was particularly commenting on the assertion that the paradox dissolved if you think about it. It doesn't. It's not that easy, and if you think it is, you are the reason why the paradox upholds.
The social contract is to tolerate that which doesn't harm or significantly affect you. Someone can choose not to be gay, and that's fine. They don't have to "tolerate" a gay guy hitting on them. However, 2 gay guys sleeping together is none of their business. In your case, the religious person can feel what they want. When they start trying to impose that on the gay guy, they are being intolerant.
Things get more complex when worldviews start impinging on each other. E.g. the religious person can have issues with a "gay pride" parade. At the same time the gay community has a reasonable right to express themselves. The balance of these views is a lot of how the rest of society functions.
That's true. But it also requires that both sides have the same definition of tolerance and the same definitions of good an evil.
It's a similar problem to respect. If I said "I'll show you respect if you show me respect" I could mean that I'll give you due regard for your feelings if you'll do the same. However, too often it means I'll give due regard for your feelings if you'll treat me with deep admiration.
It's less about tolerance of people and more about tolerance of beliefs, but more importantly actions. It requires personal agency and bodily autonomy to be sacrosanct to function. Ergo, if you wish to cut off your arm and make a taco out of it, that's fine, but you cannot force someone to eat said taco, nor can you force someone to assist you in cutting off your arm. It's your body, your choice, your action, and your consequences.
This means, if you have a religion where women are viewed as inferiors, that's perfectly fine to have. You can believe that women are lesser beings as much as you want, and you're free to treat women like the complete and total dickwad you are, but you cannot violate their personal autonomy. You cannot force anyone to partake in your beliefs or act in accordance with your beliefs.
I'd say that roaming gangs of people harrassing others does impeach on said others' personal autonomy, and thus wouldn't be tolerated.
Believe that homosexuality is a sin? Great. Don't engage in homosexuality. Believe that your labia needs cutting off? Great, do it, find someone else who shares your belief and have it done to you. You may not force this upon your daughter though, your rights end where hers begin.
You're allowed to have your god, and someone else can have theirs, even if said gods are complete polar opposites and clash with one another. Deal with it, or sod off.
Then you'll have to take it on a case by case basis. Like with everything. There's no perfect system. There never will be a perfect system.
The line is when actions are taken.
Religious people are allowed to believe and say that homosexuality is a sin.
Atheists are allowed to believe and say that religious people are stupid.
I don’t believe that hate speech is defined the same way everywhere, but it’s not really that difficult to say “we don’t legislate sin; nor stupidity.” People expressing their views is not necessarily hate speech. Calling something a sin or calling something stupid is not on par with a call to action, or attempt to intimidate a group of people.
I’ll tolerate you as long as you tolerate me.
I'd only comment that it's not just about tolerating me. I am intolerant of people who are intolerant of others, unless they follow this contract.
But then not everything is about tolerance of other people. I don't tolerate people who litter, for example, even if they tolerate me.
That's a fair point. I think it's more about respecting and tolerating people's personal agency and bodily autonomy. You don't need to respect someone's beliefs in order to tolerate them. I personally think religion is idiotic, but I tolerate it existing. I recognise that it isn't my right to dictate whether someone worships or not.
It all naturally needs to work within the framework of society. You can't force someone not to litter, but if littering is a fineable offense, then the litterer must recognise that while no one can stop them from littering, there can be consequences to their actions.
That's the final panel & speech bubbles.
Have you seen those Denizli roosters, they’re are huge
Not that kind of cock, but also that kind of cock. I love chickens, I just don’t want them in my body.
Its not a paradox.
Tolerance is a social contract.
If you refuse to be part of the social contract, then you do not receive its protection.
it is not paradoxical to be intolerant to those who want to destroy the contract to harm individuals or society. Being violently intolerant against them is nothing but acting in the defense of our own personhood, the personhood of our fellows, and the good of our society.
Exactly, it's only really a paradox of you try to define "tolerance" as a completely unqualified imperative. Tolerance of what?
Semantically speaking, "Are you in favor of tolerance?" Does not express a proposition, while "Do you tolerate everything?" without additional qualification is descriptively negative. No paradox at all.
I always cringe when I read comments like this.
Interwar Germany considered Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and various others to not be "part of the social contract".
Reading your comment with that idea in mind: It is "not paradoxical" to be intolerant to those who want to destroy the contract. "Being violently intolerant against them" is nothing but acting in the defense of self, defense of German people, and the good of German society.
The truly terrifying part is the inevitable rebuttal. It's always been some variation of "Yeah, but my cause is righteous!", as though the Germans thought themselves to be evil in 1923.
The paradox is that Popper cribbed his philosophy from Mein Kampf, and nobody seems to realize it. Popper's paradox should be seen as a lesson on the insidiousness of fascism.
I was just coming to say this, thanks!
Well put, but even so, the social contract is still amenable to social changes at different times. Social values change over time and so does the social contract. One day people are more liberal, the next conservative, far left or far right. What was accepted before by society becomes forbidden. What was forbidden is now accepted. That's why I think free speech is a never ending discussion and debate.
I'm not saying that Popper's paradox has no merit and I am not in favour of stifling free speech due to possibility of intolerance, but there is a fine line with exercising free speech and harming others through hate speech. That's why the debate on free speech must continue and that's the best we could do as society without stifling the right to free speech and dehumanising and harming others.
I dont know who you are, and I'm not going to make any assumptions.
but I will tell you.
You may want to reconsider the position you have, because.. at least in my experience, theres only one group of people that tend to make those arguments. a certain group that wants to use tolerance against the tolerant and constantly try to debate for no other reason to get the goal posts shifted and their hatred and bigotry accepted as normal discourse.
True, but not a meme. More like an infographic.
And a pretty poor one at that. It doesn’t demonstrate the concept.
Sorry sir, we only do soapboxes here.
I've always disliked how this is described as a paradox. It only highlights a broader point found in many systems, a just system is never about "the good" outnumbering "the bad". It's about a balanced equilibrium, as are most relationships. Besides, allowing intolerance is not a tolerant act, that's not the way we define that term. To make such a claim would be as ridiculous as a racist person saying they are practicing tolerance by not challenging or question any of their bigoted thoughts and instead just letting them play out.
I view it as a contract. If you don't abide by it, you are not covered
Fully agree. The only catch with this is it can be distorted with propaganda to point to anyone as being intolerant, with enough saturation. The bar for recognizing intolerance needs to be fairly high.
Why?
It's why I'm always a bit leery of the knee-jerk punch-a-nazi movements.
This was my first thought. If people choose what's intolerant based on preference then anything can be intolerant.
Appeasement doesn't work with an opponent incapable of concession.
I've personally witnessed my little brother express hating the left more than Nazis after he was banned from a video game for calling someone a retard.
It's only a paradox because the creator of the infographic has oversimplified what intolerance is.
When nazis are intolerant of a minority group, or whatever their target is, are violent towards them.
When the general society is intolerant of nazis, they are not usually calling for nazis to be killed or harmed.
And the creator does not differentiate between how a government deals with nazi versus the people. A government may "tolerate" nazis when it comes to free speech, and then be "intolerant" of nazis when they commit violence, and arrest or prosecute them. The general populace, unlike the government, cannot prosecute nazis (legally), they can only shun them. The creator clumsily does not differentiate between legal consequences and social consequences.
Basically, the infographic creator is trying to both-sides this shit, when one side want ppl dead, while other side just want nazis to go away. They are not the same. Moronic, sophomoric, low IQ. Too bad this may actually work on some people. That's the sad part.
This gets abused a lot by people who claim agency over what is intolerance and what isn’t. It would seem an easy and straightforward enough distinction but in reality there seems to be a lot of wiggle room.
absolutely it gets abused. any time anyone wants you to tolerate what they want you to(defend their own tolerance), they might suggest that you're not being tolerant enough. (suggesting you intolerant)
this means that both intolerance of reasonable rules, as well as intolerance to unreasonable rules can always be twisted as "intolerant of the tolerant ruling".
essentially, whatever an authority establishes as being right/good must be tolerated, whereas what they consider wrong/bad will not be tolerated.
of course most reasonable people know that what people think is good/bad/right/wrong varies massively, and how tricky and meaningless this fact can make the whole idea of "tolerating the intolerant". it certainly doesn't help in convincing the intolerant to be tolerant, so i think it's not worth talking about.
It happened with the UK.
Our political landscape went to shit when mainstream platforms started giving highly right wing and racist parties like UKIP and the BNP platforms.
It's not the paradox, it's the common sense.
The problem is that people label everything and everyone "Nazi" or "fascist" these days and with that they justify not tolerating any type of experience or opinion they find uncomfortable.
This leads to basically ignoring a whole bunch of people. But their problems won't stop simply because you ignore them. Instead you now have people who were on the verge to vote right wing, now definitely voting right wing because they feel the left ignores their problems (which is true).
Thank fuck someone reasonable.
Yes the term is 1000000% watered down and means nothing anymore, it's lost all the terrible insult it used to carry.
But the right's problems are things like "black people exist" or "trans people exist", or really just a bunch of variants of that for different people they hate. The Nazi comparison isn't invalid, and there's absolutely no reason for the left to entertain their problems as legitimate.
No it's not. I mean for example people who live next to a refugee home and asked for help to deal with the problems that came with it. Just really boring problems that could have been actually resolved. Like people dumping their trash on the streets, ignoring driving rules, minors stealing in corner shops, stuff like that.
In these neighbourhoods it could have been prevented that the people don't want more refugees or even vote for AFD. But instead, when people mentioned these issues, they were called racists or Nazis. Because it was uncomfortable to talk about it and everyone wanted to seem extra tolerant.
I wonder if people still think it was worth it to ignore these complaints as petty. That behaviour has antagonized a bunch of people from the cause. Only for the short gratification of a holier than thou attitude.
That is not generalizing at all. /s There are a lot of people on the right side of the spectrum, some are also compassionate and tolerant
Since it's a spectrum, polarising means ignoring them and forcing them to decide among 2 poles, and guess what will happen?
From what I've seen people use this as an argument for censorship. Personally I believe in proportional responses.
This assumes that censorship is inherently bad. Censorship against speech regarding the government should be protected. However it's perfectly legitimate to censor harmful ideas, and many countries censor hate speech. We censor people's ability to physically and emotionally harm others. We censor threats. Censorship isn't inherently bad, and is already used functionally everywhere, just ask ChatGPT.
I do however think censorship can be dangerous. I think the censorship we see in public forums (including lemmy) already treads on the toes of legitimate intellectual conversation of objective views on hate speech and offensive language. Tone policing is incredibly intellectually disingenuous, but is widespread because feelings trump literacy. I think the censorship of individual words is supremely dangerous because it also bans or limits the conversation around those words, their usage, etymology, and understanding their use. Comprehension of offensive things is just as valuable as understanding anything else, if not more so should you wish to fight them, but censorship of offensive things without context destroys the capacity for understanding to permeate the social consciousness.
If twelve people sit at a table with a Nazi, you have thirteen Nazis
For those that haven't seen it, the speech in Team America discusses adjacent nuances of this in the most eloquent and poetic way possible.
Thatms why I always say that i'm intolerrant towards intolerrant people
That's not what Popper is talking about. He's talking about maintaining the option to be intolerant of the act of intolerance, not of people.
There's only two types of people I cant stand...
I sometimes make fun of reactionaries by saying "Anti-Racists are intolerant of Racists. They're the true racists!". Didn't know there was a point to be made in that joke!
An Italian left-wing comic author once said that neo-fascism has been normalized so much that Nazi is the only term left, but perhaps that applies only to his country.
IMO the issue with this is that it's a binary: tolerant vs intolerant, and nothing in between. If you think of what it is if it's a spectrum, that's just called "having opinions", and letting your opinions decide how tolerant you are of others.
“I'm pretty tolerant person, but trans people should just die” is just an opinion. “Gay people should live in internment camps while they get cured of their disease”, is also an opinion. “Black people are just naturally inclined to live in slavery, it's easier for them that way” is also just and opinion. “It's perfectly OK for a 12 y.o. girl to marry a widowed man if her parents agreed, it's the natural order”, look at that, another opinion. “People with disability shouldn't be allowed to reproduce, it's unnatural and they risk spreading their disease”, one more opinion. Where do we draw the line? Where's the spectrum?
People easily forget that intolerance is also very selective and targeted. The vast majority of people with intolerant ideas would look pretty regular and normal most the time. The line is pretty clear though, someone's dignity (or straight up their lives) is stripped from them. That's not rocket science, it's not an unsolvable moral conundrum, or a spiritual mystery. If someone's dignity and life is being done away with, then you are looking at intolerance.
Ironic seeing how much lemmy has a hard on for the Hamas antisemitic terrorists
I think in the case of Hamas and the government of Israel, it really is kinda a "both sides" thing.
The problem with most "both sides" arguments is they are rarely accompanied by an attempt to correct both sides. Saying that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is what gives Hamas it's influence isn't a defense of Hamas's war crimes.
Hamas is an evil, corrupt organization that intentionally kills innocent people with zero remorse, accountability, or even the false impression of sadness over the murders they commit. The government of Israel does the same thing though.
Hamas fuels hatred of the Palestinians and the government of Israel fuels hatred of its citizens. Both organizations should be abolished.
The same can be said of the Taliban, Al Quaeda, FARC, ISIS, and more. All are bloodthirsty extremist organizations that were made powerful by the West's occupation and murder.
https://youtu.be/goePYJ74Ydg?si=sunG6ESBoNsEsxNC i feel like everyone should watch this video
They was cool, but your thought process is a mystery. are you thinking the tolerant are green beards or something?
Just making a comparison between altruism and tolerance. It works amazingly well if everyone is altruistic, but irl that will never happen. There will always be hawks that take advantage of the fact that everyone else is altruistic. In doing so, hawks become the winning strategy and beat out the green beards. They rise to dominance and at the end everyone is worse off. The answer proposed in game theory (or more accurately, one of many) is a strategy called "Tit-for-tat". Essentially, be an altruist until you're met with hawk behavior, and then stop being altruistic to the hawk. I thought that was very similar to tolerance. It benefits everyone, so long as they are also tolerant but gets easily destroyed by intolerance. I don't care too much about the comparison itself, but most social exchanges can be better understood though game theory.
I like that this most important point is at the top. It reduces the chances someone will skim and only ready the way to not do it.
Whatever you think, youre right and superior and others are wrong.
Thank you!!! Is nice to have some confirmation once in a while. 👍💫
The "tolerant" can also be intolerant. They don't recognize their own intolerance.
I dislike the framing of this, specifically:
"When we extend tolerance to those who are openly intolerant the tolerant ones end up being destroyed"
Implies that the intolerant are guarenteed victory. I vehemently disagree that this is true, and therefore would argue tolerating the bad actors is often a necessary evil to ensure that good actors are not unjustly censored. The risk of 'another hitler' is accepted this way of course but unless we as a society can demonstrate (if at all) that risk would be mitigated by the censorship of hate speech we have no good cause.
Let’s put it plainly.
If you tolerate something, it is implicit you disapprove of, or disagree with, the subject requiring tolerance.
People exhibiting behavior necessitating said tolerance know this. And they don’t like any reminders that just maybe they might be really, really wrong and there are people willing challenge their behavior but are holding back.
So instead of changing their behavior, they eliminate the challenge to their behavior.
I understeand the whole idea and im always up to point and laugh at cringe wanna be fascist, the problem is that the term intollerance is not used with nuance, as soon as people receive critiscism ( be it constructive or not) is easy to just shout biggot or intolerance, whereas in that wouldnt really be the case.
Another problem would be what the stablishment considers intollerance or bigotry, like as easelly as there are protected groups that cant be criticed without coming of hatefull thowards that group, that could be applied the same way to the elite class, gobernment and rich people, and at least in my country it was like that untill relatively recently, (about 2 decades ago), and that is just straight up censorship and if the gobernment wanted they could jaill you (if they didnt assasinate you privately), and i understeand its simmilar in some countries to this day, without pointing at the most obvious ones or failed nations that are in constant internal violent conflicts, one example would be India for what i heard.
My point is that this type of rethoric shouldnt be thrown around as lightly as it is, since it sounds to me as more of a justification for censorship rather than a genuenly interesting thought experiment, specially since the ones that are normally used as an easy to tear down argument are the nazis, which i mean fuck them and everything they say but is this paradox really only aplicable to them?
I agree and im a free speech absolutist type. It really comes down to what is allowed. The top panel is huge as he says respect. No one has to respect anyones ideas but they can allow them to have them and relate them in private and open public forums. The right to free speech does not allow someone to enter the whitehouse to make the speech there. It just means that if they are otherwise not messing with people or breaking the law they can say or write what they want. but you can't write on someone elses private wall or not be kicked out of an establishment for your speech. You don't vote them into office out of tolerance or wanting to hear from both/all sides. Your own free speech rights allow you to ridicule away or whatever you want.
Its not even to that extreme imo, for example if im saying "we should kill all x people" that is just instigation on mass murder, and that is illegal, and i dont know if its actually punishable by law but saying that in a public space will definetly put you on a watch list. I meant that this is used as a solution for a problem that is already solved with laws and regulations on political speech, and comes up like rallying against "everyone who disagrees with me is a biggot since i whant to give everyone ice cream and if you disagree then you whant to give everyone AIDS" when there are more nuanced takes like people being lactose intolerant, other not liking ice cream and others having diabetes or simply whanting to reduce their sugar/fats consumption and would rather have an orange. And grouping them with the "whanting to give AIDS to everyone" crowd is just a very childish way to handle this type of isues.
The paradox of the paradox: there wouldn't be a paradox if the philosopher wouldn't be stuck in the logic of a limited model and a distorted assumption about growth.
Only because there exists the possibility that a movement can grow doesn't mean that it will grow.
Intolerance is also not real, like the war on hunger. There is no enemy, but instead there are people to feed.
This leads all to a simple answer that hides that 'let' s give them a chance' was driven by intolerance for socialists and communists, which should ring a bell.
People are so proud that they are allowed to hate the right enemy that they don't ask what those humans actually need to become friends. (Which doesn't mean apeacement!)
*edit: could the downvoters please leave a note and state where they disagree, please?
Your point doesn't come with an eloquent webcomic and I think having fantasies about punching Nazis is cool
Actually, I think it's that a lot of people are aware of the Paradox of Tolerance as a fairly well-discuss philosophical point, and overhumanizing a group defined by its desire to extinguish an ethnicity is not the most constructive rebuttal to it.
It's not even Godwinizing. Karl Popper coined the Paradox of Tolerance in full knowledge of Nazi atrocities.
I didn't downvote him, but I'm thinking that's why many people did.
If anything, the model of a paradox is too mind-boggling for people to grasp it intuitively. A simpler model for it is that of a peace treaty, or of a social contract. Picture this: a contract whereby we agree to uphold rights and protections for everyone, in exchange for receiving the rights and protections thereby upheld.
Tolerance by itself is too easily conflated with having no standards whatsoever, (eh? Nazis? I guess we have to tolerate them if tolerance is the rule of the day, right?) but when it's a question of enforcing the terms of the contract, it becomes quickly clear that when they start working to break the contract they're no longer covered by it.
It's not a paradox when you're enforcing a contract or a treaty. The protections of a treaty extend only to those abiding by its terms. When the outlaws rode into town to do their outlaw thing, were they entitled to the protections of the laws? No, that's what the word outlaw means.
Of course, this framing-in-neutral-sounding-language suffers from the problem whereby in cases of oppression, neutrality aligns with the oppressor. Who gets to say what the contract is, and who enforces it? Should the organs of law and justice fall into the hands of people bent on oppressing others, that's when this neutral-sounding-framing can be used as a tool of oppression. That's how Jim Crow worked, it's how white supremacy works, it's how every colonial/settler nation functions.
There is one group of people intent on using the language of tolerance as a tool of oppression, and it's high time there was a clause in the paradox/contract/treaty that explicitly calls out that fascists aren't covered because their whole program is to subvert the contract such that they have rights and power but others do not.
Tolerance is a bad word to start with. We tolerate pain or drugs. It already frames the human relation.
What do people want who oppose tolerance? On a human level, what do they miss?
they don’t ask what those humans actually need to become friends.
The thing is, the answer to this question may be "nothing". Plenty of people with a lot of money and plentiful food are unrepentant bigots. Musk is unimaginably rich and still a transphobe. The rumor is that it's because Grimes started dating someone trans after breaking it off with him.
What would we need to give him for him to spread his wealth around and become an advocate for trans rights?
Your ideal is admirable. And certainly, we should offer redemption and encourage people to change. But that should not come at the expense of the wronged nor vulnerable.
'Officially' Musk is afraid that civilization will collapse and he wants a second 'home'. What good is his wealth if he lives in fear?
Like most, he wants to feel safe. Look in his past to figure out why he can't.
The rumors that I heard was that his child is trans and that's the cause for him buying and changing Twitter.
If he is transphobe to protect his child then you have to reach him there.
You're just doing the "all language is nihilism" thing.
Really, the logical issue is that the comic is taking a descriptive premise (tolerance of intolerance can, or perhaps is likely to beget intolerance) and forming an unqualified prescriptive message from it.
The reality of the matter is that all philosophy is local. Obviously descriptive ethics define prescriptive ethics, but rarely at a universal scale. "Tolerance can be dangerous," "radical tolerance can be dangerous," and "asbestos tolerance can be dangerous," all express very different propositions. The better you can qualify the danger, and the more you can constrain the object, the better you can act on the statement.
You can argue that here, the comic does qualify its "bar" for intolerance with the nazi example. The semantic way of reading this is that the author is defending intolerance of Nazis, or some related abstraction. I therefore don't think it is semantically correct to say that the author seeks to apply this ethos broadly.