It's just armchair philosophy used as justification for intolerance by intellectuals, the mental gymnastic people need to get over their cognitive dissonance.
AFAIK Plato came up with it to justify autocracy. That says it all actually.
It would be better to say that people shouldn't use a paradox as evidence for something (e.g., claim aliens must exist because of Fermi's Paradox).
Unnecessary use of the 'paradox' label.
If a criminal shoots a cop, that is violence.
If a cop shoots the criminal back, is that the 'paradox of violence' ?
If a surgeon cuts open a patient with a knife, to treat a tumor, is that the 'paradox of violence' ?
Violence used to curb violence is peace. Peace used to ignore violence is violence.
There is nothing 'paradoxical' about not tolerating the intolerant. That is basic justice.
>Violence used to curb violence is peace. Peace used to ignore violence is violence.
So an eye for an eye, eh? And if I use my eye to look away, I also deserve to lose it? I think you are a dangerous fellow. I'd sooner allow someone to say some mean things on the internet than let someone like you ever get into a position of power.
So if a criminal is shooting at you (violence), the police should not shoot the criminal (also violence)?
Are there documented cases of this happening or is it just a wild guess?
My bet is on the later.
I personally had to come up with arguments to justifiably censor people to stop the sub I became a part of, from becoming more of a chess pool.
I was a card carrying member of the market place of ideas/ free speech camp till 12-13 years ago, at which point it was clearer to me that giving free speech to certain groups was the same as allowing prions to proliferate in the food chain.
Which is why stronger moderation was required to reverse the descent into madness - it worked.
The people who were hateful bigots were ejected and made their own forums, where they promised never to ban dissenting voices.
Sure enough, they too started banning voices because
1) they weren’t there for free speech in the first place, just for indoctrination.
2) free speech meant that They became petri dishes for even more extreme material and eventually had to be banned or risk getting the entire forum/subreddit removed.
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I’d love alternate interpretations for it, if possible, but the experience from these multiple natural experiments show that letting malicious Machiavellian actors on your platform will result in the abuse of normal users and the tolerance of the system.
This is such a great point and to me rings absolutely true.
> "Tolerance" is kind of a weasel word anyway, essentially giving carte blanche to the one that invokes the paradox.
How so? Demonstrating that a principle makes for a poor foundation has little bearing on its ultimate validity.
Consider a group of Neo-Nazis that want to stage a peaceful protest espousing their ideology. They get their permits and set out in a town square, chanting all kinds of anti-Semitic and white power nonsense. The question "are the Neo-Nazis being intolerant?" is a tricky one. On one hand, the answer is a resounding "yes," but on the other, they're the proverbial dog that's all bark and no bite.
Consider some local Jewish group that wants to stage a counter-protest. I'll give you the same question: are the Jewish protesters being intolerant? Again, it's a tricky one: they might argue they're being intolerant of the Neo-Nazis' intolerance (as I'm sure Popper would say).
The Neo-Nazis could, in turn, argue that they aren't being intolerant at all - they're just exercising their First Amendment rights. In fact, it's the Jewish counter-protesters that are the ones being intolerant! So we're just going around in circles debating who's being "intolerant," what "intolerant" means, and what it takes to go from "tolerant" to "intolerant" -- the classic sorites paradox[1]. This is all equivocation.
When we look at simpler tests like Mill's Harm Principle, the problem is simplified! If, the Neo-Nazis aren't harming anyone, they're free to do whatever they please -- as are the Jewish counter-protesters. Harm is a lot easier to wrap one's head around than "tolerance," so that's why I think it's a much more palatable litmus test.
Maybe it should be paradox of even/odd level of tolerance? Also, in practice, it's hard to define which are the primitive intolerances and which are not.
Is it based on empirical evidence? Is it based for example on longitudinal social studies? The answer is no.
And certainly absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence but it's baffling to me how people can cite this as fact, even if it might as well be bullshit.
So do you tolerate intolerance?
it seems to be perfectly acceptable to be intolerant to some groups of people and religions/ideologies.
The real question is whether reacting with similar intolerance leaves you better off - or has any meaningful influence on the bad actors in question.
Diplomacy is full of these tradeoffs.