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Comment by jjoonathan | Hacker News Reader

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jjoonathan·

> The paradox of tolerance is bullshit though

So do you tolerate intolerance?

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Sorry, not falling in that trap ;-)

It is impossible to be tolerant of all things. The paradox of tolerance is one way of picking which things to be intolerant toward. There are lots of others, mostly worse. Ultimately though, we all have to pick.

et voila - we have a paradox

No, just a logical fallacy.

Yeah, because you know it's a paradox.

That isn't a natural dichotomy, it's silly to break down problems into that sort of black and white ("you're either for us or against us!" sort of nonsense). There are always multiple choices.

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.

But it is you cannot be tolerant of all things. You can't simultaneously be tolerant of cats and of people who wish to ban cats. Those two things cannot simultaneously be accepted.

Yes you can. I tolerate cats but I also tolerate cat haters. If people wanted to ban cats, I can disagree with them, but I wouldn’t be opposed to tolerating them, hearing their opinions, and giving them a forum to talk. Tolerance does not mean endorsement or acceptance.

So you would tolerate someone rounding up and shooting cats?

don't we all tolerate intolerance on some level/topics?

it seems to be perfectly acceptable to be intolerant to some groups of people and religions/ideologies.

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