Hacker News Reader

Karl Popper was a moron. You can tolerate intolerance just fine by assuming there will be someone equally intolerant of such intolerance.

I wish people would stop quoting that denthead. It’s as silly as people claiming the Qu’ran has passages specifically commanding them to blow people up.

View on HN

Your conclusion is definitionally the same as Popper's? Intolerance of intolerance is the solution. It is only a "paradox" in that unlimited tolerance leads to this seemingly backwards outcome of the triumph of intolerance.

The difference is that Popper thinks you yourself must be the intolerant one. I'm saying that if intolerance exists, then someone else will take care of it because they too must surely exist.

Taken to its logical conclusion, nothing can be tolerated but tolerance itself.

Kind of an inversion of Chesterton's 'Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.'

Reply on news.ycombinator.com