How about the paradox of tolerance? Should you tolerate intolerant views?
"COVID was leaked from a lab in Wuhan"
At various points in time in the last 4 years, this statement has been considered 1) hate speech 2) tin foil hat conspiracy 3) a possible scenario 4) a plausible scenario 5) a disputed fact that may or may not be true.
If we were to "not tolerate intolerant views" then there would have been no further discussion to get from stage 1 to stage 5 and the world would still believe that it was transmission by a rodent.
Same is true about the possible lab leak. In your example, it was originally hate speach because it was pulled by the media and some part of the population in a very racist way given only vague conjectures. I do think at that point it made sense to stop talking about it in the media because a it was not very well backed and of a low plausibility. It's just damn hard to strike the right balance when we are mostly geared toward emotional response. Same thing happened with vaccine and treatments.
I do think we need to be careful about proper communucation on some subject because of the high potential for misinterpretation. This is especially true when we are talking about highly technical subjects that might not be obvious to everyone.
Can you give an example?
But today, many of the most intolerant people out there are loudly proclaiming their tolerance. And because their intolerance comes clothed in rhetoric about their tolerance, they are blind to the fact of their own intolerance. And so we get people like the guy in Los Angeles a few days ago where a guy kicked his way into a Jewish family's home while yelling, "Kill the Jews," and, "Brown people matter!"
I therefore am left wondering whether I agree with you. Do we agree on which speech is intolerant speech? It's no longer something that I can just take for granted these days.
Some people will choose “tolerance” as a convenient cover for objectively bad behavior, but a good number of popular “cancelation” calls are reasonably motivated when you look at them on a case-by-case basis. You’ll likely not agree with all of them, but there’s at least sensible reasoning behind them. Especially in examples like college campus speakers, where an invite for a speaker can be seen as the institution’s endorsement of the speaker’s belief.
I think we should question why people would associate a university with every guest speaker and everything they say as being authoritative statements of the university and their staff.
So when a speaker is invited who is, for example, blatantly hostile to the advertised mission of the university, it raises eyebrows. And it paints a contradictory pictures that devalues the university itself. Or worse, if the message is blatantly hostile to a subset of students, it could discourage some people from even wanting to attend!
People work hard to get accepted to universities which they respect, and they have a vested interest in maintaining their university’s respect in the public eye.
I can see from your point several value loaded points where students will disagree with each other. The advertised mission of the university being one of them, as people often argue what the point of university training is and how much of education is learning things, research, and social networking. Then there is things like the student theater, which are often not just blatantly hostile to a subset of students and very much discourage some people from wanting to attend to social events. Then we have fraternities and sororities which activity often paints a unfavorable pictures of university life, even going so far as being occasionally borderline criminal in their activities.
What should be a appropriate response to students who disagree on how the university experience should be?
But from what I see, the cancel culture crowd mostly is the problem. Usually only one side is advocating against free speech, and it isn't generally the controversial speaker.
As for the controversial speakers, invites for speakers historically were not seen that way. They were seen as the university fulfilling its mission to give students the opportunity to encounter a wide variety of views. Furthermore that case demonstrates the problem. The financial problem for universities is that controversial speakers require security. And they require security because of the real threat of a radical mob of students causing physical harm. I'm going to go with the people who are actually trying to keep people from speaking here is the mob who is willing to support using violence to do so.
Wiktionary[1] defines "intolerant":
1. Unable or indisposed to tolerate, endure or bear.
2. Not tolerant; close-minded about new or different ideas; indisposed to tolerate contrary opinions or beliefs; impatient of dissent or opposition; denying or refusing the right of private opinion or choice in others; inclined to persecute or suppress dissent.
Bigotry (or discrimination, or prejudice), in general, is a subcategory of the broad definition #1. You are indisposed to tolerate a group of people, or a religion, or whatever.
Seeking to suppress speech or marginalize opinions (of any kind) falls under definition #2.
English might as well have two separate words for these two definitions, in case there is no "paradox". It's only a paradox if you seek to suppress speech from people who seek to suppress speech with their speech.
I don't agree with the statement, but if someone agrees with that because they believe that life begins at conception and a fetus should have the same rights as a post-birth human: could you explain the intolerance there?
Some would argue it is.
Could you explain who is responsible for deciding which views are considered intolerant, so that we know which speech we should not tolerate?
For starters, how about "people who aren't enrolled or employed at a private organization have no standing to demand access to the private organizations resources for amplifying their speech"? We can take a head count of people who are against this idea by having them publicly sign a petition demanding for support for a pro-choice speaking tour kicking off at Liberty University with stops in Notre Dame and BYU.
In addition to that, the implementations tend to be misogynistic, racist, and/or classist.
Is that not the case for many laws and cultural norms? Why is public nudity, or even public sex, illegal (in most/many places) if not religious beliefs?
Do you think people should be allowed to have sex in public? If not, are you not being intolerant and forcing your religious and cultural beliefs upon others?
But even setting that aside, most anti-abortion advocates "give the game away" by also advocating against contraception. Their primary concern is not "murder", it's sex.
For the public sex example you raise, we have plenty of evidence and experience that shows the further you get away from adults doing consensual sexual things either alone or around other consenting adults, the more likely it is that someone may be psychologically harmed. Getting the consent of everyone in a public setting is pretty hard.
Aside from religious folk, most people don't have a problem with strip clubs, sex clubs, sex parties, nude beaches, etc where a bunch of consenting adults are naked and/or behaving sexually around other consenting adults.
So no, I don't think people should be allowed to have sex in public, and it is not based in religious or cultural belief. It's based on evidence that non-consensual sexual situations (including observing someone else's sexual behavior) causes harm, and that it violates others' right to not consent to the sexual situation.
How is that belief "intolerant," except that you strongly disagree with it? Maybe you highly value the ability to kill unborn children, and they highly value the ability to stop that.
It's just a difference in values, no one is right or wrong. The whole point of speech is to discuss these competing values!
Some are against it in all cases, others argue that violating other people's right to life means you forfeit your own. (Personally I'm unsure)
> Sex education and access to contracepion
Pretty low-salience issue for most of them. Many believe premarital sex is wrong, no strong opinions beyond that. I've never known any of them to argue against condoms, for example.
> robust social safety net
They tend to be skeptical of massive government welfare programs, but they are not Ayn Randists to any extent. All recognize that a culture of life needs to support mothers and their children at every step; many volunteer at crisis pregnancy centers to help with that.
Can you give examples of what you are talking about?
>“She was denied an abortion in Texas - then she almost died”
”Doctors told her she had cervical insufficiency, which is a weakening of the cervical tissue that causes premature dilation, and that her unborn daughter would not survive. She and her husband were devastated. "She was a baby that we desperately, desperately wanted," she said.
A standard course of medical treatment for an unviable pregnancy at that stage of development is to terminate, and extract the foetus. Waiting to miscarry naturally can put the mother at risk for infection, which can prove fatal. But doctors told her they couldn't terminate her pregnancy, as under the state's laws, it was a crime to perform an abortion when there was a foetal heartbeat, unless the mother's life was threatened. Essentially, the message was that she was not sick enough yet to legally justify an abortion. Three days later, Amanda developed a life-threatening infection and went into septic shock.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65935189.amp
>“Texas abortion law means woman has to continue pregnancy despite fatal anomaly”
“At her 20-week ultrasound appointment, Beaton said her physician discovered the fetus had a rare, severe anomaly -- called alobar holoprosencephaly -- in which the fetus's brain does not develop into two hemispheres as it normally would, and the major structures of the brain remain fused in the middle.
The brain splitting into two hemispheres is a "critical stage in the development" and can impact the development of the nose, mouth and throat, Dr. Katie McHugh, an Indiana OB-GYN and abortion provider, told ABC News. The condition can result in a very painful life and death for the fetus, McHugh said.
Beaton said her physicians told her the baby could survive out of the womb for a couple of weeks, at most, in the event that the pregnancy ends in a live birth. Rouse agreed with this assessment, pointing to what she said is a lack of development of normal brain tissue and empty fluid filling the head.
"This anomaly is typically lethal for most infants within days to weeks," Rouse said.”
https://abcnews.go.com/US/texas-abortion-law-means-woman-con...
>“8 women join suit against Texas over abortion bans, claim their lives were put in danger”
“The suit alleged that Texas' abortion bans have denied the plaintiffs and countless other pregnant people necessary and potentially life-saving medical care because physicians in the state fear liability, according to a draft of the complaint shared with ABC News.
Texas has several abortion laws in place, prohibiting all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, except in medical emergencies, which the laws do not define. One of the bans -- called SB 8 -- prohibits abortions after cardiac activity is detected, which kept several plaintiffs from accessing care despite their pregnancies being nonviable, according to a draft of the suit.
Under Texas' bans, it is a second-degree felony to perform or attempt an abortion, punishable by up to life in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. The law also allows private citizens to sue anyone who "aids or abets" an abortion.
The lawsuit is asking a judge to temporarily and permanently suspend the Texas law due to the uncertainty surrounding the meaning of the exception in the state's abortion bans.”
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/8-women-join-suit-texas-aborti...
>”Most Abortion Bans Include Exceptions. In Practice, Few Are Granted.”
“Last summer, a Mississippi woman sought an abortion after, she said, a friend had raped her. Her state prohibits most abortions but allows them for rape victims. Yet she could not find a doctor to provide one.
In September, an Indiana woman learned that a fetal defect meant her baby would die shortly after birth, if not sooner. Her state’s abortion ban included an exception for such cases, but she was referred to Illinois or Michigan. An Ohio woman carrying triplets faced a high risk of dangerous complications, including delivering too early. When she tried to get an abortion in September through Ohio’s exception for patients with a medical need, she was turned away.
The abortion bans enacted in about half the states since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June do not prohibit abortion entirely. Most make exceptions in certain circumstances, commonly to protect the health or life of the patient, or in the case of rape or incest. And as conservative state lawmakers prepare to take up new restrictions on abortion in upcoming legislative sessions, exceptions will be at the heart of the debate.
But in the months since the court’s decision, very few exceptions to these new abortion bans have been granted, a New York Times review of available state data and interviews with dozens of physicians, advocates and lawmakers revealed.
Instead, those with means are traveling to states where abortion is still broadly legal or are obtaining abortion pills at home because the requirements to qualify for exceptions are too steep. Doctors and hospitals are turning away patients, saying that ambiguous laws and the threat of criminal penalties make them unwilling to test the rules.
“Having the legal right on the books to get an abortion and getting one in practice are two distinctly different things,” said Laurie Bertram Roberts, the executive director of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund, a group that supports abortion rights.”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/01/21/us/abortion-b...
- partly pro-life legislators failing at writing legislation,
- partly doctors and hospitals being (understandably, there is precedent) terrified of the slighest risk of a malpractice suit, and
- partly pro-life legislators being (understandably, there is precedent) terrified that any slack put into the laws will be willfully miscontrued by activist judges to effectively nullify all restrictions.
In any case, it's an issue that we as a movement must have an answer for, and right now we don't. That's on us. Doctors need some amount of benefit-of-the-doubt to be able to do their jobs (though it can't be infinite either).
But— my biggest issues with these bans (aside from the ban itself- I am pro choice), is that they were hastily put into place with little to no thought into the actual implementation of the ban. It’s not like they didn’t have time to come up with reasonable legislation as this has been a major discussion leading up to the reversal of Roe vs Wade. But instead of taking time to legislate this properly (or talking to healthcare providers or doctors about what an emergency in cases like these might look like), they instead just pushed through these laws with zero clarity— in turn, affecting the quality of healthcare that women can now receive.
I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist or anything but leaving “emergency” in the legislation without a single definition of what that is suppose to mean, seems almost intentional. If that’s not the case, then these legislators are so incredibly inept at their job that they should not be legislating at all.
To your second point, I think it is unfair to leave any of the blame at doctor’s or hospital’s feet given that these laws don’t actually define in any specific way what would constitute what an emergency is. You cannot blame a doctor for not wanting to perform an abortion if it will land them in jail. Without certainty in the law, the risk is way too great. Your point might be more applicable if the laws clearly defined what would constitute a legal abortion. But right now, the law is so nebulous that it is basically up to individual judges and no doctor or business is going to risk their lives on such an uncertainty.
If pro-life legislators were actually concerned with their law being misconstrued, I’d expect that they would actually want to put more clarifications into the law, not less. With the recent laws an activist could right now rule that they think an emergency applies to an abortion case (just as much as a judge could rule that their was no emergency, even if there was one). As it stands, the current law creates so much uncertainty that doctor’s and providers will just not take any action that might put them on the other side of the law. I suspect that the purpose of this lack of clarity is to insert as much uncertainty into the law so that people will be just too afraid to act. To me, it appears that these legislators are not acting in good faith.
Imagine forced abortions - wouldn't that be insane? Some see forcing a woman to have a baby to be equally insane.
I can't speak for everyone. If you feel that abortion is a fundamental right, then go stand up for it. (Of course, you are doing that.) But who can say that their list of rights is right?
I wasn't always strongly pro-life. I used to vaguely hold the standard European position (allowed up to 12-15 weeks with exceptions). What "radicalized" me, was the most cliché thing imaginable: photographs of abortion victims, from a clinic in my metropolitan area.
My memory of past events in my personal life is generally quite hazy. But the instant things "clicked" for me on this issue, is clearly fixed.
The images in question can be found here (WARNING VERY GRAPHIC):
https://www.liveaction.org/news/infant-bodies-infanticide-at...
I mostly borrow Don Marquis' notion that killing an adult human is often murder because the adult had a "valuable future" (not necessarily valued by the person themselves). A fetus also has such a future, as opposed to, say, a sperm cell. Roughly, I say this is because a fetus denotes an entity of a well-defined process of continued life (development, birth, further growth). In fact, I think all morals and whatnot are ultimately based on prohibiting the bad, no good, negative stuff that people do to each other. In other words, to ensure everyone has a reasonably "good life". Although a fetus therefore has moral consideration, though not necessarily a "person" in the moral sense, a full evaluation of abortion must also include an account of the woman's moral consideration. I'm still trying to determine where to draw the line.
> Imagine forced abortions
Unfortunately, you don't have to imagine. Many US states allow surrogacy contracts with forced-abortion clauses.
This question is the crux of the debate, and has always been. But in my experience, many pro-choice advocates are reluctant to address it directly; they prefer to talk about "rights" and "personal beliefs." Probably because, when you consider it seriously, the answer is inescapable.
No serious, mature pro-life people pretend that abortion is a simple thing. People very much so understand the gravity of it.
"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."
As much as you or I may disagree with them, it's totally absurd to claim that The Right (in the U.S.) is attempting to suppress The Left's arguments by "fists or pistols" when The Left is in the majority and most influential in almost all forms of media.
So the idea that The Left should be suppressing The Right under the principle of the "paradox of tolerance" is something Karl Popper called "most unwise" and that's putting it very mildly.
???
It's the right that's encouraging people to show up with guns at LGBTQ events[1] and passing laws (enforced by an entity that has a monopoly on legal violence) effectively banning discussion of trans issues. The idea that "the left" has cultural dominance so it should be "anything goes" for right wing opinions is absurd.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-eugene-oregon-educa...
The Right has Fox News and a few other things while The Left dominates almost all other media.
It's just completely laughable to argue that The Left is not getting a chance to "counter them by rational argument"
If The Right is winning some debates, and getting bad laws passed, that's just a reason for The Left to do a better job convincing people.
We're not living in 1920s Germany.
There's absolutely no excuse to resort to suppression, as that would be "most unwise" according to the very guy who put forth the "paradox of tolerance" idea that people love to simplify and distort.
They are not usually "on the left".
Heresy's track record does not lend itself to the idea that silencing views we disagree with is a practice worth continuing. After the Church, only dictators have ever insist on the necessity of censorship. The anti-speech demographic's interests neatly align with the most intolerant, most-abusive oppressors throughout history.
Catholics and Hitler-- that's the company you keep when you suggest speech needs limits. News flash: I don't have to like what you have to say. I'm expected to fucking deal with it. You can do it too.
The "words are violence" crowd sure throw a lot of words around, themselves, while arguing that others should not have the same right. Everything everyone else has to say is "hate speech!" How far the goalposts have moved from burning crosses, nooses and death threats.
Galileo was a heretic. Martin Luther was a heretic. That's the company the rest of us keep. Haters, the lot of us.
This is a model Godwinning. You don't see it much these days. I feel like I'm in a museum.
> 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 unwise.