do evil games expect evil prizes, thank you Rainer Forst
edit: this is a pedagogical post, not a philosophical one. i actually fully agree with the paradox of tolerance and its conclusion! i just find that it doesn’t work as well as an educational tool for introducing people to the concept. sorry for any confusion :)
It's simple really. A tolerant society cannot exist if intolerant factions are tolerated. Ergo, bash the fash.
Which is exactly what the paradox of tolerance says. So why are you agreeing with OP?
It's way simpler to say that tolerance is a contract and you're not bound by a contract breached by the other party, that description isn't paradoxical in any way
Yes, if you're looking for a simple way to express the concept, that's a good way to do it.
Poppler's formulation isn't meant to be simple. It's meant to be complete.
If I'm teaching an end user how to use the program I wrote, I'm not going to explain the code line by line. But if they ask me why it can't do some random and largely impossible thing that they want, I absolutely need to understand the code in order to explain why that isn't possible.
Understanding Poppler's formulation allows you to address the many ways in which people will try to undermine your simplified version. An example I've used elsewhere in this thread is the idea that "We can't ban Nazis from our platform because then we'd have to ban all forms of political expression. Otherwise we're just playing favourites." It's the "If you censor me then you're the one being intolerant" argument, usually strapped to a slippery slope fallacy about how you'll never stop censoring stuff once you start. And it's very, very effective. Lots of well meaning people who are not Nazis or Nazis sympathizers can still be very easily swayed by this logic.
Poppler cuts through all that. He gives us a clear and definite criteria for what ideas are acceptable and what aren't, and an ironclad justification for why. The theory he lays out is essential knowledge if you ever want to successfully defend the position expressed by "Tolerance is a social contract," or the "Nazi bar" analogy, or any other excellent ways of introducing these ideas.
You don't have to start with Poppler's paradox, but sooner or later you will need it.
i agree with what it says. i just don’t think it’s good as an educational tool for introducing people to the concept.
e: oops sorry for the double comment
Because OP's thesis is that it isn't paradoxical.
Which betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the paradox.
Poppler never said that there wasn't a solution. In fact the solution he offers is, quite literally, "Punch Nazis."
That's the entire point.
Tolerance is a paradox if you believe in absolute tolerance. That's what Poppler is saying. Absolute tolerance means tolerating everything, even intolerant behaviours. It's the "MUH FREEZE PEACH" mentality. Poppler demonstrates that by trying to create a society that hews to absolute tolerance, you ultimately create the conditions for that society to become absolutely intolerant (ie, bigoted, hateful).
Instead - paradoxically - a perfectly tolerant society must be intolerant of one thing; intolerance.
It's Poppler's answer to the slippery slope argument. "If we start censoring political speech, where does it end?" is a common refrain of Nazis, because they know credulous liberals, panicking about their ideological purity, will buy into it. "It ends at intolerance," Poppler replies. "That's the line. Be on the right side of it."
I think it’s more fundamental than that
Tolerance means you accept everyone into the social contract. Everyone. Even the nazis
It’s inappropriate to hit on someone during a work meeting. Inappropriate for gay people, inappropriate for straight people, inappropriate for everyone. At a bar, it’s generally appropriate until told otherwise
If anyone doesn’t follow the social contract, you respond appropriately based on the situation
It’s inappropriate in pretty much all situations to express a desire for ethnic cleansing. It’s inappropriate to say bigoted things. It’s extremely inappropriate to act towards such goals. You should respond appropriately based on the context, as per the social contract
There’s no paradox. You accept the nazis, until they start acting like nazis. If they keep that shit buried deep down, you tolerate them. If they don’t, they’ve broken the social contract
No. The second you """accept""" the Nazis, your society is no longer tolerant, and is in fact a Nazi state. Get real, bootlicker.
Think about it for 2 seconds.
You don’t know what’s in their heart. And frankly, it doesn’t matter.
If they act like a nazi, such as saying Nazi-like things, organizing for Nazi-aligned causes, or spreading hate/violence, you respond appropriately. From social rejection to disrupting them to outright violence, you fight.
Otherwise, how do you even know they’re a Nazi? They might be an idiot swayed by propaganda on fox, they might be an edge lord looking for a reaction, they might be a reformed former Nazi. They might just give you weird vibes and not be a Nazi at all.
These are people we need to reform, not herd into the Nazi echo chambers to become full blown Nazis. They still exist whether you accept them or not
If you want less Nazis in the world, either you kill Nazis, you reduce their recruitment, or you reform them.
That’s what tolerance is- you don’t make assumptions about the person, you say “these behaviors are tolerable, these ones aren’t”