Wow....it really shows that we JSA players are waiting to finally see the new rules and stuff if THIS thread is the one staying active and exploding O.o
I think the discussion entered a territory that is way off topic, I understand the political charge of the situation, but I do not think the discussion is fit for this thread, one can open a new thread for the off topic, but I do not think it will stay open for long. The paradox of tolerance is a really heavy piece of philosophical debate, the fundamental argument is on principles and how willing we are to disregard them on what we believe is the "greater good". It is really murky and one must serious consider what that means for the principles they stand for.
It's a really basic observation about how tolerating intolerance ultimately leads to intolerance. It's not particularly philosophical or heavy, it's pretty simple really. What do you even mean by this? It reads like you are taking it to be more complicated than it is. It has nothing to do with disregarding our principles, whatever that means. It's about how tolerance doesn't extend to ideas which are fundamentally intolerant.
But being intolerant of intolerance makes you intolerant nevertheless. That’s the paradox. Also you may not be able to choose your race but you can choose your religion or idiology and that means you can be judged for that. Different societies tolerate different things. Now maybe in Poland for example people are “islamophobic”, even though that is generalizing, but in other European countries the media portray you as an islamophobe even for voicing some concerns about Islam and its doctrines. I really like to discuss matters even with bigoted people so I can understand their way of thinking and maybe try to change their mind (unless they are dangerous), but shutting people up or ostracizing them just for having wrong views then you are some kind of a bigot yourself. I hope I make myself clear and am not misunderstood.
It doesn't. The whole point of the paradox is that it points out that tolerance needs to be redefined to exclude being tolerant of intolerance, or alternatively it cannot exist at all. Tolerance can't exist if it's extended indiscriminately.
Which of course inevitably leads to creep where any viewpoint except that of the self-described tolerant is described as "intolerant," and therefore morally objectionable.
Free Speech is the cure here, I think. How is the hater to be shown the light, unless we are willing to engage them and talk them back from that Nietzsche-an cliff?
The fundamental issue with been intolerant to intolerance is you are intolerant never the less, so it creates a self fulfilling prophecy it is a philosophical debate deeper than a simple observation and it is deeply rooted in morality and principles. Morality is subjective, hence "good and evil" is subjective, but principles are the "rules" one governs their life with, moral principles are set to keep the morality, hence what we see good and evil, constant. In a society were we have set our moral standard as been tolerant equals good, our moral principles are we must be tolerant to others, there is always a risk because societies change for the opposing view to become the moral good norm and our, at the moment, tolerant society become intolerant. By giving intolerant people space to express their ideas, we theoretically give them the means to change the morality to our society were what we see as good stops been good and what we see evil becomes "good", hence the easy explanation of tolerant societies of intolerance becoming intolerant, but it goes deeper than that, all societies will reach one or more points were their morality will be challenged, either by minor or major groups how they react and how they hold their principles on the moments of crisis will eventually determine how the societies morality will go. A "tolerant" society that is "intolerant to intolerance" is a fundamentally intolerant society, when the principle is to be tolerant, and the society is intolerant to intolerance the society has violated their fundamental moral principle, the hypocrisy is obvious consciously and subconsciously and will categorically lead to societal morality change to intolerance. Intolerance is intolerance even of it is done for the shake of tolerance. The question now becomes can a society sacrifice their principles for the "greater good"? can a society betray its core morality to preserve it? This is the philosophical debate that hides under this simple observation, can we betray our principles to keep them? at what point this is possible, can we ever do that? what that makes our principles and how concrete are they? Many simple observations, many simple questions hide a huge iceberg underneath them.
It is definitely a deep debate, and the important part of Popper's contribution, his 'paradox', was exploring what it means to be truly tolerant. That is to say (and this is a gross oversimplification), on the surface there seems to be a dichotomy, either 'tolerance' or 'intolerance', if you are intolerant of intolerance you are a less tolerant society than one which tolerates it. Popper found that view to be incorrect, because the toleration of intolerance meant that intolerance inevitably gained a foothold and destroyed tolerance. That is, tolerating intolerance destroys tolerance, and therefore cannot possibly be the more tolerant position. The seeming paradox is that the most fundamentally tolerant society is the society which is intolerant of intolerance, thus preserving tolerance, rather than the society which tolerates intolerance and thus results in the end of tolerance itself.
You're all missing an important distinction. Racism (and other similar views) attacks people. Anti-racism attacks a behaviour. The former is intolerance against human beings. The other is intolerance against ideas. Trying to equate those two is an act of ignorance that creates a dangerous false symmetry. "What do you want, Bob?" "Kill all the niggers!" "And you, Mike?" "Just want to live in peace, man!" "Ok, maybe we can find a compromise here..." To hell with that. There's a fundamental difference between those two points of view, and that difference makes the point about principles moot. Since we're talking philosophy here, there are two more points to add to Popper's thoughts. Classical liberalism, which is associated with idea that one's freedom ends when anothers begins; and the notion that you can't have freedom without responsibility, as it'll end not in free society but in chaos. I can be as pro-freedom as anyone, and still condone restricting the freedom of people who try to harm others. I can support free speech, and support prosecuting hate speech. There's no paradox here, no conflict of principles, just a clear hierarchy of rights. The human right to live in peace and safety stands above the right to preach hatred.
If you want to out yourself as not understanding philosophy, making this claim as a bare assertion is a very good way to start. You entire post revolves around an understanding of "tolerance" as some kind of absolute, which is more than a little ridiculous to claim after making a very direct (and unsupported) assertion that morality is relevant. Just extend your definition of tolerance with "Tolerance does not extend to ideas that are not tolerant" and the entire argument you've constructed falls apart. The problem is that your argument operates in a paradigm of tolerance where tolerance *must* extend to everything, without justifying "why" that should be the case, or "how" that is even possible (given the paradox stated so plainly.) Didn't you literally start the post by saying morality is subjective? There can't be a betrayal of some "core morality" if the basis of your argument is that the "core morality" is already fluid. @Shiwen's explanation is cleaner and less specific to the argument you've presented in your comment, but the main point still stands that you are claiming that 1) Morality is not absolute but somehow tolerance *must only* be absolute, 2) not justifying that claim about tolerance, as well as operating in a paradigm of tolerance that has been proven to not be the most tolerant one, per the paradox of tolerance.
The paradox of tolerance is used to justify intolerance of Abrahamic religions all the time, which are themselves conflated with race all the time. It's not the perfect justification to go out and bash the fash people on the left envisage it to be.
No, it's not. You need more than a philosophical stance to fight someone. In a similar vein freedom of speech isn't as absolute, as people on the far right claim it to be.
If you're talking about the freedom of speech in the US Constitution, that is specifically the right of the People to criticize the government. Freedom of speech doesn't apply to a debate here, this is effectively a private club owned by Corvus Belli, it's their island, they write the rules (like no selling models, or non-licensed advertisers). You can also look at it that the freedom of speech is the only freedom that isn't limited in the amendment itself. Because at the time the Constitution was written, if you called someone an asshole, they could demand you take that back or face the person you called an asshole in a duel. If they refused to either take it back or face you in a duel, you could publicly 'post' them, stating that you had been insulted, requested a retraction, been refused a retraction, been refused a duel, so that person was a coward that was unworthy of association.
If you cannot even tolerate your own countrymen, who the hell are you to lecture us about tolerating foreigners and foreign ideologies? Furthermore the right-wingers and fascists that your side detests are not motivated by fear, but by disgust. The Latin word "phobia" is not even the correct term: it is disgust, so "tedium." They suffer from, if you will, islamotedium, transtedium, homotedium, etc. Disgust is not the same motivation as fear. Fear wants to hide or to flee. Disgust wants to purge or destroy. What do you think will happen to Poland if you bring in foreigners whom you country hates? What's your plan? 1. Find haters. 2. Move in hated people by haters. 3.??? 4. Profit!? I don't believe in "hate speech" as a legal category, for the record, since all of you hate Nazis, so there's no sense legislating against hatred. What's wrong with hatred, anyway? I am allowed to hate, and so are you. No interest in living in your 1984/Equilibrium utopia.
And now I've just decided to not believe in petty theft as a "legal category". Unfortunately such a statement not only has no impact on the thing actually existing and being bad, the statement of disbelief in "categories" itself is basically a total legal and linguistic nonsense. In the mean time my country has anti-hate speech legislation, it has pretty much exclusively been used to lightly smack crazed radio shock jocks on the knuckles when they have flat out lied on air about racial minorities in a way that vilifies and encourages hatred against them. So do you believe that doesn't happen? Or do you believe people should be allowed to say anything, including lies, on any platform, to any audience with the explicit intent to instill unjust hatred for racial minorities. Because your professed lack of belief only really gets to be one of those things.
