> The paradox of tolerance was described by Karl Popper in 1945. The paradox states that if a society is tolerant without limit, their ability to be tolerant will eventually be seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Popper came to the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.
> 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.
He is meaning that there should be intolerance to violent intolerance, not to any intolerance.
That is my interpretation at least, and I find it very disingenuous to omit that part.
Pretty much every intolerance worth opposing harnesses very violent elements in it's base while maintaining a veneer of civility.
Look at religious motivated systemic violence against LGBT people in the US. Our current executive has waved a rainbow flag a time or two, but our vice president has personally funded things that look like camps and penned legislation that let's police ignore and LGBT person being beaten on the street. Neither of these things are particularly unfair characterizations.
So yeah, you're right. It's just that intolerance naturally leads to violence rather quickly in humans.
That's terrible! I can't seem to find a source of the vice president being connected to legislation allowing police to ignore LGBT people being beaten. Can you give me the link to one?
Also, what do you mean by camps? Forced orientation changing?
Sure, it's the tortured story of Indiana's so-called RFRA act that Pence presided over. It includes several problematic sections.
Section 9 opened the door for this interpretation of the build by pointing out that private contractors often work for the city and state, and specifically protecting the right to object to interacting with LGBT people if "[their] exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened".
This leads to an awkward situation where a private contractor doing police, fire, or (most likely) emergency services work for a company with a religious charter is likely protected in doing so.
What's most interesting about the RFRA (and the bills Pence helped pen but never made it to a vote in House and Senate) is the "overriding" clause, allowing for a explicit defense in state court against people who discriminated, and making it harder for those suing to press for (perhaps in 2015, more strict).
This made the law stronger than prior related RFRA acts of other states and at pre-existing federal law.
The text of the law is available publicly and about a billion perspectives on the law are available online. Give that you almost certainly didn't search for it on google, please let me refer you to "mike pence RFRA Indiana". You can find lots of pro and con to suit your taste.
RFRAs don't allow first responders to refuse to do their jobs -- the life of another is a compelling state interest, and there's no narrower way to accommodate that interest than to require first responders to respond. Merely claiming a religious burden is only one element of the test. I've never heard of any religious emergency service personnel even suggesting they have a religious objection to 'interacting' with LGBT people in emergency situations -- but even if you could, the Indiana RFRA law wouldn't have allowed that.
I mean, RFRAs have enabled other prior absurd outcomes, especially in health care. I've read a lot of interpretations of this law that suggest that this would have to be tested in court.
There is this curious not of the "obligation" of a first responder, but as we are seeing in Florida it's not clear any such obligation exists or can be realistically enforced.
Police don't have to take a bullet for anyone, but the EMT that refuses to help LGBT people on the scene of an accident will be sued into oblivion. RFRAs don't change any aspect of either situation, and we've had 20 years of federal RFRA caselaw that says it's pretty settled.
Despite what you may have read from activists, there exists no sizable group of Americans who want to use their religion, or would allow others to use their religion, to deprive LGBT people police, fire, or medical treatment in an emergency. No more, I'd venture, than there are LGBT people who would do so to religious people.
There are reasons to criticize religious beliefs or second guess RFRA expansion, but this shows the problem of encouraging a policy of intolerance toward perceived intolerance. It's often prejudice based on fearmongering, even (or especially) in the age of the internet.
You are grossly misinterpreting how this is applied in the real world. Wake me up when a first responder refuses to help someone because they are LGBTQ
> While running for Congress, Indiana governor Mike Pence called for state funding for "institutions" working to enable people to "change their sexual behavior."
Just in case anyone is reading this comment and they think that "conversion therapy" isn't equivalent to torturing individuals I suggest the following op-ed from the NYT about a man who suffered through the process:
Yeah, I see where you're coming from, but it seems this therapy is forced upon children (another commenter linked an article who experienced this at age 14). That seems wrong to me, and at the very, very least not something we should be funding at the federal level.
In fact, there could be some parallels here to federal funding for abortions. Many conservatives feel this procedure is morally wrong as strongly as others might feel about gay conversion therapy. I can see why they would be similarly upset about federal funding for clinics that perform them, although I don't necessarily agree with their final position.
There is science behind viability of a fetus for example that is used to determine guidelines and there is science behind behavioral therapy that disagrees with sexual conversion therapy.
On one side, you have people at least attempting science and rational thought, on the other side you literal magic thinking (religion) as the rationale, the two are not equal.
They're certainly not like for like, and the principles behind what make them acceptable or not are totally different. I don't expect to convince anyone of anything except that, whatever side of the aisle you fall upon, please try to have a little more empathy for those on the other.
Not that I think "gay conversion" is effective (maybe at the margins), but as society we do seem to beleive that others sexual orientations can be changed via incarceration.
I am replying to myself since I am fascinated by the other three responses. None of them are responding to what I actually wrote and all of them are responding to what they think I wrote. All of them are wrong in guessing what I think I wrote.
Perhaps all intolerant groups harness violence, but it is clearly not a required element. They could easily substitute it with social stigmatization, and achieve a similar effect. Many religious people today will disown a son or daughter for coming out as gay. Were there no legislation stopping this, I imagine the same people would refuse to allow gay people into their businesses. If we were able to guarantee that all violence would be punished, the intolerant groups would quickly adapt while remaining intolerant.
If we could only distinguish the intolerant as soon as we saw them. Maybe we should make them wear some sort of badge that would allow people on the streets to curse and abuse against them. That will turn out great!
That's actually the logical conclusion of "no tolerance for intolerance". Actual intolerance will re-emerge while using that as a slogan.
I honestly don't see any other conclusion while divisive identity politics is the culture. Every election and debate is just subtext for making sure your people are in power to protect your people.
It's a paradox. The point is that tolerance cannot be limitless. That doesn't mean that intolerance won't prevail, it just means that those who strive for tolerance need not achieve perfection.
There will forever be a balance to be struck, and it's natural to have disagreements about it.
Let me rephrase. Assuming the tolerance maximizers are completely successful, the next wave of ugly intolerance will be wrapped in a veneer of "no tolerance for intolerance".
I think the thing to strive for is a more perfect due process. I'm concerned people are instead looking for a more perfect way to label and shun transgressors. And they use hate and fear of intolerance as a key justification.
So how do we stop that? Or, rather, why haven't we had any luck so far?
I think the only answer is one which leaves everyone unsatisfied: Some ideas will be treated as transgressions; not all transgressions will be punished.
Identity politics is all the rage now, but i do believe the libertarians found the way out of this paradox. Its the use of force and coercion that draws a clear line on what kind of intolerance is intolerable.
A clear but ultimately arbitrary line, and to boot one where you've sort of shoehorned all the hard work into the definition of 'coercion' (or 'violence' depending on your brand of libertarianism).
This can take many forms. Virtually the entire citizenry can be denied the right to vote, as in autocracy. Poll taxes disenfranchise the poor. The combination of felony disenfranchisement and racial disparities in enforcement of criminal laws yields a situation where racial minorities are disenfranchised as a group.
Other shenanigans can limit people's choices, such as the restriction of candidates in Iran. Of course the first-past-the-post system used in the US also restricts choice in some ways... But "disenfranchisement", I'd say, specifically pertains to denying people the right to vote.
While Popper's description of it is popular, it seems Godel realized this as well (as per the article) - while this was after Popper's (1945) I'm not sure Gödel knew about it
According to Wikipedia: "On December 5, 1947, Einstein and Morgenstern accompanied Gödel to his U.S. citizenship exam, where they acted as witnesses. Gödel had confided in them that he had discovered an inconsistency in the U.S. Constitution that could allow the U.S. to become a dictatorship"
And then, the story has it that the judge presiding over Gödel's citizenship ceremony remarked how fortunate it was that the U.S. was not a dictatorship, which in turn prompted Gödel to want to explain the inconsistency he found, but Einstein cut him off... and one successful citizenship oath later Gödel became a U.S. citizen.
That's a bit dismissive. Goedel was correct about making the US a dictatorship. The fact that the amending clause allows unlimited amendment (particularly of the amending clause itself) means a series of malicious amendments could irrevocably change the constitution to that of a dictatorship and forbid returning to a democracy. Now maybe people would just give up on the constitution at that point, but in terms of the overall legal system he's dead right.
I've always thought it was more likely over article 2 section 3, which allows the President to adjourn both houses of Congress indefinitely under certain circumstances. If one was expecting to be impeached, for example, a little procedural hiccup on the timetable of adjournment would be sufficient to suspend legislative business altogether.
When we get to that level of a flaw, it is nice to remember that technically our own hollowed constitution is simply an illegal overwrite of the Articles of Confederation.
[Edited to fix: date of refrigerator comment upper bounded by 1953, not in 1953]. So it's possible he formed the opinion pre-freon, but it seems more likely that it was during the Freon era.
Ammonia and other nasty chemicals remained in use well after then. For example, apparently GE sold their Monitor Top-style fridges with sulphur dioxide or methyl formate as the refrigerant until at least 1936 and they stayed in use for decades after they were discontinued.
My parents had one of those and used it until the early 2000's as their "garage beer fridge". They sold it for a substantial amount to a collector when they moved. Dad was a chemical engineer and I'm not sure he knew how toxic the refrigerant it contained was - he probably would have gotten rid of it sooner if he'd known.
To be fair CFCs are toxic to humans, but only once they escape to the upper atmosphere to decrease the LD50 of sunlight. Of course in 1953, there was no way Erdos could have known that.
Ugh I meant Godel. All of these mathematicians get me confused. Because of his incompleteness theorem, I'll have to leave your other question unanswered.
The problem is in 2018, everyone intolerant person claims the only thing they're intolerant of is intolerance. Conservatives complain about liberal intolerance and vice-versa. We've moved from plain level-0 intolerance to meta-intolerance.
This is fairly insightful. Some of it can we written off as bad-faith knowing abuses of rhetorical tactics.
But the situations that don't fall into this group are more troubling as they can involve sincere and passionate advocates of civil society acting in ways that undermine that very thing.
Besides having the word tolerance in both, I don’t see how this comment relates to the article.
In Taleb’s article, he describes how the market accommodates the minority intolerance to the extent that is most economical — that is, where the “majority” doesn’t care either way. In this way, the ability of the tolerant to be tolerant is not being seized or destroyed, because the tolerant are not actually “tolerating” anything, since that word implies a level of discomfort that the customers are not experiencing.
Are you sure that's what he's saying? It's a Taleb piece so I can't blame anyone for not knowing just what the fuck it is he's on about this time, but he concludes a section with the sentence "The West is currently in the process of committing suicide."
I think Taleb wants it both ways, or every possible way, in this discursive essay. If you find yourself nodding along to the idea that we can get along just fine with people who have restrictive preferences so long as those preferences are compatible with our own, Taleb is happy to have you land there. But if you go into a piece that discussed Islam hoping to find the bit about how our tolerance of religion is destroying Western Civ, he's got you covered too.
I want to say that I find it ironic that he zeroes in on Halal food when, as a sort of general rule, Kosher food tends to be Halal and not the other way around. But I don't know if it's ironic, because Taleb is so adept at armoring his essays against any kind of critical analysis or, for that matter, basic comprehension. Maybe the fact that Muslims are more "tolerant" of different butchering practices than Jewish people but still it's the Muslims that threaten democracy is part of his whole point. 23 skidoo!
Somewhat related is the phenomenon where if fir example you know you'll have vegetarians and meatatarians, you can get away with serving vegetarian food and for the most part everyone will eat. If on the other hand you serve an omnivorous meal the vegetarians will not eat.
That's a bit silly. Why would a meatatarian eat anything except meat? They would be an omnivore if they did.
What you're really saying is that either:
a. The meatatarians are actually omnivores, and just mislabeled.
b. The meatatarians are _occasionally_ omnivores, out of preference.
Bending dietary preferences when there is social pressure ("they served me this food, being morally good to me personally means I should eat it" or "I'm on a diet, but everyone else is eating cake so I should too") is not all that surprising, especially if the reason you are excluding one type of food is because of _preference_.
But when you exclude a certain type of food out of health needs (allergic, lactose intolerance, etc) nobody will bat an eye. If a vegetarian refuses to eat meat for their own mental / moral health, I would argue it should be treated the same.
May I add that a vegetarian may refuse to eat meat for the heath of the planet as well.
It takes so much water to raise animals, and they produce so much methane. This is at lease especially true in the US where we eat so much meat, and hardly any of it is wild game
It's silly, shouldn't be considered the correct viewpoint, but a great soundbite and a nice principle from a very intelligent man. Waters down life.
Interolance gets vetted out with prosperity but it's not necessarily the requirement to achieving it as history has shown.
I'm not sure how to respond to the bit claiming that societies are destroyed by intolerance - did Popper own any history books? Is China doomed to fail today?
I wasn't expecting any up votes, but please tolerate my viewpoints!
How could we? You presented none in your original post.
Interolance gets vetted out with prosperity but it's not necessarily the requirement to achieving it as history has shown (...) the bit claiming that societies are destroyed by intolerance
I don't see where Popper said anything about prosperity or destruction of society as a whole.
> The paradox of tolerance was described by Karl Popper in 1945. The paradox states that if a society is tolerant without limit, their ability to be tolerant will eventually be seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Popper came to the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.