In my time pretty much everybody knew what Popper's Paradox of Tolerance meant. (probably due to the amount of Germans who lived through part of this, or had parents who lived through this)
It's basically you can't be so tolerant that you'd "tolerate" nazis coming to every meeting or protest you had and killing - severely beating anyone there who disagreed with them. Which did happen in Germany in the 30's. Basically once violence starts challenging the state itself, you step in and stomp. However you let it get to that point because otherwise it's a game of saying who is the nazi. It's pretty clear in popper's open society, especially when you consider when he wrote it.
It's now meant to many young folks that you have to be intolerant of what they define as intolerance altogether - this is nuts, because you can include anything under this rubric. And including "any" violence. So you have a few shootings, oops that intolerance and violence and we need to censor everyone with this view. (hence stochastic terrorism and using that as a cudgel to shut up anyone with an honest view. or today using violence against a few random synagogues to shut up anyone criticising israel)
Is this a purposeful mistranslation of Popper, or what am I missing here? And do kids actually buy this, or is this just redditor-speak? The arrogance in the former, not to mention that assumption that one is "right" is ironically the mentality Popper was speaking of.
I know this is a marxist forum who probably doesn't even respect Popper, however I don't think his original thesis is a bad idea to have.
Pictured: carton 1 that's wrong versus cartoon 2.
I still can't believe that folks actually buy into #1. No wonder why they are so censor-heavy.
If this can't even be gotten right we're fucked.
I'm not sure that I agree. You're viewing the it as a social model or guidance, but I don't think that's what it's best described as.
It's an observation about the dynamics of tolerance and intolerance. There's no "should" implied by the observation. Popper has an opinion, but the observation is justification for the opinion, not part of it.
I feel like you're hearing me say that "everyone is morally permitted to do what they think is right" in a way that implies others must accept it.
I'm saying you don't need someone else to tell you what's right and wrong. If you and enough people like you believe it's never justified to push back on a belief, then eventually that belief will get pushed out.
Poppers opinion, justified by the paradox, is that in order to survive a civil society must allow itself the means to defend itself. If you think it's wrong to cut people out of your life over politics, an individual action, you eventually get people who don't see a problem with jailing people for opposing views.
The original person I responded to was describing the paradox as a social contract, and I was saying I don't think it really makes sense conceptually as a social contract for reasons. What I'm hearing you say is that it it prescribes nothing, so I would infer that to mean that is isn't really an agreement either, so not really a social contract either.
I still get the feeling that we're roughly at the same place but took different paths to get there
Ah, I see. To me, what they said and what I said seem effectively analogous. "If you tolerate others to some degree, then others will tolerate you to some degree" doesn't really prescribe an action, it just describes the consequence of the "paradox".
My focus was more on the binary aspect of your response, since I don't think it fits and it leads to different conclusions.
A dinner discussion is not the same as killing someone. That gradient of tolerance is what allows people to be tolerant of the intolerant without the infinite regress you mentioned.