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Paradox of tolerance
(lemmy.world)
Wiki - The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
This assumes that censorship is inherently bad. Censorship against speech regarding the government should be protected. However it's perfectly legitimate to censor harmful ideas, and many countries censor hate speech. We censor people's ability to physically and emotionally harm others. We censor threats. Censorship isn't inherently bad, and is already used functionally everywhere, just ask ChatGPT.
I do however think censorship can be dangerous. I think the censorship we see in public forums (including lemmy) already treads on the toes of legitimate intellectual conversation of objective views on hate speech and offensive language. Tone policing is incredibly intellectually disingenuous, but is widespread because feelings trump literacy. I think the censorship of individual words is supremely dangerous because it also bans or limits the conversation around those words, their usage, etymology, and understanding their use. Comprehension of offensive things is just as valuable as understanding anything else, if not more so should you wish to fight them, but censorship of offensive things without context destroys the capacity for understanding to permeate the social consciousness.
What is an isn't a harmful idea changes drastically between generations. This would have been used to censor information about homosexuality before 1995 or so. "Harmful" as modernly defined is a subjective standard.
No it's not. Harm has a definition.
Not one that remains objective over time. In 1820 Atheism, and Homosexuality would be considered harmful; in 1920 Racial equality would have been considered harmful, as would Unionization. Imagine the things we consider harmful today that our descendants in 2120 will consider us barbaric for.
I do consider suppressing the opinions and expressions of others as inherently bad, and I especially hate the idea that people think they have the authority to restrict what others learn about.
Then go support your local Nazi's right to their fair say. Or maybe you want to rethink that.
There's a reason I clarified that censorship of words and concepts for education is dangerous, censoring people using those concepts to cause harm is not.
Or did you stop reading after the first sentence?