https://throwawayopinions.io/the-paradox-of-intolerance.html
"By now, most people have heard of Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance. The
philosophy that in order to maintain a tolerant society, we must be intolerant
of the intolerant.
To go with the old Nazi bar analogy: you open a new dive bar, and in the
opening crowd comes a few Nazis. They’re comfortable making their views known,
and using the bar as a platform to recruit others. The tolerant thing to do, is
to give them as much right to their views as any other. The right thing to do,
is to remove them from the bar. So long as they remain, they will recruit
compatriots, push out regular patrons, and before long what you will have is a
Nazi bar.
But here, I want to introduce the opposite, the paradox of intolerance. Assume
the same analogy, but you don’t own the bar. The bartender isn’t keen on
kicking out paying customers. In this case, you have only words. You attempt to
organize a protest to shout the Nazis out of the bar, but in turn, they do the
same. They bring in Nazis from all over the country to engage in a war of
words. What you have now, is an even bigger Nazi bar.
In case you haven’t guessed, the latter example is social media. When you
attempt to utilize the paradox of tolerance, but lack control over the space,
what you get is just more intolerance. Everyone is forced to engage in
intolerance be it for, or against the bad actors, but at no point will the
intolerance ever result in the creation of a tolerant space. Now, you might be
saying, isn’t that better than just letting them go unchecked? I’d argue not,
and please allow me to explain."
Via Diane A.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
