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Comment by rpearl | Hacker News Reader

There's a very clear social contract of tolerance though: Tolerate all speech by those who do not violate the social contract of tolerance by using their speech for intolerance. Tolerance is not an absolute. It's a peace treaty.

Then you can pretty easily ask: civil rights protests? Using speech--and violence!--but not violating that contract. They tolerate all who extend that contract to them. LGBT activists? Using speech--and violence!--but not violating that contract. They tolerate all who extend that contract to them.

The daily st-literalnazipropaganda-ormer? violating that contract. Suppress it. Destroy it. No platform should allow it. Nazis in Charlottesville shouting "Jews will not replace us"? violating that contract. Suppress them. Make them fear. They do not tolerate all who extend them that contract.

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Your argument seems to boil down to "ban all ideas the left does not agree with" to me. Tolerance in your definition confuses me. It seems like you try to make it appear like it means tolerating other's speech (with the "Tolerate all speech..."), but your own comment is very clear about not tolerating the speech of all those groups of people (even if they would extend the right of tolerance to your speech -- obviously, literal Nazis might not, but someone like James Damore certainly would). With a close reading of your comment, it seems like you leave the definition of "tolerance" unopened. Does it mean the tolerance of lifestyles? Of speech? Of religion? What happens if someone's religion mandates intolerance?

I think that, while tolerance works well as a vague social value, trying to define it and draw a border around what it is or isn't will only result in destroying the rights of one's opposition. The word can be used in a variety of way in a variety of contexts; I would propose that any use of violence against someone for holding another idea is a form of intolerance, and from your comment it clearly seems that you disagree. The only "clear social contract of tolerance" is one that is tainted by everyone's political views. Where you would advocate for the removal of those who stand against LGBT rights, a religious Christian/Muslim/Jew would advocate for the removal of you for denying their right to speak their minds.

"Tolerate all speech..."

...the next word is "that", a qualifier. And that qualifier answers literally all your questions?

There is no successful formulation of absolute free speech, because then you must allow intolerance, which takes over. This isn't a new question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1...

Let's apply my test: What happens if someone's religion mandates intolerance? Then they are violating the social contract of tolerance--we should not allow that to be done.

> a religious Christian/Muslim/Jew would advocate for the removal of you for denying their right to speak their minds.

They can speak their minds about anything they'd like, so long as they don't advocate for the suppression of the rights of others. That is the thing that is not allowed. Their right includes that qualifier; it is not an absolute right to speak. This qualifier is the safety net that stops a tolerant society from being eaten by intolerance.

(I am not saying that free speech as outlined in the US constitution, for instance, meets this formulation from a legal standpoint; I am saying that social mores do and should, and certainly private speech and private platforms should be formulated in this way.)

>They can speak their minds about anything they'd like, so long as they don't advocate for the suppression of the rights of others.

And one would posit that you could speak your mind about anything you'd like, so long as you don't advocate for suppressing their rights. From their perspective, what they are doing isn't even suppressing anyone's rights -- in their eyes, their God has mandated that doing so is _not_ a right. Everything is a matter of viewpoint, and in an alternate reality someone would be advocating for you to be silenced on the same basis.

Eh, fuck it.

What's your solution?

I gave a nice, uniform principle that allows as much as tolerance as is possible without eroding all of it. Many before me have offered it too. Again, it's not a new idea.

You pick it apart, claiming that in some (specifically intolerant of others) religious person's point of view, their magical god favoritism allows them to stigmatize people, so therefore my principle just doesn't work.

You're right: my principle excludes people. It excludes the intolerant, where intolerance is identified by the simple test I outlined. And that's it. That is all it excludes. It excludes people for their choices to harm others. But your hypothetical (again, specifically intolerant) person's magical god-favoritism instead excludes people for who they are. That's the difference.

So, we as a society can choose one of these ways or the other. And I argue we continue to treat tolerance as a social contract for the simple reason that the other option, free speech absolutism ...breaks. It erodes down to an intolerant society, where a violent few pry away the rights of everyone else. But if you treat tolerance as a social contract, the result is stable.

If I may?

I hold a bit of a strong view, here. Criminalize actions. In all but the rarest if cases, speech should be protected.

If somebody tells you to go punch a Nazi, they shouldn't get in trouble. You should, if you go punch a Nazi. Not that I like Nazis, but that you shouldn't assault them when they aren't being violent or an immediate threat to your physical safety.

I only think speech should be punished when you can show demonstrable harm. Libel, slander, credible threats, and things like that. Some idiot yelling about gassing Jews isn't a credible threat, even if reprehensible. However, if they happen to have a gas chamber, and amassed a bunch of Jews, that's a credible threat - though I am going to guess their speech is the least of our concerns, if they got that far.

I don't want speech to be illegal, in all but the rarest of circumstances.

Free speech doesn't apply to any of those examples because there was an action outside of "speech" or "thought". Speech, thought, etc. should never be illegal.

I'm not sure you followed the thread? Hit parent a few times.

> Then you can pretty easily ask: civil rights protests? Using speech--and violence!--but not violating that contract.

You can say that now because you're on the other side of the history.

But put yourself in the dorm room of someone organizing one of the first lunch counter sit-ins. That organizer is using their speech to convince a group of people not to tolerate the segregation that made it illegal for them to sit non-violently in a public place.

Now imagine a potential activist who agrees with your first paragraph hears the speech of this organizer. Do you really think it's clear that potential activist will end up participating in the sit-in?

edit: clarification

"Do not tolerate the segregation that has made it illegal to sit non-violently in a public place."

Let's see... whose speech is this organizer advocating intolerance against? It appears to be the business owners who say "some people cannot be here, because they are black."

So, the business owners are violating the social contract I outlined: their actions are intolerant. The organizer is, therefore, not breaking the contract.

Someone who followed the principle I argue for would land on the side of the protestors in this case.

A social contract is codified neither in the US constitution, nor US law. Legal constructs preempt social moores.

But we're talking about social mores and private actions here in this thread...

Social mores are social norms so widely/fervently held that they predicate the law itself, such as prohibiting incest. The term was invented to refer to these types of commonly held beliefs by a sociologist.

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