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Comment by benchaney | Hacker News Reader

Is there any actual evidence that the paradox of tolerance is correct? I suspect people stopped taking it seriously (and mentioning it in discussions on speech) because it’s advocates always seem to expect everyone to take it on faith, instead of providing a real argument to support their claims.

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> "Is there any actual evidence that the paradox of tolerance is correct?"

Nope, it's just a sound bite that people latched on to that supports their pre-existing beliefs, even though it's just one philosopher's opinion. Despite the fact that they're appealing to Popper's authority, most people using can't even name the book that Popper wrote that in, let alone any of his other philosophical stances.

That's why I say that there's a Meta-Paradox of Intolerance: "Those who quote Popper's Paradox of Intolerance are usually merely seeking to use it to justify their own intolerance, paradoxically identifying themselves as among those whom the Paradox of Intolerance warns us against."

Ironically, I could even cite Popper's Paradox of Tolerance as itself problematic: the more I tolerate the use of that philosophical argument, the more likely we are to lose the ability to freely express ourselves, therefore we ought to ban its use.

It's a circular argument that assumes its premise is correct a priori without any proof.

Popper's book is more philosophical than historical, and I'm as annoyed with people who only know one soundbite from it as the next guy, but over time I've come to believe that the paradox encodes an important truth: there's no reason for me to support freedom of speech for those who don't support mine. Maybe the way of the future is something like Substack, groups of people who say "we'll protect each other's right to speak freely, but if you want to enjoy our protection too, you must contribute materially". Without such coordination, there's no point playing the good soldier in favor of free speech for everyone. Freedom for those who care enough to coordinate is the only way freedom ever worked.

"there's no reason for me to support freedom of speech for those who don't support mine."

Tit for tat free speech. That's interesting. Reminds me a bit of the GPL, honestly.

Thanks for posting, I'm going to reflect on this idea and it's ramifications.

To me it's like leaving cancer unchecked, and praying it'll go away. Just because you dislike it. There needs to be a point at which we collectively go, nope that's too far. You're done. And we prune back the cancer.

The irony of the paradox of intolerance is that Popper defines it in the context of physically violent and irrational 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."

Most citations of Popper's paradox are used, however, to justify suppression of "dangerous" ideas with very indirect and nebulous notions of harm on the level of social contagion. So the irony is that modern uses of the paradox is intolerance beyond acceptable limits for Popper.Or, in other words, in a society with a developed norm for tolerance, the intolerant can only resort to the paradox to censor ideas as long as people just believe the paradox naively and don't take a careful look at the potential harm caused.

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