It's not, it is just a term in common usage taken to the extreme in an attempt to be clever, in contravention of all conversational norms. I don't think there is any definition of tolerance that is mathematically sound and absolute.
It would be like saying "a peaceful person would never punch someone in the nose". But what if you needed to punch someone in the nose because they were trying to kill you for no reason? That doesn't mean peaceful people don't exist, or that peaceful people need to let random people murder them. It just means that the determination of peacefulness is contextual.
Huh, does the unexpected hanging paradox come from such an overloading? It isn't obvious to me how it is. I don't mean that in a way to suggest that it seems unlikely to me. It seems quite plausible to me that it is. I just don't see in what way. Could you elaborate on how it comes from an overloading?
FYI, I think that you missed that this idea that "a tolerant society does not tolerate intolerance" is better known as "Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance" You can find it under that name, numerous articles, from Wikipedia on down (1). Since 1945. it's widely known and accepted. It's not an actual contradiction, most "paradoxes" only appear that way on a superficial inspection.
it would be like saying, as the sibling comment did "a peaceful person would never punch someone in the nose" ... except that a society that aims for peace, and is beset with violent people, is going to have to quell that violence. This might involve reserving the right to punch the punchers.
You are conflating protection from violence with protection of free speech. Paradox of tolerance is a hypocritical concept used by people to excuse their own intolerance.
Restrictions on free speech are much more dangerous than any hate speech. You won't get a new Hitler by blocking speech you don't like. It's the opposite: new Hitler will start with blocking free speech. That's what every authoritarian regime does first.
> You are conflating protection from violence with protection of free speech.
No, I am saying that they are "like" each other. It's a comparison not a conflation. Mr Popper is absolutely not conflating anything - his original formulation is very much about speech.
> blocking free speech. That's what every authoritarian regime does first.
You mean, after they become the regime, and get a lock on the power to block free speech; which in turn is after using the free speech ability to emit the divisive populist rhetoric that propels them to that power? There is no regime ever, that blocks free speech before it is voted into power. At that stage they're only to happy to use it. The shutting it down comes later.
So, not first at all then. That was Popper's point.
> There is no regime ever, that blocks free speech before it is voted into power.
But there is, we've seen it just recently! Take the US presidential elections in 2020: big media companies, bigtech all were favouring one political party and have successfully suppressed crucial damaging information against their side and baselessly labelled it as 'fake news', which helped the favoured party take power. It immediately proceeded by shutting down the media accounts of the defeated opponent.
The ongoing hate-campaign against musk that started after him buying twitter can absolutely be interpreted as a reaction to breaking the monopoly on the flow of information.
There's absolutely nothing hypocritical about e.g. "defending peace". It's realistic. between Karl Popper's well-known writings on the subject, and one accusatory sentence from someone on the internet, I'll take Karl Popper.
You probably should read Popper before dismissing his ideas. If you don't want to, it's fine, but in that case it's hard to take your dismissal seriously.
Like more or less anything real, this is not a simple binary problem.
"...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..."
That's Popper.
Does that sound like "we can't let people speak"?
Or would that actually be more in the lines of "we should expose their followers to the arguments their leaders don't want them to see"?
People who don't fear physical violence make this argument all the time. They don't know why it's wrong, because again, they do not fear violence. Speech is just things on the internet, that aren't actually real.
They don't get doxxed, they can't be identified in a crowd, they can blend with whatever the majority is.
It is very easy to defend "free speech absolutism" when you're not the target of hate speech. When you're not the target of harassment. When no one is declaring that your rights should be removed, that violence against you or one of your group memberships should be acceptable.
"We just need to have good arguments" is something said by a person who's participation in the discourse is entirely voluntary, and who's stakes aren't "I have a right to make decisions about my own body", "I have a right to live unharassed in my private life", "I am equally entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
"Free speech absolutism" is something only ever advocated for by people who don't have to care about what that speech is advocating. Who have the privilege to turn a blind eye to stochastic terrorism, and will argue out one side of their mouth that "police have no duty to protect you from crime before it happens" while arguing out the other "well a few bad actors should be dealt with by the police".
Meanwhile, in the real world - bomb threats to children's hospitals[1].
I've read him, thank you, quite a few years ago. Wasn't impressed.
Some of people here who take free speech for granted do not know its value. I live in a very authoritarian country, that once had free speech, and I have seen how restrictions on it creep in. And what I see happen in US and Europe follows a far too familiar path.
I lived in a authoritarian country and think that you are now doing yourself a slippery slope fallacy. I'm also very sorry about what is happening to your country, but the material (sources and distribution of wealth and power) and cultural circumstances of European countries are so much different that the patterns you are seeing might not apply here.
No, it's hypocritical. You defend the Rule of Law, or Democracy, or some people's self determination.
But if you start framing things as "defending peace (by force)", you may quite possibly have your arguments taken over by the people attacking whatever you want to defend. Because they can use the argument just as well as you.
People say it like it's a damnation of the idea. Things in life are fuzzy, that's why it's literally called a paradox.
The most tolerant people in the world are not going to be ok with a 20 year-old having a sexual relationship with their 12 year old daughter because of the danger involved. That's the paradox of intolerance, that everyone has a limit, and if you have no limit, someone else will pick it for you and cause damage on their terms.
We don't generally tolerate violence in the west. Yes, it's an intolerance, but it's for the greater stability of society.
but I have absolutely seen people use the paradox of tolerance to argue for some shitty opinions, so it must still be dealt with care. You can imagine a KKK member using it to defend their choice of not allowing blacks to be free of lynching.
You do realize that both "paradox" and "hypocrisy" have the same basic definition, don't you? They both mean "self-contradictory", the biggest difference is in connotation, not meaning.
No. These words do not have the same basic definition.
Hypocrisy: The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness. [0]
Paradox: A statement that seems to contradict itself but may nonetheless be true. [1]
Every time I see someone here mentioning someone the paradox of tolerance, it is to support restriction of speech for someone else. (someone really bad, of course - fascist, antivaxer, racist, you name it), and these people always hypocritically consider that they support free speech, just not for those bad people.
I'm not sure how you can accuse people of hypocrisy for being intolerant of the intolerant when they just told you they're being intolerant of the intolerant.