In my time pretty much everybody knew what Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance meant. (probably due to the amount of Germans who lived through part of this, or had parents who lived through this)
It’s basically you can’t be so tolerant that you’d “tolerate” nazis coming to every meeting or protest you had and killing - severely beating anyone there who disagreed with them. Which did happen in Germany in the 30’s. Basically once violence starts challenging the state itself, you step in and stomp. However you let it get to that point because otherwise it’s a game of saying who is the nazi. It’s pretty clear in popper’s open society, especially when you consider when he wrote it.
It’s now meant to many young folks that you have to be intolerant of what they define as intolerance altogether - this is nuts, because you can include anything under this rubric. And including “any” violence. So you have a few shootings, oops that intolerance and violence and we need to censor everyone with this view. (hence stochastic terrorism and using that as a cudgel to shut up anyone with an honest view. or today using violence against a few random synagogues to shut up anyone criticising israel)
Is this a purposeful mistranslation of Popper, or what am I missing here? And do kids actually buy this, or is this just redditor-speak? The arrogance in the former, not to mention that assumption that one is “right” is ironically the mentality Popper was speaking of.
I know this is a marxist forum who probably doesn’t even respect Popper, however I don’t think his original thesis is a bad idea to have.
Pictured: carton 1 that’s wrong versus cartoon 2.
I still can’t believe that folks actually buy into #1. No wonder why they are so censor-heavy.
If this can’t even be gotten right we’re fucked.
You’re not missing anything.
Popular belief of philosophical concepts almost always results in misinterpretation and misguided belief of the concept, usually from overgeneralization and oversimplification of the concept to make it accessible to a lay audience. This isn’t any different with science or other areas of specialized knowledge.
The vast majority of keyboard warriors are armchair expects who have no expertise in any of this, but are using the crib notes version of this argument to basically just go around feeling smart and superior and using it as a metaphor to club other over the head with. They are not interested in the original context of the argument, it’s limitations, or it’s critiques
I think my favorite other example of this is Kant’s Categorical Imperative. The lay interpretation of it gets toss around and overgeneralized, and people try to claim it’s ‘stupid’ coming up with stupid examples that make it seem absurd, like using it to justify eating cheeseburgers all day. But that takes away the original intent and context of the argument which was specifically about moral actions, totally ignoring the limits and framework of the Categorical Imperative… which define it narrowly. put another way… the categorical imperative is not a ‘rule of thumb’… but people often treat it that way. The paradox of tolerance is similarly misunderstood.
anyway, don’t take anyone seriously on the internet who starts quoting the paradox of tolerance. take it seriously if it’s in a properly sourced article or book. Not some dumb comic strip that is necessarily dumb it down for a lay audience as in info-graphic.
Here is my crazy idea… go read Popper if you want to understand it. And then go read his critics. Go to the source rather than letting other people’s hearsay about his work be your guide to his thought.