cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/6541859
Wiki - The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
I live in society. Your argument is invalid.
Yeah. If you’re in society, advocating for intolerance of others, you’re breaking the social contract, so now I can stop tolerating you and tell you that you don’t belong in society. If you say you don’t accept the social contract you inherently don’t accept society. It would be better for you in the wilderness. Wild beasts don’t have to tolerate each other. You can live how you like and hate who you want.
I never signed a social contract. Your argument is invalid.
Unless, can you produce this social contract that I signed?
Can you share with me what the consequences are of this social contract that I signed?
What is the wording of this social contract? Can I find it online?
Do I need a notary public to sign this social contract if I find it something that’s worth my while?
Do you think contracts are things that people enter into without agreeing to them first?
Who is this contract with? Who authored this contract?
Who keeps this contract on file?
Most importantly…
Who wrote this contract?
Wow you’re obtuse. Have you never had an abstract thought in your life? You can’t see this social contract is a concept? It’s a concept that explains that If we all stop tolerating each other we’d tear each other apart, destroy all the buildings and belongings and everything, and then you WOULD live in the wilderness if you lived at all.
If you refuse to be tolerant of your neighbors, or allow others to be intolerant of them, you are saying you’re fine with a little bit of apocalypse happening. All those little bits add up and eventually destroying the social contract, destroying society, because it’s the same exact thing. Society IS the social contract. It’s not just buildings and roads and lights and pipes and farms. It’s the agreement that we want those things, and that since we don’t want ours destroyed we won’t destroy anyone who doesn’t destroy. If you’re saying that doesn’t apply to you, you’re saying you have a right to destroy as you see fit. That’s an amazingly brutal and egotistical position. Are you sure you’ve thought this out? That’s a heck of a thing to make part of your personality.
You’re describing taxation. I’m not wrong.
If you’re the one who came up with this idea of a social contract, you’re certainly not selling the idea very well.
The “social contract” is a well-known term to describe the very basic idea of a society, no matter what your political or philosophical belief
Maybe you’d recognize it as “the golden rule” – don’t do things to people that you wouldn’t want people to do to you.
This social contract isn’t something anyone has ever been able to produce. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That which is presented without evidence (e.g., “the social contract”) can be dismissed.
The golden rule is “treat others how you would like to be treated.” and it’s not a great rule. The platinum rule “Treat others how they want to be treated” is far superior.
Yet, none of this has to do with the paradox of tolerance.
The social contract is a philosophical concept, Dipshit, one hundreds of years old. You can disagree with this concept, but unless you have something more than “I never signed a piece of paper lol,” your disagreement can be dismissed as petty ignorance. Or maybe you’re just trolling.
Thanks for linking me. You’re the first person to do so. Not trolling. This sounded like some BS someone made up. Then again, it’s philosophy, so it is bullshit someone made up.
Interesting idea though, because my points still stands. A “contract” is a really bad way of considering all of this. Without knowing personal values of the individual, and without stating what the stipulations of the contract are, the “social contract” can be literally anything the author wants it to be.
“Social contract” seems to be one person observing the status quo and encouraging everyone to maintain the status quo because it “was what we entered into as a society”. Example: “The police protect the people, because it says so right on the cars (‘protect and serve’), so we must respect the police, as they protect ‘us’ from ‘them’ (the ‘bad guys’). They’re ‘bad’ because they’re ‘evil’ and they know what they did”. So many issues with that: 1) police protect property, not people unless that’s people in positions of power, 2) the police (aside from the band) enforce the law, 3) what’s good and bad is a matter of personal opinion.
I am trying to understand how I could apply a “contract” to my life, one which I cannot read, one that I’m just told to obey, because there’s unmentioned consequences of disobeying said contract.
But the paradox of tolerance, is clear to me: you like tolerance? Good, your one ‘enemy’ so-to-speak would be people who fight against tolerance - the intolerant. Of course the question is then intolerant of what? Intolerant of pineapple on pizza - no harm done, except maybe to the sales of pineapple farmers. Intolerant of humans, as in, you want to genocide them - that’s a lot of harm to humanity itself and it should not be tolerated.
But where is the “contract” in any of this, when discussing how we deal with people who want to harm humanity by being intolerant of others? If we ask them, their social contract would be only 14 words long. That’s not a social contract I would ever agree to. And yet, any social contract I would write up would not be one they would agree to either. And yet, we both live in a society. Curious.
Please don’t mistake my reference to memes as trolling here, I am being sincere. If the idea of a social contract is just a metaphor, it has a lot of holes in it. I can easily get on board with ideas like the paradox of tolerance, the “golden rule” and the “platinum rule”, and short sayings like “your rights (to punch) end where my rights begin (my right to have an unpunched face)”. I can understand concepts like “law” and “policy”, “rules” - all things we agree to, with “law” being the closest to being a “social contract”; yet law can change, law isn’t morality, and law is actually written down (well, most of it anyway). “Law” looks most like a “social contract” in that we are automatically entered into agreeing to it by showing up in that jurisdiction (aka being born or otherwise being in a certain place).
This has everything to do with the paradox of tolerance. It’s literally its foundation.
For example, a healthy community would sanction someone like you until you ceased this antisocial and delberately bad-faith character you’ve chosen to be.
Let’s start with my blocklist.
You’ve given me a great example of why contracts need to be in writing. Even if that “contract” is just a list of personal preferences. Such as your personal preference that you do not like my ideas.
But, they are in good-faith. I am not trolling.
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Agreed, the social contract does not exist!
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Why do you think gravity doesn’t exist?
Is this because you think “it’s a theory?”
Mathematics is also a theory, and yet 1+1 still = 2. Some theories are proven.
Gravity does exist.
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Why are you advocating for my death?
Theories are not proven, that’s basic science.
What is it that you think science does?
His name is dipshit doesn’t understand metaphor
His name is dipshit, and he’s a single-celled organism
I’m not an egg.
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Her?
I understand the scientific method.
It’s the same contract you ‘sign’ with your friends or co-workers. People, especially in this thread, break it out as some solid ‘thing’, but it’s like any other ethereal concept that gets referred to by a concrete word. English is hard and not every word brings along every element in every instance. You could say that an ‘agreement’ must have a written, or at minimum a spoken set of terms, but you could have an agreement not to physically fight someone just by a few movements of your body, and ‘break’ that agreement by broadcasting one set of signals and then taking a swing at them.
So, who is signing what contract with Russia and Ukraine? How do people agree or disagree with that contract? What options do they have?
Can we please call things what they are?