Paradoxes of Tolerance

This video outlines five puzzles that arise for the view that tolerance is a virtue.
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0:00 - Tolerance
2:32 - First paradox
17:20 - Second paradox
28:49 - Third paradox
33:29 - Fourth paradox
38:05 - Fifth paradox

[@HerrEinzige]

I refuse to tolerate those who don't like and comment on the video

[@BooleanDisorder]

The funny thing is that intolerant people (ab)use the tolerance paradox to be intolerant as Popper meant. He spoke about free speech and democracy. That's it. He was against ALL who wanted to remove freedoms. Not simply people with bad views. That includes the very people who (ab)use his paradox for modern censorship. So, to put it in proper words, Karl Popper showed in the "Paradox of Tolerance" a significant aspect of protecting a free and open society: the need to guard against the suppression of freedom of speech >by those who would misuse tolerance as a vehicle for intolerance.< His argument is that in order to maintain a tolerant society, we must be prepared to be intolerant of intolerance - >particularly when it seeks to undermine the freedom of speech< and other democratic principles. Being against the unfree actions, not mere words of intolerance. Today's post-truth folks on both left and right messing with legendary works like that of Popper is freaking annoying.

[@ThinkingHoles]

Something that seems to be missing from the given definition of tolerance is that people will describe themselves as tolerant towards some behavior even when they believe that the behavior is morally neutral or even positive. For example, when you ask a utilitarian whether they tolerate practicing homosexuality, they would answer yes, even though according to their view, such practice is a moral good. This makes it clear that the component of the act being wrong in your opinion is not an important part of the definition, and "tolerate" rather becomes synonymous with "allow". But treating these two words as completely synonymous leads to its own problems, for example, it would be very weird to ask someone if they tolerate their children eating breakfast. What I would propose as a distinction would be to say that tolerance is to allow a type of behavior that is *potentially* seen as negative. This includes you yourself not seeing it as negative at all, but different members from your society doing so. I think this definition more closely aligns with our intuitions about the examples from which some the paradoxes arise. My definition even explains usage of the word in completely different contexts, like with pain tolerance, which people normally wouldn't classify as a moral question in the first place.

[@dreyri2736]

I don't buy it. It just turn tolerance into pure acceptance, which defeats the purpose. Removing the objection component just removes the entire point of tolerance, which is permitting things which you find objectionable.

[@kamiii6700]

Just found you about a week ago and been binge watching ever since, love your stuff, especially the pessimism/AN vids 🎉🎉

[@KaneB]

Thanks!

[@TheCoffeeHater]

Thanks for this! Crying out for freedom of speech will seem absurd for those discovering these more nuanced views of tolerance... Recently joined your Patreon, and enjoy the commentaries and videos there. You are a little more personal in those ;)

[@KaneB]

Thanks very much for the support!

[@ostihpem]

Tolerance is like omnipotence: either inconsistent or a false name (because it means something against what the name usually refers to).

[@veganphilosopher1975]

Fantastic analysis as usual as someone concerned with animal rights and welfare I find this topic personally relevant as well

[@Desnir]

Incredible video! Thanks kane!

[@Sui_Generis0]

I know you've made videos with Cole on Sam harris. What do you think about his explanation of his view in more detail with Alex O'Connor in his podcast?

[@KaneB]

I haven't watched it so I don't make anything of it.

[@Sui_Generis0]

@@KaneB Do you plan on watching it? For what it's worth, I think Alex does quite a good job trying to tie down Sam to what his view entails, giving the criticisms you two and others mentioned and allowing Sam to flesh out his ideas on the podcast with there being proper pushback.

[@francescodefilippo190]

I think I may have an interesting way to decide what kind of actions we should or not tolerate( I have made this thought while watching the video, so I don't expect it to be perfect): if I tolerate something, that presuppose that I think that specific action is wrong. But the fact itself that I choose to tolerate it means that I believe it's a necessary evil in a certain way. There's a criterion I came up with to decide wether something is or not a necessary evil : let's define a necessary evil in these terms, i.e. an action that, if not performed, would produce more pain or bad consequences than if it did. For instance, we can understand a vaccine as a necessary evil in the sense that the short amount of pain outbalances the one of a mortal desease. We should therefore ask the question above. Maybe I am wrong, but at least I think we can restate the problem in these terms. Sorry for my English, it's not my first language.

[@scar6073]

I learned a lot. Thank you.

[@yagnapatel3912]

I don’t believe you. Tell me what you learned mf

[@leungsheryl5365]

I think it's okay if people like tolerance if they believe it can prevent conflicts, not because of moral judgments. Virtues often have practical value, e.g. generosity, which can encourage people to help others in need and lead to a happier society. The practical value of virtues may be why they are a virtue in the first place. Most people agree that conflicts are bad. Therefore, tolerance becomes a virtue because it can prevent conflicts.

[@martinbennett2228]

I tend to emphasise the last of your paradoxes (how does the tolerant moral framework justify itself in the face of a framework that rejects the tolerant framework). At essence it is the fundamental problem with relativism. Perhaps inevitably since the discussion is about consequences, your presentation follows implicit utilitarian assumptions, I think this could be highlighted. If we do accept a utilitarian perspective, it is possible to evaluate the utility of tolerance (which is what JS Mill does in ), in which case the limit is where the result is substantive harm to others. Although broadly, this framework is strong enough, the details can be very difficult (impossible?) to resolve, though in practice liberal democracies adopt pragmatic approximations which put up with paradoxes at the margins.

[@Great_Olaf5]

1:33 Interesting, by the definition of tolerance you provide, I would be incapable of tolerance, on the grounds that for me proposition 2 is false in all possible cases. 19:05 This right here actually reminds me of the problem of evil we were discussing in my intro philosophy class this week.

[@KaneB]

You don't believe that, for any X, it's ever possible for any group to suppress X?

[@philosophicalmixedmedia]

Platitudes of tolerance encompass activities such as road cycling that seems like the classic sorties paradox or the proximity paradox. Car drivers ought to pass the cyclist by 1000 mm as a rule advocated by main roads department but many get lazy and incrementally encroach on the cyclist until one driver misses by 1mm. Slower drivers/vehicles ought to tolerate fast drivers tail gating them but fast drivers/vehicles ought to tolerate slow drivers so ti mitigate road rage and carnage. But if fast drivers tolerate too much then slow drivers rule the road and so there is a game of chicken within paradox of road tolerance. A driver overtakes the slow diver but the fast driver notices the oncoming vehicle will hit head on so must slam into the slow vehicle and send them over the edge. So slow drivers ought not tolerate drivers tail gating or passing close to them. The advent of vehicles that by far out pace normal human locomotion has met with the state advocating we should be tolerant on the road but facts tell a story this does not work in decreasing road fatalities and carnage so hooray for autonomous vehicles.

[@blazearmoru]

3:00 Saying you ought to tolerate things you disapprove of I think necessarily encompasses the idea that intolerance is worse than the thing you're tolerating, hence why you prefer tolerance. This also calls into question why intolerance is undesireable and can be analyzed if broken into it's components. 5:00 I would like to point out that any or most proposals necessarily excludes, even if it's simply at the opportunity cost level. What is spent as the cost can be labeled as the victims in this case because those things weren't allowed to exist as a function of something else existing. So merely blanket stating tolerance is a bit weird... Maybe it might be better as you're putting it to define it based on just the arena of discussion. In this case then it might be somewhat possible to tolerate all discussions bc the most intolerant you can get is people shouting down others. these 40min long vidos o-o Ima have to edit this comment a lot probably hahaa 7:30. If tolerating homophobic views leads to the oppression of homosexuality, then not tolerating homophobic views leads directly to the oppression of homophobes. This is like saying "In order to prevent war with china, we must initiate war!!" >~> sounds a bit like graping for virginities. This reminds me of mr bikelockman from a few years back 16:00 >~>. I don't think people who champion the notion of intolerance of intolerance is doing it for tolerance. Pretty sure they're just bullies finding an excuse. There's a lack of evidence of which people who realized they've made a mistake, sufficently redirect their intolerance to those they love. The severe lack of people deleting loved ones now that they've realized they were accidently the villain suggests that the entirety of feminism lack the capacity of moral agency. 17:55 Realizing our previous moral commitments were wrong, and having acted upon them in a violent way, suggests that we should at minimum self delete. To do otherwise would be subhuman for it suggests that all claims of moral agency has been and will forever be excuses to be morally bankrupt. I think tolerance is just the acceptance that we're all idiots, guessing at what is good/bad. Maybe intolerance is good! I literally don't know. But if they think it's good, then they better apply that shit back on themselves. Otherwise, they don't think intolerance is good - they just think finding excuses to grape people is worth it as long as they can get away with it.

[@SadeN_0]

no

[@ayylmao2710]

I think that while in general the first premise of tolerance is correct, it is far from necessary for defining it. I can tolerate something without being opposed to it. If not, then what is the term for that?

[@unhingedconnoisseur164]

i dont think you can tolerate something unless you disapprove of that thing, that's just not how the word is used if you dont disapprove of something and dont think it should be stopped then you have either a neutral attitude or a positive attitude towards it ig

[@bluemethetys9267]

Is there any book you would recommend to get an understanding of the underpinnings of liberalism?

[@RickJaeger]

Probably on the shortlist are books like John Locke's _Two Treatises of Government,_ Adam Smith's _The Wealth of Nations,_ and John Stuart Mill's _Principles of Political Economy_ and _On Liberty._

[@KaneB]

I'd just pick up an intro to political philosophy. I liked Will Kymlicka's "Contemporary Political Philosophy"

[@bluemethetys9267]

@@KaneB thank you

[@martinbennett2228]

For modern social Liberalism the core text is John Stuart Mill , for classical liberalism Locke and Adam Smith. Kane's suggestion of Kymlicka's "Contemporary Political Philosophy" is good for a presentation of John Rawls and a deontological slant on liberalism, but inadequate for Mill's radical liberalism, based on a utilitarian approach. Utilitarianism is discussed but not in the way that Mill developed it (particularly his core concept of the 'harm principle'). Unfortunately JS Mill refused to revise on the grounds that the death of his wife meant that she could not contribute. So although most of the text is very lucid, with beautifully crafted aphorisms (such as “.”), there are a occasional sections that could have been clarified with a rewrite. Nonetheless it is a brilliant text - one of the classics of all philosophy.

[@davidfoley8546]

Suppose I assert that loving monogamous relationships are a positive good. I can defend a certain degree of tolerance of infidelity and non-monogamy on the grounds that the goods of a relationship are goods insofar as they are freely chosen--being coerced into a "relationship" is not the same kind of relationship at all. So autonomy, at least in this domain, figures into my conception of the good thing itself. Here I am clearly not neutral between conceptions of the good, and maybe in this way illiberal. But that's not really a problem for tolerance per se. It just means I would need to defend my particular moral beliefs like any other position. The problem seems to be "moral neutrality", not tolerance.

[@danwylie-sears1134]

Coercive threat takes the form of speech, but in essence it's action. When you're coercing someone, you're doing something, not just advocating something, even if you do it by talking. So coercive threat isn't part of the range of speech that should be tolerated. I think the best way to understand hate speech is not as just any speech that expresses hateful feelings, but only as a subcategory that constitutes coercive threat so consistently that being in that subcategory is justification for condemning the speech (at least tentatively) as coercive threat. If you burn a cross on someone's lawn, maybe you've somehow guaranteed that no one will see it who will take it to mean what it normally means. But there's probable cause to treat it as coercive threat.

[@josebolivar4364]

After Elon Musk jumped in, I think I'm opposed to X.

[@jacobohnstad4432]

What's the font on the thumbnail I'm begging you

[@KaneB]

Candara in bold

[@Antleredangelbun]

Exactly. This goes with the video I made on apathy. Next video im making is about jokes and how the principle of "not real" or "not correct" and what you think of as those things and then LAUGH ABOUT displays your moral alignment. About tolerance.

[@piotr_jurkiewicz]

Seems to me that 'tolerance' is a nothing word that's purpose is to sound nice, what a shocker

[@user-lq4po6yu1v]

Would be better if you consider an example of USA tolerance to russia in terms of suggesting to Ukrainians not to bomb Oil refineries, because it is a civilian infrastructure. And also a tolerance to russia in terms of not providing 60billion support for half a year. This is the greates paradox of our time

[@user-qx8md4gt6n]

Can I come on next video? I am a follower of Messiah Ye, reincarnation of Shabbatai Zevi, who is intentionally Othering himself so reach the bottom of the Sitra Achra so we can finally get to the World to Come. I got ban from your discord for trying to talking about this, I very much understand the need to blot out the Other, but then secret messages can be communicated to different groups of understandings of the intoleranted topic, and you get these underground movement like Tupac and his Dionysian cult, I still have A sliver of my Tupac Jerky.

[@willparker1404]

Not the Tupac jerky

[@Sui_Generis0]

Wtf?

[@aryeh155]

Shabbatai was a Jewish person who became Muslim and was not accepted by a majority of the community at his time; ye is a black nationalist Protestant. What the hell are you on?

[@rebeccar25]

I hope he says yes

[@aureavita8653]

damn never thought Shabbtai Zvi would still have followers till this day

[@sicko_the_ew]

There's a problem I'm noticing here that comes with bringing philosophy to us masses using things we understand, like illustrations (or parables). The illustrations presuppose all sorts of moral assertions. So it's not just that racism is incorrect - a bad model of the world - or even a mean way to think about other humanoids, but it slips in as obviously wrong. Bad. Naughty. Wicked. Deserving of a good spanking, even. In itself. OK I think it might be wise to display my own virtue on this matter quickly, just to avoid controversy over something that I'll actually grant is reasonably uncontroversial. I generally don't like racism, so therefore think of it as wrong. As in bad, bad, bad. As Father Ted once said, "I'm not a racist". But am I? (And apart from the fact that illustrations turn things into Closed Questions often, who cares, yes, I don't matter. But I'm using myself as an illustration. There are some risks in that. Although maybe that's really what illustrations all tend toward being?) A personal choice I've made sometimes is to be tolerant (in the sense used by you - which makes sense to me, even if who cares about that) of racism. I've let go the quite severe racism of people I know, for various reasons. Sometimes it's because the person is a relative, and sorry, blood is thicker than even that extra-holy water I see you've managed to put in your own baptismal font. Sometimes it's just because it's someone whose other qualities I know. There are cases where the fully virtuous non-racist, is able to just let the guy everyone else is so racist toward just lie there on the road, either dead or passed out drunk on something terrible. Because drunks stink. Because it's a bit dangerous to stop and lose a minute checking if everything's OK. Might get hit by a car. The drunk might get up and get violent. Leave him. And in exactly that same case, the racist (ideologically) behaves in contradiction to this when faced with some real situation. Someone of the wrong race in trouble, and requiring some very inconvenient or even dangerous help, and the guy with all the racist ideas puts himself out for that guy. People can be very inconsistent, either way. There are non-racists who will leave "them" to suffer of the misfortunes "they brought on their own heads" when they encounter something - in an almost racist way; and there are racists who will risk their lives or give the shirts off their backs to someone they feel sorry for, even though that person is exactly the kind of person the racist has been slagging off just half an hour ago. I know a guy who lives with someone of a race he says really terrible things about, who has stopped me by a gesture from arguing with. I know him well enough to know he's the salt of the Earth. Wouldn't make it through half a day in a school of philosophy, and has some terrible ideas. But they're trivial in the grand scheme. There's someone who often receives his terrible utterances who knows they don't matter, and are not worth making a big fuss about. Because of the rest of the value spectrum or something like that. So it's not just me who's sometimes tolerant. There are victims (in a very direct way) who let it go, too. And they'll be less forgiving toward someone they see as sneaky, but with certified correct ideas. Sorry for that mess. The thing is as soon as you get down into the day to day details of how all these things turn out in the real world, it can get complicated. I just struggled to dream up good illustrations. And to disguise the perpetrators identities, to save them from persecution, too. And seeing as I've come to illustrations again, I think that's about as close as I'm going to get to make a comment to reflect for a moment on, if it's not one to be dismissed (and not just because the Question is Closed now).

[@nonsonoleonardopapa8]

Am i gonna be first?👀

[@weatherupstairs4814]

I suppose so.

[@dumbledorelives93]

Second!

[@danielbirnbaum8540]

@@dumbledorelives93third

[@bananatreelabs1137]

death

[@dr.h8r]

Congratulations, you made it. Bad news, however, now you don’t have any reason left to live. 🤷‍♂️

[@garrysmodsketches]

I'm not buying your definition of tolerance. In the modern world tolerance doesn't mean disliking group X but not attacking them. It means adoring group X and never criticising their behaviour.

[@dreyri2736]

You are joking, right?

[@garrysmodsketches]

@@dreyri2736 are you going to be called "tolerant" if you say: "I don't appreciate blacks, but let's not attack them."? No, you will be called "racist".