Personally I'm in agreement with Popper's view that societies should tolerate everything except intolerance. It draws a fine line between what's acceptable speech and what is not. And going by it, things like 8chan should get shut down.
The line of thought you put forward, by contrast, rubs me in a very wrong way. It was used to justify, depending on the period and country, not allowing people to vote on the basis that they didn't have enough revenue, didn't own enough land, couldn't read and write well enough, etc. Allowing to disenfranchise voters on some arbitrary sophistication basis can and, if history is anything to go by, unfortunately will get abused. It breaks down to: who decides what's sophisticated enough?
Popper's tolerance criteria, by contrast, seems clearcut in a you know it when you see it kind of way.
>Popper's tolerance criteria, by contrast, seems clearcut
What is that criteria? Because I can easily see people disagreeing on what is and is not intolerant. Would you agree that saying that a baker in Colorado must make a cake for a gay wedding is intolerant of the baker's belief? Because I'm certain a sizeable proportion of the US population would agree that it is intolerant.
> I can easily see people disagreeing on what is and is not intolerant
Not in the subject at hand. I think pretty much everyone reasonable agrees that "kill the {jews,muslims,hispanics}" (once more, folks, this was the THIRD ethnic massacre advertised on 8chan!) is intolerant, no? Can't we start there?
> I think pretty much everyone reasonable agrees that "kill the _INSERT GROUP_" is intolerant
I don´t know why but every time I read a sentence that starts with "I think pretty much everyone reasonable agrees that ..." I get the feeling that the person saying it haven´t really thought things through and does not see how vastly more complex the world is than they assume.
Think about it this way: what if in the mind of the person making that claim, it is one of self-defense and self-preservation? is it still intolerant?
Here is an example: As someone who grew up in the middle east, I heard people out in the open say things like: "Jews ought to be killed off" or "the imperialist American fucks deserve whatever happens to them" and if you ask them why they believe and say such evil shit, the answer in some way, shape or form always comes back to: they invaded our land, killed our ancestors and are threatening to do the same to us now, and hence we are not being intolerant but rather, we are just trying to defend ourselves (tribalism in other words).
You and I can agree that it is despicable and disgusting that people think that way. But in their minds, you are the unreasonable one. What you call intolerance to them is not that at all.
Take away: Perspectives matter in the world; and if you make a hard/deterministic rule based on a subjective understanding of an issue followed by projecting it as "what reasonable people should think", you will always get into some shady edge cases that cannot be resolved by the deterministic rule that you initially set because the world is not made up of a bunch of you:s.
You and I probably agree on what is intolerant/tolerant in most cases. However, other people who do not have the same cultural and moral upbringing might disagree with us. Hence the parent´s comment: "I can easily see people disagreeing on what is and is not intolerant"
I'm sorry, can you be specific: why shouldn't we burn 8chan to the ground? Which other sites do you want to preserve that would get swept up by our censorship run amok?
I'm gathering from your example that you're trying to preserve the rights of a bunch of middle easterners to say things like "kill the jews", and not understanding why you think that's permissible.
I mean, the El Paso shooter genuinely believes that the US is under invasion by mexicans too. Everyone has opinions. The point is that some opinions are just wrong. This is like morality 101. You aren't entitled to kill folks, no matter how much you want to. And you aren't entitled to egg other folks on to kill folks either.
> I'm gathering from your example that you're trying to preserve the rights of a bunch of middle easterners to say things like "kill the jews"
You seem to have extracted the wrong conclusion from the post made because you are thinking in identitarian terms.
> The point is that some opinions are just wrong. This is like morality 101. You aren't entitled to kill folks, no matter how much you want to. And you aren't entitled to egg other folks on to kill folks either.
You are 100% right, some opinions are wrong. But the point is: who´s to judge which ones are right and which one are wrong? I assume that you, in your infinite wisdom, find yourself to be of such a high caliber that all of humanity should use what is obvious to you as the "gold standard"? You took your inherited moral values from your culture, and projected them as the natural and obvious conclusion we should all reach. Now if that isn´t arrogance, I don´t know what is. And I am not trying to be offensive here, this is what your comment indicates. And that is what you should have gathered from the previous comment.
The funny thing is, I agree with you completely here. Again, you and I would probably agree on 99% in terms of what we deem "moral" because both you and I have inherited the those values from our cultures. However, you are in a sense dictating that the moral values you inherited are infinitely more superior than all the others. I mean you are making deterministic statements about subjective issues while calling those who dare not agree "unreasonable" without considering for a second that other people that live in other parts of the world might have different views.
Let me put it in a different way: I am not defending group X´s right to say or do Y. No matter the group. I hate identity politics beyond belief. I am merely rejecting the notion that YOU are reasonable enough to make claim as to what people should or shouldn´t be able to say. Because just as you think yourself to be the wise and saintly moral crusader that you are, others think the same about themselves. Soon enough HN user "bjross" will be writing the exact opposite of what you are writing while claiming that he/she is the moral authority on the subject.
It isn´t that I am defending the evil doers; it´s that I am opposing your (proposed) evil which I think is far worse as it leads down a slippery slope like which the world have seen many times before.
> who´s to judge which ones are right and which one are wrong?
Who's to judge that anything is wrong? Murder, theft etc.? In the end, we must organize a society. If you don't like thinking of society's judgment -- made through whatever institutions it creates -- as universal moral rulings, think of them as organizational rules. If you kill someone under certain conditions, society puts you in jail, and the word "wrong" is used for those things society deems jail-worthy (and probably beyond that, too). In this case, society does decide what opinions are right or wrong in the correctness sense, only what ideas can be detrimental to its own survival to a degree that justifies enforcement. Who decides where is that line? The same institutions that decide the penalty for reckless driving.
Well, normally morality is "decided" by a social process, which also shapes the rules, so they don't often diverge by much. But my point is to separate the two issues: society decides the rules; who "decides" morality is another discussion.
Freedom of speech is the social process that works because ideas can be aired and then opposed or supported. Free conversations are where extremes can be moderated. Driving ideas or words underground where they cannot be easily heard or clearly countered is a path to authoritarianism.
Your argument is not very meaningful because freedom of speech means something very different in the US and in, say, France, and both of these different things can be said to "work well". I, too, agree that freedom of speech is very important, but can have a completely different opinion on whether 8chan should be shut down, because what I mean by freedom of speech is different from what you mean, and I believe neither of us means the freedom to say anything, at any place, in any medium, and in any time or circumstance. We just differ on the degree to which we limit that freedom, or whose freedoms we value.
Any freedom is some compromise. If a society has two people or more, then either one person is allowed to, say, enslave the other, in which case the society isn't totally free, or not, in which case the society also isn't totally free. So there is no such thing as absolute freedom, and whenever we say freedom we actually mean some point on a spectrum. We could argue over what that reasonable point is, but absolute freedom is something that can't exist. So instead of speaking in absolutes, let's acknowledge that we're arguing over a favorite compromise.
Isn't that obvious, based on society's dysfunction alone?
It's not a moral principle. It's an explanation of where we find ourselves. This doesn't mean we shouldn't keep striving for a just society, but we don't live in a just society.
The question is how ? how can you have a just society that everyone will agree upon ? Unless we are invent some kind of eugenics or brain wash mechanism so that everyone has the same believe, same way of thinking then its impossible.
Or maybe we can develop really advance VR so that make possible for everyone to live in their own ideal socity.
We don't all have to agree on everything all the time. You strive in a direction by moving in that direction, there is no end point, no destination, no way to "complete" the process. There doesn't have to be. Life is messy like that, even when people are generally healthy and happy and kind to each other.
Sure, but all meaning and interpretation of life, all ideas on what is right, and so on, are subjective. There is nothing wrong with that, since it's not like objectivity actually exists on the other side of the scale. When it comes to moral questions, what is "objectively right" simply doesn't apply, and isn't needed.
If everybody simply stuck to treating others how they would want to be treated, we'd live in a much better world already, even if it wasn't "perfect", and even if there were disagreements, and it all still always subject to constant learning and reflection.
Our main problems don't stem from out confusion about what we think is right (and by "we" I mean each of us as the individuals that actually exist, not as a collective abstraction), but from wanting what we think is right for ourselves, while having double standards for others, and rationalizations for those.
It's not my system, it's reality, there is no objective morality, and even where people agree on many things, they don't have the exact same opinions and reasons for having them, and so on. That's at all not contingent on me giving you a satisfying answer on such a tricky question about a site I don't even know.
I expect so. It's reasonable[0] to believe there are policement and judges who will arrest and sentence you for drug use, thus enforcing the law, while not believing the law is right.
[0] I know there are such policemen, I extrapolate to expect there are likeminded judges too.
Who's to judge that anything is wrong? Murder, theft etc.?
How many people would think that it was okay for the government to steal private property in the border states under the concept of “imminent domain” if it meant that the wall could be built?
Yes imminent domain is theft. The government rarely pays the fair market value.
> ... universal moral rulings, think of them as organizational rules
Sure. Slavery was moral, or if I disagree with it, I'll accept it as an organisational rule instead. Ditto apartheid, ditto the way many mid-eastern countries treat women.
Society must come to some decision, at any given point in time, about what to do if X does Y; are they punished? if so, how? Morality is a more complex subject, that, of course, heavily interacts with the decision I mentioned. My point was merely that while the two are intertwined, they are not necessarily the same, and regardless of where one stands on some moral question, there necessarily must be (and there is) some rule about what to do when X does Y. You can equivocate on some moral question, but you cannot equivocate on a law (although a judicial system can infuse it with some nuance). So when a particular society legislates a law, you don't necessarily have to take it as if that particular society has settled a universal moral question.
I see what you're saying, but - and I mean this constructively - you can take a rather roundabout way of saying it which fogs your meaning.
Anyway...
> So when a particular society legislates a law, you don't necessarily have to take it as if that particular society has settled a universal moral question
Point taken, but laws can be plain immoral, even evil. Laws should be as moral as possible. Laws without a moral backing would seem to be meaningless.
But lets put that aside, let's take your intended point that laws are an attempt to formalise morality, and lets also assume morality is what we'd call moral (not oppressing women/minorities/certain religions/etc). You say
> but you cannot equivocate on a law
but you damn well can! In the UK the definition of theft involves intent. From wiki "[...] if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it"
It's all about intent. It's the crux of it IIRC (and I did a short course in law). A lot of law is about intent. I hit a person in the face. Deliberate? I get spanked. Genuine unavoidable accident? I get let off. Intent is central. It is very equivocable.
In our case, which of 8chan's members are in it for pure lulz, and which because they really want to start a race war. Hard to tell intent.
Still sounds like the world is a cleaner place without them lot.
That's not equivocation, it's what I called nuance, and mentioned the judiciary's role in managing it. With ethics you can say, "this is a hard question," and leave it at that; with the law, you must decide. The judge or jury must ultimately decide whether to punish the possible thief or not, and if so, how -- say, by making a decision on intent, perhaps taking degrees into account. Either society decides to shut 8chan down or not; "it's complicated" isn't an option (I mean, it may well be, but a decision must be reached). So whatever ethics is at play, and however complicated it is, a decision on action must be and is made.
And BTW, not every offense must have criminal intent. Traffic violations, for example, do not (in the jurisdictions I know). Murder, as it is defined in many jurisdictions, requires intent, but even without it killing is often a very serious offense (e.g. you can kill through an intent to endanger, and you can kill through negligence, and you'll end up in prison for both).
> Sure. Slavery was moral, or if I disagree with it,
I think you mean that slavery was legal. Most people would hold that it was never moral. Some people hold these same beliefs now about some of our current behaviors toward other animals: they're legal but not moral.
Well, for me our current behavior towards animal is moral. Moral is subjective after all. Just like slavery it ultimately decided by who can force the other (physically or persuasively) to follow their morality.
You're pointing out that people disagree about what's "reasonable", the takeaway being that since "reasonableness" is subjective, a rule based on whether something is reasonable won't work "because the world is not made up of a bunch of you:s".
But just because people disagree about something doesn't mean it's purely subjective. Some things have an objective truth value but people will still disagree on it, because people get things wrong sometimes. Objectively wrong. All the time, in fact.
You're right that neither "ajross" nor "bjross" should be the moral authority who dictates the moral values. That's because they're almost certainly wrong about some things. You're almost certainly wrong about some things. I'm definitely wrong about some things, and I really hope I find out as much as I can about what I'm wrong about as soon as I can.
Therefore it would be a bad system to set up any one person as the moral authority. Instead, we want a system such that over time, the objectively better views dominate and the objectively worse views shrink in influence.
A total free-for-all where anyone can say anything and any kind of engagement will help promote those views, like 8chan or Gab, is clearly not such a system. You don't think a careful implementation of "tolerating anything but intolerance" could possibly be such a system, and is in fact a "far worse evil"? What rules do you think there should be, or do you think a free-for-all with no rules is the only way to not lead down the "slippery slope"?
Perhaps what would help in understanding the views espoused by OP (which I find very helpful) is to consider the idea of justifiable homicide. In France, when the police kill knife wielding maniacs, it seems to be black and white, however when cops in USA kill a mentally unstable person in self defense, the line gets murky. It gets completely greyed out when Mesa PD kills an innocent for not being able to follow contradictory commands. Where do YOU draw the line? What about moving the line to China and the Muslim minoritities being ethnically wiped? Talk to a Han Chinese on the street and see if they see it your way? Same with Palestine and Israel. The world is not black and white.
Of course the world is not black and white, there are shades of grey. That is completely orthogonal to subjectivity vs objectivity. Just because a situation is grey and no one can agree on which shade of grey it is, doesn't mean the situation doesn't objectively have a shade. It can just mean humans are fallible and can't see perfectly, so we're all wrong to some degree about the correct shade. But there could still be a correct shade.
Separately, every single example you brought up is black-and-white. If a "knife-wielding maniac" were in the process of killing random innocents and police don't have a way of nonlethally restraining them, then of course the police are justified in killing them. If a cop in the USA or anywhere was in mortal danger and had no way of nonlethally restraining their attacker, then killing their attacker is justified regardless of the mental health of their attacker. If an innocent isn't following contradictory commands and isn't threatening anyone's life, of course it isn't justified to kill them, what are you talking about?! There is nothing grey about the fact that failing to follow contradictory commands by police should clearly not be punishable by death?!?!!
I'm sure there are tons of Han Chinese on the street who think concentration camps for Muslims in China is acceptable, just like there are tons of Americans on the street who think concentration camps for Muslims in America is acceptable, just like there were tons of Americans on the street who thought that internment camps for Japanese-Americans were acceptable, tons of Palestinians who think all Jews are invaders who should be wiped out, tons of Jews who think all Palestinians are suicide-bombers who should be wiped out.
Those people are wrong. Those examples are not shades of grey and not subjective, lots of people disagree because lots of people are wrong.
I'm also wrong about lots of things, I should not be dictator of the world, and neither should anyone else. That's why we need a system with rules set up so that the more wrong ideas shrink in influence and the less wrong ideas spread in influence.
You mention "objective truth value" and "Objectively wrong", which the parent comment says " But the point is: who´s to judge which ones are right and which one are wrong?"
Sure, we can say 1 + 1 = 2, and that's objectively correct. But in terms of morality what is "objectively right" and "objectively wrong"? Moral objectively usually comes from some base assumption that has to be made. Whether its the existence of a higher being, happiness meter, or utilitarianism.
"Instead, we want a system such that over time, the objectively better views dominate and the objectively worse views shrink in influence." According to history, I wouldn't really say this is guaranteed either, but that's my opinion.
Judgement can be made based on reviewing the effects of decisions over time. We need a dynamic system of laws and legal review that is capable of correcting for mistakes and adapting to new challenges.
I agree that we do need a system, that not tolerating intolerance is a good basic principle, and that such a system can be functional. I don’t think it can ever be perfect, because people aren’t perfect, but it can be a lot better than nothing.
> "But the point is: who's to judge which ones are right and which one are wrong?"
I address this. In fact, I explicitly say I agree. No one can be trusted to make that judgment. Hence, the need for a system that doesn't place absolute trust in anyone.
> "we want a system such that [...]" [...] I wouldn't really say this is guaranteed either
What? You wouldn't say what is guaranteed? You wouldn't say it's guaranteed that we want such a system?
The system has already exist, that is the one who can force (persuasively or physically) other their rightness get to decide. In this case cloudflare has the power to decide whether 8chan is allowed or not in their platform.
If you think they are wrong then you have to gain power to be more powerful than them to override it (by gaining mass support, government support or any other means).
I don't think it's possible to have any other system.
> who´s to judge which ones are right and which one are wrong
We have the power to decide. This is what the companies dropping 8chan are doing: using their power to stand up to something they view as morally wrong. Most people are happy to take your money regardless of your politics, but endorsement of domestic terrorism isn't worth the abstract philosophical consideration. If you take a moment to empathize with your fellow humans and consider the horrific suffering wrought by ideologies endorsed by 8chan, it's very easy to come to the conclusion that 8chan deserves to be destroyed.
If you want to use your platform for good, you do good no matter the time. You do your patriotic duty and we´ll all clap and cheer you on. However ISIS and right wing extremest sites have been protected by CF for years and nothing has been done so far. It´s not like CF went on a cleaning spree and dropped hundreds of shady clients that are faaaaaar worse and much much nastier than 8chan. This wasn´t a "do good / patriotic moment". This was a timely and coordinated decision (together with patreon) which leads me to speculate that it could be one of two things: either it´s mere PR move and I despise that type of behavior as it could easily be hijacked by echo chambers among other things, or it could be something far more malicious which others have speculated enough on so I won´t bother mentioning.
That said, if you are of the opinion that "A service provider has the right to deny service to a client that it subjectively deems to have a bad effect on society", then I´d like to know in case you´d make that same argument for the Bakery/gay wedding case. If not, then what is the difference really as the same argument could be easily made in both cases?
> If you want to use your platform for good, you do good no matter the time.
Why? It's a business not a "platform for good"
> It´s not like CF went on a cleaning spree and dropped hundreds of shady clients that are faaaaaar worse and much much nastier than 8chan
So what? Maybe recent events struck a personal chord with the owners and they said "fuck it, we don't need their businesses, it's one small thing we can do to offer our support to the victims". If they're hosting "much nastier" customers than 8chan then it's fair to ask them to do better or call out their hypocrisy and ask them to rectify the situation.
> this wasn´t a "do good / patriotic moment".
I never said it was.
> I´d like to know in case you´d make that same argument for the Bakery/gay wedding case
I followed this case closely and my views on it are complex. It's not as simple as most people like to suggest. In short, I think the SCOTUS made the right ruling specifically because of the reasoning put forth by Kennedy in the majority opinion; in particular, that the colorado commissions board demonstrated a hostility towards religion in their application of the state anti-discrimination laws. The opinion even goes as far as to say that the ruling could have went the other way if the commission had more evenly applied the anti-discrimination laws in past cases. Further, I agree with the reasoning that suggests forcing the baker to create a bespoke cake-to-order is a form of artistic expression and should be protected by the first amendment and that his speech should not be compelled. However, the baker in this case specifically argued that homosexuals should be prohibited even from purchasing pre-made off-the-shelf cakes that were not made-to-order. This clearly crosses the line into discrimination of a protected class, so in my view he ultimately got away on a technicality, but the SCOTUS had no choice.
> either it´s mere PR move and I despise that type of behavior
If it's "a mere PR move" then who cares? CF is a private businesses and it's their prerogative to operate their business in a fashion that is beneficial to their PR image.
>However, the baker in this case specifically argued that homosexuals should be prohibited even from purchasing pre-made off-the-shelf cakes that were not made-to-order. This clearly crosses the line into discrimination of a protected class, so in my view he ultimately got away on a technicality
If political ideology was a protected class, would you be opposed to Cloudfare dropping 8chan?
I reject the idea that political ideology should be a protected class, but if it were, I would still support CF in this case since this ban was in response to acts of violence endorsed and enacted by the 8chan community, not as a blanket ban on all white supremacist content.
It wasn't enacted by the 8chan community, it was enacted by the shooter only. And endorsed, well, I have seen many people on Reddit and Twitter who say that all Republicans are evil and should be killed, yet when Steve Scalise was shot, they weren't banned for their support of terrorism and assassination. The same principles you apply to your side should be applied to the other side.
It was enacted by a member of the community and other members of the community voiced support for the acts before, during, and after the attacks.
> I have seen many people on Reddit and Twitter who say that all Republicans are evil and should be killed
You can find anyone saying anything anywhere on the internet, but it's very obvious to anyone who has actually used 8chan that it's a particularly toxic community that is generally friendly to violent ideologies.
I have a sneaking suspicion that some three letter agencies (US + Allied nations) have asked Cloudflare not to take ISIS and the like off the Internet.
Why? Because given the technical sophistication of NSA,GHCQ etc vs the average extremist manic in the wild, it is the easiest honeypot there could be to catch all the extremist flies. Click a Like button on FB ISIS page.. Gotcha; watch a ISIS video served through the CDN.. Gotcha; Have any sort of ingress,egress data flow from any of the ISIS content... Gotcha
That may certainly be the case. In fact, I sure hope so tbh. But who knows at this point really. The decisions seems so arbitrarily made. One could easily argue that the same agency should have asked CF to do the same with 8chan. But we get this asymmetrical decision making which leaves us wondering.... why?!
Based on the aforementioned hypotheses, I think it’s reasonable to posit that a three letter agency has concluded that since 8chan has become “internet famous”, it’s unfettered yet monitored existence is now worse in aggregate than pushing its members further underground.
Whereas foreign terrorists are always worth monitoring.
It does seem arbitrary but I think the answer might be far more mundane than conspiratorial; There is simply no legal authority to hoover up the data of and trace back to american citizens for 8chan type websites.
I don't know man, even if the NSA, FBI etc couldn't give a shit about the legal implications, Cloudflare as a public company and it's officers would have legal liability if they violated the law.
It sounds like you're proposing something akin to cultural relativism. The foundations of American democracy are definitively not in cultural relativism, but in cultural absolutism:
"All mean are created equal, etc etc".
Now, we've often failed to live up to those words in the past, but it's an (ideally) constantly-improving process. Regardless, it's much, much more desirable than some anarchical cultural relativism where everyone does what they damn well please.
>However, you are in a sense dictating that the moral values you inherited are infinitely more superior than all the others. I mean you are making deterministic statements about subjective issues while calling those who dare not agree "unreasonable" without considering for a second that other people that live in other parts of the world might have different views.
There is virtually no moral judgment that every person will agree on. So what? Just because morality is ultimately subjective, society should completely avoid making any kind of judgments regarding it? Frankly I don't care that every person, including those committing terrible acts, view themselves as morally correct. I have my own values that I obviously believe are superior, and I will make an effort to impose them on society. I assume that everyone else is doing the same thing. I hope that the "best" views will become the most common.
That is the perfect call for individualism there is. You try to push your ideas down someone else´s throat and they try to do the same. You´ll find no objection here. I am more than happy to live under such a framework. In fact, I think it would make for a much better world under the right conditions.
That said however, you are missing a lot of nuances imo if you think that this form of "every man for himself" is how the west currently operates.
Exactly! Saying that one moral code must be "superior" for we to push for it is injecting universalism (in the form of a single ladder of moral codes) into the discussion, which is exactly what we moral relativists do not find credible.
This a very well articulated comment, I wish I could have this conversation with the two of you over drinks. Maybe this should be a feature of hacker news.
> This is like morality 101. You aren't entitled to kill folks, no matter how much you want to. And you aren't entitled to egg other folks on to kill folks either.
So no death penalty? No military intervention in countries which have not attacked yours? And shutdown any site/radio/TV that try to talk about it?
I don't want to know your thoughts about those particular subject, just want to show what sort of situation you can get into when arguing for criteria to limit freedom of speech.
What about monitoring these forums possibly with keyword recognition, and enforce laws such as the ones against invitation to violence?
Because it's pointless? People that have feelings and drives that make them do heinous things won't stop having them, and won't stop seeking others having them and discussing them. They'd just publish their manifests on other places. There are tons of public places. Let's say next psycho creates a Github account and publishes the next psychotic rant as Github repo. Now we have to burn Github to the ground? Or only if there are three such psychos that know how to set up a Github account?
> The point is that some opinions are just wrong.
True enough. The problem here is that somehow you think you can always tell which ones, and that you will wield the power to do it. The experience shows neither are true - you probably hold lots of wrong opinions without knowing it, and the power to exclude wrong opinions from polite society probably will be not in your hands. The best way to check every law would be "what if my worst enemy was in charge of implementing it?". If you're still OK with it - then it's a good law. Otherwise you're assuming Powers That Be would always agree with you - and that's a dangerous thing to assume.
You aren't entitled to kill folks, no matter how much you want to. And you aren't entitled to egg other folks on to kill folks either.
Try telling that to the US military. Or cops.
And it if you step back a bit you'll see that it is _obvious_(!) that the person you are replying to is exactly NOT saying that it is permissible to massacre Jews. S/he is pointing out that "obviousness" is an ill-defined criterion which can let any old genocidal predjudice slip through.
We’re taking about rules fir governing a society. The military is for dealing with threats from outside a society, so it’s not relevant.
Cops in the US do not have impunity. They may sometimes get away with too much, but they can and do go to jail for murder. There have been a few cases I could name off the top of my head in the last few years, but I’m sure many more are findable with little effort.
A few cases over years? US cops kill over 1000 people every year (https://killedbypolice.net/), so a few prosecutions is more like bad luck than real punishment.
FYI "some opinions are just wrong" is a judgement, and it might make life easier to understand that what you consider "wrong" is your subjective _opinion_ :)
I totally don't mean that in a condescending way, just sharing my thoughts from my own experiences!
When you say that the El Paso shooter believed that the US is under invasion, that was his incorrect belief, not a "wrong opinion". The opinion would be that he thinks he's justified to try to kill those people.
"I think all right thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary, decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired...
I'm certainly not! And I'm sick and tired of being told that I am." - Graham Chapman.
Usually whenever I see people evoke the paradox of tolerance they draw more attention to the authority of Popper compared to the nature of it being a paradox. It defers the question of what is tolerant, which depends on perspective as you rightly point out.
Arguments of authority are my favorites. It literally takes you 2 seconds to see through the person you are talking to and you can safely assume that they haven´t thought about the problems facing them long enough.
> You and I can agree that it is despicable and disgusting that people think that way. But in their minds, you are the unreasonable one. What you call intolerance to them is not that at all.
Don’t you think it’s despicable that we don’t think this way?
We’re there, killing their wives, children and friends. We’re destroying the infrastructure. But we don’t even have any particularly strong feelings about it. It’s just what’s economically and politically expedient...
> Perspectives matter in the world; and if you make a hard/deterministic rule based on a subjective understanding of an issue followed by projecting it as "what reasonable people should think", you will always get into some shady edge cases
Disagreement has been corner stone of any community. It is healthy in some sense, and might even be required for progress of humankind altoghter. That said...
> What you call intolerance to them is not that at all.
If ignorance, short sightedness, revenge, hatered, jealousy, wickedness is behind a thought or an action, we can universally agree to it being inferior and defective.
Like the OP said, moral and philosophical education along with ability to independently think sets reasonable people apart from others, and I agree.
I agree with most of your points here, but I am not sure I see how this really amounts to an objection to Popper's proposed prescription. Nearly everything is contested by someone, even things as mundane as who is at fault in a motor accident. And yet, we have largely workable, if imperfect, ways to resolve such disagreements, so that everyone can get on with life. So the real objection has to be along the lines of: there is no practical set of procedures that would allow us to resolve the problems of intolerant speech and behavior in a reasonably effective way.
More philosophically, however, one important way to take on the problem of subjectivism is to use something like Rawl's veil of ignorance, or Sherner's fairness principle:
“The Fairness Principle: When contemplating a moral action, imagine that you do not know if you will be the moral doer or receiver, and when in doubt err on the side of the other person.”
Not going to lie, I hold an an insane level of disdain toward Rawl´s Veil of ignorance for many reasons that I don´t want to get into right now. That said, the following sentence - I think - is one of the most important ones that I wish more people would pay very close attention to:
> ... And yet, we have largely workable, if _imperfect_, ways to resolve such disagreements, _so that everyone can get on with life_
I agree with you on the first part but disagree on the reasoning behind it.
I have a framework that I personally use when I think about topics such as this one. It has helped me understand a fair bit about social organizations in general as I see it applied everywhere I look. I´ll write the gist of it down here and you tell me what you think:
1. There are two types of solutions to problems: deterministic solutions (100% perfect solutions that can be algorithmically spelled out) and heuristics (good enough shortcuts that have x% error margin and y% efficiency - What you called imperfect solutions).
2. We desperately want to find as many deterministic solutions we possibly can to any and all problems that we face. And where we fail to do so, heuristics are brought in to help us, as best as possible, approximate that "deterministic/perfect/ideal".
3. Heuristics are things like religion, moral frameworks, political systems, language, etc. - Notice that none of them is deterministic in any way, shape or form. They are all imperfect. However, they are rule-sets that are more or less ambiguous that helps us navigate most of the problem space with relatively low effort. But the trade-off here is that heuristics break at the edges - free speech vs. hate speech is a clear example of a failure in the heuristic.
4. It is important to note that all heuristics have some error rate. If they did not, they´d be deterministic solutions. So whatever heuristic you want to use to solve a given problem, Popper´s, Rawl´s or otherwise, you have to always make sure to take the errors that might emerge into account. The error rate is far more important than most people realize as it is the determining factor for how successful/effective the heuristic is going to be in society.
5. When suggesting alternatives to an existing heuristic because of some apparent flaws - such as replacing our current understanding and notion of intolerance by Popper´s take on the matter - the new heuristic that you propose that should overwrite the old one must have a smaller margin of error. Otherwise, why even bother? in fact, if this isn´t the case, you risk making things worse rather than better.
6. Iterate on the process until you come up with better and better heuristics that increasingly approximates the deterministic solution (lower error rate over time until you reach the holy grail of 99.999999...%).
7. Every once in a while, as humanity is traversing its path, some heuristics will be replaced by deterministic answers. Ex: science replaces religion when it comes to describing the natural world -> moving from heuristic religious interpretation of the natural world to a more deterministic approach.
This is how society betters itself over time. It is an iterative process that replaces old systems with newer ones that are less prone to errors. My beef with Rawl´s, Pooper (as I call him) and most of the other thinkers that people read in 1st year college class is that the heuristics they paint are already far inferior than the ones that we currently have. But unfortunately, the academic class (read teachers) cannot see that because they lack a good framework for assessing the effectiveness/error rates of a given heuristic.
Exactly. I think that a lot of what is plaguing society right now is, in spite of how techno-sophisticated we have become, is in a sense a measurement problem.
It's not clear to me how you can say that a new heuristic is "far inferior", nor how you can say that the academics lack a good framework but you presumably don't. How do you know what a good framework would look like?
I would agree that it's a measurement problem in the sense that we don't even know what or how to measure it. But your analysis is silent on what an error is so I'm not really sure what you think you have gained by it.
Your point would stand only if these new heuristics are truly "new" when in fact, they are actually pretty old, tried and debunked at this point. And we actually do know what we want to measure and we have that as a goal but our methodology/framework isn´t all that good just yet (we currently use a form of bruteforce).
> It's not clear to me how you can say that a new heuristic is "far inferior", nor how you can say that the academics lack a good framework but you presumably don't. How do you know what a good framework would look like?
It isn´t that I have something that they don´t have. It´s far more sinister than that. And here is my argument:
The best tool we have at the moment is: you play it (any given set of ideas) out in the real world and look at the consequences in terms of elevating/reducing the amount of suffering that is at the basis of the human condition - after all, that is the end goal of political heuristics. Popper´s and Rawl´s ideas are not "new" in the sense that they have been extensively tried in the past. They were murderous beyond belief but somehow that is always forgotten and never accounted for as linguistics is used to disguise the actual end-result of the experiment by saying that "they have not been tested at all" or that "these are new cutting edge ideas".
As an example, we can take a look at communism. The total body count that was produced under communistic regimes would probably make for a giant mountain that would take months to climb. Yet somehow you always hear the slogan "that wasn´t real communism" as a rebuttal to the inherit evil of said set of ideas. If you pay close attention, parse the ideas given and see if they have previously tried or not, you can most often tell that the vast majorities of proposed changes are new reformulations of old and debunked shit.
Example: Marxism views the world as a battle between two groups, the rich and the poor. 3rd wave feminism views the world as a battle group between men and women. This is an over-simplification obviously but what I am hoping to demonstrate here is that it is the same old wolf in sheep´s clothing. We don´t need to replay that experiment to know where it will end up. This is the best we can do at the moment. Am I happy with this methodology of evaluating ideas? hell no. But we have no mechanism that performs any better. And as for the academic class, heck, it is they that purposefully spread these reformulations to the younger generations by actively reworking old debunked ideas as their own "new" takes on how the world ought to be - which is why I tend to believe that academia (especially the social "sciences") is far more sinister than first meets the eye.
Note: I used marxism/communism here as an example just for convenience. I could have just as easily used the Veil of Ignorance or the argument of intolerance to demonstrate that same principle. They have been tried many times before and they were incredibly counter-productive. In spite of what most people think, the modern form of western societies can be seen as a function of the set of most effective ideas that have been tested to date (effective = generate the most amount of reduction in overall human suffering). It isn´t perfect (it´s a heuristic after all) but in comparison to all other tried and tested set of ideas, it is the best we can do atm. Besides, even in the west, small variations of these ideas are currently being tried within each nation state. It is a process that takes time but as these experiments unfold, we will learn something new and converge on a better solution once one is found.
Have you considered that, rather that having some kind of sinister intent, other people simply have a different opinion on whether a particular idea is new or just a reworking, whether a previous idea is applicable to a current context, etc, etc?
To go way back up to your original post I kind of agree with you on subjectivity but I really don't see how you're then arguing that your framework demonstrates that Rawls etc have been 'debunked'.
But in these cases there is a blurring of bad national policy with an entire group of people unconnected to it. This is very dangerous.
For example, there maybe those who dislike Israel and even want war. But to then say "all Jews are evil" is incorrect. Most don't even live there to control policy. Of those that do, many object to policy. It's like saying some terrorists are Muslim so all Muslims are evil. Or that North Korea is dangerous therefore all Koreans are dangerous. Or America does some bad things therefore all Americans should die. It's all obviously incorrect.
You can have a reason to want to fight a _country_ but there can never be a reason to annihilate a complex, nuanced group because of their skin color or religion etc. There can be reasons for war (which is bad enough) but there can never be reasons for genocide. Americans might have reason to hate Japan after Pearl Harbor but to lock up all Japanese inside the country is obviously wrong.
More generally, there can be very good reason to stop a group organized around an action (eg Neo-Nazis). But to say "all whites must die" (because all Neo-Nazis are white) is obviously an incorrect expansion.
Unfortunately, it's a common blurring that exploitative leaders take advantage of. Today some Western leaders foment hate against all Muslims and some Islamic leaders foment hate against all Jews. In the past it was other groups. It is these leaders that are the danger.
>It's like saying some terrorists are Muslim so all Muslims are evil.
Where is the thresh hold the judgment is made at and will we consistently apply it to all groups? I can think of examples of groups that are reviled by most, yet who have members who don't desire directly evil policies. Some desire forms of what may qualify as oppression that are even seen by the majority as acceptable when you swap out certain groups.
From the POV of someone who says that, the evil actions of Israel are not a fluke, but an inevitable result of the nature of Jewish people, just like genocidal colonialism is seen as the result of the nature of white people, etc. They see themselves as frogs talking about scorpions, to put it in fabulistic terms, and the fact that a particular specimen hasn't stung is no evidence that it's harmless.
To someone like me, who believes quite intuitively that humans are generally the same everywhere, it's hard to grasp, but I don't see how I can prove it's objectively wrong.
> think about it this way: what if in the mind of the person making that claim, it is one of self-defense and self-preservation? is it still intolerant?
Yes.
It may be understandable, I get it, I have the same angry impulses as most human beings and it's very easy to feel antagonists should be simply disposed with. But that doesn't distinguish it from being intolerant.
Even if there's a genuine existential threat, indulging an intolerant response means you (1) you cut off the possibility for negotiation, and the remaining choices are victory or your own tribe's annihilation (2) it's not like the one source of antagonism/conflict is really just the other tribe, and once you build into individual minds and your tribe the idea and support for this kind of total solution, it's likely to get used again even if/after you "win."
I don't expect everyone, especially among populations that have been part of generational conflicts where they already feel they're facing an existential threat, to just sing kumbaya. Maybe it's an important descriptive point to say "not everyone can agree genocide should't be tolerated in valued discourse," but it's not a good normative point. We should be trying to get to the point where genocide is beyond the pale, where people can more finely articulate that many aspects of middle eastern policy at the state or tribal level are unacceptable for a humane civilization without kneecapping any chance for improvement, and in general where we can shape discourse it should be steered away from tribalism.
Or I guess we could always try to kill everybody who believes in genocide.
I grew up in the middle east and I still live in the middle east and I never heard anyone say kill da Jews or da imperialists because those kinds of wacky statements can only be conjured up by a Westerner with preconceived notions about what middle easterners are and pretends to be one on the internet for argument points.
I've thought about this before and respect the open-mindedness. How do you justify words purely meant to harm others and not express ideas, like the n-word?
If you think that the n-word is only used to harm others then I assume you haven't listened to any late 20th and 21st century music. Context matters. That said, its use to racially insult people is shameful and not something I support.
That's a great point, I didn't think about that. It seems like it might be difficult to prove whether or not people had an intent to harm when you allow this kind of speech though.
Your example illustrates something called "moral disengagement"[1] and it's the same thought-process used by a lot of people to justify their reprehensible views. Interestingly, the people who seem to be most "immune" to moral disengagement are individuals with high empathy. Fortunately, empathy is a skilled that can be taught and learned.
well maybe, since the US is finding this really really tricky for some reason, look at what other countries have done around hate speech.... because, you know, it didn't end civilization as we know it, we are all still free ( in fact, in terms of freedom many countries, with hate speech laws, rank better than the US ). It's bizzare that in a country where the kid who goes on a mass shooting, could engage in hate groups online, but until a couple of years ago would have been banned from getting a kinder eggs, coz ya know, it could of hurt him.
What about "kill the {terrorists|Vietnamese (circa 1960)|germans (circa 1940)|japanese(circa 1940)|rebs (circa 1860}"
My response is clearly whatboutism, and I understand that jewish, muslims, and hispanics are greatly different than naming the belligerents of armed conflicts, but this very slippery slope is why historically the US Supreme Court has resoundingly only made the most narrow rulings regarding limiting speech.
This is a terribly laid out argument. It's not kill the Germans/Japanese/Vietnamese. Hell in Vietnam we had Vietnamese allies. In Okinawa we routinely tried to stop civilians from committing suicide. There's a massive, massive difference between calling for erasing an entire people simply for existing and fighting a declared military force. No one in the US is going over to wipe out all Arabs, they are going to protect civilians and our own people under a strict set of rules of engagement meant to minimize civilian and not combatant casualties. These people are advocating violence against a people who don't even know they exist or have no defined I'll will against them. You're also conflating government protections for free speech and requirements to support said speech by civilians. No one has to provide your microphone to tell through. The mail will still deliver their racist pamphlets, they can still shout their horrors in public spaces. They don't have a right to have their hate hosted online.
There's a massive, massive difference between calling for erasing an entire people simply for existing and fighting a declared military force. No one in the US is going over to wipe out all Arabs
The clash of civilizations rhetoric makes this assertion dubious to most people that are not in the USA. That coupled with the large-scale widespread bombing of much of the world since WW2 and the support of despots engaged in torture and repression makes your fine distinction a cold comfort for hundreds of thousands (we think the price was worth it) of children.
The tendencies revealed in 8chan are a reflection of core values of US civilization.
To pretend otherwise, and agonize over the origins and supposed abnormality of racist genocide in the USA is copper-bottomed duplicity.
I suppose it makes it easier to sleep at night -- _this_ particular genocide is abnormal for us nice folks.
> The tendencies revealed in 8chan are a reflection of core values of US civilization.
To some extent, yes. But then, US civilization is sadly not all that unique.
The major issue is that the US is collapsing. Gradually, over the past few decades, but steadily. And that always creates lots of angry, nihilistic young men. Eventually they'll become cannon fodder.
All those are speech in the context of support for a declared conflict perpetuated by the government. We don't have to all agree, obviously, but yes: stated support for policies of our elected representatives has to be OK. I don't think anyone reasonable would disagree.
If someone were to talk about personal killing of gooks or japs or krauts or secesh for ethnic and not military reasons, even in a war, that would be different. But that's not what you seem to be talking about.
The distinction is precisely why we have the Geneva conventions, and this is well established law.
Your posting really gets to my core frustration with our Western political establishment: We have "rational", "moderate" politicians like Hillary, Biden, Merkel, or the late John McCain, who were in favor of the illegal attack on Iraq, well knowing that civilians would die, and that the area would be destabilized (hello IS).
But because the US didn't attack Iraq based on a protected class like race, and because the Geneva conventions exist, everything is magically okay. No reason to deplatform these heroes of bipartisan politics.
I worry about the end of radical free speech on the internet precisely because I feel deeply disconnected from "mainstream morality". As internet censorship progresses, I'm sure I'll be kicked out before any of the high-status war criminals.
(I'm referring to the 2003 Iraq war because I still remember who supported it, but I assume the handling of Vietnam was similar in its time.)
"I worry about the end of radical free speech on the internet precisely because I feel deeply disconnected from "mainstream morality". As internet censorship progresses, I'm sure I'll be kicked out before any of the high-status war criminals."
Situations where Germans were killed for just being Germans, as opposed to being soldiers, are being talked about as injustice today. The rapes done on German women after WWII are not defended as rightful today either.
There is big difference between military action against Germany, ISIS, what have you and "kill Germans" in general.
> Situations where Germans were killed for just being Germans, as opposed to being soldiers, are being talked about as injustice today. The rapes done on German women after WWII are not defended as rightful today either.
I am glad you stressed "today", because back then, I bet, they weren't talked about the same way.
It is much easier to look back at distant actions and condemn them. At the time when they actually happen, however, things aren't always as clear-cut. I am certain that a lot of "totally ok" today things will be "totally not ok" once we are removed far enough from them.
In what way they were not clear cut back then? It is not like people at the time were confused over meaning of rape or confuscation of property and so on.
These were debated as issues from the first moment. You had those who push for these kill all policies and those who oppose them. Sometimes one side win, other times the other and result is controversial from start for years.
There is this idea that "judging by the time" means judging by the perspective of worst person available, but that is not how history happened.
I was talking about generally accepted opinions by the population. Today, as the quote said, "Germans being killed for just being Germans are generally accepted as injustice".
Was it the case back in the day, though? I am not so sure about that. Of course there were plenty of people who thought this was a great injustice, but I don't think the general public back then would even raise a brow of condemnation towards a person claiming that this was ok and totally justified.
P.S. this is a total speculation about this specific scenario, but I had similar conversations about atrocities committed on the eastern front by soviet soldiers with my older family members who were young adults in 50s-60s in USSR. What I got was that their whole generation was pretty much on board with it, because, in their words, "Nazis deserved it" (with the implication being that every German person was a nazi, of course, even civilians). Not so much of a popular opinion these days.
Try putting yourself in the shoes of someone in the US in 1940.
Would the statement "kill germans" be intolerant?
///
When I was in grade school, a holocaust survivor was invited to speak at my school. At the time we had a german foreign exchange student. As a joke, one of his friends baited the speaker into going on a vitriolic rant about how much he hated Germans. The speaker than paused, and gathered himself and said he did not blame today's generation for the previous ones horror, but that the terror inflicted upon him and his family would be with him forever.
I was chosen to ask a question, and asked him what it must feel like when he sees young people today wearing Nazi paraphernalia and glorifying the Nazi regime.
That isn't protected speech. Violence against specific people, and in some cases certain people groups (calls for direct violence) is not protected even in America. Saying you hope a whole group dies off or gets killed somehow is often protected though; or gets on gray lines. In most jurisdictions in the US, police will often move on credible threats of violence.
what about the beating of an openly gay viet-american journalist on a crowded public street? does that pass the reasonable standard for intolerance? because as of writing this comment, the individuals & organizations who cheered that on still have access to mainstream platforms & seemingly have faced close to no repercussions for continuing to advocate for violence.
> I think pretty much everyone reasonable agrees that "kill the {jews,muslims,hispanics}" (once more, folks, this was the THIRD ethnic massacre advertised on 8chan!) is intolerant, no?
I mean, saying something like "Kill the Terrorists" would be something many people agree with or find to be tolerant. This shows that there is some group of "terrorists" that people are happy to have killed.
I'm not sure we can because we can't even equally apply such philosophies or even laws modern day. For example, consider what TERFs consider acceptable and unacceptable concerning acceptance of trans individuals. Or consider the violent rhetoric aimed at the US president by prominent figures (at least enough to have appearance on TV, which is far more prominent than most of the posters here). Or protests against the rich. Or the views of what should happen to really bad people in prison. Or calling certain attractions as mental disorders (granted, they were labeled as such until recently) despite the newest research and the calls to lock such people up.
And what about cases where intolerance of intolerance is viewed as unacceptable because it can be confused with general intolerance. For example, take someone who wants to reduce/end immigration of groups that might support the execution of certain minority groups being confused with people who want to reduce/end immigration of those same groups for less agreeable reasons?
Even something as simple as "The Future is Female" has roots in a ideology of killing (most) men.
Frankly, I don't know what a specific legal criteria might even look like. In fact, I'm not even sure I'd like someone smarter than me with legal street credentials to come up with one.
What I do know is that SCOTUS famously refused to define what porn is [0], and went instead with something to the effect of: I know it when I see it, and this is not it.
On the contrary. It is so important that it cannot be secondary to something that can be defined clearly. Hence my comment.
Edit for clarity: What you think is fine or not today may or may not be considered fine in the future. So there's an incentive to not set what is intolerance in stone on the basis that today's standards may not match those in the future.
Freedom of speech ensures we can always debate the value of the rest of our rights. Without it, that amorphous 'tolerance' could remove the ability to speak against bad things.
Who defines hate speech? Mobs? Who gets to enforce the official definition of intolerant behavior? Trump? Hillary? (hyperbole to make a point) If we don't maintain freedom of speech above tolerance, then we cannot speak out when our words violate the accepted (and as you pointed out, transitory and unpredictable) definition of 'what is fine'.
Do you really want to just stop talking, without recourse, when a future mob decides your words are unacceptable?
This is exactly right. So much of the discussion here is because people can't turn their own arguments against themselves. The sentiment is, "clearly this is bad and needs to go away." This is also an extension of surveillance arguments where people say "i have nothing to hide." They forget to take into consideration the power that has been given to a group that could become immoral in the future and use that power against them.
I really wish we could agree that freedom is a burden and we can and should shoulder that burden because it is worth it. Let's all take some responsibility for not doing enough to convince extremists away from their beliefs. Let's accept that censorship represents a failure of imagination in combating the issue responsibly (whatever that might be).
That’s probably the most widely mocked thing a justice has ever said -- it's even mentioned in your source -- so it's probably not the best argument to put forward.
Part of the problem is that historically intolerance has been defined as "opposition to openness" and indeed historically most human societies were too closed.
Any hope of easy classification crumbles when you consider that a society can be too open (there are actual group that want to include age as a form of protected self expression, with significant consequences on the legality of various actions).
At this point is it being intolerant if you do not tolerate treating a 30 years old person as 8 years old in matters of law?
If the baker were only baking a cake then it would be. But these were artistic cakes with a great deal of self expression, so issues of compelled speech are forefront.
Also, I wonder if, as software devs, we'd feel comfortable being compelled to take on contracts we might object to on moral grounds, e.g. I refuse to engage in projects building weapons and surveillance systems. I'd be quite upset if I were to be taken to court for refusing the contract on those grounds.
> A majority of the US population was tolerant of refusing service to ...
But the refusal of service to certain specific races itself is intolerance. That is precisely what Popper's view is: tolerance (by the majority of Americans) of intolerance (towards non-whites) is bad.
What about certain sports teams who deny half of the population a chance from playing? They justify it with notions of biological differences, but in what other setting is that an acceptable justification?
There is also the difference in refusal to serve and refusal to provide a specific service. If you are willing to serve a group but not provide them with a service that you also refuse to provide others, even when the service has a strong corollary with a service you do provide, it is seen as a different matter than refusing to serve a group. This is seen in both the bakery case and the waxing case.
I do not see how any of the examples you cite are comparable.
Biological differences in performance have scientific basis. Racism does not.
I do not know which specific bakery or waxing cases you are referring to, there seem to be more than one such case. But I will try to clarify my position with a corollary:
Say I'm at a bar with a friend who is an observant Muslim. They are offered a complimentary drink by the bartender, who happens to be non-muslim. If my friend declines the drink because they think it is alcoholic, I will think no less of them. But if they decline the drink because of the bartender being non-muslim, I will certainly think less of my friend. In either case, it does not matter if the drink does or does not contain alcohol; only what my friend thinks.
>Biological differences in performance have scientific basis.
Yet I still can't actually use these to discriminate in most cases.
>Racism does not.
Not sure how this is comparable to the previous statement. The use of 'differences in performance' in one side and a -ism on the other indicate we aren't comparing apples to apples.
>Say I'm at a bar with a friend who is an observant Muslim. They are offered a complimentary drink by the bartender, who happens to be non-muslim. If my friend declines the drink because they think it is alcoholic, I will think no less of them. But if they decline the drink because of the bartender being non-muslim, I will certainly think less of my friend. In either case, it does not matter if the drink does or does not contain alcohol; only what my friend thinks.
So it seems the judgment is based off of the material and not the person. In that case, it seems similar to the case of the bakery as the customer was free to order any existing product. The waxing case isn't as simple, because the item relevant to the drink in that case was part of the person's body, and thus innately linked to the concept of who the individual is in a way the drink is not.
> Yet I still can't actually use these to discriminate in most cases.
Yes, you can. If you can prove a scientific basis, you can. A scientific basis is not a low bar, mind you, but if you can clear it, you absolutely can, as many of us do (from cosmetics to drug trials and prescriptions to even market investments).
> The use of 'differences in performance' in one side and a -ism on the other indicate we aren't comparing apples to apples.
Forgive me, I believed it was obvious that 'racism' in this context stood for 'differences in treatment by race'.
> So it seems the judgment is based off of the material and not the person.
You appear to have misread my point. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Let me reproduce the essential parts:
"... because of the bartender being non-muslim ..."
and added clarification:
" ... does not matter if the drink ...; only what my friend thinks of the bartender"
>Forgive me, I believed it was obvious that 'racism' in this context stood for 'differences in treatment by race'.
The problem it is that it prejudges no such situations could exist. For example, one that would be easy enough to defend is that communities are better served by a doctor who shares the same race as the community because the members are more willing to follow the doctor's advice. This is why having enough black doctors to serve black communities can be argued to be a good thing, despite it being discrimination based on race. But past personal experience has taught me that the agreeableness of such judgment can changes when swapping to a so called majority group.
>You appear to have misread my point. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Let me reproduce the essential parts:
Let me rephrase my point because I think I may have compacted it too much.
Your judgment depends upon your friends judgment being based on the material and not the person. That is to say, if you have reason to believe you friend is judging based on the person (the server being non-Muslim), you will view them negatively, but if you believe that their judgment is based on the material (thinking the drink has alcohol) you won't judge them negatively. Thus, you judgment of the friend's discrimination against the drink depends upon why they discriminate against the drink. If they did so because of a property of the drink it is fine. Does this correctly match your view?
> For example, one that would be easy enough to defend ...
I'm sorry, but at this point, I think you're being pedantic. I have no interest in that here, and while I could have been exhaustively thorough in my original statement, I just didn't think I needed to and thus chose to be terse. I continue to believe I was clear then, and also believe that in the example you cite here a scientific basis (either for or against) can be clearly tested and observed.
> Thus, you judgment of the friend's discrimination against the drink ...
No. My point is I do not judge my friend on their discrimination against the drink. I judge my friend on their discrimination against the person. The drink is just an object, it's only purpose is in being 'not a person'. Replace it with anything else (say, something edible, or, a greeting) and my point still stands.
> If they did so because of a property of the drink it is fine.
No, that doesn't matter. If they did so because of the time of day, or their mood, or the colour of their shirt that day, would be the same. The difference lies in whether they did so because of the person offering.
That's the crux of the whole problem. The government passed unpopular policies and tried to morally "correct" its people from the top down. It seems most people gradually caught on and normalized those changes, but it isn't surprising to me at all that some/many didn't. I'm wholly on the side of civil rights, but lately I wonder about whether the experiment of using the federal government to try to bring together a big landmass full of people who too often really despise each other along ideological and/or ethnic lines is failing.
Here we are talking about curtailing free speech because the majority can sometimes be wrong and evil, which sounds fair, but that raises the question for me of whether constantly doing things that most people don't want in the name of social progress will create a stable society. I wish I was wrong, but I think not.
I did know. That was an "um, come again?" not a "can you repeat that?"
Your comment literally reads as "they used to tolerate refusing service to (slur)s." Not only was it totally inexplicable to use the slur in the first place, you didn't qualify it in any way. No quotes, no "people they called," nothing. You just used it. Absolutely insane.
The criteria is pretty straightforward: you apply the "intolerance of intolerance" to the first intolerant action in the chain, i.e. the one that infringes unprompted on someone else.
So, the gay couple coming to the baker that doesn't want to make a cake for a gay wedding are the intolerant ones because they are the first intolerant action in the chain? Because you know that will be how it will be spun.
Congratulations on the apt handle. Your argument is irrational because it ignores the fact that the baker committed the first intolerant act in the chain, not the gay couple.
It isn't irrational because every human being involved experiences a different intolerant act as their first intolerant act. The baker experiences the customer as committing the first intolerance to him. The customer experiences the baker as committing the first intolerance to him.
There is no global ordering of intolerant events. This is basically the CAP problem. Every node (or human) sees their own version of the database (or the world) unless all humans coordinate with all other humans (aka impossible).
So refusing to provide service is "intolerant"? Does this only works on "protected groups", or does it work in general? How about the baker is willing to provide service to the gay couple, but just not the gay wedding? Now, please elaborate how you define "intolerant".
Absolutely: refusing to provide service to gays, when you provide the same services to other people just because they are not gay, is indeed literally intolerant, without your scare-quotes or any other qualification.
What's so hard for you to understand about that?
If you're trying to argue for some slippery weaselly nuanced non-standard definition of "intolerant" which excludes bigoted bakers that you just pulled out of your butt, remember that it's a double edged sword that cuts both ways, and also excuses gay couples for not tolerating homophobic bakers.
It's not my responsibility to provide you with the standard definitions of common English words, when you're obviously capable of googling them yourself, and obviously misunderstanding them on purpose, and obviously not arguing in good faith. Look it up on Wikipedia yourself.
The baker in your chosen example is very convenient in that they are clearly anti-gay. Consider the the real life examples of bakers who are allegedly happy to serve gay couples, but believe that baking a cake for a gay couple's wedding would be a speech act in which they do not wish to engage, or a hotel providing 'separate but equal' treatment to people of colour. These things strike me as problematic, but clearly were not obviously so to the legal system of the time.
I think you're likely to run into the general issue that people seldom phrase their motives so as to make themselves sound unreasonable or intolerant.
The baker's argument was that it wasn't the same service. They would have baked them a cake; but they didn't cakes with "jim and john's wedding" written on them, in the same way you wouldn't bake a cake with the 14 words on it, even if you'd bake a cake for Richard Spencer.
I don't bake cakes for Nazis, no matter how many words they want on it. Simple as that. Not even cupcakes. No nuances.
It's pretty obvious when the baker and their supporters start bending over backwards to make nuanced hypothetical situations and ridiculous unbelievable qualifications, that they aren't making good faith arguments. If their best and most honest argument is that their bible told them to be intolerant bigots, then that's their problem for choosing to take their marching orders from that particular bible, while choosing to do business in that particular state which bans discrimination. The fact that your bible tells you to do something illegal is certainly no excuse for stoning your wife to death or killing gays, either.
So we should have the conversation in which everyone has to make the best arguments they can, instead of trying to go recursively meta with the Paradox of Tolerance, accusing the gays of being intolerant of the baker's intolerance. Simply judge them all on the merits of their best arguments and intellectual honesty and willingness to address valid counter-arguments.
I see you saying things like 'judge them by the merits of their arguments', and 'intellectual honesty'. But the problem is, I don't trust that you're intellectually honest. I don't think you actually do much logical evaluation when it comes to a case like this; you're already predisposed towards being on the side of the gay guys, and not liking the christians. Well, fine. But I don't believe that you're coming to your conclusions through reason and logic, as you claim to; my impression is that you're just declaring that the chain of evil obviously ends with the people you didn't like to begin with, and their arguments don't need to be refuted because they're not in good faith.
Meanwhile, it's alright for you to categorically refuse to give service to someone for another kind of social identity.
Fine... I just don't get the feeling I should rely on you as a source of 'good faith' arguments about this stuff. You seem to have a pretty big axe to grind.
The Supreme Court already judged the anti-gay-marriage bigots on the merits of their arguments, and they were found lacking. They brought their best arguments, and they weren't good enough. That is evidence that supports my intuition. If you have some profound new anti-gay argument that nobody's already heard countless times already, they why don't you lay it on us and change our minds?
And yes, regardless of your distrust and disbelief in me, I have already logically thought about it a lot. I'm just not writing out every step of my logical thought process right now, and I won't or dang will ding me. So you'll have to take my word that I'm smart enough to figure it out logically for myself. Even most children can come to the same conclusions as I did, if they haven't been indoctrinated to hate.
I don't owe the anti-gay-marriage bigots the respect of rehashing and yet again arguing against their tired old disproven arguments and desperate Gish Gallops. It boils down to the bible told them to be bigots. They have no better arguments.
That's why the baker case is such a great example of how to properly resolve the Paradox of Tolerance.
>The Supreme Court already judged the anti-gay-marriage bigots on the merits of their arguments, and they were found lacking.
That differs from what happened in reality. The Supreme Court issued a 7-2 ruling in favor of Phillip's right to refuse to bake the gay couple a cake. It was the Colorado Civil Rights Commission that found them to be discriminating. That ruling was overturned when brought in front of the Supreme Court.
>In a 7-2 decision, the Court ruled on narrow grounds that the Commission did not employ religious neutrality, violating Masterpiece owner Jack Phillips' rights to free exercise, and reversed the Commission's decision. [0]
Can you explain how you are balancing the notion of freedom of religion, freedom of association, and freedom of speech here?
It sounds to me like you're are arguing that those rights aren't worth protecting for the baker and you are choosing to protect the customer's right to ... what exactly? What "right" is being protected in your analysis?
Only as long as it's intolerance of real, non-contrived intolerance, which in this case it clearly is.
Intolerance of gays is real intolerance, because it can't be logically justified, and it's based on religious bigotry instead of any legitimate justification.
Contrived intolerance is the baker claiming other people are intolerant of the baker's real intolerance of gays. You're not entitled to that kind of intolerance.
Is it your opinion that "religious bigotry" is not protected by the Constitution?
How are you going to define that outside your preferred scenario of bigotry against gays? Do you intend to insist (by law) that Orthodox Jews, for example, work on Saturdays because that is more convenient for you and that that they are being intolerant of your beliefs for no rational reason?
What about Orthodox Jewish wedding photographer? Are they required to work for you on a Saturday or is it OK for them too refuse you service based on their religious beliefs?
There's a huge difference between discriminating against a day and a gay: you can discriminate against a day because it's Saturday, but you can't discriminating against a person because they're gay.
It's ok for Jews to be Saturday-intolerant, just as many Christians are Sunday-intolerant. Days don't have feelings or human rights. And there's not a long history of discrimination and institutionalized biases against Saturday, the way there are against gays.
In both cases the vendor is refusing to conduct business with the customer due to religious beliefs. Why do you think it is OK for the customer to have to find a new photographer in one case but not a different baker in the other?
I really have a hard time with the idea that the government is expected to pick the "right" set of beliefs to back on what should just be a voluntary transaction. Either both parties agree to conduct business or they don't. I realize that a laissez faire approach to commerce is not what we have today but I would prefer it over asking the government to mediate. And I do realize that would allow people and businesses to discriminate, but that just represents a business opportunity for someone else.
In the case of the photographer, the customer isn't being shamed, shunned, and stigmatized. The government definitely has a role here and should intervene in such cases in order to ensure that businesses treat customers equally and respectably.
Just think about the way modern media companies constantly shame and stigmatize people. How are you going to even define when someone is "shamed" or "stigmatized"? Aren't there people who should be shamed and stigmatized?
This seems completely unworkable and guaranteed to make absolutely no one happy other than the lawyers making money off of all the frivolous legal disputes.
Yeah, you have a good point. My opinions are pretty recently formed on this area so I'm probably off-base, and it was interesting hearing your perspective. Fortunately I'm not a judge! :-)
> Only as long as it's intolerance of real, non-contrived intolerance...
And this is where it all falls down. Any belief system which conflicts with your own is a system which is expressing “intolerance” to your belief system.
The whole idea is a crock in my opinion, as a way for one person to scream down another because they are the one who is being intolerant.
There is a lot of hate in the world, and fighting words should be shut down clearly. But this “intolerance” argument is extremely weak the way I see it, as is used as a way to hate and threaten harm against people with a different belief system, a belief system which may not have anything to do with hating or physically harming people.
>And this is where it all falls down. Any belief system which conflicts with your own is a system which is expressing “intolerance” to your belief system.
Not true. Belief systems can conflict without calling for each other's destruction, or discrimination and cruelty against each other's followers.
But the ones that do call for that kind of behavior, like religion calls for discrimination against gays and cruelty towards women, don't have the right to complain about people who they discriminate against (and other non-bigoted allies) not tolerating their discrimination.
> ... discrimination and cruelty against each other's followers.
A belief system is--by definition--discrimination against contrary beliefs, and therefore, followers of those contrary beliefs. And one definition of "cruelty" (e.g. to women - by denying full and free access to abortions) might be the inverse of someone else's definition of "cruelty" (e.g. to unborn children - by aborting them).
Someone can presume that they hold the absolute claim to the "truth" of which side is cruel, and which side is intolerant, but as human beings we simply do not and cannot know the truth of the matter.
So the problem I have is, when faced with such a dilemma, calling for violence against someone in the name of being "intolerant to intolerance".
Is this confounded or bound up with things like fake news or bad science -- would I, if I owned a platform – call it π-Chan –be prohibited from banning users who espoused anti-vax ideas because I firmly believed they put society at risk (or whatever the justification may be)?
I would, on the one hand, be strongly supported by science, but on the other intolerant of others' who have differing points of view. Would I be allowed to run my platform the way I wanted? Whose rights would prevail in that case?
The question is "who do you want to be your consumers" here. Both choices are PR choices. Legally, you're allowed to do either ("neutral platform" and "moderated discourse forum" are both things that are legally allowed to exist in the US at least).
If you want to appease the free speech crowd, you let the anti-vaxers stay (Gratz, you're running a Chan!) If you want to appease the intelligent discourse crowd, you ban/moderate people who violate your TOS (Gratz, you're running something closer to Hacker News!)
And if you can´t see why the above applies, maybe you ought not to use the word "straightforward" anymore because you are clearly not qualified to do so.
Then you have a discussion about whether that is right or wrong, instead of having a discussion about how recursively meta you can go with "intolerance of intolerance of intolerance of intolerance of intolerance of ...".
Call it the "no recursion" rule.
Case in point:
The baker who refuses to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple is intolerant of gays. That is unjustified and wrong.
The gay couple who sues the baker who refuses to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple is intolerant of intolerance. That is justified and right.
The baker is unjustified and wrong to complain about the gay couple's intolerance of his intolerance, because he was unjustifiably intolerant himself, first.
Ok, let me be facetious. Take the baker situation and push it to full overdrive.
Let's say the baker was a victim of sexual abuse and the client was asking to bake a cake rape-themed. (Not in support, you can suppose it was a replica for a documentary let's say). The baker refuses, the client sues, who is the first intolerant?
Another case, a client enter the shop of a muslim baker and asks for a depiction of Allah on a cake. Who is the first intolerant?
Maybe you have answer for all such situations, but how confident are you that a majority agrees in all cases?
I think both these cases are fundamentally different -- the baker can refuse to bake a certain type of cake, on the grounds of religious expression clashing with the cake he is making. However, it's different if he refuses service on the grounds of the type of people he is making the cake for.
and in the actual case the baker refused to write a message on the cake. he was fine with the clients and with the cake.
He only objected to a custom message defying his belief. There are good arguments on both sides. (my stance is sort of about scale as in if he had enough employees to delegate or he was the only cake-maker there)
So nobody can exclude anyone else from anything? That would mean any organization is not free to stipulate who can and cannot be a member of that organization. Is the American Medical Society intolerant for excluding someone who does not believe in vaccines?
Because I'm certain a sizeable proportion of the US population would agree that it is intolerant.
It doesn't matter.
Religious freedom doesn't come before the civil rights of gay people. Gay marriage is the law of the land in the US; if your business can't service the needs of its citizens because of your religious beliefs, perhaps you shouldn't be in a position to be serving the public. It's really that simple.
It's literally the first right in the Bill of Rights. I'm not saying anything about gay rights, just that freedom of expression lays the foundation for all other rights
That's not a particularly good example. When you enter into commerce you step out of the personal space freedom of thought. And you do so in ways that may seem arbitrary. That arbitrariness is accepted as the price of entry. At least by most people with realistic expectations.
The baker case is very very specific, because it came down to the question: Is the cake art? If it is, and your business is to make are, can you be compelled to make art against your beliefs? If I recall, the bake got rid of all custom cakes and got in further trouble for refusing to tell cupcakes to homosexual couples.
But going back to the above post: at one time homosexuality was considered this abhorred plague, just has bad as modern day Neo-Nazism and white supremacy. So who decides what is and isn't acceptable speech?
When you start closing down those roads, you easily squeeze out any descent or ability to form new moral ideas.
In the case of 8chan, you're spreading these people to even more constrained services that amplify their view. You don't get less hate; you just bury it underground and give them they feeling like they're being persecuted. It will make the situation worse, not better.
Your last point seems spot on. The only way to get rid of nazis is to change their minds so they are no longer nazis. It should have been easy to show him that skin color doesn't determine culture or politics and that his actions were going to do nothing but drastically weaken his cause.
"You don't get less hate; you just bury it underground and give them they feeling like they're being persecuted. It will make the situation worse, not better."
I think the recent rise in white supremacist violence fueled by viral media on mainstream platforms like Youtube and Twitter is a pretty strong argument against this belief. Any content on such large and familiar platforms gets to borrow some sense of legitimacy, and people who consume the content have some plausible deniability. Furthermore, algorithms that favor "engagement" create the exact constrained hate-filled extremist communities you are picturing... but then actively draw users into them from the rest of the platform!
> Would you agree that saying that a baker in Colorado must make a cake for a gay wedding is intolerant of the baker's belief?
The whole point of that position is to prevent exactly that society. Where the hate, fear, discomfort, prejudice based intolerance grows to cause a society to degenerate into a sizeable proportion of a population deciding another proportion is morally wrong for preferring their own gender.
The goal of preventing that dysfunction supersedes word games about one type of intolerance being speciously equated to another.
Popper didn't exactly write a massive book on this. It was just a footnote in which he coined a memorable name for it.
> Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. 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. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
Popper argued here that we should try rational debate, but reserve the right to use force when debate has become impossible (due to intolerant people using force themselves, refusing to engage in reasonable debates, etc).
The issue isn't tolerance IMO, but the self selective societies that online forums can create.
I would also argue that asking for some minimum level of education/sophistication like the parent poster might qualify as the type of Platonic elitism which Popper was very much opposed to (The Open Society and its Enemies).
But then again defining what qualifies as tolerance also has the potential problem Platonic elitism (i.e. who sets the criteria).
It's a pretty tough job to balance freedom of speech and prevent hatebreeding at the same time. There are many philosophical approaches but I'd say that I haven't found one that satisfies me. Currently I'm leaning towards allowing everything in the hope that rationality will win out.
At the end of the day I think it's simply a very tough topic with no clear cut answer.
Very true. He also said that suppression of intolerant ideology is unwise as long as public opinion counters it. 8chan isn't really the center of public opinion.
There were third parties that pointed their fingers to those losers on these boards and now some people lashed out. I don't want to blame anyone besides the murder, but that is the game that is being played.
Being opposed to nazisim wasn't exactly rocket science some years ago, so I don't really can get behind comments pointing to the need for education and that the lack of the latter is reason enough to curb speech.
On one hand to reject it, you would be intolerant of hundreds of years of tradition.
On the other hand, to permit it is to accept the idea that men are incapable of controlling not sexually assualting a woman and that women ought to be blamed for their own victimization. This is clearly intolerant of women being full members of society.
Either way, permitting or banning the burka is intolerant.
Then you arrive at that whole legal concept of reasonable discrimination, because property laws discriminate against thieves. But what is reasonable here?
I'm fond of the idea of only tolerating tolerance, but how do you deal with these edge cases? If you rigidly adhere to that tolerance-uber-allis belief, how long until you end up jailing people for following ancient but intolerant traditions? How long until you end up with Chinese style muslim re-education camps? This isn't a troll, this is actually one of my own philosophical conundrums. I believe in a vacuum that people would be happier not following those ancient intolerant schemas, but I don't see that as the situation in the present day.
> If the woman want to wear Burka, it should be within their rights.
What if there are robbers targeting fuel stations and 7-11 stores or mugging people on the street, using burka's and the entire black garment to cover their intent on approach and foil any video surveillance?
How many such incidents would it take before you would consider that Burka's ought to be banned in public spaces? Let's up the stakes and say the robberies were violent; how many people would have to die before you banned burkhas?
Are we talking hypothetically? Because as of right now I cannot find any stats on burqa attacks in the states but people are robbing 7-11 stores every day without burqa anyways.
Netherlands just banned the Burkha in public spaces for this reason (among others).
In Australia bike helmets are banned in 7-11, Fuel stations, Banks, Pubs, Casino's, Festivals etc for the same reason.
The point I am making is that you can't ignore the possibility of bad actors now or in the future. There are layers of cultural differences and social mores and in a multicultural society you can't just import one aspect of a culture without considering the foundations and layers on top.
You can’t ban people’s right to be in public anonymously because a few crazies will use it to commit crimes. The solution of banning those measures is nearly equivalent to saying “all humans should be under 24/7 surveillance in public by the state for their own good”
In the context of American culture it seems like a significant fraction of citizens wish to own and bear arms. That desire which exists within those citizens has deep cultural and historical roots.
But export that same cultural desire via a migrant American residing in almost any other country in the world and it would seem out of place in the context of the local culture. People would be weird out by the creepy American who insists on keeping guns in his or her house.
Same goes for the Burkha. Take it out of context of it's deep historical and cultural context in it's birthplace and it is an anachronism; like taking Mt Fuji and placing in the middle of Saudi Arabia.
By which definition the first person crying "intolerance!" wins - now they can be intolerant for free, because they are just intolerating intolerance, but their opponents can't be. I don't think such model can be defined as "drawing a fine line" - more like providing a rich field for rhetorical abuse, as long as you can excuse your own intolerance by casting whoever you target as "intolerant" you yourself get a free pass for anything. Very convenient, of course, but to me it looks like a cheap trick.
I have a simplistic test when it comes to hate. I take the part of the message that identity the target and I change it to the opposite side of the political spectrum. If the comment/speech still sound like hate then it is hate. Thus my definition for intolerance is intolerance when it is independent of the reader/authors opinion about the target.
A lot of people disprove of this approach, arguing that by doing so we ignore the oppressed or helping the oppressors, and thus we end up with different view about intolerance.
societies should tolerate everything except intolerance
That is a nice ideal to strive for, but the problem is that one person’s idea of tolerance is another’s intolerance. Example: people in the Valley love to think of themselves as “tolerant”. But most outside the Valley view actions like those taken against Brendan Eich of Firefox and the firing of James Damore of Google as examples of extreme intolerance. Defenders of these actions would argue that they are defending tolerance, because the Valley viewed these people as being intolerant. Defenders of the individuals involved here would argue that these actions show the Valley is extraordinarily intolerant of any view that even slightly differs from their own.
It’s a thorny issue. I absolutely detest 8chan and most of the speech on it. Most normal people would. But I also recognize their right to exist, at least in a country that holds the concept of freedom of speech in such high regard.
> It was used to justify, depending on the period and country, not allowing people to vote on the basis that they didn't have enough revenue, didn't own enough land, couldn't read and write well enough, etc.
Democracy was basically conceived of as a pen-and-paper version of blockchain, where the goal was to create a balance between private property rights and the redistribution of wealth. Allowing people without proof-of-stake to vote wouldn't have made any sense in the beginning given that no one had any idea how the system would work. Keep in mind that the government was basically distributing free property to people as fast as possible so that more people could vote, and only stopped doing that once the country ran out of land.
Even today, most people wouldn't want to live in a system where millions of people could just show up for vacation for a couple days, vote to give themselves ownership of all the country's assets, and then leave.
>It draws a fine line between what's acceptable speech and what is not. And going by it, things like 8chan should get shut down.
I agree with most of your post, but on this particular point...
"First they came for the imageboards, and I did not speak out because I did not post on imageboards. Then they came for my facebooks, and zomg how did this happen?"
8chan is just an anonymous imageboard, similar to thousands of others online currently. It happens to have the characteristic of allowing creation of new imageboards in a similar way to Reddit allowing anyone to create subreddits. This characteristic has made it one of the most popular imageboards.
Much like the solution for Reddit was to shut down individual subreddits and ban particular posters, and the solution for Facebook was to close down individual groups and ban particular accounts, the solution for 8chan is to shut down individual boards and ban particular posters.
>Popper's tolerance criteria, by contrast, seems clearcut in a you know it when you see it kind of way.
This breaks down quickly when faced with a current example: Some folks oppose immigration of people that follow religions which espouse intolerance. Via your measure, this is justified. But many I think disagree with that stance, so how can this be resolved?
Clearcut is something that is easily / sharply defined. If you only know something when you see it then that thing is by its very nature not easily defined / loosely defined. These are opposite things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
That is not protected speech. The 'attack' is the keyword. Therefore, supremacist groups typically say "<oarabbus_'s ethnicity> is destroying <oarabbus_'s country of residence>" which is legal. They're just connecting the dots the only way they know how.
Yes, it is. The nuance he was intentionally illustrating is the basis of our entire law. The one key exception to freedom of speech is speech that will, with high certainty, provoke "imminent lawless action."
And this is something that is interpreted in the most literal and conservative fashion possible. In his former statement he has a specific target, time, and location. It is extremely likely that his behavior will result in imminent unlawful action. By contrast condemning a large group lacks any specificity and is, in and of itself, not likely to suddenly drive any specific unlawful action.
Issues similar to this have been brought up in the courts many times, and they almost invariably (sexual obscenity is one exception) yield lopsided results in favor of the 'offender.' One random recent case is Elonis vs the United States [1]. Elonis made statements online suggesting a desire to kill his estranged wife, later on kindergarten children, and then after that an FBI agent that had visited him in relation to the threat against children.
He claimed it was art and he was only expressing himself and not attempting to threaten or intimidate the individuals/groups in question, even though he was aware they would likely interpret it as threats. This is really a million times more threatening that some vague expression against an ethnicity. The supreme court ruled 8-1 in his favor. The US Supreme Court is extremely supportive of free speech, including the most detestable.
As an aside the links on the scotusblog are extremely high quality and provide lots of plain language analysis of the technical points. A phenomenal resource for any case or issue you're ever interested in learning about the legal nuances behind. For instance this [2] is their coverage of the 'gay cake' case.
> He claimed it was art and he was only expressing himself and not attempting to threaten or intimidate the individuals/groups in question, even though he was aware they would likely interpret it as threats. This is really a million times more threatening that some vague expression against an ethnicity. The supreme court ruled 8-1 in his favor. The US Supreme Court is extremely supportive of free speech, including the most detestable.
In this context it was not indeed a standalone statement.
from the wikipedia page indeed his statements are quite general and in a sense artistic. He did not argue for killing his ex-wife, there is no reading where he could encourage others to kill his ex-wife.
He really had a wish for it and was talking about it.
From what is reported in the wikipedia article even something like "I think it is a good idea to kill my ex-wife" would have been too much.
the "Let's" part is literally an encouragement. Surely it can be made legal (e.g. by obvious irony). In a case like Elonis v. United States the defense was that the statements where more of "I have a wish to kill X" instead of "I/you/we/they should kill X".
“Let’s attack” is generally the indicator here, and where we draw the line both morally and functionally. For example - there’s been very few partisan attacks on democrats despite the absolutely virulent “they’re destroying the country” speech from every conservative news sphere (and vice versa). Pundits have learned to walk that line because that has been the line that actual violence starts. 8chan has no filter or moderation on that. We see the results.
"The Court held that government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is 'directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.'"
Steve Scalise's assassination was attempted by a radical anti-Trumper, Antifa has cracked open skills and sent people to the hospital. We have strong evidence that anti-Trump Facebook groups and subreddits cause real-world violence.
The exception in this standard is for "likely" and "imminent" violence. There are also exceptions for the commission of a crime, but then the crime has to be committed, and thus the intent.
Episode 8 of the "Make No Law" First Amendment podcast has an excellent explanation of the difference between the two. That episode is a Q&A and covers other great topics as well. The entire podcast is excellent if you want a good, baseline understand on the exceptions to US first amendment law and why/how they are so narrowly defined.
Exactly. Its very hard to claim that one is just putting stuff out on "the marketplace of ideas", when in reality, losing ground to an ideology that places people who have non-majority skin color, sexuality or religious views (or lack thereof) below the majority is simply dangerous to any minority, and should not be allowed to fester. This is not just about ideas, its about refusing others the full rights of personhood. And that should not stand in any ethical society.
> Personally I'm in agreement with Popper's view that societies should tolerate everything except intolerance.
This is incorrect. Popper does not say intolerance should not be permitted, he said that we should not extend unlimited tolerance, and he expands by saying that only intolerance that cannot be countered by rational debate should be impermissible. Clearly escalation to violence is a form of intolerance that cannot be countered by rational debate but it's not clear at all what else should fall under this criteria.
This is clearly a very different claim that does not support your narrative, and instead, shows how your view is just another form of intolerance that we should oppose.
I’m not familiar with Popper’s work, but I see that quote (“tolerate everything but intolerance”) used to rationalize intolerance toward perfectly tolerant individuals. Any evidence that the target is “intolerant” suffices, no matter how tenuous or contrived (“an intolerant person once said a good thing about <target> therefore <target> is intolerant). This seems similar to the concern you expressed about the GP’s philosophy. Did Popper lay out more stringent criteria for what constitutes “tolerance” and “intolerance”?
> societies should tolerate everything except intolerance
I disagree.
Societies are held together by common moral standards. Intolerance of anti-social/moral behaviour (compared to the accepted standard) should be accepted, even encouraged.
One of the reasons the US is falling apart at the seams is because of the 'as long as I want to do it, I should be allowed to" attitude. People don't care what others think.
An extreme (of sorts) is Japanese society... if you are out of line expect that you will hear about it immediately from many people and the negative consequences of bad behaviour can be very broad and long lasting.
That sort of intolerant social pressure also led to a famously high suicide rate and a culture of workaholism that led to a word for “death by working too much”
Antisocial behaviours included women going to work and homosexuality in the past btw
I'm not advocating Japan's strict societal ideology, just pointing out that Western society's "intolerance is bad" (i.e. therefore I can give "zero fucks" about my bad behaviour) is also a problem.
Why should people tolerate things which they don't think it's in their interest to tolerate? If, for example, people believe it's harmful to their children to see people performing sexual acts in the street, why should they tolerate that behavior?
Are you aware of anyone in this thread, or of any major national movement, advocating for a tolerance-based right to perform sexual acts in public in front of children? Looking past the strange and extreme strawman you've propped up, the reasons for tolerance in society are multitudinous. It prevents misunderstanding, fear, and hatred from festering and potentially giving rise to violence.
As a simple thought experiment ask yourself the following question. How many individuals hailing from tolerant communities or organizations have you seen commit mass shootings? Contrast that to the number of individuals committing public violence who hold intolerance as a virtue. Public violence is a serious negative for everyone and its prevention should be reason enough to support tolerance as a basic tenet of societal health. The fact of the matter, no matter who might dislike it, is that modern societies are, for the most part, very diverse. Without tolerance for differences violence is a forgone conclusion in the modern world.
>Without tolerance for differences violence is a forgone conclusion in the modern world.
What makes you think that violence is not a foregone conclusion if you start prohibiting people from expressing their genuinely held political beliefs or advocating for what they see as their interests?
I encourage you to look twice at your question - I believe that, under close scrutiny, you will see that it contains its own answer.
No one is advocating for prohibiting people from peacefully expressing their genuinely-held political beliefs in ways that do not infringe on the rights of others in public (unless you want to count the multitudes of minority voters who are regularly removed from voting rolls by GOP lawmakers or subjected to onerous identification requirements and other intimidation tactics...). If a person's "genuinely-held political beliefs" involve racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., and if said person "genuinely believes" that the appropriate way to exert their opinion upon society is to discriminate against the people they hate or even inflict violence upon them, then they are crossing a line established by our societal norms and threatening the stability of society itself.
If a person's genuinely held political beliefs lead them to enact discrimination or violence upon others then they have placed themselves outside of society and are by definition not valid input sources for determining societal norms and laws.
>No one is advocating for prohibiting people from peacefully expressing their genuinely-held political beliefs in ways that do not infringe on the rights of others in public
OK, but some people are arguing for an expansion of some of those "rights of others" to include not being offended by political speech.
>If a person's "genuinely-held political beliefs" involve racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., and if said person "genuinely believes" that the appropriate way to exert their opinion upon society is to discriminate against the people they hate or even inflict violence upon them
I'm not talking about anyone actually discriminating against anyone or inflicting violence on them. I'm talking about people merely expressing their beliefs, which may include advocating for discrimination or the use of physical force.
>If a person's genuinely held political beliefs lead them to enact discrimination or violence upon others then they have placed themselves outside of society
Right, if they've broken the laws against such behavior, they've placed themselves outside of society. However, advocating for, for example, changing laws to allow such behavior is not currently against the law, and I don't think it should be.
Tolerance isn't the absence of rules, tolerance is leaving some space between what is undesirable and what is forbidden.
Which is why I don't understand why people think you can't be tolerant towards intolerance. There's plenty of room between what I think counts as intolerance and what I think should be forbidden by law.
Popper's quote is often quite misconstrued. Here it is, in context:
"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. 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. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
He is specifically framing the issue as one where an ideology goes outside of the realm of debate and on to violence. So for instance an ideology that says 'attack migrants' is obviously something that should be suppressed because these people have skipped the whole debate step and instead appointed themselves judge, jury, and executioner. But, by contrast, an ideology that argues for reasons why unchecked migration may be unhealthy for a society and lobbies for according change is something some may consider intolerant, but is quite obviously not what he was referring to. On the other hand, he would certainly have been opposed to Antifa which, though ostensibly fighting against intolerance, have once again appointed themselves judge, jury, and executioner and have 0 interest in debate or discussion or their views.
> On the other hand, he would certainly have been opposed to Antifa which, though ostensibly fighting against intolerance, have once again appointed themselves judge, jury, and executioner and have 0 interest in debate or discussion or their views.
With all due respect, "Antifa" in their use of the word is almost completely a straw man created by the extreme right to justify their insane and violent behavior. A couple people throwing milkshakes at intolerant political extremists in Portland doesn't equivocate to me with a group of people that are using stochastic terrorism tactics to murder hundreds of people. I sincerely doubt he would have made a both sides argument here with a weak resistance movement that hasn't even killed a single person yet. They're so nonviolent in comparison that the alt right has to create false information about their tactics (for example the "fast drying concrete in the milkshakes" lie that was completely false).
> They're so nonviolent in comparison that the alt right has to create false information about their tactics (for example the "fast drying concrete in the milkshakes" lie that was completely false).
Literally it was a police officer who saw and reported "what looked like" quick drying concrete.
> lie that was completely false
There were people associated with antifa publicizing this.
> I sincerely doubt he would have made a both sides argument here with a weak resistance movement that hasn't even killed a single person yet.
There is no "both side" there is violent extremists, whether they agree or not between themselves is irrelevant.
> hasn't even killed a single person yet.
Is this seriously the threshold for political violence and abandoning political rationality? (And anyway after Tacoma it is not for a lack of trying).
Right now what I see is one side being allowed with mainstream opinion of defending political violence. Antifa is performing political violence. Throwing a milkshake is not self-defense, it is political violence. Alt-right extremism is also political violence. I only see despicable people in both groups. I see no reasons why one side faults should excuse the other.
By equating "milkshake throwing" with the violence of the alt-right (using guns to murder tens/hundreds of innocent civilians) you portray both sides as equal when one side has clearly done something that is much more morally reprehensible.
This form of "enlightened centrism" is insidious because while it claims to be "neutral" and "unbiased", in reality, it artificially gives a moral advantage to one side (in this case the alt-right). It also ignores that sometimes sacrifices are necessary for the greater good.
Do you disagree with either of the following two points?
1. Even if milkshake throwing is bad, it is objectively less bad than shooting innocent civilians.
2. The "political violence" committed by the left is much smaller compared to the political violence committed by the right.
Are you unaware that of the two mass shootings that occurred in the US yesterday, one of them was perpetrated by a self-described 'leftist, anime fan, and metalhead' that supported Antifa?
I literally see no reason to compare them. Not one.
To answer: 1. true 2. agree.
So What?
The only thing you are doing is painting a romantic ideal of antifa as freedom fighters, robin hoods of the people. Stop. They answer violence with violence.
For me, the crux of the matter is that people use Antifa to claim that both the left and the right engage in equal amounts of violence or that both are equally morally bad/good.
I was pointing out that this isn't the case since Antifa uses several orders of magnitude less violence than its right-wing counterparts. Thus, antifa cannot be used to justify the statement that "the left and right are morally equivalent".
I never painted antifa in a romantic light, my point about sacrifices being made for the greater good was in reference to policies that help minorities at the cost of harming the majority.
> For me, the crux of the matter is that people use Antifa to claim that both the left and the right engage in equal amounts of violence or that both are equally morally bad/good.
For me that's simply irrelevant, because how "bad" your enemy is doesn't give you any additional leeway. You can use violence to directly prevent greater violence, for example in self-defense. Throwing milk-shakes at someone achieves nothing. Even when a murderer is arrested, the cops don't get to spit at them while they wait for trial. It doesn't matter in the least how bad a person is. It's a red herring from the word go, due process and same rights for all is a very clear standard, and normalizing violating it because "others are worse", leaves us with nothing.
How conveniently you forget how Steve Scalise was shot, how Bike Lock Man cracked open an old man's skull(and got away with probation), and many other things. The neonazis have done shootings, but the far left attempted to assassinate a senator. Both are pretty bad.
There is also the danger that if you keep equating Antifa with the right wing extremists shooting people you create a space on the ultra left for people who would do those things and I’m sure in any large movement those people are there.
It’s not like left wing groups haven’t done horrible things in decades past.
That said at the moment in the US it’s pretty clear that the body count (literal) is piling up on the right wing side.
Honestly if people could just stop shooting people for stupid reasons it would be awesome.
As an external observer it seems like the US is slowly sliding towards a worse state of affairs, the government seems unable to get it in hand, dangerous times.
Not much better over in the UK either, we have the ever present threat of the islamists, the border question in Northern Ireland hanging over everyone’s heads (I’m just old enough to to remember the IRA blowing up town centres on the mainland) and a group of people who are seriously pissed off brexit hasn’t happened yet, We already had a lovely MP shot to death by a right wing nut bag and there is a really ugly mood, people are really pissed off with the present state of affairs and another recession caused by economic fallout of brexit could light the touch paper.
I think there is a significant (though small) chance we’ll see troops on the streets peacekeeping over the next two years.
Side note:
I find the dismissal of the milkshakes to be a very disingenuous tactic.
From a group that promotes the idea that speech can be violence, the act of throwing any sort of projectile at anyone should be classified as a violent act without qualification.
You could argue that those milkshakes are also a form of stochastic terrorism as it demonstrates that those politicians are vulnerable. So those with the desire can reach them with something other than a milkshake.
I don't want to hear about how milkshakes aren't violence.
I want to hear why that violence is acceptable. Because, deep down, according to your actions, you think that sometimes violence is necessary.
He got shot, but not killed, so you are technically correct in stating that he is alive. I guess you totally defeated the parent commenter's point, good thing the shooters didn't have good aim, right?
I take the OP's original point to be that far-right ideological extremists have targeted, injured, and killed orders of magnitude more people than far-left ideological extremists during the last few years, which seems to me to be incontrovertible without resort to sophistry. Also, given that the larger context of this discussion is terrorist attacks rather than political confrontations that turned violent, it's relevant to ask "how many random bystanders have been killed when self-identified white supremacists opened fire on crowds vs. bystanders killed when self-identified 'antifa' have done so."
There's an interesting parallel here by Nassim Taleb, author of several books the most famous of which might be The Black Swan. In this article, a chapter from an in-progress book, he contends that the most intolerant faction will eventually come to dominate. In the article he's talking about extremist Muslims but it could just as easily be extremist Christians or extremist white nationalists.
Superficially, it does sound quite reasonable. The problem is that the quote itself is a call for people to abandon rational debate and use violence, not just against targets who have themselves eschewed debate for violence but against "any movement preaching intolerance". Whilst his justification is that those movements might themselves eschew debate for violence, he very specifically does not restrict this to movements which have done so or even threatened to do so.
So for instance, Poppler's paradox is easily used to justify violent intolerance of anyone who opposes unchecked immigration. Not only are they preaching intolerance, but people with very similar-sounding views are actually violently attacking immigrants so it's easy to justify the claim that those ones might as well.
The reason I offered Popper's entire quote is because while I do think many people use it as are you suggesting, his quote makes it quite clear that is not what he is suggesting. He is speaking of an intolerant view as one that is intolerant of alternative views. In other words a view that:
- refuses to debate or discuss its merits and values
- refuses to meaningfully consider or discuss alternatives
- responds to discussion with aggression
The book which includes his quote was published in 1945, Popper was of Jewish ancestry, and the book was speaking primarily about avoiding totalitarianism. His philosophy should be taken in that context. People are manipulating his quote to try to justify intolerance of anything except their own world view, but it is this exact sort of totalitarianism he was suggesting that may imperil an open and free society. In particular he also defined an open society as one "in which individuals are confronted with personal decisions" as opposed to a "magical or tribal or collectivist society."
Intolerance trends towards a closed society where you believe what you are supposed to believe, or face the consequences. Tolerance trends towards an open society where individuals may not agree, but are free to express themselves and challenge one another on any view or value.
> "I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. 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"
But I understand your point. To that end, attacking illegal immigrants would be "intolerant". But what about advocating their arrest and deportation?
Then it turns into a game (game theory, not Risk) of whom defines "intolerance". And once duly defined, it is now verboten and removed from discussion and vernacular.
Hot button topics: capitalism, abortion, religion, right vs left, states rights
I think the founders had it better: govt can't censor speech, so the individuals and the public could decide. Just, the framers didn't imagine companies of such scope.
Is it your understanding that 100% of the followers of Islam are intolerant? There has never been a single person who identifies as Islamic who has been tolerant?
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The line of thought you put forward, by contrast, rubs me in a very wrong way. It was used to justify, depending on the period and country, not allowing people to vote on the basis that they didn't have enough revenue, didn't own enough land, couldn't read and write well enough, etc. Allowing to disenfranchise voters on some arbitrary sophistication basis can and, if history is anything to go by, unfortunately will get abused. It breaks down to: who decides what's sophisticated enough?
Popper's tolerance criteria, by contrast, seems clearcut in a you know it when you see it kind of way.