I think anyone pitching the “paradox of tolerance” needs to understand recursion a little better, or perhaps try to understand how their argument looks in a mirror to someone who disagrees with their stated position.
In my opinion that "paradox" is just used as a justification to silence speech of others. All one must do is label their opponent as "intolerant", and all of a sudden all bets are off. And frankly, nowadays more and more perfectly normal behaviour such as simply disagreeing is seen as intolerant.
The problem is exacerbated because 'intolerance' is a buzzword like 'violence' now. It's a label used to attempt to silence or de-platform a dissenting opinion.
The people applying the label are often themselves the perpetrator of intolerance against a valid, and perhaps even mainstream, political viewpoint. Turns out silencing your political opponent is an extremely effective strategy.
> It's a label used to attempt to silence or de-platform a dissenting opinion.
Right. Dissent != intolerance. Something that is just a dissenting opinion would not qualify as something we should be intolerant of, only actual intolerance.
even recursive loops have a point of exit, in this case it would look something like
if ("promotes violence" && "has not been receiving violence") {
print ("this person is intolerant")
}
else if ("has been receiving violence" && "promotes violence") {
print ("this person is oppressed and is trying to oppose that")
}
else {
print ("this person is not within the scope of intolerance")
}
All rights have limits, often rights exist at the expense of other potential rights, our ancestors/predecessors and us have decided what those should be, how they should be handled and what exceptions/allowances should be made. Free speech is one thing but in twitter's particular case is bumps up against property laws as twitter although open to the public is private property. Similarly slander laws exist, and similarly there are other limits of speech that are not protected by the 2nd amendment particularly categories like: incitement, defamation, fraud, obscenity, child pornography, fighting words, and threats. These exclusions always were intended to deal with the intolerant (meaning those who would perform or incite violence unprovoked). Can it be leveraged to silence opposition, yes our laws are not as air tight as they should be especially on the enforcement end of things, but was that the case here? I don't think so, this is a pretty cut and dry case of incitement.
