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> anti-Israeli campus posters as idiots

The problem with free speech absolutism is that it leads to the 'paradox of tolerance'. We are now seeing the fruits of that line of thinking.

> The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical concept suggesting that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance; thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance



I don't see the paradox. You can consider some people idiots and find it condemnable for idiots to be kidnapped in vans or have their visas revoked.

If anything it's a slipperly slope logic. These people are idiots -> these people deserve bad things happening. Unfortuntaely, the admin is proving all those fallacies before us.


'Considering some people idiots' is intolerance. Tolerating that kind of intolerance in the name of free speech in the marketplace of ideas or whatever can allow that intolerance to gain traction such that intolerance becomes a dominant mode of thinking, via tolerating people. Is that not the paradox?


> These people are idiots -> these people deserve bad things happening.

These are unfortunately the only circumstances in which I ever see Popper's "paradox" invoked.




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