Comment by mathnmusic
6 years ago
I think this sort of response was inevitable and will be seen in more and more nations. China bans most of the popular websites and apps (including Wikipedia). The most recent trigger was the border standoff between India and China where Indian citizens could see and read both governments' responses, but Chinese citizens were only told Chinese govt's talking points.
This seems like yet another instance of the paradox of tolerance (reciprocity is a must have for a tolerant/liberal/globalized society): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Though if you apply your argument with rigor and reciprocity was in play, more countries should ban american social media which censors geopolitical rivals
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/12/us-pressure-social-media-...
Venezuela, Iran and Syria do censor US media and it's far more extensive than any censorship of foreign media within the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Iran
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Syria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Venezuela
They do censor american social media. Like china and north korea obviously do
It's bound to happen. See the political battles being fought for data localisation, and control of Internet governing bodies.
So you're equating the banning of accounts to the blocking of the majority of internet?
America will literally fuck with you if you start doing this at scale. India can ban Chinese app since India can do this. China needed to understand this before escalating the border tensions with India.
The paradox of tolerance is bullshit though, as it's not based on empirical evidence.
It's just armchair philosophy used as justification for intolerance by intellectuals, the mental gymnastic people need to get over their cognitive dissonance.
AFAIK Plato came up with it to justify autocracy. That says it all actually.
This seems like a really wild stance to take on a paradox. Paradoxes aren't principles, laws, or theories. They're just self-contradictory or logically contrary statements; they don't require "empirical evidence" outside of the reasoning laid out in the paradox itself.
It would be better to say that people shouldn't use a paradox as evidence for something (e.g., claim aliens must exist because of Fermi's Paradox).
> paradox of tolerance
Unnecessary use of the 'paradox' label.
If a criminal shoots a cop, that is violence.
If a cop shoots the criminal back, is that the 'paradox of violence' ?
If a surgeon cuts open a patient with a knife, to treat a tumor, is that the 'paradox of violence' ?
Violence used to curb violence is peace. Peace used to ignore violence is violence.
There is nothing 'paradoxical' about not tolerating the intolerant. That is basic justice.
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Well no, a claim is made and that is... unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. And this is then used as an argument in debates such as this one.
Are there documented cases of this happening or is it just a wild guess?
My bet is on the later.
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I think you're going to get heavily downvoted (HN loves the paradox of tolerance), but I wholeheartedly agree. I think it's complete nonsense, not to mention that its spirit is much better represented by older ideas (e.g. Mill's Harm Principle). "Tolerance" is kind of a weasel word anyway, essentially giving carte blanche to the one that invokes the paradox.
The evidence is in: HN hates the paradox of tolerance and loves the idea of having its cake and eating it, too. I'm not surprised, but I'm slightly surprised that you're surprised.
> "Tolerance" is kind of a weasel word anyway, essentially giving carte blanche to the one that invokes the paradox.
How so? Demonstrating that a principle makes for a poor foundation has little bearing on its ultimate validity.
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For me the paradox of tolerance doesn't make too much sense is because intolerance usually is recursive. There would be intolerance, and intolerance of intolerance, and intolerance of intolerance of intolerance, so on so forth. It is usually can be used as justification against other groups, since everyone is in the intolerance chain.
Maybe it should be paradox of even/odd level of tolerance? Also, in practice, it's hard to define which are the primitive intolerances and which are not.
And why should we believe you vs. Plato?
You shouldn't believe me or Plato, unless you like religion. You should believe in empirical evidence.
Is it based on empirical evidence? Is it based for example on longitudinal social studies? The answer is no.
And certainly absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence but it's baffling to me how people can cite this as fact, even if it might as well be bullshit.
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It explains cancel culture perfectly though.
> The paradox of tolerance is bullshit though
So do you tolerate intolerance?
Sorry, not falling in that trap ;-)
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That isn't a natural dichotomy, it's silly to break down problems into that sort of black and white ("you're either for us or against us!" sort of nonsense). There are always multiple choices.
The real question is whether reacting with similar intolerance leaves you better off - or has any meaningful influence on the bad actors in question.
Diplomacy is full of these tradeoffs.
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don't we all tolerate intolerance on some level/topics?
it seems to be perfectly acceptable to be intolerant to some groups of people and religions/ideologies.
How is "tolerance" relevant to banning apps based on national origin?
This is nothing but good old fashion economic escalation.
The China censors things so we should too stance just seems to strengthen their position of censorship...
Quite the opposite. China (the country, not China the economy) is investing billions into developing tech companies to surveil their citizens. Those apps are all centrally controlled by the Chinese government. They can freely suppress discussions without you ever knowing. Hell, they don't even need to censor it but only need to make it less discoverable.
As soon as those apps reach the western hemisphere (or just anything outside China) and become dominant communication mediums, the Chinese government will be able to dictate opinion in the West.
Thats exactly how HN keep misteriously pushing things out of the top 30 no matter how many upvotes.. Also theres control in the flagging mechansim - as in shrugs, we don’t know, it was flagged by some users... shrugs again..
Im just making the case about HN not because I disagree with their job of keeping things civil, in fact this is much less toxic a platform than many others. My point is that whoever has the control can dictate whatever they see fit or serves their interest. For that reason I’d never use TikTok, not even to see what it is about because of who is backing it
I know something similar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel
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What do you think the ad networks and social networks are all already doing? Reddit just deleted a whole subreddit... (which ultimately moved to its own website).
At some point it's not really about censorship or freedom of speech anymore... and more about not letting the other guys win.
I think quite the contrary, China has very limited interest in using propaganda to influence the western-sphere. I used to be very inline with these news but as my old friends from youth progress in their careers in China (many in those 'state based' sectors), I grow increasingly skeptical as I know more about their mundane jobs. Yes a lot of policies seem to be from a backward society, but actually a lot are benign and these perceived 'agenda' don't really exist in real life. To be quite frank technology-wise China is still vastly behind world's frontier.
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How does this have anything to do with tolerance? India has never been known to highly value tolerance, and this move is about national security rather than censorship on the Chinese apps.
> I think this sort of response was inevitable and will be seen in more and more nations. China bans most of the popular websites and apps (including Wikipedia).
Hopefully the rest of the world follows suit and bans Chinese apps and websites.
> paradox of tolerance
Unnecessary use of the 'paradox' label.
If a criminal shoots a cop, that is violence.
If a cop shoots the criminal back, is that the 'paradox of violence' ?
If a surgeon cuts open a patient with a knife, to treat a tumor, is that the 'paradox of violence' ?
Violence used to curb violence is peace. Peace used to ignore violence is violence.
There is nothing 'paradoxical' about not tolerating the intolerant. That is basic justice.
>Unnecessary use of the 'paradox' label.
No, it is not. You just didn't read up what the paradox is—or what a paradox is for that matter.
Tolerating the intolerant, or intolerating the intolerant - that's not a paradox.
It's no different from the police using violence on violent people.