Comment by exceptione
12 days ago
It isn't that hard. A democracy can be maximally liberal, including the internet, up to the Tolerance Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
The people that govern Big Tech have said as much as that they don't believe in democracy, they show they don't believe in fair markets, and they are put to work to implement the threats of a crazy but powerful clique, attacking free and social democracies with an endless stream of sponsored garbage. If the EU had any leaders instead of weasels, they would have closed the sewers that brings lies, hate, conspiracy theories and division. If the EU does not act, it will go down, taken apart by the oligarchs.
Tolerance Paradox is not a "Tolerance Threshold" - it's a Paradox. You cannot be maximally liberal "up to Tolerance Paradox" - as soon as you are maximally liberal to any threshold, you are no longer liberal - hence the paradox.
It seems you define liberal in a rigid way. What I tried to convey is that for any Tolerance to exist, it has room to tolerate anything except Anti-Tolerance, as part of its essence. Paradox isn't a contradiction ("you are no longer liberal"), it is something that might seem like a contradiction. But maybe we agree about that and my wording was confusing.
Let's leave "liberal" definition aside. I agree it's not well defined - I only used, because you said "maximally liberal".
A dilemma is a hard choice. A paradox is a principle that undermines itself when applied consistently. It doesn't "seem" like it - it is. In this case, if you stop intolerant ideas, you are no longer tolerant. That's quite simple, and Popper named it correctly as such. Now, if I put my 2c on it, the danger of this arbitrary "Tolerant except for the Anti-tolerant" idea is that, the tools you use to stop the Anti-Tolerant will one day turn around be used against the Tolerant as well, because these definitions are fluid.
When the example are "People from X are vermin" - yes this is anti-tolerant. But when "We should first create jobs for people born here"; is this anti-tolerant? It's a slippery slope where all ideas except the ruling one can be muted.
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This Tolerance Paradox is something I’ve been discussing lately with family and friends, but was having a hard time articulating. Thanks for the link.
I see tons of parallels with today’s world, on both sides of the spectrum (left/right, woke/unwoke etc).
Like, I do agree that most speech should be free and that dark humour and unpopular ideas and whatnot should be allowed even if you or a portion of the population don’t like it.
However I also think you can’t just say whatever you want and hide behind that free speech protection, because that opens the door to really nasty stuff that the human species has lived through.
But where’s the line?
That comedian arrested in the UK for a tweet[0], for instance. Do I agree? No. Do I think it was an intolerant thing to say from my POV? Yes. Do I think it is in fact inciting violence and deserves arrest? No.
On the other hand, you have people preaching white supremacy and talking about inferior races. We know where that led us.
So where’s the line? Same thing applies for these “regulated” surveillances. CSAM sounds like a good reason, but the same tools can be used to limit or monitor other speeches and behaviors. (Not to get into the debate of effectiveness, since bypassing is doable if you really want to).
I don’t have an answer, and I don’t think there is a clear line to be drawn.
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c07p7v2nn8mo.amp
The last line of that news article is quite important here. He was also arrested for a harassment charge which if memory serves was more serious than his tweets alone.
Your memory does not serve it seems at least I can not find anything “more serious” with a cursory search.
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