"How wonderful it would be if all people renounced violence forever ... I could conquer the whole stupid planet with just a butter knife." - Dogbert (https://dilbert.com/strip/1989-10-20)
A super-fast, 4-minute trip through my thinking on Karl Popper's arguments in "The Open Society And Its Enemies".
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If we want to preserve an open society, then we must preserve openness, and at the same time preserve society. To preserve openness, we must tolerate all ideas. To preserve society, we must NOT tolerate all ideas.
The paradox exists because we assume a few things:
there is no middle ground: anything short of full tolerance compromises the open society, leading ultimately to tyranny.
some ideas are anti-social: giving voice to them is a threat to society.
all ideas have merit: repressing any idea is also a threat to society.
Isn't it a bit strong to say that ideas are dangerous?
Hmm. In "The Republic", Plato argues that if a society is already as good as it is going to get, any change will make society worse. So any ideas that encourage change must be repressed, as allowing such ideas threatens the very society that allows them.
Meh! Let me re-word the argument a bit.
We tolerate all ideas because we want to engage with all points of view.
We DON'T tolerate all ideas because we want to defend against coercion of any one point of view.
We want to both engage and defend because we want to make good decisions. We want to maintain - and even improve - our society.
Why engage with all points of view? Why not ignore the obviously bad ideas?
Because ideas are bad until they aren't. An idea can appear to be bad at first glance, but turn out to be useful on closer examination. Anyway, who exactly gets to decide "good" or "bad"?
So why not tolerate ALL ideas? Can't coerced ideas also be good on closer inspection?
It does seem that we are confusing the messenger with the message, and in fact rejecting bad messengers. Which goes back to the point above - who gets to decide "good" or "bad"?
And that is the problem: the very fact that a coerced idea IS BEING COERCED means that one group is pushing its idea of "good" or "bad" onto everyone else, bypassing the usual process of discussion and refinement that ensures the ideas are for the wider good.
Multilateral ideas and decision-making involve a wide range of views. This is more likely to produce outcomes that are considered "good" by most/all parties.
Unilateral ideas and decision-making by definition ignores most other viewpoints. They are likely to produce outcomes that most parties have objections to - and so can only be implemented through use of some sort of force.
Furthermore, by serving only the "good" of a few parties, unilateral decisions ignore the "bad" viewpoints. This runs the risk that legitimate problems will be overlooked. Multilateral decisions tend to catch these problems in advance.
So what is tolerance in this context?
When two parties are in conversation, each is allowed to express ideas, and each listens to the ideas of the other. There is mutual engagement, even in the face of "bad" ideas from the other party.
In Game Theory, this reciprocal arrangement is known as the "tit-for-tat" strategy. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for...) It largely encourages cooperation between parties.
If one party stops listening, or suppresses the ideas of the other party, this strategy shuts down the conversation, leading to mutual intolerance. While the first party may have a short-term gain, it is bad in the long term for both parties.
Alack, when once our grace we have forgot,
Nothing goes right; we would and we would not.
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
So how does this help the paradox?
Let's revisit the purpose of having an open society in the first place. Is it to maximize free speech, and therefore avoid any and all censoring of voices?
Popper suggests that the purpose is actually to MINIMIZE TYRANNY, which requires censoring of bullying tactics. Popper's view means that:
we can allow censure of some parties.
we can still encourage free speech, so long as there is mutual engagement.
in other words, we encourage free CONVERSATIONS.
we aim for open communication within our society.
How does that help?
Let's revisit the original paradox.
If we want to preserve an open society, then we must encourage multilateral ideas, and at the same time discourage unilateral ideas.
To encourage multilateral ideas, we must engage with all parties. That's what multilateral means, after all.
To discourage unilateral ideas, we must … ALSO engage with all parties. By definition, non-engagement is unilateral. To discourage it, we have to encourage engagement.
Where's the paradox?
The paradox disappears.
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Music is "Outsider's Paradox" by Springtide.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/sp...
More fun reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox...
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