Yes, Popper was the original on this thinking. Not Taleb. This is where the phrase "freedom requires we be intolerant of the intolerant"

I didn't know about Popper before. This rings so true today more than ever. I often joke about my home town of San Francisco that we are very open minded as long as you believe exactly the same things we believe.

Unfortunately, everyone seems to be keen on justifying their own intolerance with the supposed intolerance of the other.

If all it takes people to be freely intolerant is to convince themselves that the object of their intolerance is intolerant too, intolerance spreads everywhere.

Yeah, it's not like we have actual Neo Nazis marching in our streets chanting things like "The Jews will not replace us!". It's just a bunch of SJW calling everyone intolerant so they can be intolerant themselves.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/nazis-r...

Ah, you're referring to that time when 100 idiots out of a country of 320 million people dressed up like nazis three years ago?

Please check out the term "Overton Window"

>Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that, "In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance."'

Is it paradoxical? There's "no paradox of peace", the idea that "In order to maintain a peaceful society, the society must be violent against the non-peaceful"

Quakers, hippies, the anti-war movement, and many others would disagree with you.

Elaborate? If China starts dropping bombs in the US, do they think that we should not retaliate?

That's the idea. Quakers will never take up arms. In both world wars they would actively help in peaceful ways (helping widows, sending care packages to POWs, etc), but their actions remain peaceful.

>Early Quakers were among the leaders of the anti-slavery movement in the United States. Quakers are also pacifists, responding to wartime calls for service seeking out non-combat roles such driving ambulances or serving in conscientious objector work camps.[0]

[0] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/quakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Testimony

This would really only work in the US, where invasions are very rare. Also, there's a difference between refusing to fight on foreign soil (like in ww1/ww2), and defending your homeland. eg. if the enemy is right outside their village, and they're going to rape/kill/pillage them, are they not going to fight back?

There have been similar cultures throughout history and throughout the world. Many Native American or Pacific Islander tribes refused to take up arms. Those tribes are no longer with us, but the cultural idea that one should not inflict violence on your fellow humans keeps popping up.

I think the paradox results from a confusion of static vs. dynamic equilibrium. The consequence of not fighting back when attacked is that you end up dead. But that doesn't mean everyone will fight back - people end up dead all the time, there are plenty of human behaviors that lead to the death of their host and still persist (suicide being the most obvious one). Empathy is pretty deeply rooted in the human psyche, and is adaptive under most peaceful conditions. It's not a stretch to imagine groups for whom it becomes a way of life, at least until they're dead.

Any view can be described as intolerant. Stamping out, “intolerant” views is one of the reasons many authoritarian regimes uses to stamp out dissent.

The United States did this when it persecuted leftist sympathizing folks back in the 50's. "If we don't kill communism, then communism will kill our society. These filthy socialists and communists preach intolerance with rhetoric against the hardworking American. Tolerating them will only get us killed."

The USSR did this by sending people who questioned party agenda straight to the gulags. "By going against party thinking, these people are pushing for an intolerant society that is stratified with the class structures of old. We need to get rid of them before they ruin our perfect tolerant society."

The same logic is used to try to stamp out Muslims in countries like India right now and other places in the world historically. "If we leave the intolerant Muslims around, they'll bring forth Jihad and enforce Sharia law on everyone. The Koran is very intolerant about how non-Muslims should be treated, we need to force them out because their intolerant views are a threat to tolerance everywhere."

Literally every Christian country post-Martin Luther in the middle ages used that logic to wage wars on other Christian countries. Not just Christian vs. Christian of course. It's why countries in the past fought against each other over religion so much. When intolerance is defined as views that I don't agree with, it becomes kill or be killed world.

One of the best features of the enlightenment thinking is the concept of tolerance. One of the fundamental principles of Western thought. The idea that, we might have fundamentally opposing views, but can we interact without having to resort to a scorched earth policy. It started with Christians tolerating other sects of Christianity, but it’s now encompassed nearly every historical division.

The paradox of tolerance is inherently wrong, because true tolerance requires you to be tolerant to beliefs that you believe are intolerant.

What would you suggest the citizens of Weimar Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s do to prevent the rise of Nazism while also being tolerant?

Fascism and Stalinism are two endpoints of Enlightenment thinking. Is it merely utopian to aspire for tolerance when it's clear that it can lead to the depths of brutality and stupidity?