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Cake day: December 13th, 2024

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  • That clears it up, and I missed it earlier: we appear to have a merely verbal dispute over the word tolerance.

    You mentioned speaking out against the objectionable (an act lacking force) as an instance of not tolerating it. This is not the notion of tolerance defined in the wikipedia article or SEP article that discussions of the paradox go by. Tolerance is permitting ideas, action, practices one considers wrong yet not worthy of prohibition or constraint. Typical formulations of the concept consist of 3 components:

    1. objection component, the object considered wrong or bad
    2. acceptance component, reasons to permit it regardless
    3. rejection component, the boundary from tolerable to intolerable where reasons to reject outweigh reasons to permit.

    Not tolerating something—not permitting it—implies prohibiting or constraining it somehow. Wherever someone could express/do/be something intolerable that usually means force to prevent/limit them from doing so. Acts (such as speaking out, not sharing your things) that don’t prohibit or constrain the objectionable still permit & therefore tolerate it.

    Tolerance has a number of paradoxes identified in the SEP, and the paradox in discussion is more precisely called the paradox of drawing the limits. By permitting the objectionable & merely objecting, it’s still tolerated & the paradox of drawing the limits isn’t really an issue here.

    As you point out, general rules (on harm, violence, force, etc) mostly resolve these paradoxes without special embellishment needed.


  • If there’s an unacceptable use of Force against the intolerant, then is there one which is acceptable and if there is

    I don’t see how that follows: spell out the logic?

    use of Force against intolerance

    I’m mostly confused, because I was thinking of violence/force used by the intolerant for intolerant acts: that can be justifiably constrained.

    Legal constraint implies force by legal authorities: violators go to jail or get legal penalties.


  • The argument isn’t rational to begin with, rationality cannot disprove it in the minds of those who believe it.

    So, people are just powerless to do anything but follow at the call of bigotry & disinformation, and they’re witless masses totally unamenable to reason? Got it.

    The KKK has largely been expelled from society for the past century (not entirely).

    That’s a weird example: white supremacists & KKK spoke openly and terrorized with complicit support of local & state authorities during the civil rights movement. Despite that, the civil rights movement prevailed. Without understating the difficulties, challenging reprehensible ideas is evidently possible.

    Speaking with a Nazi posits that their ideology has the same value as yours.

    No: association fallacy. Now you’re being irrational. You were before, but are now, too. It merely means we disagree, same as rebutting someone who is wrong.

    Nazis should be expelled from society in their entirety.

    Unless we exterminate them or deport them (where?), I don’t see how we do that. Maybe you mean suppress them from freely expressing themselves? Sacrificing any civil rights to achieve any of that is almost certainly an unjust threat to civil rights. Maybe you prioritize civil rights, too, but think sacrificing them is necessary to defend them?

    Neoliberal propaganda has convinced you that all ideas have value.

    No. We’re merely convinced bad causes can be defeated justly, because it’s been done before.

    Sometimes I wonder if these types of claims discouraging the healthy, open discourse we had decades ago are disinformation designed (1) to make people think the effort is futile and (2) to inflame & harden polarization. Same with comics like this.


  • The paradox of tolerance doesn’t lead to a unique conclusion. Philosophers drew all kinds of conclusions. I favor John Rawls’:

    Either way, philosopher John Rawls concludes differently in his 1971 A Theory of Justice, stating that a just society must tolerate the intolerant, for otherwise, the society would then itself be intolerant, and thus unjust. However, Rawls qualifies this assertion, conceding that under extraordinary circumstances, if constitutional safeguards do not suffice to ensure the security of the tolerant and the institutions of liberty, a tolerant society has a reasonable right to self-preservation to act against intolerance if it would limit the liberty of others under a just constitution. Rawls emphasizes that the liberties of the intolerant should be constrained only insofar as they demonstrably affect the liberties of others: “While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger.”

    Accordingly, constraining some liberties such as freedom of speech is unnecessary for self-preservation in extraordinary circumstances as speaking one’s mind is not an act that directly & demonstrably harms/threatens security or liberty. However, violence or violations of rights & regulations could justifiably be constrained.


  • Polysemy is a regular part of language, and rather than accept Warner’s assumptions, Elle could have countered that tolerance (in the stricter sense of allowing or overlooking an objectionable matter) is satisfied.

    That said, tolerance is not that confusing, and a looser sense of tolerant (meaning not intolerant) was commonly understood as more live and let live, open-minded, gracious, charitable, inclusive, etc. In the 90s & early 2000s, leftists were more commonly easy-going, freedom loving, unconventional, uncritical like the Dude while rightists were more rigid puritans critical of any provocative influence (non-judeo-christian) they believed would corrupt society & children. When rightists claimed to be tolerant (stricter sense), skeptics might wonder if they’re really that tolerant of objects they frequently complain about. Leftists, in contrast, were largely more tolerant in that looser sense. Later, more critical leftists gained influence and may have increasingly distanced themselves from people with disagreeable ideas even on technologies that could bring people together (can’t platform those pesky ideas).

    Consent can have a more open meaning, though it seems you’re trying to load a biased definition. It’s an agreement to participate where rights are at stake. Your negative connotation isn’t necessary: people can consent to share something fun together or take risks. There are certainly other words that could better fit your idea like interest, eagerness, or willingness.

    I don’t know what identity is doing here. I think we already knew without much explanation that social identity is made up of multiple, diverse factors: some personally determined, others inherited or socially determined. Buzzy intersectionality isn’t needed to understand that, and it doesn’t blow the imagination.


  • That said, there was crazy homophobia back then.

    Yes, not to understate it. Though it was a few years earlier, Matthew Shepard’s murder was prominent, and similar homophobic killings continued into the 2000s. Nightclub shootings took headlines this decade & the last, too. While parts of society seem more tolerant nowadays, regressive parts of society have hardly changed at all, so it’s hard to gauge.


  • That take seems a bit inaccurate.

    Metrosexual meant going above & beyond in male beauty care (a pretty low bar): going to a salon to get manicures & pedicures, maybe apply foundation & eyeliner, manscaping. Possibly wearing those low-heel shoes that show the ankles without socks.

    I also remember the words fag and like being ambiguous such that in written contexts I’d sometimes see the clarification good kind of fag to mean homosexual in contrast to an insult directed at someone the insulter dislikes (for being pretentious, aggravating, annoying or whatever). In speech, the distinction was often understood from tone & context, so someone could be a fag (homosexual) yet not an effing fag (detestable), and their company might be absolutely welcome for that reason. An insulter would usually pile on imagery of the subject performing homosexual acts as the recipient of such insults typically disapproves portrayals of themselves that way. The insult was a way to puncture egos & authorities claiming a traditionally masculine image. It wasn’t particularly effective against out & proud homosexuals or people who weren’t homophobic. While fag wasn’t always an insult, however, bigots & religious zealots often drew no distinction, either.



  • Passkeys or WebAuthn are an open web standard, and the implementation is flexible. An authenticator can be implemented in software, with a hardware system integrated into the client device, or off-device.

    Exportability/portability of the passkey is up to the authenticator. Bitwarden already exports them, and other authenticators likely do, too.

    WebAuthn relying parties (ie, web applications) make trust decisions by specifying characteristics of eligible authenticators & authentication responses & by checking data reported in the responses. Those decisions are left to the relying party’s discretion. I could imagine locked-down workplace environments allowing only company-approved configurations connect to internal systems.

    WebAuthn has no bearing on whether an app runs on a custom platform: that’s entirely on the developer & platform capabilities to reveal customization.