The obvious problems with 'the paradox of intolerance' being that anyone who can convince themselves of another's intolerance now has moral license to behave intolerantly to an unspecified degree. Of course, exactly this sort of thing happens all the time; notably, it was used to rationalize Google's firing of James Damore--Damore's memo allegedly contained "dogwhistles" so he deserved being fired, slandered by the media, and mobbed on social media.
If it wasn't problematic it probably wouldn't be called a paradox.
I'm inclined to divide intolerances into two types: intolerances based on what somebody thinks, and intolerance based on what somebody is. I'm further inclined to model intolerances as a directed graph where nodes represent a group of one of those two types, e.g. conservatives and men might be represented by individual nodes of those two types respectively. Edges represent an intolerance, e.g. there would be an edge pointing from Klan members to black people. The former node would be of the first type, the latter of the second.
Where there's a cycle in this graph we are seeing a mutual intolerance of people with different ideas. An example might be people who think the Earth is flat and people who think it is round. Who is right? It's impossible to say without diving into the issues themselves.
flat earthers <=> round earthers
Because what you think is independent of what you are, nodes of the second type cannot have outgoing edges. Incoming edges represent base intolerances of the sort that have historically been very harmful: racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on. Obviously these edges represent a different type of intolerance because they are based on innate attributes that their targets have no control over. To a liberal person, they are essentially definitionally bad. To an illiberal person, they're fine. Great, even, depending on who you ask.
Note that I'm talking about liberalism in the general definitional sense, not in the modern U.S. politics sense (i.e. "the left").
So, how about this graph taken from real life (the <=> represents two edges, one pointing in each direction):
anti-racists <=> white racists -> non-whites
Deletion of the rightmost edge (i.e. deletion of white racism) means that we also have to delete 'white racists' or the implied meaning of the graph is paradoxical. It then follows that we have to remove 'anti-racists'. Now we have no intolerance at all—all that's left in the graph is `non-whites`, enjoying their existence without harassment, and all it took was the elimination of racism. You could also remove the 'white racists' node, with similar meaning and identical effect.
However, deletion of 'anti-racists' leaves the racism intact. I'd argue that this form of graph appears in many places where there is an illiberal group intolerant of a type two group and a liberal group locked in mutual intolerance with the illiberal group. The inverse setup doesn't really appear because, as I noted before, edges pointing to type two nodes represent a sort of intolerance that is anathema to liberals.
I'd also argue that there is a strong implication that these sorts of edges are the most important to remove—because, as demonstrated, doing so causes the rest of the graph to collapse. They are the "root cause", if you will, of many webs of interconnected intolerances.
It should be obvious that this model denies the assertion made by many modern American 'conservatives' that intolerances are all equivalent and relative, "the tolerant left", etcetera. I would say the water is most muddied by the fact that our 'left' and 'right' do not map cleanly onto liberal and illiberal. It's easy and sexy—but invalid—to apply the same political label to someone who thinks gay couples should be able to enjoy the same legal benefits as heterosexual married couples, and someone who thinks all white people should be killed.
P.S. Damore is a moron and his pseudoscientific screed was legitimately offensive to his co-workers. That's fine justification for him to be fired from his job at a private company. As for the rest of it, we live in a culture of growing illiberalism and zeal for generating outrage. It's a bummer.
I think you missed the point of my post, which was that this paradox allows anyone to abuse anyone else if the abuser can convince themselves that the abused is really 'intolerant'. As in the Damore case, a certain political group didn't like his message, so they claimed it contained hidden white/male supremacy messages, which was sufficient to justify his termination and abuse (contrary to your ad hominem post-script); the mob patted themselves on the back citing this very paradox.
I think you missed the point of mine. Doesn't matter.
A lot of people made a lot of politicized fuss about the Damore thing, but the simple fact is that his document contained offensive generalizations about women and if I was a woman I would not want to work with him. He's free to say whatever he wants; as I said before, though, this is a fine justification for termination.
A lot of people from all sides of the spectrum made it a political issue, because of course they did. The left said Google didn't act quickly or harshly enough and the right acted like Damore's right to speak freely was being taken from him. I'm not one of those people and I'm not interested in discussing the issue in terms of 'ideologies'. Ultimately, as I've said before, what he did does not have to be viewed through a political lens for it to be a legitimate justification for termination.
edit: I said "if I was a woman I would not want to work with him." Actually I would not want to work with him regardless.
I may have. It sounded like you were highlighting the paradox itself, while I was intending to highlight the way the paradox lends itself to abuse. Perhaps ironically, your comments about Damore and the memo are exemplary--the memo contains zero offensive generalizations; it's been picked over and no one has produced an 'offensive generalization'--only phrases that allegedly contain offensive hidden messages. And because of those hidden messages, the mob pats itself on the back for helping to suppress Damore's "intolerance" (by the way, the same mob was rationalizing the New York Times hiring Jeong despite her four-year montage of overtly racist tweets). Again, I don't want to focus too much on any one example, because there are so many others and I don't want to steal attention from the broader phenomenon.
> I may have. It sounded like you were highlighting the paradox itself, while I was intending to highlight the way the paradox lends itself to abuse.
My intent was to illustrate that not all intolerances are only relative degrees of the same thing (as claimed in the popular 'conservative' talking point); some are categorically distinct, and in a web of interconnected intolerances the two types that I identified interact in asymmetrical ways.
I mostly just wanted to write down an idea that occurred to me on my walk home from work. I don't expect something that long to play well in an internet forum. It's meant as an interesting abstraction, not an airtight position.
> Perhaps ironically, your comments about Damore and the memo are exemplary--the memo contains zero offensive generalizations; it's been picked over and no one has produced an 'offensive generalization'--only phrases that allegedly contain offensive hidden messages. And because of those hidden messages, the mob pats itself on the back for helping to suppress Damore's "intolerance" (by the way, the same mob was rationalizing the New York Times hiring Jeong despite her four-year montage of overtly racist tweets). Again, I don't want to focus too much on any one example, because there are so many others and I don't want to steal attention from the broader phenomenon.
It's quite literally the only piece of coverage I've seen of the Damore saga that I mostly agree with. Otherwise I think I've said what I have to say about him and his document. If you want to project politics onto me, I can't stop you, but I don't think it's productive. My opinions on this issue aren't political.
> My intent was to illustrate that not all intolerances are only relative degrees of the same thing
Ah, I see. I agree, though I wasn't espousing the "popular conservative talking point" (which I've never actually heard before), so I'm not quite sure why the conversation took that particular turn.
> Have you read this
I have, but I don't really want to dissect that here and now.
> If you want to project politics onto me
I don't want to, and I don't think I did. :) Sincere apologies if I offended.
