cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/6541859
Wiki - The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
I never signed a social contract. Your argument is false.
Teachable moment here. Your reply is why the paradox of tolerance needs to be taught to everyone, even if it's not perfect. You didn't sign any tolerance agreement upon birth, but treating your fellow humans with tolerance if they are doing the same for you should not be something you have to consciously agree on or physically sign paperwork for.
I understand the paradox of tolerance. This “social contract” stuff is BS, though.
“Social contract” is made up by people who don’t understand the paradox of tolerance. ITT: many of them
You're speaking to two separate issues here. Seems like you're on the same page regarding tolerance, so I'll practice some more of that today and see if I can explain the concept of a social contract in layman's terms. Presuming that you're not trolling here.
In essence, the 'social contract' is a mutual agreement between individuals and their respective systems of government that states, "I will allow some of my personal sovereign rights to be curtailed by you in exchange for peace and security". These curtailed rights are absolute freedoms, e.g. the freedom to kill anyone or steal from your neighbor - rights which everyone has but in practice few people use because most people prefer peace and to be left alone.
The social contract is what gives governments the right to rule - because governments are supposed to protect their citizens against the 1% of people in any given society that want to break laws for their own benefit. This obviously is where things start to break down when put into practice. Hopefully you can see how it's supposed to work and why it's essential for modern society. It's a give and take.
If you don't like the social contract in your area, then you vote with your feet if you can. Go somewhere else where they won't care if you dump your night soil into the river, or that won't give you problems if you decide to rob your neighbor. Places like that are usually pretty rough though.
First, see my comments here where I learn a little bit and explain why I still don’t like the idea. But you’ll probably get the TL;DR from this reply.
I enjoy trolling sometimes (mostly shitposting), but I’m not trolling here.
This is just called law isn’t it? I can understand that the idea of a social contract may have existed prior to the idea of “law”, but if that’s the case I am curious why the idea of ‘social contract’ is even brought up, if we can discuss it in the context of law.
This gave me pause and I needed to re-read it a bit. Just to make sure we’re on the same page, is this describing a group of people selling the idea of protection (from death or theft) for the fee of being governed (and being punished if they kill or steal)? Again, not trolling, just trying to understand who the players are in this social contract, and trying to understand the period (which would have to had been in a maybe hypothetical period before conquests, or maybe there’s just no ‘selling’ / consent and the ‘social contract’ is entered into by way of knights and swords and the threat of death if you don’t comply).
I think most people don’t want to kill / steal because it’s socially disadvantageous to do so. Cooperation that happens from communities, but also from fear of how communities may retaliate if you go after one of their own. That sounds closer to ‘social contract’ but I’d argue it’s less of a contract and more of a fact of life which can be observed in other species.
This is where I think it’s important to make the distinction of exactly what a social contract is, because at this point it sounds like anything between:
But again, this sounds like law, governance and in some cases, depending on the discussion topic, taxation.
This sounds like “If you don’t like it, you can leave”. And it sounds like law, and governance.
If that’s the case, we know the ‘social contract’ is legal, but is it moral? Does the ‘social contract’ benefit society? And most importantly what happens when one social contract explicitly states that the other social contracts cannot exist?
I guess the way that I perceive a social contract is like this, but codified and enforced by a governing body in the form of laws. In a perfect world, the laws wouldn't be necessary, but there's always someone who will maliciously shit the bed and they're why the laws exist. Rational minds may think differently than I do of course and it may be simple but that's how I see things.
And yes - if you don't like the social contract where you live, you move if you can. Or you rebel against it I guess, with all of the consequences that either of those actions would come with. Morality doesn't really enter into the discussion in my opinion because governments are not inherently moral in my estimation - they are judged by how they treat and take care of their people. If governments fail to take care of their citizens then the government should be reformed or replaced with one that will.
You liken a government to a mob offering protection for money, and that is an apt comparison. Don't short change the tax man or they'll throw you in the clink. Do I like that? Not particularly, but I do like the fire department and the federally funded roads I use, so it's a trade off. I could choose to live in the uncharted, unclaimed woods in some backwater country and shit in a bucket to avoid all this cultural folderol, but I like my creature comforts and also I don't wanna shit in a bucket more than is strictly necessary.
If one contract or group says another contract or group can't exist, then we're back at the paradox of tolerance again. Why do they think that way? Is it religion/caste/some other BS that causes this group to be intolerant of others? The end result of this difference of opinion, if not reconciled, generally leads to conflict. Better to talk these differences out if possible, you know?
Ultimately, I think it always ends up at the paradox, if you take any of these things to there logical conclusions. It would be great if we could convert nazis via discussion and logical debate, and indeed I enjoy seeing it when it happens. But a group seeking to eliminate a population will start working to eliminate that population. A society is what we make it. “We” being the people that want to build said society. Nazis are trying to make themselves part of society, and in the society I exist in, they have never been allowed. Nazi isn’t a protected class, or something we can’t change like skin color or where we were born. Nazi is an agenda, and the agenda is to institute their ‘social contract’ upon us, when it isn’t compatible. If show up when they show up, and shit on their parade, run them out of town, unmask their indentities and dox them online, we’re just obeying their social contract against their own.
understood and agreed upon by whom? This isn’t a scientific consensus thing here. There’s some problems with the theory, at least when it comes to using it in conversation as any sort of meaningful model.
What the hell does that have to do with anything?
Well that’s just like, your opinion, man.
Work on what? I’ll give you an example: You need to work on your communication. You are insinuating that you are correct, that I am incorrect, but you’re not using words to explain this, you’re just throwing out psychological diagnoses and telling me I need to work on what.. not thinking?
You need to work on your communication. You’re very bad at communicating with others.
He needs to ‘work’ on his being autistic? Like he needs to tone down this autistic diagnosis you just performed in order for you to accept him?
Then go live outside society. Your point is invalid. Use of the system known as society is consent to the social contract.
Edit: Your name is on point though, good job there.
Look up contract law - in particular what elements are required. We didn't really have a chance to opt out. Fuck, if I try to just end myself I'll get locked up.
I live in society. Your argument is invalid.
Yeah. If you're in society, advocating for intolerance of others, you're breaking the social contract, so now I can stop tolerating you and tell you that you don't belong in society. If you say you don't accept the social contract you inherently don't accept society. It would be better for you in the wilderness. Wild beasts don't have to tolerate each other. You can live how you like and hate who you want.
I never signed a social contract. Your argument is invalid.
Unless, can you produce this social contract that I signed?
Can you share with me what the consequences are of this social contract that I signed?
What is the wording of this social contract? Can I find it online?
Do I need a notary public to sign this social contract if I find it something that’s worth my while?
Do you think contracts are things that people enter into without agreeing to them first?
Who is this contract with? Who authored this contract?
Who keeps this contract on file?
Most importantly…
Who wrote this contract?
Agreed, the social contract does not exist!
Why do you think gravity doesn’t exist?
Is this because you think “it’s a theory?”
Mathematics is also a theory, and yet 1+1 still = 2. Some theories are proven.
Gravity does exist.
Why are you advocating for my death?
Theories are not proven, that's basic science.
What is it that you think science does?
Wow you're obtuse. Have you never had an abstract thought in your life? You can't see this social contract is a concept? It's a concept that explains that If we all stop tolerating each other we'd tear each other apart, destroy all the buildings and belongings and everything, and then you WOULD live in the wilderness if you lived at all.
If you refuse to be tolerant of your neighbors, or allow others to be intolerant of them, you are saying you're fine with a little bit of apocalypse happening. All those little bits add up and eventually destroying the social contract, destroying society, because it's the same exact thing. Society IS the social contract. It's not just buildings and roads and lights and pipes and farms. It's the agreement that we want those things, and that since we don't want ours destroyed we won't destroy anyone who doesn't destroy. If you're saying that doesn't apply to you, you're saying you have a right to destroy as you see fit. That's an amazingly brutal and egotistical position. Are you sure you've thought this out? That's a heck of a thing to make part of your personality.
You’re describing taxation. I’m not wrong.
If you’re the one who came up with this idea of a social contract, you’re certainly not selling the idea very well.
The "social contract" is a well-known term to describe the very basic idea of a society, no matter what your political or philosophical belief
Maybe you'd recognize it as "the golden rule" -- don't do things to people that you wouldn't want people to do to you.
This social contract isn’t something anyone has ever been able to produce. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That which is presented without evidence (e.g., “the social contract”) can be dismissed.
The golden rule is “treat others how you would like to be treated.” and it’s not a great rule. The platinum rule “Treat others how they want to be treated” is far superior.
Yet, none of this has to do with the paradox of tolerance.
The social contract is a philosophical concept, Dipshit, one hundreds of years old. You can disagree with this concept, but unless you have something more than "I never signed a piece of paper lol," your disagreement can be dismissed as petty ignorance. Or maybe you're just trolling.
Thanks for linking me. You’re the first person to do so. Not trolling. This sounded like some BS someone made up. Then again, it’s philosophy, so it is bullshit someone made up.
Interesting idea though, because my points still stands. A “contract” is a really bad way of considering all of this. Without knowing personal values of the individual, and without stating what the stipulations of the contract are, the “social contract” can be literally anything the author wants it to be.
“Social contract” seems to be one person observing the status quo and encouraging everyone to maintain the status quo because it “was what we entered into as a society”. Example: “The police protect the people, because it says so right on the cars (‘protect and serve’), so we must respect the police, as they protect ‘us’ from ‘them’ (the ‘bad guys’). They’re ‘bad’ because they’re ‘evil’ and they know what they did”. So many issues with that: 1) police protect property, not people unless that’s people in positions of power, 2) the police (aside from the band) enforce the law, 3) what’s good and bad is a matter of personal opinion.
I am trying to understand how I could apply a “contract” to my life, one which I cannot read, one that I’m just told to obey, because there’s unmentioned consequences of disobeying said contract.
But the paradox of tolerance, is clear to me: you like tolerance? Good, your one ‘enemy’ so-to-speak would be people who fight against tolerance - the intolerant. Of course the question is then intolerant of what? Intolerant of pineapple on pizza - no harm done, except maybe to the sales of pineapple farmers. Intolerant of humans, as in, you want to genocide them - that’s a lot of harm to humanity itself and it should not be tolerated.
But where is the “contract” in any of this, when discussing how we deal with people who want to harm humanity by being intolerant of others? If we ask them, their social contract would be only 14 words long. That’s not a social contract I would ever agree to. And yet, any social contract I would write up would not be one they would agree to either. And yet, we both live in a society. Curious.
Please don’t mistake my reference to memes as trolling here, I am being sincere. If the idea of a social contract is just a metaphor, it has a lot of holes in it. I can easily get on board with ideas like the paradox of tolerance, the “golden rule” and the “platinum rule”, and short sayings like “your rights (to punch) end where my rights begin (my right to have an unpunched face)”. I can understand concepts like “law” and “policy”, “rules” - all things we agree to, with “law” being the closest to being a “social contract”; yet law can change, law isn’t morality, and law is actually written down (well, most of it anyway). “Law” looks most like a “social contract” in that we are automatically entered into agreeing to it by showing up in that jurisdiction (aka being born or otherwise being in a certain place).
Thank you for writing a thoughtful response! My understanding of the social contract is that it's an unwritten agreement that if you want to get the benefits of living in a society (being able to purchase food and shelter rather than having to live in the wild and make/get your own) you have to abide by its rules. Where the Paradox of Tolerance comes in is that being intolerant (in how you treat other people specifically) is disruptive to society, which breaks the social contract. There may or may not be actual laws broken when doing so, but you should expect to be shown the door (also links nicely with "freeze peach" arguments).
So this kind of comes down to the “is it ok to punch nazis?” question. It sounds like the social contract, being unwritten and thus open to interpretation says “No, nazis are part of society and society has laws and rules, such as not being allowed to punch people just because you disagree with them”.
Or, does it say “Yes, although nazis are a part of society, they are a part of society that doesn’t agree with the social contract that we should not harm others, and as such, we are morally obligated to turn their antisocial threats against them, even if it means that we are being antisocial to the antisocials”? Because to me that sounds like a paradox.. of tolerance.
My point has just been to say that this unwritten “social contract” is a dangerous idea to continue with, because it can be used in many ways. This thread began because someone mentioned that the paradox of tolerance is false, and that it’s a social contract. To me, that sounded like “no paradox here, if you punch nazis, you are a nazi, because it breaks the social contract”. Which at best sounds centrist, and at worst sounds like trying to create an environment where nazi ideas may be entertained.
Yeah, since the "social contract" is a concept, it will vary depending on what society or even part of society you're in. The Paradox of Tolerance specifically refers to societies that value tolerance of others - there's no paradox in a society that's just fine with being intolerant. When it comes to "is it okay to punch Nazis?", I'm of the belief that it's highly dependent on the situation. If you're meaning to just express displeasure in their ideology, the better way to do that is to collectively "show them the door," make sure they know that their ideas aren't welcome without resorting to violence. But actively oppose them and don't simply ignore them, because they will use any power given to them to suppress others. If the Nazis are violating your rights, then, yes, it's okay to punch them because they've taken a step over the line at that point.
I'm pretty sure this is the opposite of what they meant because as I said, the Paradox of Tolerance only apples to tolerant societies, which the Nazis are demonstrably not a part of. And of course, breaking the social contract doesn't necessarily make you a Nazi. Could you break the social contract in a tolerant society by punching a Nazi? Yes, if you instigated violence without sufficient reason.
This makes sense. I guess I get mixed up because I want to live in a tolerant society, which I understand as being a society which tolerates others. I understand the paradox as “sure, we all want others to be tolerated, we want to live in a tolerant society, but this doesn’t mean pure tolerance, as in tolerance of intolerance”, or otherwise as an exception to the tolerance we should have in a tolerant society.
But I recognize that we live in a society that is intolerant of others. There’s the nazi extremists, but also conservatism as a whole being intolerant of anyone but the conservative white man. It boils down to me being intolerant of most people, as most people are intolerant of someone else. Of course in my example, my intolerance is my additudes towards that person and not say trying to make live actually miserable (via harming the person, the person’s employment or the person’s rights). I try to attack ideas, and not people, and by “attack” I mean criticise and question.
It might be, but this is also where I get confused. A contract is an agreement between one or more parties. If I agreed to the tolerant society contract, but the nazis agreed to the 14 words contract, who’s right? Which contracts trumps the other? Who arbitrates this? The best I can understand is that “our” social contract is the paradox of tolerance, or simply put: “you’re cool unless you want to physically harm and murder others, in which case it breaks the social contract and now we get to punch you” - which sort of makes it sound like a bit of a mob protection order: “that’s a nice face you’ve got there. Shame if some violent rhetoric about hurting minorities were to come out of it”. The reason for “our” social contract is because “thier” social contract seeks to terminate the lives of non-white people.
Anyway, thanks for explaining. It clears things up a bit. I still don’t like the idea of the social contract, but I think we’re splitting hairs at this point, and most of my dislike has to do with how easy it is to pick apart the concept due to the “contract” wording.
Seems like your biggest hang up is the word ‘contract’, which you have assigned a lot of concrete properties to. Would it be easier to understand if they used the word agreement, and described it in softer terms like the general agreement everyone in the world has that punching someone in the face is not an acceptable for of greeting? I mean, no one has said that, and you haven’t personally gone up to everyone and stated this and shook hands on it, but it’s still something everyone agrees on.
The social ‘contract’ is like that, it just uses an unnecessarily official sounding term in it, but ultimately is just the understanding that some concessions have to be made to deal with other humans. The terms of the contract are really to vague to ‘sign’, and when people start referring to more specific terms things can go of the rails pretty quickly, but there is still an implicit agreement. It’s like living in an apartment where you didn’t sign the lease…sure you’re not legally bound by the terms in the same way that someone who did sign the lease is, but your still bound by them in some ways simply by living in the apartment. In the same way, continuing to live in society is the way the ‘contract’ gets signed.
Yeah ‘contract’ is a terrible word to use here, especially in 2023. Oh sure if we want to discuss hunter gatherers, I can relax my definition of ‘contract’ a little bit, but we aren’t discussing hunter gatherers. We are on the internet in 2023 and we have better words to describe things, like ‘law’ and ‘governance’.
So, taking your definition, a ‘social contract’ is what Russia does to Ukraine when they say “this land is my land”. The Ukraians ‘agree’ or disagree, but since Putin wants that land, the ‘social contract’ is less of a ‘contract’, or an ‘agreement’ and more of a ‘command’ with a threat of violence. It’s just very wierd to discuss wars and modern day politics with ‘social contracts’. It’s such a very basic way of thinking about the world. “That’s the great thing! Ukranians don’t need to sign anything! In solviet russia, social contract comes to you!”
So, can we all please stop using this phrase ‘social contract’ to give our big-brained selves a pat on the back and instead talk like real people in 2023? I’ll start: Is it ok to punch nazis?
This has everything to do with the paradox of tolerance. It's literally its foundation.
For example, a healthy community would sanction someone like you until you ceased this antisocial and delberately bad-faith character you've chosen to be.
Let's start with my blocklist.
You’ve given me a great example of why contracts need to be in writing. Even if that “contract” is just a list of personal preferences. Such as your personal preference that you do not like my ideas.
But, they are in good-faith. I am not trolling.
His name is dipshit doesn't understand metaphor
His name is dipshit, and he's a single-celled organism
I’m not an egg.
Her?
I understand the scientific method.
It’s the same contract you ‘sign’ with your friends or co-workers. People, especially in this thread, break it out as some solid ‘thing’, but it’s like any other ethereal concept that gets referred to by a concrete word. English is hard and not every word brings along every element in every instance. You could say that an ‘agreement’ must have a written, or at minimum a spoken set of terms, but you could have an agreement not to physically fight someone just by a few movements of your body, and ‘break’ that agreement by broadcasting one set of signals and then taking a swing at them.
So, who is signing what contract with Russia and Ukraine? How do people agree or disagree with that contract? What options do they have?
Can we please call things what they are?