The origin of "outlaw" didn't mean someone was a bandit.

It meant they had broken the social contract, and as such were no longer protected under any laws

An outlaw didn't avoid civilization because they'd be arrested, it was because everyone else could steal from them or even kill them, and face zero consequences for it.

They didn't abide by the social contract, so others didn't have to either

I work in manufacturing so at first read this as machined tolerances are a paradox. Confused for a second but I got there.

Why did she apologize for agreeing?

Somebody who teaches rhetoric sat through multiple debates about the so-called paradox of tolerance without thinking about the social contract once? Maybe I should just teach, I'm also incompetent at everything I do.

I've never seen anything of any substance in the (so-called) "Paradox Of Tolerance."

"Tolerance" is of no use to me or anyone else - we don't owe people "tolerance," we owe each other mutual respect. If you are dead-set on proving yourself unwilling of giving mutual respect (such as, for instance, fascists or capitalists) you disqualify yourself from that paradigm - zero "paradoxes" required.

It's not that easy. Social contact theory can work when there's a relatively objective standard like "physical violence" but you'll often believe that the people you disagree with are being intolerant, and they'll believe that you're being intolerant. If the general rule is "I'll only tolerate people if I'm convinced that they're tolerant" then very soon no one will be tolerating anyone else.

With that said, I don't think there's a "paradox of tolerance" simply because tolerance is hard. The people talking about a paradox want to get credit for "tolerating" just the people they don't mind having around, but you have to tolerate the people you hate, the people you think are a threat to you. Otherwise you're not tolerant.

The paradox of tolerance is just a description of how a virtue can at limit become a vice in practice. It's not a math problem for the oh so smart folks in this thread to resolve. One cannot be unbound from the social contract because someone else breaks it. This is why for instance even when we go to war we try to limit harm and when we punish someone, even a murderer, they are entitled to process and law even while we are punishing them.

You are always bound to ethics and law based on who YOU are not who they are. This is nearly the most fundamental fact of ethics.

this is where the old concept of an outlaw came from. the idea was that the law was something we all voluntarily agreed to follow. let it limit your behavior toward others, and others would limit their behavior toward you as well. an outlaw was someone who had, through their actions, opted out of the law. there was no prescribed punishment for doing so, it's just that once you became an outlaw the law no longer applied to you, nor did apply to others in their dealings with you.

It's only a paradox if you're a mentally handicapped bigot. It makes perfect sense to everyone else.

This is how I've always described it.

Its not a paradox, its a contract.

And those that do not abide by it, universally, share a very specific end goal that is not good for society, countries, or the species.

The surprise here is that the paradox confuses people so much. Paradox doesn't mean bad or broken

Tolerance is a moral or ethic, not a contract. Like other aspects of morality, it continues to apply to people who violate it, otherwise it would be legitimate to, e.g., lie to a liar, steal from a thief or, indeed, to murder a murderer.

If you don't believe those responses are legitimate, you have to construct an argument as to why tolerance is a special case among the other morals.

I agree. We should not tolerate the lactose intolerant.

So then those that tolerate the intolerance are also excluded from the contract, right?

Edit: this is a genuine question.

Second time I see that and second time I think to myself "Isn't that exactly what the paradox points at? Meaning that meme is completely useless?"

Is true.

But who/what defines where the boundry is between acceptable and not acceptable?

I like to think of it as multiple contracts or rules that create different and incompatible kinds of societies, and everyone has to decide what they prefer. E.g. do you want to live in a Nazi society or a pluralistic society? They are fundamentally incompatible, so supporting one means you cannot tolerate the other.

There is no paradox in this, and also no question about who starts the intolerance or whose intolerance is justified. We all just pick which path we prefer, and what we should do follows from there.