As a starting point, you can open the tweet and report it to twitter. Twitter will sometimes delete the accounts of users who threaten violence if it is reported to them.
On a deeper level, the problem is that freedom/liberalism is inherently self-defeating. Any form of freedom involves giving people the right to accumulate power; but once they accumulate enough power, they can use this power to take away other’s freedoms.
In this case, the “power” is organized social networks, and the freedom in question is freedom of association. In order to stop communists from organizing a revolt, you must dissolve their social networks, e.g. get forums like Twitter to ban them when they threaten violence, but doing so violates their freedom of association.
If you’re just trying to protect the economic conditions as they exist now, then that might not be a problem, but you explicitly say that you want to protect libertarian democracy, which runs into the paradox. I’m not aware of any full solutions to the paradox; having rules like “don’t threaten violence” helps I guess, but they tend to be justified using lies such as mistake theory, that “you should spread your policies through debate, as participants are honestly trying to improve the world for everyone”, which seems like a bad foundation.
This is why the secret true LOTR ending is Sauron slow-clapping and then fishing the ring out of Mt. Doom while explaining that you can’t destroy the one ring (edit: and much obliged for fetching me my ring).
It would be really good to figure out a real solution to this. A possible speculative way in: mistake theory is afraid of violence (understandably) and so ignores that violence is continuous with existence (existing is a kind of doing violence to nature), and the notion of mistake is founded on the notion of truth which is founded on life which is founded on existence. So maybe mistake theorists can uncover how they’re already essentially wielding a kind of violence. (Not at all to say that all violence is the same. Argument good, bullet bad.) Once that’s uncovered, the violence they’re already wielding might perhaps be more reconcilable with the violence needed to prevent violence.
You can more-or-less prove that that paradox has no mechanical solution. Nevertheless, there is such a thing as a citizenry with a widespread culture of moderation that makes them resistant to bad violent memes.
I sort of imagine an unstable equillibrium, where even small perturbations can put you off track, or aiming a ship in hyperbolic geometry for some exponentially small subset of the space.
However, I think for doing this, since it is so unstable, it is important to think carefully about building the foundations. Hence why I bring up concepts like mistake theory, I find that people often treat mistake theory as a counter to revolts, but it doesn’t seem to me that it even attempts to accurately describe the social dynamics involved in democratic debate, and so I feel like this may be a foundation that needs improving.
I just did report the tweet. Following their questionnaire for the report, it’s a specific group of people being harassed or threatened with violence. This is being done by wishing harm on people, though their identity isn’t targeted. Straightforward violation of Twitter’s content policies.
lies such as mistake theory
Except… some people are just honest but mistaken?
More to the point, the “paradox of tolerance” thing supposes some nontrivial things:
Checks and balances / bills of rights don’t exist.
Nobody / not enough people will use their power to protect others / the institutions of freedom/liberalism in general.
Nobody is a hardcore flagrant strong-preference… tolerant/libertarian/liberal person.
Preemptive coercion would work well enough / not backfire too hard.
(Not necessarily in your comment but in similar arguments): It supposes that more violent/extreme/rights-limiting ideas will inevitably get more adherents. This can be true with threatened violence, but...
The PoT also assumes no/little enforcement against violence. Which is the case in parts of the U.S., but is not universal. If violence is adequately prevented, then the paradox falls apart.
As a starting point, you can open the tweet and report it to twitter. Twitter will sometimes delete the accounts of users who threaten violence if it is reported to them.
On a deeper level, the problem is that freedom/liberalism is inherently self-defeating. Any form of freedom involves giving people the right to accumulate power; but once they accumulate enough power, they can use this power to take away other’s freedoms.
In this case, the “power” is organized social networks, and the freedom in question is freedom of association. In order to stop communists from organizing a revolt, you must dissolve their social networks, e.g. get forums like Twitter to ban them when they threaten violence, but doing so violates their freedom of association.
If you’re just trying to protect the economic conditions as they exist now, then that might not be a problem, but you explicitly say that you want to protect libertarian democracy, which runs into the paradox. I’m not aware of any full solutions to the paradox; having rules like “don’t threaten violence” helps I guess, but they tend to be justified using lies such as mistake theory, that “you should spread your policies through debate, as participants are honestly trying to improve the world for everyone”, which seems like a bad foundation.
This is why the secret true LOTR ending is Sauron slow-clapping and then fishing the ring out of Mt. Doom while explaining that you can’t destroy the one ring (edit: and much obliged for fetching me my ring).
It would be really good to figure out a real solution to this. A possible speculative way in: mistake theory is afraid of violence (understandably) and so ignores that violence is continuous with existence (existing is a kind of doing violence to nature), and the notion of mistake is founded on the notion of truth which is founded on life which is founded on existence. So maybe mistake theorists can uncover how they’re already essentially wielding a kind of violence. (Not at all to say that all violence is the same. Argument good, bullet bad.) Once that’s uncovered, the violence they’re already wielding might perhaps be more reconcilable with the violence needed to prevent violence.
You can more-or-less prove that that paradox has no mechanical solution. Nevertheless, there is such a thing as a citizenry with a widespread culture of moderation that makes them resistant to bad violent memes.
I agree, I think.
I sort of imagine an unstable equillibrium, where even small perturbations can put you off track, or aiming a ship in hyperbolic geometry for some exponentially small subset of the space.
However, I think for doing this, since it is so unstable, it is important to think carefully about building the foundations. Hence why I bring up concepts like mistake theory, I find that people often treat mistake theory as a counter to revolts, but it doesn’t seem to me that it even attempts to accurately describe the social dynamics involved in democratic debate, and so I feel like this may be a foundation that needs improving.
I just did report the tweet. Following their questionnaire for the report, it’s a specific group of people being harassed or threatened with violence. This is being done by wishing harm on people, though their identity isn’t targeted. Straightforward violation of Twitter’s content policies.
More to the point, the “paradox of tolerance” thing supposes some nontrivial things:
Checks and balances / bills of rights don’t exist.
Nobody / not enough people will use their power to protect others / the institutions of freedom/liberalism in general.
Nobody is a hardcore flagrant strong-preference… tolerant/libertarian/liberal person.
Preemptive coercion would work well enough / not backfire too hard.
(Not necessarily in your comment but in similar arguments): It supposes that more violent/extreme/rights-limiting ideas will inevitably get more adherents. This can be true with threatened violence, but...
The PoT also assumes no/little enforcement against violence. Which is the case in parts of the U.S., but is not universal. If violence is adequately prevented, then the paradox falls apart.