So yes, I agree that intolerance can also be contagious—and it’s sort of a quantitative question of which one outweighs the other. I don’t personally believe in “evil” (as you sort of hint there, I believe that if we are sufficiently eager to understand, we can always find common humanity with anyone) - but all kinds of neurodivergences, such as biological lack of empathy, do exist, and while we need not stigmatize them, they may be socially disruptive (like torching a city). Again, the question of whether our absolutely tolerant society can be stable in face of psychopaths torching cities once in a while I think is a quantitative one.
But what I’m excited about here is that in the case that those quantities are sufficient (tolerance is sufficiently contagious, psychopaths are sufficiently rare, etc), then we could have an absolutely tolerant society—even in that pacifist way you don’t quite like. And that possibility in itself I find exciting. And that possibility is something that I think Popper did not see.
So yes, I agree that intolerance can also be contagious—and it’s sort of a quantitative question of which one outweighs the other. I don’t personally believe in “evil” (as you sort of hint there, I believe that if we are sufficiently eager to understand, we can always find common humanity with anyone) - but all kinds of neurodivergences, such as biological lack of empathy, do exist, and while we need not stigmatize them, they may be socially disruptive (like torching a city). Again, the question of whether our absolutely tolerant society can be stable in face of psychopaths torching cities once in a while I think is a quantitative one.
But what I’m excited about here is that in the case that those quantities are sufficient (tolerance is sufficiently contagious, psychopaths are sufficiently rare, etc), then we could have an absolutely tolerant society—even in that pacifist way you don’t quite like. And that possibility in itself I find exciting. And that possibility is something that I think Popper did not see.