Should you tolerate everyone? What about people who are intolerant and actively work to restrict the rights of others? Should you specialize early or wait? Which brings greater long-term success?

Oh, and a fun music video from one of my current favourite bands to lighten up the mood.

The Paradox of Tolerance

In response to my post last week reviewing The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, Tim pointed me towards the paradox of tolerance. In my review I said:

A good thinker is willing to entertain viewpoints they don’t agree with and engage in a reasonable discussion about it.

To that I added a footnote that said, “Yes there are exceptions like Nazi’s, fuck those people.”, which is where the paradox of tolerance comes in. This idea was first stated by Karl Popper who argued that any truly tolerant society must retain the right to deny tolerance to those who promote intolerance.

This is why I say fuck the Nazi’s and the white supremacist and probably the conspiracy theorist. Most are unwilling to engage in rational argument and instead resort to their fists to enforce their will on the rest of the population.

Doing some more research to try and understand this I came across this brief and great explanation on Reddit. You and your friends decide to be always nice to each other regardless of behaviour. Billy starts being an asshat during sleepovers, but you keep being nice because that’s the deal. Billy ruins everything with his behaviour enforcing his will on everyone.

To be a good set of friends you need to tell Billy to fuck off with his behaviour. Hopefully Billy will learn from the loss of friendship that his behaviour is not acceptable and he can rejoin the group as a better person.

Today we see the opposite reaction in many though. They yell and scream that when we kicked Billy out for being an asshat we were intolerant and ran contrary to our own views of tolerance. We were wrong and Billy was right.

When I lived in Chilliwack there was a school board trustee that continued to be elected to office despite his terrible treatment of teachers and the youth in the school district he was elected to. His name is Barry Neufeld. I remember talking to my oldest daughter while this was going on and she asked if I would have a decent conversation with him about his views. I had to confess that no sometimes you just have to tell people to fuck off. I could avoid him and walk away, but otherwise I’d have to tell him he was an asshole and not engage with his bigotry.

I guess I just didn’t have a name for that idea, but I believe in it. We should be tolerant, but not to the intolerant who want to revoke the rights of most of the rest of society and get away with terrible behaviour in the name of tolerance.

You can read more about the Paradox of Tolerance in The Open Society and Its Enemies.

Match Fit and Success

My oldest is 14 and she’s already hearing at school that she needs to specialize now into her future career, though the research doesn’t support that. Both Late Bloomers and Range support this conclusion, that you should stay curious much later into your life than teachers and many parents tell you to. Be curious and look for what interests you.

In fact, success is generally not tied to a single skill, but a result of a set of skills developed over your life fitting with a particular problem at a particular time. According to Eric Barker, to find the spot you excel in you may need to ignore what others think you should be doing because they often have you aimed at their goals and aren’t taking what’s best for you into proper account.

Electric Callboy Music Videos are Crazy

I started a new YouTube playlist called MTV just to play music videos on my stereo because they’re fun. VH1’s Popup Video is where I spent most afternoons in my friend’s house. We’d talk and watch the music videos through much of my early teenage years.

I’ve listened to Electric Callboy for a while now but hadn’t checked out their videos and dang they’re crazy awesome. Here is one of my favourites.

Really I should download that YouTube playlist and have it running randomly sometimes via ErzatzTV.