CONCEPT
Paradox of Tolerance
Popper's footnote-turned-famous argument that unlimited tolerance destroys tolerance — that the preservation of open values requires a specific, bounded intolerance of forces that would eliminate openness itself.
In a footnote to Chapter 7 of The Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper articulated a principle that has outgrown its original page: "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." Tolerance is not self-sustaining. A society that tolerates everything, including the active destruction of tolerance, will find the intolerant eventually prevail — not because they are stronger but because the tolerant society, by its own principles, has no mechanism for defending itself. The paradox's resolution is bounded intolerance: intolerance of intolerance itself, drawn at a specific line beyond which the defense of tolerance requires action against the thing that would destroy it.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The paradox has been applied almost exclusively to political questions — how democracies should respond to