> Popper argued that Plato had produced a vision of one such closed society. He pointed to the stratification of the social order in Plato’s ideal city, the strict division of labor between the intellectual and productive classes, the absence of social mobility, state censorship of most culture, and, above all, the promulgation of an openly fraudulent myth, the so-called Noble Lie, to legitimize the status quo.
You'll need to read the book -- if you're looking for a soundbite you're doing yourself a disservice -- it's short anyway. But note that he's talking specifically about argumentation.
The book is a response to Plato, who generally opposed free speech for the masses. In general, Popper strongly disagrees with Plato. And it's important to note that he described of the paradox as he understood it from Plato, but does not necessarily endorse it.
The people suddenly fond of this one footnote might take a moment and read his work anyway, as they may be surprised to read his views on socialism and Marx specifically.
Popper’s criticism is, iirc, drawn mainly from Plato’s Republic. But Popper somehow managed to read a deeply ironic and subtle text as a recipe for tyranny. Eg there are numerous points where Socrates makes obviously bad arguments which others call out, and Socrates just hand waves them away. Numerous critics and philosophers have made this observation, the most ready to hand example I can find is here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/10/empty-...
It is a simple, massive, and all too common blunder of interpretation to read the Republic the way Popper does.
With the risk of being unpopular I have to admit I have found what I've read of Popper to be seriously overrated. So far I have gone through The Open Society... and the better part of The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
Open Society to me read mostly like a critique of the political philosophy of Plato, Hegel and Marx, with brief mentions of what the open society is actually supposed to be (I recall some mentions of social engineering and other such things). At best it felt like a grounding for the currently dominant neo-liberal social order.
The Logic... on the other hand does seem to bring novel content, but I feel the core of his endeavor is hopeless. Science definitely doesn't and can't work in a perfectly coherent algorithmic way. Science is a human social process that can't be subjected to a strict methodology. On this front I think Lakatos or even Kuhn are much closer to how things can/do work.
> Karl Popper was a well-regarded 20th century philosopher
I'm aware and don't see why an appeal to authority is necessary. Also OP didn't link Karl Popper. They linked a rando-streamer who's opinions on censorship probably have Popper rolling in his grave.
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Just for the sake of this thread here's Popper's conclusion from `The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Spell of Plato`:
> . . . In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument . . .
This may seem like a logical conclusion, but it's based on a paradox and therefore inherently illogical. A paradox is usually useful for showing issues with a conclusion and not supporting one.
Consider who decides what is tolerant or not. Do the Karl Poppers (who was very opposed to totalitarism) decide? How about the linked youtuber, who blocks everyone with slightly opposing opinions? What if I consider the youtuber intolerant?
By not tolerating the intolerant, that person person should therefore not be tolerated. How could such a thing possibly be realized?
In similar fashion to the capacitor switch paradox, [1] it stems from an inaccurate model. Toleration is an abstract idea modeling a much more complex social trait. Abstraction models may make reasoning as humans easier but we should always be careful when applying them.
I think that summary misses out how much Popper argues should be tolerated. e.g. in the quote in the article, Popper writes:
> In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.
I think Popper's cred comes primarily from one of his acolytes getting very very rich, and using that money to amplify a low-information signal.
"If to argue like [Professor Popper] should ever become a frequent practice among writers on serious subjects, all cool and rational discussion would quickly come to an end. . . . His manner towards Aristotle is the sort that an unkind man sometimes adopts towards someone whom he believes to be his intellectual inferior; and, as is usual in such cases, it tells us more about the contemner than the object of his contempt. . . . There is here a failure of sympathy . . . on Professor Popper’s part; and he is the poorer for it."
- John Plamenatz
"Karl Popper is philosophically so uncultured, so fully a primitive ideological brawler, that he is not able to even approximately to reproduce correctly the contents of one page of Plato. Reading is of no use to him; he is too lacking in knowledge to understand what the author says"
- Leo Strauss
I decided to launch my big question: Is his falsification concept falsifiable? Popper glared at me. Then his expression softened, and he placed his hand on mine. “I don't want to hurt you,” he said gently, “but it is a silly question." Peering searchingly into my eyes, he asked if one of his critics had persuaded me to pose the question. Yes, I lied. “Exactly,” he said, looking pleased.
>Sir Karl Popper is not really a participant in the contemporary professional philosophical dialogue; quite the contrary, he has ruined that dialogue. If he is on the right track, then the majority of professional philosophers the world over have wasted or are wasting their intellectual careers.
Popper essentially takes the same position as Thomas Jefferson. Popper says: "I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise." Emphasis on the unwise -- for some unknown reason, there's this idea floating around that Popper thought it was wise to suppress intolerant philosophies. That's Marcuse's position, not Popper's (and Marcuse also is candid that his own position may be incompatible with democracy).
What Popper does agree is that societies should retain the right to act if civil discourse fails, which is again basically Jefferson's position.
I absolutely don't agree and have not found the author trying to shed that light on Popper. Quite the opposite in fact, I felt it was just the description of a rightly self-confident and exuberant philosopher.
Thank you for this. I’m seeing the argument and that particular misinterpretation raised frequently in online discussions lately. I suspect that few of its proponents have actually read Popper, and have based their interpretation on that terrible comic that’s often reposted on Reddit.
You can find a criticism of _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ in _The Fabric of Reality_. I think that book is (significantly but not entirely) mistaken. One reason is the book can be seen as offering historical laws like Marx, which certainly aren't laws of physics, and don't follow from the laws of physics, and aren't scientific, and have no good reason that they must always be the case in all cultures. BTW Popper criticizes historical laws in _The Poverty of Historicism_ as well as more briefly in other books including C&R.
This is something of a side note in any case. tSoSR says people are prejudiced and emphasized new generations of people as important to progress. Popper mostly talks about how knowledge is created, not who creates it. So, his focus is different, and less psychological. If only the younger people are creating knowledge, that's perfectly compatible with most of what Popper says about how (anyone) can create knowledge (via fallible, tentative guesses, and criticism and subjecting ideas to severe tests).
Because many philosophers of science reject Popper's views as unrepresentative of the way science is done by real people in the real world. The Wikipedia page for falsifiability enumerates some of these criticisms.
> Popper argued that Plato had produced a vision of one such closed society. He pointed to the stratification of the social order in Plato’s ideal city, the strict division of labor between the intellectual and productive classes, the absence of social mobility, state censorship of most culture, and, above all, the promulgation of an openly fraudulent myth, the so-called Noble Lie, to legitimize the status quo.
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