Thanks for doing this! I also find it disturbing how socially acceptable it is to call for the death of innocent people (or to actually murder them, if they’re an insurance company CEO).
If you believe that the UHC CEO knowingly pushed a model that had a 90% error rate, being programmed to almost always just (illegally, incorrectly) deny health care coverage to people who were less likely to sue, then “innocent” is a big overstatement. That’s pretty close to murdering people for money.
Similarly, I don’t think you could claim that the executives who knowingly launched the Ford Pinto were innocent.
The UHC nhPredict lawsuit has not resolved yet, and I haven’t done enough research to be confident about it one way or another. But my point is that the crux is more “are current billionaires actively getting people killed for money?”, not “is it ok to kill innocent people because they’re rich?”
“is it ok to kill people (or call for the killing or support the killing) who have not been convicted by any court and the killing does not stop any immediate physical threat to you?”
innocence is not required, it is presumed by our civilization. At question is NOT whether the victim was a bad person who we’re perhaps better off without. At question is whether anyone but a court can decide what to do about it.
It’s disturbing how socially acceptable it is to call for mob action in direct contravention of rule of law.
People call for mob action because they believe the rule of law isn’t working. At the moment the fact that nobody besides Epstein and Maxwell that was involved in their operation got charged with any crimes is a good sign that the rule of law isn’t really working well at charging people at the top.
Nobody at HSBC got into prison for laundering drug money. Facebook getting away with 25% of their profit being facilitating fraud of their customers also seems to me like the rule of law isn’t working.
At the moment the fact that nobody besides Epstein and Maxwell that was involved in their operation got charged with any crimes is a good sign that the rule of law isn’t really working well at charging people at the top.
The article you links essentially argues a strawman:
Most people named in the Epstein files are not being prosecuted for the simple reason that what appears there does not meet anything like the legal standards required for prosecution, let alone conviction. Being mentioned in an email, a contact list, or a flight log may be morally damning and emotionally enraging, but it’s not evidence of a crime in the way the criminal justice system is actually supposed to require.
You wouldn’t persecute people who are just mentioned in an email, contact list or flight log. You would persecute those accused by the women who told the police they are victims. According to the lawyer for the victims there are at least twenty men against whom victims gave testimony.
Given victim testimony and the files we have I think it’s also would make sense to say that Epstein was running a criminal enterprise that’s subject to the RICO act. That means that plenty of employees like the pilot that was trafficking the girls to the island likely committed crimes. If you start you RICO proceedings you can offer lower level employees immunity for providing more evidence.
They’re not really calling for mob action (in almost all cases). It’s a rhetorical expression of hatred. Cf saying ‘eat the rich’ is not a serious advocacy of cannibalism.
That’s not to say though that it’s ok to call for mob action eg on social media, as it slightly increases the chance that some extremists might take it literally and act on it
“is it ok to kill people (or call for the killing or support the killing) who have not been convicted by any court and the killing does not stop any immediate physical threat to you?”
When you phrase the question like this, do you think that you’ve identified a set of characteristics that, throughout history, will never lead to the wrong conclusion? Or are you making a heuristic argument?
I think that throughout history, there have probably been many “ok” killings against people who did not present an immediate threat to the killer and had not been convicted by any court. I think that even today there are probably such killings. Do you have an argument against that position or do you think that, by phrasing things in the way you have, you’ve implicitly made a sufficient argument already?
(This is not to say that the UHC CEO killing in particular was justified, of course.)
do you think that you’ve identified a set of characteristics that, throughout history, will never lead to the wrong conclusion?
Not at all. There is no such set of characteristics. Wrong conclusions are inevitable and commonplace. Godel’s Theorems apply to all formalisms.
In the current world, the harm of unsanctioned killing being commonly accepted (and cheered) is generally a LOT higher than the harm of statistically-evil people continuing to live. So, yes, a heuristic argument: this is a loss of civilization and order, even if it might have been justifiable on some dimensions.
Wrong conclusions are inevitable and commonplace. Godel’s Theorems apply to all formalisms.
A tangent, but Godel’s incompleteness theorems simply show that for sufficiently powerful formal systems:
There are statements which are true, but unprovable
If the system is consistent, “this system is consistent” is such a statement.
Neither of which show that all formal systems are unsound. That is, if a statement is provable in a formal system, the corresponding property is true in all models of that formal system. So this point is not correct because of Godel (though it could be practically correct for other reasons, such as the world being complicated).
Not at all. There is no such set of characteristics. Wrong conclusions are inevitable and commonplace. Godel’s Theorems apply to all formalisms.
They do not apply to all formalisms, morality is not a formal system, and even if it were this is not what either of Godel’s theorems would say about it. I don’t know why this particular bit of math misunderstanding is so popular online, I suspect it’s because it enables moves like the one you’re making here (i.e. of the form “it’s impossible to justify any statement so I can’t be expected to justify my statements”).
In the current world, the harm of unsanctioned killing being commonly accepted (and cheered) is generally a LOT higher than the harm of statistically-evil people continuing to live. So, yes, a heuristic argument: this is a loss of civilization and order, even if it might have been justifiable on some dimensions.
Ah, I wouldn’t call this a heuristic argument—by “heuristic argument” I mean something like “I can’t come up with any utilitarian calculation that says the bad outweighs the good here, but I know that human brains are prone to underestimating this sort of bad, so I assume there is a calculation saying it was overall bad even if I don’t know what it is.” (Incidentally this is how I understand this situation.) If you have an argument to this effect, I’d love to see it! But to satisfy me it will need to be the sort of argument that permits killing Stalin or Hitler or Idi Amin with a pretty wide margin for error, and if it’s not I’ll make the same critique I did before.
But my point is that the crux is more “are current billionaires actively getting people killed for money?”, not “is it ok to kill innocent people because they’re rich?”
I don’t think that’s true. Picture the average 4chan-tier internet racist who says he wants to shut down all immigration from Africa because they’re destroying Western civilization. What empirical facts do you think you would have to convince him of to get him to accept a policy with high African immigration? I don’t think this is impossible, but man, it’s pretty close.
I have had arguments with both TND 4chan posters and Eat The RIch leftists, and a recurring pattern I have observed is that when they say “I hate ‘em because X”, if you falsify X to their begrudging satisfaction, they won’t hate ’em any less. People often have beliefs that are less than fully factual, especially when vicious monkey-brain tribalism is involved.
Trusting these groups of people about their cruxes here seems naive to the point of apologia. “Oh Hitler didn’t want to kill innocent Jews, surely you agree some drastic action would be necessary if the Jews were plotting the downfall of the Reich.”
Thanks for doing this! I also find it disturbing how socially acceptable it is to call for the death of innocent people (or to actually murder them, if they’re an insurance company CEO).
If you believe that the UHC CEO knowingly pushed a model that had a 90% error rate, being programmed to almost always just (illegally, incorrectly) deny health care coverage to people who were less likely to sue, then “innocent” is a big overstatement. That’s pretty close to murdering people for money.
Similarly, I don’t think you could claim that the executives who knowingly launched the Ford Pinto were innocent.
The UHC nhPredict lawsuit has not resolved yet, and I haven’t done enough research to be confident about it one way or another. But my point is that the crux is more “are current billionaires actively getting people killed for money?”, not “is it ok to kill innocent people because they’re rich?”
“is it ok to kill people (or call for the killing or support the killing) who have not been convicted by any court and the killing does not stop any immediate physical threat to you?”
innocence is not required, it is presumed by our civilization. At question is NOT whether the victim was a bad person who we’re perhaps better off without. At question is whether anyone but a court can decide what to do about it.
It’s disturbing how socially acceptable it is to call for mob action in direct contravention of rule of law.
People call for mob action because they believe the rule of law isn’t working. At the moment the fact that nobody besides Epstein and Maxwell that was involved in their operation got charged with any crimes is a good sign that the rule of law isn’t really working well at charging people at the top.
Nobody at HSBC got into prison for laundering drug money. Facebook getting away with 25% of their profit being facilitating fraud of their customers also seems to me like the rule of law isn’t working.
Are you sure that is true?
The article you links essentially argues a strawman:
You wouldn’t persecute people who are just mentioned in an email, contact list or flight log. You would persecute those accused by the women who told the police they are victims. According to the lawyer for the victims there are at least twenty men against whom victims gave testimony.
Given victim testimony and the files we have I think it’s also would make sense to say that Epstein was running a criminal enterprise that’s subject to the RICO act. That means that plenty of employees like the pilot that was trafficking the girls to the island likely committed crimes. If you start you RICO proceedings you can offer lower level employees immunity for providing more evidence.
They’re not really calling for mob action (in almost all cases). It’s a rhetorical expression of hatred. Cf saying ‘eat the rich’ is not a serious advocacy of cannibalism.
That’s not to say though that it’s ok to call for mob action eg on social media, as it slightly increases the chance that some extremists might take it literally and act on it
When you phrase the question like this, do you think that you’ve identified a set of characteristics that, throughout history, will never lead to the wrong conclusion? Or are you making a heuristic argument?
I think that throughout history, there have probably been many “ok” killings against people who did not present an immediate threat to the killer and had not been convicted by any court. I think that even today there are probably such killings. Do you have an argument against that position or do you think that, by phrasing things in the way you have, you’ve implicitly made a sufficient argument already?
(This is not to say that the UHC CEO killing in particular was justified, of course.)
Not at all. There is no such set of characteristics. Wrong conclusions are inevitable and commonplace. Godel’s Theorems apply to all formalisms.
In the current world, the harm of unsanctioned killing being commonly accepted (and cheered) is generally a LOT higher than the harm of statistically-evil people continuing to live. So, yes, a heuristic argument: this is a loss of civilization and order, even if it might have been justifiable on some dimensions.
A tangent, but Godel’s incompleteness theorems simply show that for sufficiently powerful formal systems:
There are statements which are true, but unprovable
If the system is consistent, “this system is consistent” is such a statement.
Neither of which show that all formal systems are unsound. That is, if a statement is provable in a formal system, the corresponding property is true in all models of that formal system. So this point is not correct because of Godel (though it could be practically correct for other reasons, such as the world being complicated).
They do not apply to all formalisms, morality is not a formal system, and even if it were this is not what either of Godel’s theorems would say about it. I don’t know why this particular bit of math misunderstanding is so popular online, I suspect it’s because it enables moves like the one you’re making here (i.e. of the form “it’s impossible to justify any statement so I can’t be expected to justify my statements”).
Ah, I wouldn’t call this a heuristic argument—by “heuristic argument” I mean something like “I can’t come up with any utilitarian calculation that says the bad outweighs the good here, but I know that human brains are prone to underestimating this sort of bad, so I assume there is a calculation saying it was overall bad even if I don’t know what it is.” (Incidentally this is how I understand this situation.) If you have an argument to this effect, I’d love to see it! But to satisfy me it will need to be the sort of argument that permits killing Stalin or Hitler or Idi Amin with a pretty wide margin for error, and if it’s not I’ll make the same critique I did before.
I don’t think that’s true. Picture the average 4chan-tier internet racist who says he wants to shut down all immigration from Africa because they’re destroying Western civilization. What empirical facts do you think you would have to convince him of to get him to accept a policy with high African immigration? I don’t think this is impossible, but man, it’s pretty close.
I have had arguments with both TND 4chan posters and Eat The RIch leftists, and a recurring pattern I have observed is that when they say “I hate ‘em because X”, if you falsify X to their begrudging satisfaction, they won’t hate ’em any less. People often have beliefs that are less than fully factual, especially when vicious monkey-brain tribalism is involved.
Trusting these groups of people about their cruxes here seems naive to the point of apologia. “Oh Hitler didn’t want to kill innocent Jews, surely you agree some drastic action would be necessary if the Jews were plotting the downfall of the Reich.”
Sometimes the only appropriate response to an especially bizarre statement is “On what planet do you spent most of your time?”