And it is triple ultra forbidden to respond to criticism with violence. There are a very few injunctions in the human art of rationality that have no ifs, ands, buts, or escape clauses. This is one of them. Bad argument gets counterargument. Does not get bullet. Never. Never ever never for ever.
Lawsuits are of an importantly different category than violence. Lawsuits are one of the several mechanisms that society uses settle disputes without needing to resort to violence.
They may be inappropriate here, but I want to reject the equivocation between suing (or threatening to sue) someone and shooting (or threatening to shoot) them.
As I think of it, the heart of the “bad argument gets counterargument” notion is “respond to arguments using reasoning, not coercion”, rather than “literal physical violence is a unique category of thing that is never OK”. Both strike me as good norms, but the former seems deeper and more novel to me, closer to the heart of things. I’m a fan of Scott’s gloss (and am happy to cite it instead, if we want to construe Eliezer’s version of the thing as something narrower):
[...] What is the “spirit of the First Amendment”? Eliezer Yudkowsky writes:
“There are a very few injunctions in the human art of rationality that have no ifs, ands, buts, or escape clauses. This is one of them. Bad argument gets counterargument. Does not get bullet. Never. Never ever never for ever.”
Why is this a rationality injunction instead of a legal injunction? Because the point is protecting “the marketplace of ideas” where arguments succeed based on the evidence supporting or opposing them and not based on the relative firepower of their proponents and detractors. [...]
What does “bullet” mean in the quote above? Are other projectiles covered? Arrows? Boulders launched from catapults? What about melee weapons like swords or maces? Where exactly do we draw the line for “inappropriate responses to an argument”?
A good response to an argument is one that addresses an idea; a bad argument is one that silences it. If you try to address an idea, your success depends on how good the idea is; if you try to silence it, your success depends on how powerful you are and how many pitchforks and torches you can provide on short notice.
Shooting bullets is a good way to silence an idea without addressing it. So is firing stones from catapults, or slicing people open with swords, or gathering a pitchfork-wielding mob.
But trying to get someone fired for holding an idea is also a way of silencing an idea without addressing it. I’m sick of talking about Phil Robertson, so let’s talk about the Alabama woman who was fired for having a Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker on her car (her boss supported Bush). Could be an easy way to quiet support for a candidate you don’t like. Oh, there are more Bush voters than Kerry voters in this county? Let’s bombard her workplace with letters until they fire her! Now she’s broke and has to sit at home trying to scrape money together to afford food and ruing the day she ever dared to challenge our prejudices! And the next person to disagree with the rest of us will think twice before opening their mouth!
The e-version of this practice is “doxxing”, where you hunt down an online commenter’s personally identifiable information including address. Then you either harass people they know personally, spam their place of employment with angry comments, or post it on the Internet for everyone to see, probably with a message like “I would never threaten this person at their home address myself, but if one of my followers wants to, I guess I can’t stop them.” This was the Jezebel strategy that Michael was most complaining about. Freethought Blogs is also particularlyfamous for this tactic and often devolves into sagas that would make MsScribe herself proud.
A lot of people would argue that doxxing holds people “accountable” for what they say online. But like most methods of silencing speech, its ability to punish people for saying the wrong things is entirely uncorrelated with whether the thing they said is actually wrong. It distributes power based on who controls the largest mob (hint: popular people) and who has the resources, job security, and physical security necessary to outlast a personal attack (hint: rich people). If you try to hold the Koch Brothers “accountable” for muddying the climate change waters, they will laugh in your face. If you try to hold closeted gay people “accountable” for promoting gay rights, it will be very easy and you will successfully ruin their lives. Do you really want to promote a policy that works this way?
There are even more subtle ways of silencing an idea than trying to get its proponents fired or real-life harassed. For example, you can always just harass them online. The stronger forms of this, like death threats and rape threats, are of course illegal. But that still leaves many opportunities for constant verbal abuse, crude sexual jokes, insults aimed at family members, and dozens of emails written in all capital letters about what sorts of colorful punishments you and the people close to you deserve. [...]
My answer to the “Doctrine Of The Preferred First Speaker” ought to be clear by now. The conflict isn’t always just between first speaker and second speaker, it can also be between someone who’s trying to debate versus someone who’s trying to silence. Telling a bounty hunter on the phone “I’ll pay you $10 million to kill Bob” is a form of speech, but its goal is to silence rather than to counterargue. So is commenting “YOU ARE A SLUT AND I HOPE YOUR FAMILY DIES” on a blog. And so is orchestrating a letter-writing campaign demanding a business fire someone who vocally supports John Kerry.
Bad argument gets counterargument. Does not get bullet. Does not get doxxing. Does not get harassment. Does not get fired from job. Gets counterargument. Should not be hard.
Relevant: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NCefvet6X3Sd4wrPc/uncritical-supercriticality
I’m unclear on why you you posted this comment. Is this a reminder not to resort to violence? Who are you reminding?
I dunno why cata posted it, but I almost quoted this myself to explain why I dislike the proposed “bad argument gets lawsuit” norm.
Yes, that’s what I was thinking. To me the lawsuit threat is totally beyond the pale.
Lawsuits are of an importantly different category than violence. Lawsuits are one of the several mechanisms that society uses settle disputes without needing to resort to violence.
They may be inappropriate here, but I want to reject the equivocation between suing (or threatening to sue) someone and shooting (or threatening to shoot) them.
As I think of it, the heart of the “bad argument gets counterargument” notion is “respond to arguments using reasoning, not coercion”, rather than “literal physical violence is a unique category of thing that is never OK”. Both strike me as good norms, but the former seems deeper and more novel to me, closer to the heart of things. I’m a fan of Scott’s gloss (and am happy to cite it instead, if we want to construe Eliezer’s version of the thing as something narrower):