in the human art of rationality there’s a flat law against meeting arguments with violence, anywhere in the human world
No. You’re confusing rationality with your own received ethical value system. Violence is both an appropriate and frequently necessary response to all sorts of arguments.
A strong claim but without any evidence to back it up.
Perhaps you could at least give some examples of arguments for which the necessary response is violence.
Perhaps you could at least give some examples of arguments for which the necessary response is violence.
Possibly, but only if you roll a natural 20 on your necromancy check. You are replying to a comment that was posted in 2007 - and on a different blog! Perhaps not the ideal place to play the “my position is the default—you are the one who needs to supply all the evidence!” game. Or, then again, perhaps it is the ideal place!
A strong claim but without any evidence to back it up.
It is not even a question for which demanding evidence makes sense—at least without specifying more clearly what kind of observations of the world you are considering. One could assume that you mean “give me evidence that the consequences of responding to arguments with violence can positive”—but then you have already lost to Caledonian’s position. When you are looking at consequences, “argument” and “violence” are just two different kinds of power. Occasionally the latter is to be preferred to the former.
The only way “there’s a flat law against meeting arguments with violence, anywhere in the human world” was going to hold was if it stayed purely in the ideological realm. And a Traditional Rationality ideology realm more than a Bayesian Rationality one. “Arguments” can, at times, be a greater epistemic rationality violation than mere violence.
Possibly, but only if you roll a natural 20 on your necromancy check.
:) I did know that I was responding to an ancient response… but I had thought that Caledonian may still be lurking about this site...
In a way my response was more to point out the problem with what he said—than to actually request a specific response from him. If somebody else came along later and happened to agree with Caledonian, they might point out evidence that would support his claim… thus I figured it was worth posting anyway.
We keep being told to comment regardless of how old the posts are… and this is why.
One could assume that you mean “give me evidence that the consequences of responding to arguments with violence can positive”
Nah—that’s the wrong tack. I’m sure there are things where violence could be a positive response. But the claim made was that there are things for which the necessary response is violence… as though for certain situations, only violence will work.
Perhaps there are such situations.. but Caledonian did not even give examples, let alone evidence to support his claim… Thus my reaction.
I’d argue that there are vanishingly few situations in which the only possible solution is violence… but, as I stated, would welcome evidence/discussion to the contrary.
This might be stretching the definition of an “argument”, but I think there’s a class of speech that must be dealt with by violence. The key identifier of this class is that there is a time-critical danger from third parties accepting the argument.
In other words, its not so much violence used to prevent Alice from trying to convince you that the sky is red, but violence used to prevent Alice from trying to convince Bob to participate in a lynching.
I’d disagree that violence was the only option in that case. I think the best option might be to spirit away the potential lynchee. If they’ve already got him strung up—then firing a shot in the air, followed by harsh words from the local law-maker would be the next option… violence is still an option, but not the only one, and not necessarily the first port of call.
I think it’s quite rare for violence to be the only option available.
Drawing a sharp distinction like this between violence and the implied threat of violence (e.g., firing weapons and “harsh words” and the invoking of authority backed by force) is problematic. The efficacy of the latter depends on the former; a law-maker known to be reliably nonviolent firing a harmless noisemaker would be far less effective.
Yeah—could be. I also read a comment from EY saying that it was specifically his vote keeping him unbanned.
I’ve read other comments from EY that seem to suggest that Caledonian was being kept around as a kind of troll-in-residence.… including one that seemed to indicate that EY used responses to Caledonian to determine whether or not he’d got his point across well enough :)
Interesting. I don’t remember those, but I do remember several discussions where EY wanted to ban Caledonian and various other people talked him out of it.
You may be right, but I wanted to point out that I think that violent repression of speech is an accepted part of common law and is an available remedy in the United States and other countries based on English common law. Civil actions related to libel and slander ultimately carry a threat of violence by the state in recovering judgments found against someone in a civil court; you never see it actually happen, and often judgments are not collected at all but it is completely possible you could be found in contempt or have a lien against property that eventually results in an arrest warrant.
My understanding is that it’s supposed to be a “Bayesian Rationality on leaky hardware” thing. This makes finding evidence for and against very subtle, because you have to come up with some kind of reference class that’s objective in a certain hard-to-define way.
But some kind of argumentation is necessary and has some chance of working.
No. You’re confusing rationality with your own received ethical value system. Violence is both an appropriate and frequently necessary response to all sorts of arguments.
A strong claim but without any evidence to back it up. Perhaps you could at least give some examples of arguments for which the necessary response is violence.
Possibly, but only if you roll a natural 20 on your necromancy check. You are replying to a comment that was posted in 2007 - and on a different blog! Perhaps not the ideal place to play the “my position is the default—you are the one who needs to supply all the evidence!” game. Or, then again, perhaps it is the ideal place!
It is not even a question for which demanding evidence makes sense—at least without specifying more clearly what kind of observations of the world you are considering. One could assume that you mean “give me evidence that the consequences of responding to arguments with violence can positive”—but then you have already lost to Caledonian’s position. When you are looking at consequences, “argument” and “violence” are just two different kinds of power. Occasionally the latter is to be preferred to the former.
The only way “there’s a flat law against meeting arguments with violence, anywhere in the human world” was going to hold was if it stayed purely in the ideological realm. And a Traditional Rationality ideology realm more than a Bayesian Rationality one. “Arguments” can, at times, be a greater epistemic rationality violation than mere violence.
:) I did know that I was responding to an ancient response… but I had thought that Caledonian may still be lurking about this site...
In a way my response was more to point out the problem with what he said—than to actually request a specific response from him. If somebody else came along later and happened to agree with Caledonian, they might point out evidence that would support his claim… thus I figured it was worth posting anyway.
We keep being told to comment regardless of how old the posts are… and this is why.
Nah—that’s the wrong tack. I’m sure there are things where violence could be a positive response. But the claim made was that there are things for which the necessary response is violence… as though for certain situations, only violence will work.
Perhaps there are such situations.. but Caledonian did not even give examples, let alone evidence to support his claim… Thus my reaction.
I’d argue that there are vanishingly few situations in which the only possible solution is violence… but, as I stated, would welcome evidence/discussion to the contrary.
This might be stretching the definition of an “argument”, but I think there’s a class of speech that must be dealt with by violence. The key identifier of this class is that there is a time-critical danger from third parties accepting the argument.
In other words, its not so much violence used to prevent Alice from trying to convince you that the sky is red, but violence used to prevent Alice from trying to convince Bob to participate in a lynching.
I’d disagree that violence was the only option in that case. I think the best option might be to spirit away the potential lynchee. If they’ve already got him strung up—then firing a shot in the air, followed by harsh words from the local law-maker would be the next option… violence is still an option, but not the only one, and not necessarily the first port of call.
I think it’s quite rare for violence to be the only option available.
Drawing a sharp distinction like this between violence and the implied threat of violence (e.g., firing weapons and “harsh words” and the invoking of authority backed by force) is problematic. The efficacy of the latter depends on the former; a law-maker known to be reliably nonviolent firing a harmless noisemaker would be far less effective.
An easier and less politically charged example: libel is a crime iff you knew it was false at the time you said it.
Actually, I think he got banned—if you look at his last comments, he certainly thought it likely that he was going to be.
Yeah—could be. I also read a comment from EY saying that it was specifically his vote keeping him unbanned.
I’ve read other comments from EY that seem to suggest that Caledonian was being kept around as a kind of troll-in-residence.… including one that seemed to indicate that EY used responses to Caledonian to determine whether or not he’d got his point across well enough :)
Interesting. I don’t remember those, but I do remember several discussions where EY wanted to ban Caledonian and various other people talked him out of it.
You may be right, but I wanted to point out that I think that violent repression of speech is an accepted part of common law and is an available remedy in the United States and other countries based on English common law. Civil actions related to libel and slander ultimately carry a threat of violence by the state in recovering judgments found against someone in a civil court; you never see it actually happen, and often judgments are not collected at all but it is completely possible you could be found in contempt or have a lien against property that eventually results in an arrest warrant.
My understanding is that it’s supposed to be a “Bayesian Rationality on leaky hardware” thing. This makes finding evidence for and against very subtle, because you have to come up with some kind of reference class that’s objective in a certain hard-to-define way.
But some kind of argumentation is necessary and has some chance of working.