Yes, precisely! This is what I think should be the golden standard for censorship. Ask yourself if the other person would try to censor you if they thought they could get away with it even if you were nice to them, and if the answer is yes it is acceptable (but not necessarily desirable!) to censor them. So an honest and reasonable bio-realist should not be censored, but Eugine Nier should be. It’s simply a matter of memetic self-defence.
The same way you distinguish between someone who murders a person in order to steal their money and someone who kills a person in self defence: By evaluating on a case-by-case basis to the best of your ability. It’s not always easy, but it sure beats not bothering to make the distinction.
(In this case I think it’s quite obvious that Eugine Nier is the DefectBot and not Kaj_Sotala.)
Imagine the distance to the “cooperate” button is slightly higher than the “defect” button. Someone who can’t reach the cooperate button might not mean any harm. But from your point of view, they might as well be a defectbot.
Ask yourself if the other person would try to censor you if they thought they could get away with it even if you were nice to them, and if the answer is yes it is acceptable (but not necessarily desirable!) to censor them.
That isn’t what a DefectBot is. A DefectBot is an agent that would defect in every position, including this one.
For example, the Nazis might do everything in their power to hurt you now (such as attacking you on the way home), and when they are in power (such as, well, I think we all know the canonical example of that.)
On the other hand, they might act nice now but, you suspect, defect when they find themselves in power. Or they might attack as hard as they can now, but be generous in victory. Neither of those are DefectBot.
That’s funny because I view progressives as the exact group that would instantly throw me under the bus the moment I didn’t want to help them against someone else. Neoreactionaries at least propose to leave me alone.
I’m not excited about the NR plans for gay people if they ever come to power. Moldbug is charmingly neutral on the issue, but many of the others most certainly are not.
It is my impression that neoreactionaries want a non-democratic government. Surely this non-democratic government will make laws that you are required to obey, right?
Most neo reactionaries I read believe in something called Exit whereby if you want you can get the hell out. Contrast this to the ussr or how America will continue to tax you for something like 10 years if you want to emigrate.
Exiting isn’t cost-free, though. Most people won’t even exit by moving to a different state in the US, just because of all the direct and indirect costs of moving.
I think you’re confusing “responding to a point someone is trying to make” and “making fun of someone”.
Maybe the average progressive has neither the power or the inclination to put me in a gulag but the side of things that they historically have lent their power and rhetoric to sure does. I don’t feel it’s particularly likely to happen in the near future but I also recognize that no one seemed to have predicted the outcome ahead of time the last time.
Or to put it another way: Stalinists are on a continuum with progressives. They are not a different kind of thing.
I think you’re confusing “responding to a point someone is trying to make” and “making fun of someone”.
Fair point. My comment was unnecessarily snarky.
Maybe the average progressive has neither the power or the inclination to put me in a gulag but the side of things that they historically have lent their power and rhetoric to sure does.
There have been sections of the progressive left that lent their power and rhetoric to support Soviet communism. There have also been significant sections of the progressive left that lent their power and rhetoric to vociferously oppose Soviet communism. Andrei Sakharov, Vaclav Havel, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Camus and George Orwell—a few big names that come to mind immediately—all had political views that would probably classify them as “progressive” in today’s political climate. In addition, progressives have been at the forefront of most movements to expand civil liberties in the 20th century.
If you just focus on progressivism’s criticisms of capitalism and conservatism, then yeah, it doesn’t seem like a different kind of thing from Stalinism. But that ignores another prominent tendency in the history of the movement—a strong strain of civil libertarianism (the ACLU, for instance, is regarded by many as a progressive institution) -- which is qualitatively distinct from Stalinism.
Or to put it another way: Stalinists are on a continuum with progressives. They are not a different kind of thing.
I’m not sure what you mean by “progressives”, but it seems to me that “liberals” or “social-democrats” are actually closer to libertarians in terms of personal freedoms, while Soviet-style socialists are closer to fascists and theocrats on these issues.
The political spectrum has at least two dimensions: personal freedoms and economic freedoms.
I would probably put it as “The more power progressives get, the more they tend to evolve towards stalinists”. After all you’ve got to protect the people against the horrors of capitalism.
I was under the impression that “Exit” was the means by which they were going to establish their own utopia, that is, by exiting whichever one they were living in currently, rather than a fundamental right for us unlucky proles.
Ask yourself if the other person would try to censor you if they thought they could get away with it even if you were nice to them,
I think you are going to run into problems here. I suspect that most adherents of many ideologies would censor opposing views if they could get away with it.
Yes, precisely! This is what I think should be the golden standard for censorship. Ask yourself if the other person would try to censor you if they thought they could get away with it even if you were nice to them, and if the answer is yes it is acceptable (but not necessarily desirable!) to censor them. So an honest and reasonable bio-realist should not be censored, but Eugine Nier should be. It’s simply a matter of memetic self-defence.
The problem is how does one distinguish someone defecting because he’s dealing with a DefectBot with someone defecting because he is a DefectBot.
The same way you distinguish between someone who murders a person in order to steal their money and someone who kills a person in self defence: By evaluating on a case-by-case basis to the best of your ability. It’s not always easy, but it sure beats not bothering to make the distinction.
(In this case I think it’s quite obvious that Eugine Nier is the DefectBot and not Kaj_Sotala.)
And it wasn’t the people Eugine Nier was downvoting?
No, it wasn’t. Do you have any reason to think it was?
Well Eugine seemed to think so.
He seemed to think they were not rational enough to participate on this site. That’s not the same as being a DefectBot.
Imagine the distance to the “cooperate” button is slightly higher than the “defect” button. Someone who can’t reach the cooperate button might not mean any harm. But from your point of view, they might as well be a defectbot.
That isn’t what a DefectBot is. A DefectBot is an agent that would defect in every position, including this one.
For example, the Nazis might do everything in their power to hurt you now (such as attacking you on the way home), and when they are in power (such as, well, I think we all know the canonical example of that.)
On the other hand, they might act nice now but, you suspect, defect when they find themselves in power. Or they might attack as hard as they can now, but be generous in victory. Neither of those are DefectBot.
That’s funny because I view progressives as the exact group that would instantly throw me under the bus the moment I didn’t want to help them against someone else. Neoreactionaries at least propose to leave me alone.
I’m not excited about the NR plans for gay people if they ever come to power. Moldbug is charmingly neutral on the issue, but many of the others most certainly are not.
It is my impression that neoreactionaries want a non-democratic government. Surely this non-democratic government will make laws that you are required to obey, right?
Most neo reactionaries I read believe in something called Exit whereby if you want you can get the hell out. Contrast this to the ussr or how America will continue to tax you for something like 10 years if you want to emigrate.
Exiting isn’t cost-free, though. Most people won’t even exit by moving to a different state in the US, just because of all the direct and indirect costs of moving.
this is true, and one reason why I’m not a neoreactionary. But I’d still rather be deported than gulagged.
I think you’re confusing progressives with Stalinists.
I think you’re confusing “responding to a point someone is trying to make” and “making fun of someone”.
Maybe the average progressive has neither the power or the inclination to put me in a gulag but the side of things that they historically have lent their power and rhetoric to sure does. I don’t feel it’s particularly likely to happen in the near future but I also recognize that no one seemed to have predicted the outcome ahead of time the last time.
Or to put it another way: Stalinists are on a continuum with progressives. They are not a different kind of thing.
Fair point. My comment was unnecessarily snarky.
There have been sections of the progressive left that lent their power and rhetoric to support Soviet communism. There have also been significant sections of the progressive left that lent their power and rhetoric to vociferously oppose Soviet communism. Andrei Sakharov, Vaclav Havel, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Camus and George Orwell—a few big names that come to mind immediately—all had political views that would probably classify them as “progressive” in today’s political climate. In addition, progressives have been at the forefront of most movements to expand civil liberties in the 20th century.
If you just focus on progressivism’s criticisms of capitalism and conservatism, then yeah, it doesn’t seem like a different kind of thing from Stalinism. But that ignores another prominent tendency in the history of the movement—a strong strain of civil libertarianism (the ACLU, for instance, is regarded by many as a progressive institution) -- which is qualitatively distinct from Stalinism.
I’m not sure what you mean by “progressives”, but it seems to me that “liberals” or “social-democrats” are actually closer to libertarians in terms of personal freedoms, while Soviet-style socialists are closer to fascists and theocrats on these issues.
The political spectrum has at least two dimensions: personal freedoms and economic freedoms.
I would probably put it as “The more power progressives get, the more they tend to evolve towards stalinists”. After all you’ve got to protect the people against the horrors of capitalism.
I was under the impression that “Exit” was the means by which they were going to establish their own utopia, that is, by exiting whichever one they were living in currently, rather than a fundamental right for us unlucky proles.
I think you are going to run into problems here. I suspect that most adherents of many ideologies would censor opposing views if they could get away with it.