I could spell out the relevant differences here, but I don’t believe you’re genuinely confused about this. Instead, you got the idea that drawing a false equivalence between regulation and throwing a molotov cocktail was a rhetorical weapon you could use. Maybe you tried it out in some echo chambers, and got positive feedback from some people who also pretended to be confused in this way.
I’m not pretending to confusion. I’m calling out the hypocrisy in your sanctimonious denunciation of some minor ineffectual violence while simultaneously publicly advocating for far worse, just gussied up. But no, I did not expect any response from you other than the typical reaction to any such special pleading being pointed out: “false equivalence,” “whataboutism”, “tu quoque fallacy” etc.
Government regulations come into being through political processes which at least somewhat track truth and the collective interests of voters. If the arguments that superintelligence is not worth the risk are compelling enough, then governments will ban building it; if they aren’t, they won’t. It’s far from perfect in the United States, but it sure as heck beats having individual outlier people attempting to implement their preferred decision with violence.
Government regulations come with enforcement mechanisms, which, somewhere along the escalation chain, wind up including imprisonment. Those regulations have violence lurking in the background behind them, mut most of the time, in practice, lurking in the background is as far as it goes. Lawyers warn businesses away from doing things that are banned, and then no one goes to jail. It’s far from perfect, but the US legal system has had a lot of effort invested into making it predictable and proportionate.
“Political processes which at least somewhat track truth and the collective interests of voters” applies to Molotov cocktails as well… there’s a reason one common definition of “the government” is “the successful claim of a monopoly on violence”.
Yes, yes, governments are more sophisticated than stochastic social media terrorists. They have processes and checks and whatnot. This means their violence is more likely to actually be in their self-interest, and not out of emotional spite or delusional grandeur. So? Read Shankar’s original comment:
This is just elevating your aesthetic preference for what the violence you’re advocating for looks like to a moral principle. The claim that throwing a Molotov cocktail at one guy’s house is counterproductive to the goal of “bombing the datacenters” is a better argument, though one I do not believe.
He correctly identified that you are really saying, “individuals are prone to take counterproductive violent actions,” and thus the correct refutation is to say that instead of pretending your heuristic is a moral tautology. It clearly isn’t a tautology, or someone couldn’t have thrown a cocktail!
I could spell out the relevant differences here, but I don’t believe you’re genuinely confused about this. Instead, you got the idea that drawing a false equivalence between regulation and throwing a molotov cocktail was a rhetorical weapon you could use. Maybe you tried it out in some echo chambers, and got positive feedback from some people who also pretended to be confused in this way.
I’m not pretending to confusion. I’m calling out the hypocrisy in your sanctimonious denunciation of some minor ineffectual violence while simultaneously publicly advocating for far worse, just gussied up.
But no, I did not expect any response from you other than the typical reaction to any such special pleading being pointed out: “false equivalence,” “whataboutism”, “tu quoque fallacy” etc.
Government regulations come into being through political processes which at least somewhat track truth and the collective interests of voters. If the arguments that superintelligence is not worth the risk are compelling enough, then governments will ban building it; if they aren’t, they won’t. It’s far from perfect in the United States, but it sure as heck beats having individual outlier people attempting to implement their preferred decision with violence.
Government regulations come with enforcement mechanisms, which, somewhere along the escalation chain, wind up including imprisonment. Those regulations have violence lurking in the background behind them, mut most of the time, in practice, lurking in the background is as far as it goes. Lawyers warn businesses away from doing things that are banned, and then no one goes to jail. It’s far from perfect, but the US legal system has had a lot of effort invested into making it predictable and proportionate.
“Political processes which at least somewhat track truth and the collective interests of voters” applies to Molotov cocktails as well… there’s a reason one common definition of “the government” is “the successful claim of a monopoly on violence”.
Yes, yes, governments are more sophisticated than stochastic social media terrorists. They have processes and checks and whatnot. This means their violence is more likely to actually be in their self-interest, and not out of emotional spite or delusional grandeur. So? Read Shankar’s original comment:
He correctly identified that you are really saying, “individuals are prone to take counterproductive violent actions,” and thus the correct refutation is to say that instead of pretending your heuristic is a moral tautology. It clearly isn’t a tautology, or someone couldn’t have thrown a cocktail!