“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!
“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!