I’m not sure. The strongest claim I make in that direction is that “Many in the rationalist sphere look down on tribalism and group identity.” I think this is true—I bet each of the people I named would endorse the statement “The world would be better off with a lot less tribalism.”
Possibility strickler in me notices a claim of “It is impossible to deal with pests without resorting to violence”. While doing poisoning and outrigth killlings for pest control is rather easy ethic bar to clear I don’t see the inevitability of it. You could have things like plant surfaces being engireered to be repulsive to pests, you could do things like allowing pests to only grow outside of industiralised farming. For a lot of these options the effort extended would overshadow the gains in “ethical” operation.
For example in a very simple view of law enforcement the police just straight up murder bad guys. But for a more nuanced and complex system, use of force is more detailed and actual application of lethal force would be rarely the prescription. There is a important line between “policing involves use of legitimised state violence” vs “policing will always involve force”.
Is anyone arguing that we shouldn’t affiliate with any tribe?
I’m not sure. The strongest claim I make in that direction is that “Many in the rationalist sphere look down on tribalism and group identity.” I think this is true—I bet each of the people I named would endorse the statement “The world would be better off with a lot less tribalism.”
Yeah, but that’s not to say it’s not good.
The world would be better off with a lot less violence. But in a world where other people are violent, being so is sometimes good.
Even if no humans were violent we’d still need a minimal level of violence to defend against pests and such.
But the world would still be better off without violence.
I don’t know, it seems to me like you’re making a category error, but maybe I’m missing something.
Possibility strickler in me notices a claim of “It is impossible to deal with pests without resorting to violence”. While doing poisoning and outrigth killlings for pest control is rather easy ethic bar to clear I don’t see the inevitability of it. You could have things like plant surfaces being engireered to be repulsive to pests, you could do things like allowing pests to only grow outside of industiralised farming. For a lot of these options the effort extended would overshadow the gains in “ethical” operation.
For example in a very simple view of law enforcement the police just straight up murder bad guys. But for a more nuanced and complex system, use of force is more detailed and actual application of lethal force would be rarely the prescription. There is a important line between “policing involves use of legitimised state violence” vs “policing will always involve force”.
I think we’re disagreeing on semantics. But I’d endorse both the statements “violence is bad” and “violence is sometimes good”.