anyone who’s blandly willing to murder millions of non-combatants of a friendly power in peacetime because they do not accede to empire-building is unfit for inclusion in the human race
You do realize that the point of my proposed strategy was to prevent the destruction of Earth (from a potential nuclear war between the US and USSR), and not “empire building”?
I don’t understand why Richard and you consider MAD acceptable, but my proposal beyond the pale. Both of you use the words “friendly power in peacetime”, which must be relevant somehow but I don’t see how. Why would it be ok (i.e., fit for inclusion in the human race) to commit to murdering millions of non-combatants of an enemy power in wartime in order to prevent nuclear war, but not ok to commit to murdering millions of non-combatants of a friendly power in peacetime in service of the same goal?
A comment on LW is not the same as that bland willingness to slaughter, and you do yourself no favours by incorrectly paraphrasing it as such.
I also took Richard’s comment personally (he did say “your bland willingness”, emphasis added), which is probably why I didn’t respond to it.
The issue seems to be that nuking a friendly power in peacetime feels to people pretty much like a railroad problem where you need to shove the fat person. In this particular case, since it isn’t a hypothetical, the situation has been made all the more complicated by actual discussion of the historical and current geopolitics surrounding the situation (which essentially amounts to trying to find a clever solution to a train problem or arguing that the fat person wouldn’t weigh enough.) The reaction is against your apparent strong consequentialism along with the fact that your strategy wouldn’t actually work given the geopolitical situation. If one had an explicitly hypothetical geopolitical situation where this would work and then see how they respond it might be interesting.
He could easily have said “bland willingness to” rather than “your bland willingness” so that doesn’t seem to be an example where a pronoun is necessary.
No, it’s an example where using “you” has caused someone to take something personally. Given that the “he/she” problem is that some people take it personally, I haven’t solved the problem, I’ve just shifted it onto a different group of people.
You do realize that the point of my proposed strategy was to prevent the destruction of Earth (from a potential nuclear war between the US and USSR), and not “empire building”?
I don’t understand why Richard and you consider MAD acceptable, but my proposal beyond the pale. Both of you use the words “friendly power in peacetime”, which must be relevant somehow but I don’t see how. Why would it be ok (i.e., fit for inclusion in the human race) to commit to murdering millions of non-combatants of an enemy power in wartime in order to prevent nuclear war, but not ok to commit to murdering millions of non-combatants of a friendly power in peacetime in service of the same goal?
I also took Richard’s comment personally (he did say “your bland willingness”, emphasis added), which is probably why I didn’t respond to it.
The issue seems to be that nuking a friendly power in peacetime feels to people pretty much like a railroad problem where you need to shove the fat person. In this particular case, since it isn’t a hypothetical, the situation has been made all the more complicated by actual discussion of the historical and current geopolitics surrounding the situation (which essentially amounts to trying to find a clever solution to a train problem or arguing that the fat person wouldn’t weigh enough.) The reaction is against your apparent strong consequentialism along with the fact that your strategy wouldn’t actually work given the geopolitical situation. If one had an explicitly hypothetical geopolitical situation where this would work and then see how they respond it might be interesting.
Well, this is evidence against using second-person pronouns to avoid “he/she”.
He could easily have said “bland willingness to” rather than “your bland willingness” so that doesn’t seem to be an example where a pronoun is necessary.
No, it’s an example where using “you” has caused someone to take something personally. Given that the “he/she” problem is that some people take it personally, I haven’t solved the problem, I’ve just shifted it onto a different group of people.