Sam Harris came closer when he put the accusing finger on faith. If you don't place an appropriate burden of proof on each and every additional nice claim, the affective resonance gets started very easily.

How does one determine the appropriate burden of proof?

Apparently I left a tag open. The first paragraph is yours, whereas the second is my question.

Minor point. It is peculiar to talk about the "death of communism" when there are about as many communists in the world as there are Christians.

"Death of the _Purported_ Worldwide Worker's Communist Revolution" is closer to the truth (and a mouthful).

How about "Death of Worldwide Revolutionary Communism"?

The problem with Communism is timing. In the future (if we survive the next century) there will be enough technological progression to create essential Communism (no-one needs to work, everyone will have necessary resources to live incredible lives and so forth). Of course, we won't call it Communism.

Haven't had a post this good in a while. With immediate application,too.

Err... did that post end up dying in a free speech happy death spiral?

Especially odd from a person who believes in the probable possibility of humanly irresistible bad arguments as a reason for not AI boxing. If there are minds that we can't let exist because they would make bad arguments that we would find persuasive this seems terribly close, from an aggregative utilitarian standpoint, to killing them.

I'm not an expert in the Rwandan genocide, but it's my impression that to a substantial extent the people behind it basically just made arguments (bad ones, of a primarily ad-hominem form like "Tutsis are like cockroaches") for killing them and people who listened to those arguments on the radio went along with it. At least with the benefit of hindsight I am reluctant to say that the people promoting that genocide should have been stopped forcibly. Similarly, it's my impression that Charles Manson didn't personally kill anyone. He merely told his followers ridiculous stories of what the likely results of their killing certain people would be.

It would be nice if, as Socrates claimed, a bad argument cannot defeat a good one, but if that was true we wouldn't need to overcome bias. With respect to our own biases, hopefully careful thought and study of psychology is the only tool we will ever need to overcome them, but with respect to the biases of others it would be terribly biased to never consider the possibility that other tools are necessary. We can find good heuristics, like "don't violently suppress anyone who isn't actively promoting violence", but sadly violence isn't a basic ontological category, so we can't cleanly divide the world into violent and non-violent actions, no into statements that promote or don't promote some conclusion (in the context of what goal system?).

Especially odd from a person who believes in the probable possibility of humanly irresistible bad arguments as a reason for not AI boxing. If there are minds that we can't let exist because they would make bad arguments that we would find persuasive this seems terribly close, from an aggregative utilitarian standpoint, to killing them.

Fine, let me rephrase: in the human art of rationality there's a flat law against meeting arguments with violence, anywhere in the human world. In the superintelligent domain, as you say, violence is not an ontological category and there is no firm line between persuading someone with a bad argument and reprogramming their brain with nanomachines. In our world there is a firm line, however.

Let me put it this way: If you can invent a bullet that, regardless of how it is fired, or who fires it, only hits people who emit untrue statements, then you can try to use bullets as part of a Bayesian analysis. Until then, you really ought to consider the possibility of the other guy shooting back, no matter how right you are or how wrong they are, and ask whether you want to start down that road.

If the other guy shoots first, of course, that's a whole different story that has nothing to do with free speech.

So what is your response to someone like Hitler? Assuming the thug won't listen? Die? Run? I mean before the AGI goes "phoom".

Eliezer, I first saw the distinction between "natural" and "supernatural" made the way you describe in something by Richard Carrier. It was probably a blog entry from 2007-01, which points back to a couple of his earlier writings. I had a quick look at the 2003 one, and it mentions a few antecedents.

anonymous:

"In the future (if we survive the next century) there will be enough technological progression to create essential Communism (no-one needs to work, everyone will have necessary resources to live incredible lives and so forth)."

-10 points for confusing means with ends.

From the article:

"[...]there is never an Idea so true that it's wrong to criticize any argument that supports it."

Or make jokes about it? Having a sense of humour ought to be mentioned as a primary piece of equipment in the Bias-Buster's toolkit. It's easy and fun! After all, a defining feature of True Believers is that they lack a sense of irony.

Eli, you said:

In the superintelligent domain, as you say, violence is not an ontological category and there is no firm line between persuading someone with a bad argument and reprogramming their brain with nanomachines. In our world there is a firm line, however.

I don't think there is such a firm line. I think argument shades smoothly into cult brainwashing techniques.

Peter: It seems to me that we can draw a firm line, but on one side sits our very strictest most careful thought in the spirit of inquiry and on the other sits everything remotely aimed at influencing others, from legal argument to scientific defense of a position to advertising to flirtation to music (at least lyrical music) to conversation using body language and tones of voice to cult brainwashing techniques and protest rallies etc. It's very clear that we can't live entirely to one side of that line, or if we can, that we can only live on the side that contains, well, life, and also, sadly, violence.

"Bad argument gets counterargument. Does not get bullet. Never. Never ever never for ever."

What about knowledge which is actually *dangerous*, eg., the Utterly Convincing and Irresistible Five-Minute Seminar on Why We Should Build a UFAI, with highly detailed technical instructions.

Tom, I did not confuse ends and means.

there are about as many communists in the world as there are Christians. Really? There are a lot of Christians. From what I've read, virtually nobody in China is a communist now, just as people had stopped believing in the last days of the Soviet Union. In North Korea or among the rebels of Nepal there are still true-believers, but I don't think there are as many as there are Christians.

In general I like having a norm against using force when people make bad arguments. I deplore the anti-fascist fascists who seem to be the primary enemies of free speech today. At the same time I recognize that in some situations it could hypothetically be the case that free speech leads to bad outcomes, in which case I'd be alright with restricting it. I think such cases would be fantastically rare and would likely only occur during a civil war (a category I don't consider wars of secession to be members of). I recognize though that in normal situations giving a directive/command as opposed to an argument for something should be treated as solicitation of an act. Stephan Kinsella discusses that in Causality and Aggression.

Incidentally, I've taken to using the term "afaithist" for myself rather than "atheist" largely due to above mentioned issues. I'm not all that concerned so much about various religious beliefs rather than the notion of the virtue of non rational/anti rational belief, including various "must not question" flavors. Questions like existance of god/etc etc are almost incidental, questions of "mere" (eheh) fact.

Tom: If there was such a convincing eminar, perhaps it contains such a convincing argument that it's genunitely correct. Modify it to "Utterly Convincing and Irresistable Five-Minute Brainwashing Seminar On Why....." :)

no, anonymous. The problem with communism is that it's coercive and tyrannical. A super-duper welfare state is not the same as communism. Especially as productivity goes up. The difference being: under a welfare state you are taxed a portion of what you have, and some of that goes to the poor. Under communism you are essentially owned by the state. The state can tell you when to work, what to work on, and how many hours. The state tells you what you can or cannot buy, because the state decides what will or will not be produced.

Whatever you think about welfare states, communism is something else entirely.

"Tom: If there was such a convincing eminar, perhaps it contains such a convincing argument that it's genunitely correct. Modify it to "Utterly Convincing and Irresistable Five-Minute Brainwashing Seminar On Why....." :)"

It was just an example; it was deliberately chosen to be as extreme as possible, to avoid grey-area questions. No human, so far as I can determine, has the intelligence to actually produce such a thing. Many less-extreme examples of this abound, eg., what should we do with blueprints for nuclear weapons? What about genetic databases which include deadly viruses? What about genetic databases which are .1% deadly viruses and 99.9% life-saving medical research? And on and on it goes.

in the human art of rationality there's a flat law against meeting arguments with violence, anywhere in the human world

No. You're confusing rationality with your own received ethical value system. Violence is both an appropriate and frequently necessary response to all sorts of arguments.

> From what I've read, virtually nobody in China is a communist now, just as people had stopped believing in the last days of the Soviet Union. In North Korea or among the rebels of Nepal there are still true-believers, but I don't think there are as many as there are Christians.

I find it useful to distinguish between the Chinese and the Swedish. I call the Chinese form of government "communism", and I call the Swedish form of government "socialism". If they are all sub-tribes of "Canadians" to you, then you don't prize distinction as much I do.

There are certainly more "self-reported communists" than there are "humans whose daily actions are informed by the example of Jesus Christ".

...All I need are are a few dozen "self-repored communists" to prove that...

And it is triple ultra forbidden to respond with violence.

I agree. However, here are my minority beliefs on the topic: unless you use Philosophical Majoritarianism, or some other framework where you consider yourself as part of an ensemble of fallible human beings, it's fairly hard to conclusively demonstrate the validity of this rule, or indeed to draw any accurate conclusions about what to do in these cases.

If I consider my memories and my current beliefs in the abstract, as not a priori less infallible than anyone else's, a "no exceptions to Freedom to Dissent" policy follows naturally. But if I, instead, always model my last ten minutes of thought as part of a privileged, infallible Bayesian process, then the simplest conclusion is that I have a right, and even a moral duty, to mete out political punishment as I see fit. (You're also logically required, if the latter is your world-view, to eschew stock-market index funds in favor of placing diverse InTrade bets with your savings; finally, you're also required, if a betting market ever opens up where people can bet on the consequences of mathematical proofs, to bet against the greatest mathematicians in the world, anytime you disagree with them on whether a proof is valid or not.)

A rule of human rationality becomes flat when the probability of falsely perceiving an exception to the rule, vastly exceeds the probability of ending up in a real-world situation where it genuinely makes sense to violate the rule. Relative to modern Earth which includes many violent people and many difficult ethical dilemmas, but does not include the superbeing Omega credibly threatening to launch a black hole at the Sun if you don't shoot the next three Girl Scouts who try to sell you cookies.

I think a lot of the commenters to this thread are also missing the counterintuitive idea that once you fire a gun, the target or their survivors may shoot back.

Isn't the probability of ending up in a real world situation where the entire world is in terrible danger and only you can save it vastly smaller than that of falsely perceiving such a situation? Despite that, I'm glad Petrov made his decision. Expected costs and benefits have to be considered, not just probabilities, but then you are back in normal decision theory or at least normal but not yet invented "decision theory for biased finite agents".

Not murdering people for criticizing your beliefs is, at the very least, a useful heuristic.

Isn't the probability of ending up in a real world situation where the entire world is in terrible danger and only you can save it vastly smaller than that of falsely perceiving such a situation? Despite that, I'm glad Petrov made his decision.

Fair enough. s/probability of/expected utilities associated with/

But you can still end up with a "flat" rule for the human art of rationality, when the expected negative utilities associated from biased decisions that "the end justifies the means, in just this one case here", exceeds the expected positive utilities from cases where the universe really does end up a better place from shooting someone who makes an argument you don't like after taking all side effects into account including encouragement of similar behavior by others.

Remember, human targets shoot back. Since bullets are not even probabilistically more likely to hit when fired at a human target who has just made false statements as opposed to true statements, it's very difficult to see how a social decision process can be made more rational by introducing bullets into it.

Agreed Nominull, spectacularly useful. Definitely the sort of heuristic one would sensibly like to promote.

Rolf: It seems to me that you are trying to assert that it is normative for agents to behave in a certain manner *because the agents you are addressing are presumably non-normative*. The trouble is, using that strategy you guarantee no normative agents. The non-normative agents are not corrected by adopting your strategy, as it only mitigates their irrationalities, while any normative agents are adopting an inappropriate strategy. You can never choose soundly by assuming the processes generating your choices not to be sound. Looks to me like we need a more coherent concept of normativity, preferably one without supernatural agents. With flawed agents, all we can rigorously say is that they do what they do. What room for "should" once you have assumed them flawed and what room even for "could" once you have decided to treat them as causal systems.

in the human art of rationality there's a flat law against meeting arguments with violence, anywhere in the human world

"No. You're confusing rationality with your own received ethical value system. Violence is both an appropriate and frequently necessary response to all sorts of arguments."

I want to note that Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon, famously encountered a man who denied that humans have ever gone to the moon but that the videos of Buzz on the moon were filmed in arizona. Buzz's response when the man presented his arguments was to sock him in the jaw.

The science fiction writer John Barnes, who collaborated with Aldrin on a couple of science fiction novels, has since written several novels in which the appealing protagonist argues that the only appropriate response to some arguments is a good swift sock in the jaw. His protagonists do so, with good results.

Millions of impressionable young science fiction readers are influenced by these novels.

If you met John Barnes and he argued that he's doing the right thing, would it be appropriate to sock him in the jaw?

Barnes is 53 years old but has been doing martial arts for something like 30 years. Would that influence your choice?

Should you let the moral value of initiating violence depend on whether or not you win?

If it's right to physically attack somebody who disagrees with you provided you win but wrong when you lose, what about when it's a ten year old girl who makes an argument you can't answer except with violence?

In this case it seems that Eliezer is a bit biased toward defending his stated position, despite the fact that it is entirely obvious that his "flat rule" is in fact a leaky generalization.

For example, he keeps mentioning consequences that result from the response of the person attacked or the imitation of others. These consequences will not follow in every case. There will be no such consequences when no one (including the person attacked) will ever find out that one has responded to an argument with violence.

One can easily think of many theoretically possible circumstances (not involving superintelligence) in which one can prevent immense evils and bring about immense goods by responding to an argument with violence, and yet satisfying the condition above, that no one will ever find out.

It is true that such circumstances are not particularly probable, yet they might well be quite recognizable if they actually happened. Thus, there can be no such flat rule of rationality.

It seems to me Eleizer has arrived at a line of arguing that mirrors buddhusm and other similar systems. People are attached to certain ideas, concepts, beliefsystems etc, and when two opposing ideas clash together the result is killing, and a destructive spiral. The challenge is to transcend the situation, by being able to keep the mind cold when the rest of society goes amok. Unfortunately while scientists are good at discribing a situation, when it comes to giving normative advice they are mostly useless.

Another thing, faith is so often brought up as a reason for war and massmurder. Equally important imo are other caracteristics of the human psyche like fear, frustration, humiliation and hatred. Just consider why do (or did) so many americans support the senseless attacs on Afganistan and Irak? I would say more beacause they are scared shitless that some arabs might blow up their neighborhod rather than their blind belief in their leader.

But you can still end up with a "flat" rule for the human art of rationality, when the expected negative utilities associated from biased decisions that "the end justifies the means, in just this one case here", exceeds the expected positive utilities from cases where the universe really does end up a better place from shooting someone who makes an argument you don't like after taking all side effects into account including encouragement of similar behavior by others.

That might deserve a post of it own...

There will be no such consequences when no one (including the person attacked) will ever find out that one has responded to an argument with violence.

There are also effects on the attacker - specifically, it may make it easier for them to attack again. It will change their attitude on many issues. You'd need a murder-suicide to pull this off properly...

One can easily think of many theoretically possible circumstances (not involving superintelligence) in which one can prevent immense evils and bring about immense goods by responding to an argument with violence, and yet satisfying the condition above, that no one will ever find out.

Indeed. Eliezer's rule cannot be a flat-out rule unless it's the only flat-out rule of moral conduct - otherwise it's nearly certain it can be contradicted by one of the other flat-out rules (barring strange specific moral rule constructions that are used by nobody).

But if we take "flat-out" to mean "This rule has more weight behind it than you can imagine. Much more. You're not there yet - you can't yet conceive how bad the consequences of violating this rule will be", then it's acceptable.

"You'd need a murder-suicide to pull this off properly..."

Reminds me of Agatha Christie's "Curtain". Of course this is fictional evidence, and in any case I was thinking of more obviously justified cases.

You can think of reasons to be violent, you can think of the good that violence might create, but consider this:

The only human being who is remembered as being completely good because he shot someone was Hitler, when he shot himself.

The list of possitive changes accomplished in the REFUSAL to shoot anyone is much longer.

I don't believe violence can ever have a positive effect, except when used to defend against greater violence.

In argument, short of the entirely impossible situation where an abominable idea is irrestable to everyone else, (and assuming that you are the one person capable of resisting it...) having a 99.9999999999% probability assigned that non-violence is preferrable by a vast margin, in almost every possible situation, would be a good guide line for even the strictest rationalist.

Let me rephrase: Hitler's action (suicide) was for the good. Not he as a human being, or pretty much anything else he did. (With the exception of painting, those weren't bad.) I really should proofread this before I come off as saying something completely different.

There are plenty of situations where violence is the correct answer. There are even situations where being the first to initiate violence is the correct answer, for example, to establish a property-ownership system and enforce against anyone being able to wander in and eat the crops you grew, even if they don't use violence before eating.

However, in real life, initiation of violence is never the correct answer to a verbal argument you don't like. Anyone can "imagine" exceptions to the rule, involving definite knowledge that an argument persuading other people is wrong, and (more difficult) absolute knowledge of the consequences, and (most difficult) themselves being the only people in the world who will ever pick up a gun. Except that it's easy to forget these as conditions, if you imagine in a naively realistic way - postulate a "wrong argument" instead of your own belief that an argument is wrong, postulate "I shoot them and that makes the problem go away" instead of your own belief that these are the consequences, and just not think about anyone else being inspired to follow the same rule. Real ethical rules, however, have to apply in the case of states of knowledge, rather than states of reality. So don't tell me about situations in which it is appropriate to respond to an argument with violence. Tell me about realistically obtainable states of belief in which it is appropriate to respond to an argument with violence.

It seems to me that normative statements like "let us go and serve other gods" aren't really something you can have a rational debate about. The question comes down to "which do you love more, your god or me", and the answer should always be "God"... according to God.

Similarly, one could have a rational debate about whether a command economy will outperform a market economy or vice versa (although the empirical evidence seems pretty one-sided), but a statement like "all people ought to be socially and economically equal" seems like something that just has to be accepted or rejected.

_So don't tell me about situations in which it is appropriate to respond to an argument with violence. Tell me about realistically obtainable states of belief in which it is appropriate to respond to an argument with violence._

I don't exactly agree with this, but I can see it as a social signal. As Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes seem to express it, when somebody makes his argument that you utterly despise, you hit him to show that you refuse to engage in rational argument with him. He is your enemy and beyond the pale and his position is not one that you consider open to rational debate.

So for example a zionist might respond this way to someone who argues that israel/palestine should become one democratic nation under one-person/one-vote. It would mean the destruction of the state of israel, it would mean that israelis would become a minority in their own country. A zionist could respond with words, something like "I don't need logical arguments for why israel should exist. Israel exists because people like me are ready and willing to kill anybody who tries to destroy her.". But a good swift sock in the jaw says the same thing more forcefully, without actually killing anybody. Ideally you knock him out and he falls down and hits his head on the floor, and when he wakes up he will be a chastened antisemite, a subdued antisemite, a far more submissive antisemite. He will not annoy you with logical argument.

Similar treatment might be effective against communists, pro-abortionists, and liberals generally. Logical argument can only carry you so far; at some point you get to principles that you accept because of who you are. You can't expect everyone to accept those same principles because they are not you. Some people accept the principle "You should not sock somebody in the jaw just because he disagrees with you" and some do not.

How we get along in social conversation with people who disagree with us says a lot about us. If you're having a civil conversation with a rapist, or a serial killer, or a republican, how do you handle yourself? Should you always wait for him to strike the first blow, or is it ever appropriate to cold-cock him with no warning?

If you met John Barnes and he argued that he's doing the right thing, would it be appropriate to sock him in the jaw?

No, because the statement that "the only appropriate response to some arguments is a good swift sock in the jaw" is not itself one of the arguments whose appropriate response is a sock in the jaw. There may or may not be any such arguments, but socking him in the jaw is admitting that he is fundamentally right. Of course, it might be appropriate to sock him for some other reason :-)

One can argue that Buzz Aldrin had a special right to sock the guy that you or I would not. To me, claiming the moon landing was faked is just an absurd statement. Saying it in front of Buzz is unjustifiably calling the man a fraud and a liar. Buzz shouldn't have to put up with that kind of crap.

GW, to what extent should we treat people as we want them to treat us, and to what extent should we treat them the way they say is right and the way they treat others?

Sometimes it's polite to treat other people by their own standards, and it isn't an admission that their way is right and ours is wrong.

J Thomas: Ideally you knock him out and he falls down and hits his head on the floor, and when he wakes up he will be a chastened antisemite, a subdued antisemite, a far more submissive antisemite. He will not annoy you with logical argument.

Gosh, I hope no one ever tries anything similar on a Jew.

TGGP writes:

"I recognize that in some situations it could hypothetically be the case that free speech leads to bad outcomes, in which case I'd be alright with restricting it. I think such cases would be fantastically rare..."

What about the "Werther Effect"? Journalism guidelines are drafted on the assumption that it is real, and browsing through PubMed suggests that the evidence is strong enough.

So, if imitative suicide is facilitated through art or media stimuli in predictable ways, isn't the empirical question as to whether there are "bad consequence of free speech" answered, with the reality being more prosaic than fantastically rare?

Unless you don't think suicide is a bad thing, I suppose.

What about the "Werther Effect"? I'm not really that bothered by a bunch of people I don't know killing themselves. It's your life to make or take.

Unless you don't think suicide is a bad thing, I suppose. I think my more apathetic attitude toward human life separates me from transhumanists/immortalists. I discuss that a bit here. I'm thinking more along the lines of violent totalitarian ideologies that have a reasonable chance of taking over and really screwing things up.

You can see the Buzz Aldrin punch on Youtube.

I heard he also roundhouse kicked a holocaust denier through a plate glass window and karate chopped a 9/11 truther in the balls.

DaCracka. Hitler’s paintings were bad. Unfortunately. If the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna had accepted him, he would not have become a dictator. Communism and Socialism had common ideas. The Socialists and Communists (Marxists) in the Europe after the First World War wanted to give power to the working class, establish more fairness and empower disempowered people. I am sure you all are aware of the political and historical aspects. Marx’s idea of Communism was a form of capitalist evolution. Certainly you all have read ‘Das Kapital’. I think the idea of a utopian communism contrary to the practice of a totalitarian communism was quite good. Unfortunately, everything – be it religion, ideology, etc.- gets distorted if forcefully imposed upon people.

dutz, as paintings, yes, they weren't any good. But still, much better than genocide.

Violence may convince your opponent it isn't worth arguing with you. But it will convince your audience that you're an emotional, impulsive, irrational person, no matter how right you were.

People can see someone as less than human. Until they see the getting beaten with fire hoses, and then pity sinks in.

I think in the original context, Eliezer was talking about violence commited by a society/sect/police force against an individual.

I happen to believe a swift punch in the jaw is justified in rare cases. But I can show you a few people who think beating an uppity woman is the best way to put her in her place.

You have to draw the line somewhere, and I think Buzz would agree. Sometimes, you're going to have to step over that line, so let's put it as far back as we can.

DaCracka: I think these are two issues related in a different way. His paintings were not better than genocide. This is like saying butter is better than a smack in the face. This is kind of illogical. Though, if his paintings would have been better there would have been a chance to avoid this genocide, because the Academy would have accepted him and he might have become a painter instead of a dictator. About the violence thing. I agree nobody should react with violence to an argument. There are people out there who do so. They do it because they are either frustrated or they have not learnt to discuss, or somebody has taught them to do so, or their only language is violence. It might be in the genes or just lack of education or a social dysfunction ‌. Some people, by the way, feel better, if they shoot the alien. Some people feel better if they use violence. Some people batter their kids and spouses because they did answer back or the soup was not cooked properly. Some people are inherently violent. They are ‘anger’ machines. It gives them a kick. About violence and society. What do we define by violence? Do we also define intrusion in our personal sphere, psychological re-programming, etc. as violent activities? Capitalism can be seen as violent and intrusive. Globalisation, the forceful opening of new markets, the imposing of certain consumer and management phraseology on whole groups, the creation of seemingly unnecessary needs and obsessive consumerism. There is a whole generation of managers with certain speech and thinking patterns, they seem to be the forerunners of limited futurist AI. As posted by others, sometimes violence is the only way of avoiding even greater violence and injustice. What about the Resistance in countries that were occupied by Nazi Germany? I think that their violence was necessary violence.

"But there is never an Idea so true that it's wrong to criticize any argument that supports it. Never. Never ever never for ever."

Was it wrong for the guy who thought Buzz Aldrin helped fake the moon landing to present his arguments to Buzz?

One of the hungarian Manhattan-project physicists had a slogan that went "It is not enough to be rude, one must also be wrong." When it comes time to decide whether to answer a verbal argument with violence, does it matter whether the argument is wrong, or is it enough to be rude?

guts, I would prefer butter to a slap in the face anyday. I'm sure you would, too.

The point I was making about the paintings, (in the tradition of the late Mr. Vonnegut,) is that Hitler was a person. Being a person, he should've stuck to painting, rather than violence. We should encourage more video games where people make art rather than shooting things. We should be less upset about children seeing naked people and more upset about them seeing dead ones.

In terms of a punch in the jaw:

We'd all agree that beating a child is wrong, and that Mike Tyson isn't a rationalist, on any level. You don't win an argument with a punch in the jaw, you end discussion. I've taken a beating or two for refusing to alter my beliefs, and it didn't influence my idea any. I'm sure the arm chair theorist took the punch in the jaw as confirmation that Mr. Aldrin was a mongoloid, incapable of operation of anything more complex than a tricycle.

A punch in the jaw is a reaction, and I'm sure Mr. Aldrin didn't debate the instinct. His greatest accomplishment was being questioned by an arm chair theorist. A punch in the jaw was, in hindsight, not a great action worthy of applause, but certainly understandable.

Again, Eliezer's original point was talking about large groups, (Catholics, Nazi's, Communists, Puritans, Islamic extremists... etc) committing violence, not a sock in the jaw, but a gas chamber. I still agree with him that if you have to kill and torture to defend your idea, it's probably not a good idea in the first place, or the execution isn't working out well.

JT, I think someone who's wrong, stupid, and rude deserves more sympathy than someone who's calm, open-minded, and polite. The nice person probably has more friends, and a better relationship with his family. The arrogant tend to be terribly unsatisfied, and feel inferior, so they overcompensate.

A punch in the jaw? How about a hug? Or a respectful handshake? Are you any better than the rude and uninformed if your first reaction is to wonder if you should hit them in the face?

That looks like a verbal argument to me. Kind of bare without any supporting evidence, but he might have been about to provide supporting evidence. Hard to tell what he was about to do.

About violence and society. What do we define by violence? Do we also define intrusion in our personal sphere, psychological re-programming, etc. as violent activities?
You should read Randall Collins.

What about the Resistance in countries that were occupied by Nazi Germany?
Did they actually accomplish anything? I think it was the violence of the opposing armies that actually ended Nazi occupation.

Thanks for pointing out Randall Collins.
Resistance certainly achieved something. I mentioned it as an example for 'justified' violence.

What did the Resistance accomplish? I already stated that it seemed to me that it was the opposing armies that got rid of the Nazis. If you disagree on that or have something else you think they did, state it.

The Resistance pinned down occupation troops that otherwise would have been available to fight opposing armies.

Anyway, it's different committing violence against people who kill you if they catch you disobeying them, versus committing violence against people who are only presenting a verbal argument. Some of us take the moral stand that it's wrong to hurt people just for what they say, while others of us figure that the practical thing is to stop bad stuff at whatever stage is most effective.

_About violence and society. What do we define by violence? Do we also define intrusion in our personal sphere, psychological re-programming, etc. as violent activities?_

Gutzperson, if by "intrusion into our personal sphere" you mean saying things in our presence we don't want to hear, I'd have to say that isn't violence. If it means breaking down our doors and pointing guns at us, that comes a lot closer.

Similarly for psychological reprogramming. If it involves coercion where you give people intense negative reinforcement -- electric shocks, beatings, sleep deprivation, etc -- then that pretty much includes violence. If it's just telling them things they aren't psychologically ready to handle, I tend to think not although it's maybe a gray area. People ought to be ready to handle anything anybody says to them. But sometimes they aren't. Do we have a responsibility to respect other people's fragile mental stability by never saying anything that might unsettle them?

Eliezer, your post appears to at least in part be animated by a frustration with people who are incapable/unwilling/don't make a serious enough effort to *both* pursue interesting tangents that could later be developed into other full-length conversations *and* stay on topic overall. Granted, this probably describes a vast majority of people. Nevertheless, presuming the straying from topic though tangent acknowledgment to be an affliction of conversation with *all* people unfortunately leads you imply a necessary trade-off between the values of rigorous word definitions and untangling all those "really important" topics. While I come to this from a weakness for distinction-making, I don't think that weakness really impairs my resolve to get through what you imply (and what I'm strongly inclined to agree) are the larger topics. In other words, I haven't found interests in semantic and non-semantic questions to be mutually exclusive.

While I agree that "Redefining a word won't change the facts of history one way or the other," I find the "this is exactly the wrong way to look at the problem. What you really want to know - what the argument was originally about" part of the complaint to be both unpleasantly constraining and inaccurate. That there isn't "exactly the wrong way to look at a problem" -- what it *is* is defining a whole other area of interest. If in fact every time such a new area of interest is defined some other earlier problem risks getting abandoned altogether, then sure, I agree, that's absolutely no good, but I just haven't found that to be the necessary case with all conversations.

With this comment I'll only express a tiny insight into the semantic part of the conversation (and I understand that addressing it doesn't actually get at what you hope to discuss at full length, but whatever.) The whole question of whether "someone who has a definite opinion about the existence of at least one God, e.g., assigning a probability lower than 10% or higher than 90% to the existence of Zeus" should be called a "religious" person can be niftily neutralized by a slight but, I think, helpful rephrasing of same: Should that person be considered to hold religious opinions? If you agree that this new question doesn't omit anything interesting from the original question (and you may not), then you may notice that the added benefit of such a rephrasing is that it blocks that whole silly digression about Stalin's religion being Communism.

If you're off-put by this kind of nitpickiness, perhaps you should reconsider: I think that getting your interlocutor to recognize that he or she is introducing an entirely new topic -- semantics -- rather than expanding on an original one may help you both remember that an answer to the semantic question doesn't even begin to address the non-semantic question. (This isn't true in all cases, but it is in this one.)

I find that kind of distinction-making valuable because it doesn't limit the the topics "worthy" of consideration *and* ensures that interesting questions don't get abandoned. Putting aside the opportunity cost of one discussion over the other, everyone should be happy about this, no?

Rolf: It seems to me that you are trying to assert that it is normative for agents to behave in a certain manner *because the agents you are addressing are presumably non-normative*.

On a semantic level, I agree; I actually avoided using the word "normative" in my comment because you had, earlier, correctly criticized my use of the word on my blog.

I try to consistently consider myself as part of an ensemble of flawed humans. (It's not easy, and I often fail.) To be more rigorous, I would want to condition my reasoning on the fact that I'm one of the flawed humans who attempts to adjust for the fact that he himself is a flawed human. (But, I don't think that, in practice, this particular conditioning would change my conclusions.)

I do have to, to "bootstrap" my philosophy, presume that I have some ability to, much of the time, use logic, in such a way that (on average) >50% of my 1-bit beliefs are likely to be correct. But since I grant that same ability to the rest of the ensemble of flawed humans, that doesn't affect the analysis.

I don't have a citation to an existing paper that rigorously spells out how you would do this (maybe such a paper doesn't even exist, for all I know), but my intuition is that such analysis is not, at a fundamental level, self-contradictory.

About the word "supernatural"... isn't this whole concept not bogus?

This is obvious if we assume the there was No Design(er). However the same applies more widely. Anything that happens or exists will be natural by definition.

Consider this: Let's assume for arguments sake that Intelligent Design is correct. Then all of nature is created and hence unnatural by definition. Depending on the nature of the designer it might be the only really natural thing around.

Conclusion: So unless intelligence is considered supernatural, the simple conclusion must be that nothing supernatural exists.

This has of course been pointed out, but "And it is triple ultra forbidden to respond to criticism with violence... Does not get bullet. Never. Never ever never for ever." --- doesn't make sense. It's a bizarre authoritative / normative assertion completely out of place in all of this. And Eli knows that, I'm sure. I suspect that he's just had this directive beat into him in previous encounters, in objection to the "coldness" of purely utilitarian decision-making. If e.g. an argument-ending bullet is what it takes to ensure humanity gets off-planet, then the utilitarian answer is to shoot.

Of course.

There is one type of claim for which a bullet does provide relevant evidence: claims about bullets themselves, such as "Your bullets will not harm me." (For example, an armored vehicle that is supposed to protect its occupants from gunfire will certainly end up being tested against actual gunfire at some point before its design is put into widespread use.)

Not replying to the comment thread: I think the quote might actually be Deuteronomy 13:6-10 in the King James Version.