That wasn’t your argument two posts up :-) You said that enlightened self-interest should win implying that the size of the stick is immaterial. Did you change your mind?
No, I did not. The implication isn’t that the size of the stick is immaterial, but that sticks, like swords, are for having, not using. Once you draw your stick, you don’t have many options and they’re all bad ones. This is especially true in cases of Mutually Assured Destruction, where both agents are very careful not to wrong each other, because they both know and respect each other’s destructive power.
We disagree about that :-) I think that swords and sticks are precisely for using and if you don’t think so I’ll be happy to use mine while you’re still thinking whether it’s OK to draw it :-/
Obviously if I see you draw your sword I will draw mine. The point of having a sword in the first place, however, is that you dare not put us both in a situation where you might die.
Cases of MAD (or at least MRD) are extremely common in Real Life. They’re the reason adults stop using violence in the extensive way they used to as children; even a simple fistfight is liable to end in death for one of the fighters. And that’s not withstanding any Leviathan that make it suicidal to shoot first, second, or ever.
And will you stop it with the smiley faces? It doesn’t add anything to your argument and it comes of as cheeky, which is to say, self-satisfiedly disrespectful.
For most of recent Western history, wearing a sword casually (i.e. not as part of paid employment) was primarily a status marker: it said you were part of the aristocratic class, someone with interests and an honor that you could, in theory, be expected to defend. Toward the end of the early modern period swords began to be replaced with walking sticks in this role, but the idea was the same: you were carrying a weapon because that’s what gentry were originally for.
This didn’t necessarily mean you were expected to shank people on a regular basis, though. The amount of actual swordplay involved varied wildly between cultures and times: sometimes swords were essentially male jewelry, sometimes practical dueling weapons that everyone in your social circle would have been trained with and weren’t too unlikely to have used in anger, sometimes something in between. Note too that the existence of a code duello or the equivalent didn’t necessarily mean it was in common use or had a lot of etiquette built up around it.
Anger is indeed the kind of situation where caution and forethought stand a good chance of being thrown to the wind. Which is allegedly why in Open Carry towns people are remarkably polite and civil to each other.
“Used in anger”, as applied to weapons, is idiomatic; it means use with the intent to cause serious harm (i.e. in war or a duel or brawl), regardless of the emotional state of the bearer.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m generally for weapons rights. But the point I was trying to make is that weapons intersect with culture in ways that can’t easily be summed up by phrases like “an armed society is a polite society”. Sometimes the norms of your subculture demand that they not be used in most conceivable circumstances, and so they generally aren’t and their cultural role tends to atrophy. Sometimes those norms demand that they be used in response to perceived slights, which tends not to produce a polite society as we understand the term but rather one excessively concerned with honor, and where skill with weapons affords you a lot of social power through various knock-on effects. If you’re interested in leveraging arms as a means of decentralized social control you’d probably be shooting for something in between, but judging from history that’s a relatively small target.
Oh. One of those idioms, like when knights say they got into a duel because of philosophical differences. Well, I think my point still stands, that anger is the “bluff” that makes weapons function as deterrent. “No one in their right mind would initiate violence over a small slight; it’s not worth the trouble. But maybe I’m wrathful enough that I’ll do it anyway. Do you want to take that chance?” I understand that MAD functioned under a similar framework, of pretending very hard that your country might be just “crazy” enough to launch a first strike, and made a point of being very first-strike-capable.
As for the rest, I already know that truth resists simplicity. I find all of this very confusing, and lots of nuances elude me, but I haven’t given up on understanding it all yet. I can’t possibly be satisfied with the way things are presented on their face.
Point is, adult people can kill each other even with a slap to the face. A simple fight can leave you with wounds that will cripple you for life. Not to mention possible mental and social consequences. Violence is a crapshoot.
But, yeah, it’s a huge overstatement; there’s a mutual assurance of destruction, there’s just a risk, and by “destruction” I mean “consequences that you cannot afford”/”it will ruin your life” rather than “your body will be annihilated into non-existence”.
Well, stop it. I handle harsh criticism well as long as it’s fair, but I’m no good at dealing with teasing, mockery and facetiousness. That kind of stuff really trips me up.
Point is, yeah, taking stuff away by force is easy if you’ve got force on your side, but there’s a mountain of reasons both small and big, both rational and not, that securing consent and consensus is more practical in the long term.
Even Genghis Khan understood that it was better to tax the Chinese cities as a renewable resource than to destroy them, kill everyone, and turn everything into pasture. Although it took some persuading; the man had momentum.
That is hardly ‘plain and simple’; in fact, it is ambiguous. Do you mean “I cannot discern a meaning to this sentence” or “I understand this sentence, and I evaluate it to be false”?
As for “fair criticism”, try for something that, if it were said to you in that position, you would reply to it with a ‘fair enough’/‘you make a good point’.
In a world without rights, you can have your enlightened self-interest and I’ll take the big stick (along with all your stuff) :-D
Who says that just because I refrain from taking everything by force, that I don’t carry a bigger stick than yours? I just happen to speak softly.
That wasn’t your argument two posts up :-) You said that enlightened self-interest should win implying that the size of the stick is immaterial. Did you change your mind?
No, I did not. The implication isn’t that the size of the stick is immaterial, but that sticks, like swords, are for having, not using. Once you draw your stick, you don’t have many options and they’re all bad ones. This is especially true in cases of Mutually Assured Destruction, where both agents are very careful not to wrong each other, because they both know and respect each other’s destructive power.
We disagree about that :-) I think that swords and sticks are precisely for using and if you don’t think so I’ll be happy to use mine while you’re still thinking whether it’s OK to draw it :-/
Cases of MAD are very rare in real life.
Obviously if I see you draw your sword I will draw mine. The point of having a sword in the first place, however, is that you dare not put us both in a situation where you might die.
Cases of MAD (or at least MRD) are extremely common in Real Life. They’re the reason adults stop using violence in the extensive way they used to as children; even a simple fistfight is liable to end in death for one of the fighters. And that’s not withstanding any Leviathan that make it suicidal to shoot first, second, or ever.
And will you stop it with the smiley faces? It doesn’t add anything to your argument and it comes of as cheeky, which is to say, self-satisfiedly disrespectful.
Hey, lookit that, something I’ve actually studied!
For most of recent Western history, wearing a sword casually (i.e. not as part of paid employment) was primarily a status marker: it said you were part of the aristocratic class, someone with interests and an honor that you could, in theory, be expected to defend. Toward the end of the early modern period swords began to be replaced with walking sticks in this role, but the idea was the same: you were carrying a weapon because that’s what gentry were originally for.
This didn’t necessarily mean you were expected to shank people on a regular basis, though. The amount of actual swordplay involved varied wildly between cultures and times: sometimes swords were essentially male jewelry, sometimes practical dueling weapons that everyone in your social circle would have been trained with and weren’t too unlikely to have used in anger, sometimes something in between. Note too that the existence of a code duello or the equivalent didn’t necessarily mean it was in common use or had a lot of etiquette built up around it.
Anger is indeed the kind of situation where caution and forethought stand a good chance of being thrown to the wind. Which is allegedly why in Open Carry towns people are remarkably polite and civil to each other.
“Used in anger”, as applied to weapons, is idiomatic; it means use with the intent to cause serious harm (i.e. in war or a duel or brawl), regardless of the emotional state of the bearer.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m generally for weapons rights. But the point I was trying to make is that weapons intersect with culture in ways that can’t easily be summed up by phrases like “an armed society is a polite society”. Sometimes the norms of your subculture demand that they not be used in most conceivable circumstances, and so they generally aren’t and their cultural role tends to atrophy. Sometimes those norms demand that they be used in response to perceived slights, which tends not to produce a polite society as we understand the term but rather one excessively concerned with honor, and where skill with weapons affords you a lot of social power through various knock-on effects. If you’re interested in leveraging arms as a means of decentralized social control you’d probably be shooting for something in between, but judging from history that’s a relatively small target.
Oh. One of those idioms, like when knights say they got into a duel because of philosophical differences. Well, I think my point still stands, that anger is the “bluff” that makes weapons function as deterrent. “No one in their right mind would initiate violence over a small slight; it’s not worth the trouble. But maybe I’m wrathful enough that I’ll do it anyway. Do you want to take that chance?” I understand that MAD functioned under a similar framework, of pretending very hard that your country might be just “crazy” enough to launch a first strike, and made a point of being very first-strike-capable.
As for the rest, I already know that truth resists simplicity. I find all of this very confusing, and lots of nuances elude me, but I haven’t given up on understanding it all yet. I can’t possibly be satisfied with the way things are presented on their face.
Mutually Assured Destruction is extremely common? We live in different worlds (or you’re confusing MAD with “there will be consequences”).
That is correct. I am cheeky :-P
Point is, adult people can kill each other even with a slap to the face. A simple fight can leave you with wounds that will cripple you for life. Not to mention possible mental and social consequences. Violence is a crapshoot.
But, yeah, it’s a huge overstatement; there’s a mutual assurance of destruction, there’s just a risk, and by “destruction” I mean “consequences that you cannot afford”/”it will ruin your life” rather than “your body will be annihilated into non-existence”.
Well, stop it. I handle harsh criticism well as long as it’s fair, but I’m no good at dealing with teasing, mockery and facetiousness. That kind of stuff really trips me up.
Point is, yeah, taking stuff away by force is easy if you’ve got force on your side, but there’s a mountain of reasons both small and big, both rational and not, that securing consent and consensus is more practical in the long term.
Even Genghis Khan understood that it was better to tax the Chinese cities as a renewable resource than to destroy them, kill everyone, and turn everything into pasture. Although it took some persuading; the man had momentum.
It’s you who decides on the fairness, though, right?
OK. If you want plain and simple, I can try to do plain and simple. This whole subthread started with you saying
This is utter nonsense.
That is hardly ‘plain and simple’; in fact, it is ambiguous. Do you mean “I cannot discern a meaning to this sentence” or “I understand this sentence, and I evaluate it to be false”?
As for “fair criticism”, try for something that, if it were said to you in that position, you would reply to it with a ‘fair enough’/‘you make a good point’.