I was asked to post the following by an anonymous member.
There is a very big issue which this new policy fails to address:
Self defense is a widely advocated legal right in most jurisdictions. For instance, if someone is about to press a button that will activate a bomb which would kill you, and you have no other means of stopping them, in many jurisdictions you have a right to shoot them. Even when the offending party is not legally at fault (e.g. is insane).
This right puts extra burden of moral responsibility on the people that make certain claims. If someone made an unjustified claim that a button on your cellphone would trigger a bomb, and you get your face smashed against the ground by the concerned bystanders or the police—or get shot—the person that made that claim will take the fall for the incident even though formally it can be said that this person has never advocated any violence.
One can clearly see relevance of the above hypothetical to organizations and individuals which make broad and specific claims with regards to dangers and existential risks. Such as Singularity Institute, or a famous Friendly AI proponent Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, known for his somewhat dramatic statements with regards to dangers and risks posed by certain types of software and by completion of some specific projects.
Point one: We never said X->Y. We said X, and a bunch of people too stupid to understand the fallacy of appeal to consequences said ‘X->violence, look what those bad people advocate’ as an attempted counterargument. Since no actual good can possibly come of discussing this on any set of assumptions, it would be nice to have the counter-counterargument, “Unlike this bad person here, we have a policy of deleting posts which claim Q->specific-violence even if the post claims not to believe in Q because the identifiable target would have a reasonable complaint of being threatened”.
Regardless of whether the authors “accept” this moral burden, to “indicate” that they do would be unwise. If you can get in serious trouble for saying something the public statements of smart people are a lot less evidence for what they actually think on that topic.
I was asked to post the following by an anonymous member.
Regardless of whether the authors “accept” this moral burden, to “indicate” that they do would be unwise. If you can get in serious trouble for saying something the public statements of smart people are a lot less evidence for what they actually think on that topic.