In abuse it is very important to be aware which qualifications are in fact used and they in fact differ and their differences are important. However declaring one set of qualifications as “correct” goes into actual opinion rather than just clearing definitions.
I most disagree with 4) instead fo assuming that a mischaracterization is taking place it would be more apporiate to think the person actually cares about threats. In a real life example when I am playing overwatch and somebody says “pick reinhart or I throw” I might pick reinhart but I will file a report for “inactivity”. The threat of throwing not carried out is on the same severity level as actually throwing. I get there might be genuine difference in opinion whether it is as bad but to me it is.
Heinouness of benefitting from violence without comitting it. Consider workplace sexual harassment. If you in a position to fire a person and ask for a sexual favour you don’t need to make an explicit ultimatum for a person to be genuinely concerned that they will be fired if they refuse. “It was just talk” isn’t going to fly. Further more illegal threats. If you credibly say you are going to beat somebody that is an offence even if you do not lay a finger on them. It has to be credible thought. If it is absurd then it can be counted as just talk. In the same way if a polician starts to talk about how somebody should be hurt that can credibly be construed to be a suggestion/order to commit violence. Hence “incitement against a group of people” being something you can be quilty of. And if you call in a bomb threat with no actual bomb there is a chance it will not be written off as a joke.
There is a genuine discussion how to respond to and whether to utilise credible threats. Assuming what the correct stance should be is avoiding that discussion instead of having it.
With fruit salads I don’t know whether I meanigfully disagree. Like if somebody assumes my gender wrong and I don’t correct them have I mislead them? And I think there is room that a opinionated cook could try to sell that cucumber is now a fruit. In fashion if you are low status and don’t do as the fashion says you are violating the norms but if you are high status and do something original you are a trend setter and define what the fashion is. Thus “those shoes do not go with those pants” is a similar kind of claim to “cucumber doesn’t go into fruit salad”. If I stylise someone and their close ones decry them as ugly have I lied that I stylised them? If the restuarant list “champagne” as one of drink options but it is not produced in the correct area, it that misrepresentation or does the saving grace that average customer gets the idea what kind of drink it is effectively save it from being blameworthy?
A high status person violating norms for trendsetting/ counter-signalling is violating expectations for a specific purpose very much like a comedian violates them for laughs. I agree that violating expectations helps achieve certain goals.
But, if my goal is to argue well, communicate well, find more accurate beliefs, then I should be focused on not violating expectations for the sake of clarity.
[Note: I am finding a lot of value in our conversation thread so far, and I appreciate your input. It’s really forcing me to figure out when and why and how this concept is useful or when it’s not.]
What if the audiences expectations are based on faulty beliefs? In particular some given topic might have a bunch of entrenched assumptions so that there are positions that can’t be expressed without violating expectations. In the very limit if the communication doesn’t violate expectations then it can’t convey information, the Shannon entropy is zero. There are probably multiple kinds of surprise here. The “easy” kind would be if nobody expected anybody to say “the sky is red”. The “hard” kind would be if one means the lowest wavelength kind of light with “the sky is blue”. Exhausting the easy kind can be done relatively effectively and straighforwardly. But when there are conceptual problems then the hard kind of thing is the main source of progress. If you encounter evidence that can’t be handled with your current conceptual palette you must come up with new concepts in order to accomodate reality. Those updates tend to be laboursome but they tend to be the valuable ones.
If you’re claiming “Threats should be taken seriously and punished”, then we agree. If you’re claiming “we should punish groups that threaten violence for political reasons as ‘terrorist’”, then we might agree, but it’s not a big deal and not the point of this post.
If you’re claiming that
If 100 random US citizens are told “X is a group of terrorists” and are told to ask what actions the speaker is trying to imply X engages in, the majority of the group will write “only threatens violence for political reasons”
, then we disagree. I predict they will write a mix of “threatens and commits acts of terror”, but never “only threatens”.
I think you would not be misleading if you said “X is a group of terrorists, but only the kind that threatens violence but hasn’t actually injured/murdered people, but that’s still bad and I think we should take it much more seriously than we are right now”, and that this statement would pass the “100 random people” test above.
If you disagree with my prediction, then that’s just a difference in our priors on how other people qualify that word. This isn’t the point of the post.
If you disagree with “100 random people” test as being a good test, then this is relevant to the post.
While the policy suggestion is indeed outside the scope of the discussion I feel it woud be important to process it differently. “Groups that threaten violence for political reasons are terrorist” and “We should punish terrorists”. Calling someone a terrorist is not itself a punishment (unless again the label triggers unstated mechanisms that are beyond deliberate, concious or official control). In the topic area it is not unheard of to be issues where “terrorist” is a special position that warrants different procedure. There the issues would be “punish as criminals” or “punish as terrorists” (or POW or combatant etc). If we connect the long definition straight to treatment reference to a one word concept is unneccesary.
I was refrring to the threat portion becuase that is the difference that is sometimes included and sometimes not included. “Only threathens” doesn’t really occur.
Exhange that is likely to happen or happens frequently is:
A: “This is a group of terrorists.”
B: “You lied to me. I did research and group has not killed anyone”
Sure if you give long form this kind of misunderstading doesn’t happen that much.But consider this:
A: “This murderer will be held in prison for life”
B: “You lied to me. This guy only killed criminals, that is not murder”
You could avoid this by going
A:”This person committed a lot of murder on criminals but didn’t kill any innocents. He will spend his life in prison.
Now what is or is not murder might be beside the point of the communication. But accomodating such a weird conception of the crime is not exactly neutral. In choosing such a phrasing one could be normalising that criminals have a weakened right to life.
I guess the differences are slight as I don’t really advocate to only use the definitions or conceptions of words you have but I think there is a risk of being too conceptual network pandering and persons should have some share of having some sensibility in their concepts. In particular I think in this instance “definition of murder” would get a population majority behind it yet people would in similar representative way fail to apply the label to these circumstances. Thus the “meaning of words” is more strongly established / can be emphasised more rather than the ad hoc associations.
In terrorist there is a pattern that when evaluating I/me the threat component tends to be weak but when applying to others it tends to be strong. The issue is whether it establishes a principle or whether it is a summation or overview of the attitudial landscape.
In abuse it is very important to be aware which qualifications are in fact used and they in fact differ and their differences are important. However declaring one set of qualifications as “correct” goes into actual opinion rather than just clearing definitions.
I most disagree with 4) instead fo assuming that a mischaracterization is taking place it would be more apporiate to think the person actually cares about threats. In a real life example when I am playing overwatch and somebody says “pick reinhart or I throw” I might pick reinhart but I will file a report for “inactivity”. The threat of throwing not carried out is on the same severity level as actually throwing. I get there might be genuine difference in opinion whether it is as bad but to me it is.
Heinouness of benefitting from violence without comitting it. Consider workplace sexual harassment. If you in a position to fire a person and ask for a sexual favour you don’t need to make an explicit ultimatum for a person to be genuinely concerned that they will be fired if they refuse. “It was just talk” isn’t going to fly. Further more illegal threats. If you credibly say you are going to beat somebody that is an offence even if you do not lay a finger on them. It has to be credible thought. If it is absurd then it can be counted as just talk. In the same way if a polician starts to talk about how somebody should be hurt that can credibly be construed to be a suggestion/order to commit violence. Hence “incitement against a group of people” being something you can be quilty of. And if you call in a bomb threat with no actual bomb there is a chance it will not be written off as a joke.
There is a genuine discussion how to respond to and whether to utilise credible threats. Assuming what the correct stance should be is avoiding that discussion instead of having it.
With fruit salads I don’t know whether I meanigfully disagree. Like if somebody assumes my gender wrong and I don’t correct them have I mislead them? And I think there is room that a opinionated cook could try to sell that cucumber is now a fruit. In fashion if you are low status and don’t do as the fashion says you are violating the norms but if you are high status and do something original you are a trend setter and define what the fashion is. Thus “those shoes do not go with those pants” is a similar kind of claim to “cucumber doesn’t go into fruit salad”. If I stylise someone and their close ones decry them as ugly have I lied that I stylised them? If the restuarant list “champagne” as one of drink options but it is not produced in the correct area, it that misrepresentation or does the saving grace that average customer gets the idea what kind of drink it is effectively save it from being blameworthy?
A high status person violating norms for trendsetting/ counter-signalling is violating expectations for a specific purpose very much like a comedian violates them for laughs. I agree that violating expectations helps achieve certain goals.
But, if my goal is to argue well, communicate well, find more accurate beliefs, then I should be focused on not violating expectations for the sake of clarity.
[Note: I am finding a lot of value in our conversation thread so far, and I appreciate your input. It’s really forcing me to figure out when and why and how this concept is useful or when it’s not.]
What if the audiences expectations are based on faulty beliefs? In particular some given topic might have a bunch of entrenched assumptions so that there are positions that can’t be expressed without violating expectations. In the very limit if the communication doesn’t violate expectations then it can’t convey information, the Shannon entropy is zero. There are probably multiple kinds of surprise here. The “easy” kind would be if nobody expected anybody to say “the sky is red”. The “hard” kind would be if one means the lowest wavelength kind of light with “the sky is blue”. Exhausting the easy kind can be done relatively effectively and straighforwardly. But when there are conceptual problems then the hard kind of thing is the main source of progress. If you encounter evidence that can’t be handled with your current conceptual palette you must come up with new concepts in order to accomodate reality. Those updates tend to be laboursome but they tend to be the valuable ones.
If you’re claiming “Threats should be taken seriously and punished”, then we agree. If you’re claiming “we should punish groups that threaten violence for political reasons as ‘terrorist’”, then we might agree, but it’s not a big deal and not the point of this post.
If you’re claiming that
, then we disagree. I predict they will write a mix of “threatens and commits acts of terror”, but never “only threatens”.
I think you would not be misleading if you said “X is a group of terrorists, but only the kind that threatens violence but hasn’t actually injured/murdered people, but that’s still bad and I think we should take it much more seriously than we are right now”, and that this statement would pass the “100 random people” test above.
If you disagree with my prediction, then that’s just a difference in our priors on how other people qualify that word. This isn’t the point of the post.
If you disagree with “100 random people” test as being a good test, then this is relevant to the post.
While the policy suggestion is indeed outside the scope of the discussion I feel it woud be important to process it differently. “Groups that threaten violence for political reasons are terrorist” and “We should punish terrorists”. Calling someone a terrorist is not itself a punishment (unless again the label triggers unstated mechanisms that are beyond deliberate, concious or official control). In the topic area it is not unheard of to be issues where “terrorist” is a special position that warrants different procedure. There the issues would be “punish as criminals” or “punish as terrorists” (or POW or combatant etc). If we connect the long definition straight to treatment reference to a one word concept is unneccesary.
I was refrring to the threat portion becuase that is the difference that is sometimes included and sometimes not included. “Only threathens” doesn’t really occur.
Exhange that is likely to happen or happens frequently is:
Sure if you give long form this kind of misunderstading doesn’t happen that much.But consider this:
You could avoid this by going
Now what is or is not murder might be beside the point of the communication. But accomodating such a weird conception of the crime is not exactly neutral. In choosing such a phrasing one could be normalising that criminals have a weakened right to life.
I guess the differences are slight as I don’t really advocate to only use the definitions or conceptions of words you have but I think there is a risk of being too conceptual network pandering and persons should have some share of having some sensibility in their concepts. In particular I think in this instance “definition of murder” would get a population majority behind it yet people would in similar representative way fail to apply the label to these circumstances. Thus the “meaning of words” is more strongly established / can be emphasised more rather than the ad hoc associations.
In terrorist there is a pattern that when evaluating I/me the threat component tends to be weak but when applying to others it tends to be strong. The issue is whether it establishes a principle or whether it is a summation or overview of the attitudial landscape.