Your generalization is averaging over clairvoyance. The whole purpose of discussing such plans is to reduce uncertainty over their utility; you haven’t proven that the utility gain of a plan turning out to be good must be less than the cost of discussing it in public.
Does the policy apply to violence against oneself? (I’m guessing not, since it’s not illegal.) Talking about it is usually believed to reduce risk.
There’s a scarcity effect whereby people believe pro-violence arguments to be stronger, since if they weren’t convincing they wouldn’t be censored. Not sure how strong it is, likely depends on whether people drop the topic or say things like “I’m not allowed to give more detail, wink wink nudge nudge”.
It’s a common policy so there don’t seem to be any slippery slope problems.
We’re losing Graham cred by being unwilling to discuss things that make us look bad. Probably a good thing, we’re getting more mainstream.
Either you or some of the people reading your comment seem to have been mislead into concluding that a thing being illegal and also violence against oneself can be generalised to conclude that violence against oneself or even discussion of violence against oneself is illegal. That seems to be a rather blatant confusion.
I’m not sure what RomeoStevens meant about discussion of violence against oneself being illegal, but aside from that aspect, his point is entirely valid. You seem to be suggesting that we’re generalising from “suicide is illegal” to “any form of violence against oneself is illegal”. We’re not. We’re simply noting that suicide is one type of violence against onself, and it’s illegal.
Your statement expands to “In most times and places throughout history, including all countries whose legal systems I am familiar with, violence against oneself is fully legal.” Unless you’re familiar only with very odd legal systems, that seems to be a rather blatant confusion.
but aside from that aspect, his point is entirely valid
No. MixedNut’s point. RomeoStevens’ reply was confused and mistaken. Unfortunately Caspian has mislead you about the context.
We’re simply noting that suicide is one type of violence against onself, and it’s illegal.
That was my original impression and why I refrained from downvoting him. Until, that is, it became apparent that he and some readers (evidently yourself included) believe that his statement of trivia in some way undermines the point made by MixedNut’s and supported by myself or supports RomeoStevens’ ungrammatical rhetorical interjection.
I had read the entire context, and re-read it just now to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. You’re correct that RomeoStevens’ reply doesn’t really undermine MixedNuts’ point, and is therefore “trivia”. But it’s nonetheless correct trivia (modulo the above-mentioned caveat) and your refutation of it is therefore quite confusing.
But it’s pointless to continue arguing this trivial point, as it’s irrelevant to the thread topic, except in the meta sense that these kinds of pointless semantic debates will be the inevitible result of implementation of this extremely ill-advised and poorly thought-through censorship policy.
What are you thinking of? Non-assisted suicide that doesn’t put third parties in danger is legal most places (exceptions: India, Singapore, North Korea, Virginia). Self-injury is legal in the US at least. Discussion of suicide is allowed as long as it’s even slightly more hypothetical than “I intend to kill myself in the near future”. Discussion of self-injury is AFAIK completely legal (in the US?).
My understanding has always been that self harm or plausible discussion of self harm in the US leads to a loss of autonomy in that you can be diagnosed with a mental illness and lose access to things like voting, driving, firearms, etc. (depending on the diagnosis)
There’s a huge chasm between a mental illness diagnosis (which self-harm is very likely to cause, especially in the US where you need diagnosis other than “ain’t quite right—not otherwise specified” for insurance) and actual repercussions. Members of online support groups report that their psychiatrists either treat self-injury like any other symptom (asking about it, describing decreases as good but not praiseworthy) or recommend they stop but do not enforce it. If it gets life-threatening it’s treated like suicide, but that almost never comes up.
What does it mean to make suicide illegal, anyway? You can’t punish the perpetrator, they’re dead. You can punish their relatives by e.g. taking away their inheritance, but someone who plans their suicide in advance can circumvent that by transferring ownership of the important things before killing themselves.
Punish attempts. Punish in ways that are avoidable (e.g. inheritance) but work for insufficiently planned suicides. If there’s a state religion, predict punishment in the afterlife. Punish relatives directly (North Korea does that).
Is there good data on whether this is effective as deterrence? I don’t expect it could be effective as punishment: I would expect it to increase despair and poverty, and so to increase chances of recurrent attempts.
Once you have so many smart contrarians that you run into sharp diminishing returns trying to recruit more, you want to attract smart non-contrarians. To pick a very silly example, a group of mostly Gentiles musing aimlessly on the ethics of genociding Jews (because it’s a local point of pride to play with any idea no matter how evil or stupid) is going to have a hard time attracting Jews.
Once you have so many smart contrarians that you run into sharp diminishing returns trying to recruit more
Why are there diminishing returns? Because too many smart contrarians cannot coexist? Because we ran out of smart contrarians to recruit? Because a group requires non-smart or non-contrarian people too in order to function better?
Also: over the last year many people joined LW, many of them referred here by HPMOR. I would expect these people to be less smart-contrarian.
Your generalization is averaging over clairvoyance. The whole purpose of discussing such plans is to reduce uncertainty over their utility; you haven’t proven that the utility gain of a plan turning out to be good must be less than the cost of discussing it in public.
Does the policy apply to violence against oneself? (I’m guessing not, since it’s not illegal.) Talking about it is usually believed to reduce risk.
There’s a scarcity effect whereby people believe pro-violence arguments to be stronger, since if they weren’t convincing they wouldn’t be censored. Not sure how strong it is, likely depends on whether people drop the topic or say things like “I’m not allowed to give more detail, wink wink nudge nudge”.
It’s a common policy so there don’t seem to be any slippery slope problems.
We’re losing Graham cred by being unwilling to discuss things that make us look bad. Probably a good thing, we’re getting more mainstream.
since when is violence against oneself or even discussion of violence against oneself fully legal?
In most times and places throughout history, including all countries whose legal systems I am familiar with.
Suicide in particular is often illegal.
ETA: possibly this statement of mine was outdated.
Either you or some of the people reading your comment seem to have been mislead into concluding that a thing being illegal and also violence against oneself can be generalised to conclude that violence against oneself or even discussion of violence against oneself is illegal. That seems to be a rather blatant confusion.
I’m not sure what RomeoStevens meant about discussion of violence against oneself being illegal, but aside from that aspect, his point is entirely valid. You seem to be suggesting that we’re generalising from “suicide is illegal” to “any form of violence against oneself is illegal”. We’re not. We’re simply noting that suicide is one type of violence against onself, and it’s illegal.
Your statement expands to “In most times and places throughout history, including all countries whose legal systems I am familiar with, violence against oneself is fully legal.” Unless you’re familiar only with very odd legal systems, that seems to be a rather blatant confusion.
No. MixedNut’s point. RomeoStevens’ reply was confused and mistaken. Unfortunately Caspian has mislead you about the context.
That was my original impression and why I refrained from downvoting him. Until, that is, it became apparent that he and some readers (evidently yourself included) believe that his statement of trivia in some way undermines the point made by MixedNut’s and supported by myself or supports RomeoStevens’ ungrammatical rhetorical interjection.
I had read the entire context, and re-read it just now to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. You’re correct that RomeoStevens’ reply doesn’t really undermine MixedNuts’ point, and is therefore “trivia”. But it’s nonetheless correct trivia (modulo the above-mentioned caveat) and your refutation of it is therefore quite confusing.
But it’s pointless to continue arguing this trivial point, as it’s irrelevant to the thread topic, except in the meta sense that these kinds of pointless semantic debates will be the inevitible result of implementation of this extremely ill-advised and poorly thought-through censorship policy.
What are you thinking of? Non-assisted suicide that doesn’t put third parties in danger is legal most places (exceptions: India, Singapore, North Korea, Virginia). Self-injury is legal in the US at least. Discussion of suicide is allowed as long as it’s even slightly more hypothetical than “I intend to kill myself in the near future”. Discussion of self-injury is AFAIK completely legal (in the US?).
My understanding has always been that self harm or plausible discussion of self harm in the US leads to a loss of autonomy in that you can be diagnosed with a mental illness and lose access to things like voting, driving, firearms, etc. (depending on the diagnosis)
Trigger warning for, obviously, self-harm.
There’s a huge chasm between a mental illness diagnosis (which self-harm is very likely to cause, especially in the US where you need diagnosis other than “ain’t quite right—not otherwise specified” for insurance) and actual repercussions. Members of online support groups report that their psychiatrists either treat self-injury like any other symptom (asking about it, describing decreases as good but not praiseworthy) or recommend they stop but do not enforce it. If it gets life-threatening it’s treated like suicide, but that almost never comes up.
What does it mean to make suicide illegal, anyway? You can’t punish the perpetrator, they’re dead. You can punish their relatives by e.g. taking away their inheritance, but someone who plans their suicide in advance can circumvent that by transferring ownership of the important things before killing themselves.
Punish attempts. Punish in ways that are avoidable (e.g. inheritance) but work for insufficiently planned suicides. If there’s a state religion, predict punishment in the afterlife. Punish relatives directly (North Korea does that).
It means that you prosecute failed suicides as crimes.
Is there good data on whether this is effective as deterrence? I don’t expect it could be effective as punishment: I would expect it to increase despair and poverty, and so to increase chances of recurrent attempts.
I’m not sure if that’s a good thing...
Once you have so many smart contrarians that you run into sharp diminishing returns trying to recruit more, you want to attract smart non-contrarians. To pick a very silly example, a group of mostly Gentiles musing aimlessly on the ethics of genociding Jews (because it’s a local point of pride to play with any idea no matter how evil or stupid) is going to have a hard time attracting Jews.
Why are there diminishing returns? Because too many smart contrarians cannot coexist? Because we ran out of smart contrarians to recruit? Because a group requires non-smart or non-contrarian people too in order to function better?
Also: over the last year many people joined LW, many of them referred here by HPMOR. I would expect these people to be less smart-contrarian.