1) Eliezer_Yudkowsky just made a post arguing that it’s not very virtuous to do things at great person risk when you believe you’re immortal, and when you believe you are doing it to get great things in the afterlife.
2) The 9/11 hijackers believed they would be greatly rewarded in the after life.
3) It does not take much courage to argue on the internet, or in public forums.
4) The 9/11 hijackers did not argue their point of view with their intellectual opponents.
5) But, the 9/11 hijackers were courageous.
I agree: let’s not look for whatever flimsy pretense we can, for throwing a negative label at people we don’t like. But “9/11 terrorist were cowards” is a bad example of that. Here are some better examples of wrong labels:
Wow, the cowardice thing again. To review:
1) Eliezer_Yudkowsky just made a post arguing that it’s not very virtuous to do things at great person risk when you believe you’re immortal, and when you believe you are doing it to get great things in the afterlife.
2) The 9/11 hijackers believed they would be greatly rewarded in the after life.
3) It does not take much courage to argue on the internet, or in public forums.
4) The 9/11 hijackers did not argue their point of view with their intellectual opponents.
5) But, the 9/11 hijackers were courageous.
I agree: let’s not look for whatever flimsy pretense we can, for throwing a negative label at people we don’t like. But “9/11 terrorist were cowards” is a bad example of that. Here are some better examples of wrong labels:
The 9/11 hijackers were...
-disloyal
-hypocritical
-short-sighted