Want to get mind-killed HARD? I mean, frothing at the monitor hard? Here’s his opinion on the Norway massacre.
...If it was militarily possible to free Norway from Eurocommunism by killing a hundred communists, or a thousand communists, or ten thousand communists, we might have an interesting moral debate over whether this butcher’s bill was worth paying....
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, if you could ask Hitler and a random leftist from the academia in the 1930 whether 1) the sky is blue and 2) Stalin is an evil butcher, they’d perform equally well on 1) and you’d have to support Hitler over the leftist on 2), but still. This is not “deliberate hardcore contrarianism”. This is not even trolling—go ask /b/, they’re the internationally acknowledged authority. Moldbug is spitting on the graves of innocent teenagers slaughtered by an evident psychotic.
He says that a certain amount of lives is worth a regime change. This is not a controversial position in the real world. No one for example would in polite society say that regime change in 1945 in Nazi Germany was not worth the lives of 40 or 4000 young or 40 000 young men or women. He also calls the man a butcher, and clearly is implying that change can not be achieved by terrorism nor even conventional military action.
Considering the discussions that are calmly had on LessWrong (infanticide for starters) I can produce a dozen such “incriminating” out of context quotes. Come to think of it you can get quotes of me saying that infanticide is not as bad a crime as killing an adult, that incest among consenting adults should be legal, ect. Will you use that when itching to win a argument with me?
Also Robin Hanson has said that 9/11 isn’t a big deal. Aha that’s something I can use! How dare he spit on the graves of … oh wait no actually that would be an inappropriate thing for me to say.
Even on a pure level of instrumental rationality, calmly pointing out the above quote and linking to it and asking if say I agree or not, would made him look much worse as well as being equally effective at any point you are trying to make. Also I would respond by stating the truth (as I shall now), that I haven’t read it so far and that I haven’t yet done the calculations about how many lives changing Norway’s government to Marxist-Leninism/Anarchy-Syndicalism/Futarchy/Fascism would be worth, but that I suspect considering there are few better alternatives if any, and that Norway has such a small population that it wouldn’t amount to more than ~5. Unless there is a really awesome form of government I don’t know about yet.
I get it you really really hate Moldbug, but I’m basically currently of the opinion that the only one getting mindkilled here is you. Why couldn’t you discuss the points and maintain the usual level of discourse? I fail to see how this was the right course of action, unless you are acting up being mindkilled for the purpose to shut down a certain topic for good.
I know very little of the political situation in Norway but it is plausible that a better supreme court or batch of ministers could do a better job to the point of saving more lives than would be lost by such action (one has to factor in not just their lives but the cost of greater security measures such acts would produce if they where detected).
Oh I see, I thought you had some sort of general formula for weighing (naive) consequentialism and deontology. If I had known there were going to be creepy specifics, I wouldn’t have asked.
I assumed 5 or 6 seemed a creepily specific number and thus you wanted specifics. Note that as I said this was pure uninformed speculation. Norway is a partcularly well governed country, and overall specific people tend to in well governed Western states to matter much less here than say in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. However even a marginally better job at governing or crafting laws creates averts a lol of dusts specks.
I usually apply pure consequentalism measuring happy healthy years of life as a first estimate. When actually contemplating real actions to support I go by vritue ethics, since some costs are hard to capture in utilitarian thinking. Following virtue ethics I wouldn’t ever support an attempt to assassinate someone unless they where directly responsible for a massive amount of death, as in signing death warrants or conducting killings or hiring thugs. Perhaps controversially I wouldn’t put torturing people a ok reason to assassinate since that seems really hard to establish because of propaganda, misninformation, a more convoluted paper trail, ect.
Even on a pure level of instrumental rationality, calmly pointing out the above quote and linking to it and asking if say I agree or not, would make the thing look much worse
I didn’t strictly speaking make that comment to persuade anyone, I’m just making small talk. Who’d take some guy’s esoteric politics as a matter of actual life and death when we can have an AI?
I get it you really really hate Moldbug
You are WRONG! I sneer at him a bit, as many tend to when they find that people much smarter than themselves are kind of fucked in the head. I don’t consider him a force for evil. I just clarify that in some cases I value politeness more than I do free speech if, and only if, said free speech is in a natural, all too human language. Nowhere have I suggested that weighing evil acts is inappropriate—say, when you clearly see how to apply math—otherwise I would’ve promptly freaked out back at the dust specks question.
haven’t yet done the calculations about how many lives changing Norway’s government would be worth, but that I suspect considering there are few better alternatives if any
I believe that it’s exactly what he’s admitting to himself—Norway is a kickass place to live in! - , and that although he might be serious about “Eurocommunism” as a potential engine of collapse, he’s not serious serious. In other words, his prime motivation in formulating that sentence is a good opportunity for what he sees as trolling.
Considering the discussions that are calmly had on LessWrong (infaticide for starters) I can produce a dozen such “incriminating” out of context quotes. Come to think of it you can get quotes of me saying that infanticide is not as bad a crime as killing and adult, that incest among consenting adults should be legal, ect
Sorry? The discussion over infanticide we were holding a couple of weeks ago was—maybe—not perfectly relaxed, but neither side found the other’s statements of position to be unacceptably crude, like flinging excrement in public. I do find exactly that about Moldbug’s statement.
believe that it’s exactly what he’s admitting to himself—Norway is a kickass place to live in! - , and that although he might be serious about “Eurocommunism” as an engine of collapse, he’s not serious serious. In other words, his prime motivation in formulating that sentence is a good opportunity for what he sees as trolling.
And you are trolling… why? Oh sorry, quoting a troll trolling on another forum/blog isn’t actually trolling.
Nope, sorry. I have seen that the Less Wrong community lacks neither the experience nor the intellectual courage to deal with highly provocative words head on—sometimes keeping its cool and sometimes not, but hardly resorting to a policy of selective blindness.
I’m not saying that Moldbug is a terrorist/would-be Hitler/whatever, or that people aren’t allowed to like him on rational grounds, or anything of the sort. I am merely refusing to quickly avert my eyes from a thoroughly appalling detail.
Even if you feel that judging the quality of someone’s thought requires reporting any particularly offensive statements in their other writings, you could at least do so without encouraging mindkill and frothing. Arguably we shouldn’t be discussing Moldbug in the first place.
Arguably we shouldn’t be discussing Moldbug in the first place.
I more or less agree (for a different reason as you can see), however, I’m against pretty much any restrictions on LW topics provided even a modicum of intelligence being shown.
So if I’m an opponent (and yes, don’t waste time pointing out my self-identification as such and pre-written bottom line), I don’t like staying silent and I don’t think that “mind-kill” is at all a net negative to LW discussion… heck, I’m gonna have oh-so-irresponsible fun.
I more or less agree (for a different reason as you can see), however, I’m against pretty much any restrictions on LW topics provided even a modicum of intelligence being shown.
In the current context I find this statement disingenuous. I’ll be perfectly honest I think you are acting in bad faith.
Want to get mind-killed HARD? I mean, frothing at the monitor hard? Here’s his opinion on the Norway massacre.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, if you could ask Hitler and a random leftist from the academia in the 1930 whether 1) the sky is blue and 2) Stalin is an evil butcher, they’d perform equally well on 1) and you’d have to support Hitler over the leftist on 2), but still. This is not “deliberate hardcore contrarianism”. This is not even trolling—go ask /b/, they’re the internationally acknowledged authority. Moldbug is spitting on the graves of innocent teenagers slaughtered by an evident psychotic.
He says that a certain amount of lives is worth a regime change. This is not a controversial position in the real world. No one for example would in polite society say that regime change in 1945 in Nazi Germany was not worth the lives of 40 or 4000 young or 40 000 young men or women. He also calls the man a butcher, and clearly is implying that change can not be achieved by terrorism nor even conventional military action.
Considering the discussions that are calmly had on LessWrong (infanticide for starters) I can produce a dozen such “incriminating” out of context quotes. Come to think of it you can get quotes of me saying that infanticide is not as bad a crime as killing an adult, that incest among consenting adults should be legal, ect. Will you use that when itching to win a argument with me?
Also Robin Hanson has said that 9/11 isn’t a big deal. Aha that’s something I can use! How dare he spit on the graves of … oh wait no actually that would be an inappropriate thing for me to say.
Even on a pure level of instrumental rationality, calmly pointing out the above quote and linking to it and asking if say I agree or not, would made him look much worse as well as being equally effective at any point you are trying to make. Also I would respond by stating the truth (as I shall now), that I haven’t read it so far and that I haven’t yet done the calculations about how many lives changing Norway’s government to Marxist-Leninism/Anarchy-Syndicalism/Futarchy/Fascism would be worth, but that I suspect considering there are few better alternatives if any, and that Norway has such a small population that it wouldn’t amount to more than ~5. Unless there is a really awesome form of government I don’t know about yet.
I get it you really really hate Moldbug, but I’m basically currently of the opinion that the only one getting mindkilled here is you. Why couldn’t you discuss the points and maintain the usual level of discourse? I fail to see how this was the right course of action, unless you are acting up being mindkilled for the purpose to shut down a certain topic for good.
Now I’m really curious what calculation would lead you to that number.
I know very little of the political situation in Norway but it is plausible that a better supreme court or batch of ministers could do a better job to the point of saving more lives than would be lost by such action (one has to factor in not just their lives but the cost of greater security measures such acts would produce if they where detected).
Yay I made the CIA watch list!
Oh I see, I thought you had some sort of general formula for weighing (naive) consequentialism and deontology. If I had known there were going to be creepy specifics, I wouldn’t have asked.
I assumed 5 or 6 seemed a creepily specific number and thus you wanted specifics. Note that as I said this was pure uninformed speculation. Norway is a partcularly well governed country, and overall specific people tend to in well governed Western states to matter much less here than say in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. However even a marginally better job at governing or crafting laws creates averts a lol of dusts specks.
I usually apply pure consequentalism measuring happy healthy years of life as a first estimate. When actually contemplating real actions to support I go by vritue ethics, since some costs are hard to capture in utilitarian thinking. Following virtue ethics I wouldn’t ever support an attempt to assassinate someone unless they where directly responsible for a massive amount of death, as in signing death warrants or conducting killings or hiring thugs. Perhaps controversially I wouldn’t put torturing people a ok reason to assassinate since that seems really hard to establish because of propaganda, misninformation, a more convoluted paper trail, ect.
I didn’t strictly speaking make that comment to persuade anyone, I’m just making small talk. Who’d take some guy’s esoteric politics as a matter of actual life and death when we can have an AI?
You are WRONG! I sneer at him a bit, as many tend to when they find that people much smarter than themselves are kind of fucked in the head. I don’t consider him a force for evil. I just clarify that in some cases I value politeness more than I do free speech if, and only if, said free speech is in a natural, all too human language. Nowhere have I suggested that weighing evil acts is inappropriate—say, when you clearly see how to apply math—otherwise I would’ve promptly freaked out back at the dust specks question.
I believe that it’s exactly what he’s admitting to himself—Norway is a kickass place to live in! - , and that although he might be serious about “Eurocommunism” as a potential engine of collapse, he’s not serious serious. In other words, his prime motivation in formulating that sentence is a good opportunity for what he sees as trolling.
Sorry? The discussion over infanticide we were holding a couple of weeks ago was—maybe—not perfectly relaxed, but neither side found the other’s statements of position to be unacceptably crude, like flinging excrement in public. I do find exactly that about Moldbug’s statement.
And you are trolling… why? Oh sorry, quoting a troll trolling on another forum/blog isn’t actually trolling.
Right.
No thank you. LessWrong is a no froth zone. Please take it elsewhere.
Nope, sorry. I have seen that the Less Wrong community lacks neither the experience nor the intellectual courage to deal with highly provocative words head on—sometimes keeping its cool and sometimes not, but hardly resorting to a policy of selective blindness.
I’m not saying that Moldbug is a terrorist/would-be Hitler/whatever, or that people aren’t allowed to like him on rational grounds, or anything of the sort. I am merely refusing to quickly avert my eyes from a thoroughly appalling detail.
Even if you feel that judging the quality of someone’s thought requires reporting any particularly offensive statements in their other writings, you could at least do so without encouraging mindkill and frothing. Arguably we shouldn’t be discussing Moldbug in the first place.
I more or less agree (for a different reason as you can see), however, I’m against pretty much any restrictions on LW topics provided even a modicum of intelligence being shown.
So if I’m an opponent (and yes, don’t waste time pointing out my self-identification as such and pre-written bottom line), I don’t like staying silent and I don’t think that “mind-kill” is at all a net negative to LW discussion… heck, I’m gonna have oh-so-irresponsible fun.
In the current context I find this statement disingenuous. I’ll be perfectly honest I think you are acting in bad faith.
Yes yes we all know Blue tribe clearly acts as an apologist for greater atrocities than Green.
[insert emotional screed against Green here]