I suspect there are a higher-than-average number of bullet-biters here, and I number myself among them. I don't grant the intuitions which lead people to dodge bullets much credence.
Although I am a gun-owner, I don't think I am substantially more likely to shoot anyone (delicious animals are another story) than the others here. Though you may think my above-mentioned criteria (including the government as a source of ass-kicking and taking into account risk aversion) don't count, I'd say that constitutes a substantial unwillingness. Also, while this is pedantic, I'd like to again emphasize the importance of disease over guns. Note that north america and australia have had nearly complete population replacement by europeans, while africa has been decolonized. The reason for that is not technology, but relative vulnerability to disease.
If it makes you feel any better about the inhabitants of Less Wrong, note that your reaction was voted up while my response (which was relevant and informative with links to more information, if I may judge my own case for a moment) was voted down. I do not say this to object to anyone's actions (I don't bother voting myself and have no plans to make a front-page post) but to indicate that this is evidence of what the community approves.
Although, as mentioned, I don't believe in objective normative truth, we can pretend for a little while in response to joeteicher. We believe we have a better understanding of many things than 1700s colonists did. If we could bring them in a time-machine to the present we could presumably convince them of many of those things. Do you think we could convince them of our moral superiority? From a Bayesian perspective (I think this is Aumann's specialty) do they have any less justification for dismissing our time period's (or country's) morality as being obviously wrong? Or would they be horrified and make a note to lock up anyone who promotes such crazy ideas in their own day?
G. K. Chesterton once said tradition is a democracy in which the dead get to vote (perhaps he didn't know much about Chicago), which would certainly not be a suitable mechanism of electing representatives but gets to an interesting point in majoritarian epistemology. There are simply huge numbers of people who lived in the past and had such beliefs. What evidence ancient morality?
I don't doubt you're a nonviolent and non-aggressive guy in every day life, nor that in its proper historical context the history of colonists and Indians in the New World was really complicated. I wasn't asking you the question because of an interest in 18th century history, I was asking it as a simplified way to see how far you were taking this "Anyone who can't kick ass isn't a morally significant agent" thing.
Your willingness to take it as far as you do is...well, I'll be honest. To me it's weird, especially since you describe yourself as an ...
For a long time, I wanted to ask something. I was just thinking about it again when I saw that Alicorn has a post on a similar topic. So I decided to go ahead.
The question is: what is the difference between morally neutral stimulus responces and agony? What features must an animal, machine, program, alien, human fetus, molecule, or anime character have before you will say that if their utility meter is low, it needs to be raised. For example, if you wanted to know if lobsters suffer when they're cooked alive, what exactly are you asking?
On reflection, I'm actually asking two questions: what is a morally significant agent (MSA; is there an established term for this?) whose goals you would want to further; and having determined that, under what conditions would you consider it to be suffering, so that you would?
I think that an MSA would not be defined by one feature. So try to list several features, possibly assigning relative weights to each.
IIRC, I read a study that tried to determine if fish suffer by injecting them with toxins and observing whether their reactions are planned or entirely instinctive. (They found that there's a bit of planning among bony fish, but none among the cartilaginous.) I don't know why they had to actually hurt the fish, especially in a way that didn't leave much room for planning, if all they wanted to know was if the fish can plan. But that was their definition. You might also name introspection, remembering the pain after it's over...
This is the ultimate subjective question, so the only wrong answer is one that is never given. Speak, or be wrong. I will downvote any post you don't make.
BTW, I think the most important defining feature of an MSA is ability to kick people's asses. Very humanizing.