- 7 weeks ago, I precommitted that censoring a post or comment on LessWrong would cause a 0.0001% increase in existential risk.
- Earlier today, Yudkowsky censored a post on less wrong
- 20 minutes later, existential risks increased 0.0001% (to the best of my estimation).
Laws are not comparable to blackmail because they have process behind them. If one loan individual told me that if I didn't wear my seatbelt, he'd bust my kneecaps, then that would be blackmail. Might even qualify as terrorism, since he is trying to constrain my actions by threat of illegitimate force.
A lone individual making a threat against the main moderator of a site if he uses his discretion in a certain way is indeed blackmail/terrorism, particularly when the threat is over a thing substantially outside the purview of the site, and the act threatened is on its own clearly immoral (e.g. it'd be legitimate to threaten leaving the site, or reposting censored material on a separate site). As it stands, it's an attempt to force another's will without any semblance of legitimate authority, which seems to qualify as " clearly wrong."