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NancyLebovitz comments on Stanislav Petrov Day - Less Wrong
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You are certainly trying hard to make me look bad but regardless of whether you are successful in persuading your audience I reject your claim. I have more than enough evidence to conclude that I would prefer a peace prize that is awarded to Stanislav Petrov and Gandhi than one awarded to Yasser Arafat and Al Gore. Or Barack Obama for that matter. That's like awarding little Johnny US the Encouragement Award because he punched and stole the lunch money of slightly fewer of his classmates this week.
Is there anything I have ever said or done on lesswrong that gives the impression that I have anything like Ghandi's philosophy for dealing with conflict? Gandhi's tactics are highly situational and work only for those particularly adept at judging and manipulating public opinion and for those who are too helpless to do anything to improve their circumstances. No, my advice for the most practical and ethical way of dealing with oppressors is to not protest at all, not let them know that you oppose them and systematically assassinate all their leaders until they leave.
I further suggest that if you don't think Gandhi's example would be consistent with getting offended by things then you totally missed the point of what he did. The guy did hunger strikes and silly walks to fetch salt as a way to broadcast how offensive things are. He wasn't nice, he just wielded offense and public opinion as his weapons.
Again, you miss the point. The Nobel Prize committee is beholden to Alfred Nobel. The rest of the world, including myself, are not. The rest of the world are free to make it, as wikipedia puts it, "a highly regarded award, recognised internationally" or to marginalise it as a bad joke by a meaningless institution. We as individuals can then evaluate the aesthetic appeal and expected consequences of the 'Peace' prize awarded as it is. We can also consider how public opinion of the prize as a respected institution reflects on human psychology.
I used to think that, but I no longer find it plausible. The premise seems to be that leaders are detachable pieces.
In fact, assassination has a risk of making leaders more frightened and forceful. Additionally, a good many people may be loyal to a leader, so that assassination registers as an outside threat rather than a favor.
A sequence of assassinations is hard. Are you expecting enough of your group to survive and continue? Other groups to take up the project?
Not having a significant power base is rather a limiting factor when it comes to just about any political campaign. I suggest that it takes less surviving members to arrange assassinations than it requires to perform a rebellion via conventional tactics.
Has the sequence of assassinations tactic ever worked?
The Center for Economic Policy Research says yes.
Full text: http://ipl.econ.duke.edu/bread/papers/working/150.pdf
Thanks for the links, but what it actually says is that while successful assassination can significantly increase the chance of a move from autocracy to democracy, the odds of a successful assassination are sufficiently low that the net effect of trying to change things with an assassination attempt is close to zero.
Assassination has some effect on wars, though.
If I may say so, those odds seem a lot better than the usual options like 'write letters to the newspaper' or 'start a political party'.
The idea of someone trying to decide between writing a letter to their newspaper, starting a political party, and attempting an assassination is really entertaining me right now. I suspect I need sleep.
It's a good thing I'm not politically active. Those first two options sound horrible. ;)
On the other hand, the risks and costs of the letter are much lower than an assassination. The monetary costs of starting a political party are probably comparable or higher, but the personal risks are probably lower unless you're in a country where ending autocracy is a really good idea.
Is working within an existing party just too disgusting to think of?
Risking your life to get less war probably makes sense on utilitarian grounds unless the war is likely to get rid of a very bad government.
No, my point was the recorded odds of success for assassins is much much better than conventional politics, by like several percent. How many hundreds of thousands of eager young people have enlisted in the Republican Party and associated conventional routes over the past 50 years, dedicating their lives and aspiring to change things?
How many changed things as much as, say, Sirhan Sirhan or Lee Harvey Oswald?