sam0345 comments on Rationality Quotes November 2012 - Less Wrong

6 [deleted] 06 November 2012 10:38PM

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Comment author: sam0345 11 November 2012 10:48:55PM *  1 point [-]

I don't think violence has declined. State violence has increased. Further, since we are imprisoning a lot more people, looks like private violence has increased, supposing, as seems likely, most of them are being reasonably imprisoned.

Genghis Khan and the African slave trade cannot remotely match the crimes of communism.

And if it has declined, Xenophon would interpret this as us becoming pussies and cowards. Was Xenophon more violent and cruel than any similarly respectable modern man? Obviously. But he was nonetheless deservedly respectable. We rightly call the ten thousand brave, not criminal.

Social acceptance of brave, honorable, and manly violence has greatly diminished, and so brave, honorable and manly violence has greatly diminished. But vicious, horrifying, evil and depraved violence, for example petty crime and the various communist mass murders, has enormously increased.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 November 2012 11:20:49PM 2 points [-]

Further, since we are imprisoning a lot more people, looks like private violence has increased, supposing, as seems likely, most of them are being reasonably imprisoned.

This doesn't follow, unless by 'violence has increased' you mean that there are more incidents of violence. But this would be consistant with violence being extremely rare. So are we imprisoning people for violent crimes and at a higher rate?

I have the same questions about your claims of increased state violence. Has the rate of state violence gone up, or just the number of incidents? It's the former we're interested in.