Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:
- Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
- Do not quote yourself.
- Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
- No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
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One thing we learn even in situations that are not in the Middle East is that actions cause incentives.
Refusing to kill militants when protected by human shields encourages the taking of more human shields.
It's not hard to bring up the Wikipedia article. Proportionality requires that the force be proportionate to what is necessary to achieve the objective, not that the force be proportionate to the number of deaths caused by the enemy.
If this was truly what they believed, then I could, for instance, argue that Israeli attacks don't make it easier for Hamas to recruit from the enraged population, and it would also count as an argument that Israel's attacks are proportionate. I don't believe for one second that such an argument would be received in such a way.