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ThrustVectoring comments on Uncritical Supercriticality - Less Wrong
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:) I did know that I was responding to an ancient response... but I had thought that Caledonian may still be lurking about this site...
In a way my response was more to point out the problem with what he said - than to actually request a specific response from him. If somebody else came along later and happened to agree with Caledonian, they might point out evidence that would support his claim... thus I figured it was worth posting anyway.
We keep being told to comment regardless of how old the posts are... and this is why.
Nah - that's the wrong tack. I'm sure there are things where violence could be a positive response. But the claim made was that there are things for which the necessary response is violence... as though for certain situations, only violence will work.
Perhaps there are such situations.. but Caledonian did not even give examples, let alone evidence to support his claim... Thus my reaction.
I'd argue that there are vanishingly few situations in which the only possible solution is violence... but, as I stated, would welcome evidence/discussion to the contrary.
This might be stretching the definition of an "argument", but I think there's a class of speech that must be dealt with by violence. The key identifier of this class is that there is a time-critical danger from third parties accepting the argument.
In other words, its not so much violence used to prevent Alice from trying to convince you that the sky is red, but violence used to prevent Alice from trying to convince Bob to participate in a lynching.
I'd disagree that violence was the only option in that case. I think the best option might be to spirit away the potential lynchee. If they've already got him strung up - then firing a shot in the air, followed by harsh words from the local law-maker would be the next option... violence is still an option, but not the only one, and not necessarily the first port of call.
I think it's quite rare for violence to be the only option available.
Drawing a sharp distinction like this between violence and the implied threat of violence (e.g., firing weapons and "harsh words" and the invoking of authority backed by force) is problematic. The efficacy of the latter depends on the former; a law-maker known to be reliably nonviolent firing a harmless noisemaker would be far less effective.