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wedrifid comments on New censorship: against hypothetical violence against identifiable people - Less Wrong Discussion
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EY has publicly posted material that is intended to provoke thought on the possibility of legalizing rape (which is considered a form of violence). If he believed that there was positive utility in considering such questions before, then he must consider them to have some positive utility now, and determining whether the negative utility outweighs that is always a difficult question. This is why I will be opposed to any sort of zero tolerance policy in which the things to be censored is not well-defined a definite impediment to balanced and rationally-considered discussion. It's clear to me that speaking about violence against a particular person or persons is far more likely to have negative consequences on balance, but discussion of the commission of crimes in general seems like something that should be weighed on a case-by-case basis.
In general, I prefer my moderators to have a fuzzy set of broad guidelines about what should be censored in which not deleting is the default position, and they actually have to decide that it is definitely bad before they take the delete action. The guidelines can be used to raise posts to the level of this consideration and influence their judgment on this decision, but they should never be able to say "the rules say this type of thing should be deleted!"
That's an... interesting way of putting it, where by "interesting" I mean "wrong". I could go off on how the idea is that there's particular modern-day people who actually exist and that you're threatening to harm, and how a future society where different things feel harmful is not that, but you know, screw it.
The 'rules' do not 'mandate' that I delete anything. They hardly could. I'm just, before I start deleting things, giving people fair notice that this is what I'm considering doing, and offering them a chance to say anything I might have missed about why it's a terrible idea.
If you genuinely can't see how similar considerations apply to you personally publishing rape-world stories and the reasoning you explicitly gave in the post then I suggest you have a real weakness in evaluating the consequences of your own actions on perception.
I approve of your Three Worlds Collide story (in fact, I love it). I also approve of your censorship proposal/plan. I also believe there is no need to self censor that story (particularly at the position you were when you published it). That said:
This kind of display of evident obliviousness and arrogant dismissal rather than engagement or---preferably---even just outright ignoring it may well do more to make Lesswrong look bad than half a dozen half baked speculative posts by CronoDAS. There are times to say "but you know, screw it" and "where by interesting I mean wrong" but those times don't include when concern is raised about your legalised-rape-and-it's-great story in the context of your own "censor hypothetical violence 'cause it sounds bad" post.