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Konkvistador comments on New censorship: against hypothetical violence against identifiable people - Less Wrong Discussion
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Fun Exercise
Consider what would have been covered by this 250, 100 and 50 years ago.
Bonus Consider what wouldn't have been covered by this 250, 100 and 50 years ago but would be today.
I see the point you're trying to make, but I don't think it constitutes a counterargument to the proposed policy. If you were an abolitionist back when slavery was commonly accepted, it would've been a dumb idea to, say, yell out your plans to free slaves in the Towne Square. If you were part of an organization that thought about interesting ideas, including the possibility that you should get together and free some slaves sometime, that organization would be justified in telling its members not to do something as dumb as yelling out plans to free slaves in the Towne Square. And if Ye Olde Eliezere Yudkowskie saw you yelling out your plans to free slaves in the Towne Square, he would be justified in clamping his hand over your mouth.
It wouldn't be dumb to argue for the moral acceptability of freeing slaves (even by force) however.
It wouldn't be dumb for an organization to decide that society at large might be willing to listen to them argue for the moral acceptability of freeing slaves, even by force. It would be dumb for an organization to allow its individual members to make this decision independently because that substantially increases the probability that someone gets the timing wrong.
Beware selective application of your standards. If the members can't be trusted with one type of independent decision, why they can be trusted with other sorts of decisions?
Because the decision to initiate a particular kind of public discussion entails everyone else in the organization taking on a certain level of risk, and an organization should be able to determine what kinds of communal risk it's willing to allow its individual members to force on everyone else. There are jurisdictions where criminal incitement is itself a crime.
I can't say whether I agree or disagree until you precise the meaning of the qualifiers "particular" and "certain". But my question was in any case probably directed a bit elsewhere: if the members shouldn't be free to write about certain class of topics because they may misjudge how the society at large would react, doesn't it imply that they shouldn't be free to write about anything because they may misjudge what the society at large might think? If the rationale is that which you say, returning back from abolitionists to LW, shouldn't the policy be "any post that is in conflict with LW interest can be deleted" rather than the overly specific rule concerning violence and only violence?
"Criminal incitement" and "the risk of being arrested," then. In other time periods, substitute "blasphemy" and "the risk of being burned at the stake."
They shouldn't be free to write about certain topics with the name of their organization attached to that writing, which is the case here. They can write about anything they want anonymously and with no organization's name attached because that doesn't entail the other members of the organization taking on any risk.
Sure.
How does an organization make decisions independently of the members of the organization?
It doesn't. The distinction is between decisions that individual members make independently and decisions that individual members make communally.
If it helps, the underlying moral principle I'm working from here is "try to avoid making decisions that entail other people taking on risks without their consent."
Did they take on the risks when they entered the conspiracy, or do they only take on those risks when events beyond their control happen? It would be foolish to conspire with foolish or rash people, which is one reason why I don't.
Bonus:
Consider what's likely to be covered 50 years in the future.
For something like that, consider the algorithm you use to answer it. Then consider why the output of said algorithm should at all correlate with future social trends.
I considered adding that too. :)