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Konkvistador comments on New censorship: against hypothetical violence against identifiable people - Less Wrong Discussion

22 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 23 December 2012 09:00PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 25 December 2012 11:49:08AM *  4 points [-]

I think your example is rather atypical to be honest at least in the wider West. Emma West being the more typical one. Very much like with hate crime laws there is controversy whether hate speech against white people even is hate speech.

What would be considered unacceptable for one group is not unacceptable for another. The star of the recent popular movie Django Unchained, Jamie Fox joked for example:

"I get free. I save my wife and I kill all the white people in the movie," Foxx said to thunderous applause. "How great is that?”

in light of his other comments this is interesting

"As a black person it's always racial. ... when I get home my other homies are like how was your day? Well, I only had to be white for at least eight hours today, [or] I only had to be white for four hours."

Foxx went on to say that “black is the new white.”

Whether this combined is ominous, righteous or innocuous depends on your model of the world. That how such laws are applied depends heavily on what kind of model of the world judges or police officers are likely to use is hardly disputable however.

Comment author: Plasmon 25 December 2012 06:01:07PM 2 points [-]

Oh, I agree fully that such laws are problematic and open to abuse, and that it might well be better for no such laws to exist at all. Nonetheless they exist and should occur as a (possibly very low) cost in the calculation of the expected utility of advocating violence.