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MugaSofer 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: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 24 December 2012 11:12:05PM 2 points [-]

This seems to me like a deliberate misunderstanding. But taking it at face value, a story in which violence is committed against targets not analogous to any present-day identifiable people, or which is not committed for any reasons obviously analogous to present-day motives, is fine. The Sword of Good is not advocating for killing wizards who kill orcs, although Dolf does get his head cut off. Betrayed-spouse murder mysteries are not advocating killing adulterers - though it would be different if you named the victim after a specific celebrity and depicted the killer in a sympathetic light. As much as people who don't like this policy, might wish that it were impossible for anyone to tell the difference so that they could thereby argue against the policy, it's not actually very hard to tell the difference.

Comment author: MugaSofer 25 December 2012 12:19:17PM *  0 points [-]

a story in which violence is committed against targets not analogous to any present-day identifiable people, or which is not committed for any reasons obviously analogous to present-day motives, is fine

I was unsure if people who do not currently exist might also be considered "identifiable real-world individuals", if discussed in the context of futurism. Thank you for clarifying.