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Viliam_Bur comments on LINK: In favor of niceness, community, and civilisation - Less Wrong Discussion
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Nice. This is another confirmation of something that's becoming increasing apparent to me, and raises the same issue I've been thinking about.
I'm of the rationalist libertarian persuasion. We value truth, honesty, and a lack of coercion in human interaction. When you argue, you argue honestly. You don't lie, you admit when the other side scores points, etc. Politically, you respect the freedom and equal rights of others, and don't use force to violate those rights. But we live in a world of people who do not share those values. By our lights, these people are engaged in war against us. Yet we don't respond in kind. We're in a war, we're being shot at, but we never shoot back.
For all the talk of guns and self defense, rationalist libertarians are basically social pacifists. You could add the nerd persuasion to the list of pacifisms - in this case pacifism in the near politics of negative sum social status wars.
All this pacifism, from people who generally think it's moronic when actual bullets are involved. It's rather peculiar.
Whatever we might think of the best way for humans to interact, surely that is contextual, and the fact that another person is shooting at you should count as a relevant part of that context. If we never make such people pay a price in violating what we consider the ceasefire of the war of all against all, why would we ever expect them to stop?
Libertarians in the US are fond of the quote (variously attributed) that "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance". Vigilance is just the start. The true price is making violators of that liberty pay.
It's nice to get those occasional windows into an alien mind. Probably worthwhile to go to various ideological walled gardens on the internet disguised as a native.
The fact that we don't shoot each other literally and verbally is one thing that allows a website like LessWrong to exist.
The alternative would be splitting the website into dozen subsites: More Right, More Left, More Free, More Feminist, More Vegetarian, etc., which I suspect wouldn't remain rational for too long, although some of them might keep the word "rationality" as their local applause light.
Would that improve the world? My first guess is that these diverse websites would mostly cancel out each other, so the result would be zero. As an impact on their personal lives, they would probably spend less time studying, and more time inventing smart sounding political arguments. Which already other big parts of internet are doing, so they would be just another drop in the ocean.
Yes, here, where there is a sizable libertarian contingent, libertarians and progressives manage to be civil. And from my rationalist libertarian perspective, that's a good thing, and I wouldn't want it to change.
I don't think it's good to initiate force. I think peaceful truce's are good things.
But I wasn't addressing the situation at LW, I was addressing the broader context where rationalist libertarians are taking bullets, but not returning fire. I consider pacifism a loser of a strategy. A better strategy, IMO, is some kind of proportionate tit for tat. But the first step is to realize that pacifism is the current strategy, and that it's probably a loser of a strategy.
I'd say the same with Nerd near social pacifism.
"The great are great only because we are on our knees: Let us rise."