>this comment is pretty introspective and open to criticism, which I think is even more LW-y than being "smart".

Thanks. 

I'm not going to delete my posts on second thoughts, it would not be fair to those who have replied to me. I sort of feel that all political posts should just be moved to a walled off area for cognitive hazards. I am however, committing to staying away from politics.

Perhaps I will create a new account.

>Was she part of a crowd?

Yes, but they could only fit through the broken door slowly one at a time, so they couldn't rush the officer. 

Incidentally, I realise that my comment sounds pro-republican because I'm talking about what I see as a democrat executing a republican. But I'm sure many republicans would love to execute democrats too, its just that at the moment the democrats seem to have far more power, and so its far more likely that democrats start executing many republicans than vice versa. Either way, my point is that mass violence is an order of magnitude higher now than it was a few decades ago.

>Dan Carlin has often mentioned the numerous domestic bombings in the 70s; this Rand article says there were 1,470 domestic attacks in the US in the 70s.

Yes, and the US government might have collapsed in the 70s. I remember that the national guard shot some anti-war protestors. Did any major politicians or journalists condone this? (I genuinely don't know the answer) Anyway, grassroots violence won't collapse a government without elite support, and what I'm saying is that the elites seem to be endorsing violence now. Additionally I don't think an election has been contested like this ever?

>I think if you're going to redefine 'execution' to include some forms of police violence at protests or riots, the bet is going to become too vague to be likely decidable.

I'm not thinking of one or two rouges killing people, I'm thinking of a significant escalation. The riots would eventually become paramilitary death squads, I suppose. 

This could be made precise by, say, specifying that the death toll per capita has to equal the French revolution. Speaking of which, I don't think I would have been able to predict what would happen in the French revolution. Standing in 1789, a prediction of mass murder followed by a giant war would sound paranoid.

(I know I said I would stop talking about politics, but I thought I might as well continue this thread)

>If, as I contend, most of them weren't, why should we take the shooting of Ashli Babbitt (in the course of committing a violent crime) as evidence that the US is headed into fascism and mass executions in the next few years, when we don't draw any such conclusions from tens of thousands of other police killings?

Heading into mass executions with perhaps 5% probability is what I said. 

The point is that the police make mistakes, but now it seems that whether an action is justified depends on political affiliation. If there were a similar event, of a republican killing a democrat and seeming to get away with it on pure political affiliation grounds, I would be similarly worried. BTW, events like the storming of the Bastille also involved very few deaths, but rapidly escalated in the next few years.

>(An aside: I was curious about where you were coming from, so to speak, so I had a quick look at your LW comment history. It seems that you post about pretty much nothing but politics (including under that heading highly-politicized topics such as race). I think we have different ideas about what LW is for.)

This comment depressed me. I'm not actually politically active, and I don't think that I or others should be really. I have many points of disagreement with both parties. In many ways I'd rather no party had all that much power. I talk about politics because ... its the impulse to tribal politics getting its hooks into my brain. If I think that there is a 5% chance of mass murder, I think for most of us the best thing to do is just... ignore it, unless it gets a lot worse, in which case the best thing to do is probably just leave, if you can.

 

Frankly you're right, I have been using LW wrong (and so has everyone else that talks about politics).

Is there some way I can delete my account and all my posts? 

>If the police officer who shot Babbitt was tasked with defending the Capital, then, even if there was poor judgement on his part, it seems really unreasonable to call his actions an execution. An execution is carried out, generally by a state, as part of a deliberative, measured process of deploying force. This is a distinction I think most people would appreciate.

You are correct, this is an important distinction. My impression is that there was no grounds for the officer to think that his life was in danger - since he is a man he could have physically restrained the woman without a risk of her wrestling the gun from his hands - therefore he doesn't really have a justification of panicking, and he could deliberate and decide to kill her. Furthermore, the legal system had time to deliberate and decide not to charge him, which greenlights lethal force in any future similar situation. 
 

Suppose in 2024, there is an argument at a polling station over accusations of misconduct. An officer might reason that he can start shooting republicans, by the precedent jan 6th set. 

Its not an execution in the sense of a deliberate sentence, its the judicial system deliberately turning a blind eye. 

>Define "mass" and "a few years" I'll consider taking the other side of this bet.

10 years, and at least 10% dead (of those who actually stepped foot inside the capitol) with the majority of the rest in some kinda gulag, or having fled the country, or in non-democrat controlled territory in a civil war. The deaths could follow a trial, or could be execution by mob or whatever.

If 5% seems high, there seems to be civil wars on average once every 200 years or so, and tensions seem very high now. 

>If you weren't trying to suggest that there's debate about whether the people who stormed the Capitol should be executed without trial,

There isn't debate: Ashli Babbitt was de facto executed without trial (unless there is an objective legal principle where a male police officer can shoot an unarmed woman for breaking into a government building) and the shooter is described as a hero by the main levers of power, with no debate. The mass execution of capitol rioters might occur within a few years, I give it perhaps a 5% chance. 

Now this might seem like I'm trying to build sympathy for the Republican cause, but I am actually not. It is wiser to side with the winner than the loser, and I for one welcome America's new fascist overlords.

This tactic is called Kafkatrapping:

"A sophistical rhetorical device in which any denial by an accused person serves as evidence of guilt."

Its also an idea I consider far more absurd than creationism, and to be frank I am shocked to see it taken seriously here. 

1) If race is a social construct, then if we abandon this social construct, will a person who previously would have been conceptualised as Asian suddenly grow a few inches? If not, then this is an example of race having a physical meaning independent of mental states.

2) If differing outcomes are a matter of oppression, then shouldn't Holocaust survivors, the city of Hiroshima, the whole of China etc all be doing really badly? Shouldn't African Americans be doing worse than African Africans, as African Africans are distanced from White oppression? 

3) Since Jewish people have more power than non-Jews on average, any logically consistent claim of the need to fight Whiteness also justifies anti-Semitism (to make it abundantly clear, I am attempting a reducto ad Hiterium argument, I am not trying to justify anti-Semitism)

I am quite curious as to whether anything like this (a group of people deciding to hate themselves) has ever happened before in recorded history. Does anybody know?

I can understand why a race realist would argue that beleiving the truth makes you racist, but why a vicious racist?

This is just blue-tribe signalling. I apologise for being rude, but I don't know which is more absurd - the implication that only Europeans cared about gold/land/slaves (I think all non-tribal civilisation cared about the first two, and most cared about the third), or the idea that land has no value. I wonder what history would look like if the US had not expanded west? I think the most obvious change is that Germany and/or Japan would have won WWII. The US would have had little oil (as the Texan oil fields were not part of the initial colonies) no pacific naval bases, no empty land to test nuclear bombs on etc. Going further back in history, if no-one cared about land then we would all still be hunter-gathers.

Similarly the idea that Spain collapsed due to having too much gold sounds like nonsense - Spain traded with other countries, so any inflation caused wouldn't just affect Spain. 

The reason why immigrants often are beneficial to the host country is because barriers to immigration provide a very strong selective effect. But this does not apply to open borders or refugees, and also this brain drain is not sustainable.

 

I haven't posted on LW for a while now, but after posting to LW2.0 I got banned (till 2021) very quickly. My posts were also deleted. I was not told why I was banned, although I assume it was because I entered a fake email (I was annoyed that the new site required an email and not just a username). I asked why I got banned, and received no response.

Well, I'm sorry for using a fake email. I wasn't trying to spam, or sockpuppet or anything, but I think a 3 year ban without any sort of warning or explanation seems a little excessive. I'm happy to provide an email that works if required. I also considered setting up a new account with a real email, but I don't want it to seem like I'm sockpuppetting.

Facebook is full of bullshit because it is far quicker to share something then to fact-check it, not that anyone cares about facts anyway. A viral alarmist meme with no basis in truth will be shared more then a boring, balanced view that doesn't go all out to fight the other tribe.

But Facebook has always been full of bullshit and no-one cared until after the US election when everyone decided to pin Trump's victory on fake news. So its pretty clear that good epistemology is not the genuine concern here.

Not that I'm saying that Facebook is worse then any other social media - the problem isn't Facebook, the problem is human nature.