LESSWRONG
LW

All of glutamate's Comments + Replies

3Alicorn
This is an ongoing controversy, but if you can be inoffensive without sacrificing too many other virtues, it seems best to go for it. That's good to know. It wasn't at all clear - any of it! - from your original comment. I would agree with a weak, purely descriptive form of my restatement.
8Alicorn
No, glutamate. Your original comment was rude and uninteresting. "Stupid" isn't an informative criticism (not even if you specify that the stupidity is "incredible"), and it signals contempt and disrespect besides. Uninformative criticisms that signal that attitude are not readily welcomed here. You could have said - if I interpret your view correctly, which I may or may not - something like:
Cached Thoughts
glutamate-10

I never said that, nor implied it. You're completely misinterpreting what I said.

Consider the difference between these two scenarios:

a) There's a family of 10 people, who I normatively have decided do not deserve to live. I, over the course of the next 40 years, kill them person by person, using an instant and physically painless method, one by one, one ever 4 years.

b) There's a family of 10 people who I normatively have decided do not deserve to live. I wait 40 years, and kill them all at once, using an instant and physically painless method.

Answer me thi... (read more)

Reply
1[anonymous]
If I'm a member of the family, I prefer (a), because it gives us nine opportunities to identify you, track you down, and kill you before you kill us all.
6AdeleneDawner
Actually, assuming that the people in the family are relatively normal and want to live and want each other to live, and assuming that they don't know about your plans before you start enacting them, I'd expect the suffering to be significantly higher in situation A, since the family members experience more time mourning and probably considerable time worrying about being murdered. I'm not actually sure how these scenarios are relevant, though.
5Alicorn
Please, explain how the human race could fail to survive without each of its members dying.
Offense versus harm minimization
glutamate20

Precisely.

To say religion is not a choice would be to imply someone is being forced into it against their will. If it is against their will, surely their offence over blasphemy is insincere?

By the same line of argument that we shouldn't slander one particular long-dead paedophile warlord because he has a legion of sycophants at his metaphorical feet, we shouldn't slander a large number of other people who have a similar following and will take the same offence. So when someone says something not-so-nice about Nick Griffin, or draws a funny cartoon of him, is it not just as bad?

Reply
6jtk3
Yes. Say the Brits had put the electrodes in their own brains and built up a tradition of shocking themselves if others produced and published drawings of King Arthur. To me, that seems closer to what the muslims in question are doing. And people would be a lot less sympathetic with my Brits than Yvain's, for good reason.