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You're not going to get far with a consistent habit of booing the outgroup and clear consensus building. I note multiple previous warnings, so I'm going to extend a 3 day ban to make this one stick.
I have to ask, will it ever be considered "rational" to talk about living up to the ideals of the American Founding and watering the tree of liberty? I currently live in a state with my Attorney General elect thinks I and my children should die because we're breeding "little fascist". His top priority is emptying the prisons into my community to see this done. At what point does it become permissible to openly discuss your natural rights to self defense against the state?
I think whatever response you give here, you should give in sufficiently general terms that I can also give it to my lefty college buddies that think we're at the point of having to pick up guns against the Ice-Nazis.
At the very least, it's "we're not even close".
Within 24 hours of this post, two National Guard members were shot
and killedin Washington DC, by a shooter that alleged targeted and ambushed them.I'm willing to give another 24 hours from now before speculating on the motives of that shooter. The shooter has been capture and is expected to survive. I'll note, however, that nationally syndicated television did not wait to see whether the man was a gangbanger or schizophrenic before giving justifications for the shooters actions.
It's possible that Dilanian is fired in a week. Would you like to make a wager?
Because I'd wager that your lefty college buds can get all the justifications and friendly tongue-washing from broadly published news media that everyone treats with far more respect than it deserves; the wig-wong waggling here doesn't really matter.
Edit: I shouldn’t trust politicians. “conflicting reports”
No argument here about the media.
Nevertheless, on an individual level, you should endorse a logic on the threshold for armed conflict that cannot transparently justify both you and your opponents.
Surprisingly, no.
Trivially, there are levels of armed conflict that would be acceptable and even laudatory. If New Yorkers could accept self-defense or defense-of-others by innocents against illegitimate threat to life and/or limb, we'd be in a much better place. Just as trivially, there are levels of endorsement I can give that are hundreds of miles short of what is not just common but already mainstreamed to the point of being room temperature; endorsing Rittenhouse is not going to give any genuine sanction to Jay Jones.
These aren't without their risks. There are definitely progressives willing to hallucinate that the knife-waving meth addict who broke into someone's house at midnight tots wasn't gonna hurt nobody, and that the police officer considering a speeding ticket was a dire threat to life; there are people who were already drooling over the shooting the children of political opponents now and did respond to the Rittenhouse defense by doubling down. But those are concerns in the same sense that a schizophrenic legitimizing a murder because the radio waves in his teeth told him it was okay, and sometimes by the same biochemical pathways.
At a deeper level, the Litany of Tarski wins. If you're arguing game theory and utilitarianism, it's not just enough to believe that pacifism is the best behavior with the best outcomes. Most advocates aren't even willing or able to pretend.
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As entertaining as watching fedposters like you fedpost is, it seems bad for the sites continued existence and vaunted neutrality to enable and encourage it.
"Viewpoint neutrality" does, in theory, include permitting the viewpoint "we should massacre my enemies" (from either side). Forbidding that viewpoint is a concession to legal reality and arguably utility, not upholding neutrality.
"fedposting is bad, actually" shouldn't be a hot take
Motte:
Bailey:
The bailey is something I feel morally obligated to oppose wherever I see it, i.e. the redefinition of terms to legitimate a preferred policy without acknowledging real tradeoffs. This is catastrophically dangerous because it leads to important principles getting hollowed out and losing their actual meaning - see "free speech doesn't include hate speech".
So, defend your claim. Or retract it. Don't try to pull a fast one by retreating to a motte.
(The reason I said "arguably utility" is because it can be useful for people like me to talk people out of starting a Boogaloo, and that can't happen if the other side is deterred from speaking.)
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Depends if the government is conspiring to murder you or not.
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Please don't share more info than is wise, but out of curiosity, why not vacate that state? There are states with moderately sane AGs (and overall saner justice systems that try to lock up criminals), minimal gun laws, and lower taxes. And I don't mean places that many people dread like North Dakota or Wyoming, although the latter is a very pretty state in places and no one is going to put their nose in your business.
Trivially, there are pretty significant costs to flight.
More seriously, there's very little guarantee it would work. I'll point, again, to KendricTonn getting a Kirk Smirk in Ohio meatspace, or to my own experiences over half-a-decade ago. Crusading AGs from Blue States have brought the long arm of the law against people who did try to escape, or (as people trying to publish CAD files from Texas have found out) even if they were never in New Jersey to begin with. WhiningCoil cares a lot more about trans stuff than I do, but Wyoming specifically isn't exactly matching with his goals there despite a legislative and regulatory environment that specifically ordered or legislated it.
And then you get the federal government decides that they're going to have a new interpretation of a law and want a nice high-profile grab, you get your skull ventilated at 6AM, the cops doing that put more effort into documenting your soon-to-be-widow's morning piss than the pre-dawn raid, and no one in office in Arkansas cares. The supposed libertarians otherwise traumatized by the presence of masks for law enforcement they don't like will suddenly find crickets, the people who would burn down buildings over government overreach will suddenly decide to roleplay owls with a 'who, who'.
And I'm not downplaying them. His job, his wife's job if she has one, schooling for the kid(s), church, overall support structure if family is nearby... those are all significant considerations and make moving complex. However, if the alternative is seriously weighing armed rebellion, then perhaps relocation is a more realistic first step.
As to your other points, I don't disagree. There is no perfect escape at this point. To add to your examples, in Arizona, Daniel Shaver got killed by a cop while crawling along the ground, and there certainly wasn't any rioting when the cop was acquitted of murder. And that's Arizona, so what does that say about supposedly pro-freedom states? Even so, there are an awful lot of states I'd pick before VA or NJ.
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People, by revealed preference, seem to like living in the northern Rockies. But even neighboring North Carolina is a very pleasant GOP run state.
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Because it's a non-argument: or rather, you're forgoing your opportunity to make an argument with an appeal to violence. Honestly, advocating others to fedpost on your behalf on social media is a cowardly and self-defeating act. A real chad just goes out and does things, you know?
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I would imagine on The Motte you could make an effort post about what people would consider a morally acceptable line for either starting revolution or committing political assassinations in a completely abstract sense. Though that does invite people to come up with "hypothetical" scenarios that are thinly-veiled parallels to actual American events.
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I don't see where "rationality" even comes into the picture here. If we were modding people for being "irrational", we would have far fewer participants left.
As it stands, your comment is a non-sequitur. To assess the rationality of armed resistance to what you perceive as a hostile state is not in my remit as a moderator. Questions of rationality don't even come into the warning/tempban here. He was building consensus, being a culture warrior, and so on and so forth. Fedposting isn't in the sidebar rules last time I checked, but we frown on it because:
It goes against the culture and ethos of this forum. Doesn't get much more heated than that.
Zorba prefers the FBI don't kick his door down. We're all here at his behest, and on his sufferance.
You want to discuss your to natural rights to defend yourself against a state? Buddy, that's half of all we talk about over here. But if things have gotten so bad across the pond that you feel the need to form a militia and shoot the AG, then take it to Facebook. And if everyone else feels that way, I think moderation guidelines will be a less than pressing concern during a civil war.
10/10.
Can we put this on the sidebar?
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Aren't we a rationalist forum? I've always thought so, at least; a part of the rationalist diaspora, if a few steps removed from LessWrong/Overcoming Bias.
Not really, and IMO the old-guard movement is a shell of itself. I certainly wouldn't count any of Scott's other commentariat-zones as 'rationalist,' either.
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I wish, I really do. Unfortunately, this place is best described as rationalist-adjacent, which is the next best thing.
LW? The ur-rats.
Scott himself? Of course.
SSC/ACX and the subreddit? Mostly the case.
Us? The blood is a bit diluted.
Of course, this is my personal opinion, but IMO, a real "rationalist" forum includes more explicit discussions of the tenets of rationality itself, which we really don't do very often. We have high standards for discourse, we have people using Bayesian arithmetic when they feel like it, but we are a more general interest kinda place. And that's fine!
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Irrespective of whether it's "rational", is it really a conversation we need or want here? I'm with @FiveHourMarathon below regarding how these discussions always wind up going. I don't even think that there aren't interesting discussions to be had about how a popular uprising in the US would proceed, but the burden at this point should really be with those who want to talk about it to lead with something novel rather than another instance of "my chad tribesmen will beat the shit out of your effeminate wimps, if only the sheeple finally wake up and develop
classtribal counsciousness".Maybe I’m unusual, but I’m pretty doomer-pilled about the right’s prospects in a civil war.
Enh, 50/50.
I think they hold clear dominance in fieldcraft, and modern infrastructure is in fact so perilously fragile that a small group of dedicated individuals can have truly outsized effects. On the other hand, team red sucks at organizing in groups.
The biggest deterrent against civil war is that a vast majority of people on both political aisles are Comfortable(tm), or at least, comfortable enough that a civil war would have deleterious effects to their present quality of life and material well-being. They may not be happy or even content, but there's a gulf between that and everything else.
Also, there's nothing sadder than the yes-chad who got shot first getting less than half-hour's engagement on social media before everyone else shrugs and moves on. Nobody wants to be the one who starts a revolution if it doesn't start a revolution.
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There is no winning for anyone if it comes to that. Just violence until both sides are exhausted, or one is annihilated. I can't even speak with confidence which side it would be. But funnily enough, I always remember a line out of a trashy fantasy novel I read once.
"We don't fight to win. We fight so that we don't lose."
The prevailing wisdom here cannot be "Listen, it's just 'rude' not to walk into the ovens. It would get us into trouble with the feds if we talked too openly about non-compliance with their pogroms". Are we really so committed to ensuring everyone cannot even imagine a world where they aren't forfeiting their lives for nothing?
Why does there need to be "prevailing wisdom" here on this topic at all? You treat it as a given that we can't just ignore the topic, as something that can't be discussed while maintaining the spirit and purpose of the forum, and perhaps even mean to suggest that enforcing non-discussion is tantamount to complicity with your enemies. The exact same approach has been tried on the other side, with popular glosses like "the personal is political", "silence is violence" and what-not; and look where the discussion norms built around those memes got them.
I'm not saying what the prevailing wisdom should be, I'm saying what it should not be.
This is wrong and bad faith and borders on intellectual malpractice. "Silence is violence" as deployed by the left is about compelled speech. I'm asking for free speech, non censorship. Nobody has to have an opinion about their own genocide. But I'm asking for the freedom to discuss it, as well as extra-Democratic ways to survive.
And this is exactly what people mean when they say this place, and it's rules, are too "feminized". The only possibility that can be imagined is consensus. If you disagree, you are trying to change the consensus to a different consensus. Because a consensus must exist. There must be a norm that everyone conforms to. There cannot simply be endless discussion.
So, full disclosure, I found @remzem's post obnoxious and performative, but I would not have modded him for it, even though it did get several reports. @self_made_human decided otherwise, and while I would have decided differently, I don't think he's necessarily wrong. (Yes, this does in fact mean how you do or do not get modded sometimes depends on which mod decides to take action.)
I will attempt to answer your questions directly.
Are you allowed to discuss resisting the state? Yes, you can discuss it. People discuss that all the time here! (And that's why I personally thought @remzem's post was borderline but within bounds.)
Talking specifically about people you think should be killed is not within bounds. Talking about plans to do violence is not within bounds (and would be pretty fucking stupid if you're serious).
No, we are not saying it would be "rude" to talk about not walking into ovens (really, though? Come on.) Or that you can't talk openly about "non-compliance."
But what is it, exactly, that you want to say that you think you are not allowed to say? That you hate Jay Jones and hope someone shoots him? Well, you can say you hate him, but no, you can't openly wish death on him. (Yes, his texts would have gotten him banned on the Motte.) If you want to be more indirect about it ("I really think some of our state leadership should water the tree of liberty"), we are not stupid and we're still going to tell you to knock off the fedposting. Both because, yes, it's easy for you to whine about what you're not allowed to say when you're not the one who would get visited by the FBI, and because as several others have pointed out, most people here are not really interested in reading dick-fondling threads about what people will do to their enemies when the Boogooloo happens. If that's what you're into, there are guys on Twitter whose entire niche is jerking themselves off over such fantasies, including our own Motte alum Kulak. If you want Kulak-posting, go give him a follow.
There's a really morbid joke here, because on one hand, yes, we have very specific test cases on this very specific hypothetical, and back in 2013 I had some sympathy for the state's concern even if some of the actual actions were clearly overkill response to hyperbole. From Zorba's position, that's clearly the correct calculus...
For conservatives.
When an actual assassin got within inches of doing a Gallager to the then-Presidential Candidate and now-President, and someone started talking about aiming better next time, the fascist brownshirts didn't break down her door at midnight and the FBI or Secret Service weren't knocking on every message board she'd been to; she got fired from Home Depot and every progressive in the country started taking cancel culture seriously for three seconds before promptly finding an asshole they wanted to fire again. When a major political activist got shot in the throat, with audience members dancing in glee while he bled out on livestream, I gave you, specifically, a long list of people who weren't going to suffer after it, and not only did I manage to guess right in almost every case, it was only going to surprise you if they all turned out to be true. It's actually kinda impressive how direct and explicit the threats have to be before this FBI -- this administration's FBI -- is going after anyone.
And, of course, there's no FBI investigation after WhiningCoil's very specific example of Jay Jones saying worse than Corcoran said, when Jones sent his texts directly to one of his political enemies. Like, duh, obviously, that's not something that's even worse considering as possible.
That's not the joke. The real fun is that convention isn't limited to calls to assassinate political rivals. Indeed, there's a lot of other reads to WhiningCoil's position that aren't assassinating political rivals.
But we know that this rule applies to a wide variety of other matters -- whether it be advocacy of lethal force for the specific case of defending yourself from a man trying to beat your head in, or saying mean things about teacher's unions or school boards. There's a very specific post about a number of recents -- and about countless other prominent events -- that I will pointedly not make, here, because as you're very clearly saying, it's not allowed. Doesn't matter that isn't specific, hell, doesn't matter that it's advocacy of something that's legal.
What's the penalty for being late?
We know the state and its partisans are hypocrites. We try not to be hypocritical here.
It's still not clear to me what you and Whining want. To be allowed to openly talk about people who should be killed? To talk about when it's time to take up arms against the state?
This is a non-hypothetical question: how do you think our moderation policies are wrong, and how do you think we should correct them? Because from my POV (and as I mentioned above, our "moderation policies" are literally plural, as the mods try to be consistent but obviously we have a lot of latitude to use our judgment case by case), we are just trying to enforce rules like "Don't make death threats" and "Don't talk about doing obviously illegal shit." But we didn't tell anyone they can't talk about resisting the state or non-compliance.
Whining is the one who came in indignant because @self_made_human moderated @remzem for a shitty post. smh's reasoning was not even that remzem was advocating violence! He got modded for boo outgrouping. (The fact that @remzem has a long history of shitty edgelord posts worked against him.) So it looks kind of like Whining got triggered by a post that expressed sentiments he agreed with and thinks he might get modded for, and what do you want us to do about it?
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The parenthetical statement is not necessarily true unless the word "oneself" is added after "violence". See e.g. Al-Qaeda/Islamic State's "lone wolf" strategy, and the notion of stochastic terrorism.
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To nitpick, I have stated the sentiment that I would celebrate if a public figure died of natural causes and not gotten a warning for it.
While neither is a nice sentiment, I think there is a clear distinction between the wishing for someone to die and wishing for them to get murdered. One is poor taste and possibly makes me a terrible human being, but the other is calling for or condoning violence, which has a corrosive effect on civilization.
To further complicate matters, there are certainly cases where homicides are widely celebrated. The death of Bin Laden has been widely celebrated, for example. (Yes, you can argue that Obama's SEALs were doing their utmost to bring him in alive to stand trial in NY, and he somehow thwarted them by presenting a clear and present danger, so they had to abandon their objective and kill him (so the public would not be celebrating a murder but a killing in self defense), but given the general US policy of drone strikes against individuals suspected of terrorism, I think it much more likely that they fulfilled their objective. -- Personally, I would have liked to see him stand trial, but of all the deaths from W's war on terror, his is certainly in the lowest percentile of upsettingness.)
So empirically, it seems to depend on the victim if a homicide can be praised or not, at which point we are mostly haggling over price.
I am not saying that people should be able to call for the murder of anyone (and I do not think there is a CW topic whose outcome could be improved by murder, actually), I am just stating my opinion that it is hard to make hard and fast rules about these things.
Generally speaking we won't mod people for celebrating someone's death ( though it is in poor taste), but wishing for someone's death is more likely to get modded.
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The difference here between homicide and murder is significant.
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The term is "boogaloo". It's a reference to the movie Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, which became a meme title for sequels (the idea being that this conflict would be a sequel to the American Civil War).
"Boogaloo" is certainly the original such term, but, well, quoth Wikipedia:
I can't say I know for sure that "boogooloo" has ever been used, but I wouldn't be surprised.
(And, of course, I'd argue "boogaloo" was itself a euphemism intended to slide under normies' radar; it's certainly more subtle than just calling it "Civil War II".)
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Oh how far we've fallen. From rhetoric you'd see heroic sung in a Disney movie that was required viewing in Elementary School to intolerable hate speech that will get you and everyone around you visited by the feds in a single generation.
But sure, I'm the problem here.
So look, if you want to argue that we are in need of a revolution, you can make the argument. But Thomas Paine you are not. "I hate my enemies and want them dead" is not an argument.
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I should probably be glad we have higher standards than the Virginia electorate, but mostly it makes me disappointed in humanity.
A nice consolation prize.
Cheering after the fact should tragedy occur to such an innocent and praiseworthy individual, a la Kirk and approximately every internet forum to the left of The Motte?
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"Silence is violence" is absolutely deployed in defense of "free speech" too - it's a mainstay in protests where students disrupt unrelated university functions to inject progressive talking points of the day, and in those cases is taken to mean that being forced to stay silent (on the talking points, at university) is tantamount to being forced to be complicit in violence. Essentially, you and they are conflating the "I have the right to be heard" notion of free speech and the "I have the right to speak wherever and whenever I want" notion; while neither can be implemented perfectly, we can get a lot closer to something like a stable equilibrium with the former.
Also, from where do you get the idea that there is a consensus here, and anyone is trying to force some other consensus? I am under the impression that, weighted by posting frequency or upvotes, this place leans mildly towards the at least boogaloo-sympathetic. I do not think that a right-wing uprising in the US would win, and I am generally pro-chaos so I would want to see it happen! Yet, I do not want it to be discussed here, just like I don't want my approximation algorithms lecture to be disrupted by people yelling about Palestine (even though I am inclined to agree with them).
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In the post you replied to, self_made_human modded remzem for consensus-building and boo-outgroup, not for advocating violence. Did you mean to reply to Amadan's post?
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