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There is a difference between random one off attempts and repeated attempts.
There is also a difference with how people in the group react.
If I was part of a group whose members kept doing terrible things with support from a decent number of members, I would have to seriously question whether I’d want to be a member of that group. You wouldn’t?
Sure, but there's been multiple anti AI attacks.
How exactly do we determine this? Does Yudkowsky writing if anyone builds it, everyone dies and advocating for slowing down AI development count as some sort of implicit support for anti AI violence because he believes humanity will end? It's really easy to see how people might read it and conclude "well if they're destroying humanity, we need to do anything to stop them"
Should Yudkowsky be blamed for attempts on Sam Altman's life?
What's the actual base rate though? I'm part of many groups where members keep terrible things with support from a decent number of members.
I'm a human, tons of those are violent. I'm an American, tons of those are violent (the government is even literally bombing fishers in South America. I'm a capitalist, I bet there are other people who would call themselves capitalist that have done crime before. I'm a man, and I'm pretty sure men commit crimes. I live in a city with criminals in a state with criminals. Maybe my next door neighbor is a criminal! Maybe some of my coworkers are criminals, they could be selling pot on the side or something.
The default of basically every group that isn't "not criminal" is having some criminals in it. Like how cardiologists just keep doing messed up things.
But even increased rates don't really matter too much. If base crime was .5% of the population and cardiologist crime was 1% of the cardiologist population, so what? The overwhelming majority of cardiologists would still not be crime. Even if they were 5%, most would still be fine people! It'd be an interesting thing to consider what attracts 10x worse people to cardiology as a field, but I wouldn't blame any cardiologist for wanting to work their job. The same way I don't demand that all the priests step down cause a few kept molesting children, or that anti AI folk should shut up because a few people tried to kill Sam Altman or that insert other people I don't like are responsible just because a few of them were bad.
Arguably, the rat adjacent attacks on Altman qualify.
I think your other examples miss the point. It isn’t about finding a random connection between group A and bad thing B. It is about finding a direct connection, higher than the baseline, and tacit group approval. It was shocking how many people cheered Kirk’s death. It was shocking how many people were upset Trump survived the multiple attempts.
Now hold on, there's a difference between being happy someone is dead and actively supporting violence against them. Trump himself has cheered on the death of multiple people who he disliked, including the murder of Rob Reiner. Hell, Trump has even called for the death penalty against those Dem lawmakers like half a year ago which is one of the closest things you can get of support for violence while still not quite crossing the boundary.
Now maybe those are crass comments (I think they are), but I wouldn't interpret them as instructions to "go out and kill Democrats". Heck Trump once posted Obama's address leading to an armed man afterwards showing up casing the joint looking for a "good angle" to shoot. I could say that Trump caused this, but I could also just say that this guy was a nutjob who had a history of threatening Democrats, and consider that most people didn't try to kill Obama. This guy didn't do it because of Trump, he did it because he was a violent and hateful man.
I'd say a government official with the power to set in motion the process of executing somebody calling for them to be executed clearly does cross the boundary - it is, in non-clown cases, an order to start that process. When Trump does it he arguably isn't calling for violence because when Trump speaks in public it is presumed to be (especially by his supporters) a mindless bloviation intended to express emotions, not an attempt to communicate.
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