zlacker

>>david9+(OP)
I bang on a lot about not saying things like "this person is a threat to democracy" and other such apocalyptic statements. This right here is a perfect example of why: when you steep people in a culture that tells them someone is (or their ideas are) an existential threat, eventually someone is going to be the right level of scared + unstable that causes them to kill people to try to defend their way of life.

If you find this horrifying (and I hope you do, because there can be no moral justification for celebrating murder), then I encourage you to really think about whether we would not be better off without such extremist language poisoning people's minds. We have to try to stop escalating, or the cycle is going to destroy our society.

>>bigstr+XD
You start your comment saying we should avoid making apocalyptic statements and end it by saying "the cycle is going to destroy our society".

My conclusion is that you don't mind making apocalyptic statements about actions you think are dangerous to society, which sits uncomfortably with your asking other people not to.

>>kybern+LG
> My conclusion is that you don't mind making apocalyptic statements about actions you think are dangerous to society, which sits uncomfortably with your asking other people not to.

This is a nonsense argument. It is possible that constantly making apocalyptic statements can result in an apocalypse, and saying that people should stop doing that is not contradictory.

The words you use matter. If trump is an existential threat to democracy, he should be assassinated. If you're not advocating for murderous escalation, then stop using those words (for example).

>>kryoge+tN
> If trump is an existential threat to democracy, he should be assassinated.

Who/what is defining assassination as a reasonable response to that threat, who/what maintains the list of words which can replace "democracy" in that section, and what happens when someone disagrees with the maintainer of that list?

>>zamada+rQ
Those are all great questions, and why the point under discussion is whether or not we should choose our words more carefully and stop making apocalyptic predictions.

>>kryoge+dR
I wholeheartedly disagree - we need to be less concerned with who might say something and more concerned with how we teach society to react to it. Whether or not someone is making apocalyptic predictions should not define our ability to hold back from assassinating.

>>zamada+zR
Humans are not rational machines.

You can "educate" someone all you want, they will still suffer from all the normal biases and those biases will still affect their choices.

This is why we have double blind trials even though doctors are "experts"

>>mrguyo+u61
I agree with this, and, as a result, I don't believe there is any possible approach which results in 0 people assassinating political figures for what other people say. I think the same conclusion can even be reached if people were supposed to be expected to be perfectly rational beings.

I do believe education on how to effectively engage against an idea which feels threatening is better equipped to handle this apparent fact than bigstrat2003's approach of teaching people to not say certain beliefs because they'd be worth killing about. That doesn't mean it results in a perfect world though. Some may perhaps even agree with both approaches at the same time, but I think the implication from teaching the silencing of certain beliefs from being said for fear they are worth assassinating over if believed true ends up driving the very problem it sets out against. Especially once you add in malicious actors (internal or external).