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Sir_Pings_a_Lot  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   3746 thread views

Am I an acceptable poster for theMotte.org?

Hi, I'm a long time reader of Slate Star Codex and I used to post on the Reddit forum until I got banned. There are a few reasons that I believe I got banned.

  1. Uncharitably claiming that Leftist censorship was a threat to the rationalist community

  2. Advocating for violence

  3. Not being kind

I understand why all of these things could have been a problem on the Reddit community, but I would like to know if they're still going to be a problem here, since I don't want to invest a lot of time creating a profile and having good-faith discussions with people if I'm only going to be banned again. Here are the reasons that I think these three issues shouldn't be a problem anymore.

  1. I was right, and everybody who disagreed with me was wrong. The fact that the community had to move here proves it. I'm not expecting an apology but I think that time has proven me correct on that score.

  2. Violence is a completely justifiable response to tyranny. While calls to violence may be against Reddit rules (and the community was right to ban me from Reddit because my rhetoric could have caused problems for the mods) there are no such rules here. In fact, rdrama (which helped set up this offsite community, and whom you should all be grateful to) actively encourages calls to violence. If a rational and logical case can be made for violence then I think there is no good reason not to hear that case out. If you're forced to censor people you disagree with because you're unable to make a stronger case for pacifism over violence in the open marketplace of ideas, then you should question whether your pacifism is actually a worthwhile philosophy.

  3. Kindness and truth are different terminal values. If you optimize for kindness then it is self-evident that you will have to sacrifice truth at some point. Obviously the Reddit community has chosen kindness as its terminal value, but I'm hoping that this offsite community is enlightened enough to choose truth.

I'm linking to a few articles from my Substack here so you have a few examples of my style of writing and can make a better judgement about whether I would be a good fit for the offsite community. I'm also on rdrama where my username is sirpingsalot. If you think I'm not a good fit for the offsite either, then no hard feelings - I'm happy to take my ideas to more sympathetic communities instead. I just don't want to put in the effort of investing time and energy here if I'm only going to get banned again for the same reasons.

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Yes, advocating violence is still prohibited.

Maybe this rule has more nuance? If I wrote something to the effect of: "Murderers should be arrested, even if they resist arrest.", I am advocating violence, but I don't think I'd be scolded on this forum for that expression.

Well, yes, I'm not going to spell out every possible interpretation of "advocating violence" because we use a reasonable standard with our human judgment, we don't try to anticipate every loophole a pedantic rules lawyer might try to exploit.

Most people know what we mean when we say "You may not advocate violence," and if someone is unclear, we'll explain it to them.

Advocating that the state use its monopoly on violence against those who are the reason for that monopoly in the first place? Sounds like a rational position to me.

Calling for crimes to be committed (which inherently includes asking for consensus) is bad, prohibited, and different from the former.

Calling for crimes to be committed (which inherently includes asking for consensus) is bad, prohibited, and different from the former.

Rather than having this glaring asymmetry (it's okay to cheer for violence sanctioned by our current rulers, but not for violence not sanctioned by them), it would be better if we could (follow/go back to) the interpretation that you shouldn't call to any action at all. Argue the consequences of depersonalised actions ("if the state arrests all the murderers, things happen and then utopia", "if every responsible citizen went and beat their local CoD player half-dead, things happen and then utopia"), sure, but no deontological prescriptions ("the state ought to arrest all the murderers", "you should go and beat up a CoD player").

This makes sense to me.

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