Comment by Kye | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Kye | Hacker News Reader

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>> "What is gained by classifying speech as violence rather than simply vilifying the type of speech without the violence label? What is lost? "

Gained: the ability to identify how words and actions can eventually lead to physical (or other kinds of) violence rather than be surprised when it happens. Maybe it could even lead to intervention!

Lost: awe and mystery at how physical violence happens? I'm at a loss. Having language and concepts to understand stuff is pretty handy.

>> "What you are referring to here has been, in the past, considered a call to violence (or perhaps an implied call to violence)."

Call to violence is more direct. "Go murder that asshole!" The many faces of non-physical violence are rarely so direct.

Economic violence, for example, can set the conditions for physical violence. If prejudice as manifested through poverty (economic violence) makes it impossible for someone to live a good life, they may go out and rob someone or join a gang. They're more vulnerable to radicalization in general.

In my experience, people who get hung up on the "violence" part don't really care what you call it. They reject the idea of words mattering wholesale. Using gay as an insult, calling black people thugs, and the many worse kinds of awful never go anywhere, so it doesn't matter to them. To them, there's no point in caring in the first place.

You don't even get to discussing what to call harmful words and systems with them because they don't see that words can lead to harm and they reject the notion of human systems. We might as well call it violence and be done with it. You weren't going to find a palatable alternative.

It's a philosophical difference between "...and words can never hurt me" and "...words precede the sticks and stones." The former is fun to say before a bully kicks your ass. The latter is more reasonable once you've seen what words can do.

Or more simply: If words don't matter, who cares if I call non-physical violence violence? They're just words...

Calling words 'violence' is like calling a restaurant recommendation 'eating'. A call to eat is not eating; A call to violence is not violence. It's simply nonsense.

In fact there's no area where people are trying to equate words with the actions they might lead to. People oppose words on the grounds of what they might lead to, but that's very different from saying the words are what they might lead to.

But why, then, do some people hold onto this absurdity tooth and nail, refusing to give it up even when it's clearly causing miscommunication? It gives some benefit to them.

The benefit is: People with weak ideas recognize that they won't win a neutral exchange of ideas. So they want to avoid the frame where the interaction is just a neutral exchange of ideas. Instead, they try to change the contest to something they can win - a violent power struggle.

They want a contest of power: Who can stigmatize, harass, and physically intimidate the other side into submission?

Because they sense they can win a contest of power, but they might not win a neutral exchange of ideas. There's nothing else to it - it's pure bad-faith power games straight out of 1920's Russia.

Of course, it's poisonous to civilization, since it weakens the discussion norms we need to find truth and good paths forward.

> But why, then, do some people hold onto this absurdity tooth and nail, refusing to give it up even when it's clearly causing miscommunication? It gives some benefit to them.

Interesting take. We'll get back to this in a moment.

> They want a contest of power: Who can stigmatize, harass, and physically intimidate the other side into submission?

And yet weirdly you're part of a group hear arguing that we should not call this violence? If this isn't violence, then why shouldn't I stigmatize you? What do you care? So long as no punch is thrown, you've been arguing no foul has been committed!

If speech, association and the implication of violence are so trivial that it cannot constitute violence, then why are you arguing that you don't want it used against you?

Perhaps we should ask our resident 13-dimensional chess player who saw this question coming, jlawson.

> But why, then, do some people hold onto this absurdity tooth and nail, refusing to give it up even when it's clearly causing miscommunication? It gives some benefit to them.

> They want a contest of power: Who can stigmatize, harass, and physically intimidate the other side into submission?

And that's why you're simultaneously arguing that speech cannot be violence but also arguing that it is a violence used against you and thus granting you a moral right to invoke those very same mechanics.

> And that's why you're simultaneously arguing that speech cannot be violence but also arguing that it is a violence

No matter how many times you elide the modifiers before the word violence (before, "a call to", now "movitated by a desire for" or some variant thereof), jlawson's point remains.

You can add those quantifiers if you want, but jlawson's argument is still an obvious double standard.

Maybe we could get together and talk about it over a nice frosty milkshake?

Speaking of talking it out, I'm curious how you found this thread. Given it's age and moderation status I doubt it's organically.

> You can add those quantifiers if you want, but jlawson's argument is still an obvious double standard.

Add? Put them back where you took them from, rather. You can claim that until the cows come home and it will still be true that jlawson hasn't accused you of violence.

> Maybe we could get together and talk about it over a nice frosty milkshake?

Cute, but no deal.

> Speaking of talking it out, I'm curious how you found this thread. Given it's age and moderation status I doubt it's organically.

The article was on the front page when I clicked it. You last comment was about three hours old when I commented.

> If this isn't violence, then why shouldn't I stigmatize you? What do you care? ..... If speech, association and the implication of violence are so trivial that it cannot constitute violence

You seem to have the idea that any act/speech which isn't literally violence must thus be trivial/acceptable/unobjectionable.

Do I even need to explain why this is wrong? Obviously there are many acts which are unacceptable and objectionable, which are not violent. E.g. If you called my boss and made up lies about me being a pedophile to try to get me fired.

I can kind of sense that you're trapped in your own definitional games here. Since you've so long equated "any objectionable thing" with "violence", you are now having trouble following a text that depends on the difference. By erasing these language distinctions, you've actually been conditioned to be unable to follow the reasoning that would make you understand why they're wrong. I just have to ask you to step back for a moment, consider my example above about the pedophilia lies, and try to remember the distinctions that you were surely once familiar with. Violence is an objectionable thing; not every objectionable thing is violence.

> You seem to have the idea that any act/speech which isn't literally violence must thus be trivial/acceptable/unobjectionable.

I haven't put that forth, but thank you for your concern. What I'm noting is that you're essentially decrying the labeling of some types of speech-as-violence as a tactic that according to you is being espoused by people to somehow cover the idea that they want to use speech tactics against you.

You claim this is to their benefit, but that is absurd on it's face. Why would folks ostensibly wanting to use the sharper sides of self-expression go and label their own actions as violence?

What conclusions are we supposed to draw from such an obviously wrong point?

> I can kind of sense that you're trapped in your own definitional games here. Since you've so long equated "any objectionable thing" with "violence"

Quite the opposite. I'm willing to be very flexible and contextual with the application of words because that's what words are. You might want to have this conversation with other folks in the thread suggesting with dictionary-based semantic rigidity.

> consider my example above about the pedophilia lies,

I ask you to step back and ask yourself if you're really going to commit to the general conversation here. Because the point you're jumping into is a conversation about if forms of violence besides a fist and a gun exist, with your opinion arising from within a group who denies that.

I'll give you a counter example: is the act of lawmakers to criminalize all abortion in Alabama despite the will of their electorate is clearly an act of speech. It is an act that radically reduces the freedoms and rights of it's citizens and provokes other parties into action (such as law enforcement) which may include physical violence. It seems strange to suggest that a declaration stripping you of many of your rights and property is not a violent act simply because the lawmaker themselves is a flaccid old man.

Laws are speech, and in some cultures that speech holds enormous power. Under your refusal to recognize causality, I could set up a bomb to explode outside your car when the door opens and then claim I didn't open the door. If I undertake actions that are certain to lead to physical harm towards another how am I not in some way morally responsible? How is the speech act itself not part of the violence?

It seems to me like the one hoping to split definitions to hair-fine levels via semantic games here is you.

But perhaps we'd find a more fruitful conversation in person. Perhaps we could meet for milkshakes some time and talk it out?

>Why would folks ostensibly wanting to use the sharper sides of self-expression go and label their own actions as violence?

Nobody labels their own actions as violence. They label others' actions as violence, and either don't notice or hope to avoid the logical conclusion. People are not good at consistency.

People label others' words as violence in order to justify their own actual violence in return. E.g.:

"That speaker is racist and his words are violence, so we're justified in forcing open the doors and screaming and stomping to stop the speech."

>It seems strange to suggest that a declaration stripping you of many of your rights and property is not a violent act simply because the lawmaker themselves is a flaccid old man.

It really doesn't, any more than a restaurant recommendation is not an act of eating. Words have meanings.

A law to reduce pollution standards is not climate change, it is a law that will cause climate change. A law to increase government spending isn't a budget deficit, it's a law that will cause a budget deficit.

>I could set up a bomb to explode outside your car when the door opens and then claim I didn't open the door. If I undertake actions that are certain to lead to physical harm towards another how am I not in some way morally responsible?

You are morally responsible, because you're responsible for the outcomes of your acts.

This is so bizarrely simple, and I know you understand it, because you can't function in the world if you literally don't understand the difference between a cause and an outcome.

An act that leads to a result is not the same as that result. The initial act makes the actor responsible for the result. It doesn't mean that the initial act _is_ the result. This is a simple distinction present in all human languages for a reason.

E.g. If I recommend you eat at a restaurant, and you do, and enjoy it, I get some credit for that enjoyment, even though I didn't eat at the restaurant, I caused you to do it.

This is not a hair-fine semantic game, it's basic language understood by children.

Your final veiled threat is childish.

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