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Comment by seydor | Hacker News Reader

how can convincing (not coercing) be harmful? What's the definition of harm

Woman convinced her boyfriend to kill himself and was convicted:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/michelle-carter-found-g...

She was convicted because she breached her duty of care after he informed her that he attempted suicide, and she told him to get back in the car and then proceeded to do absolutely nothing about it. The judge was spot in noting that by having the conversations with him that she did, at the time, she had a duty of care that she did not uphold. Your characterization of her liability is completely inapposite what the court found, it is misleading, and it is being done so to serve your own political beliefs regarding speech.

Where did you get that? The court decision does not mention "duty of care" (which is a well established term for situations that have nothing in common with this one). She created a different kind of duty for herself, not by any of the preceding messages but rather by the final "get back in" message.

I was just going off memory. You are right that it was that specific message and not the previous messages.

interesting. What are my beliefs regarding freedom of speech? I attempted to provide an example of what the OP spoke of, might have been wrong. My beliefs regarding freedom of speech is that is should be just shy of absolute. Only limit should be believable threats of violence. I appreciate you telling me what I believe and my political beliefs though.

When did I say what your political beliefs were? It's obvious to anyone reading your post, that you shared what you did to further your beliefs. Sheesh! And go figure, you're just shy of an absolutist. Who would have guessed that? (me! I would have!)

Lol, I'm guessing all of your posts are to hamper you political beliefs?

Sheesh indeed my friend, sheesh indeed.

So because your post was obviously made in an effort to expound upon the validity of your beliefs, it must be the case that I only ever do that? I don't follow. I wasn't projecting, I was just using basic reading comprehension skills to understand why someone would write what they did. It's a totally normal skill: https://www.lsac.org/lsat/taking-lsat/test-format/reading-co...

I honestly have no idea what you just said :) I look forward to your insulting response.

Terminating a millions-years-old family line is pretty harsh imo.

Is it? Nature does it all the time. Maybe it's a sentimentality thing.

lol, what?

If I killed someone, I can't be like "Whats the problem? Nature kills people all the time. Why are you so sentimental?"

You can convince someone to go shoot up a school, good luck arguing convincing is not coercing in court.

It really depends on what you did to convince them. See the top level post.

The law does not only care about causality. It is also cares free speech, reasonable interpretation, and comparative responsibility.

I could craft and publish an argument School shootings are in fact a positive good a we should have more of them. I am legally in the clear, even If someone finds my argument convincing and goes and shoots up a school because of it.

"Reasonable" can be whatever the judge/jury say it is. That can vary wildly. There are laws on the books in which the statute specifies "reasonable" and a judge has determined that it's an absolute liability offense because determining reasonableness is too hard and would frustrate the legislatures intent. (Even though this conflicts with other precedential opinion which states you can't ignore the letter of the law to pursue it's spirit).

In short, "reasonable" means nothing until the people in power tell you what it means.

I was speaking about what the law philosophically cares about - how it was crafted.

When it comes to this example, it is a lot more clear. I can write a book on why you should shoot up schools and it would be protected. Reasonable does not come in to that part of the question.

Sure, I'm just saying in practice the ideals that the laws were crafted on tend to go out the window - to the point that the law (through opinion) contradicts the written statute.

>"Reasonable" can be whatever the judge/jury say it is."

Not really. The boundaries of "reasonable" are... wait for... it reasonableness.

I.e. if a jury or a judge isn't reasonable, then an appeals court can overturn it. A judge or jury is not given free reign to determine anything to be reasonable.

Years of costly appeals will still ruin your life.

I was just responding to your point in the abstract, not arguing with you about whatever it is you are arguing about.

The court won't need to get that far, convincing itself falls under conspiracy without having to conflate it with coercion.

That strongly depends on how you convince them. If you one-on-one talk someone into shooting up a school, that's conspiracy. If you tell a large audience that teachers and children are a scourge upon society that must be eliminated and count on some small fraction to be unhinged enough to connect the dots, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

Even the private conversation does not raise to the level of conspiracy without a plan.

One action is a crime, the other (in)action isn't.

Convincing someone to commit suicide (not a criminal act per se anymore) is still a crime in many jurisdictions.

Not having children is a life decision that's harmful to the society the same way suicide is harmful to the society.

Childfree groups should be treated as suicide cults.

it's not coercing though

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