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Only the use of violence isn't enough; you have to ban the incitement to violence. Authoritarian causes never lacked martyrs.

toasterlovin 7y ago
Fair enough. But we still don't need the law to concern itself with anybody's ideology.
Mathnerd314 7y ago
It depends on how good the enforcement is. If orbital space lasers were set up to incinerate anyone committing an act of violence within a few seconds, it's hard to see how incitement to violence would work. Comparable examples might be getting blocked for posting too fast and triggering the automated spam filter, or trying to harass someone by mailing them $100 bills. At the moment police response time is still 15 minutes though, and inadequate for large crowds, so there is some room for incitement. The bigger problem though is just having laws and having enforcement of those laws; there is too much room for corruption, abuse, etc.
- trashtester 7y ago
  Not sure if you realize the irony of such extreme violence as a tool to counter violence. Perhaps you don't consider it violence if it is within the law? If so, is it violence to execute people for homosexual acts? What about ideologues that seek to introduce the the death penalty for gay sex? Or is such legal actions only non-violence if it is used to enforce the values that you happen to hold yourself?
  - Mathnerd314 7y ago
    Violence seems to be an innate animal tendency, of course a system to counteract it would be extreme. I suppose such a system would not necessarily be violent, e.g. drones equipped with tasers are mostly nonlethal. And since people react to alarm clocks in the morning perhaps all that's needed are drones with loudspeakers ordering people around. But since it's a thought experiment I went for the zapper. I was thinking of an objective definition of violence like causing death or serious injury. The death penalty is rarely used in most countries and seems unlikely to significantly contribute to overall violence statistics, compared to police shootings or natural disputes. The Hiroshima bomb is debatable as it might have caused more radiation deaths than an invasion from Japan would have. But a total surveillance system would not obviously cause any more deaths and could be used to prevent them.
    - trashtester 7y ago
      Even if you are toning down your proposal, you still seem to argue for something that resembles an extreme police state. Strip away the sci fi terminology, replace the space lasers with police armed with sniper rifles, and replace the tasers with batons, and you have technologies that are available today (except for the surveillance needed to identify the offenders, but for that part, you could have the super-AI needed foor the task feed informatino to the police instead of to satelites/drones.) While efficient law enforcement is important, "perfect" law enforcement is likely to cause more harm than it will prevent.

toasterlovin 7y ago

Fair enough. But we still don't need the law to concern itself with anybody's ideology.

Mathnerd314 7y ago

It depends on how good the enforcement is. If orbital space lasers were set up to incinerate anyone committing an act of violence within a few seconds, it's hard to see how incitement to violence would work. Comparable examples might be getting blocked for posting too fast and triggering the automated spam filter, or trying to harass someone by mailing them $100 bills. At the moment police response time is still 15 minutes though, and inadequate for large crowds, so there is some room for incitement. The bigger problem though is just having laws and having enforcement of those laws; there is too much room for corruption, abuse, etc.

trashtester 7y ago
Not sure if you realize the irony of such extreme violence as a tool to counter violence. Perhaps you don't consider it violence if it is within the law? If so, is it violence to execute people for homosexual acts? What about ideologues that seek to introduce the the death penalty for gay sex? Or is such legal actions only non-violence if it is used to enforce the values that you happen to hold yourself?
- Mathnerd314 7y ago
  Violence seems to be an innate animal tendency, of course a system to counteract it would be extreme. I suppose such a system would not necessarily be violent, e.g. drones equipped with tasers are mostly nonlethal. And since people react to alarm clocks in the morning perhaps all that's needed are drones with loudspeakers ordering people around. But since it's a thought experiment I went for the zapper. I was thinking of an objective definition of violence like causing death or serious injury. The death penalty is rarely used in most countries and seems unlikely to significantly contribute to overall violence statistics, compared to police shootings or natural disputes. The Hiroshima bomb is debatable as it might have caused more radiation deaths than an invasion from Japan would have. But a total surveillance system would not obviously cause any more deaths and could be used to prevent them.
  - trashtester 7y ago
    Even if you are toning down your proposal, you still seem to argue for something that resembles an extreme police state. Strip away the sci fi terminology, replace the space lasers with police armed with sniper rifles, and replace the tasers with batons, and you have technologies that are available today (except for the surveillance needed to identify the offenders, but for that part, you could have the super-AI needed foor the task feed informatino to the police instead of to satelites/drones.) While efficient law enforcement is important, "perfect" law enforcement is likely to cause more harm than it will prevent.