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I once walked up to a woman in a parking lot at night while she was putting groceries away (we were coming out of a grocery store). She turns and says "please

I once walked up to a woman in a parking lot at night while she was putting groceries away (we were coming out of a grocery store). She turns and says "please get away from me" in a way that made it obvious she was irrationally fearful, no idea why but I can guess. Most people would not have reacted in that manner. My point is this: Go tell the victims of dog attacks they're being busy-bodies by wanting dogs leashed in the park.

mjburgess 3y ago
I doubt the victims are. Its those people wandering through parks having this fantasy of victimisation to drive their 'compassionate' impulse to police others. If you wander around the world engaged in these fantasies, and police everyone around you such, then you're creating a nightmare for people to live in. Do you imagine teenagers attacking people, and then keep them out of parks? They're vastly more dangerous than dogs. Do you imagine so for everything? For knives and forks? For trees? Why! Trees do fall and kill people, we must be ever vigilant for the person with a tree on their property who has not put signs up warning people. Yes, the world has some minimal danger to it; and people are routinely injured one way or another. If you spend your life in fantasies of this danger you'll only make the world doubly unbearable -- as unsafe as it ever was, and now with self-appointed social police making sure no one can enjoy it If there's a dangerous dog in a park, that's a problem -- and call the police; make laws against it; make it a crime to own a dangerous dog. But if there isnt, if you're just having this fantasy that some random guy walking some random dog is endangering the people in the park -- well, I dislike you much more than I dislike that dog. And I'd like a sign to keep you out of the park. But people who make signs arent the kind to make that one; they're the busy-bodies.
- hollerith 3y ago
  Do you own a pit bull by any chance?
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    I don't own a dog. And as I've said elsewhere, this really isnt about dogs. It's about whether the appropriate response to rare events of danger, imagined in abstract circumstances, should be met with 'fantasy compassion' where people go around policing each other. An unleashed dog in a park is safe as people in the park, indeed, much more so. More people are attacked by other people in parks than by dogs. If we're going to police society to this level, it'll be a nightmare. If there's a dangerous person in the park: call the police. Likewise if there's a dangerous dog. I find it a certain moral sickness to go around in a fantasy that people are all dangerous, or likewise dogs are, or anything else. This is just some internal emotional licence to appoint yourself a police officer. In the comment i replied to above: why was that woman afraid? Because of a dog? No. She reacted to another person. Another person hurt her. People are dangerous. I guess we should have a sign 'no people in the park' -- then we can really enjoy it
    - Podgajski 3y ago
      I am the OP. It was about dogs.
      - mjburgess 3y ago
        'this' refers to my position. As far as the topic goes, the topic is about how emotional disregulation in autistic people can lead to feelings of injustice and concequentially hostile behaviour. Dogs and their owners are just an illustrative case.
        MacsHeadroom 3y ago
        As an autistic person, your sense of (in)justice matches mine. I see no greater injustice than the oppression of arbitrary authority (e.g. dog leashing signs); and no worse person than those who perpetuate it.
        mjburgess 3y ago
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  The term for this is whataboutism. Despite your protestations to the contrary, this is about unleashed animals in the park. It's not about trees, it's not about weapons (although most parks also have prohibitions against weapons), or teenagers. It's about dogs and why people want them to be leashed. Joel Spoelsky coined a term years ago, architecture astronaut. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architecture-astronauts-scare-you/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architect... > When you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don’t know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don’t actually mean anything at all. > These are the people I call Architecture Astronauts. It's kind of like those people who didn't believe covid existed until their family members started dying of it. It's really easy to hold such views when the idea of a dog attacking is an abstract idea. When there isn't a real understanding of the level of danger an attacking dog has. What I'm saying is that you're holding this opinion due to your ignorance.
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    I have elsewhere defended 'whataboutism' as just another way of asking a person to answer for moral hypocrisy. Some people clearly want to walk their dogs without leashes. Some people want all dogs leashed. Now, what's the moral standard at work? How do you determine the level of danger? If you want to constrain people, limit their ability to lives their lives as they wish, you need to have an answer you can defend without bias or prejudice. That you don't like unleashed dogs cannot be grounds for limiting another; there has to be more than your mere preference. To separate out people disguising their irrational fear from a genuine moral position, one needs to establish that moral position. 'Whatabout' here applies exactly, in moral philosophy its called casuistry: arguing from cases. So if your moral position is that at a certain level of risk, one must put up signs and start socially policing people -- then ok, let's hear it: what level of risk? what's the principle at work here? (Or does your mind leap to imagined danger in one case, but not another: are you a bigot?). My view is that I want to live in a society much more tolerant to risk for the sake of avoiding social policing. I dont want to go to parks where people are 'watching out for rule breakers'. You, presumably, want to live in that society? This is the question. If you do, so be it. I am not taking a stand against leash laws one way or another. I'm taking issue with a particular mechanism of enforcement of social rules by which emotional busy-bodies go around clutching their pearls and calling the police. The issue of dog leashes is just one trivial example of this general phenomenon -- and it is this that I am talking about. I have no care whatsoever about what the law should be in the matters of dog leashing. I gather people in this thread are unable or unwilling to engage in the argument I am making which is at one level of abstraction above the issue around dog leads.

mjburgess 3y ago

I doubt the victims are. Its those people wandering through parks having this fantasy of victimisation to drive their 'compassionate' impulse to police others. If you wander around the world engaged in these fantasies, and police everyone around you such, then you're creating a nightmare for people to live in. Do you imagine teenagers attacking people, and then keep them out of parks? They're vastly more dangerous than dogs. Do you imagine so for everything? For knives and forks? For trees? Why! Trees do fall and kill people, we must be ever vigilant for the person with a tree on their property who has not put signs up warning people. Yes, the world has some minimal danger to it; and people are routinely injured one way or another. If you spend your life in fantasies of this danger you'll only make the world doubly unbearable -- as unsafe as it ever was, and now with self-appointed social police making sure no one can enjoy it If there's a dangerous dog in a park, that's a problem -- and call the police; make laws against it; make it a crime to own a dangerous dog. But if there isnt, if you're just having this fantasy that some random guy walking some random dog is endangering the people in the park -- well, I dislike you much more than I dislike that dog. And I'd like a sign to keep you out of the park. But people who make signs arent the kind to make that one; they're the busy-bodies.

hollerith 3y ago
Do you own a pit bull by any chance?
- mjburgess 3y ago
  I don't own a dog. And as I've said elsewhere, this really isnt about dogs. It's about whether the appropriate response to rare events of danger, imagined in abstract circumstances, should be met with 'fantasy compassion' where people go around policing each other. An unleashed dog in a park is safe as people in the park, indeed, much more so. More people are attacked by other people in parks than by dogs. If we're going to police society to this level, it'll be a nightmare. If there's a dangerous person in the park: call the police. Likewise if there's a dangerous dog. I find it a certain moral sickness to go around in a fantasy that people are all dangerous, or likewise dogs are, or anything else. This is just some internal emotional licence to appoint yourself a police officer. In the comment i replied to above: why was that woman afraid? Because of a dog? No. She reacted to another person. Another person hurt her. People are dangerous. I guess we should have a sign 'no people in the park' -- then we can really enjoy it
  - Podgajski 3y ago
    I am the OP. It was about dogs.
    - mjburgess 3y ago
      'this' refers to my position. As far as the topic goes, the topic is about how emotional disregulation in autistic people can lead to feelings of injustice and concequentially hostile behaviour. Dogs and their owners are just an illustrative case.
      - MacsHeadroom 3y ago
        As an autistic person, your sense of (in)justice matches mine. I see no greater injustice than the oppression of arbitrary authority (e.g. dog leashing signs); and no worse person than those who perpetuate it.
        mjburgess 3y ago
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
The term for this is whataboutism. Despite your protestations to the contrary, this is about unleashed animals in the park. It's not about trees, it's not about weapons (although most parks also have prohibitions against weapons), or teenagers. It's about dogs and why people want them to be leashed. Joel Spoelsky coined a term years ago, architecture astronaut. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architecture-astronauts-scare-you/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architect... > When you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don’t know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don’t actually mean anything at all. > These are the people I call Architecture Astronauts. It's kind of like those people who didn't believe covid existed until their family members started dying of it. It's really easy to hold such views when the idea of a dog attacking is an abstract idea. When there isn't a real understanding of the level of danger an attacking dog has. What I'm saying is that you're holding this opinion due to your ignorance.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  I have elsewhere defended 'whataboutism' as just another way of asking a person to answer for moral hypocrisy. Some people clearly want to walk their dogs without leashes. Some people want all dogs leashed. Now, what's the moral standard at work? How do you determine the level of danger? If you want to constrain people, limit their ability to lives their lives as they wish, you need to have an answer you can defend without bias or prejudice. That you don't like unleashed dogs cannot be grounds for limiting another; there has to be more than your mere preference. To separate out people disguising their irrational fear from a genuine moral position, one needs to establish that moral position. 'Whatabout' here applies exactly, in moral philosophy its called casuistry: arguing from cases. So if your moral position is that at a certain level of risk, one must put up signs and start socially policing people -- then ok, let's hear it: what level of risk? what's the principle at work here? (Or does your mind leap to imagined danger in one case, but not another: are you a bigot?). My view is that I want to live in a society much more tolerant to risk for the sake of avoiding social policing. I dont want to go to parks where people are 'watching out for rule breakers'. You, presumably, want to live in that society? This is the question. If you do, so be it. I am not taking a stand against leash laws one way or another. I'm taking issue with a particular mechanism of enforcement of social rules by which emotional busy-bodies go around clutching their pearls and calling the police. The issue of dog leashes is just one trivial example of this general phenomenon -- and it is this that I am talking about. I have no care whatsoever about what the law should be in the matters of dog leashing. I gather people in this thread are unable or unwilling to engage in the argument I am making which is at one level of abstraction above the issue around dog leads.