A discussion on TFES forum

[Red]

More often? I doubt that's true. Please show me the research.

See the Dunning Kruger effect. The more knowledge you have, the more aware you are of your ignorance, and vice versa.

[brimstoneSalad]

I don't know now, I think I did the right thing.

You did not.

Seriously, what's the difference between the claim that you have been on an airplane and the claim that you have flown a dragon? To someone who has never seen neither an airplane nor a dragon, like myself, both claims are extraordinary.

If you think both claims are 'extraordinary', you're an idiot.
Airplanes being false would require a massive conspiracy theory -- clearly you have seen photos and film of them being represented as real things. Clearly you have heard from many people who have seen planes first hand, and make no such claims about dragons. People widely regard dragons as fictional and planes as real -- everybody you know who has normal social connections knows somebody who has been on a plane, or who knows somebody who has. Look into degrees of separation in social webs. We're talking about thousands of people colluding on a giant plot -- including your ex-friend.

Should the claim that you are a human being be extraordinary to me? I've never seen you. I've just seen text. You could be a dog. Is that equally probable? Sure, I've seen humans before, and I've never seen dogs type, but I've never met such a crazy conspiracy theorist in person, why should I believe human beings are capable of this level of insanity?

If he wants me to believe he was either on an airplane or on a dragon, he should provide some evidence (like some reasonable explanation of how the airplanes work) and he didn't.

Stop being an asshole. He doesn't know how planes work, he's just sat in one and saw and felt it take off, as well as witnessed other planes do so with his own eyes.
You can know something DOES work without understanding how.

You may say that it's a scientific consensus that the airplanes exist, but if this thread has shown us anything, that's that if you try to believe in scientific consensus, you are way more likely to misunderstand it and believe nonsense than to believe the truth.

Only if you're a complete moron.

Scientific consensus:
Do airplanes exist? Yes.

How is that hard to misunderstand?

You're confusing questions of IF and HOW. We know many things exist without fully understanding them, because we have uncontroversial empirical evidence of their existence.

The only reason you need to know HOW something works in order to believe it exists is if you don't have any direct evidence of its existence.

This is the case for things like "god" and black holes: By understanding the theoretical framework, we can predict and believe that black holes probably exist without ever having seen one.

Once we understand what to look for (based on the predictions) we can start to find evidence for them:

http://astronomy.stackexchange.com/ques ... lack-holes

On the same basis, we can understand that "god" doesn't exist, because the framework and definition isn't consistent, or where it is, there's no reason to believe such a thing would exist, and no direct or indirect evidence of it.

Airplanes probably exist, and whether or not they exist is irrelevant to this discussion.

Why do you believe airplanes probably exist, but not believe dragons probably exist?

It's not irrelevant.

And why do you think people are so unlikely to be in a conspiracy? Because you feel bad when you lie?

Because people are incompetent, and bad at keeping secrets. It also only takes one person who knows about it to feel bad to blow the whistle.

Well, you feel bad when you eat something someone had to be killed for you to eat, yet most of the people do that.

They key word here is MOST. Around one in a hundred do not.
So, if you have a hundred people drafted into a conspiracy, it only takes that one person to realize it's wrong.

This is why, as a conspiracy grows, the chances of it being revealed grow too.

Two people conspiracy = 1 - (.99^2) = about a 2% chance of exploding right away
20 people in on it = 1 - (.99^20) = about an 18% chance of exploding right away
50 people in on it = about a 39% chance
100 = about 63%
1,000 people = 99.995682875%

The bigger the conspiracy, the more of an idiot you have to be to believe it.

Also, the chance goes UP over time, as people have temporary crises of conscience (a lot of people go veg. for a day or a meal after being exposed to something, they just don't stick with it -- but it only takes one act to blow the whistle on something like that).

I know I hurt his feelings, but, as far as I can tell, you don't care about not hurting someone's feelings, so why should I care?

Because you were in the wrong, morally and intellectually. The two are connected. Hurt feelings matter if there's no utility in it, or negative utility as in the case of your conspiracy theory beliefs. You hurt him for no reason, or for a bad reason. You were wrong.

[EquALLity]

How do you figure?

Some things should not be criminalized, because the act of criminalizing produces more harm -- like creating black markets, and begetting more crime.

Things like this aren't at all like that. The risk of being punched in the face (which means in actuality that people are sometimes punched in the face) is discouraging intentional provocation, thus an occasional punch in the face (in appropriate situations like this) may do more good than harm by discouraging that behavior.

It's the same thing we see with crime and punishment. IF the death penalty acted as a deterrent, then it could be argued to be a social good (even if in that particular case it's harmful).

I don't think you got my point there.

I'm not saying that hitting someone for provoking you should be illegal. I'm not sure whether or not it should be, but that's a different discussion.

I'm saying that hitting someone for insulting you is IMMORAL.

By the way, the death penalty doesn't act as a deterrent. But that's a different conversation.

When somebody calls you a liar to your face like that, or what teo did (which is distinct from somebody telling others that you are a liar, or shaming on a public stage), that is so unlikely to be productive in any way: ALL it is is provocation.
The public claim that somebody is a liar is free speech, to an extent. There is still libel and slander, and those are important laws which help keep people from lying about others to destroy their reputations (which are of moral significance).
Just provoking people probably holds little to no utility in terms of freedom of expression.

So what?

It's wrong to call someone a liar in the way that teo did, but it's 100 billion times more wrong to commit assault.

Violence in this situation is revenge. It's 'you offended me, so I'm going to commit violence against you in retaliation'.
Revenge as a concept is evil. It's hurting someone to hurt someone.

In a one on one conversation, there's a difference between disagreeing with a person's perspective or ideas, saying the person is mistaken, lying to his or herself/being intellectually dishonest/succumbing to bias or delusion, or offending an ideology, and outright saying that person specifically is being intentionally dishonest (to that person) which is one of the most useless things that can be said. If you think the person agrees with you and is just lying for some reason, why have the conversation? There's no reason other than provocation.
In a public context we can talk about the utility of shaming, and in those cases it's very possible people are lying -- and it can be useful if you catch somebody in a contradiction and can demonstrate it -- but one on one, calling somebody a liar has a very tenuous link to free speech, if any at all.

I completely agree that there's a difference. I'm not defending what teo said.

I'm just saying that responding in violent vengeance is immoral, and an here also an extreme form of political correctness.
All speech is inherently connected to freedom of speech. Just because you're not expressing a good idea doesn't mean your speech doesn't fall under 'speech'.

It's not necessarily revenge, but revenge itself can be justified morally if it is proportional and serves social utility. As you said at the beginning: like to prevent deliberate provocation.
If you get punched in the face for behaving that badly, then perhaps it will discourage that unproductive behavior in the future.

...

I don't know. Maybe we should have public executions and floggings like they do in Saudi Arabia to discourage illegal behavior.

[EquALLity]

You're literally advocating for unecessary violence here out of revenge.
You can't justify revenge morally.

Not that I think revenge is the appropriate term here but I could easily justify this action morally. In behavioral psychology, a person's action is apt to repeat itself if being rewarded, whereas a person's action is less likely to repeat itself if it is followed by some type of punishment. A punch in the face is a pretty strong type of punishment. I never respected people who ignore people who are behaving badly as they do nothing to improve the total sum of human behavior. Look in to operant conditioning if you want to learn more.

1) It's pretty clearly revenge to me.
"That person insulted me, so I'm going to punch him in the face to make him pay."
What else could it be?

2) I know, but violence isn't the way to go. There are other methods that can be used to produce the same effects.

3) I'm not saying to IGNORE bad behavior; I'm just saying to react in a civilized way.

[brimstoneSalad]

I don't think you got my point there.

I'm not saying that hitting someone for provoking you should be illegal. I'm not sure whether or not it should be, but that's a different discussion.

I'm saying that hitting someone for insulting you is IMMORAL.

I know, that's what I was responding to. If people occasionally hitting assholes overall has better consequences than people not ever hitting assholes despite how big of an asshole those assholes are being, then that corrective action could be MORAL.
It's one of the reasons the internet is so nasty: no consequences. How nice would it be if face to face interactions were all like the youtube comment section?

Sometimes it might have worse consequences, and sometimes it might have better -- the question is the average consequence, and how it affects society.

There's a tendency of seeing any physical violence as deontologically wrong, but that's not valid. Sometimes physical violence (particularly modest amounts, that are more like a slap on the wrist or a spanking) could have beneficial effects for correcting extreme behavior (like that from Teo, or the conspiracy theorist who called Buzz Aldrin a liar and a coward).

Things like this [punching somebody] aren't at all like that [creating a black market]. The risk of being punched in the face (which means in actuality that people are sometimes punched in the face) is discouraging intentional provocation, thus an occasional punch in the face (in appropriate situations like this) may do more good than harm by discouraging that behavior.

By the way, the death penalty doesn't act as a deterrent. But that's a different conversation.

I agree that it's not a good deterrent. My point is that IF it were, it could be argued to be moral on those grounds. The trouble with the death penalty is that you don't survive it to be deterred in the future, and because it's so extreme it's harder to use it. Assholes getting punched in the face for being assholes IS a deterrent. It makes people less likely to do that, and the physical harm it does is pretty minimal -- it's relatively easy for everybody to take their licks, survive them, and learn to function in society.

Most people who get punched in the face may get a black eye or a bloody nose. It's a form of very assertive communication (body language) that what that person is doing is unacceptable.
It's not meant to severely harm them. It's meant to inform them in a way they will not forget that what they are doing is unacceptable.

It's wrong to call someone a liar in the way that teo did, but it's 100 billion times more wrong to commit assault.

I didn't say he should be wronged because he wronged somebody else. Being punched in the face can be a corrective disciplinary measure (from society) to teach somebody appropriate behavior. See Jebus' post about conditioning.

It's not 100 billion times more wrong to sucker punch somebody in the face than to call a person a liar to his or her face. If it had no utility, it might be a little more wrong.

Violence in this situation is revenge. It's 'you offended me, so I'm going to commit violence against you in retaliation'.
Revenge as a concept is evil. It's hurting someone to hurt someone.

It's not about being offended by an idea, it's about that person's socially unacceptable behavior. People do the same thing when somebody cuts in line: it's not personally offensive, it's socially offensive. And even the people who were ahead in line will join in.

When Buzz Aldrin punched the conspiracy theorist who was in his face calling him a liar and a coward, the world didn't cheer because they were offended and avenged: the world cheered because an asshole was appropriately censured for his extreme behavior.

Look at the consequence if everybody acted this way, and punched assholes: People would hold back on yelling insults in each other's faces. This in no way diminishes free speech because that kind of insult isn't really valid communication; they can be strategic in debate, but "backstage" in a one-on-one situation we should understand that they are nothing like making an actual argument.

All speech is inherently connected to freedom of speech. Just because you're not expressing a good idea doesn't mean your speech doesn't fall under 'speech'.

The argument that it's "free speech" only goes so far as it really is communicating an idea in some productive way. Not all speech is protected, since not all speech is really functional communication.

You can express a bad idea in a way that is still functional communication, or be an advocate for a good idea in a way that's unacceptable and useless for communication.

If instead of questioning his friend's honesty, he said something like, "I'm sure you believe you were in an airplane, but maybe you were hypnotized to believe that or something", that would have still been absurd (and probably worth unfriending him for being a lunatic), but not needing a punch in the face.

I'm just saying that responding in violent vengeance is immoral, and an here also an extreme form of political correctness.

It's not necessarily about vengeance. And punching people is politically incorrect as a form of communication.
The issue is the state or authority censoring such things, since it's very hard for any outside party to draw such lines or understand the context.

It's not necessarily revenge, but revenge itself can be justified morally if it is proportional and serves social utility. As you said at the beginning: like to prevent deliberate provocation.
If you get punched in the face for behaving that badly, then perhaps it will discourage that unproductive behavior in the future.

...

I don't know. Maybe we should have public executions and floggings like they do in Saudi Arabia to discourage illegal behavior.

If it stopped people raping and murdering and such? Sure. The question is: Does it work?

What's the alternative to an occasional punch in the face when somebody behaves like that? Minor infractions can't really be handled by the law.

1) It's pretty clearly revenge to me.
"That person insulted me, so I'm going to punch him in the face to make him pay."
What else could it be?

Third parties also want these people to be punched. It's not revenge.

2) I know, but violence isn't the way to go. There are other methods that can be used to produce the same effects.
3) I'm not saying to IGNORE bad behavior; I'm just saying to react in a civilized way.

Like what? Suing them? Tie of the courts and expend resources?
Call the police to do it for you? That's worse if the government is doing it.

Whatever mechanism it is has to be fast and easy, or people won't do it, and the behavior will just be ignored: which means it gets worse.
If we had some kind of reputation system where you could just downvote somebody, that might help. But currently we don't have anything like that in reality.

[teo123]

Hey, if you think that calling people dishonest is bad, why did you say this?

You are trying to emotionally abuse FE-ers, right? That means that you don't have any rational justification for your claim that the Earth is round!

He did make an argument, you just ignored it and posted dishonest rhetoric like this.
(...)
Currently you have led me to believe you are dishonest. I don't typically take time from my day to help dishonest people find a truth they don't want to believe.

[brimstoneSalad]

Hey, if you think that calling people dishonest is bad, why did you say this?

You are trying to emotionally abuse FE-ers, right? That means that you don't have any rational justification for your claim that the Earth is round!

He did make an argument, you just ignored it and posted dishonest rhetoric like this.
(...)
Currently you have led me to believe you are dishonest. I don't typically take time from my day to help dishonest people find a truth they don't want to believe.

Read it carefully, in context, and you can figure it out.

The first part was commentary on what you said on another forum, and it was dishonest rhetoric (you probably understand why now). You were making claims about the other person's motivations there, which you suggested were dishonest. The rhetoric you used (like calling your friend a liar for saying he had been on an airplane) had the purpose of shutting down conversation, not enabling it.

The latter was my saying I can not help you if I do not believe you are honest: which is true. It's not possible to have a productive conversation with somebody who is inherently dishonest. I didn't say you were, but that your behavior made me think that, and if that's the case I couldn't help you.
You had at that point violated the good faith in argument already, and I made it clear why you needed to establish your honesty before and if we were to proceed.

[EquALLity]

I know, that's what I was responding to. If people occasionally hitting assholes overall has better consequences than people not ever hitting assholes despite how big of an asshole those assholes are being, then that corrective action could be MORAL.

You wrote:
"Some things should not be criminalized, because the act of criminalizing produces more harm -- like creating black markets, and begetting more crime.

Things like this aren't at all like that."
It sounded like you thought I was suggesting that certain speech shouldn't be criminalized, because making it illegal and making the punching legal would cause more harm. That's not what I was saying; I don't care about legality in this at all.

About your point here: Of course if it produced more good it'd be moral, but it doesn't.
The harm of being angered by someone is insignificant compared to the harm of people being violent.

It's one of the reasons the internet is so nasty: no consequences. How nice would it be if face to face interactions were all like the youtube comment section?

That's true. People say whatever they want because the Internet is anonymous.
Violence is not the solution, though.

There's a tendency of seeing any physical violence as deontologically wrong, but that's not valid. Sometimes physical violence (particularly modest amounts, that are more like a slap on the wrist or a spanking) could have beneficial effects for correcting extreme behavior (like that from Teo, or the conspiracy theorist who called Buzz Aldrin a liar and a coward).

Well, I never said it was always wrong. Genital mutilation isn't always wrong either, because everything is dependent on context; if you mutilating a person to prevent that person from raping a bunch of people, it could be justified.
Rape is still pretty much always wrong, though.

About violence against children, since you brought it up, that is completely different and much worse than just hitting someone for pissing you off.
1) Spanking doesn't just not work; it's a counterproductive form of 'disciplining' your kids; studies show that it is correlated with psychological problems and more aggressive behavior. And of course that's the case. If you are violent towards your children, your children will take from that to be violent when they don't get their way as well.
2) Many people who I've heard talking about spanking said it was traumatizing, and that makes sense.
How is a child supposed to feel safe and loved when he is being hit by his parents?
See this story:

"Above all, I believe that there should never be any violence." In 1978, Astrid Lindgren received the German Book Trade Peace Prize for her literary contributions. In acceptance, she told the following story.
"When I was about 20 years old, I met an old pastor's wife who told me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn't believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a tree was standard punishment at the time. But one day when her son was four or five, he did something that she felt warranted a spanking--the first of his life. And she told him that he would have to go outside and find a switch for her to hit him with. The boy was gone a long time. And when he came back in, he was crying. He said to her, "Mama, I couldn't find a switch, but here's a rock that you can throw at me."
All of a sudden the mother understood how the situation felt from the child's point of view: that if my mother wants to hurt me, then it makes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do it with a stone. And the mother took the boy onto her lap and they both cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself forever: never violence. And that is something I think everyone should keep in mind. Because violence begins in the nursery--one can raise children into violence."
I think that too often we fail to feel situations "from the child's point of view," and that failure leads us to teach our children other than what we think we're teaching them.
Published by permission of Saltkrakan AB, Lidingoe, Sweden, owner of all copyrights to Astrid Lindgren's works."

http://www.atlc.org/Resources/never_violence.php
3) There's a reason why the overwhelming amount of defense for spanking comes from religion. It's a barbaric, outdated, and sick way to punish your defenseless kids.
4) In certain cases, it's kind of pervy... Come on. Hitting your kids on their asses? Is that not extremely violating, particularly in certain methods?

I agree that it's not a good deterrent. My point is that IF it were, it could be argued to be moral on those grounds. The trouble with the death penalty is that you don't survive it to be deterred in the future, and because it's so extreme it's harder to use it. Assholes getting punched in the face for being assholes IS a deterrent. It makes people less likely to do that, and the physical harm it does is pretty minimal -- it's relatively easy for everybody to take their licks, survive them, and learn to function in society.

Most people who get punched in the face may get a black eye or a bloody nose. It's a form of very assertive communication (body language) that what that person is doing is unacceptable.
It's not meant to severely harm them. It's meant to inform them in a way they will not forget that what they are doing is unacceptable.

Really? "Very assertive communication?"
It's meant to "inform them"? Oh, how generous.
These are extreme euphemisms (I thought you were against political correctness?) It's violence.

And it's about anger and revenge. It's a violent response to being insulted.
Nobody is thinking, "Let me punch that guy in the face for the good of society" or something.

I didn't say he should be wronged because he wronged somebody else. Being punched in the face can be a corrective disciplinary measure (from society) to teach somebody appropriate behavior. See Jebus' post about conditioning.

It's not 100 billion times more wrong to sucker punch somebody in the face than to call a person a liar to his or her face. If it had no utility, it might be a little more wrong.

I saw and responded to his post.

It's much much worse to be violent than to insult someone.

It's not about being offended by an idea, it's about that person's socially unacceptable behavior. People do the same thing when somebody cuts in line: it's not personally offensive, it's socially offensive. And even the people who were ahead in line will join in.

When Buzz Aldrin punched the conspiracy theorist who was in his face calling him a liar and a coward, the world didn't cheer because they were offended and avenged: the world cheered because an asshole was appropriately censured for his extreme behavior.

I'm not sure what the reaction of 'the world' was, but if it was cheering, then yes, it's because they thought, "What an asshole, teach him a lesson".
Are you really saying people were thinking, "Ah, yes. That's a good way to discipline the guy so that people are less rude in the future?"

Look at the consequence if everybody acted this way, and punched assholes: People would hold back on yelling insults in each other's faces. This in no way diminishes free speech because that kind of insult isn't really valid communication; they can be strategic in debate, but "backstage" in a one-on-one situation we should understand that they are nothing like making an actual argument.

Perhaps some people would, but I see the consequences of violence as more significant than petty offense.

The argument that it's "free speech" only goes so far as it really is communicating an idea in some productive way. Not all speech is protected, since not all speech is really functional communication.

You're contradicting things that you've said in the past here about how you're defining free speech.
Not all speech is protected, and according to you, that means that some free speech is protected by law and some isn't.

If instead of questioning his friend's honesty, he said something like, "I'm sure you believe you were in an airplane, but maybe you were hypnotized to believe that or something", that would have still been absurd (and probably worth unfriending him for being a lunatic), but not needing a punch in the face.

Again, I'm not defending what teo said; I'm just saying that punching people for saying things like that is unethical.

It's not necessarily about vengeance.

Of course it was vengeance.
"You offended me, so I'm going to punch you in the face out of anger and teach you a lesson."

And punching people is politically incorrect as a form of communication.

You're twisting things around here.
It's not politically incorrect; it's extreme political correctness.
Again, it's "You offended me, so I'm going to punch you in the face out of anger and teach you a lesson."
It's no different in this regard from when extreme BLM advocates advocate for violence against white people.

The issue is the state or authority censoring such things, since it's very hard for any outside party to draw such lines or understand the context.

What?

Again, I'm not talking about legality here.

If it stopped people raping and murdering and such? Sure. The question is: Does it work?

Saudi Arabia is one of the worst countries for human rights, partially for this reason.

Even if it did stop some people from committing crime (which I don't think it really does, because most people don't think they'll be caught or are committing a crime in the moment without thinking things through), the harm that does to the people watching and the barbarism of the punishment far outweighs the slight good done.

What's the alternative to an occasional punch in the face when somebody behaves like that? Minor infractions can't really be handled by the law.

“You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fightin' with your head for a change."
-Atticus

Third parties also want these people to be punched. It's not revenge.

It absolutely is revenge. The third parties who supported Buzz Aldrin punching that conspiracy theorist supported it because they were offended by what he was saying about science and to Buzz.

Like what? Suing them? Tie of the courts and expend resources?

No, responding using words.
Or, you actually could ignore it, and they'll eventually give up.

Call the police to do it for you? That's worse if the government is doing it.

Of course not. I don't want the police hitting people for revenge either.

Whatever mechanism it is has to be fast and easy, or people won't do it, and the behavior will just be ignored: which means it gets worse.

Just respond with language. There's no need to put your hands on anybody.
And ignoring it doesn't necessarily make it worse in this situation, when I think about it.

[brimstoneSalad]

You wrote:
"Some things should not be criminalized, because the act of criminalizing produces more harm -- like creating black markets, and begetting more crime.

Things like this aren't at all like that."
It sounded like you thought I was suggesting that certain speech shouldn't be criminalized, because making it illegal and making the punching legal would cause more harm. That's not what I was saying; I don't care about legality in this at all.

There are two reasons why something should not be illegal:

1. It's impossible to enforce properly, and the opportunity costs of attempting it, and the side effects (like the black market) would cause more harm.

2. The behavior itself it not harmful on balance (it may do some harm, and some good, and we don't want to lose the good with the bad)

I'm saying IF it should not be illegal, if the case is not #1, then the reason must be #2.
There is a small element of #1 in that in extreme cases of provocation it may not be possible for normal people to retrain themselves, but there still is reason to believe that punishing the behavior would discourage it in the future, and generally.
The bulk of the reason is #2. The legality of punching somebody for provocation discourages provocation without legally banning any speech itself.

About your point here: Of course if it produced more good it'd be moral, but it doesn't.

How do you know?
We don't have an example of an environment, except the internet, where people don't punch each other when rudely enough provoked to their faces. And on the internet we see what that results in.

The harm of being angered by someone is insignificance compared to the harm of people being violent.

A single instance: Yes. But one punch can correct bad behavior and prevent that person from provoking others hundreds or maybe thousands of times of more.
The punch, while it has immediate consequences that are more negative, has likely long term positive consequences.

The positive consequences even exist for the person who has been punched. Once the provocative behavior has been corrected, that person can make and keep more friends, and can learn to communicate his or her ideas in a more effective manner, and even learn why others disagree with him or her.

Of course, it is a careful balance.
If Buzz Aldrin just punched the guy for arguing that the moon landing was faked (not accusing Buzz to his face) because he was indirectly offended, that would not be acceptable.
If somebody tells a person his or her god doesn't exist, that may be an offensive idea to that person, but it is not any kind of direct insult; it is communication.

There are cases that are not provocative, and that's just assault, and it's not useful.

Violence is not the solution, though.

Violence is not an option on the internet. This is why reputation systems are more useful. If we had something like that in reality, it might be a useful alternative.

About violence against children, since you brought it up, that is completely different and much worse than just hitting someone for pissing you off.

I'm talking about degree of violence, not efficacy in any particular situation. Depending on how it's used, spanking can be effective; it may or may not have behavioral consequences depending on the application.
I'm not advocating spanking of young children, particularly by parents or in any situation of anger. Corporal punishment has been classically administered by courts as well, and the importance of that administration is its impartiality.

Really? "Very assertive communication?"
It's meant to "inform them"? Oh, how generous.
These are extreme euphemisms (I thought you were against political correctness?) It's violence.

It's all of those things. You can't just focus on the bad without the good: utility comes with the harm in this case.

And it's about anger and revenge. It's a violent response to being insulted.
Nobody is thinking, "Let me punch that guy in the face for the good of society" or something.

Sure they are. That's what "teach him a lesson" means.

I'm not sure what the reaction of 'the world' was, but if it was cheering, then yes, it's because they thought, "What an asshole, teach him a lesson".

Exactly my point. Teach him a lesson: so he will learn that's unacceptable and stop doing it.

Are you really saying people were thinking, "Ah, yes. That's a good way to discipline the guy so that people are less rude in the future?"

Not in so many words, but yes. That's basically what a lot of people are thinking.
They're not trying to end him. They're trying to end the behavior.

It's much much worse to be violent than to insult someone.

Yes, if done for no reason, all other things being equal. But all other things are not equal. We have to look at the overall consequences.

Perhaps some people would, but I see the consequences of violence as more significant than petty offense.

This is why it's only acceptable in extreme situations.

The argument that it's "free speech" only goes so far as it really is communicating an idea in some productive way. Not all speech is protected, since not all speech is really functional communication.

You're contradicting things that you've said in the past here about how you're defining free speech.
Not all speech is protected, and according to you, that means that some free speech is protected by law and some isn't.

The utility of "Free speech" is rooted in the freedom to communicate an idea. Not all speech is valid communication.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... exceptions

The conspiracy theorist was not prosecuted for his insults, BUT he also was not protected from the consequences of them.

Again, I'm not defending what teo said; I'm just saying that punching people for saying things like that is unethical.

If it would have taught him not to do that, then it could have been far more beneficial than harmful -- to everybody around Teo, and Teo himself.

It's not necessarily about vengeance.

Of course it was vengeance.
"You offended me, so I'm going to punch you in the face out of anger and teach you a lesson."

Sometimes it's about personal vengeance, but not necessarily. Teaching somebody a lesson is a matter of utility. It may be to teach the person not to mess with "me" personally, or to teach the person not to do that generally. For somebody who is morally offended, it's probably the latter: but assault is only justified by a personally addressed personal attack, so it's limited to contexts where there's no useful expression of ideas.

Vengeance can be valid, even personal vengeance, when it has utility in deterring socially bad behavior, given it is proportional and doesn't escalate to cause greater harm.

You're twisting things around here.
It's not politically incorrect; it's extreme political correctness.

Political correctness would be punching somebody for saying something (valid communication) which you find to be an offensive idea. This is not that.

It's no different in this regard from when extreme BLM advocates advocate for violence against white people.

It's entirely different. What they're doing is out of hate, and it's illegal.
It's like a BLM advocate said it's OK to punch somebody if (and only if) that person called you a "nigger" to your face. That's what this is. And that is legal.
It's not at all like advocating violence against people who, for example, disagree with affirmative action, or are merely white.

Again, I'm not talking about legality here.

I'm explaining how personal enforcement against certain insults is not harmful in the way the institutional enforcement against speech is.

Even if it did stop some people from committing crime (which I don't think it really does, because most people don't think they'll be caught or are committing a crime in the moment without thinking things through), the harm that does to the people watching and the barbarism of the punishment far outweighs the slight good done.

We'd need evidence of both of these claims. People watch violent television all of the time: should it be banned to protect people from witnessing those things?

What's the alternative to an occasional punch in the face when somebody behaves like that? Minor infractions can't really be handled by the law.

“You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fightin' with your head for a change."
-Atticus

That doesn't sound very useful.
What is "fighting with your head" against a conspiracy theorist?

Third parties also want these people to be punched. It's not revenge.

It absolutely is revenge. The third parties who supported Buzz Aldrin punching that conspiracy theorist supported it because they were offended by what he was saying about science and to Buzz.

No, it's because they saw his behavior as wrong and socially unacceptable. They wanted him taught a lesson, which he was.

Like what? Suing them? Tie of the courts and expend resources?

No, responding using words.
Or, you actually could ignore it, and they'll eventually give up.

There's no evidence of that when it comes to these conspiracy theorists. Also, even bullies don't give up: they give up on you, and they move on to another target. All you're doing is passing the harm on to another by not addressing it and correcting the behavior.

Just respond with language. There's no need to put your hands on anybody.
And ignoring it doesn't necessarily make it worse in this situation, when I think about it.

How is it you think calling the conspiracy theorist a meany pants would help the situation? They thrive on conflict, they feed on that, and it would probably make the situation worse.

How would allowing people, as a society, to behave like this essentially without consequence not make it worse?
What we'd create is in-person behavior as bad as behavior on the internet. That's a lot worse.

[teo123]

And do you think we should be violent towards meat-eaters? I don't think that would help, I think that would make their beliefs even stronger. Why would it be different for the conspiracy theorists?