Thought experiment about political theory

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superrific

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Someone gives you a remote doom machine. It has several buttons, which produces the following results.

1, 1a. Putin and Kim Jong Un die.
2. King George III of England dies in 1775 after granting the US independence (let's ignore the time travel paradox for now and assume history would play out the same way, with the only differences being thing that George III did or didn't do with no ripple effects).
3. Hitler dies in prison while trying to draft Mein Kampf in blood
4. Trump and Elon Musk die
5, The 1000 people who owned the most slaves in America in 1850 die (same rules as #2).
6. 10000 vaccine deniers in the US die, and it collapses the anti-vaxx movement.
7. 1,000,000 MAGAs die, in strategic places so that the Dems win the next two elections.
8. The leaders of all terrorist organizations in the world die (here we can exclude state-sponsored terrorism, again to focus the discussion).

You can, at any time, turn the machine off. You can also choose whatever ironic deaths you want. Putin can slip on a banana peel and fall out of a 10 story window, if you want. Dead slaves can arise as zombies and, as actual sub-humans, devour the brains of the plantation owners. And you can also assume that people understand what happened, and you can assume, if you'd like, that some FAFO lessons will be learned.

Which buttons, if any, would you press? Please provide reasons. In my estimate, most Americans would press buttons 1, 3 and 8 without hesitation. I also think that very few Americans would press button 7. Buttons 2, 4, 5, and 6 are more complicated.

These questions go to the heart of political theory, in my view. Every theory of government has to answer these questions. They go to legitimacy and the nature of power evolving over time.

Edit: I changed the hypo slightly for #1 to 1 and 1a, as Putin and KJU present some similar issues but some different ones as well.
 
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3 would be the only one of interest to me. Probably the smallest immediate effect with the largest overall footprint. Of course, history might call for a variant so I probably wouldn't use it, either. While obviously not the end of the issue and at a tremendous cost, a lot of people had to confront what unfettered racism could mean.
 
3 would be the only one of interest to me. Probably the smallest immediate effect with the largest overall footprint. Of course, history might call for a variant so I probably wouldn't use it, either. While obviously not the end of the issue and at a tremendous cost, a lot of people had to confront what unfettered racism could mean.
What did you think about killing Osama Bin Laden? Or the leader of Hamas? And to make the analysis either, you can assume that whatever variant might arise would be less bad than the reality.
 
I thought it was treating a symptom and not the problem but symbolism does matter. Both were important enough in their way that I understand why it happened. It just didn't change anything important. Changing what caused them to gain power might but nobody much is interested in that.
 
What is the significance of #2? That England, by not losing a costly war (costly in ships, money and men) against America would've been even more dominant in Europe in the late 18th and 19th centuries?
 
What is the significance of #2? That England, by not losing a costly war (costly in ships, money and men) against America would've been even more dominant in Europe in the late 18th and 19th centuries?
Good question. The classic version of this thought experiment involves Louis XVI or, in some cases, Czar Nicholas. I'm trying to make it more accessible to Americans. I suspect that if the colonists had been able to get at George III, he would not have survived the revolution but that's a hypothetical counterfactual that surely has no answer.

Generally speaking, you can think of many of the hypos as raising the question of when revolution is justified. what means of revolution are justified and under what circumstances. They also address the stability of democracy as a form of government, and whether forms of government must necessarily (as a normative or empirical matter) contain provisions for their own termination or alteration.
 
interesting.

i don't think that 5,6 and 7 would result in materially different positive outcomes.

the slaves simply pass on to the heirs of the owners who died and pressing the button to kill ignorant anti-vaxxers and magas is just cruel and #4 would have already significantly neutered their movement.
 
interesting.

i don't think that 5,6 and 7 would result in materially different positive outcomes.

the slaves simply pass on to the heirs of the owners who died and pressing the button to kill ignorant anti-vaxxers and magas is just cruel and #4 would have already significantly neutered their movement.
If you'd like, you can assume that the heirs of the deceased slave owners would believe, with some justification, that the zombies could arise again.

Anti-vaxxers do (and certainly will) kill more than 10,000 people globally through their "activism."

Can I put you down for pressing button #4? Any others?
 
1,3,8 for me
All right. Now distinguish those cases from the others. Why would you kill Putin and not Trump? Is it because of the magnitude of their crimes? Does that mean that you would support option #4 if, say, Trump ordered the US military to clear Gazans out of Gaza? Is it because you like Trump?

What about #6? How do you distinguish that from #8? Anti-vaxxers probably cause more deaths than terrorism; it's certainly possible for them to do so if they don't now. Is it a skin color thing? A motive thing? Would it matter to you if there were, say, emails exchanged between anti-vaxxers where they predict that people will die from the lack of vaccines but say that the ends justify the means?

I'm trying to understand where you're coming from. And if it helps you to remove the name Trump or Musk, fine. Hypothesize a Democrat who tries to seize complete control of the government, breaks dozens of laws per week, basically tells congress to fuck itself and runs roughshod over any and all limitations on the power. That is, at the moment purely hypothetical, but it's not necessarily so. Juan Peron of Argentina would have been a Democrat had he been American. And of course, Maduro and Chavez come from the left, and Chavez had support from American leftists. So it's not impossible. What's the line that has to be crossed for you?
 
All right. Now distinguish those cases from the others. Why would you kill Putin and not Trump? Is it because of the magnitude of their crimes? Does that mean that you would support option #4 if, say, Trump ordered the US military to clear Gazans out of Gaza? Is it because you like Trump?

What about #6? How do you distinguish that from #8? Anti-vaxxers probably cause more deaths than terrorism; it's certainly possible for them to do so if they don't now. Is it a skin color thing? A motive thing? Would it matter to you if there were, say, emails exchanged between anti-vaxxers where they predict that people will die from the lack of vaccines but say that the ends justify the means?

I'm trying to understand where you're coming from. And if it helps you to remove the name Trump or Musk, fine. Hypothesize a Democrat who tries to seize complete control of the government, breaks dozens of laws per week, basically tells congress to fuck itself and runs roughshod over any and all limitations on the power. That is, at the moment purely hypothetical, but it's not necessarily so. Juan Peron of Argentina would have been a Democrat had he been American. And of course, Maduro and Chavez come from the left, and Chavez had support from American leftists. So it's not impossible. What's the line that has to be crossed for you?
Putin is a much bigger global threat to global peace than Trump. Trump is not some war hawk. And more importantly, Russia is our mortal enemy while Trump is on our team and is our President.

And to be clear I would’ve killed Putin way before Biden too in this hypothetical even though I completely disliked Biden. In no way was he more dangerous than Putin, to the point where I would voluntarily wish death on him.

As for your other question, you can’t possibly equate an anti vaxxer with a terrorist murderer. I really hope you aren’t serious about that. The whole idea with vaccines is that enough people take them that we reach herd immunity. As far as I know, enough people in the US are getting all the key vaccines that there is no real societal danger there. So I wouldn’t wish death on those people even if I think being anti vaxx is stupid. I can be pro vaccine without wanting to kill off the anti vaxxers or equate them to terrorists, lol.
 
Putin is a much bigger global threat to global peace than Trump. Trump is not some war hawk. And more importantly, Russia is our mortal enemy while Trump is on our team and is our President.

And to be clear I would’ve killed Putin way before Biden too in this hypothetical even though I completely disliked Biden. In no way was he more dangerous than Putin, to the point where I would voluntarily wish death on him.

As for your other question, you can’t possibly equate an anti vaxxer with a terrorist murderer. I really hope you aren’t serious about that. The whole idea with vaccines is that enough people take them that we reach herd immunity. As far as I know, enough people in the US are getting all the key vaccines that there is no real societal danger there. So I wouldn’t wish death on those people even if I think being anti vaxx is stupid. I can be pro vaccine without wanting to kill off the anti vaxxers or equate them to terrorists, lol.
1. The point of a discussion like this is specifically to suss out these details. If I wanted to argue that anti-vaxxers were the same as terrorists, I would have done so. I'm interested in people thinking things through.

2. I agree that Putin is a much bigger threat to global peace than Trump is. But that's only true if you think Trump is all talk and no follow-up. What Trump has said in the last two or three weeks would, if implemented, make him the biggest threat to global peace in a very long time. He's talking about invading Greenland, taking the Panama Canal by force, engage in ethnic cleansing in Gaza, annex Canada and use military weaponry on Mexico.

So if he does some of those things, would you still say that Putin is actually more dangerous?

3. That Trump is "on our team" is begging the question, and again that's why we have these discussions. Was Mussolini on team Italy? The Italians didn't think so, or at least they came to that conclusion after a while. At what point, in your view, does Trump stop being on our team, and instead becomes an enemy? What if he sets up a gulag (he's already doing that at Gitmo, or taking preliminary steps)? Or a concentration camp?

4. A hundred kids died in Samoa because of anti-vaxxers. They spread anti-vaxx propaganda all over the globe, preying on the distrust that many African peoples (in particular) have of European-administered medicine. They make the jobs of aid workers and doctors more difficult. And I'm confident that anti-vaxxers have caused more deaths than terrorists; it's just that they aren't as visible (not surprising, since the point of terrorism is to attract attention).

So I reject that as a distinction. Likewise, it is no answer to say, "they aren't really causing any harm," because they are causing no harm in the same way that the shitty rockets fired into Israel cause no harm. RFK Jr tried to have the authorization for the Covid vaccine revoked. That would have produced tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths.

You are perhaps drawing a distinction based either on a) the use of force or b) the intentions of the anti-vaxxers. OK. So let's remember that. If anti-vaxxers continue not to use force, then the distinction holds. But what if RFK Jr shuts down vaccine production and the administration ignores court orders to resume (as that would be grossly illegal)? What happens to your distinction in that case?

5. I'm using these hypotheticals for a reason: namely, that they are hypotheticals. Hypotheticals are often quite good at teasing out principles, assumptions and/or thought processes because they are controlled experiments. You can take emotion and present frustration out of the equation to deal with the underlying thoughts. Obviously anti-vaxxers are not Hamas. Not yet, anyway. And that's precisely why we might think about the conditions under which they might be equivalent or analogous.
 
Why would anyone engage with the original post? Why?
Because it is asking questions that political theorists and philosophers have been asking for hundreds of years? Just because you have no interest in political philosophy doesn't mean that the discussion is a bad one.
 
Here was a comment directed at me, and this seems like as good a place as any to respond.

Pardon me, super, for questioning what “radical action” might mean from someone recently “hoping for Luigi”.

If Paine, rodo, law, Mulberry, nyc, etc. made your “radical” comment, I’d think nothing of it. Superrific of the zzlp, however, is a very specific character. In the vast majority of conversations, superrific gets my benefit of the doubt (hell, I read nearly every word you type). However, in this particular case, you do not, and not because I don’t trust your honesty, knowledge, or earnestness, but because I don’t presently trust your self-regulation, self-scouting, nor the directionality of some of your recent commentary.

[. . . ]
Lastly, dude, folks exist in many spaces outside this forum, including “radical” ones. Apparently, I’ve given you the impression I’m a 2D cartoon fox, with a sock on its head. I’m not. Turns out, I exist in spaces with “radical” (not actually radical, just mainstream European style left-of-center) thought, organizing, and staunchly left-wing action. My “bitching” here offers minimal insight into my actions nor my, god’s honest truth, 3D composition.



OK, "hoping for Luigi" is pretty fucking far from radical action. In fact, it's not action at all. I do not think you are a 2D cartoon fox. I do think you gave me a 2D answer. I get criticized for giving 3D answers to 2D comments, and apparently also 2D answers to 2D comments. People mock me for making long posts; then when I respond with brevity, I get this. I'm not blaming or criticizing you; I am saying that I have the acute impression that I get flack no matter what I do.

Second, these comments are also really, really far from anything that might be feared from a lack of self-regulation. If you're worried that I'm going to go all Charles Whitman, I'm currently at the "build a toy gun out of Lego Duplo" stage. I mean, I guess it's possible that I end up gunning people down from a clock tower but the vast, vast, vast majority of people who build toy guns out of Lego Duplo don't get anywhere close to that.

Furthermore, if you were concerned about my self-regulation, wouldn't you want me posting my thoughts here where they can be seen? Is that better or worse than typing up a Unabomber manifesto in private and then mail-bombing people on that basis? For the record, I long ago decided that I would never own a gun, shoot a gun, or if I could help it, touch a gun. There are lots of reasons for that; one of them is that if I don't know how to use a gun, then I can't go on a shooting rampage. Or shoot myself. Or commit armed robbery. I don't think I would do any of those things, and there are plenty of other reasons not to be a gun-toter, but just in case there's additional protection. I also do not know how to make bombs, make ricin or sarin gas, and so on and so forth. I have an arsenal of chemicals in my home that are deadly to ants, bees, and insects. That's the extent of my ability to project power. If Trump or Elon sends Ant-Man after me, I'm protected.

I fully expect a nsa, fbi, cia, and [insert musk project] filled almost entirely with “yes” men to eventually get around to monitoring the communication of Americans in a detailed and bad faith manner (I deeply hope that’s paranoid). I’d rather my news, politics, and occasional shit-posting site not come under scrutiny because an alarm went off on Musk’s phone that an online persona called superrific placed the words Luigi and Musk and Trump too near each other, a few too many times.

The type of resistance I believe necessary, for what’s coming down the pike, gets done in person, on burners, and through encrypted communication (eta: imo, even for protest organizing). I wrote that in my original comment, then deleted. Remiss. Nothing about this site is private. I’m of the opinion nothing is about to be private. This site is also frequented by maga and several Good German; the moment Gabbard or Patel or Musk or one of Musk’s 20 year old cenobites creates a”make American great again by informing on your neighbors database”, threads ideating on “radical action” that contain hints of violence are going to get reported, post haste. We have several bad faith, deeply insecure, and bitter posters.


I'll be honest: I did not expect this angle. My response is that if this site ever shows up on Musk's phone, we will probably have been fucked long before that, and would definitely be fucked regardless of what I might say. We are much, much, much more likely to be targeted by the many statements of support of trans people and discussions of racism than anything about radical action I might write. I mean, if you think we need burners and encrypted communications to be safe, I mean, I guess. I don't know how to use any of those things, and I'm not really interested in trying.

If we live in a world where we have to communicate with encryption and untraceable phones, I really can't see how the loss of this site would have any impact at all. It's like building a movie theater in a bunker so that you'll still be able to watch films in the case of nuclear war.

There are no legal consequences that can come to the board for anything I write. First, everything I write is constitutionally protected and it's not close. I'm not going to veer beyond that. Second, even if I did write something bad, this message board -- like all social media sites -- is protected by section 230. If I post something that brings some sort of heavy-handed enforcement action against us, I'll pay the attorneys' fees. And if we can't win that legal case, again we will have way more problems than the ZZLP being shut down.
 
And this is the precipitating comment directed at me.

@superrific
"If you're not even going to contemplate alternatives to capitulation to the fascists, then at least have the decency to stop bitching about it."

Categorizing someone as a bitching capitulator is quite the way to win allies, from someone consistently speaking on the values of making friends within a big-tent. Additionally, without qualifiers, you executed a character judgement upon the person behind a banal opinion, i.e. I expressed an opinion the value of this site as an organizational and ideational tool for "radical action".

I have few issues with your response, above. I do, however, have distinctly different opinions vis a vis the use of this site, and said as much in the post you're dissecting, though you failed to transfer that commentary.

"I have said several times, this site is many things to many people. If you think it’s a good space for ideating and organizing resistance to a revanchist, lawless fascist regime, filled with the most resourced and insecure techbros on the planet, go for it. I certainly won’t participate, will likely delete, and that won’t be much loss for anyone given the cynical and snide slice of me I offer this site. But, this site dying would be a loss to many.​
IMO, one of the, if not the, fastest way this site dies is if “radical action” discussion trends violent, which, again, your commentary has recently brushed upon. I expect violent rhetoric would be quite off-putting to a number of posters and some I suspect, including myself, would fear association with the potentially violent rhetoric, or hell, even perceived violent rhetoric. Again, your recent commentary has laid “hoping for Luigi”, relative to Musk, and “radical action” contextually near each other.​
I encourage you to start a radical action thread, if that’s how you think this site is best utilized. If I’m wrong about the direction I fear it could take, great."​

Lastly fwiw, I find no value in a tit-for-tat the includes framing that relies upon extremist examples like Charles Whitman and Ted Kaczynski. The distance is so large between cartoon fox guy's lack of trust in superrific's online rhetoric and the fucking Unabomber, as to render the conversation pointless, though I did get a literal lol moment.
 
And this is the precipitating comment directed at me.

@superrific
"If you're not even going to contemplate alternatives to capitulation to the fascists, then at least have the decency to stop bitching about it."

Categorizing someone as a bitching capitulator is quite the way to win allies, from someone consistently speaking on the values of making friends within a big-tent. Additionally, without qualifiers, you executed a character judgement upon the person behind a banal opinion, i.e. I expressed an opinion the value of this site as an organizational and ideational tool for "radical action".

I have few issues with your response, above. I do, however, have distinctly different opinions vis a vis the use of this site, and said as much in the post you're dissecting, though you failed to transfer that commentary.

"I have said several times, this site is many things to many people. If you think it’s a good space for ideating and organizing resistance to a revanchist, lawless fascist regime, filled with the most resourced and insecure techbros on the planet, go for it. I certainly won’t participate, will likely delete, and that won’t be much loss for anyone given the cynical and snide slice of me I offer this site. But, this site dying would be a loss to many.​
IMO, one of the, if not the, fastest way this site dies is if “radical action” discussion trends violent, which, again, your commentary has recently brushed upon. I expect violent rhetoric would be quite off-putting to a number of posters and some I suspect, including myself, would fear association with the potentially violent rhetoric, or hell, even perceived violent rhetoric. Again, your recent commentary has laid “hoping for Luigi”, relative to Musk, and “radical action” contextually near each other.​
I encourage you to start a radical action thread, if that’s how you think this site is best utilized. If I’m wrong about the direction I fear it could take, great."​

Lastly fwiw, I find no value in a tit-for-tat the includes framing that relies upon extremist examples like Charles Whitman and Ted Kaczynski. The distance is so large between cartoon fox guy's lack of trust in superrific's online rhetoric and the fucking Unabomber, as to render the conversation pointless, though I did get a literal lol moment.
1. Re: Whitman and the Unabomber. Luigi -- my invocation of his name was what set this conversation off -- was a big fan of the Unabomber. I honestly don't know what you're trying to communicate to me. You say that you don't trust my self-regulation because of that comment about Luigi. What is it that you're worried about?

2. My comment about capitulation was in response to your statement that "the extremity of one’s opposition leads to extreme counter ideation, and this is not the appropriate venue." I still don't really know what you mean by that, except maybe an oblique reference to the targeting of this site that you fear. It sure seems as though you were continuing previous attacks on my posts as containing homicidal ideation, which they do not (no more than when someone says, "I'm going to kill if you if you drink the last beer").

I have a psychiatrist. I am married to a psychiatrist. I really do not need people here trying to dictate to me from afar what I should say based on concerns about my self-regulation. I've opened up about my mental health conditions for essentially the same reason that gay men came out of the closet in the 1980s (well, the comings-out that were orchestrated as a type of political statement). Maybe that was a mistake.

3. I'm not always very good at discerning intent of comments aimed at me. I see hostility, perhaps where there is none. I perhaps project hostility, when I don't mean to. At risk of more people accusing me of pity-posting (when in fact I'm just explaining circumstances), my childhood socialization was full of hostility. At home, at school, in sports activities, I was targeted. My home environment was a never-ending stream of absence, yelling, abusive behavior of everyone toward everyone else. I literally learned what constituted acceptable behavior from TV. Apparently, when I was 5 my mom had to teach me how to run because I was emulating Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman. My role models were TV characters.

So now that I'm an adult, I've grown a bit. And I've learned how to behave for the most part, but it's mostly an intellectual endeavor. My social intuitions are not very useful, and conscious processing of these things can be subject to error. This is an issue that I've been dealing with my whole life, and it's one reason that I'm typing on a message board instead of being a judge (like many of my law school classmates).

Point is: I do the best I can. I don't know what people want from me. I'm not ever going to be a normal poster (regardless of mental health, I don't see the world the same way that most people do). I couldn't do it even if I want to. If you think I'm being hostile to you, chances are that I'm not, or I'm doing so only as a reaction to perceived hostility toward me.

4. Obviously none of these threads are going anywhere, so I will just pack them up. And I'm really not interested in the "let's track all the ways Trump is breaking the system" because, without some plan of resistance, they are incredibly depressing and I'd rather not know what's happening. So maybe it's time for me to take another break from the board. Posting here is certainly doing nothing good for my mood or overall outlook on the world right now.
 
I really do not need people here trying to dictate to me from afar what I should say based on concerns about my self-regulation.
You say that you don't trust my self-regulation because of that comment about Luigi. What is it that you're worried about?

super, no one is dictating anything. This is not an attack, nor was it ever. An opinion was expressed vis-a-vis the utility of this site, for a specific purpose. Your response to the disagreement, in my opinion, was a form of character assassination founded on flimsy evidence, based upon a flimsy online character I created. Hell, I just looked by at the triggering post and it leads off with "I think", i.e. flimsy. Getting tagged a bitching capitulator is beyond the pale, IMO. You can stuff that shit in a sack.

You have shared more broadly about yourself on this site than anyone, I'd wager by quite the margin. I often find your disclosure to be brave and intentional forms of processing and framing. When mixing some of that data with your recent assassination adjacent posts, and the opprobrium you expressed towards modest pushback, I'm led to the following sentiment:

"I don't presently trust your self-regulation, self-scouting, nor the directionality of some of your recent commentary."
I implicitly trust your democratic and empathetic intentions. That does not mean I presently trust you to facilitate a discussion on "radical action", nor did I (at the time of my instigating post) trust your definition of radical action, nor trust what you might express as the hypothetical conversation advanced.

I don't think you're the fucking Unabomber, super, nor did I intend to express some paternalistic fear for your safety. That you're tuned to see that in my comments is an implicit condemnation of your past antagonists. My concern re: your self-reg and monitoring was geared towards concern for the site, under the working assumption your radical action rhetoric aligned with assassination rhetoric. I'm not trying on some bad faith bosider mask, blithely tossing around "concern" for your mental health. I know what your wife does. You've expressed your history. You've worked hard on executive skills. You don't need any of us to regulate you.

I apologize for utilizing pop psych terms that frequently get weaponized in bad faith projects.

Political allies are arguably more important now than any post-bellum period in US history.
 
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