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• rustystump 5mo ago
  Interesting you say not vs never. It seems this kid thought it was a time where violence was needed. The question i always ask in these situations is about what the line would be that would justify violence? Things like healthcare, crime, existential ai, have very grey lines as it isnt obvious when one needs to flip the table. How broken must a system be?
  • Aeolun 5mo ago
    > what the line would be that would justify violence It doesn’t matter where we think the line should be drawn, only where those much worse off draw it.
  • jmull 5mo ago
    Violence is an extreme failure state. If your goal is to improve the system then you always want to move away from it. Probably a reasonable justification would be self-defense, committing violence to stop worse violence. (Preemptive violence is not self-defense.)
    • rustystump 5mo ago
      But that is the kicker. As the sister comment said it matters a great deal what others do. At some point a broken system enacts soft violence on people. So it isnt surprising people act out when they think survival is at stake. With healthcare, it really can be. But where is the line? When someone you know dies? 10 people? It is messy.
      • jakeydus 5mo ago
        RadioLab did a phenomenal series on illegal immigration years ago. One thing that stuck out to me and has stayed with me ever since was an interview they did with a woman who had been deported multiple times, risked her life multiple times, denied a visa and asylum multiple times. They asked her why she kept trying to get across the border and she said that the alternative was death for her and her family. Whether or not she was being honest I don't know. But it did make me realize that the broken system has created an all-or-nothing choice for so many people. No punishment or policy could ever outweigh the alternative for them, so you'll never be able to stop immigration, illegal or not. I'm sure I'm not doing the argument justice, but your comment reminded me of it.
      • jmull 5mo ago
        It's not surprising that violence begets violence, in an escalating cycle. But it doesn't end with a better system. If your goal is a better system, you'll be looking hard for ways to move away from violence, not justifications to escalate it.
    • deleted 5mo ago
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    • MiguelX413 5mo ago
      [flagged]
• joecasson 5mo ago
  That’s a very dismissive point of view to the seriousness of the situation. He had a Molotov cocktail thrown at his home in the immediate aftermath of an article that painted him in a negative light. The two may not be connected but seem to be.
  • Hasslequest 5mo ago
    [dead]
  • sofixa 5mo ago
    There have been articles depicting him in a negative light, for good reasons, for years.
• jstummbillig 5mo ago
  > Violence like this is not the answer. However Sigh
• riazrizvi 5mo ago
  Altman didn't create AI. That disruption is already coming no matter what. He's a fine enough steward of the tech. And what's this garbage about selling to the military? You pay taxes? You fund the military. Without security you can't protect your nation or your allies, and enemy nations would do as they please. Yet another citizen who benefits from a system while trying to attack it.
  • SecretDreams 5mo ago
    > He's a fine enough steward of the tech. Are you Sam Altman?
    • therobots927 5mo ago
      One of his ~10 burners
  • angoragoats 5mo ago
    > Altman didn't create AI. No one said he did. > That disruption is already coming no matter what. [citation needed]. Depending on what you mean by "that disruption," I might even be willing to bet against it coming at all. > He's a fine enough steward of the tech. He's a manipulative con-man who is mediocre at everything except convincing investors to give him money. If the tech is truly as revolutionary as it's purported to be, he absolutely should not be a "steward of the tech."
  • sofixa 5mo ago
    > And what's this garbage about selling to the military? You pay taxes? You fund the military. Without security you can't protect your nation or your allies, and enemy nations would do as they please. There is security, and there is bombing schools. Guess which one is Altman associating himself and the software he sells associating with?
• daseiner1 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  • jbverschoor 5mo ago
    Words and writings (law) only have power because of violence (the monopoly of it) So yes, in essence, it seems like violence is the answer. When (perceived) justice is gone, the monopoly crumbles because the system is not working. And this perception can have many causes
• zug_zug 5mo ago
  > Violence like this is not the answer. I know people pretty reflexively downvote questioning this, but I question this. I think some people are afraid that even asking this moral question is somehow inciting violence. I think it's quite believable that the possibility of force is actually essential to keeping institutions in-line. Certainly a lot of civil rights progress was a lot less peaceful than I was taught in school.
  • bb88 5mo ago
    That's certainly the implied threat when people show up with AR-15's in the Idaho statehouse. Yes it's legal. But what is the point? This is ruby red Idaho. I've always said when peaceniks start to carry weapons, it's time to worry. Alex Pretti didn't pull his gun, but still got shot. At what point will some escalation tactic end up in a gun fight between the local police and ICE?
  • wat10000 5mo ago
    Violence is not the answer if and only if there are non-violent ways to achieve necessary goals. We seem to go through a cycle where we set up systems that provide non-violent ways of resolving issues, then people get annoyed with the outcomes and break down those systems. They hope that it means they'll always get what they want, but what it actually does is make it so that violence is the only way for others to get what they want. Like organized labor. We seem to be in a cycle where strong labor organization is seen as inefficient or harmful to business, and it's being suppressed. The people suppressing it seem to think that the end state will be low wages and desperate workers. They've forgotten that collective bargaining didn't spring up from nothing, it's the nicer alternative to descending on the boss's mansion with torches and pitchforks. All that Civil Rights violence you mention was because those in power did not provide any non-violent way to achieve it. Suppressing votes and legalizing oppression only works up to a point. Eventually people will take by force what they've been denied by law. Or as JFK said it better than I can: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." The corollary: when peaceful revolution has been made impossible, violent revolution is the answer.
    • 5mo ago
• kakacik 5mo ago
  Sociopath who rides high ego wave and drinks his own kool aid, acting highly amorally and then complaints that his actions have some (benign) consequences. Why do we care what he thinks? Lets discuss his work if we have to, not emotional pondering and feeling victim.
• conartist6 5mo ago
  Yes. Yes.
• yfw 5mo ago
  Answer to what? Do you know the question?
• AmericanOP 5mo ago
  It is not complicated. Because of the valuations of Open AI and Anthropic, Sam Altman may be credited with one of the all-time most damaging brand decisions when he got in bed with Trump’s department of war crimes. This should have been SO OBVIOUS. Attempts to paper over the damage with a $100 billion dollar round will crumble after the IPO. Poor decisions generate poor options, and the whole industry smells his desperation. Decisions at the highest level are indistinguishable from responsibility. All Sam accomplished was showing the world he is structurally unfit for moral leadership.
• qwertytyyuu 5mo ago
  If it wasn’t a good or at least workable answer, the state and corporations would be using it so much
  • deaux 5mo ago
    Think you missed an "n't" in "wouldn't" there.
  • janalsncm 5mo ago
    I don’t like expanding the definitions of things like this. People have had a commonplace definition of violence for a long time. One that encompassed throwing Molotov cocktails and doesn’t include more intangible things like poverty or inequality or racism. Academia doesn’t get to just assert that their broader definition is the real one.
    • pibaker 5mo ago
      But every "intangible" thing you mentioned was in fact maintained by very tangible violence that those in power decide legitimate. What happens if a poor man decides to squat a rich man's vacation home? What happens if a black woman living under segregation refuses to give up her bus seat for a white person? In both cases the police will be called, and i'm damn sure that the cops don't shy away from using violence if it gets the thing done.
      • janalsncm 5mo ago
        Again, your definition is too broad to be meaningful. If tolerating poverty is “violence” and genocide is “violence” the term no longer serves a purpose. Further, just because governments use physical force to protect a thing does not make that thing violent. The federal government sent in the army to protect the Little Rock Nine in Arkansas. Does this mean racial integration is “violent”? Or is it only “violent” when the government tolerates inequality?
  • noduerme 5mo ago
    If your only measure is whether something is effective, then state and corporate violence will always be a lot more effective than individual acts of violence. You could even say that individual violence helps the state to commit violence, by providing justification and by removing the moral imperative to avoid violence.
• noduerme 5mo ago
  >> Yeah, the words and narratives that Sam Altman promoted caused so much fear and uncertainty and anger that someone thought their only option was to attempt a horrific crime. The problem with this inversion of your first statement (that violence is not the answer), which everyone justifying violence in this thread seems to forget, is that there is always someone who feels this way about anything. The words and narratives of Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, caused so much fear and uncertainty and anger in some people that they thought their only option was to commit a horrific crime. Someone responded to you below saying if you feel that peaceful revolution is impossible, then violent revolution is necessary. That person feels that they are on the side of justice. What they forget is that so does everyone else. The reason revolutions rarely stop where a reasonable person would want them to stop, and instead continue into eating their own and counter-revolutions, is that once you say that it's understandable to take out a proponent of (X narrative), there's no end to the number of people who will justify violence in the same way against any other narrative as well. We can all well think that Altman is opening Pandora's Box, but that doesn't justify opening it ourselves, or giving a pass to wannabe revolutionaries who would. In retrospect, too, we can say that the assassination of Hitler had it succeeded would have been a good thing. We can say that the elimination of the ayatollah by the US was a good thing. What we cannot say is that an individual's perception gives them a right to commmit murder.
  • throwaway78297 5mo ago
    [dead]
  • overfeed 5mo ago
    > What they forget is that so does everyone else. Despite all the high-minded talk, Americans have always been comfortable with violence, since before it was a country: pick a year and I can find 10+ extrajudicial violent incidences. A surprisingly large percentage of US presidents have had assassination attempts against them. Seeing no changes after Sandy Hook made it abundantly clear to me that occasional violence - even on innocent child victims - is the price America is willing to pay for other freedoms.
• therobots927 5mo ago
  It’s about as thinly veiled as a fishnet.
• TwoNineFive 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• blast 5mo ago
  "Violence like this is not the answer. However,"