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Violence / science

Hi Danny, how's things? Cheers for the link. It would have been good to hear your views on the science stuff. For instance, do you agree with Hayek? This article of yours is about as good a position piece on your view of the science I can find. I commented there, you never got back to me. As you know, one day I'd like the two of us to actually work through the science. Since we both seem to agree methods *do* exist that can effectively sort fact from fiction objectively, that should be possible, shouldn't it? One of us is wrong, methods exist to work out which, and if I turn out to be wrong, I'll be the happiest man alive.

On the link you sent: you haven't actually given me anything to go on as regards what you actually think, so I'll have to second-guess. A number of those quotes aren't threats of violence at all. (I'm guessing from what the site says, the writer thinks they're 'wishing the power of state upon them', which I guess must be something libertarians find particularly offensive.) A lot are of the 'gee, I could really smack him upside the head' variety that both you and me are guilty of occasionally. Are you saying those are equivalent to actual death threats or threats to people's families that force them to live under heavy security measures? Here's two of yours:

the first person who implies my criticism of Nobomba is racist gets a punch in the face (link)

Glad I never pursued the possibility of entering the FCO myself. I would have had plenty of choice 'off-message remarks' to make, preceded by the word 'f**k' and followed by a few punches into the fat faces of those corrupt bureaucrats / warlords / terrorists / handmaidens. Never mind 'don't shoot the messenger', it would have been 'careful you're not beaten silly by the messenger'." (link)

Here's a couple of mine - the first one almost a match for the first in the list you sent... oh, now I read it, it's actually self-inflicted violence:

We should all have Scott's parable stapled to our foreheads.

You seemed to like that one: "And after we've stapled Scott's parable to the heads of all the agent-based modellers we could count the staples left and know how many modellers we can cut down and burn each year..."

And here's my 'best' one:

If anyone ever quotes this out of context, I will find out where you live and burn your house down. Just so's you know.

I didn't mean it, of course, and you were presumably joking too. Us saying these things: is it anything like the kind of threats that force people to take extra security precautions? Despite the fact that you can administer a very effective, well-trained punch to the face, I don't believe your statements mean you would. I think it's a figure of speech. The link you sent had one properly worrying one - the rest, I can't see how you'd conflate them with genuine threats to self and family. If you do, then it looks like we're both genuine threats too.

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