[tlb]

I know you're being facetious, but dueling wasn't such a great thing for society. It gave tough people an advantage in life over smart or conscientious people. You wouldn't like living in a society where toughness won. It was one of Queen Victoria's great contributions to make dueling socially unacceptable.

[jstewartmobile]

Not joking. That, and it doesn't require toughness so much as good aim:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Hudson#Duel_and_disast...

I'd much rather roll the dice with duelling again than introduce some new, elaborate, and untested form of social engineering.

[gknoy]

Dueling implies that someone who is _better at one thing_ (hurting others) is inherently Right. It also means that someone who is sufficiently good at such things can act as a bully.

Dueling introduces personal risk for libelous claims, but it _also_ introduces the same risk for those who are making true claims. People already fear the people that hurt them; giving them a legally supported way of hurting them even more (as a legal "defense") would make people even less likely to report others' bad behavior.

Would you challenge someone to a duel, knowing that you're likely to die, even though that person wronged you? Few would take that risk.

[gowld]

#1 The challenge, demand satisfaction. If they apologize, no need for further action

#3 Have your seconds meet face to face, negotiate a peace or negotiate a time and place. This is commonplace, ‘specially ‘tween recruits. Most disputes die and no one shoots.

#8 Your last chance to negotiate. Send in your seconds, see if they can set the record straight.

[jstewartmobile]

> Dueling implies that someone who is _better at one thing_ (hurting others) is inherently Right

I don't think it does. Revisit the story of Jeffrey Hudson, and how winning a duel changed his life. What it does imply is some personal risk in making unsubstantiated claims against people.

Try looking at the glass as half-full. Under the present system, true claims are suppressed well enough by the pay-to-play nature of mass media. Re-introducing some aspect of personal risk--one that couldn't be mitigated by mere cash--would, hopefully, let the air out of entire industries of manufactured controversy, which fuel everything from needless wars to societal decay.

As for the challenge, there are worse things than death.

[watwut]

From all I know about past press, it was full of manufactured controversies. It also fuelled wars.

The notion of journalistic objectivity was not even popular.

[jstewartmobile]

Never sold it as a panacea.

School us on the booming gossip and accusations industry in colonial America.

[commandlinefan]

> good aim

Andrew Jackson (I believe it was) was challenged to a duel once - he turned around, let his opponent shoot him, and then took his time aiming to make sure that his shot would be fatal whereas his opponents wasn't.

[beat]

You should read Steven Pinker, then, if you think going back to a Golden Age of murder over social slights is a good idea.