[pixl97]

This gets messy quick. If for example you lived under a dictator and that dictator didn't like your conversation then you wouldn't expect to have a venue unless you took extreme measures.

Now let's say that you think AI was an existential threat to humanity and we were all going to die because of it. In your mind would it matter if you blew up 10 people? 100 people? 1000000 people? I mean in your mind they are all dead anyway and if this is the price to pay to stop it, it will have been worth it.

[happytoexplain]

First, I'm not sure you're using "quick" properly here. There is no trajectory - only individual cases. We can easily consider his actions unjustifiable and yet consider similar actions against a brutal dictator justifiable without straying into hypocrisy.

Second, the "imagine you truly believed X" defense is a good argument for sympathy, but not a good argument for justification or credence.

[onethought]

Yes, it should matter, because sane people admit there is a chance they could be wrong. You can walk back ideas, you can’t walk back deaths.

Also unless you’re a government you probably shouldn’t be applying utilitarian ideas of ethics to your actions, you do not have a right to decide on behalf of anyone but yourself as an individual, so even by utilitarian standards you are likely being unethical.

[emodendroket]

Anyway, if we want to apply utilitarian reasoning, taking someone’s ideas seriously simply because he garnered attention through random killings would seem to encourage more people to do violence for various different causes.

[emodendroket]

I mean, yes, if I sincerely believed in his project maybe I’d think that way.