Comment by rl3
5 days ago
To be clear I'm not saying any of it is justified and generally agree with everything you wrote. The fact that happened to Sam and his family is indeed horrible.
That said, please don't twist my words. I think there's utility in understanding why people feel and act the way they do.
Otherwise, everybody just takes the de facto stance of "those people are intrinsically bad people, and not good people like us!" which is pretty useless and typically just leads to more escalation.
You could also spare me the one-line zinger at the end.
I didn't mean it as a zinger; I meant it as a rebuttal of the line from your comment. If you felt zinged by it, maybe it's worth considering why.
You keep writing comments where you try to wiggle between it being really important to think about the context in which people commit crimes and the context in which people are OK with crimes being committed based on not liking the victim, but also you keep clarifying that you don't condone what they're doing or saying.
What is your actual point? The best I can try to pluck out, the summation of the above is that the people throwing molotov cocktails, and the people saying it's justified, are bad people but they're bad for understandable reasons?
>I didn't mean it as a zinger; I meant it as a rebuttal of the line from your comment.
Fair enough.
>If you felt zinged by it, maybe it's worth considering why.
Conditioned response from years of defending comments against immediate pedantry, of which I'm probably guilty of myself. Not saying that you were being pedantic.
>What is your actual point?
Originally dang seemed pretty burnt out from moderating this thread, so I just wanted to pitch in with my two cents saying that he's dealing with a tidal wave of larger negative public sentiment that's perhaps beyond his control.
I think there's an important distinction to be had between whoever threw the cocktail (fuck them), and the folks expressing what I termed callous indifference.
People are allowed to not give a shit and say as much, and while that might be bannable I don't think it's particularly productive to take that route.
Moreover, I thought it was important to note that some people here (like dang presumably) actually know Sam personally, so it might not be appreciated that it comes off as extra ghoulish to them when they're reading said callous comments.
At the same time, if your only source of information about the guy is recent press, it's easy to understand how someone arrives at that position; anti-AI sentiment is gaining popularity rapidly.
That's it. That's my point or stance if you will, I don't think it's that unreasonable; just trying to highlight what I see as a disconnect.
This is the waffling again. You made the pitch earlier that explicit condemnation felt hollow. Your comments here (and the many from other people saying similar things) are what look hollow to me.
When you say things like "it's easy to understand how someone arrives at that position", you're laying the groundwork to justify why what you class as "callous indifference" is just a logical and natural state that we should accept.
We shouldn't. The people who are celebrating or ok with molotov cocktails being thrown are also bad people. To borrow your language: fuck them, too.
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