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This is the kind of article that makes people who think they are geniuses (but have produced nothing useful) feel justified in hurting others to get what they want.

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I didn't read this article as encouraging either coyote or racoon behaviour, but rather to be an arborist [0]. What makes you think this?

[0]: https://www.epsilontheory.com/the-arborist/

The people I'm thinking of would read "Too Clever by Half" and think, "Obviously what I'm doing is a hole that needs to be filled [I won't admit it, but it's really because it would enrich me or make me more powerful], and so the rules and regulations shouldn't apply to me, it's just for those asshole raccoons."

A reasonable reading would interpret the article as praise for what the "geniuses" are doing, and lament that if only the idiots weren't so greedy, the geniuses could reap a justified reward for their fiendish cleverness.

Those people are rationalizing away harm to others as a moral concern. No phrasing is sufficient to prevent that, and all phrasing is sufficient to enable it. They’re not depending on the phrasing for anything more than a launchboard through the mental logic that lets them say “logically” that their methods are justified.

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