Comment by shmde | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shmde | Hacker News Reader

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From the story

---------- The professor elevated his nose and said sternly, “I don’t believe in violence. It’s immoral.”

“It’s unethical ever to use violence,” said the bosun.

“I’m terrified of violence,” said the lady passenger. --------------

They are literally talking about people like you in the story lmao. The ship is further going north and they know they are gonna drown if they don't have a violent revolution against the captain and throw him out of the ship(killing him) so that they can turn the ship around.

> "The point of the story appears to justify murder as a legitimate means to enact change."

Well what the hell do you do in this scenario(in the story) ?? Have a non-violence protest and risk losing lives ?? Or throw the captain off the ship and steer it south ?? Violence/Murder is 1000% justified and is the answer in this story's scenario.

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - John F. Kennedy

The people fantasizing about violence are usually the first to run when the war breaks out. If someone uses violence to further their goals, they are a terrorist and case closed.

The problem is that every one has different views of what the ship going north means. If you permit violence, then many groups will use it…don’t be surprised when some religious extremists use it because “they’re killing babies!”

That some goals are 'easier' accomplished by violence, is nothing you need to point for religious (and other) extremists. They are well aware of that tool in their box.

It's also something politicians are well aware of (or at least have been reminded about recently).

We don't have to fantasize about violence. But even in our relatively safe, civil societies, we should be aware of it, and not categorically discard it as aboherent in all case.

> But even in our relatively safe, civil societies, we should be aware of it, and not categorically discard it as aboherent in all case.

My opinion is that violence is abhorrent in all cases except in self-defense when the recipient is a directly active threat to your life.

I, on the other hand, consider the story to be too simplistic. It reads like an abstract concept hammered out by a smart person far from any actual life-threatening situation, which is what it actually is.

The captain and his mates don't necessarily need killing, even though a revolt might be desirable. Even in plenty of actual ship mutinies, the rebels didn't outright kill the overthrown officers, only imprisoned or marooned them. And that was in the context of the death penalty hanging over them if they failed.

Violent revolutions in general have the small problem of bringing other violent psychopaths to power. Kaczynski might not mind, but I do. It was a well-known problem in actual pirate crews as well, and pirates actually had some interesting rules (including a fairly modern division of powers on board) to prevent the most violent psychos from taking over their ships and introduce some measure of consensus into their internal politics.

His caricature of "weaklings abhorring violence" does not address the succession problem at all, and even if the original officer crew was bad, another officer crew self-selected of willing murderers could conceivably be worse by being both professionally incompetent and ready to torture their opponents etc.

> far from any actual life-threatening situation, which is what it actually is

Not clear. Several legitimate interpretations of "going North" into current situations are factually «life-threatening».

The story was written by Ted, who due to his shitty brain by "going North" he meant NOT rejecting technology and switching to being "hunter and gatherers" (which I practice would mean hunting only other humans and living on canibalism)

Murderer writes story justifying murder, belittles those who will not.

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