> The reason most people aren't constantly worried about being murdered isn't because we have super advanced defense systems but because the fear of punishment keeps people from doing it.
No, the real reason most people aren't constantly worried about being murdered is that most of the people we encounter aren't murderers.
> The reason most people aren't constantly worried about being murdered isn't because we have super advanced defense systems but because the fear of punishment keeps people from doing it.
In this case, CSAM is the "advanced" defense system, not the fear of punishment.
> And the world is a more violent place because of it.
I don't think the world becomes more violent because people defend themselves and others. And if it does, it's still worth it compared to surrendering to every would-be tyrant without a fight.
> Or at least a logical explanation, as to why you think the majority of the population are homicidal maniacs, held in check by the threat of prison time.
You don't need the MAJORITY of the population to be homicidal maniacs, only held in check by the thread of punishment to see a marked rise in homicides.
I'd guess that even with a low rate of one out of every thousand people being homicidal maniacs only kept in check by the threat of force, you'd get 200x or more homicides than you have now.
After all, a homicidal maniac will, almost by definition, kill repeatedly, and since (in this hypothetical situation) they are not punished for it, there's simply no reason for them to stop doing it.
> My best guess is that people cooped up and afraid are more likely to kill.
People who are cooped up and angry. (I mean, they are afraid, too, but I think the anger is more the cause of murders than the fear.)
What are they angry about? Being cooped up. Still being cooped up. Having their job put on hold, their self-worth threatened, their financial well-being threatened. And they have more time to spend of social media in a filter bubble (from either side), getting more angry about everything else.
>What you are living in is not safety. It is the illusion of safety
Statistically, people are safer today than in the past, if you are looking at violent death rates. It's really not an illusion. Life expectancies are higher not just because of scientific advances, but because we are simply less likely to die at the hands of others.
Putting aside the domestic manslaughter rate, over the past few decades people have been far less likely to die through war than at any other point over the past 3-4 centuries (if not longer, records pre the 1700s are unreliable).
What I think could be argued as an illusion is that this period of safety has been due to increased surveillance and espionage, especially domestic surveillance.
> If you think about it, don't you think it is a somewhat unnatural reaction to being under attack, to always end up fearing those who didn't initiate the attack?
It is, but natural reaction is wrong. I still have much bigger chance of dying in a car accident than a terrorist attack. In general, the natural reaction to such events was fine 6000 years ago, but in today's hyperconnected, media-driven society, awareness of a danger is usually inversely proportional to the chance of it happening to you.
But I also know that general population has this natural reaction, and - as politicians follow the voice of people, instead of the voice of reason - it leads to very bad outcomes. I am afraid of those bad outcomes.
> I think if you threaten someone who is well off already with death ... number of cases will rapidly go to zero.
You can think that, but you'd be wrong. Everyone who commits a crime thinks they're gonna be the one to get away with it.
It's a very popular opinion among certain kinds of people, but history and even present day has shown, time and again - You can't slaughter your way to a peaceful law-abiding society.
> an invention of risk departments at modern corporations.
No, it's an invention of an industrialized society that, for the most part, has material goods in relative abundance.
Very few people are actually in a situation where some burglar is in a position to ruin them to destitution. We aren't subsistence peasants, for whom the theft of a farm animal could have been the difference between life and starvation.
Violence, inflicted either by you, or at you, on the other hand, can very well be the difference between life and ruin, and it's baffling how so many people seem to treat the use of deadly force as if its some kind of video game, or Stephen Seagal flick.
> I suspect the vast majority of people wouldn't kill someone even if it benefited them and they knew they would never get caught.
I wasn't referring to individualized, but rather to large-scale violence. And, having read a bit about history, I must disagree. The extreme enthusiasm that is sometimes displayed in regards to wars (e.g., in the initial stages of the US Civil War and of WW1) shows that we are more than capable of wishing, and striving for, the death of out-group members.
The main reason that large-scale wars have been avoided for the last 65 years has been exactly consequentialist: the wiser among us have learned the bitter lessons of our bloody past. As the Milgram experiment (not to talk about the experience of conscript mass armies) has shown, the vast majority of people are more than capable of killing someone.
> Nobody should be surprised that removing an entire portion of the population would cause the homicide rate to fall the same way nobody would be surprised that there is less rainfall on a day that has less cloud coverage.
If the homicide rate had fallen by only 2%, I would not have considered it notable. In effectively all societies, the vast majority of serious crimes are committed by a tiny sliver of the population who offend again and again. Deal with that sliver, and everyone else can breathe free.
Well, it's dangerous to your population once you are attacked, especially by a superior enemy, but it's also a deterrent to attack in the first place. The net cost or benefit depends on a fairly complex balancing of concerns.
But we are safe, at least from terrorism. The probability that you'll be killed by a terrorist on any given day is far lower than the probability that you'll be killed by something mundane.
> If you can’t sympathize with the people making death threats, you are not sufficiently invested in the problem
I can sympathise with someone while acknowledging they should go to jail, and also sympathising with the people they’re attacking for taking prudent safety measures.
> Some of us want to stop easily predictable violence before it gets to the point of actual violence.
Are you being serious? I honestly can't tell. This has played out in countless movies and books, and the result is never good. It has also played out in real life, and the result is even worse.
> What matters is the actual practice...
Bingo! Sounds like maybe you're beginning to see the error in trying to police thoughtcrime. It's the actions that matter, not the beliefs alone.
> High-tech weapon systems save lives. But I am pretty sure you already know that.
Not the OP, but what the high-tech weapon systems do (among other things, like killing innocent people attending weddings in remote parts of Afghanistan or Yemen) is to disengage the killers (i.e. the people making the decision to shoot, sometime from thousands and thousands of miles away) from their acts, as those doing the killing bear almost no risks of getting killed in retaliation and they also don't get to see the distorted limbs of those they get to kill. As such, the decision to make the kill becomes more and more easy and more and more random, because it doesn't have almost any effects on those who are responsible for said killings.
This is a very, very sad state of affairs for us, as a species, I mean, the fact that we've managed to make the act of killing to have almost no moral consequences on those that actually carry said killings.
No, the real reason most people aren't constantly worried about being murdered is that most of the people we encounter aren't murderers.
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