Re:Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious
by lopmotr on Monday July 20, 2020 @04:35PM
(#23901621)
The existing situation favors quick-witted people who can fire back another insult and come away unharmed. But your proposal favors physically advantaged people who are strong/brave/skillful enough to punch someone. I don't think it's clearly better, just different.
It's also how it works in lawless societies where everyone has to protect their honor using violence otherwise they'll be seen as an easy target and get abused by everyone else. That includes, school, prison, and countries with poor rule of law. It seems like a default way for humans to behave in the absence of civilization.
It's also an almost uniquely male behavior, so women wouldn't really function in this system very well. They may make alliances with and become dependent on men to protect their honor on their behalf.
Let me explicitly say I don't mean this as something to draw out much farther than the example I give. I don't mean to punch people who merely disagree with you politically, or beating them excessively, or any other bizarre extrapolation you may want to accuse me of. It doesn't even particularly apply online since there's no physical interaction component. I'm just thinking, you know, you get what you reward, and when you permit endless, endless trolling but punish the natural human reactions to it, you're going to get a culture of trolls and churlishness. We're paradoxically both too nice and too churlish as a culture right now.
https://centerforinquiry.org/news/buzz_aldrin_punches_moon-l... (& note the punch wasn't for the conspiracy or denial, it was for flat-out insult.)
(There is moderation in the process, in that generally the people around you are going to need to mostly agree that was justified. This prevents total chaos. One must aggressively, persistently, and willfully step over the cultural lines for this, it is not something that would be deployed for every minor disagreement.)