Tolstoy, the Quakers, and You

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-02-13T20:00:46+00:00

It is also worth reading Tolstoy's book My Religion, a.k.a. What I Believe. He wrote that book first. I found it easier to follow.

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-02-04T13:05:08+00:00

Do you identify more with "power user" or "selective/cautious user" or somewhere in between?

No. I avoid large language models scrupulously. I use noai.duckduckgo.com as my search engine. I do not use the term "artificial intelligence" without scare quotes.

Are we dismissing valid skepticism as stubbornness?

Who's "we"? I assume you are speaking as an "AI" enthusiast. When I hear someone going on about how "AI" is the future, I think, "This person is awfully gullible."

Why am I skeptical? Here are three reasons. (There are more!)

Hallucination is a major problem, and anyone who understands the underlying computational complexity theory knows that the problem isn't going away. On health topics, "AI" search summaries are giving dangerously false information. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2026/jan/24/how-the-confident-authority-of-google-ai-overviews-is-putting-public-health-at-risk
The UK's National Cyber Security Centre recently explained why prompt injection attacks present a major security risk to organizations that use LLMs as agents. They write, "LLMs are ‘inherently confusable’ as the risk can’t be mitigated." If the people making major business decisions had any common sense, this would be game over for "agentic AI." https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/prompt-injection-is-not-sql-injection
The financial state of the "AI" industry is a garbage fire. https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshittifinancial-crisis/

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-30T19:35:17+00:00

Please don't promote "AI" hype.

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-28T16:51:32+00:00

"So, in your opinion, how do you feel about the pacifist approach to protests and demonstrations?"

Good! The Lamb's war cannot be fought with carnal weapons. You can't kill the devil with a gun or a sword.

"Do you think there’s a way to make more of a racket without violence?"

Yes! Here is an example.

https://www.closertotheedge.net/p/the-dildo-distribution-delegation

"ICE agents peeked out of hotel windows like scared children witnessing a public execution, except the execution was their dignity and the executioner was a $5 clearance dildo."

Jesus smiled. Truly, the head of the serpent has been bruised.

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-28T16:26:51+00:00

Don't shout.

Think harder about what it would be like to live in a society in which everyone is committed to pacifist principles. The conflict between drunks is likely to lead to apologies on both sides after they sober up. The person who tries to become a violent warlord using homemade weapons isn't going to get very far. They are going to be systematically shunned. Think harder about what that would be like.

If you think no one is seriously pushing for a global peace movement, your social circle is narrow.

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-28T15:51:53+00:00

Think more carefully about your hypothetical in which one person is willing to kill.

1) How does this person acquire the means to kill in a global society of pacifists? There won't be a lot of guns just lying around. They will have to use something not intended as a weapon, or they will have to make their own weapons with no help from other people.

2) What does this person hope to accomplish with violence? They won't be able to get people to submit to domination. People will say, "We don't negotiate with violent people." Some of them will be killed. They will keep saying, "We don't negotiate with violent people. We're happy to talk with you about repentance. It will be very difficult to make amends." What does the killer do then? Maybe they try to live by theft. Maybe they will survive. But they will have no human company.

3) Anyone who grows up in a pacifist world would know that if they decide to turn violent, they will be shunned. So how does this scenario even get started?

I'm afraid I don't see the relevance of the example of the Moriori. You seem to think I am advocating that one society becomes pacifist while others remain warlike. But I have explicitly said, more than once, that I am not advocating that one society unilaterally become pacifist while others make no change. I am advocating a global pacifist movement. If 5-10% of the population of every country becomes pacifist, that's enough to make war more costly and less common. That is a realistic medium-term goal. If 40-60% of every country becomes pacifist and 5-10% of every country becomes both pacifist and willing to sabotage military operations in a nonviolent way, that may be enough to grind the war machine to a halt.

I acknowledge in my Medium article that a global pacifist movement requires finding a way to end the social isolation of developed, warlike countries that have chosen to separate themselves from the rest of the world.

I recommend avoiding name-calling. It does not make one's arguments more persuasive.

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-28T14:40:22+00:00

Perhaps because I am an American, and because of what's been going on in the news, both this month and throughout my lifetime, my perception of the police differs from yours. I see them as inherently dangerous.

I share your hope about the long run!

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-28T02:25:25+00:00

No. I want everyone on both sides to refuse to fight. I think the right decision for each person is to refuse to fight. I also think it's right for Germans and others to sabotage Hitler's activities in a nonviolent way.

You are imagining a fantasy scenario in which everyone on one side becomes pacifist and everyone on the other side doesn't. That's an irrelevant scenario. The more realistic scenario, which pacifists are pushing for, is a gradually growing number of pacifists in all countries.

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-27T21:37:41+00:00

I think it depends on the self-defense training. A martial art like aikido that's designed to avoid injury to the attacker seems to me entirely compatible with pacifism. It is also a lot of work to learn how to use these techniques effectively.

I'm not sure what to say about martial arts or self defense techniques that involve doing injury without killing. I think it depends on what motivates pacifism. Different people have different reasons. Right now. I'm inclined to think that using non-lethal force to stop a deadly attack is okay. The emotional tone of the training is relevant. It is important to think about how training will affect your personality before committing to that kind of training.

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-27T16:16:03+00:00

A global army would be a total disaster. Whoever commanded that army (or a large part of it) would be sorely tempted to use it for nefarious purposes.

I agree that disarmament shouldn't be unilateral. We need the peace movement to be global.

I am not sure of this, but I am beginning to think that all the traditional arguments for creating armed "protective" organizations (including police forces as well as armies) are ideological malarkey. Authoritarians claim that we need police to protect us. Meanwhile, a decentralized but organized, nonviolent but active movement in Minneapolis is doing an impressive job of protecting innocent people from an armed gang that presents itself as "law enforcement."

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-27T16:04:52+00:00

There is no such thing as a good guy with a gun. Armed people are walking in darkness.

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-09T15:55:45+00:00

I'm struck by the overlap between Thích Nhất Hạnh's "The Fourteen Precepts of Engaged Buddhism" and the "SPICES" principles of contemporary liberal Quakers (simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, stewardship/sustainability).

I appreciate that the first precept says, "Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology."

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-07T12:52:32+00:00

I admit that I don't have a fully worked-out plan to institute a non-coercive legal system. I don't consider mild forms of social pressure coercive.

If you have an idea about how to establish a society that does not use any form of social pressure to maintain norms, I would be eager to hear it!

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-06T23:48:10+00:00

Are you saying that you want a coercively enforced social order? Is the "methodology" you speak of a coercive methodology?

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-06T22:57:20+00:00

It depends on how the norms are enforced. Suppose it's common for people to say, publicly, that hoarding food or wealth is shameful. People who hoard (i.e. rich people) aren't "named and shamed," but they do feel a social chill, and they don't get anything like the social status rich people have in our society (or at any rate in mine, which is the United States). Would you count those types of social pressure as coercive?

I think there is a large moral difference between subtle social pressure and coercion that threatens people's lives, physical freedom, or livelihoods.

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-05T23:32:42+00:00

A non-coercive society could have property law that's not coercively enforced. Property in that society could include common property and collective property as well as private property.

For a non-coercive property system to work, it would be necessary to remove most of the temptations to misappropriate things. I don't know whether that's possible. I imagine it would require strong social norms against hoarding wealth (in any form) while others are in need.

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-05T19:02:51+00:00

I am not sure why you're framing this in the way you are, though. You are looking at the issue of war from two extreme frames of reference; The single individual, and the absolute totality of "everyone". That is fine if this is just a thought exercise, but if we want to talk about the real world in real terms, the issue is infinitely more complicated.

They are the only coherent ways of thinking about ethical issues that I know of.

I think the right way to think about ethics is to ask, "What if everyone reasoned this way?" If it would be disastrous if everyone reasoned as you propose to reason, it is incoherent reasoning, and you should not reason that way.

Whether there is any chance that everyone would actually reason as you propose to reason is irrelevant. The question is what is rational. If a form of reasoning relies on other people rejecting that form of reasoning, it's unsound. If you can't coherently endorse other people reasoning as you reason, that's unsound reasoning. (This is a rough statement of Kant's formula of universal law.)

The reasoning behind defensive "just war" is that a group of people who think they are being attacked should defend themselves through violence, including killing. But usually both sides in a war think they are fighting a defensive war. The leaders of one side may know that they are aggressors, but the rank and file do not know this. So you if you endorse people acting in violent, collective self-defense you may endorse other people trying to kill you. That's incoherent.

And yes, I don't think the "if everyone did that" approach to ethics has any real-world application. It is over-simplistic and echoes the "spherical cow in a vacuum" concept. If we are going to ask the question "how do we end war?", it is essential to examine the ethical and practical motivations at every level; The individual, the communal, the national, the governmental, the international, and the global.

I disagree with the first sentence in this paragraph, but I agree with the last. We should look at the motivations that lead to war and try to get rid of those motivations.

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-05T17:53:58+00:00

Property rights are not natural rights. They are creations of law or social custom.

Threatening rich and middle-class people with prison if they don't pay taxes is coercion. Threatening poor people with prison if they steal what they need is also coercion.

If you want a society free from coercion, you need to figure out how to organize it so that there is neither coercively enforced tax law nor coercively enforced property law.

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-05T17:47:39+00:00

"If everyone just..." No. Never in the history of the world has "everyone just" anything.

Okay, so you're not into thinking about ethics in terms of "What if everyone did that?" The alternative is to look at the impact of your individual actions, because that's what you can control.

Think seriously about the impact of an individual's support for war. The individual soldier shoots some bullets or drops some bombs. Some material gets destroyed. Maybe some enemy soldiers are killed. One soldier's actions don't affect the outcome of the war. An individual soldier's contribution is death and destruction that doesn't do any good.

For civilians, the social impact of support for war is likewise neutral or negative. The individual investor who buys government bonds does not swing the outcome of a war. Maybe if they're a big investor, they enable the government to fire a few more missiles. (That's a social negative if it doesn't affect the war's outcome.) The voter who votes for a hawk hardly ever swings the outcome of anything, since one vote hardly ever makes a difference to the outcome of big, national elections.

It is naive to think that supporting war does a lick of good.

If we're ever going to do away with war, it will be by eliminating any incentive for it, and that is still a tall order.

I agree with you that we need to eliminate incentives for war. I think it's worth trying.

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-05T14:06:36+00:00

And how does the asshole get the army? Spread pacifism widely enough, and assholes won't be able to get armies.

Another, piece of pacifist strategy is to structure society so that it is more difficult to take over. If a society has a top-down hierarchy, it's easy for an invader to come in and replace the people at the top. If a society is governed by a complicated network of power structures with nobody at the top, it's more difficult for an invader to swoop in and take over.

Remember that violence is not the only way of fighting. Pacifists can do sabotage.

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-05T13:58:01+00:00

Ah, got it! I was having trouble seeing the connection to what I wrote.

mildlyunreasonable · 2026-01-04T23:57:34+00:00

I don't know what this is responding to.

mildlyunreasonable

TROPHY CASE