> In the wake of this terrible shooting, I lost sleep. Frankly, I would have used my body to stop the bullet on its path to kill a young father and husband like Charlie at age 31.
The system is either working as intended or it should be changed.
The current system is that murder (among private civilians) is already illegal. You walk around with your gun, kill whomever you like, then you go to jail.
> There is so much more that Charlie could have done if he had lived to his full potential.
Well ... his condoned violence himself and wished harm to others. He literally helped to create more toxic world and did it intentionally. It is wrong to kill people. Pretending that killed people were someone they were not may feel good, but does not make anyone safer.
The author lives in quite a bubble if he thinks people would be excited to fund this kind of research. People want to be able to afford the cost of living, not fund extraterrestrial research. (I'm saying this as someone who would be excited to fund this)
> This brings me to my main point: ridiculing or shooting people with whom we disagree is not a sign of intelligence. An extraterrestrial observer might have a hard time concluding that humanity represents an intelligent civilization given our history of political violence.
While Charlie Kirk doesn’t fall into this subgroup, the thing that makes this ignorant is that a great deal of political violence is driven not by intellectual disagreement but rather abuse of power by those in power and as an option of last resort because the social contract is broken.
Carving out Charlie Kirk’s murder as an intellectual no-no amidst a plethora of mass shootings of children is intellectually dishonest about the intentions of the framing.
> ridiculing or shooting people with whom we disagree is not a sign of intelligence
How can people write this shit with a straight face after 2016? As someone very eloquently put it recently, “you can’t invite violence to the dinner table and be shocked when it starts eating”.
He thinks from the cosmic perspective political violence and even ridicule doesn't make sense? And we should be thinking of alien worlds instead? He is extremely detached from reality here. He's welcome to live in his world not impacted by people like Kirk. But I'd rather read articles written by people who are impacted by racist policies and xenophobia and I'll think of those "aliens" much closer to our lives.
Avi wrote a perfect description of privilege.
> There is so much more that Charlie could have done if he had lived to his full potential
Yes, he'd make lives of people, very much not like Avi, at least a little bit worse.
Odd article. I agree on points made about political violence being counterproductive, but the author goes on to imply ridicule of others is as problematic in the same sentence.
Killing someone is a very, very different thing from ridicule and it’s important to recognize this.
While I wouldn’t say ridicule is productive, criticism of problematic ideas absolutely is. I don’t think Charlie deserved to be shot.
At the same time, it is absolutely healthy and important to reject certain ideologies that are counter to the foundational ideas of a society if you want to maintain said society. For the US, I believe that’s anything that erodes the rule of law and disenfranchises citizenry from participating in the democratic procsss.
I’m not deeply familiar with Kirk or his assailant’s ideologies, but I sure as hell hope the US as a country can move away from a lot of the political extremism motivating this violence. I suspect I’ll be disappointed—a lot of people are hurting and that’s hard to come back from—but I hope.
"Here’s hoping that by encountering an extraterrestrial role model, we will do better in the future than we did in the past."
Through what mechanism? This is thoughtless, ignorant stuff.
Instead, humanity has come together by successfully acting as a species through cosmopolitanism -- which right now is cast as an equity thing, but if you squint, it's actually a way for humans to row in the same direction, more free from reptilian-brain isms.
That's tough; there's reactionaries everywhere and self-interest causes them to be bankrolled and amplified by our most wealthy and powerful folks.
Where we've made the most strides as humans though, we've temporarily found narratives to mobilize enough folks against the Charlie Kirks of the world, lifting some of the economic and social barriers that artificially depress the talent/cooperation/discovery.
Casting that work as a distraction when it's actually a force-muliplier for progress -- like the kind described here -- is profoundly dumb.
Avi Loeb's career is focused on the idea that it's not 100% possible for contactable alien intelligence to exist, and he dedicates his career to finding it, and bends all news to that end. He does not exist in the world of pragmatic estimation, weighted probabilities and cost-benefit analysis.
This is totally disqualifying:
> Frankly, I would have used my body to stop the bullet on its path to kill a young father and husband like Charlie at age 31.
No one can jump in front of a single sniper bullet.
Thousands of young fathers die every day. Why isn't Loeb helping them instead of spending all this time promoting his search for aliens, and misleading journalists and the public about extraterrestrial intelligence?
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The system is either working as intended or it should be changed.
The current system is that murder (among private civilians) is already illegal. You walk around with your gun, kill whomever you like, then you go to jail.
What part should be changed?
> There is so much more that Charlie could have done if he had lived to his full potential.
Well ... his condoned violence himself and wished harm to others. He literally helped to create more toxic world and did it intentionally. It is wrong to kill people. Pretending that killed people were someone they were not may feel good, but does not make anyone safer.
While Charlie Kirk doesn’t fall into this subgroup, the thing that makes this ignorant is that a great deal of political violence is driven not by intellectual disagreement but rather abuse of power by those in power and as an option of last resort because the social contract is broken.
Carving out Charlie Kirk’s murder as an intellectual no-no amidst a plethora of mass shootings of children is intellectually dishonest about the intentions of the framing.
How can people write this shit with a straight face after 2016? As someone very eloquently put it recently, “you can’t invite violence to the dinner table and be shocked when it starts eating”.
Avi wrote a perfect description of privilege.
> There is so much more that Charlie could have done if he had lived to his full potential
Yes, he'd make lives of people, very much not like Avi, at least a little bit worse.
Killing someone is a very, very different thing from ridicule and it’s important to recognize this.
While I wouldn’t say ridicule is productive, criticism of problematic ideas absolutely is. I don’t think Charlie deserved to be shot.
At the same time, it is absolutely healthy and important to reject certain ideologies that are counter to the foundational ideas of a society if you want to maintain said society. For the US, I believe that’s anything that erodes the rule of law and disenfranchises citizenry from participating in the democratic procsss.
I’m not deeply familiar with Kirk or his assailant’s ideologies, but I sure as hell hope the US as a country can move away from a lot of the political extremism motivating this violence. I suspect I’ll be disappointed—a lot of people are hurting and that’s hard to come back from—but I hope.
Through what mechanism? This is thoughtless, ignorant stuff.
Instead, humanity has come together by successfully acting as a species through cosmopolitanism -- which right now is cast as an equity thing, but if you squint, it's actually a way for humans to row in the same direction, more free from reptilian-brain isms.
That's tough; there's reactionaries everywhere and self-interest causes them to be bankrolled and amplified by our most wealthy and powerful folks.
Where we've made the most strides as humans though, we've temporarily found narratives to mobilize enough folks against the Charlie Kirks of the world, lifting some of the economic and social barriers that artificially depress the talent/cooperation/discovery.
Casting that work as a distraction when it's actually a force-muliplier for progress -- like the kind described here -- is profoundly dumb.
This is totally disqualifying:
> Frankly, I would have used my body to stop the bullet on its path to kill a young father and husband like Charlie at age 31.
No one can jump in front of a single sniper bullet.
Thousands of young fathers die every day. Why isn't Loeb helping them instead of spending all this time promoting his search for aliens, and misleading journalists and the public about extraterrestrial intelligence?