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ominous | 3 years ago

> Like I said, your point is "so high-level and abstract as to be useless."

It is not useless. It tells you coercion, if applied to fix these other reasons, could be counterproductive.

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eesmith|3 years ago

"Could" is doing a lot of work there. It could also be productive. (Another example of "so high-level and abstract as to be useless".)

Here's a counter-example. Assume 99% of the people who run a red light / haven't vaccinated their kid, do so for some reason totally disconnected from reacting to coercion, and 1% of the people are fighting The Man.

Now we change the coercive circumstances [1] so that 98% of those people now stop at a red light / have vaccinated their kids, the 1% still haven't changed, and an additional 1% have joined them.

That means the overall number of red light runners / non-vaccinated children go down significantly.

Which means those changes are productive.

[1] For traffic lights this might include: higher fines, more active police enforcement, propaganda campaigns about the dangers of running a red light, changing the lights to be more visible. For vaccination these might include: remind parents of vaccination requirements, provide in-school and home-visit vaccination services, and increase propaganda campaigns.

ominous|3 years ago

A counter example of a "could"? That's brilliant.

Are you seriously trying to argue your way away from agreeing that coercion can be refused by itself so much that you can't resist providing your hypothetical?