On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Nathan<nawr...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 2:28 PM, Ken Arromdee <arrom...@rahul.net> wrote: > >> On Tue, 7 Jul 2009, Ian Woollard wrote: >> > > But if they do make demands about silence, it is our ethical duty >> > > to... censor ourselves? >> > Yeah, why not? Just because your enemy want something to happen, >> > doesn't mean you don't want it as well. >> >> But it has some negative effects that they don't care about and we do. >> >> For instance, modifying our articles when a hostage is threatened >> encourages >> other terrorists to take hostages. How long until some terrorist demands >> that >> we alter our Jenin article to say that Israel committed a massacre, or else >> they start executing hostages, now that we've demonstrated that we can be >> coerced in that way? >> > > I have a hard time believing you honestly see that as even a remote > possibility. In the extraordinarily unlikely case that a psychotic terrorist > takes someone hostage to effect a short term change in a *Wikipedia > article*, I doubt our prior response to such pressure will figure > significantly in his/her decision process.
I see where Ken is coming from on this, but there's not a bright line. One does not immediately do exactly the opposite of what a terrorist demands be done, in order to frustrate the value of them issuing demands completely. One example might be, for instance, extrajudicially executing prisoners that terrorists demand to be released. Doing what terrorists demand, in total, encourages them. Same with criminals. But when lives are at stake there is usually a large grey area of various levels of partial cooperation that increases the odds of successful survival of the victims. In that large grey area are usually large swaths of cooperation that nobody really feels are unethical (i.e., holding discussions / negotiations with the terrorist or criminal), large swaths which are commonly done but sometimes some people object to (news blackouts, etc), some which are commonly done but feel like giving in (paying ransom). A news blackout, to me, seems much less ambiguous and much less giving in than paying ransom. We do not impose legal or social penalties against families or companies that pay ransoms. Objecting strongly to news blackouts, without objecting strongly to ransoms, seems somewhat contradictory. Even though ransoms encourage more kidnappings, they're seen as necessary to save human life. Even though they directly enrich the criminal or terrorist. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
