The definition of the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP)
http://morelife.org/glossary/mno.html#NAP
"an individual human should not initiate actual or threatened (physical)
force against, or defraud another individual or his property."

[It should be noted that this definition relates to standard libertarian
thinking and was placed there long before SelfSIP was conceived. The NAP is
actually not a well-defined or complete concept and does not directly relate to
the theory of Social Meta-Needs or the Natural Social Contract (NSC). --Paul]


"allows" one to "decide" when a physical threat is being made against
hirself (or for that matter against anyone else) and apply physical
force in order to protect hirself (or others).

Now some other definitions of the NAP call it the threat a "credible
threat", which simply makes my question easier: how can one
differentiate between a credible threat, and a non-credible threat?

Now I can imagine that if the threatened individual decides that it's
not a credible threat, then one must bear the consequences of not
defending hirself. This does not mean that s/he cannot ask for
restitution should s/he be harmed, just that s/he is responsible for
*not* taking action (I suspect many get confused by that distinction; I
know I was).
So the potentially problematic case is when one decides that there's a
credible threat, and "defends" oneself, possibly effectively causing
harm to the threatening person. Now the question is whether the harm is
culpable or not. Again, I'm guessing that if the threatening person
thinks that s/he was unjustly harmed (say because s/he was not
threatening anyone), then s/he can simply ask for restitution (note:
this is the "threatening" person asking restitution from the "defending"
person), and if not given restitution then s/he can press charges. At
this point the culpability issue "goes to trial", and that's were things
get murky; and it gets murky because there's no clear definition (that I
know of) of credible threat, so in effect the jury/judge/dice decide
whether the threat was credible or not.

[Once again Micky has shown an excellent ability to uncover the problem areas of
stated definitions and principles. I have known that the problem of how to deal
with threats has been the hardest one to solve right from the start of my work
on the NSC, and although I had a solution, I have never been as "satisfied" with
it (ie. been convinced it was the optimal solution) as I am with most others
aspects of the NSC.

Yes, the notion of "credible threat" is totally gray and essentially
undefinable. That is the reason why I did *not* use that phrase in my definition
of the NAP :-) Unfortunately, very few libertarians (or any others for that
matter) understand the need for precise definitions which clearly separate the
various situations covered into distinct categories. Many people even think that
such clear separations are impossible, that there is no black and white in the
world, and that a "wise" judge will always be needed to make the ultimate
decision in many cases. The problem with this approach is that it is not
possible for any person to be wise enough to know what are the true evaluations
of others, and therefore any such judgment will always be unsatisfactory (ie.
unjust) in some respect.

My answer to the problem is that the only person who can evaluate whether a
threat is being made is the one who perceives him or herself to be threatened.
This principle is implemented in the definition of Culpable Threat within the
definition of Culpable Harm (see:
http://selfsip.org/solutions/socialcontract.html#culpable_harm and also the
definitions of "Duress" and "Voluntary" at:
http://selfsip.org/solutions/socialcontract.html#duress) In making such an
evaluation that a threat is being made, and particularly in responding to the
perceived threat, the individual must be prepared to be fully responsible for
the consequences of any actions taken including restitution to the threatener
for harm done to him/her. However, the social meta-needs of being able to act
fully voluntarily and free from threats is so great that I think the onus of
concern for it should be placed on the perceived threatener. By this I mean that
a Freeman needs to be very careful about doing anything that might be perceived
as a threat, because if he does so, while he will still be eligible for
restitution, he cannot charge the person who harmed him with breach of the NSC.
As with all learning processes one's training will be guided by the negative
interpersonal discrimination effects from such behavior. The flip side of this
is that a Freemen also must not "too lightly" perceive actions as threatening
and that he is not entitled by the NSC to use defensive force unless he
determines it to be "the only alternative to grave irreversible harm" (see
Section E.4.) For example, one cannot use defensive force against someone who
merely threatens to slash your tires (instead you report this widely on the UCN
and you get your defense agents to grab and charge him if he actually *does*
slash your tires). I think the correct way to implement a "learning" process
for perceiving threats too lightly is by means of the social discrimination that
results from the perceived threatener who has been harmed (or maybe only
counter-threaened) reporting on the UCN the details of the "too light" threat
perception and therefore inviting the social discrimination effects of others
(who would be hesitant to deal with a person who really is too lightly
threatened) create the learning incentives and disincentives.

In reviewing the above ideas with respect to implementation in the NSC, I find
that being the effective cause of Duress is classified as one kind of Violation.
Because I am now convinced that this would leave Freemen too open to being
charged and convicted of Breach of the NSC at the whim of another's thoughts
(purely a subjective evaluation of whether s/he has been threatened), I now
think that kind of Violation should be eliminated from the NSC. Perceived
threats will still be grounds for entitlement to act in various ways (defense,
contract breaking, etc) and not be in Breach of the NSC.

With this background, I will now examine Micky's examples and his thoughts and
questions about them. --Paul]


So here's the hopefully borderline example to illustrate my confusion:
say the "threat" is a "habitual" traffic offender. A person that is the
effective cause of several culpable harms on the road (which s/he has
fully restituted), say because s/he seems to focus more on fixing hir
appearance than s/he focuses on the road. I'm trying to come up with a
scenario where someone is a "serial" culpable-harmer, but not "on
purpose" and also one that so far has always fully restituted. Some may
perceive hir as a credible threat and say, slash hir tires, and others
might say that while s/he might indeed pose a potential threat, it is
not a credible one. What say yeah?

[I don't think the concept of threat is fully appropriate to this example. The
negligent offender's repeated offenses cause others to be at "risk" of harm, but
s/he is only correctly a threat at the time when such action occurs again, and
this would be so dynamic a situation that action, other than defensively keeping
very clear, would be impossible to take without additional risk. What this shows
is that not all threats can be safely defended against. It would be up to the
owner of the road how many such "offenses" would be allowed before the offender
would be considered too high a risk to be allowed to continue to drive on his
road any longer, and it would be up to the patrons of the road to chose whether
or not they deemed his decisions made the road safe enough to drive on. In
addition, the habitual offender's negligence would be reported on the UCN and
s/he would be highly discriminated against by other Freemen (and told why) until
s/he smartened up. If s/he is negligent in this manner it is also likely that
s/he is negligent in other ways and it would be best to generally avoid
interaction with him/her. Anyone slashing his/her tires would be subject to a
charge of Breach of NSC due to his/her intentional act of culpable harm. --Paul]


I was about to edit the paragraph above and comment that the road owners
have not yet revoked the offender's "license", therefore s/he was
entitled to drive on their roads. But then, if s/he was entitled to use
the road, then... can s/he be considered a credible threat?

[S/he could not be considered to be a threat (although s/he could be consider to
be a risk) because users of the road are only entitled to use it under the
conditions set out by its owner. A threat can really only occur on your own or
another's property where such action is against the understood contractual
rules. Of course, just as no reasonable person would accept contractual rules
that allow intentional harm, so they would also not accept rules that allowed
intentional threats. Therefore, the only real problem that exists is how to deal
with perceived but unintentional threats. --Paul]


And should the road usage contract define what a credible threat is?

[Not what a threat *is*, but when the frequency of being the effective cause of
harm by either negligence or "accident" reaches the stage of being a major risk
for others. Note that I put "accident" in quotes because it is not really
possible to define the line between accident and negligence. --Paul]


So does it
again boil down to the contract? And if the contract did not have a
clause to answer "properly" what a credible threat is, then is it again
"enter at your own risk"? Seems like it, but my brain is still somewhat
foggy about that matter. Wait, if the contract has to describe what a
credible threat is, then there's no real need for the NAP, is there?
Still foggy. Help! :-)

Micky.

[I assume that you meant to type "NSC" instead of "NAP" above, since the NAP
also does not in any manner describe what a threat is (credible or otherwise)
and the NAP, as I have noted above, is not any part of SMN theory or the NSC.

I have always been aware of the possibility that no NSC is needed at all because
*all* rules of behavior could be defined and contractually implemented by each
property owner for his own property, hopefully according to the standards of
only a few different arrangements created as services by law standards
companies. This is essentially the market anarchist model. You might note that I
already talked of such different smaller subsets of rules of behavior, all
"underneath" the framework of the NSC which different road owners and other
different property owners might have. My considered opinion is that such a
market anarchist system would be far too complex to be practical and that most
people would want to standardize additionally by using a more general framework
like the NSC. However, note again that even the NSC is set up to deal with both
other "acceptable" rules systems and even to a certain extent with
"unacceptable" rules systems. In any case, I am convinced some such overall
framework such as the NSC is a far better way to convince large numbers of
people that they can do without government than is the idea of going to a full
anarchist model which has no clear notion of what the rules of social
interaction will be. --Paul]