verily, my good sir. *slowly reveals pyre and stake* deus vult!

Postmodern thought (specifically with relation to social constructivism, which seems to be what's being referred to here) is basically just a philosophical own-goal. They dismiss the value of reason for the sake of pretending that everyone's reasoning is equally valid. To which they proceed to aggressively label certain kinds of thoughts as "less valid" and so on, basically embodying the kind of chaotic thought process that would make Orwell cry at what we've allowed to be created under our noses.

That's fine. Which server are you in? I'm in NA (UID is 601461909)

Awh lol, what's your AR (I'm at 36 rn)? I'd be willing to play with you but I play pretty slowly.

For now I think I'll preemptively say that this isn't an argument worth continuing. We're not getting anywhere, that much is clear to me, and I don't think we'll be able to given that we seem to be working with vastly different philosophical approaches.
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This discussion has been quite fun. Have a nice day/night!

From my point of view, your arguments take a very large leap. It goes beyond just terminology. There is a specific thought process that makes you assert that violence is an expression of power. I would believe that you then believe that violence requires power, which you seem to affirm. So from there, my objective is to show that power as a concept cannot be a requirement for violence, particularly considering that we can come up with examples that counter a variety of conceptualizations of power. I took a semantics approach, particularly since using definitions and common-use connotations is the most straightforward manner of deciding what a term should mean in the broadest use of it. If we can't conceptualize power in a way that will work in every instance of violence, then we can't claim that power is absolutely a requirement for violence.

Yes, reality is often much more mysterious and nuanced that I take in my examples. We haven't modeled the world perfectly, that we know based on the fact that we have an entire field of study dedicated to estimating the possible variance between our perfect-world calculations and what could happen in the real world. But that is quite beside the point when we model real-world behaviors. Our models provide a framework, and from there we have something to investigate. My objective is to aim for the model. If we can't prove that something works on a basic level, we can't prove it always works for specific cases.

I don't think you're being deliberately willful, but you haven't addressed my examples straightforwardly. You added factors I had already dismissed for the sake of the argument, such as rare incidents and blindness, which I take to mean either damage to the nerves or photoreceptors in the eyes. While I do dismiss a lot of things in my example, the point of it is to show why we can't just dismiss abilities from an armchair point of view. And from there, without being able to dismiss abilities based on whether they are expressed, we can't claim that power is a necessary requirement to do violence.

Whether or not an ability is intrinsic or environment-dependent is irrelevant to whether it is expressible. Any ability that is not merely theoretical is expressible, even if it's left unexpressed. Every person with two arms and two hands have the ability to clap them together. But if they never clap their hands in their life, despite showing amazing dexterity, can we say that that ability to clap is a mere theory? They clearly have the motor functions and range of motion to clap their hands together in front, back, and to the side of them. That potential is not just theoretical-- we can prove that it is real, but left unexpressed. After all, all we need to show is that their motion range allows their palms to press against each other.

We call the "theory of gravity" a theory because we can't unconditionally prove that it is an innate property of everything. We can inductively assume so-- every object within our solar system seems to exhibit the same attraction properties that we see objects have to Earth, so we can retroactively say that at least every object within the solar system exhibit this concept we call gravity. We haven't come across a counterexample yet, so the inductive logic still applies. We can, on the other hand, prove that sharp teeth and strong jaws unconditionally lead to torn flesh on a human. Beyond mere inductive reasoning, we can use physics to demonstrate that the force of the jaws closing, combined with the teeth, will result in torn flesh. Since such a thing will cause bleeding and will lead to death by blood loss or infection, we can consider this dangerous beyond a theory.

For better or for worse, when we refer to potential, we must not consider it as merely theoretical when we don't directly observe an effect. The potential to be dangerous is still quite dangerous. But what we can do is justify why we don't consider that potential to be threatening in specific circumstances-- a pet dog typically will never be dangerous to its human companion, because the human formed a sufficient emotional bond to make it consider them inviolable. But the dog can still yet hurt an intruder if it believes that the intruder can violate its inviolable human companion. That potential is not theoretical up until that point. We cannot justify that, because that would necessarily imply that we can't directly prove that the dog can be dangerous. Their teeth and jaw strength alone are sufficient proof of the dog's potential to harm (as long as neither are damaged beyond usability).

I don't believe we can label potential as merely theoretical. A suspended piano has every potential to fall, but we don't write that potential off as merely theoretical. It is real, regardless of whether we take measures to stop it from falling. If the piano is just floating in the air with no other support helping it, we have a justifiable reason to say that the piano's potential to fall is theoretical. We don't know what's holding it up, or if it needs to be held up at all. But when we suspend the piano ourselves with ropes, cranes, and any other necessary equipment to stop its descent, we don't reduce its potential to fall to a mere theory. We know that its potential to fall is strikingly real, and failure to stop it from falling will result in a pretty bad outcome. In the best case scenario, we just get a pay cut.

Ignoring the idea that there could be other agents in our room, what can we say about our person's visual abilities? If we assume that all of their organs are undamaged, then clearly their eyes are still trying to process any of the information they receive. But the information they need to construct an image-- light-- is the determining factor of whether we can claim that our person is able to see. But we can do a variety of observations on our person before they are given light, and we know (for the sake of the argument) that their eyes are capable of receiving light. What do we say about their potential ability to see, then? It is more than just theoretical-- it is real, but not demonstrated, in the same way that the destructive power of modern nuclear bombs is real, but never seen.

I think I will say that ability is not always intrinsic. There are times when an ability is gained or lost due to the environment. If, for example, you placed a person in a completely dark room, we could say that they don't have the ability to see. Our vision relies on at least a little bit of light being present and reaching our eyes. Without that light, we can't perceive what is in front of us-- we don't have the ability to see what's in front of us. Place even the weakest candle in that room, and our person in the dark room will be able to see. Their ability to see has been gained, due to the presence of one other condition necessary for that ability.

I realize that not everyone argues with a high focus on specifics, but I do not believe that your arguments held in every context. My hope was to show that by focusing on specific versions of power, I could show that the use of the term "power" to describe a condition to be able to do violence is contradictory on some level. It may not be a contradiction if we view power in a very specific lens, though my hope is that we don't also distort other terms around it without good reason. But so far, I will say that I do think that your arguments inflate power beyond mere ability. When you also consider circumstances and unknown factors, we go past saying "mere ability" or "mere power" (as is found in the dictionary). We enter an argument of conditionals and what-ifs, something I want to avoid since we can go into any variety of what-if scenarios. Descartes found that out very quickly with his "we cannot prove we are not in a dream" thought experiment.

As for the majority of your other arguments-- perhaps the confusion lies in the fact that you're referring to power in various different contexts, and are (to me) conflating them into a mysterious catch-all concept. Power as energy is not synonymous with power as ability, and power as political authority is not synonymous with power as political ability (we usually consider most young children as politically inept, but in cases of absolute monarchies we see them ascend to positions of political authority). This is, perhaps, the main issue I take with your arguments so far. You use power in many different ways, each of which are intrinsically different. My arguments focus on very specific kinds of power, definitions that I hope are at least somewhat clear and cannot be confused for another.

If you mean "invalid" as in "not expressed," then I think I would have to disagree with your choice of terms. Not only is it confusing, it is difficult to work with since "valid" and "invalid" necessarily imply some sort of truth value, while "expressed" and "unexpressed" only refer to states of being. While I can grant that expression and non-expression are dichotomous, this does not mean that we can simply label one as "true" and the other "false" (or in this case, "valid" and "invalid"). There must be something more to why you would label the expression of abilities as valid and the non-expression of abilities as necessarily invalid.

I'm interested in your thought that an ability (as potential) is not valid unless expressed. It is my understanding that an ability is always valid, regardless of whether it is expressed. Take some infant, named Baby A, that is old enough to crawl, but hasn't yet. Do we say that Baby A's ability to crawl is invalid? Now take Baby B, another infant who has crawled at some point. Clearly Baby B has expressed their ability to crawl, but does that make that ability "valid"? What does "valid" mean in this sense? Does it mean "realized"? Or does it mean "existent"? If we take the latter ("existent"), then clearly Baby A's ability is also valid. It exists, but remains unexpressed. If we take the former ("realized"), then we get into a solipsistic argument about what it means to realize an ability.