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...and the article has a direct response to your first part: > He suggests that people will indeed do nasty things on a mass scale if they are convinced that i

...and the article has a direct response to your first part: > He suggests that people will indeed do nasty things on a mass scale if they are convinced that it is for the greater good. It was not inherent nastiness that led to the Holocaust, Bregman suggests, but years of indoctrination. For your last point about people in poverty, I would point out that the global poverty has gone down dramatically during capitalism's reign, and generally overall humanity has been toward helping poor countries and poor in their countries. Is there enough social protection for everyone? No. That does not invalidate the article's points. The fact that humans do not achieve perfect or near perfect does not mean we are not generally good.

falcolas 6y ago
And yet he has no explanation for why people will torture other people, to the point of death, for getting quiz answers wrong. This kinda points to his hypothesis of these being outliers as being incorrect. The inherent selfishness, as he himself refers to, of humanity leads to the nasty and brutish behavior. > I would point out that the global poverty has gone down dramatically during capitalism's reign And yet the poverty numbers for the US, one of capitalism's biggest proponents, remain fairly static over the last 4-5 decades, times in which productivity and the GDP have flourished.
- answermachines 6y ago
  You want,... "not-rundown petite bourgeoisie" But more than 7 billion people have to behave obey... Let me think... huh...sounds... 'dystopian'...? P-:
- drivebycomment 6y ago
  > And yet he has no explanation for why people will torture other people, to the point of death, for getting quiz answers wrong. From the article: "Bregman's digging into subsequent critiques of the experiment revealed that it was not quite as bad as it seemed: a substantial proportion of the "torturers" had figured out that it was not real. Several more protested that it was wrong. Those who did continue were convinced by the researchers that what they were doing was for the greater good." So Bregman disagrees with your premise. Re: US poverty. https://www.vox.com/2014/12/14/7384515/extreme-poverty-decline https://www.vox.com/2014/12/14/7384515/extreme-poverty-decli... If that's not progress, I don't know what is. Also, the US official poverty rate doesn't take all the social programs (like food stamps, etc) into account. If you do: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26532#fromrss https://www.nber.org/papers/w26532#fromrss the poverty has dropped substantially.
zozbot234 6y ago
> It was not inherent nastiness that led to the Holocaust, Bregman suggests, but years of indoctrination. Arendt's entire report on "The banality of evil" was essentially a direct refutation of that exact argument. Nazi evil was 'banal' in a way, to use Arendt's term, precisely because it was, unambiguously, evil. There was not even the start of a colorable argument that it could be for any sort of "greater" good, no matter how construed. And the whole indoctrination part was as banal and as evil as the rest of it. Complacency towards authority demands and the diffusion of responsibility were the key mechanisms, not indoctrination per se.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  The bits I've read/seen recently were definitely leaning far harder on the (as they perceived it) greater good than any "let's unambiguously[1] be evil" rhetoric. - Goebbels' Sportpalast 1943 speech[2] https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb36.htm https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb36... - Triumph of the Will 1935 https://archive.org/details/TriumphOfTheWillgermanTriumphDesWillens https://archive.org/details/TriumphOfTheWillgermanTriumphDes... - Hitler's Sportpalast 1933 speech https://www.stern.de/politik/geschichte/sportpalast-rede-die-macht-der-rhetorik-3350756.html https://www.stern.de/politik/geschichte/sportpalast-rede-die... [1] granted, the ambiguity is up for discussion. But I think any criterion that colours the speeches above as unambiguously evil would also tar many current regimes with the same brush. [2] a rationale: defending 2'000 years of "western civilisation" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24137060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24137060

falcolas 6y ago

And yet he has no explanation for why people will torture other people, to the point of death, for getting quiz answers wrong. This kinda points to his hypothesis of these being outliers as being incorrect. The inherent selfishness, as he himself refers to, of humanity leads to the nasty and brutish behavior. > I would point out that the global poverty has gone down dramatically during capitalism's reign And yet the poverty numbers for the US, one of capitalism's biggest proponents, remain fairly static over the last 4-5 decades, times in which productivity and the GDP have flourished.

answermachines 6y ago
You want,... "not-rundown petite bourgeoisie" But more than 7 billion people have to behave obey... Let me think... huh...sounds... 'dystopian'...? P-:
drivebycomment 6y ago
> And yet he has no explanation for why people will torture other people, to the point of death, for getting quiz answers wrong. From the article: "Bregman's digging into subsequent critiques of the experiment revealed that it was not quite as bad as it seemed: a substantial proportion of the "torturers" had figured out that it was not real. Several more protested that it was wrong. Those who did continue were convinced by the researchers that what they were doing was for the greater good." So Bregman disagrees with your premise. Re: US poverty. https://www.vox.com/2014/12/14/7384515/extreme-poverty-decline https://www.vox.com/2014/12/14/7384515/extreme-poverty-decli... If that's not progress, I don't know what is. Also, the US official poverty rate doesn't take all the social programs (like food stamps, etc) into account. If you do: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26532#fromrss https://www.nber.org/papers/w26532#fromrss the poverty has dropped substantially.

zozbot234 6y ago

> It was not inherent nastiness that led to the Holocaust, Bregman suggests, but years of indoctrination. Arendt's entire report on "The banality of evil" was essentially a direct refutation of that exact argument. Nazi evil was 'banal' in a way, to use Arendt's term, precisely because it was, unambiguously, evil. There was not even the start of a colorable argument that it could be for any sort of "greater" good, no matter how construed. And the whole indoctrination part was as banal and as evil as the rest of it. Complacency towards authority demands and the diffusion of responsibility were the key mechanisms, not indoctrination per se.

082349872349872 6y ago
The bits I've read/seen recently were definitely leaning far harder on the (as they perceived it) greater good than any "let's unambiguously[1] be evil" rhetoric. - Goebbels' Sportpalast 1943 speech[2] https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb36.htm https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb36... - Triumph of the Will 1935 https://archive.org/details/TriumphOfTheWillgermanTriumphDesWillens https://archive.org/details/TriumphOfTheWillgermanTriumphDes... - Hitler's Sportpalast 1933 speech https://www.stern.de/politik/geschichte/sportpalast-rede-die-macht-der-rhetorik-3350756.html https://www.stern.de/politik/geschichte/sportpalast-rede-die... [1] granted, the ambiguity is up for discussion. But I think any criterion that colours the speeches above as unambiguously evil would also tar many current regimes with the same brush. [2] a rationale: defending 2'000 years of "western civilisation" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24137060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24137060