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You'll note that the tyrants of world history have often said directly that their actions are justified by the need to fight evil. I don't recall any claiming t

You'll note that the tyrants of world history have often said directly that their actions are justified by the need to fight evil. I don't recall any claiming that their actions were justified by drinking water or brushing their teeth or eating apples or enjoying the cinema of any of a million other random correlations we might imagine. But they have claimed explicitly that fighting evil was a direct cause of their actions (as have their supporters and adherents). That's why we have reason to believe the relationship might be causal. (Not every claim of causation demands a "correlation isn't causation" response.)

BeetleB 6y ago
This doesn't address my comment at all, and you're not disagreeing with me.
- dionidium 6y ago
  To address your comment another way, the majority of drunk drivers make it home safely, but drunk driving is a bad pattern that leads to bad outcomes. It does no good to point out that most drunk drivers actually make it home just fine (and it's certainly not fallacious to warn others that drunk driving leads to negative outcomes, even if it actually usually doesn't). The belief that one is fighting evil is a standard negative pattern in human behavior. One should watch out for it, even if it sometimes works out ok, because when it doesn't you just crossed the center line and killed a family of four on their way to grandma's.
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    The difference, though, is that there is little good you can say about drunk drivers. There are no known positive outcomes of driving while drunk. However, plenty of good does come out of people striving to fight evil. Trivial examples are having a justice system (even with all its down sides).
    - dionidium 6y ago
      I know HN hates joke responses, but it's late in this thread and nobody is paying attention anyway, so what the hell :) https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762?lang=en https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762?lang=en

BeetleB 6y ago

This doesn't address my comment at all, and you're not disagreeing with me.

dionidium 6y ago
To address your comment another way, the majority of drunk drivers make it home safely, but drunk driving is a bad pattern that leads to bad outcomes. It does no good to point out that most drunk drivers actually make it home just fine (and it's certainly not fallacious to warn others that drunk driving leads to negative outcomes, even if it actually usually doesn't). The belief that one is fighting evil is a standard negative pattern in human behavior. One should watch out for it, even if it sometimes works out ok, because when it doesn't you just crossed the center line and killed a family of four on their way to grandma's.
- BeetleB 6y ago
  The difference, though, is that there is little good you can say about drunk drivers. There are no known positive outcomes of driving while drunk. However, plenty of good does come out of people striving to fight evil. Trivial examples are having a justice system (even with all its down sides).
  - dionidium 6y ago
    I know HN hates joke responses, but it's late in this thread and nobody is paying attention anyway, so what the hell :) https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762?lang=en https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762?lang=en