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Seems like we as a species can't shake the notion that someone MUST be responsible for what is happening. - conspiracy theories - those damn reptilians/rich gu

Seems like we as a species can't shake the notion that someone MUST be responsible for what is happening. - conspiracy theories - those damn reptilians/rich guys/secret services - covid - china/unmaskers/antivaxxers - autism - mothers/quack doctors - anything else - some other unknown agent (so we invented a god to assign blame for "default:" case) What else can you do if the only thing you can blame are rules which do not work in border cases or just random harmful events/mutations? We can't sue the social rules or physics, so we try to find someone you can direct your hate to.

bobthechef 5y ago
I'm not a fan of "as a species" arguments. It fails to understand potentiality, i.e., that something can remain substantially (or put another way, intrinsically) the same while changing. Development and the actualization of inherent potential are important to understand. A human baby cannot walk. If all you ever saw were infants, given "as a species" reasoning of this sort, you would conclude that human beings "as a species" have difficulty walking. Or basic literacy. Hundreds of years ago (not even) most people were illiterate. Today, literacy in developed countries at least is over 90%. Reasoning and knowing are like that in the sense that you have the potential to reason well and to know things, but you aren't born with these things actualized. Reasoning well requires practice and refinement, and coming to know things requires the exercise of reason. So you have the potential to develop the prior faculties developmentally and then the potential to refine those faculties once you have them. Also proper exercise of reason requires virtue. Vices corrupt the use of reason by introducing impure motives (envy might lead a person to deny truths he would prefer not be true, for example, or to accept sloppy reasoning because the conclusion is desired out of ill will). That it is easy for many people to blame individual things or root causes in a tidy way is not a fault with the species, but a fault with people who either want an easy scapegoat for their real or imagined predicament and want to shoehorn everything into a single, easy-to-blame box, or people who suck at reasoning.
- yetihehe 5y ago
  > but a fault with people who either want an easy scapegoat for their real or imagined predicament and want to shoehorn everything into a single, easy-to-blame box, or people who suck at reasoning. So, you are putting the blame on people who can't put the blame properly? Everyone has some notions of "who is to blame for current bad situation". In this instance I agree with you, now after finding solution - what can I do about this? We put the blame very easily, but finding solutions is hard. That's why most people stop at finding someone to blame, then say "why don't anyone do something about this". Reason why I don't "do anything about this" : no one listens to my opinions and solutions I can accomplish by myself are mostly illegal. If I want to accomplish something constructive, I would have to convince many people to change themselves, but this is probably the hardest thing to do for normal people and I'm worse than normal people at it.
hvidgaard 5y ago
It's really hard for us as a species to accept that in sufficiently complex systems, seemingly small issues can cascade into serious issues. In the tech sector it's well known that sometimes something as innocent as a particular server failing can expose an emerging property that ends up taking down major networks such as Google, Cloudflare, Facebook or similar. This is companies with millions on the line in the case of downtimes and they spend millions ensuring that it does not happen.
nicoburns 5y ago
I don't know about that. Look at climate change and you see the reverse: we are likely are responsible, but plenty of people aren't prepared to accept that. I suspect there's a large factor of rejecting that which is personally inconvenient.

bobthechef 5y ago

I'm not a fan of "as a species" arguments. It fails to understand potentiality, i.e., that something can remain substantially (or put another way, intrinsically) the same while changing. Development and the actualization of inherent potential are important to understand. A human baby cannot walk. If all you ever saw were infants, given "as a species" reasoning of this sort, you would conclude that human beings "as a species" have difficulty walking. Or basic literacy. Hundreds of years ago (not even) most people were illiterate. Today, literacy in developed countries at least is over 90%. Reasoning and knowing are like that in the sense that you have the potential to reason well and to know things, but you aren't born with these things actualized. Reasoning well requires practice and refinement, and coming to know things requires the exercise of reason. So you have the potential to develop the prior faculties developmentally and then the potential to refine those faculties once you have them. Also proper exercise of reason requires virtue. Vices corrupt the use of reason by introducing impure motives (envy might lead a person to deny truths he would prefer not be true, for example, or to accept sloppy reasoning because the conclusion is desired out of ill will). That it is easy for many people to blame individual things or root causes in a tidy way is not a fault with the species, but a fault with people who either want an easy scapegoat for their real or imagined predicament and want to shoehorn everything into a single, easy-to-blame box, or people who suck at reasoning.

yetihehe 5y ago
> but a fault with people who either want an easy scapegoat for their real or imagined predicament and want to shoehorn everything into a single, easy-to-blame box, or people who suck at reasoning. So, you are putting the blame on people who can't put the blame properly? Everyone has some notions of "who is to blame for current bad situation". In this instance I agree with you, now after finding solution - what can I do about this? We put the blame very easily, but finding solutions is hard. That's why most people stop at finding someone to blame, then say "why don't anyone do something about this". Reason why I don't "do anything about this" : no one listens to my opinions and solutions I can accomplish by myself are mostly illegal. If I want to accomplish something constructive, I would have to convince many people to change themselves, but this is probably the hardest thing to do for normal people and I'm worse than normal people at it.

hvidgaard 5y ago

It's really hard for us as a species to accept that in sufficiently complex systems, seemingly small issues can cascade into serious issues. In the tech sector it's well known that sometimes something as innocent as a particular server failing can expose an emerging property that ends up taking down major networks such as Google, Cloudflare, Facebook or similar. This is companies with millions on the line in the case of downtimes and they spend millions ensuring that it does not happen.

nicoburns 5y ago

I don't know about that. Look at climate change and you see the reverse: we are likely are responsible, but plenty of people aren't prepared to accept that. I suspect there's a large factor of rejecting that which is personally inconvenient.