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It's not the news that's bad. It's that power incentivises people to become sociopaths.

tremon 3y ago
That's not true. Unchecked power allows people to become sociopaths, and the more power is accumulated in a small group, the harder it is to check. It's not an automatic process, despite what those in power want you to believe.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  The only check on power that can work as intended are higher values, such as honour, generosity and justness. Written laws and regulations are a failure for ordering society. Our modern nations have hundreds of thousands of laws, which nobody can know by heart. So we have this weird situation where it supposedly is okay for rulers to abuse their power since they're not breaking any laws or regulations. Or where there's always an impeachment process going on against a ruler, for some obscure law that makes sense to nobody. There is a false idea that judges will keep check on politicians, but the high judges are some of the most corrupt psychopaths a society can bring forth, as it has been since forever. Now if the ruler or rulers act without honour, that is something that is obvious for anybody to see and know by heart. If they act greedy, that is obvious for anybody. It they are unjust - even by keeping the law by circumventing it - that is obvious for anybody. When these higher values are ingrained in a society, they become powerful, and the ruler has to bend to them. But there's a long way to go, since the large mass of the population is currently in a low state.
Frost1x 3y ago
I think it's more of a selection bias. In most structures, it's more beneficial have emotional detachment as emotion in most cases can be exploited to adds constraints to your decision space. It's not that power holds a carrot and says, to hold me you must be a sociopath, it's that competition for power selects those lacking emotion. I'm no anthropologist but I suspect since humans evolved from small groups, emotions developed because group work was beneficial. As humanity evolved rapidly into larger societies, it's not clear that emotion in these group sizes are so beneficial for survival. At some point survival from the size of the group becomes nearly guaranteed and competing more within the group becomes a better survival strategy from an independent standpoint. These days you're far less likely to starve to death or be eaten by say a bear or lion because you live in large societies with all sorts of services and just basic proximity scares other predators away. Now the dynamic is about succeeding within the bounds of that system itself. Detaching from others and focusing on yourself tends to give you better success in that environment. Specific cases exist where you should work as a team but if you can do this without emotion and identify all these cases on a highly transactional basis, you can better optimize your own success. Frankly I think it's kind of sad because, well, I have emotion and don't like to think of the world like a sociopath but... if you want to compete, you need to more and more.

That's not true. Unchecked power allows people to become sociopaths, and the more power is accumulated in a small group, the harder it is to check. It's not an automatic process, despite what those in power want you to believe.

carlosjobim 3y ago
The only check on power that can work as intended are higher values, such as honour, generosity and justness. Written laws and regulations are a failure for ordering society. Our modern nations have hundreds of thousands of laws, which nobody can know by heart. So we have this weird situation where it supposedly is okay for rulers to abuse their power since they're not breaking any laws or regulations. Or where there's always an impeachment process going on against a ruler, for some obscure law that makes sense to nobody. There is a false idea that judges will keep check on politicians, but the high judges are some of the most corrupt psychopaths a society can bring forth, as it has been since forever. Now if the ruler or rulers act without honour, that is something that is obvious for anybody to see and know by heart. If they act greedy, that is obvious for anybody. It they are unjust - even by keeping the law by circumventing it - that is obvious for anybody. When these higher values are ingrained in a society, they become powerful, and the ruler has to bend to them. But there's a long way to go, since the large mass of the population is currently in a low state.

Frost1x 3y ago

I think it's more of a selection bias. In most structures, it's more beneficial have emotional detachment as emotion in most cases can be exploited to adds constraints to your decision space. It's not that power holds a carrot and says, to hold me you must be a sociopath, it's that competition for power selects those lacking emotion. I'm no anthropologist but I suspect since humans evolved from small groups, emotions developed because group work was beneficial. As humanity evolved rapidly into larger societies, it's not clear that emotion in these group sizes are so beneficial for survival. At some point survival from the size of the group becomes nearly guaranteed and competing more within the group becomes a better survival strategy from an independent standpoint. These days you're far less likely to starve to death or be eaten by say a bear or lion because you live in large societies with all sorts of services and just basic proximity scares other predators away. Now the dynamic is about succeeding within the bounds of that system itself. Detaching from others and focusing on yourself tends to give you better success in that environment. Specific cases exist where you should work as a team but if you can do this without emotion and identify all these cases on a highly transactional basis, you can better optimize your own success. Frankly I think it's kind of sad because, well, I have emotion and don't like to think of the world like a sociopath but... if you want to compete, you need to more and more.