5 ms·

A man who studies everyday evil

89 points by d_a_robson 12y ago

kelukelugames 12y ago
"The man who..." is beginning to sound like catchy clickbait titles.
- monksy 12y ago
  The BBC has a lot of documentaries that fix that title.
- savanaly 12y ago
  Seems accurate in this case, no? The title sets you up to expect to read a profile of an individual doing some interesting research, and that's pretty much exactly what we got.
praptak 12y ago
"even Mother Theresa apparently had a steely side" Even? http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2003/10/mommie_dearest.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_wor...
- ytturbed 12y ago
  Yeah. Another questionable assumption: >If you had the opportunity to feed harmless bugs into a coffee grinder, would you enjoy the experience? Even if the bugs had names, and you could hear their shells painfully crunching? No doubt their nervous systems transmit pain signals but whether bugs experience suffering seems like an open question to me.
  - girvo 12y ago
    I rationally know that, but I can't bring myself to wilfully destroy life, even that of an insect, with the sole exception of if something is dangerous. So I can totally understand the reactions of those who don't have a high "everyday sadism" score.
    - ytturbed 12y ago
      Oh I agree, I'm the same, but I do acknowledge that there's an unsolved philosophical/scientific problem here, with no good explanations in sight. And thus I can't equate indifference to the death of insects with sadism.
      - tjradcliffe 12y ago
        Whether its sadism or not is independent of the experience of the bug, even if that question is meaningful. It depends on whether the person committing the act believes the bug is suffering, and whether they enjoy it on that basis or some other. And since the question is open as to what the bug's experience is, there may also be a tendency for individuals to interpret their behaviours as being evidence of suffering or not depending on how sadistic they are. Non-sadists may tend to interpret the bug's behaviour in ways that suggest there isn't any experience of suffering. Sadists will do the opposite. It's difficult to see what if any interesting issues the question of the bug's internal experience could bear on. It's our perception or imagination of that experience that would seem to be far more important in how the act should be classified for a given individual.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    Ummm... irrespective of whether they experience suffering in any phenomenological sense, what's the actual point supposed to be in feeding bugs through a coffee grinder? It seems as if you could only really enjoy the act if you enjoyed the prospect of making something else suffer.
  - dmm 12y ago
    > No doubt their nervous systems transmit pain signals Why are you so certain? There seems to be plenty of debate on the issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_invertebrates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_invertebrates .
    - ytturbed 12y ago
      'No doubt' is a figure of speech. But in species where there aren't any pain signals at all, my case is strengthened. I've skimmed the page you link: doesn't it just assume that 'pain experience' implies suffering? But this is contradicted by the testimony of cancer patients on opiates or Hindu saints undergoing surgery without anaesthesia. They feel the pain but it doesn't bother them.
Mz 12y ago
It's too bad the article did not put more emphasis on this perspective: All of which underlines the false dichotomy of good and evil that Paulhus has been keen to probe. For example, surgeons tend to lack empathy. People who are too empathetic would have a hard time cutting into someone. They would be too squeamish. Soldiers are also a necessary and important role in the world where the work isn't "nice" in nature.
- trhway 12y ago
  >For example, surgeons tend to lack empathy. People who are too empathetic would have a hard time cutting into someone. They would be too squeamish. lacking and having control over are 2 different things. Former makes a psychopath, latter - a good surgeon.
  - Mz 12y ago
    My understanding is that doctors tend to lack empathy, not control it. A quick google brings up this article which agrees with that understanding: http://news.legalexaminer.com/study-finds-doctors-lack-empathy.aspx?googleid= http://news.legalexaminer.com/study-finds-doctors-lack-empat... Your suggestion simply does not fit with anything I have ever seen or heard. I would be happy to see data suggesting that your idea is true instead. Care to cite a source?
    - koliber 12y ago
      That's interesting. I read a while back that psychopaths are not people who are completely devoid of empathy. Instead, they were defined as people who can control empathy. They can turn it on or off. They can turn it on when it suits them and turn it off when it would get in the way of achieving goals.
      - sarciszewski 12y ago
        I would call those people borderline rather than full-blown psychopaths, but I'm not a psychologist.
tjradcliffe 12y ago
The American psychologist Roy Baumeister has a very good book on evil: http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-Cruelty/dp/0805071652/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422680912&sr=8-1&keywords=evil http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-Cruelty/dp/... My review of it can be found here: http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1605 http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1605 Short version: Baumesiter focuses on data, not imaginary scenarios, which he correctly identifies as profoundly misleading (which should be no surprise to anyone paying attention to the past 300 years of scientific history, which has basically been a monotonous repetition of "Your imagination is a terrible tool for knowing reality"). He defines and rejects the imaginary "myth of pure evil" and investigates empirically what causes evil and how it works in the real--not the imaginary--world. The causes he identifies are fragile egotism, material gain, utopian idealism, and sadism (the last is the least, accounting for perhaps 5% of evil acts.) He backs his claims with data, not imagination, and anyone arguing against him must bring far more than "it just makes sense to me" as a counter. I can't recommend this book enough. Is it the last word on the subject? Of course not: it is science, and therefore open-ended. But it is so much better than almost anything else you will read on evil that complaining about its shortcomings looks silly. It is certainly vastly better than the purely imaginary accounts of evil found in the Bible or the Quran or "A Treatise on Human Nature", to the extent that they are incidently but convincingly shown to be completely irrelevant as practical guides to human behaviour.
joelthelion 12y ago
This is very important research. Consistently ignoring our dark side is bringing us nowhere.
harkyns_castle 12y ago
What a waste of peoples LCD's. Such a load of crap I haven't read in a while.

89 points by d_a_robson 12y ago

kelukelugames 12y ago

"The man who..." is beginning to sound like catchy clickbait titles.

monksy 12y ago
The BBC has a lot of documentaries that fix that title.
savanaly 12y ago
Seems accurate in this case, no? The title sets you up to expect to read a profile of an individual doing some interesting research, and that's pretty much exactly what we got.

praptak 12y ago

"even Mother Theresa apparently had a steely side" Even? http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2003/10/mommie_dearest.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_wor...

ytturbed 12y ago
Yeah. Another questionable assumption: >If you had the opportunity to feed harmless bugs into a coffee grinder, would you enjoy the experience? Even if the bugs had names, and you could hear their shells painfully crunching? No doubt their nervous systems transmit pain signals but whether bugs experience suffering seems like an open question to me.
- girvo 12y ago
  I rationally know that, but I can't bring myself to wilfully destroy life, even that of an insect, with the sole exception of if something is dangerous. So I can totally understand the reactions of those who don't have a high "everyday sadism" score.
  - ytturbed 12y ago
    Oh I agree, I'm the same, but I do acknowledge that there's an unsolved philosophical/scientific problem here, with no good explanations in sight. And thus I can't equate indifference to the death of insects with sadism.
    - tjradcliffe 12y ago
      Whether its sadism or not is independent of the experience of the bug, even if that question is meaningful. It depends on whether the person committing the act believes the bug is suffering, and whether they enjoy it on that basis or some other. And since the question is open as to what the bug's experience is, there may also be a tendency for individuals to interpret their behaviours as being evidence of suffering or not depending on how sadistic they are. Non-sadists may tend to interpret the bug's behaviour in ways that suggest there isn't any experience of suffering. Sadists will do the opposite. It's difficult to see what if any interesting issues the question of the bug's internal experience could bear on. It's our perception or imagination of that experience that would seem to be far more important in how the act should be classified for a given individual.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  Ummm... irrespective of whether they experience suffering in any phenomenological sense, what's the actual point supposed to be in feeding bugs through a coffee grinder? It seems as if you could only really enjoy the act if you enjoyed the prospect of making something else suffer.
- dmm 12y ago
  > No doubt their nervous systems transmit pain signals Why are you so certain? There seems to be plenty of debate on the issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_invertebrates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_invertebrates .
  - ytturbed 12y ago
    'No doubt' is a figure of speech. But in species where there aren't any pain signals at all, my case is strengthened. I've skimmed the page you link: doesn't it just assume that 'pain experience' implies suffering? But this is contradicted by the testimony of cancer patients on opiates or Hindu saints undergoing surgery without anaesthesia. They feel the pain but it doesn't bother them.

Mz 12y ago

It's too bad the article did not put more emphasis on this perspective: All of which underlines the false dichotomy of good and evil that Paulhus has been keen to probe. For example, surgeons tend to lack empathy. People who are too empathetic would have a hard time cutting into someone. They would be too squeamish. Soldiers are also a necessary and important role in the world where the work isn't "nice" in nature.

trhway 12y ago
>For example, surgeons tend to lack empathy. People who are too empathetic would have a hard time cutting into someone. They would be too squeamish. lacking and having control over are 2 different things. Former makes a psychopath, latter - a good surgeon.
- Mz 12y ago
  My understanding is that doctors tend to lack empathy, not control it. A quick google brings up this article which agrees with that understanding: http://news.legalexaminer.com/study-finds-doctors-lack-empathy.aspx?googleid= http://news.legalexaminer.com/study-finds-doctors-lack-empat... Your suggestion simply does not fit with anything I have ever seen or heard. I would be happy to see data suggesting that your idea is true instead. Care to cite a source?
  - koliber 12y ago
    That's interesting. I read a while back that psychopaths are not people who are completely devoid of empathy. Instead, they were defined as people who can control empathy. They can turn it on or off. They can turn it on when it suits them and turn it off when it would get in the way of achieving goals.
    - sarciszewski 12y ago
      I would call those people borderline rather than full-blown psychopaths, but I'm not a psychologist.

tjradcliffe 12y ago

The American psychologist Roy Baumeister has a very good book on evil: http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-Cruelty/dp/0805071652/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422680912&sr=8-1&keywords=evil http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-Cruelty/dp/... My review of it can be found here: http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1605 http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1605 Short version: Baumesiter focuses on data, not imaginary scenarios, which he correctly identifies as profoundly misleading (which should be no surprise to anyone paying attention to the past 300 years of scientific history, which has basically been a monotonous repetition of "Your imagination is a terrible tool for knowing reality"). He defines and rejects the imaginary "myth of pure evil" and investigates empirically what causes evil and how it works in the real--not the imaginary--world. The causes he identifies are fragile egotism, material gain, utopian idealism, and sadism (the last is the least, accounting for perhaps 5% of evil acts.) He backs his claims with data, not imagination, and anyone arguing against him must bring far more than "it just makes sense to me" as a counter. I can't recommend this book enough. Is it the last word on the subject? Of course not: it is science, and therefore open-ended. But it is so much better than almost anything else you will read on evil that complaining about its shortcomings looks silly. It is certainly vastly better than the purely imaginary accounts of evil found in the Bible or the Quran or "A Treatise on Human Nature", to the extent that they are incidently but convincingly shown to be completely irrelevant as practical guides to human behaviour.

joelthelion 12y ago

This is very important research. Consistently ignoring our dark side is bringing us nowhere.

harkyns_castle 12y ago

What a waste of peoples LCD's. Such a load of crap I haven't read in a while.