jschulter comments on The Nature of Offense - Less Wrong

86 Post author: Wei_Dai 23 July 2009 11:15AM

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Comment author: MoreOn 11 December 2010 06:44:22AM 3 points [-]

Wow, it’s a really cool insight!

I guess the natural question to ask would be: Do people ever get (genuinely) offended by anything that does not threaten their status?

Going further, I don’t know of people directing offense at animals or inanimate objects. Does the offender need to be perceived as intelligent? In that case, are people less frequently offended at those they consider stupid?

Comment author: jschulter 20 March 2011 12:47:19PM *  3 points [-]

Well, I have encountered people being (or claiming to be) offended by what in all rights would be an assault on someone else's status. This could be a form of empathy, or in many cases an attempt to gain status themselves through a show of sympathy. This does seem like a potential occurrence of legitimate offense not caused by a perceived direct or indirect threat to the status of the person being offended, iff the offense is genuine- something which I cannot personally attest to, never having experienced this myself.