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AdeleneDawner comments on A Suite of Pragmatic Considerations in Favor of Niceness - Less Wrong
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I want to ask, why are people mean in the first place? I think before we try to "fix" some behavior we should make sure we understand it first. Otherwise we might be like the social reformers who try to fix "broken" institutions without understanding their reasons for existing.
To a first approximation, meanness seems to be the deliberate cause of offense. (Although I wonder if I'm suffering from the man-with-a-hammer syndrome here.) Anyone have other ideas?
This and this suggest to me that one purpose (meta-purpose?) of meanness is cheap signaling - if you already have a reputation (deserved or not) as an authority figure, you can use it to quickly designate something as 'bad' without having to spend time and energy justifying yourself.