MrHen comments on Shut Up and Divide? - Less Wrong

60 Post author: Wei_Dai 09 February 2010 08:09PM

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Comment author: MrHen 09 February 2010 10:49:37PM 5 points [-]

Caring should be different than being surprised that it happened. If I stole $1 from you everyday I suspect you would still care every time I did it.

The reason I say this is because "So what?" applies to both surprise and caring. If I tell you the sun rose today you could reply, "So what?" You don't care, but in a surprised sense of the word, not in an sympathetic sense of the word.

Likewise, if you don't feel sympathetic by someone dying it is more likely because you don't have any emotional investment in them. If your best friend died you wouldn't respond by saying, "So what? People die every day."

In other words, you don't care because (a) it isn't a surprise and (b) you aren't emotionally invested in the tragedy.

Comment author: randallsquared 10 February 2010 02:13:06PM 3 points [-]

If I stole $1 from you everyday I suspect you would still care every time I did it.

I don't think so. Most people in the US pay more than $400/yr in taxes which support things they claim to despise (though not all the same things, of course). Yet the vast majority of Americans do not seem to be upset about paying taxes, something which they typically have no choice in except not to make the money.

Once you've been stealing money for a while, it's relatively easy to convince people that it's okay "because it's always been this way".

Comment author: thomblake 10 February 2010 04:14:20PM 0 points [-]

Indeed. Milton Friedman regretted his part in inventing income tax withholding, for this reason.

Comment author: MrHen 10 February 2010 02:30:28PM 0 points [-]

Awesome. Where do you live?