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Athrelon comments on Rationality Quotes October 2012 - Less Wrong
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--Eric Hoffer, on Near/Far
Invertible fact alert!
It's a lot easier to hate Creationists than to hate my landlady.
It is easier to control how you relate to a theoretical group than a concrete individual. If you believe it is proper to hate Creationists, you can do so with little difficulty. If you change your mind and think it is better to pity them, you can do that.
But if you landlady has actually helped or hurt you, and you know a strong emotional response isn't actually called for, you're going to have a very hard time not liking or hating her.
Mad libs:
It is a lot easier to <strong emotion> <vaguely defined group> than to <same strong emotion> <actual acquaintance>.
And sometimes it's true with s/easier/harder/. ("feel compassion for".) Hence invertibility.
Well, yes, but the invertibility is conditional.
Compassion is easier with a concrete person for a target. As is... idk. There's probably some (respect? romantic love? Loyalty?).
Hate is easier with a diffuse target. As is, say, idolizing love, disgust, contempt, superiority, etc.
The invertibility isn't in that you can flip "harder" to "easier" and then have it make just as much sense. You have to change the emotion too, which signifies that there is a categorization of emotions: useful!
If you insist that this is invertible wisdom, then I must say you are misapplying the heuristic.
Depends. A klansman may find it easy to hate "niggers" but much harder to hate his black neighbour. A literary critic who values her tolerance may it find difficult to hate an abstract group but can passionately hate her mother-in-law. I am not sure whether the difference stems from there being two different types of hate, or only from different causes of the same sort of hate.
It is easier to <far-mode emotion> <vaguely defined group> than to <same far-mode emotion> <specific person>.
It is harder to <near-mode emotion> <vaguely defined group> than to <same near-mode emotion> <specific person>.
Isn't the <far-mode emotion> actually a <signalled emotion> and the <near-mode emotion> an <actual emotion>?
I don't think hate is necessarily easier with a diffuse target. People hold personal grudges well. There's also the fact that there are sometimes legitimate reasons to hate specific people, but there are basically never legitimate reasons to hate entire groups of people.
Can you summarize your understanding of legitimate reasons for hate?
I'm not asking for examples, but rather for the principles that those examples would exemplify.
Semi-legitimate might be a better descriptor. If someone destroyed me or the ones I loved out of spite and took pleasure in it, I would probably hate them and probably feel that my hate was legitimate. If I went through any traumatic experience like torture or rape, I would probably come out of that with some hate.
I'm an egoist, not a utilitarian (I have strong utilitarian preferences though). That probably has implications for this as well.
Linus van Pelt