gwern comments on Rationality Quotes January 2013 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: katydee 02 January 2013 05:23PM

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Comment author: TimS 07 January 2013 01:51:05AM *  6 points [-]

Let’s see if I get this right. Fear makes you angry and anger makes you evil, right?

Now I’ll concede at once that fear has been a major motivator of intolerance in human history. I can picture knightly adepts being taught to control fear and anger, as we saw credibly in “The Empire Strikes Back.” Calmness makes you a better warrior and prevents mistakes. Persistent wrath can cloud judgment. That part is completely believable.

But then, in “Return of the Jedi,” Lucas takes this basic wisdom and perverts it, saying — “If you get angry — even at injustice and murder — it will automatically and immediately transform you into an unalloyedly evil person! All of your opinions and political beliefs will suddenly and magically reverse. Every loyalty will be forsaken and your friends won’t be able to draw you back. You will instantly join your sworn enemy as his close pal or apprentice. All because you let yourself get angry at his crimes.”

Uh, say what? Could you repeat that again, slowly?

In other words, getting angry at Adolf Hitler will cause you to rush right out and join the Nazi Party? Excuse me, George. Could you come up with a single example of that happening? Ever?

David Brin

Comment author: gwern 07 January 2013 03:39:44AM 13 points [-]

Lots of people in Weimar Germany got angry at the emerging fascists - and went out and joined the Communist Party. It was tough to be merely a liberal democrat.

Comment author: TimS 07 January 2013 04:54:13PM 2 points [-]

I suspect you have your causation backwards. People created / joined the Freikorps and other quasi-fascist institutions to fight the threat of Communism. Viable international Communism (~1917) predates the fall of the Kaiser - and the Freikorp had no reason to exist when the existing authorities were already willing and capable of fighting Communism.

More generally, the natural reading of the Jedi moral rules is that the risk of evil from strong emotions was so great that liberal democrats should be prohibited from feeling any (neither anger-at-injustice nor love)

Comment author: gwern 07 January 2013 05:04:15PM 3 points [-]

I suspect you have your causation backwards.

I don't know why you would think the causation would be only in one direction.

Comment author: TimS 07 January 2013 05:16:12PM 2 points [-]

Now I'm confused. What is the topic of discussion? Clarification of Weimar Republic politics is not responsive to the Jedi-moral-philosophy point. Anger causing political action, including extreme political action, is a reasonable point, but I don't actually think anger-at-opponent-unjust-acts was the cause of much Communist or Fascist membership.

You might think anger-at-social-situation vs. anger-at-unjust-acts is excessive hair-splitting. But I interpreted your response as essentially saying "Anger-at-injustice really does lead to fairly directly evil." Your example does not support that assertion. If I've misinterpreted you, please clarify. I often seem to make these interpretative mistakes, and I'd like to do better at avoiding these types of misunderstandings in the future.

Comment author: gwern 07 January 2013 05:20:44PM 2 points [-]

But I interpreted your response as essentially saying "Anger-at-injustice really does lead to fairly directly evil." Your example does not support that assertion.

It certainly does. In reaction to one evil, Naziism, Germans could go and support a second evil, Communism, which to judge by its global body counts, was many times worse than Naziism, which is exactly the sort of reaction Brin is ridiculing: "oh, how ridiculous, how could getting angry at evil make you evil too?" Well, it could make you support another evil, perhaps even aware of the evil on the theory of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'...

I don't know how you could get a better example of 'fighting fire with fire' than that or 'when fighting monsters, beware lest you become one'.

Comment author: TimS 07 January 2013 05:28:32PM 2 points [-]

Anger can lead to evil vs. Anger must lead to evil.

And ignoring anger for the moment, Jedi moral philosophy says love leads to evil (that's the Annakin-Padme plot of Attack of the Clones - the romance was explicitly forbidden by Jedi rules).

Comment author: gwern 07 January 2013 05:31:54PM 0 points [-]

Anger can lead to evil vs. Anger must lead to evil.

Not what we're discussing.

And ignoring anger for the moment

Let's stay on topic here.

Let me quote Brin:

In other words, getting angry at Adolf Hitler will cause you to rush right out and join the Nazi Party? Excuse me, George. Could you come up with a single example of that happening? Ever?

How is my example - chosen from the very time period and milieu that Brin himself chose - not a 'single example of that happening ever'?

Comment author: TimS 07 January 2013 05:58:20PM 1 point [-]

Anger can lead to evil vs. Anger must lead to evil.

Not what we're discussing.

Exactly what we are discussing. Brin explicitly acknowledges the first point - he's rejecting the second point.

How is my example - chosen from the very time period and milieu that Brin himself chose - not a 'single example of that happening ever'?

That's not a charitable reading of that point. In the real world, there are lots of different ways to be evil. In Jedi-land, evil = Sith.

Annakin opposes the Sith. Then he feels strong emotions (love of Padme). Then he becomes Sith. Not extremist-opponent-who-is-just-as-bad.

Opposing Nazis does not lead one to becoming a Nazi. Of course, in the real world, Nazi isn't the only way to be evil.

Comment author: gwern 07 January 2013 06:17:00PM 1 point [-]

That's not a charitable reading of that point. In the real world, there are lots of different ways to be evil. In Jedi-land, evil = Sith.

Annakin opposes the Sith. Then he feels strong emotions (love of Padme). Then he becomes Sith. Not extremist-opponent-who-is-just-as-bad.

If there is only one way to be evil in Star Wars, then to become an extremist opponent of a different flavor maps back onto becoming a Sith...

Comment author: OrphanWilde 07 January 2013 06:21:24PM 1 point [-]

In fairness to Lucas, Anakin's love of Padme isn't what converted him; it was Mace Windu's disregard for the morality the Jedi professed to follow.

I regard the Jedi versus Sith as less "Good versus evil" and more "Principle Ethics versus Pragmatist/Utilitarian Ethics" - Anakin reluctantly embraced Principles until he saw that the Principles were ineffectual; even its adherents would ultimately choose pragmatism. It's kind of implied, in-canon within the movies (the books go further in vindicating the SIth still), that Sidious' master might not have been evil, per se; he sought to end death.

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