soreff comments on Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided - Less Wrong

102 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 03 March 2007 06:53PM

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Comment author: More_Right 24 April 2014 08:56:30AM *  -1 points [-]

There are a lot of people who really don't understand the structure of reality, or how prevalent and how destructive sociopaths (and the conformists that they influence) are.

In fact, there is a blind spot in most people's realities that's filled by their evolutionarily-determined blindness to sociopaths. This makes them easy prey for sociopaths, especially intelligent, extreme sociopaths (total sociopathy, lack of mirror neurons, total lack of empathy, as described by Robert Hare in "without conscience") with modern technology and a support network of other sociopaths.

In fact, virtually everyone who hasn't read Stanley Milgram's book about it, and put in a lot of thought about its implications is in this category. I'm not suggesting that you or anyone else in this conversation is "bad" or "ignorant," but just that you might not be referencing an accurate picture of political thought, political reality, political networks.

The world still doesn't have much of a problem with the "initiation of force" or "aggression." (Minus a minority of enlightened libertarian dissenters.) ...Especially not when it's labeled as "majoritarian government." ie: "Legitimized by a vote." However, a large and growing number of people who see reality accurately (small-L libertarians) consistently denounce the initiated use of force as grossly sub-optimal, immoral, and wrong. It is immoral because it causes suffering to innocent people.

Stangl could have recognized that the murder of women and children was "too wrong to tolerate." In fact, he did recognize this, by his comment that he felt "weak in the knees" while pushing women and children into the gas chamber. That he chose to follow "the path of compliance" "the path of obedience" and "the path of nonresistance" (all those prior paths are different ways of saying the same thing, with different emphasis on personal onus, and on the extent to which fear plays a defensible part in his decision-making).

The reason I still judge the Nazis (and their modern equivalents) harshly is because they faced significant opposition, but it was almost as wrong as they were. The levellers innovated proper jury trials in the 1600s, and restored them by the 1670, in the trial of William Penn. It wasn't as if Austria was without its "Golden Bull" either. Instead, they chose a mindless interpretation of "the will to power."

The rest of the world viewed Hitler as a raving madman. There were plenty of criticisms of Nazism in existence at the time of Hitler's rise to power. Adam Smith had written "The Wealth of Nations" over a century earlier. The Federalist and Anti-Federalists were right in incredible detail again, over a century earlier.

Talk about the prison industrial complex with anyone, and talk with someone who has family members imprisoned for a victimless crime offense. Talk with someone who knows Schaeffer Cox, (one of the many political prisoners in the USA). Most people will choose not to talk to these people (to remain ignorant) because knowledge imparts onus to act morally, and stop supporting immoral systems. To meet the Jews is to activate your mirror neurons, is to empathize with them, ...a dangerous thing to do when you're meeting them standing outside of a cattle car. Your statistical likelihood of being murdered by your own government, during peacetime, worldwide.

Comment author: soreff 26 April 2014 07:39:25PM 1 point [-]

Concern about sociopaths applies to both business and government:

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/01/09/3140081/bridge-sociopathy/

One paper examining a sizable sample of business folk found that percentage of sociopaths in the corporate world is 3.5 times higher than in the general population. Another study of 346 white-collar workers found that the percentage of corporate sociopaths increased as you go up the corporate ladder. That’s consistent with the reasons why politicians tend to be sociopaths: corporate leaders have lots of power over others and arguably even less need for empathy and conscience than politicians.