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wedrifid comments on Human Evil and Muddled Thinking - Less Wrong
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Comments (138)
Having read dozens autobiographies, memoirs, and other primary sources (including translations, I don't read German, Russian, etc.), as well as many more secondary sources about the Second World War (and the Spanish Civil War, and the Winter War, etc.), I can only wonder as to what you might mean by "clarity", "logic", and the other terms you use and/or how you came to your conclusions, and what sources were the input you interpreted.
This is misleading. Wikipedia.
Good intentions do not stop people from acting evilly.
Non sequitur.
I think Lessdazed meant that even if rationality doesn't stop people with bad intentions from doing bad things, it can stop people with good intentions from doing bad things. And there are probably more bad things done by irrational, well-intentioned people than by evil people.
In order to accomplish gigantic evil deeds, it is necessary for people to work together in teams. Consciously evil people are not team players.
Thus gigantic evil deeds are invariably accomplished by teams of people full of clever rationalizations for evil constructed by clever intellectuals.
They don't need to rationalize when they just don't have sam0345's concept of 'evil' anywhere in their brain in the first place. It get the impression, for example, that Genghis Khan just did what he wanted to do - no excuses, no need to rationalize. Hearing this 'evil' concept of Sam from the future wouldn't have just been something he rejected it would be completely dumbfounding.
Seems like he would have a label like "evil" for stabbing an ally in the back or the like. It just mightn't apply to outgroups whatsoever.
Yes, there's clearly something dubious about assuming that not only Genghis Khan, but his entire army, consisted of weird mutants who somehow lack moral intuitions. Much more likely is that they had normal human moral intuitions, but failed to apply them generally to all people, rather than (say) people in their own cultural group.
Stalin actually was a psychopath (probably diagnosable, as he fits all the standard criteria: flat affect, deceives people easily and without remorse, indifferent to suffering, superficially charming). Genghis Khan may have been (we know far less about him). But the average Soviet soldier? The average Mongol warrior? Clearly not---there are simply too many of them for that to be plausible.
Can you explain?
The article says things such as:
B.H. replies:
B.H. seems to think that intellectuals of the past century suffered from a lack of compassion and desire to do good, and were good at thinking clearly. I think that they were compassionate and had good intentions, yet had muddled thinking. It is this contrast that I was trying to bring out, and this is not anon sequitur.
You had a valid point to make (or at least an interesting point that would appeal to the lesswrong philosophy). It did not apply to the quote you set it up as a refutation of. Refuting a somewhat different position that what you are quoting is the foundation of debating but I consider it bad form. Particularly because it works so well against human minds.
If you just made your point without the vaguely relevant quote then I would not have commented.
For my part I don't particularly agree with either of you. I wouldn't focus on 'teaching compassion' or 'teaching clear thinking'. I would focus on setting up institutions and power structures in which corruption and things-I-call-evil just aren't the most efficient way to gain power.
I think you read into what I said some things that weren't there.
I agree with the value of that approach to group and societal problems, but the smaller the scale, the less relevant that approach is and the more relevant overcoming bias is, so which I think better to focus on for a situation depends on specifics. B.H. was discounting clear thought in favor of good intentions, I addressed that, without intending to malign auxiliary approaches. I do not believe that many people are the villains of their personal narrative, and so think that "teaching compassion" is not too important, and that teaching clear thinking is. Teaching clear thinking isn't always the right approach.