Ferro comments on Human Evil and Muddled Thinking - Less Wrong

40 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 September 2007 11:43PM

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Comment author: B.H. 14 September 2007 03:32:44PM 1 point [-]

I regret that I have to disagree with the post, even though I am a great fan of Orwell.

Stalin and Hitler did not suffer from lack of clarity. They knew exactly what they were doing, knew why they were doing it, and were glad of the outcome. More logic and better writing would simply have helped them be even more effectively evil. Teaching clear thinking is important; but it will not stop evil people from having evil intentions or acting evil. Evil emerges from the heart and soul, not the head. Intellectuals who supported, and support, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Osama, Saddam, and so forth, knew what they doing. They got a vicarious thrill from the results, even if they did not get their hands dirty. Yes, they may have used wretched writing to hide the consequences from others, but they knew what they wanted. I might add that Orwell's hands were not clean; he fought with the Communists in Spain, he advocated hard-line total socialism in England of a type that would make George Mason economists gag.

Maybe you suffer from "intellectualist bias." Academics commonly do. That is a bias, that might go all the way back to Socrates, that the world only needs education to be good. A few courses in logic, rhetoric, and good writing, and everthing will be okay. So, sorry, but intellectualist bias may be the hardest to overcome.

So, in a sense, I am with Tyler on this one. It is good to overcome confirmation bias, or attribution bias, and so forth, but they are not at the top of my list.

Helping people to open their eyes and see human suffering, raising children to be compassionate, will do far more to get rid of the Hitlers and Castros than logic and writing classes. Maybe that is just my bias.

Comment author: TobyBartels 27 August 2010 08:06:16PM 11 points [-]

Stalin and Hitler did not suffer from lack of clarity. They knew exactly what they were doing

Yes, hypocrisy is not the problem with them.

Intellectuals who supported, and support, Lenin, […], and so forth, knew what they doing.

No, I don't think that they did or do! Orwell was writing to intellectuals who were in denial about what Stalin was doing and why. Here is where hypocrisy causes problems.

Comment author: Ferro 24 May 2012 08:42:11AM 1 point [-]

One might say that, in a general sense, Stalin and Hitler were in possession of 'cold logic', much like 'cold empathy'. One can know both how to, and how not to, steal the cookie, and the effects that will have, and the moral consequences of that, but in the end, if one's intent is evil, then one's actions will be evil, especially if one knows all the consequences of their actions. Logic is blind; in the end, it is subservient to the will of the wielder, and merely amplifies the actions of the individual, whether good or evil. In the same way, hypocrisy is only a 'good' or 'evil' thing when it contradicts 'evil' or 'good' ideals. One can think one's way into and out of any situation one wishes; who here has read Donne's poetry?