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Lumifer comments on If you can see the box, you can open the box - Less Wrong Discussion

49 Post author: ThePrussian 26 February 2015 10:36AM

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Comment author: gjm 26 February 2015 04:58:14PM 9 points [-]

I'm unconvinced that this is a good question, for two reasons.

  • If it exists but is incredibly rare, the answer is still "yes". And for pretty much anything you can briefly describe, there exist people who take pleasure in it.
  • There are probably substantial numbers of people who, e.g., take pleasure in unwanted pain when inflicted as punishment for something they strongly disapprove of. This may or may not be a bad thing, but it doesn't seem reasonable to say that it's evil by definition. (And I guess that James_Miller didn't intend to.)

So I think we'd get nearer to James's intent if we asked whether a substantial fraction of humans (let's say, at least 3% or so) take pleasure in other people's unwanted pain for its own sake.

Comment author: Lumifer 26 February 2015 05:02:16PM 2 points [-]

A third reason is that "pain" is somewhat ambiguous. Does schadenfreude count?

Comment author: bbleeker 27 February 2015 04:32:47PM 1 point [-]

Yes, yes it does.

Comment author: gjm 26 February 2015 05:31:28PM 1 point [-]

Yes, good point. I kinda just assumed it really meant "suffering" in some generalized sense, rather than anything narrower.

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