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Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

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Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Toxoplasma Of Rage", an excellent essay[0] by Scott Alexander, points out that sadly there are only two choices for activists today - behave nicely, gather universal agreement to their cause and then get completely ignored, or draw attention to their cause by being so hated by everyone, that half of the audience starts working against the cause just in spite. [0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxopl…

I know what you're saying but it isn't true. Let's look at 2 examples, the LGBT community and Feminism. LGBT celebrates its differences. It welcomes everyone. It is open minded and tolerant. Feminism bullies, ridicules, excludes, creates us/them divides and is continually hypocritical. You could not have 2 more different different approaches. You don't need to be a bully. You don't need to threaten or ridicule or div…

Isn't chalking LGBT as "tolerant" and feminism as "intolerant" (whatever these labels mean) yet another example of the us/them duality?

Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#182
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you grow up in a poor community where murders happen often but are not often solved. You don't trust the police to serve justice to those who have wronged you. You notice that many of your neighbors solve their problems themselves - by fighting, threatening, killing. People often heckle you because you try to not fight back when people pick on you - there's a culture of toughness and honor all around you. N…

Doesn't that classify as self-defense?

Indeed, it does not count as self-defense. It counts as retaliation, and it is justified in some societies (e.g. honour killing).

Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#183
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most human beings and human societies agree on the same general points of morality. - Killing -- Try really, really hard not to do this! - Lying -- Please try really, really hard not to do this! Or there's George Carlin's formulation: "Really try hard to not be a jerk!" I think everyone has a pretty good idea of what this means, and most people agree on the broad outlines. The devil is in the details, of course. Then…

I'd go bit further. Let's assume everybody agreed with the "Really try hard to not be a jerk!" and everybody would have 100% similar general picture of what is moral. Two people still interpret a situation from two points of view. Both making the judgement that the other guy is out of bounds. Which justifies some apprehension. But they both experience wrongful apprehension, which justifies pretty big apprehension. Wh…

My favorite example:

1) Randomly divide people into two groups.

2) Ask everyone in the first group this question: "If someone sues you and loses, is it fair that they should pay your legal costs?" Most people will say yes.

3) Ask everyone in the second group this question: "If you sue someone and lose, is it fair that you should pay their legal costs?" Most people will say no. Even though it's the same fucking question.

That's why we need shared enforced norms :-)

Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know what you're saying but it isn't true. Let's look at 2 examples, the LGBT community and Feminism. LGBT celebrates its differences. It welcomes everyone. It is open minded and tolerant. Feminism bullies, ridicules, excludes, creates us/them divides and is continually hypocritical. You could not have 2 more different different approaches. You don't need to be a bully. You don't need to threaten or ridicule or div…

Isn't chalking LGBT as "tolerant" and feminism as "intolerant" (whatever these labels mean) yet another example of the us/them duality?

Noting a difference does not imply intolerance. You can be inclusive and still call a spade a spade; the issue is whether you respect others regardless of their race, gender, sexual preferences, religion, et cetera, and offer them the same opportunities. Talking about the way things are with respect is not an issue, and should not be an issue.

Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#185
post #78

Is there a peer reviewed paper showing their findings? The author is an academic who says he has studied this, but there is no link to such a paper. I would also note that police usually investigate people who knew the victim, rather than people who were morally opposed to them. But I don't have a peer reviewed study either.

Tage Rai, the author of the article has written a book 'Virtuous Violence' [0] published in December 2014. I'm guessing the article is taken from that.

[0]: http://www.amazon.com/Virtuous-Violence-Hurting-Killing-Rela...

Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#186
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mentions several categories: We analyzed records of all kinds of violence, ranging from war to torture to genocide to homicide. That other stuff seems out of scope.

Why does it seem out of scope? In terms of biomass humans seem kind of insignificant. Some ants make slaves [1]. Some wasps torture cockroaches [2]. I don't know enough about them, but I imagine that bacteriophages would happily commit genocide [3]. I believe that humans are special because we're made in the image of God, but I mentioned the spiders et al because it felt like this whole thing was sliding into a philo…

Because the scope of the study was limited to human against human violence.

Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#187
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a reason that delusions of morality don't count as a mental health issue? It's a bit dangerous if you start defining deviations from group norms; which is what delusions of morality would look like from within a group; as mental health issues without some moderating factor. Under those conditions the person who expresses, 'Maybe we shouldn't kill her just because she left the faith,' is mentally ill within…

I've been trying to come up with a response to this and keep ending up in a rabbit hole of thought. Ultimately what I feel is that we can step away from the micro image of religious and cultural influences, and actually look at what is right for all of humanity. We have a pretty decent system for that in what the world considers "basic human rights" I would argue that an honor killing culture is by definition mentall…

The problem is that you do not occupy a privileged ontological position. You may seem mentally ill to someone in the future, who has a different set of morals. There are plenty of other people in the history of the world who have thought that what they were doing was the best for humanity, or at least the part of humanity they cared about. If you really believed that disbelieving in God got you sent to a place of eternal suffering - and even worse, if you believed that disbelief could be caught from heretics - then you would be acting in a perfectly virtuous way in trying to stamp out that sort of heresy with violence. If you really believe that drugs ruin lives, if you think the world functions in that way, then you are acting in a perfectly virtuous way in operating the war on drugs.

Of course we can note a lack of evidence, or even contrary evidence, in both of those cases. That's not the point, the point is that that's just how reality looks to people in those positions and you have no reason to presuppose that you are not sharing similar errors in whatever you would decide on as "right for all of humanity." You will even find disagreement over what people believe constitute "basic human rights" you will find places, and times in history, where your right to life would have been – and still is in some places – a laughable concept. And even today you find certain rights that seem to contradict other rights, I'm reminded of the fact that you have a right to an education in Germany but that this right has been interpreted as a mandate. Which rather seems in conflict with my right to pursue happiness, my right to be free from imprisonment, and so on. (Granted, people generally don't treat children as having many rights - but since we're talking right for all humanity.) Similarly there are great number of rights that you would think people have but that for various reasons they do not – or at least have no functional way of asserting. My right to control my reproductive system for instance - I've found it almost impossible to get my tubes tied on the NHS because doctors continually tell me that I'm too young to make those sorts of decisions about family. (Or, in one rather vexing case, outright asked what was wrong with me.) Despite being a woman in my twenties who reacts extremely poorly to birth control (i.e. it makes me a crazy bitch). They interpret a right to a family in a strongly positive sense - they've decided that's right for all humanity.

The sort of power you're talking about would ultimately be wielded by politicians, by psychologists, by the same sort of doctors who make decisions about what people can do with their lives and their health who have made terrible decisions in the past and continue to make terrible decisions today. Do you trust those people? The same sorts of people who decided that being gay was a mental health problem? Even if we accepted that you could get together a small group of people who honestly did not desire to be tyrants, even if we accepted that you would only define those things that seem to us on the basis of our current morality as the most egregious examples of violations as mental health problems, there is no one worthy of giving that sort of trust to. That's probably how the situation looks to everyone who ends up as a tyrant.

They have misused that power in the past, they continue to miss use it today, and you have no reason to suppose that they will not miss use it in the future.

Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Toxoplasma Of Rage", an excellent essay[0] by Scott Alexander, points out that sadly there are only two choices for activists today - behave nicely, gather universal agreement to their cause and then get completely ignored, or draw attention to their cause by being so hated by everyone, that half of the audience starts working against the cause just in spite. [0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxopl…

I know what you're saying but it isn't true. Let's look at 2 examples, the LGBT community and Feminism. LGBT celebrates its differences. It welcomes everyone. It is open minded and tolerant. Feminism bullies, ridicules, excludes, creates us/them divides and is continually hypocritical. You could not have 2 more different different approaches. You don't need to be a bully. You don't need to threaten or ridicule or div…

Both womens rights and LGBT right sit at a strange point in history. The bad behaviour has largely become socially unacceptable, but a lot of the people who committed crimes are still extant in society. We have collectively decided to forgive and forget without any kind of process. Why should we expect the anger to just disapear?

Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Toxoplasma Of Rage", an excellent essay[0] by Scott Alexander, points out that sadly there are only two choices for activists today - behave nicely, gather universal agreement to their cause and then get completely ignored, or draw attention to their cause by being so hated by everyone, that half of the audience starts working against the cause just in spite. [0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxopl…

I know what you're saying but it isn't true. Let's look at 2 examples, the LGBT community and Feminism. LGBT celebrates its differences. It welcomes everyone. It is open minded and tolerant. Feminism bullies, ridicules, excludes, creates us/them divides and is continually hypocritical. You could not have 2 more different different approaches. You don't need to be a bully. You don't need to threaten or ridicule or div…

Now you're elevating a vocal subset of "feminists" to represent the entire group. There are plenty of old-school feminists, from when feminism was about equal rights. They just don't create as much internet drama as the other kind, so you hear about them less.
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