2mo ago

Oh Yeah

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No, evil is simply flawed logic. In other words, stupid people.
- Many of the Nazis convicted at Nuremberg were undeniably smart in the sense that they could perform abstract reasoning better than most people. Some of them had top 1% IQs and none of them had below average IQs (yes, IQ is an imperfect measure of intelligence, but at the same time, anyone who gets a 130 on an IQ test is smart... They just might not be smarter than someone with a 120 or a 110 from a different background).
  I've had a long (25 years so far) and successful career in computational science/engineering. Everyone I have worked with in the last 25 year, with only 2 exceptions I can think of, was smarter than most people. I have heard some truly awful things come out of coworkers mouths. Particularly in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. People who could write software that accurately predicted airflow through jet engines who did not care that the people of Iraq were not the same people who attacked the WTC. They knew, but did not care! They simply wanted to lash out at brown people in the middle east.
  No, empathy is the distinguishing characteristic.
  
  Smart doesn't mean logical/rational. Logic doesn't require much intelligence.
  Empathy doesn't reliably prevent people from doing wrong: injustices are often defended with irrational appeals to emotion, partiality, & selective reasoning.
  
  I don't think you understand what empathy is. Why are you bringing up irrational appeals to emotion?
  
  I don’t think you understand what empathy is.
  Maybe your empathy is failing.
  People can feel how others feel. That doesn't mean they'll morally reason well, have the integrity to defend it, or not use those feelings to justify irrational injustices even if they mean well. People are susceptible to biases that empathy alone won't defend against.
  
  The comment you link to does do a better job of explaining what you're getting at, but I would still argue that those behaviors also require a partitioning of empathy, and that is a behavior most humans are susceptible to... Those who have empathy can often be made to shut it down or partition it so that it only applies to certain people.
  I stand by my original comment modulo the part that asserts that it is empathy. It is not a lack of intelligence being the point.
  
  I agree it is not intelligence, either. However, the comment above didn't make it about intelligence: they called out flawed logic, and they called failure to uphold logic an instance of stupidity. Logic & consistency are more about commitment & insistence than intelligence.
  Sophisticated work can take considerable intellect to produce & defend yet be maddeningly stupid in flouting general coherence & integrity. Abstract example: non-heliocentric models strained under increasingly sophisticated math (greater intellectual demand) yet are stupid compared to heliocentric models (better parsimony & more consistent with the rest of classical mechanics).
  There's also the phenomenon of smart stupidity where people (smart in specific areas) apply their intelligence irrationally: intelligence can be stupid. When people with a compatible morality arrive to unjust positions inconsistent with straightforward moral reasoning (through partiality or elaborate rationalization), some may call that flawed logic maddeningly stupid regardless of the intelligence it took to get there.
  Moral reasoning takes logic, it's not merely an exercise in empathy. Cases inevitably arise with multiple considerations where emotions conflict & not everyone can be satisfied: empathy alone will not settle them & moral judgement is necessary. Insistence on consistent reasoning & follow through despite challenges is integrity. The Milgram experiments show that even as people express empathetic distress & stall with questions, too many of them will obey orders to administer the maximum electric shock to someone they think they had shocked to unconsciousness. They had empathy & felt compromised, but they needed integrity.
  
  Even "Smart" people are pretty stupid and make mistakes all the time, and most don't respect truth enough to self correct. Empathy is a decision, and making that decision requires being able to make correct choices.
- Yeah, stupid people who lack empathy only get to run for the Republican ticket!

77 comments